I am a health & fitness blogger groupie. I have about 20 H&F blogs on my Google Reader that I check regularly. Currently, FOAM magazine has a contest going on to find their next H&F blogger and girls are submitting their arguments why they qualify for the job. When I read through some of these candidates posts I realized they were very similar to all the H&F bloggers I follow.
Do you know what all these bloggers have in common? Save for one in C0lorado and one in Vancouver (Shout out to Katy!), all these bloggers live in warm, sunny climates; Hawaii, Florida, Arizona. It’s a lot easier to stay in shape in a place where it’s summer all year round. You are in shorts, tank tops and swim suits more often, you have better access to fresh fruit, you have constant sunshine.
But what are we poor Northerners supposed to do? Oh you hear the same old “take up an outdoor sport like xc skiing, snow shoeing, snowboarding, ice skating” and that’s well and good if it’s no colder than -20C. But what about when it is FREEZING cold out? What do you do when you need to go to the gym but you can’t stomach the thought of going to the car and freezing the whole way to the gym and back because it takes 5-10 minutes for your car to warm up? What do you do when it is so cold that you start to jog and the icy cold burns your lungs? Or you step out of the house and your nose instantly begins to ache? My plan for next winter is to have a bigger home with an extra room to convert into a home gym but if that doesn’t come to fruition, then what?
When you live in an area where it’s below -20 for an extended period of time, your body CRAVES fattening, heavy foods to put more layers of fat on to stay warm and it is very hard to fight those cravings. I feel like a zombie in the winter because of the lack of sunshine and have to take Vitamin D supplements to try to keep my energy up.
I know it’s a moot point now that it’s spring but in preparation for next year does anyone know of a Canadian health writer out there who writes about ways to stay fit in the winter? And I mean a Canadian winter! Are there any H&F bloggers who can commiserate?
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