Pregnancy: Should You Take Parenting Classes

Have you recently learned that you are going to be a new mom? If you have, congratulations! Motherhood is something that most women live their lives for.

As nice as motherhood is, many issues arise that many first time parents do not know about. For that reason, many first time mothers make the decision to take parenting classes, but the question is should you?


When it comes to determining if you should take parenting classes, to prepare for the raising of your new baby, many parents are unsure. If you are one of those soon-to-be parents, you may want to examine the advantages and disadvantages of parenting classes.
These advantages and disadvantages, a few of which are outlined below, may help make making a decision a little bit easier for you.

As for the advantages of taking a parenting class, you will find that there are an unlimited number of them. Although you may have babysat children in the past, parenting is much different. When you are a parent, you are responsible the safety and the wellbeing of your child. While this task may seem like an overwhelming one, you do not have the option of backing out on this one. For that reason, you should take any steps necessary, including parenting classes, to prepare for this venture.

Another one of the many benefits to taking a parenting class, before the birth of your first child, is the information that you will walk away with. Many parenting classes focus on a wide range of issues. In a parenting class, you may learn how to properly change a diaper, lay your baby down for a nap, as well as feed them in a healthy way. In addition to educating you in a classroom setting, you will also find that many parenting classes give you hands on learning. This is often done with the use of baby dolls.

Networking is another one of the many benefits to taking parenting classes before the birth of your child. You may actually be surprised just how popular parenting classes are. Whether you live in a large city or a small town, there is a good chance that your parenting classes will be filled to capacity with first time mothers. While you may not necessarily think about this at the time, this is a great opportunity to meet new people and develop new friendships. If you do not have any friends or relatives who are parents, this may be a concern of yours.

The affordability of parenting classes is another one of the many advantages of or benefits to taking a parenting class. As previously stated, parenting classes come in a number of different formats, as well as costs. It is possible to find parenting classes where you are required to pay a small fee, often less than a hundred dollars. With that in mind, it is also possible to find parenting classes that are free of charge. These free parenting classes are often made available through non-profit organizations.

While there are a number of benefits to taking a parenting class, to prepare for the birth and upbringing of your first child, there are also a number of disadvantages or downsides to doing so as well. One of those downsides is the meetings. Parenting classes vary, but many have multiple classes in a short period of time, like a month or two. You will want to attend each and every one of those classes to absorb as much information as possible. Preparing for the birth of a new child, especially your first child, can be a busy and hectic time in your life. For that reason, you may not necessarily have the time to devote to parenting classes.

The above mentioned advantages and disadvantages are just a few of the many that exist, concerning parenting classes. The upbringing of a child is an issue that you, as a soon-to-be mother have to deal with. For assistance, you may want to turn to a locally offered parenting class.

For more information on pregnancy issues see our Pregnancy Fitness section

Fat Burning: A Different Approach

No more cardio? Well, not quite—but if you train with weights correctly, you won’t need to visit that boring treadmill quite as often to keep your abs sharp.

And I’m not talking about interval cardio, although the weight-training method I’ve been preaching has an HIIT feel to it. That’s the F4X method, (featured in Old School New Body) which is moderate-weight, high-fatigue training with short rests between sets. It burns more fat and pumps up your muscles like crazy too. Here’s the drill:

You take a weight with which you can get 15 reps, but you only do 10; rest 30 seconds, then do it again—and so on for four sets. On the fourth set, you go to failure, and if you get 10 reps, you increase the weight on the exercise at your next workout. Notice how those sets are like intervals with short breaks between—you can even pace between sets to burn extra calories, but there’s more.

Fat-burning pathway 1: While that training style does great things for muscle growth, via myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic expansion, you also get loads of muscle burn. That lactic acid pooling has a spiking effect on your growth hormone output—and GH is a potent fat burner. Fire up muscle burning to get your GH churning. (GH also amplifies other anabolic hormones, so it effects both muscle and rippedness.)

Fat-burning pathway 2: If you do the reps correctly on every set, you’ll also get myofibrillar trauma. The myofibrils are the force-generating strands in muscle fibers. By “damaging” them with slower, controlled negative strokes, you force the need for extra energy during recovery. In other words, your body runs hotter while you’re out of the gym as it revs to repair the microtears.

To attain that extra fat-burning trauma, use one-second positives and three-second negatives on all 10 reps of all four sets. On a bench press that’s one second up and three seconds down. It’s the slow lowering that will produce the metabolic momentum after your workout. (That rep speed will also give you 40 seconds of tension time on every set, an ideal hypertrophic TUT.)

Fat-burning pathway 3: Now if you really want to get some blubber-busting microtrauma, try your last set of a F4X sequence in X-centric style. That’s one-second positives and six-second negatives. You may have to reduce the weight, but it will be worth it. Try for eight of those, 56 seconds of tension time, and you should feel the results the next day. Your muscles will be aching, but it’s a good indication that fat is baking.

F4X for a GH surge, slower negatives for fat-burning micro trauma and X-centric for even more time under tension and fat extinction. It all adds up to faster leanness with less meanness—because you’ll need less cardio. Prepare for acid-etched abs!  Yes!!  Even as you age this system works, in fact it is the closest thing we have to the fountain of youth.

Stay tuned, train smart and be Built for Life.

Steve Holman

Editor in Chief Iron Man Magazine and co-creator of  Old School New Body

Christmas May Be Cancelled

News flash

It has been reported that Christmas may be cancelled due to a tragic
accident over  the north pole. It has been reported that Santa Claus
had a serious accident over the North Pole while on an annual
training flight in preparation for his annual Christmas flight.


The cause of the accident may have been found in a conversation
with Mrs Claus in which she divulged, that  recently Santa has
been having some somewhat serious problems with his vision.

No report was given about current condition of Santa.

Getting Women To Exercise Video

Is indulgence part of a healthy diet?

HEALTH TIP OF THE WEEK
Is indulgence part of a healthy diet?
Sure, you know the importance of eating healthy foods. But is there room in a healthy diet for occasional splurges?

For the rest Click Here 

Enjoy!!

A Note From Ben Stein

Apparently the White House referred to Christmas Trees as Holiday Trees for the first time this year, which prompted CBS presenter, Ben Stein, to present this piece which I would like to share with you.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:...
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejewelled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a nativity scene, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina). Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorist attacks, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said okay.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.
Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it.... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what a bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards, Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

Are you interested in increasing your Google PageRank?

You should be. If you have never heard of Google PageRank and you have established a website, it is high time you learned about Google PageRank and what it means to you and the success of your website. Having an excellent Google PageRank can either make or break a website in terms of overall success. Let's take a look at what Google PageRank is and why it is so important to every website owner.

First, a word about the Google Search engine: Google is one of the most popular search engines on the Internet. Not only is Google's search engine the absolute largest of its kind, the company focuses on making web information easy to access and even easier to find. Google has designed a unique system and the search engine has yet to be surpassed in terms of the information it provides. Google has grown immensely since its early beginning in 1996 and it will continue to be a predominant force on the Internet. Furthermore, because Google offers easy access to immediate information, they own one of the top Internet search engines in the world. Thus, it would serve a webmaster well to become familiar with the Google PageRank process-the Google PageRank is an algorithm that is based on inbound links and other factors and will ultimately determine the location of listing of your website in the Google Search Engine.

What precisely is Google PageRank?

Google PageRank is a process the search engine's uses as a way of selecting sites to answer specific queries. Basically, when an Internet user submits a query, the Google search engine will attempt to match websites to the query that has been posed. Yet, there is a bit more to this simple science than the act of submitting a query suggests. Rather, behind the scenes, Google uses specific algorithms to determine if a site specifically address a web user's needs by analyzing the content of a site by keyword and by the number of inbound links associated with the site-every inbound link is viewed as a vote and the more votes one has, in conjunction with the more keywords one has, the higher their Google PageRank is.

Why is Your Google PageRank Significant?

What does it mean to you when your Google PageRank is increased? Does it really matter what your Google PageRank is at all? You bet it does-the higher your Google PageRank is the higher on a search engine's listing your website will appear. Thus, if you are looking for top billing, especially in a search engine as popular as the one Google offers, you will definitely want to maximize your efforts of getting your website visible and improving your PageRank is the best way to accomplish such a task. Moreover, the higher you appear on the search engine listing offered by Google, or many other search engines, the easier your website is to find. Essentially this equates to more web traffic for your website and if you are running an online business, more web traffic ultimately means more profit for you.

Making Google PageRank Improvements

If you are looking to improve your Google PageRank you can do so by starting a link campaign. A link campaign can help you increase more inbound links to your website and in turn, more inbound links will increase your Google PageRank. How do you start a link campaign? Well, you can go the hard route by scouring the Internet to find websites similar to your own. Or, you can make your link campaign a far easier process by using the services afforded to you by PageRank Browser and locate all of the best, themed websites on the Internet with relative ease.

Of course, there are few things you must bear in mind when you begin your link campaign. Google actually rates various links and holds some links higher than others. In other words, if you link to 100 less than popular sites you may increase your Google PageRank. Conversely, if you link to 50 extremely popular sites and you get inbound links in return, you may significantly increase your Google PageRank because the most popular sites on the Internet are linking directly too you. Thus, when you begin your link campaign, keep this popularity issue in the back of your mind. Further, know that in using PageRank Browser, you will be able to locate the popular sites with ease, and thereby significantly increase your Google PageRank.

About Inbound Links

Quite frankly, some links that you will establish will be better than others. You goal will be to establish the best links possible by examining the quality of inbound links. Various webmaster tools can help you determine the quality of the reciprocal links you establish. You will want to work hard at establishing direct inbound links to your site-direct links from already popular websites. You will also need to establish links to websites that are similar to yours-remember the search engine algorithm used by Google to determine your page rank is based on relevance. You will also find that the location of inbound links is of significant importance. For example, when you establish inbound links, those links that are buried deep within a website will have less influence on the ranking of your website in Google's search engine.

What is clear is that your Google PageRank is of significant importance. Thus, every effort should be used to improve your Google PageRank-with the use of webmaster tools and the use of sites like PageRank Browser you should have little difficulty getting your PageRank right where it should be. Therefore, you will not only improve your PageRank you will improve the web traffic you receive by leaps and bounds. Moreover, your improved PageRank will make you a force on the Internet to be reckoned with-you will have a highly recognizable website for all your efforts and you will ultimately improve your online business' bottom line.

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