If you like story podcasts or audiobooks, definitely check out the app Zombies, Run! (for iOS and Android) Despite the name, you can walk or jog instead of running if you like. The app tells the story of, unsurprisingly, a zombie apocalypse and its survivors. You are one of those survivors, and the star of the show; as you keep moving (which you can do on a treadmill as well), you’ll pick up items, rebuild your base and progress the story. You can even set the app to occasionally make you pick up the pace when the zombies get too close. There are no goals or thresholds you have to hit; you can just set how long you would like to exercise or for how many miles.

Otherwise, finding a good audiobook or story podcast and only listening to it during exercise is a terrific motivator. I owe the shedding of several pounds, over many evening walks, to Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn’t Dead, Within the Wires and The Orbiting Human Circus. If you’re more into nonfiction, try a true crime podcast (you’re spoiled for choice there) or something like The Plot Thickens, which tells stories about the film industry.

As any fan of soaps or serials knows, the need to know WTH is going to happen next tends to override most, if not all objections and obstacles. 😉