The Great $1000 Fitness Dilemma

So I have a bit of a $1000 conundrum. Well actually, $939 to be exact. But close enough!

You see, I recently started a new job and it turns out that one of my benefits is an annual allowance that I get to develop myself professionally. That can either mean conferences and books I can use for my professional life or health and wellness stuff that also serves to make me a better lawyer! Yaaaayyyy for progressive work policies! :o)

Anywho - the catch is that I just became aware of the allowance and I have until the very end of March to both spend and claim my reimbursement or I forfeit my allowance for this fiscal year! EEEK!!!

What is a girl to do?

My first thought was to use it to subsidize myself a treadmill. It's early on in the New Year and there are still plenty of sales to be had. In fact I was terribly tempted by the idea of having my own souped up Nordictrack treadmill at home. In particular, I was drawn to the Commercial 1500, currently on sale for a very lovely price at Costco.

I spent quite a long time trying to convince myself that this was the best option. I was lying. A treadmill is not feasible for me at the moment. I rent a home for the time being and although there are quite a number of rooms the layout makes it so there is not much extra space. I tried to convince myself I could put it in my library (what I like to call the room filled with an endless amount of bookcases). But really there's not enough room in the middle to put a treadmill. Ditto for the bedroom, in fact I think the doors would get in the way. And the living room only allows enough room for my furniture.

No treadmill for me.

And therein is the true dilemma. How to spend nearly $1000 in such a small amount of time. For now this is my plan:

1) Try to have the Bodybugg . This is that little gadget used on The Biggest Loser. You wear it on your arms at all times and it measures a whole bunch of things to come up with an accurate amount of calories burned during the day (not only while exercising but also while sedentary too!), you then feed that information into their online program and also add what you ate on the day. This effectively gives you either a deficit or a surplus of calories consumed (vs. those burned). The goal is to create a deficit and thus lose weight. In fact you can even tell it how much you want to lose and in what time period and it will calculate what your deficit needs to be each day.

I figure if I can get the Bodybugg approved then that will take care of a good chunk of change in terms of my allowance (I'm Canadian so I have to allow for the conversion rate in any of my U.S purchases). But what to do with the rest of it?

2) Buy health and fitness DVDs and books. Right now my Amazon cart contains all of the following for a total of less than $100: Jillian Michaels' Making the Cut, South Beach Diet Supercharged, Six-Week Bikini Countdown, Total Body Power Yoga DVD (with Rodney Lee), Jillian Michaels: 30 Day Shred DVD, Workout One-on-One Training with Jackie DVD.

So that's my list for now, I suppose I could also use it to pay for gym membership for the next year too. That's always an idea.

Do you have any suggestions for me? Who knew spending this money would cause such a dilemma? Makes you wonder what I'd be like if I won the lottery one of these days! :oP