Gold's Gym Stride Trainer 500

I was down at Wal Mart the other day and back in the back area where they have the marked down things they had a Gold's Gym Stride Trainer 500. Very very nice machine sort of like the one pictured below, but a bit different in style and bigger than the one shown below.

They had it tucked into the back because it was missing the adapter and the hardware for assembling it. After I got it home, which was not easy, had to take it all out of the box to get it into the car in pieces, I read through the manual and it never did have the power adapter with it, and the hardware was an wasy fix. I went to the hardware sore and stopped about $10 on replacement parts according to what the instructions said should have been in the box.

It is working great now and is a lot of fun, even if it is meant for a man roughly 6 feet and I am only about 5 feet tall. Thing went for $250 to $395 new (box said $250, but the Wal Mart website said $395), they had it marked down to $20. Yeah, twenty dollars. So, $20 for the machine, $10 to $15 in hardware, for $35 I got a $250 to $395 exercise machine that is a lot of fun to use. I love it. Now I have to build myself a actual exercise room sometime in the future to put all my goodies into.

The holiday diet fail

Okay, I have decided that Halloween is an evil time of the year for dieting. In fact it kicks off a long line of evil times of the year. First we have the candy overload that is Halloween, then we fall directly into Thanksgiving and the year's largest dinner. Follow that with candy canes, boxes of chocolates, a dozen different desserts and two dozen different kinds of cookies that make up Christmas... By the time the New Year arrives it is no wonder we want to drink enough that we're drunk enough to think we could possibly lose that weight we put on over the holidays! And then, just as we think that we have the momentum for losing the weight on our spring exercise kick, Easter arrives and we toss out the New Year's resolution in favor of the chocolate bunny ears and creamy sugar filled chocolate eggs!

I think I need to make up a less calorie filled plan for celebrating the holidays!

Wii for exercise

Okay, I have scratched and saved and collected every penny I have passed and was therefore delighted when I walked into a store yesterday wanting to get the Wii and found out that the price had just been lowered from $249 to $199. It's within my budget!

Yes, I went ahead and got it, but not until after several years of wanting to get one, and even as I paced the store contemplating the purchase I texted one of my friends and consulted with her on if I really could afford to get one of the systems or not. We ended up running the battery on my cell phone all the way down going back and forth on the issue of rather or not I could afford to get a Wii system and finally decided that given the use I would get from it being unable to get outside and exercising, and the game system having a remote that is used with just one hand so my dad can use it.... yeah, I bought a Wii.

Only time of the year I can afford to splurge on myself, and I really need something to help me get more exercise, so it was a good purchase and I have only played it a few hours (my nephew spent the entire night playing the thing lol) but I love it and it's a lot of fun so you don't even realize you are up moving around exercising.

Now I just have to get it hooked up to one of the old TVs so that I don't have to wait for my dad to go to bed before I can play the Wii. LOL!

Soda Tax

I just have to laugh when I see those commercials on television that show the woman getting her groceries out of her car and walking into the house, and as she walks she says how the tax on sweetened soda, juice and such would be a hardship on families trying to buy groceries.

That is such a load of crud. Where was her "oh please don't raise the taxes!" when they decided to tax cigarettes? I am sure that my dad is not the only one that has been told that stopping smoking would be worse on his health than keeping smoking. But, everyone was fast to jump on the tax bandwagon when it was cigarettes because they are, of course, bad for you.

Sweetened soda is bad for you too, so why are they sparing it and spoiling the child? Cigarettes were originally taxed under the excuse of making them too expensive for children to afford to buy them (as if kids ever bought the things), so why not tax sweetened beverages so that kids can't afford to buy them?

I don't know about your family, but I can do without a Coke a heck of a lot easier than my dad can do without a cigarette, and I don't mind if my neighbor's Coke habit helps pay for the health care reform stuff. Sweetened beverages might be enjoyable, but they are hardly a necessity of life for people. And the information I saw said that diet soda's would be excluded, so what is the worst case scenario? Everyone switches to healthier beverages and they have to start taxing something else?

Destination Weddings at the Karisma Hotels Resorts

One of the reasons for wanting to lose weight that many women will give is to look better in their wedding dress. All brides want to be the most lovely woman in the room on their big day and I think that is probably is particularly true for those who are planning beach-side Destination Weddings where the after wedding parties are likely to include swimsuits.

Those planning destination weddings should consider the all-inclusive package vacations that can help alleviate much of the stress from them on their big day. One chain of resorts to consider is the Karisma Hotels Located on secluded white-sand beaches on the Mexican Riviera Maya.

Note that the Karisma Hotels resorts do include both adult only and family friendly resorts, so make sure that you know which one you are planning for and be sure that your guests are aware of what the resort is going to be like when you select your destination -

Adults Only:
El Dorado Royale Spa Resort
El Dorado Seaside Suites

Family-Friendly:
Azul Beach
Azul Blue

Naturalist:
Hidden Beach Resort

Some of the amenities to be found at the resorts include beach butlers, fine food, iced bartops, swim-up rooms, white gauze curtains around the beds, hot tubs, hammocks and more. Check out the listings for each resort for more details on which resort offers what services and for details on services offered exclusively by each resort, such as the milk baths and aromatic massages of the El Dorado Royale Resort, or the kid-sized bathrobes and coloring books offered by the family friendly Azul Beach Hotel.

Check out the link above for more information on each of the properties that Karisma Hotels resorts offers.

Slow getting going in morning

I was a bad girl. Today should have been the first day of my exercise, but instead I slacked off and got some sleep in the time I should have been exercising. I felt (still feel) sickly, so decided that rather than get physically ill, I should let body rest a bit and gather itself for the day ahead.

I should have done meditation instead probably, a nice calming meditation to focus me for the day would have made sense too, but I did not think about that. I think I'll do that from now on though, start the day with a few minutes of meditation to help me wake up slowly and get focused on the day ahead, then do a little exercise, and then dive into my day's work load.

Exercise Ball

I was in town earlier this month (where the heck did this month go anyway? How'd we get so far into September so fast?), anyway, Sears had their inflatable exercise balls on discount, about 50% off for them, so they were actually inexpensive enough that I could afford to get one so I did. I love it! I have never used one of them before, but it is a lot more easy to use than I had expected, and my favorite exercise has become laying on my back, my calves resting on the top of the exercise ball, and lift up my hips in kind of a backwards crunch maneuver. Very fun to do, and far easier than I had expected it to be.

The one to the right is the one that I got.