Without fail, everybody who has visited my place has told me where I live when they come in from the front door - I have more fitness and health equipment then furniture. From a commercial leg press to an elliptical cardio machine - I got it here! I’ve had a number of gym memberships through the years, usually averaging $30 to $40 a month- doesn’t seem like much but by the time you factor in your time to get to/from the gym, waiting for a machine to become available and the very easy excuse “I don’t feel like going out to the gym tonight”. Like many things in life, doing things on the cheap (monthly) end up being more expensive in the long run.

I think of it this way, I was easily spending probably about $600 a year and what do I get in return financially? Nothing. Sure I miss the eye candy that is present at any gym but at the end of the year I am out this money that could have been invested in my OWN gym- that is why I began getting my own stuff. Every year, instead of spending 600$ on a gym membership, I spend it on new equipment, this year alone I got my commercial quality leg press and adjustable abdominal board - sure I went over budget but if I ever wanted to sell it, it’s easily worth at least half what I paid for it.

Here are some tips to getting your own home gym set-up.

1. no gym is complete without a set of free weights, get two dumbbells, a barbell and about 200lbs in plates and your off to a wonderful start
2. purchase the highest quality equipment you can afford, not only will it outlast you but will have a higher resale value
3. have fun but BE SAFE, at a sports clubs you have spotters if you want to push yourself, in a home gym you don’t have that option, so never take on what you can’t handle and ALWAYS use safety equipment. My life has been saved numerous times when I couldn’t muster enough power to finish one last rep of a bench press by using spotter stands

Oh and by the way, if you still miss the eye candy, get your partner to workout with you - it’s the second best way to burn off some calories with your loved one.

Before I begin to say anything, review the animated picture in this weeks issue. Does one color scheme make you feel more comfortable? What do you think they represent (does it matter)? Why do you think those colors where chosen? Who is the intended audience? I could easily go on with the questions but let me tell you now that they both represent exactly the same thing. Although I redid the map, I left one with the original color scheme with shades of blue and updated the other with mine with are shades of red. Does giving you this additional information help you at all to figure out what it is showing?

What I am trying to demonstrate this week is something that us visual artists have always known, that the use of color affects your mood, perception and can even modify your beliefs on an issue. The image represents a real and growing problem in the United States, it is based off hard data from the CDC (Centre for Disease Control). This is data that politicians, agencies and companies around the world use to track their interests. How many of you have gotten a pile of papers and at the end was a graphic and just skipped right to it - I know for me I look at pictures first.

So lets recap, both images are showing the same data from a CDC statistical study with the only difference being color. If you had only a few seconds to look at this image, my guess is that if you saw the blue one you would say “hey, we aren’t doing too bad”, if I showed you the red one you would say “holly $#@$, we got to do something”. Isn’t it amazing how much feeling has been generated by a simple picture? What you are looking at is the 2003 data for the growing diabetes epidemic in the USA (and worldwide). What you see in dark blue (or red) are states where over 6% of their population has diabetes. I am sure it’s even higher now then 2 years ago. To put this into perspective, 6% is essentially 1 person with diabetes for every 14 individuals.

Now imagine if this represented a disease or infection such as HIV, Herpes, Malaria, TB or Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) where the population had over 6% infection rate - would you use blue or red?

One thing I have absolutely no patience or respect for is people who base their treatment of others on ethnicity, social-economic background or things done by ancestors. Whether you come from the North Pole or some small remote tribe in the Amazon Basin - we are all the same. Sure your skin may be a different color, body proportions and other environmental adaptations but if you where to look past that, a human is a human. The lucky ones in this world have either been born with breaks in life or have had to earn them - the vast proportion of humans on this world have had neither and live in abject poverty - but in the end WE collectively are all the same. If you look down on a fellow human being, your really looking down on yourself. As such we should all help one another achieve goals that will make all our lives as enjoyable as possible.I believe ignorance is NOT an excuse to treat others badly whom have caused no harm to others. It’s a duty of all human beings to stand up against people who are oblivious to this fact and educate them.

Lots of people blame external factors as to why they are not in shape. “I don’t workout because my boss gives me too much work to do”, “I can’t eat right, my husband keeps ordering out” or “I don’t have time to prepare a good meal, I got kids to take care of”- etc. What people must realize that NOBODY can exercise, eat right or take care of U other then U. I think this is one area where its 100% perfectly fine to be selfish, you need to take time out to improve yourself on a daily and weekly basis. If you find you got too much “work” to do and can’t get around to working out, what that means to me is your own well being isn’t a high priority in your life - we all have 16 hours a day to manage - so manage it! Your personal health MUST be your top #1 priority in life - otherwise how can you enjoy your husband, kids or your life if your body can’t allow you to due to neglect? Maybe it means putting the kids a sleep an hour early or telling your husband to cook a quick 20 minute meal instead of ordering out, there is ALWAYS an alternative if you look deep enough to introduce healthy habits into your daily life.

Here is what I want you to do if you keep finding excuses not to improve your own health. Sit down and write in 30 minute intervals what you actually did that day, do that for a week. This gives you a baseline as to how your life is going NOW, there is always at least one hour where you can replace an unhealthy activity with one compatible with your health goals.

Remember, its up to U to be healthy to get the most out of life.