That's Fit

Here are some "kick butt" tips for keeping fit, active and regret free on the Fourth of July from KickYourButtIntoGear.com. As KickYourButtIntoGear.com is owned and managed by a fellow expert in the field of fitness, Exercise Physiologist, Tracy Benham ... the tips are awesome advice for you and you family to adhere to!

• Sports and summertime go together. Plan an activity early in the day. Play baseball, touch football; go to the local pool or beach.
• Get outside early and see if you can think of and do more than four activities before four o'clock to celebrate the Fourth.
• Eat a bowl of fruit before you head for the barbecue goodies. Tons of fruits are in season. Make a Fourth of July fruit cocktail. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries...
• Use a plate. You will be less tempted to mindlessly snack.
• Skip the cheese and the Mayo on your burger and load up on lettuce tomatoes, pickles, onions and relish.
• Alternate cocktails and other caloric beverages with a glass of water. Or ... just avoid the high calorie beverages all together!

Your Total Health correspondent Hoda Kotb sat down with actor Kevin Bacon this past week and learned a thing or two about the man who has starred in more than 60 movies and can be linked to almost every actor in six easy steps.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is the name of this game, a popular sport played across college campuses in the 1990s, and now it's not only celebrities you might link to Bacon. You can also link yourself -- in just one easy step.

Besides acting -- and singing with his brother in the band The Bacon Brothers -- Bacon is busy making a difference with his newly launched website SixDegrees.org. He wants you to check it out. The purpose of his site is to raise money for various charities -- donations can be made online -- by linking celebrities with causes. Jennifer Love Hewitt and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital are a pair, for example. So are Eva LaRue and the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition, and Natasha Richardson and the Foundation for AIDS Research. The list of causes and celebrities go on. But more notable are the regular people who are linking themselves to causes -- and to Kevin Bacon too.

More than 4,000 profiles of everyday folks populate this site. It's more than celebrities now, says Bacon. It's thousands of people, like you and me, championing their own causes.

It's about giving back, Bacon told Kotb about his desire to raise money and social consciousness at the same time. And then he revealed some of his health secrets. Here are a few: Kevin Bacon takes a nap every day. He puts his feet up, his hands across his chest, and he sleeps. He's addicted to this healthy practice, he says, and feels quite cranky if he misses his daily siesta. He also practices a hated exercise called Super Slow which involves lifting very heavy weights in a super slow manner. It's enough to make you puke, remarks Bacon who says some days, his least favorite body part is his face. I say that face is a quite an asset. Without it, this whole six degrees thing never would have been.

Yooooooohooooooo...That's Fit readers! I want you! I need your help inspiring the millions of other folks visiting this site each month in efforts to become educated and inspired. We all love success stories. We all love to hear from others in the same boat we're in. You have a story to tell.....and I want it!

All I need you to do is answer the questions below and email them along with a photo to me. Try to keep the photo of yourself around 200 pixels. It's easy, fun, and a great opportunity to change the life of someone else.

Name:

Age:

Occupation:

How often do you exercise?

What type of exercise do you do?

What gets you to workout, even when you're feeling lazy?

What's on your MP3 player?

Favorite healthy food?

Favorite not-so-healthy food?

Greatest fitness accomplishment?

Best fitness advice?

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I was checking out some of the info on DIY Life recently and was very amused by this post by Heather Craven on making your own hand sanitizer. Like Heather, I can be overzealous when it comes to washing my hands. In her case it's essential to carry hand sanitizer when out at soccer games or the supermarket with her kids. I always have some handy (no pun intended) for music festivals (port-o-potties aren't always equipped) and while traveling (foreign subways are never equipped).

Turned off by the not-so-nice chemicals in store-bought hand sanitizers, Heather went on an Internet search for one she could make cheaply at home with easy-to-find products. The amusing part is that her favorite turned out to include vodka in the mix of ingredients.

If you'd like to give it a try, take a look at Heather's post to get the recipe. I love the idea of avoiding rubbing chemicals into your skin by making your own sanitizer, but I can't help but think that it's a waste of vodka! I'd definitely recommend skipping the Grey Goose and using the cheapest brand you can find instead.

One of my favorite treats is bread and jam. Toast and jam works too, and both are especially good with a tablespoon of the tasty, homemade raspberry variety. When I was little, I used to love visiting the family farm and spending an afternoon picking berries (although admittedly, a lot of those berries didn't make it into the pail, but rather ended up heading straight into my mouth after being plucked from among its leafy green surroundings), knowing that my grandmother would turn it into one of my favorite sweet treats.

I never sat in on a jam-making session though, so have never had the chance to make it on my own and wouldn't even know where to start. But recently I came across this post at DIY Life by Heather Craven that gives details on how to make your own jam! She mentions that it's great to use fruit out of your own garden, but if you don't have that particular luxury it's the perfect time of year to find all sorts of appropriate fruits at a local farmer's market. Next time all you fellow jam-fans out there have some time on your hands, you'll know what to do.

Videogames have taken a lot of flak over the years. If they're not unhealthy and agents of laziness, then they are dangerous by causing people to kill each other left and right. Everyone has an opinion about them, whether founded or not. However, every once in a while a new game comes around that challenges the notion of it as an "unwholesome" activity.

Back in the day it was Tetris. The popular puzzler had everyone twitching at the thumbs. However nowadays there is a new game in town which could make a great stocking stuffer for just about anyone. Brain Age for the Nintendo DS is shaping up to be the next mind tickler. Their target demographic is 40 and 50-year-olds for crying out loud! And having seen the appeal it has on youngsters too (I'm pretty hooked myself), the results suggest that there isn't anyone that can't have fun with this game.

So what is it anyway? Well, Brain Age keeps you focused in order to utilize your cognitive and memory abilities. In other words, it features small games that get you to count, keep track or memorize things while somehow making it addictive and fun. Instead of wrapping up a knit sweater this season, give them something spontaneous that may even do their brain some good.