Winter: Base-Building and Boredom-Busting

Your resolutions probably came with a regular gym membership and not-so-regular motivation. But this is when you need a schedule most. You have to build a solid foundation of strength and cardiovascular health before you can move on to more intense and more fun activities. If you haven’t exercised regularly, start with 2 days a week. Hit 6 weeks, and it’s a habit. Start here.

Beat the post-holiday bulge

Stay Low

Keep your cardio intensity lower than about 60 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate, or a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. If you push too hard, you’ll peak early and burn out. Plus, you’ll burn fat by doing 30 minutes at 60 to 70 percent. When you train at lower intensities, you’re teaching your body to use fat rather than carbohydrates.

Be Spontaneous

Every once in a while, choose exercises the way you’d browse through a bookstore go in without a plan. You can do anything, just whatever you feel like, for 30 minutes to an hour. It’s a great way to avoid boredom, and you don’t have to wait for machines. For cardio, follow the guidelines outlined above. For strength, keep your weights low (low enough so that you can complete two to three sets of 10 mildly challenging reps), or just do one set of each exercise, mixing them as you please without thinking about what’s coming next.

Click here for more tips

How to stick to your New Year’s fitness resolution

If one is to hold fast to their faith, country and family, let’s face it, there has been little left to stand firm upon.

While I do not hold much to resolutions, in 2011, I will accept what comes my way with a determination to stay above it all. In the best of scenarios, I will more than likely roll with the punches and do my best to float, float on.

I am wise enough to appreciate that I stand because someone was made to kneel before me so, by no blessing of my own, my ‘I am’ is not contingent upon the trend of politics nor the weight of my economic standing. My character is neither determined nor swayed by outside influence. I am a strong woman but not merely because of my race. I am a quilting of past and present souls who have stood firm with me and sometimes for me when I could not bear my own weight. Because of them, most days I stand, regardless.

Many of us are of a certain age in that we have accumulated all of the squares of our quilt, and as the remainder of days before us are probably fewer than those we have left behind, there’s no need to go rounding up folk if your quilt seems incomplete. We are reaching the top of the mountain and my granny would say, ‘Ain’t no use in crying about it now.’ It is time to stitch together the quilt that will cover you against the threat of life’s winds and bind its edges beyond the prospect of fraying.

Beginning this new year, gather up your people and offer yourself to them as you might be a square they need. Open yourself in return that you might allow room for another stitch or two.

In all, HAPPY NEW YEAR, Beautiful You!

Give The New Year A Healthy Start

Make 2011 The Fittest Year Of Your Life

1. Visit grocery stores’ websites to find valuable savings coupons that you can print and take with you when you go shopping. When it’s not prohibited, combine coupons issued by the store and those offered by the manufacturer for the same item.

2. Take advantage of savings programs from drugstore and discount chains. When you combine drugstores’ automatic-rebate programs with their coupons and sales, you can occasionally wind up getting certain items for free. In some cases, you can even receive money back! For the latest national-drugstore bargains, visit couponmom.com.

How to throw a New Year’s Eve Party

3. Sign up for free samples of health and beauty products online. You can order them at sites such as freeflys.com, mysavings.com, startsampling.com, and Wal-Mart’s instoresnow.walmart.com. You may need to answer a few questions, but you generally won’t have to pay for shipping. And at these sites, you won’t be put on spam lists.

4. Sign up for store loyalty cards. You’ll get generous coupons for products that you tend to buy regularly.

5. Ask how a particular promotion works. For example, a “10 for $10″ sale may not require that you purchase 10 items; you might be able to buy only what you need and still get the reduced price. (Use a coupon, and you just might end up paying nothing.)

GET MORE HERE

Mike Alvear, host of HBO’s “The Sex Inspectors,” tells the Huffington Post his top 5 sex predictions for the new year.

[From Huffington Post]

A friend once described his sexual appetites this way: “A hungry junkyard dog is more fun than a poodle.” He’s going to be one happy puppy after he reads my five predictions for sex in 2009:

1. You’re going to have a lot more of it.
The recession that hit your pocket will tickle your crotch. Call it Recession Sex. If you’re coupled, you’re going to spend more time at home and at some point that TV’s gotta be turned off. The nesting impulse will increase your resting pulse. That’s the good news. The bad? As discretionary income goes down, indiscretions go up. Oops. If you’re single, you’ll have the time but not the money to fritter away at bars. You won’t wait for the last-call yard sale so you’ll probably lower the bar to increase your odds.

2. You’re going to see a lot more of it.
Larry Flynt once said, “There are two kinds of people who oppose porn. Those who don’t know what they’re talking about and those who don’t know what they’re missing.” Well, ain’t nobody missing it anymore. It’s everywhere. The mainstreaming of porn in art, fashion, and media is turning adult videos into a sort of Zen koan: No matter where you go, there it is.

3. You’re going to be paying a lot less for it.
Nobody’s going to put call girls in a higher tax bracket this year. With a tanking economy, streetwalkers, pole dancers and gold diggers alike are going to have to give it up for less. So are the online dating sites, as they compete with free sites like Plentyoffish.com, Okcupid.com, and DateHookUp.com. It’s like they’ve been working a corner for years and now some hussy’s going to do the job for free. Oh, my.

You might blow a lot of things up for porn but it won’t be your budget. You don’t have to buy it anymore. Hell, you don’t even have to rent it. You just have to point your browser to free sites like Youporn.com and xtube.com, where amateurs and pros upload unstoppable watchables. Offline piracy, illegal downloads and free video sharing sites are going to make dinosaurs out of adult video studios. If they don’t figure out how to compete with “FREE” soon, their last movie is gonna be about their profits–Gone With The Girdle.

What are the other two predictions?! Click here to find out.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wondered whatever happened to Antonio Sabato, Jr., because he is damn fine.

Well, according to recent photos, he’s still fine. The actor was spotted at a couple nightclubs with Fergie and a few other celebs to ring in the new year, and we’ve missed his absence.

Amen.