In the area of health and fitness, motorised treadmills are amongst the most popular forms of home exercise equipment for people wanting to lose weight, but what do you need to look out for in a motorised treadmill?

Firstly the motor must be efficient. Generally a 1.5 hp motor is the minimum, you should consider, this is suitable for people up to 250 pounds. The higher the horse power, the smoother the treadmill.

The incline range can be fixed, manual or power. Fixed inclines can’t be changed and are therefore uncommon. With manual incline you need to change incline manually when you are not using the treadmill. These are cheaper. Power incline means you can adjust the incline using controls, even when using the machine.

The best incline range is a 0-10% power incline treadmill.

Speed depends on the purpose of the treadmill and fitness levels. For walking a 0-6mph speed is enough.

For running a 6-12mph speed is better, 8mph for light workouts and 12mph for serious runners.

Features & Programmes – Electronic feedback is standard and is recommended for any motorised treadmill you decide to buy , speed, time and distance. There are also treadmills with pre-set programmes that target goals such as fat loss, cardio etc…

Some motorised treadmills store personalised programmes and a record of previous workouts. Extras include heart rate programmes, which show the zone you should work at for maximum benefits. This is recommended for most users.

If you decide to invest in exercise equipment it is important to know what type of home exercise equipment you wish to purchase?

There are a wide variety of different tyoes of exercise equipment available on the market.  exercise bikes, treadmills, elliptical trainers  weight training equipment, ski training equipment, and also equipment used for so-called passive exercising such as inversion tables .

Many people prefer exercise equipment for many reasons to actually running round in circles in the streets or parks.

First, you can exercise at home, out of the weather and you can do other stuff like watching the TV at the same time. You can also go to a gym and use their equipment there.

Running on machines also has benefits to your joints as some of the machines do not cause impact or strees on your knees and ankles etc…

Machines also have instruments on them such as heart monitors, pulse rates monitors, strees minotors etc… and you can change the degree of difficulty my adjusting the incline or the speed of the machine.

You can also meet people and make friends down at the gym which you might not do if you are running in the street.

I have tried posting videos here but for some reasont hey never work.

In my attempt to get fit or maybe that should be keep fit I thought I should get an exercise bike. Was that a good idea ? Only time will tell. It certainly forces you to get up off your settee as so far I haven’t discovered one that is incorporated into my settee so that I can pedal lying down and get fit while I snooze !

What they are starting to do however is to plug exercise bikes into the mains electricty grid to make electricity while you are pedalling. Now that is a good idea as you could reduce your electricity bill as you pedal and maybe one day even get paid for pedalling. Of course some peope would then pedal all day long and the do-gooders in the world would complain that this was slave labour !

The problem with exercise bikes at the moment of course is that it is an incredibly boring activity so naturally you tend to do it while watching TV – so that you may be getting healthier but you are also getting stupider !

One person I saw on TV the other day while pedalling my way to health and fitness was Susan Boyle - she could do with an exercise bike herself ! But she can certainly sing – so hats off to Susan Boyle and good luck to her. I foresee problems ahead as she is rocketed to international superstardom but it’s got to be better than being unemployed in West Lothian so I dare say that at the moment she is not worrying too much about the possible probelms she may encounter.

The whole cult of celebrity is very peculiar – Susan Boyle was unknown and generally uncared for just a week ago – now everybody and his dog has watched her on youtube and people are camping outside her house in the hope that they might get her autograph.

Also, a CD that nobody was interested in last week is now selling on Ebay for over £1000 because she has become famous and has sung a song on TV. How weird is that ! Still let’s wish her well and let’s hope she gets herself a personal fitness trainer to make her a bit fitter and leaner and meaner !

So my foray into exercise equipment has so far been only a moderate success but I have increasd my knowledge of the trivial pursuits that make this merry world go round !

OK here is another attempt to put up a video from VideoJug – if this one doesn’t work I’ll knock it on the head and go back to using exercise equipment

Preventing Injuries:Pilates: How To Warm Up And Cool Down

Yoga is now very popular in the west as a way of keeping fir. It is of course much more than that being a discpline designer to achieve unionwith the Absolute – yoga means union after all.

Neverthless, lots of people aprpeciate yoga as a means to keep fit.

For a greater understanding of the essence of yoga I recommend you check out Ramana Maharshi the greatest sage of the 20th century in my biased opinion.

Yoga:Yoga: Standing Postures – Part 1

If you are more interested in keeping fit I recommend a new blog on the block which is full (or will be) of intersting and informtive quality articles – Best Way to Lose Weight

My first post on the Health and Fitness blog. A recent survey has shown that it’s not the diet that you follow that makes the difference – Atkins, Zone, High protein or whatever, they are all valid as long as you stick to the plan diligently. The people who lost the most weight over 2 years were thoese who were disciplined enough to not get knocked off track. Recently we have just seen a new diet devised by a doctor based on eating cookies ! When will see the ice cream diet ?  If you are tempted by the idea of an ice cream diet then making your own ice cream is probably the more sensible option – at least youwill get some exercise while making the ice cream especially if you use one of the old manual ice cream makers

This blog is not specifically about weight loss but as a first post I just thought I’d mention that until I get into the hang of how this place works !

So just keep on keeping on!

A diet is for life – actually you don’t need to diet as such, just take in less calories than you use each day and you will lose weight.