Guru Goddess

Many men and women are interested in getting fit, but don’t know where to start. Or, they start, but don’t keep it up because they get bored or feel like it’s a lot of hard work.

But you can get into the mood and the move in a lot of different ways that don’t involve hours on a treadmill or stairclimber, or spending a fortune on gym membership or equipment.

The most important way to stay fit and lose weight is to stay on the move. It takes 2000 calories to put on a pound, but 3500 to burn one off.

But exercise does not have to be a chore, or something you need to set aside hours for. The good news is that even 10 minutes a day can help—and new research has also shown that 4 sessions of 10 minutes a day is actually better for you than 40 minutes of sustained exercise.

Not only does it help you stay physically fit and trim, exercise also enhances your mood. Often you can even meet a lot of great like-minded people who will encourage you to stay fit.

The easiest way to exercise is the 10,000 steps a day rule. You can get an inexpensive pedometer to help keep you on track. Walking is a tremendous way of staying in shape for many men and women. You can gradually begin walking more with each passing day. In time, you can build up to the 10,000 step a day level.

You can also carry two water bottles and/orswing your arms more vigorously, to burn even more calories. Walking up hill or up stairs can also increase the impact of the workout and the number of calories burned.

Walking to the store instead of taking the car, or, not grabbing the first parking spot, but actually parking further away from the store entrance, can all help you meet your 10000 step goal.

Taking the stairs instead of the elevator, both up and down counts. Stepping from side to side while you wait for a bus or train works too, and actually exercises another set of helpful muscles. To increase your heart rate when walking, take smaller, more numerous strides per minute instead of longer, fewer ones.

A dog is also a great way to keep fit, and he is a mood booster too. Just remember, a puppy is a 15 year marriage commitment, til death do you part, usually its death. At the same time, though, there are tens of thousands of dogs looking for a home at www.petfinder.org if you feel that a canine pal will help keep you on track with your fitness goals.

Other daily activities which you can include would be golfing, especially if you carry your own clubs, and gardening.

Swimming is another huge calorie burner with low impact on your joints, something to consider if you are trying to lose weight without stress and strain to yourself or your joints. But you can’t do it literally anywhere (even in a plane!) the way you can with walking.

The worst exercise is none at all, so look at your daily schedule and try to see where you can add a few steps here and there to get your 10,000 every day. Every step counts on your path to better fitness.

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Today, many men and women (and children) around the globe, but particularly in America, are significantly overweight. As a result, a growing number of people find themselves starting different diet programs all the time, going for fad diet after fad diet hoping for some sort of miracle for them being overweight.

Unfortunately, most people who embark on a diet plan fail to lose weight. Or, even if they lose, it often not only creeps right back on, but in many cases, it rebounds back again, so that they end up even heavier than they were before they started attempting to diet. Dieting can cause you to put on weight because you are playing with your metabolism in a potentially dangerous way.

Many of the fad diets being promoted are hazardous to a person’s health. While you may lose weight at the outset on one of these diet plans or programs, many of these plans are not designed to promote a healthy and balanced eating lifestyle which you can sustain long-term in order to keep the weight off.

In the final analysis, when it comes to healthy living and reaching and maintaining an appropriate weight, the only true course of action in which you can follow is a balanced diet and exercise, and those are not things that you can get out of a pill bottle or a box.

By eating a balanced diet, you will be able to maintain the energy and nutrition levels needed to keep your body running like a well-fuelled and well-oiled machine.

For those of you who hate counting calories, the facts are sad but true. To gain a pound takes 2000 calories. To LOSE one, takes 3500, because your body stores fat to later be used for energy.

Do the math! Only regular exercise or physical activity is going to help you budge the pudge!

Regular exercise will also help you maintain a healthy, toned and trim body, and a toned body helps you burn more fat, again, because your body is operating efficiently.

Through a balanced diet and regular exercise, you can not only reach your weight goal, you can get the pounds off and keep them off.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Another solid but average thriller

This is yet another addition to the ‘shag the suspect’/victim the FBI guy is supposed to be protecting line of romantic suspense books. I think it might have been better as a dark book. Relying on the obnoxious dog with an eating disorder and diarrhea in order to get them out of various disasters is just too cutesy and ridiculous for words. The villain is motiveless, so none of the very rushed ending of the book really ties together.

Sam McCabe is great, but his sidekicks Wynne and “Rambo Barbie” Gardner and her “J. Lo” posterior are just very irritiating. The book is so repetitive that this is probably why. She uses whole sentences almost verbatim for the couple of love scenes in the book. The instant love affair is also wildly improbable but this is all par for the course in this genre. They never have a real conversation once they get past the ‘so what is your family like’ stage. Also, does every Romantic suspense novel have to be set in New Orleans these days? It must be putting off tourism to the city like nobody’s business, with people thinking they’re going to be murdered at any moment!

Finally, the heroine, Maddie. She swings wildly from quivering little girl afraid of the dark to another Rambo Barbie sex goddess without any consistency.

An enjoyable read, but don’t look for any heat or depth, just a mildly interesting way to pass the time.

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Book Review: Dark Magic
(The Carpathians (Dark) Series, Book 4)
by Christine Feehan

1.0 out of 5 stars Gross and offensive

I have read and enjoyed the Carpathian novels in the past, about 5 or 6 of them, but this one truly disgusted me.

Gregori the Dark one has engineered Savannah in the womb by making his blood part of hers when he helps her mother Raven. He has also tricked her into intimacy for years as a child by posing as her beloved pet wolf. Really pervy.

We are told that Carpathians cannot live without their lifemate and so he will go over to evil if he does not have her. He is so close to the edge he might as well be over it. He has waited twenty three years for her after all-though after a thousand of not turning bad we find this hard to believe.

Despite Savannah’s continuous protests, he takes her as his lover and partner. But there is no tender lovemaking-he nearly rips her to pieces in every sense of the word in an appalling scene which goes on for over 50 pages!

I do get the blood part, really, but the gratuitous violence and rape in this book is simply not what I expect from a romance.

Nor does his terrible behavior get mitigated in anyway when he uses his saliva with all of its Carpathian healing properties to ‘heal’ her and of course make the moves on her at the same time. Really graphic, take my word for it.

There is just too much nonconsensual sexual activity in this book for any sensible modern woman reader to be comfortable with. I gave up after 100 pages, the book was so crude, violent and graphic in its portrayal of his betrayals and rape of the heroine. I will not even go into the terrible repetitive writing, with the use of hunger, need and erotic used about 4 times on every page. The shocking violence should be enough to deter any true seeker of a romantic read. 343 words

In this section you will find some useful yoga information. Nothing brings out your inner goddess more than yoga. It is a great mind and body connection, and helps keep you fit and flexible. If done correctly, it is a safe workout you can enjoy no matter what your age, at home, in a group, anywhere! Best of all, in most cases, yoga does not even need any special equipment.

Here you will find advice on staying fit and health using a variety of strategies, to help bring out the inner goddess in you.