That's Fit

Feeling stressed? One of the best ways to manage stress may be waiting for you just outside your back door.

My mom is one of those hard-to-buy-for types. She and my dad are, thankfully, in a position where if they need or want anything, they can go out and get it. But when birthdays and holidays like Mother's Day roll around, it leaves my siblings and me with very few options. This year, I think I'll try to give my mom something in keeping with her healthy lifestyle. If you're thinking along the healthy lines for Mother's Day gifts too, here are some ideas to consider:

• A day at the spa. Moms rarely take time for themselves. Give your mom a gift certificate for the spa and help her relax.
• Skin care. Whether you give a face mask, moisturizer, hand lotion, or cleanser, skin care gifts are always appreciated.

Spring is here and that means flowers, nature in bloom everywhere, and as I just recently learned while working on an article for AOL Body (11 Reasons to Love Spring): the potential for improved health. While doing research for the article, I had the opportunity to discover a new reason to love spring, which is -- at the risking of sounding touchy-feely -- the healing powers of gardening.

"Watching something grow and even smelling flowers can have an impact on someone's health," says Mary Beth Miller, a horticultural therapist with Gardening for Good. A horticultural what? No, not a therapist for plants, but someone who helps her (human) patients address mental or physical health problems through gardening and connecting with nature.

What are the health benefits? The Horticultural Therapy Institute says this unique brand of therapy:

My grandma always had a compost pile. We grandkids never knew exactly why she went to all the work of gathering a bunch of trash and dumping it in a bin in her backyard. She had her reasons, though, and while we didn't grasp them way back when, we understand her intentions now.

Successful gardening -- my grandma loved gardening -- starts with feeding with soil. The best way to nourish the soil comes from an unlikely but nutrient-rich source -- the home and yard.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that food scraps and yard trimmings account for about 25 percent of all the waste generated in the United States. Composting cuts down on this percentage. Just reuse and recycle the garbage you create right at home and you'll benefit the planet. And your garden too.

Here's how you can get started.

• Start in the Spring.
  
  

• Find some scraps and find a place to put them. Make a big pile in an out-of-the-way outdoor spot or buy bins to contain your compost and protect it from the elements.
  
  

• Grab a pitchfork or shovel so you can turn your pile and incorporate oxygen.
  
  

• Gather fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, eggshells, shredded white paper, newspaper (nothing shiny, just newsprint), torn-up toilet paper, paper towel tubes, and plant and yard trimmings.
  
  

• Do not use meat, oil, and dairy products. They won't break down properly, will smell badly, and will attract pests. Avoid weeds too. They will only produce more weeds.
  
  

• Go heavier on "brown" materials -- leaves, straw, wood -- than the "green" items from your kitchen.
  
  

• Compost should be kept as moist as a wrung-out sponge.
  
  

• Compost is finished when it smells good, looks good, and feels like dark, rich, crumbly earth. Your original ingredients should be unrecognizable. If you do nothing but add scraps to your pile, it may take up to one year before you realize your final product. If you actively work your pile -- turning it, monitoring your green/brown ratio, checking on moisture -- then it could take as little as one month.
  
  

• When ready, sprinkle your compost on the soil surface. Then start planting.
  
  

• If your compost begins to stink, bury your kitchen scraps in the material from the yard.

Whether your job involves heavy lifting or a great deal of typing, the possibility always exists that you may injure yourself. Granted, a sudden injury is more likely to come as a result of lifting a 50-pound box than it is typing an annual report, but injury can also develop over the long term from repetitive strain.

Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSIs) most frequently occur in the wrists, hands, shoulders, and elbows. Fortunately, you can protect yourself against RSIs by performing functional exercise or recreation activities as little as one time per week.

In a study of about 60,000 full-time workers, researchers found that those who enjoyed physical activities -- tennis, dancing, gardening, working out, basketball, etc. -- in their time off had almost 20 percent fewer RSIs than less active workers.

When it comes to growing and eating healthy vegetables, the Alaska State Fair isn't messing around. There are vegetable growing contests at pretty much every state fair around the country, but those in Alaska have an edge. The summer months in Alaska mean hyper-extended daylight hours, which means ginormously overgrown veggies -- like this 73.4 pound cabbage grown by Brenna Dinkel. In fact, cabbages do so well up in Alaska they have their own category at the fair. I really do love cabbage, but there's no way around the fact that it stinks when you cook it -- that must be one smelly neighborhood the days after the fair is over and everybody's having cabbage (lots of it!) for dinner!

Doesn't sound so simple, does it? But this list of tips from Frugalist Magazine (via Dr. Mercola) is designed to not only make your life happier and healthier, but it is organized so that it is one less complication you'll have in your life.

Different sections on work, around the house, finances, goals and beliefs, romance, socializing and health and diet offer well-rounded suggestions on how to improve your life.

How about dancing? Saying thank you? Vounteering? Paying in cash? Planting a garden? Rearranging your house? Always being on time? Simple. Easy. But do we do them?

Frugalist's list is a nice reminder that it really is small changes that make all the difference in our happiness.

Here at That's Fit, our Daily Fit Tip is all about small steps you can take to make your life healthier. Today, why not trying to burn some calories. You don't need some hour-long sweat session that burns 600 calories or anything ... but how about 100? Burning 100 calories is easier than you think. It's as easy as dancing with your honey for half and hour, going to the park with your kids or gardening for 20 minutes. If you could devote time every day to burning 100 calories, you would be burning an extra 700 calories a week which is sure to pay off after a while.

For me, burning an extra 100 calories is as easy as taking a walk at lunch instead of sitting at my desk. It's refreshing and energizing after hours of toiling away at the computer.

How do you burn 100 calories?

Being healthy is about so much more than just eating more fruits and vegetables and working out (although those are very important!), it's also about having a healthy outlook on life and having healthy relationships. It's that whole "well-rounded and balanced" idea we can't seem to get away from, because everything really does work together. So in tune with the season of getting your garden started this spring, check out this inspirational (and also a little cheesy) analogy on why you should plant squash, lettuce, peas, and turnips in your garden this year (squash gossip, let us love one another...)

A little while ago, I did this post on some outdoor activities for the summer that will blast calories and provide hours of entertainment at the same time. I just discovered this eDiet's article that lists some other great outdoor activities, namely Whitewater rafting, frisbee, swinging (at the playground, not another type of swinging), gardening and more. I think it's a great list -- they're all things that you can easily work in to your routine, and as I look out at the gloomy spring showers, I can't wait to get out and about. Whitewater rafting is a favourite summer activity of mine -- it's thrilling, refreshing and a really good workout if you're tackling some serious rapids and not just floating down a river.

What other activities can you think of?

After a few warm days and some sunshine, I was amazed today when I strolled through my yard. Plants that had just been sprouting a mere week ago are now nearly a foot tall. Unfortunately, half of those plants are weeds and I have my work cut out for me. If you have a yard like mine -- large and untamed -- many of your spring weekends may be spent in the yard or garden. You may also wonder, like I often do, if gardening counts as exercise.

If I was keeping track of my daily activity on a calories burned calculator, I'd enter in gardening for sure. In my yard, it means heavy-duty digging, hauling heavy bags of mulch, digging up and moving large plants, and trimming and hauling away big branches. You can burn about 350 calories per hour doing that sort of work -- not too bad! The other great thing about gardening, for me, is that I can easily spend 4 hours working out in the yard, and I'd never commit that kind of time to a workout.

So, while gardening isn't a planned and focused "workout," it certainly can cut calories from your day and put plenty of activity back in. But you need to be realistic about how much you're really doing. If you're holding a hose or pulling a few weeds and not breaking a sweat, it's not exercise. But if you're bending and stretching, sweating and out of breath...then you're getting a workout of sorts. To find out exactly how many calories you're burning, check out this calculator that measures calories burned by the minute.

Spring has finally sprung here in the Northeast, and I have begun cleaning out my garden beds. Gardening is amazingly hard work if you do it with any amount of gusto behind your raking, digging, hauling and planting, and I just know I have been burning some fat. Never underestimate gardening as a powerful fitness activity.

Have my well-used gardening gloves, complete with dirt, holes, worn spots and who-knows-what-that-stuff-is inspired me to write a Fitku? You betcha . . .

Bends, stretches, and squats
Hand rake weaves amidst new growth
Good for plants and health

Between the fresh air, exercise and sunshine, I have major spring fever!

This chair is called Land Ho! It is a large, rotation-molded seat made out of polyethylene, and it has a very unique feature. Can you see the little sprouts coming out of the top of the chair? The chair is equipped with a large planter as part of its construction, so you can sit with the garden, instead of simply being near it.

The design, as it is a work of art in addition to being both a planter and a chair, is probably very expensive, but that doesn't mean that you can't apply a similar technique at home. Adding some lightweight window planters to the back of a sturdy chair or, better yet, inserting them into a cutout on a wooden table, will make your yard look more interesting and increase the amount of greenery that you're able to have. And for us, a greener home is a happier home.

Plus, you'll get to feel like you're doing something productive every time you go to relax outside.