GeekSugar

A New Website Asks: What Matters to You?

GeekSugar — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 07:00:51 PST

By visiting 1000 Things That Matter, you are encouraged to leave a couple of sentences, or a video, or a picture, to express what matters to you. The blogger who started the project hopes to take the responses and create a short film about the future of telecommunication. Here's what he had to say about his latest venture:

If meaning is created through language then our society is created through its communications technology.

The film is intended to inspire and motivate people to do something that matters. So get busy and tell the world what matters to you!

Barry's Bootcamp's Joey Gonzalez on Why Your Workout Isn't Working

Shape — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:05:07 PDT

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from Shape here on FitSugar.

Barry's Bootcamp (BBC), the high-intensity workout that helps celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Jessica Alba, and Jake Gyllenhaal stay in amazing shape, has opened its first East Coast location in Manhattan! The studio is known for its nightclub-meets-boot-camp-style during hour-long classes that mix strength training with treadmill intervals. The result is a high-intensity workout that burns fat (up to 1,000 calories per class) and tones muscles.

In an exclusive interview with Shape.com, Barry's Bootcamp co-president Joey Gonzalez reveals where he thinks most women's workouts go wrong - and what they can do to fix it.

Common Misconceptions: Where Your Workout Goes Wrong

1. You do one or the other: cardio or body sculpting. "Don’t get me wrong, half of our class is cardiovascular, but the strength training is equally as important, and that's really what helps kick metabolism into high gear," Gonzalez says.

2. You ignore weights. "What you're doing when working out is building muscle, and muscle is an integral part of actually burning calories throughout the day. With weights, your body is burning 'x' amount of calories more an hour than it was before you did it - and that’s not true of cardio. That’s why women who tend to use weights and bring it into their regular exercise program are not only stronger and healthier, but on average have better bodies. If you touch their arms they're strong, they're not soft. Women complain about 'flarm' (laughs), the flabby arm area, and, really, the best way to target that is working your triceps."

See the rest of Joey's tips after the break!

Tax Hangover: The Cure For Next Year

LearnVest — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:15:19 PDT

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

Tax season officially end[ed Monday] at midnight. Care to join us for a celebratory cocktail? OK, maybe you’re still planning to run to the post office tonight (if so, check out our last-minute tips). But if your return is already filed, grab that martini and treat yourself to a massage. No matter how many times we do it, tax season is always, well, taxing. And immediately after filing, we do everything we can to forget about taxes…at least until next April.

But we started to wonder–if preparation and planning are some of the best tools in conquering your personal finances, can this approach help with taxes, so they’re not a new scramble every year?

The answer is yes. We asked Cindy Goldstein, a certified public accountant and tax attorney in New York, for ways to make next year’s tax time less stressful and less expensive with things you can start doing now. Well, okay…tomorrow.

You Couldn’t Find Your Paperwork

Either you wasted time rifling through papers, or you dumped them on your accountant and she charged you accordingly. “The more organized a client is, the better fee I can offer them,” says Goldstein, “because then I can just do my job instead of sifting through their receipts.”

This is what you need to save.

Combat "Lethal Sitting" With These Tips

Leta Shy — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:55:09 PDT

We all know that sitting at a desk all day is not exactly the best thing for our bodies, but a recent New York Times Magazine article posits that not only is it bad, it could be lethal.

James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic, has been studying the effects of sitting and says that it can lead to earlier death - up to 20 percent, according to his and others' research.

Why is being sedentary so bad? As soon as we sit, Levine says, our muscle activity, insulin effectiveness, and good (HDL) cholesterol levels fall, and our calorie-burning rate drops to a third of what it is when we walk. All of this also increases our risk for developing Type 2 diabetes and becoming obese. Sitting is so bad for you, Levine says, that an otherwise active lifestyle can't combat the negative effects of sitting at the office for nine hours a day.

But since we can't all have a job that keeps us moving and in shape, the researcher suggests that we do little things - "non-exercise activities" - to combat the effects of excessive sitting when we can. Read on for some of my non-exercise suggestions after the break!