Exercising and eating right gives you a lot of short-term benefits, such as weight control and increased energy. But a healthy lifestyle has a long-term benefit as well -- a longer life. And now we know that optimism is important to your lifespan as well.

Eight years into one recent study, female participants with a positive outlook were 14 percent more likely to be alive than their more-negative counterparts (participants were age 50 or older at the start of the study). The good news is that the same fitness and nutrition habits that can benefit your health can also benefit your outlook.

• Exercise. Not only does exercise relieve the stress that can contribute to a bad mood, exercise can also stimulate the release of brain chemicals that can leave you feeling more content and relaxed.
• Nutrition. Mood and food go hand-in-hand. When you choose nutritious, energy-promoting foods you'll feel more alert and ready to tackle your day.

In addition to a healthy lifestyle, take active steps to maintain a positive outlook. Try to balance your work, home and family responsibilities -- and be sure to leave time for having fun! Engage in regular stress-reducing activities; choose something that works for you, such as reading a book or getting a pedicure. Stop yourself from negative self-thoughts and do your best to be kind and non-judgmental of others.

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That's Fit Club is our feature devoted to you, the reader! We have all learned so much on our paths to becoming more fit, and now it's time to learn from and inspire each other! That's Fit Club members are constantly working to better themselves. Some are perfect; some are not. But all have health on the mind.

Besides showing you off, we want to reward you for all of your hard work! Everlast and Everlast Woman are giving gorgeous workout T-shirts to each featured member! To join, please send Fitz your answers to these questions with a photo of yourself. Time for you to be the motivator!

Name: Courtney Clasen

Age: 32

Occupation: Homemaker, Domestic Engineer, In-House Chef, Maid, Taxi, Motivator, Sheriff, Dog Walker, Cat Feeder, Snake Tamer, Playmate and Diva

How often do you exercise? About six days a week.

What type of exercise do you do? I am proud to say that for the first time in my life I can call myself a runner. I also do resistance exercises.

What gets you to work out, even when you're feeling lazy? My bad mood! I know exercise will snap me out of it and give me that hyper "I love everyone" feeling.

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Not only is laughter the best medicine -- it could quite possibly be the best way to work out too. Actually, you're probably laughing right now. See how it works those abs? I told you so.

OK, seriously. An hour of laughing can burn off as many calories as 30 minutes of lifting weights -- no joke. And this could help you shed once dress size or 11 pounds over the course of the year. How does laughing help you lose weight? Leading neuroscientists say it's because a bout of laughter is like a short, intense aerobic workout that uses muscles in both your face and stomach. Plus, laughing helps boost your confidence and ward off depression. Click here for Laura's take on why laughing makes you slim.

So I guess the only question is ... what makes you laugh? For me, this video does it every time.

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I just posted a list of my favorite fitness tools of the year in my Holiday Hottie column over at Holidash, and since you are all fitness fans ... I'd feel silly not to share it with you.

The bottom line is: I'm privy to the best tools and clothes on the market. I aggressively seek out hot new items, and sometimes the makers of those items seek out me. At the end of the day, I drop the crap and keep the stuff I truly love.

My short list of Gifts to Get Greedy Over is comprised of some of the most innovative tools for training at all levels of fitness. Oh! And the apparel is to die for. So scoot on over to Holidash and give the gift of fitness. Or ... get something fancy for yourself. You deserve it!

I wish you happy and healthy holidays!

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Holidays make me happy. For some, though, holidays bring on the blahs. If the season gets you down, allow food to come to your rescue. Here, five foods that can banish your blues.

• Whole grains Whole grains pump up that brain chemical called serotonin, which regulates appetite and improves mood, food cravings, and sleep. Hey, can't do much better than that.
• Spinach Leafy greens are a great source of folate, a B vitamin also related to serotonin.
• Bananas Get your B6 here and your body will make, you guessed it: Serotonin.
• Salmon Omega-3s are key here. They can decrease your chances of depression and memory loss.
• Water Mild dehydration can cause headaches, fatigue, poor short-term memory, and impaired concentration and cognition. Need I say more? Got to drink your water.
  

Need more holiday inspiration? Click on the Holidash link below.

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Think the food-mood connection is a real one? I do. A handful of nuts always makes me feel happier than a bag full of chips. Maybe it's because I know nuts are better for me than chips and by eating them, I'm preventing a trail of guilt that would follow my chip indulgence. Or maybe it's something else altogether.

Seems certain vitamins and compounds can actually change brain chemistry in happy ways, like these.

• Omega-3 fatty acids: Eat them and combat depression.
• Folic acid: Higher levels of folic acid lead to lower levels of depression.
• Low-quality carbs (candy, cookies, cakes): Watch out -- they can boost the blues.
  
• High-quality carbs (oats, barley, lentils, beans, sweet potatoes): The can stabilize mood swings.
• Vitamin D: It alleviates seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
  
  

Ready for some feel-good starter foods? Try these: Beans, wild salmon, skim milk, and blackberries. And don't forget to eat every four to five hours -- it will keep you feeling satisfied and happy all day long.

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Lisa Rinna obviously looks good. Shoot, her body looks phenomenal, regardless of how you feel about her plump lips or predilection for leopard print. And, while she certainly keeps that in mind as she plans her workouts, a hot body isn't necessarily her main goal -- rather, exercise helps her stay positive.

"That's why I work out so hard," says the hot mama, adding, "Because if you don't feel good about your body, you don't feel good about anything. I do whatever it takes so that I feel good -- not just how I look, but how I feel inside."

The way we look and the way we feel are often intertwined, at least in my experience. And if I had a body like Lisa Rinna, I think I'd be pretty darn happy! How about you?

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Want to be happy? I mean, really happy? It's possible, says Gretchen Rubin, author of the soon-to-be-published book The Happiness Project and blogger for happiness-project.com.

Rubin's got 10 strategies for getting happy and offers them in October's Real Simple magazine. I've got to tell you, three of her tips are right up our alley. Here they are.

• Start with the basics. Get enough sleep and don't go hungry. Science backs this up -- these two factors have a big impact on happiness.
• Don't treat the blues with a "treat." This means no candy, brownies, or otherwise junky pick-me-ups. The pleasure only lasts for a minute and then guilt sets in. No prescription for happiness, is it?
  
• Exercise to boost energy. Exercise is one the most dependable mood-boosters, says Rubin, who admits she's often too tired to go to the gym. Even a 10-minute walk can brighten her outlook. Might do the same for yours.

It's hard to believe that the girl who claimed nothing came between her and her Calvins has anything to worry about body-wise, isn't it? But 20+ years and two kids later, Brooke Shields admits that she has insecurities... just like most of us do. The Lipstick Jungle actress dishes about fitness, confidence, and happiness in the October issue of Shape Magazine.

Body image can affect your health both physically and emotionally. When you strive for an unrealistic goal -- a size your body isn't meant to be or to imitate some picture in a magazine -- you can set yourself up for disappointment. Letting your body image come from any external source is looking at yourself from the wrong perspective. Instead of focusing on any perceived flaws and aiming for unnatural goals, look to fitness and nutrition for one purpose and one purpose only. Health.

When you keep your body fit and strong and nourished with healthful foods, you'll feel the difference in your mood and your energy. Learn to love your body for all the amazing things it does.

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Do you sometimes feel like marriage problems are inevitable? They might be -- recent studies show that marriage problems have been linked to a specific gene variation in males. The gene variation, involved in brain signaling, affected the ability to mate for life in rodents and experts believe that it may produce similar results in humans, based on findings that showed that men with the gene were more likely to be unhappy in their relationships.

Still, don't let these findings get you down. Marriage is hard but a little compassion, understanding and quality time goes a long way. Our Life Fit expert Laura Lewis has some valuable tips on how to make love last -- check them out!

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I used to be vigilant about exercising every morning... and it felt great. I started my day out with energy and a sense of accomplishment. After adopting my son, however, my schedule has changed and my morning exercise has become sporadic at best. I've vowed to get back on the bandwagon when he returns to school next week, though. Our schedule will be changing naturally -- so it's a good time for me to get my morning self in gear again.

Divine Caroline offers some great inspiration with five reasons to start the day with a workout:

• Better performance at work.
  
• A metabolism boost throughout the day.
• A better night's sleep.
• Increased likelihood to stick with it.
• A happier outlook.

Check out the original article for details. Then, set that alarm clock a little bit earlier and get your move on in the am.

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Volunteering at our local Humane Society and caring for a room full of rescued cats is keeping me and my little boys plenty busy and happy this summer. It may also be helping our hearts.

Researchers have found a correlation between cat ownership and a decreased risk of deadly heart disease. While we don't own our very own cat, we do engage in many of the tasks that cat owners practice. And so maybe, if we're lucky and keep at our community service project, we'll enjoy a 40% lower risk of one day dying from a cardiovascular condition.

Caring for cats can make you more energetic and happy, say researchers. I believe it. My seven-year-old is very content while petting, brushing, and loving the cats we visit. And while having any pet companion is good for both physical and emotional health, it seems cats do the trick better than dogs do. Maybe it's because there are more cats owned in the United States -- there are 90 million compared to 74.8 dogs. Makes sense. There are 90 some cats in our Humane Society cat room. There were about 10 dogs last time we visited. Clearly, there's more cat work to be done.

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I don't recommend the sort of happy meal you'd find at McDonald's and other fast food joints. But I do suggest you try some of the happy foods Redbook magazine features in its June 2008 issue. For the whole run-down -- there are 15 of them in all -- head on over to this site. For a little taste, keep on reading this post.

First, let me tell you why these foods are considered "happy." It's because they do more than fuel the body -- they help fight stress, fatigue, even the blues. They make us feel good. They make us feel, well, happy. And here they are.

Oatmeal: Ever met a dieter who is angry and tense all the time? It's likely a lack of carbohydrates causing such irritation. We need carbs. Not doughnut carbs, but carbs rich in fiber so the body absorbs them slowly and allows serotonin to flow steadily. Oatmeal fits the bill. So do whole-wheat pasta and beans.

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Today I bring to you the first day of our recent family vacation at the happiest healthiest place on earth, Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. To catch up with this feature, click here. As your online Fitzness Trainer, I'm eager to share with you the simple ways my family and I maintained and enjoyed our healthy lifestyle while on vacation. Disney has really made strides with their efforts to embrace healthy food and entertainment options. They've done a bang up job at it as well.

You'll see in this photo gallery that we started our day off at Typhoon Lagoon. Those energetic hours were followed by a ridiculously healthy dinner, scootering around our resort, and dancing our tushies off all night. It was both high-energy and a blast. Can you say "Quality Time"?

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Saturday morning, my son accidentally put a deep, four-inch scratch in my new car. Instead of being that cool, calm mom that I've always wanted to be, I flipped out a little bit. From that moment on, I was in a bad mood all weekend. I was a grump with a capital G. Thankfully, I shook my bad mood and I'm back to normal this morning. (Good thing, too, because this morning my son used an Allen wrench to knock about 30 dents into the molding on our staircase. I swear to goodness, destruction is my son's middle name).

If you're anything like me, stress and other day-to-day occurrences play a big role in your mood. But there a lot of things you can do to help boost your mood:

• Be thankful. Spend some time thinking about the good things in your life. Maybe even write a list of all the people and things you have to be happy about.
• Try something new. Have you been wanting to take guitar lessons? Don't put it off until life is less hectic. Whether you want to join a sports team, learn to play an instrument, take cooking classes, or join a book club -- don't put it off. Trying something new can actually improve your mood and help you better deal with life's stressors.

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