Rbods.com - Exercise and Activity Blog

Hello Everyone, its great to see you all here!

Thanks for showing up on this cold winter evening. Hope you all are enjoying the holidays and having lots of memorable times with your family and friends.

I am Bob Hart and this is my wonderful wife Cathy. Or as we are both known in Twitterland, rBodsBob and rBodsCat.

Tonight we are kicking off the rBods150 for 2010 American Challenge…A mouthful isn’t it….Simply stated its our challenge to all Americans to make New Year’s Resolutions to begin, or continue, a regular exercise routine of at least 150 minutes per week throughout 2010.

But before I continue we would like to acknowledge a few people that have influenced rBods to date…Both or our moms- who couldn’t make it here tonight but are inspirational to us because at 78 (Cat’s mom) and 87 (My mom) they both still exercise every day!

And in the audience tonight, My son, Bob, and his family, Allison, Allen, Courtney and Marissa are here. They have been a tremendous help in building the rBods Mobile Stage and its Exercising Mannequins. Without them we wouldn’t be here today. Alan helped us build this stage in the hottest days of this summer. Bob spent many long hours developing the mechanisms that allow the mannequins to operate. Allison never complained about a garage full of mannequins. Courtney and Marissa are as inspirational to us as we hope we are to them!

With their help, Cat and I bring you the rBods Mobile Stage, featuring our exercising mannequins… rBodsSue, Sally, and Sedentary Sam. As you can see Sue and Sally exercise daily for far more than 150 minutes per week we are asking from you. But it wasn’t always like that! Both Sue and Sally were overweight and out of shape not that long ago. Sue had been warned by her doctor that she was a candidate for a heart attack and Sally couldn’t climb stairs without

Recently on Twitter someone asked me “So How are you going to Motivate Me”? To answer the question we need to think a little about the human condition and how behavior is sustained or changed. Here are a few related thoughts, followed in red by our vision of how a well-funded rBods will be able to motivate you, and in blue by what you are probably thinking:

1. Each of us is different. In essence, each of us is a mosaic composite of our past experiences. Our behavior at any given time is therefore dictated by what has gotten us by before under similar circumstances. Unhealthy behaviors, such as overeating or lack of physical exercise, are no exception. rBods can’t change the past, we can only help change your future. That’s true!
2. Motivation comes in many forms but each of us reacts differently to different stimuli. Motivation only occurs if the person receiving stimuli is already in a receptive mindset. Meaning that they have already recognized their bad habit and wish to create new healthy one. rBods, if sufficiently funded, will

We are building a video library that is indexed to help you find healthy lifestyle videos that YOU enjoy. We have tried to include all types of activity, exercise and healthy eating videos and we will continue to add more content as time goes on. You are encouraged to add your own videos to this library.

When you look at the category list in the video section you will see that there are several categories marked "rBods xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". These are intended to include videos that are made by members like you (not commercial interests) specifically for the rBods site that reinforce the importance of taking care of our bodies. This is our attempt to create content that represents the character of the rBods membership…sometimes serious, often quite humorous…but always HUMAN! At this point

Today I wanted to talk a little about our favorite topic at rBods – developing healthy habits in children.

A few years ago when Cathy and I were purchasing domain names we made sure that we tied up rBods4kids as well as rBods4teens (I’ll talk about that site on another blog). Our logic goes something like this…If we can get parents and grandparents to start living healthier on rBods.com then they would automatically start setting good examples for those around them in daily exercise, nutrition and preventative health. If these parents and grandparents took this concept one step further and became “healthy” mentors to their children and grandchildren, by talking openly and frequently to them about the virtues of exercise and eating well, then we could slowly begin reversing the unhealthy trend that has occurred over the last 30 years. We want to introduce rBods4kids in a manner that is safe in every way for the children. There would be absolutely no connection to the children, between rBods.com and rBods4kids, except by the parent or legal guardian (and others like teachers, classmates, grandparents or friends pre-authorized by the parent/guardian). We will actually need proof of their relationship and verify specific pertinent information before completing the process. Then the

rBods.com has many different areas with content to keep you entertained and motivated to live a healthy life! Please add content to help motivate others also!

• In the action video section you can watch or upload activity, exercise and sports videos. You can also comment and rate the videos.

• The action photo gallery has many images to look at. You can upload your own action photos, rate, or comment on other's photos.

• The social network is where you can communicate with other members of rBods. You can see other members, send them messages, see what they are up to, install applications, see tweets, etc. This is also where you upload your rBods.com avatar picture.

• In the fitness forum and chat rooms you can discuss fitness, nutrition, diets and related topics with other members of rBods. You can get opinions and ideas about almost anything here. You can read tutorials about the rBods.com website, get recipies, learn about new hiking and biking trails, etc.

• You can vote in the polls and see the results. Learn about what is most popular, and see opinion graphs.

• We accept donations through Paypal. At this time these donations are not tax deductable.  We are working with a non-profit foundation and should have a tax deductible account set up soon. All donors get their names displayed on the donations page if they wish or they remain annonymous.