7 Fabulous Fitness Role Models for Moms

a fitness blogger recently posted a picture of her well-toned self and her three kids with a caption that reads, "What's Your Excuse?" She claimed that her intention was to say that if she can do it with her three kids, everyone else can do it too. Because that's how it works, right? Whatever you think of her post or whether you believe that her intentions were genuine, my general feeling is that role models do not typically announce themselves as role models. Instead, they simply lead by example. Then again, she did land herself on a gazillion interviews because of that post, so maybe it's just me. The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about that whole controversy. She has two daughters, and our conversation moved onto how few female role models there are in pop culture for girls to look up to right now. When it comes to fitness, at least there are a few great role models for us moms. They are mothers with realistic bodies and high-profile, time-consuming careers who still make a strong effort to put fitness on their priority list. Here are 8 fabulous fitness role models for moms (and for all women, for that matter). -By Jessica Cohen

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Dad Films Premature Son's Miraculous First Year

Ward Miles Miller is a happy, pudgy 16-month-old Ohio boy who likes chasing the family dog and slurping green smoothies. But when he was born, 15 weeks prematurely, he weighed not quite a pound and a half, and required a host of machines to keep him alive during his 107-day stay in the hospital’s newborn intensive care unit. Parents Benjamin and Lyndsey didn’t know if he would survive. Now a short vedio of Ward’s first year, created by his photographer dad as a birthday gift for his mom, is serving as a testament to the boy’s fighting spirit and captivating viewers worldwide. “The response has been great—so many people have shared how it’s touched their lives,” Benjamin, 29, a Columbus-based wedding and portrait photographer, tells Yahoo Shine. “I’ve been blown away.”The 7-minute video, which he uploaded to Vimeo two weeks ago, has been viewed 169,000 times. And it’s growing in popularity during what happens to be National Prematurity Awareness Month, as promoted by the March of Dimes and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Benjamin shot his seven-minute film on a handheld Canon 5D camera, capturing moving moments from Ward’s first year of life. It begins with the scary first days in the NICU, and with Lyndsey carefully picking up her fragile baby for the first time. Once she gets him to her chest, after nurses help move away the host of medical wires and tubes attached to his tiny body, she’s overwhelmed with emotion and begins to cry. “I felt the same way watching—so happy, but then it sort of sets in what’s happening,” he explains. “I definitely cried while I was making [the film]. There’s a moment here when the camera is shaky, but I didn’t want to cut it, because it wasn’t about the perfect moments.”

Baby Miles with mom and dad in the NICU. Photo: Benjamin Scot Behind the scenes, he adds, were even harder moments, such as when they were told Ward had bleeding on both sides of his brain. “It could’ve meant nothing but scary things,” including the possibility that the boy would never walk, he says. (But it stopped, and Ward appears to be healthy.) Also painful was getting to know the other NICU parents and watching what they went through, including, in some cases, the deaths of their newborns. “It just breaks your heart,” Benjamin says. “You almost feel guilty walking out of there with your baby.”The film goes on to show Ward’s transformation—from a delicate, tube-fed preemie who cannot breathe on his own to a happy, healthy baby who eventually nurses from a bottle, smiles and giggles with his mom, and devours his first-birthday cake to the point it makes him vomit. That, Benjamin notes, is a result of his having an irritable throat; feeding issues are common with premature babies. In the U.S., according to the CDC, one in eight babies is born premature, or at least three weeks before the due date; it’s a rate that’s gone up by 36 percent over the last 25 years. The babies account for a large proportion of infant deaths, and those that survive face many health risks, including possible cerebral palsy, speech issues, vision and hearing problems and, like Ward, feeding disorders. Dealing with a newborn preemie, notes Kelli Kelley, founder of Hand to Hold, a national support network for parents of preterm babies, “is a very isolating experience.” Kelley was particularly taken with Benjamin’s video, and wrote to him Thursday about the possibility of using it for educational purposes. “I just sat there and sobbed because that is my same story,” she tells Yahoo Shine of her reaction to the film, referring to the birth of her now healthy 13-year-old son. “I was remembering what it felt like to hold my baby, that weighed basically a pound, for the first time, and it had such a profound impact, because that’s not what you envision. I was so scared to love my baby, because I didn’t know if he would survive.”

Goodluck Insulted Muslims By Going To Jerusalem On Pilgrimage (Opinion By Sheikh Gumi)

By Sheikh Gumi

I am not a keen political commentator probably because my brain also filters information through the prism of religion, but I definitely now believe that Mr. Jonathan is neither a politician nor does he mean well for other Nigerians.

His ‘tourism’ to Israel is a big political blunder, I said tourism because it’s never in the annals of true Christianity to partake pilgrimage as it’s a cardinal tenets of Islam to go on such pilgrimage to three most Ancient mosques in the World. In a hadith narrated by Al-Bukhari and Muslim from Abu Huraira, the prophet – peace be upon him was quoted as saying: “No religious journey is allowed except to three mosques”. They are the Makkah mosque, the Medina mosque and the Jerusalem mosque.

Nigeria along with many other African and world countries has sided with the plight of the Palestinians that were forced out of their homeland, killed and scattered. There are still Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and all over the world. They are prevented from entering their mother land just because it was confiscated by the western powers with Israel used as a ‘front’. It’s a share case of colonization with expulsion of the rightful occupants. For this reason no Nigerian president in the past, Muslim or Christian has visited Israel in order not to honor such injustice.

Today Nigeria riddled with insurmountable political, economic and social problems, our least priority is a state visit to a controversial state where human suffering is the norm of the day. What do we stand to gain from Israel? For one, the Jews -I am saying this without any prejudice- are traditionally known to be misers while we African are seldom not beggars. Charity is not in there lexicon. Jesus – alaihis Salam- has condemned them in the most explicable terms no other human has done. ‘Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?’M’t:23:33.

In the Quran, Jews were also cursed with misery and lowliness; they can only parasite on other nations to survive and on Allah’s mercy on occasions. Allah said: “ Shame is pitched over them (Like a tent) wherever they are found, except when under a covenant (of protection) from Allah and from men; they draw on themselves wrath from Allah, and pitched over them is (the tent of) destitution. This because they rejected the Signs of Allah, and slew the prophets in defiance of right; this because they rebelled and transgressed beyond bounds”. Q3/112

Notherless the Quran in fairness said “Not all of them are alike: Of the People of the Book are a portion that stand (For the right): They rehearse the Signs of Allah all night long, and they prostrate themselves in adoration. “ Q3/113.

What concern us now, is that Jonathan has succumbed to the pressure to support the Jews at the detriment of the oppressed Palestinians and the teaming millions of Nigerians living under the most appalling conditions, our children out of schools, and the ostentatious life style of his ministers, cronies and oil thieves.

If Jonathan wants religious peace in Nigeria, his visit to a religiously controversial state is a mistake. The message is that he is insensitive to Muslim’s sensibility. There is share recklessness in such an adventure. Truly Islam has enjoined Muslims to interact, mutually benefit with the Jews in business and marriage. Muslims are allowed to eat their food, therefore it should be understood that the Muslim’s apathy towards them is because of Zionism and the plight of their fellow Muslims. The Jewish experience is Spain under the Muslim rule is well documented. They prefer Muslim’s treatment to the Christians. Even in recent history what the German Nazi did to the Jews cannot be effaced.

My advice to Israel is that they should not interfere with Nigerian problems, treat Mr. Jonathan as a simple tourist. As I also beseech them to facilitate Muslims going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem as instructed by the prophet of Mercy.