Capitalism may warrant mindless production at times, but mindless consumption does not have to follow its lead…

An intelligent fitness routine, that pushes the boundaries of our physical limits, is the fuel and the spark that sustains the fire to live with strength and intensity until we no longer can; it’s daily rejuvenation and shedding of the skin from the damage we experienced the day before.

It’s my belief that many of the positive attributes of spirituality – as well as religion – have more to do with self-acceptance than with either of the aforementioned historical paths.

“The heart-related deaths of two New York City triathlon competitors has once again opened the question of whether extreme exercise can be dangerous or even deadly. No one knows yet whether either competitor had, for example, an undiagnosed heart problem. But experts say that under certain conditions, even healthy, finely-tuned athletes can get into trouble, especially in the swimming phase of a triathlon. That’s where both competitors experienced problems during Sunday’s Nautica New York City Triathlon.”

StrengthLab Opinion: sudden cardiac death can happen while at rest and while in motion (even to very well-trained athletes – although rare) so the organized events are not the problem here. It’s that many participants do not take the the time to train adequately (or intelligently) for an organized physical event. A few months of semi-consistent training (fresh from an office cubicle) an entry fee paid and expensive equipment purchased does not make a participant race ready. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44065817/ns/health-fitness/

If we want to do what’s best for our children… we should work on the warmth and depth of our relationships – that’s where they’ll learn the most from us. The fact of the matter is, we cannot have lasting, intiment relationships without being someone worth having a positive, long-term relationship with in the first place.

The search for meaning and its personal definition should vary with every mind who has ever tried to define it; an accurate, all-encompassing definition is not defined easily, if at all. Personally, I have found meaning in accepting what is weak – whether it be physical, mental or spiritual – and then working on making it stronger.

If you don’t enjoy the experience of exercise… you likely will not persist in doing exercise for long. If you center your motivation primarily on end results while exercising, you will not persist in exercise for long; albeit longer than those who don’t enjoy it, but results are fleeting and eventually plateau. Therefore… exercise is best maximized when you simply love the experience.

A recent study reported that healthy eating added $380 to a yearly grocery bill – this simple conclusion is very misleading.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44013462/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

How much money is saved by eating well and improving our immune system? This most certainly leads to less sick days at work and higher energy and focus leading to more production while there. How about lower incidences of health care use through healthier eating? Personal healthcare costs a tremendous amount of money each year to the individual, as well as to the government. Eating healthy can even make us more attractive leading to higher salaries and even getting the job in the first place. Moreover, increased self-esteem and perhaps even better relationships gained through healthier eating… how can that even be valued with a price tag?  

Simple conclusions to very complicated story lines only confuse the issue of what is right… and that’s eating healthy without chemicals and undue ingredients.

Losing weight quickly isn’t very tricky… it doesn’t require a strong foundation based upon longterm thinking and it can be executed on a whim. Permanent weightloss on the other hand is far more challenging… it requires a robust foundation that’s based on longterm thinking and facts – not a whimsical, anecdotal approach.

A thicker skin can certainly be a tremendous advantage when being showered with disapproval or even disrespect (and all the various ways that can be shown) but contrary to common wisdom, in matters of deeper meaning, it’s wiser and more powerful to be thin-skinned and sensitive; that’s where the desire to get involved and the force of change is born.

“Inexpensive or affordable trainer” is nothing more than a euphemism for inexperienced and/or low-skilled personal trainer; as with many things, the price frequently reflects the quality of service. There’s no need to pay too much for assistance, but there’s certainly a need to pay enough.

With locations all over the Valley… you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a quick, healthy salad or sandwich – just make sure to choose wisely when there.

AJ’s Fine Foods Hours & Locations
Open 6 am to 9 pm daily.

East Valley-Chandler
480-705-0011
SWC 56th St & Ray Rd
7131 W. Ray Road, 85226

Scottsdale-DC Ranch
480-538-3080
SEC Pima Road & Union Hills
18271 N. Pima Road, 85255
 
Glendale-Arrowhead
623-537-2300
SWC 67th Avenue & Beardsley
20050 N. 67th Avenue, 85308

Scottsdale-Lone Mountain
480-575-6200
SEC Lone Mountain & Scottsdale Rd
31311 N. Scottsdale Road, 85266
 
East Valley-Mesa
480-507-7280
NWC Val Vista & Baseline
1836 S. Val Vista Drive, 85204

Scottsdale-Pinnacle Peak
480-563-5070
SEC Pinnacle Peak & Pima
23251 N. Pima Road, 85255
 
Phoenix-Arcadia
602-522-0956
NEC 44th Street & Camelback
4430 E. Camelback Road, 85018

Scottsdale
480-998-0052
SWC Scottsdale & Lincoln
7141 E. Lincoln Drive, 85253
 
Central Phoenix
602-230-7015
NEC Central & Camelback
5017 N. Central Avenue, 85012

Scottsdale-Thompson Peak
480-314-6500
NWC Frank Lloyd Wright & Thompson Peak
15031 Thompson Peak Parkway, 85260
 
North Phoenix – Moon Valley
602-863-3500
SW Corner of 7th Street & Thunderbird
13226 N. 7th Street, 85022

Via Linda
480-391-9863
SEC Via Linda & Mountain View
10105 E. Via Linda, Suite 110, 85258
 
Tucson at La Encantada
520-232-6340
NW Corner of Skyline & Campbell
2805 E. Skyline Drive, 85718

The relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you’ll ever hold; relationships with your family, friends, neighbors, customers and employees will never be right until you get the relationship with yourself right first.

No one makes it from infancy without full-time care and once an adult we rely on others to provide everything that we’re dependent upon; the money that we earn is provided by someone else and the products that we purchase are produced by someone else. There’s no such thing as self-made… perhaps we should spend more time thanking each other and less time denigrating each other.

I’ve never really cared for expensive clothes and vehicles, oversized houses or prestigious careers… it’s been the search for meaning thats always mattered most to me.

Trader Joe’s Chicken Hotdogs are tasty and healthy!

Only 2.5 grams of fat and no artificial ingredients… they couple very well with Trader Joe’s Honey Wheat Hotdog Buns too.

Frozen Trader Joe’s Grilled Chicken Burger Patties (great with Trader Joe’s Honey Wheat Buns)

Fully Cooked, quick and healthy (2 mins in the microwave from frozen) 

Ingredients: chicken, water, onion, lemon concentrate, garlic and ground pepper

Serving Size: 1 Patty

Total Fat: 5 Grams

Total Carbs: <1 gram

Protein: 25 grams

A new review of popular multivitamins found that one in three did not contain the amount of nutrients claimed in their labels or improperly listed their ingredients. Researchers at ConsumerLab.com discovered that eight contained too little of specific nutrients, two contained more nutrients than claimed and three improperly listed their ingredients.

“We found a wide range in the quality of multivitamins,” said Dr. Tod Cooperman, president of the company. “Interestingly, the more expensive products didn’t fare any better than those that are just a few cents a day.”

Although low levels of certain nutrients can be a problem, doses that exceed recommendations are especially worrisome. Several products evaluated by ConsumerLab, including some designed for children, had this issue.

Among the supplements that had too little of a particular nutrient were Trader Joe’s Vitamin Crusade (just 59 percent of the vitamin A advertised on the label), Melaleuca Vitality Multivitamin & Mineral (just 42 percent of the touted vitamin A) and All One Active Seniors (less than 2 percent of the beta-carotene, 73 percent of the retinol and 49 percent of the vitamin A listed on the label).

Centrum Chewables had the opposite problem, with 173 percent of the vitamin A listed on the label. This is of particular concern because too much vitamin A can spell trouble. “If you get too much vitamin A it can be toxic to your liver,” explained Dr. Michael Cirigliano, an associate professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “People don’t realize that everything they put in their mouths is bioactive. Whether it’s baby aspirin or food, it has an effect on the body. People think that if you can get it without a prescription it’s safe — that’s baloney.”

Money won’t buy you much if you ignore everything else in your life; that applies to other exclusionary obsessions that we may spend our time pursuing as well, at the expense of all others.

“The Los Angeles Unified School District is taking a stand against child obesity, becoming the nation’s largest school system to stop serving sugar-laden flavored milk.” 

Uhmm… chocolate milk isn’t the problem here, there’s much worse “so-called” food being consumed by our kids inside (as well as outside) our public schools than chocolate milk; the lack of physical activity isn’t helping the problem either. Thank God, mystery meats, fried items and various foods laden with an enormous amount of fat and chemical content remain available to the kids though…  

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43414471/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/

6/16/2011  LOS ANGELES, CA — A suspected drunken driver plowed into a group of around 100 bicyclists on a midnight ride, critically injuring one rider who was dragged under the car and leaving 10 others with lesser injuries. Story Below:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43426381/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

With all the cooking shows on television and the vast numbers of celebrity chefs, you’d think that everyone, latently at the very least, had this deep, burning desire to cook for themselves. Conversely, opposing this cooking trend, Trader Joe’s grocery has reaped continued financial success by using real ingredients in the majority of their products, that are fully prepared and ready to eat.

The joy of not cooking… because I’ve got better things to do – even if it’s nothing at all.

We need to stop and remember all those who came and went in the name of this country… from the American Revolution, to World War I and II, to the present conflict in Afghanistan. We’re lucky to be Americans.

Alternative medicines (from acupuncture, to herbal remedies, to homeopathy) are quite popular today, but the majority of treatments are clinically unproven and in many cases worthless. In a recent study, nearly 95% of contemporary alternative treatments had no better effect than a placebo; a placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to a treatment or substance. In the remaining 5% of alternative treatment cases, there was a hint that something interesting or beneficial was taking place perhaps warranting further study… but, by and large, alternative treatments are typically nothing more than hype!

 Find this at Costco in the freezer section:

Nutritional Facts

Calories: 200 calories

Total fat: 2.5 grams

Dietary fiber: 4 grams

Protein: 5 grams

Ingredients:  FILTERED WATER, 100% WHOLE GRAIN STEEL CUT OATS, CRANBERRIES (CRANBERRIES, SUGAR), BLUEBERRIES (BLUEBERRIES, SUGAR), CURRANTS, CHERRIES (CHERRIES, SUGAR), VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP, BROWN SUGAR, SEA SALT.

Surface strength isn’t good enough for lasting success… careers, relationships and opportunities suffer if the depth of your strength isn’t all the way through you.

You’ll still need to read your labels when shopping these two stores, but Trader Joe’s and Fresh and Easy are the two best places to find convenient food, already prepared, with primarily real ingredients, at reasonable prices. It’s important to know what’s in your food and how your food was prepared if you aren’t willing to make it yourself; these two stores make that principle easy to follow through on.

http://www.freshandeasy.com/

http://traderjoes.com/

Lactic Acid does NOT exist in our bodies… because it doesn’t exist in our bodies, it can’t be the reason we fatigue; this is a common misconception.

Important to Note: our body does produce lactate during energy production, but this is NOT lactic acid and it’s NOT the reason we fatigue either.

Why do we fatigue if lactic acid isn’t the reason?

We all produce energy and we all expend energy… if we expend it, faster than we produce it, we fatigue; it’s energy management that’s the key here, not lactic acid. If we increase our ability to produce energy then we increase our ability to expend energy; but energy management is still the key. Even well conditioned athletes will fatigue if energy production and energy expenditure is mismanaged.

Our Diet Soda Culture desires all the sweetness without all the calories… all the rewards without all the sacrifices.

Those who subscribe to this flawed cultural precept believe in materialism, voluntary cosmetic surgeries, weightloss diets of the moment and infomercial exercise products. Subscribers to this myopic cultural viewpoint, incorrectly believe they’re intelligent without studying, athletes without sweating and deserving by simply demanding or buying it.

Intelligent behavior and dedicated sacrifice comes with great and lasting rewards; credit is no good here… it’s very necessary to pay in advance.

Traditional fitness training programs, such as the ones used by local track coaches, university programs and even professionals, typically utilize a base, build and peak formula; working through all three periods of training before reaching an important scheduled event. When the event is accomplished, the athlete takes a planned respite and potentially begins the process all over again.

I DO NOT subscribe to this type of training for the average working professional. This type of “Peak” training leads to physical and mental burnout, low longterm adherence levels to fitness, as well as increased injury rates. The only athletes who should be executing this type of program are those who are involved in specific organized programs meant to be competitive, very experienced athletes who measure themselves by their performance and professionals who get paid well to train in this way. Important to note: even these highly motivated and carefully guided athletes will eventually suffer from physical and mental burnout, as well as succumb to various injuries when training repeatedly for peak performances.

Every client is different… and although many of the initial health, fitness and life goals sound similar in nature their underlying reasons and methods of success are frequently unique to each client; I can’t stress enough that carefully listening to and fully understanding each particular client is what drives the physical and intellectual methods used in their eventual success.

Because supplements are primarily a waste of money, personal trainers who promote, advise or sell supplements fall into one of the following categories:

A. Don’t know or understand the basics of nutrition or human physiology.

B. Believe the subjective opinions and marketing hype in which they’re subjected.

C. Have determined that personal financial gain is more important than being honest.

Important to Note: there are supplements worth buying and consuming, albeit very few, Carlson Labs Very Finest Liquid Fish Oil would be one of them.

The human mind is predetermined to discover, explore and understand… within this natural proclivity is the need to build explanations of everything.

In fact, so called experts have theories, which are accepted to be true (after validation) until proven otherwise, in all the major fields of endeavor; from physics to religion. Stating and proving theories is a noble endeavor and I certainly wouldn’t bash this notable human tendency, but the human mind is innately ill-equipped to explain and understand everything and that’s something we as human beings should accept… “faith and wishful thinking” do not fill in all the gaps.

Knowing that there are things that we cannot know and will never know in this lifetime, is a sign of wisdom and strength, not weakness.

When Exercise Is Too Much of a Good Thing

 Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images

Recently, researchers in Britain set out to study the heart health of a group of dauntingly fit older athletes. Uninterested in sluggards, the scientists recruited only men who had been part of a British national or Olympic team in distance running or rowing, as well as members of the extremely selective 100 Marathon club, which admits runners who, as you might have guessed, have completed at least a hundred marathons.

All of the men had trained and competed throughout their adult lives and continued to work out strenuously. Twelve were age 50 or older, with the oldest age 67; another 17 were relative striplings, ages 26 to 40. The scientists also gathered a group of 20 healthy men over 50, none of them endurance athletes, for comparison. The different groups underwent a new type of magnetic resonance imaging of their hearts that identifies very early signs of fibrosis, or scarring, within the heart muscle. Fibrosis, if it becomes severe, can lead to stiffening or thickening of portions of the heart, which can contribute to irregular heart function and, eventually, heart failure.

The results, published online a few weeks ago in The Journal of Applied Physiology, were rather disquieting. None of the younger athletes or the older nonathletes had fibrosis in their hearts. But half of the older lifelong athletes showed some heart muscle scarring. The affected men were, in each case, those who’d trained the longest and hardest. Spending more years exercising strenuously or completing more marathon or ultramarathon races was, in this study, associated with a greater likelihood of heart damage.

The question of whether years of intense endurance training might, just possibly, be harmful to the heart is hardly new. It arises whenever a seemingly healthy distance runner, cyclist or other endurance athlete suffers a heart attack. It’s also sometimes invoked by those looking for an excuse not to exercise.

But, to date, science has been hard pressed to establish a clear cause-and-effect link between strenuous exercise and heart damage. A much-discussed 2008 German study of experienced, older marathon runners, for instance, found signs of fibrosis in their hearts more frequently than in a group of less active older men. But some of the racers had taken up regular exercise only late in life, after decades of smoking and other bad health habits. It was impossible to say whether their current heart damage predated their marathon training.

The new study of elite lifelong athletes avoids that pitfall. None of the athletes were new to exercise. Only one had ever smoked. But even so, the study can’t directly prove that the older athletes’ excruciatingly heavy training loads and decades of elite-level racing caused heart scarring, only that the two were associated with each another.

But another new study, this time in laboratory rats, provides the first solid evidence of a direct link between certain kinds of prolonged exercise and subtle heart damage. For the study, published in the journal Circulation, Canadian and Spanish scientists prodded young, healthy male rats to run at an intense pace, day after day, for three months, which is the equivalent of about 10 years in human terms. The training was deliberately designed to mimic many years of serious marathon training in people, said Dr. Stanley Nattel, a cardiologist who is director of the electrophysiology research program at the Montreal Heart Institute Research Center and a senior author of the study.

The rats had begun their regimens with perfectly normal hearts. At the end of the training period, heart scans showed that most of the rodents had developed diffuse scarring and some structural changes, similar to the changes seen in the human endurance athletes. A control group of unexercised rats had developed no such remodeling of their hearts. The researchers also could manually induce arrhythmias, or disruptions of the heart’s natural electrical rhythm, much more readily in the running rats than in the unexercised animals. Interestingly, when the animals stopped running, their hearts returned to normal within eight weeks. Most of the fibrosis and other apparent damage disappeared.

What does all of this mean for those of us who dutifully run or otherwise make ourselves sweat several times a week? Probably not much, realistically, said Dr. Paul Thompson, the chief of cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and an expert on sports cardiology. He was one of the peer reviewers for the British athlete study.

“How many people are going to join the 100 Marathon club” or undertake a comparable amount of training? he asked. “Not many. Too much exercise has not been a big problem in America. Most people just run to stay in shape, and for them, the evidence is quite strong that endurance exercise is good” for the heart, he said.

Dr. Nattel agrees. “There is no doubt that exercise in general is very good for heart health,” he said. But the emerging science does suggest that there may be a threshold of distance, intensity or duration beyond which exercise can have undesirable effects.

Unfortunately, it remains impossible, at the moment, to predict just what that threshold is for any given person, and which athletes might be most vulnerable to heart problems as a result of excessive exercise, said Dr. Paul Volders, a cardiologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who wrote an editorial accompanying the recent rat study.

“Let’s say we ask 100 people, all same age, all same gender, to start a marathon training program at the age of 20 years,” Dr. Volders wrote in an e-mail. If the runners continued their training uninterrupted for 30 years and scientists then scanned their hearts, “it is very likely (one may say: for sure) that there will be major differences in the tissue of the chambers of the heart between these people,” he wrote. For some, the changes will be beneficial; for others, probably not.

Similarly, because most of the research has been done in men and male animals, it is unclear whether the hearts of long-term female athletes are affected in the same fashion. But Dr. Nattel said it seems likely that the latest finding would also apply to women.

So for now, the best response to the emerging science of excessive exercise is to just keep exercising, but with a low-level buzz of caution. If your heart occasionally races, which could indicate arrhythmia, or otherwise draws attention to itself, Dr. Nattel said, consult a doctor.

But if you exercise regularly and currently have no symptoms, “I think it’s safe to say that you should keep it up,” Dr. Thompson said.

A study of the two most popular weight-loss surgeries found obese diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery lost 64 percent of their excess weight after a year, compared with 36 percent in those treated with the Lap-Band device.

StrengthLab Thoughts: This is like choosing between the governments of Iran and North Korea… which do you like better?

“How about Eat Less, Eat Better and Move More?”

The study: conducted by researchers at Northwestern University, found that young adults who frequently attended religious activities were far more likely to become obese than those who didn’t.

“Our main finding was that people with a high frequency of religious participation in young adulthood were 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age than those with no religious participation in young adulthood,” says Matthew Feinstein, the study’s lead investigator and a fourth year medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. And that is true even after we adjusted for variables like age, race, gender, education, income, and baseline body mass index”.

StrengthLab Thoughts: Renouncing personal responsibility, in things that you can control, is frequently proceeded with negative consequences; gaining weight is merely the least of them.

Informal education is in many cases more important than formal education and it’s considerably less expensive too. Myriad schools dictating the required material necessary to be enlightened and properly educated is short-sighted and narrow-minded. Individuals who want to learn have numerous opportunities to do so within the United States… and for those who don’t want to learn, well no school is going to correct that character flaw; it’s a personal choice – no matter the circumstances.

I hear the word “passionate” thrown around a lot within the fitness industry; I know what passion looks like… so when I hear someone say it, I know that I’m not looking at it.

We human beings have a tendency to rate ourselves as better than other species because of our innate intellectual capacities; we frequently rate ourselves as superior within our own species as well for this very same quality. But, we all might do well to keep in mind, that we all suffer the same fate, regardless of intellectual capacities – imagined or real. Are you smart enough to avoid that end? Then how much better then everyone else are you?

The ability to fully recognize, appreciate, understand and even share feelings as they’re being experienced is one of humanity’s greatest characteristics; in fact, the future success or failure of our species rests directly upon it.

The “HCG Diet” is so far fetched, I have a hard time even talking about it without sneering. 

A fertility hormone, virtually lost within a liquid homeopathic remedy, that helps you lose weight when you place a few drops under your tongue? Believe me… not a chance! The 500 calorie diet that is prescribed to go along with the supplement may help you lose weight, but it’s nothing more than a starvation approach to weightloss and that can be performed without the supplement; although I’m certainly not advising that either.

There’s no “evidence based” information anywhere that states HCG (or Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) aids in weightloss… Buyer Beware!  

Quick and convenient Grains to go! And it really tastes good too!  (Trader Joe’s stocks this cereal.) 

INGREDIENTS: Organic whole wheat meal, organic wheat bran, organic evaporated cane juice, organic soy flour, organic flax, organic puffed Kamut® Khorasan wheat, organic barley malt extract, organic soy fiber, organic oat bran, organic freeze dried blueberries, sea salt, organic cinnamon and tocopherols (natural vitamin E) – That’s it!  Only 3 grams of fat, 7 grams of fiber and 9 grams of protein per serving!

Trader Joe’s Organic Multigrain Artisan Sandwich Bread

This is another great choice for those who need convenient Grains to go!

Organic Ingredients Include:

Unbleached Wheat Flour, Whole Wheat Flour, Vita Grain (Barley, Corn, Millet, Triticale and Rye), Sunflour Seeds, Sea Salt, Flax Seeds, Oats and Whey – That’s it! 

During his lifetime, Albert Einstein was right about some very big and new ideas that still hold true today; but he was also very wrong concerning many of these same large paradigm shifting ideas as well.

Remember, that what we don’t know is considerably more than what we do know.

To conceptualize and remember that last sentence… is to stay interested, interesting and engaged for a lifetime.

Sally Meyerhoff (27 years old) considered one of America’s top female marathoners and winner of this year’s PF Chang’s Marathon, was killed Tuesday when the bicycle she was riding collided with a pickup truck in Maricopa, Arizona. She will be missed by many!

I find it interesting that our formal educational system within the Unites States, if not the entire world, is primarily focused on building the rational mind (e.g. math, chemistry, biology, physics, etc.). Yet, the decisions that have the vast importance to the quality and depth of our lives have very little to do with reason or logic. Wisdom can be taught, wisdom can be learned, wisdom can be applied and it should be a primary goal for all of us…

The NorthStar is the brightest star in the Ursa Minor and regardless of your position in life, you too are someone’s NorthStar; so stand tall with courage, take thoughtful care of yourself and make the most of it… because your light is needed.

The most memorable thing about athletics is not how we’ve excelled against others, but, rather, how we’ve excelled against ourselves; the real contest, no matter the venue, really is within us.

Any action, decision, or promise founded on a lie, or even a half truth, will come back to haunt you; this isn’t a moral opinion, it’s simply a fact.

Protein supplements are widely popular in the United States, but they shouldn’t be… protein consumption is already quite high and protein is plentiful in every restaurant and grocery store throughout the nation.  Furthermore, it’s expensive per serving and there’s absolutely no health benefits to consuming excess protein. In most cases, protein supplements are sold as meal replacements or marketed as necessary for muscle stimulation and/or growth… neither are viable options for purchase.

Meal replacement? Eat a healthy salad that provides more nutrition per ounce than any supplement could ever provide, as well as the benefits of healthy weightloss.

Muscle growth? Follow a quality weight training program and put in the yearly sweat equity that’s required to move you toward your physical goals.

Important to note here: Expensive shampoos and lotions that provide protein in their products are a waste of money as well. You cannot strengthen your hair, nails, or skin through the surface of your body… the improvement starts from the inside by what you consume.