Women are so good at taking care of everyone around them that many forget to put themselves and their health first. There are so many things women do well when it comes to sabotaging their health and I really think they are selling themselves short without always recognizing the consequences of their actions.

I thought it might be a good idea to look at 15 things women do to sabotage their health in the hopes that this list will become a wake-up call for many women.

1) There’s nothing wrong with having one or two bad habits: Thinking that eating well all week long allows you to have a few “weekend cigarettes” without affecting your health or going to the gym all week and end up finishing two bottles of red wine on Saturday with the pretext that red wine is good for you is simply foolish. Even though you maintain overall good health habits, the fact that you are smoking or/and drinking heavily will affect your health negatively.

2) I really don’t have the time to exercise because my life is way too crazy: Juggling a career and a family is not an easy task in the new millennium. There are far more pressures on women today than at any other time in history because we have more choices and freedom and that means that we might be tempted to “have it all at the same time”. I truly believe that in life we can have it all … but NOT at the same time. If you are over 40, you should know that lack of exercise and chronic stress are the two best way for you to sabotage your health.

People of all walks of life have one thing on their mind these days: the fledging economy!

You cannot go to the water cooler, the gym, a dinner party, a meet-up with friends or simply browsing at your favorite store without someone mentioning the falling stocks and their shrinking life-savings.

People usually go to the gym to relax and get into shape, but I’ve noticed lately that people have been huddling in small groups with somber faces and shaking heads at the news of a world-wide recession. People are still sort-of-smiling, but you can tell it’s that forced smile where the corner of your lips curl up, but your eyes aren’t smiling one bit.

It’s true that most of us are changing our buying habits, but that’s not enough to make up for years of careless over-spending.

With Golden Globe talk and Oscar buzz we’re all glued to our telly trying to catch a glimpse of our favourite celebs. I watched all the highlights from the 66^th Golden Globes Award.

Marissa Tomei is back on the Hollywood scene thanks to her performance in the movie The Wrestler where she plays a stripper.

There’s no doubt that playing a stripper at any age might be scary, but when you have the chutzpah to do it in your 40s, I say bravo to that.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us have experienced stress in 2008 in a way that had been unforeseen in our lives. If you are lucky enough to have great-grandparents or grandparents who were alive during the 1929-1930 depression and who are able to recount their sad memories of those dreadful years, then maybe the events of this past October and November 2008 might not seem so foreign to you.

For most of us, it’s been a very shaky and bumpy ride filled with a lot of drama. Many people have been dealing with a deluge of bad-luck – losing their homes, losing their jobs, seeing their retirement money vanish into thin air, dealing with crisis at a level that is so elevated that it has left them in permanent state of constant stress.

Most of us were running after time and we were stretched thin because of the recent stock market and real estate bubbles, but now most people can spell stress in every possible language without batting an eyelash because it’s almost impossible to get away from it these days.

To cope with the uncertainty of the current situation many people have stepped up the expediency of their lives just to try to juggle everything without dropping a ball.

There is no turning back the clock, winter is here and it’s very cold outside!

This is the time of the year where thermometers are cranked up to the max which means that dehydration is a problem for so many of us.

Protecting your skin during the colder months of the year is essential. Not only can dry skin lead to premature aging, but it’s quite uncomfortable.

Keeping your skin well hydrated is simply a question of taking a few conscious steps in your lifestyle and your diet.

10 tips to hydrating your dry skin:

1) Eat more carbs: Fall and winter bring many seasonal carbs to the market. You’ll definitely want to reach out to squashes and sweet potatoes during the coming months. Not only are they very tasty, but they also will help at nourishing your body because they are moisture-rich-foods.

I had reviewed kettle bells a while back because it was getting a lot of buzz in Hollywood and celebrity trainers were introducing their celebrity clients to kettlebells.

If you missed my original post from 2008, you can still read it: Kettlebells: A workout straight out of Mother Russia

One of the reasons why kettlebells are becoming so popular (especially among women) is because this power-training that originated in Russia improves your cardio while targeting trouble spots to help you get a leaner and toner body. If you remember, in the 1980s athletes from Russia and athletes from the old communist countries used to leave the competition in the dust when it came to winning gold medals … that’s because kettlebells were their secret training weapon of choice.

*** I’ve dug out some vintage fitness videos for this post! I cannot believe these are still available!!!***

I still cannot believe that show was a Canadian production and not an American idea.

As a teenager, I just LOVED THAT SHOW SO MUCH!!! There is no doubt that there is a lot of Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” (the video was blasting on MTV and Much Music in 1981) influence, but if you were a teenage girl in Canada in the early 80s (and if you were a boy), you made sure you didn’t miss that show!

According to Wikipedia:

“20 Minute Workout was created by Ron Harris in 1983, produced by Tantra Entertainment in association with the Canadian animation company Nelvana Limited, and broadcast locally on Citytv; in the United States, it was syndicated by Orion Pictures (Now part of MGM Television).”

The “20 Minute Workout” was my introduction to exercise … I wanted to be one of those pretty gym girls.

Since January 7^th, Bob Greene (aka Oprah’s fitness guru and trainer) has embarked on a US wide tour to promote his site “Best Life” and to sign books.

Since 1992, Bob Greene has been helping Queen Oprah remain at a healthy weight and he’s been making a killing in the process. Everyone would only dream of getting the “stamp of approval” from Oprah because you are guaranteed access to the Millionaires’ Club (pick me Oprah, pick me)!

Bob Greene has sold several thousand copies of all of his books (if not millions) and he’s now part of Oprah’s go-to-people when it comes to health and fitness.

Since the idea of hiring a personal trainer and nutritionist to help you burn that holiday fat off might no longer be part of the plan given how many of us have seen our retirement funds shrink, I decided to search for some courses and training programs from top fitness and health experts at a fraction of the price they would charge as a one-on-one consultation.

I’ve found a number of great courses to help you get back into shape in the New Year that won’t break the bank.

In these recessionary times, it’s going to take a lot more effort on your part to be accountable for your weight control program because it’s going to be harder for you to be able to justify a personal trainer or a nutritionist. For women living in cities where gym memberships can run as high as $100-$200/mo, these types of low-cost-high-results courses will be such a relief for your wallet.

Since I find it so important to skip rope, I can tell you that the second I found out about Jump Snap, I knew I HAD to get my hands on it.

I will openly admit that JumpSnap is most likely the most expensive skipping rope you’ll ever buy. On average, athletic skipping ropes are about $6.99 to $15.99, but the JumpSnap comes in at a hefty $59.95. That said, you will do things with Jump Snap that you cannot do with other skipping ropes.

Jumping rope burns more calories and fat than a lot of other form of exercise and it’s amazing at building strength. The problem is that you need high ceilings (so you cannot do this at home … unless you live in a massive home) and you need some serious co-ordination.

I don’t want to brag, but I skip rope once per week for 15-30 minutes as my cardio … the rest of the week I box and spin. I no longer feel the workout on my lungs, but I do still feel how strenuous skipping rope is on my legs every time I skip.

When I skip at the gym, I always get people commenting about how lucky I am for liking skipping rope that much. I always tell them that I don’t like skipping rope … I do it because it challenges my body and it pushes me outside of my comfort level. If I keep doing exercises that are easy for my body, then I will plateau and I won’t see the benefits of so many hours of training.

I’m not as much as a professional as some of those professional hoopers, but a few hours of practice got me hooping to some great Euro club music!

I think Hoopnotica is a fun way to integrate exercise in your busy life.

Here are the Hoopnotica videos I watched to get inspired for my workout:

Hooping to Beyonce

If you were a kid in the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, you must remember playing with a hula hoop! I could swirl that thing around for hours and I’m sure I did when I was a kid.

A few months ago, I was waiting for the bus when I thought “wouldn’t it be fun to hula hoop again as an adult”? I quickly dismissed the idea as silly and went about my day.

Not long after that little conversation with myself, I was surfing You Tube watching videos of people dancing salsa, meringue and all sort of other ballroom dancing favourites, when I landed a video of an adult woman swirling a hula hoop!

***This is a FREE 8-day body boot camp for Beauty Match readers***

Recently Precision Nutrition released a new eight-day email course called “Body Transformation with Precision Nutrition.”

This course is a great introduction to the whole Precision Nutrition philosophy.  And it doesn’t cost you a cent to enroll.

This course will really help you start your New Year off on the right foot.

Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn:

At this time of the year, we’re all busy setting resolutions for the New Year. The most common and popular resolutions include losing weight, making more money, getting a better job, going back to school, quitting smoking, finding your soul mate, getting in better physical shape and having a better relationship with friends and family members.

If anyone would tells that “my New Year’s resolution is to love myself more”, you’d probably look at that person and think they’re off their tree! It might seem odd to have “love myself more” as a New Year’s resolution, but the reality is that unless you love yourself more you WON’T think that you are worth having a slim body at a healthy weight, you won’t think that you are worth finding the love of your life, you won’t think that you are worth having a better education, without self-love you won’t think that you deserve to get paid $10,000 or $25,000 more for your expertise than what you are getting right now.

The holidays-food-binging are over, and if you are like most people you might have packed on a couple pounds of fat to start the New Year.

Did you know that losing weight is the #1 New Year’s resolution for both men and women?

What if you could find a way to actually melt fat and achieve your ideal weight?

How about if it didn’t involve will power, dangerous pills, or some wacky new exercise program!

But before I reveal this secret; I think you might be interested in the science of willpower.