First off, what is cellulite? Cellulite is formed by fibrous connective cords that connect your skin to your underlying muscle. In between these cords are your fat cells, and as your fat cells accumulate, they push up against your skin, while at the same time, the connective cords pull down. This pulling and pushing under the skin creates an uneven surface and also causes the dimpling everyone sees and seems to hate. Many factors play a role in this, including sex, age, and weight. The sex, sorry women, but your the main target. But don’t head to the doctor, there are plenty of ways to naturally help get rid of this unwanted texture.

1. Cardio. Doing cardio strengthens the areas where cellulite usually is targeted. With the growing of the muscle, it adds strength to your skin as well, helping decrease the visual of cellulite.
2. Losing weight. Weight is a huge cause of cellulite because it’s build up of fat under the skin causing cellulite to occur. Eating healthy and working out, which allows you to lose weight, will also help you lose that unwanted cellulite.
3. Resistance train. Resistance training in the areas of cellulite will help strengthen and build your muscles which can give your skin a more even texture. So if you have cellulite in your thighs, you can go on all fours and using a resistance band, lift your back legs one at a time toward the ceiling.
4. Stay hydrated. Drinking enough water is an easy way to improve the texture of your skin. It seems counterintuitive, but by drinking more fluid, your body actually releases excess fluid that you may have been holding onto.

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Everyone knows how to do a crunch and a twist, but what is it actually targeting and what is it working? Below are the four main parts of your abs and what targets them. From a regular crunch to a twist to a plank, you target all four of these from the shallow abs to the ones deep down inside that stabilize you as you walk. These four ab groups are to help educate you on what you are working on and what you are working with!

1. Rectus Abdominis. Also known as the “six pack”, most ab work outs target this muscle. The regular crunch focus on the rectus abdominis and this is also the easiest one to target.
2. External Oblique. The extrenal obliques are the muscles that run along the sides of your ribs. Turning your body from left to right with a medicine ball held in front targets these side muscles.
3. Internal Oblique. Your internal obliques are located just inside your hip bones. when you do a twisting motion, one external oblique contracts while the opposite side of the internal oblique contracts. For example, twisting or crunching the trunk to the left requires the left internal oblique and the right external oblique to contract together. So, when you are working the external, your also working the internal and vice versa.
4. Transverse Abdominis. This is the deepest abdominal muscle layer. It reaches from each side of your lower abdomen towards the middle. IT is primarily responsible for stabilizing your trunk and maintaining internal abdominal pressure. This muscle is especially worked when you do stabilization exercises like planks and yoga.

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Drink, drink, drink!! if you begin a workout or end a workout dying of thirst, that is not good or healthy. Becoming dehydrated is very easy, especially when your on the run. If you are feeling thirsty, you already have passed the hydration point you need to be at.

1. Dehydration is bad! Everyone knows that, but when it comes to being fit, it really is. Dehydration makes you feel tired and sluggish, making it easier to skip your workout and if you do go to your workout, make it harder to feel motivated and keep on strutting along. Other signs of dehydration include dry eyes, headache and dizziness.
2. If you wait until your thirsty, your body is already dehydrated. It takes two hours for anything you drink to have an effect on your body. So keep in mind that when you are drinking, drink two hours before you work out. To be efficient keep drinking throughout the whole day so your body never feels thirsty or the effects of being dehydrated.
3. If your event that you are participating in, it is important to be adequately hydrated prior to the event. Drink a lot the day before and prior to the event to keep hydrated during your event. During the event drink when you are getting a dry mouth and after drinking sports drinks to refill your body with electrolites.
4. Good hydration has other benefits as well. Being hydrated improves your skin, helps with digestion and helps to flush out toxins and other impurities in your body.

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These five helpful weight loss tips will get you going on the right track. Some might surprise you actually. Most people think that avoiding calories, barely eating, and just working out 24/7 will do the trick, but that is the wrong way to go. The key is to eat healthy, and not necessarily avoid calories, just avoid the unhealthy ones and stick with eating healthy calories. Following these simple tips, along with maintaining a decent and scheduled workout throughout the week will keep your waist slim and fit.

1. You don’t need to avoid all calories. Avoiding all calories will actually make you gain weight a lot faster after you’re done dieting. Avoid eating foods and drinks that are calorically dense and wont necessarily fill you up, like desserts and mixed drinks with multiple liquors and sweetened mixers. Your body needs calories to help give it energy and keep your metabolism moving.
2. When running, run hungry. Waking up and doing cardio in the morning helps to burn more fat. When you run out of stored carbs, your body begins to burn body fat to create energy.
3. So you’ve got the muscles now, but what is the key to keeping them toned? Besides doing a work out at least three times a week, eating healthy keeps those muscles toned and tight. Eating right and your muscles wont let you down!
4. An apple a day does really help. All the nutrition packed in that rounded fruit helps speed up your metabolism and gives you enough energy to keep you going through the day. Speeding up your metabolism will help you digest all the other food you eat and improve you body’s ability to burn fat.
5. Eat every three hours. Not huge meals, but snacking healthy every three hours keeps your metabolism working, blood sugar levels stable, and this allows your body to remain in a hormonal state that allows fat release all day long!

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In a rush but need a snack? Well, put down those lays chips and candy bar and eat those fruits and veggies that taste good while on the run while taking the kids to school or off to work. It’s important to trade in those salty crackers for a crunchy carrot or juicy pear because over 90% of adults and children don’t get the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, and we don’t want you to be in that statistic! Below are some tricks to allow eating fruits and veggies as easy to grab and taste just as great while in a hurry and on the run.

1. Buy easy-to-pack fruits. Oranges & apples are on the top of the easy-to-pack fruit! The night before or even a few days before when you have free time, cut up the fruit and place in the bag. Keeping them in the fridge will keep them from going bad and on the go, just grab and snack!
2. Dried fruit is just as good! Just look at the package to make sure it’s just fruit and not covered in sugar and artificial flavors. Whether it’s dried, frozen, juiced, or fresh, fruit is fruit and all counts toward the daily recommended amount! These also come in bags so they are ready super easy to grab and go!
3. Keep cut up fruit in the freezer! Frozen fruit taste just as good. Having frozen peaches in your freezer for your on the go snack is sweet, cold, and refreshing, especially during those hot summer days.
4. Make a smoothie! Make a smoothie the night before the morning you have to get up early and head off into the busy world. Using fresh fruit, low fat yogurt and ice and keeping it in the fridge will make the next morning less stressful knowing you have a healthy, drinkable breakfast!
5. Use Vegetables on the salad. A trick in getting your veggies is by adding them to your sandwiches when ordering them at lunch time or even drinking V8 & V8 splash. Hiding veggies makes it easier to get down those greens your not a big fan off.

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Tired of feeling gross and lazy on your day off? These four tips will help make you feel energized and feeling good by the time your next work out begins. SImple steps like these will keep you relaxed on your day off but keep you moving a little to help drain out all that lactic acid that was built up the previous day on your gut busting work out.

1. Get a Good Night’s Sleep. Getting a goodnight’s rest helps reenergize your body and helps prevent your from getting ill as well. A goodnights sleep is anywhere between 6 to 8 hours.
2. Play Outside. Sounds like something a little kid would say, but it’s true. Playing outside makes you feel good because it’s fun and your outside enjoying the great weather. From frisby, to football, to golf to basketball, there are plenty of fun things you can do with friends and family that create memories but also help kick off those calories on your day off without even knowing it. Sitting around on the couch makes you feel like a couch potato, this makes you feel happy and energized.
3. Juice Up! Not like it sounds with steroids, but drinking a cup of orange juice a day helps add vitamins to your body that helps your metabolism but also makes you feel energized to get through the day.
4. Do an easy workout on your day off. Whether it be yoga, a walk around the block, or basketball with the kids, doing a quick and easy workout helps drain out the lactic acid that makes your muscles hurt. Do something instead of just sitting on the couch because you’ll be more sore the next day if you don’t.

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Eating healthy is not the only way to cut calories and burn fat. Eating certain foods actually burn more calories eating and digesting because they take more work. Chewy, hearty and energizing foods are the ones that keep your metabolism hard at work! Here are five examples of foods that get your metabolism working at full speed.

1.    Lean Meats, nuts, whole fruits & vegetables. The “chewy” food group makes you, well, chew. These foods take more work to chew and are in your stomach longer because they take longer to digest, leaving you feeling full longer!
2.    Fruits, vegetables, brown rice, whole grains & cereals. These “hearty” foods are not only chewy, but also are filled with fiber which also help make you feel full. Along with the feeling of being full they are what gives your metabolism that bump to keep it in calorie-burning mode.
3.    Coffee, black & green tea, dark chocolate. When taking in these energizing foods, make sure you don’t load them with cream & sugar, as that defeats the purpose. Caffeine in the morning can boots your metabolism by 8%, which means you burn about 80 to 128 calories more a day than without caffeine.

4.    Peppers. The chemical located in peppers that makes them burn, capsaicin, helps burn fat through metabolism. Peppers increase the heart rate, so that more energy is utilized by the body, therefore burning more fat and increasing metabolic rate.
5.    Putting all into a meal. By putting together meals that consist of mostly chewy and hearty foods, you will really be putting your metabolism to work. To really kick your metabolism into high speed, add an energizing and warming food to help digest and burn those calories you just ate.

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Would you be willing to sacrifice 1 year of your life if you could magically be guaranteed a ‘perfect’ body for the rest of your life? How about 5, 10, or even 20 years of your life? Tune in Tuesday night at 11 p.m. to 19 Action News’s Jen Picciano as she reveals the shocking (and revealing) results of a survey that polled women right here at Fitness Edge in Lakewood, as well as around the nation. What would you be willing to sacrifice for the ideal body? Post your answers down below in the comments box!

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Tired of carrying around that spare tire around your midsection?  Make the following changes and watch your belly disappear!

Check it out:

1. Get a grip, and the gut will go! Most of us run around all day and are over worked, don’t get enough sleep, and get stressed out way too much, and too often. All of this extra stress causes our body to release an excess production of a hormone called Cortisol. Cortisol causes your body to hold on to fat and direct that fat toward our internal organs as a method of “self preservation.”  Reduce the excess stress in your life, and you’ll automatically reduce your cortisol levels and your body’s tendency to store excess belly fat!

2. Garbage in, Garbage…in? Are you on a steady diet of ‘nutritionally dead junk food?’ A diet high in junk food tends to lead to a clogged up intestine and colon. This drastically reduces your body’s ability to absorb all of the nutrients, vitamins and minerals it needs to help burn fat. A clogged up system also leads to that bloated feeling which is never comfortable. Bottom line: eat clean, get your fiber intake in and cleanse your insides of all that toxic waste!

3. Turn your metabolism on! If you’ve ever found your self wanting to drop a few pounds, the first thing you probably did was to “put the fork down” and drastically reduce your caloric intake. This will cause weight loss initially, but as you continue to starve yourself, your body adapts to living on fewer calories, metabolism slows down, and weight loss comes to a screeching halt! In order to reverse this, you need to eat foods that have a ‘thermic effect’ every 3 hours. Combining lean proteins and fibrous carbs will do the trick and reverse the downward spiral you’re currently on.

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If you want lifelong health and fitness, a healthy diet is KEY. So here are 3 quick & easy rules for staying on the wagon and staying healthy…

#1. Eat five to six times a day - It’s a myth that you shouldn’t snack between meals. The fact is snacking keeps your energy levels high and prevents you from over eating at main meals. Always mix a lean protein with a good carb for optimal results!

#2. Eat Like Clockwork – Try to eat at the same time every day so your body gets into a routine, and works with you toward health & fitness.

#3. Build Out a Meal Plan – With a meal plan you know what to eat and when so you can stock up at the grocery store and never be left short at dinner. This means no excuses for fast food.

And there you have it. Maintaining a healthy diet is literally as easy as 1, 2, 3!

Do you have any helpful tips for maintaining a healthy diet? Please share! Just post your comments down below.

Have a great day!

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