More about Body For Life

Exercise
For most of the 12 weeks I did ~45 min of weight training MWF, ~30 minutes of running TuThSa and took my free day on Sunday. During the last ten days I did both (running and weightlifting) with only one day off.

Motivation
If you decide to do Body For Life, don’t skip the goal setting and motivational sections. The motivational part helped keep me going, so did entering the competiton and having a friend do the program with me. My goal was to lose 20lbs of fat and gain 10lbs muscle in 12 weeks.

Diet
I ate 6 small meals and drank about 90oz of water per day. Body for Life defines a meal as a portion (fist size) of carbohydrate and a portion (palm sized) of protein and as many vegetables as you want. There is a list of approved food, but I won’t go into that here. I tried to get at least 20g of protein in each meal … which sounds like a lot. In fact, my friend and I were concerned about the health risks of eating too much protein in the beginning. But if you crunch the numbers, the amount I was eating minus the recommended daily allowance times the amount of time I was doing the program it works out to 11.85 lbs of protein over 12 weeks. And since my body’s absorption rate is not 100% and I was planning on gaining 10lbs of muscle, that didn’t seem to me like too much.
((20g x 6meals) -56g) x 7days x 12weeks x 0.0022046lbs/g = 11.85lbs

Vitamins and Suppliments
Myoplex is the Body for Life recommended suppliment. I never used it, but I have heard good things about it. I just couldn’t afford it (then or now). So I took standard over-the-counter multivitamin. Occasionally I would chew them to try and get more out of them (yuck). I also used a standard protein powder, usually once a day - nothing expensive or special. I just found if I worked out a lot and was not getting enough protein I would end up feeling really tired during the day. Make sure, if you use a protein suppliment, that it is not loaded with cholesterol because some of the cheap ones are! I also found several brands of power bars (Zone Perfect, Balance, etc) that I liked. So I’d buy them at Costco or the dollar store and ate several them times a week.

Free day
On my free day (Sunday) I didn’t exercise, but still ate according to the program. Instead, I gave myself two “free meals” at some point in the week. That meant that two times during the week I could eat one thing that I wanted to eat. It worked out well for me that way.

Innovations?
During my program I read numerous articles in the news about health and fitness. All of them claimed to have “new information”. But everything in them was already in the Body for Life program. It is the most complete fitness programs I have ever researched.

For the ladies
My friend who did Body for Life with me is a woman. One of the biggest difficulties / fears for her was she thought she was going to look like a woman bodybuilder. From what I have seen it takes a whole lot beyond the standard Body for Life program to start looking like a female American Gladiator! So do the weight training at 100% and don’t worry about looking manish.

Results
In 12 weeks I lost 25lbs of fat and gained 10lbs. Mission accomplished!

And now …
There are a lot of programs out there. Body for Life is only a starting point. Since the finishing the program I have modified it slightly and added some of the exercises from other programs - most notably Crossfit. (Warning: Many of the Crossfit exercises involve complex motions and are significantly dangerous for the inexperienced. Personally I would recommend incorporating them only after you have a fair amount of weight training experience and at least a moderate level of cardiovascular fitness.)

Relative Chart

USDA Labeling
List of okays and nokays
USDA Organic Site
Is Organic Better for You?

Support Sites:
Autism Speaks
Autism society of America
Autism Research Institute

Information:
Autism Overview
Autism: Treatment, Prognosis
Autism Fact Sheet

People and Stories:
Scientists Reconsider
A Rare Map Of Autism’s World
Stanley Greenspan’s website

Other:
Is the Autism Epidemic a Myth?
Vaccines & Autism: Myths and Misconceptions

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Not really secret but …
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The SPAM site.

Mystery of the dying bees
What’s Killing The Honeybees?

Links

WebMD

The Doctor’s Book of Home Remedies -
Online free at MotherNature.com
Buy the print version online

Q. Is my stimulus payment taxable?
A. No. You will not owe tax on your payment when you file your 2008 federal income tax return. But you should keep a copy of the IRS letter you receive later this year listing the amount of your payment.

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=182003,00.html

UV things you could use

After many requests, we decided to put up some links for the original SteriPEN, adventure or travel versions.

Sonicare now makes a toothbrush that cleans itself with UV and a cleaner for brushs.

They even make a household cleaning items that uses UV like a vacuum, a sweeper, and a germ wand.

The 1st Video
The 2nd Video
The Instructors
The Statistics

Super awesome viewer Tina has pointed to a snopes article that debunks the 8 glasses a day idea. WebMD agrees with her, but then says while there is no official rule it should be around 11 to 15+ cups a day. 20% of that comes from food (ie Fruit) and 80% from liquid.

CNN’s article recommends around 3.0 liters (13 cups) for men and 2.2 liters (9 cups) for women.

The idea of 75% of us being dehydrated could be false. But hey, that’s what the Terms of Use video is for.

Snopes article
WebMD: The Wonders of Water
CNN: How much should you drink every day?
Is Water Really Important?

… but I think I have see this trailer somewhere before!

How Stuff (Quicksand) Works

Good thing super viewer Halfabee knows more than we do:

Just wathced your show on Spotting. I’m a recreational figure skater and must say that some corrections are in order.

Dancers spot but figure skaters do not. Watch a figure skating competition on TV and you definitely won’t see any skaters’ heads whipping back and forth while they spin. Here’s more of what YOU ought to know (Sorry… I’m sure you’ve never heard THAT before.)

Figure skaters spin too fast to spot. That’s just the facts of spinning around on a thin piece of metal while standing on a sheet of ice.

In addition, it’s just not possible to spot in certain spinning positions, such as a layback (http://i.a.cnn.net/si/2006/olympics/2006/writers/02/09/figure.skating/T1Cohen.jpg) , a camel spin (http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00373/camel%20spin.JPG), or, even more convincingly, a Biellmann spin (http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00373/biellman%20spin.JPG).

The physics of spinning are pretty simple. Anyone who’s ever played with an office chair knows that if you start spinning with your arms stretched out and then pull them, you start spinning faster. Figure skaters often start spinning with their arms spread out and pull them in to spin faster.

Imagine that you have a top. OK, of course you have a top…. I mean, imagine you one of those toys that spins. You know what I mean. You spin one of those suckers and it just keeps going. That’s because it’s weight is evenly distributed around a center axis of rotation. If you had a “head” on top of the top that kept spotting (turning back and forth), the top wouldn’t spin nearly as well. The same applies to figure skating spins. Figure skaters turn their heads INTO the spin. That helps to keep everything distributed more evenly over that center axis, which helps them spin longer.

Go get some ballet and some figure skating videos and watch them in slow-motion. (Ha! I’m SO gonna make you watch figure skating. =P)

So, why don’t figure skaters lose their lunch? The answer is boring. You just get used to the sensation of spinning. Also, don’t eat a full meal right before you get on the ice (who eats a full meal right before they work out?) Nobody wants to clean up frozen vomit.

To North Shore Explorers for the underwater photos and footage.

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