Become A Change Optimist

I am an eternal optimist and that certainly helps when you are trying to motivate people. It is especially helpful when you are asking people to change their bodies and change their lives. I am blessed to get an inspirational email and a good article that I saw recently was, “Become a Change Optimist” and here is a little excerpt”

“Everyone experiences change–it may be a job change, relationship change, health change, or a change you’ve initiated that suddenly seems daunting. If you find change difficult, you’re not alone. Many people think change is hard. But it’s possible for the change you’re going through to be easier, smoother, and less stressful–you can find the positive in transitions and learn to love your life more…you can become a Change Optimist.” Continued…

Americans still unclear about stroke warning signs

I for one really don’t know any of the warning signs of a stroke.  I only know that when I was under a lot of stress last year with a failing business, I thought that I might have a stroke.  This article is from Reuters Health:

“Fewer than half of Americans can recognize the top five warning signs of stroke, information that could help save thousands of people from death and disability, the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

Their report uncovered significant disparities in awareness, with whites, women and people with higher levels of education much more likely to be aware of individual stroke warning symptoms and call for an ambulance than others.

“These findings indicate a need to increase awareness of stroke warning symptoms in the entire population, and particularly among blacks, Hispanics, men and persons at lower education levels,” the CDC said in its weekly report on death and disease.

Stroke warning signs include sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side; sudden confusion or difficulty speaking; sudden trouble walking, dizziness or loss of balance; sudden trouble with vision in one eye or both; and severe headache with no known cause.  Continued…

Early exercise aids against breast cancer

As a parent of an active 3 1/2 year old, I was heartened to see this article and know that she is starting out life on the right foot so to speak.  This article appears in CNN Health and is from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis:

“New research shows exercise during the teen years — starting as young as age 12 — can help protect girls from breast cancer when they are grown.

Middle-aged women have long been advised to get active to lower their risk of breast cancer after menopause.

What’s new: That starting so young pays off, too.

“This really points to the benefit of sustained physical activity from adolescence through the adult years, to get the maximum benefit,” said Dr. Graham Colditz of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the study’s lead author.

Researchers tracked nearly 65,000 nurses ages 24 to 42 who enrolled in a major health study. They answered detailed questionnaires about their physical activity dating back to age 12. Within six years of enrolling, 550 were found to have breast cancer before menopause. A quarter of all breast cancer is diagnosed at these younger ages, when it is typically more aggressive.

Women who were physically active as teens and young adults were 23 percent less likely to develop premenopausal breast cancer than women who grew up sedentary, researchers report Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.”  Continued…

Half of Americans on Medicine

Yikes! That to me is pretty shocking. I don’t go to the doctor and don’t take any prescription medicines. No, I don’t have a death wish and it may not be smart in some people’s minds, but I exercise, eat to nourish my body, take supplements and keep my stress down and that formula is now working for me quite well. Here’s an excerpt from the article that appeared in Time, if you want to read what other people are doing:

“For the first time, it appears that more than half of all insured Americans are taking prescription medicines regularly for chronic health problems, a study shows.

The most widely used drugs are those to lower high blood pressure and cholesterol — problems often linked to heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

The numbers were gathered last year by Medco Health Solutions Inc., which manages prescription benefits for about one in five Americans.” Continued…

4 Bad Habit Makeovers for Your Little Ones

You may wonder what this has to do with health and fitness, but believe me, as the father of a 3 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old, the actions of your kids have a lot to do with your mental and physical health.  I know that you parents will enjoy this article that appeared in CNN.com Health:

“Raising kids, I used to think, how hard could it be? Anything you can carry around in a car seat can’t be all that big a deal, right?  Given this line of reasoning, I deserved every bit of grief I got when my first child, Lucy, was born. Of course, it wasn’t really my fault. I never slept. I breastfed round the clock, taking breaks only for wrestling matches with my unspeakably tight pre-pregnancy pants. My hormones mocked me. So I did whatever it took to survive.

Rather than listen to Lucy cry, I rocked her to sleep. If she woke up in the middle of the night, I let her stay in my bed, even though it meant I’d lie awake beside her. Then, when she was a toddler, I gave up on teaching her how to pick up toys. (I could do it faster and better.) And it wasn’t just toys I was picking up; it was Lucy herself, who always seemed to get a case of rubber leg anytime we had to walk more than a few blocks.

I assumed she would outgrow these habits. But she didn’t. She just got heavier, something I felt acutely when I was nine months pregnant with her baby sister.

This couldn’t go on. But was it too late to change the bad habits — mine, as well as hers?”  Continued…

Failing the Faithful

Anyone who reads my blog is either very faithful or has a lot of time on their hands, since I only post about once a week and I’ve been getting nominated for most boring blog on the Internet.

That is changing as I write because I now am going to focus all of my attention on my blog and my message board posts - informational and business - and it will now be worth it to you to stop in and read.

You may think that I finally figured out that spending the better part of a day creating a newsletter would be my motivation to “downsize” to a blog that I can update at will and that certainly played a part in my decision.

The greater motivation was a survival instinct and rather than paying, in my case, $446.30 next month to renew my contract with my newsletter delivery service, I would instead use my wonderful, free WordPress blog and the free Beachbody Message Boards to convey my thoughts and wisdom and what little knowledge I can still access in my old brain.

When it comes to survival of the fittest, part of criteria for survival is being smart and I just need to be smart.  So all of you faithful readers of my blog will now be seeing what all of my subscribers saw and hopefully they won’t abandon me and come here to read it when all they used to have to do was go to their email in box!