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Not everyone wants to spend hours at the gym each week in order to exercise, and not everyone has the money to buy all of the necessary equipment that is needed to create an at-home-gym. If you’re looking to exercise and live a healthier life without worrying about strapping yourself for cash, you’re in luck! Here are 14 ways to exercise at home, which means you’ll never have to set foot inside of a gym or spend outrageous amounts of money on gym equipment.

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When you indulge in a bag of Swedish Fish, there’s no question if you’re spiking your blood sugar. But did you know there are 56 different names for sugar? And they sneak up in almost every category of food. What you often perceive as the naturally sweet flavor of a healthy food is actually hidden sugar.

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When it comes to exercise, it’s hard for someone else to determine whether or not it’s time for a change. Exercise is a personal thing and your workout routine results and problems can only be recognized by you. No matter if you’re a novice to physical fitness or an expert, there’s always wiggle room for change when it comes to your workout routine. Here are 14 signs that you need to switch up your exercise regime ASAP!

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A lot of women focus on the cardio aspect of exercising in order to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. While cardio does serve its purpose and has proven to be helpful in helping women lose weight as well as strengthening the heart and the entire cardiovascular system, cardio isn’t the be-all end-all of exercising. When it comes to working out efficiently and effectively, it’s best to switch up your routine. To do this, add strength training to your routine a couple days a week. If you’re unsure that strength training is for you, here are 14 reasons that just may persuade you to pick up some weights.

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Committing to a diet or workout plan means daily mental work, re-scheduling your life, and often depriving yourself of things you really love. So if you’re going to put all that work into something, you deserve to get the results you expect. And you’ll get them sooner if you can differentiate the facts from the fiction about weight loss.

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When it comes to trainers, one size does not fit all. And since you’ll inevitably be paying a pretty penny to get a pretty derriere, you want to be sure you and your trainer have the same vision for that trim/toned/buff/bootylicous or whatever figure you’re going for. So how do you choose the perfect trainer who will motivate, challenge, and get you?

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Aren’t you ever just a little jealous of men’s carefree attitude towards working out and dieting? They can talk about it, without all this anxiety and pressure around it. That could be because they’re doing it right! Here are some tips we could take from them.

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For most people, time at the gym is pretty precious, especially if you are paying for your membership. When you’ve done your exercise for the day and it’s time to say goodbye until tomorrow, it’s nice to know that the time you have spent at the gym was worthwhile and meaningful.

If you want to get the most out of your time at the gym, there are definitely some things you’ll want to make sure you’re doing every day you’re there. Here are 14 ways to maximize your time at the gym.

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Dear Readers,

My body is a little weird.  I know that that’s an odd way to start an article, but it’s true.  I don’t know what type of metabolism I have, but it baffles me on the regular.  If I want to lose weight, I can lose it extremely fast, like losing a little over 30 pounds in one month (which is about a pound a day), and I gain weight just as quickly (I can gain about 6 pounds in one week if I eat all the crazy things that I’m drawn to).  But I have to be honest, when I do the one pound loss a day, it does come with a price of restricting and a workout regimen that’s fitted for athletes, which I think is what causes me to go back to unhealthy eating habits and gain the weight back within a year.

This time, after still carrying the extra weight that I gained from having my daughter I decided to go about it in a more slow and steady pace.  So, I’ve made adjustments to my diet, added a few weight loss apps on my phone, and began a workout routine from my favorite trainer that helps you “shred” the fat in 30 days.  For five days a week, for six weeks I would start my mornings off with circuit training, and then running.  The weight and inches did begin to come off and I felt good about this slow transition.  Until one morning during my fifth week, after the workout and I started cooking myself breakfast and an infomercial came on.  It was from my same favorite trainer and she was advertising her new 90 day workout plan.  I sat down on the couch and watched as testimonials of people standing next to their before pictures, talked about how the workout plan changed their lives.  I felt my eyes began to tear up as I learned that with purchasing the 90 Day workout I could get the eating plan for free, guaranteeing to melt fat away in record time.  I was in full blown bawling mode as they showed the contestants doing the workout, sweating and lifting their shirts to show their rock hard abs.

I know that this is an insane thing to make a person cry, but for some reason, seeing that informercial made me feel so defeated.  I mean, I knew that once the workout DVD that I was using was over, then I would have to go to a different regimen.  But I just began to feel like my pursuit in weight loss was going to be a life long pursuit.  After I finish one workout regimen, I would be going to the next one, then the next, then the next, in an attempt to not only get the perfect body, but to maintain it.

Feeling like this made me disregard all the hard work I’d put into those five weeks, and made me want to give up on the sixth, because, what’s the point?  It’s never going to be enough.  There’s always another workout just waiting to change your slightly less flabby body in a more less flabby body, so you can go to the next work out.

After crying and eating breakfast, and then calling a friend and crying to her, and then crying in the shower, and then maybe three more crying fits throughout the day (I’m just joking, I don’t think I cried that much, but I did cry… which makes me sound kind of sad.) I realized that maybe I had to change how I saw my weight loss journey.  I had to eliminate the idea of what I saw was an imperfect body, stop obsessing over the numbers on the scale, and stop thinking so intently on my “next course of action.”  I learned that when I focus too much on these things, it can make this journey I’m on seem tedious and that makes it become unbearable for me.  I had to learn to take this thing one day at a time and learn to love me as I am for the moment.

I don’t know if my weight loss journey will be a life long pursuit, but I know that by changing how I saw my pursuit has helped me to enjoy it.

Kendra Koger is contemplating a trampoline workout regimen next.  Contemplate going to her twitter @kkoger.

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Since you probably already have dozens of excuses ready to go as for why you shouldn’t exercise — and because sitting on your butt just feels so good —you need to prepare mantras, ahead of time, to repeat at those moments when you don’t feel like moving at all and eating a tub of ice cream! Here are a few thoughts to get you started — and motvated.