1. Where’s my Hollywood Mansion? Contestants of the Biggest Loser reality fitness show are moved into a Hollywood Mansion for three months. It is undoubtedly a heck of a lot easier to maintain fitness focus when you’re sequestered in a Mansion for 12-weeks. Plus the cash incentive is huge: the winner banks $250,000. Cash and isolation make it far easier to maintain a commitment to the transformation process. Participants are not bothered with any of life’s distractions: work, family, stress and dilemmas.

2. Beat the hell out of them — Whoever dreamed up the training regimen for this torture-fest ought to be indicted as a war criminal. If US Army personnel subjected Guantanamo Bay terror prisoners to the forced labor insanity the Biggest Loser personal trainers do show participants they would be subject to court martial. One day the little female personal trainer made 400-pound men (miserably out of shape) run - not walk not jog - while carrying her on his back. Can you imagine the heart stress for a man who could generate a 90% age-related heart rate maximum walking to the mailbox and back? On the distaff side the metrosexual non-gender specific male personal trainer had his female fat babes run up the side of a mountain! To make matters worse, both PT’s inflicted psychological torture by taunting there respective crews with clichéd fitness platitudes. Oh the horror! They’re damn lucky someone didn’t keel over dead.

3. Then starve them — After making the obese people work like political prisoners in a Soviet Gulag circa 1952, participants are fed next to nothing. 350-400 pound men were allotted 1500 calories per day. This works out to 3.75 calories per pound bodyweight. Again, the Red Cross and Amnesty International should be alerted. This savage combination of over-work in the gym and under-feeding after the fact causes a metabolic condition known as catabolism. Any 1st year medical student would know that combining sustained and intense physical effort with starvation-level calories is physiologically disastrous and dangerous. When the human body senses starvation primordial hardwire circuitry triggers and the body will preserve body fat at all costs. Cortisol is dumped into the bloodstream as a result of physical stress and a lack of nutrients. The body cannibalizes muscle tissue to cover caloric shortfall; the body literally eats its own muscle tissue in order to spare body fat. What a revolting development.

4. The winner was easily spotted from day 1 — The deck was stacked. The ultimate winner was an athletic protegee; a guy who’d wrestled for Iowa, Matt, was a national level athlete who had a shot at making the Olympic team. He’d allowed himself to get badly out of shape. Any athlete of this caliber has so much “muscle memory” that when I saw his credentials I knew he would be the ultimate winner: it was a foregone conclusion. At his athletic peak, weighing under 200, he was light years past the qualifications of show’s “personal trainers.” It was clear how superior an athlete he was when on one episode the prison guard female PT worked the men to exhaustion then challenged them to a sprint: how delicious a moment when the exhausted 340-pound fat man whipped her soundly. She was shocked speechless. Wrestlers know all about deprivation and anyone who wrestled at that level has the athletic work ethic of a machine. Give a guy like that 20 weeks to beat himself into shape, wave $250,000 in front of his face and watch the “normal” people get trampled in his path. If they were serious they should have chosen untrained people of various ages and not allowed out-of-shape athletic wonders to compete. Plus it didn’t hurt his weight loss regimen that he simultaneously kicked the booze.

5. Twenty weeks is a long time — Twelve weeks were spent isolated at the Mansion and eight weeks were spent at home. Is there any greater training and dietary motivation being in the final three with a quarter of a million bucks on the line? Normal obese people living regular lives are not provided that type of motivation. It’s a lot harder to maintain focus and drive when no one is watching, when no one cares (other than concerned friends and relatives) and there is zero financial incentive. With its dubious methodology its doubtful any aspect of the Biggest Loser approach has the slightest applicability to real people leading real lives.

6. Not to cast stones without offer alternatives — Purposefully Primitive Obesity solutions provides real results for real people leading regular lives.

Marty Gallagher is a former fitness columnist for washingtonpost.com. He is also a former national and world champion powerlifter. Marty’s articles have been featured in Muscle Media, Muscle & Fitness, and Powerlifting USA magazines. His website, http://www.martygallagher.com, assimilates years of accumulated knowledge from the athletic elite and makes them accessible to the common person. The “Purposeful Primitive” way has been proven effective time after time after time for weight loss, increasing muscle tone, and complete physical transformation.

Purchasing music for use as production music for film, television and video projects, or as background music for different projects and companies as well as music on-hold for personal and professional telephone systems can be a time-consuming and very expensive endeavor. Because many businesses do not have the money to spend on on-going music royalties, many are turning to libraries of royalty free music to fulfill their many musical needs.

While royalty free music is certainly a convenient and inexpensive option for those in search of bulk music for their restaurants, not all royalty free music is created equal. Music from major providers such as Award Winning Music is an affordable and premium music choice for all types of professionals. The following are five characteristics to look for in high quality royalty background music, production music, and music on-hold to help insure it will enhance a business’ or project’s mission and communicate its purpose and style without reducing its value:

1. Good - make that excellent — sound quality. The sound quality of the music you are listening to will be the first and most noticeable element. If the music has been recorded under optimal conditions, you will hear a perfect balance between bass and treble, as well as consistent sound and texture regardless of the volume at which you are listening to the music. Similarly, you will be able to pick out the individual sounds of different instruments as they blend to create the whole piece.

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4. Well-composed music by musicians and artists with real credentials. Great royalty free music sites will provide credentials for the composers and performers they enlist, and their artistry will shine through in the finished product. A purveyor of beautifully and carefully crafted background music, on-hold music and production music will be able to give the history of the artists involved in the design and production of the music, and this history will include collaborations with major artists in the genre of the type of music being composed.

5. A diverse yet still versatile music library. The best royalty free music will offer diverse styles that run the gamut of musical tastes. Genres of music might involve classical, jazz, different types of rock and roll, New Age and some progressive styles such as Hip-Hop and techno/dance music. But even within the more traditional styles of music, such as classical, there will be selections that appeal to younger listeners with typically more “modern” musical tastes, just as within the more cutting-edge styles, there will be pieces that can be enjoyed by even those that would not normally listen to techno and Hip-Hop.

Looking for these basic characteristics when shopping for royalty free music will help discriminating professionals select the perfect production music, music on-hold or background music to suit their very specific projects.

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We are repeatedly told of the necessity to plan. “If you fail to
plan, you plan to fail”, “Plan your work, work your plan” etc.

In terms of goalsetting and achieving goals, when people talk of
planning, they generally mean:

1. You set your goals

2. You make a plan for achieving your goals

This, for us, is putting things upside down. And we are going to
put things right back on their feet.

If planning is really necessary, it is much more UPSTREAM, i.e.
BEFORE goalsetting - you decide what you want, when, where, how
you are going to “affirm and visualize”, than DOWNSTREAM i.e.
AFTER goalsetting - how you are going to achieve your goals.

This “upstream planning” is generally not considered as
planning. It is normally called “decision-making”: You decide
WHAT, explore the reasons WHY, and organize your affirming and
visualizing activity (time, place etc.)

This is different from planning :

For example if your goal is to buy a house in 1 year’s time, you
would be planning for HOW to achieve you goal (save, invest,
work more etc.)

Now I am going to shock you with one little-known success
mindset secret: once you know exactly what you want,
visualization is more important - even more necessary - than
planning, in other words, thinking about how you are going to
enjoy whatever you want once you get it is more important - even
more necessary - than thinking about how to get it in the first
place!

Visualization is much more productive, much more efficient, much
more motivational and inspirational than planning. Besides, it
is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

Once (and even before) you’ve set your goals, FAITH is also much
more important than planning.

Planning is in inverse proportion to faith: the stronger your
faith, the less necessary it is for you to plan.

If you really have faith, you don’t need any planning (another
“shocking” statement!)

Let us simply say that planning is only good inasmuch as you
need to be reassured that what you want is really possible or
what you want to do is really feasible.

The truth about planning is that it only causes limitations, in
that lots of possibilities outside the plan are not even
considered.

So, just state whatever it is that you want and don’t worry too
much about HOW you are going to get it, because there are always
far more ways than you could ever plan for, or even imagine.

Focus on what you want and keep your mind open to the idea that
there are always other ways.

Focus on your goal and obstacles will disappear, because
“obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off
his goal” (E-Joseph Crossman).

The best way to get rid of obstacles is to keep your eyes on
your goal.

Now, you may ask: ” Won’t you trip and fall if you concentrate
too much on your goal and forget to look where you’re walking?”

Here is my answer to your question: ” If you have enough faith,
you don’t WALK to your goal, you FLY over all possible
obstacles, straight to your goal”

So, affirm, visualize, and receive: if you have enough faith,
failure is impossible!

A.M.Sall

February is the perfect month to consider mending your broken
heart and San Francisco is the just the right city to do it. No,
I am not talking about your love life. I am talking about
strengthening the most important muscle in your body; your
heart.

Valentine’s month is a period in between the holidays and
summer. There are not as many distractions which make it a great
month to begin an exercise program. The San Francisco setting
for this is ideal with the cool clear days February provides and
no fog!

More importantly there is no better city to train than San
Francisco because of our unique topography. Where most cities
have to rely solely on long, boring and flat cardio workouts we
have a ton of options for quick, high intensity cardio workouts.

Three great options for fast cardio training that The City
offers are: beach sprints, hill sprints and stair climbing.

1. Beach Sprints: Sprinting at the beach is great for developing
strength in your legs as well as your heart. It takes more
effort than sprinting on a solid surface and you can’t beat the
scenery (unless all you can see is fog but that’s pretty cool
too.) A great cardio workout at the beach would be to sprint for
twenty seconds then walk for ten and repeat eight times for a
total of four minutes. This has been proven to be just as
effective as running at a steady state for longer periods.

2. Hill Sprints: When I was young and had to walk everywhere I
would curse the hills of San Francisco. Driving my old cars with
stick shifts was never much fun either. Now it’s all about
automatics and using the hills to exercise. Much like beach
sprints; hill sprints are great for strengthening the legs and
glutes, as well as your heart. The best thing about hill sprints
is you most likely have a hill right outside your door (if you
don’t you probably live close to the beach.) Try the “around the
block run.” Jog easy downhill and around the turns and sprint
uphill. Depending on the length and slope of the hill start out
doing this once or twice and try to build up to five or six
times or more.

3. Stair Climbing: One of the aspects of San Francisco I have
always loved, even as a kid, is the amount of stairs we have.
Long staircases slice through neighborhoods providing easy
routes to our favorite coffee shops and create the feeling, for
me, of being in an old world time and place. What I really love
about them is the leg, glute and cardio workout they can
provide. Try running up a long staircase, walking up two stairs
at a time or carrying a pair of dumbbells on your climb. If you
want to climb it more than once be careful coming back down as
you will be tired.

Of course do a proper warm up before exercising and always
consult a physician before starting a new exercise program.
Happy Valentines Day!