There is another good thing about spring and summer that doesn’t just include the fact that you can walk around in minimal clothing and feel a lot more free, taking dips in pools and the lake and going and getting an ice cream cone without freezing your tookus off.

I love jogging outside. In fact, I’m writing this in the “afterglow” of an outdoor jog. It’s the end of March, and it’s gorgeous here in Northeastern Ohio. It’s actually quite unseasonal to be honest, and everyone is really soaking up the rays and taking advantage of it. Every single house I jogged by had their garage doors open, or they were sitting out on their decks or out on the front porch, just inhaling the fresh spring air and enjoying being uncooped from the house.

You see, it’s around this time in Northeastern Ohio that everyone starts to get cabin fever – big time. There are only so many months that you can stand to be indoors, without being able to really venture outside without bundling into a hundred layers.

There is something that gives a burst of energy and vitality about the sprint time, a feeling of new beginnings, and focusing again on your health and well being. You see to be drawn the healthier foods,even.

And jogging outside, ugh, well it’s simply the best. Not only do you get fresh air and to see great scenery and say hello to people as you pass, but you also get to soak up the sun’s rays and get your daily dose of vitamin D, which sadly, we miss out on too much in the winter time when our skin in barely exposed to the sun’s rays. Believe it or not, they’re not all bad, and sunlight actually boosts our mood and provides a much needed vitamin that cannot be made without the light, Vitamin D.

Since Vitamin D is proving to be a very integral part of health and cancer prevention, we’d do best to really make sure we get some sunlight exposure here and there. I know everyone is all about never going out in the sun, but as long as you do not burn, and you don’t over expose yourself, you do NEED some sunlight exposure.

You know that as time goes on, we think of more and more ways to work our bodies out into peak fitness and performance. That’s the cool thing about time progression, at least as it applies to our bodies and the technologies, diet and health innovations, and new exercise techniques and equipment.  One example of what is sort of an exercise fad right now (which I also happen to love by the way), is plyometrics.

This is where you make short, explosive moves that are high impact, but they also give results fast, and get your heart rate up very fast, so they are often included in these newer short but very intense and very effective workouts you see on DVD.

Another example of newer techniques in working out and getting in shape is a newer type of abdominal shaper that I love to do. Gilad actually introduced me to this one through one of his Fit TV shows.  It’s where you stand up, and using a weight or a medicine ball ( a medicine ball is probably better, it would just help you distribute the weight better).  You hold the ball between your hands in an upright standing position.

Then, you sort of a do a squat, and rotate your trunk to the right, then to the left, so you are working your obliques and lower abdominals at the same time. What I don’t like about these types of moves is that it’s very easy to do them with the wrong form, and therefore to be putting strain on your back. Also, you could be getting no results if you do the form wrong because you’re not really targeting those abs if you do this move wrong.

It is an easy move to mess up for your abs, so if you do it, you want to make sure you’re feeling it where you are supposed to, which is where your love handle area would be, and the lateral sides of the abs.  You should feel the squeeze there, and if you don’t, or you feel back pain, then you are probably doing it incorrectly and should seek help on how to handle the form properly.  When you do these stand up ab exercises right, you will really get an extra blast to the abs and feel that you are targeting the right areas, and you’ll be ripped if you mix them in with more traditional floor work abs.

For those of us with desk jobs, just getting out of our chairs to mosey around the office every once in a while can be quite a challenge.  I know for me, at my office, I can’t stand to sit still for more than a full hour. Many times I get up before the hour is up, just to stretch my legs and move around, to get my circulation going and wake the hell up half the time!

You know how it is, sometimes you feel like you’re asleep in your chair, and you can’t seem to get into the waking world again unless you get up and get your blood going and your heart pumping a little bit faster. This is how it is for those of us that are leashed to a desk, so to speak. If you have a job that you are lucky enough to be able to be out and about or up and about for the majority of your day, of course, you may be laughing at me, thinking I should feel lucky to sit at a desk all day, but trust  me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Half the time I think that it has to do with why my butt has gotten bigger over the years I’ve had a desk job, and I wonder if I still waited tables if I wouldn’t have a smaller butt and have to worry about it as much.

I say if you get up once an hour, then you should definitely avoid a lot of the problems that come with being sedentary all day, such as poor circulation, pooling of blood in the feet, and a general feeling of no energy and enthusiasm for life.

I really can’t wait until the weather starts to be consistently warm and balmy. Not just because everyone seems to be in a generally more jolly mood, but because I can get outdoors more. Stretch my legs.  Sew my wild oats, if you will. I think we all have that instinct in us, to get out there and smell the fresh air, to be able to move about freely and to wander amongst the green grass, the trees, the blue sky, and to have less clothes on, which is so freeing. This fact in itself isn’t given enough credit, people don’t like to be all bundled up all day every day, it’s just so restrictive!

I’ve already noticed since we’ve had somewhat of an indian summer here in Northeaster Ohio lately, that I feel bouncier, more alive, more happy – just naturally. What is it about warm weather – and more importantly sunshine – that does that to people? I’m not really sure!  What I do know is that I feel like I could run a marathon, and running is what I do. I like to go on a few side roads by our house and jog.

I love to breathe in the fresh air, look at what people are doing with their yards and their gardens, to hear the bees buzzing, the birds singing, and the general orchestra of life around me as I indulge in a little “me time” for myself and my body. You just feel so at one with nature I suppose, and that is so opposite of what you feel like in the winter, when you are at odds with old man winter, fighting tooth and nail to stay warm.

Not to mention the fact that good, healthy food becomes more sparse in the winter, and it’s hard to find a good fresh fruit of veggie that doesn’t taste grainy and tasteless. Let’s face it. Winter is good for one thing, the holiday season and the snow covered landscapes. Other than that, it pretty much stinks!

So, I was on the elliptical machine that we have at our gym where I work the other day, and I discovered that there was a new way I could position my feet and legs on the machine so that I could really target one of my consistent problem areas – my saddle bags on the sides of my thighs. They are definitely partially genetic, because even when I lose a boatload of weight and am at my leanest, I still have those two stubborn, albeit smaller, pouches on the sides of my thighs, just clinging to them like some sort of extra appendage.

Can you tell I hate my saddle bag problem!? Well, I was working out as I said on the elliptical machine, and I positioned my feet so that it looked like I was sort of walking like a duck, with my toes pointing outward, and as I pumped the pedals on the machine, my knees were also sort of pointed out to the left and right sides of the room I was in.

This actually targets the outer thighs better, because you are turning the work inward from your quadriceps muscles, which get pretty big on me if I don’t watch it and work them too much anyways. This motion allows you to specifically target the thighs and the saddle bag area and tone it. I also make sure I turn the tension way up on the machine, maybe to about a ten or twelve tension setting, depending on what your fitness and muscular strength level is.

Turning up the resistance and simultaneously pointing your feet outward are key to get those outer thighs working and toned up more, so that you can begin to see a difference in their size shrink down a bit (diet always helps too on this stubborn part of a woman’s body), because you are pulling them in by working those outer thigh muscles.

I love this exercise now. I usually do it for about 3-5 minutes at the end of my elliptical workout so I can get the extra toning benefit at the end and that also serves as a cool down for my heart rate since I’m moving slower, but still toning the muscles, which is a great combo for fat reduction.

Too many people, when they really want to fast track their fitness or weightloss goals, will jump on the treadmill, put it on it’s highest incline and speed, and run until they fell like they’re going to pass out. I’ve been guilty of this myself. And guess what? I’ve also learned that you cannot do this, or else you burn out almost instantly. It’s kind of like your body just says no, it can’t do it, and it can’t just be thrown right into something that is totally rigorous and trying on the body.

Most of us need to ease into a bit more. This is not to say that you shouldn’t still challenge yourself when you work out. It’s just to say that you should not over do it to the point where you are sore or can’t move for several days, and have made your body go into defense mode against all exercise. That doesn’t do any good, because then you are rendering your body useless for several days, and this defeats the purpose.

Instead, make sure you sort of ramp up to your goals. If you know that you eventually want to start doing 10 miles an hour on your treadmill at a 40% incline (good luck with that by the way, that would be killer), then don’t start off on that, instead start off doing maybe a fourth of that goal, see how it goes, and your lungs and your endurance will build up to where they need to be.

The key is building up, not jumping right in and fatiguing the body right away, this way, your body will get used to the extra taxation and be able to handle it instead of shutting down, and you can gradually challenge yourself more and more and not get discouraged right away.

Yep, that’s right, not only can you exercise your body to shape it, tone it, and whip it into the exact shape you want it in most cases, but you can also perform facial exercises that will help keep your face, your cheeks, your chin, your jawline, and underneath your chin where your neck is where the infamous “double chin” phenomenon occurs.

You can actually help keep definition in your face and defy gravity as time ages your skin with facial exercises which is very cool, especially considering the fact that plastic surgery options are known to look fake and almost otherworldly scary so many time. I mean, who wants to get things injected, have their face sliced into and moved around, if you can maintain the integrity and lift of your skin naturally, through facial exercise?

Not that it’s a total catch all or that you won’t still naturally get some fine lines and wrinkles, but half of the reason your face looks more “aged” with time is simple gravity. It pulls it down and gives you things like jowls, less defined cheek bones and overall bone structure, nasolabial folds, which are those creases on either side of your mouth leading up to your nose, and a generally more slack, less taut look.

There are actually some good instructional videos for facial exercises, and there are also some great short books that you can read that will give you, step by step, the exercises that you need to perform on your facial muscles to help get rid of a double chin as well.

Double chins are caused by excess fat, yes, so many times losing weight will dramatically reduce their appearance, but what about after that, if it’s all genetics? Well, aside from having something like smartlipo, where the fat is literally liquefied with a laser and then sucked out, which is actually a minimally invasive surgery, you can do these exercises, and within a few weeks, you should start to notice a difference in your chin’s sagging and bulging.

There are also some little devices that you can use that exercise your facial muscles, if you look on Amazon, you can find quite a nice range of them which can help you do everything from lift your chin to define your jawline and help get rid of those jowls. After all, it’s best to go as natural as possible on your face when it comes to anti aging and preventive stuff – you just want to look like your best self – not some unnatural, alien version of yourself!

I hate to harp so much on my newfound interest and joy in a sport that I used to do as a child with my grandfather and my little sister and my mom so often – ice skating. I know that there’s a lot of hype built around the sport now too because of the winter Olympic games and the still highly spectated sport of figure skating – which I still enjoy watching on tv immensely, I suppose it’s somewhat like a trip down memory lane for me to my younger days.

Definitely very sentimental and nostalgic thing for me, we used to watch it together as a family, and I guess it’s a very fond memory I have of our family actually having fun together times as a younger girl, before my parents got divorced when I was sixteen, so it definitely holds a special place in my heart. My mom, sister and I went when my sister was in town from California at an ice arena around where I grew up, and I had a blast.

Although I was really shaky and unsure of myself at the outset because I hadn’t been ice skating in several years, I quickly became reacqainted with the sport, and was whizzing by beginners in no time, enjoying feeling the cold breeze on my face and the feeling that I was gliding through the air.

My husband and I decided to go again, together, since after my sister mom and I went, he was anxious to get back out on the ice after a long hiatus from it. He had taken skating in college, and he hadn’t been ice skating in years either, so after we went, he said he’d like to go. We ended up going to the college ice arena, and we also had a ball.

It was PACKED though. Here in Ohio, we actually had a nice day with the sun out, which has been a rarity over the past few weeks with us getting hammered with snow nonstop, so people were out in full force, and I’m sure that the buzz about ice skating from the winter Olympics were definitely contributing to the popularity of the sport.

We had a few falls – well, mostly my husband did because he didn’t have the benefit of having just been skating like I did, and he ended up with a big knot on his knee from taking a nasty spill, but we both had fun and got a great workout, and worked muscles we’d forgotten we had. It was a really great, active bonding experience!

I live in Ohio. And, to top it off, I live near the greater Cleveland Akron area of Ohio. You know, that area that just got voted the top “most miserable city” to live in by some magazine or other? Yeah, aren’t we so proud! One of the reasons Cleveland was voted the top most miserable US city to live in is because of our long, cold, snowy winters, among other things like taxes and appearance.

All that aside, there are a lot of US areas that are snowbound in the winter, or greatly limited by the winter time because of frigid temperatures and icy conditions outside, which make it hard to get anywhere sometimes. Also, you have the factor of not wanting to go anywhere because you don’t want to step out of your nice cozy warm house, and you certainly don’t want to get out or your big cozy sweaters or sweatsuits to go out in the cold, no sir! At least I’m speaking for myself. Others may not be as big of a freeze baby as I am.

This is why it is SO important for you to keep your motivation to workout in the winter time. Not only is it freezing outside, but we often go into a sort of hibernation mentality and physical state that can cause depression and anxiety, which only worsens if you also happen to not be working out like you should be.

Not working out regularly, and it’s negative effects on the body and mind, are only compounded by the fact that you also aren’t getting outdoors and moving around as much as you probably normally do in the summer. Think about it, in the summer, even if you’re not naturally a really active person, you are leaving the house more, walking around more, doing yard work, going to events, going on vacations and weekend getaways, all that good stuff that gets you up and around.

It’s really easy to fall into a sedentary rut in the winter time because you think, well, what can I do anyways, I might as well just be a slug and lay around until the spring time hits? However, that makes it all that much harder for you to get fit and ready for the summer every year, and it really puts your poor body through a yo yo routine as far as loss of muscle tone and weight gain. It’s better to keep your workouts steadily going throughout the winter and the summer time. Be kind to your body and at least show it some consistency.

With all the excitement over the Olympics, and American’s continued interest in figure skating, but not as much as it used to be sadly before the scandals of unfair scoring came into view, there is a lot of attention on the sport of figure skating. Ice skating has always been a fun sport to engage in for me. Ever since I was a little girl, my grandpa, who was an avid ice skater (he passed away several years ago now), used to take me and my little sister ice skating all of the time.

We always enjoyed it, but I don’t think we appreciated the actual skating as much as we appreciated how much fun it was to get junk food at the snack bar! Hey, you just like different things when you’re a kid!

We did love carousing around on the ice though, gliding effortlessly and doing fun, faster skating when you really started to feel more confident that you weren’t going to fall. What we didn’t realize then either was that we were getting a great physical workout by skating for those two hours during the public skates in Cleveland Ohio.

You often don’t understand that you got a lot of muscle conditioning from skating until the next day, when your lower back might be sore, and you calves might be sore, depending on how you balance yourself and what muscles you use most. You are really using a lot of your core muscles too, especially if your core (your abs and the surrounding area) is conditioned to begin with, because then your body is more conditioned to actually use the core instead of the back.

This is why you should try extra hard to condition your core, because then your back will ache a lot less since your core is doing most of the work, which is how it should be. One thing you want to be mindful of when you’re ice skating is to make sure your skates are laced up extra tight. This helps prevent sore ankles and arches, from straining to keep your body upright.

It provides extra support to these areas, and helps your body balance without trying so hard, so you can focus more on going faster and staying up than on balancing your feet on the ice.

What’s hilarious is when you get out on the ice during an open skate, you see children that are like 4 years old whizzing past everyone, doing fancy moves, and basically making everyone else look bad! Kids truly have no fear, we could definitely learn a thing or two from them as adults