Bigger is NOT better!

Each year for the past few years, when the Centers for Disease Control releases its data on the fattest states in America, I’ve felt sick. Disgusted. Appalled.

This year is no exception. How is it that we have let ourselves go so badly? And what is it going to take to reverse the obesity trend?

According to the CDC’s study of the fattest states in 2007, Mississippi tops the list for the third year in a row. Mississippi is the first state ever whose obese population exceeds 30 percent over a three-year average. Another 35 percent of Mississippi adults are overweight.

Colorado is still the leanest state – but its number of obese adults increased from 16.9 percent to 17.6 percent. Even the leanest state can’t rest on its laurels – or its love handles.

This Web site has a nice analysis, along with a map and ranked list of all 50 states.

And, where does my home state of Kentucky rank? It’s in seventh place, with 28 percent of the population obese and 66.4 percent obese or overweight.

That only leaves about a third of us maintaining a healthy weight in Kentucky. This means that as a healthy weight person in Kentucky, I’m a minority. Now, as a white female, I never thought I’d be a minority. I wish I could say I was proud, but I’m not.

In addition to all of the overweight adults in Kentucky, my state also has the third highest rate of overweight youths aged 10-17. So our children are getting fatter, too.

Fellow Kentuckians, you need to get off your fat arses and take that weight off!

I am not enough of an expert to know the answer to the growing obesity problem in America. We can start by laying off that extra soda and bag of M&M’s in the afternoon. Try some fruit or yogurt instead. We can also get up and walk now and again instead of sitting so much.

It seems pretty simple to me. So why is it so complicated?

Keep your mind healthy. Learn something!

Did you know that John Adams, second president of the United States, and Thomas Jefferson, third president of the U.S., died on the same day, within hours of each other? And that day happened to be July 4, 1826, 50 years to the day of the Declaration of Independence?

Cool stuff, huh? And I learned this from a historical drama, but that drama caused me to go to the Internet and do some research on the real guys. (By the way, the drama I refer to is “John Adams,” an HBO series starring Paul Giamatti. I highly recommend it.)

I write a lot about healthy diet and exercise, but a fully healthy life also includes a strong, healthy mind. Just because you’re done with high school and college doesn’t mean learning stops. In fact, your learning has only begun.

You’ll learn new things for your job, and you’ll learn how to manage things in your life like finances. But it’s also good to learn things just for the heck of it. When you’re not in school anymore and don’t have to follow a prescribed curriculum, it’s fun to pick up something and learn it because you just want to.

It is widely believed that keeping mentally active will prevent age-related mental decline. This article quotes a 2003 study that found mentally active seniors reduced their risk of dementia by as much as 75 percent, compared to those who do not stimulate their minds.

Even if you’re nowhere near being a senior yet, keeping your mind active and stimulated will help keep it strong and flexible, the way physical exercise does the same for your body.

So how do I keep my mind active? Besides learning all I can related to my job, I learn other things just because it would be cool to know it.

My husband and I buy college-level lectures from The Teaching Company. I am listening to a lecture set now about England during the Tudor and Stewart periods. You know – Henry VIII and his three children, one of which was Queen Elizabeth I. This week, I will learn about Elizabeth’s reign, and I know almost nothing about the Stewart line that came after her, but over the next few weeks, I’ll learn about it. It’s great stuff, and I bought it simply because I was interested.

I always try to learn new things, partly because I consider myself a lifelong learner, but as a believer in the importance of a healthy life, I want my mind to stay just as healthy as my body. I’m many years yet from being considered a senior citizen, but I hope that when I do get to be one, all of this effort now will pay off then. And I won’t plan to stop learning, either.

There’s a recurring line in one of my favorite book series: “All knowledge is worth having.” I agree. It’s true at any time in your life.

What new stuff have you learned lately? How much fun did you have learning it?

Sugar substitute, sugar or honey: Which is best?

In an occasional series of posts, I’ve written before about ingredients of various foods in my diet. Sometimes I’ve found out that there are things in my foods I’d rather not be eating, and it has caused me to change my habits.

I’ve written about coffee creamer and bagels. Today, I’m tackling various sweeteners – namely, sugar substitutes, good ol’ sugar and honey.

Let’s look at sugar substitutes, first as a category, then at the specific one I use in my diet.

According to Wikipedia, sugar substitute is a food additive that duplicates the effect of sugar or corn syrup in taste, but usually has less food energy. Some sugar substitutes are natural and some are synthetic. Those that are not natural are, in general, referred to as artificial sweeteners.

In the United States, five intensely-sweet sugar substitutes have been approved for use. They are saccharin, aspartame, sucralose, neotame, and acesulfame potassium. There is some ongoing controversy over whether artificial sweeteners are health risks.

The food and beverage industry is increasingly replacing sugar or corn syrup with artificial sweeteners in a range of products traditionally containing sugar. Artificial sweeteners cost the food industry only a fraction of the cost of natural sweeteners.

The particular brand of artificial sweetener in my kitchen is Splenda, made from sucralose. It is also available in generic brands, such as Kroger’s Apriva. Sucralose is approximately 600 times as sweet as table sugar, twice as sweet as saccharin and four times as sweet as aspartame. Unlike aspartame, it is stable under heat and over a broad range of pH conditions and can be used in baking or in products that require a longer shelf life. Sucralose also does not promote tooth decay.

Now for the sweetener we all grew up with: table sugar. Sugar is a class of edible crystalline substances including sucrose, lactose and fructose. Common table sugar (sucrose) is made from sugar beets or sugar cane. Sugar also appears in fruit, honey, sorghum, sugar maple (in maple syrup) and in many other sources. It forms the main ingredient in most candy. "Excessive" consumption of sugar has been associated with increased incidences of type 2 diabetes, obesity, tooth decay and gout.

The Sugar Association lists many sugar myths and debunks them with evidence.

As I read through them, some of them made sense, but I kept in mind that the Sugar Association would have a vested interest in debunking myths that would harm the sale of its product. That doesn't mean their evidence isn't true, but I like to keep in mind that they're not exactly objective.

And finally, let’s look at honey, that sweet and viscous fluid produced by bees and derived from the nectar of flowers.

Honey gets its sweetness from fructose and glucose and has approximately the same relative sweetness as granulated sugar.

Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds. With respect to carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about 31.0%). Honey's remaining carbohydrates include maltose, sucrose and other complex carbohydrates.

Honey contains trace amounts of several vitamins and minerals, but it is not a significant source of either. Honey also contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase and pinocembrin.

The specific composition of any batch of honey will depend largely on the mix of flowers available to the bees that produced the honey.

The World's Healthiest Foods site has some charts and information about the health benefits of honey. In addition to its reputation as nature's nutritive sweetener, research also indicates that honey's unique composition makes it useful as an antimicrobial agent and antioxidant.

For more information, also see the National Honey Board.

Of the three major sweeteners I’ve examined, I think the blue-ribbon winner overall is honey. It sweetens your foods naturally while delivering some health benefits. I don’t think table sugar in and of itself is bad for you – like anything else, it has to do with how you use it and what you eat it in. It’s all about moderation as part of an overall healthy diet.

As for artificial sweeteners, I think I’ll try to stay away from them. I wouldn’t say they’re the most horrible thing you could eat – and if they’re my only choice, I’ll go for it. But it falls in line with my recent efforts to stay away from things with the word “artificial” when I can.

Lately, I’ve switched to sweetening some of my foods with honey. I previously used sugar substitute in my coffee, but in my effort to use more natural ingredients in my foods whenever possible, I’ve been putting honey in it, and it tastes good. I have also been putting honey on my oatmeal for breakfast. All-natural oats topped with all-natural honey. It doesn’t get much better than that.

What type of sweetener do you use most often? Have you made any switches lately?

Emotional eating takes its toll

Why do you eat?

Is it because your body needs nourishment? Or is it because you are unhappy and depressed, and you think that piece of cake will make you feel better?

Luckily, I've never been an emotional eater. I've always eaten for nutrition. If I indulge in a piece of cake, it's because I want a treat.

But I've seen people who are emotional eaters, and they are not happy.

I have known people who "can't resist" so-and-so's wife's cookies, or people who "have to do something" for someone when they have a birthday or leave their job.

In their eyes, "have to do something" means getting a large cake or a colossal cookie.

Since an emotional eater ties their gratification to food, the only way they can show their appreciation for others is also through food.

I saw an example recently of someone who is not very well thought of at his workplace who bought lunch at a sit-down restaurant for a group of nine people. Once you include appetizers and tip, the bill had to be around $100!

Funny thing is, this person will complain that he never has any money. If that's the case, how can he afford to pick up a $100 lunch bill? Was he genuinely doing something nice for the group, or was he hoping the group would think better of him in return? In other words, was he trying to buy friends with food?

I don't know for sure, and probably will never know, but I suspect it's the latter.

I've also known people on weight loss programs like Weight Watchers who just can't stop cheating. Weight Watchers and other programs like it cost money. I never have been able to understand why someone would pay money to be part of a program that they are not even going to follow. Does the emotional eating get in the way of their weight loss?Are they afraid of losing weight for some reason? Do they like being fat?

I think emotional eating comes from deeper problems than just being overweight, and that if an unhappy person loses weight, but doesn't work on their other issues, they will go right back to using food as comfort. Which mean they will go right back to being fat.

A Good Housekeeping column agrees. The author says, "If emotional eating is a challenge for us, if we suffer because of the size of our bodies and our relationship to food, then somehow we end up believing that getting rid of the fat will take away the suffering. When it doesn’t, we feel so betrayed that we eat to comfort ourselves."

She recommends an experiment: Instead of waiting to be thin to be happy, try being happy right now. Live as if you were already thin, as if you liked yourself, as if you chose to have the life you have right now.

I like that.

An entry on The Fit Shack says, "If you do not work on your inner self and find the things in your life that you are happy about now and cultivate them to create more happiness, that unhappiness will more than likely follow you even if you lose weight, and you’ll find yourself either an unhappy thin person or an unhappy person who regained the weight they previously lost."

My favorite poem, "Desiderata," ends with the line, "Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."

If you are an emotional eater, I hope you can take this advice to heart and find it within yourself to break your attachments to food. There is much happiness to be found in this world, and it lasts longer than a piece of cake. You only have to look for it.

Are you an emotional eater? What struggles have you had? How did you overcome them?

Popeye would be proud of me

I’ve been eating my spinach.

I’ve been a salad eater for a long time. I spend quite a bit of time each week with knife and cutting board, slicing greens and veggies for my lunch.

I used to buy iceberg lettuce because it was the cheapest. Then I learned that it had virtually no nutritional value. So, I switched to green leaf or romaine lettuce.

But then the recent economic problems hit, and food prices skyrocketed. The head of green leaf lettuce that I used to buy for $1.69 is now $2.29.

Well, my pocketbook won’t handle that for very long, so I started looking for alternatives. I wanted to keep as much nutritional value in my salads as possible while still keeping my food budget in mind.

Suddenly, I looked at the dark greens – spinach, kale, mustard and turnip greens. I had bought spinach on occasion, just for something different in my salads, and I knew it packed a wallop nutritionally. But then I noticed something even better: the price. Spinach is $1.69 a bunch at my grocery store. Its price may have gone up recently, too, but it’s still cheaper than green leaf lettuce. So I started buying it on a regular basis a few months ago.

Since I’ve been eating spinach a lot lately, I got to thinking: exactly what nutritional benefits does it have? Well, to answer that question, I checked Wikipedia.

Spinach is a rich source of iron. According to the USDA, one 180 gram serving of boiled spinach contains 6.43 mg of iron -- three times the iron in the average hamburger patty.

Spinach has a high calcium content. It is a rich source of vitamin A (and lutein), vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, several vital antioxidants and folic acid (Vitamin B9).

Spinach is an excellent source of manganese, folate, vitamin B2, potassium, and vitamin B6. It is a very good source of dietary fiber, copper, protein, phosphorous and zinc. In addition, it is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, niacin and selenium.

This Web site shows a great chart of the percent daily value of the nutrients in spinach.

Wow! I knew spinach was good for you, but I didn’t know just how good! I’m glad economic factors drove me to choose a food that’s cheaper on price, but not cheap on nutrients.

With all that nutrition, I just might have to stick with eating my spinach for awhile. Maybe I’ll get as strong as Popeye!

Do you eat spinach? Why or why not? Leave me a comment!

Working the chest: Pec Deck Flies vs. Dumbbell Flies

I hear debates in the fitness world about the pros and cons of free weights and selectorizers. Which is better?

I was doing some dumbbell butterflies at the gym the other day, and I thought it would be fun to look at dumbbell flies versus butterfly machines.

First, a description of the butterfly machine, also called the pec deck butterfly. This Web site describes it this way:

"Using a Pec Deck machine, seat yourself in it accordingly. Perform the exercise by squeezing your forearms and elbows in together so that you virtually touch them together at the peak of the movement. Be sure to really squeeze your pecs at the peak of this movement for a one-count. Return to the start position and repeat."

When I do dumbbell butterflies, I usually lay on a flat bench. You can also do them on an incline bench. Here is a description of flat bench dumbbell flies.

"Position yourself on a free-standing flat bench, flat on your back. Have your spotter hand you each dumbbell. When you begin this movement, you want your arms to be stretched out wide to your sides with your elbows slightly bent and your palms facing inward, toward one another. When you lift the dumbbells up together, visualize hugging a giant tree trunk. At the peak of the movement, really squeeze your pecs together for a one-count. When returning to the start position, be sure to lower the dumbbells in a slow and controlled fashion."

On this Web site are cute animated diagrams and descriptions of the butterfly machine and the dumbbell flies.

This article on about.com gives a good discussion of free weights vs. machines. Some of the pros of weight machines are: they're supportive, they're easy to use, they save time and they're less intimidating. However, they can be too supportive and limit the ways you can work your body.

The pros of free weights include versatility, functionality and building whole body strength. However, they can be hard to learn, there is more risk of injury, and they can be confusing.

Personally, I think there are benefits to both types of exercise, depending on what your purpose is. The dumbbell flies are more difficult -- as are most free weight exercises -- and they make me more sore. I try to do them most often.

But some days, I just don't feel like lifting the free weights, or the free weight area is too crowded, or I'm in a hurry, so the butterfly machine does just fine. The butterfly machine is also a great finishing exercise. If I have done several free-weight chest exercises and need one more to finish up, the butterfly machine is a great one to jump on.

Which do you prefer, free-weight butterflies or butterfly machines?

Job change and the stress that goes with it

I have an announcement. I have accepted a new position as an instructor at Eastern Kentucky University. I'll be leaving the daily newspaper environment soon to teach journalism classes at a great state university.

"Wow!" people are telling me. "That's great! How exciting!"

Yes, it is exciting, and I am happy as can be about this opportunity.

However, I have a feeling that soon, the stress is going to set in. All change -- even good change -- brings stress.

Stress is not always a bad thing, though. Stress is simply the body's response to changes that create taxing demands. When people talk about being "stressed out," we usually think about negative stress, or distress. But there is a positive term for stress, and it's called eustress.

According to Wikipedia, distress is the most commonly-referred to type of stress, having negative implications, whereas eustress is a positive form of stress, usually related to desirable events in a person's life. Both can be equally taxing on the body, and are cumulative in nature, depending on a person's way of adapting to a change that has caused it.

Why does change cause such stress? According to this Web site,change challenges you to let go of the past, especially the comfortable, old ways of doing things, to accept new challenges and opportunities for growth.

This site recommends that you maintain the calm of an open mind, encourage flexibility in the face of rigidity and be willing to abandon former perceptions and security blankets. Change, like stress, can be beneficial when harnessed.

I'll have to remember that in the coming months.

So, how do you cope with the stress of adjusting to a new job?

This Web site has some good tips. A few typos and incomplete thoughts (Sorry, I have been a copy editor, after all. Just getting in practice for teaching my class!), but good tips nonetheless.

According to the site, the main key to adjusting to a new job is preparation. You also need to set new habits quickly, familiarize yourself with your new environment, find a friend and establish rapport and make the new environment as "homey" as possible.

Luckily, I have taught the very class I'll be teaching for EKU on a part-time basis. Thus, I am familiar with some of the people I'll be working with, and I have a taste of what teaching will be like. But as full-time faculty, I'll have many other responsibilities as well, like advising the yearbook staff.

I am preparing for the new job now by setting up meetings with some of my new colleagues -- especially those who have done parts of my job before me -- and getting as much information and advice as I can. I am also giving myself some time between the last day at my current job and the start my new job to relax at home for a few days and begin preparing for my classes. I hope all of this will help me be ready once classes actually start in the fall.

Many of the personal items on my desk at my current work will go straight to my new office. I have three beautiful plants that will keep some green around me, as well as some items at home that were once part of an office I had before. All of this will help me surround myself with familiar things, and with a little luck, make me feel right at home.

In the midst of the changes ahead, I will keep a few habits constant in my life. My once-a-week yoga class will be a wonderful relief, as will my twice-weekly gym workouts. And my blog will be a nice, personal outlet, as it has been for the past couple of months.

With all of these resources at hand, I hope I weather the positive stress this exciting new change will bring me.

Are you going through a major change in your life? Good or bad? How are you coping with it?

How hobbies keep you healthy

What do you do in your spare time? Do you sit around and watch TV or stare into space? Or do you do something that keeps your mind or body active in some way?

In other words, do you have a hobby?

I hope so, because hobbies are good for. They engage you in different ways that your typical work or other obligations. A hobby often teaches you something new. Hobbies can also relieve stress and help you cope with other less-than-satisfactory areas of your life.

What is a hobby, exactly?

According to Wikipedia, a hobby is a spare-time recreational pursuit. Hobbies are practiced for interest and enjoyment, rather than financial reward.

How does a hobby help your health?

I found a Web site that addresses this very question. According to the article, hobbies can engage you physically and mentally, and people who have a hobby are generally healthier. Hobbies that require expertise are more satisfying because developing an expertise in something requires commitment, and commitment results in a higher level of engagement.

The ideal hobby engages us on three levels: first as a diversion that helps pass the time, second as a passion where we become truly engaged in doing something we love, and third as something that creates a sense of purpose.

Who doesn’t need that?

You may be wondering if I have a hobby. Yes, I do. I have several.

I love to read. Every night before I go to bed, I wind down with a good book. I do some gardening. I have a project underway in my backyard, for which I have drawn up a diagram and made specific plans. As I’ve mentioned before, I like to exercise. I go to the gym twice a week and take a yoga class once a week. I also enjoy writing and blogging, hence the reason I started Healthy Life. I also enjoy roleplaying. I have a couple of imaginary characters that I play in fantasy settings.

My husband also likes to read, and he goes to the gym with me. He runs the roleplaying game in which I play. In addition, he is learning Latin.

What does all this mean? We are keeping ourselves active and engaged. Reading and roleplaying keep our minds active and spark our imaginations. Exercise keeps our bodies strong and in shape. Gardening makes me feel good to cultivate something living outside of myself. There’s something about digging around in the dirt, connecting with the earth and making something beautiful out of my backyard space.

When I’ve had a bad day at work, or when I just need something to do, these hobbies fill in the gap. You might or might not enjoy your career, but it takes more than that to have a healthy, fulfilling life. Hobbies give me that, and they can give you that, too.

So, what are your hobbies? I’d like to know!

Are you a lark or an owl?

Do you wake up early in the morning, refreshed and bouncing with energy, ready to meet the day? Or would you rather stay up late into the night, then sleep in the next day?

"Larks," or morning people, prefer to go to bed early and get up early, whereas "owls," or night people, prefer to stay up later and sleep later.

Most of us are programmed by our circadian rhythms to sleep at night and be awake in the daytime. The circadian rhythm is a roughly-24-hour cycle in the biochemical, physiological or behavioral processes of living beings. The term "circadian" comes from the Latin circa, "around", and diem or dies, "day", meaning literally "approximately one day."

I took this quiz and came up as "very much a night person." Trouble is, my current schedule requires me to get up at 6 a.m. in order to be at work at 7:30 a.m. Maybe this explains why I am perpetually tired at work! My natural rhythm and my work schedule are at complete odds with each other!

This article from the BBC says the answer to why some of us are larks and others are owls may lie in our genes. Researchers found a link between people's preferene for mornings or evenings and a gene called Period 3. If you have a long form of this gene, you're more likely to prefer early mornings. If you have the short form, you're probably an evening person.

I'm betting I have the short form of Period 3. That would explain a lot.

This site from the Medical College of Wisconsin has some interesting information about the body's biological clock and how light affects our brain.

If you're a lark, you probably don't have too much trouble with a normal daytime work schedule. If you're an owl, however, it can be more difficult.

There are ways to train yourself to be a morning person, such as putting your alarm clock across the room, getting up at the same time every day and turning on bright lights as soon as you get up.

Or, if you're like me and your natural rhythm and work schedule are at odds, you can just resign yourself to not going to bed as early as you should and being tired the next day. Naps work great for making up the difference in sleep! If you can escape to your car and take a brief power nap at lunch, it will go a long way toward helping you feel more alert in the afternoon.

Take the quiz above and see if you're a lark or an owl. Let me know what your results are. How do you deal with the differences between your natural circadian rhythm and your lifestyle?

Make your whole household healthy

Committing to a healthy lifestyle isn't easy. Sometimes, it's downright difficult.

But if you don't have a supportive partner or family, it's almost impossible. One person can't do it alone when everyone else in the house is eating junk food.

I know from experience. When one partner’s favorite dinner is Hamburger Helper, and they are eating potato chips and M&M’s all the time, it’s hard for you to focus on eating vegetables, fruits and lean meats.

Healthy eating also requires expanding your palate to include new recipes, flavored in different ways with spices and oils instead of creamy sauces, and cooked in healthier ways, such as sauteeing, broiling or baking. It’s hard to do these things when your partner wants everything deep-fried and won't try healthier ways of flavoring foods.

Luckily, I have a supportive partner now, one who is just as committed to healthy living as I am.

As I’ve written before on this blog, my parents modeled healthy eating habits to us kids. Our daily snacks mainly consisted of fruits, and dinners included meat, potatoes or rice and vegetables. We drank milk on a regular basis. Potato chips, desserts and soft drinks were kept to a minimum.

The key was that the whole family supported healthy eating habits.

Exercise is also an important component of a healthy life. And it's much easier to keep exercising if your partner or the whole family is involved.

Your exercise partner can be your spouse or significant other, or it can be a good friend or family member. My stepfather and stepbrother used to go to the gym together. My husband and I go to the gym together now.

A partner can keep you motivated, urge you to exercise when you just don’t feel like it, spot you during weightlifting and encourage you to do new exercises.

An article I found here says one of the single best things you can do to help ensure your health and fitness success and give your efforts a much-needed jumpstart is to embrace your family and draw them into living healthier with you. It offers tips for getting the family started on a healthy lifestyle together.

So grab your partner and your kids, fix a healthy dinner together and then go take a walk afterward!

Are you trying to be healthier? Is your family healthy? What obstacles stand in your way?

What kind of body do you see in the mirror?

When you look at yourself in the mirror, what do you think?

Do you generally like the way you look, or do you frown at your nose, your eyes, your too-small or too-large breasts, your round hips or your big butt?

A poor body image can cause you to obsess about everything you perceive is wrong with your body. It’s no secret that quite a few women have body image problems. We are bombarded with pictures of young, thin, tall models in the media. Fitness magazines show women on the covers with willowy figures and perfectly flat abs.

Body image is all about perception -- how you see yourself. Sure, media messages can affect our body image, but so can our own inner voice.

I long ago accepted my body and all of its good points and bad points. I have a bit of a pot belly. I’m not going to achieve those perfectly flat abs any time soon. I also have a bit more cellulite than I would like on my thighs.

But you know what I like? My arms and chest are well-toned and strong, much more so than they were a few years ago. My legs are strong, and my muscles are flexible. Underneath my perpetual layer of belly fat are some pretty strong ab muscles. I also practice yoga, and I am able to achieve some fairly advanced poses.

Overall, not bad. I work with what I’ve got.

I ran across a study in the American Journal of Public Health that found the difference between actual and desired body weight was a stronger predictor of mental and physical health than the body mass index (BMI). This study raises the possibility that some of the health effects of the obesity epidemic are related to the way we see our bodies.

A great women’s heath Web site says a poor body image can lead to emotional distress, low self-esteem, dieting, anxiety, depression and eating disorders. Developing a positive body image and a healthy mental attitude is crucial to a woman's happiness and wellness.

The site gives some healthy lifestyle tips that can help you improve your body image.

• Healthy eating can promote healthy skin and hair, along with strong bones.


• Regular exercise has been shown to boost self-esteem, self-image, and energy levels.


• Plenty of rest is key to stress management.

Although body image problems are more common among women, we can’t forget the other gender. Yes, men can have body image problems, too. This article says that males with body image disorders are showing up with increasing frequency in psychiatrists' offices, and more men are abusing steroids in an attempt to build muscle.

I don’t think this trend is good for either gender. We should be worried about being as healthy as we can be, both physically and mentally, and not trying to attain some impossible standard that the media promotes.

Sure, you do want to be at a healthy body weight. And sure, you want to wear flattering clothes and have a nice hairstyle. But it’s not until you accept the reality of your body – and I mean the good points as well as the bad points – that you will be truly carry yourself with confidence and pride.

What do you like about your body? What do you dislike? What can you change, and what do you have to simply accept?

Fourth of July safety tips

Today is Independence Day in the United States, and I'm taking the day off along with most everyone else.

Since many of you will be out at cookouts and picnics with your family and friends, I thought I'd pass along a few links to some cookout and fireworks safety tips.

Fireworks safety tips from The National Council on Fireworks Safety

Barbecue safety tips

Tips for a fun, festive and safe 4th of July

4th of July safety tips

Fireworks safety videos

I hope you have a safe, happy and healthy Fourth of July!

A mid-year's resolution: How I'm going to keep living healthy

Since we are now halfway through 2008, it's a good time to reassess our healthy living goals for this year. As I wrote in my last post, it's a good time to recommit yourself to the goals you may have set back in January, or to set new goals for the second half of the year.

Here are some of the goals I've been thinking about during this mid-year week.

Examine my diet. I have already begun doing this, and I have written about it here in previous posts on coffee creamer and whole wheat bagels. I have a few other foods I'd like to investigate to get a sense of what I'm really eating and make changes accordingly.

Strength training. I have set a concrete fitness goal to be able to do an unassisted pull-up within the next few months. Right now, I'm lifting about two-thirds of my own body weight.

Develop this blog. My Healthy Life blog is about two months old now, which is young in the blogosphere. I am quite enjoying it so far, and I have done well with establishing a regular posting schedule and sticking to it. My goal for the rest of the year is to promote my blog and expand my audience, and get feedback from you, my readers, about what you would like to see here.

Professional development. I work at a newspaper, and newspapers have been notoriously slow to embrace online and multimedia. An online media specialist named Howard Owens laid down a challenge for journalists to become "more wired" in 2008, and I took up his challenge. This blog is one of the results. He laid out a list of ten goals to meet, and I still have some work to do. This list has inspired me more than anything else professionally this year, so, over the next six months, I will continue my "getting wired" gameplan.

Reconnect with friends. It's hard sometimes for me to find the time to send a simple e-mail to friends I haven't talked to in awhile, but we need friends as part of a well-rounded, healthy life. Thus, I would like to reconnect with some of my old friends, and renew some relationships that have languished. I have also recently found some old college friends on Facebook and MySpace, and I need to keep up with them and what's happening in their lives now.

Enjoy my hobbies. Among all of my other goals, I want to keep enjoying my hobbies. The main two things I do in my free time are gardening and roleplaying. I hope I don't get so busy doing everything else that I neglect these hobbies.

The first half of 2008 has had its ups and downs, and I hope that by sticking to the goals above, I can have a better second half of the year.

One of the cores of living a healthy life is consistently growing, changing and improving. These goals will be my blueprint for the next six months to make my life as healthy as it can be -- physically, mentally, professionally and socially.

What are your mid-year's resolutions? What's your blueprint for the rest of the year?