Things are still going pretty well. I’m down to the home stretch with just one week left before final measurements!

Here are my stats for the end of Week 11 (beginning with my starting measurements):
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One of the things that people often miss the most when trying to lose weight is dessert. When you’re trying to save calories, sweets are often the first to go.

Fortunately, you don’t have to forgo all sweets. There are many delicious sweet treats that you can enjoy without breaking your diet. Check out the following list for ideas.

*Note: As with all things, moderation is key; keep an eye on your portion size and stay within your calorie deficit.
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Local fitness and weight loss expert and owner of Superwomen Boot Camp, Val Fujii, has helped many clients achieve their health and fitness goals. Today, he wants to make aware the fact that losing weight is not only a physical challenge but a mental challenge as well.



There has been a lot of recent controversy surrounding a personal trainer, Paul James, who packed on 90 pounds in an effort to get inside the heads of his overweight clients. “I admire his out of the box thinking, however, his stunt to understand and literally put himself in his obese client’s shoes is absolutely unnecessary. He is creating more of a mental challenge for himself, rather than a physical challenge, and this could cause even more unwanted strain on his body,” Fujii says. Fujii goes on further to point out that because of the weight gain, James avoided socializing, he was embarrassed to go out in public, and he would sleep more frequently. “These are all clearly signs of the onset of depression.”



“As personal trainers and fitness experts we need to realize that we have to be part of the solution…not part of the problem,” Fujii claims. “We need to set examples and support our clients in helping them to achieve their fitness and health goals, and a big part of that is motivation, to keep them on track mentally in order to reach those goals.”



All of you women out there who are looking to find the right combination of a fun, motivating and supportive workout environment, come on out to Superwomen Boot Camp. Sessions run on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at three convenient times—6 a.m., 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Spots fill up fast, so don’t miss out. You’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.



Source: www.pr.com

Working out alone can be boring and difficult to stay on pace without having the support of a friend or family member. Support from somebody that can be there when a personal trainer is not, can help keep a client on track to reach his or her fitness goals. Team Fitness America encourages fitness buddy training by offering their customizable sessions with a certified personal trainer for as low as $19.99 per person.

“A fitness buddy is someone that you know you can count on such as your spouse, sister, brother, cousin, or best friend,” said Margie Pajak, founder of Team Fitness America.

“Working out with a fitness buddy will keep your sessions going on a fast pace that will bring your heart rate up while you burn more calories, then once the personal trainer leaves, you will be able to continue your workouts with the same pace and tempo. When the personal trainer returns he or she will provide you with another great workout while giving you and your fitness buddy things to do when they are not there,” added Pajak.

While most people already are looking for an affordable alternative as opposed to joining the gym or they do not want to endure the usual “large gym” intimidation, clients of Team Fitness America can save money, get in shape, and avoid intimidation by being in the comfort of their own home while working out with a loved one.

Only accepting certifications from some of the best nationally recognized organizations, they take things a step further by giving their clients complete control of their fitness program. Clients have the right to choose their workout times, days, and even the gender of the personal trainer that they are working out with throughout the duration of their fitness program.

Source: www.pr.com

So what if your gym refers to the power rack as the “curl station”? There are ways to butch up even the wussiest gym.

Sensitive Skin

For those with sensitive skin you should try and find a gentle exfoliator, preferably a natural one suitable for your skin type. Look for ingredients such as sugar, jojoba, vitamin E and Aloe Vera. Also make sure that there are no harsh chemicals such as parabens in the scrub (these can be identified by the suffix ‘paraben.’) Look for retailers and websites that promote natural, handmade products and you will find that these are fine for sensitive skin.  If you do find a daily scrub then it may not be necessary to use it on a daily basis even if it is for sensitive skin, if you find that you can use it just three times a week and gain the desirable results then do so.

Dry Skin

With dry skin you need to ensure you get a product that won’t dry you out even more, just the process of putting water on your face to wash the scrub off will dry your skin. Try and find a product formulated for your skin type or turn to other methods of exfoliation for example you can buy exfoliating facial wipes which need no water to work. They will also remove makeup, cleanse and tone. Try and use a natural product, ones with chemicals in tend to dry your skin out even if they do claim to be moisturising. When using any product even one that is formulated to moisturise your skin, apply a moisturiser afterwards whilst your skin is still wet.

Oily Skin

For this skin type you need to ensure that the product does not contribute to your oiliness. You could get away with using a daily scrub to remove oil and all the dirt that clings to it. This will prevent spots, rid you of that oily feel and prepare your skin for makeup.

Acne-Prone Skin

There are products out there specifically produced to combat acne, even if you just get one or two spots every so often or you suffer with acne quite badly investing in a product such a Clear and Clear face scrub can help to keep skin clear. If you prefer natural products then look at ones that contain tee tree and that are non-comedogenic, meaning they don’t clog pores, this will help to banish spots. These should be used daily or according to the instructions on the pack. When washing your face with the scrub, to wash it off you should use cold water, although this is less preferable to using warm water (especially with the impending winter months approaching) but it will help close your pores to any oil or gunk from your makeup that may cause spots.

Images via Wikipedia

The H1N1 virus, better known as the swine flu, has gotten more than its share of press lately. With the world up in arms against this invisible killer, we have all gotten a little more cautious around anyone exhibiting the slightest cough or sneeze. This was especially true of my family. With my wife working as a hair dresser, my six year old in the second grade, and myself working at the city fire department, which also includes being a first responder/EMT, we have had the odds stacked against us that one of us will get sick. Factor in the 5 month old girl in our house, who came prematurely with a mile long list of “don’ts,” and a constant stream of doctors and nurses telling us how susceptible to illness she is, we have been walking on eggshells to keep everyone in the house healthy. However, despite our every effort to avoid the flu, it found us, or, me, to be more specific. It would seem that if I caught the flu, the family would be soon to follow, but there are ways to safeguard against spreading disease. Luckily for us, the good doctors and nurses had not only drilled into our heads how weak our baby’s immune system was, but also how to protect her health. It’s very simple, but it takes some forethought and diligent practice.

First off, let me explain how I caught the flu to begin with. I didn’t get enough rest. I pushed myself to stay up too late and wake up too early. It’s bound to happen at some point to all of us, and this is why it’s so important that if you can go to bed at a decent time, do it. I work as a firefighter and an EMT. With this, we’re trained to take extra precautions. We wear respiratory masks and latex gloves to calls, we decontaminate everything after every exposure, and we wash our hands religiously. We are as careful as we can be, but we are only kidding ourselves if we think that we will not be exposed at some point. The same goes for everyone else. You can catch it from a doorknob, a handshake, sharing a drink, or an uncovered sneeze. It’s in more places than people realize, and it’s spreading. The best thing you can do to protect yourself from the flu is to rest, eat healthy, and get a flu shot, and even then, you’re still not guaranteed to dodge the flu. Be that as it may, your chances of staying well are the best when you get plenty of sleep. I did not, and I suffered for it.

So, I came home from work knowing that something was wrong. I almost shrugged it off as being utterly exhausted, but I treated myself like I would a patient in the field. I assumed the worst of the situation, and looked at my symptoms before I wrote it off as nothing. I was sore, achy, had a horrible headache, and just felt worn down. Now, these are symptoms of exhaustion, but they’re also symptoms of the flu. So, I got in the house, told my wife to keep her distance, took a shower, put my clothes in the wash, and went to a separate room to lay down. Step one in preventing your family from catching what you’ve got is to realize you’re sick, and stay away from them. You don’t have to leave the house, but stay in a different room, and go to bed. You may not have anything but a hangover or a headache from a bad night’s sleep, if it’s something more, you may already infect your loved ones before you know what it is you’ve got. If you want to keep the flu to yourself, keep to yourself. Wash your hands EVERYTIME you cough, sneeze, wipe your face, etc. BEFORE you touch anything that someone else might touch. This includes the remote control to the TV, the refrigerator door, dishes, food, ANYTHING your other family members might touch. You can also use hand sanitizer, but nothing is as good as a thorough hand washing. Another good idea would be to send someone to your local drugstore to pick up some respiratory masks. Get the cheap box of 20. You will go through them. This is especially important if you have small children or elderly family members, as the flu can be deadly to them.

My next course of action was to check my temperature regularly. I went from 98.6 to 102.7 degrees F in less than 8 hours. You are most contagious when you have a fever above 100 degrees. If you have a fever, schedule a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. I had to wait until the next day, so I didn’t allow anyone in the room with me while I had a fever. At the doctor’s office, it didn’t take long for them to diagnose the flu. My visit was relatively short, and they were able to give me a shot of Tamiflu, which is an antiviral drug that, if taken during the initial phases of the flu, is very effective at helping the body to kill off the flu virus. Remember, it’s only effective if taken at the early stages, so don’t wait to go to the doctor. They also prescribed an antibiotic and more Tamiflu to be taken orally. Viruses cause your immune system to weaken tremendously, which allows bacteria to run rampant, making an antibiotic a necessary precaution. Both the Tamiflu and the antibiotic have to be taken over a course of a few days. Be sure to take the full course of both, or you run the risk of a relapse. Other than that, these are the only things that can be done for the flu. The best medicine is rest.

It only took a few hours for the medicine to start working, and my fever broke that night. Although I felt a hundred times better, I still was not in the clear. H1N1 is still contagious starting on the day prior to becoming sick and from 5 to 7 days after. Even though you feel better, that doesn’t mean you can’t spread it. For the first 5 days, I’d recommend using the same precautions, if possible, around your family that you did when you had a fever. Keep to yourself. After that, keep your face out of other’s faces, wash your hands, and be aware of things you touch to your mouth, like toothbrushes, cups, utensils, and keep them separated from the rest of the family. After a week, you’re in the clear, and hopefully, your family is too.

My experience with H1N1 wasn’t entertaining, but it did show me something. Just because it’s highly contagious doesn’t mean it can’t be contained. If you do get sick this flu season, which I hope you don’t, but if you do, you can use this as a simple guideline to keep your loved ones safe.

She may have had it herself. Or, it might be her mother, her sister, her best friend or even her daughter. Breast cancer, as far as we’ve come with early detection, prevention and cure, still strikes fear into the heart of women all over the world.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Offices and schools all over the U.S. will hold “Denim Day” on October 2. Runners in Houston will “race for the cure” in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. Walkers in San Francisco and Atlanta will “walk for the cure” in two- or three-day walkathons. Talk show hosts will mention it. Yogurt manufacturers will run campaigns to collect pink lids. Pen makers and cleaning supply manufacturers will donate part of the purchase price of select pink items to breast cancer research. During October, breast cancer will be front and center in our national awareness.

What are your feelings about dedicating an entire month to focus on breast cancer, pass out small pink ribbons and raise awareness about this disease? Apathetic maybe? Totally involved? Jealous that a disease impacting your own life doesn’t get equal treatment? Does it matter to you at all, and should it? That is something only you can answer.

For many younger women with no family history of breast cancer, myself included, remain distanced from it. Breast cancer isn’t really a huge worry until somebody the same age gets it – or you get an abnormal finding on a mammogram. Then it really hits home that you could be vulnerable to this disease also. Until then there is a certain amount of denial that  enters in. We may wear the ribbon or even donate to the cause, but our hearts aren’t really in it. But when it hits home, it’s a rare woman who ever looks at breast cancer half-heartedly again.

Don’t wait until you or someone you know gets breast cancer to begin caring about its cure and prevention. Make this the October to help raise awareness. Learn something new about it. (Did you know that you don’t need a lump to have breast cancer? It’s true.)  Wear a pink ribbon, save the yogurt tops, when you have a choice to purchase a product that has part of the price donated to breast cancer research, choose that product. Make a donation directly. Volunteer at a hospice. Drive a woman to her chemotherapy treatment. Participate in some way. Thousands of women, maybe someone you love, might benefit in the future from your act of caring right now.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Ever since hominids started walking upright, their jaws have been shrinking (and their brains expanding) over the millenia owing to evolution. This shrinking has left only a few people with a jaw large enough to accommodate the four wisdom teeth in the back of the mouth. Our ancestors ate rough roots and nuts and raw meat that caused the teeth to protrude forward and create space for the wisdom teeth which came in later.

Also, the excessive wear and tear due to hard food caused teeth to fall sooner, making way for the newly arriving wisdom teeth or the third molars. The advent of fire and the modern softer processed food cause less wear and tear to the teeth. Biologists now classify wisdom teeth as vestigial organs, or body parts that have become redundant.

Wisdom teeth erupt in your late teens and early twenties, which is why they are called wisdom teeth. Wisdom teeth don’t make their appearances in every mouth. Even their number is not fixed; it varies from one to four, or sometimes to even higher number, according to a study published in the Journal of the Canadian Dental Association. Whatever be the reason for the excessive number of teeth to appear, they subject their owner to a miserably painful existence.

Whenever there is not enough space in the jaws for them to poke through, they drift about looking for a space in the jaw and get blocked by tissues and other teeth. This can make an adjacent tooth to malposition itself. Besides, they can become a fertile ground for the bacteria to feed on the food trapped in the interstices and the intractable infection that follows may develop into cysts. If the cyst is not treated, a tumor may develop from the walls of the cyst and a more involved surgical procedure may be required for removal.

Source: American Association of Oral and Maxofacial Surgeons

There is lack of consensus among dentists whether the wisdom tooth should be removed. Should they be extracted only if they cause problems, or should they be pre-emptively extracted giving them no chance for mischief? Often, in order to accommodate prosthetic appliances, asymptomatic impacted wisdom teeth are removed. American Association of Oral and Maxofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) opine that it is unwise to wait until trouble, because by then it would have become too difficult to handle easily.

They caution that impacted wisdom teeth often grow at an awkward angle making their removal more difficult.  People who have oral surgery after the age of 35 have higher risks for complications, more difficult surgeries, and longer healing times than those who get them removed in their late teens or early 20’s. Increasing age also brings greater likelihood that bone surgery will be needed to pull the tooth. There is also the risk of nerve damage that causes numbness in parts of the face and speech impairments.

Since you may be unaware of the damages that a nascent wisdom tooth may have already done, AAOMS advises getting an early extraction of the wisdom teeth before they become impacted.

Some people develop wisdom teeth that function normally, and they do not need to go under the knife. Regular checkups and X-rays can alert your dentist to potential problems before a wisdom tooth starts getting disruptive.

Though no serious study has been done to determine what percentage of people get into trouble if impacted wisdom teeth are left in place, limited studies show many 60- to 70- year-olds who still had their wisdom teeth did not have evident disease in their impacted teeth.

Is eating eggs a healthy thing to do? Eggs have gotten a bad rap in the last couple of decades, due to them having a high level of cholesterol (all of it is in the yellow yolk). However, many researchers and doctors have recently concluded that the cholesterol in your diet may not always affect the cholesterol in your bloodstream. In other words, the fat that you eat in your diet may not necessarily cause any problems, such as heart disease. In fact, far from being a villain, cholesterol is actually very important for your body. It is used to make your hormones, and keep your body’s cell membranes supple and fluid. But cholesterol may not be the most important nutrient in eggs—the nutrient choline is also found in abundance in eggs as well, and may be just as important as cholesterol if not more so.

Choline is grouped with the B-vitamins, and is sometimes known as an “unofficial” B-vitamin. Choline is an essential nutrient, which means that it cannot be made inside the body—it has to be taken into the body from food or supplements. Eggs provide an excellent source of choline; one egg supplies 22% of the daily choline requirement for an adult.

Animal studies have shown that females who are given choline during pregnancy bear offspring that have excellent brain development and higher memory capabilities. Human studies have also shown that choline can be helpful in treating memory deficiencies in adults. One study done on college student food preferences revealed that over 85% of the adult students had dietary intakes of choline below the recommended level. Just think of how much better these students may perform if they had more choline in their diets.

Choline, however, is not the molecule that is responsible for improved memory—this honor goes to its chemical offspring, acetylcholine, which is converted from choline in the body. Acetylcholine is one of the most important signaling molecules in the body; the technical term is a neurotransmitter. It’s been shown that low acetylcholine levels in the brain leads to poor memory. Acetylcholine cannot be made without choline, hence choline’s importance in food. Choline is also available by itself as a supplement. Unfortunately, taking large amounts of supplemental choline can have some side effects.

The supplement lecithin (phosphatidylcholine) contains choline, and tends to have less side effects. One study found “a dramatic result in favor of lecithin” for the treatment of people with memory problems. Of course, someone could instead supplement their choline requirements by simply eating eggs. There are also eggs in the grocery store that now have enriched omega-3 fatty acids, which also help brain function in many ways. Many people choose to obtain health through diet and exercise alone instead of supplementing, and eggs appear to be a good dietary staple for them.