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.

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).

I ordered the arm-slimming and defatting exercise and diet plan that is called “Sleeveless in Seven”. It’s a short ebook style program that tells you how to get smaller, more muscular arms. I had it with my arms.

I went out with my husband for St. Patricks day.  We had a great time, eating our low carb dinner of chicken wings (we had been low carbing it for a while, with no real big weight loss), and having a few brews.

Then we all had a bit too much to drink and the camera phones came out. Multiple pictures were taken. I’m not gonna lie. Looking at my arms in these pictures (I had a baby doll tshirt on that night) made me want to do something about them the moment I saw the pictures.

I’ll admit it. I was motivated by pure ego and vanity.  My arms have never been small. Even when I’ve been skinny, my arms still maintain a lot of fat on the upper arm area.  It’s always been a source of insecurity for me.  They just always look “big”.

I always admired those girls with sculpted, skinny arms that looked muscular and yet not manly or too bulky. That’s exactly how I wanted my arms to look – strong, and with not a lot of excess fat on the upper arm area.

But it just never worked out that way for me.  So I ordered the Sleeveless in Seven arm sculpting program that promises to help you slim down and tone up your flabby arms.  It comes with a very easy to follow diet plan as well that I have to say I’m having no trouble following because it’s flexible and has foods in it that I happen to really enjoy anyway.

I’m already starting to see results. My husband says he can see biceps on me now, and my arms are shrinking a bit after almost two weeks of doing the weekly exercises twice a week and following the diet plan.

I’ll keep y’all posted on my progress on my flabby arms!

Many of us suffer from back pain. Whether it is from an injury we had, or from simple stress and genetics, back pain can be an all encompassing pain that really is life interrupting if you don’t know how to manage it.

Many people think, intuitively, that when you are in pain, you should stay still and this will help. That is exactly opposite of what is true. Staying still, and leading a sedentary lifestyle where you get little movement and sit in a chair a lot is the WORST thing you can do for  back pain.

Moving around helps to loosen up the muscles, get the blood flowing, and perhaps most importantly gets enorphins and pleasure chemicals released in the brian, which helps to offset any of the pain you might be feeling in your back. The same goes for neck pain, and often times back, neck and shoulder pain go hand in hand.

Think of moving as lubing up the body. It helps to loosen the joints, and also helps to keep you mobile and agile as you age and  your joints, bones and muscles inevitably become less elastic and more prone to injury.

Exercises like yoga, swimming and water aerobics are excellent for those that exeperience back pain. The elliptical machine is a great way to get your cardio in if you have a sensitive back or joints in your leg that act up, since it has almost zero impact on the muscles and the joints.

Walking is an excellent workout for those with back pain. In fact, just walking and standing in the upright position helps us to stay mobile and flexible, whereas sitting and laying down really allow the muscles to atrophy and to become inflexible.

It’s all about maintaining movement and flexibility in the body.  If you have a desk job, make sure you get up and walk around once every hour. If you can’t actually get up and walk around, make sure you at least stand up from your chair and move around your cube or office, or stretch your back.

If you are going to do yoga for your back pain, be mindful that some poses are not back friendly if you are not flexible enough yet, and must be eased into instead of forcing your body into them. This can actually create more pain or result in injury, so take it slow.

Many exercises for flabby arms also help to ease back pain, such as supermans and kickbacks, all of which help to strengthen the lower back and help prevent back pain and weakness.

We have created a new page (and new section, all for various trouble areas!) on how to get thinner outer thighs, something for which so many women struggle.  We explain, detail by detail, how to do these outer thigh exercises, and we also tell you how they burn that area, and how to get the most out of each one.

Women, including myself, struggle very hard with the outer thighs, because they do seem very tough to get smaller. The saddlebag area is one of the most fretted over in the female mentality (again, including mine). But these exercises, when done correctly and diligently, will get your thighs smaller, more scultped, and much more toned.

Here is our new page on outer thigh exercises : OUTER THIGH EXERCISES.  Enjoy!

UPDATE : We now also have a whole page dedicated to another huge problem that many women complain about, but this one also can happen to men. It’s the flabby upper arms (the tricep area, which is the stuff that hangs down unattractively when too much fat accumulates).

There are multiple names for this, the least flattering being “lunch lady arms” and “batwings”.  In fact, a lot of women have liposuction and laser assisted fat removal to get these flabby lower arms sucked out.  But diet and exercise can effectively downsize this area.

We’ve put together a page of the most effective Flabby Arm Exercises that we know of that will help you sculpt and minimize this bothersome trouble zone!

Aging really sucks in general. At least when it comes to how aging affects your body, your facial appearance, and the many other fun health things that go with aging. But aging doesn’t have to be all together terrible when it comes to how you physically feel and look.

There are a ton of things you can do to maintain the way you look. Mainly, you can do this by exercising and eating well. But sometimes even doing that doesn’t prevent certain things from happening. Things like “turkey neck” and our necks getting saggier and looser are some of the ones that happen to even the best of us.

I started to notice that I was getting a bit of a “double chin” about a year ago. I had this extra little paunch of fat right below my chin. Not quite on my neck actually, but enough to eventually become a full fledged waddle. So I was determined to find natural ways to exercise the surrounding muscles and get that developing waddle to come back up and be firm and nice and defined, like my chin and neck were when I was young.

So I found a little device that was actually a neck exerciser. I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond for just about twenty bucks.  It is just a simple cheap little plastic device that you rest on your chest, and put your chin in. You then do almost like a “sit up” with your chin, off of your chest. You can feel your neck muscles tensing as you do it.

You are only supposed to do this facial excercise for a few minutes a day at most. I find one minute to be sufficient, and in fact I actually get a little sore if I go more than that. The exercises are more intense than they appear, and you are exercising muscles that rarely get worked, so you may feel a little soreness in places that you’re not used to feeling that way.

These types of exercises for waddles, turkey necks, double chins and neck fat can be very effective, but they take time to work, and you must be diligent and consistent with doing them.  The underlying muscles need to literally pull the fat and skin back to where they belong. Of course weight loss can help in extreme situations, but many times it’s just age that makes us sag in these areas.  Damn Father Time!

Sometimes, taking vacations and staying in hotels with gyms, no matter how small they are, is a really great way to either take your workout in a whole new direction because you may not have all your devices at hand that you usually do, or to try a new piece of equipment, gadget, or fitness accessory.

We recently went on a tiny little getaway to Pittsburgh, and stayed at a Doubletree Hotel, where there was a pretty decent little gym. It even had that nice new tile that minimizes impact on your joints laid down, and smelled or new rubber – not at all like dirty socks and sweat like most gyms end up smelling!

So, needless to say, we enjoyed the one time we got to visit it on our two and a half day stay.  One of the pieces of fitness equipment this particular hotel gym had was a Bosu ball. A Bosu ball is something I’ve seen in other gyms and seen in ads, but I had never had the opportunity to try it.

I literally had no idea what I was doing because there were no directions on the exercises you can do posted in the gym.  So, I figured I’d wing it. I ended up flipping it, ball side down, flat side up, and using it as a balance board for me to stand on and do my squats. 

Boy, let me tell you, the Bosu Ball added a whole new dimension of difficulty to my squats. You really have to focus on balancing your body when you’re standing on the small flat board, and you don’t realize it until you get up on it. 

I was quivering and shaking the whole time. I only did twenty squats, and that actually seemed like an eternity to me, so I know I got a totally kick butt, different workout on the ball. I also know that I was utilizing muscles I rarely use since I was out of breath and shaky after only twenty slow squats, which I figure would help shape my butt and thighs and maybe even firm up some of my cellulite.

There is actually a lot more you can do with the Bosu ball that I didn’t try.  You can use it as an ab cruncher, by sitting on top of the ball part of it with your butt planted in the middle and your legs coming up to your chest, then back out and extended for an extended crunch.

You really work and tone the abs and stabilizing muscles a lot more, and your butt, because you are trying to keep yourself balanced the whole time, not just working the abs by doing mechanical crunches. I’m a fan of the Bosu ball, and will use it again when I have the opportunity, especially now that I know more ways to use it!

I read one of the best books I’ve read in a long time about the body’s natural healing abilities, and natural ways to help keep your body healthy, energetic, and vital well into your older age. It’s by a well known holistic doctor, Dr. Andrew Weil, and it was actually written several years ago.

It will still be a relevant book many years from now even though, in my humble opinion. It’s called “Spontaneous Healing”. It is not only an eye opening and educational read about how to keep your body healthy using nature, but it is also an incredibly entertaining and well written book for a man who is not by trade a writer. 

One of the many useful tips he gave was one that had to do with energizing the body and clearing the natural breathing passageways by doing a very simple breathing exercise that you can do at home in front of your own mirror.

Lord knows we can all use energy boosts where we can get them. This exercise is one you can perform at work during the day in the bathroom stall or even in your cubicle, without drawing too many weird looks, for an instant pick me up.

It also can help to regulate your breathing when you’re having a lot of stress and anxiety, which will help you to manage your stress levels better.

Stand in front of a mirror if you’d like so you can see if you’re doing it right. Put your arms straight out from your body, so you look like a cross, with your palms facing down to the floor.  Hold your arms out as long as you can, almost until your arms start to get a little bit sore if you can.

Once they start to burn a little, slowly, very slowly, raise your palms up to the ceiling, and bring your arms down very slowly and deliberatly toward the floor. 

This is supposed to help open the breathing passageways in the lungs, and helps you to breathe more deeply and completely, which energizes the whole body with pure oxygen, and pure energy!