Tag Archives: health

10 ways to challenge yourself for the New Year

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January 1st is, traditionally, a day that many people use as the motivation to make positive changes in their lives. From getting in shape to going to church more often and everything in between there are countless ways in which many people are vowing to improve themselves, starting today. If you’ve made a resolution to improve yourself but you’re not quite sure how to go about doing so, you may find value in taking on some kind of challenge to help you reach your goals. We’ve collected a list of 10 of our favorite ones for you to check out below the cut.

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User Queries : How many calories?

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Image courtesy of db*photography

Image courtesy of db*photography

I’d like to lose the 20lbs that stand between me and a size 12, or  even the 50lbs that stand between me and a size “Wow!”.  I know that to do so I need to make calories in less than calories out. But how many calories should I shoot for in general?

I’ve used a number of calculators, with so vastly different results.

Here’s two examples:

The American Cancer Society says I need 2318.

The Mayo Clinic says I need 1550.

What gives? Where can I get a reliable number?

Thanks,
Naomi

Ok.  Wow.  You guys have really decided to stop throwing softballs at us when it comes to these questions, haven’t you?  Next time why not ask us how to perform open heart surgery or something?  Sheesh.

Seriously, though – The reason this is a difficult question is because the first (and most honest) response is “it depends.”  It depends on a lot of things.  It depends on how old you are, how tall you are, how much you weigh currently, how active you are, what your sex is, and what type of calories you’re putting in to your body (a 1200 calorie a day diet consisting of nothing but Snickers bars isn’t very likely to warrant positive results).  With all of those factors in place it is no wonder that you’re having a hard time finding a solid answer to your question.

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The recession is a good thing!

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charlie_chaplinThe economic recession that has crippled the world economy for the last few years is, according to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, “likely” to be over.  We won’t know for sure until well after the fact, but the indicators are currently pointing towards a growth in our Gross Domestic Product.  Unfortunately for those of us who don’t have lots of money in the stock market, the unemployment rate is going to remain high for a long time – possibly years.  Unemployment is always a “lagging factor” during a recovery and is the last economic indicator to show improvement.  This time around they don’t think the unemployment rate is going to come back quickly at all, so those of us who are out of work or stuck in a low-paying  job and unable to find anything else are going to be mired down for a while.

I’ve  mentioned before how difficult it is to maintain a healthy diet when you are poor due to the high cost of nutritious food, so imagine my surprise when I read recently that despite the fact that things, in general, tend to suck during an economic downturn the populace on the whole tends to get healthier.

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Exercising with Aion

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Aion TreadmillA few years ago several World of Warcraft players with way too much time on their hands decided that it would be a good idea to rig their computers to a treadmill so they could virtually “run” across Azeroth.  Unfortunately the video and the page that originally linked to it have vanished into the virtual ether, but suffice it to say that the heroes of the story soon learned that they were not, in fact, nearly as fit as their digital selves.

It seems as though these days you can’t have a conversation about Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games without someone asking which one is going to be the World of Warcraft killer.  Personally?  I happen to agree with my buddy Kevin Stallard who boldly stated that there would never be a WoW killer.  Regardless of our opinion, though, people still speculate who is going to have the power to dethrone the 800 pound gorilla that Blizzard created, and many folks are wondering if the Asian inspired Aion from NCSoft has what it takes to become King of the Hill.

So what, you may be wondering, does dominance in the MMO industry have to do with a Health and Fitness blog?

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Yet another Health Insurance Reform factoid

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There are four of us on my insurance policy.  It’s a good insurance policy, by all accounts.  It’s certainly much better than not having insurance.  Most of the time, anyway.

This whole H1N1 scare, though?  If you’re following all of the CDC best practice guidelines if you think you’re exposed you should go immediately to a clinic and be tested and start on Tamiflu.

The Urgent Care clinic co-pay on our plan is $50.

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Hands-free fitness gaming with Your Shape for the Wii

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Your ShapeThere was a lot of buzz on the floor of E3 this year after Microsoft unveiled Project Natal, and rightly so.  The potential to have a game system that can track your movements so precisely that it can actually recognize who you are when you walk into the room is pretty amazing (and, admittedly, pretty creepy at the same time).  While attaching a camera to a console to use in a video game is nothing new, the level of interactivity that Project Natal is promising is going to be a huge leap forward if it ever actually makes it out of development.  Needless to say, this kind of tool could totally revolutionize the fitness gaming industry.

Ubisoft, however, isn’t waiting around for Microsoft to finish development of Project Natal.  This Christmas they are bringing the hands-free fitness gaming concept to the Nintendo Wii.

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Television really IS bad for you

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Image courtesy of Aaron Escobar

Image courtesy of Aaron Escobar

As we human beings have raced through the modern era there seems to be, in every generation, some form of popular entertainment that the previous generation looks down upon as being a symbol of the impending doom of society as a whole.  I say modern era because I have a hard time picturing such a thing happening in ancient times, but I suppose it IS possible (“I worry about the boy, Banafrit.  He spends all day messing around with those damned hieroglyphics!  When I was his age I was dragging stones to Giza.  Uphill!”).  From Rock and Roll to Mini-skirts and everything in-between there has always been some crazy thing “the kids” were in to that was simply an affront to the sensibilities of those who came before them.

The big villain on the block these days is video games, but I grew up in the 80’s during the height of the Saturday Morning Cartoon era.  Back then our parents were convinced that television was going to rot our brains, give us cancer, and turn us into pasty blobs who lived on nothing but junk food.

Turns out that, in some ways, our parents were right.

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Brain Dump

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I started writing this post a few days ago.  I figure I’ll just go ahead and append on the end of it with the understanding that, perhaps, my head space is a bit different than it was when I first began this ramble.

Not only do I feel the need to break up the utter and complete monotony of posting nothing but my workouts here, I also have a compulsion to simply talk about a few things.  Get some stuff out of my head and out there in the ether as it were.  As a result this may end up being an incoherent post at times, so I apologize in advance.

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New obesity drug nears approval

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Red Pill/Blue PillOrexigen, a San Diego based pharmaceutical company, announced on Monday that a new drug designed to help patients overcome obesity had passed three clinical trials and was now one step closer to FDA approval.

Contrave combines buproprion and naltrexone, two drugs used to combat a variety of mental afflictions such as depression and addiction, to reduce food cravings in obese patients.  Instead of attempting to create feelings of fullness the drug works to curve the desire to eat simply as a reward or to feel better.

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Washington Doctor writes a prescription for American obesity

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I'm Just A Bill - Schoolhouse RockWith all the talk coming out of Washington these days about health care, and specifically the impact that obesity has an our rising health care costs as a nation, it is not difficult to imagine a time when our elected officials may see fit to try and regulate our waist lines.  We’ve written here about several incidents where the government has seemed to do just that.  From taxing sugary soft drinks to removing a morbidly obese child from his Mothers care, several states have taken a very hands-on approach to dealing with obesity.  With those kind of precedents being set it is only a matter of time before slippery slope logic dictates we will have some kind of federal intervention into our daily caloric intake.

Contrary to popular belief, though, not everything that comes out of Washington, D.C. is going to be the equivalent of the next $400 hammer.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing that the federal government is taking a closer look at what can be done about the obesity epidemic in America, and one doctor has outlined a plan that could really make a significant difference without infringing on our personal freedoms.

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