I remember watching Ice Castles as a kid and wanting nothing more than to be an ice skater. (Preferably without a terrible accident that caused blindness, though.) So maybe the movie is a bit cheesy and admitting that I had a little crush on Robby Benson certainly dates me as a child of the '70s, but it motivated me into trying something I'd never tried before. And that's exactly what a great sports movie can do.

FitSugar recently asked readers what their favorite motivational sports movies were... and they came up with a great list. Some of the picks are:

• Remember the Titans.
  
• Million Dollar Baby
• Miracle
• Rudy
  

Click over to FitSugar for the full list. A couple of my favorites that didn't make the list are Hoosiers and The Rookie. What other sports movies have inspired you?

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Sometimes all it takes to get you moving is a little reminder. A recent study shows that something as simple as a motivating email message can inspire people to get out and exercise.

In the study, 172 sedentary adults were followed for six weeks. The participants were broken into three groups -- one group didn't receive emails at all, a second received generic motivating messages, and the third received messages that including motivating text and images that were personalized and geared toward their demographic.
Not surprisingly, the group that received the personalized messages were the most active.

Do you want to sign up for a motivating email message? Lots of online fitness programs offer a message service. Some other sources are Men's Health and Self Magazine.

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Here's an interesting question: is watching TV while you exercise, specifically something tempting like a cooking show or the Food Network, motivating or distracting? Are you more likely to push yourself harder and faster, or get frustrated and quit early to head to a fattening dinner at your favorite restaurant?

Fitsugar posed this question and according to their survey the results are pretty close, with only 4% separating the "it's motivating" group from the "it's distracting" group. Personally I can relate to both sides -- I think it's all about my mood at the time and, of course, how hungry I am. One more reason to keep a tasty power bar in my gym bag!

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If the words "jumpstart your fitness" sound like something that applies to you then what you probably need is renewed motivation. Motivation is the gas that keeps your workout plan moving -- and although it's cheaper than the gas that moves your car (it's free!) the trade-off is that it's much harder to come by. There's no one way to motivate everybody -- heck, there's not even one way that will always work for motivating one same person. It's all about your mood, and your current situation. What helped you drop that last 5 pounds two summers ago may not mean anything to you at all this year, and maybe you've got other things in your life on top of it all that you didn't have to deal with before, like children or a new job.

It's tricky to figure out what's going to trip your trigger and get you moving again, especially when it feels like you've been dieting and exercising forever and you just want to rest. Remembering that being healthy and getting in shape is about making permanent lifestyle changes can help, and if losing weight feels like true exhausting 'work' to you then maybe you need to make some changes on how you're going about it. Not to say it will always be a totally easy piece of cake, but you shouldn't be miserable either.

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Nothing makes time fly like having fun, and what better 'time' to have time flying by than during your workout? Finding something you genuinely think is fun that also burns loads of calories will not only help you get fitter faster, but it will make it easier to motivate yourself to get started every day and stick with your exercise routine. Spring isn't officially over yet, so take advantage of the season of new beginnings and good weather and join a league or start playing a sport to burn some extra calories and rekindle your fitness regimen and motivation. Here are just a few sports that will do wonders for your physique, (among other things!):

• Soccer is obviously great for leg and glute muscles, plus all the running around is great cardio for your heart. But what you may not realize is that soccer also gives your core and arms a workout as they keep you balanced, and your hips, knees, and ankles get stronger as they work to keep you stabilized.

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I don't know if there's any scientific proof to back it up, but to me it always seems like the more muscular you are the more weight you gain the minute you stop working out. But whether it's fact or fiction, it certainly seems to be what happened to Army specialist Maggie -- as soon as she was no longer in the military the pounds started packing on big time.

This article actually a pretty inspirational story, whether you go for the diet plan side of it or not. It's a good reminder that even the buffest of people have to work hard to stay that way!

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Here's an article that says something I can really get behind: January is not a good month for resolutions. It might be a good month for making resolutions, but it's definitely not a good time to try to stick to them. This idea makes total sense to me, but partly that's because I'm totally not a "cold turkey" type when it comes to making changes in my life, and January 1st comes up awful close to all the holidays. I really need some time to ease out of things, otherwise -- when I'm failing week after week in January -- I just end up feeling like a total mess-up.

So February is for me! I've been talking the talk for weeks now, and I think I'm finally mentally ready to actually back it all up with action.

I'm sure my New Year's resolution has totally written me off by now...so it will never see me coming!

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Feeling fat has become so common in our society that's it's almost uncool not to feel ugly and overweight. If you're standing around the water cooler with a group of colleagues and somebody complains about how gross they feel and that they're planning on starting a new diet, everybody chimes in with how and why they hate their own bodies. Nobody like's the person who stands there and says, "Yeah, I don't worry about what I eat cuz I'm already so hot." Stuck up fatty...

Now there's nothing wrong with being confident, although it does go best with some humility. But the important thing is not to let the negativity of people around you drag you down, and not to let "feeling fat" become a sneaky term for other emotional issues like being unhappy or lonely. It's difficult, if not impossible, to achieve anything positive if all you've got is negative energy. Start by changing how you talk to yourself, the actual words you use. Be kind (or funny) with yourself, but not self-loathing or critical. Become that confident happy person you imagine yourself to be if you were thinner, and before you know it your body will catch up with your thinking.

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