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Did you ever think when you started playing golf that it could have such a profound impact on your life. Did you ever think that you would be in the gym trying to make yourself better at it? Did you ever put these together and think of how having something to show for it keeps you dedicated? I didn't until just recently, but over the past few years I have discovered that being in shape does make things quite a bit easier on the golf course and have become religious to my routine.

Flexibility, strength, muscle speed, increased cardiovascular functionality; all attributes you will develop when sticking to a proper golf fitness routine.

How will you benefit? It's no secret that the best players on the planet are like Gumby when it comes to flexibility, but under those polos, these guys are completely ripped, and have the muscle speed to go with it. A deadly combination when it comes to distance.

I've played with some guys who play baseball as their primary sport. They claim to be able to hit the ball a mile. Well, let's just say I've been able to win quite a few bucks off of these meat heads. Why? Because most baseball players are power players. They spend all their time in the gym bulking up. They don't seem to understand that being flexible and having muscle speed can generate a lot more clubhead speed that pure brute strength, not to mention make it easier to make solid contact.

My professional advice to these fellas and simply anyone looking to improve their golf game through proper fitness is, if you want to be a long bomber, if you want to be really good, really consistent, and it be effortless, here's what you need to do. Take the weight down, and the reps up. Develop flexibility and muscle speed by using an explosive golf fitness routine. Increase your upper body and hip flexibility, rotator cuff strength, shoulder turning ability, leg strength, core stability.

Hardly any of this requires really heavy weights. It simply requires sticking to high energy explosive routines. You can do most, if not all, at home.

How does all of this help? The more flexible you are, the less restricted your swing is, meaning you have less tension in your muscles, leading to more consistency. The faster your muscles can fire, the more clubhead speed you can generate. The more stable your core, the better your posture will be. The stronger your rotator cuff, the faster you'll be able to pull through with your target side, generating more clubhead speed.

One last example, Sergio Garcia, Sean O'Hair, Jonathan Byrd, all struggled before dedicating themselves to fitness. Now they're in contention week in and week out, busting long drives, hitting deadly straight irons, and being more consistent in general. And as for tiger, well he started the golf fitness revolution. I don't have to tell you what he's done.

Check out the link here for an absolutely amazing golf fitness resource. - Fitness for Golf
I write in this blog every few days which from time to time I like to include some awesome
FREE golf tips. Make sure to check that out here - View My Blog

Cody Wheeler is a PGTAA Class A Master Instructor. He has been heavily involved
in the golf industry for over 15 years and is currently authoring an innovative golf
e-book complete with pictures and videos!

With two out of three Americans overweight today, its getting harder to believe that all this extra fat is a simple problem of self-indulgence or poor personal discipline.

In fact, researchers and clinicians from various sciences say unequivocally that its not. Certainly adults are responsible for what they put in their mouths. But when so many are affected, from all across the American demographic, we have to also look whats going on in our culture at large.

And one thing thats going on is that theres a lot more going out. In 1978, just 18 percent of the calories Americans consumed were eaten away from home. But by 2003, that was up to half.

Why should that even matter? A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, right?

At the bottom line, yes. The trouble is that when we eat out, we simply have much less control over what ends up on our plates, and from there, on our bottom line. That shows up in a variety of ways.

Nutritional research indicates that for almost any given dish that you might choose to prepare at home, when its compared to a restaurant dish of the same name, its often not the same thing at all. So even trying to consciously select what looks like the healthiest choice on the menu might not do you much good.

Restaurants tend to use more oils and fats, more sugar, and more salt in their food preparations. The reason is simple: if the food is yummy, youll come back! But that tends to add up to a lot of extra calories you werent counting on.

And speaking of extras, how about all those extra nibbles: the plates of appetizers, the baskets of warm bread with pots of cool butter, the bonus beverage specials? Most families simply dont have all those edible accouterments with regular home meals.

But at a restaurant, your drinks are brought before you even order. You often get bread or rolls to eat during your wait, and appetizers and desserts are helpfully suggested by your server.

Yet those extras can have even more calories than your meals! An order of buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing? Thats a tidy 1,010 calories before dinner. For a fried onion blossom with dip, figure around 2,000. Even a basket of garlic bread is about 800 calories. How many people are sharing those calories at your table?

Then you get to the main attraction, and the major problem with dining outportion size! Restaurant meals are often three to four times larger than a normal serving size.

Even plates, glassware and utensils have grown. Very often, the dinner plate you get in a restaurant would qualify as a platter in any home kitchen, but then, they have to be bigger to accommodate those super servings!

It wouldnt be such an issue if we were better at walking away. An old adage about fitness says that the most important exercise to do is pushbacks, as in, when youve had enough, push back and get up from the table.

But research shows that Americans in general tend to be completers, and many of us were raised to feel a sense of guilt if we left food on our plates. Add that programming to a giant dish of pasta, and suddenly, youre stuffed!

The truth is, no matter how we're raised, or whether we're slim or fat, if more is put in front of us we'll eat more, period. And usually, we're not even particularly aware of it. This has been proven out by study after study, in both the United States and abroad.

And that's not all. The research also shows that as we become accustomed to those mega-sized meals were presented in restaurants, we tend to prepare bigger portions at home, as well. We may not use all the extra oil, salt and sugar that restaurants do, but were certainly having more of our main ingredients, and were eating big and hearty.

The other thing that restaurants have over the home meal is variety. Even the most accommodating home cook typically wont make a different special meal for each member of the family. Again, the nutritional research shows that the more different things you can have, the more youll eat overall.

United States Department of Agriculture studies showed that when offered three varieties of a given food itemsay, sandwiches or cookiespeople would eat more than if they were offered three items of the same variety. Thats part of why those all-you-can-eat buffets are such a caloric catastrophe. Who ever has just a little?

Given the demands of todays busy lifestyles, dining out nowadays is not only a pleasure, but a time-saving survival tool. Restaurants may eventually be required to provide nutritional facts for their meals, but even without hard numbers, awareness of the pitfalls can go a long way toward helping us control those calorie counts.

We just need to think about what were up against when someone else is serving, so that when were eating out, were not taking so much in.

Caroline J. Cederquist, M.D. is a board certified Family Physician and a board certified Bariatric Physicians (the medical specialty of weight management). Dr. Cederquist is the founder of Bistro MD a home diet delivery program that specializes in low calorie gourmet food that is delivered to your home or office and a practicing bariatric physician.