What is the Team Beachbody Community?

Team Beachbody is the online fitness and weight loss club where you get results. It is a proven combination of cutting-edge fitness programs, simple-to-follow diet guidelines, effective supplements, and the most compelling peer support system ever created. Why not sign up today and get the support and incentives you need to succeed.
Join the Free Team Beachbody Community!

Your FREE membership includes:

• Access to WOWY®, our online SuperGym™
  Log in your workouts for the extra accountability you need to stick with your fitness regimen. Track your progress and work out with your buddies.
• Get support from your Personal Coach
  Your Coach will give you that extra one-on-one support you need to give your all. Beachbody® Coaches are community members dedicated to motivating, encouraging, and helping other members.
• Connect to other members through our Message Boards
  Our members are people just like you who are committed to losing weight and living healthy lifestyles. They’ll be there for you every step of the way!
• Get great tips from our weekly diet and fitness newsletter
  Learn how to stay healthy and fit from our experts—gain insight from articles like “Give Your Metabolism a Boost” and “10 Tiny Changes for Big Weight Loss.” It’s all there!

Plus, you can win amazing rewards just for working out!
Enter your workouts in WOWY and you could win up to $1,000 or other cool rewards like iPods, DVD players, and cameras every day!

Click here to sign up today for free and become part of the Team Beachbody Wellness Revolution!

Is There A Secret to Having a Flat Stomach?

First of all, if you are trying to get a flat stomach, I commend you because many, many people these days are trying to lose weight and certainly are not at the point where they can think about having a flat stomach.

I have six good articles on my website and all of them provide information on how to have a flat stomach. The classic is by Jorge Cruise and it is entitled, “8 Minutes to a Flat Belly” and starts out by addressing why abdominal fat is bad for your health. In an excerpt from the article, Cruise writes, “Here’s the real bad news about abdominal fat. Belly fat is worse for your health than fat in your butt or thighs. Yes, belly fat tends to trigger your liver to release its stored fatty acids — raising your cholesterol levels. It also tends to alter levels of key hormones involved in appetite, fat storage, and heart disease. In fact, when you gain weight in your abdomen, and these hormones become altered, you tend to feel hungrier, you eat more, and your body tends to store more fat in your abdomen. It’s a vicious cycle — but you can break it!” He lists a number of ways that abdominal fat erodes your health and then goes on to list the benefits of having a firm belly.

Another very good article by Brad Schoenfeld, author of Look Great Naked is, “A Flatter Stomach is Just 3 Steps Away“. Schoenfeld first lists four myths about toning the tummy and then provides three great exercises with video demonstrations on how to do them which are really helpful.

Yet another excellent article is by Shawn Phillips (brother of Bill Phillips who is author of Body for Life), author of AbSolution and it is entitled, “10 Minutes to a Flatter Tummy“. Interestingly, he says, “The most important muscle you need to flex to get the tight-and-toned tummy you’ve always wanted? Your mind! Shawn says mental awareness is instrumental to the process of getting in shape. That’s where his three D’s come into play: Decide, Define and Develop.” He, too, has three effective exercises with video demonstrations of each one, making them easy to understand and do.

The “Ab Exercise Checklist to Tighten Your Tummy“, by Michael Stefano (author of the Firefighters Workout) also has three video demonstrations for correct form so that you can get the most effectiveness from these ab exercises.

And finally, there are two more articles, “10 Fitness Facts That in Reality are Fitness Myths” and “5 More Fitness Myths and the Fitness Facts Behind Them“, both by Ralph Calzadilla, and each article has a myth about how to get a flat stomach which are worth reading.

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.

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.

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…

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…

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…

Exercise To Relieve Stress

The therapeutic benefits of regular exercise are well documented. Study after study has shown that it increases health and general well being. It’s been said that if exercise were a drug, it would be the most powerful medication on earth. However, it still seems difficult to get people to workout on a regular basis. When life gets hectic, it’s generally the first thing that gets crossed off the “to do” list. In reality, it should be the last. It’s an industry standard to tell people that they should consult a physician before beginning an exercise program. Based on the scientific evidence, it would be more appropriate to consult a physician before parking yourself on the Laz-E-Boy for a session with the TV. Continued…

6 Ways To Fire Up Your Metabolism

It can be discouraging when our results don’t seem to match the efforts we’re putting in. But instead of giving up on our fitness program, or worse, diving into the Twinkies (trust me, you’ll regret it!), try making just a few, easy changes to your diet and lifestyle that will fire up your metabolism. Sometimes the smallest things—like getting more protein in the morning or enough rest at night—can lead to the biggest weight loss surprises. Continued…