Being a busy mom that is also savvy with time management is praise-worthy. Self-care is extremely important, so if you have found the time for working out while juggling other things in your everyday schedule, we salute you!

If gym is a regular to-do on your list, you must know how important proper skincare is. Air filth piling up, and mixing with skin’s natural oils and excessive sweat may result in breakouts and poor looking skin. When you exercise, your body temperature rises; your heartbeat increases as your heart pumps more blood to the vessels, the ones in your face included. If you’re wondering why you get the lobster-like color while other people don’t, it’s probably due to the fact your blood vessels are more superficial in the cheek area. Some things are genetic, but here’s what’s in your power and how you can work on prevention.

Minding the environment

Your skin is sensitive to external factors. While redness is caused by the regulation of the body temperature in the cooling-down process, the temperature and humidity of the room you’re exercising in, or the weather conditions your skin experiences while you jog – all have their impact on the overall skin’s look. Work out in a cool environment that enables your skin to breathe freely. Wear comfortable clothes that aren’t too tight and make sure you stay hydrated. As for the high-intensity workouts, you may want to scale it down and avoid switching between different intensities too quickly. Although it has its benefits for fat burning, you need to give your body time to gradually progress towards a different intensity workout: it will make your redness less visible and you’ll feel more relaxed during the mild cool-down process.

Prevention: using the right products

If you have sensitive skin or a skin condition such as rosacea, you are very prone to face-redness or might even experience broken capillaries. Either way, your skin is easily stressed out and irritated. This means you have to take particular care of what type of ingredients your beauty products contain, so you can provide your skin with what it needs in the long term. Don’t be lazy and read the ingredients list: choose moisturizers with natural ingredients, like aloe, honey, chamomile, or willow, which soothe sensitive skin. Don’t use products that contain retinol or chemical peels the night before a big workout. To restore your skin’s natural oils, use a face mask enriched with natural ingredients: they will help your skin calm down and become more resistant to outer influences. Invest in redness-reducing products and you can even bring them to your workout: a refreshing body spray will help your face cool down; nourishing wipes will ensure you remove the impurities during your training and cool your face.

Proper care is mandatory

Establishing a good beauty routine is crucial for well-cared skin during the times you’re breaking a sweat. Make sure you cleanse your face on a regular basis and use a gentle cleanser that contains anti-inflammatory ingredients such as green tea. Clean your skin before and after a workout. By all means, avoid wearing makeup to the gym – it will result in excessive filth accumulating on your skin, leaving you with blackheads, whiteheads, or pimples. Avoid using hot water as it promotes dryness of your skin, making it more prone to redness. Don’t skip on using a moisturizing toner: it ensures all the impurities are removed and leaves you with a fresh-looking skin. In addition to taking care of your skin on the outside, make sure you do it from the inside, too. Proper nutrition is very important and do check your iron levels: its deficient may result in itchy and red skin, along with other problems.

When it comes to skin problems that occur due to exercising, prevention is the key. Take these simple steps into consideration, be disciplined with your workout and beauty routines, and enjoy leading a healthy life!d

The post Gym Beauty Tips – How to Avoid Post-Exercise Face appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

The amount of information surrounding Crossfit is staggering, making it practical to write multiple posts on it. Crossfit is a program that was designed to be a fun and useable form of fitness, regardless of who you are. It was not created to focus on one specific variable of performance; instead components of endurance, strength, speed and stability were all mashed into one over-arching principle: complete optimization. This makes Crossfit a great alternative to traditional programs, which are generally just focused on a single component of performance at a time. Although the workouts can be grueling, most components are scalable, which is why any one can complete some form of the workout. It is also great that Crossfit focuses on mobility and flexibility as a core foundation, something that is lacking in the majority of strength and bodybuilding regiments. Walking into a Crossfit gym, you will instantly notice no standard exercise machines found in a commercial gym, but instead tires, sandbags, rings and ropes. These are all functional implements that work multiple parts of your body at one time. Little to no stress is put on isolated movements or individual muscle groups because that really does not translate into anything other than hypertrophy.

Crossfit has become a god-send for many people who were not into fitness prior to its introduction. The brand has been marketed beautifully and its community-like settings give a feeling of belongingness. A huge number of people have become involved with fitness and transformed their lives because of Crossfit. This is one of the reasons why it is so great; people actually want to do it. The workouts are fun, difficult and can produce benefits in multiple areas of the physical and physiological. There are many components of Crossfit that are not so glamorous, which will be expanded upon in a future post, but nothing is more obvious than its disrespect for proper form. Because so many people have got involved and jumped right in with Crossfit, many lack a sound foundation. Training is provided at many Crossfit gyms, but whether those trainers are qualified or even know what is going on is another question. As was said, this will expanded upon later, so enough for now. Here is some additional information on what Crossfit is and why it is a great alternative or addition to your traditional training program.

A complete Crossfit program combines pieces from aerobic conditioning, gymnastics, strength training, Olympic lifting and anaerobic conditioning and creates its own beast. For the most part, participants will start out by warming muscles up through dynamic stretches and fascial rolling (foam rolling). Generally an exercise is broken down and worked on (for example, a snatch) prior to the workout. The workout is called the Workout of the Day and a different one is designed each day. For the most part they are very strenuous, but they can be scaled in different ways to allow most anyone to complete it. After finishing the WOD, participants will either stretch or cool down.  

Crossfit markets its self to all people; prior training experience or not. This is great, but a little experience will without a doubt be an asset. The intensity of the WOD is very high and it is not worth injuring yourself over if you can not complete it properly. Take your time and work with people that support you, not push you into an injury. As you get more and more comfortable with the workouts, you will without a doubt begin to see your overall fitness improve. Regardless if you are a housewife, teenager, football player or an executive, Crossfit really can add a whole new dimension into a fitness program. Many people choose to stick only to doing Crossfit workouts, which is fine, but Crossfit is not “training”. A wall will eventually be hit, and that is why Crossfit is best combined or shuffled with other fitness cycles. 

A new but very popular player on the scene, Crossfit seems to be the choice program for people looking to improve their life through fitness. No one can be locked out of a Crossfit gym, unless it is by his or her own choice, which is very refreshing. There are very few programs out there that are that accepting. If you are looking to change things in your routine or looking to jump on board with something completely different, Crossfit should definitely be in your considerations. The next Crossfit post will go into the Good and the Ugly aspects, but for now, take a chance and try it out.

Bio: Mackenzie Kelly is a fitness model, personal trainer and fitness coach. In her free time, she writes about health and fitness to educate others. Her personal blog about health and fitness can be found at: www.mkellyfitness.com. 

The post An Introduction to Crossfit appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

By Lincoln McElwee

There are individuals out there who can engage in some serious gaming! They can ace a serve at Wii tennis or tear up the dance floor playing Dance, Dance Revolution. And there are those who are also deadly at Assassin’s Creed and even expert marksmen at Call of Duty.

The interesting thing about gamers is that, for the most part, if you ask someone to think about the demographic of gamers as a whole, very few people imagine mothers as part of this demographic. Though this undoubtedly has more to do with social conditioning than anything else, given that we are now living in the 21^st century, I’d say it is a great time to break down some unnecessary boundaries!

In other words, the fact that gaming consoles evolve just as fashion, trends and society evolve, means that each and every member of the family can now have a stake in game time.

If we can do away with the stereotypes of moms who don’t play video games at all but who buy games and gaming consoles for either husbands and/or children with no thought of what these consoles can possibly provide, of what relevance these consoles may have in their day-to-day lives, then we are one step closer to using a “box” to think outside of the box!

Indeed, with companies like Microsoft that are making strides to connect gaming with every member of the family, moms can indeed benefit from the very same gaming consoles that are stereotypically thought of as only suited for children and/or men 

Microsoft released the Xbox in 2001. The console as most of us know it now – the Xbox 360 – was released in 2005, with its latest emanation, the Xbox One, scheduled for release some time later this year.

To make gaming more user-friendly, and perhaps more appealing to every member of the family, Microsoft released the Xbox 360 Kinect in 2010, as well as a version for Windows PC in 2012. Kinect is a motioning sensor device that can be used along with the Xbox 360 console and allows users to interface with the gaming console or PC through gestures and spoken commands without even touching a game controller.

Guinessworldrecords.com has confirmed that Microsoft’s Kinect claimed the Guinness World Record for being the “fastest selling consumer electronics device” after it managed to sell a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days! And as various advertisements and commercials for Kinect and Kinect products attest to, the fun that can be had with the device is indeed fun for the entire family!

So what does all of this have to do with gaming and exercise? Everything!

By using the Kinect’s motionless technology for no-hands gaming, moms can easily take command of Xbox “games,” such as Nike+ Kinect Training, Zumba Fitness, UFC Personal Trainer, Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout, The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout, and Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Adventure.  

All of these games have one goal in mind: having the maximum amount of comfort and control all while losing weight or staying in shape and having fun!

And so along with the pure thrill that comes from playing video games that keep you active is the fun of playing games with the ones you love. What’s more, with the new gaming devices, you can even tap into a global family by tapping into online communities of like-minded gamers. You can join teams and chat with people around the world about your workouts; you can get instant, virtual updates on your progress and record your workouts with the gaming console’s memory unit. The best part of using these gaming “boxes,” in my opinion, is that you now have the advantage of exercising right in your own home from a box that benefits the entire family!

And the pros of this new type of home gym far outweigh any arguments that might try to counter gaming or buying game consoles in general. For instance, there is no sweaty exercise equipment that needs to be wiped down with a squeegee and a bottle of peroxide, no ogling eyes or machine loiterers talking about how many pounds they can bench press or reps they can do, and workouts can be done at your own pace while actually enjoying the workout.

Additionally, consoles like the Xbox 360 double as actual DVD players, while Sony’s PlayStation 3 console allows you to play Blu-ray DVDs. 

With all of the remarkable advantages to gaming, it’s time for the entire family to get involved in all of the benefits that can be had from owning a gaming console. 

The post A Home Gym in a Box appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.

Attempting to manage a family, kids and a job while maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be quite overwhelming. The simple days of running to the gym or going on a last minute run have been replaced by school lunches, homework, business deadlines and fostering meaningful relationships. Adding a weekly workout schedule to the list can sometimes seem too much and is usually the first item to be unfulfilled from your daily task list.  But, it can absolutely be done and you will look and feel amazing. 

I am a working mother of four children and after looking in the mirror one day several years ago, I realized that I hadn’t put any effort into living a healthy lifestyle since I became a mother. I was completely focused on my family and my business, but I wasn’t making time for myself.  I made a decision six years ago to get healthy, workout and live a positive life.  It wasn’t easy.  I gave up a few times after just a few months.  But, I started over more than once and eventually it stuck.  I’ve had a consistent workout schedule for nearly five years now and I’ve never felt or looked healthier. I have reached and exceeded my goals year after year.  Now, I continuously look forward to what the next challenge will be.

It really doesn’t take much to get back on track.  You just have to take the first step which is definitely the hardest. In fact, once you get into the swing of a consistent workout schedule and start seeing actual results, you will be even more motivated and find yourself going beyond your expectations. Taking time for yourself each day will positively impact all areas of your life and you will be a better mother, wife and business woman.  When you feel good about yourself, you are more positive and will be open to amazing opportunities.

1. SET GOALS:  Set weekly goals to workout.  3-4 times per week is best, but even if you can only work out 1-2 times, that’s a great start.  Include some form of cardio and strength training as a part of your workout.  Even if you only have 30 minutes each day-that’s great.
   
2. FIND A FRIEND:  It makes it more difficult to find an excuse to not go to the gym, walk or run when you have a friend counting on you standing in your office ready to go. If you can afford a personal trainer, try this option one time per week-just another friend waiting for you at the gym to help you be accountable and provide new workout ideas.
   
3. CHALLENGE YOURSELF: As you go week to week and fulfill your goals, challenge yourself the next month to increase the number of workouts each week or the time you workout each day.
   
4. TIME: Try using part of your lunch hour to workout.  If you are eating healthy snacks throughout the day, you can take the beginning of your lunch hour to workout and the last 20 minutes or so to eat a healthy lunch. This is what I do nearly every day. It has been the key for me being able to maintain a consistent workout schedule.
   
5. EAT HEALTHY:  No matter what your workout schedule, if you don’t eat a healthy diet, you won’t make much if any progress on getting fit. Just being aware of what you are putting in your body and really thinking about it first can really cut down on the calories. This has been another key for me – meal proportions.
   
6. DRESS UP: This may sound silly…don’t dress too frumpy when you workout.  As you increase your workout schedule, seeing the results and you looking fabulous while doing it is actually very motivating.
   
7. DON’T GIVE UP: Even if you skip a week or a month, set a new goal and start over until it sticks! YOU CAN DO IT!!

The post WORKING MOMS – WORK IT OUT!!! appeared first on AKAMom Magazine.