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.

Exercise definitely has a calming effect on the brain and other important organs and bodily functions.  It has a definitive physiological effect on the body and mind that is utterly undisputed.

I look to my own experience as proof.  When I think about the periods I go through where I tend to be a vegetable and a couch potato, I also realize that, although parts of that type of lifestyle can be fun at times, I’m also sometimes a mental mess.

Lack of exercise, for me, also correlates to a general apathy toward life.  If I’m not up and moving around, it sort of translates to where I am in life and how I feel about my life – stagnant!

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.

I view them as a time to hang out with our friends, who come over every Sunday at one o’clock and often don’t leave until seven or so, and a time to eat some sort of fun junky foods that I usually don’t indulge in. I also have begun to view it as a time to sit on my laptop and get work done.

Yes, I’m one of those people who is sitting on their laptop while everyone else enjoys the game!  But I do get quite a lot accomplished, and I don’t feel as horribly guilty for sitting all day long.

What I have begun to pledge to myself, which helps with the guilt immensely and also helps with the falling asleep feeling in my butt, is work out before everyone gets here. I work out fairly quickly, but very intensely, making sure I get a lot of bang for my buck with my workout.

This helps me sit and not be fidgety the whole day (which still does happen sometimes). It also allows me to enjoy something without feeling like a piece of garbage for sitting down all day.

I just got done with a very hot and sweaty day of mowing the lawn, weeding, and doing all that other fun summer stuff that sometimes feels like a bit of a stress reliever, and when you’re not in the mood, feels like a major ball and chain.

Sometimes it can be the bain of home ownership, which is otherwise pretty freakin awesome if you ask me. But if I’m not in the mood to sweat it out, watch out because I tend to pout about it.

I’ve grown to really like sweating though – especially outdoors, where you really feel at one with nature and you can just kind of turn off everythign else about your life and listen to the hum of the locusts, the buzzing of the bees, and the hum of crickets, and just shut everything else out. It is then that I don’t mind sweating, and when I feel my most in the element.

Do you have to sweat to burn calories though? Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt. The mere act of sweating means that your body temperature is elevated. When your body is working to keep itself cooler, or trying to warm itself up in the cold, you automatically switch into a higher metabolism gear.

This is because your body is forcing something that isn’t coming naturally. Much like when you work out really hard. You are pushing your body’s boundaries, and testing it. It rewards you with a higher metabolism, even if only for a few hours. This is how you can lose weight if you combine diet and exercise.

Sweating can be incredibly detoxifying as well. It rids the body of excessive toxic buildup in the body by taking it and transporting it out, along with lots of water and lots of salt, through the skin’s pores and out onto a towel, the back of your shirt, your hand, or evaporated out in to the air.

Have you ever accidentlly tasted your skin after sweating? You’ll notice that it tastes salty, and you can even feel the grit of the salt crystalizing on your skin as it dries out sometimes. It’s pretty cool!  This is your body’s way of ridding itself of excess sodium as well, so sweating also benefits you by ridding it of water retention and excess sodium intake, which can help with hyptertension.

Lately, everyone is talking about fitness as a perfect goal.  The question is, what is fitness?  How do we define it?  Can you tell by appearance who is fit and who is not?  It is all cardiovascular, or do you actual count bulging muscles among your greatest fitness conquests?

Most of us define fitness by looking at a person’s appearance and attach fitness to a list of physical traits.  You don’t have to be thin or the typical “buff” look to be considered physically fit.  There are a lot of mistaken beliefs about fitness and physical appearance. 

Fitness is a composite of many different factors including body fat percentage, aerobic capacity and resting heart rate.  Fitness is described by many as functional ability and many even factor in emotional measures such as happiness and confidence. 

Fitness usually has to do with being healthy and being able to perform a wide variety of tasks.  Most people excel and are more fit in one category than they are in others. 

Cross fitness trainers strive to develop fitness in 10 different areas.  Since most people shy away from what they are not good at, cross fitness training gets you using muscles and coordination in areas you might ordinarily avoid.

Weight is a factor in fitness, however, it is not the only one.  BMI, or athleticism, by themselves, are not the only definition of fitness.  Actually, fitness is not about looking like models and it is not a contest.  It is an ongoing challenge and journey, to keep yourself happy, confident, physiologically sound and strong. 

Any one of us can challenge ourselves by continually raising the bar on our level of fitness.  During workouts, we usually strive to add a little more to improve ourselves and see how well we can do.  Training in the gym should be viewed as training for the outside world.  Fitness is about being our personal best with the body type and shape that nature gave us.

So I just had my first opportunity to really get ou tand about in the yard and do some yard work. It was a perfect day to do it. At first I thought it was a bit chillier than I would have wanted but once I got going and got my heart pumping and circulation going and started to really work, I was glad it was only about 55 degrees!

I also like the fact that it is before it starts to get all buggy outside. The bugs always bother me when I’m gardening, and it’s definitely one of the reasons I don’t like doing that “yucky” work when it’s eighty degrees or higher outside.  Although I will say you get more of a sweat and probably a better workout when it’s hot outside.

What I did today was mulch three large garden beds. Before I could actually spread the mulch though, I had to clean the beds out. There was a lot of debris in the way of dead branches, leaves and other things leftover from last fall and more. That in itself is a lot of work.

There is a lot of lifting, bending and walking with heavy items and wheel barrows when you mulch, especially when you live on a really graded piece of land like we do.  First, I had to hoist bags of mulch that weighed about fifty pounds each into the wheel barrow, then wheel them down fifty feet or more to the garden beds, then I had to spread the mulch shovel full by shovel full.

I was beat!  I’m hoping I really burned a lot of calories because I feel famished and I also feel like I could take a nap after the four hours outdoors!  Welcome SPRING!!! I’m so glad you’re here. It was great to get outside and get a natural workout with some cardio and muscle work in and also feel a huge sense of accomplishment when I’m done.

I will say, there is nothing more peaceful that yard work once you get into it, and the feeling of gratification knowing that you did something to make your yard look beautiful is really the best part.  Oh, and the calories burned and muscles worked. Except now I think I may need an Aleve for my back

It’s the national American pastime big game day today, and the majority of us today will be watching a game for a few hours, and undoubtedly also engaging in some beer drinking, or some other sort of fun, as well as a lot of snacking and binge eating.

Things like deep fried wings, chips and dip, soda pop, pizza, and other unhealthy foods loaded with saturate fat, sodium, and sugar, will be inundating our bodies today shortly. But – you can help to mitigate the effects of these naughty foods and the fact that you’ll be spending several hours indoors on your duff by working out before the big game!

It’s okay to have the occasional “day off” from a healthy diet and a good exercise regimen, but if you can at least fit one of those in every day, then your chances of ever getting to be obese or heftily overweight diminish greatly.

I know I myself will be hitting a yoga DVD here shortly, just so I can get my movement and fitness in for the day and not feel so terrible about tossing back a few beers and gobbling on some salty, fatty snacks which I no doubt will do.  At least I burned calories and did something good for my body earlier, and that makes me not have such guilt about pigging out.

It’s dangerous to fall back into a diet rut so soon after the holidays, so try not to let this little pigout and resting period last for more than a half day today.  As long as you keep moving in life, you’ll be in for a healthier, happier and ultimately longer life.

So, whomever you’re rooting for in today’s game – the PACKERS of the STEELERS – may the best team win!  And HAVE FUN!