BodyForTheAges.org Blog

The holiday season proves to be a challenging chapter of the year.  With over booked schedules, non-stop holiday parties, and pastries at every turn, it’s no wonder people are stressed out and gaining weight!

According to a study published in the US National Library of Medicine, the average weight gained during the holiday season by Americans is 1lb.  Not so bad. However, it is a pound that you will never loose!  After thirty five years of indulging in the holiday junk food-a-thon, it’s no wonder the mid-section tends to grow!  A second study published a year later showed that obese people gain on average 5lbs!  So how do we enjoy the festivities and keep the weight down?

According to an article posted on WebMD, the food choices we make are connected to our emotional state.  Our emotional state has a huge influence on what kind of food we decide to eat and how much.  If a person is exercising daily and feeling strong, he/she is less likely to over eat. Regular exercise keeps the stress down and the weight off!

Review additional suggestions at WebMD about keeping healthy during the holiday seasons here: WebMD

Balance is the key to a healthy lifestyle and healthy eating habits.  At Body for the Ages, we believe in our online Wellness Program which delivers the support and encouragement you need in order to create a healthy balance in your life!  The online Wellness Program offers an individually tailored plan to each unique person.  Pax Beale, founder of Body for the Ages, believes that with proper nutrition, exercise and supplementation, each person has the potential to live their genetic lifespan!

To read more about the Body for the Ages online Wellness program, go to: www.bodyfortheages.org.

Be Well!!

Donnamarie Alesia

Body For the Ages Blogger

After a stressful day, most of us just want to relax, and getting exercise may be the last thing on our list of priorities. However, research is increasingly proving that exercise is just what we need to significantly decrease daily stress and anxiety.

From a Mayo Clinic staff study, “Exercise helps prevent and improve a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. Research on anxiety, depression and exercise shows that the psychological and physical benefits of exercise can also help reduce anxiety and improve mood.”

How does it work? In a variety of ways:

Chemical: Exercise releases “feel good” chemicals in your brain. You may have heard of the “runner’s high”. Well, it’s not just a ploy to get you to exercise! Physical activity releases endorphins, which deliver a mood lift to your body and mind.

Healthy Choices: Beyond chemical stimulation, exercise most often makes you feel good about your choices. When you’re confident that you’re improving your health, you’ll increase your overall confidence.

Distraction: Exercise can be an opportunity to step away from the worries of the day, and spend time by yourself, focusing on your body, and letting stress take a back seat for a while. That’s a daily prescription we could all use!

Read more of what the Mayo Clinic has to say regarding exercise and anxiety here:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/depression-and-exercise/MH00043

And go here to read about how the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program can deliver an exercise, health, and wellness program tailored to your specific needs:

www.BodyForTheAgesNonprofit.org

-Melissa Chandler, Body For The Ages Blogger

Turning Back the Clock

If you’ve reached middle age and your health habits are less than desirable, don’t give up hope.  Making a change at this stage of life will yield significant results, and set you on your way to an improved quality of life now, and in your senior years.

Dr. Dana King, a University of South Carolina professor of medicine, is part of a research team whose findings indicate that changing lifelong unhealthy habits in middle age may yield you a longer life.

“It’s not too late,” says Dr. King.  “If you make [healthy] changes now, it has a tremendous impact.”

Dr. King and his team colleagues looked at four healthy habits in over 16,000 people between 45 and 64 years of age.  Here are the categories they evaluated: eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day, 2.5 hours or more of exercise per week, a healthy weight level, and not smoking.

Dr. King’s research team found that the people who adhered to the four healthy habits were “40 percent less likely to die and 35 percent less likely to suffer heart problems than those who did not adopt the beneficial habits.”

Read more about the findings here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=5314059&page=1

Body For The Ages is committed to helping you make the health changes necessary for you to enjoy a vastly improved quality of life for years to come. 

By becoming a Body For The Ages Member, and participating in the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program, you’ll be assigned your own personal coach via the web.  Your personal coach will create a wellness program tailored to your specific needs, and walk you through workouts, nutrition, supplements, and most of all, be a knowledgeable and dependable motivating force, as you reclaim your health.

Visit http://www.bodyfortheages.org/, for details on our Wellness Program, and how to become a Team Body For The Ages Member.  Join now.  Body For The Ages is here to help you turn back the clock.

Have you been meaning to drop those extra pounds?

Whatever your reason, be it aesthetics, athleticism, or heart health, health problem prevention, there’s never been a better time to do it than now.

According to a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, two thirds of adults in the United States are overweight, and about one third are obese. http://win.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/

Extra weight plays a contributing factor in numerous health problems.  A report recently released from our nation’s capital states that more than 100,000 cases of cancer each year are caused by excess body fat.  Read more here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/05/obesity.cancer.link/index.html

Weight Loss is not easy, and it takes commitment.  But we all know that commitment will pay off, when we see that we’re increasing our extra energy and self-esteem, along with decreasing our health concerns.

Your time is valuable, and the Body For The Ages Online Wellness Program will show you how to make it count, with fun workouts, wellness tips and anti-aging tips, valuable advice from our very own Panel of Experts, and an online personal trainer available for guidance 365 days a year.

Are you ready to commit to your health and happiness?  It’s the best investment you’ll ever make.

Go to www.BodyForTheAgesNonprofit.org, get your four free gifts, and become part of the Body For The Ages Team.

Hey there Folks,

This is pretty helpful for anyone looking for some background information on the practice of anti-aging and exceeding the average human lifespan: Wiki - Anti-Aging.

We at BODY FOR THE AGES place an emphasis on anti-aging through preventative and rehabilitative Heart Health. We do this utilizing a more holistic / fitness regiment [concentrating on Heart Health and fighting Heart Disease], as opposed to some of the more scientific perspectives that are discussed in this Wiki page.

However we do implement the power of Pyruvate and Protein supplementation, found as a portion of our Online Wellness Program, you may visit us there to learn more about our Nonprofit mission or for direct access visit us at our retail Online Store now offering a 2 for 1 special on Pyruvate and 2 for 1Protein !! Visit and learn how Pyruvate can help you prevent Heart Risks.

until next time,

Team Body For the Ages

A recent article in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/health/12heart.html?bl&ex=1227070800&en=0fd3c2f76367617a&ei=5087%0A) got me thinking.  We target the 40-60 crowd here at Body for the Ages.  Are we focusing on the wrong group?  Don’t children need the help more?

The thing is, we teach our children through our example.  If we let it be OK for us to be dangerously overweight, we demonstrate to our children that it’s OK for them too.  If we constantly reach for the cookie over the celery, we tell our children it is OK for them too.  If we spend every afternoon on the couch, we tell our children that’s OK for them too.

If we die early from heart disease, is that one lesson enough to undo all the others?  Maybe.  But why bet a child’s life on it?

The great thing about our example is that it works in all directions.  If we turn around ourselves, we show our kids that they can do.  That’s one of the great things about Pax, he shows that you can come back from nearly being dead to become National Bodybuilding Champion.  It’s one of the great things about the President-Elect, he shows that any child can grow up to be president.

And that’s what you got to be for your kids.  You got to be the example that anybody can get fit.  That anybody can achieve the body of their dreams, and reduce their heart risks in the process.

And we will help you do it.  Join us here.

You can’t make a Total Commitment - or even a good partial commitment - without the tools for proper motivation.  A good gym or fitness health center becomes a motivating playground.  Add a personal trainer or personal coach, and a transformational lifecoach, and your recipe for motivation is even richer.

Generally speaking, a personal trainer has their focus on your exercise, while a personal coach in a fitness health center can focus on your whole being.  I don’t mean a certification by the group itself.  Think in terms of the art and science of weight-resistance training, aerobics, nutrition, scientific nutritional supplements, the psychology of total commitment, legally prescribed drugs, and optionally, at the request of the client, the personal coach can relate to the client’s physician.  Thus, the benefits of a synergistic effect.

Most gyms have personal trainers.  Some are excellent, some are worse than bad.  Because regular gyms sell comfort amenities, such as whirlpools, saunas and exercise classes, there is generally less emphasis on quality control over employed personal trainers.  Most are not paid well.

An exception would be the big, locally owned, licensed gym chains like Gold’s, Powerhouse, or World, where personal trainers are usually independent business people, not employed by the gym.  These personal trainers are excellent, but bring your wallet.  Many charge over $75 per hour in major cities.

Gold’s, Powerhouse and World Gyms seem to function differently than some other big chains which have mastered the art of the hustle for memberships.  The joke is that Gold’s, Powerhouse and World Gym offer a membership hoping you will show up and train.  At some of the others, memberships are hustled, but if every member showed up there would not be enough space to accommodate everyone.  You decide.

Look under gyms and health clubs in the Yellow Pages.  Clubs that picture weight training activity, or show bodybuilders in their advertisements are the ones you want; otherwise, you could end up going to a dance studio or gymnastics center.  This is even more true when you travel in foreign countries and the language barrier is a tougher hurdle than performing a record bench press.

The psychological dilemma of weight loss is such a dynamic subject it is worth discussing, even if you are not overweight.  The story is a prime example of the market forces of our capitalistic society becoming so powerful, they subconsciously influence the very basics of our daily lives - in this case, the necessary act of eating.  We can’t seem to turn around without the billion-dollar food industry, not only trying to manipulate us, but actually succeeding to do so many times in an unhealthy direction.  Or does anyone really believe a high-cholesterol, high-fat, fast-food hamburger has merit?

Here’s a choice vignette for you.  I actually sat in the office of a CEO of a California supplement company dedicated to producing and marketing weight-loss products.  The CEO unabashedly said that he didn’t care about the dose of his product, except that it should be relatively low, so the price would be attractive to the buyer.  I asked him what the best dose was to yield successful weight loss.  He looked at me as if I didn’t get the message, then replied, “No dose works for weight loss.  Weight-loss products have a lifespan of about 24 months, and then the public gets wise that they don’t work.  By ‘don’t work’ I mean they won’t sell, because none of them cause permanent, healthy weight loss anyway.  The name of the game is to continually come up with new weight-loss products and start the promotion all over again.”

Furthermore, he acknowledged that he could only fool the public for a couple of years and then he would have to start the cycle all over again with some other song-and-dance involving another weight-loss product.  The company is now out of business, but the CEO will likely surface again.

Now here, laid out for you, are necessary simplistic planks for your platform for weight loss.  I have listed them in the order you should address them, because you are wasting your time seeking a positive lifestyle, if you are determined not to put forth effort in the right directions.

• You understand that some effort is required in an anti-aging, wellness lifestyle.
• Cope with your denial system by not blaming outside sources for your undesirable weight.
• Having committed to the above two bullet points, you are now ready to create a positive, rejuvenating lifestyle for long-term weight control success.
• Recognize that you have choices. You can choose a lifestyle for success, not a lifestyle of failure, as has likely been your modus operandi to date if you are overweight.
• The lifestyle you choose should be fun.
• The lifestyle should be easy to implement and to sustain.

There is no need trying to cope with the psychological dilemma of weight loss, unless the lifestyle you choose meets the Art of Wellness above criteria, and you are ready to make a Total Commitment.

Join the Body for the Ages Online Wellness program, and we can help you put your effort towards a weight loss program that recognizes all the above needs.

I know that when I’m implementing Pax’s nutrition system, I lose weight. And I miss pasta.

So, I was excited to find this morning a recipes for zucchini pasta as a substitute in the New York Times.

Here you go:

2 pounds zucchini (or a combination of yellow and green zucchini)

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

3/4 cup tomato sauce(optional)

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan, for serving (more to taste)

1. Using a vegetable peeler, cut the zucchini into lengthwise ribbons. Peel off several from one side, then turn the zucchini and peel off more. Continue to turn and peel away ribbons until you get to the seeds at the core of the zucchini. Discard the core. You can also do this on a mandolin, adjusted to a very thin slice.

2. Cook the zucchini strips in two batches. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When it is hot, add the zucchini ribbons and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt. Cook, tossing and stirring the zucchini, for two to three minutes, until softened and beginning to turn translucent. Adjust salt and add freshly ground pepper to taste, and transfer to a serving dish. Repeat with the remaining olive oil and zucchini. Serve, topping with tomato sauce and freshly grated Parmesan if desired.

Serves four