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!

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!

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.

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

Not only that, I just want to get outdoors, run, stretch my legs, and get physical. Maybe do some things out in the garden and get my hands dirty again, smell the earth and the new greenery growing and hear the birds chirp again. Oh yeah, and see that yellow disk in the sky that’s been so shy as of late.

If you have spring fever, then you can do a few things to try to get over it. You can go on a vacation where you can work out and jog outside if you want, lay on the beaches and hike in the warmth and be the physical creature that you want to be, or maybe you can pay to go in a sauna. We love our infrared sauna, it really helps us feel like we’re escaping the cold in the middle of the winter when you feel like you’re one big popsicle all day long.

Or, you can maybe get some great workout dvd’s that show tropical, outdoor scenery. It sounds kind of ridiculous and trivial, but I love watching the Gilad shows Total Body Sculpt and his other one too, because they are exercising outdoors in Hawaii. It sort of makes me feel like I’m there with them, and the moves they do certainly make me feel like I’m sweating it out on the beach.

Cabin fever is bound to take hold when you live in an area, like I do, where it snows a lot in the winter and the temperatures are cold enough to keep you indoors most of the time. However, if you choose the right outlets, you can escape the winter doldrums in your own home!

The study though, I think puts the more important aspects of exercise aside, like how it makes you feel, how it gives you more energy, conditions your heart and lungs, and has a multitude of other health benefits, not just as use for losing weight or maintaining a certain said weight.

For example, my hour on the elliptical machine could be wasted if my only goal were to burn calories and control my weight if I belonged to this class of people who do not benefit that way from exercise, however, I do receive that benefit form exercise, I know I do because I am leaner and thinner when I am consistently exercising. Of course, I have to watch my diet as well, but still.

These 1 out of 5 people are apparently missing some piece of genetic makeup that allows them to aerobically burn off calories and oxygen, which is the key component to burning off calories and controlling your weight via cardio exercise. Because of this, they do not garner those benefits, but that does not mean they aren’t garnering many other benefits such as mood enhancement, cardiovascular conditioning and heart health, circulatory health, and even digestive system health benefits by following a regular exercise routine.

Exercising releases endorphins, it lowers stress hormones like cortisol in the body, and it conditions our bodies to be strong and more lean and also to be conditioned to go through strenuous, physically taxing situations. That right there is enough in itself to make you want to exercise, at least it is for me!