In order to try and build an even larger following for this blog - and hopefully help even more people get into shape you’ll find us now on MySpace.

So if you’re keen on weight loss, health, fitness, muscle growth and so on, and you have a page over at MySpace please add us as a friend!

It’d be great to get to know some of our readers a little bit better. We’ll even (so long as the technology works OK) be adding blog posts from here onto our MySpace page automatically.

Fingers crossed

You can find our profile here.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Starting to lose weight you need to make a choice. And you need to keep making the choice all the time you’re slimming. It’s this.

Do you want to go all out - correct diet, hard exercise, focus, denial etc - and get the fastest results possible, or do you want to slowly introduce weight loss into your daily routine.

Do you want to spend an hour in the gym then come home to eat brown rice and chicken, or do you want to just take a walk with a friend on the weekend?

The choice really is yours.

Here are some factors to consider…

Generally those who go all out are going to achieve better results, faster, which may well prove very motivating. Seeing the pounds fall off each week is likely to keep you coming back for more.

Equally, people doing so much are, arguably, more likely to give up as they’re putting themselves under so much pressure that eventually something has to give.

Those who introduce things slowly are less likely to suffer from injuries caused by intense workouts and are more likely to be able to live a reasonable life around their new regime, but progress will likely be slow which may cause frustration before long. This could also lead to giving up.

Steve Pavlina who writes an interesting personal development blog some time ago mentioned using the power of overwhelming force to achieve your goals and I think its something you really should be considering.

Here’s the skinny…

Many military battles are won by using overwhelming force. This principle can help a small or less well-armed group win over a bigger foe. You simply apply everything you’ve got a short, sharp, intense hit.

You don’t wander in, fire a few bullets, stop for a bite to eat, fire a few more and so on.

No, you hit the enemy force with *everything* you’ve got - all your soldiers, you have planes dropping bombs, rockets firing at them and so on.

The enemy force doesn’t know what’s hit them!

How can you apply this overwhelming force to your weight loss? Tell your friends what you’re going to be doing. Clear out the kitchen cupboards to get rid of junk food. And so on. I’m sure you can brainstorm dozens of ways in which sticking to your diet is made more difficult or at least not as easy as it should be.

Make a list of these factors and turn them around so *everything* is focused on helping you achieve your fitness goals.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Jason Vale - the self-proclaimed Juice Master - claims that by living on his life-affirming juices and nothing else for a week that you will lose at least 7lbs.

It’s quite a claim so I decided to buy a copy of his book and take a closer look.

The first thing to say is that Vale seems to enjoy swearing in his book - he seems to do it just to try and get attention and while I’m not immune to a little swearing myself it did get a bit tiresome after a while.

Perhaps the reason he likes to swear is that he comes across as such a self-confident (almost cocky) individual and I, for one, found it very difficult to like the character writing the book. This is in sharp contrast to, for example, Bill Philips in Body For Life. I just kept thinking “stop blowing your own trumpet!”.

Most medical practitioners these days recommend around 1-2lbs of weight lost per week when dieting and it’s interesting (and revealing) to here Vale explaining how his diet fits into this.

Basically he says he doesn’t care. His readers want to lose weight fast so who cares if it goes against medical recommendations?

In terms of fairness I should say that I have publicly lost well over 2lbs some weeks here on this blog so I am in no way saying I am perfect but I do point out what is recommended and his relaxed attitude I find a little hard to swallow.

Then there’s what I see as somewhat hokey science. Vale agrees that digesting food takes up a lot of energy for the body which is why so many diets, such the the Body For Life diet recommend eating 6 small meals rather than 3 larger ones, but Vale then claims that by juicing the ingredients, and so saving your body expending extra energy that it is “saved for the task of removing fat”.

Seems a very strange claim and is only one example of many that made me think “Now hang on here, where is the science to back up those claims”.

With this avalanche of negativity toward the 7lbs In 7 Days book you’re probably assuming you shouldn’t buy it.

But I don’t think it’s as easy as that. You see, the evidence suggests that the actual diet itself does work - it’s an interesting, successful weight loss regime - even if you take into account Vales various ways of “cheating the system”.

For example he recommends weighing yourself the night before you start the diet then the morning after you finish the diet to check you’ve lost 7lbs or ore. Well, pardon me, but by weighing yourself then (a) you’ve got an extra half a day of time to lose weight and (b) we all weigh less first thing in the morning than last thing at night so you’re going to show weight loss doing this even if you don’t follow the diet.

He also recommends 2-3 exercise sessions of 20-30 minutes each, per day. That’s up to an hour and a half of cardio per day which, again, would help anyone lose weight irrespective of their diet.

No matter. However you cut it, this diet does seem to work.

It’s just wrapped up in what, to me, was a dreadfully written, boring and repetetive book.

You’ll have to wade through a lot of rubbish within the covers but if you follow the core principles it’s likely you’ll lose quite a bit of weight without too much difficulty - and isn’t that what we all want?

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Weigh We Were (get the pun?) bills itself as the largest collection of personal weight loss stories on the Internet.

It’s a hugely professional blog and is one of the best I have seen so far. Chock-full of fascinating articles I strongly recommend it as a source of inspiration whenever you need it. In addition, if it’s preferable for you, there are videos present which makes it even easier to get excited about the possibilities of getting into shape.

As well as literally hundreds of stories of real-life weight loss stories the site contains a blog directory of personal blogs (which I have just added this site to) so provides yet more useful information.

Lastly there is a very decent, spam-free forum where you can discuss every aspect of weight loss.

This could well be the best weight loss I’ve ever seen and I shall be spending quite a bit of time over there now I have discovered it!

Popularity: 6% [?]

We all know that if you live in the USA you need to have medical insurance to cover any nasty surprises that come around. The last thing anyone wants to think about when they are ill is how to finance their stay in hospital, or how to cut corners on essential medical treatment.

As a reader of this blog focusing on your physical health it stands to reason that you are exactly the type of person who cares about their well-being and so wants to make sure they get their medical insurance just right.

So I though you might be interested to know about a health insurance comparison site I just discovered which offers no medical term life insurance among other things.

Equotes specialises in these no medical exam life insurance policies which have two major benefits. The first of these of course is that there is no need for a medical so you can avoid all the hassle and expense of such an experience. Secondly, as they offer term life insurance you are insuring yourself for a particular period of time (such as the next decade) which can prove more cost effective than medical cover for the rest of your life.

The way Equotes gives out it’s free no medical life insurance quotes is that you simply fill in their no obligation form, click the button and a variety of quotes are provided to you to compare and contrast. When you find the quote you’re ahppy with, just sign up and you’re done. They claim the whole process takes under 20 minutes so may well be worth a look.

Popularity: unranked [?]