First lady: Doctor's warning led to revelation

 

High BMI? What it means for your child, and what you can do about it

 

First Lady Michelle Obama, right, talks to White House Executive Chef Cristeta Pasia Comerford, second from left, as local 5th graders from Bancroft Elementary look on during the White House Kitchen Garden Fall Harvest on October 20, 2010, at the White House. The festival was part of the First Lady's initiative to stop childhood obesity. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

In an exclusive post published on Shine today, First Lady Michelle Obama offers some advice, drawn from her own experience, about the Affordable Care Act and how parents can get the most out of visits to the pediatrician. One of her suggestions: Learn about your child's BMI.

The First Lady was surprised to learn that her daughters' BMI numbers were "creeping upwards." "I didn’t really know what BMI was," she writes. "And I certainly didn’t know that even a small increase in BMI can have serious consequences for a child’s health. But as Dr. Susan J. Woolford explains, despite the medical jargon, BMI (Body Mass Index) is actually a very easy way to answer a very difficult question: Is my child overweight?

Most annoying new reality TV stars

 

  

It's hard to believe that the reality TV genre can keep producing new personalities that are even more outrageous, annoying, and/or disgusting than the last ones. But yet this spring alone has brought us another crop of folks we love to hate. Some of them are actually familiar faces we may have enjoyed watching in the past, while others are gifting us with their awfulness for the first time. Click through this slideshow to see the most annoying reality TV stars of the spring. — Television Without Pity

News Source:yahoo

 

 

Kidnapped journalists detail abuse in Libya

 

This article is by Anthony Shadid, Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell and Tyler Hicks. 

 

As the four of us headed toward the eastern gate of Ajdabiya, the front line of a desperate rebel stand against the advancing forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, a car pulled up alongside.
“They’re in the city!” the driver shouted at us. “They’re in the city!” Lynsey and Steve had worried that government soldiers might encircle the town, trapping us, but Tyler and Anthony discounted it. We had covered the fall of two other rebel-held towns — Ras Lanuf and Brega — and each time, the government had bombed and shelled the towns for days before making a frontal, methodical assault.

High-tech cloud will cool World Cup fans

 

2022 World Cup: High-Tech Way To Beat The Heat In Qatar

Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup by promising that its nine new open-air soccer stadiums would be air-conditioned. Now the Qataris have announced another cool twist to their hospitality -- an artificial cloud to hover above the stadium and provide shade.
The head of mechanical and industrial engineering at Qatar University said the cloud would be positioned by remote control and run on solar power.
Based on the design shown in local Qatari news outlets, the cloud isn't white and fluffy. It is flat and rectangular, resembling a giant cell phone, and will be built using light carbonic materials. Perhaps something was lost in translation from Arabic because the invention is more spaceship than cloud, but ultimately players and fans will benefit from the shade.
The cost of the cloud is $500,000, but money is no obstacle for Qatar, which is one of the world's richest countries thanks to vast natural gas and oil reserves.
There have been concerns about the heat ever since Qatar began its campaign in 2009 to pursue a World Cup. The average high for July in Qatar is 106 degrees, and temperatures have reached 120 degrees in the summer. That is one reason why Prince Ali of Jordan suggested shifting the 2022 World Cup from its traditional time in July to January, which is Qatar's coolest month with an average high of 71 degrees.
Temperatures were in the 60s for the 2010 World Cup championship match in Johannesburg, South Africa, held on July 11, between Spain and the Netherlands.
Qatar, which is roughly the size of Connecticut, will be the smallest nation to host a World Cup. The other finalists to host in 2022 were the U.S., Australia, Japan and South Korea.

News Source: yahoo

States with the most couch potatoes

 

States With the Most Couch Potatoes

In the earliest days of the U.S., the frontier was a tough place to live. Surely more than one pioneer, upon reaching the rushing and roiling Mississippi River, turned to his wagon-mates and said, with a wave of his hand, "Yeah, this looks like a nice place to settle, let's call it a day."

Whatever heartiness allowed people to settle successfully in the West may have been diluted by internal migration during the past two centuries, but to get an idea of how much different states vary in their residents' fitness levels, MainStreet looked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention State Indicator Report on Physical Activity, 2010.

Four of the worst late-night snacks

 

The Worst Late Night Snacks

 There are a lot of things that can conspire to keep you up all night: The slumping markets. The rising prices. That recurring nightmare about being chased down the street by Steven Tyler's lips. But if you're having trouble getting a good night's sleep, here's a culprit you might not have looked at: Your diet. Turns out that plenty of late-night snacks can actually interfere with sleep—and conspire to make you gain more weight than you should. 

It's true: When food keeps you awake at night, it's actually doing a double-whammy on your tummy. In a study from Wake Forest University, adults younger than 40 who slept 5 hours or less gained more abdominal fat over a 5-year period than those who slept for 6 or 7 hours a night. (You think Jimmy Kimmel looks like that by accident?) And worse, in a recent study from the European Heart Journal, researchers found that people who sleep fewer than 6 hours a night are at a higher risk for certain health conditions such as heart disease and stroke.

What are these late-night dietary double-crossers? And how can you tweak your diet so you not only burn calories day and night, but get the added fitness burst of a good night's sleep? Eat This, Not That! has (tirelessly) compiled a list. Let's find out...

WORST LATE-NIGHT DINNER
Beef Ribeye (8 oz)
565 calories
33.5 g fat (13 g saturated)

If you eat dinner late, avoid big, fatty beef cuts. They digest slowly, which means your body has to keep active when you want it to be in shutdown mode. Plus, the heavy dose of protein will pump you full of tyrosine, an amino acid that triggers neurons in your brain to become more active. That's not something you want before you nod off. If you must appease your grumbling, stick with poultry as your main meat. The tryptophan in turkey and chicken induces serotonin, a compound that plays an instrumental role in regulating sleep cycles. And the bun that holds the chicken? That helps, too. An Australian study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that starchy carbs—like the ones in bread—can bolster the tryptophan and serotonin spikes. 

Mystery from MJ movie comes to light

 

The box scores from 'Space Jam' for a nostalgia kick

For basketball fans, few cultural touchstones hold as much nostalgic pull as the 1996 comedy "Space Jam," a Michael Jordan vehicle in which His Airness joins forces with the Looney Tunes to defeat evil space villains who steal the talent of such '90s basketball luminaries as Shawn Bradley and Muggsy Bogues. It's not as good a film as the next film starring these classic characters, the cruelly underrated "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," but "Space Jam" nevertheless means a lot to anyone who grew up watching basketball 15 years ago.

Hidden benefits of a common workout move

For Killer Abs, Try Some ... Push-Ups?

Not many of us love the push-up. Sure, it’s relatively safe and effective, but let’s face it, it's kind of boring. It's something we did in P.E. class.

But what if you realized that the push-up would not only help you get a stronger upper body, but also a stronger midsection?
It's true. The push-up incorporates the stabilization muscles of your core, combining an upper-body pushing movement with a plank -- one of the best and most basic exercises for your midsection.
In fact, according to Nick Tumminello, trainer and owner and operator of the Performance University gym in Baltimore, Md., the push-up can effectively replace the sit-up.

“The push-up is basically a plank position," Tumminello says, "so it’s actually a great abdominal exercise and there’s no reason to do planks if you can do (a significant number of) push-ups."

Make a million by age 22? It can be done

How to Make $1 Million Before You Graduate

 

 

These entrepreneurs, interviewed by Forbes over the last three years, started launching businesses by the tender age of 9. Some of them identified problems and created companies to solve them, while others turned their hobbies into money-making ventures. Some teamed up with friends, parents and mentors; others plowed ahead on their own. To qualify for this round-up, the kids had to have cracked $1 million in revenue before college graduation and by age 22 (or be on track to do so), or had to have received funding that valued their operations at $1 million or more.

Autocricket
In the summer of 2008, after his high school graduation, Jason Brian started working in the marketing department of a South Florida car dealership. He knew the future of marketing was on the Web. "With half of the money, I found that I could double the results," by buying online ads and using search engine optimization techniques, he recalls. Three years later, at age 21, Brian spent "less than $10,000" of his savings to build a website that would help consumers look for cars. Autocricket.com made money by selling customers' information to dealers and manufacturers, which could market to customers directly. Six months after launch the site attracted the attention of two entrepreneurs in Naples, Fla., who invested $250,000. The site generated $1.2 million in revenue in 2009, when Brian was 22. In 2010 it did $6 million.


Showclix
In 2005, when he was 18, Joshua Dziabiak sold his first company--a Web hosting firm called Mediacatch--for north of $1 million. He bought a Mercedes (in cash) and a flat-screen TV, and used the rest to invest in other companies, including Showclix, his current venture, a website that lets performing arts centers, colleges, live music venues and other outlets sell tickets online, over the phone and at their box offices. In 2009 he raised nearly $1 million, which valued the company at $2.75 million. Showclix collects services fees (usually paid by the ticket buyer) of 7% to 15% of ticket sales. Those fees brought in $9 million last year.

Screen icon Elizabeth Taylor passes away

 

 

LOS ANGELES - Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the classic movie stars and a template for the modern celebrity, died Wednesday at age 79.
She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.
"My mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love," her son, Michael Wilding, said in a statement.
"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."
"We have just lost a Hollywood giant," said Elton John, a longtime friend of Taylor. "More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being."