Then why do you do it? I won’t lie, I used to think that weighing yourself everyday makes sense, especially if you are on a diet and exercise program. But sometimes our bodies don’t make a lot of sense. We can work our butts off in the gym and eat right all day long, and still gain weight the next morning. We can eat a ton of food, wake up, and actually lose weight.

It would happen to me all of the time, and it’d set the precedent for the rest of my day. If i didn’t lose weight after a great day of exercise and diet, I’d get depressed for the rest of the day. If I did lose weight, then I’d end up doing what I was going to do anyway.

I’ve learned to weigh myself just once a week. If your happiness level is tied directly to your weight, then you should do the same. Daily fluctuations in your weight are not worth thinking about. They will drive you nuts.

Set a goal for yourself - If you’re on a long-term weight loss program (30lbs in 2 months for example), set weekly goals. That’s about 4 lbs per week. If you are pushing yourself to eat properly and get a lot of exercise, then you will stick with it all week long until “weigh-in” day. If you’re weighing yourself every single day, then you are going to think way too much about what you are doing.

Focus on How You Feel - When you don’t focus on the number of pounds you weigh, have lost, or have gained, you think about other things. Ideally, you’re focusing on your goal. And if you’re doing everything right then you will be more concerned with how you actually feel (which should mean you feel good!). How you feel is far more important than your weight or body fat percentage.

If you’re a habitual weigher, try only weighing yourself once a week and see how it does. I think most people will benefit from this because you will be much more focused on what’s important.

A new blog by the name of DietSpy.com just recently launched, and they are giving away The Simple Weight Loss Guide, a short yet sweet e-book that can help the majority of people lose weight. It comes in at under 30 pages, which is a pretty quick read.

I’ve read the book and it is full of great, no-nonsense information. It includes some simple diet changes, like what you should eat and what you should not eat, what to do for exercise, and which supplements to take to accelerate your weight loss. Then it gives you 7 tips that you can implement into your life. My personal favorite is the Goal Setting tip, which is something that you can apply to other areas of your life, not just weight loss.

The best part is that it’s free. So download The Simple Weight Loss Guide to start changing your life today!

70% of losing weight is about diet. Don’t think that you can spend 2 hours in the gym, working your ass off, and then rewarding yourself with two value meals from Burger King. You’ll never lose weight this way.

That said, you should definitely try out FitDay.com for tracking your progress. At the very least, use it as a tool to track the amount of calories you eat. That way, you can be completely honest with yourself. After a few days you’ll begin to see why what you’re eating is working, or not working.

Also, apologies for not updating this website too often. I am working on a book that I will give out for free to everyone who wants to lose weight. Basically it condenses down all the basics you need to know about losing weight into a handy, short book. Should be in the next week or so.

But lets be honest. Americans watch more TV than any other country, and America is the most overweight country on the planet. The correlation is there. Take a look at this graph: correlating the amount of hours of TV watched vs obesity rate.

Can’t find the United States on that graph? Take a closer look at the lonely dot on the upper right hand corner.

Replace TV with something Productive

The data is there. Watching TV doesn’t add on calories to your tummy, but it does absolutely nothing to help you burn them. As you sit there, watching your favorite shows, you’re not doing anything for your body to burn those calories you ate today.

A simple remedy for this is to replace an hour or so of TV with something productive. Take a walk, hit the gym, whatever. Just get off your ass and MOVE! If you can’t stand missing your favorite shows, get yourself a Tivo. Reward yourself after a workout by watching your favorite shows without commercials.

As Americans, we’ve fallen into a trance with our TV’s. It’s so bad that the NFL started a program to encourage kids to go outside and exercise. We’re going in the wrong direction with our priorities in life, but heck, it’s been like this for ages.

Studies on happiness have shown that people are not happiest when they are watching TV. It would be safe to assume that we enjoy TV so much that it makes us happy, but that is not the case. There is no interaction with TV, there is no input from us.

Instead, we find ourselves happiest when we challenge ourselves, whether mentally or physically. Replace some TV with working out and exercise and you will reap the benefits.

For about the past 7 years I’ve been a member of 3 gyms for at least a year each. I know what I like when it comes to a gym, which is a substantial amount of weight training and free weight space. I’m also very keen on customer service, because as you know gyms have a horrible reputation of locking you into a contract you can’t get out of unless you move out of the country or injure yourself on purpose.

So without further delay, I’ll give you the pros and cons of each national gym chain based on my experiences. While there are plenty more chains out there, I can’t speak for them because I’ve never been a member.

Some of the pros and cons will not apply to your location. Location is everything, so while my experience with a gym may have been horrible, it can be the exact opposite at another location depending on the staff, total number of members, and the city it is in.

Lifetime Fitness

I recently signed up for Lifetime Fitness and I must say it is the most impressive gym I have ever been to. The complex is absolutely huge and it’s easily the biggest gym I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if they build all Lifetime Fitness gyms like this, but if you can find one in your area then I suggest you sign up immediately!

The rates for Lifetime Fitness are much higher then I’ve seen. I think I’m paying $60 a month, which is double what I’m used to. They cap off their membership at a certain rate, and bump it up to $80 or something when their quota is reached.

One thing that sets Lifetime Fitness apart from any other gym that I’ve seen is that they do not lock you into any contract. You’re basically paying month to month, so if your lazy ass gives up trying to get in shape after 6 months, then you can just quit, no questions asked. Otherwise, you’re locked into whatever rate you sign up with even if they raise their rates.

This is a very unique approach to running a health club and it’s easy to see why they are so successful.

My only gripe with this gym is that the area dedicated to free weights and weightlifting is incredibly small compared to the size of the entire facility. It can get a bit hectic if you hit this gym during rush hour and you want to lift some weights.

Pros

No Contract Membership
Open 24 Hours a Day
Huge Complex

Cons

More Expensive than most gyms

24 Hour Fitness

Most 24 Hour Fitness gyms on are in the West Coast and Central States. I was a member here for about a year, but it was just too far a drive for me to continue. It’s hard enough to make yourself go to a gym, especially in the dead of winter, but driving 20 minutes to get there can also put a damper on things.

24 Hour Fitness is a great gym all around. Their rates are moderate, and you can probably get a good deal if you sign up under someone who is already a member. I think I was paying $30 a month at the time.

They tend to cater towards weight lifters and strength training, which isn’t saying much, but at least the entire gym isn’t made up of Treadmills and stationary bikes. Also the crowd is much younger then the other 2 gyms I review, so if you’re a young sexy single this is the place to be! (You should be working out anyway, not cruising for chicks!)

Pros

Open 24 Hours a Day
Caters to weight lifting and strength training, younger crowd

Cons

Contract Membership
Can get very, very crowded

Bally Total Fitness

When I first started weightlifting right after high school, Bally’s was the first gym I joined. My friends and I would go there religiously when we were young and naïve. After a couple of months, we started to realize that we didn’t really like Bally’s. The facility was very small, the people working there were not that likable, and it just kind of sucked. And I don’t know if this is an East coast thing, but the gym was not open 24 hours like the ones mentioned above. It was really over priced for such a small gym.

I’m sure you could enjoy Bally’s, or any gym that has the equipment you want, but my experience with them has been fairly dismal. They lock you into contracts, and the only way out is to move or get a doctors note. I somehow managed to get out of a Bally’s contract, but that was only because I moved out of state.

When I went back during the summer during college to my hometown of Philadelphia, I signed up for one of their summer programs so I could work out. I recall it was $40 down and $40 for 3 months, no “contract.” The person who signed me up told me I wouldn’t be billed after the summer, but low and behold, I was. It took me a few months to realize, but after a very long phone call to customer service (well over 3 hours) I got my money back.

They will straight up lie to you, so read their fine print very carefully. This doesn’t apply just to Bally’s, as most gyms work this way, even 24 Hour Fitness. Gyms make money on the fact that you will eventually stop going after a few weeks or months, but you’ll still have to pay them!

They must be hiding something, because their employees are always moving from location to location. Every couple of months you would see some new employees, and when you asked about the old ones, they always went to another location. Why is that?

Pros

Any gym is better than no gym, I guess.

Cons

Expensive for such a small location
Not Open 24 Hours
Fairly Generic Experience
Impossible-to-get-out-of Contract Membership

So, what’s your favorite gym, and what have been your experiences?

While I’d love to write some useful articles on helping men and women lose weight, I keep coming across articles and information about the rotten status of the United States healthcare system. I saw this interesting article on LiveScience today, which basically states that in 2007, 41% of working-age Americans had trouble paying medical bills, up from 34% in 2005.

Now I don’t want to get into an argument of universal healthcare versus privatized healthcare, which country’s healthcare system is best, or what is really wrong with our current healthcare system today, although you can read about my gripes with the pharmaceutical industry here.

I will say that our current healthcare system is screwed, and there are a bunch of fundamental problems with it that make it far too expensive for most people. You can’t step foot in a hospital or doctor’s office without having to pay a bill. Unless you have fantastic coverage at your job, you’re more then likely going to pay a few hundred or few thousand dollars out of pocket with each hospital visit.

Too Many Problems Stem from Being Overweight or Obese

You are probably well aware that 2 out of 3 people in the United States are overweight or obese. No need to toss that number around. But do you realize how many problems actually stem from obesity? Let’s count them down: Hypertension, Osteoarthritis, Dyslipidemia (high cholesterol), Type 2 diabetes, coronary hearth disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and some cancers.

I’d also like to mention depression or anxiety. While it’s not listened on the CDC website’s list, poor self-image is a problem that affects many young adults in the US. With poor-self image you’re likely to feel more depressed then someone very confident about themselves, so you see a doctor and are now on a $50 a month prescription plan to make you feel better.

These are some serious illnesses that are not cheap to fix. Some of them will turn into lifelong problems that can lead to financial problems for the rest of your life. Do you want to be stuck with frequent hospital visits throughout the year when you don’t have to be going in the first place? Do you want to put that burden on your family members when you won’t be able to pay these bills yourself?

Our Healthcare System is designed to treat Consequences, Not Teach Prevention

Over and over again I hear stories of people who lose weight and completely change their lives around. When you’re fit, you suffer from far less illness then when you’re overweight. Being fit gives you confidence, especially if you’ve had a lifelong problem with self-image due to being overweight. There goes your depression. Being at a healthy weight can reduce all of the major problems associated with obesity that I’ve listed above. While I don’t have the numbers, I can guarantee you that fit people spend much less time in hospitals and doctor’s offices then obese people.

The healthcare system in America needs overweight and obese people to make its incredible profits. Without the problems that stem from obesity, our hard-earned money would stay in our pockets and out of the hands of pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. Don’t worry, they will still be making incredible amounts of money, but it will be for illnesses and problems that cannot be prevented. Out of our own pocket, and as taxpayers for Medicare and Medicaid, we’d be well over $100 billion wealthier as a country.

It is a sad state of affairs when the area in my gym dedicated to machines is about 3 times the size of the area dedicated to free weights.

The same thing can be said for getting fit and committing to some sort of exercise. Master what you love doing, and that 6-pack stomach will follow. When people try to force themselves into fitness, whether through diet or a training program, often times they will fall short of their goals or give up completely. Why does this happen?

I attribute it to people doing something they do not like doing. They want something so bad that they are not willing to accept the fact that the means they are using to get there is not right for them. Why do people who hate cabbage try to lose weight on a cabbage diet? Why people who hate running run to try to get into shape?

A perfect example of this is me and running. I have not been to a gym for about 8 months. My gym membership expired, it was too far away with gas prices soaring, and I ended up not renewing it. I figured, “Hey, I’ll just run myself into shape.” I have a treadmill and miles of open road around my house, so why not?

Obviously that did not work. As much as I enjoyed the feeling of a successful run, which wasn’t that far anyway, I could never get into a groove to run everyday. About 2-3 times a week was the best I could do, while most of the time I never ran. I just hated it so much that I spent more time trying to convince myself to run than I did actual running. Once I got to running, I didn’t mind it too much, but good luck getting me to do it again tomorrow.

This week, I joined a new gym that was built very close to my house. I have gotten so out of shape and lazy this year, I yearned for something to get me sweating again. I yearned for the endorphin rush that happens after an hour-long workout. I couldn’t take it anymore. I just had to sign up. So I did. And it was the best thing I did all year.

The second I touched a weight in the gym, I remembered, “Oh yeah, this is what I love to do.” I’m no bodybuilder by any means, but when it comes to fitness, weightlifting is one thing I am good at and know how to do, and one thing I really love to do. I was excited and looked forward to my next day in the gym working out a different muscle group.

Imagine if you were excited and looked forward to going into work everyday. How fast would you be promoted?

Step 1: Find What You Love – Fitness Does Not Have to Suck

Face it. You’re not going to get in shape doing something you absolutely hate doing. 90% of people don’t have the willpower to stick to and master something they do not want to do, let alone something that would take 6 months to do like losing 30 pounds.

Do you love lifting weights like I do? Then get back in the gym. Do you love boxing? You better join a boxing club and find a sparring partner. Did you love riding your bike as a kid? Get a new bicycle. Love to run but feet hurt too much and you can’t run that far? Get yourself some top quality running shoes and learn the techniques that allow top runners to attain the “runner’s high.”

Be honest. You’re not bullshitting anyone but yourself. You won’t be able to “lie” yourself into fitness.

Step 2: Finding Flow

The goal is to find something you love and to dedicate yourself to it 100%. When you begin to master an activity, you find more pleasure in it. You begin to look forward to challenging yourself to beat your previous records and times. When your skills are on par for the challenge ahead, you begin to find your flow.

People fail at exercise and fitness plans because the challenges put before them are too great for their skill set. No matter what it is, if our skills are not up to par, we feel anxiety and dread… which are the worst emotions to have when trying to commit to any activity.

This whole post is inspired by this book, Finding Flow, which I recommend to anyone that can read. It doesn’t necessarily teach you how to do anything, but you will begin to understand the fundamental reasons why people love or hate what they are doing. This article simply focuses on the flow of exercise and fitness.

Step 3: Don’t Focus On The End Result of Losing Weight

Don’t get me wrong. You should set goals. But most fitness goals are along the lines of “Lose X amount pounds.” Does that goal have anything to do with what you love doing? Not exactly. While that kind of goal can work if you fall in love with the idea of losing weight, wouldn’t it be better if your goal were something like; Run a 5 minute mile or Squat 350 pounds? Attain the goals of what you love to do and a better body will follow.

But don’t always focus on the ultimate goal. Each day is a challenge that you have to focus on. When a boxer is aiming for being a champion in his weight division, he has to move up the ranks. When he is fighting those exhibition fights, is that boxer focusing on knocking out the guy he’s fighting with, or is his focusing on that championship fight months away? If his mind isn’t 100% on the fight at hand, he’s going to suckered in the face and lose.

When rock climbers summit a huge rock wall, they don’t have the option of thinking about anything else. Their mind must be 100% focused on the climb, otherwise they can fall to their deaths. Nothing else matters but the goal in front of them.

What if you want to win the Boston Marathon? You have to complete many successive goals, which would be smaller marathons or runs. You don’t focus on what your time could be in Boston. You focus on beating your time today!

Step 4: When Doing What You Love Doesn’t Work

There are only two reasons why doing what you love can become mundane and unbearable. You have either mastered the skill, or your skills are not up to par.

If you love biking but are only semi-experienced, then trying to cycle the Tour de France will be an overwhelming challenge. In that case, your skills are not ready for the challenge. Start with something smaller than you actually have a chance at accomplishing.

On the other hand, you may have mastered something you love to do and the challenge has become too easy. In this case, you have to increase the challenge. Have you been doing the same workout routing in the gym for 6 months. It’s no wonder you’ve become numb to it. With weightlifting, there are a thousand and one exercises you can come up with or read about. There are always new challenges. Tired of cycling the same 12 mile route around your neighborhood? Switch it up and create new routes with new scenery and new challenges.

Simple isn’t it?

The whole point of this is article is to get you out there and to do something you love. When your heart is in something, you want to do it. When you are forcing yourself to do something, then you half the battle is just getting started, and the rest of the time you’re not enjoying it, making it more likely that you will give up.

The previous two articles written on this site, Pharmaceutical Drug Companies Killing Middle America Legally while Robbing You Blind and Pharmaceutical Drug Companies Marketing and Policy Making, were written without prior knowledge of this interview or book. But it just goes to show that our health as a population is at stake and there is a real problem going on.

In this interview with Melody Peterson, we get the low down on an industry that has put profits before our health. She is the author of Our Daily Meds, which is the culmination of four years of work as a New York Times journalist researching the pharmaceutical industry.

Watch the interview here.

(Disclosure: I have not read this book yet. I only just found out about it today, but the interview is well worth watching.)

A lot of people are taking the comments personally. Sorry if we hit a nerve. Like we tried to say in the previous article, we know that there are legitimate purposes for many, if not all, prescription drugs. We just want to see many of them being used as a last resort after exhausting all of the common sense, holistic techniques to treat an ailment.

By the way, we are not doctors. We are not qualified to give medical advice. The views and opinions expressed on this site are just that: views and opinions. On that note, we are not Scientologists or conspiracy theorists either.


That said, let us continue our attack on the business that is pharmaceuticals. Please read the “Killing You Legally” article first to understand the context of what is written below.

Restless Leg Syndrome is Actually a Real Disease

First and foremost, I’d really like to apologize to the actual Restless Leg Syndrome sufferers out there. In the previous article I treated RLS like a made up disease, which obviously it is not. There are most certainly people out there that suffer from Restless Leg Syndrome where it affects their daily lives. I don’t mean to pick only on RLS, but that is the way it came out in the previous article.

But 1 in 10 Americans? Really? How come we never heard of this disease 10 years ago? Now, all of the sudden, every tenth person I know is a sufferer of Restless Leg Syndrome? You should be weary of any disease and its cure that is promoted so heavily, where it affects so many people out of nowhere.

There is a huge conflict of interest here when the company that produces the drug to treat RLS runs the main information portal while providing “non-biased” research to prove their point. Take from it what you will, but I truly doubt these studies were non-biased. When millions of dollars are involved, there is no such thing as independent research.

The Good, The Bad, and The Profitable.

The Good

The pharmaceutical industry is huge in the scope of its work. There are drugs out there that treat anything from allergies all the way to yeast infections. There is very good work being done by very good people in the field of medicine, the foot soldiers and the pioneers. The progress of medicine in America and the world has been incredible. Cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and many more are life-threatening diseases that affect us in one way or another, whether we suffer from the disease itself, or a close family member or friend.

The Bad and the Profitable – Pushing the Big Pharma Agenda

I believe in capitalism and free markets. I don’t think health care and medicine should be in the hands of government. Not a very liberal point of view, but that’s just my opinion. For the record, I’ve never seen Sicko, not that it should matter.

But somewhere medicine stopped being about the common good. The “free market” of medicine is not free at all. It can’t be free when the there are more than 2 pharmaceutical lobbyists for every 1 member of Congress. It can’t be free when the pharmaceutical industry spends more than any other industry on its lobbying efforts. ($758 million since 1998 as of 2005)(1)

And this is my problem with the pharmaceutical industry, and it should be yours. This is the point I was trying to make in the previous article. There is plenty of good work being done in medicine, but it is being exploited and abused by those in control. Like when a drug to treat severe depression is marketed to the general public, so it can hook those with low self-esteem or those going through a rough patch in their lives to a habit forming pill. Promoting the common good has taken a backseat promoting a company’s bottom line. From USA Today(2):

Over the years those lobbyists have been very successful, demonstrating that the industry knows politics as well as it knows chemistry. Drug companies won coverage for prescription drugs under Medicare in 2003 while blocking the government from negotiating prices downward. They have so far kept out imports of cheaper medicines from Canada and other countries. And they have protected a system that uses company fees to speed the drug-approval process.

“They win more than they should,” says James Love, an industry critic who is director of the non-profit Consumer Project on Technology. “The one thing they have going for them is money.”

The Food and Drug Administration IS THE Pharmaceutical Industry, and vise versa

There is a conflict of interest when a government agency whose purpose is make sure pharmaceutical drugs are “safe and effective” before they hit the market, has advisers from that very industry. A USA Today article (3) reports that 92% of FDA advisory committee meetings from January 1998 to June 2000 had at least one member with a financial conflict of interest. 55% of meetings had half of the FDA advisers in those meetings with a financial conflict of interest. A more staggering fact is that 33% had a financial conflict when dealing with the fate of a specific drug.

When so few people will affect the lives of so many, it is a crime that their decisions are allowed to be influenced by their stake in a company. The very people who are hired by the FDA to debate, test, and finally approve these drugs are the very people working for the drug makers.

Advisers can be paid up to $50,000 as a consultant for a drug company before there is a “conflict of interest” according to the FDA. Private jets paid for by drug companies whisk politicians and lawmakers to and from closed meetings, events, and the capital. There is a lot of money involved. Your health and safety are footnotes.

Who is to blame?

Who am I going to blame for the sky-high drug prices, excessive promotion of unnecessary drugs that end up being not-so-safe, and rising death toll from prescription drugs? Everyone. Let’s begin.

Government

Lobbying is nothing new in Washington. Gun makers, cigarette companies, oil companies, farmers and so on. They all do it. Every industry has stake in the laws our government makes. But it is a disgusting practice that needs to be stopped or regulated better if you want real change in this country, no matter which candidate you support.

The public controls the government. That is the way it should be. But who really controls it? Sure, we the people have the illusion we control it, but decisions in Washington are heavily influenced by private interest. There is no getting around that.

The Pharmaceutical Companies

Pfizer spent $16.90 billion on marketing in 2004, and only $7.68 billion on research and development. GlaxoSmithKline spent $12.93 on marketing, and $5.20 billion on research and development. Merck spent $7.35 billion on marketing and $4 billion on research and development. (4)

Just like the previous article, I still want to put a lot of blame on the Pharmaceutical companies. Imagine if those numbers were reversed. Rather than 2:1 spending on marketing to R&D, what if pharmaceutical companies had a cap on marketing spend, or a minimum spend on research and development? Would that change anything? Who knows. It’s a pipe dream anyway. When big Pharma spends more on lobbying that any other industry, no law or act will ever be put into place that negatively affects their profits. Never.

Does the pharmaceutical industry want cheap drugs on the market? Of course not. Arbitrarily high prices are the reason their profits are so big. The barriers to entry for new drugs are so high that true, free-market competition is not possible. These barriers are put into place by the companies that make up the drug industry lobby. The industry functions very similar to a cartel.

Ourselves

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. Wake up America. If you’ve read this article and the last, you have been warned. Pharmaceutical companies want you to take their pills whether you need them or not. If you need them and they work for you, thank the pioneers, thinkers, and scientists. There are honest in people in the pharmaceutical industry that want to rid the world of disease as much as you and I do.

But for the average Joe, think about the pills you think you need. The playing field is not level because we are bombarded with billions of dollars worth of advertising every year, convinced into thinking that we need expensive pills for all that ails us.

Try the holistic approach before you succumb to the lure of prescription pills. Do you suffer from depression because you’re over weight? Spend a year getting in shape and you will change your life for the better. Still suffering? Then maybe you have a real problem.

Do you suffer from heartburn? Take a look at your diet. Is it fully comprised of foods that would cause heartburn? Yes, the commercials say that heartburn is caused by both the foods we eat and genetics. Eliminate the “foods that cause heartburn” part first, and then talk to your doctor about the pill.

Always talk to your doctor before taking the holistic approach. We must state once again that this website not written by doctors. If you are on medication, talk to your doctor about ways you can get off of it safely if that really is your ultimate goal. Before going on medication, talk to your doctor about available natural cures and approaches, and what else you can do before you absolutely have to get on a prescription.

I truly believe in the ability to cure ourselves for many of the problems we have. I’ve heard and read too many stories of people turning their lives around by getting in shape and staying in shape, or changing their lifestyle for the better to eliminate the stress and heartache in their lives.

On that note, be weary of holistic scammers too. Not everything can be cured holistically. While the “natural cures and holistic treatment industry” pales in comparison to the racket that the pharmaceutical company has in place, there are still enough people waiting to rip you off. Be weary of anything that is promoted by scam artists or that is “too good to be true.”

Article Resources

1.) Medical News Today: USA Today Looks at Prescription Drug Industry’s Lobbying Efforts
2.) USA Today: Drugmakers go furthest to sway Congress
3.) USA Today: FDA Advisers Tied To Industry
4.) The Center for Public Integrity: How the pharmaceutical industry gets its way in Washington

Additional Reading

“You look at the number of lobbyists — we are up against an army.”

Under the Influence - 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft Reports On Drug Lobbyists’ Role in Passing Bill That Keeps Drug Prices High