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Our first article this week doesn't have a lot to do with health and fitness, but it does speak to the sad state of affairs in our society today! It also demonstrates why Fitness Destinations recommends alternative methods of career and life status rather than the standard "go to college and get a great job" scenario. Check below for the article 'Study: Most College Students Lack Skills' for more details!
Also be sure to read through Josie Anderson's 'Fat Loss Exercise Strategies' below which details a great basic program to get or keep you on track with your fitness program!
Enjoy this week's features and have a great weekend!
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Fitness Article - Study: Most College Students Lack Skills
By BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer Fri Jan 20, 2006
WASHINGTON - More than half of students at four-year colleges — and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges — lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.
The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills — no matter their field of study.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills. That means they can do moderately challenging tasks, such as identifying a location on a map.
There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.
"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
"This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said. "States have no idea about the knowledge and skills of their college graduates."
The survey examined college students nearing the end of their degree programs.
The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.
Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.
Baldi and Finney said the survey should be used as a tool. They hope state leaders, educators and university trustees will examine the rigor of courses required of all students.
The college survey used the same test as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the government's examination of English literacy among adults. The results of that study were released in December, showing about one in 20 adults is not literate in English.
On campus, the tests were given in 2003 to a representative sample of 1,827 students at public and private schools.
It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
On The Net:
American Institutes for Research: http://www.air.org/
Still ready to go to College?
Check out "Persistence Alone is Omnipotent" to read our article on the many ways in which Network Marketing is a viable alternative to going to college and getting a "Corporate" job. Fitness Destinations is not against formal education, although we do endorse "out of the box" thinking rather than simply having an education that doesn't translate to real world use!
Fitness Article - Fat Loss Exercise Strategies
By Josie Anderson
How many calories you consume has a big impact on fat loss or gain. If you eat more calories than your body is able to burn will result in weight gain. The best thing about exercise is that the more you do the less you have to worry about calories and you are able to stimulate fat loss.
By burning 500 calories a day you can lose 1 pound of body fat in one week. By combining exercise with a reduction in calories you are able to make it easier to attain a calorie deficit. By riding a stationary bike for a half hour and reducing 200 calories from your daily caloric intake you can create the 500 calorie deficit without having to starve yourself or exercise yourself to exhaustion. 200 calories a day can be as small as a plain baked potato, one slice of pizza, or 1 cup of cooked spaghetti.
Another advantage of exercise is that after you exercise your resting metabolic rate (RMR) is elevated for several hours. Weight training has a longer effect on your RMR than aerobic exercise. Recent studies have shown that the raise in the resting metabolic rate from weight training can last up to 36 hours depending on the intensity of the weight training session.
Exercise helps preserve muscle tissue, which when trying to lose weight is a dieters advantage. Lean body mass (muscle) burns more calories per day than fat tissue. This is why building muscle mass is important when trying to lose weight. The more muscle that you build the more calories you will burn resulting in greater fat loss.
Calories burned during weight training plus a raised resting metabolic rate and increasing lean muscle mass resulting in a higher metabolism can help you shed pounds faster than just dieting and doing aerobic exercise alone.
Losing weight does not necessarily mean that you have to cut calories. Strength training at high levels of intensity and eating quality nutritious low fat foods will take care of the extra fat you are carrying on your body. Research has shown that people who begin a weight training program need 15 percent more calories to just maintain their current body weight.
By adding aerobic exercise to your workout routine can also help in expending extra calories. Or just increasing the intensity of your weight training, that is lifting heavier weights or shortening rest periods, will burn more calories.
It is important to combine exercise and a healthy diet so that boredom or the feeling of being deprived does not ruin your weight loss goals. Also to remember not to eat the same exact things day after day and do the same exercises all the time. After 12 weeks the body learns to adjust to things, and with exercise this means that the body gets more efficient at not using so much energy to be able to do the activity. Change your exercise routine every 2 months so as to keep your body guessing and burning fat. A change in routine can be as much as doing the exercises in different orders, changing intensity, adding new exercises, or just doing a whole new routine.
Follow these tips and within 12 weeks of doing weight training and eating a healthy low fat diet you should start to see changes in your body.
About the Author
Josie Anderson is a personal trainer and is the owner of http://www.weight-loss-program-101.com providing weight loss resources to help with many weight loss goals and newsletter to keep you up to date on the latest in the health and fitness industry.
