Here is a hysterical clip of what not to do in the weights room. The obnoxious spotter is my personal favorite!

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Editors Note: This post is written by contributor Gina Ryan. Gina is a licensed nutritionist and Wellness coach from Hawaii. Read her Bio on the About page or visit her blog Lunch Without Ed.

Fat. The word itself will bring up some emotion for most people and for many it isn’t pretty!  Love it or hate it we find it back in the news, now with the scientific community saying the science was not really there all along.

Take for example this quote from a recent article;

“For more than three decades, we’ve been told that fatty foods are deadly, to blame for a full menu of health hazards, from heart disease to obesity to cancer. Regularly described as the nutritional equivalent of cigarettes, fat has been the target of public-service campaigns and municipal bans aimed at keeping us slender and healthy. But a growing body of international research suggests our obsessive fear of fat may be misplaced. A high-fat diet won’t necessarily make us sick or fat; a low-fat diet may not make us healthy or slim.” from Janet Paskin | June/July Ode Magazine.

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Editors Note: This article is written by David Hodgeson a Performance Coach, Business Architect and Advisor. You can visit him at I-Acomplish or read more about him on the About Page

Your secret weapon is something you already have unlimited access to, is more powerful than any supercomputer and can be honed to your every whim. I think you already know what I’m talking about. The answer is your mind.

Our minds perform the most complicated tasks without us needing to think about them. This autonomous control in life’s critical  actions hints at the potential of our minds. They say we use around 10% of our mind. This has proven difficult to prove and disprove. What we do know is that the minds ability to adapt is huge. The potential of our minds is incredible and yet we know so little about it. The following example demonstrates what training our minds the right way can do:
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Tagged As: fitness, mind training, performance, psychology

Editors Note: This post is written by weight loss expert (and former couch potato) Meg McFarlane. Meg has experienced the weight loss journey first hand and has chronicled this in her blog, Spud On The Run.  She has a Bachelor of Science from Sydney University is currently working in IT.

1. I  hate dieting

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Tagged As: diet, Excuses, healthy, Motivation

If you have trouble getting to sleep, or need some new meditation material, this video blog gives you some podcast tips! My personal favorites are Meditation Oasis. Go into the Itunes store, click on podcasts and search for Meditation Oasis. It’s narrated by Mary Maddox who has a lovely soft voice. Just be careful you don’t wake up with the ipod cord wrapped around your neck!

Tagged As: meditation, podcasts, sleep

Recently I competed in and completed the 2009 Boston Marathon (that’s me on the left being an idiot at Niketown!). I have never seen a city get so hyped up by a road race, not just on race day but the preceding days as well. It seemed bigger than Christmas day, New years eve and the big game rolled into one. With 25000 competitors, it’s a big race, but New York gets double that, as does Sydney’s City to Surf. So why is there such a hype around the Boston Marathon and is running this race really worth the gruelling winter training and US$250 involved?
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Tagged As: Boston, exercise, fitness, marathon, running

If you answered money, you’d be somewhat mistaken. Determining the secret to happiness has been a long, controversial topic and whoever comes up with the guaranteed solution will be richer than Gates! Mirko Bagaric has come up with his own solution. He has been researching happiness for many years, is a professor at Deakin University and the author of numerous books on the topic. Bagaric has developed a list of lifestyle habits that he believes leads to a much happier, fulfilled life. He might not have cracked the foolproof happiness code, but I think he is onto something. Do you practice most of his habits, or do you need a happy kick up the butt?

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Tagged As: depression, exercise, happiness, happy, lifestyle

Have you got a success story to share? It might be yours, it might be a friends, but we’d love to hear it. Enter our fitness success story competition for a chance to win celebrity trainer Michelle Bridge’s new book Crunch Time.

Tell me how a change in your health and fitness has made a dramatic improvement on your quality of  life. I am looking for you to share your stories no matter how miniscule or monumentous, simply share how fitness has improved your life.

Add your story into the comments section of this post and I will choose a winner next month. I am looking for what you to change your health and fitness and how it has changed your life forever. I can’t wait to read these entries and give Michelle’s book away.

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Tagged As: fitness, Health, motivaion

Here is an interview I did for a great health website called Lose That Tyre.  Mark is another blogger who has an interesting weight loss story and writes about health and fitness.  In this interview we speak on topics such as my personal diet, exercise philosophies, working in the fitness industry and the blogging world.

Tagged As: fitness, nutrition

Winston Churchill- called depression his "Black Dog"

Have you been feeling down lately? Maybe you’ve been been feeling down for a while. Take this online depression test to determine the severity of how you feel.  Depression is a serious disease that affects many people and someone feeling that way should not be ashamed of how they feel.

This test is called the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (Self Report) (QUIDS-SR), and was developed by A. John Rush, MD, a leading psychiatrist and author from the University of Texas Medical Center.

Click here to take the depression test

How did you do? Should you or someone you know be suffering from the ‘Black Dog’ (as Winston Churchill used to call it – he was a sufferer), try this website for support and read my other article Depression and exercise: Beating the blues with exercise.

Black Dog institute: It is very interesting to Read about its logo,

Tagged As: depression, test, tests