A recent poll of gym owners and members shows an increased trend of those visiting the gym to workout in this economy. 84% of those polled said that now is the best time to invest in their health and workout.

The trends also show people are spending less on entertainment and eating out.

Many gym owners are seeing full classes and more members working out than in the past. LifeTime Fitness in particular has seen a rise of 13% in new memberships and an increase in member visits and Town Sports showed club usage up 15%.

These are great trends that we hope will continue.

If you wanted to learn more about how to workout at home, without the costs of a gym membership or expensive equipment, check out Roger’s Lightning Routines.

To your best health!

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What contributes most to metabolic syndrome?

Diet.

What you eat is the primary influence in your risk of having metabolic syndrome. Studies have shown that the most significant factor is today’s Western Diet of mainly processed foods, soda, meats, fried foods and fast foods. In fact, those eating two or more servings of meat a day (equivalent of 2 burger patties) increase their risk of metabolic syndrome by 25%.

Lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, water and natural grains in our diet contributes significantly.

The research has shown that after 9 years of following up with study participants, 40% had three or more of the risk factors for metabolic syndrome. Also, 60.5% of the study participants had metabolic syndrome when they began or developed it during the research period.

The only way to reduce or eliminate your risk of metabolic syndrome is to make simple lifestyle and eating habit changes:

• getting plenty of sunshine daily
• removing animal products from your diet
• removing processed foods from your diet
• staying active daily for at least 30-60 minutes
• maintain a diet rich in fresh, organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, especially fresh, organic leafy green vegetables, broccoli and tomatoes
• keep a positive outlook on life
• maintain an attitude of gratitude
• reduce or eliminate the effects of stress in your life

To your best health!

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The popular TV talk show host joined her personal trainer Bob Greene as they kicked off their national fitness initiative, Best Life Challenge, before an estimated crowd of 4,000 assembled at Dumont Plaza.

“We’re really happy to be here,” said Winfrey, who, immediately upon her appearance, prompted several minutes of yells and screams from the enthusiastic audience.

“I’m happy that my state of Mississippi (the comment prompted another rash of yells from the audience) is going to turn the tide with our fat behinds,” she said. “We are going to get off our fat butts and turn our lives around. We are tired of being fat. And we are tired of all the excuses we have made for being fat.”

Winfrey then made the affirmation, “No more excuses! This is your year! This is your year!” Meridian was chosen as the city for the kickoff of Oprah’s and Bob’s ‘Best Life Tour’ because of the community’s push toward weight loss and fitness through the “Just Lose It, Meridian” campaign. Winfrey’s researchers learned about the weight-loss initiative while compiling statistics on obesity for the talk show.

During the search, it was noted that Mississippi was the fattest state in the nation and Winfrey, a Mississippi native, wondered if anyone was trying to tackle this issue. The show’s researches discovered the “Just Lose It, Meridian” campaign on the Internet and contacted local officials about filming in Meridian.

“I want to give the mayor (John Robert Smith) a shout out because he tried to get 1,000 people to sign up last year to lose weight,” Winfrey said. “The mayor saw where the state was headed and said he wanted to do something to turn it around. When we saw that here is a city that has actually made the effort to say, ‘We want to turn the statistics of our state around because we want people to live longer and to be healthier in this community,’ we saw that and said, ‘Let’s go to Meridian.’”

Winfrey admitted that she, like many others, has had struggles, particularly with her weight.

“The only difference is that mine is in the public,” she said.

Winfrey said she is no longer trying to take care of her health to get into a pair of jeans or waiting on the next event in her life.

“This is about changing your life forever; this is it for me,” she said. “And I want it to be it for you – ending the struggle forever. Taking control of your life, of your health. You want to be around to see your children, and your children’s children. You want to be able to live your best life.”

Greene described the Best Life Challenge as a lifestyle, not a crash diet.

“This is about making changes that are ingrained from childhood, which is one of the toughest things to do,” Greene said.

The initiative – which is the same plan followed by Winfrey – includes Greene’s phased approach to changing eating and exercise habits. It also features daily and weekly meal plans based on the individual’s lifestyle and preferences, an extensive online Best Life Approved Recipe Database, an online video library featuring a suite of “how-to” exercise demonstrations, as well as related diet and nutrition clips and weekly newsletters and tips from Greene.

The Best Life Challenge Tour will continue in upcoming weeks in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York and other locales.

“We’re going to hit the whole country – and it started here in Meridian,” Greene said.

“One in three people in Mississippi is fat,” Winfrey said. “But when the nation sees what Meridian can do, it will be a shining example for other people all over the world.”

Winfrey said she does not know if she and Greene will return to Meridian to see the results of those who have signed the contract. However, they will monitor them and have regular contact with them.

Source: MeridianStar

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I recently gave a workshop in Ontario. Since we didn’t have a yoga teacher, I was asked to show some exercises in the morning. I’m not an expert in Yoga but one thing I have practiced for years was the FIVE TIBETAN RITES, a simple series of exercise designed to increase your energy and level of well-being. To my great surprise, no one in the workshop had ever heard of that.The five “Tibetans” is a series of simple, yoga-like exercises that can give you tons of energy and make you look years younger. The book that made the Tibetans really popular is “The Ancient Secrets of the Fountain of youth,” by Peter Kedler. It is still available as an e-book, and has been translated into many foreign languages. But still, some people haven’t heard of the Tibetans.

I first read about it in Joe Alexander’s book Blatant Raw Foodist Propaganda, where the exercises are explained, accompanied with Joe’s drawings. I felt inspired after reading that chapter, and started practicing the exercises. I was surprised to find that what Joe had described in his book was true: the Tibetans give you more energy and make you feel great!

The Tibetans are so easy it’s a joke. They are a series of five exercises that take about 10-15 minutes to complete, that everyone can learn in a few minutes, and can be done anywhere where there’s enough space to lie down.

Each exercise is done 21 times, and you don’t have to hold the position like you do in hatha yoga. You combine deep breathing with the movements. The first exercise is not even an “exercise” as it only involves turning around like an idiot. In the second “rite” you lay down, raise your leg in the air, keeping your chin on your chest. The third rite is a back stretching exercise. The fourth one is doing the “bridge,” and the fifth one is a regular, bending, typical yoga exercise.

- The Fountain of Youth?

Christopher S. Kilham (who has written several book on yoga) writes: “After practicing the Five Tibetans for two years, I was convinced that, at the very least, they were extraordinary. Despite the fact that they represented only minutes in a daily yoga regimen that was several hours long, I felt invigorated by practicing them. (…) At the very least, they do in fact greatly increase strength, energy, and mental alertness. They open up the body/mind energy system and seem to balance energy in a way that I have not experienced with any other individual yoga method or set of yoga practices.”

In the beginning of the book, “The Ancient Secrets of the Fountain of Youth,” by Peter Kedler, we can read a series of testimonials where people report: more energy, increase in strength and endurance, gray hair turning back to its original color, vision improvement, athritis relief, better memory, younger look, weight loss, and more extraordinary rejuvenation. People claim to “look ten years younger,” and to have “never felt better.”

One M.D. writes: “My sexual desires and my abilities have all returned to normal. I cannot explain this medically or scientifically, yet I know that what has happened to me is absolutely true.” One person claims that after six months of doing the exercises, “the gray hair at the back of my head began to turn back to its original dark brown.” Another person says: “Since doing the rites, I’m always alert and full of energy.” A man from California writes: “Everything this book claims is true. I haven’t been sick for one and half years — not even a cold!” All these extraordinary testimonials of rejuvenation and many others can be found at the beginning of Kedler’s book.

Whether the five Tibetans are indeed the “secrets of the fountain of youth” remains to be seen. There might be some exaggeration in these testimonials. However, every person that I have talked to who has done the rites has had great results, and most are really excited about them. People usually report increased energy and mental alertness. The most radical testimonials of rejuvenation from doing the rites, as most of the ones found in Kedler’s book, come from older folks, some past their 80th birthday, who report feeling decades younger, while getting rid of health problems that had been plaguing them for years. But even younger people (like me!), can get a lot of benefits from doing the rites.

- The Colonel’s Tale and the chakras

One afternoon, Peter Kedler was sitting in a park, reading his newspaper, and engaging conversation with an old man, a retired British Army officer, whom he calls Colonel Bradford, though he admits that it is not his real name. It seems that during his travels to India, some years ago, Colonel Bradford had heard the interesting stories of a group of lamas who had discovered the secret of eternal youth. The lamas lived in monasteries, where the secret had been kept due to their remote location. Colonel Bradford, who had, like many other men, grown old at the age of forty (and was not getting younger since), told Kedler that he intended to go to India and look for this monastery. He asked Kedler to come along, but Kedler refused, wondering shortly after if this was the right decision.

Many years later, Kedler received a letter from Colonel Bradford. The very exciting news were that not only had the Colonel found the fountain of youth, but that he was bringing it back to the USA, two months later. This was about four years after Kedler had last seen the Colonel. When he finally arrived, Kedler could not recognize him. His gray hair had mostly disappeared and he looked decades younger. The Colonel then went on to tell his story.

After many months of wanderings in northern India, the Colonel headed for Tibet. After a long and perilous expedition in the Himalayas, which followed a thorough investigation to find the location of the monastery, the Colonel finally arrived to the land of eternal youth. There, he found a group of lamas, composed of men and women, who didn’t seem to age the same way that Westerners do. They constantly kept their strength and vitality. The secrets to this “fountain of youth” was apparently a set of simple exercises that they performed everyday, along with a frugal existence away from the worries of the modern world. But the most important thing was their understanding of the “chakras”

The lamas explained to Colonel Bradford that the chakras, also called vortexes, are powerful energy centers, that govern the endocrine system of the body, which, in turn, regulates the process of aging. There are 7 vortexes or chakras, and anyone that has studied yoga is familiar with them. In a healthy person, the chakras are “spinning” at a normal speed, permitting the prana, or vital life energy, to flow through the body. What happens is that at some point, one or more of these chakras slows down, and then the flow of prana is inhibited, and that’s when aging starts. So the key to eternal, or at least greatly prolonged youth, is to keep the chakras spinning full spine, and one of the ways to do this is to practice the five Tibetans everyday.

He wrote: “The only difference between youth and vigor, and old age and poor health is simply the rate of speed at which the vortexes are spinning. Normalize the rate of speed, and the old person becomes like new again.”

- Putting the rites into practice

I do not know if these rites originate from Tibet, or anywhere else. As far as I can tell, Kedler might have just made up this whole story about the lamas and the Colonel Bradford… but I don’t care, it works! I don’t know if it has to do with the chakras, but I know, like everyone else who has practiced this series of exercise, that the stuff works. The only thing required for them to work is: (1) to practice them everyday, (2) to perform 21 repetitions for each exercise. But before we get into the rites themselves, there are a few things we can discuss that will be of interest to you.

Colonel Bradford, who later went on to start the “Himalaya Club,” where he would teach the rites to others, mainly dealt with old and sick people. Therefore, he recommended a certain progression when starting the five Tibetans. He suggested practicing each rite three times a day for the first week. Then, with every following week, to increase the repetition by two, until, after 10 weeks, you are performing 21 repetitions for every rite. However, like I said, he was dealing with fairly old and sick folks. Most people can start right away with 7 repetitions, and increase with 7 repetitions by the second week, so you are already performing the full set of 21 repetitions after the second week. You could even start right away with 21 repetitions. That is what I have done. If you find the rites difficult to perform at first, find a progression that works for you. The goal is to perform 21 repetitions for every rites, and do the series once or twice a day. One thing that is important to remember is that the rites work in conjunction with each other. So it is important to do all of them. Performing the five rites with 21 repetitions each will take you from 10 to 20 minutes.

A good time to practice the rites is in the morning, after of before taking a shower. You will find that practicing the five Tibetans in the morning will make you feel more energetic and fresh during the rest of the day. You will also experience greater mental alertness during your daily activities. I have also found great benefits in performing the five Tibetans another time, before the evening, when most of us come back home. It will leave you feel better for the rest of the day, and improve the quality of your sleep.

You will have better results if you practice the rites slowly without rushing, and if you breath deeply in-between the rites. It is also critically important to combine breathing with the movement, as I explain in the description of the exercises. There is no point in doing the rites as fast as possible. However, if you don’t have much time, you could do fewer repetitions. Also, most people have found that doing more than 21 repetitions is not useful. 21 seems to be the magic number when doing the rites.

As Barbara Simonsohn suggests in her book (“Die Fünf Tibeter mit Kindern”), it is useful to practice the exercises at the same time everyday, for example in the morning after a shower, before breakfast, or before the evening meal. This way we get used to the routine and we implement a new rhythm in our lives. In is also better to practice the exercises on a empty stomach. We can also practice the rites at the same place everyday, for example in the living room.

To learn more about the Tibetans rites, I have found the out-of-print, old edition of Peter Kedler’s book, originally titled “The Eye of Revelation.”

This e-book comes with a 100% money back guarantee, so I’m really happy to point you to this classic in the natural health field. The exercises work for me, and I bet they’d work for you too.

Click here to learn more!

Frederic Patenaude, is the author of the best-selling e-book “The Raw Secrets”. He is currently giving away free access to his private library of over 100 exclusive articles along with a subscription to his newsletter Pure Health & Nutrition. Visit http://www.fredericpatenaude.com while charter subscriptions last.

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Zone Pilates divides your body into three target areas, called zones. Just work a zone for minutes a day and you’ll see fantastic results. And best of all, it doesn’t take hundreds of repetitions. The secret is the Zone Pilates Sculptor that guides your body and adds muscle-toning resistance to accelerate your results.

• The Sculptor also provides consistent resistance training, and engages multiple muscles at once improving the efficiency of your workout
• Zone Pilates comes with a unique Foot GuideMat that ensures your body will always be in perfect Pilates positioning
• Combined with the Zone Pilates Sculptor, the GuideMat takes the mystery out of being in the correct position
• Dimensions: 12.4″ L x 18.7″ W x 2.6″ H

> Find Zone Pilates on DVD

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