Before You Eat That Piece Of Cake...

A Cautionary Tale, Featuring My Daughter Ava...

I know you're excited about the cake.











And yes, I know you're thinking about taking a HUGE bite of the cake.












Before you dive in, why not EARN the cake?












WOWY on Saturday July 1 at Noon ET/9AM PT and the system may randomly select you for the $500 cash prize! You just need to be:

(1) working out in WOWY as of 9:01:00 AM PT (Noon ET)
(2) have a WOWY icon photo or MyBeachbody after photo
(3) not a Beachbody celebrity (Sorry Tony, Debbie, Kathy, Gillian, Teigh and Chalene)
(4) not a Beachbody employee (Doh!)

Invite all the people you can, and see how good it feels not to lose your momentum and see what kind of summer WOWY peak we can create!

And then when it's cake time, you might not even want a piece... Especially if your 6 year old already committed her face to it!

Get a life.

I came across a speech given to graduates of Villanova this year. I don't know if it will speak to you per se, but it's something I wanted in this blog, if for no other reason than to make sure I read it from time to time, and that Ava will consider it when she makes choices that shape her priorities.

This is the commencement speech by the writer, Anna Quindlen, to the graduates at Villanova this year (2006)

"It's a great honor for me to be the third member of my family to receive an honorary doctorate from this great university. It's an honor to follow my great Uncle Jim, who was a gifted physician, and my Uncle Jack, who is a remarkable businessman. Both of them could have told you something important about their professions, about medicine or commerce. I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first. Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for re-election because he had been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'" Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul. People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion - the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights - a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all: I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived."

Turn Back The Clock on Your Birthday

I read a great thread on the message boards yesterday, where member Sookie (aka Itsy in WOWY) is using the new WOWY invitation application to create her very own online birthday party on July 2nd -- it's a birthday workout at 7AM ET!

And she's already got over 20 people who have signed up for that time!

I think this is a great way to turn back the clock on your birthday - you do your favorite workout, improving how your body feels and at the same time increasing your support group for the year ahead by confirming your commitment on the one day each year that is all about you.

When we created WOWY one of the things we talked about doing was having a page devoted to birthdays for just this reason, but we never got around to building that page. Now it seems the invitation tool has helped it materialize on its own. I think I'll speak to the MyBeachbody staff about taking this idea to another level in the next version of the program.

Thanks to Sookie for reminding me about the birthday application!

Good odds to win $500

While the WOWY invite tool seems to have caught on quickly, not a lot of people so far committing to the Saturday July 1st NoonET/9AMPT $500 WOWY giveaway -- and fewer still with WOWY photos uploaded.

That means that right now the odds of winning $500 is 1-in-5 since Beachbody employees are not eligible. Have you made the commitment to beat the summer slump on Saturday 7/1 at 12 NoonET? Do you have a WOWY photo uploaded? Do you like winning money just for working out in WOWY?

I sent out a few more invitations today, and asked those folks to invite two people each, and to ask those people to invite two people each.

Attendance to workouts has definitely increased already thanks to the invitation tool though. Over 750 people worked out in WOWY yesterday with a peak of 67 -- that's ten more than the peak on the same day last week. A good sign that people like connecting to keep the appointment to exercise!

Inviting people to WOWY works... So when will you invite someone to YOUR next workout?

July 1st -- You Are Invited!

That's the news at Beachbody and WOWY -- we've just launched the BETA version of a WOWY invitation tool to help people get (and give) workout support!

The existing Success Buddies feature has done pretty well, but now it gets even better because you can invite people to workout when you've put your schedule together. The system walks you through it step by step. And I'm hoping it will be another tool to help people keep their commitment to workout by giving you the power to build consistency with a group of people you know.

And to encourage you to add your photo to your WOWY profile, I'm putting up another $500 to see how many people will put off the summer-slump for a 12PM ET/9AM PT workout on Saturday July 1st. 500 smackers goes to someone logged in at Noon ET/9:00AM PT. They will be randomly chosen to win the $500 just for working out within WOWY (with an approved photo in their profile).

And while you're thinking ahead and scheduling your workouts - take moment to try out the BETA version of the invitation tool.

Here's how it works:

1. First go to WOWY.com and log in
2. Click on the date in the calendar you want to schedule (July 1)
3. Choose the time you want to workout in the drop down menu (9AM)
4. Select the workout you're going to follow (I will be doing Turbo Jam Cardio Party - my first ever TJ WOWY!)
5. Click on "Invite Buddies" in the Success Buddies" section
You'll need to have people in your address book to invite:
> Click "Add Buddies"
> Lookup members and add them to your address book.
> Consider adding non-members ( in the area at the bottom) so you can add "outsiders"
who you've wanted to encourage to start working out.
> Then click "Done adding Buddies"
6. Click on the buddies you want to invite to that workout and click "Submit"
7. Check the invitation, and click on "Yes - SEND THE INVITATION"

Maybe on the 1st we'll break the record of 331 people in WOWY set exactly 6 months ago on the first of the year! With all the Turbo Jam activity in WOWY the last couple months, I wouldn't be surprised.

I look forward to hearing how you like the invitation tool, and look forward to our July 1st workout!

Fat? Good for you? Watchu talkin' bout Willis?

Got fat? The more I hear, the more I feel like I haven't been paying attention. When did the world realize that all fat is not all "fattening". Why didn't anyone call me?

I can remember Susan Powter's "Stop the Insanity" infomercial where she knowingly held up five pounds of crystallized fat and proclaimed something kitschy like "Five pounds of fat... It can't form on your hips if it doesn't cross your lips." Whatever she said, it made sense, in an oversimplified kindergarten kind of way.

But now people are getting sophisticated. According to the National Academies Institute of Medicine recommendations for healthy eating, adults should consume between 20-35% of their daily calories from fat to meet daily calorie requirements and minimize risk for chronic disease.

Typical sources of fat in a diet include butter, margarine, vegetable oils, visible fat on meat and poultry, whole milk, egg yolks, and nuts. Look closer, and you find out it is not only best to minimize the amount of saturated and trans fats in your diet, but critical to consume the good fats in order to functionn (and, ironically, to lose fat).

Good fats, are monounsaturated fat and essential polyunsaturated fats (often called EFA's, essential fatty acides.) I personally take a teaspoon of the following sources of EFA's every morning and right before bed in order to get enough of the good fats into my diet every day: Coconut Oil, Codliver Oil, Lecithin, and Bee Pollen.

Ever since I started this regimen, I have noticed that my metabolism is running faster (i.e., I don't gain weight as easily) and I hardly ever get headaches anymore. I've read about that consequence a number of places due to the anti-inflammatory effects of EFA's.

Research is showing that EFAs help you burn excess fat, restore health to the cardiovascular system, relieve arthritis pain and inflammation, and strengthen the immune system.

Sounds good. I wish they made cheese out of the good fats. But for now, I'll continue to take my teaspoons of fish and coconut oil, bee pollen and lecithin. If you want to achieve a healthy Beachbody, I highly recommend you do some research and make the investment into some EFA's from trusted, quality sources. Not all sources deliver the same quality. So ask around, search the net. And get fat. Well... Get essentially fat so you get thin and healthy. You know what I mean.