Welcome to 2021! With a new year, many people make “New Year’s Resolutions.” If you have made a resolution to improve your health through diet and exercise, well, the library has online resources to help you meet that goal. 

A one-stop resource for all your fitness and diet choices is Hoopla. This streaming resource, which works on smartphones, tablets, computers and smart TVs, has everything from exercise music and videos to diet cookbooks. Plus, after doing a lot fitness or having a stressful workday, there are many choices to teach you meditation and mindfulness.  Check out the many categories filled with titles to choose which you can find by browsing through Hoopla’s formats: 

Audiobooks categories:  

• Fitness & Diet – There are 23 titles to choose from, ranging from The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler through 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald to 8 to Your Ideal Weight by M.K. Mueller.
• Health & Fitness – In this section, you will find a huge variety of eAudiobooks to listen to – over 2,700 titles!
• Health & Nutrition – Here you have 63 titles, covering not only regular nutrition, but also many health issues, such as depression and diabetes.
• Meditation & Mindfulness – A collection of 56 titles on all sorts of meditation.

Ebooks categories: 

• Cooking – Looking for cookbooks and recipes, Hoopla has over 7,700 titles! To narrow down the list, there are many subcategories to choose from:
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• Health & Fitness – Another huge category of with over 8000 titles grouped together! As with Cooking, there are a wide variety of subcategories to choose from in order to narrow your choices down to an easier browsing list:
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• Some great subcategories to choose from with a goal to a new, healthier you would be:
• Diet & Nutrition – With over 2,000 titles to browse through, this subcategory of Health & Fitness has its own subtopics to help narrow the list further:
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• Exercise – You will find over 550 titles to choose from here.
• Tai Chi – Over 30 ebooks on various forms of Tai Chi!
• Yoga – With over 300 titles to check out, you will find a wide variety of types of yoga to tryout.

Movies categories: 

• Food & Health – There are 40 documentaries to choose to view, from The Big FAT Lie through Food Matters: You Are What You Eat
  
• Health & Fitness – This movie category with over 150 titles has subcategories to help narrow your selection.  And some of the subcategories include additional subtopics, even!
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• New Year, New You – This ‘Movie’ collection of 34 titles is actually a combination of Movie and Television titles, covering everything from working on your body: The FIRM Cardio Dance Club, through feeding your mind: Learn to Play Piano Today.

TV categories: 

• Dance Your Way to Health! – With 11 titles for those into dance fitness, you can choose from Richard Simmons Sweatin’ to the Oldies to Zumba Fitness Dance Party.
• Fitness for Moms – For those mothers-to-be out there, along with those with children already, here is a selection of 9 TV workout series.
• Food & Cooking – With over 70 titles to choose from, you can satisfy your food cravings visually with The Great British Baking Show and Chocolate Covered. Of course, there are also healthier options, such as Food, Delicious Science.
• Health & Fitness – 114 titles covering everything from pilates and yoga through cardio fitness and cross training.
• Jillian Michaels – This is actually a combination of 7 TV series, 1 movie, 1 ebook and 1 audiobook by Jillian Michaels, the perfect category for an fans of her workouts!
• Meditation & Mindfulness – This category has a mix of 19 TV series for adults and children to learn meditation.
• Workouts for Women – Over 20 TV series devoted to women’s fitness, from cardio and strength training through pilates, tai chi, and yoga!
• Yoga – Over 70 TV series on all types of yoga for the many yoga fans out there!

Music categories: 

• Fitness & Workout – Just looking for soundtracks to do your own exercising, well Hoopla has 260 albums to choose from right here!
• Meditation & Mindfulness – Here you will find 49 soundtracks to listen to while you work on your meditations and mindfulness skills.
• Moving to the Music – 55 music albums, from dance options through running to yoga, all waiting for you to try them out!
• Yoga Music – And we end the Hoopla portion of this blog with 72 Yoga albums for the many fans of yoga out there!

Another great digital resource is OverDrive.  Here you can locate even more audiobooks and ebooks to help you in working toward a new and improved healthier body.  Check out these nonfiction subject areas: 

Cooking & Food – There are over 700 titles to choose from for those interested in locating cookbooks and learning more about food in general.

Health & Fitness – With over 800 titles to view, you will find all sorts of titles covering diet and nutrition through exercising, plus many books on various health issues.

Plus, OverDrive has a special collection, Eat Fit, which provides a selection of 40 titles to easily browse through to help you on your New Year’s goal of a healthier body.

Looking for magazines on fitness and nutrition, try out Flipster  .  There are magazines to browse under the categories of:

Fitness & Health has 10 magazines to choose:

• Better Nutrition
• Clean Eating
• Consumer Reports on Health
• Diabetic Living
• Eating Well
• Health
• Men’s Health
• Prevention
• Runner’s World
• Women’s Health

and Food & Cooking has 12 magazines:

• AllRecipes
• Better Nutrition
• Bon Appetit
• Clean Eating
• Diabetic Living
• Eating Well
• Food Network Magazine
• Good Housekeeping
• Pioneer Woman Magazine
• Taste of Home
• Woman’s Day
• Woman’s World

In all, there are 18 magazines in Flipster related in some way to fitness and health which may help you on your way to a healthier you this year!

Another resource with access to healthy magazines is Consumer Health Complete. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can browse articles from American Fitness and Yoga Journal.  In addition, you can search for relevant information in the topic of Food, Nutrition & Exercise.

Want to learn even more about fitness and nutrition? The library also has educational online courses you can take for free with your library card!

UniversalClass has lots of health courses available in their course catalog under Alternative Medicine (over 40 online courses) and Health & Medicine (over 45 online course).  By browsing the catalog using the following keyword searches: “Exercise,” “Nutrition,” “Cooking,” and “Yoga,” you will find these courses to choose from:

Lynda.com, while known more for business and computer/technology skill courses, also has some healthy video courses:

• Chair Work: Yoga Fitness and Stretching at Your Desk – a useful course for the many of us working long days at a sit-down job.
• Recharge Your Energy for Peak Performance – a course covering the needs of healthy sleep habits and nutrition to do well throughout your work day.
• Breathing Exercises for Mask Wearers – a course which we all hope will not be needed for the entire year.

I hope you’ll find these many library online resources – FREE for all library cardholders – helpful on your journey to a new, healthier you in 2021! 

Happy New Year! 

Sara Churchill

Sara Churchill is the Digital Services Specialist and Assistant Supervisor in the Information Services Department at Main Library. A major fan of technology devices and computer research resources at work, she enjoys helping everyone learn to use their devices and the library's many online resources.  She loves reading Science Fiction/Fantasy books, British cozy mysteries, True Crime and other true stories, plus a past reader of horror fiction by the likes of Stephen King and John Saul (among others).  Also, she’s a big fan of Sci-fi, action, horror, spaghetti westerns, and based-on-a-true story movies.  Her blogs are for adults and the entire family to enjoy reading and trying out the many online resources free for PLYMC library cardholders to use.