I can feel the power of stress busting and exercise even as I sit here and write this. What am I talking about exactly? Well, I just got done with a workout after a stressful first half of the day. I can feel my endorphins going, my blood pressure rate has gone down and even my breathing has slowed from frenzied quickness and hurries rapidity to a nice, slow tempo again.

In short, I’ve experienced the wonderful, healing, calming and stress busting effects of getting up, moving, and sweating. There is something to be said about how exercise makes your brain work. I feel much smarter, more confident and generally more mentally “quick” and capable when I’ve been working out regularly.

My husband and I have long wanted a dog. There’s only one problem. Well, there are a few problems actually.  We have two 8 year old cats, one of which is deathly afraid of even the smallest dogs. She won’t even come out of our bedroom for an entire day when a small dog is at our house.

The other problem is that my husband and I both work ten hour days. We actually work close to eleven hour days when it’s said and done, and we have an hour and a half back and forth drive time ,which rounds us out at being out of the house for about twelve hours a day four days a week.

This is a question that gets asked a lot. Heck, it’s a question that I had until I figured out on my own that it’s after about a year of solid use for me personally .That is, if I’m using my running shoes to do what they are for – running – on a regular basis. My husband on the other hand, doesn’t use his as much so he could probably go longer and make it about two years between new running shoes.

It occurred to me that I should really start using TV watching, game playing, and computer time to interject a few fitness moves. My husband and I have actually started doing this, and it really helps you to stay motivated. It also helps you to not feel like such a couch potato!

For example, we were watching an hour long show that we watch every week. During a more boring part of the show, he and I hit the floor and did 100 crunches.  It broke up the monotony of sitting still for an hour, and I felt like I was actually accomplishing something instead of sitting idle for an hour.

First Lady Michelle Obama has done some really great work for fitness and nutritional awareness in children, an often forgotten link to the obesity epidemic. The idea is that if you get kids in the right mode of nutritionally beneficial foods and exercise when they are young, they tend to carry that with them for a lifetime. It is true – at least if you look at me.

I was raised by parents who rarely ever allowed me junk foods or even junky cereals. My mom was very strict about including a vegetable or a fruit at every meal for us. We used to hate taking our lunches to school because most of the other kids had more “fun” lunches that were really just junk food.

My sister is a Capoeia enthusiast. She also happens to be in a lot better shape than me.  This, combined with the fact that I am not used to moving in the unique ways that this demanding sport/martial art/performance art pastime demands, made me one sore puppy a couple days after I attempted it with my sister in a class.

She came to visit me here in Ohio. The last time we went together was about a year ago. She has since gotten a lot better at this art, and I was impressed at watching her play/spar with some of the kids and the instructor. It can be very intimidating at first, especially for someone like me who is more of an introvert by nature.

Whether you are a seasoned and experienced runner, or you are just beginning to enjoy the fruits of this incredibly addictive sport and pastime, you need to train if you are going to run a marathon.  There are several marathons happening during the year. They occur in major cities and smaller cities. They can be hundreds of runners, or literally thousands of runners.

The Chicago marathon usually has about 40,000 participants believe it or not. These are not all seasoned runners either. Often times they are people who have signed up for the challenge and camradery of it all. They like to see what their body can do.

In a surprise study, teenaged men fared better on exercise programs when trying to quit smoking that teen girls did. Teen girls actually did better with their endeavor to quit smoking without the exercise. This shocks me, because I think exercise gets rid of a lot of the nervous energy that is behind why smokers smoke.

They think that it calms them, when in fact smoking actually increases the stress hormones in the body.  However, the study results are not arguable since they clearly showed that teen women did better quitting smoking without the exercise.

It’s football season.  And I, like so many others here in the US, are going to be sitting on our duffs for the majority of our Sundays, watching America’s favorite sport. It’s not because I’m a huge football fan. In fact, I’m not. I prefer sports that are faster paced like basketball and hockey. Even those sports, I could take or leave.

On of my flaws and simultaneous strengths is that I find sports to be a huge waste of time. I’m too goal oriented and workaholic-minded to be able to sit and watch anything for hours on end without feeling huge pangs of guilt for doing so. But football sundays are a little different for me.