Want to make some extra money in your spare time?

Make money in your spare time promoting the Team Beachbody online fitness club and make $19.44 on each membership! The Team Beachbody Club is the fastest growing, most effective and affordable online fitness club on the Internet.

Hundreds of thousands of members are enjoying the support, guidance, motivation and inspiration of the Team Beachbody national fitness community and you can make extra money in your spare time helping other people achieve their fitness and weight loss goals, simply by telling them about the benefits of the club.

What does it cost? Sign up for just $39.95 and pay just $14.95 a month! That’s it. No fine print and no additional costs and you can start telling your family members, friends, coworkers and neighbors about the Team Beachbody Club and start making money right away. Every time someone signs up, you make $19.44. If 10 people sign up, you make $194.40. It is as simple as that! Also, when the members that you sign up renew in 3 months, you get another $19.44 for each member who renews. In fact you make $19.44 on each renewal, every 3 months!

How do I get started? If you are ready to get started making some extra money in your spare time, then click here to get started. If you don’t trust the Internet and you are afraid this is a scam, then learn more about my business site by clicking here. You can learn more about me, Richard Dafter, and how I got started the same way you will and now make a substantial income promoting Team Beachbody full time, by clicking here. Please feel free to email me at howtobefit@aol.com or phone me toll free at 866 797-7336 (505 797-7336 in Albuquerque).

How do I actually promote the Team Beachbody Club? Once you sign up, you create your own Internet fitness website*. Your $14.95 monthly fee pays for your own online business site. Say you chose “jointheclub” as your screen name during the simple sign up process. Your Internet fitness site would then be - www.teambeachbody.com/jointheclub. It is as simple as that! Once your site is set up, you simply tell your family members, friends, coworkers and neighbors to go to your website and click on “Join the Club” and you have made $19.44!

*Creating your website is simple and you just fill in information about why you are promoting Team Beachbody club memberships and Beachbody workout DVD’s and products. No computer skills are necessary and I provide all of your technical support.

What is the Team Beachbody Club? Want to see what a Team Beachbody Club member gets with their membership? Go to www.teambeachbody.com/ and log in. In the top right corner of the page enter jointheteam@howtobefit.com as the member email and nextstep as the password. Browse the site and see the wealth of information and resources. To better understand all of the benefits, use the Guide to the Team Beachbody Club

Still not convinced? What if you got a 25% discount on all of your own purchases of Beachbody workout DVD’s and products. And what if you got a 25% commission on all of the Beachbody DVD and product purchases that your members made? You are not only making $19.44 for every member that signs up, $19.44 every time that your member renews every 3 months, but also a 25% commission on all of their purchases! All you have to do is sign up and get started.

What if I change my mind? As great as promoting Team Beachbody has been for me, it may not be right for you. You can cancel at any time in the first 30 days for a full refund. After that, you can cancel at any time and you will no longer be charged $14.95 a month for your web hosting fee.

Should we be living in zoos?

My daughter and I went to the zoo today and all of the animals are so beautifully housed and fed and every effort is made to recreate their natural habits and to keep them healthy and happy.  Not too fat, not too thin, but eating like they would in their natural habitats and maintaining an ideal weight.  Animals can exercise, get fresh air, sunshine and they aren’t allowed to get overweight or to be housed inappropriately or there would be an outcry from the public.

But when my gaze turned from the animal’s habitats to the walkways and paths for the visitors, I have never seen so many overweight, obese and morbidly obese people in my life.  If 66% of adults in the US are overweight or obese, this morning skewed that percentage some, because it was more like 80% or more who were quite to significantly heavier than their ideal weight.  I saw firsthand why we are the most overweight and obese society in the world.

So what is my point?  Zoo animals are being held in captivity against their “will” probably the only plus being that they actually live longer in most cases in captivity.  No enemies, no disease, good diets, probably supplements, good veterinary care and so forth contribute to their longevity.

We, on the other hand, have lifespans that are shortening and we are not held in captivity.  We make choices as to where we live and how much exercise we get and what type and when.  We eat what we please and when we please and how much we please.  We seek medical care by choice or when we can afford it.

We, too, should be healthy and at our ideal weights, but instead we are not.  I saw people out of breath and struggling to go up paths or to take stairs to exhibits in order to see animals in about as perfect condition as they would be outside of their natural habitats.

We have the largest elephant habitat of any zoo in the country and the elephant keepers place their food in amongst logs so that they have to search for it and inside huge balls that they have to push around to make the food come out.  The “visitors” on the other hand congregated where the fast food, ice cream and other sweets were being sold and sat down to eat.

My daughter and I saw animal mothers and fathers playing and nurturing their young.  The human parents seemed to be just sitting and talking to each other and the children tried to play, but since they, too, were quite overweight and one nine or ten year old girl was morbidly obese and couldn’t play at all.  We saw no counterpart of hers amongst the residence of the zoo.

Can’t we take care of ourselves as well as we take care of our animals.  If we take our dogs or cats to the vet, don’t they suggest that we put our pets on a diet (and we comply right away) if they are overweight?

Do we need “keepers” or “owners” to take care of us so that our lifespans are lengthened and so we eat well and exercise enough to be healthy and maintain ideals weights?  I guess so because  we certainly are not capable of doing it on our own.

Meditate for Your Heart

A recent study of adolescents with high blood pressure found that those teens who practiced transcendental meditation for 8 months improved the ability of their blood vessels to relax and dilate by 21 percent. That’s about the same improvement expected from taking antihypertensive drugs.

Dr. Vernon A. Barnes is a physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia’s Georgia Prevention Institute and the lead investigator on the study. Researchers concluded that 15 minutes of transcendental meditation twice a day steadily lowered the blood pressures of 156 inner-city adolescents, with levels tending to stay that way.

To read all of Tony Horton’s (creator of P90X) article, please click here.

Kicking the habit may be contagious

Did I tell you that I am blue in the face? Yes, I’m blue in the face from passionately and unashamedly promoting the benefits of health and fitness and maintaining an ideal weight to everyone that will listen.

I do that by telling everyone that in order to be successful you need support and guidance from someone who wants you to be successful, peer support and having a sense of community where everyone is working toward the same goal and no one is trying to lead you astray and cause you to fail.

I am that someone who cares about your success and I work full time as a Fitness and Success Coach. By becoming a member of Beachbody’s online fitness club you also get the peer support and sense of community that will make all the difference in your success or failure.

Backing up those statements are Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School in Boston and Dr. James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego and they have studied 12,067 people who have been taking part in the Framingham study — a study of the health and habits of nearly an entire town in Massachusetts — for the past 32 years.

In an article from Reuters Health News, Maggie Fox, the Health and Science Editor says, “Nothing may feel lonelier than trying to quit smoking, but in fact, people kick the habit in clusters, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The same team of experts who found that obesity may be socially contagious said they found similar patterns among smokers, with people clearly influencing others in their social and family networks.

In fact, the most isolated people are now those who remain the most addicted as their personal networks get pushed to the fringes, they wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“This study tells us that social relationships have a critical impact on health behaviors and decisions, and that people are strongly influenced by those in their social sphere,” said National Institute on Aging director Dr. Richard Hodes, whose institute paid for the study.”

To read more of Maggie Fox’s article and to learn how changing lifestyle habits can be contagious, please click here.

Are you struggling with belly fat?

On the message boards today, I saw someone write, “I’m getting just a little, no a lot, frustrated with the belly fat that just won’t go away” and I provided a short response. It is a good opportunity for my readers to get more information about the risks of belly fat as well as some ideas on how to get rid of lower ab fat.

Doctors refer to fat accumulated at the belly as an “apple” shape (on the buttocks and thighs, you’re a “pear” shape). But whether you call it belly fat, an “apple” shape or visceral fat, it is serious and according to WebMD, “Researchers describe it as an active “organ” in your body — one that churns out hormones and inflammatory substances.” They also go on to say that, “”A big waistline puts you at increased risk for many health problems — diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke,” says Robert Eckel, MD, president of the American Heart Association.”

The article also goes on to say, “Abdominal fat is thought to break down easily into fatty acids, which flow directly into the liver and into muscle,” says Lewis Kuller, MD, DPH, professor and past chair of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

When these excess fatty acids drain into the liver, they trigger a chain reaction of changes — increasing the production of LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol and triglycerides. During this time insulin can also become less effective in controlling blood sugar, so insulin resistance sets in, he explains.

Blood sugars start to get out of balance. Fats and clots get into the bloodstream, and that sets the stage for diabetes, heart disease, and more.”

Tom Venuto has a great article on “How to Get Rid of Lower Ab Fat” and I will present an excerpt here.

“Most people don’t have their fat distributed evenly throughout their bodies. Each of us inherits a genetically determined and hormonally-influenced pattern of fat storage just as we inherit our eye or hair color. In other words, the fat seems to “stick” to certain areas more than others.

The lower abs is often the first place the fat goes when you gain it, and the last place it comes off when you’re losing it. Think of ab fat like the deep end of the swimming pool. No matter how much you protest, there is no way you can drain the deep end before the shallow end.”

To read the rest of the article and get some ideas on how to get rid of your belly fat, please click here.

Obesity contributes to global warming

Obesity contributes to global warming, too.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school’s researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

“We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility,” Edwards said in a telephone interview. “Obesity is a key part of the big picture.”

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.  Continued…

U.S. obesity rates alarmingly high

New research shows “alarming levels” of obesity in most ethnic groups in the United States, principal investigator Dr. Gregory L. Burke, of Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina told Reuters Health. The study also confirms the potentially deadly toll obesity exacts on the heart and blood vessels.

“The obesity epidemic has the potential to reduce further gains in U.S. life expectancy, largely through an effect on cardiovascular disease mortality (death),” Burke and colleagues warn in the latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

Among 6,814 middle-age or older adults participating in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, or “MESA” study, researchers found that more than two thirds of white, African American and Hispanic participants were overweight and one third to one half were obese.

Obesity rates were far lower in Chinese Americans in the study, with 33 percent overweight and just 5 percent obese, suggesting, Burke said, that high rates of obesity should not considered “inevitable.”  Continued…

Amby Burfoot’s 10 Tips for Marathon Training

I’ve been a long time reader of Runner’s World and always find their articles informative and valuable. The marathon isn’t for everyone, but if you do decided to train for one, these 10 tips from Amby Burfoot will help you do it right.

“Three weeks before last spring’s London marathon, I received an e-mail from a friend who’s an ophthalmologist (smart, scientific, precise) and a very talented marathoner. He was concerned about Ryan Hall’s just-posted blog at runnersworld.com. Hall described a long, fast-finishing 26-mile workout. “Don’t you think that’s a mistake?” my friend asked me. “He won’t be fully recovered in time for the marathon.”

Three weeks later, Hall ran 2:08:24 at London, and my friend e-mailed again. “I guess I was wrong,” he said. No, not wrong, I replied. We simply don’t know whether Hall’s success was specific to him or could be extended to other runners. This point was affirmed several months ago by an exciting new study in the International Journal of Sport Physiology and Performance. In his research project, running coach and exercise physiology Ph.D. student Jason Karp asked 93 U.S. elite marathoners how they trained. All of them had qualified for the 2004 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials by running at least 2:22 (the men) or 2:48 (the women). Karp was hoping to find many universal themes. He didn’t.

Sure, the elites all ran a lot, from 40 to 125 weekly miles, and more than 70 percent of their marathon training was at a relaxed pace. Beyond that, Karp was forced to conclude, “Among U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers, there is no consensus as to how to prepare for the marathon.”

What? No consensus? Well, things aren’t that bad. While marathon training hasn’t been studied extensively, millions of runners have managed to go the distance, some of them at a sub-five-minute clip. And runners incessantly exchange their tales of success and failure. When I look at the accumulated science and shared knowledge of marathon training, these overarching principles emerge. Continued…

8 Ways to Know If You’re Fit

A major health headline this week was a study dispelling the notion that you can be both fit and fat. Last fall, the wires were abuzz with citations about the dangers of being thin and fat (so-called “skinny fat”). With a national obesity rate of nearly 30 percent, we know that we’re overweight. But if thin isn’t the indicator of fitness, and you can’t be large and fit, how are we supposed to tell if we’re healthy? Let’s decipher what these studies indicate and sort through the murkiness about what it really means to be fit.  Continued…

What is Your Body Mass Index?

It’s no secret that the U.S. is one of the fattest nations in the world: 66.3 percent of Americans over 20 years old are overweight or obese (about 140 million); 32 percent are obese (67 million); and almost 5 percent (9 million) are morbidly obese. Among adolescents 12 to 19 years old, over 17 percent are overweight (over 12.5 million)—16 percent are girls and 18.2 percent are boys. But what exactly do the terms “overweight,” “obese,” and “morbidly obese” mean, and why should these distinctions matter to you?

The standard definitions as used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO) (and most social science and medical journals that rely on the data from those organizations) are based on body mass index (BMI) levels. This is a calculation using your height and your weight.  Continued…