Hiking can be a good form of exercise, and granted it’s not really something most people do every day.  However, it can be enjoyable, healthy, and exert the kind of energy you need to in order to get your heart rate up and otherwise.  This being said, there are a few tips to follow.  First of all, start early.  If you do, you are less likely to hit the heat of midday and therefore it’s more likely to be more of a pleasant experience rather than otherwise a negative experience in general.  Especially if you are going long distances, the lack of excess heat will help.  Second, don’t carry too much, and wear light clothes.  The more weighing you down, the harder it’s going to be.  Less weight allows you to cover longer distances and at a higher speed.  Third, make sure you are bringing food and water. It’s easy to get dehydrated on any hike, and on longer hikes especially, you may well get hungry.  So it’s extremely important to cover these particular needs with your body and take care of it in general so that it is satisfied in all these particular ways and comfortable.  It will also make you more likely to go on said hikes in the future and therefore get all the exercise benefits out of it.

When I was younger, my cousin and I had whole arguments about lotion and how when I used it, my legs would automatically get tanner. We didn’t think about the fact that when your skin is really dried out, it develops a kind of white and dry film, and so by moisturizing you naturally get rid of that. I just came to a simpler conclusion that didn’t include the basic mechanics and she came to the conclusion that I was stupid, even though we could actually demonstrate the effect. We were both 5 at the time, so can’t count on a 5 year old to figure these things out. But that being said, there are plenty of eye creams and wrinkle creams alike that claim to get rid of wrinkles by using a moisturizer. You can definitely prevent them by using a good moisturizer. But you can’t really get rid of them. This being said, I noticed a couple days ago that I had this odd line in my forehead. It’s never been there before and it’s never really been there since. But frankly, I put a thick moisturizer I have on it, and it went away. Why? Because that particular area was really dried out, and it reacted in that certain way. It was highly temporary, and I’m sure it would’ve been gone the next day either way. But in some ways, I think many of us don’t think about this, and so when we see more dried out spots like this, we think they are wrinkles when in fact they are not. I’m sure it could also happen around the eyes and therefore those eye creams that use that method would logically work for those problems. There is also the fact that with really thick moisturizers, you feel a difference maybe deceiving yourself. But either way, if you want real eye creams or real results, it shouldn’t be based on moisturizers.

I realized a few things about myself the other day. I was thinking about my high school class as I went to my 10 year reunion, that’s a scary thought, and while you always know that sometimes the most popular and the jerkiest people ended up peaking in high school, at the same point in time, you don’t think about certain things. I mean if you consider, the majority of people you may have graduated with 5 or 10 years ago probably have used what they considered to be the best weight loss supplements by now, that’s a scary thought. If you consider more than half of them are still overweight or obese, even scarier thought. I actually counted quite a few who had died in the past 10 years, some from drug overdoses, some actually from heart attacks, I know health problems are hitting earlier and earlier, and otherwise there have been various issues. The most avoidable one in the bunch was a guy who actually fell asleep at the wheel on a long drive and one car collision. But that being said, my high school class from 10 years ago reflects the obesity epidemic found in the United States exactly. We are no exception going either way. I mean certain states use more of the best weight loss supplements while others use less, I guess we just fall somewhere in the middle.

They say that a more educated public is a skinnier and healthier public. This could be true, because obviously if you learn more about fitness and diet nutrition, you would hopefully follow it. But some of the worst offenders are dieticians, doctors, and people who should really know better. I don’t know if they go through some unaccredited online degree program or what. But for some reason, they cannot honestly seem to control themselves. And that being said, a lot of the smartest people like doctors, lawyers, and otherwise very successful and very educated people are likewise some of the most obese and unhealthy people I know. It could be blamed on their busy schedules that they so often have. But especially if you are a heart surgeon for example, the breadth of your hands really matters, and obviously you would see the effects of obesity for yourself. Do they just possibly disconnect themselves entirely or something. I mean really. Education is not seemingly the key, and I have to seriously doubt that all the qualified professionals who are stupid like this went through an unaccredited online degree program. They went through legitimate channels, and while online channels can be legit, they probably went through traditional schools for the most part is my guess.

I can say this for myself. When I was in college, I was quite possibly one of the most healthy and fit people you could possibly find. Well maybe not healthy. I was out on the weekends partying it up, and I was out half the late nights with my friends and Denny’s, Wendy’s, or something else. But that being said, I also ran about 20 miles per day every day. For me, it was a natural depression treatment that broke down about the time Crohn’s Disease really flared up, and while I was thinner then, I really lost a lot of weight at that point. I stopped running, because it was too painful to stand up, let alone go running, and since then I’ve never really gotten back to that at all. But honestly speaking, as far as the fitness levels, you cannot do better for a natural depression treatment than running. Now most people who use it for that reason tend to go to extremes as I did. It only works for so long, especially with severe depression, and then you feel like it is only working as long as you are actually running, which means you do it more and more just to try to keep up. This is one of the reasons why I hate those that insist upon the idea that everybody should use a natural approach, exercise more, and otherwise. It works yes, but in severe cases it’s not enough. And frankly, that kind of thinking can be obviously dangerous.

They always like to talk about colon cleansers and their ability to reduce your risk of colon cancer among other things. The most popular claim I’ve heard is that John Wayne had something like 30 pounds built up in his colon when he died. I’m sure it happens. Actually I’ve known colon cleansers in general to help people to obviously drop weight, feel better, look better, the whole 9 yards. But frankly, there are sometimes better weight loss products. This I say because with most colon cleansers, they are only designed to actually get rid of that toxic waste, which sometimes isn’t enough, and that’s assuming you get a legitimate colon cleanser. Many are drawn into those that make claims about John Wayne and such, when those are actually the ones that are the most likely to be scams and the most likely to cheat you in certain ways. They are the most likely to just use diuretics so that you think you are losing weight and cleansing your colon, but you are just damaging your body and making it actually harder to lose weight in the future. So all I’m saying is that if you’re looking for weight loss products, you can jump start your diet with this kind of thing, but I wouldn’t rely on it for the whole thing.

I’ve learned to accept the fact that my body is highly tempermental.  I follow strict diets and exercise plans, because when I fall behind, even the tiniest little bit, like not exercising as much by about 30 minutes in any given day, I don’t lose weight and I gain weight.  So that doesn’t really help anything for me at least.  I have a specific number of calories, and I have specific types of food I eat.  If I fall below that caloric amount, I’m fine, I’m great, we’re on a good road.  The problem is when I fall even about 100 calories above that and even worse if they are the wrong types of calories.  So it requires time, effort, planning, all things frankly everybody should use.  My body is just a little bit stricter about that particular aspect of things, meaning I have to keep a closer eye on things than some other people do.  Now obviously, many people have more anal bodies about these things than they realize, and they don’t take the time to deal with it.  But it’s one of those things you have to do whether you like it or not.

One of the best and most educational experiences of my life was training with two martial arts instructors that were from the country of origin.  What I mean by this is the fact that they actually trained in the country where the martial art started out, not in the United States.  In the United States many instructors go soft on people, because they know people will often drop out if they do the same things they would have done in another country, it’s a horrible thing to say yes, but so true.  This being said, when in these classes, I lost a ton of weight, and I found that it may have been because English was a second language or it could’ve been for another reason, but I grew a thicker skin than I’ve ever had before, because they were extremely abrasive in their comments, and if you cried or showed any kind of weakness, big mistake.  One of the bigger compliments I got was “you’re not fat anymore!”  That’s what I mean by abrasive and a big lack of tact.  But frankly, the insults as you can imagine were far worse than you would hear anywhere else, and mostly they were in other languages.  But I learned to stop looking them up or listening in general when they weren’t barking orders, because realistically nobody needs to hear that.  Granted, I only got a few of those the whole time and they were when I did something stupid.  But if you have a hardcore trainer, I can tell you it’s worth it because you lose more weight and you really get better results in general.

Obesity is not hereditary, it has a lot to do with diet.  I discovered this through family history in part.  And honestly, it’s a bit funny.  My family members with the exception of one have never actually blamed it on heredity, they know better, they see better.  My ex aunt is the one that does.  And her mother has a belly now, only because frankly she’s about 80 years old and has gained weight over time.  But frankly, she has never been a particularly big lady.  She’s just about average.  On the other hand, my ex aunt is literally about 400 pounds.  Likewise, my great grandma was always a bean pole as was my great grandpa.  My grandpa is a bean pole, and my grandma since her younger days is a short lady, under 5’, which keeps her weight lower.  But still, she’s about 200 pounds.  It’s because she’s always eating these cheese sandwiches, she made us caramel popcorn whenever we were over.  As she got older, we started cooking for ourselves, and she cried because she thought we no longer liked her cooking.  We were doing it, because she really developed some serious health problems, a lot of them obesity related and frankly we didn’t want her to feel that pressure to always take care of us.  She always took care of us as kids and spoiled us rotten, which is what a grandma really should do.  But as we got older, we figured we should take care of her.  After that, we went back to allowing her to do some things.  We would make caramel popcorn again and tell her how much we loved it all the time.  But we would change it so we were actually following her recipe and just doing a lot of the work for her, which really helped to take the pressure off while not making her feel bad.  She is like some cultures where they express their love through food.  But honestly, it’s never been about heredity.

A friend of mine has her Facebook status of course, and she recently posted about losing 30 pounds without exercise with the big D.  She has always been a bigger girl, and the common response was good for you, that’s great, and mine was something about well just make sure it’s not like Rush Limbaugh where it’s really not sustainable.  But that being said, I couldn’t figure out what the big D was.  So then somebody came up with the answer for me.  Diabetes.  Now for her I’m not sure which classification it is, but I’m guessing Type 2.  Anyway, either way, when you first start developing diabetes, you tend to lose significant amounts of weight in a short period of time, as well as experiencing other symptoms in general.  This being said, any quick weight loss like that is something to worry about.  In this case, there has been more than one person to go anorexic or otherwise take extreme measures, because when you lose this weight and you start using the proper medication, most people start suddenly gaining the weight back, which can obviously be highly frustrating for many people in general.  This is something that’s completely normal, and the best way to deal with diabetes in general is through good diet and exercise.  For some, this requires more of a change than it would with others.