Just for Health and PE Teachers

Or others interested in what the net has to offer for developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Today begins a series of posts dedicated to specific disciples. In the future I plan to attach Math, Socials, English…you name it (actually you should name it in the comments section so that I am more motivated to do it sooner, rather than later).

Many schools offer health or wellness as part of their curriculum. With many schools wanting an integration of tecnology, the net is an obvious place to look. Here are couple of favourites and fun ones:

Death by Caffeine

How much of your favorite energy drink or soda would it take to kill you? Take this quick test and find out. This site offers a lot on information on Cafine, from what it does to you to where it is hidden in foods.

Goal tracking

Web site Traineo is a weight loss and fitness tracker designed to keep you motivated to achieve your fitness goals. Key to this site is that it allows you to announce your goals to up to four people via email and they can track your progress, not to mention keep you accountable. Anotherwebiste, BellyGraph offers a similar service with an emphasis on graphing. Peer trainer tackles more specifically losing weight & getting fit. Actually, because I am attention deficit, I am going to through in one more: Joe’s Log, which also works with Joe’s goals. 

Life-Expectancy Calculator

The BBC offers terrific interactive Health Assessments. Check your life expectancy. I can expect to live to 79 years of age according to how I entered the data. By exercising 30 minutes 3 times a week, I can live an extra year an a half…(hardly seems worth it). Changing my coffee for tea adds another year and a bit. They even have food and exercise diaries for downloading. Another webiste asks a few more specific questions and generates you life expectancy. I ended up at 72. Living to 100 is another site that calculates your life expectancy. This last one seems the most in depth and gives more ture lifestyle options. It has me pegged at 70. I best get exercising.

Goal Setting

43 things is an interesting goal setting site with a social networking element. Currently in Shanghai, 476 people are sharing their goals which inlcude:

1. Save $400 to buy a cute cat
2. collect all the Audrey Hepburn’s movies
3. open an internet store
4. 学开车
5. travel around china
6. do a success job
7. go to MBA
8. become a expert on Oracle database

The idea is simple: write down your goals and share them. Or click on other goalds and say I want to do this.

Getting wellness answers

One of my long time favourite health sites is Go Ask Alice. They have polls, questions broken into categories and reader responses. WebMD offers more specific medical related Q and A. Actually typing specific ailments in Google will get you options to search for treatments, tests etc.

Calories

Want to find out how many calories you will burn walking for 30 minutes? Check out Bitter Poison. They also offer tools to calculate your calorie needs in a day and how many calories are ina  food.  Anotherwebsite takes it further down the line to include nutritional information. This even lets you generate custom food labels.

Ipod Wellness

Who would have guessed how many different ways the iconic music player would invade our lives. Take a look at exercise:
We endure, a free website, offers video downloads for your ipod.
iworkout offers a free download of 101 Narrated workout videos plus much more:
- Gym Guide
- Exercise Metronomes
- Trainer Tips
- 42 Text-spoken workout routines w/ pictures
- ACE Certified Workout Routines

Swisspod offer excerise idea for the big round ball.

More resources

You can find many more handy webistes and podcasts at the Personal wellness link of my high school counseling pages.