Forget keeping your arms shoulder-width apart, doing crunches for your flabby belly and tackling squats for the perfect behind. Breaking rules like these can up your fitness level and prep you for that barely-there bikini.

• Spread your arms out a few inches or pull them in, says New York City personal trainer Steve Lischin about the shoulder-width-apart rule, which is great for stability and all. It's just good to mix things up for better strength and tone.
  
• Pilates moves beat crunches if you're aiming for a sculpted midsection. Ever heard of "The Teaser"? It's an exercise that reportedly works 39 percent more of your six-pack and 266 percent more of your love handles. Ready to try it? Instructions right here.
• Hip extensions might be better than squats for the perfect bikini bottom. The American Council on Exercise says the move hits 55 percent more of your hamstring muscle and 79 percent more of your glute muscle.
• Slow down on the protein. Sure, it's a vital muscle food, but you don't want extra, because the calories will be stored as fat. Dietitian Molly Morgan says 20 percent of your calories should come from protein.

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KEEN Footwear offers some of the coolest most comfortable fashions for everything from long hikes to date nights. KEEN shoes are fun, sporty, and versatile and you may just be able to score yourself a free pair! In fact, if you win the giveaway, you could win anything on the KEEN website. Socks, shoes, purses, laptop bags and backpacks are up for grabs.

Oh ... and entering is ridiculously easy. All you have to do is visit KEENFootwear.com and decide which pair of shoes you like best and then write in this comment section which style you love and what you would want to go do in them.

And just so nobody walks away feeling like a loser, KEEN has offered That's Fit readers a special promo code to get free shipping on anything you purchase. That code is FITFREE and you deserve every penny that you save!

Keep reading for official Giveaway Guidelines ...

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Five things. I've got five things for you to consider as you begin to overhaul your diet -- you do want to renovate your eating habits a bit, right?

Quality:

Eat the best quality foods most of the time, like fruits and vegetables, grains, lean cuts of meats, beans, nuts, and items low in fat, dairy, sodium, and sugar.

Variety:

Branch out. Don't eat the same four vegetables all the time. And move beyond your usual wheat and rice and go for grains like quinoa, barley, and millet. Throw in a few new fruits too, like papaya, mango, kiwi, or starfruit.

Frequency:

Eat lighter meals every three to four hours instead of three large meals. Add in snacks to help maintain steady energy levels throughout the day and help control your weight too.

Joy:

Love the foods you eat. Every nutrition plan has room for favorites, even if they do fall into the junk food category. Just keep your consumption minimal and you'll be OK.

Adventure:

Try different flavors and textures, cook new recipes, eat unfamiliar foods, go to new restaurants, and pat yourself on the back for moving outside your comfort zone.

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Austin, Texas has it's own fit magazine -- called Austin Fit. I picked up a copy this weekend right off the sidewalk of Guadalupe, a store and restaurant-lined street that runs through the University of Texas campus. It was free. Quite a deal for those, like me, who pick up this publication. It's full of great stuff -- health, fitness, diet, sport, style, and life sections cover the pages -- and one of the first articles I stumbled upon, 6 Rules for Recovery, is just one of many that taught me how to do better at life, this one in particular by doing less. Check out these tips:

Create a need for recovery: Following each hard workout you take on, take a recovery day to fully reap the benefits of your strenuous training.

Rest before; recover after: Make sure your body is rested before vigorously challenging your body. Make sure you recover after the challenge.

Take it easy: Light, easy workouts are important. They don't tax your body like their tougher counterparts, and they don't require a major recovery period.

Train hard when it's time: Train hard because your body is ready, not because your schedule says it's time. If something doesn't feel right, bail on the workout and do something light.

Monitor your recovery status: Listen to your body. If you feel tired, your body is telling you it hasn't had enough downtime. If a tired pattern persists, rework your training schedule by adding more recovery or lighter workouts.

Take a week: Work recovery weeks into your training: After training for three of four weeks, plan for a week of light training for full recovery. This will help prevent an accumulation of fatigue, and it will allow you to train even harder on your heavier weeks.

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I call them rules but my exercise requirements are not so hard and fast really. I'd like them to be but as life would have it, stuff gets in the way and I end up violating my workout rules more often than I'd like. In a perfect world, these would be the rules I'd follow faithfully. In reality, these are the rules I mostly comply with but sometimes find myself breaking.

1. Exercise in the morning, just after rolling out of bed, getting dressed, washing face, placing contact lenses in eyes, pulling hair into ponytail, putting on running shoes, and eating something small yet smart. There's nothing better for me than starting off my day with a workout. It's refreshing, invigorating, and erases all worry about when I'll fit in my fitness feat for the day.

2. Pump up the volume on MP3 player. It can be radio station tunes or MP3 downloads. Regardless, music inspires me to meet all sorts of exercise goals. Sometimes I run until I hear a commercial. Sometimes I run for the duration of five downloaded songs and then repeat them and keep on running. I change my pace according to the sounds that pipe into my ears. Upbeat songs keep me at a high performance level. Slower songs keep me slow and steady. The combination changes up my momentum and keeps me from burning out. Music is an essential rule that I rarely break. When I do, it's because my MP3 batteries have died. The result: I usually stop dead in my tracks. Silence just isn't a motivating force for me.

3. Exercise alone. I don't want a partner, don't need a class, and definitely don't prefer my kids in the background while I exercise. Now a family bike ride is fine, and I do sometimes walk the hills in my neighborhood with my mom but when it comes to a challenging workout -- my preference -- company just isn't necessary. My music, my thoughts, the sound of my own huffing and puffing is all I want and need.

4. Sweat. I simply must sweat to feel I've accomplished meaningful physical activity. I like to wipe drips from my forehead. I like to feel drops from my hair hit my neck. I like a soaked shirt, a red face, and a treadmill I have to wipe clean when my workout comes to a close.

5. Exercise every day. My day flows so much better with exercise in it.

And so these are my basics, my few requirements for the very thing I believe is keeping me healthy and happy. What are your rules for exercise?

You probably already know this: It's perfectly OK to give in to a few gooey sweets and fatty treats now and then.

Cravings are natural, says Densie Webb, R.D., Ph.D. for SHAPE magazine. And succumbing to our food-related desires is not always bad form. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines even give the green light to a little discretionary cheating. Just don't go overboard. Keep these five ground rules in mind so you don't pay too high a price when you indulge.

1. Cut the guilt
2. Cheat in public
3. Weight your options
4. Don't be an angel
5. Go ahead, skip a meal

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All of the conflicting information about food that is circulating out there -- what you should eat, what you shouldn't, what's going to make you fat, what's going to give you cancer -- can be a bit maddening. How is anyone ever supposed to know which of the information to believe?

Perhaps this article on nutritional myths may help. Written by a nutritionist who explains that many client's were getting grilled about the foods they'd been recommended, the author tries to set the records straight on a few common misconceptions about what you should and shouldn't be eating.

Five food rules that you should break are discussed in the piece, so if you're interested in reading the nutritionist's information about whether red meat causes cancer, if salt consumption really leads to high blood pressure, whether too much protein will damage kidneys, and why butter isn't so terrible after all, take a look at the full article here.

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Planet Fitness, a gym with about 120 locations nationwide, is serious about maintaining a non-intimidating atmosphere for its members. In order to make their gym into the kind of place anyone can feel comfortable, they have a very strict set of rules, including rules against wearing bandanas, banging weights down on the ground, and grunting. That's right, no grunting is allowed. And they're serious about it, too. A man in New York was escorted out of a Planet Fitness gym by police after breaking that rule last week.

"When somebody's in there and they grunt and they grunt loud, it's trying to bring attention to themselves to show everyone how strong they are," said Mike Grondahl, CEO of Planet Fitness. The offender, a 40-year-old corrections officer, said that it was an embarrassing situation to be in over a grunt.

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