Day in the Life: Full Time Fitness Blogger + YouTuber

Hi Everyone! I’m honored to be sharing with you a day in my life today on Cara’s blog. I absolutely love this feature here on Cara’s blog. Non-traditional jobs are not the norm here in Boston and I found myself wasting hours just reading about everyone else’s days before putting mine in type. Boston is a small city and the fitness community is tight. We may be “massholes” but we know how to support to one another which is why I’m exited to share a day in my life here today!

My name is Sarah Dussault and I am a full time fitness blogger at SarahFit.com and YouTuber living here in Boston. My day to day routine changes often given my travel schedule but when I’m here in the city, this is an example of what my day looks like.

My alarm goes off between 6:30 and 7:30 am. I teach at Barry’s Bootcamp 3 days a week at 8:20 am and I try to take the class before mine at 7:10 am. If I hit snooze one too many times, I default to taking the one after but lately, I’ve been good! I am not a morning person. One of the reasons I love working for myself so much is that I get to wake up when I want. I usually have a warm cup of water with fresh lemon and either half a banana or green juice before leaving my apartment.

Now that the weather is nice, I use Hubway to get to Barry’s in Downtown Crossing from my apartment in the South End. If I’ve been good and gotten up early, I’ll skip out on the stretch to wash my face, change out of my sweaty clothes and get ready to teach my class. This is probably my favorite hour of the day. I love teaching group exercise. I usually have a smoothie by the sound system to drink while I teach.

After class, I shower up at the studio and then head back home to get down to blog business. I get a lot of emails from readers, potential brand partners, press releases and other opportunities. It takes a lot of time to go through them and respond. Once the important ones are taken care of, I move on to the fun stuff!

I try to blog at least once a day. Depending on what campaigns I have going on, sometimes this means, creating recipes in the kitchen or taking pictures of new products. Sometimes, it’s just sharing my workout or daily meals. This takes a lot more time than people think. While I’m writing too, I’m always multi tasking by uploading pictures to Instagram or Facebook and responding to comments on my latest YouTube video. After the blog is done, it’s time to plan for my YouTube channel.

Oh yeah… YouTube  I have over 160K followers so that is where the majority of my time is actually spent. If I’m uploading a new video that day, I usually spend 1-2 hours on creating graphics, researching keywords and promoting it. Once a week, I also shoot new videos the second half of my day. This requires getting camera ready, putting together my props and traveling to the shoot location. We frequently film at Recycle Studio Boston Common because it has beautiful natural light and Cate, the owner is a friend. We also shoot at other gyms, grocery stores, college campuses and more.

I have a videographer that meets me to shoot about 2-4 videos. It usually takes between two and fours hours from start to finish. We do everything from workout videos to recipes and grocery store hauls. After we shoot, I head back home and to get back to business development, answer emails, respond to fan comments, prepare upcoming Barry’s classes and plan for my next video.

If I’m not shooting, it’s not uncommon to have a meeting or lunch date planned out of my home office at a healthy spot in the city like Sweetgreen.

Dinner is usually homemade and making it is never an option. I start around 7-7:30 and eat around 8 or 8:15pm. Lately, I’m loving Life Alive-like power bowls lately. I mastered their Ginger Nama Shoyu sauce and can’t get enough. After dinner, it’s more social media and then bed! This is a boring day but more often than not, what my schedule looks like.

Thank god though I’m usually out of town at least 25% of my time shooting videos for other companies or working on branded campaigns. I will travel to Los Angeles to shoot videos with my YouTube network or to company headquarters with brands that I work with like Chicago or Portland, OR. A couple years ago, I got to go to Kona, Hawaii for the Ironman World Championships for a whole week to just blog about the experience! These days are totally different and why I love my job.