Fact: Beachbody is the 69^th fastest growing company in the United States according to an article in Entrepreneur Magazine, March 2008.

Fact: Beachbody was started by Carl Daikeler and Jon Cogdon with $500,000 borrowed from family and private investors and is now a $250 million company that spends $90 million on marketing annually.

Fiction: Becoming an Independent Beachbody Coach is a get rich quick scheme.

Fact: With a modest investment of time, it takes about four months to start making money and then only about $100 a week to start. When you invest more time, you make substantially more money.

Fiction: Beachbody coaches are part of a pyramid scheme - a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service being delivered.

Fact: Beachbody coaches market fitness and sell products from their own websites and are rewarded for encouraging people to become members of the Team Beachbody Club, get commissions on the fitness products that they sell and can build a business team where everyone is rewarded for their efforts to promote fitness, weight management and improved quality of life. Network Marketing is a business distribution model that allows a parent multi-level marketing company to market their products directly to consumers by means of relationship referral and direct selling.

Fiction: You have to spend a lot of money to be an Independent Team Beachbody Coach.

Fact: It costs $47.99 to become an Independent Team Beachbody Coach and then $14.95 a month if you decide to continue being a coach. There is no other cost for becoming a coach and the $14.95 monthly fee pays for your own coach website and e-commerce itness product and supplement store.

Fiction: All that you have to do is sign up to be a coach and you will start making money.

Fact: Like any other business (each coach has their own coach business center) you have to work to make money. The more effort you put in, the more money that you will make. Beachbody helps you make money by providing a wealth of information and resources including live and recorded conference calls explaining the company and providing ideas on how to be successful, business building videos, product training sheets to familiarize you with all of the products, success stories, downloadable materials, access to everyone in the management of the company and most of all, your own personal coach to help you build your business.

Fact: The top coach in the company, a now retired school principal, in his first year (which is also the first year of the Beachbody network marketing business model) earned $305,938.00.

For the complete Team Beachbody Statement of Independent Coach Earnings, please click here.

Please read this post from the Team Beachbody Message Boards and apply it to your life:

“I was in the chat with Tony Horton the other day. It was very thought provoking. He shared several principles of life and working out.

The one that stuck with me most and really got me thinking was: What is my purpose for working out anyway, and my purpose for life even more importantly, because to me they should compliment one another. His philosophy is really good and may surprise you. “Looking good is not a good reason for working out,” Tony said it. If that’s your goal then when you turn 60, 70 or 80 or whenever you don’t like your looks anymore then what? It’s all temporal, and temporary. So think about you purpose. This will give you the foundation to motivate you to keep working out throughout your life.

Here’s my purpose for life and working out: To love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself (my paraphrase). So working out is done so that I can have physical strength to serve my God, my family, and my neighbors - not just half heartedly, but really truly. My purpose is to have life more abundantly. I believe that life is a gift that we need to steward not squander. I want to be my best me. Then my purpose is also going to leave a legacy for my family and those I touch, because they will live healthier, more on fire lives because of what God did through me.

SO WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?? and make it one that lasts past your lifetime people! One that makes a difference for eternity even!”

Cathy

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!

As far back as she can remember, Pam had always been the chubby girl who struggled with her weight. While she was growing up, eating food became the way she tried to cope with the pain of being abandoned by her father when she was a baby. During moments of insecurity, she reached for food to pacify her feelings. Over the years, she developed what she refers to as the fine art of masking her body fat with carefully crafted outfits. With a knack for layering, Pam would camouflage the rolls that seemed to be multiplying on her body. She tried every diet plan and exercise program out there, but nothing seemed to work. When she finally was able to maintain her weight, she started having children—the whole cycle started over again.

It wasn’t until Pam reunited with her father that she found a sense of security, and finally began trying to get control of her bad eating habits. Shortly after the birth of her first child, Pam’s father was so eager to meet his first grandson and introduce Pam to her new brother, who had been born with Down syndrome, that he flew both of them out to the Philippines for a visit. At this point in his life, Pam’s father had reached a turning point. Watching her father pour all his love and energy into his new son really helped spark the healing process for Pam. As their children grew, so did their bond, and not long afterwards, Pam’s father moved to Las Vegas to be closer to his family. Just when things seemed to be falling into place, Pam’s whole world turned upside down.

About a year ago, Pam was on the way home from work when her cell phone rang. It was her husband. Their 14-year-old son was suicidal, and she needed to get home right away. All the air had been sucked right out of her. It was all she could do to keep the car on the road. As she fought through tears and sheer panic, she received another call only a few minutes later. It was her stepmother—her father was terminally ill, and she needed to be with him in Nevada. Pam says that she’s never felt so torn in her whole life. As she struggled through the following months traveling back and forth between Nevada and California, she fell back into her old habits of using food to cope with the pain. On bad days, she would sit in front of the TV, in a fog of despair, and eat an entire family-size bag of peanut M&Ms. Two of the most important people in her life were on the brink of death, and Pam felt hopeless.

Early one morning, while waiting to catch a flight to Las Vegas to see her father, Pam saw an infomercial for Slim in 6®. At first, she was just simply too tired to change the channel, but as she watched the testimonials, something clicked inside her. She jumped on the phone and ordered the program right away. As soon as Slim in 6 arrived, Pam started Pushing Play. Although she was so out of shape that the first 25-minute DVD exhausted her, Debbie Seibers made her feel like she could do the program. She dedicated herself to the workouts, determined to reclaim some control over her life by working out no matter how down she felt. Not too long afterwards, Pam’s father passed away. When she returned home after the funeral, her son returned to school and began attending outside therapy. At this point, she realized that to “do right by” her family, she was going to need to “do right by” herself.

Since committing to a healthier lifestyle, Pam has lost 35 pounds. 2 months ago, she completed her first 5k run—something she never thought she would be able to achieve in the past. She now has bags of clothes that don’t fit anymore, but more importantly, she can smile and laugh again. The best part of Pam’s story is that her son wanted to start working out with her. Watching her son battle depression through working out with Tony Horton has truly been a godsend. Pam’s road hasn’t ended, but she knows now that no matter what life throws at her, she can handle it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.