Frugal Fitness: Get a Great Workout for Free

3...2...1.... and NOW you get it. Something tells me this diet tip involves a lot more than a diet.

Zumba! Kettlebells! TurboKick! Circus Class! Stripperobics! Krav maga! In addition to the perennial faves like yoga and boot camp, there are so many fun ways to exercise and with new programs coming out all the time it's a wannabe-fit girl's dream!

And a frugal girl's nightmare.

The trick to finding exercise that you love is to try everything but as anyone who has looked at the impressive offering of classes (Trapeze! Hanging yoga! Pilates Reformer!) at an Equinox gym and then looked at the price to become a member of Equinox will know - exercise ain't cheap.

But it can be, and I'm going tell you how to not only get in on the fun for a discount, but often for free. Over the past 4 years of doing the Great Fitness Experiment, I have become an expert at cheap exercise. With 4 tiny kiddos at home and an insatiable appetite for novelty, I've had to get creative. Learn from my miserliness, young grasshoppers!

To see my 4 tricks for getting a free workout, join me over at BlogHer where I'm the anchor-blogger (that sounds funny - I think I need bigger hair and whiter teeth for this) for the month of January. Be sure to read the comments too as there have been some excellent suggestions posted there too (that I wish I'd thought of but didn't. you know.)

Want more Charlotte today?

I'm on the Huffington Post talking about Zuzana of bodyrock.tv's gritty and honest interview about her past in the porn industry. I have a lot more respect for her now. If you don't have time to read my article, at least read her interview - it will really make you think about how we commodotize women and the effects on our society.

Check me out today at Redbook talking about the stigma of minivan mamas. (Huge thank you to all of you who contributed your thoughts to this one on FaceBook and Twitter! You guys are a gold mine!!)

Plus: the results from the first week's challenge of January's Great Fitness Experiment are posted! Guess who won? (Hint: US!!!) Go Team GFE! Thank you to everyone of you who participated this week and did your workouts - we had the longest plank hold times and the highest rate of workout completion! You guys ROCK! Let's keep the lead this week with our new challenge: all the pushups you can do in one minute! Want to play along at home and see if you can beat my score? - every toe pushup counts for 2 points and every knee pushup counts for 1. Thanks Lindsey - we're loving our new workouts this week!

Free fitness tricks, fitness porn, minivan lovin' or challenge winning - let me know what you think! And how long did it take you to figure out the problem with the ad at the top? Seriously, it took me like a full minute.

Rejecting Food Without Being Rude [Plus a note on commenting]

First - If you've ever commented on my site, you'll notice I use a plug-in widget called Intense Debate. It's better than Blogger's native commenting system (allows for threading, e-mail replies, IP tracking etc.) but it's also terribly buggy. It'll work perfectly for months and then out of the blue go haywire and eat a bunch of comments. That, apparently, happened this past week. I just released over 100 not-spam comments from the "spam" moderation folder. So if you commented and you didn't see it post, that's probably what happened.

Second, it has been randomly eating my replies to your comments. For instance, I replied to everyone who commented on my Dietary Fat post (great comments on that one!!) but only about 3/4 of them are showing up right now. I've reposted my replies only to have them disappear up to 3 times. So I want to apologize if you asked me a question and didn't get a reply. I DID respond - and if you left an e-mail addy I tried to send it to you there. I'm looking for a different commenting system in the meantime (and trying to get up the guts to finally switch to WordPress already - Ryan, genius that he is, at No More Bacon posted a step-by-step guide but I can't even get past the first step... doesn't bode well. ) Recommendations totally appreciated if you have any help for me!

So [insert totally unnatural segue here] part of eating intuitively is eating what you need when you want it but equally important is learning how to not eat when you aren't hungry. Social situations can be particularly tricky. How do you respond to people when they want you to eat something you don't want to eat, without resorting to lying or giving in? One-year-old Jelly Bean's tactic of throwing said food right back in the giver's face is effective but in case you'd like some other tips, I've posted my second tip in my "Little Steps to Better Health" series for BlogHer: Rejecting Food Without Being Rude.

Have you ever been in that situation? Did you fake sick? Pretend an allergy? Or have you found a way to talk about it without artifice? Share your tips please!