My sisters and I have been completing a fitness challenge for the past two months. My fabulous sister Megan came up with the idea and I loved it: complete a fitness challenge every day for the month of January. Each day we did: 100 jumping jacks, 100 squats and 100 crunches. It was awesome! Even on the days where I felt like doing absolutely nothing I would complete the challenge and feel better for having done so. I would also add this as my warm up before my workouts on certain days. 
Then in February we added to the challenge: complete the same challenge from January and add 10 burpees (squat thrust with a push up). This has also been awesome. You work up a sweat and build up the energy to keep on working out. 

I will let you all know what the challenge will be for March and I highly encourage you to join! It is worth your time in many ways :) 

We all do our best to stay in shape, but are we using our time to the fullest? When you get on the treadmill or elliptical, do you stay at one speed for the entire time, or do you add short bursts of speed every few minutes? Hopefully you do the latter, because sprinting has been shown to increase calorie burn during AND after a workout. So next time you start your cardio workout, make sure to add a 10-20 second sprint every few minutes. If you are a beginner I would recommend doing a sprint every 2-3 minutes, giving you enough time to recover. Here is a great article detailing the other benefits of high intensity interval training (HIIT). http://www.shape.com/fitness/workouts/8-benefits-high-intensity-interval-training-hiit