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I was so excited this year about new years resolutions that I decided to create minor ones to support my big ones for the year for February.

Of course I am a little off pace after January for my new years resolutions but I can almost expect this. I always seem to aim too high and then when real life gets in the way I have to ratchet back my goals a bit. I have done this before and I will do it again and I expect it.

So I have made some nice smaller goals that are all about consistency. I have decided that there are certain things in my life that have not been gelling together and nothing will fix this faster then consistent effort and small results.

My fitness took a bit of a fall in January when I hurt my back and now my back is better so I am again looking at cardio every day and then taking out cardio days for weight days as I go through February.

Last week I was again reading the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and it reminded me of a couple of things that I am doing terribly wrong in my life. First email, I check email constantly during the day so now I have decided as a way to save time I will only be checking mail a few times, maybe 3 or 4 times a day and either dealing with or deleting what I do not need. My email mailboxes are sitting at 3000 or 4000 messages across a few accounts and most of it is just junk and spam. I am not much better with reading RSS feeds and right now I follow about 300 different blogs, I will be cutting back on that too.

Another thing that I am looking at now is that I have made really great changes with my eating and not snacking at night. I am proud of these changes but now I am looking back on my new years resolutions and realize that the next step is cutting back on my pop and chocolate. This change in diet will not be as big as the other changes that I have made but I always like to make sure that I am moving in a more healthy lifestyle and going in the right direction at all times is more important then making those big changes that we always seem to strive for.

So now that I have shared all of that what are you going to be doing? As we all know most new years resolutions have failed already for most so it is my guess that now that we are into February you can make some better decisions and easier to attain goals that are all about you and not what you want to tell everyone else.

Share them or keep them private, but I really do believe that this is the best time to make better  goals and resolutions that will stick.

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.

Being January 1st I thoughtg that it would be very important to remind people about how to join a gym. I was listening to some sports radio guy on ESPN this morning and he was telling people:

“If you are thinking about getting in shape, don’t. Don’t go and join a gym or get in shape it’s too much trouble. One of your friends probably convinced you it was a good iea and you don’t need to do that anyway. Keep doing what you are doing”

I was a little offended by the guy until he continued:

“My workouts that take 50 minutes always take 2 hours in January when so many people join a gym. Don’t bother getting in shpae, who wants to feel better about themselves, who wnat to get complements abouot how great they look, who want to look years younger, no just stay at home in front of the TV and eat fried food, someone has to to keep the economy going buying too much bad food.”

What a great rant. Anyway, last year I wrote a series of articles aboout what to look at when you are joining a gym. Here are the links to the articles:

Joining a Health Club - The how and why of joining a gym

Joining a Health Club - The Tour - The guys at the gym put on a little dog and pony whow and it is almost worthless unless you know your priorities and ask the right questions

Choosing a health Club - Distance from Home - Where whould your gym be? Close to home? Close to work?

Health Club Staff - How to know what to look for in the staff at the gym itself. Your membership si paying for the staff you should get your moneys worth.

If you are going out in the next couple of days to join a gym I think that it will really help you make a better decision to read these articles.

Good luck with the gym shopping.

I have been planning and putting this offer together for a while now and it is nice to finally unveil it on the blog. As I hope you have seen I have done reviews of the three big internet weight loss and fitness programs. The programs are:

Fat Loss for Idiots - This is a customized online diet program that comes with a handbook to help you through your diet to lose weight.

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle - This is a mammoth 350+ page book written by a natural bodybuilding champ that shows you how any normal overweight person can lose fat and gain muscle through a special diet and good exercise.

Turbulence Training Program - A three day a week weight training program that will help you lose fat while gaining muscle. Not the standard way that most people workout but in fact a new program that is done in just 45 minutes 3 times per week.

The above links are direct to the sales pages of the programs but if you want to see my reviews you can just click on the links on the right side of this page. Each of the programs are only $39 so you can choose any of them and know that you won’t get soaked for a bunch of money, they are all really cheap. Read the rest of this entry »