Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite eating days of the year. Thanksgiving dinner is now only a couple of days away in Canada and the Turkeys and Hams have already been bought and are waiting to be eaten. This thanksgiving maybe you can be more careful about your eating and well being and I hope that looking at these tip will keep you feeling better the day after as you get to go on your post Thanksgiving day shopping spree.

1. Decide what you are going to eat each day in the morning before you start. Think about 3 meals and 3 snacks. No one says you can’t have a snack, then dinner a while later and then desert a while after that.

2. Get some exercise right after you get out of bed. This will help you focus on your fitness and make you aware of how your body feels that day.
Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: angel food cake, Canada, christmas, Cool Whip, drink water, energy outlet, food, heavy food, leftovers, thanksgiving, thanksgiving day, thanksgiving dinner, Turkey, turkey dinner, United States

I ran across an article on the CNN Money site this morning about health clinics at Wal Mart. Here in Canada we have a nationalized health care system that does not allow any kind of a third party in the market instead of using doctors offices but now more and more doctors are opeing up storefronts that allow people to go to the clinic and it just works as a doctors office that allows walk in patients.

This has become crucial to delivering health care in Alberta anyway, as the emergency rooms in hospitals have not been able to keep up and many people are forced to wait 10 hours or more just to get treated.

I have not had much opportunity to go to the hospital emergency room as we usually take our kids to one of these clinics or else our family doctor. Anyway her are some of the points that are being made in the CNN article.

Americans, frustrated by endless waits at the doctor’s office, are sidestepping their family physician and taking their rashes, strep throat and pink eye to stores such as Wal-Mart and Walgreens instead.

As this trend gains more traction, experts say it could define the market for primary care. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Alberta, Canada, chairwoman, CNN, Columbia, Columbia University's School of Public Health, family physician, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Jonathan Weiner, professor of health policy, professor of health policy and management, retail clinics, Sherry Glied, United States, Wal-Mart

There is a war a brewin over milk in all of it’s forms. Last night I was at my local WalMart Supercenter and went to grab a jug of milk when a new kind of milk caught my eye. Microfiltered milk? Well I had to see what this new healthy version of milk is.

Over the last few years my milk consumption has really gone down but the kids still drink milk and I like to have some chocolate milk occasionally so I though I would see what the latest on milk is.

Microfiltered Milk

Microfiltered milk undergoes a unique microfiltering process that actually removes more bacteria than pasteurization. Therefore, this milk has a longer shelf life.

Pasteurization is a process that kills harmful bacteria that can make people sick. Some of these bacteria are Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria and the bacteria that can cause tuberculosis. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Canada, employing microfiltration technology, fluid milk processing, microfiltration technology, milk processors, milk products, natural product, Ontario, reducing illness, tuberculosis

A bit of a generic title but i grew up in BC and I can tell you that years ago there were many people in school who along with me ate a ton of junk food and pop for lunch and snacks. Well it seems that British Columbia has banned junk food in schools which is a really great start to showing young people that they need to find an alternative. The touble is that whenever there is a heavy handed method of banning something everyone wil;l want to find a way around it.

Chocolate bars, salt and vinegar chips and ice cold root beers have been expelled from B.C. schools as the government starts the new school year on a health kick.

Education Minister Shirley Bond says a healthy body really does promote a healthy mind, and B.C. schools will be the healthiest in the country.

Junk food has been banned from all public schools and students from kindergarten through to Grade 12 will be required to complete 30 minutes of physical activity a day, or the equivalent of 150 minutes of exercise a week, she said. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: B.C. Teachers' Federation, banned junk food, British Columbia, Canada, chocolate bars, Education Minister, food, food guidelines, health program, hockey, Irene Lanzinger, junk food, junk food ban, minister, Norm Macdonald, president, province-wide school junk food ban, Shirley Bond, sports teams, the Canada Food Guide, USD, Vancouver, vinegar chips

As much as I may be a health and fitness blogger I beleive I may have a sometimes bad diet, especially if you ask my wife.

Anyway this week here in canada we have been hit with a food recall as Maple Leaf foods (a giant food distributor here in Canada) has shipped a bunch of bad meat that is killing people. although we do not eat any Maple Leaf meat in our house my wife is still looking at the holes in our diet and we are hoping to start improving the bad parts of our diet.

First thing my wife wants to get rid of is Deli meat. We but that bulk deli meat that they sell at a Safeway or other grocery store, the kind that you ask the person behind the counter for. This kind of deli meat is full of preservatives to try and make it last longer and even so it is also full of nitrates and other yucky stuff for you. Instead we are thinking of buying a big ham and roast and then cut it thin, save it in the freezer then fridge so that it is accessable for lunches.

I will try posting more about the changes and things that go on in our house for eating. This is important stuff as the kids get back to school over the next week for most families and taking in lunches is so much more important.

Tags: Canada, deli meat, food recall, giant food distributor, maple leaf foods, preservatives, Safeway

Here are a couple of examples to show what can be achieved with simple changes in diet and exercise. Although generalizations on fitness improvement in fitness and fat loss are fairly unreliable, specific examples illustrate what certain individuals have accomplished.

Paul is a thirty-five-year-old self-employed certified public accountant. He has a wife and three preschool children. He works between ten and twelve hours a day five to six days a week.

In an effort to get started in business he has been working long hours for almost ten years. Now he is quite successful. When he graduated from college he was in excellent physical condition, having competed successfully in intramural sports. As the years went by he discovered that he was too tired at the end of the day to do anything other than collapse into an easy chair when he arrived home. Having once experienced fitness he decided to get back into shape. Usually this would be insufficient motivation for success, but in Paul’s case it worked. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: attorney, Canada, certified public accountant, easy chair, fatigue, fitness improvement, intramural sports, manager of a nationwide automobile firm, officer, sales manager, simple changes, squash

I received and email yesterday from Andrea. Andrea was on the X-Weighted TV show and it is going to me on TV this Wednesday night for those of us here in Canada. I thought that the email was insightful and asked for if I could post it here, Andrea agreed:

I was reading some of your articles on X-weighted and just wanted to give you a heads up that on the Wednesday July 9th episode, Binge Buddies, you will see my  formerly flabby butt get kicked by Paul Plakas. Paul was absolutely the best thing to ever happen  to me and he is such a great guy.  Carrie and I(my neighbour, and duo on the show) stayed with Paul for a weekend so that we could attend the launch party for the show and he was so good to us!

If you just give yourself over to him, he will brutally tell you what  you have so needed to hear, but, unlike most other’s he takes you by the hand, completely  invests in you and shows you the way.  In general the people who hate Paul are not ready for the  changes they claim to want to make sooo bad.  Carrie and I agreed that if we got this  opportunity that we would NOT waste a minute, we would take full advantage of all the opportunities we  were given and make Paul proud.  So if you want to watch a great episode, tune in on Weds. and  let me know what you think!!!

In fact I think that it is a great opportunity for someone to get on a TV show and have that pressure of losing weight. Whether the show is Last 10 Pounds Bootcamp, Biggest Loser, or X-Weighted there is an extra sense of pressure to do well and to not give up. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Canada, paul plakas

I know most people outside of Canada will not really care about how fat or not different areas of Canada are but there is a new overweightness article that I found on MSN. In the morning I boot up the laptop and sign into MSN Messenger and it pops up a little box with some news stories. One of the stories today was about what area and cities of Canada have the most overweight and obese people. Here is a quote:

Ten years ago, smoking was the national epidemic that had the country talking. Across Canada, anti-smoking campaigns were being implemented. The bar and restaurant industry began to prohibit smoking indoors, and cigarette companies were dropped from sporting events as lead sponsors.

Fast forward to 2008, there is a new national concern, – a more silent, yet equally as deadly epidemic – obesity. Although smoking remains the number one preventable cause of death among Canadians, obesity is a close second. By now, the majority of us are aware of the hazards which extra fat can cause, so why are more than half of Canadians either overweight or obese? According to Statistics Canada, a shocking 59 per cent of Canadians are currently overweight or obese – that’s almost 6 in 10 adults who carry around extra weight every day.

Although the number of Canucks who are overweight or obese is high, some communities are on the right path to a healthier lifestyle – and smaller pant size. We’ve got the lowdown on Canada’s fittest and fattest cities – how do you measure up?

The article is interesting although it does not list my chosen home of Calgary. There is also the BMI info that we are so use to seeing in one of these articles. Have I mentioned enough times how much I hate the inaccuracy of BMI calculations?

There is probably the same kind of info for US cities but I have not seen it myself. The shocking thing about this article is that the number of people in Canada looks to be well over 60% of the entire population.

Sign up for my FREE 21 day Fitness overhaul.
Change your life in only three weeks with simple steps sent every other day to your email. What will you get? More energy, better concentration, become stronger, fitter and sleep better.
Your Name:

Your E-Mail:

Tags: calgary, Canada, energy, MSN Messenger, obesity, United States

Well after all of the dragged out hype the Wii Fit has finally been released, it came out yesterday. I have not made it to a store to get it or even see the box but of all place Business Week has a review of Wii Fit. I like one of the quotes from the article:

Wii Fit’s major downside is its lack of tact. The company decided, in the name of being useful, not to pull any punches. If you’re overweight or obese, Wii Fit will tell you so. (Gamers 330 lb. and heavier need not apply, as that’s the game’s official weight limit.) But some of the game’s messaging seems overly harsh. I, for one, wasn’t too pleased when the Wii Fit told me my balance was “weak” and that in some poses it considers me a yoga “novice.” And, forums have been abuzz in recent weeks with parents concerned the game could damage their children’s self-esteem.

What is wrong with this? The self esteem of a child should not be based on weak balance or even weight issues. We see this a lot in society and it is not at all fair, the last thing I would want to see is a diet for an 8 year old kid….geez let them eat good food instead. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: athlete, Canada, food, United States, USD

I am very excited. The weather has gone good again and here I am in Calgary with temperatures around 25 Celcius today, thats in the 80s for those of you south of Canada.

This morning was my first ride in of the year in a T-shirt with no jacket on. It feels like a national holiday. I think I am going to take the long way home today and enjoy this nice day after a long cold winter.

Hopefully this weather inspires me to post a little more, my pace has slowed these last couple of weeks.

Tags: calgary, Canada, national holiday