This is my latest column in Max Muscle Sports and Fitness Magazine!

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“Every day is a new battle”

Yesterday I didn’t want to workout. While I had lost the majority of my baby weight since my second son, Nicholas, was born six weeks ago, I still felt fat, wobbly and extremely out of shape. I didn’t want to drive to the gym, nor did I want to test out my jogger stroller on the hot pavement outside…I just wanted to sit on my butt and feel sorry for myself.

And then I decided to stop thinking – because sometimes thinking too much prevents you from taking real physical action.

So I got up, I put on my sneakers and walked out to the backyard bringing a jump rope, a medicine ball and a water bottle in tow. I started my stopwatch and began to move my body until it reached my target heart rate of 160 beats per minute. Once I got the blood moving through my veins, I kept it there for forty minutes.

I performed two minutes of jump-roping followed by 40 lunge walks.  After warming up, I incorporated squat jumps, burpees, pushups, jumping jacks and mountain climbers. I cycled each exercise a total of three times averaging three minutes each. Throughout my intense backyard workout, my 17-month-old son cheered me on while my newborn slept quietly in his bouncy chair.

The workout was hard, impromptu and unorganized – but I got it done. Consistently completing short term goals is not easy, but it’s what it will take in order for you to complete your long term fitness goal.

When you have dedicated yourself to look better, eat healthier, and become physically fit, then you have set yourself up for a serious journey ahead. Not only must you plan balanced meals and endure intense workouts, but you have to keep yourself motivated every step of the way. Motivation is usually easy when you first begin and even easier when you start seeing results, but when you are tired, stressed, distracted or feeling unprogressive, then motivation is very hard to find.

When I used to compete, I would place motivational quotes everywhere thoughout my house. On top of the television was “Take Action!” In front my refrigerator was “Nothing tastes better than being Fit!” Near my  bedside read “You’re not hungry when you’re sleeping!” And on my bathroom mirror was “Every day is a new battle.”

And it was a battle to workout yesterday! Mentally I was lazy. Physically I was tired…and emotionally I felt extremely unmotivated. It took creativity, drive and above all, discipline, to get up and take action towards a long term goal of having a great body after giving birth.

If you want to look great in a bikini, run a better mile or increase your bench press…you can! You can do anything you want as long as you have the drive, determination and discipline to make it happen every day. Fulfilling your fitness dreams is not about counting calories and logging in hours on the treadmill, ultimately, it’s all about how badly you want it.

So how badly do you want it?

Video Game Research Project to Help Blind Children Exercise

ScienceDaily (June 5, 2010) — VI Fit, a project at the University of Nevada, Reno, helps children who are blind become more physically active and healthy through video games. The human-computer interaction research team in the computer science and engineering department has developed a motion-sensing-based tennis and bowling exergame

“Lack of vision forms a significant barrier to participation in physical activity and consequently children with visual impairments have much higher obesity rates and obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes,” Eelke Folmer, research team leader and assistant professor in the computer science and engineering department, said.

Exergames are a new type of video game that use physical activity as input and are considered powerful weapons in the fight against obesity. Unfortunately, exergames have not yet been accessible to children with visual impairments, although it is evident they could benefit from them the most.

“Our games are adaptations of the popular Nintendo Wii Sports exercise games that have been modified so they can be played without visual feedback,” Folmer said. read the rest here.

teach them to move without fear!

Great Music issue! I write for this magazine regularly!

View it digitally online here!

I’ve been drinking a lot of juice lately…mostly because it’s around the house all the time due to my tiny toddler. When I do drink juice however, I always mix it with water. Sometimes I mix it half and half…other times its 1/3 juice and 2/3 water. I think that’s the best way to get your ‘juice fix’ if you really don’t want to drink plain ol’ water. The truth is, is that juice has a lot of sugar. So it’s important that you dilute it.

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Unhealthiest Juices in America

By David Zinczenko, with Matt Goulding – Posted on Mon, May 10, 2010, 11:06 am PDT

FITNESS LIFESTYLE

HOW TO RAISE FIT KIDS

By: Maria Kang

Teach your children how to live healthy and fit for a lifetime. Photo by Harry Grigsby

EVERY YEAR, raising a healthy child becomes more challenging. It begins with what type of baby food to buy, then progresses to what type of dinners to make. Then there are the sweet fruit juices, the yummy happy meals, the tasty fruit snacks and the sugary soft drinks. Before you know it, the holidays roll around and promote chocolate hearts, marshmallow bunnies, Halloween candy and candy canes. With the increasing popularity of video games and television programming and lack of physical activity, it’s becoming increasingly harder to raise a fit child.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, childhood obesity has tripled since 1980. Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese as adults. That statistic increases by 10 percent when a parent is overweight. These alarming studies illustrate how important a parent’s role in promoting family fitness has become. After all, for the first 18 years of a child’s life, parents are able to control and manage most of their child’s daily activities and food consumption. Raising a fit family comes with many challenges, but with the right attitude, consistency, determination and desire, your family can beat the statistics.

“My child is a picky eater.”
Establishing a healthy routine from the beginning sets your kids up for good habits in the future. Not only is nutritious eating positively encouraged in their youth, but it also trains your child’s taste buds to desire healthy and naturally delicious foods.

“We enjoy healthy eating as a family,” states Yolanda Dixon, 2004 Miss Bikini Universe, short class. With kids ages 10, 4 and 2, Dixon understands first-hand how challenging it is to promote healthy eating with young children. “When you make these things a priority from the beginning, children will see eating healthy as part of their normal routine,” she says. “My kids have never had a problem eating vegetables or other healthy foods because that is what has been given to them since they were born.” read the rest here.