News
BIKINI BODY
Bikini Body Pilates Style
Get ready for swimsuit season or ANY season now! Brand new Bikini Body Pilates Style classes are specially choreographed to define your legs and glutes, burn mega calories, and strengthen and stretch your entire body. These are not your regular Jazzercise classes! This class is every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 9:20am.
4 Things You Can Do
1) Bag It
Get reusable cloth bags for your grocery store purchases and anything that would normally be bagged.
Fact: More than 100 Billion Plastic Bags are thrown away every year
2) Stop Junk Mail
Every year 100 million trees are chopped down for junk mail just in America! Think about the statistics for the entire planet!
3) Shut Down
The Average Computer left on all day uses nearly 1,000 kilowat hours of electricity a year producing more than 1 ton of carbon emissions. So, turn off your computer any time you are not on it and eliminate the screen saver function which uses more energy than the sleep mode.
4) A Mug of Your Own
Every year in America alone, consumers throw away 25 billion polystyrene cups and 25 billion individual water bottles, most of which end up in land fills. Again, think of the world wide consumption rates! Instead, buy a reusable To-Go mug and a bottle that you can refill with water.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO BIODEGRADE?
Brown Paper Bag — 1 to 5 months
Cigarette Butts and Filters — 12 Years
Plastic Bags, Caps, and Lids — Decades Aluminum Cans — 2 to 5 Centuries
Styrofoam Clamshell Containers (to-go boxes) Virtually Forever
BUY LOCAL or BYE BYE LOCAL
All year long please consider shopping from locally-owned businesses as much as possible. It's a simple and painless way to stimulate the economy and 100% of your money stays local. Shifting just 10% of your shopping from chain stores to locally owned businesses adds $244 million to our local economy annually. And you'll support a local sustainable economy for us all.
OUR OWN ANGEL NETWORK
TOTAL thru December 2009: $7414.50
Beginning with Fall of '04, my share of all class ticket sales are sent to Shared Hope International and the Fistula Foundation. Both of these organizations provide support for women in need. They each have their own website if you should wish more detailed information. (www.sharedhope.org & www.fistulafoundation.org)
Check back monthly for how much YOU contributed!!!
IS BEING FAT CONTAGIOUS?
No. Really? When our friends get fat, we get fat.
Two distinguished researchers spent five years looking at the 5,000+ participants of the Framingham Heart Study (begun in 1948 and continued for two generations) to see what the effects of the relationships among the participants was. Here's their stunning discovery:
Obesity spreads more by association than genes.
"In 1948 fewer than 10% of Framingham residents were obese. By 1985, 18% were, and today about 40% are. What changed? Social norms of diet and physical appearance." Wired, Oct 2009
By studying the Framingham folks as an interconnected network rather than a mass of individuals, the two researchers made this intriguing discovery:
Obesity spread like a virus. Weight gain had a stunning infection rate. If one person become obese, the likelihood that his friend would follow suit increased by 171 percent.
And, your friends are more predictive of your size than your spouse:
"Having an obese spouse raised the risk of becoming obese by 37 percent. If a friend became obese, the risk skyrocketed by 171 percent."
Moral: hang out with friends who are or are getting to the size you want to be. ER Fat Burn club anyone?
It works for happiness, too, they say.
GOOD DEED
Do your good deed for the day or everyday by logging on to www.freerice.com. This website donates grains of rice based on your vocabulary. The more you know, the more rice is donated. Very fun and rewarding. Great for the kids!
