Healthy and Active Lifestyles: Getting Active with Fun Exercises!

We recently discussed finding the motivation to exercise, and one of the things I suggested in that post was to:

Look for ways you can turn your “social time” into “fitness time.” I had a friend that wanted to hang out one Saturday recently, and I suggested we go hike Burgess Falls. It was a GREAT workout and a really fun day!

The goal is to start getting active, but with FUN exercises. I live in Tennessee, which is a gorgeous state with a lot of natural areas to explore. One I recently discovered is Virgin Falls, which is a long and strenuous hike with amazing waterfalls that come out of underground streams and disappear into caves beneath. Definitely something I want to see, and next on my list to tackle! 😀

I enjoy going to the gym (finally!) and I even like doing my Zumba DVD at home. But lately I’ve been getting into more of an Active Lifestyle mindset, and I’m finding it is SO much more fun than just “exercising”.

That said, as I mentioned in my post about getting motivated to exercise, I’ve turned my gym time into social time, by going with friends. That’s where we catch up, talk, laugh and have a good time. Which is much better than going out to lunch. It’s so common for “social time” to happen over a meal. Especially here in the south, lol. But make it a point to get your social time in different ways.

Ideas include playing tennis, basketball, walking the trail, taking your dogs for a run together, going on an adventurous hike, or anything that gets your heart rate up and is FUN at the same time!

My goal is to have a healthy, active lifestyle.

While I started the low carb diet initially just to lose weight, I found that it made me much more health conscious. Add in turning 40 this year, and I’ve been getting more and more active – with an emphasis on FUN. This is my decade, and I aim to the make the absolute most of it. 😉

I recently went to my first college football game. I’ve never actually watched football, and it’s not something I would have seen myself doing (going to a live game). But when I got invited to go, I said YES!!

There was a lot of walking involved, and you can see from the picture how sweaty I was. The bottled water they sold down the sidewalk came in real handy for cooling off. 😛

We walked a good four miles that day, which is more than I do at the gym – and a lot more fun!

Interestingly, after we returned from the trip, someone had mysteriously dropped off a pair of water skis at the same friends house. Go figure. I imagine they needed to get rid of them for some reason and saw a boat in the driveway and just dropped them off here.

How cool is that?! There are still awesome people out there in the world, hey?

I hadn’t water skied since I was 17 years old. Which means at least 23 years!

But I took one look at those skis, just like Virgin Falls and the trip to Neyland Stadium, and said “Heck Yeah!” 😀

(That’s my Great Dane lounging on the back of the boat while I get ready to ski.)

I’ll show you a video. Let me just say though, the quality is not great. I ran stabilization to get most of the shakiness out, and overlaid music to cut out the noise of wind, but the video was shot with a cell phone and zoomed in. And it was shot by the only person in the boat, who happened to also be driving, lol.

(It helps if you view it in full screen, and change the setting to HD quality.)

But yeah, this is me, at 40, getting off my a** and having FUN:

What do you do for fun? Or what would like to start doing to achieve your goal of having a more healthy, more active lifestyle?

I say anytime you can sweat with a smile on your face, or better yet, laughing! – that’s a good thing. 😉 What are your favorite fun exercises??