With all the news about natural disasters happening everywhere, the world has enthusiastically reached into its pockets to help. News about goodwill, good deeds, and acts of kindness, should be regularly broadcasted, but maybe bad news is more profitable to broadcast.

However, let me stick to the point of this article. In
order for nature, and the universe, to flow in harmony, we should all regularly give to charities, whenever it is possible to help someone in need. This is practicing Yoga “off the mat.”

“Saving for a rainy day” is one thing, and hording money, is quite another matter. By all means, save some money, but always remember to give to those in need, without expecting something in return.

To put it simply, selfishness creates a dead end, or
stagnation, within the universal flow of all things. The universal law of cause and effect (karma) will always override.

Just as stagnation within your body is unhealthy, the same law applies to the universe and all things within in it, including money. Stagnation will cause an infection of the body, mind, or spirit. This is the exact opposite of Yoga practice, where we seek to unify body, mind, and spirit in harmony.

Remember Nishkamya Bhakti, and take the time to research the meaning of the word again. We should give
unconditionally without pursuing a reward. It is also good to give anonymously and not to tell anyone. Giving is also good for your inner being and your self worth.

Take notice of how lucky you are in this life. Be content with what you have by appreciating your family, friends, and achievements. Look at the improvements and rewards you have seen, since you started practicing Yoga.

I will leave you with a short story and something to think about. Last Christmas season, a man, who was dressed as Santa Claus, worked outside a local store with a legitimate charity’s sign and donations bucket. Many people, including me, gave to him.

Within a few days, local police had chased this man through the parking lot and arrested him. It had been discovered that this man was allegedly an imposter and did not represent a charity at all.

Is this man a criminal? I think not – he was a beggar who practiced deception. In some countries and cultures, like mine, begging is not tolerated at all. This man resorted to deception in order to beg. He did not rob people of their money.

This is not an endorsement of deception or begging, but I want to make you aware of the fact that when you give to a beggar, that is charity too. Don’t worry about which charity to give to – just give something. There are good forces at work that will distribute your donations evenly.

Always remember that Yoga is for the improvement of physical, mental, and spiritual health. If you think Yoga is only about physical mastery, asanas, and a beautiful body, you have missed the “big picture.” Yoga offers so many benefits for mental and spiritual health, that they should never be ignored.

© Copyright 2005 – Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

Donating your used car is an alternative to selling it in the market. This is especially true for unused cars that are in non-running condition. If you were to try and sell such cars in the market you would first have to conduct repair work and search for buyers which would take up quite some time.

Amongst the benefits of donating your car is the fact that you receive a tax cut. Secondly you can even donate a car that has reached the end of its life and does not work any longer. Furthermore most car donation companies will be more than willing to receive your car from your home without you having to incur any extra costs of managing delivery. In cases where donated cars are auctioned, the donor is entitled to receive a portion of the proceeds and can select the particular charity to which the remaining proceeds should go to.

Although car donation has been made much easier than it used to be before it is still different from donating other items like clothes and furniture. This is because you have to keep the element of tax breaks in mind. In order to receive the tax break you need to follow a certain procedure. The IRS or the particular charity to which you intend to donate can also provide you assistance in this regard.

The first step is to select a charity to which you want to donate. Preferably you should go for one that does not charge you a removal fee. It is important to determine that the charity organization to which you are looking to donate is qualified and registered by the government. Again, the IRS can provide you with authentication in this matter.

You also need to make sure that you know what kind of cars are eligible to be donated. Only those cars that have been manufactured for the purpose of transport can be donated. This means that cars that you purchased to sell cannot yield you a tax break. In order to illustrate this fact we can use the example of a car dealer who sells your car to the charity.

The task of determining the fair market value of your car is also your responsibility. This is the average market price that you will be able to yield for your car in the open market. The charity’s management can help you in determining the estimated selling price of your car. However in case you do not want to rely upon the management of the charity organization you can conduct this research independently and take guidance from used-car selling guides. In case your car is worth more than $5000 you should have it professionally appraised. A good idea to take pictures of the interior and exterior of your car in order to get the best estimated price. You should also keep the commitment receipt of the charity and any further documentation that you may have been provided as this will come in handy when it comes to claiming your tax deduction.

Car donation is certainly a good way of getting rid of your old car. An old car can consume a lot of space and your valuable time for care and maintenance. Car donation process is much simple and easy when compared to the process of selling your old car. There are certain things that you need to know when thinking of donating a car. Some of these are given below -

Car Donation Facts

• Selling your car is a tedious process that involves advertising for your car, locating prospective buyers, showing them your car off and on, arranging paperwork, etc. Not to mention the loss to privacy and possible risk to security. Car donation will eliminate the need of carrying all the above activities.

• Most car donation charities arrange for the towing expenses and hence you need not worry about how to send your car to charity.

• A car donation requires you to fill out a form. It is a simple form that can be obtained online. The same is picked up by the driver who comes to tow away your vehicle.

• Your vehicle is marketed by the charity through different means such as middlemen, own car lots of charities, etc.

• It is recommended that one should check out whether the charity one has chosen is qualified or not. the IRS website carries names of the charities that are qualified to receive.

• When thinking about donating your car to charity, go through the car donation program that is being run by the organization. This information can be obtained from ‘blue books’, guides published by certain trade organizations and commercial firms. Car donation organizations do not need to send you a form if your car eventually sells for less than $500.

• You can shop around on the internet to choose a car donation service that you like. There are several such organizations present in the United States.

• As far as benefits are concerned, a car donor can find a number of benefits other than saving himself from the hassles of selling your car to an unknown buyer. When you donate a vehicle, you become a part of a good cause. Not only this, you can also claim tax deductions on the amount of the acknowledgement receipt.

• One thing that not many people know when they want to donate car for charity is that all the four tires of your car need to be inflated to be accepted by a car donation organization.

• Also, deduction for car donation is only eligible if the car has been itemized on your annual return.

• A car donation tax deduction is allowed up to a maximum limit as per the rules set up by the IRS.

1.History and business model:

Amazon was founded in 1994, spurred by what Bezos refers to as his regret minimization framework, his effort to fend off late in life regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush.1 It is common lore that Bezos wrote its business plan while he and his wife drove a 1988 Chevrolet Blazer from Fort Worth, Texas to Bellevue, Washington,although this story is largely apocryphal according to early employees of the company.original research?

The company began operating as an online bookstore under the name Cadabra.com (as in abracadabra), a name that Bezos quickly abandoned due to its sounding like “cadaver”. While the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs for books might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could offer many times more. Bezos renamed his company “Amazon” after the world’s most voluminous river.

The company was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington, began service in July 1995, and was reincorporated in 1996 in Delaware. The first book ever sold by Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.Amazon.com had its initial public offering on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol amazon at an IPO price of US$18.00 per share (equivalent to US$1.50 after three stock splits during the late 1990s).

Amazon’s initial business plan was unusual: the company did not expect to turn a profit for four to five years. In retrospect, the strategy was effective. Amazon grew at a steady pace in the late 1990s while many other Internet companies grew at a blindingly fast pace.

Amazon’s “slow” growth caused a number of its stockholders to complain, saying that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the Dot-com bubble burst and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2002: a meager US$5 million, just 1¢ per share, on revenues of over US$1 billion, but it was important symbolically.

The firm has since remained profitable: net income was US$35.3 million in 2003, US$588.5 million in 2004, US$359 million in 2005, and US$190 million in 2006 (including a US$662 million charge on R&D in 2006). Nevertheless, the firm’s cumulative profits remain negative. As of September 2007, the accumulated deficit stood at US$1.58 billion.

Revenue continued to grow thanks to product diversification and international presence: US$3.9 billion in 2002, US$5.3 billion in 2003, US$6.9 billion in 2004, US$8.5 billion in 2005, and US$10.7 billion in 2006. On November 21, 2005, Amazon entered the S&P 500 index, replacing AT&T after it merged with SBC Communications.

Time Magazine named Bezos its 1999 Person of the Year in recognition of the company’s success in popularizing online shopping

Merchant partnerships

The Web sites of Borders (borders.com, borders.co.uk), Waldenbooks (waldenbooks.com), Virgin Megastores (virginmega.com), CDNOW (cdnow.com), and HMV (hmv.com) are powered and hosted by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would similarly bring up Amazon.com’s Toys & Games tab; however, this relationship was terminated as the result of a lawsuit.4.

Amazon.com powers and operates retail web sites for Target, the NBA, Sears Canada, Sears UK, Benefit Cosmetics, Bebe Stores, Timex Corporation, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, Lacoste and Bombay Company now defunct. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform from where a customer can interchangeably interact with the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, and phone-based customer service agents.

It also powers AOL’s Shop@AOL service via Web Services technology.

The company’s global headquarters is located on Seattle, Washington’s Beacon Hill. It has offices throughout other parts of greater Seattle including Union Station and The Columbia Center.

2.The Product lines:

Amazon has steadily branched into retail sales of music CDs, videotapes and DVDs, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, lawn and garden items, toys & games, baby products, apparel, sporting goods, gourmet food, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items, beauty products, musical instruments, industrial & scientific supplies, groceries, and more.

The company launched Amazon.com Auctions, its own Web auctions service, in March 1999. However it failed to chip away at industry pioneer eBay’s juggernaut growth. Amazon Auctions was followed by the launch of a fixed-price marketplace business called zShops in September 1999, and a failed Sotheby’s/Amazon partnership called sothebys.amazon.com in November. Although zShops failed to live up to its expectations, it laid the groundwork for the hugely successful Amazon Marketplace service launched in 2001 that let customers sell used books, CDs, DVDs, and other products alongside new items. Amazon Marketplace’s main rival today is eBay’s Half.com service.

Beginning August 2005 5, Amazon began selling products under its own private label, “Pinzon”; the initial trademark applications suggested the company intended to focus on textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods.In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a larger and more diverse list of goods, and to register a new design consisting of the “word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter O whose space appears at the “one o’clock” position.” 6. The list of products registered for coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry.

On May 16, 2007 Amazon announced its intention to launch its own online music store.The store launched in public beta September 25, 2007, selling downloads exclusively in MP3 format without digital rights management.

In August 2007, Amazon announced Amazon Fresh, a grocery service offering perishable and nonperishable foods. Customers can pick up orders or have them delivered to their homes. Delivery is initially restricted to residents of Mercer Island, Washington, a wealthy suburb of Seattle.

3.Website:

A popular feature of Amazon is the ability for users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. As part of their review, users must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Such rating scales provide a basic idea of the popularity and dependability of a product.

The review feature is an important and highly influential function for customers and one of the main reasons for amazon.com’s success at selling books. As with book reviews anywhere, the buyer must beware that all reviewers have bias. Under normal circumstances, reviews give the reader at least a modest basis for evaluating a given book.

Because it is an open forum, the reader can benefit from a variety of perspectives. However, the anonymity of web reviewers increases the chances of abuse in the form of self-praise, praise from friends, or malicious criticism. This situation was confirmed in 2004 when the origin of reviews was accidentally made public on an amazon site, and some authors openly confirmed their glowing reviews of their own books.

Amazon provides an optional badging option for reviewers, e.g., to indicate the “real name” of the reviewer (based on a credit card) or to indicate that the reviewer is one of the “top” (most popular) reviewers. Some books have well over one thousand reviews (e.g. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged), but many books, especially new ones, have none.

The U.S. site generally has the most reviews, but other country sites offer the perspectives of other reviewers. A review posted on one site is not necessarily visible on another site.

Search Inside the Book is a feature which allows customers to search for keywords in the full text of many books in the catalog.The feature started with 120,000 titles (or 33 million pages of text) on October 23, 2003. There are currently about 250,000 books in the program. Amazon has cooperated with around 130 publishers to allow users to perform these searches.

To avoid copyright violations, Amazon.com does not return the computer-readable text of the book but rather a picture of the matching page, disables printing, and puts limits on the number of pages in a book a single user can access. Amazon is planning to launch Search Inside the Book internationally. Additionally, customers can purchase access to the entire book online via the Amazon Upgrade program, although the selection of books eligible for this service is currently limited.

According to information in Amazon.com discussion forums, Amazon derives about 40% of its sales from affiliates, whom they call “Associates.” An Associate is an independent seller or business that receives a commission for referring customers to the Amazon.com site.

Associates do this by placing links on their websites to the Amazon homepage or to specific products. If a referral results in a sale, the Associate receives a commission from Amazon. Worldwide, Amazon has “over 900,000 members” in its affiliate programs. Associates can access the Amazon catalog directly on their websites by using the Amazon Web Services (AWS) XML service.

Amazon was one of the first online businesses to set up an affiliate marketing program.AStore is a new affiliate product that allows Associates to embedded a subset of Amazon products within, or linked to from, another website.

According to the Internet audience measurement website Compete.com, Amazon attracts approximately 50 million U.S. consumers to its website on a monthly basis.

4.Noteworthy events:

In 2002, Amazon became the exclusive retailer for the much-hyped Segway Human Transporter. Bezos was an early supporter of the Segway before its details were made public.

On June 21, 2003, Amazon coordinated what was at the time one of the largest sales and distribution events in e-commerce history with the sale of over 1.3 million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, since beaten by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a sale of over 2 million copies preordered in 2007.

On July 16, 2005, Amazon celebrated its 10th anniversary by telecasting a worldwide live concert hosted by Bill Maher and artists such as Bob Dylan and Norah Jones.

5.Donations:

In 2001, Amazon was one of the first online stores to begin accepting donations to the Red Cross on behalf of 9/11 victims. For several days the company dedicated its entire home page for this cause.citation needed

In 2004, Amazon launched its Presidential Candidates feature, whereby customers could donate from US$5 to US$200 to the campaigns of U.S. presidential hopefuls, resurrecting the Amazon Honor System for the purpose. The Honor System was originally launched in 2001 as a way for Amazon customers to “tip” their “favorite Web sites and to buy digital content on the Web,” Amazon collecting 2.9% of the payment plus a flat fee of US$0.30. It has never been shut down, but had fallen into relative disuse.

At the end of 2004, with the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Amazon set up an online donation channel to the American Red Cross using the Honor System, waiving its processing fee. As of January 3, 2005, over 162,000 individuals had donated over US$13.1 million in this way.

The same week, Amazon created similar channels for the British, Canadian, French, German, and Japanese Red Cross organizations via its international sites. Over 7,000 Britons donated more than US$350,000; 900 Canadians over US$56,000; 660 French over US$23,000; 2,900 Germans over US$145,000; and 1,900 Japanese over US$66,000.

Amazon reactivated its Red Cross donation channel when Hurricane Katrina struck at the end of August 2005. As of September 8, over 98,000 payments had been made totaling over US$10.7 million.

6.Patent use:

The company has been controversial for its alleged use of patents as a competitive hindrance. The “1-click patent”is perhaps the best-known example of this. Amazon’s use of the one-click patent against competitor Barnes and Noble’s website led the Free Software Foundation to announce a boycott on Amazon in December 1999.The boycott was discontinued in September 2002.

On May 12, 2006, the USPTO ordered a reexamination of the “One-Click” patent, based on a request filed by Peter Calveley. Calveley cited as prior art an earlier ecommerce patent and the Digicash electronic cash system.

On February 22, 2000, the company was granted a patent covering an Internet-based customer referral system, or what is commonly called an “affiliate program”. Reaction was swift and negative. Industry leaders Tim O’Reilly and Charlie Jackson spoke out strongly against this patent and O’Reilly published an open letter to Bezos protesting the 1-click patent and the affiliate-program patent, and petitioning him to “avoid any attempts to limit the further development of internet commerce”.

O’Reilly collected 10,000 signatures with this petition. Bezos responded with his own open letter. The protest ended with O’Reilly and Bezos visiting Washington D.C. to lobby for patent reform.

On February 25, 2003, the company was granted a patent titled “Method and system for conducting a discussion relating to an item on Internet discussion boards”.

7.Chris Benoit DVD:

In late June 2007, shortly after the death of professional wrestler Chris Benoit, Amazon displayed a special note on search results pages for the term “WWE” “Tragic news from the WWE. Wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and son have been found dead in their Georgia home, and police are investigating the situation as a possible murder-suicide.”

The caption was then followed by a photo and a link to purchase the Hard Knocks: The Chris Benoit Story DVD. Amazon.com later removed the offending message after widespread complaints in the professional wrestling community

8.The Humane Society of the United States v. Amazon.com,Inc:

Amazon continues to carry two cockfighting magazines and two dog fighting videos although the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) contends that the sale of these materials is a violation of U.S. Federal law. The Humane Society of the United States has filed a lawsuit against Amazon. The HSUS is actively advising supporters to write Amazon requesting the removal of the offensive materials.

This writing campaign gained momentum in August of 2007 after the much publicized dog fighting case involving NFL quarterback Michael Vick.Some supporters are also calling for a boycott of Amazon until the animal fighting materials are removed from sale.

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s The Healthiest Year of Your Life, which can be found at http://thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com. In this excerpt, Craig Pepin Donat shares important information on gyms, fitness equipment, prescriptions and “scientific” studies.

The Healthiest Year of Your Life with Craig Pepin Donat, a certified personal trainer and author of The Big Fat Health and Fitness Lie. Kevin: Yes. Something these fitness professionals that I know who do operate gyms, they do have a contract and their reasoning and I think it’s valid, is that the longer that someone stays with them, the better and more tangible the results are going to be and so they, they want to do it almost to protect themselves from people, you know, trying it for a month and not, not sticking with it, you know.

Craig: Well, there’s that, but there’s been the other side of it you could look at, you know the consumer side of it which is, if the facility offers great services, great facilities and can, you know, get people the results that they’re looking for, then they’re going to maintain it anyway. So there’s another barrier, of course, when you have, you know the barrier to entry of contract. The decision that people have to make as opposed to if you say that you can join my club and it’s month-to-month pay as you go, stop when you want, no long term contracts, cancel whenever you want. We’re so confident that you can get the results and you’re going to like the environment that you can walk away at any time.

Kevin Yes.

Craig: And in fact, we can give you a 30 day guarantee.

Kevin Yes.

Craig: A money back guarantee. There’s a lot of clubs out there that are doing things like that and that lowers the barrier of entry for the average person that, you know, might say, “Well, I don’t know.” Because, I don’t know about you, Kevin, but don’t you just hate it when you go into a phone store to buy a cell phone and every time you upgrade they lock you in for another two years.

Kevin: Oh, it’s awful.

Craig: I hate that and then and then the service is bad and then you got to buy out of it. It’s one of the most frustrating things that I think it should be illegal, actually.

Kevin: Yes. You talk a little bit about fitness equipment and I, myself, am not a huge advocate about fitness equipment, but there is fitness equipment that does work. What are some of the things that you’ve come across that you like and some of the things that you don’t?

Craig: Well, first of all, the one thing that people have to know is that the majority of claims made for equipment and on infomercials and about the results they can achieve are defective or flat out lies. There’s so many unfortunate things, you know, I talk about, a lot about how there’s not only companies and industries that sabotage our efforts to improve our health there’s also government agencies, you know the Federal Trade Commission, for example that allows the disclaimers, the fraudulent disclaimers to be used on some of these pieces of equipment. It’s just unbelievable. It should be outlawed. So there are pieces of equipment, I’ll talk about the one area that I really, I have to get on a soap box and scream at the top of my lungs about which is the whole class of abdominal equipment.

Kevin: Okay.

Craig: That uses claims that trick people into believing that they can spot reduce inches off of their waist and reduce their waist line and get six pack abs, you know this is one of the biggest lies of all times. It’s fraudulent. You and I both know, Kevin, any health professional knows that spot reduction is impossible.

Kevin: Yes.

Craig: Your body physiologically does not have a mechanism to magically melt fat from a given area of the body. As much as we would like to remove fat from our midsection or from our butts or from our thighs or from wherever your problem areas are, the body does not care about that. The only way you can spot reduce is if you do it surgically, which, of course I don’t recommend.

Kevin: Yes.

Craig: So the pieces of equipment that are out there, you know the manufacturer’s that advertise for pieces of equipment like the Ab Lounge, the Ab Rocker, the Ab Roller the Ab Doer, the Bean, the Red Exercise, I’ve tried all of these pieces of equipment. They just use fraudulent claims and it’s deceptive, it’s a lie. They shouldn’t be able to do it. It should be illegal. Now, if you want to buy one of these pieces of equipment, some of them, not all of them, some of them can work. Hey, I have a stability ball. You can get a stability ball for 20 bucks these days.

Kevin: Yes.

Craig: I love this stability ball for doing ab work. The Bean, I tried that. I bought the Bean to review it. I don’t like it. I can get a better workout. For me, I can, get a better workout on the floor doing crunches, but it’s not bad and it’s great for my four year old. She can sit on my chest when I do it. She likes it. She has fun and I can get some exercise where I can’t do that if I’m doing crunches so I have all kinds of — even the stability ball is great for her to play with while I go off and do some other stuff. So if you want to use some of these pieces of equipment to supplement your workout know to build up strength in your abdominal area, that’s great, but it’s not going to magically burn fat off your midsection. You’re never going to see a six pack of abs through fat and that’s the reality, but there’s a lot of other pieces of equipment like, for example, the Red Exerciser. Well, I reviewed this piece of equipment and it is truly one of the worst pieces of equipment I’ve ever tried. I can’t believe people are actually buying it. You know, it simulates the motion of, you know, moving back and forth as if you were on an office chair. I think you can get the same end results — by using an office chair actually. Pieces of equipment like the Thigh Master,

Kevin: Okay.

Craig: This is a multi-million dollar product that people have been tricked into believing it’s going to magically reduce inches from their thighs. Leg Magic, the Gazelle Freestyle, I’m not a big fan of. Because it makes people believe that it’s the emotion of an elliptical and it’s not, it’s more like the motion of a cross-country ski machine which is not the same type of motion. It puts a lot of stress and strain on the hip flexors and it’s not a movement that is sustainable for a long period of time. It’s kind of like the old Stairmasters. If you can only do it for five minutes well, you’re just not going to get a lot of benefits from it.

Kevin: Yes.

Craig: And then there’s another one. I love to talk about this one. It’s called the OCM Eye Gallop which is said to mimic the motion of riding a horse.

Kevin: Yes.

Craig: But it delivers the results of a donkey. It’s the most ridiculous thing that you could possibly think about. Then, of course, you’ve got electronic muscle stimulators, anything that people put around their waist. They think that there’s going to be electronic pulses that are going to magically reduce inches from their waist. The Slender Tone Ab Belt, don’t buy it. It’s been now FDA approved and they have taken out all of the deceptive claims because the FDA went after a lot of these companies and they litigated against them and they shut them down, but then they came out and they approved the Slender Tone Ab Belt. So Slender Tone now doesn’t use any of the same verbal claims, but they use all the same deceptive before and after images making people believe that they’re going to get these six pack abs from this thing. They’ve also come out with a pair of shorts that you can put on that will send electronic pulses into your thighs and your hip and your butt and make you believe you’re going to lose inches off those areas. I don’t know. Maybe it’s going to make you feel good but it’s not going to melt inches off your butt or thighs. That’s for sure.

Kevin: I remember recently looking at that Galloping machine or one similar to it.

Craig: Yes.

Kevin: I looked into some of the research about the claims that they made and I think that the focus group or the study group was like nine or fourteen people that they use over like a two week period. I’d have to check my numbers again, but the information that they’re getting their claims from is not very strong fact-based information.

Craig: Yes. Well, don’t get me started on these studies because it’s so easy to say you did a study. Nobody ever looks into the fine detail of that the study actually was. So it’s easy to say that scientific evidence shows or some college performed this test to prove that you would reduce 100% more calories if you did this than something else.

Kevin: Why do we put so much attention or so much credibility towards if a college did it or something like that. Why do we do that?

Craig: Yes. Well, people have been conditioned to believe that if a doctor says it, for example — that it’s true, but doctors for years told us that margarine was heart healthy and it was one of the worst debacles in the history of modern medicine. It was trans fat, hydrogenated vegetable oil and it caused probably more death than just about any other recommendation from a physician other than probably the recommendations to go on Vioxx or some other Fen Phen. Some of these other prescription drugs that killed tens of thousands if not millions of people and destroyed the health, certainly, of a number of people.

Kevin: When you mention the before and after pictures, now you and I both know that some of these people are paid.

Craig: Oh, absolutely.

Kevin: I still think the people like don’t like to believe that’s the truth.

Craig: Yes and it’s all the devil is in the detail and that’s where people aren’t looking. They’re looking at the surface level. They’re looking at the before and after and that triggers an emotional response. Everything, all of the buying decisions that we make are based on how we’ve been conditioned over the years and we’ve been brainwashed. That’s what conditioning is, to believe that there is a simple solution to get in shape, we want to believe it because, who doesn’t. I would much rather think that I can go on a diet for six weeks and achieve my ultimate health and fitness result and the truth of I’ve got to maintain an exercise and fitness regime and eat properly for the rest of my life and avoid toxicity and do all the other things that are critical, crucial in order to sustain a healthy and fit lifestyle. It’s just an unfortunate fact that there are a lot of people in industries out there that take advantage of the ignorance and insecurities of people who just want to feel better about themselves.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access more information on creating and living a healthy lifestyle and hear from other health experts just like Craig Pepin Donat please visit http://thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com.