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Don’t let the weather get you down. Take some time to relax and expand your mind or enjoy the latest novel. Here are some great book ideas for snow days that will provide entertainment while the weather is foul and give you a boost to tackle the world again when the snow stops. I’ve created a list that include both fiction and non-fiction, since everyone has different taste. I’d love it if you’d share some of your favorites in the comment section, since I’d like to find a few new ones myself.

Novels can keep you enthralled and make the day fly by quickly.

You may not want to start War and Peace or another long novel, but there are many short novels that won’t take longer than a day. Downloading the books from Amazon is inexpensive and you’ll often find other choices that are intriguing while you’re there. Binary Star is an inside look at a battle with eating disorders, while on a long trip with a boyfriend. At 172 pages, it won’t take long to get to the end. A classic short book that you might have missed is The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.

Find novellas for quick reads you can finish in a day.

Novellas are short novels that are under 200 pages. They let you start the journey the author created and end it in record time. Some of my favorites include the most recognizable names that you may only have seen in movies. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is only 166 pages and you get to see what started the rash of movies through the decades. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is thrilling and just 55 pages and Silas Marner by George Elliot another classic that’s just 160 pages.

Plan a garden, learn healthier cooking or study rocks in your extra time.

While we often think of reading time as a time to read a story or novel, non-fiction writing can be as riveting if it’s about something you really love. If you’re a gardener, there’s nothing better than thinking of warm weather and the perfect garden on a snowy day. You can download these books or may have one or two already at the house you’d like to review. I love reading cookbooks, not necessarily cooking the items. Scouring a book on healthy recipes may inspire you to try a few. Whether you collect stamps, rocks or have another hobby, books about it will make great ready while the weather is cold.

• Go to the classics that are short, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (64 pages), The Picture of Dorian Gray (180 pages) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (128 pages) are great short ones.
• You’ve probably watched A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but have you read the book? It is just 80 pages and a super quick read. You can impress others when you watch the movie by saying it isn’t as good as the book.
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck is thought provoking and just 96 pages.
• Heartburn by Nora Ephron will make you laugh and also provide a few recipes. It’s both funny and poignant at the same time. (She’s the woman who created Sleepless in Seattle.)

There’s a lot of fat-shaming and most of it comes from those who gained weight and is about themselves. Hating how you look and thinking desparaging remarks about yourself isn’t the answer. In fact, in some cases, hating yourself only leads to further weight gain. You lower your self-esteem even further, making you feel like you don’t deserve any better. In order to really make progress when it comes to fitness, you need to make a commitment to self-love and affirmation.

Self-love does not mean you ignore a problem.

Self-love doesn’t mean you don’t have self-awareness and understand that excess pounds and lack of fitness can lead to some serious health issues. In fact, it actually drives you toward making the changes to reverse the trend and live a healthier lifestyle, because you deserve it. If you have a set back, you forgive yourself and get back on track. Self-hate does quite the opposite. If you don’t lose the weight you wanted to lose, you start that mental thrashing and then turn to what makes you feel better, which is often comfort food.

Self-hate destroys your self-image and makes you believe you don’t deserve anything.

I’ve seen people come in so down on themselves that they don’t even eat healthy, feeling they don’t deserve anything but junk food. Good healthy food should be reserved for someone with more restraint. You may have felt that way yourself. When you start working on liking yourself, you’ll find reasons that you should be healthy and do what it takes to become more fit. You’ll notice how much easier it is when you consider healthy food part of the way to take care of yourself and know you deserve that type of care.

Consider your weight loss a project and eliminate the emotion.

You are not your weight, so why do you allow it to control your emotions and feelings about yourself? Losing weight and getting fit is like painting a house that you love, which is well built and otherwise in good shape, but hasn’t had the walls cleaned or painted for a long, long time. You don’t hate the house, you love it and want it to look great again. You simply set a goal of first washing the walls and then room by room paint them. It will take a while but before you know it, the house will look like new again. Getting fit and losing weight should evoke the same emotion as painting that house. You still love yourself, but you want to look and feel better and weight loss can do it.

• You’re more than just your body, you’re a unique individual with many different skills and positives. However, if your body isn’t healthy or you have no energy, you won’t be able to share those with the world.
• When you set goals to lose weight, your focus shifts from your body to the actual goal. It eliminates much of the emotional charge that often comes with weight loss.
• Start being happy now. Don’t ever say that you’ll be happy, motivated or more self-loving when you lose weight. If you’re unhappy, find the cause. In most cases, it’s not the weight, but something more. Once you solve that, you’ll find weight loss is easier.
• Remember that weight loss and fitness is always about more than just looking good. It helps you stay healthier, have more energy and reduce the risk of serious illnesses or conditions.

Getting a good workout program and healthy eating not only promotes your good health, but can be a great way to promote fitness for kids. Children live what they see and if they see a parent that’s active and eats healthy, the chances are, they’ll grow up doing the same. You get a double benefit from a fitness program. It not only improves your health, it improves the health of your family, particularly if you use some of the new found energy to participate in active play with the children.

Start with a healthy menu.

You do the shopping, or a spouse does, not the kids. Create a united front with other adults in the house to insure the foods you bring in are healthy. Have healthy snacks ready and waiting in the refrigerator for those hungry times after school. Even though there’s been attention drawn to healthier school lunches, not all schools follow the guidelines. Make sure you check what’s on the menu and if it’s not a healthy choice, pack your child healthy lunches. If you’re eating healthy, there’s no reason to have junk food in the house. Healthy eating should be the norm.

Make sure each child has adequate exercise.

You can limit the amount of computer, iPad, TV or laptop time and increase the amount of activity they get in simple ways. Walk your child to school if at all possible, rather than drive them. You’ll both benefit from the extra exercise. Encourage activities like sports, hide and seek and tag. The whole family can go geocaching or rock climbing. You can also create a treasure hunt, with a hidden treasure that can be found after following clues. Hide the object in the house and let them find the treasure while you’re preparing dinner or doing other things.

Workout with the kids or find a local activity program.

If you have a community center or after school programs that offer sports and active games, you can use this resource. However, even if they have one, there may be problems with scheduling. If no programs are available, share your workout with the kids. Ask your personal trainer for modifications that younger children might require or ways to make it harder for children that are more fit.
– Dance away during commercials with the kids, or create a two minute workout. It can be a lot of fun and nobody will argue they want to watch the TV when it’s commercial time.
– Get children involved in meal preparation. There are cute ways to create fruit and vegetable creatures that kids will love to eat.
– Make your weekend adventures, true adventures. Go hiking, bike riding, roller blading, skiing or other active options and pack a healthy lunch for the trip.
– Get the kids involved in chores to get them finished faster, get them moving and teach a sense of responsibility. Chores can be one more way to increase physical activity.

If you go online, you’ll find a lot of different recommendations for building big triceps quickly. Many of these can be quite dangerous and potentially cause injury. Here are some of the best tricep tricks I know that are far safer and will build your muscles fast. They don’t involve heavily weighted exercises, such as kickbacks, which potentially cause injury to the elbows or dips that may cause shoulder problems.

Develop all three areas.

It’s called a tricep for a reason. There are three different sections of the tricep, the lateral, long and medial. You need to make sure all three are exercised. The long is on the upper arm on the inside and one of the more difficult ones to develop. While raising your arm may seem like a simple task, the tricep, the muscle that does it is not. It has three separate heads, so you need to develp all three heads by doing a variety of different exercises. Use multiple methods for each head to get the full development.

Use resistance bands instead of dumbbells to help avoid injury.

The elbows are susceptible to injury when using weights to develop the triceps. You can do overhead extensions, but instead of dumbbells, use resistance bands and you’ll reduce the risk of elbow injury. Resistance bands provide the most resistance when your arms are straight above you and your triceps are their strongest. When the triceps are weakest, when the elbow is bent, the bands have the least amount of tension. You’ll get a workout with less potential of injury.

Warm up thoroughly.

Warming up the areas thoroughly is one of the keys to safely working out the triceps. If you think one set of warm up set will do, do a second to be on the safe side. Push downs with an angle bar or rope are a good warmup because you can lock your elbows and focus the warm up on the triceps to make it more limber.
– Vary your routine. Do more than one routine for triceps and alternate them. One should be a less strenuous session, while the other more difficult. Don’t just vary the weights or intensity, do different exercises entirely.
– Don’t overtrain. You’ll be working on your triceps when you’re working on other areas too. Make sure you include those exercises as part of your tricep training so you insure you give them time to rest and get bigger.
– Track your training to make sure you’re making progress.
– Always check your form. That’s one advantage of working with a personal trainer or having a workout partner.

Your gym bag should have all the necessities to make your transformation from John or Joan Average Citizen to powerhouse and back again. While some people have everything they need and seem to be pros carry just the right number of necessary items, others either forget things or have enough stuff in their gym bag to hold them over for several days. The first on the list should always be clean gym clothing and tennis shoes.

Don’t forget your toiletries.

If you’re working out after work and going directly home, hair product may not be on your list. However, deoderant should be, as well as other toiletries. A bottle of dry shampoo can help remove the greasy feeling sweating left in your hair. For women, light moisturizer with a little bit of coverage to take the red out of your face can help you feel more presentable after a workout, but without taking a lot of time. If you’re going to work, make sure you have the makeup you need for the office and both male and females need their hair care products. Don’t forget your comb or brush, you’d be surprised how many people do. Most people buy a special one for the bag.

Think about the workout and include items to help make it better.

If sweat poured in your eyes and your gym charges a towel rental fee, take your own. You’ll want to keep your hands dry so they aren’t slippery for performing some of the exercises. While a sweat band helps, it only goes so far and having your own towel not only assures you that it’s clean—or least only used by you—but also ensures you’ll have one when you need it. For women with longer hair, make sure a few hair ties are in your gym bag.

Bottled water or a refillable thermal bottle is important.

Staying hydrated is hard, but what’s even harder is drinking from public faucets when you’ve heard all those stories about e-coli and other bacteria thriving there. They don’t have to be true to make you appreciate having your own water in a reusable bottle that keeps it cold and refreshing for hours. If you’re an avid water drinker, carry one plastic bottle in and keep the thermal one in your gym bag for when you finish the first.
– Having a few healthy snacks to munch on after the workout will keep you from grabbing a high calorie snack with no nutritional value.
– Don’t forget the Rx. Aspirin or other anti-inflammatory, muscle balm and even an elastic bandage should be part of your gear.
– Bring a spare pair of socks. Feet sweat big time and you want a spare, particularly if you’re wearing your gym clothes home. Have an extra tank top or tee in your bag too.
– For women, particularly if you’re coming directly from work, have a face wipe to remove your makeup before a tough sweaty workout or you’ll be wearing your mascara on your cheeks.