Attention all women with one child, planning on having another: According to new research, women who gain weight after their first pregnancy and fail to lose the weight, risk great complications if and when a second pregnancy occurs.

Recent studies are showing that women who gain 3 or more BMI units after their first pregnancy are much more prone to pregnancy complications such as, “life threatening placenta disorder pre eclampsia, high blood pressure, temporary diabetes, caesarean delivery, stillbirth and having large babies that can lead to a difficult delivery.”

Wow. The more information that comes to light, the more and more it becomes apparent that maintaining lower body weights before, during, and after a pregnancy is absolutely vital. Go check it out!

Getting frustrated about your daily workout routine? Feel like all that work isn’t adding up to what you want it to? Think again; moderate exercise, done consistently, really does add up, and I just found an article to prove it.

Based on new research, exercise truly does appear to be cumulative, meaning that 30 minutes a day done every day adds up to a HUGE amount of disease prevention, obesity reduction and lifestyle improvement.

To reach this daily modicum of “moderate exercise,” doctors and researchers say you should aim to burn at least 150 calories a day, minimum. I have the perfect way to do that…Fit Express; enough said.

Woah, talk about a startling headline. Could it be true that New York City is pondering prohibiting trans fat? Wow.

This groundbreaking news comes just 3 years after smoking in restaurants was banned; now, the city wants to ban any and all cooks in the city’s 24,600 restaurants from using any artificial trans fatty acids in their meals. All of them.

As mentioned in the article, trans fat shows up in everything from french fries to doughnuts and pie crusts, and is deadly to your diet. Apparently Chicago is also tossing this idea around. I have to admit, I Love it, but I have a very strong suspicion it’s not going to pass. We’ll see.

You’re exercising, Great. You do it every day without fail, Great! Wait, are you doing it TOO Much? Perhaps.

New research is looking into something that most people probably never think of…how much exercise is Too much exercise? Right now, eleven Vancouver-based Arthritis Research Centre of Canada researchers are looking into just that. They want to find out how much exercise it takes to possibly “contribute to the development of a degenerative joint disease called osteoarthritis (OA)in the hips and knees.”

They aim to find out just how much exercise it takes to actually contribute to something like that; more importantly they are researching what all is involved when it comes to moderate exercise. This one is another one to stay tuned, but rest assured 30 minutes a day at Fit Express is not going to lead to anything negative. Our hydraulic resistance machines will leave you fit, without leaving you hurting!

We’ve heard just about every parent in the United States say it; the old adage that it’s so hard to keep their kids eating healthy with all of the ads on television tempting their kids into unhealthy cravings. The question remains, is that true?

Now, the FCC will find out. A massive study is planned to study the link, if any, between television advertisements and the prevalence of childhood obesity. With current research suggesting that the average child “watches 2 to 4 hours of TV per day and views about 40,000 TV ads every year” it’s clear this kind of a study is a necessary one. If a link is found, perhaps proper changes can be made to significantly reduce the ads, thereby reducing obesity levels? Perhaps.

Whatever happens, this is one to stay tuned to, so rest assured, I’ll keep you well abreast of the situation. In the meantime parents, shut the TV off and go outside with your kids; an hour or two of good old fashioned play-time will go a long way for both of you. Either that or come to Fit Express!

Hey all you health-conscious mothers out there, here is a great article with Great promise. According to new studies, babies that are breastfed instead of fed formula, are much less likely to become overweight or obese, even if their mother is obese or has diabetes.

Talk about great news for mothers, and terrible news for formula makers. In the study of over 15,000 children, evidence showed that “Exclusively breastfed babies had roughly a 34 percent reduced risk of being overweight during childhood, compared to children exclusively formula-fed…”

Wow. Go read the article, then get back to Fit Express, because remember, your children learn from you; the healthier you are, the healthier they will be!

Could one of the reasons be struggling so much with obesity in the world actually be a lack of math skills? Perhaps, according to new studies.

That’s right, tough-to-read food labels that require the reader/shopper to do math in their head to figure out just how much fat/sodium/sugar/carbohydrates/calories are in each serving might be causing people to just skip reading at all, and buy what they like. According to Dr. Russell Rothman, one of the head honchos of this study, as many as 90 million American’s have poor reading skills, as well as poor math skills that make the trip down food aisles dangerous.

When all is said and done, the three areas people had the most trouble on were: “failures to decipher serving size, simple calculation errors in how much they had consumed and distraction by the complexity of the label.” Perhaps a change needs to be made, and perhaps that change will really, really help?

I bet you can think of 10,000 things you’d Rather do than exercise, right? Join the club. Lucky for both of us, all of us, I just found a helpful little article with 5 tips on how to get Over that hateful hurdle, and still reap the benefits of exercise.

As always, head over and check out the full article, but here for your reading pleasure is the abbreviated list of 4 of the 5 tips:

• Find a form of exercise that you will actually look forward to…
• The best time to work out is when it’s right for you…
• Stay motivated by keeping a fitness journal…
• If you find you’re feeling run-down, try varying your exercise routine…

My advice, come to Fit Express; in one small step (for mankind) you can hit all those tips and more!

You know something that breaks my heart almost as much as the rising obesity problem in this country? When people are So concerned about their weight that they go to the opposite side of the spectrum and become anorexic or bulimic.

That said, anorexia and bulimia is a reality, and a very common one; I have personally seen what it can do to friends and so when I found this article today, I had to post it. What are anorexic people to do to help maintain their strength, so the disease does not completely take over? Resistance training, according to new research.

That’s right, research is showing that “Hospitalized anorexic patients who take part in a light resistance training program experience increases in knee and elbow strength.” Now, thankfully, exercise and light resistance training is being recommended as an effective therapy.

What do you do when you’re brand, your logo, and your entire company are in the crosshairs of almost every dietitian, nutritionist, and even lawyer in the whole world? You change, that’s what.

While it still remains unclear if this new change will spread worldwide, for now, McDonald’s in Ireland, and most likely the rest of the UK is reducing the amount of salt they use in their french fries by 50%. The salt content has already been reduced by 24% but many believed it needed to come down even further. In addition to this change, they are also reducing the trans-fat in their cooking oil all the way down to 0%. Wow.

I’m not saying it’s healthy for you, it never will be, but you gotta give it up to a company for taking strides like this; especially when other companies, *cough*Burger King*cough* pulled out of similar drives to reduce fatty and salty content in Their food.