Exercise can greatly enhance not only the quality of your life here on earth, but it can also greatly increase the actual time you have here in this physical body here on earth as well. More evidence is pouring in of that nature, so it’s pretty hard to deny the obvious health and longevity benefits that exercise has in general.

A new study is pointing to some pretty compelling statistics that jogging is a huge factor in longevity (life span).  Those that jogged as little as one hour a week at a moderate pace (not even running, just jogging) lived several years longer than those in the study who did not jog at all.

I love jogging, and don’t get to do nearly enough of it in my opinion. I’m not a fan of jogging on a treadmill, I’d rather work out on an elliptical maching any day over that. But I love jogging outside in the cooler crisp fall weather and in the earlier or later hours in the summer when the sunny heat has cooled a bit.

The exposure to the colors and scents of the outdoors, coupled with the fresh air is really an invigorating feeling, and I love how it makes me feel energized and ready to conquer anything. There really is something to the idea that runners and joggers experience a sort of high from jogging.

You definitely get some sort of endorphin rush when you are doing it, and afterwards you feel pretty amazing, with all your anxiety spent out of your body and relaxation setting in.  I think jogging outdoors is one of the best exercises for me personally because of the multitude of not only physical benefits, but also of mental health benefits.

Gosh, typing this right now, looking out the window at an early morning sunny day with the birds chirping wildly, my cat in the window lazily enjoying the sights, makes me want to go outside and get on the move right away!

So I was swinging away on our Horizon elliptical machine, which I’ve definitely enjoyed for five years now since we bought it at Dicks all those years back. It costs us somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred bucks, so it wasn’t the super high end, but it was also definitely not the low end either.

It’s pretty much almost a gym quality machine, but not quite. It’s very smooth and I like it a lot. It gives a great workout without the impact to the knees and joints like other high impact workouts which is what I love about it. I like the fact that I can get an excellent cardio workout on the elliptical all without jarring my body or my sensitive back or neck.

However, I must warn you to heed warnings when your machine starts to get a little bit of age on it. I had been noticing that a strange noise was coming from the right track on our elliptical for a lot longer than I should have before something happened.  It was a squeaking noise, and I simply thought the machine just needed the tracks oiled a bit.

I told my husband as much and we just kept putting it off. Then I was on the machine last week, trucking along and suddenly the right track completely broke and I went crashing down. Not exactly “crashing” I suppose, but if I hadn’t braced myself correctly I could have had a bit of a twisted ankle, but not much more than that.

What had happened, and what we ignored for a while, was a bolt had actually broken. Had we been normal people who actually pay attention to things like this and keep things in good repair, we could have prevented it from breaking while one of us was using it.

It ended up being a really easy fix. We went to the hardware store and bought a replacement bolt and it was good as new after that.  Just a word or warning to those that own any piece of exercise equipment – make sure you keep it in good repair and also keep an eye (or ear in this case) out for things that might be getting old and rickety on the machines and fix them before they break while you’re using them.

This story has a happy ending – our elliptical is good as new!

It seems like the two biggest problem areas on women as most women can attest to are the outer thighs and the belly area. These are the most common complaints I hear personally.  The third is probably flabby and fatter upper arms (this has long been a complaint of my own, as well as my outer thighs which always seem to have a mind of their own even when I’m at my thinnest).

So why are outer thighs such a problem for us?  Well, studies have shown that this is one of the key places a woman’s body wants to store fat.  It has something to do with us being child bearing creatures, but I don’t recall exactly why the outer thighs use of fat would come in handy for women with children. Wouldn’t it slow them down if nothing else?

On a positive note, studies have also shown that women who carry extra fat in this area of their body tend to also exhibit more intelligence. Yay! I must be a VERY intelligent woman   All kidding aside though, the reason cited in this study was that this is also where your body tends to store a lot of the omega 3 fatty acids that you get in your diet.

These fatty acids have been linked to the functionality of the brain, which may explain the link between higher intelligence and cognitive function and more thigh fat.

Outer thighs are a struggle for women because this fat is very hard to get rid of without a serious change in diet. You really can’t zap it with exercise alone. You have to have a a diet that is also conducive to reducing the fatty tissue in this area as well.

Ideally the diet needs to be somewhat low in fat, although you should always consume an abundance of omega 3 fats. It should also contain a great deal of naturally fibrous foods such as broccoli, kale, spinach, sweet potatoes and the like. This is because natural, whole fiber in foods helps flush our bodies of the bad fats and sugars that we take in.

These unhealthy fats and sugars as well as excess carbs all get deposited as extra fat in our saddle bag area, giving us that infamous look that every woman loathes of having a travel bag on each side of our thighs. Not fun.

You can perform many exercises for the outer thighs as well that will help tone the underlying muscle and pull in the appearance of the thighs, but the diet is very important if you want to target reduce this area of your body.

My husband and I just got back from Pittsburgh, where we checked out the Pittsburgh ComicCon and also did some business while there as well.  One thing I love about traveling is staying in hotels. Not only do you get to not worry about cleaning up after yourself, cooking, or working and doing chores like you do while you’re at home (not coincidentally it is hard to relax when we’re at home sometimes), but you also get to experiment with fun new gym equipment!

Now I know that not all hotels have stellar gyms. In fact, at some of them you’re lucky to have one treadmill and one elliptical in a room with no televisions or windows. But at the one we stayed at this past weekend, they really had a great gym. It had stuff in it that I don’t have in my work gym or home gym.

It had some great weight machines that had multiple hookups and smooth pully-like exercises that you could do. It also had the Bosu ball, which I’ve talked about in past posts with great affection but still have yet to purchase because let’s face it, I’m just too cheap

It had elliptical machines (state of the art Precor brand ellipticals complete with the built in televisions and the whole nine), treadmills, a stability ball, medicine balls, weight benches, free weights and a state of the art Precor weight machine with so many attachments you could do just about any weight training exercise with it on any part of your body.

True workout nirvana, in other words! My husband and I took advantage of the gym and worked our bodies very hard both days we were there. We couldn’t believe that both days we had the whole gym completely to ourselves!

We tired something cool that I’d never tried before with the medicine balls that really helped tone my lats, which I hardly ever work out.  We stood about ten to twelve feet from eachother and tossed it to one another, all while stepping back and launching it in a sort of shot put way.

We only did this exercise about ten times back and forth, but just that little bit of time really trained my lats hard and had my biceps bulging and hurting!  Probably because I was working them in a way I wasn’t used to.

I was even sore the next day. It’s amazing how, even if you’re really fit, you just change your routine up here and there and it can really take your fitness to a whole new level.

The sedentary lifestyle is clearly being linked to early death and more and more health issues as time goes on. As science gets more sophisticated at pinpointing the problems that lead to shorter lifespans and higher risks of certain types of deadly disease, we are seeing clearly how important it is that we do what we were made to do since the dawn of time – MOVE!

Whenever I read a new story like this, it makes me cringe to be honest because I happen to have a desk job during the week where I sometimes am completely unable to get up from my desk for a few hours.  I try to make it a point to stand up, stretch, take walks and move around as much as I can, but I can feel (and see) the effects that having a desk job for ten years has had on my body.

I used to wait tables and work in fast food sorts of jobs for years before I landed my cushy desk job. I was a lot more in shape when I had my active jobs of course. But I was also younger. I still think that having the desk job for all these years has added weight to me and also taken away a lot of my former muscle tone.

I also feel like I have to fight twice as hard to keep weight off now. Again, that is a symptom of aging as well, but I know that it has something to do with the fact that the only time I get true, constant exercise is when I’m working out. If I don’t work out every single day, that means I’m only getting adequate movement when I make sure I work out.

Sometimes that may not be much, maybe 3–5 days a week.  I just was watching the show “The Doctors” where now they are linking the sedentary lifestyle to an increased risk of breast cancer in women.  This makes sense, since cancer of all kinds is usually a higher risk for people who don’t get enough exercise.

This is because so many other things go along with the sedentary lifestyle.  Excess weight and fat, which creates excessive estrogens in the body, which fuels certain types of cancer is one for instance. Another is the fact that exercise is a huge stress buster, and those with less stress and anxiety tend to have better immune systems and healthier cells in their body which lessens their risk of cancer.

It is clear that living a non-moving lifestyle is dangerous to your health these days. Not heeding these clear signs would be dangerous to your longevity, mindset and your generall health and well being.

So I’ve started now to run again about once a week since this has been one of the most ridiculously beautiful, mild springs ever on record here in Northeast Ohio. What I’ve begun to notice though is that my calves are starting to bulk up a bit, as they always do, when I run.

I tend to get bulky in a lot of places. My quadriceps also get bulky, and basically anywhere on my leg can get bulky. What I try to do to counterbalance getting bulked up, which is the opposite of what I want – I want to slim these parts on my body down, not make them more bulging, is do exercises that complement the bulking without furthering it.

Let me explain. I do stretching types of exercises such as pilates and yoga. I also make sure I stretch my muscles out right after I work them to help keep them looking “longer” and leaner instead of the muscle bunching up and becoming larger.

Pilates is an excellent exercise regimen to pair with things like running, jogging and weightlifting because it helps to keep your body long and sleek, and keeps the muscles conditioned to stay that way.  REMEMBER to always wear a great pair of shoes for running too – this is paramount for good form and injury prevention.

It also helps to tone them, and helps keep you more limber and lithe throughout your entire life. Being able to stretch and move around and stay flexible becomes more and more important as we age. It helps keep disease at bay and helps keep you mentally sharp and ready to spring into action at any time.

It also promotes good circulation and improved immunity (at least yoga does, I’m not sure I can say that about pilates, pilates are more of an appearance and strength exercise).

To get my calves nice and stretched out after a hard run, and to keep the muscles from cramping up, I do an extended downward dog. This is the inverted triangle pose that is a yogic posture. It’s excellent for loosening up the neck since you are inverted toward the ground and the gravity is taken off of you. It’s also excellent for the calves and the backs of the legs because it keeps them stretch out and warmed up.

I would only recommend doing this stretch after your run, not before since it’s a static and not dynamic stretch. Remember, dynamic stretches should be the stretch of choice before a run (this is the type of stretch where you are moving and getting the circulation going and the muscles warmed for action).