Though the 1980’s comedy classic Ruthless People is not often thought of as fitness movie, it can be argued that the physical transformation of Barbara Stone, played with diabolical hilarity by Bette Milder, is the catalyst for her moral transformation from bitchy, over-privileged snot to cool, down to earth accomplice in a modern day Robinhood scam against her evil husband (Danny Devito).

For those of you who haven’t enjoyed the ab workout that is Ruthless People, the basic plot starts with Sam Stone marrying Barbara for her father’s money and eventually getting frustrated when the old man refuses to die. He decides to kill the wife he never wanted anyway, so that he can score her fortune and marry his mistress. Before Sam gets the chance to chase his darling bride around the house with a rag of chloroform, she is kidnapped by a cute and bumbling couple, who Sam has screwed out of a small fortune.

Barbara is locked in their basement for most of the film. To keep busy she inflicts mental terror on her captors and begins following along with the exercise programs showing on the television set her humane kidnappers have provided. Because her husband Sam doesn’t want her back alive she’s is chained to that bed for quite a while and starts getting pretty serious about her routines, culminating with an inspiring montage showing her doing pull-ups on her bed frame and using her chain as a jump rope.

For the first time in Barbara’s indulgent, corpulent life she is losing weight, getting fit and feeling great; despite the fact that she is chained to a bed in the basement of a rundown house. I think there are a lot of useful lessons here.

1. We should all be really glad that it’s not considered cool to workout in G-string leotards anymore.

2. In the film Barbara Stone has tried every faddish way to lose weight including enduring injections of the urine of pregnant women. Fads and “get fit quick schemes” almost never work.

3. Breaking out of your routine is one way to make rapid progress. In this case Barbara went from being an uber-rich heiress who could have anything she wanted to a captive. Your change doesn’t need to be quite so dramatic, but a shakeup can be helpful.

4. Sometimes it’s good not to have options.  In the film Barbara is chained to a bed and doesn’t have anything better to do then workout. What kind of “chain” can help you get fit? Is it canceling cable so that you have to walk to get a movie? Putting away your credit card so that you’re not tempted to eat out? Telling your spouse not to let you in the house unless you have gone to the gym for the day?

5. Give your goals the time they deserve. In the film Barbara has all day and night to workout and fitness is her main focus.  If losing weight or getting fit is the top priority in your life then plan your time accordingly (using chains when necessary).

6. Simplify. For Barbara losing her freedom is the best thing that has ever happened to her. Turns out when she doesn’t have very many options, she is able to make better choices.  What tempting options can you eliminate from your life so that a healthy diet and exercise become the obvious choices?

7. You don’t need fancy equipment to get fit, just determination and imagination. I don’t recommend jump roping a chain, but you certainly don’t need a fancy gym membership or thousand dollar piece of equipment.

Now go get Ruthless!

Though many fitness trends of the 80’s are best forgotten (G-string leotards anyone?) the Par Course is one innovation that deserves a comeback tour.

The Par Course is a fitness playground for adults, made up of wood or metal apparatus set into parks, fields or other open spaces. The basic course usually includes various heights of pull-up bars, push-ups bars, downward slanting sit-up boards, and squat and step-up platforms. I’ve also seen balance beams, adult sized monkey bars and rings. The equipment can be spread out along a trail or clumped together like an outdoor gym.

To witness the hey day of the mighty Par Course in the US you would need to click the heels of your high-top Reebok aerobic shoes together and travel back to 1985, when there were over 5,000 courses. Since then, many have fallen into disrepair and been reduced to fitness ghost towns, with splintery wood, rusty bolts and missing instructional signs. The decline and fall of the Par Course is a huge shame because this fitness movement was way ahead of its time in offering a challenging, versatile, full-body workout with a view.

I hope that we can get a Par Course renaissance going and bring these sturdy, reliable work horses back to the forefront of fitness.

Reasons to find an existing course or ask your employer or local municipality to install one:

• Once installed a Par Course is free to use and available to anyone with the energy and gumption to take advantage of it.   
• The Par Course is a great alternative to the gym, especially if you already have a foundation of fitness. Body weight exercises such as push-ups, squats and pull-ups develop balanced, full-body strength that is difficult to duplicate using fitness machines.
• It’s outside, which can be such a blessing in our indoor, climate controlled world. Get your dose of Vitamin D while you get into shape.
• Have a Par Course picnic! Since most courses are in park like settings why not relax and enjoy afterward.
• Each course offers practically endless variations and challenges. Try jumping rope, doing sprints or sun salutations between stations. Bring your own gear (hand weights, medicine balls, or resistance bands) to add even more variety and isolate specific muscle groups.
• Your progress is easily measurable. Keep track of how many push-ups, sit-ups or pull-ups you can do and recognize your bad a#* self as you get stronger and fitter.
• You will gain functional, athletic strength that will easily transfer to sports and daily life.
• It’s fun! Exercising in a playground like setting with others who are happy to be getting fit too. What could be better?

Find a Par Course near you, slap on some sweat proof sun block and get busy!

It’s natural in these uncertain economic times to want to keep our budgets as lean and fit as possible. Unfortunately that sometimes means cutting back on many of the services that keep us happy, healthy and sane. Message, chiropractic care, personal training, spa days and gym memberships are often the first to hit the chopping block as we begin to liposuction our budget. Going without these proactive health services can be a real drag and also have a negative impact on our overall well being. Read on for tips on keeping the good health rolling.

Cut back, not off

Reduce your services from weekly to bi-weekly or monthly. You will maintain the relationship with your provider as well as the commitment to your health, while saving lots of dough.

Negotiate

Most everyone in the health and wellness industry is feeling the pinch and your practitioner may be willing to see you at a discounted rate.  Sure, it can be uncomfortable to bring this sort of thing up, but its better then just disappearing without a trace. Ask if they have a sliding scale or tell them that while your financial situation has changed, you still really value them and would like to figure out a way to continue. More then likely they will be willing to work with you, so swallow your pride and ask.

Throw a sweat meet

Have an exercise equipment swap with friends or strangers who are vulnerable to late night fitness infomercials. Frank’s never used treadmill for Linda’s nearly brand new Solo-flex or Georgia’s trampoline for your punching bag. Trade for a little while or forever. Equipment that’s new to you will keep your workouts fresh without working out your wallet.

Tone up those angel’s wings

This is a particularly good idea if you are un or under employed. Many places including yoga and Pilates studios, private gyms and YMCA’s give complimentary classes or free memberships to good Samaritans who volunteer a few hours a week.

Three’s company

If you have been working one on one with a trainer, find a friend of similar fitness levels to join your workouts and you’ll save considerable bank. If personal training is still too much, group classes might be better for your budget. Just make sure you connect with the instructor and your workout mates. It’s possible to create similar bonds of accountability and motivation in this setting, though you will have to work a little harder to get feedback and attention.

Join a cheaper gym

Be careful with this one though because if your new gym is inconvenient/unfriendly/loud/oddly smelling etc. you won’t go and then you might as well just quit all together and buy a jump rope.

Stay tuned

For the poor man/woman’s massage day, a relaxing and rejuvenating experience that can be enjoyed on the cheap.

Go to any gym or place of exercise and you will see that most people are not following a written plan or documenting what they are doing. To make matters worse, Joe Dumbbell is probably doing a workout he has done six million times before or making it up as he goes along. This haphazard workout style ignores three of the pillars of fitness; progression, documentation and variety. With a few simple and easily implemented habits Joe D. can go from average to extraordinary.

In my own workouts I have also found that the freedom of no plan can turn into a curse. If I show up at the pool without something on paper I inevitably struggle mentally and do fewer yards then usual. The problem is that I am forcing myself to be both coach and swimmer at the same time and I usually end up not doing either job especially well.

It is the coach’s job to select an appropriate, challenging and progressive workout for his or her athletes’. It is the athletes’ job to execute that workout to the very best of their abilities, asking questions for clarity, but not questioning the coach’s plan. If you don’t bring a daily plan to the gym, pool or track then you will also have to bring your internal coach or trainer along. Your attention will be subdivided between coaching and playing and you will do neither activity at full strength.

You can certainly be your own coach and many great athletes are self-coached. Problems occur when you try to be both coach and athlete simultaneously. It is impossible to think critically when you are winded or to think of your next exercise while you are counting your own reps. Trying to accomplish both roles at the same time often results is a disorganized, less effective workout and a stressed and prematurely exhausted athlete. Get a plan, write it down and bring it along; you will free up loads of physical and physic energy for your workout.

Tips for the self-coached athlete:

Buy index cards and a plastic index card holder. Write the basics of your workout including date, time, sets and reps and keep the old ones in the case. If the index card system isn’t your cup of tea try a small note pad in your workout bag or a spread sheet on your computer. Keep trying until you find a system that works for you. This is also an invaluable tool if you decide to hire a coach or trainer.

Keep your old workouts saved and handy so that you can use them again when you don’t have time to create something new. No need to reinvent that wheel every time you get sweaty.

Review and make changes every 3-6 weeks. This will help you realize what is working and what is not. If you don’t enjoy planning your own workouts hire a trainer or coach to create something new for you on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

White bread is the crack of the carbohydrate kingdom. I had this thought while enjoying a completely fiber-free roasted pork sandwich made with pillowy, white bread. Most of the time I stick to whole grains, and I had almost forgotten how seductive the sweet, soft kiss of white bread could be. As I chewed, the pork mostly since the bread melted instantly in my mouth, I tried to think of metaphors to describe the experience. The bread was like cotton candy, or your favorite 1,000 times washed t-shirt, or like a baby bunny or the under skin of an old lady’s arm. I stopped there. Suddenly the name Wonder Bread made sense. If you had been eating rough, grainy, sandpaper bread your whole life, white bread would seem like a culinary wonder; such a shame that it’s also a nutritional quagmire.

Like most Americans I struggle to get enough fiber in my diet.  I probably think about fiber more then I actually eat it, and I’m troubled whenever I read the statistics. If they are even close to true the Great American bowel is not going anywhere and very slowly.

In a wheat kernel, fiber is the indigestible parts of plant based foods. It acts like dumbbells in your GI track, stimulating the muscles to stay smooth and strong as they move the weights along. White bread is more like pillows in your intestine, fun to play with, but not much of a workout. This probably explains why fiber lovers generally have lower rates of colon cancer. Besides personally training your GI track, wonder fiber also helps lower blood cholesterol, risk of heart disease, diabetes and other digestive track ailments, assists with constipation and probably a lot of other good things they haven’t even figured out yet.

There is lots of fiber in whole grains, but it is taken out, along with almost all the other nutrients during the modern refining process. When people first switched over to modern white bread they started getting rickets and other weird diseases, so in 1942 Congress Passed the US Enrichment Act. This law forced bread makers to put back some of the nutrients they strip mined out during the milling process, specifically iron, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin. The law did not address fiber and the nation has been getting a lot of reading done ever since. Perhaps there will be a million constipated man march on Washington some time soon and Obama will make whole grains the law of the land.

Until then to keep your GI track sleek and buff eat lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, beans and brown rice. If it’s been nothing but pillow fights in your pipeline for a while start slowly and drink lots of extra water. You may not be able to show off your hot healthy colon at the beach like the rest of your muscles, but there are lots of other benefits I know you will enjoy.

I’m always on the lookout for something fresh and different for my morning’s nutritional amusement. We all agree that breakfast is the nutritional launch pad for the rest of the day, but it’s so easy to get bored and fall back into naughty habits like skipping it altogether or grabbing a carb bomb muffin.

Many of us grew up on the televised brain washing of children’s cereal commercials. If you hear 10,000 times before the age of 10, that “this is part of a nutritionally balanced breakfast,” it makes an impression, especially if you are told by an animated elf or animal. Turns out like so many other things we were told as children that was a big fat, sugary lie. We have since learned that the processed cereals that we ate as kids were a very, very small part of a nutritionally balanced breakfast. Eating the box might have been a more natural, higher fiber experience. Perhaps taking nutritional suggestions from Tony the Tiger and The Fruit Loop Toucan wasn’t such a great idea.

But just when you thought you had to settle for a sad, adult life of bran branches and whole grain gruel, Annie’s steps into save the day. Our favorite food superhero has already wowed us with organic mac’ and cheese and lots of other wholesome snacks shaped like bunnies. Cocoa and vanilla bunny cereal is another welcome edition to their line of healthy, comfort food. The cereal is as adorable as a breakfast food can be and boasts of “no icky additives or pesky preservatives.” Amazingly the white bunnies are created using real vanilla and the brown bunnies are made from authentic cocoa. There is no dreadful partial hydrogenated corn oil or high fructose corn syrup to toxify your bodily temple. In fact there are only ten total ingredients, none of which could be mistaken for chemical reactions.

Try a bowl of bunnies and your favorite milk product to start the day or as an afternoon pick me up. Who can be sad with all those bunnies around?

In the name of full disclosure it must be said that a bunny based breakfast doesn’t have the fiber kick of oatmeal or much protein, but its way better then the many other sweet cereal alternatives. Cocoa and Vanilla Bunny Cereal is delightfully crunchy and not too sweet. Give it a try if you are trying to find a fun way to ease into morning healthiness. Try pairing it with sliced bananas or strawberries to give your bunnies something to play with.

Learn more at www.Annies.com