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It is said that hosting the Olympic games is an opportunity to showcase your country and this will lead to increased tourism over the coming years. Well China seems to have had another side effect to hosting the Olympics and that is getting more people interested in exercise and fitness.

The end of the Olympic Games has not been the end of exercise for Beijing, for people’s enthusiasm for keeping fit has been encouraged.

In a country where going to gyms was not as common, even in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, as in developed countries the immediate aftermath of the Games has seen greater interest in exercise.

“I liked watching the basketball games most. I myself wanted to play when I saw the players fight hard on the field, so I came here with my friends,” the 19-year-old Liu Bing said at an outside basketball field in downtown Beijing. Read the rest of this entry »

There is not much more humbling experience for you physically than moving.

When you exercise whether it is running or weights or going for a bike ride or swimming you always usually know how tired you will be after an hour or two or exercise. Moving is a bit different and the guys that are movers are different still.

Today we had movers in that helped us to move our furniture in a move that seems to have been taking far too long already. Two skinny guys show up in a big truck and after a bit of conversation they tell me that I can help them move. I haul furniture with one guy while the other guys packs everything up correctly in the truck.

This is when I broke my first sweat of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

I was reading a post at Tom Venutos blog which was a question from a guy in Scotland that says that all of his friends drink, and everyone in Scotland drinks a lot of alcohol and how can he change and entire country so that he can live a healthier lifestyle. Of course everyone just says “change your friends” but as much as this seems like the easy answer it is not an easy thing to do. Tom says to change yourself and let those changes influence your actions. Here is a quote.

Once you accept a new lifestyle to the point that it becomes your identity, you can’t go back. You can’t say to yourself “I am a bodybuilder” and mean it, right down to the deepest subconscious level, and then go out drinking every weekend - it is simply not congruent, and your nervous system will short circuit behaviors that might sabotage you as a bodybuilder.

And the same works in reverse. If your identity is, “I am a drinker,” you cannot fight the automatic behaviors that are generated as a result, because it’s subconscious mind you are working against and thats a fight you always lose in the long term.

Read the rest of this entry »

While in Hawaii I finally had a chance to see the type of marketing that Glaxo Smith Kline are doing for the Alli weight loss pills. And wow I bet they are selling well.

First of all we all know that there are some side effects to Alli. The pills make you leach a bit of oil from your bum when you are taking them, other then that the Alli diet pills are basically a fat blocker that lets you know that you have eaten too much fat and stops your body from storing it.

Back to the marketing. Part of the problem that diet pills have had over the last few years is that they are very flash in the pan and no one trusts them, usually from good reason. I am not sure how many different diet pills there have been between Phen-fen to Hoodia and in between but there have been lots. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my goals this year is to pull some of the posts off of this blog and create blogs that are more tightly focussed. Don’t worry about the posting frequency or the content, I just want to make sure that this blog concentrates on diet, exercise and fitness. Over the last year or so I have been diving a little bit away from this focus and giving you posts about a few other topics.

Today I want to announce that I have moved off all of the acne and skin care posts over to a new blog. That blog is Acne Info Today. Acne info today will be focussed exclusively on skin care.

So as I start looking through the 600 or so posts on this blog what would you like to see? I have been thinking of doing more muscle building but of course the motivation for diet and exercise are important as we get near the end of January and the quick death of the new years resolutions. Do you want more diet articles? More supplements? I started new categories for both supplements and for nutrition so that I could start getting a bit more concentration on those two important topics.

More to come.

I was just writing a post of new years resolutions and realized that I had not taken a hard enough look at last year and what it brought me as well as my failures. I will list the downsides of last year first just to get them out of the way.

Over 2007 my fitness activity actually went down. The exercise that I have always enjoyed on my bike dropped as the year went on because I moved to a house that was a lot closer to work so my ride is shorter. One thing that has helped in this regard is that I have been riding a lot more days, still not enough in my opinion though to make up for the shorter ride. Another fitness issue has been my lack of weight training. This last year I was very on again off again about it and have not joined a gym because the distance is far to great for me to really make it worth my while. Lastly my eating although good also comprises some bad foods and that is one thing I will be working on this year.

I hate that part. This part is much better, my victories for 2007. In this last year I was really happy in my focus on fitness increasing, I at a lot better, I focussed on great thoughts instead of destructive ones and I strengthened my core (back and abs) more os I feel really good about myself. I got myself a new bike and although it was still under $250 it is much better than my sub $100 bike I rode for three years. I was able this year to spend more time with my family taking them to California and Disneyland in the Summer although I have to stil improve my work-family focus over the next year.

As far as this blog goes I am most excited with the fact that I moved from and old family subdomain to a whole new architecture (Wordpress) and domain of www.fitnesstipsforlife.com. Also since about the beginning of October I have posted everyday which for me proves to myself that I can be very consistent although I always think of myself as not.

Overall I am happy with how 2007 worked out. My family and work life are better this Jan 2nd than last and I think that I am more excited about this upcoming year than I have been in several years, this is a sign that I have forward running momentum I think.

Only one more post remains for this whole new years resolution stuff and I am ready for the new year anyway.

Kids often eat badly. I have gotten a lot of emails from families that say that the biggest challenge that they have with their kids is eating well. I am very fortunate in some ways that my kids do eat a lot of healthy food and don’t get the joke about kids not liking brocolli. But at the same time my son is horrible for never wanting to eat dinner and then snacking in the evening. Jaiden may be eating grapes and apples (cut up of course, dad has to do some work) in bed but the fact that my son is often missing out on all the goodness of a proper dinner does bother me some.

So as a fitness guy and as a father interested in getting the kids to eat everything and not just some things I thought that I would research around and see what i could find out about getting kids to eat better and here are a bunch of ideas

Your responsibility in your childrens eating

Changing the family’s diet begins with two realizations. The first is that teaching your children about good nutrition is as important as making sure they learn good manners, get good grades in school, get to bed on time, etc. Poorly fed children are sick more often, have increased risk of developing degenerative diseases at earlier ages, and tend to have weight problems sooner or later. Many children find it difficult to concentrate and learn as a result of poor nutrient status, too. I don’t know a responsible parent that wants any of these things to happen, but the reality is that ignoring the importance of good nutrition will almost guarantee that one of these outcomes will occur sooner or later. Read the rest of this entry »

As you can imagine top athletes are very particular with what they eat and when. I was over at a running blog today when I ran across the following article about Carb cycling.

Crib Sheet on Carbohydrate Cycling at Her Active Life

The basic idea behind carb cycling is that you eat every day based on the next day workouts. Some top athletes will build their eating around bog events as well as seasonal patterns of training and working out output.

Even if you are not really at the level of fitness and athleticism to take advantage of a concept like carb cycling this is a nice peek at what the real elite athletes think about when it comes to diet.

I think I may have covered this before but I am struggling with my eating this week as I am oin a short business trip.

Yesterday I started my eating easily enough and left town before lunch to do some computer work in Winnipeg. I didn’t eat again until almost 9:30 at night and even then it was chicken strips at the hotel lounge (high protein, low carbs, still does not make up for the grease).

Today I tried to get back on track but with an empty backpack I had a breakfast bagel at the Winnipeg airport , a sandwich at lunch and Tim Hortons chili and a bun for dinner in London Ontario, but, missing were all of the snacks that keep my metabolism up, at least I got some exercise today.

Getting out of your schedule is always difficult as you may be able to eat, you may be able to exercise but getting that rhythm thrown off will usually force you to sacrifice doing what you should be.

Don’t be like me, plan your days even when out of town. I may not be able to bring liquids on the plane because of airport security but I could have easily brought food and made a plan for what I would buy when. Also it is pretty easy to buy lots of water at your destination (like I did in Disneyland a couple weeks back) and protein bars do not take much room and are a great way to get between meal snacks in.