I have recently had the wonderful opportunity to get an interview with Mobile Marketing & Broadcast Production Assistant of the Washington Nationals‘ Baseball Club, Oscar Bermudez, and he gave me some GREAT information about the Nationals that I believe a lot of baseball fans do not know. I’ve came up with questions that he gave amazing feedback on, and here is what he shared with MECKids:

DG: How long has the NatMobile been in existence?

Oscar Bermudez: The NatMobile has been in existence since August 2009.

DG: The NatMobile has made such wonderful contributions to support health and fitness for youth and families.  What is the NatMobile’s overarching mission in the community and what kind of impact has it made?

Oscar Bermudez:  Our mission is to spread the joy and excitement of the Nationals out into the community.  Many of our fans only experience this feeling when they come to our stadium, Nationals Park, but we spread the excitement out on the road, not just at the stadium.  We have realized that we have gained more fans and generated more love for the Nationals by us being able to take our excitement out into the community.

 DG: What is your favorite part of being a member of the Nationals organization & how has that inspired you?

Oscar Bermudez: My favorite part is always seeing the happiness of our fans when we take our NatMobile out on the road to an event and when I see the fans come to our stadium.  Their reaction and joy is contagious and it makes me feel so proud to know that we, as an entire organization, are able to bring this type of enthusiasm into their lives.  I feel inspired to continue being a good employee in order to see the smiles in our fan’s faces.

 DG: What are your thoughts about this season’s prospects and new players?

Oscar Bermudez:  I think we have one of the best teams in Major League baseball this year.  They have a lot of talent and 90% of the team members are back this year, so they know how to play together as a team.  Our new players are very experienced and should be able to blend in easily with the players that we already had from last year.

 DG: What is your favorite motivational quote from any of the baseball players?

Oscar Bermudez:  My favorite motivational quote comes from our Left Outfielder, Bryce Harper, who stated that, “hustle and hard work comes from within and you have control over it.”  Basically, meaning that even if you are not the smartest, fastest, or tallest player on the team, you can still work hard and hustle on every single play, because you control that and can show great energy each time you play.

DG: How did you decide on which new Racing President to add to the dancing mascots?

Oscar Bermudez:  I am not sure how our new Racing President, Robert Taft, was chosen, but I can say that he was a very well liked and respectable President in his time in office, and I am very happy with the choice.

DG: What inspirational words do you have for young aspiring baseball players?

Oscar Bermudez:  My advice would be to always work hard and never give up at the goal you have placed in your heart.  No matter how hard the challenge, goal, or task is, always do your very best to accomplish it.  It does not matter if you fail at it, just do your best and you will never have any regrets.  Do your best and never give up.  If you win, win like a champion, but if you lose, lose like a champion.

After interviewing with Oscar Bermudez, I got a very inspirational lesson in what “Natitude” is all about and his words of wisdom can motivate youth and families everywhere in living a healthful, fruitful and successful lives.

About Lori Rischer

Lori Rischer’s philosophy is that living a healthy lifestyle is all about balance. “It’s easier to be happy when you’re healthy”, says Lori, “and when you’re happy, you’re a nicer person.”

Her journey began when she started doing yoga and noticed her own life and health improved. She wanted to share that experience with other people so she became a teacher.  Lori was certified as a Yoga Therapist at Loyola Marymount University with Dr. Larry Payne in their renowned yoga therapy program. She also received a teaching certificate from Earth’s Power Yoga in Los Angeles.

“I’ve always been active, but as I got busier I realized it was harder to find time to take care of myself,” she says.  And no truer words could be spoken! Lori has kept incredibly busy as a national radio promotion/marketing executive at Island Def Jam Music Group, working closely with superstars such as: Rihanna, Bon Jovi, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, Neon Trees and Taio Cruz..  She also spent several years at The Firm, one of Hollywood’s top management companies based in Beverly Hills, While there, she signed OneRepublic and was on the management teams of mega artists such as Enrique Iglesias, OneRepublic, Ice Cube, Mandy Moore, Korn and many others. Her work has been widely recognized by the music industry. In fact, she was named the 2010 Promotion Executive Trendsetter by FMQB Magazine and the 2010 Executive of the Year by SIN Magazine.

Combining two of her passions– Music & Yoga– Lori teamed up with KIIS-FM  and 98.7 (KYSR) to be the Yoga instructor for their popular Yoga On The Pier and Yoga On The Beach summer promotions for the last three years. The series has been named Huffington Posts’  “Five Best Summer Workouts” and was featured in the LA Times, Malibu Magazine, LA Yoga Magazine, Pepperdine Times. “It is the highlight of my summer!” Lori exclaims.

Lori is also the co-creator, co-executive producer and host of the new celebrity health and fitness show from SkeeTV, Rockstar Health & Fitness.   “Everyone is interested in people who are in the public eye, so we found an opportunity with Rockstar Health and Fitness to focus on some of their healthy lifestyle secrets,” Lori says. The guest artists include: Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy), OneRepublic, Canadian superstars Hedley and Kim Glass a 2008 Olympic silver medal winner.

Giving back to the community is another important way Lori wants to create balance and a healthy lifestyle. She supports a number of charities that are very close to her heart. In 2008, Lori received the highest honor from the Make A Wish Foundation, the Chris Greicius Celebrity Award, for her work in helping make wishes come true.  She has also lectured at the Make A Wish Worldwide Conference. Additionally, in 2008 she was inducted into the Mentor Hall of Fame and this year, she completed her ninth year as a volunteer working with inner city teenagers for Youth Mentoring Connection.  She is also on the Leadership Council for A Place Called Home, a community center in South Los Angeles for at-risk youth. The Los Angeles City Council recently honored Lori for her contributions in making the city a nicer place to live.

The DC TapFest 2013 was an exhilarating evening featuring an extravaganza of tap stars and special guests including Grammy Award winning singer, Mya, Emmy Award winner Jason Samuels Smith,  the 7 year old tap dancing prodigy seen on Ellen, Luke Spring, stars of Broadway show Bring in Da Noise Bring in Da Funk, World-renowned Festival producers Chloe & Maud Arnold (soon appearing on Boardwalk Empire), and many more. I had the wonderful opportunity to interview with the Emmy Award winning tap star, Jason Samuels Smith, on his wonderful experience growing up in the dynamic world of tap and how it has enhanced health and fitness in his life in numerous positive and enriching ways. Here is what the tap star had to say on why “You Gotta Move!”:

“For tap dancing, you don’t need a lot of space to do it. I have been doing it since I was 7 years old so I have done it for about 26 years so far. Traveling is a big part of what I do. I have been to Brazil, Japan, China, Argentina and India. India is amazing! The culture there is so rich from food to their language. I love their spicy foods. I like to sweat when I’m eating their spicy foods and if that happens that means I’m happy. But I actually went out Bahati which is in Assam which is not far from Bengal so that is the closest I have been to Bangladesh. I worked with a Katak artist. Katak is a northern Indian style of dance and it is very similar to tap. They don’t wear shoes, vungudos, and they do storytelling. They do hand movements, neck movements, eyebrow movements and everything. I think the culture in India is the most amazing in the world. I have been there 8 times now. Any chance I get I will go back. I don’t think really that tap is only physically good, it’s like a language and everybody can appreciate it in the world whether they tap or they can do their own style of rhythmic dance but they can still appreciate the relationship tap has to music and music is universal.”

- Emmy Award Winner, Jason Samuels Smith

Click Here to View More Photos of the DC TapFest 2013

The Get Kids Movin Tour featured a variety of fun festivities for kids to get moving, including a wonderful  interview with phenomenal fitness experts such as the amazing soul singer, Green Tea and “Healthanista,” Tosh Patterson. Here’s the wisdom and fitness advice they shared with youth and families to keep them moving!

Green Tea: In the health industry, I’m a certified group exercise instructor. So I teach step aerobics and I teach strength resistance. I also counsel people on how to eat healthy and how to still eat cakes and pies while you’re doing your thing. If you stop once you have that little taste you start binging for it all the time when you aren’t eating the cakes and pies. I teach people how to do that, so that is what I do.

Tosh Patterson: In regards to what I do, I help people with two things. One, how to lose weight if you have been on a diet for a decade or more.  I help people figure out how to keep the scale moving again, so that you have success and I teach people the power of juicing fruits and vegetables. I’m a huge juicer! So I love juicing and that is one of the ways I got healthy. I like to show people the power of juicing.

Interviewer: Many people think that healthy eating is more expensive, they think it’s nasty what do you ladies have to say about that? Tosh Patterson: Because I buy so many vegetables to juice them and eat them, it’s actually not expensive. As you buy more fruits and vegetables, you are probably buying less cookies and less chips and that money is going towards fruits and vegetables instead.

Green Tea: I would say that I have a group of seven: 3 kids, a husband, 2 cats, and 1 dog. So it can get expensive when you’re trying to eat healthier because you’ll notice that certain things cost a bit more if it is healthy. So if you go to Starbucks, the smallest size of cups they have is a short and nobody knows that. People think the smallest cup is a tall. The short is not even on the menu and sometimes the smallest size which is a regular 8 ounce cup cost the most because it’s a regular portion size for a cup; it sometimes costs more than a tall but it’s a healthier choice. So just an input from me, I always ask my clients how much they spend in the grocery store and if they say $200, I can relate to that because when I go grocery shopping every two weeks, I always get fresh produce. I don’t do anything boxed or any frozen veggies. I do everything fresh and I still get all of my stuff for $200. So, I teach my clients that with that $200 budget that you have when you’re buying hot pockets, pizza and steak and all that stuff you can still get fruits and veggies.

Interviewer: So what are some of your favorite meals and what are some snacks kids could make for themselves?

Green Tea: For snacks, I would say always keep live fruits or veggies in the house.  I have a drawer in my house filled with tangerines, apples, kiwis and bananas something that is a go-to and always have that on you when you’re hungry. And here is what parents and  kids could make for themselves, an english muffin pizza! What you do is get a light english muffin. The english muffin has two pieces, you add a little tomato sauce, sprinkle some reduced mozzarella cheese and put any size of turkey pepperoni. Let your parents help you put it in a toaster oven or regular oven for a couple of minutes so the cheese can melt. And as a result, the kids are happy because they have two pizzas when it’s really only one english muffin.

Interviewer: What would you suggest to some parents on meals that are affordable for children on a weekly basis?

Green Tea: I would say that I would keep in mind when I make dinner that I have protein, starch, and veggies. I try to keep that in mind all the time. So I can take some chicken breast, put it in the oven, season it a little bit, some cabbage and then have a veggie with it. So different things like that. So I try to think like that. Or if I want to do quesadillas I would do it  with chicken and a little bit of cheese and then I’ll have a vegetable or a salad. So I always try to keep those things in mind: a whole bunch of vegetables, you have different options for your sides. You could have brown rice, you could have yellow rice if you want. You could have cabbage or cauliflower. All these different things so I try to keep them on the side. So I plan ahead of time. If you keep that in mind that you have a meat, you have a starch, and you have a veggie. If you have a whole bunch of veggies, a whole bunch of meats, sometimes kids get a little tired of chicken but you can do so much with chicken. Or one thing that I do that is very easy, you know how to cook cabbage, you can get some sweet Italian sausage and add it to the cabbage, so that is something really easy to do.

Other female: You guys won’t like this answer but I stopped eating fast food for the most part, a couple years ago, just as it has been for the effort to save money and it turned into a part of my lifestyle, so I really don’t eat fast food. But one of the things I stumbled on, I was cleaning my car and I found an old french fry from the Golden Arches and the french fry did not look a day old, at all. So, it really got my attention and I wondered why didn’t it have green mold on it? And why didn’t it look weird? And so I decided to do an experiment and if anybody in the audience wants to see it after this panel. But on Sunday March 31st, I bought a four piece chicken nugget meal from the Arches and it is still sitting on my counter untouched, unchanged. It does not smell and it’s sitting next to a cucumber that has completely shriveled up. It’s got nasty. It’s like mold and everything and it leads me to the conclusion that the fast food is not real food and it does not nourish us and it’s not worth spending our money on. If you want to see my project. I have pictures with me and so I would encourage people to move away from fast food  because I don’t think it’s real food. Because if it’s like that on my counter, it hasn’t changed, its not green, its not moldy, it doesn’t smell, then what is it doing in my body. And do we want to put those thing in our bodies? I don’t think so! We want to nourish ourselves, we want to nourish our bodies and we want to be well, not just to look good and be a certain size but so we can live a healthy life and have a good internal body as well, and we only get one body!

Washington Nationals Wednesday night lineup against the Miami Marlins was the first game with Bryce Harper back from Flu like symptoms. Bryce Harper made himself available to hit late in last nights game in spite of the fact that he was battling flu like symptoms. Bryce Harper is the Washington’s Nationals 20 year old outfielder. His  flu like symptoms kept his fellow outfielder, Denard Span, out of the Nats lineup in the second game of three against the Miami Marlins. They played at Marlins park in Miami. His teammates said that it looked as if he was about to die but he was ready to hit. He was pale as a ghost but still wanted to play. The Nationals lost to the Miami Marlins (8-2) a horrible loss against the Nationals in the series. The Nationals 2010 1 st round pick is back in the lineup tonight for the last game of the series against Miami Marlins. Span is still out, Roger Bernadina is back in the outfield tonight after going 0-4 with a grounder in the two hole last night. Bryce Harper and Steve Lombardozzi is at the top of the lineup. In 8 games so far this season,  Lambardozzi is 6 for 16 with three doubles one the year. The game features Ross Detwiler on the mound against the Marlins in his third straight start of the season. After this game the Nationals are off to face the Mets in New York.

These days you got to have every pair of Jordan’s that releases or you are a nobody. To me I think you can go without the shoe it’s just a hype beast. I love shoes and I buy them a lot but Jordan’s are starting to come out almost every week now. This weekend there is a pair of Jordan’s called the Air Jordan’s 8′s, the eighth  shoe that Michael Jordan released. The Air Jordan 8 was released during the 1992-93 “Three-Peat” Championship season. The Air Jordan 8 was the last Air Jordan shoe that Jordan wore before retiring the first time.  The Bulls and Jordan won their third consecutive NBA title. Jordan himself got seventh straight scoring title and reached a milestone in his NBA career when scoring his 20,000th point. The Air Jordan 8 was one heavy hype beast. It’s base was clearly close to its predecessor but it had a lot more details, colors, and accents. It had cross- over Velcro leather straps and padded. The padding in the shoe was thick so it made the shoe heavy and easily got warm. The Air Jordan 8 was first retroed in 2003. Nike kept it short and sweet with the Air Jordan release. It was only 4 color ways released in total. The Air Jordan 8 are also know as “The Bugs Bunny’s” because of the two straps that are on them. The Air Jordan 8 retros were one of the most anticipated retros ever released. Michael Jordan impacted the shoe industry in a big way but also played a role in children life such as mines. Michael Jordan is a big inspiration to me and somebody that I would be proud to look up to especially me being a young basketball player. Michael Jordan is an entrepreneur and a great basketball hall of gamer any person would live to be in his state right now. If I could do what he did and impact the world in such ways it would be a honor because people all over the world are wearing his shoes and making him more rich and wealthy even thoughtless doesn’t play basketball anymore.

Sports and other physical activities have innumerable physical health benefits. It can improve cardio respiratory and muscular fitness, bone health, increase life expectancy, and coronary health. Sports can also help prevent different types of cancer and weight gain. Sports can also have positive effects on mental health by reducing depression and improving cognitive function. Sports can give you long term weight loss and help avoid weight gain. Sports increases metabolic rates and can help increase lean body mass while you burn calories and get rid of excess fat. Sports can help you maintain a healthy weight. Between two and a half to five hours of moderately intensive physical activity can help achieve weight stability. High intensity sports can help people who want to lose weight or maintain a significant amount of weight loss. Sports can help people. Of all ages maintain and improve the health of their heart, lungs, and blood vessels. Physical activity can significantly reduce the risk of coronary disease and stroke.  As you grow older, physical activity becomes more important for the health of your bones, muscles and joints. Building bone, muscle and joint strength is also important for kids . Sports can be a form of mental therapy for people with physiological disorders and depression. Sports may promote self- esteem in the form of positive perception of body image and self- worth. Sorts can decrease colon cancer by as much as 300 percent. It can also significantly decrease the risk of breast cancer, and might decrease the risk of lung cancer.

The Washington Capitals‘ last game with the Winniepeg Jets at the Verizon center ended up with a victory for the Capitals. They’re heading to the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the Southeast Division Champions. The same team that’s started the season with two wins in its first 13 games and entered play in 14th place, seven points removed from a playoff spot and nine points off the division lead, won its fifth division title in the past six years and locked up the number 3 seed in the Eastern conference by beating the Jets (5-3) on Tuesday at the Verizon center. Braden Holtby made 24 saves for the Capitals.

The Capitals are 14-2-1 in their past 17 games dating back to March 21, when they played the first of two in a row in Winnipeg. They won both by a combined 10-1 and haven’t looked back in taking over the division lead from the Jets. The Jets played their  last game of the regular season Thursday against the Montreal Canadiens. Ovechkin had a combined 3 goals and five points in the last two games. Hendricks no. 5 gave Beagle no.6 an assists for the goal for the first points of the game. Ovechkin scores 2 straight points for the Capitals. Chimera scores the 4th goal for Washington to make the score (4-2). In the third period Perreault and Erskine both assisted each other with the final pints of the game and the Capitals come out with the win against the Winnipeg Jets for the final score of (5-3). With this win against the Winnipeg Jets the Washington Capitals clinched the first spot for the Southeast division and winning the division championship. Some people believe that the winning streak that the Capitals went on was nearly impossible about a month ago the way they where playing, but the Capitals bounced back and clinched a top spot in the division.  Congratulations to the Capitals for their hard play!