The World Champion athlete and boxer Laila Ali is dedicated to ‘knocking out’ childhood obesity. Most recently she has worked with the Live Like A Champion Tour which is an award-winning initiative based out of California.   The tour encourages kids to get active by teaching them interactive games and sports-themed activities.  Ali is one of the newest council members and she was at Kentwood elementary last week showing the kids conditioning exercises.  She said,

“It is an honor to take on this role with the Governor’s Council and Live Like a Champion Tour. I am committed to promoting healthy eating and active lifestyles and hope that children learn the importance of exercise and a balanced diet through the Champ Corner.”

In the Champ Corner (see photo) kids do sit-ups, push-ups, jump roping and they use a speed bag.  Other celebrities athletes in the tour are Jerry Rice and Misty May-Treanor.  The tour will focus on reaching the state of California’s under served communities and will visit schools, community centers and associations such as the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Clubs.

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Grammy Award winner Christina Aguilera is releasing her third and latest fragrance, Christina Aguilera By Night. She recently spoke with the Daily Mail about her new perfume and her transformation from teen pop idol to a matronly mom. As a self-confessed junk food fanatic she has no plans on remaining stick thin like other celebrities because she doesn’t like going on strict diets and she has more important things to worry about. However, she does workout so that she can eat what she wants. She explained,

“I make healthy choices when I can, because it’s very important for me to have moments where I can let go, have a great dinner and not care so much about the carbs. I work out five days a week – and I hate working out in the moment, I truly do. But the aftermath is so great, and it helps you feel good – not only physically, but mentally.”

The 28-year-old gave birth to her first child in January of 2008 and she has since become a dedicated mother who’s learning to wake up in the mornings and perfect the balancing act of mothering her child and allowing herself times to be creative and work on her music. Considering that other teen stars like Lindsday Lohan and Britney Spears are such train wrecks you’ve got to admire Christina’s calm, cool and collected style after years of being in the limelight.
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Jillian Michaels, fitness guru and trainer for the show The Biggest Loser receives the deserving title as America’s Healthiest Body in the November issue of Health Magazine.  With a new reality show in the works and tons of exercise DVDs and books it’s no surprise this wonder woman is being acknowledged by the magazine. Michaels said she was very flattered by the recognition but she admitted that she too struggles just like the rest of us.  She explained,

“I’m totally flattered. But I just think, ‘God, if people had any idea of the stuff that goes on behind closed doors: the struggles in the middle of the night in front of the refrigerator, the weeks on end I can’t get my ass to the gym!’ But, in reality, there’s a part of me where it makes perfect sense.”

Michaels also gave some tips on healthy eating and lifestyle choices by promoting an organic diet that’s free of chemicals and to strive to reach our full potential when it comes to exercise.  She also noted that to be healthy doesn’t mean that the person is necessarily skinny.  Smokers and drinkers can be very thin but are waiting for diseases to attack at any time.  Instead, a healthy person is someone who is disease-free.

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It’s hard to believe, but the 43-year-old supermodel Cindy Crawford doesn’t think she has the body for the contemporary modeling world. Back in the 90s her curvaceous figure is what made her an international modeling sensation but these days cover girl’s look a lot different. She told Germany’s Bunte Magazine that she looks too healthy and that the industry is no longer looking for,

“A body like mine with big breasts, normal thighs and toned upper arms.”

The mother of two went on to say that she likes being in her 40s because she is at peace with herself and she knows that being pretty isn’t her only or best strength.

Cindy quit modeling in 2000 has launched a furniture line called the Cindy Crawford Home Collection.

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Across the pond there’s another celebrity profiting from a fitness website; Sky Sports presenter, Georgie Thompson. She follows in the footsteps of other celebs like Jillian Michaels with loads of fitness products,  Tracy Anderson with a fitness website offering exercise tips and products to buy, as well as Gwyneth Paltrow who has a site with fashion, diet and exercise tips. Georgie teamed up with personal trainer Cat Dugdale to create a website for lazy girls who prefer cocktails to cardio, iamsuperchick.com.

The site already has approximately 10,000 members from the US, UK and Australia who each pay a monthly fee to get access to workout videos and exercises that incorporate household chores. One such exercise can be seen above where Dugdale is doing lunges while sweeping. Thompson said,

“It’s much harder during the winter to motivate yourself up off the sofa and out of the house to do any form of fitness. That’s why we devised a way for women to hibernate and get fit at the same time using our home training videos.”

This affordable and assessable website is cheaper than a gym membership and who wouldn’t want to bake a cake and get a good chest workout at the same time? A clean home means a fit woman.

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This week the First Lady invited 100 local school children to the White House for a Healthy Kids Fair.  During the event kids were taught exercise, healthy eating habits and watched food demonstrations on how to make healthy snacks. But Mrs. Obama stole the show when she hula-hooped 142 swivels before the hula-hoop hit the ground.  She explained to the press that the event was to teach kids how to eat and exercise and she considered it a call to action because one out of three kids in the US are overweight or obese.  She said,

“One of our goals was to focus on the importance of educating our kids about healthy eating,”

The pictures of the First Family hula-hooping in the law will definitely spark a resurgence of this fun retro activity.  There’s a gym in Los Angeles that leads a class called Hoopnotica and now that the Obamas hula we’ll all be signing up for classes sometime soon!  Supposedly you can burn 100 calories in 10 minutes so break out the hula-hoop.

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Aislin Bates is by all accounts a healthy, active 2 year old who was denied health insurance by United Health Care for being too small. She weighs 22 pounds which is in the third percentile for children her age. Her father was dumbfounded stating:

“It seems as if they’re discriminating about the fact that she’s smaller, that her size is an issue,. I don’t see why that would be a factor in whether or not a child is healthy.”

Although the parents expressed disbelief about the rejection, I am sure they understand the real reason for this denial. It’s more than likely that Aislin parent’s will request growth hormone therapy which comes out to about $20,000 per year and total treatment costs can easily tally up to over $100,000.

Aislin will be a big “expense” for United Health Care and there is no way they will ever cover the costs for this type of therapy from health care premiums. Let’s face it, the insurance companies are in the business of making money, not securing your health and this and similar cases makes this abundantly clear. Here’s yet another reason we absolutely need a government run public insurance option as part of Obama’s health care overhaul.  Otherwise, all a health care overall will do is enrich the coffers of the very insurance companies that are making health decisions based on profit and loss calculations.

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Ugly Betty star America Ferrera was spotted relaxing in the Bahamas over the weekend and taking some time off after filming the fourth season of the series. We normally see her in frumpy Betty Suarez gear or donned in a sweeping gown on the red carpet so this rare photo proves that she practices what she preaches and does not worry about her rather shapely figure. While many of her Hollywood contemporaries are bone thin and wearing clothes sized in the single digit varieties, the 25-year-old has always had a healthy body image.

The actress has revealed in previous interviews that she wants nothing to do with the Hollywood ideal and she refuses to conform to a weight and image that doesn’t represent who she is. She said,

“I think it’s hilarious when people call Jessica Alba or Eva Longoria curvy. Come on – they’re not curvy. I’m curvy!….. I’ve been really lucky. Playing Betty has prepared me to be exactly who I am and not to change.”

Ferrera went on to mention that she doesn’t like how the media gives so much attention to the way celebrities look and doesn’t know what is even considered normal these days. She questions if normal is a size zero how can starving oneself be beautiful?

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Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr graces the cover of Sunday Telegraph Magazine this week. At only 26 years of age she’s had an incredible modeling career in both Australia and New York, she’s dating Hollywood A-lister Orlando Bloom and she somehow manages to be one of the most grounded girls in the fashion business. Kerr credits her inner calm to yoga and meditation but what makes it more interesting is that several years ago at a very young age she became a devotee of Nichiren Buddishm.  Since then, she’s developed a passion for organic foods, has studied hatha yoga for more than 10 years and she even studied health and nutrition for 18 months at the Academy of Natural Living in Cairns, Australia. Kerr said,

“Yoga is so important to me. I’ve been doing it for a long time now and I’ve taken it to a fairly serious level. Through yoga, I became interested in meditation and positive affirmations. My favourite is: ‘I am a vibrant being of love and light.’ How beautiful is that?”

Amazing how a supermodel can be so deep but in this latest interview she proves to know nutrition, yoga and inner peace. She has even been working on a book over the past few years, Treasure Yourself, which is a motivational self-help book to encourage young women and girls to respect their own beauty and feel confident in themselves.

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Oscar winner Russell Crowe is currently producing and starring in the movie Robin Hood.  Of course we’ve seen Crowe ultra fit back in the days of The Gladiator but when he’s off camera he maintains a comfortable weight that’s a bit on the soft side.

He had to gain weight for his last movie State of Play, and now for his role as the cunning Robin Hood he had to lose 50 pounds.   This week on Entertainment Tonight, Crowe explained what he did to lose the weight and keep it off.  Although he’s normally an avid cyclist he did say that he now does hiking and yoga to keep in shape.  But when he’s busy filming and on the set, he keeps exercise time to the weekends.  He said,

“When filming I exercise three hours a day on the weekends.”

Crowe stars along side fellow Australian actor Cate Blanchett who stars as Maid Miriam.

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