Challenge Week 8

WELCOME
If you are like me you have, at least at one point in your life, looked for the easy way out - the quick fix, the magic pill, the effortless exercise machine - to make us thin without the hard work! The result is usually the same - a roller coaster of weight gain and loss. Reading our advice column this week was both informative and scary. It reminds us that it's important to look at significant weight loss as a lifestyle change and not a quick fix.

FOOD/NUTRITION
Below are a couple of exerpts from Darya Pino's nutrition website, Summer Tomato. If you are looking for help making a lifestyle change regarding your eating habits, this is an awesome place to start.

Health is our greatest resource and though it sometimes seems elusive, anyone can achieve it. Long-term health and weight loss are within your reach, but you can’t rely on a short-term plan to get you there.

Nutrition science is not as nebulous as the media would lead you to believe and healthy living is not as difficult or time consuming as you might think. Your daily food choices are by far the most important factors in your long-term personal health, and upgrading your healthstyle can add more than a decade of quality years to your life.

Summer Tomato was named one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2011.

HEALTH/FITNESS
It's time to ban the yo-yo workouts as well ... what am I talking about?

For the man's perspective check out YoYo Workouts and the Fitness Lifestyle from Hall of the Black Dragon. Warning - enter at your own risk ... generally speaking, I liked the site, but I didn't go into the girly links either. You perverts are on your own!!! LOL

Ladies ... Oprah claims you can counteract the effects of lapsing and relapsing with these Ten_Minute Workouts

WEEKLY CHALLENGE
Well, don't tell Dr. Brouillet, but I walked a mile today in the boot and feel pretty good. I'm thinking about heading to Brickhouse Ellicott City for a Zumba class on Friday! (in the boot, of course!)

APPS/BOOKS
Now, I don't have a great app for this week - for a lifestyle change I would recommend looking for a Weight Watchers download. But, after reading Juan's article below, I will encourage all of you to use the internet for good instead of evil. If someone is selling you on a get-thin-quick program ... it's time to go online and do some research. Check out the Wikipedia page on Kevin Trudeau.

ADVICE
I met Juan Ponte when he volunteered to work out Turkey Trot 5K at Centennial HS this fall. He is a nutritionist and owner of Columbia Max Muscle. We got to talking about the best ways to lose weight and he agreed to help us with our challenge.

A recent fad in the weight-loss industry is the HCG Diet - a program that combines low calore diets with hormone injections to promote weight loss. At first glance it sounds perfect, but buyer beware - if there were a quick and easy fix, we'd all have it by now.

Juan shares with us this article dispelling the myths of this program and offering us some reviews on some pretty good programs to help us reach our goals.

If you visit Juan at Columbia Max Muscle, tell him I sent you and you'll receive a 15% discount on any purchase!!