That's Fit

Fitzness Fiends is a section devoted to you, the reader! We all have learned so much on our path to becoming more fit, and now it's time to learn from and inspire each other! Fitzness Fiends are constantly working to better themselves. Some are perfect, some are not. All have health on the mind. Please send Fitz your answers to these questions with a photo of yourself. Time for you to be the motivator!

Name: Lauren Rinck

Age: 23

Occupation: Consumer Product Sales Representative for Hormel Foods

How often do you exercise? Every day.

What type of exercise do you do? Road Biking, Running, Cardio, Circuit Training, Spinning, Swimming

What gets you to workout, even when you're feeling lazy? Exercising and fitness is just something that is a priority for me, something I look forward to. I love how I feel afterward as well! I can see results as I continue to place emphasis on working out. My ultimate goal is to race in an Iron Man, so I continually strive to push myself in that direction.

I'm writing to both congratulate and brag a bit about the newly announced Heisman trophy winner, Tim Tebow of the Florida Gators. I'm a Gator. I've earned all of my degrees up through my Master's at the University of Florida and am very proud of this young man. The first sophomore ever honored with this award.

Being great at football is one thing, and boy is he great at football. But, Tebow is the kind of kid you want to chase down and give a big congratulatory bear hug to. He's of great moral value, strong in academics and more humble than he should be. When millionaire athletes seem to be making both reckless and criminal decisions on a daily basis, Tebow just keeps getting "gooder". "More gooder", as my friend Izzy would say.

My husband always tells me to take my cell phone when I go outside to exercise. I know his urging makes sense -- what if something happens and I need help? Surely, it would be convenient to make a quick call for assistance, if I'm able to mutter any words, that is. But I rarely take my phone with me. I limit my gear to clothing, shoes, and a MP3 player strapped to my arm. I don't need anything else in the way as I cover ground in my next-door neighborhood. I suppose I should take my hubby's advice, though, and take my phone along for the ride. A Road ID would be even better.

If you're a runner, cyclist, triathlete, or someone prone to bursts of activity, the Road ID may be just the item for you. This athletic accessory not only looks good -- it saves lives. In the event of an accident, if you can't speak for yourself, your Road ID will do all necessary communicating by making your vital information available to first responders via telephone or internet.

The Road ID, priced at $19.99, was created by a father/son team who saw a need -- read their story here -- and are now chasing their dream: To see the day where wearing ID is as common among athletes as wearing a seatbelt is among motorists.

Kudos to nearly all New York City restaurants who are now complying with phase one of the city's new trans fat regulation. Those still using spreads or fry oils containing the artificial trans fat will be fined by the Health Department.

A whopping 94 percent of 3,300 restaurants inspected between July 1 and September 1 were using zero grams of trans fat. Before the regulation had passed, 50 percent were in compliance. By June, 80 percent were on board. And for the few still not passing with flying colors, it seems margarine use is the hold-up. Fines starting at $200 -- fining began on October 1 -- is the penalty for non-compliance.

"Despite claims to the contrary, New York City restaurants have shown that it's easy to get artificial trans fat out of spreads and fry oils," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, Health Commissioner for New York City. "New Yorkers are now enjoying more healthful foods without any change in taste or price."

A group of Canadian audiologists and speech pathologists are concerned that noisy classrooms are making it tougher for kids to properly hear lessons and therefore learn material. A study comissioned by the Canadian Language and Literacy Reseach Network showed that first grade students tend to miss at least 1 of every 6 words spoken by their teachers because of the amount of ambient noise, including other classes and audio equipment, in classrooms.

As this article points out, while adults have the language skills to determine words that they've missed in sentences, children aren't able to put the pieces of a sentence together and end up experiencing a number of detrimental effects including poor understanding, reading problems and decreased attention. Apparently the problem is worse in Canada than in the United States, where there is a national standard that keeps classrooms less noisy.

Are you worried about the amount of noise in your child's classroom?

What do you do first -- cardio or weights? Me, I've always done the following: stretching, a 10-minute warm-up on a cardio machine, 25 minutes of weights, followed by 35 minutes (or more) doing cardio. I do it this way because a personal trainer told me that I would burn more fat if I revved my heart rate with weights and then did cardio. Plus, I enjoy doing cardio more than weights, so the cardio session is what motivates me to keep going.

The reason I bring it up is Fitsugar posted on this exact question. There are good arguments for doing both cardio and weights first, but I'll stick to my routine. How about you?

Going on a diet plan that includes having food delivered right to your door is becoming very popular these days, which means it's also becoming big business. And with big business comes all kinds of people trying to get in on their corner of the market. So with so many companies offering diet food delivery services, how can you tell which one is for you? Well Epicurious.com was curious too, so they recently tested 5 of the most prominent weight loss food delivery plans looking for who had the best taste and nutrition overall, as well as a few other factors. So who came out on top? eDiets! Congrats to them for getting "3 out of 4 forks" on the Epicurious rating system. The total ranking of 5 looks like this:
1. eDiets
2. Zone Chefs
3. Pure Foods Low Carb
4. Jenny Craig
5. Nutrisystem

Did your favorite make the list?