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In actuality, some of the best strategies to combat the effects of aging are time tested and common sense based. It seems in the never ending search for the quick fix, people are more willing than ever to open their wallet for marketing driven hype. Doesn’t it seem like there’s a new anti aging product coming out every month?

Often times, the biggest obstacle to feeling young is our health. Nagging, chronic health problems often get in the way of feeling our best and doing our best. While some health conditions are unavoidable, others are easily kept at bay by simple alterations to our daily routines.

In order to combat the aging process, we need to place equal emphasis on our physical and mental well being. As we age, we tend to focus on our physical health. It’s equally important to monitor our mental health as well, especially since optimum mental health can actually help us overcome physical health challenges.

Here’s our top 10 anti aging tips, all low or no cost:

1. Make a quick list of all the beverages you drink in a day. For just one of those beverages, substitute a glass of water. Hydration is extremely important, and helps your skin tone as well as helping your internal organs perform their functions.

2. Enjoy deep, restful sleep. While it might sound easier than it is, do your best to make your sleep environment as distraction free as possible. Deep, invigorating sleep has a positive effect on energy levels, mood, and general well being.

3. Just a little exercise. Go for a walk, pedal a bike, go dancing … whatever strikes your fancy! Exercise burns calories and reduces stress. As you may know, stress is a major contributor to premature aging.

4. Set aside time to stretch. Flexibility diminishes as we age, and stretching is the best way to maintain flexibility. Stretch your arms, legs, and back especially.

5. Don’t lose your balance. Balance is a skill that we lose as we age, particularly if we don’t work at it. Try standing on one foot for 15-30 seconds, and repeat with the other foot. This is an excellent way to keep or even improve balance.

6. Work your mind like a muscle. Keep your mind nimble by engaging in challenging mental activities. Try to learn something new every day by seeking out knowledge and activities that focus on knowledge building.

7. Look up an old friend. Have a friend you’ve fallen out of touch with? Reconnect! It’ll widen your social circle and give you something to look forward to, as well as helping to keep your mind sharp.

8. Eat more fresh fish. Fish is extremely good for you and offers significant vital nutrients. And no, a big platter of fried fish doesn’t count! Substitute fresh fish for red meat at one meal per week.

9. Put your goals down on paper. Jot down what you want to accomplish tomorrow before you go to bed tonight. You’ll be surprised at how much of a positive difference this makes. You’ll awaken more refreshed and you’ll accomplish more than ever. Try it, it works!

10. Adopt a new friend and get a pet. Pet owners are known to enjoy more active, healthful lives. Pets bring a wonderful level of companionship and joy to our lives, not to mention being a built in personal trainer in the case of dogs. You’ll really appreciate all the joy that a pet companion will bring into your life!

Did you catch that video of Rachel Ray learning to waterski on the net? I think it was posted mainly because a few of us wanted to see her in a bathing suit, but got me thinking, how is Ray learning to waterski? Isn’t slalom water skiing only for those daredevil junkies of the 1970s? Whatever system they had setup for her, made it look easy and pretty fun.

I tried water skiing only a few times and honestly it was mainly peer pressure (\”Come on, you never get a chance to try this\”) and even though I got up on the skis and they took me around a bit, it was a bit too daunting to want to try again.

When that water gets rushing fast underneath you, and they (the family and friends) decide to up the throttle on the boat, and you’re hanging on, hunched over, that can be pretty nerveracking. I never got to the point to even consider how to slalom waterski, since all of my focus was on just not making a faceplant into that highspeed H20!

These days, water skiing is not as popular as some other water sports, such as tubing or jet skiing. But when you see somebody who is really talented at slalom water skiing, youall soon discover just how elegant and thrilling a sport it can be. And with the new aHollywooda style training that incorporates some of the latest technology, itas now much safer and quite a bit easier.

One of Hollywoodas little secrets, which I noticed in the Rachel Ray video, is using an aluminum abarefoot boom,a which attaches to the front of the boat and lets new skiers practice good posture and proper weight balancing. All this is done at a fairly slow speed, somewhere between 10 to 20 mph depending on the age of the skier.

The concept behind this waterski boom is that it offsets the sudden jerk that many skiers feel when the boat starts picking up speed, allowing you to get the skis in front of you while leaning back. You are then ready to practice dragging the rope behind you in order to simulate the feeling of holding onto a handle that isnat offering any real support. With enough practice, youall get behind the boat and be up on skis.

The water ski boom is the perfect training tool for just about anybody, and if you have someone competent driving the boat who doesnat take off too fast, you can practically learn this on your own. Good posture is very important, and a trainer can help you learn that, but by using the boom, I could easily build up enough confidence to learn how to do this.

What I do know is that youare supposed to keep your shoulders back with your weight on your hops. Then arch your back and allow your ankles to slide out in front of you as the boat picks up speed. Bear down on your ankles at this point and you will begin to feel lighter than air. With celebrities like Rachel Ray showing how much fun skiing is, it just might make a real comeback!

To achieve optimum results from training, it is necessary that you must supply your body with all the correct vitamins and minerals as well as enough of the major components of the diet being proteins, carbohydrates and fats. These are called the ‘macro-nutrients’ of the diet as they are needed in much larger amounts compared to the micro-nutrients’ being the vitamins, minerals and other biological substances which are needed in much smaller amounts in the diet than are the ‘macro-nutrients’, but are found present in different amounts accompanying the macro-nutrients in food.

It is true that most of the micro-nutrients are already present in the foods that make up the macro-nutrients, but hard-training bodybuilders have been shown to require much more than food can provide in terms of the micro-nutrients which are often lost out of foods through cooking. In addition, the stresses of training the body uses up a large amount of the micro-nutrients in growth and repair of body tissues, and extra levels are required at amounts that could not be acquired by food alone, and so are taken via a few pills from a health-food store in the morning, evening, and with meals.

These supplements should be taken at breakfast, no doubtedly the most importmant meal of the day, so DON’T SKIP IT. After having slept for a few hours, your blood sugar level is low, and the body needs to access materials to help raise these levels. Your muscles can be accessed to raise blood sugar levels which is the exact opposite to what we want which is building muscles (anabolism) i.e. BODYBUILDING!, so Breakfast is now your number one priority.

Therefore, as you can see, a good breakfast is an extremely important meal, which should include milk, an egg-white omelette and complex carbohydrates including rice, which boost blood sugar levels steadily as they are digested. So make sure you give yourself sufficient time in the morning for breakfast otherwise visible results on training will be slow.

Some people may be lacking a good appetite at first, but as long as you eat omething healthy for breakfast, its not a problem, as your appetite can be your guide, and will probably grow alongside gains from your training. Why does the appetite increase? Well basically cause your body has more muscle tissue to feed as your training continues. Many people should benefit a great deal from extra vitamin B-complex supplements as well as extra vitamin C as they are water soluble vitamins and therefore are not retained to any great extent within the body and are used up quickly in general tissue metabolism and EVEN MORE so when your muscles are growing !!!

Therefore, it would be a good idea to try supplementing with extra B-complex and C vitamins in the morning and before sleep, and perhaps before your workout that day. When using high levels of vitamins such as this, remember to take in extra amounts of water / fluids which may come from just drinking water (recommend bottled water) or water used in making brand-name carbohydrate sports drinks and for mixing your creatine with. Consuming a couple of litres of fluid each day may be enough for some, not enough for others. Optimum hydration is required to flush out waste products from the body tissues that lower levels of fluid intake could not accomplish.