5 websites for better health

Spark People
Every New Year millions of people pledge to eat healthier, lose weight, and exercise. The majority of those people fail to keep their resolution and return to their bad habits. Spark People is a site that wants to help those who are struggling and inspire those who haven't started trying to get healthy yet. Their site is free to join and offers a wide variety of resources to help you improve your health. The site offers articles, calculators, food guides, quizzes, nutrition information, exercise videos, workout guides, calendars, recipes and tracker tools. Spark People is a fantastic place to assist you in meeting your health goals. If improving your health is something you want to do, go over to Spark People and join. What is there to lose?

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Video Jug

Video Jug is a sites that provides free professional "how to" videos on hundreds of topics. This sites videos are sorted into 10 categories and the focus of the site is improving your life. Do you have a home project you want to start? Perhaps you want to learn to cook a certain dish? Maybe you want to become a better golfer? This site is overflowing with tips on cooking, sports, technology, home projects, relationships, children, and the list goes on and on and on. If you want to learn something new by watching a video, don't go to You Tube, try Video Jug first. Their videos are high quality and done by experts so you can be sure you are getting good advice.

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Calorie Gallery
There are countless site that show the nutritional value of foods but the numbers might have more meaning if there were a visual to help you understand them better. Calorie Gallery is a site that not only provides the nutritional information it also gives you a picture of what a 200 calorie portion of that food looks like. According to the site's homepage, the site has not officially launched but you are still free to look around at their library of food pictures and information. There site offers 11 categories that you can browse or use their search bar to find a specific item and there is information. Each item you view comes with complete nutritional values information in grams or ounces as well as how long it will take you to burn those calories by different exercises. Their site also offers a meal planning tool that will help you calculate calories depending on what ingredients you choose. Calorie Gallery is a good website to help people stay healthy through nutritional choices. Health teaches as well as Consumer and Career teachers should give this site a try and they may find it useful for their students.

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Life Organizers
Life Organizers is a website designed to help you organize every aspect of your life. Messy homes, clutter, relationships, exercise, finances, travel, time management. These are just some of the areas that Life Organizers can assist you with. Their website contains both articles and check lists  to assist you in getting control over a challenging or time consuming part of life. Teachers and parents will be happy to know that Life Organizers has a section dedicated to education and helping your children/students with school. Most of us have an area of life that needs attention and Life Organizers just may have the solution to your problem.

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Monkey See
Last on today's agenda is Monkeysee, a "how to" website for just about everyone. It features videos produced by experts on just about any topic you can imagine. Their list of categories and subcategories is quite extensive. There are videos about cooking, safety, parenting, sports, and even education just to name five. Take a few minutes to browse their collection and you will be sure to find something interesting.

Calorie Gallery - Showing you what 200 calories looks like

There are countless site that show the nutritional value of foods but the numbers might have more meaning if there were a visual to help you understand them better. Calorie Gallery is a site that not only provides the nutritional information it also gives you a picture of what a 200 calorie portion of that food looks like. According to the site's homepage, the site has not officially launched but you are still free to look around at their library of food pictures and information. There site offers 11 categories that you can browse or use their search bar to find a specific item and there is information. Each item you view comes with complete nutritional values information in grams or ounces as well as how long it will take you to burn those calories by different exercises. Their site also offers a meal planning tool that will help you calculate calories depending on what ingredients you choose. Calorie Gallery is a good website to help people stay healthy through nutritional choices. Health teaches as well as Consumer and Career teachers should give this site a try and they may find it useful for their students.

Video Jug - Thousands of Professional "How to" videos to Improve Your Life

Video Jug is a sites that provides free professional "how to" videos on hundreds of topics. This sites videos are sorted into 10 categories and the focus of the site is improving your life. Do you have a home project you want to start? Perhaps you want to learn to cook a certain dish? Maybe you want to become a better golfer? This site is overflowing with tips on cooking, sports, technology, home projects, relationships, children, and the list goes on and on and on. If you want to learn something new by watching a video, don't go to You Tube, try Video Jug first. Their videos are high quality and done by experts so you can be sure you are getting good advice.

Spark People - Resources to Spark Better Health

Every New Year millions of people pledge to eat healthier, lose weight, and exercise. The majority of those people fail to keep their resolution and return to their bad habits. Spark People is a site that wants to help those who are struggling and inspire those who haven't started trying to get healthy yet. Their site is free to join and offers a wide variety of resources to help you improve your health. The site offers articles, calculators, food guides, quizzes, nutrition information, exercise videos, workout guides, calendars, recipes and tracker tools. Spark People is a fantastic place to assist you in meeting your health goals. If improving your health is something you want to do, go over to Spark People and join. What is there to lose?

More Cool Web Finds

This week I'd like to begin with a site that is intended to make you laugh. We all have taken embarrassing pictures somewhere in our past. We are also smart enough to make sure they don't get posted on the internet. Fortunately, there are plenty of people brave (foolish?) enough to share there worst moments caught on camera. Check out awkward family photos, which is a collection of photographs that will make you smile as you say "what were they thinking?" Thank God these people decided to put them on the web for us to see.

I came across two very cool video sites this week. First there is Frequency, which is a site where you will find video collections made by people just like you. Choose the category on the left and a long list of channels appears in the middle of the page. Choose the channel and the videos appear on the left. The categories range from entertainment, to education, health, "how to", and many more. I plan on spending more time at this site in the future.

The second video site is called Video Jug. This sites videos are also sorted into categories but the focus of the site is improving your life. Do you have a home project you want to start? Perhaps you want to learn to cook a certain dish? Maybe you want to become a better golfer? This site is overflowing with tips on cooking, sports, technology, home projects, relationships, children, and the list goes on and on.

Speaking of improving your life, if improving your health is your goal then go to the Greatist where you will find tips on exercise, nutrition, sleep, stress reduction and other health related topics.

For those of you who enjoy online shopping there is Uncommon Goods, where you can find a wide variety of unique and unusual gifts. With the holidays fast approaching, it is worth a look.

I was a comic book collector when I was younger so this site appealed to me personally. The Digital Comic Museum is a collection of comics from the "Golden Age of Comics" (1930's-1950's) that are now "public domain and have been put up on the net. There is educational value here in that they provide a snapshot into American culture of the time. They were published during World War II as well as the earliest days of the Cold War so there is plenty of propaganda to be found for the social studies teachers out there.

Finally, in the era of Twitter and other micro blogging sites there is One Sentence, where people submit stories told in only one sentence. They reject 90% of the "stories" that are submitted so this is obviously much more difficult than it looks.