A Healthy Diet and Lifestyle – The Foundation to Successful Weight Loss

We’ve all been tempted by quick fix diets, weight loss inventions and other quick, easy weight loss schemes. I know I have. The truth is, the foundation to successful weight watching is a healthy diet and lifestyle, combined with exercise.

This is easier said than done with today’s fast paced, constantly on the go lifestyle that most of us live. It sure seems easier to run through a fast food drive through for lunch or grab a mocha latte for a pick me up. I’m guilty of doing this myself. But in the long run, you’ll save time and energy by simply having a healthy diet and lifestyle plus exercising 30 minutes a day.

The pants tell the truth. How many of you are in the same size you were a year or two ago? Many of us aren’t. The statistics about obesity in America are staggering. Six out of 10 adults Americans are over weight and 17% of our children are overweight or obese.

We need to make real, long term lifestyle changes to win the battle against the bulging waistline.

So how do you make changes to your lifestyle that will result in healthy living? Here are 5 simple tips to watch your waistline:

1. Be consistent with eating and exercise choices – consistency is the key to getting the results you want. To keep your body at the weight you want, you’ll need to eat better and be more active for your whole life.

2. Enjoy healthier foods – reach for fruits, veggies and balanced meals rather than the fast food value meal of a mocha latte. These are high in fat, sugar and calories, but low in nutritional value and can quickly add inches to your waistline.

3. Get active, stay active – exercise is critical to maintaining a healthy weight. Strive for a balance between a healthy diet and lifestyle plus physical activity. Your waistline and your energy levels will both thank you.

4. Change your lifestyle – take it slow and smart. Make subtle changes rather than drastic ones. An all or nothing approach may work short term, but you’ll end up frustrating yourself and make it more difficult to stay with a healthy lifestyle.

5. Be patient – we all want instant results, but the reality is that watching your waistline takes work and time. Recognize the small achievements. They will add up over time.

Remember, the foundation to successful weight watching is a healthy diet and lifestyle, combined with exercise. If you can do that and stick to it, you will be well on your way to a healthier, happier life.

How to Start Making an Income Using YouTube Videos

Do not think you will upload a video and have it become one of the most viewed YouTube videos. It can happen that way but it is not common. Most videos that have large viewership also are part of a group on a channel and that channel has lots of videos uploaded consistently thereby creating a following. More about this later when I discuss promoting your video. First, let me point out the business of YouTube.

Users upload 35 hours of video every minute. YouTube has created the largest online video community in the world.

YouTube’s revenue has grown from somewhere between $100 million and $250 million in 2008 to just under $1 billion in 2010 and its monthly global audience has grown from 344 million unique users to 500 million.

With numbers like that YouTube is an advertising haven to major brands. “The numbers almost did not make sense,” said Adam Butler, a brand manager at Kraft Foods for Philadelphia Cream Cheese, after revenue had been raised by 5% as a result of 10 million views to their promotional video with 100,000 clicking through to the site. “It’s bigger than TV” he said.

After you have uploaded videos that are hopefully funny, informative, entertaining or so intriguing the viewer can’t look away there are a few things you can do to promote them. A channel is created for everyone with the account so you can customize it by changing the background, adding a theme with a color scheme, a photo of yourself and you can paste a link on your channel leading to your personal website or a blog. After you have this channel customized to your liking invite people to subscribe to it.

Sharing your video with friends and family through email with the share button is a good way to let them know you have a video and ask them to subscribe to your channel.

Video responses can increase traffic to your videos by leaving video responses to other videos in the same niche as yours. You can create a logo so that each time you leave a response you stand out more. It is like your avatar, it brands you.

Video sharing sites can boost your presence online. This works by uploading a video as you would except instead of going to just YouTube your video will be distributed to numerous other video sites as well. Two places you can do this are Tubemogul.com and Trafficgeyser.com.

Now that you have hopefully increased your amount of views you can get started on your revenue stream by becoming a YouTube Partner. The criteria are: original content, own the content, post regularly, adhere to the community guidelines and have thousands of views.

YouTube started its partner program in 2007 to encourage audience-attracting producers to create more and better content. It sells against their videos and gives them more than half the revenue. It began with just a handful of partners with the intention to grow to a massive global scale.

There are now more than 10,000 partners in the program and it is estimated that the top 350 to 400 have been able to quit their day jobs and earn a living off the platform. Some of the monetization tools that help boost revenue for partners are using annotations, tagging, related videos, response videos and playlists.

These tools promote an increase in revenue, viewership and interaction. The creators of these videos can interact with fans in a way TV cannot. Some of the successful top partners are:

Smosh, a sketch group;
Dane Boedigheimer, who has the number 1 web show, The Annoying Orange; and
Fred Figglehorn, the squeaky-voiced creation of teenage comedian Lucas Cruikshank, who made the successful leap to TV last summer with a hit movie on Nickelodeon.

These successful creators of original content often get Hollywood agents and managers. HBO has even picked up one of the skits from “Funny or Die”, a channel that makes funny videos that feature your favorite comedians and celebrities. Founded by Will Ferrell, “Funny or Die” makes 25 videos a month with the majority getting hits from millions of viewers.

How-to-videos can make you a fortune and propel you to becoming a YouTube Star. For instance Michelle Phan has a multitude of makeup tutorial videos on YouTube demonstrating her beauty know how using her favorite makeup, Lancome. Her how to on Lady GaGa’s poker face look has garnered 24 million views. Lancome took notice and offered her a video deal.

Similarly, consistent posting of YouTube videos on their skateboard tricks has propelled California 12 year old twins Nic and Tristan Pueshe into YouTube Stars. They started skateboarding when they were five. After years of hard work and mastering impressive jumps, kickflips and switch-stances they have been offered a movie deal starring themselves called Nic & Tristan go Mega Dega.

While there is no magic formula to having the most viewed YouTube Video the overall theme to becoming a YouTube Star, and leading you on your path to income, seems to start with doing something you love to do. If you start there your genuine passion and commitment comes across and that is what people will resonate with. Your passion coupled with great content helps people find value in your postings and that will keep them coming back and sharing your video with others.

How to Qualify for Working From Home

The SciTech era is not only shaping our social progress, but it is changing our working habits as well. These days due the influence of Internet in our lives, the style of working has also been highly revolutionized. Different national companies as well as multi national corporations have started hiring people who work from their homes.People are working online for the companies as part time or full time employees from their homes and drawing handsome salaries. Moreover the best part is that you are your own boss. You can make a huge difference in your career development. Many computer-driven businesses are growing efficiently by encouraging several options of home employment.Some opportunities do require an investment. To qualify you just need to fulfill some standard requirements. These mostly include a PC and an internet connection. But there are also some jobs which require an amount of investment at the beginning. For instance, the organization may ask you to pay some amount of money during the training period as their training fees and after completion of the training period you will start earning yourself. A major drawback of work at home jobs is the possibility of frauds.If you search through the Internet there are plenty of free jobs. But you need the three D’s – Desire, Dedication and Determination. Moreover you can do your work according to your own time schedule. But this also demands your total dedication and determination to improve. For this you first need to find a job that has the ingredients of your interests. This is where the desire to work will arise.The basic things that are required to qualify are knowledge of the industry you want to operate in, a computer with good speed and memory, Internet connection at home. You should have efficient knowledge of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. One also needs to have a good knowledge of using the Internet.To work from home one needs to be very serious about his or her work. Your reputation and the quality of your service would ensure continuous jobs to sustain your livelihood. While on the upside you get to spend a lot of time with your family, the downside is that too much of family involvement and interference can hamper your work at home performance.Attitude of negligence towards work just because it could be done any time should not be there. To perform efficiently, one needs to determine a particular time and should stick to it. If you work with complete dedication, the determination to complete a project will definitely happen.