Of
course, that statement isn't even remotely true, but look around at our
consumer society, and you'll be hard pressed not to believe it.
Everywhere you turn, you're told you need this membership or that
gadget or this exotic, Brazilian fruit to look and feel good.
Fortunately,
the reality is that fitness doesn't require loads of cash; it just
requires a little savvy and a lot of hard work. Here are a few ways to
go about getting ripped without getting ripped off.
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Ditch the gym membership.
Odds are, if you belong to a gym, it's costing you hundreds, if not
thousands of dollars a year. Is it worth it? Do you go all that often?
And if you do, what are you doing there that you couldn't do at home
for less?
For you cardio freaks out there, here's an excellent
replacement for that treadmill. It's called "pavement." As in running,
outside, on the pavement. It's free. Stairmasters? Try the stairs! And
for all you spinning fans, they actually make bikes now with these
crazy things called "wheels." You can ride them outside!
The
International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association estimates that
the average annual club membership is $775 a year. In the same time
frame, you can do four rounds of P90X®
at a fraction of that cost—and it comes with a nutrition guide. I
challenge you to find a gym that lays out a complete meal plan for you.
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Don't drink bottled water.
With prices 1,900 times higher than tap water, the $35 billion bottled
water industry is one of the greatest scams of the 21st century. It's
just water. A select few brands might be trucked in from some exotic
mountain spring, but for the most part, bottled water comes from
municipal sources—and oftentimes, it doesn't meet the same standards
that tap water needs to meet. In October 2008, the Environmental
Working Group sent 10 popular brands of bottled water to the University
of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory for testing. They found traces of 38
low-level contaminants including Tylenol®, arsenic,
industrial chemicals, and our favorite, bromodichloromethane, which was
found in levels exceeding safety standards for cancer-causing chemicals
under California's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. And
where'd they find that particular pollutant? Wal-Mart's Sam's Choice
brand. Yum!
So drink from the tap. It's cheaper and the Environmental Protection Agency holds it to higher standards.
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Eat seasonal fruits and veggies.
If you buy strawberries from New Zealand in the middle of winter, who
do you think is going to absorb the cost of shipping that fruit halfway
around the world? The farmers? The supermarket? No, it's you who pays
extra for produce purchased out of season, so avoid it if you can. Eat
peaches, tomatoes, and cherries in summer. In winter, go for
cauliflower and citrus. Not only will you save a few bucks, it'll taste
better. It's probably riper and hasn't been sitting in a refrigerated
cargo hold for a few weeks, where it loses valuable nutrients,
according to a study out of Penn State's College of Agricultural
Sciences. In the study, researchers learned that spinach, even stored
at a chilly 39 degrees, still loses significant folate and carotenoid
content after just 8 days.
If you really want to save even more
cash, cut out the four or five middlemen, and get your produce at your
local farmers' market.
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Avoid fancy body fat scales.
It is possible to accurately measure body fat, but not without
thousands of dollars of hydrostatic testing equipment and a ton of
certification. A $60 body fat scale just isn't going to give you much
accuracy. In fact, it isn't going to give you any accuracy at all. What
these scales do is called bioelectrical impedance analysis, in which
they measure your body density and then do a series of calculations to
predict what your body fat might be. In other words, they guess.
It's
a safe bet to assume that guess will be +/-5% off. This is still useful
because the guesses will probably be consistent, so while you won't be
certain of what your body fat is, you'll know if it's dropping or going
up. But you'll get roughly the same information using a $15 pair of
calipers, so save yourself some cash and just buy one of those instead.
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Ride your bike for transport.
Fitness aside, the math here is obvious. Let's say you buy yourself a
splashy urban bike, like a Trek Allant, for $539.99. First off, you'll
be able to use this thing for years. I have about 13 years on my old
Diamondback Response SE, and it still gets me where I need to go in
style.
Now let's say you'll be biking to work instead of
driving, and it's a ten-mile commute. That's a total of twenty miles a
day, and we'll assume your car gets twenty miles per gallon, or a
gallon a day, which is currently about $2.30. That's $11.50 a week or
$575 a year.
Wait a minute! You just paid for your fancy bike and actually pulled a profit!
Or
let's say you'll be forgoing public transportation. In San Francisco, a
monthly public transportation pass is $45, so $540 annually. Again with
the profit.
So I've already put up an incredibly compelling
argument, and we haven't even discussed the fact that you'd be getting
a ton of great cardio five days a week.
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Skip Starbucks®.
If you frequent this type of joint, it means you drink one of two
things. Coffee or something else. If you order a Coffee of the Week or
Pike Place Roast, you're indeed ordering coffee, but it's costing you a
couple bucks per cup, whereas it would cost you pennies to make at
home. And if you're dead set on that Starbucks "quality," they sell the
beans in handy take-home bags.
Drink anything else on the menu,
such as a Vanilla Rooibos Tazo Tea Latte or a Coffee Frappuccino
Blended Coffee, and you're not really drinking coffee, no matter how
many times they cram the word into the title.
True, there's
coffee in there, but you're drinking coffee in much the same way
wolfing down a banana split is considered eating a piece of fruit.
For
the record, a Grande Coffee Frappuccino Blended Coffee is 240 empty
calories. A Grande Vanilla Rooibos Tazo Tea Latte with 2% milk would be
200 empty calories. Both are more than a can of Coke.
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