I haven't eaten this stuff in years but remember driving up to a local Friendly's drive through as a teenager asking for cheeseburger with french fries and a coke.  It was delicious to my young palate.  Now I refrain from eating in restaurants unless I know the owners or the chefs who make the food.  I'm a good cook and I usually buy organic.  Well, I do 'cheat' sometimes but I pay the price.

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Sara from Diet.com and author and Obesity Acitivisist, Julia Havey, show what happens to an aged(4 years) McDonald's cheesburger.  It looks like fast food cheeseburgers age better than most humans.  The French Fries still look fresh and vibrant.

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Just received an exercise tip in the mail from Denise and wanted to share it with you.  I spend most of my workout time doing Qi Gong and Yoga with a variety of DVD's but there are many people who might want this short quick tip from Denise(5 minutes, 2-3 times/week) on getting 'dancer legs' as she calls it. 

I would say its a quick exercise for anyone who wants to strengthen their legs.  I think I'll try it out.  Why not…it's only a few minutes a day.

Want dancer's legs without having to go to dance class? Here's a move that will help give your legs that long, lean appearance!

You'll need a chair for support. Start by standing tall, with one hand on the back of the chair for balance and the other on your hip. Begin in "first position" (think ballet), with your toes turned out and your heels touching. Keep your back straight and your abs tight. Dip down by bending at the knees, keeping them square over your toes. Lift your heels off the floor, pushing from the balls of your feet. Straighten your legs, squeezing your buttocks and inner thighs, then lower your heels, returning to the starting position.

The move has four steps — plié down, lift heels, push up, and heels down to starting position. Repeat the series for two sets of 8 to 12 reps each. Rest for 15 seconds between sets. Fabulous! It's that simple!

Read more about Denise Austin and her diet. or see her weekly video tips at her site.

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The Truth About Back Pain by Todd Sinett and Sheldon Sinett- Todd is on CBS-TV video telling us how we can help the soreness or pain in our backs. You can hear Dr Sinett give great suggestions. 

Remember to sign up and get all the wonderful bonuses on the virtual book tour- $1327 in better health and wellness bonuses with your copy of his book.

Sign up now for your FREE Access Pass and watch the video.

Todd Sinett writes about his book on The Huffington Post.

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Ideally we should synchronize our sleep cycles with the sun, so we should go to sleep as close to the sun setting as possible.  Most people don't go to sleep at 7 or 8 at night, so he's just saying that if you go to bed in the middle of the night, it doesn't bode well for your health.

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I wrote that important hormones are only reproduced during sleep cycles, so here's another reason to get the right amount of sleep.  Check how you feel when you get 5, 6, 7 or 8 hours of sleep.  You can decide how much sleep you really need to have a sense of well being.

In an article from sleepfoundation.org, it seems how much sleep you really need depends on many factors.

The first thing experts will tell you about sleep is that there is no "magic number." Not only do different age groups need different amounts of sleep, but sleep needs are also individual. Just like any other characteristics you are born with, the amount of sleep you need to function best may be different for you than for someone who is of the same age and gender. While you may be at your absolute best sleeping seven hours a night, someone else may clearly need nine hours to have a happy, productive life. In fact, a 2005 study confirmed the fact that sleep needs vary across populations, and the study calls for further research to identify traits within genes that may provide a "map" to explain how sleep needs differ among individuals.

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Lesley Stahl reported on 60 Minutes- sleep research which showed why humans need sleep and the dire consequences when they don't get enough. 

Not getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night affects our health in many ways including memory and the immune system.  Stahl reports that in this study, healthy young volunteers had their bodies monitored while their sleep was interferred with for 6 nights in a row.  The researchers noticed after testing that the young subjects were in a pre diabetic state.  On the road to diabetes after only 6 nights of interrupted sleep!

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The study also showed that lack of sleep may be contributing to the epidemic of obesity through the work of a hormone called leptin that tells your brain when you're full.  After the six nights of sleep interruption,  the subjects had a drop in their leptin levels which then told the body it was hungry when it really wasn't.  So, they ate and ate more.  So now not only eating too many calories can put the weight on but also not sleeping enough.

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I just got off the phone with Anthony(there he is running in the photo) and we spoke about the Blood Type Diet.  He's a B blood type, I'm a rare AB.  Anthony told me that he could make a bar with my blood type beneficial ingredients. 

So now I can design a bar myself.  I've been getting yummy chocolate cherry bars with beneficial ingredients at the blood type store.  This is an interesting and creative option.  Imagine choosing YOUR own ingredients!

Here's the history of the You Bar in Anthony's words:

After years of being enthusiastic consumers of commercially available nutrition bars, L.A. mom Ava and her USC business student son Anthony got fed up with buying mass-produced bars that reflected generic tastes. Ava wanted bars that weren't too sweet with loads of protein to fuel her days teaching snowboarding and bellydancing. Anthony, a marathon-running athlete, needed high carbs and no milk products (he's allergic). The nutrition bar craze went wild at the beginning of the new millennium, but the number of commercial bars Anthony and Ava (that's us!) could eat actually decreased.

So we took the bar by the horns and began making our own nutrition bars at home. It was as though we'd died and gone to heaven, except for the dishes we had to clean! We finally had nutrition bars with the exact ingredients that we wanted free from preservatives and corn syrup, freshly made and as delicious as Mom Ava's fluffy wholegrain pancakes. And they never got boring either: smooth, crunchy, chewy, sweet and savoury to suit any mood!

We began making customized nutrition bars for the rest of our family and friends' the response was great. (Dad didn't even mind the messy kitchen!) We learned we weren't the only ones fed up with eating mass produced bars. Almost everyone we knew lit up at the possibility of creating bars tailored to their own tastes and dietary dreams. And so You Bar was born.

We've been making our own nutrition bars for over two years and now you can too. Try creating your own nutrition bar it's fun, easy, fresh and most importantly tastes like you want it to with the nutritional content that you choose. You are what you eat (as Nana used to say), so choose!

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One day last week, I ran out of my juiced ginger that I keep in a spice jar refrigerated(lasts 2 days) and drank green tea alone without the usual ginger…stomach ache.  I juiced more on the spot and my stomach was peaceful again. That's how medicinal ginger is.  So now we can talk about green tea, weight and fat loss.

The University of Connecticut's Richard Bruno, PhD, RD, and colleagues reported in February's edition of The Journal of Nutrition that green tea might block fat and promote weight loss according to preliminary lab tests in mice.

Here's what those preliminary lab tests in mice show:

Less weight and fat gain among mice with an obesity gene, those that ate chow laced with green tea extract gained less weight and less fat. Less fat in the liver. There was less sign of "fatty liver" disease in the mice with the obesity gene that ate chow laced with green tea extract. Lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels in mice with the obesity gene that ate the chow laced with green tea extract compared to other mice with the same obesity gene.

You would have to drink seven cups of green tea daily to equal a smiliar amount of the tea extract in this study.

In an article about the benefits of green tea from WebMD, a new study shows that drinking green tea may also help to reduce fat.

Here's why:  most teas contain large amounts of polyphenols, which are plant-based substances that have been shown to have antioxidant, anticancer, and antiviral properties.  However, green tea is rich in a type of polyphenols called catechins which may affect body fat accumulation and cholesterol levels.

Researcher Tomonori Nagao of Health Care Products Research Laboratories in Tokyo suggests:

the catechins in green tea contribute to the prevention of and improvement in various lifestyle-related diseases, particularly obesity.  Catechins may trigger weight loss by stimulating the body to burn calories and decrease body fat.

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A study conducted at McMaster University by the Department of Kinesiology’s Exercise Metabolism Research Group found that milk does help exercisers gain muscle and lose fat.

Researchers found that the milk drinking group had lost nearly twice as much fat as the carbohydrate beverage group.  Those drinking soy lost no fat.  The gain in muscle was much greater among the milk drinkers than either of the other two groups.

Stuart Phillips, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster, who led the research study had this to say:

This simultaneous gain in muscle and loss of fat is a pretty powerful combination. Milk contains two types of proteins, whey and casein, that are the highest-quality proteins known. They contain all of the essential amino acids, the necessary building blocks of proteins in our bodies. Whey contains one called leucine, which may be a key trigger for the synthesis of new muscle proteins

The loss of fat mass, while expected, was much larger than we thought it would be. I think the practical implications of these results are obvious: if you want to gain muscle and lose fat as a result of working out, drink milk.

The evidence is beginning to mount. Milk may be best known for its calcium content in supporting bone health, but our research, and that of others, continually supports milk’s ability to aid in muscle growth and also promote body fat loss. To my mind – with milk being a source of the nine essential nutrients – it’s a no brainer: milk is the ideal post-workout drink for recreational exercisers and athletes alike.

To read more about the study with reader's comments, go here. Technorati Tags: body, build, muscle, weight, loss, fat, exercise, weights. gain, milk, carbs, carbohydrates, soy, proteins, whey, essential, amino, acids, leucine, calcium, growth

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Just 10, 20 or 30 minutes of yoga or qi gong 3 times a week is a good start.  Check out Lee Holden or Peggy Cappy.  They  both have beginner through advanced dvd's that you can use at home.  Lee does qi gong and Peggy does yoga although its amazing how similar the workouts seem to be.

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So here's Mercola's deal.  It's about 'brown seaweed' in supplement form since its impossible to get the real thing for the next ten years(as he says).  If you don't want to get the supplement, the video is filled with great information as usual.  Who doesn't need reminders anyway.

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