Fitness Plans

Fitness Plan - Getting Started!

Exercise is good for you in many different ways. It can help you maintain a healthy weight and boost your overall energy level. Regular exercise decreases stress and anxiety, and helps improve your mood.

Exercise can and should be fun. This guide includes three worksheets to help you figure out what motivates you to exervise, which types of activities you’ll enjoy most, and how to fit them into your life.
If someone has to stay in bed for a while, all of the changes that typically occur with age happen within a very short period of time, even if the person is young. These changes include:
*Shift in the ratio of body fat and muscle mass, in favor of fat.
*Drop in aerobic capacity
*Rise in blood cholesterol
*Increased tendency to develop dangerous blood clots
*Calcium loss from the bones
*Decreased ability to control blood sugar
These same things also happened to the astronauts I used to work with when they were subjected to the weightless environment of space.
Fortunately, these effects can be halted -- and reversed -- at ANY AGE through a good fitness plan and diet.
William J. Evans, PhD, director of the Nutrition, Metabolism and Exercise Laboratory at the University of Arkansass for Medical Sciences coauthored "Biomarkers: The 10 Keys to Prolonging Vitality"
In it he says through a good exercise fitness plan and sound nutrition you can alter your body's aging process by changing 10 key aspects of good health. He calls these factors biomarkers.

read more

Have A Happy New Year - It's All Up To You

New Years Quotes, 

Recently, browsing at Barnes
and Noble bookstore, I noticed a number of books about happiness on
display. Apparently, hearing "have a happy new year" hundreds
of times in the first few weeks of January is not sufficient to bring
it about.

As I see it, there are two
fundamental truths to being happy.
Truth 1: We are responsible
for our own happiness.
I know, that one is always
hard to swallow: Why should I have to take responsibility for my own
happiness? Why can't it just happen? Like, right now, and more often!
(On the other hand, would you rather rely on the vagaries of fate to
determine when and how much you can be happy?) Accepting this truth
is the first, and perhaps most difficult, step.
Truth 2: Happiness is a
skill.
As Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard,
dubbed "the happiest man in the world" based on MRI imaging
of his brain while meditating, writes in "Happiness: A Guide To
Developing Life's Most Important Skill" happiness is something
to be learned, like playing tennis or reading. That's empowering, don't
you think? Because it means that, rather than something that just "happens," happiness is something I can practice (like my backhand!) - and on the
days when I just can't seem to get there, it's more akin to my tennis
game being off than it is about not being able to "find" happiness.
Still, I often forget these
truths when I get caught up in the hectic day-to-day and find myself
reverting to the good ol' familiar myths many of us have been conditioned
to believe.
by Renita Kalhorn

read more

Health Insurance

Are you Covered? When it comes to your health,your family and your money.
In this soft economy, declining revenues are putting the squeeze on corporate expenses. One expense, however, is squeezing back. The cost of providing employees with health insurance coverage is increasing at double-digit rates. Some companies experienced 20% and 30% increases when the 2003 renewal forms landed on decision-makers’ desks.
Forced to make changes, businesses are seeking help. They’re finding solutions by using outside consultants and changing the offerings they make available to employees. This year no single solution has come to the fore except for 1, but we will discuss this solution a bit later. There is widespread skepticism about whether current cost-saving ideas can stem future increases. According to the Center for Studying Health System Change, companies have tried many things, such as decreasing premium contributions, shifting costs to employees, changing the products offered or the insurance carrier and reducing coverage and eligibility. These are some of the cost-saving strategies financial managers and other CPAs can suggest when human resource executives ask for help reducing the impact of health insurance costs on the company’s bottom line.
THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
The unwillingness of businesses to continue to absorb health insurance cost increases is widespread. According to a recent study by human resources consultant Hewitt Associates, employers expect a 15% premium increase this year but say they can absorb only 8%. For many businesses, that means they simply can’t afford to continue with their previous insurance offerings.
“We can’t raise the cost of the services we sell as fast as our health insurance premiums are increasing,” says Jonathan J. Wernick, CPA, general manager for Datafaction in Los Angeles. “We still want to provide the same good coverage to our employees��"we just can’t afford the cost increases.” Wernick is responsible for benefits plan decisions for a 40-employee software company that provides multiclient and multiuser accounting programs for accountants and wealth, business and talent managers in the entertainment industry. Today 1 company is changing the pattern of society, ASI. ASI provides affordable healt, dental, and optical insurance for the entire family. They don't put undo stress upon american households, to the contrary they have low premiums and affordable rates for all.
By Grena Bowers

read more