Ever hear of the runner’s high? Ever sit in amazement over those goshdarn people who seem to have never ending energy, vibrance, and seem half their age? Or maybe you’re envious that a certain woman or man you know never seems to gain a pound yet they are not on a strict diet all the time, although they may generally eat in a somewhat healthy fashion? Chances are those obejcts of our envy may be lifetime runners.

Runners tend to be lifers, meaning once you’ve caught the running bug, you don’t every stop craving that feeling that you get when you go for a run, and you will always be a runner in some shape or form, even if you temporarily fall off the wagon once in a while, for your whole life because it just makes you feel good and calms your nerves.

Well, there are new studies showing that runners not only enjoy all these benefits and also display happier and more energetic presence, but they also tend to live longer as well as enjoy genuinely and scientifically proven better health. Sounds like a good reason to start running, eh? Even if you can’t run for some reason, say you have an injury or a bad back, you can still do things that compare to running indoors or on machines that will help recreate the same experience.

It was found that members of running clubs not only had less occurrences of cancer and neurological disease, but they also had way less risk of heart disease and generally lived much longer than their non-running counterparts in the study. They also had less occurrences of things like alzheimers and tended to also retain their mental acuity much longer than those that did not run. It was not clear whether this was strictly a difference between runners and non runners though, or whether it was a difference between runners and people who simply do not work out at all. I would hope the same held true for those of us who don’t necessarily like to run, but still work out.

As I sat and watched football with my boyfriend last Sunday, I noticed a commercial with high profile NFL stars urging parents to take their kids outside and be active with them, and I thought it was just a really powerful and positive message, especially considering the fact that childhood obesity is an ever increasing problem here in the United States, and also the fact that obesity rates overall have increased 33% in just the past twenty to thirty years (I can’t remember the exact stats on that, but it’s something close to that).

If you also consider the fact that children have all of their fat cells by a certain age, and if they are obese as children they are set up for a sure struggle with obesity throughout their adult life, adding to the adult obesity epidemic as well. Of course other factors enter in such as genetics and “fat genes”, but the fact that a child is overweight when they are young really does add to the likelihood that they will be struggling with their weight as an adult as well.

The ad I saw during NFL football also mentioned another problem, and that is that most kids are addicted to things that are not active in nature such as watching television or playing video games, only further compounding the problem of inactivity and making it an issue that adds to the factors that make kids and adults overweight. There are also a huge number of illnesses and diseases that are linked to obesity and weight issues such as diabetes, heart problems and many different types of cancers.

The dates for the official Take a Child Outside campaign are supposed to be September 24-30, with campaign ads and other stuff going around to promote the awareness that parents need to make sure their kids get enough time outdoors when it’s nice enough outside to not only get their exercise, but also to instill a sense of appreciation of nature as well as outdoor activities, which are some of the best for you since you get fresh oxygen and it’s not like running on say a Proform treadmill or working out on an elliptical machine (see reviews) because turf is varied on the earth and in nature, making your body work a bit harder.

It’s also been proven that those that do outdoor activities as their exercise report feeling more connected to nature and being outdoors has an added benefit of additional anxiety and stress relief that working out indoors can’t compare to. I can’t tell you how different it is when we work out indoors compared to getting a nice run in outdoors. You feel liberated and exhilerated to be out in the open and the fresh air.

Color therapy really does work. We actually have different colored lights we can put on in our far infrared sauna, and I can tell you that color definitely does affect mood. For example, blues tend to relax me, reds make me feel like I’m about to lose my mind, and yellow tends to make me feel a little smarter. But that’s just me, in my sauna, with my experience speaking about how colors tend to affect my mood, my mental sharpness, and my stress levels. They are known to even make people feel a little randier (ready for sex and intimacy), angry, lovey dovey and also more intellectual.

So it’s not surprising that color therapy has now been combined with a new form of yoga that puts the two together to help control stress, which is a major contributing factor to heart disease, weight gain, mental disorders and even your blood sugar levels (diabetes). Stress can definitely mount over time and likely may affect your life span as well, so it’s ultra important to control your stress levels in any way you possibly can through different therapies and techniques, exercise, and meditation is that’s what suits you.

How does this new yoga class work that is offered by the famous Crunch gym? Well, while customers do their various yoga poses, there are different colored lights that softly fill the room which are supposed to be targeted at different areas of the body, calming and soothing each part of the body as the movements are synched up for maximum effectiveness in stress control.

So red is supposed to signify a home base, familiarity, food, shelter and warmth - the basics of life. Orange is the pelvic area, which signifies and reinforces family, sex and intimacy. Green is supposed to be targeted to the heart, and this one is tied to love. Blue is supposed to be for the upper body, our throat, our voicebox, which signifies our voice, asking for what we need and what we want out of the people in our lives and our lives in general.

Lavender lights are supposed to be tied to the area above the brow, which is the meaning of life, getting your thinking about your purpose, why you are here and what you are meant to do with your life. All together, Crunch claims that their customers leave the color yoga class feeling refreshed, relaxed and rejuvenated in mind, spirit and body. Just watching students do this relaxed me, and put me in the mood to do some yoga. Think I’ll go do some now!

Yes! Self hypnosis is a great way to lose weight and also to boost your natural desire to work out if you use it correctly and consistently. I’m actually proof that it works. I have been using a hypnosis CD on and off (I use it again when I start to feel either lethargic and apathetic toward exercise, as well as when I gain too much weight and need that subliminal willpower to boost my weight loss and fitenss goals), for a while now, and I always notice that not only do I seem to only want and crave foods that are good for my body, but I also begin to want to work out more.

Working out doesn’t seem like such a chore, rather something that I have to do to make my day complete when I am firmly in the control of self hypnosis and the positive hidden subliminal messages that it sends to my subconscious that tell me to take care of myself, eat well and exercise copiously.

I would have to say after my experience with self hypnosis for wanting to exercise more that I would confidently recommend self hypnosis for anyone who is struggling with staying on a fitness regimen or who is looking for added willpower when they feel they just don’t have the strength or means to do it all on their own.

By the way, with hypnosis you are still doing these things on your own, you are just being helped to harness the natural power that your mind has over your body. It’s definitely something that is always within you, sometimes you just need coaxing for that little inner voice to become an ever present voice that dictates how you live your life, what you put in your mouth, how you feel about yourself, and ultimately your health, wellness and longevity are at stake.

I think all of us make sure we have a big glass of water when we’re working out, to make sure we don’t get too dried out and overly heated from sweating a lot and getting rid of a lot of excess water, but what constitutes overhydrating yourself when working out? I’ve seen some people take it to the extreme, constantly swigging on water about every 10 to 15 minutes during their fitness routine, and unless you are sweating profusely, this is not the way to go because you are actually overhydrating yourself, which may slow your workout down and even make it less effective.

Part of the benefit of working out as a cardio benefit is that you elevate your body temperature, which in turn begins to burn calories. Because your body has to constantly work to cool itself off (sweat), you are not only burning way more calories, but you are also losing water weight - albeit temporary, but you get the point. Those that are constantly drinking ice cold water are sort of defeating the purpose a little since you are constantly cooling the body off, not allowing it to get to that point where it’s overheating and burning calories.

There is also an actual danger in drinking too much water - there have been people that have actually died from water toxicity. It’s when someone drinks way too much water and their kidneys have to overwork to flush the water out of the system. The water eventually ends up overworking all the organs as well as increases your volume of blood, which puts a huge burden on your circulatory system and also on your heart.

This is especially true if you are not peeing it out, as happened to a woman in a water drinking contest on the radio who died from drinking too much water and was denied the bathroom in a contest for a Wii gaming system. After going home, she collapsed and actually died from complications associated with drinking around two gallons of water while being deprived the bathroom.

I had an interesting experience today at the gym where I work (for new readers, yes I am lucky enough to have a job that thinks a lot of it’s employees and has an employee gym you can go to on your lunch breaks, before and after work etc.) just today actually. I went in after, I’m ashamed to say, a couple day respite from working out. I was in desperate need of blowing off some therapeutic steam in the gym, and felt as if I were going to explode with all the stress and anxiety that had built up from those previous days of not working out. Ah, the benefits of being a workout junkie, huh?

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all! It’s just that, you know what I’m talking about if you work out regularly, it’s almost like you crave it and feel like a giant crabapple if you don’t get it. Which is good! God knows that those who never really got into working out should feel like garbage when they don’t get exercise, but many people don’t even realize what they’re missing out on or why they feel bad, simply because they don’t correlate the two.

Enough with my soapbox folks. My point is, I went to the gym after a break, and found that there were new elliptical trainers, at least I had never noticed them before (disclaimer, I am the queen of oblivion sometimes). So, I decided to hop on one of the new elliptical machines and noticed that after only five minutes I was breathing harder than I normally do with my elliptical workouts, and that I had to actually turn down the resistence so that I could finish my normal 30 minute workout.

I was actually sweating very badly in a highly air conditioned gym that gave me goosebumps when I first walked in - a sign of worsening circulation, probably exacerbated by me not working out for several days. I noticed when I was done that my bangs had actually gotten soaked, something that doesn’t usually happen both because I have them secured and because on the older elliptical machines in the gym I normally did not exert myself so much. You see, the older they get, the less resistant they get, so you just have to start cranking up the resistance on them - no biggie.

I had to laugh when my sister asked me what was up with the crappy push up bars in our basement, and I told her that I thought they helped align you better to do a better pushup by elevating your body a little more off the ground and helping you to figure out which angle you wanted to do, whether you wanted to target your triceps or biceps, and how intense you wanted to make it.

Pushup bars are really the simplest looking devices. They are just a u-shaped bar, usually made of some sort of metal alloy that can support a couple hundred pounds since people are going to be putting the majority of their weight on them when using them for pushups, and ours has rubber on the top for easier gripping and increased comfort. I think ours is made by Gold’s gym or something like that, it’s some sort of gym I do know that!

The way I do it is align them up by my head, so that they are perpendicular, and then I go ahead and do my various pushups, including the target area for me, which is my triceps, where I tend to retain a lot of surface fat, which is common in women. Women need to be careful when targeting various parts of the arms though if they don’t want to end up looking bulky, so it’s important that they do make sure they are usually targeting the triceps specifically some of the time so that they aren’t always working the biceps, and making for an uneven look that isn’t really all that feminine.

In order to make sure you lose upper arm fat, you can’t really just put all the responsibility in your workout regimen, because you actually need to also watch what you eat and especially limit your fat intake, which will help burn fat in that area since you’re not adding more fat to be burned by the body first, and also since this will help you be better able to get rid of the body fat that you do have. Upper arm fat is especially stubborn on women, as are the hips, but if you really are consistent with getting in those good tricep workouts, and possibly also use a pushup bar as well, you will see results.

I love the Horizon elliptical machine we have, no doubt about it. We’ve now had it for a little over a year, making it one of the first purchases we made when we finally moved into a home where we had room to put a little mini gym, and ever since then it is a staple in both mine and my boyfriend’s workout routine and also a pivotal part of our cardiovascular fitness routine and health.

There’s also another big reason I love our Horizon elliptical though, and that is that I can easily go backwards on it and help shape and tone by buttocks, which of course can always use all the help it can get since I’m a woman and the butt is the most frequent area of fat deposits, followed by the thighs and the upper arms, oh yeah and then the abs, but that is probably where I have the least problems so far at this point in my life (by the way I’m in my early thirties).

What I do it stop using the moving arms of the elliptical machine, and begin to instead go backwards, which tends to feel a little more like you are working the buttocks instead of the fronts of the legs and the quadricep muscles, which is a concern for most women that these muscles will get bigger, not something that many non body building women tend to want to happen.

The way I do it is in intervals, doing about eight minutes of forward movement with my arms moving on the moving arm extensions, and then I take a two minute backwards jaunt, really focusing on squeezing those buttocks muscles so that I can get the most out of it, and believe me, I’m watching the clock still too because although you stop using your arms and maybe the cardio intensity isn’t as high, the muscle work is still hard and requires concentration and focus, just a different kind.

I have found that differentiating my elliptical workout like this by going backwards has indeed helped to lift and shape my butt, so I continue to do it in intervals of eight minutes followed by the two going backwards, and I usually stay on the elliptical machine for a total of about thirty minutes, so it amounts to a total of about 6 minutes going backwards, but it changes it up often enough so you are not totally exhausting the muscles of the butt, however you are creating muscle confusion which is one of the best ways to tone and burn fat.

Finally, there’s a video game with the emphasis on fitness, activity, exercise and balance. The Wii Fit by Nintendo comes with a balance board that informs the user of their weight, center of gravity and even their body mass index when their height is factored in.

With all of the information compiled, the Wii Fit informs the user of their fitness age. Wii Fit has approximately 40 different exercise activities. Included in it’s programs is a series on yoga poses. The balance board tracks your center of gravity during these activities.

Other categories of activities include aerobics, strength training and balance games. The aerobics series includes jogging, step aerobics, hula hoop, rhythm boxing and more. The Wii Fit balance games involve ski jumping, ski and snowboard slalom, heading soccer balls, a table tilt game, a tightrope walk and more.

For strength training, the Wii Fit offers push ups, side planks, jackknife, the lunge, rowing, squat, arm and leg lifts, a parallel stretch and more. The yoga poses on the Wii Fit include the Half-Moon, Warrior, Tree, Salutation, Standing Knee, Palm Tree and more.

The combination of workouts emphasize basic core training but avoid overexerting the individual. To get to new activities, you must unlock them by acquiring “fit credits”. The fit credits are accrued in a “fit bank.” If you get a 100% score on an activity, it unlocks the next more advanced level of that activity.

Also featured on the Wii Fit is an activity log to track other activities outside of the Wii Fit game. On your activity log, the categories are light, medium or heavy activity. Wii Fit is a good introduction to exercise for some individuals who have been sedentary. It’s a good tool to keep exercise fun with the playful balance and aerobic games. Within the game play, Wii Fit incorporates Miis to assign to each person to add to the fun and track your level of fitness.