Summer weather has arrived, and with it, the season for outdoor activities, sunburns, and, of course bug bites! With all the rain that many parts of the country are experiencing this spring, mosquitoes are particularly pesky.

Personally, I seem to have grown more sensitive to mosquito bites as I have gotten older, although I suspect it is a particular type of mosquito that leaves the worst bites. The bad ones cause huge red welts that last for an entire week of itching and burning misery. Due to my sensitivity, I admit I have resorted to DEET products a few times over the past few years (notably on our visit to Minnesota last summer, where the mosquito is - only half-jokingly - referred to as "the state bird").

However, I am always on the lookout for natural products with safer ingredients that actually work. The recipe below is easy to make with just a few simple and natural ingredients, and you can customize it to your preferences, or experiment to find out which oils are most effective. I love the smell of citronella, but there are a number of other essential oils which have bug-repelling properties, which are listed below.

Exercise is a fundamental human requirement for health and longevity, so why does it seems so hard to do sometimes? You would think that exercising would be as universally enjoyed as eating, since it is nearly as essential to life!

Yet for some reason, many people dread exercise and sometimes even go out of their way to avoid it. Many people think of exercise as difficult, painful, or just unenjoyable (by the way, I'm not one of those people, but there are certainly times when I can relate!), and we can see the result of this mindset all around us in the epidemic of obesity and sedentary-lifestyle-related diseases facing our society today.

So why don't we all love to exercise?

I do think some of it has to do with the messages we see in the media about exercise being "hard," as well as the portrayal of thin, fit bodies as an ideal that we just don't feel we can live up to. However, I think an even greater cause of our dislike of exercise is the unnatural separation of movement from our livelihoods and daily routine.

Humans originally evolved as creatures of nearly constant movement. When we weren't sleeping or eating, we were moving - climbing, walking, running, jumping, chasing prey (or being chased), digging, stooping, reaching, and generally incorporating movement into just about every aspect of our day.

As we became more settled and adopted an agrarian lifestyle, our lives were similarly intertwined with motion as we cultivated and harvested crops, erected homes, built furniture, killed and cooked and processed our food, scrubbed laundry, tended to animals, and went about all the tasks of daily living in a world where we had to provide most of our physical needs for ourselves.

The industrial revolution began to change all of this, as factories automated so many aspects of production, moving us further and further from the processing of our food, the making of our textiles, and the creation of most of our worldly goods - namely, everything we used to do for ourselves that involved exercise.

Now we find ourselves in what can rightfully be called a "knowledge economy," where the jobs that are considered the highest "value" are also usually the ones that require the least physical labor, and our health as a society is suffering for it.

So what is the solution?

It is neither practical nor advisable for everyone to go back to growing, harvesting, and processing 100% of our own food (although I heartily support anyone who tries!), or making all of our own clothing, furniture, and other goods, and generally spending all of our time just trying to physically survive. But clearly we need to find a way to get more exercise into our daily routine. Our health depends on it!

There are many ways to do this (and you can browse our archives for some of them), but in my mind the easiest way lies in finding ways to incorporate more natural movement into our daily lives, beyond just "working out" at the gym for an hour every so often. Not only does this method involve less effort and planning than more structured workout routines, but it is also more attractive to those who "hate to exercise."

Below are 7 easy and fun ways to get more exercise - without working out:

We've all either experienced or heard of someone who had the experience of going on a diet to lose weight, and promptly gaining all the weight back once the "diet" was over.

In fact, studies show that 95% of dieters gain their weight back after going off the diet. While the reason for this seems simple (if you go back to eating the same way that made you gain all the weight in the first place, it makes sense that you would gain it back again in a matter of time), in fact, there are some sneakier reasons why diets don't generally work. 

The truth is, most diets actually set you up for failure... 

During this month's special event, the Reclaim Your Body Summit, you will learn why most diets don't work, as well as what does work, and how you can achieve lasting results even if you have tried numerous diets and failed in the past. You will learn from a number of renowned health experts who will teach you how to stop yo-yo dieting, discover your answers and create healthy habits that work for your body.

Register to watch for free here, or read more below...