Penny Love Hoff

Okay, back to sit-ups.

My last entry about my mom muscles was a big hit but if I am honest, doesn't everything look better in hindsight? As Nora Ephron says, "Think of one of your body parts that you don't like and in ten years you will be nostalgic for...

My fitness writing may imply that my main concerns are about squeezing into single-digit size clothing, calculating the calorie content in the glue on an envelope, and coveting loose waistbands and sculpted abs.

But that is just my day job. My highest calling, for the last 18 years, has been...

I read two books recently, both of which were gratifying in similar yet completely opposite ways. The first book was 50 Shades of Grey, recommended by my 30-something friends, and the other was The Wisdom of Menopause, placed on my office desk by my wise, 50-plus co-worker. One reminded me...

If you're like most folks, you may still have some urgent questions about fitness and health. All week you've probably been lying awake, asking yourself whether you should or shouldn't (or should) take more Vitamin D.

Or, if you're an avid exerciser: "Hey, what about recent evidence that suggests...

People (and by people, I mean women) -- people have a magic number. It's that number on the scale that is just on the other side of the gulf. You know the gulf. It's the five, 10 or 50 (fill in the number) pound gulf between where you are and...

Forgive me, Lord, in advance for what I'm about to do.

This week is Holy Week, and for those of you not in the know about Jesus and his crazy life, this week marks the end of Lent, the craziest of the last 40 days of Jesus' crazy journey...

Words are like toothpaste. Once you squeeze that tube -- or say those words -- they're almost impossible to put back. I thought this was a good analogy for my kids, who often, like their mom, speak before thinking.

And in an inverse way, the eating we do on Thanksgiving...

I'm going to diagnose myself as a sufferer of early onset seasonal affective disorder. Early onset as in early in the day. Several times this week I've had to stop myself from climbing into my pajamas at 7 p.m. We changed our clocks back from Daylight Saving Time, and it's...

Tuesday is my day off. I teach exercise classes for a living so perhaps I should specify that Tuesday is my day off from exercise. Come Tuesday, the last thing I want to do is sweat. Unless, of course, I wake up to a morning like I did this past...

Welcome to your extra long day. This extra hour day always feels wonderful, like the day is yawning and stretching and in no hurry to end. During the day, that is. Then, if I remember correctly, 5 p.m. arrives and brings with it full and instant blackness, which makes me...

I am a fitness writer and if you read my rants with any regularity, you know that they are irregular in a consistent way: I tend to filter everything I see in my daily life through the filter of fitness. Fitness can be a metaphor for just about anything in...

I shouldn't have read the newspaper that morning. Leaving the gym after my Thursday morning class, I noticed that my mind, usually pleasantly quieted with the thrum of my just-finished spinning class, was anything but calm. I usually get a "back to the real me" sense after exercise, but today...

I had a few of those fitness moments last week that made me feel my age.

First, I fell down in my spinning class. I know, I know. You normally sit safely on the saddle during most classes, but in my class, you never can expect normal things to...

How many times have we heard the embarrassing story of a child in a store pointing and blurting out "Mommy, why's that lady so fat?" Or how about the teenage girls who snicker when another, heavier girl walks by in the cafeteria? Or are you one of those moms who...

Just to keep me on my toes, I'm going to resist the urge to use the term "audacious radical fitness zealots" when referring to CrossFit, a strength and conditioning program for what I would call the "over-the-top" athlete.

On the CrossFit website, they summarize their program in 100...

I took more than seven years of piano lessons when I was a kid. I really liked my piano teacher. She was the minister's wife at the First Christian Church and I played very well during the actual thirty minutes of my lesson. But could I actually play you a...

I've been trying to sit down and write this article for a week. Unfortunately for you, my topic is "how to get back on track." I never even intended to take the summer off from writing. I just kept not writing.

Now, two months of "todays" later, I've somehow finally...

I've been into making lists lately. Lists are good. They help you accomplish your goals. Write 'em down, check 'em off. With the arrival of fall, I should be checking things off my lists. But instead, I find myself making other lists, silly lists, fitness lists or really any lists...

Last Wednesday was the second biggest peak of my fitness calendar year, second only to January 1 -- the grandmother of all workout peaks. If you took a poll on when people begin exercise programs, any Monday after a major holiday would rank in the top few. Throw in the...

Belly fat comes in two different forms. One is slightly annoying and fairly harmless. It is the layer of fat directly under the skin called subcutaneous fat. Think of it as a layer of fat between the surface of the skin and on top of your abdominal organs.

The...