Here is a recipe that is a personal favorite of mine and you will gobble it down like the little tike in the picture! It is a true power pudding with no sugar, a whopping 40g of high-grade protein from Beverly International and very low in fat.

*1 box (39g) of Sugar Free-Fat Free Instant Jell-O Pudding

*2 scoops of Chocolate Beverly International Ultimate Muscle Protein, also known as UMP (you can use Vanilla (UMP) with any other flavor of Sugar/Fat-free Jell-O pudding mix as well!)

* 2 Tbs of Sugar-free Cool Whip.

*Ice Cold water to desired consistency

*Mix all indredients with a wisk until pudding gets thick, creamy and starts to set. Don’t be lazy, make sure you whisk long enough to make it super smooth & creamy. Cover and put in fridge for 10-15 minutes then serve. For ultimate smooth texture & creaminess, let it sit covered overnight!

Great for a high protein, low sugar snack anytime…day or night…Pow!

If things are not bad enough with regard to junk food…there are now a series of soft drink commercials touting a “Throwback” series of drinks with a retro package design and highlighting that the drinks contain “real sugar.”

Gee-Wiz…thanks soft drink companies!…just what I always wanted, the same soft drink in a different container loaded with more sugar in just 8 ounces of liquid than most people need in two days. Is it Christmas again already?…thanks guys!

All sarcasm aside, this really is ridiculous. The fact that many people (whether they are fat or thin) consume a large amount of their daily, empty calories and carbohydrates by “drinking” them in the form of sugar packed soft drinks and fruit juices from concentrate is alarming.

The obesity crisis is just that….a crisis! Just because people aren’t dying on the spot after drinking a full-sugar soft drink or eating a bag of greasy french fries doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be cause for alarm. Our nation’s top causes of death are due to poor dietary and activity habits that slowly deteriorate peoples health, quality of life and independence.

Companies playing on peoples affinity for nostalgia or “the way things used to be” with products that have without a doubt been proven to be at the root cause of the top ills of our society, is just outright irresponsible. They pump the airwaves with these messages as if full-sugar soft drinks were what made Americans well….American! What a joke!

This is similar to the irresponsibility that Beer companies exhibit by their constant efforts to associate beer with an active, healthy lifestyle…knowing all the while that they want people to sit on their butts at bars and at home and chug as much beer as they possibly can.

Don’t be fooled by this junk and stay focused on eating healthy foods, staying consistently active and making your health a true priority. When you do this, all the marketing dollars that companies spend to get you hooked on junk products will not sway or fool you in any way.

These companies could care less about you or your health, they only care about squeezing as much money out of you as they can get their hands on. It is up to you to protect your health and the best way is to do that is to personally control your activity habits and what you do and don’t consume on a consistent basis.

Is there anything wrong with an occasional, full sugar drink or beer with a friend?…No but to tout these things in a manner that suggests that they are the fabric of our society or lifestyle is a load of you know what!

Stay healthy, stay active, don’t be fooled! Go Getem!

Unfortunately, many people fail to reach their fitness and wellness goals because of one thing….quitting! The reasons for this common occurrence are infinite but there is a simple way to help create a mental structure that will allow you to set the stage for consistency and success.

This mental structure comes with enlightening yourself to the fact that things arent always easy and there are ups and downs that you must push through in order to reach your goals. I know I may seem to be simplifying things a bit but you would be suprised by how many people start fitness/wellness programs thinking that just by “saying” they are going to get healthy somehow rearranges the cosmos in their favor. That my friends, couldnt be any further from the truth!

As much as we would like to think that we can hope and wish our way to healthy success, the reality is that success comes with you putting your body in motion with a determined commitment to healthy habits. That commitment paired with the realization that fitness success is not “easy”but rather a “simple” process that involves embracing and accepting the fact that there will be ups, downs, hardships, lazy days, setbacks and mistakes.

I was watching a women’s Alpine Skiing race this morning and the course was one of the hardest in the world. Even at this elite level, the skiers who garnered the best results were the ones who were not deterred or intimidated by the course but rather accepted its challenges, fought through them and attacked it like it was their last day on earth.

Understanding and accepting that challenges and difficulty are just like any other part of life is a universal key to success in any arena. Expecting things to be easy and quitting when they become difficult is the universal key to failure and subpar results.

Create your plan of action, embrace the hardship as part of the journey and you will be surprised at how well your mind and body both respond and produce results never before thought possible. Go Getem!

A good example of thinking outside the box is Croation Skiing legend and 4 time Olympic gold medal winner, Janica Kosteli?. She and her brother are world class winners on the Olympic and Alpine Skiing circuits and were trained by their father who had a very unorthodox way of training them. He would have perform squats with heavy rocks and run up and down the rocky shores of the Baltic to develop their strength, stamina, coordination and reaction times. People were shocked to find that the secret to their training was carefully crafted routines using , hills, rocks and sand!

Do you exercise outside the box or do you stick to the normal formats of getting fit? While there are numerous “old-school” formats of training that will always provide quality results, it is also important to keep your eye open for new or different styles that can help to garner additional results.

Keep in mind that there is a fine line between quality, alternative formats of training versus the over-hyped infomercial products and programs that only cause money loss rather than fat loss…so proceed with caution and common sense when looking for different ways of training.

Here is an article detailing one man’s quest to change the way people view certain aspects of abdominal training. http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/01/19/the-man-who-wants-to-kill-crunches/

Let me know what you think!

Extreme adventures, competitive sports, trendy workouts, bootcamps, spinning and power-pump aerobic classes are great right? Yes, if there is first a foundation of solid fitness knowledge and technique to support all that.

All too often, people of all backgrounds and interests go to the gym on their off days by themselves and have absolutely no idea about how to correctly use the equipment. First things first…it is always smart to learn the basics on how to use Dumbbells and many of the countless exercises they allow you to do. Learning how to master the many techniques, body positions and exercises supports any activity and serves as a great foundation for many other forms of training you may perform in the future.

It is great to involve yourself in numerous types of training formats but it is just as important to master the basics with equipment that has been around for centuries and will be for centuries more! Here is video with a few things to think about. http://www.wthr.com/global/Category.asp?c=83078

When choosing home exercise equipment, keep things simple and start with basic pieces that have been proven over time to be of the highest quality….steer clear of trendy, infomercial equipment that only produces loss of your money and NOTHING else!

I always recommend starting with strength equipment such as a Multi-Purpose Weight Bench with a set of Dumbbells or a Powerblock set which is a cool system that replaces dumbbells, offers countless variation and will save you valuable space.

Chris Lutz from Bob Block Fitness is on hand with his recommendation for Cardio Equipment. Choose equipment based on quality, your needs, personal preferences and goals then get moving!!

Here is a link to my Monday segment on home exercise equipment. http://www.wthr.com/global/Category.asp?c=83078