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About This Site.

This site is the website of motivational speaker Craig Harper. A constantly updated, one-stop information, inspiration, education and motivation station. Unlike many similar sites, it is a totally free resource for anyone who is serious about moving from mediocre to amazing in any area of their personal or professional life. With hundreds of articles covering a wide range of subject matter, great interviews with cool people and inspirational video posts, there's more than enough brain-food to keep you busy for hours. Okay, days!! Enjoy.


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In this entertaining presentation, Craig discusses the notion of Renovating Your Body - once and for all. Many of us have a curious ability to be able to get in shape for events (weddings, parties, reunions and birthdays), if only we'd get in shape for life.

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Welcome to Craig's site.

Craig Harper is Australia's leading motivational speaker and educator (according to Google Australia). He is a highly sought-after corporate coach and is considered to be a leader and pioneer in the areas of personal and professional development.

Working with hundreds of teams, companies and a wide variety of organisations on numerous continents over the last twenty years has given Craig a unique insight into, and understanding of, human performance and all its variables. Craig has an ability to educate, inspire, challenge and make people laugh all at the same time!

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Renovate Your Life Blog


Friday, September 5, 2008
Heart Attack in a Box
It seems that yesterday's post pushed a few buttons with some of you. Good to see you're all paying attention. I love it when you get a little fired up. I'm sure today's article will generate some passionate responses also. Don't forget, I'll be in Perth for instalment one of our Renovate Your Life National Tour on September 14 (Sunday week), so if your Life is in need of a make-over, you may wanna click on this thingy and book in. On with today's post....

The Quad Stack Burger. Oh Yes.

Here in the Land Down Under we have just added another menu option to our ever-expanding culinary landscape. Just what we need. I guess it's not often that the humble hamburger receives saturation press coverage on a national level, but the new Hungry Jack's (Burger King in the US) Quad Stack Burger (see picture) has been getting just that over the last two days. Every major television and radio station in the country has been running stories about the $5.95 heart attack in a box. And won't the good folk at Hungry Jack's be rubbing their fat little hands together with all that free PR for their new product.

And despite the excessive fat, salt, sugar, cholesterol and calories, it seems the burgers are running, or should I say waddling, out the door at a rapid rate. Take a look at some extracts of a story taken from one of our national newspapers (The Adelaide Advertiser). The stuff in italics is the original text from the article and I've added a few thoughts of my own (there's a shock) in this yucky colour...

Adelaide Advertiser September 3, 2008

A FAST food chain's "gross" 1080-calorie burger is irresponsible and a sign that the industry is ignoring health warnings about the obesity epidemic, experts say. How can a burger be irresponsible? And irresponsible to whom? Is the state of our national health (and waistlines) the responsibility of fast food companies? Don'tcha think we might personally have something to do with our country sitting at the top of the fat table? Let's not delude ourselves, yes they sell unhealthy crap - we all know that - but surely their 'responsibility' as a commercial business is to make money, keep their shareholders happy and sell as many burgers, fries and shakes to as many suckers as possible. That's how it works right? Just like your responsibility as a person who owns a brain is to make good choices about what you shove in your mouth. If people are stupid enough to CHOOSE to buy and consume the stuff then THEY should be held responsible for what THEY DO to their own bodies. To the best of my knowledge Hungry Jacks aren't force feeding the masses are they? There is a free will component to the obesity thing isn't there? How dare I state the obvious; of course we do it to ourselves but it's always so much easier to blame them for my fat self isn't it?

Obesity doesn't happen accidentally - we choose it (consciously or not), we create it and then we try to make someone or something else responsible for our poor decisions and our lack of self control and discipline. It should be a personal responsibility thing. Rather than wasting time, energy and resources blaming companies for our individual and collective fat guts, why don't we get mad at ourselves - after all, that's who really makes us fat. Let's be honest, multi-nationals don't care about my cholesterol or the size of your ass. And neither should they. You should. I should. They simply wanna sell stuff.
I can manage my cholesterol and you can manage your ass by choosing to avoid products such as this burger. Just like you don't care about their bottom line, they don't care about your bottom.

TV commercials are promoting the Hungry Jack's Quad Stack Burger, which contains four beef patties, four slices of cheese, two rashers of bacon, barbecue sauce and two sugared buns. It contains 71g of fat, 34.7g of saturated fat, 1930 milligrams of sodium, and 74.8g of protein. That is kind of obscene but I have an idea... let's not eat one! That might work. It is humanly possible right? The burger, which sells for $5.95, has no salad and the calorie content equates to more than half of a woman's recommended daily energy intake and nearly one-third of a man's. That calorie statistic is complete crap. It could be true however if all men and women had exactly the same calorie needs each day - which they don't. Individual energy needs and expenditure vary greatly depending on the weight of the person, general activity levels, body composition, age, occupational activity levels, exercise habits and genetics.

When shown a photo of the burger by The Advertiser yesterday, Health Minister John Hill said: "This is just gross and encourages binge eating." Doesn't encourage me. You? Maybe it's about individual response. My response is, "no thanks". "It is unbelievable in this time of heightened awareness of obesity that a junk food producer would sell this product," he said. If people are stupid enough to buy them and eat them.... someone's gonna sell 'em! That's how the world works. It's called business. It's been happening for a while now. Ever heard of cigarettes? Alcohol? Apparently they're not so healthy either. Still for sale though. And rumour has it, quite popular. They are kind of profitable for the government too. Hey, who's that knocking at my door?

Life Personal Trainers dietitian Tanya Lewis said Hungry Jack's was being "irresponsible" in selling the new burger. "I was quite surprised that with so much media about healthy eating and the whole anti-supersize thing that they would come out and do the exact opposite," she said. From a marketing perspective, it's actually quite brilliant; heaps of free PR, massive sales and cashola galore. Tanya's not happy but someone is.

Now, of course I'm not supporting Hungry Jack's or their new menu item and I would personally never even consider eating one, but our ever-increasing dimensions are not about what they (or any other fast food outlet for that matter) are offering, it's about what we (the masses) are buying and eating!


The proliferation of unhealthy eating options will not finish with this new burger. There will be more burgers. And pizzas. And donuts. And choc bars. And beers. And cigarettes. And drugs. And people will continue to use and abuse all of them. By choice. I would love to live in a junk-food-free world but it ain't gonna happen. So maybe we should all worry less about getting mad at the fast food guys and focus on what really determines our fitness or fatness; us.

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