Welcome to my post for Des Moines' Frugal Blog Tour. Read all the blogs on the tour for great frugal living information. As a chiropractor, I love adding value to my patients’ lives. That starts with giving them a plan to get back to pain-free living, but in the process I enjoy sharing ways to improve their life overall. In these conversations I often pick up tips and tricks for better living from my patients as well. Here are a few tips for improving your health naturally and frugally.
· Read 7 Steps for a Pain-Free Life by Robin McKenzie – If I could only share one book to improve the health of people’s spines, it would be this one. Pick it up from the library or buy it used on Amazon. It highlights how poor posture causes the majority of neck and back pain and teaches the most important stretches to counteract the poor postures of our lives. If you do these stretches on a regular basis, you will be standing up straight and pain-free for the rest of your life.
· Listen to Healthy Podcasts – Ben Greenfield Fitness and Dave Ramsey are amazing podcasts. Ben Greenfield is the country’s top trainer. He gives great information on improving your health. He discusses workout plans that are perfect for someone interested in home exercise on a dime. Recent discussions of TRX and Gymstick highlight ways that he spotlights home exercise tools that could be used to craft a very effective workout program without need for an expensive gym membership. On his website are a number of video clips highlighting proper exercise form. Further proof that he gives you workouts you can do on a dime: he recently released his plan for the Glee spinning workout, in which any episode of Glee can be transformed into an intense home or gym bicycling workout. Further, you could easily take the principles from that plan and apply it to the treadmill or elliptical trainer.
· Dave Ramsey is the ultimate frugal living podcast. He provides the motivation to get “gazelle intense” to get out of debt. I have also taken financial strategies from his show and applied them to my health. For instance, Dave Ramsey is an advocate of the envelope system for personal budgets, in which you fill an envelope with cash at the beginning of the month for each part of your budget and you only spend that amount during the month. Earlier this year, I noticed that my dietary habits were going downhill as I was frequently stopping for gas station snacks (Hot Tamales), icecream, or other fast food on my way home from work. In order to curb these bad habits, I implemented Dave Ramsey’s envelope system. I filled an envelope with $20 that was only to be used for fast food or gas station treats. It was effective at both improving my health and at helping my budget as I cut down significantly on unhealthy and expensive treats.
· Shop with a plan – I know that another blogger will be focusing more on frugal eating and shopping. However, one of my coworkers recently shared her shopping plan with me and it is so phenomenal I feel compelled to share it. She uses a spreadsheet with all the foods they frequently use organized by aisles of the store (the spreadsheet linked is for the Jordan Creek HyVee). This spreadsheet makes it simple to choose their favorite healthy and “treat” meals, see what’s needed to stock the kitchen, and then efficiently pick up the needed items. As a result, there is less wasted money and time. Shopping with a plan like this also helps to avoid the temptation purchases.
· Attend free workouts around Des Moines. If you know where to look, a number of free group workouts are available around Des Moines. A few of my favorites include:
o Iowa Outdoor Unlimited – subscribe to their yahoo newsgroup and you’ll see a number of free hikes and cross country skiing outings available this winter.
o IronWorks – Loran Storts from Ironworks offers weekly free group workouts guaranteed to kick your butt. His most popular offering right now is a Wednesday night circuit workout held at Sapphire Gymnastics in Urbandale. After meeting Loran, there's a good chance you'll be inspired to perform at a higher level in distance running or triathlon, in which case you can bring him on as your coach.
o Zoom Performance – Zoom offers a free group workout every Thursday evening. They also coach runners and triathletes.
o Capital Striders – Capital Striders running group has a group run taking off Saturday mornings from Drake. I’ve also enjoyed their Beginner’s Running Group which takes off every week from Campbell Park in Clive on Monday’s at 6. A small group of hardcore runners will continue to run weekly throughout the winter.
o Yoga in the Park – although not available now, Yoga in the Park was a great success with many taking advantage of free yoga by excellent local instructors. Look for it next spring.
Taking advantage of these suggestions will greatly improve your health. Thanks for reading and please contact me if you have any questions!
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