4 Ways to Stay Fit While Traveling
Issue #2356
- WEALTHY: What the Fed’s rate cuts mean for your investments (Rick Pendergraft)
- HEALTHY: The best ways to keep healthy on the road (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Hilaire Belloc on travel
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Your marketing challenge doesn’t end at building a website (Michael Masterson)
- The foundation of a successful retail business (Patricia Carluccio)
- It’s Fun to Know… if it’s possible to live on air alone
- Add "temporize" to your vocabulary
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Running Out of Bullets
If you hope to make money off the flailing economy, you need to keep your eye on the Fed. Last month, the Fed made another quarter of a point rate cut, bringing the target Fed Funds rate down to 2.25 percent. This makes 3.25 percent the Fed has shaved off the rate since last summer.
These rate cuts make it cheaper for banks to borrow and, as a result, make it cheaper for you, the consumer, to borrow. But before you get too excited, remember that rate cuts have side effects. For instance, making it cheaper to borrow can increase inflation. And this means goods and services (especially imports) will cost you more money.
At this point, Ben Bernanke has to feel like Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show. Remember how Andy gave Barney only one bullet at a time… and he had to keep it in his pocket? Mr. Bernanke has to feel like he is running out of bullets.
The economy isn’t improving the way the Fed had hoped. With the cuts being done in quarter-percent increments, the most the Fed has left is nine cuts. Of course, they could go the same route as the Bank of Japan and start doing 0.10 percent cuts.
Last month’s cut is another spent round from the Fed’s gun. How long will it be before they start raising rates again?
Given the way food and energy prices are climbing, it won’t be long before the Fed has to make inflation their main concern. At that point, they will have to make moves to strengthen the dollar. This would help counteract the tremendous rise in oil prices. When the Fed decides to stop cutting rates, the dollar should strengthen and items that have ramped up on the fall of the dollar (oil, in particular) will start falling.
There will be several ways to make money when the Fed starts raising rates. You could, for example, buy shares in the inverse ETF for oil, the UltraShort Oil and Gas ProShares (DUG). The value of this ETF will increase as the price of oil falls.
[Ed. Note: Rick Pendergraft is a professional trader and market analyst. In Rick's new investment service, he gives easy-to-follow, step-by-step advice that you can use to create consistent, automated income. Learn more about how he can help you produce explosive gains - no matter which way the market is trading - by clicking here.]
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"We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."
Hilaire Belloc
4 Ways to Stay Fit While Traveling
Last year, I flew more than 20,000 miles and visited more than two dozen airports around the world. Along the way, I learned – the hard way – how difficult it is to eat on the road. Especially when you’re stuck in an airport for hours and hours at a time (as I was in Washington one night).
Today, I want to share the lessons I’ve learned about keeping fit while traveling.
The way to keep yourself healthy while on the road is to plan ahead. That goes for everything you do in your fat-loss program, especially eating properly.
You see, nutrition is where people fail big-time when traveling. After all, there isn’t much good food for sale in airports. Not to mention all the restaurants you inevitably visit while vacationing or on a business trip. The good news is that it’s possible to find nutritious food… if you know where to look. For instance, you can almost always get fresh fruit, nuts, and even grilled chicken in most airports.
After nutrition, simple laziness is the next hurdle you have to overcome while traveling. It’s easy to talk yourself into skipping a workout if the hotel gym doesn’t have the equipment you’re used to. But the truth is, you don’t need fancy equipment to get a fat-burning workout. You can do dozens of great bodyweight exercises practically anywhere.
Here are four strategies that can help you stay fit and stave off the fat while traveling.
1. Pack nutritious food for the road.
Yes, you can usually find healthy options in airports and restaurants. But you increase your chances of eating healthfully by packing your own snacks. Some healthy, road-worthy choices include water, green tea, almonds, apples, bananas, and jerky.
There’s a saying in the fitness industry: "You can’t out-exercise a bad diet." So no matter how often you hit the hotel gym (and not many travelers do at all), you won’t be able to fight off weight gain if you continue to down processed foods and sugary beverages.
On a recent flight from Nashville to Toronto, I sat beside an overweight women who was (ironically) reading Dr. Phil’s book on how to lose weight while she drank a glass of orange juice.
Now she clearly did not need the orange juice. She could have had water or a club soda (like I did) or even a coffee. Instead, she chose just about the worst drink possible. Within minutes of drinking orange juice, blood sugar levels spike, increasing levels of the fat-storing hormone insulin. To make matters worse, those spiked blood sugar levels eventually crash – making you hungry again.
Bad food choices doom travelers to stay overweight forever. But if you pack your own snacks – and ask for healthy substitutions in restaurants (replacing potatoes with extra veggies, for example) – you can control what you eat. Kelley Herring has written extensively about healthy food options. If you need some inspiration for what to eat while traveling, check out some of her past ETR articles.
2. Schedule your workouts with as much dedication as you schedule your business meetings.
When you book your hotel, make sure you have access to an adequate hotel gym or nearby fitness establishment. That way, you can continue with your regular exercise routine.
You might want to purchase a day pass at a local gym and work out with a personal trainer. If there is no time to schedule a session with a personal trainer, and your hotel gym doesn’t have weights, try a bodyweight-only workout.
Here, for example, is how to do the Off-Set Push-Up:
Start in a regular push-up position, with one exception. You move one hand a hand’s-length forward. (So it will be at forehead level, not shoulder level.) Do half as many push-ups as you normally do. Then, without resting, switch your hand position so the other hand is now a hand’s-length forward. Do an equal number of repetitions.
This push-up works your upper body just as hard as (or harder than) regular push-ups. But it also works your abdominals a lot harder, because your torso muscles are working harder to stabilize your upper body.
Take advantage of whatever time slot is available for exercise during your travels. And don’t miss it. An added bonus: Your exercise appointment can be the perfect excuse to skip unnecessary post-meeting cocktails and calories. Which brings me to my next tip…
3. Stay away from alcohol.
Whether you’re on vacation or traveling for business, cocktails and wine are usually bountiful. But boozing it up adds hundreds of unnecessary calories. Plus, a few drinks can lead you to indulge in high-fat, high-glycemic foods you would ordinarily avoid. As a group of Canadian researchers reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, just one alcoholic drink can have that effect on your diet.
4. Spend waiting time walking.
If you have a layover between flights or are killing time between meetings, take a brisk walk. Some people think that walking is so low-intensity it doesn’t do anything to help keep you fit. But that’s just plain wrong. Researchers from Duke University found that walking the equivalent of 11 miles per week helped prevent the accumulation of deadly visceral fat, no matter the intensity of the exercise. So take a pedometer with you when you travel, and walk as often as possible.
Travel with a "maintenance mindset." Stick to your plan, and you’ll return home without gaining any fat or losing any fitness.
[Ed. Note: Fitness expert Craig Ballantyne is the creator of the Turbulence Training for Fat Loss system. No matter where you travel, as long as you have an Internet connection you can get advice, motivation, and social support to help you improve your health, lose weight, and get fit. Just sign up for ETR's free natural health e-letter, which you can read anywhere, anytime.]
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Dear ETR: "Do I need two different websites and two different approaches to marketing?"
"In the last two months, I have found a product and created a website (paydownthatmortgage.com). I am selling a course that teaches you how to pay off a 30-year mortgage in less than 10 years. In addition, there is an opportunity for people who buy the course to become affiliates and sell it (like I’m doing).
"Here is the problem: I feel I am marketing to two different types of people with the same product. A person would buy the course for a personal finance reason (to learn how to pay down his mortgage). But there is also a business opportunity reason to buy it – because you can’t become an affiliate unless you buy it first. I think I need two different websites catering to two different types of buyers: the personal finance guy and the business opportunity guy. I don’t think I should push both aspects of the sale in one website. If I mention the affiliate program to a personal finance buyer, they may think it is some sort of multilevel marketing scam and be scared away.
"What do you think? Do I need two different websites? And should I have two different approaches to marketing, or can my website be set up in a way that caters to both types of buyers at the same time? I have purposely played down the affiliate sign-up in my current website."
Dave Ferry
Key West, FL
Dear Dave,
Your instinct is good. Generally speaking, your marketing will be stronger if you sell one product at a time.
These are, as you say, two different markets. And each requires its own unique approach.
One thing, though. It’s unlikely you will do much business by setting up a couple of websites. The challenge in marketing is always this: How can I acquire a customer cost-effectively?
A website is cheap to operate, even cheap to establish if you use the right programs and do most of the work yourself. But it won’t give you much in the way of sales unless you are driving a hell of a lot of traffic to it. Internet marketing gurus who focus on search engine optimization sometimes forget to tell you that SEO marketing is often inefficient — especially if you don’t have a developed backend product line – and therefore inappropriate for start-up ventures.
If any of this is confusing to you, you need to deepen your knowledge of Internet marketing before you invest any time and money in your idea. You can do so with ETR’s Internet Money Club. This year’s Club is full, but you can get on the hotlist for next year.
You might also be interested in the following articles we’ve published in ETR on the subject of getting more traffic to your site:
- "The SONAR Content Distribution Method of Getting More Traffic and More Sales" by Wendy Montes de Oca
- "3 Places You Should Use Keywords but Probably Don’t" by Alexis Siemon
- "11 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website" by Craig Ballantyne
- "How to Find Customers in a Web 2.0 World" by Wendy Montes de Oca
- "The Social Media Connection: How to Get Search Engines to Love Your Site" by Alexis Siemon
One final thing: Your product should be good and unique. If it is merely a report that explains the benefit of paying down a mortgage faster by, say, making 26 payments a year… then it is not, in my opinion, a strong enough product to rest your hopes on.
Good luck!
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Send your questions to AskETR@ETRFeedback.com. Include your full name, your hometown and state, and the ETR team may answer you in an upcoming issue.]
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Worth Quoting: Priscilla Carluccio, Proprietor of an Upscale Shop in London, on Customer Service
"In addition to unique, inspiring goods, I wanted to return to traditional shopkeeping, where service matters more than spreadsheets. I want to surprise, delight, and really look after my customers."
(Source: The New York Times)
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It’s Fun to Know: Can You Live On Air Alone?
You’ve no doubt heard of vegetarians and vegans (who don’t eat any animal products). Maybe you’ve even run across a few raw foodists (no cooking allowed) and fruititarians (who eat only fruit). But you probably don’t know any breatharians, who believe they don’t have to eat at all. They claim to live off prana, a "life force" that exists in the air and light.
Unlike many religious groups that practice occasional fasting, breatharians maintain that they can fast forever without ill effect. (Unfortunately, several converts have died over the years.) Still, many of the movement’s leaders continue to eat, claiming they don’t need the nourishment but merely enjoy the taste of food.
(Source: Howstuffworks.com)
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If you’re like me then the simple sight of a police car in your rear-view mirror is enough to send shivers down your spine, but…
When the lights start flashing…
There Goes That Safe Driver Discount… Right? Not anymore…
Word to the Wise: Temporize
To "temporize" (TEM-puh-rize) – from the Latin for "time" – is to be indecisive or evasive in order to delay action.
Example (as used by Stacie Zoe Berg in Insight on the News): "But when it comes to paying out claims, too many third-party providers stall, balk, and temporize."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
I’ve heard of Breatharians who were complete frauds and also the real thing. There is a Yogini (holy woman) in India who has eaten nothing but only drank milk for thirty years. Therese Neumann ate only one small (Catholic) wafer a day. Giri Bala, another Indian Yogini was documented to have not eaten at all. You can read about the later two in Yogananda’s very popular book; Autobiography of a Yogi.
If any of you have not yet experienced the power of your breath (prana) through Conscious Energy Breathing (also known as Rebirthing Breathwork) then I suggest you try it as soon as possible. You will be ** Amazed ** at its effects, and Breatharianism will not sound like such a strange thing, once you experience Prana for yourself!