• 1 scoop Greenberry Shakeology
• 1 cup strawberries
• 1 Philadelphia 1/3 Less Fat Neufchâtel Cheese Mini (1.25 oz.)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1/2 cup water
• Ice (to taste)

Place ingredients in blender and blend until thoroughly mixed and creamy. Makes 1 serving.

If you’d like to ask a question or comment on this newsletter article, just email us or visit http://shakeology.com/alluraophira

Get More Recipes when you Order Shakeology Today

A veggie wrap for lunch. A night out for sushi. And you’re working out . . . but you’re still not losing weight. What gives?

Some “diet” foods may be your worst enemy. That’s because they’re tricking you into eating too many calories. So what are some of the worst offenders?

1. Sushi: Fish wrapped in rice and seaweed. Not a diet food? Yep, that’s right. It’s not always as “light” as it seems. Some sushi has calorie levels so high it might just shock you.Diet Shocker: One eight-piece serving of Philadelphia sushi roll is the caloric equivalent of 1 medium bagel with plain cream cheese—close to 500 calories. It’s the cream cheese that gets you. And what about spicy tuna and other mayo-based rolls? They can contain as many as 450 calories and 11 grams of artery-clogging fat per serving. Eat too many of the “wrong” rolls and you’re in Big Mac® calorie territory.
2. Wraps: You order the whole wheat veggie wrap thinking it’ll put you on the skinny track. But is it actually the fat track? For some reason, wraps have been viewed as a healthy upgrade from a sandwich, but this isn’t always the case.Diet Shocker: The tortilla holding your wrap together can easily contain the same number of calories as four slices of bread, not to mention more carbs and twice as much fat. Many kinds of wraps you get at a deli have at least 300 calories. And that’s just the tortilla, not the contents. You also have to factor in the fillings—and keep in mind that a wrap has more surface space to spread these calorie-boosting culprits:
   • Dressing
   • Cheese
   • Mayo

   All told, one healthy-seeming wrap can easily trick you into eating hundreds more calories than you planned.

3. Granola: When you’re having granola, you might think, “It’s healthy. The fiber and all those little pieces of dried fruit are so good for me.” Truth is, although it’s got good stuff in it, it also packs in the calories.Diet Shocker: A half-cup serving is what’s often listed on the nutrition label of prepared granola. But who eats just half a cup? For most brands, there are more than 400 calories in a one-cup serving of granola. And when’s the last time you actually measured? If you keep filling your cereal bowl with this stuff, it’s no wonder you’re not losing!
4. Bran Muffins: The kinds sold at many bakeries today aren’t the little 3-inch muffins Grandma used to bake. They’re much, much bigger. And just because they’re made with “healthy” bran doesn’t mean they’re a diet food, either.Diet Shocker: The average bakery muffin can contain as many as 630 calories. You might be slightly better off with a bran muffin than, say, a banana or blueberry one because of bran’s extra fiber, but most of them are still packed with sugar and butter. Eat one bran muffin from Dunkin’ Donuts® and you’ll be consuming 480 calories, 13 grams of fat, and 46 grams of sugar. OMG.
5. Dried Fruit: The more fruit you eat the better, right? Not when it comes to the dried stuff.Diet Shocker: You could boost your calorie count as much as four times (!) by choosing to eat the dried version of a fruit rather than its fresh counterpart. Check out these calorie comparisons based on a 100-gram (about 1 cup) serving:

Fruit (about 1 cup)	Fresh	Dried
Grapes	70 calories	(Raisins) 300 calories
Apricots	50 calories	240 calories
Bananas	90 calories	(Banana chips) 350 calories
Plums	45 calories	(Prunes) 230 calories

6. Pumpkin-Flavored Baked Goods: Pumpkin is nutritious, but these baked goods can be a dieting disaster. Like bran, pumpkin has lots of stuff that’s good for you. So if you see pumpkin on a baked-goods label, it’s easy to think you’re eating something that’s lower in calories. Not the case, though: Pumpkin doesn’t mean diet food.Diet Shocker: Dunkin’ Donuts strikes again. Their pumpkin muffin has 630 calories and 28 grams of fat. OMG again! Want to switch bakeries? It won’t help much. A pumpkin muffin from Panera Bread® has 530 calories and 20 grams of fat, and the pumpkin scone at Starbucks® has 470 calories and lots of fat too—22 grams’ worth. You might as well be eating pie with whipped cream!
7. Olive Oil: It’s a good fat and helps you burn fat. However, you don’t need a lot of it to get the benefits. Two tablespoons a day can do the trick. And overdoing it can backfire.Diet Shocker: Olive oil served with bread at a restaurant is heart-healthy, but high in calories. You can easily sop up a quarter of a cup. That’s 478 calories, not including the bread. Or the rest of the meal you’ve ordered.
8. “Healthy” Salads: That’s what some restaurants want you to believe in their “lite” section of the menu. It must be diet-friendly, right? Not always.Diet Shocker: Listed under “Healthy Options” on the T.G.I. Friday’s® menu, their pecan-crusted chicken salad, which contains mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, and celery, has 1,360 calories. Meanwhile, their cheeseburger and fries combo weighs in at 1,290 calories. Say it ain’t so.

So what’s a dieter to do in a world filled with “diet” traps?

Ask about nutrition and read food labels. After a while, you’ll be a pro at it and enjoy the weight loss that comes with it. You won’t even have to give up the foods you like. That’s because you’ll know how to work them into your food plan the right way.

Carl Daikeler said in his blog today that when he and Jon Cogdon and Michael Niemand met President Obama at a dinner recently, the scene unfolded something like this:  “At once the door swung open, and in walked Obama. He gave a quick hello and a hug to Mark and then he walked straight up to Jon who said “Hello Mr. President we’re the co-founders of Beachbody – This is Carl Daikeler. You might know our products like P90X.”

With that Obama moves in and grabs my hand in a handshake and says “P90X! My wife does that. Man, I can hardly keep up with her!”

She’ll be a P90X graduate like many of the rest of us soon!

For years, Mr. T earned $15 an hour as a kickboxing and martial arts instructor. Making ends meet was a struggle. “I love teaching fitness,” he explains. “But existing paycheck to paycheck was a constant stress. It’s no way to live, especially when you have kids.”

Though fitness was his passion, Mr. T often considered leaving the industry. But to do what? “I was willing to work hard,” Mr. T says, “but never really trained to do anything else. I was out of answers.” Then a solution came to him—in the mail.

“I was honored with an invitation to teach kickboxing at a Breakthrough to Success seminar in Scottsdale,” Mr. T recalls. That’s where he met Team Beachbody^® Coach. “I knew about Beachbody,” explains Mr. T, “I’d ordered P90X from an ad in a fitness magazine a few years before.” He was only too pleased to be recruited by my coach. It was September 2008 and suddenly Mr. T had a plan for earning extra income in the field he loved.

A little more effort, a lot more achievement
By January 2010, Mr. T still had more potential than business. “Everything was in place, except my attitude,” admits Mr. T. Overwhelmed with the duties of parenting and work, he was slow to take action with his business. “I didn’t give the opportunity the time or attention it needed to take off.” Then, coming home from a family trip, Mr. T felt something inside him shift.

“I was done, fed up with the same old struggle. Then it occurred to me that committing to my business wasn’t something I HAD to do. It was something I WANTED to do. Just like that, my attitude changed.” So did his actions.

He called his Coach who recommended the Game Plan. Mr. T jumped in with both feet. He says, “I adopted Ralph Waldo Emerson’s mantra, ‘Do the thing and you will have the power!’” He attended every corporate event and immersing himself motivated him to work even harder. “I took on the 90 Days to Diamond Challenge,” he smiles.

Thankfully, after finding so much success as a Coach, Mr. T found it easier to handle life’s obstacles, too. “Shortly after going Diamond, I went through a difficult break-up. I moved from California across the country, to East Coast. I had to leave my local network, but it gave me the chance to reconnect with old friends.”

Mr. T brought his buddy Mr. C  to Team Beachbody, and Mr. C went Diamond in only 51 days. “He’s in qualification for One Star Diamond Coach, just seven months into the business,” beams Mr. T. “Now we have two Fit Clubs going at the on East Coast!” And things keep getting better for Mr. T.

Good fortune is contagious
These days, the good fortune Mr. T has brought into his life has spread to people around him, too. “One of my Coaches, Ms. P., is now in one of the  infomercial.  Mr. T’s children reap the rewards of his business, too. “Now, with my flexible schedule, I can be there for my girls,” he says. It’s a wave Mr. T intends to keep riding.

“I’m Star Diamond now and I plan to be 5 Star Diamond or better by the end of 2011. I want to achieve 10 Star by Summit 2012. And I am committed to building a strong Hispanic Team.” And these ideas are modest compared to his long-term goals. “Most important, I want to open Ireland as a market! I have lots of family there,” he explains.

Now, more than ever, Mr. T is a huge proponent of personal growth and development. He recognizes that there will always be challenges, but now has a strategy for rising above them. “You gotta let go of the No’s and keep it moving. Put in the effort; what you get out of it is success. The growth of my business is the perfect barometer of that.”

Coach’s Playbook:

• Be a product of the product. You are the “after” picture. Tell others how you got here.
• Talk to strangers. They are some of your richest prospects.
• If you believe in the products, speak with conviction about your experience.
• Write down your goals and work off that list. This yields demonstrably better results than just keeping it in your head.
• You don’t have to let negative thoughts or experiences weigh you down. Shake them off and keep going!

• Make a list of the problems that are overwhelming you. Yes, write them down! (If there is only one big problem, break it down into more manageable pieces.)
• Organize the items on the list based on order of priority.
• Look at the biggest problem on the list, and focus 5% on that one problem and 95% on the healthiest solution.
• Move on to the next problem on the list and do the same.

Note: I know these instructions look way too easy to work. Follow them three times anyway. After they’ve benefited you three times…. you’ll almost always remember to use them…. cause it doesn’t matter how easy they look. They work beautifully anyway.

It’s important to remember, just because you didn’t find answers before, that doesn’t mean the answers weren’t there. It only means you were looking for them in the very most non-productive mental state you’re capable of…. i.e. trying to find solutions to everything at once while your emotional alarm clock of depression is ringing so loud you can hear nothing else. Depression blinds you to the light. That’s why it’s so important to hit the snooze button. And never forget just how brilliant the human brain is, ask it any question repeatedly and it will give you answers. To alleviate the pain of depression you’re going to have to change what you’re doing or change your perception. We can always change one or the other. Failure isn’t even applicable.

I hear and I forget.
I see and I believe.
I do and I understand.
- Confucius (551-479 BC)

Note: Under no circumstances am I suggesting that people stop taking any medication that’s currently being prescribed for them by a medical or naturopathic Doctor.

“The mind, once stretched by an empowering idea,
can never fully shrink to its original dimensions.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, paraphrased

Every single one of the the three hundred plus pages of the lollie.com was built to draw you here to see this one page. Look. See for yourself what I consider so important I’d go to such lengths to share it.

Thank you for sharing this page with your friends.

There are not many companies these days that can do $400 million in sales and remain relatively anonymous.

Yet Beachbody, a private company, grossed nearly as much as Groupon did last year and very few people talk about the robust engine that is behind exercise workout programs like P90X^®, INSANITY^® and Turbo Jam^®.

Under the leadership of co-founder Jon Congdon and Carl Daikeler, the company has developed a business model that seems to be Teflon, turning successful converts of its programs into network marketers who ensure that the brands flourish.

Many multi-level marketing companies are based on building a network of sellers and distributors getting rewarded based on the size of their network.

Most often, the people who have gotten in on the ground floor reap the greatest benefits while those late to the game struggle to make money.

What makes Beachbody’s network of distributors, called coaches, so successful is that these people have done the programs and are often in incredible shape. Their testimonial and therefore their business relies on how good they look, not whether they tell friends that a certain superfruit drink helps them have more energy or cures their stomach problems.

It seems like, more often than not, network marketing thrives on results which can’t be verified, but if my fat friend shows up with a six-pack, I’ll be more likely to believe he was doing an intense workout program.

Since starting the network marketing program three and half years ago, Beachbody now has 51,000 coaches who take a cut of videos and nutritional products they sell. Beachbody coaches sell $1 million worth of nutritional shakes under the brand’s Shakeology^® name a week. And it’s not cheap at around $120 for a month worth of servings.

“We could have built this company’s sales a lot faster at retail by selling at Walmart and Target,” Daikeler said. “But selling it through direct television (infomercials) and through our network works better for us.”

Daikeler says that his coaches serve as walking billboards and salespeople who want to help their family and friends by helping them lose weight through the company’s exercise programs. This is unlike many other multi-level marketing companies that solely rely on building a network to make more money.

And Daikeler doesn’t have to pay for testimonials, a common practice in the infomercial business space he plays in.

“The standard network marketing doesn’t work with our model,” Daikeler said. “This is not a ponzi scheme where if you’re the last one in, you don’t have a chance to do well.”

While the average lifespan of a multi-level marketer is three months, Daikeler says his coaches remain in the system an average of 18 months. It’s why he’s confident that by the end of 2011, there will be 150,000 coaches.

We don’t promise it will replace your every day job,” Daikeler said. “That has been the case with about 1,000 of our coaches. But what it does for others is it keeps them in shape. In order to continue to have credibility selling, you need to continue to keep up. And so, it allows the people who want to fight obesity, to be motivated by the fact that they have skin in the game.”

By continuing to have more and more videos – P90X led to a harder workout, INSANITY, and that program is leading to The Asylum, which will come out in a few weeks – I don’t see Beachbody slowing down any time soon. And the non-traditional, more patient route of using those converted to the brand by reallyusing it is a smart approach that I think will pay off nicely down the road.

Different from other methods of cardio, jumping rope, take some time to learn. Coordination requires some practice to learn, and only then can you jump rope for a workout. So once you’ve learned to jump rope try mixing with resistance training exercises, then give the training below a try!

Jump rope and the combination of bodyweight exercise

You can work out anywhere there’s space to jump rope. The only equipment required is a jump rope and your bodyweight.

Work out in your home, nearby park, sports field, etc. Anytime you feel the need to break away from training in a gym, take your jump rope to the nearest park for a combination of bodyweight and jumping rope.

After the warm up, choose one the following circuits for your workout!

Circuit # 1:

• Pushups: 10 reps
• Squats: 15 reps
• Crunches: 25 reps
• Jump rope: 250-300 as fast as possible

Rest for 1-2 minutes and repeat the entire circuit to another 2-5 times depending on their level of fitness.

Circuit # 2:

• Pushups: 10 reps
• Jump rope: 100 as speedily as possible
• Lunges: 8-12 reps with each leg
• Jump rope: 100 as speedily as possible
• Pike Walk: 5 times
• Jump rope: 100 as speedily as possible

Rest for 1-2 minutes and then repeat the entire circuit 2-5 times depending on level of fitness.

Jumping rope and weight training

Mixing up weight lifting and jumping rope can be hard and effective.

For these workouts, I have focused on the use of weights with jumping rope. Here are some examples of exercise routines you can try!

Circuit # 1:

• Dumbbell Overhead Press: 10 reps
• Dumbbell Lunges: 6-8 reps each side
• Dumbbell Rows: 10 reps each side
• Jump rope: 250-300 as fast as possible

Rest for 1-2 minutes and repeat the entire circuit to another 2-5 times depending on their level of fitness.

Circuit # 2:

• Dumbbell Squat / Overhead press: 10 repetitions *
• Jump rope: 100 as quickly as possible
• Dumbbell Lunges – Curl: 8 reps each side *
• Jump rope: 100 as quickly as possible
• Dumbbell side bends: 12-15 repetitions on each side
• Jump rope: 100 as quickly as possible

* Refers to a hybrid movement of the two exercises for each representative

Rest for 1-2 minutes and repeat the entire circuit 2-5 times depending on level of fitness.

A ‘clean-eating’ plan combined with 2 or 3 of the above circuits per week will turn your body into an fat burning machine.  So try to jump rope training and, as always, I welcome your comments!

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Coach Allura has done a great job of putting some useful instructional videos jump rope. So if you’ve never jumped rope before, I suggest you watch videos Coach Allura must first jump rope and get the basic skills for jumping rope.

For those of you who are decent and I would get more out of it, let me share some of the ways you can do it. Of course, by decent I mean that you should be able to jump rope continuously for at least 10 minutes straight before you try the following:

Skip Interval

Like any other form of cardio, jumping rope and toggle quickly with a slower tempo, which tends to burn much more fat compared to the steady state hopping. By the way, “fast” means to go as fast as possible, so do not just make a few more shots and I think are on track. Try to get as you can change during the fast. With that being said, here are some examples of the jump rope intervals to try:

Beginners:

• 10 seconds of quick jumps
• 30 seconds of slow jumps
• 20 seconds rest

That was a minute of interval training routine. Repeat this sequence up to 10-15 times after a strength training workout for great results!

Intermediaries:

• 20 seconds of quick jumps
• 30 seconds of slow jumps
• 10 seconds rest

Repeat the above sequence 12-15 times after a workout of strength training for best results!

Advanced:

• 30 seconds of quick jumps
• 30 seconds of slow jumps
• No break

Repeat the above sequence of 15-20 times after a strength training workout for great results!

Leg jumps

Wow, this really burns the calf muscles! Just hop on one foot for 30-60 seconds and repeat for 30-60 seconds on the other leg. Keep alternating between two legs to complete a total of 10-20 minutes for a great cardio workout.

When you get better at jumping rope on one foot, you can switch between the legs on each jump. This will take some real concentration on his part, what we really try to focus. Initially, this may be very difficult, but stick with it and probably get good at it.

Of course, there are some examples to jump rope and more difficult to swing side Criss Cross, or trying to get two swings for each hop, etc. There is also the option of getting a heavier rope and its use for a session hard cardio. Therefore, start jumping rope and enjoy of the most difficult to get over the jump rope.

Jump rope training routines Part 2, covering some ways to combine jump rope, along with strength training for a killer workout!