At some point, worrying about our health can become unhealthy in and of itself. This video speaks volumes, and it’s absolutely must-watch.

You don’t become the world’s richest man without being a bit eccentric. But this is pretty outrageous, and it’s something we never knew about Warren Buffett.

Warren Buffett is obsessed with weight. Obsessed as in OCD. He pays family members to stay within a certain BMI range, and ties weight goals to pay structures for his children.

This video is a fascinating look both at an American icon and a cautionary tale of placing too much emphasis on weight.

Image credit: Topnews.in

But we know, deep down, this is only half true. Sure, if we all had unlimited time, many more of us would work out, but even with our compressed schedules, we find time to squeeze in other things that are important to us.

The fact is, we just need a compelling enough reason to get started. If you find the right reason, it will take you past the point where you want to quit, to the point where working out is a habit, even part of your identity.

For the affluent, hiring a personal trainer is a great way to create that reason. It’s expensive, but having someone waiting for you, on your dime, is in instant reason to be at the gym.

For the rest of us, we need to look a little harder for the reason. We love Podfitness, but we still have to have a reason to want to show up. Several of us have started boxing. It’s an unconventional, fun, and exhilarating (and sometimes exhausting) way to get fit, and it helps build a skill that requires you to up your fitness level to get better.

For some of us, it might be a pair of jeans we want to fit into. For others, it could be getting ready for wedding photos. And for a lot of us, there are health problems we know we’re in danger of that only exercise can prevent.

Whatever it is, start paying attention to your feelings to find something in your life that would get an upgrade if you start exercising now. The rest will fall into place once you find your foothold.

After the coin toss, it was decided that we’d have to change our name.*

The fact is, after 3 1/2 years, we’re no longer just a “downloadable iPod accessory”: We’ve got versions for Zune and other MP3 players, and we’re expanding into the mobile arena and other awesomely cool places that have to stay secret for now.

We think NextFitness is a good choice, it implies that our direction is way beyond iPods or podcasting, without being too much of a shock to the system (we’re not going for trite web 2.0 stuff like “fitr” or anything!). Hopefully, it is indicative that we’re bringing something entirely new to the world of fitness.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll start to see subtle and not-so-subtle changes around our product and our website. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store, and as always, we welcome your comments and input.

*We can’t confirm it was decided by coin toss; it was an educated guess on our part.

In the “highly interesting observations” department, look what an eagle-eyed observer noticed this week.

From our fitness profile:

And here’s an eerily similar set of qualifications from a new fitness site:

There are 2 scary things about this:

1. They couldn’t even keep the grammar intact. From seeing the site, spelling and grammar are not their strong suits, but they actually wrecked the grammar after cutting and pasting!
2. The material they stole came from inside the fitness profile. That means they signed up for Podfitness before ripping us off. Who knows what else they stole to make their product?

We won’t be linking to their website, because their company name does not even come up when you search for it in Google, and we’d like to keep it that way.

We have no idea about the legal ramifications of this; we at the Podfitness Blog are not lawyers and whatever happens is well outside our realm of opinion and commentary.

It looks to me like they were “shooting for the stars” and landed on our website.

(image credit: University of New South Wales Website)

- Now works with iTunes 7.7.1

- Music selection is much faster and smoother

- Runs in menu bar, rather than in Dock

- “Percent complete” is now more accurate

To get it, just use Podfitness, you’ll automatically be asked to update and relaunch.

Important: Make sure you’re using the latest iTunes (7.7.1).

If you have questions or issues, drop us a line in the comments, or visit our community forums!

A pretty disturbing new study by Johns Hopkins suggests that by 2030, 86 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese, with related health care expenses pushing close to 1 TRILLION DOLLARS. With a “T”.

This means that in 20 years, there’s an 86% chance you’ll be overweight! Those are not terrific odds.

Not to despair, it’s easier to be in the 14% than a lot of people think. In fact, thinking is exactly what will put you in the 14%, rather than the 86%.

At Podfitness, we’re not sitting on our hands about this, either. The fact is, people don’t want to get off the couch to try to lose weight, and we’ve actually got something pretty revolutionary up our sleeve. We’ll post about it quite soon. 

So we made up the part where Jackie Chan will kick you in the face if you do not drink this tea. But he does want you to try it, and who are we to argue?

(So maybe we found it in a supermarket, and our curiosity was piqued.)

There are 3 reasons we think you should try this stuff:

1. It’s cold-pressed green tea. That’s the kind you want; it’s better for you than brewed green tea. It’s the best stuff we’ve seen on the market for instant, brewed, or bottled tea. There are 50MG of EGCGs in it, and 150MG of antioxidants.

2. It’s sugar free, but doesn’t taste like a saccharin-sickle. It’s actually pretty good, with just the right amount of sweetness. After taste-testing lemon and raspberry, we prefer lemon, though both are surprisingly tasty. Kind of a Crystal Light-ish flavor.

3. It’s cheap. We picked ours up at Albertson’s for around 25 cents a packet. Seeing as many instant drinks try to hit you for north of $1.00 apiece, this seems like a pretty good deal.

Super healthy and cancer-preventing, easy, cheap, and tasty. What in the world are you waiting for?

Note: Some cursory research shows that the makers of Jackie Chan’s Tea, TeaTech, are located a couple of miles from Podfitness headquarters. They, nor anyone else, will get a paid review here. And although we’ve never talked to them before, we’d be willing to drive down just to see Jackie slaving over his latest batch of delicious raspberry tea.

Friday, Chris Kluge and I went down to the Apple Store to pick up the new iPhone 3G. We wanted to make sure we got one in time to get back to Podfitness Home Base, so we went extra early.

We figured we’d be close to the front of the line if we showed up at 5 AM, and we couldn’t have been more wrong. There were more than 100 people in front of us. Shortly before the store opened, the line seemed to go on forever:

We eventually got our iPhones, but the problems Apple was having activating phones meant we didn’t get out of there until after noon. There were lines throughout the weekend.

Sitting in line for 7 hours wasn’t exactly our plan, nor was it something we’d recommend for a healthy lifestyle. Still, it was fun and we’ve got the newest gadget.

We’d like to know if you’re as psyched about the iPhone as some of us are. Would you use it to work out, or is it too fragile/expensive?

A lot of people believe the diet industry is conspiring to keep us fat, so that we keep buying weight loss products. This is a load of rubbish, but it’s easy to see why this notion keeps popping up.

We’re continuously sold a string of short-term fixes (lose 10 pounds in 10 days!), and when they don’t work long-term, we go out in search of another one.  

There are 127 million overweight adults in the US, spending $43 billion on weight loss. That means the average overweight person is spending almost 350 bucks a year on their weight loss plan, yet the number of overweight adults is increasing, rather than decreasing.

So it’s quite refreshing to hear advice that is designed to work long-term, easy to apply, and isn’t full of marketing-speak. They asked 6 diet experts about fad diets, and got some surprising answers.

We definitely recommend reading the entire article over at MSNBC; we think there’s more real-world truth in it than in a lot of the diet books we’ve read.

Don’t you enter a fat-burning zone when you exercise at lower intensities? The idea of a fat-burning zone is b.s. In order to burn only fat, you would have to go at such a slow pace that you’d burn only two to three calories per minute. You’d have to walk 50 miles to get a decent workout. It’s better to exercise at a moderate pace, so you’ll burn some fat and some carbs. Doing that regularly can definitely help you control your weight.

Our resident weight loss and fitness expert, Bryan Haycock does take one issue with the article: it places a lot of emphasis on diet.

While it’s true that diet overshadows exercise in strictly losing pounds, the article doesn’t take into account the fact that exercise is like a medicine for a host of problems and diseases that diet can’t touch, and absolutely essential to living a longer, higher-quality life.

We’d be curious to know if you’ve tried losing weight with just exercise or diet alone, or with both. Has it worked short term? Long term?

Yahoo reports on the 5 unhealthiest drinks. Some are surprising. In others, the only surprise is that you could gain almost a pound of fat in a sitting.

It’s definitely worth your time, especially if you’re a die-hard Vitamin Water fanatic (we’re looking at you, 50 Cent).

It reminds me of the Simpsons episode that had Bart and Lisa walk in on a fat, bloated Krusty:

“To get into shape, I’ve been drinking nothing but milkshakes!”

“You mean those diet milkshakes?”

“Aww, crap!”