I have this theory that anything that’s good for the planet is good for your health as well.  You’ve heard it all before:  ditching the car, eating organic greens, and drinking tap water are all great ways to maintain your well-being.  But did you know that adding a little green to your workout routine can actually bump it its effectiveness and your subsequent sexiness?  Read on, my friend…

Treadmill vs. Trail: Treadmills use a lottt of energy – about 6 hours of lights on a Christmas tree-worth in only 30 minutes (obscure analogy, I know).  Running outside, however, requires no additional energy except for that needed to manufacture your workout clothes.  I don’t expect you to run outside just for the environment’s sake, but what if I told you that running outside can up your calorie burn and save your joints from strain and impact?  Not only are trails more likely to have inclines that torch calories like a wildfire, they also have a bumpier terrain which causes your muscles to make tiny corrective movements. All in all, this can increase your calorie burn by up to 10%!  Run on sand, and burn 1.6 times more calories!  Plus, dirt trails, wet and dry sand, and even asphalt (never run on the concrete sidewalk!) are softer than the surface of treadmills and will better protect your knees and ankles from impact and future joint pain.  Trust me, running in nature sure beats trotting alongside that 50 year old man sweating like a pig in his 1976 gym shorts.

StairMaster vs. Real Stairs: Like treadmills, StairMasters use a lot of energy to simulate the effect of…stairs.  I don’t know where you live, but where I’m from, stairs are not exactly a rare site.   Spare yourself the pricey gym membership and the unbecoming fluorescent lighting and hit your nearest sport stadium.  Depending on your weight, running stairs for 30 minutes can burn around 500 calories while 30 minutes of the StairMaster burns a measly 300 (hey, that’s an extra scoop of ice cream right there!).  You can also use the stairs as a forum for strength exercises, like this one from Women’s Health.  Plus, there’s always the added benefit of “accidentally” running the stairs at the exact same time as the football team…

Free Weights vs. Resistance Bands: Of course, both free weights and resistance bands take energy to manufacture and distribute.  However, think about the difference between buying an entire set of dumbbells and buying one or two resistance bands.  Not only is it better for the environment, but it is also a lot cheaper for us poor college students.  Unlike free weights, resistance bands challenge your muscles on both the flex and the release, increasing your muscle stability and strengthening tiny muscles that you didn’t even know existed.  You can use them in various exercises and you can control how hard the exercise is based on your form and the positioning of the band.

If you find that your band is too easy for you, just run on over to your local sporting goods store and buy one with higher resistance for about 15 bucks.  Plus, they’re super portable so that you can take them with you on that binge drink-a-thon spring break you have planned.  Don’t know how to get started?  Head to Fitness Magazine’s website and check out their plethora of resistance band workouts.

Of course there are so many other green exercises you can do!  Using your body as resistance instead of using weight machines, biking or walking to class instead of driving, and taking fitness classes instead of using the machines are all great examples.  Let me know what you do to keep the planet cool and your body hot!

While most people tend to focus on the right types of cardio to get their most successful workout on, it’s not the only way to tone, shape and define our bodies into what we want them to be.

Lifting weights can often get a bad rap; lots of women think that weight lifting is designated for those big, steroid looking macho men that hang around the gyms. But, little do some know, weight lifting is perfect for all shapes and sizes; it’s just a matter of finding what works for you.

According to the lovely safe-weight-lifting-for-women.com, weight lifting can help women:

• Have easier weight loss or weight maintenance

• A leaner, stronger body

• Improved appearance

• Better posture

• Lower blood pressure

• Increased resting metabolism rate

• Improved balance and coordination

• Stronger bones, and protection against osteoporosis

Bet you didn’t know that, eh?

What is the best way to incorporate weights into your workout to become a toned, but feminine buff chica?

If you don’t belong to a gym where you can use the free weights, go to a sports store and buy 5lb and/or 10lb hand weights. Then, grab a chick 8-minute Workout DVD, or go to an online workout website like FitSugar.com, where there are various videos demonstrating tutorials on how to workout. If you have a gym membership, talk to a trainer or try a weight lifting class, like Muscle Jam or Boot Camp.

Whatever you choose, make sure to incorporate weights into your weekly routine. Cardio is great, but it is by no means the only workout you need to get into tip top shape.

Like the size two girl in the office bringing in cupcakes, you want the slightly squishy members of society to drown in a pool of self-loathing while you gloat above the rest of us, spending two plus hours at the gym five days weekly and playing intramural athletics on the side. You want us to know that we’ve just failed the physical fitness test of life, and are not as good as you. As people. Our bodies are not as firm and toned, and therefore, you are better at life than any of us who would rather eat Cheetos and take a nap.

I even enjoy the gym on the rare occasion. Sometimes it’s a great way to deal with stress or boredom. But I can’t compel myself to go everyday. Unfortunately, it’s one thing that I’m okay with taking out of my schedule. If I can be social, that’s going to trump in priority, every time. So unfortunately has been the case for the past month, and so my gym membership goes unused.

In the city, there’s always something to do or somewhere to go. By working out, I’m missing out on something else. So fine, I’ll walk to and from work, but I’m still going to enjoy my cupcake. And you and your guilt are not stopping me.

I like to think that the roll around my hips, affectionately named my “chub” as it has not and never will go away, no matter how fit I may be, helps emphasize that my waist is actually smallish. I’m not a small person, and so I don’t expect to be tiny. I am proportional. I am within the healthy weight range for all six feet of vertical space I take up. Just because I am tall does not mean I need to be built like a thirteen year old boy. Modeling is not in the cards for me. I know this. I’m over it. You should be too.

Male gym rats might even be worse than the female addicts. Guys, it’s great that your musculature can make me salivate, but really, I have an issue with hooking up with people in much better shape than me. It makes me feel like I’m being judged. If you’re going to be interested and a gym addict, please refrain from pointing out your triceps/quads/insert-muscle-group-here. I know I’m squishy, okay? And really, egotism is a bit unbecoming. Keep your opinions to yourself.

So for the peer-pressuring fitness lovers? Stop. I’ll do it on my own. I have enough guilt to carry around from my parents, thanks, plus was raised female and have learned to have a pereptual dissatisfaction with my body regardless of how thin or fat I may be. You can’t make me share your passion.

Love it or hate it, we’ve all got an opinion. What are your thoughts on judgers at the gym?

Let’s say that you fixate on ‘toning up’ your arms and that you start doing bicep curls with three or five pound weights and a high number of repetitions per set. But after two weeks, you don’t see any results, so you give up.

Do you want to know why that didn’t work?

Because there is no such thing as toning up. All of those bicep curls that you do with three pounds weights? That starts you down the path that you want to go on, but what you’ve got to do is put down the puny weights and pick up those heavier bad boys.

If you were working with three pounds, move up to five; if you were at five, move up to eight and so on. Do 12 reps, rest for a minute, repeat the set and after another one minute rest, complete the final set of twelve. You don’t want to do two or three sets of 12 – 15 reps with such ease that you didn’t actually work the muscle.

Yes, the heavier weights can be intimidating but that’s no reason to stay away from them. Perhaps you’re afraid of ‘bulking up’. Well, fear not, because women simply lack the testosterone to bulk up and look anything remotely like those scary ginormous body builders.

And if those muscle heads at the gym intimidate you or you don’t want to deal with a gym at all, buying sets of dumb bells at varying weights are all you need to work out at home or in your room.

I know people who have been discouraged because they insist that they’ve bulked up when the truth is that they’ve built muscle under the fat stores that they haven’t lost. In the first couple of weeks that you start a weight training program, the scale will show a slight weight gain, but the scale doesn’t accurately track your progress – the fit of your clothes and how you look in the mirror are the true indicators.

Despite what’s been pounded into our heads about working out from infomercials and just plain false information, there is no such thing as spot reducing, no miracle instant cure and ‘toning’ just isn’t going to happen.

Muscles either get bigger or get smaller. You get stronger or you get weaker. We mistakenly use the word ‘tone’ to mean ‘get lean.’ So if you want those stronger muscles to show, then the only way to do that is to lose body fat.

Let’s go back to the arms scenario. Genetically, we are all preprogrammed to store fat in certain places first and unfortunately the last place you gain fat is the last place that you lose it. To lose fat on your arms, you can’t just work your upper body. What hinders our progress is looking at our body in parts, because if that is how you see it, then that is how you will work it. We need to shift our perspective and work the whole body in order to make the changes that we want to see.

There are three components to making those muscles show:

1) Weight training

2) Cardiovascular exercise

3) Healthy diet

Weight training is the absolute best thing that you can do to make real changes to your body. It will not give you instant results but over time, it is the most effective because the more lean mass that you have, the higher your metabolism. A pound of muscle burns about 60 calories per day. A pound of fat burns about 5 calories per day. Five pounds of fat is the equivalent size of a grapefruit; five pounds of muscle take up the space of a tangerine.

Cardio is also key but keep in mind that you can do cardio to your heart’s content, but if you aren’t properly fueling your body, then you’re shortchanging yourself. Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories that your body burns if you don’t move all day. Whatever that number is, you should NOT go below that.

To help you along further, websites like Calorieking.com and Fitday.com are great tools for figuring out how many calories are in the foods that you eat and calculating how many grams of fat, protein and carbohydrates that you’re eating per day.

Working out doesn’t mean that you can eat whatever you want; it means that you don’t want any kind of nutritional deficit by eating the foods that are devoid of the nutrients that your body needs.

This website looks daunting I know, but someone recommended it to me and it really gives some great tips. You don’t need to go in and be able to bench 100 pounds. Work at your own pace and you’ll be amazed at the changes you see and how strong you can become.

I like to break it down this way:

Day #1: Chest, shoulders, back

Day #2: Legs and abs

Day #3: Biceps and triceps

As an example for day one, I recommend trying the following moves:

For shoulders: the shoulder press or rear delt row with free weights.

For the chest: the bench press, using free weights or the machine

For the back: dumbell shrugs, the lat pull down machine, and the barbell bent over row.

What’s great about this website is it shows you how to lift properly. Correct form means better and injury free results.

Alternate the muscle groups that you work and do not underestimate the importance of resting; you actually build lean mass while you are at rest.

So get your weight lifting gloves and get to work! In four to six weeks, you will be thrilled with the results.