Erin Whitehead - A Girls Guide to Fitting in Fitness

When we first set out to write this book about teen fitness, we asked ourselves one question: If we could go back in time, what would we want to tell ourselves back in high school about living a truly healthy lifestyle? Turns out, wed tell ourselves a lotabout eight chapters worth of goodies, in fact.

Right now, you may think working out and eating right are just about helping you look better in your swimsuit or improve your tennis swing, but the healthy habits you build now will have a huge impact on your life going forward.

From tennis and cheerleading practice to cooking healthy dinners with our families, we were lucky enough to grow up with pretty healthy role models for parents. However, even with that, we misstepped, trying a crash diet here and under-or over-exercising there. With all of the unhealthy messages out there to look and dress a certain way, its easy to get caught up in the hype that you are your dress size or that a boy will never like you unless you can rock a string bikini. But, believe us, thats a bunch of hooey.

You are beautiful as you are, right in this moment. And you deserve to take care of yourself to be healthy and strong and confident. Not because a celebrity selling a new kind of makeup tells you so, but because deep down you are worth taking care of. Not to be a certain weight, but to be your best and healthiest version of yourself.

As you flip through the pages of this book, youll see weve shared our top tips on how to do just that. Weve laid out a plan for you to easily and sanely fit fitness and healthy eats into every aspect of your everyday life.

In the first few chapters, well introduce you to all the fitness and health fundamentals you need to know. Well help you with getting motivated and getting started, and teach you how to properly fuel your body for everyday life. Then after that, well get more specific with workouts you can fit into your already busy schedule, like a quick morning workout, a walking routine you can do after school, and a dance party that will get you sweating. Once youve gotten hooked on fitness, well show you how to pump up those workouts to get even more of a challenge! Its not all fitness either; well share our tips on eating better, busting stress, and getting plenty of recovery time, too!

Throughout the book, we investigate (and often expose) common fitness myths, share pitfalls to avoid, and highlight tips from real teens who have made fitness and health a priority. Be sure to check out our resources, too, which will give you tons of great websites for all of your fitness and health needs.

Whether youre hoping to start working out, or looking to take your fitness level up a notch, well help you get there. All we ask is that, in doing so, you pay attention to your body, and treat yourself with respect and love. For us, that was the missing piece to our teen-fitness puzzle: It took us too long to realize how awesome we already were!

So now, without further ado, lets get to it!