Sensei for Weight Loss, Cellphone Personal Training Workouts and more!

It wouldn’t be the cutting edge unless

people had the option for high tech weight loss gadgets! Forbes ran a fascinating article about it, to wit:

No Excuses
A major way these services appear to help users is by eliminating their excuses for falling off the health wagon. The Sensei for Weight Loss program, which delivers customized meal recommendations, weekly shopping lists, fitness tips and motivational messages to a mobile phone or personal Web page, aims to get involved in as many of your daily decisions as possible.

Have a tendency to snack at night? For a weekly fee, Sensei will send you a variety of messages reminding you to brush your teeth after dinner to quell your sweet tooth. Get invited to a hastily arranged business lunch at a steakhouse? Alert the program and you’ll get advice on healthy choices the restaurant offers.

If you’re on the road frequently and can’t stand hotel gyms, you can pay a small fee to have PumpOne Mobile send your cellphone traveling workouts that use hotel furniture, water bottles and luggage as props. IPhone or iPod touch users also can access the just launched Pump10, which offers weekly, 10-minute video workouts, fitness tips and personal training advice for free.

And if your downfall is eating out, try texting DIET1 for free instant nutritional information. Part of Diet.com’s Nutrition on the Go program, the service can tell you calorie, fat, carbohydrate and protein counts for items on more than 1,700 restaurant menus nationwide.

“It’s not that easy to eat healthy,” says Carol Davies, a partner at Stamford, Conn.-based consultant group Fletcher Knight. “Anything that can help consumers do that on the spot is very on target.”

You can’t discount the fun factor either.

For instance, for a subscription fee Weight Watchers Online for Men shares customized advice, including which beers are the most diet-friendly and whether you’re better off snacking on wings or nachos at the bar. It also lets users constantly manage their food intake and monitor their weight loss progress with charts and statistics sheets, not unlike tracking the stats of an athlete for fantasy baseball, says Jason Carpenter, site editor.

While you can’t discount the benefits of face time with a dietitian or a personal trainer, who can give you advice with a human touch, experts say these services are a good option for those who are time-crunched and have enough discipline to consistently log in to them.

“These things aren’t going to give you willpower or determination,” Davies says. “They’re tools to help you make good decisions…..MORE….”

The goodies they reveal are most intriguing indeed! Do check them out.

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps – Want a good cellphone for your personal training?

Move Over 5 Bite Diet – Enter Stage Left, Flat Belly Diet!

Proving that there

will always be people who crave buying the dream, the latest diet craze to sweep America is the Flat Belly Diet (only after one week of the 5 Bite Dite!). To wit:

The newest diet craze is the Flat Belly Diet. Prevention Magazine has created the ultimate flab busting eating plan (oh joy, says I). They tested this diet out, now we get to hear the results of how it worked. According to Prevention Magazine their diet can help you lose fat especially around your tummy. They explain that it is important to lose the excess weight around your belly because it can lessen your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar. (sign me up for those college courses!).

Did you know there are five flat belly foods? Golly gee, yes, and Prevention tells you that you should be consuming at least one of these foods at every meal.

The five foods are

1. Good oils – Oils that don’t misbehave such as oil, flaxseed oil, olive oil, peanut oil, pesto sauce, safflower oil, sesame oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, walnut oil

2. Nuts and Seeds – Almonds, almond butter, Brazil nuts, cashew butter, chunky natural peanut butter, dry-roasted cashews, dry-roasted peanuts, dry-roasted sunflower seeds, hazelnuts and many others.

3. Avocados

4. Olives- Black or Green

5. Chocolate- Dark or semisweet chocolate chips, shavings, or chunks (no this does not include ice cream).

They also talk about eating more whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, and limiting your intake of meat. Their suggested meal plans suggest around 1600 calories a day.

Here are more places where you can learn about it?

All I have to say is….sigh….

Barbara

ps – want some Ab belly thingees?

Diet and weight loss implants now in practice!

Morning,

Have you heard

about the following?

….

It’s probably safe to say most of us want to lose a few pounds, but there are thousands in San Antonio who need to lose weight to live. Now, a new device being tested right here in San Antonio is offering help and hope.

Nelda Gonzales is beginning a new chapter in her life. She’s been battling weight for years, and when she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, she said she went into a depression, but now, she has a reason to smile.

That’s because tucked away in her belly is the Tantalus Two, which she calls her “Titanium Baby” because of the fluttering sensation she feels when it’s telling her she’s full.

“When I tend to over eat or when I’m full the ‘baby’ flutters and that’s a sign to me that tells me that I’ve had enough,” explained Nelda.

San Antonio doctors are testing the Tantalus Two to help stop the obesity and diabetes problem reaching epidemic proportions in the US, something, as a school teacher, Nelda sees every day.

She told us, “I see so many overweight children. It’s really, really scary, and I’m afraid they’re going to end up like me.”….MORE….

What do you think about it? Here’s more resources for you:

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps – perhaps the following might help too:

P90x Fitness Review – Core Synergistics, Week 8, Day 2 – Total Days – 51

Morning!

I was able

to get to my beloved P90x workout this morning and tackled Core Synergistics. This is my rest week, so it went really well. I confess to missing bashing my body with the weights, but I remember the last rest week really helped me recover.

I hate the Supermans but they work quite well. :)

And that’s Day 51,

Barbara

ps – some nifty P90x goodies:

Wii FIT – The little white balance board of beauty!

Morning!

I’ll be the first

one to confess – I adore my DDR (dance dance revolution) but can see…the Wii is really starting to gain popularity. And in my never-ending quest for giving my children even more reasons to come in out of the fresh air and plop themselves down in front of the TV, I’ve been researching the Wii FIT for awhile. Check out this story!

…My second week of daily Wii Fit training has come to a close. This week was a lot busier than the first so I am learning not only how to balance n the little white board, but also how to balance Wii Fit into my life.

After the first week I had lost no weight, but I was still very optimistic about the program. This week I have continued to build that positive mental attitude as you can read in the logs below. But is there any weight loss to go with it? Read more to find out….

…

Day 8 (February 12th)
BMI: 25.34
Body Age: 22
In game training time: 45 minutes
Actual playing time: 54 minutes

I have unlocked almost all of the exercises at this point. Some of the later ones can really be put into the “silly” category. For example one of the exercises has you lie down on the floor with the Wii remote pointed at the ceiling and you are to repeatedly stand up and fall back to the ground while shaking the remote as little as possible. It is perhaps good for leg training, but it really looks stupid.

Focusing more on yoga is starting to pay off. I am seeing definite improvement in my yoga poses. I really hope my balance is actually getting better and not that I am just learning how to trick the board….MORE….

What do YOU think?

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps – want some cool Wii games?

Celebrity Weightloss, ooooooo! Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry and more!

Morning,

Well! It appears the latest book on celebrity fitness is The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets! Discussed by CBSNEWS, one sees:

… Have you ever wondered how Jessica Simpson or Jennifer Lopez got that lean, toned body? Now you can find out thanks to a new book that’s revealing celebrity diet secrets.

“The Black Book of Hollywood Diet Secrets” reveals tips and little known diet tricks that stars like Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry, and Jennifer Aniston use to stay fit.

One tip says that many celebs add large amounts of asparagus to their daily diets. Why? “Celebrities are using it as a laxative,” explains Robin Plotkin, a registered dietician in Dallas. But don’t think that taking off the pounds is as easy as that. “While yes, you might initially lose weight quickly by eating a lot of asparagus for example, it’s not going to stay off,” says Plotkin. “So it is just a quick fix.”

Another item in the book has some celebs saying that brushing your teeth can help curb your appetite. Plotkin says – that’s true! “It triggers our brain to say, ‘Hey lets stop eating for a while and enjoy that nice flavor that’s in our mouth’.”…..MORE….

Sigh. When will the public learn? Anything celebrities do is because their personal trainers tell them to do. And anyone can learn those techniques by simple visiting the library and learning a good lifestyle habit to choose.

But, if you’re one who wants to explore more, let me assist you like so:

Enjoy,

Barbara

“Mom, tattling on myself just isn’t cool!”

You know you’re a parent

when your precocious younger child tells you

“Mom, tattling on myself just isn’t cool!”

This conversation happened when my children were debating the merits of being the tale-bearer back to Mom. When I asked him, okay, if you feel an insane urge to tattle, just tattle on yourself, he gave me the above rather cute response.

Kids. Gotta love raisin’ em. :)

Enjoy,

Barbara

ps- some great parenting resources include:

P90x Fitness Review – Xstretch, Week 7, Day 7 – Total Days – 49

I’ve completed

7 whole weeks! YAY!!!!!!!

P90x rocks! Today was ‘give my body a rest’ day, so I did the XStretch while really felt good.

Next week (okay, tomorrow) starts my rest week. It’s about time. :)

And that’s Day 49,

Barbara

ps – Tony Horton has other goodies like:

5 Bite Diet – Talk about starving, dangerous in the extreme

Morning,

Now, I’ve seen some ridiculous diet ideas in the past, but this one takes the cake:

The 5 Bite Diet

The incredibly stupid utterly unique idea behind this diet requires you taking only five bites of what you want 3 times on a day, drink a lot of water, and at night you must take a multivitamin pill.

ARGH! ARGH ARGH!!!!!!!!

ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shield me from the stupidity please! And the worst thing is, you’ll get lots of folks who are desperate to buy the dream…and will shell out the money for it. :(

Starvation just doesn’t work. No no no, it won’t work. What a horribly bad idea this diet is.

Extra ran an article about it that you can access here. One interesting comment reads:

….I am shocked ‘Extra’ would even give this charlatan the air time. Eating disorders in this country are at an epidemic level for both men and women and suggesting this kind of ‘diet’ is dangerous and careless. I am sure many of your viewers are in their teens and are unable to or don’t have access to resources that can help them make healthy choices should they want to lose weight. This ‘diet’ is the first step in teaching anyone how to unrealistically ‘control’ their eating….which is the first step into the madness of an eating disorder, namely, anorexia. I honestly thought this segment was a joke….. MORE….

Sad….very sad.

Barbara

ps – some useful diet books you might to consider instead are: