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.

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.

Some can even catapult someone into a downward spiral if certain variables are present, as documented in several cases. Over the past decade alone, several anti anxiety meds have gotten bad raps as being too laden with serious side effects, including serious withdrawal upon stopping the medication, akin to someone withdrawing from serious street drugs. But there is something you can do that can and does dramatically reduce anxiety and instills a constant sense of peace and calm.

What is it? Exercise of course, silly! Exercise, in its many varied forms serves as not only a natural anti anxiety remedy, but it also wards off depression and many different diseases and disorders. Best of all, it’s free if you don’t pay to go to a gym (besides of course the initial investment in any equipment like a proform treadmill and elliptical machines or weight machines and other various exercise do-dads).

But it most definitely can be free if you just use your imagination a bit. You can jog, run, walk, do pushups, swim like the great Olympian Michael Phelps has done to the tune of record gold medals, do yoga, tai chi and other indoor floor work types of exercises that do not require equipment or weights, just using your body as resistence completely free of charge in or near your own home.

Exercise in many different forms, and ones that bring your joy or that you find kind of fun. Switch it up and keep it interesting, because just enjoying the type of exercise you do can have an immense impact on whether you keep doing it or not and also enhances mood, which helps zap anxiety and depression. Make sure you get your heart rate up, because this is key to reducing anxiety in the long run, although it may run contrary to initial thoughts.

Sometimes anxiety is simply pent up, extra energy that we need to expend, and that’s why working out helps in the most amazing way from relieving the angst feeling that seems to envelope your chest when it has you in its grips. For me, exercise provides almost instant relief, and most definitely provides a long lasting mood boost.

Well, that may not be the case, and there are newer workout regimens that preach quality over quantity and give you a butt kicking twenty minutes to a half hour workout that packs as much punch, if not more, than a more relaxed one hour workout. What sounds better to you? One hour or a half hour? I know what they majority of you will say, and it’s what I’ll say too - whatever can save me time in this hectic life of mine is what I’d pick!

There are workouts out there now that offer that shorter, but more intense, more targeted workout, and many people are seeing the results of that too, fairly quickly. One such regimen is the Thirty Day Shred series of workouts by Jillian Michaels, which one of my friends at work is trying out and says that it really does a butt kicking job of getting your muscles sore.

The Tae Bo series by Billy Blanks used to also use this concept in many of his shorter, blast workouts that offered you a sweat-pouring workout in about a half hour’s time. When you were finished, you’d feel like you’d just been in a (hot) gym for about four hours, and yet you watched the clock plainly say that about 28 minutes had gone by. Now that’s what I’m talking about - cardio conditioning, butt kicking muscle toning and sculpting, and all in just as much time as it takes to cook dinner (for some, less!)

A new pill that has been developed as a drug for those who cannot exercise but need the benefits of exercising, has been tested on lab mice with positive results thus far, making scientists think they might be on to something for near future use for human consumption. The idea is that those that are incapacitated in some way would reap the benefits of exercise, since they cannot actually move around too much, but the applications may spread beyond that into a strictly cosmetic diet aid as well for all we know.

The drug was tested on sedentary mice and found that the sedentary mice who received the pills for four weeks straight burned more fat and had less body fat, and a higher metabolism than those mice that did not receive the pill and were not sedentary. This means that, at least in mice so far, who biologically are supposed to be fairly similar to humans, this drug is working it’s magic on the metabolism and fat burning capabilities of their bodies.

Although this drug sounds great, and it most certainly would be a blessing to those who truly cannot move, I doubt it could ever wholly replace all the benefits that go with exercise, like feeling great after a workout, mood balance, and possibly even the development of muscle definition. Also, we just don’t know the long term effects of drugs like these because there simply isn’t enough time to test them before they go to market. Usually something that alters the body chemistry in these ways is eventually going to have some sort of repercussion.

Well, it seems that children of immigrants are even worse off when it comes to inactivity when it comes to getting in their physical fitness daily, than American-born children, which is worrisome of course as well because these children are also more apt to become part of the bad side of the childhood obesity epidemic.

Another reason to blame for the childhoor obesity epidemic is not just inactivity and lack of true exercise of the body, but also a high amount of processed, fatty and sugary foods being substituted for healthier, fresh options like fruits and veggies, because of the convenience aspect of processed and packaged foods.

Not only do children of immigrants get much less normal activity in during the week, they also participate drastically less than US born kids in organized sports and physical activities or clubs, making it even more unlikely they will be getting the exercise they need to burn calories and have a healthy, lean body that so many active children enjoy.

I think it’s horrible that kids are experiencing these problems so young now, especially since a child’s likelihood of wanting to exercise more as they reach adulthood is slim, since scientists have proven that children have an in-born tendency to be more active and want to be more active when younger, and it is only in teen years that yearning goes away, so the window of opportunity for true activity and wanting of physical activity goes away in a narrow time frame, considering how long we are here on earth.