The average U.S. family and their employers paid an extra $1,017 in health care premiums last year to compensate for the uninsured, according to a study to be released Thursday by an advocacy group for health care consumers.

Families USA, which supports expanded health care coverage, found that about 37% of health care costs for people without insurance — or a total of $42.7 billion — went unpaid last year. That cost eventually was shifted to the insured through higher premiums, according to the group.

“I don’t think anybody has any idea about how much they are paying because of the need to cover the health care costs of the uninsured,” said Ron Pollack, the group’s executive director. “This is a hidden tax on all insurance premiums, whether it is paid by business for their work or by families when they purchase their own coverage.” Read the rest of this entry »

Strip That Fat is a full weight loss system that includes a very elaborate and fun to read book, and a personalized diet generator. If you purchase the Platinum package you will get a second diet book, a calorie worksheet, and a 30 healthy meal plan book.

This program is a simple but very effective weight loss system that gives you many foods to eat as well as a great diet generator that will give you a wide variety of foods that you like and also keep the diet interesting so that you do not get bored eating.

Strip that Fat Information

Strip that Fat is a two part system.

First there is an ebook that will teach you what you are eating right and wrong and tell you what is really important in losing weight.

Secondly there is a Strip that Fat diet generator that will give you many foods that you can eat and build a diet for two weeks for you.

The Strip the Fat system is based on the idea of having 5 small meals a day. Five meals a day will keep your meals small but stop you from getting hungry and will at the same time raise your metabolism. Raising your metabolism is the key to weight loss as most people that can not lose weight simply have a very slow metabolism. This can be fixed.

One drawback in my book is the fact that Strip the fat does not even touch on exercise. I am a firm beleiver in the fact that exercise is one of the really important keys to losing weight.

I am so confident that exercise is important in losing weight that I will send you some e-books that I have about exercise and what kinds aid weight loss. Simply click this link to order and then email me at bill@fitnesstipsforlife.com and I will send you the ebooks.

Strip that Fat Reviews

I have tried the Strip That Fat system and continue to do so – I’ve lost 8 pounds already in a few weeks and it is pretty easy – it definitely does work – but only if you are totally committed to changing the way you look.

You see a lot of fad diets out there focus on a quick fix – that is not the way to lose weight permanently. With Strip That Fat your focus will be on long term, healthy weight loss rather than unhealthy short term “miracle” weight loss
-Yahoo Answers

“Strip That Fat works for busy people because it’s so simple and due to the fact that it’s based on nutrition mostly and not on exercising. While working out is important, it is also time consuming, so Strip That Fat is more time efficient which suits a lot of people perfectly.
-EzineArticles reviewer

Strip that Fat Price

Strip that fat costs $47 for the guide and diet generator. There is an enhanced program for $57 for the platinum program. Click here to learn more about the difference in the two packages.

Strip that Fat Guarantee

There is a full 60 day, no questions asked guarantee on Strip the Fat. Before you give it up though I urge you to see just how good this is and try the diet for at least four weeks to see how well it works for you.

Many people want to know how long to workout for. I tend to find that most people spend to much time in the gym and if you could decide to have your workouts only last 45 minutes you would keep your motivation and get in better shape because you will be much more consistent than you could ever be with two hour workouts.

So what can you get done in 45 minutes? Well 45 minutes is all that it takes me to go through my circuit training workout. You can get 3 sets for every muscle group using basic, compund exercises as long as you do circuit training and minimize your rest between sets.

If you are doing cardio 20 to 30 minutes will seem like a long time when you get started but after a minth or so of cardio you can easily do cardio for an hour. Instead of doing an hour of cardio you would do much better to pick up the intensity and only do 30 minutes of cardio per session.

If this one 45 minute workout is not enough of course some people sill workout twice in a day, one weight or cardio in the morning and another cardio or weights in the exening. This would definitly be considered very advance workouts to be sure and not anything you would want to worry about until you are some kind of competitive athlete.

It seems like everytime I write about a food problem it seems to involve Salmonella. Well this week we see a lot about Peanut Butter. This is a fast moving salmonella scare so I suggest that you watch the news and see whether your Peanut Butter is poisonous or not.

U.S. health authorities urged consumers Saturday to avoid eating peanut butter and products that contain it until they can determine the scope of an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning that may have contributed to six deaths.

“We urge consumers to postpone eating any products that may contain peanut butter until additional information becomes available,” Dr. Stephen Sundlof of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety said in a teleconference with reporters.

The Bowflex Blaze Home Gym is a very popular piece of home workout equipment. Bowflex as you probably know uses long bending rods instead of weights to add resistance to exercise and the Blaze is a great example of this equipment

In the beginning of using the Bowflex Blaze Home Gym it would be a good idea to concentrate on doing just a few compound exercises for three sets each and then after a few weeks start to mix it up. One of the things that happens with weight workouts is that your body becomes accustomed to exercises that you are doing and strength gains stop happening so you regularly need to change exercises to keep a certain amount of muscle confusion.

As for number of sets and reps it is a good idea to do 3 sets of each exercise with 10 reps per set. I usually do the first set with a light weight and slowly through the entire range of motion of the exercise get the muscle warmed up and then do two heavier sets. You may want to take it kind of easy for the first couple of weeks though as you may be tired after your workout but the next day and two days later your muscles will get really sore if you push yourself too hard.

The goal of doing the compound exercises on the Bowflex Blaze is that you will gain muscle mass and this will also lead to a faster metabolism when you are gaining muscle your metabolism will need to be higher for both maintaining the muscle and the healing of the muscle and this happens between workouts. With cardio you obviously raise your metabolism during the time that you are exercising and then if you have worked out hard enough for more than 20 minutes you will get an additional raise in your metabolism for about 12 hours.

Try doing this 3 times a week on non consecutive days. So say Monday Wednesday Friday and initially without the curls. I do this kind of workout as a circuit doing every exercise once and then repeating. You may not need as much time between each exercise as you are hitting different muscle groups on each set so your muscles will not tire as quickly. It should only take about 45 minutes to get through each workout after you get the swing of it.

So as for the exercises that you will want to do, there are 65 total exercises for the Bowflex Blaze it looks like and you really want to only be doing 6 or so at a time.

The page numbers listed below are the pages that the exercises appear on in the Bowflex Blaze manual.

Bench Press – This works the Chest and Shoulders and also the Triceps as a secondary muscle (p18)

Wide Grip Lat Pulldowns – This works the Lats (upper back) as well as the Shoulders and Biceps (top p30)

Shoulder Press – This works the shoulder very hard and the triceps as well (top p23)

Leg Extensions – This works the Quadriceps which are the biggest muscles of your body as well as the Calves (p45)

Leg Curls – This works the hamstrings (not in the book but just lie on your stomach and pull the weights up. See link) http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Hamstrings/LVLyingLegCurl.html

Crunches – For the Abs and to add to core stability. To start with you do not need to use any weight. (top p34)

Good Mornings – This is not really part of the Bowflex but it is a great exercise to strengthen your lower back which adds a lot of stability to your core. Seems easy but if you do to many reps or work to hard with it your lower back muscles can get really sore the next day. There is no need to do this with weights for a while and I do them with my hands on my head to add to upper body weight in the exercise. http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Hamstrings/BBGoodMorning.html

Bicep Curls (bottom p37) and Tricep Curls (top p34) – The Biceps and Triceps are kind of show muscles and you are working them anyway using the compound exercises so it although not needed you may want to add these exercises after you are more comfortable with your workouts after a couple of weeks or so.

Try out the Bowflex Blaze. This is one of the great pieces of workout equipment on the market today and with it you can quickly increase your strength and improve your fitness.

Happy New Year!

Over the years I have had some really good years and some really bad years as far as making change on new years day is concerned. I know that back in my drinking smoking partying days I would not commot and do the work for anything and sadly I now call those my lost years. Not anymore. Every year I move forward and I have accepted the fact that every year parts of my life chance a lot and always for the better.

So what makes the biggest difference in my eyes? Making the commitment with action.

The trouble with thinking of a new years resolution and trying to get it done is that you will forget it easily when other things in life distract you, so you take the action of writing it down, and this gives you a better chance.

To further improve your chances of meeting your new years resolutions, today you must do things that will move you towards them, ACT!, get moving now!

If you want to lose weight (very common today of course) then start eating right this morning and get some exercise this morning as well. I read a book once where the lady that wrote it (Your Best Year Yet!)
said that in a drunken bit of bravado she announced that she was going to run the London Marathon and the next day, hungover she realized she would have to give it a shot and she started running that day….that is what it takes.

So to help you today to get started I am going to pull a few posts from the archives that will hopefully give you some ammunition to get started today. You can always change your life for the better so why not start that process today?

One question that I get emailed about more than almost anything else lately is “How can I get on the Biggest Loser?”

I know that many people are interested in the show, after 7 or 8 seasons now people have seen so many success stories on the Biggest Loser that they can’t help but think that there is no way that they can lose the weight they want to lose without getting on the biggest loser.

I for one don’t beleive that at all, no matter if you want to lose 20 in one month or lose 100 pounds in a year there are always ways to lose the weight without going on a TV show. Really! Believe it.

How to get on the Biggest Loser

Ok, now after that if you really want to know how to get on the Biggest Loser I have a plan that won’t guarantee anything but I think will improve your chances to get on the Biggest Loser. Read the rest of this entry »

What are the foods to gain muscle? I wrote a few posts last week that were about how to gain muacle and how to do weight workouts to gain muscle. One of the things that I kind of glossed over were the foods that you need to eat to gain muscle. Lots of this may just be a recap for lots of people but it is important to know what foods help you gain muscle and what your diet should look like.

Protein to gain muscle

The building block of all muscles is a combination of amino acids (the building blocks of protein) and water. If you look at that as part of your diet then you need to eat lots of protein. Here I want to stress lean protein, you know fish, chicken, lean beef, not Kentucky Fried Chicken or deep fried fish. Read the rest of this entry »

As we all know a faster metabolism will help you lose weight. One of the risks that people that are overweight hve is an increased risk of getting diabetes.

A new study done by a pharmaceutical company seems to show that taking a certain drug for raising metabolism also reduces the risk of diabetes.

Investigational drugs that mimic the metabolic effects of calorie restriction have shown favorable results in animal models, according to researchers here and in France.
Action Points Read the rest of this entry »

There are several reasons that people do not lift weights but several more reasons why it is important to add weightlifting to your health and fitness regimen.

This week I am hoping to write a few articles that will help you understand what it takes to lift weights as well as the how and why weightlifting is important, but today lets just start with the basics.

First of all did you know that fewer that 10% of the population actually does any weightlifting in their pursuit of fitness? I know that the number is low for a few reasons. Read the rest of this entry »