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Besides adding a blog, other features found on the new site include our weekly words of wisdom quotes, news and events section, our free forms download, and our new advertising banner. Church Fitness has also developed Wholly Fitness, a free licensing program for church fitness centers. Church Fitness was formed to promote fitness within the church, and be a complete resource to support, encourage and assist church based fitness centers everywhere.

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Most packaged meals and snacks marketed to toddlers have more than the recommended amount of sodium per serving, meaning children as young as one are most likely eating far too much salt early in life, according to one of several studies on sodium presented this week.

The studies were presented at the American Heart Association‘s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions in New Orleans. The findings were alarming to researchers since there is evidence a child’s sodium intake is related to the likelihood that he or she will develop hypertension as an adult. Hypertension is a major risk factor of cardiovascular disease and the number-one killer of men and women in the United States.

“The good news is that commercial foods for babies, when they start complimentary feeding from 4 to 12 months … are relatively low in sodium,” explains Joyce Maalouf, the study’s lead author and a fellow at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But the products marketed to toddlers were significantly higher in sodium: more than 75% of the toddler meals and snacks had high sodium content.”

Maalouf and her team reviewed more than 1,100 products specifically marketed to babies and toddlers that were sold in grocery stores. Any product that had more than 210 milligrams of sodium per serving was defined as being high in sodium, based on guidelines outlined by the Institute of Medicine and MyPlate.gov for salt intake and young children.

Some of the toddler meals tested had upwards of 630 milligrams of sodium per serving. Meals and “savory snacks” had the highest amount of sodium compared to the cereal bars and fruit snacks that were tested. Maalouf and her team are not releasing the brand names of the foods they tested but described the meals as being readily available in grocery stores aisles stocked with food for babies and toddlers.

“We’re talking meals that are pre-packed … like mac and cheese, pasta with meat sauce, pizza, or chicken and vegetables,” says Maalouf. “These are not frozen meals, they’re usually microwavable.”

The UDSA recommends toddlers ages 1 to 3 consume between 1,000 and 1,500 milligrams of sodium daily. Maalouf says parents need to be aware that eating too much salt can be a problem in young children and encourages people to read nutrition labels before buying meals or snacks for their children.

“These meals are not the only meal that kids will eat,” says Maalouf. ”They’re growing, they’re always snacking. So they’re eating seven to eight servings and meals per day.”

Two other studies being presented at the annual meeting focus on the global effects of too much sodium.

According to one, the average intake of sodium among three-quarters of the world’s population was nearly 4,000 milligrams a day in 2010, almost double the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 2,000 milligrams.

Researchers calculated in a second study that nearly 2.3 million people worldwide died from cardiovascular deaths attributable to too much sodium in 2010 alone.

“In the United States and similar countries, the burden for change lies with the government and with the food industry,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, cardiologist and lead author of the second study. Mozaffarian is the co-director of the Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology and associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.  ”Salt is spread so evenly throughout our food system, there have to be policies to minimize how much sodium we eat.”

Both studies were part of the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases study and were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Aerobic conditioning is the ability of the heart, lungs, and circulatory system to supply oxygen and nutrients to the working muscles. It involves the ability to persist in activities, such as elliptical training, walking, jogging, and cycling. Improved aerobic endurance is associated with increased health and reduced risk of chronic disease, such as obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke.

To experience the health benefits of aerobic endurance training, you should participate in prolonged aerobic exercise (eventually reaching 20 to 60 minutes of continuous training) at an intensity (or level) that stimulates the aerobic system. Fortunately, if you are a beginner who has been inactive for a long time, you can start with 5 to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise and still get aerobic health benefits. The intensity of aerobic exercise (or how hard you work) is simple to determine if you know how to measure your heart rate and if you pay attention to how you feel during a workout.

Measuring Heart Rate

The measurement of heart rate, or pulse, is represented in beats per minute (bpm). To assess heart rate, place your fingertips on either the radial or carotid pulse site. If you choose to take your pulse at the carotid side, avoid putting heavy pressure on the carotid arteries because they contain receptors that sense increases in pressure and respond by slowing the heart rate.

To determine the number of beats per minute, take the pulse rate, counting the first pulse beat as zero, for 10 seconds and then multiply by six.

Target Heart Rate

The rate at which your heart beats during exercise can be used to assess how hard you are working. When performing light to moderate exercise, your heart rate increases as your work rate increases. This ensures that blood gets to the muscles so that they can get the oxygen and nutrients they need to continue working.

Being able to measure your heart rate allows you to determine aerobic exercise intensity by taking your pulse during the workout and comparing it to your target heart rate. A common method to determine your target heart rate is based on a percentage of your estimated maximum heart rate. Input your age in the prompt below and the calculator will produce a range in which to keep your heart rate during aerobic exercise.

Now that you know your target heart rate range, you can check your pulse at regular intervals (every 5 to 10 minutes) during the workout session and compare your exercise heart rate to your target heart rate. If your exercise heart rate is below the target range, increase your pace or effort slightly to achieve the proper intensity. If your exercise heart rate is above the target range, decrease your pace or effort slightly to remain with the range.

While this method is widely used in the fitness industry, it can be inaccurate for many people. Therefore, gauging intensity using a percentage of predicted maximum heart rate should be used along with another method to ensure appropriate exercise intensity. A commonsense method called perceived exertion should always be used in conjunction with other heart rate-monitoring methods. Perceived exertion is a technical description of simply paying attention to how you feel during a workout.

How Do You Feel During A Workout?

Exercising at an appropriate intensity should feel somewhat challenging, but it should also feel like you could continue on for a prolonged time period. If you are working at too easy of an intensity, you will still receive some health benefits but you will not experience the calorie-burning effect and the aerobic benefit that you would if you were working at an appropriate intensity. If you are working too hard, you won’t last very long because you will become extremely fatigued and run the risk of injuring yourself in the process.

A quick, easy way to evaluate intensity is to check your ability to breathe and talk. You should be able to breathe fairly comfortably and rhythmically throughout all phases of a workout to ensure a safe and comfortable level of exercise, especially if you’re just beginning an exercise program. You should also be able to talk continuously, completing short sentences with no problem. If you cannot carry on a conversation, you may be working too hard. While you should challenge yourself, use this gauge of monitoring your ability to talk continuously for 10 – 20 seconds as an effective guideline.

Heart Rate Training Zones

Another way to evaluate your aerobic exercise intensity is to compare how you feel to an established guide, such as a heart rate training zone. For our purposes and for new exercisers, training target zones can be thought of as a traffic light where the green, yellow, and red lights correspond to the intensity of exercise. That is, the green training zone represents an appropriate level of intensity (light to moderate exercise) that indicates “continue,” like a green traffic light. The yellow training zone indicates an intensity that is moderate to vigorous, and if performed for too long could result in fatigue. When training in the yellow zone (moderate to vigorous exercise), an exerciser should slow down or proceed with caution if the intensity feels too high, similar to the rules for a yellow traffic light. Lastly, exercising at a very vigorous pace or very high intensity reflects training in the red zone, which corresponds to a red traffic light, which means stop.

Exercise in the red zone may be harmful to beginners or people with health conditions and should be reserved for those who are experienced exercisers or under the care of a trained health professional.

Article is courtesy of the American Council on Exercise Fitness – www.acefitness.org

Founded in 1985, the American Council on Exercise^® (ACE ^®) is a nonprofit organization committed to America’s health and wellbeing. Today, ACE is the largest nonprofit fitness certification, education and training organization in the world with nearly 50,000 certified professionals who hold more than 55,000 ACE certifications. With a long heritage in certification, education, training and public outreach, ACE is among the most respected fitness organizations in the industry and a resource consumers have come to trust for health and fitness education.

The number of states with an adult obesity rate of at least 30 percent remained unchanged from the previous year, but a new study says adult obesity rates could exceed 60 percent in 13 states by 2030.

The “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2012″ report was recently released by the nonprofit organization Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). This is the first year that the annual report has projected obesity rates based on state-by-state data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Not only could there be 13 states with adult obesity rates of 60 percent or above by 2030, but if obesity rates continue on their current trajectories, 39 states could have rates above 50 percent, and all 50 states could have rates above 44 percent, according to the report. By 2030, Mississippi could have the highest obesity rate at 66.7 percent, and Colorado could have the lowest rate for any state at 44.8 percent.

“This study shows us two futures for America’s health,” Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, RWJF president and CEO, said in a statement. “At every level of government, we must pursue policies that preserve health, prevent disease and reduce health care costs. Nothing less is acceptable.”

The number of states with an adult obesity rate of 30 percent or above in 2011 was 12,the same number as the previous year. For the first time, all 50 states plus the District of Columbia were at 20 percent or above.

For the eighth consecutive year, Mississippi has the highest adult obesity rate at 34.9 percent, an increase from 34.4 percent from the previous year. For the ninth consecutive year, Colorado has the lowest adult obesity rate at 20.7 percent, an increase from 19.8 percent from the previous year. By comparison, Mississippi had the nation’s highest adult obesity rate in 1995 at 19.4 percent.

If states’ obesity rates continue on their current paths, the number of new cases of type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension and arthritis could increase 10 times between 2010 and 2020, and double again by 2030, according to this year’s study. Obesity could contribute to more than 6 million cases of type 2 diabetes, 5 million cases of coronary heart disease and stroke, and more than 400,000 cases of cancer in the next two decades.

By 2030, medical costs associated with treating preventable obesity-related diseases are estimated to increase by $48 billion to $66 billion per year in the United States, and the loss in economic productivity could be between $390 billion and $580 billion annually by 2030, according to the study. Current estimates of the medical cost of adult obesity in the United States range from $147 billion to nearly $210 billion per year, although the study notes that medical cost estimates can be difficult to calculate.

The states with the highest projected adult obesity rankings by 2030 are:

1. Mississippi (66.7 percent)
2. Oklahoma (66.4 percent)
3. Delaware (64.7 percent)
4. Tennessee (63.4 percent)
5. South Carolina (62.9 percent)
6. Alabama (62.6 percent)
7. (tie) Kansas (62.1 percent)
7. (tie) Louisiana (62.1 percent)
9. Missouri (61.9 percent)
10. Arkansas (60.6 percent)
11. South Dakota (60.4 percent)
12. West Virginia (60.2 percent)
13. Kentucky (60.1 percent)