New Year resolutions have always puddled faster than a snowball on the hearth for me, until, that is, I found a way to trick myself.

The word exercise conjures up thoughts of sweat and pain, which are the opposite of fun. That’s why I came to the conclusion that I should mentally avoid the term exercise in my battle for midriff mitigation.

The key was to find something that is fun to do and that still burns calories. In other words, fool myself into working out. It wasn’t as hard a search as I expected, but it did require literally stepping out of my comfort zone and into the snow. I guess I lost my love of snow when I stopped having fun with it.

One January First, however, I vowed to exercise and considered the winter sports that might be fun and burn calories at the same time: sledding, ice skating, skiing, and snowshoeing came to mind. As I considered each of these from an adult perspective, the last items presented themselves as the most appealing in that, a) I don’t have to pull my sled back up the hill, b) there are a great many more places to ski and “shoe” than to skate, and c) it’s cool to tell your coworkers that you spent the weekend trekking in the woods.
When skiing is mentioned, the first thought that comes to most people’s minds is downhill or Alpine, but there is another type that many consider as much fun, but much cheaper, not to mention much safer--cross-country or Nordic. Snowshoeing is more self-explanatory. Most of us have at least seen the equipment for both sports.