Weise

If you recently received or will receive an invitation to join AARP (or maybe not so recently), then you can consider yourself a baby boomer. The accepted definition for a baby boomer in the U.S. is anyone born between 1946 and 1964. Most marketing experts consider this generation to be the most influential and powerful generation to ever come along. We have been changing things every decade as we enter new arenas - be they political, social or financial. Now our generation is starting to approach retirement, and as usual we are redefining everything again. We expect our retirement to be much more active then that of our parents and grandparents. One of the challenges we face is making sure that we stay healthy enough to do all the active things we want to accomplish. A chief concern for our continued or renewed health is proper weight control.

Fact 1: Changing Lifestyle Patterns

As baby boomers move into their later 40's, 50's, and now 60's, we are running into new challenges for controlling our weight. Our kids are now teenagers out more on their own, college students away at school, or maybe they are married and starting their own families. In any of these cases, this usually means that both our activity and eating patterns are changing. As new, or soon to be "empty nesters", we are starting to find it more challenging to prepare meals because it is often just the two of us rather than the family. Because of this, we eat out more, or just throw something simple together rather than spending a lot of time putting a whole meal together. These new eating practices can cause us to eat less healthy and create problems for our weight control.

Fact 2: Changes in Body Chemistry Studies indicate that after the age of 30 we lose about 10% of our muscle mass per decade. And, to make things worse, our metabolism (the speed at which our bodies breakdown the foods we eat) begins to slow down. These two things coupled together makes it much more challenging for us to maintain a healthy weight and good muscle tone. Remember that muscle weighs more than fat, so as we age and lose some of our muscle we can stay at the same weight and start gaining more fat around our middle, legs, and bottoms. All of a sudden our clothes are getting tighter and we don't know why because the scale says we're still the same weight as we have been for years.

Fact 3: Changing Activity Levels Often, without our kids around for us to chase after, we start becoming less active. We sit around and watch more television. Maybe that old sport or dancing injury keeps us from doing certain things. Our job requires us to travel more and eat more airport and restaurant food, while sitting in hotel rooms doing paper work. Often the demands of our jobs keep us from doing the activities that can help us stay healthy and fit.

All of these things piling up can seem to be insurmountable challenges to a healthy life style and the ability to control and maintain our weight. If we don't make a conscious choice to do things differently, we can quickly become the overweight, middle aged man or woman that we said we would never let our self be.

So, what can we do to keep this from happening to us? Arm yourself with a little knowledge and some determination, and you can overcome these problems before they grab hold, or reverse them if they have already snuck up on you.

It has been proved over and over again that as little as 30 minutes of exercise per day can help a person maintain or regain lost muscle. If you do 2 or 3 days of strength training per week and do aerobic exercises on the remaining days, you will make a great deal of progress toward developing and maintaining a healthy, fit body. Strength training (working with weights) will help develop and strengthen your muscles. Aerobic exercise (walking, running, biking, swimming, etc.) will help increase your body's ability to process oxygen and strengthen your heart (the most important muscle in the body). There is also evidence that aerobic exercise builds collateral blood supply in the arteries around the heart, which can help to reduce the chances for or severity of a heart attack.

The other major thing we need to be watching and addressing, is our food intake. More specifically, the balance of caloric intake versus expenditure. The simple scientific fact is that 3,500 calories equals 1 pound of weight gain or loss. If we take in 3,500 calories more than we use, we will gain a pound. If we use up 3,500 more calories than we take in, we will lose 1 pound. Therefore, if you want to lose 2 pounds per week, you need to eat 7,000 less calories for the week, do 7,000 calories of extra exercise for that week, or do a combination of both. Of course, as with anything, there are a few additional things you need to keep in mind for this to work while maintaining optimum health.

I was recently talking with a doctor about losing weight. He said that he simply tells his patience to not eat more than 1,000 calories per day. With that statement, I lost a great deal of respect for this doctor. Among the many things wrong with this statement, there are two that I specifically want to mention. One - Do you think eating 1,000 calories a day of cakes and candies will help you lose weight in a healthy way? Obviously not. You would lose weight, but you would quickly get sick from lack of proper nutrition. This brings up a controversial point. Many health professionals (including me) believe that it is a good idea to take a good quality multi vitamin supplement every day. At the least, it is a reasonably inexpensive nutritional insurance policy. Other professionals say that if you eat a properly balanced diet you will get all the vitamins and minerals you need from the foods you eat. That's a great concept, but for most of us our food choices won't meet the test, so a multi vitamin can help make up for the deficit.

Two - Except for the smallest of women, a 1,000 calorie a day diet would put most people's bodies into starvation mode. Our bodies are conditioned to shut down our metabolism when we go into starvation mode, which means that your body will start conserving calories anyway it can. And when you ingest some additional calories, your body will store them away for future use (usually as fat).

When you are developing a sound, healthy diet that will help you control your weight, one of the things that should be taken into consideration is your BMR (basal metabolic rate). This is the number of calories that you specifically need to operate efficiently on a daily basis. There are specific formulas used to help determine this number. Once you have your BMR it is relatively easy to determine how many calories will help you gain or lose weight in a healthy, controlled way.

According to my nutrition professor in graduate school, very few doctors receive formal training in proper nutrition. Because of this, I would suggest that if you want good advice on proper dieting, you should find a registered dietitian or someone else who has had formal training in this area.

******************* Online fitness coach Tom Manfredi is the creator of the site fitness-after-50.com. He has a master's degree in exercise physiology and over 20 years of practical exercise experience as a long distance runner, triathlete, and martial arts instructor. This site is designed with the mature adult in mind. Learn more by going to fitness-after-50.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Manfredi

Tie the knot properly and make a memorable wedding. As you embark upon a love that lasts a lifetime, do it right. This is the biggest day of your life and not to be taken lightly.

You want to lay a strong foundation in your marriage. The bride has been imagineering this day all of her life and will also be remembering for the rest of her life. Therefore grooms should do themselves a favor and make the necessary investment to ensure a lifetime of happiness. Though it may seem to men a bit ridiculous and futile at times to get all worried about an event that will last a few hours, it is very important to the bride to have her day as a princess.

It never ceases to amaze me how couples will spend up to $1,000 on flowers for a wedding and not give much thought about the wedding minister who presides over the entire ceremony. It is a known fact that most church services and wedding ceremonies are terribly boring and unoriginal. It is a tragedy considering the sizeable investment.

I guess it doesn't occur to most couples that they don't have to be married in a church or use a stale, stoic priest to preside over their ceremony. Excessive tradition makes a wedding rigid and frigid. A wedding is to be a time for celebration and inspiration.

Hire a minister who is a skilled orator who can connect with and speak to hearts. Anybody can direct traffic from the platform, but only a minister inspired by God can speak elegantly, graciously, and wisely.

The more personal, the more powerful. Choose someone to officiate your wedding who is personal, creative, and fun.

Paul Davis is a wedding minister who officiates marriage ceremonies and vow renewals. Paul has been in ministry for over 15 years, blessing people around the world. He has traveled to over 50 countries and 6 continents having a worldwide impact. As a relational coach, Paul's compassion for people and passion for transformation makes him very successful. His depth, understanding, experiential wisdom, and disarming sense of humor makes Paul a personal favorite of many couples. Highly celebrated and sought after, Paul has authored several books including Breakthrough for a Broken Heart and Are You Ready for True Love? Pauls organization Dream-Maker Ministries is making a difference throughout the world building dreams, breaking limitations, and reviving nations. Pauls interpersonal and unprecedented experience engineering breakthroughs for individuals and organizations is revolutionary. Contact Paul to officiate your wedding and more! RevivingNations@yahoo.com 407-284-1705; 407-967-7553 http://www.itietheknot.com http://www.CreativeCommunications.TV Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Davis

U.S. pairs skaters Rena Inoue and John Baldwin made history by landing the first throw triple axel in Olympic history.

Read about the Americans jump at http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/torino/figureskating/2006-02-11-pairs-skating_x.htm.

Midori Ito in 1989 was the first woman to land a triple axel in a major ice skating championship (the Worlds). See http://www.mountaindragon.com/midori/mistats.htm.

So what are triple jumps and what is a triple axel?

"The Axel is a jump in figure skating, named after the Norwegian skater Axel Paulsen (1855-1938) who was the first to perform it in 1882.

A single Axel consists of 1 1/2 rotations in the air. For a jump with counterclockwise rotation, it has a takeoff from the left forward outside edge and a landing on the right back outside edge; this can be reversed for a clockwise jump.

The Axel can also be done as a double jump with 2 1/2 rotations, or as a triple with 3 1/2 rotations." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_jump.

The above article states, No skater has yet accomplished a quadruple Axel.

To read a fun article on figure skating go to http://www.slate.com/id/2136701/fr/rss/. Even the best skaters take there turn (for the worse) on the ice.

Sasha Cohen is the only woman skater in the current Winter Olympics who can do a quadruple jump. She did not attempt it last night. She didnt need to. But she may give it ago. Keep watching. Read about Sasha at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/olympics/260243_olyfig21.html.

A number of men have performed quads in these Olympics.

Here are some hints for watching women ice skating at the Winter Olympics (Dont watch men skating. They make the jumps look too easy,):

1.Dig those old skates out of that box of junk in the garage. Put them on. Stumble into the room where you have a television set and plop yourself down. Now, dont you feel better all ready?

2.Before you put your skats on, turn the thermostat down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. To make it more authentic for the Olympics, make that 10 degrees Centigrade. Have some heavy quilts ready.

3.Have your spouse brew up a big pot of hot chocolate. Dont go stumbling out there in the kitchen by yourself on those ice skates. You might get scalded.

4.While your spouse is out in the kitchen anyway, have her (or possibly, him) fry up a bunch of scones. A scone is fried bread dough. Just pic up the dough at the grocery store and plop sections of dough into the grease. Biscuit dough is fine. The scones should be served with butter and honey. (If you must run down to the store to get the honey, for gosh sakes take off the ice skates. You'll look pretty funny wrapped up in a steering wheel.)

5.While you are watching the ice skating, suck the honey off your fingers. Dont try to wash honey off with cocoa. You might burn yourself. Well, you can wait until the cocoa cools a bit like I do. Then you have some yummy sucking to do.

6.Here are some words you will need for ice skate competition watching:

Ohhhhh! Use this when a jump goes awry and the skater lands on her poduka with a thump. The bigger the thump, the bigger the OHHHHH!

Yeah! Scream this at the top of your lungs when a scatter performs a trivial move effortlessly.

Wow! Say this when a scatter makes a routine triple jump.

Holy Cow! Yell this when a triple axel is made and the skater makes a good landing. If the jumper falls on her paduka with a thud, say Holy S

My wife cut me off there.

Now that you know the elements of watching womens Olympic ice skating, do as Red Green says, Keep your stick on the ice!

Oh, Nuts! My wife says that only applies to ice hockey. Well, keep your paduka off the ice!

On reflection I looked up the word paduka in the Hindu dictionary (see http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Ri_paduka/id/62126). It means sandals of the venerated leader.

When I say lands on her paduka, Im not talking about sandals.

The End

Ice skating, triple, quadruple, lux, axel, Olympics, Torino, Winter Olympics, paduka, Hindu, Midori Ito, Sasha Cohen