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Last night there was a great show on the relationship between happiness and having a sedentary lifestyle titled “Making Australia Happy”.

The the show highlighted many factors that can contribute to one’s level of happiness and leading a sedentary lifestyle played a big part in how you feel. Similarly having high stress levels led to the release of cortisol which in turn leads to changes in your body’s chemical balances.

Another factor that was taken into consideration was “mindfulness”, that is being mindful of his surroundings and other people around you. This can be as simple as taking 5 minutes out of your day to perform a random act of kindness to a complete stranger.

The idea of having this consciousness of the world around you was to focus on the present what was happening now and not allowing your forced to run away. One great activity involved doing something nice for a complete stranger, the idea being That you are engaged the world around you as opposed to being self focused.

Other factors that increase the risk of a person being unhappy was nutrition. It was disturbing to the people who participated in the study were actually consuming during the day, while this may be at the extreme end of the average person’s daily food consumption, it does highlight the appalling nutritional habits of some people. While there may be many psychological factors that influenced a person’s diet, what food is consumed exacerbates their dependency on high fatty food.

While exercise plays an important part how you feeling in the release of endorphins, similarily if you do start to exercise rigorously your body needs the right mix of energy for fuel and by eating rubbish you’re giving your body is a poor foundation to perform exercise and recover adequately.

The great thing was there was the precise way of measuring one’s activity levels during the day, this involves wearing a armband (Sensewear) which measured the orientation in relation to the ground i.e. if you’re sitting, sleeping and their level of movement. The show highlighted the effects of leading such as sedentary lifestyle, one participant in particular only managed three hours per day whereby they were not sleeping or sitting down.

This is quite a disturbing expose of how one person who perceives that they were doing some level of activity during the day i.e. a little walking while in reality the armband monitoring device confirmed that being confined to the computer desk for long periods or alternatively spending time in the car lead do minimal levels of physical activity.
This can lead to the increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

The ultimately living at physically active lifestyle not only helps with the release of endorphins target helps prepare for your body for a good night’s sleep.

So take the “Happiness test” and see how you fare, you may be surprised by the results.

On the weekend while I was camping, I meet Chris who started riding to work 20 odd years ago.

When he started cycling, Chris’s workmates would laugh at him, “why on earth would you want to ride when you have a car” This was a common reaction amongst the other printers who had difficulty comprehending the concept of regular exercise.

Well 20 years later after bumping into one of the guys who laughed at him has changed hi view from ignorance to envy after seeing what awesome shape he is in.

Regular exercise has helped keep Chris’s energy balance in check, rather than sitting in traffic for 55 minutes, his commute to work only takes 5 minutes more while he watches people in their cars getting frustrated and angry as they grind to a halt.

The great thing about exercising regularly is the cravings for junk food and unhealthy meal options disappearing. The body is quite a complex biological system, but when you’re more sedentary in your lifestyle, unhealthy food seems to be more attractive and desirable.

A lot of the printers at his current workplace are overweight and look extremely unhealthy. While abusing your body may seem ok when you’re younger, eventually it does catch up with you.

Quite often there may be a few of us that plan on riding to work but we often don’t place our health as a priority in our life.

So hope on the bike today, with new bike friendly facilities now available for city commuters, what are you waiting for?

A restaurant near Seymour is growing its own vegetables and herbs and raising chickens for the eggs. The great thing about growing your own is that not only is it good for the environment and making tasty dishes, but it actually saves you money.

As vegetables continue to increase in price, growing your own is the ultimate way of saving some dollars while getting organic produce fresh from the garden. The flavours and nutrients are at their highest levels and the taste is quite overwhelming when compared to supermarkets vegies that have been sitting in a cool room or spending time being transported by truck.

Bruce and Lindy at the Wool Shed Cafe have a plentiful supply of vegetables, depending on what’s in season. During summer for example, they have fresh capsicums, tomatoes, cucumbers and beans and the excess is preserved in their delicious chutneys and pickles.

The great thing about Bruce and Lindy’s garden is their use of permaculture. Food scraps are fed to the chickens or mulched for reuse in the garden, while the chicken poo makes fantastic manure.
The other part of the equation is the gardening itself – its good exercise! Digging, planting, tilling the soil, weeding, composting are all great activities that require you to expend energy.
So, if you have the space, even a small pot for some herbs, start to grow your own you can create your own vegetable patch with only one square metre of space.

Even in the movies it’s becoming hip to become self sufficient, the restaurant owner in “The kids are all right” have their own vegetable patch – see it and be inspired!

Even in the movies it’s becoming hip to become self sufficient with the restaurant owner having their own vegetable patch in “The kids are all right”

Finally drinking water fountains are being introduced across Melbourne.

While the bottled water industry would rather consumers drink bottled water, drinking tap water in Melbourne or any other capital city in Australia is perfectly safe and what’s more the water generally tastes great.

While it may be seem daggy and a bit tight arsey to refill your water bottle, it’s actually the smarter way to keep hydrated without consuming any unwanted toxins that are leech from the walls of the plastic bottled water, plus it saves you $$$.

With the price of bottled water being higher than petrol/litre, why do we keep handing over money to buy our water? With mortgage stress, that is where more than 30% of your household income goes towards the mortgage, why do we still spend our hard earned cash on something we almost get for free?
(10cents for hundreds of litres)

Last night had a Funny Fitness story about a Fitmate who had lost a substantial amount of weight over the past 12 months. Like most of us who have a resistance to donating old clothes that needed retiring, our Fitmate had a secret stash of original 80′s clothes.

Well after 20 odd years it was time to clear the wardrobe including numerous pairs of white coloured pants (very sexy). Just out of curiosity our fitmate decided to try them on. Well to their surprise the pants fitted perfectly, something that wasn’t possible over 12 months ago.

So while white coloured pants haven’t made a comeback yet, it’s great to see that modifying your diet together with high intensity bootcamp training can reunite you with your old clothes.

One important thing that people in general should be aware of with regards to the size of your waist is the increased risk of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.