Remember those gift cards or pre-paid credit cards you received from your lazy family members for Christmas? Well it’s time to cash them in and we’re here to offer up some health and fitness suggestions for you.

As an aside, I’m quickly becoming a fan of receiving gift cards, and especially pre-paid credit cards. With it, you get to shop anywhere you like instead of being bound to a single store like a traditional gift card.

However, watch out for the inactivity fee charge though. The MasterCard prepaid credit card I received for Christmas starts charging $2.50 per month at the 6-month mark after activation.

There are plenty of health and fitness products to consider – and completely ignore - in the today’s marketplace.

Here are 10 ways to spend your holiday gift cards on losing weight and getting healthy: (more…)

Today’s post comes to us all the way from Italy. My good friend Oscar Del Ben is a personal development blogger who writes about really cool lifestyle topics such as productivity and business, and he’s also a martial arts fan. I asked him to share some of his thoughts with us on alternative activities to achieving a healthy lifestyle – hence the topic of martial arts.

[Nothing like a side-kick-to-the-chops to get someone's attention]

Oscar is usually very quick to point out his lack of English writing skills because it’s not his native language but rest assured I think he has a very good handle on it and does a fine job expressing his points of view. You can find his blog at FreestyleMind.com and feel free to leave comments for Oscar or myself below.

Martial Arts as a Way to Stay Healthy – Guest Post by Oscar Del Ben

Martial arts became famous in the western culture as a way to defend ourselves by doing a series of – sometimes complex and bizarre – movements. In reality, martial arts is more then just Bruce Lee bicycle kicks – it’s quickly being linked to keeping our body healthy and balanced in various modern research studies. (more…)

Having an active holiday season is what I remember most from my childhood. Rolling-up huge boulders out on the snow-covered lawn in an effort to build an abominable snowman or digging out forts to prepare for a snowball fight are some of my favorite pastimes.

[An oldie but a goodie, this funny comic gets me every winter:)]

But as we grow older and accumulate different responsibilities, maintaining our physical and mental well-being can be difficult through the winter holidays. Throw in shorter daylight hours and we can often find ourselves huddled in our house – or at a shopping mall – stressed out from the holiday pressures of buying presents, attending parties and eating too many of those rich and creamy holiday deserts! Chocolate panatone, I think I love you… Bah humbug we say.

Not so fast! The Christmas season doesn’t have to be an unhealthy time of year. Instead, here are 8 ways to keep you active and healthy during the winter holidays: (more…)

Let’s all admit one thing right from the start: It’s so much more enjoyable to complete a cardio workout through a game or sport then by traditional means.

 
[HINT: The sport I'm talking about in this post is a close relative to tennis. Err... excuse me sir, you have something stuck in your back!]

Forget treadmills, ellipticals, step-machines, or whatever other piece of equipment you’ll find at your local gym. I’d rather be testing my physical abilities, or lack thereof, opposite another person or group of people playing basketball, soccer, football, or ultimate frisbee to name a few.

But mainstream sports aside, today’s article is about a sport that suffers from a reputation as a pastime for only the elite in society. How ironic is it then that it was likely invented by prisoners in the 19th century? You can find the complete history lesson over at Wikipedia.

What Sport Am I?

(more…)