Resolutions

Alan and I discussed and wrote down some New Year's Resolutions at the beginning of this year. We've been pretty good about keeping most of them, something that doesn't usually happen! Anyway, among our list was to exercise a specific number of times each week and to try and eat less sweets (we usually try to only eat treats on weekends.)

Well, I read in a magazine article that a good way to motivate yourself to exercise is to pay yourself a dollar for every mile you run/jog/walk. (Apparently this helps if looking good and feeling good about yourself isn't sufficient motivation!) The money you make can then be used to buy whatever you want! Alan and I decided to do this for ourselves, but we decided a dollar was too much so we are paying ourselves 50 cents for every mile we jog or walk on our treadmill. Furthermore, we each get a quarter for every day that we don't have any sweets. The general idea is for each of us to earn $15 or so each month to spend on whatever. Truthfully, it will probably be spent on food: Alan will use his money to go out to lunch occasionally with his coworkers, and I will probably use my money to go out to lunch with friends or get some Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets just for the heck of it when I'm out and about. Ha ha, I guess that somewhat defeats the purpose of exercising! But it's nice to not feel guilty about spending unnecessary money if we've "earned" it.

Anyway, we've only started paying ourselves for exercising and eating right starting this month, so I'm not sure yet how successful it will be. But it's fun to see the money in my account growing!

How do you motivate yourself to eat right and exercise?