Archive for August, 2011
Our Many Addictions are Loss of Mind Control
Posted by: | CommentsThe mind can be a devious master. All our lives we battle for control. Many times we submit because we can’t stand the heat.
We are familiar with the difficult battles of alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. These pernicious chemicals create a dependence that affect our mood, attitude, and behavior. Without them, we think we are not ourselves.
But there are also the lighter addictions like coffee, chocolate, soda, eating, TV, Face Book, smart phones, internet surfing, gambling,and sex. There are probably many more and each of us might have things we habitually need in our daily routine.
In a newspaper article Judd Handler reports:
“The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) earlier this month released a new definition of addiction. This applies to cup o’ Joe addicts as well. Got caffeine addiction? Here’s how to break the habit…
The ASAM now defines addiction as a chronic brain disorder. Whether it’s caffeine or illicit drugs or gambling or sex, addiction’s roots are not a behavioral, psychological or emotional problem; it’s a problem with your noggin’s wiring.”
Some habits we don’t realize are addictions. Some we acknowledge and say we want to break. Some habits we are powerless of breaking. One common trait of habits is they take up our time and maybe are the main focus of our lives while everything else is filler.
Maybe they give our lives meaning because we have been unable to find something else that fills the empty space with the same impact. Maybe the habits define who we are or give us our identity. These can be anything from our addiction to texting to our need for gambling.
The common solution is to find something as a substitute that takes the habit off our plate; more easily said than done if we have a chemical or psychological habit that goes deep into our wiring. It takes acknowledgement, courage, and strength to break habits.
I have never had a chemical addiction other than maybe caffeine, but I have faced many of the smaller ones. I have realized that being in control of my mind is a powerful and worthwhile effort.
The first step for most addictions is finding a substitute. Even if the substitute is also harmful, breaking the psychological connection allows winding down the substitutes until we arrive at something healthy. Adding healthy habits to our lives helps tip the scales to eventually have predominantly good habits.
On the lighter and superficial scale, I once broke my nightly ice cream habit by substituting Snickers and then granola bars. I have broken many food habits by eliminating the bad foods and adding something healthy one item at a time.
I have suggested to friends who drink too much that I was once shown that after reaching a good buzz you could start drinking water and it felt the same. Now not only are you satisfying the urge to keep drinking, but you are getting better and staying in the party longer.
Exercise is a great device for mind control. Your ability to push past the pain level when the mind says you are killing yourself is a great exercise to show how the mind can be wrong. It might be the first insight that you can observe what the mind is telling you and make a decision to do differently.
If you do what the mind says every time you are not in control. If you can observe and make an independent judgment or find a different route, you often train the mind to follow your lead. The mind and body want to do the best thing for you and they will be great supporters.
When I realized how much time I spent watching the news and sports on TV, I eliminated it and let other things fill my time. I wish people could go on bike rides, drive, go to the beach, and walk without the need to check their smart phones. No one is that indispensable and there is rarely anything that important coming over the wire.
Eliminating addictive habits and substituting healthy ones gives us time to be creative, innovative, inspired, productive, and happier.
How to Increase Your Passions
Posted by: | CommentsLife is best when lived with passion.
A single or many passions can create that zest that makes life wonderful.
Some people say they don’t have a passion or wish they could find one. Some say they have too much on their plate to find something new and they don’t love much that is on their plate now.
The stress of the daily grind can wear down our enthusiasm to find life exciting. We have a few people we love to see, but they have their own lives even if it’s our kids. We often are left to the Friday night blow out or the frequent visits down the excess food or drug trail to elevate our serotonin.
We get high on food, alcohol, or drugs to relieve the tremendous stress as we watch our security erode or worry about our future security. Too much stress blocks our ability to get into flow. Anxiety and stress are the products of too much Beta waves in our brain.
Flow is the result of the correct amount of Beta that is followed by dopamine production and the feeling we call happiness. The resort to alcohol, food and drugs blocks out our beta waves and brings on the alpha of the right brain to settle us in to a more creative, intuitive, dream state.
To get dramatic change, we have to change up our structure. We generally have a passion for something at which we also have some talent. One of the fastest ways to create dramatic change is our lives is to take things off our plate. This leaves us room to find something new.
My first dramatic change was taking out bad foods and putting in good foods. Over a four year period, I have become very good at this and I continue. Having lost 45 pounds, I now have a passion for staying lean. It feels very good.
I had a passion for TV. I watched CNN every evening and too many football games. I took TV out of my life. It left a big hole. TV turns your brain to mush even though it feels like its giving you a rest. I still love the news but I get it on line. I read more. I stay outside longer or find new things to do in the evening. It makes a big difference.
Staying active feeds on itself. There are lots of ways to exercise. There is the gym, walks, hikes, bikes, stretching, and classes. It can be social if you join groups which then support your efforts and make it more fun.
There are the quiet hobbies like writing, reading, cooking, crafts or collecting. A little time each day makes you better. My day is filled with things I like to do. Luckily I have the opportunity at this point in my life. I start the day with writing, then go to exercise, then reading and in the evenings cooking and socializing.
Even if you had a work schedule, you could feed these items in if you took other items off your plate. The more positive activities you have that are building your skills, the more enthusiastic you will be about the next day.
You might even get passionate as you see your skills improving.
Increase Jobs vs Cut the Spending
Posted by: | CommentsIts pretty easy for people like me to sit back and say this government really doesn’t work. It is always deadlocked when action is needed and the long run results don’t seem to bring improvement.
In fact, it seems that the nation without a government involved in any finances could operate on different cycles but without debt. Private enterprise could step into the breech when there were services that could be profitable, everyone would be dependent on their own survival skills and in the long run we would have a much smaller population.
I am leaving out the need for a military to defend ourselves against foreign foes or to defend out economics in other lands.
But on the other hand, I have to look at how any person or family might solve seemingly insurmountable problems because that is where we are right now. Since our inception in the late 1700’s Congress has been a dead locked agency when action was needed. Yet somehow, we don’t yet have people rioting in the streets for their personal freedom.
It’s how this nation works under law. We have two different economic classes trying to get what they feel is best for their survival through one government body. They have two different perceived needs. We have two different parties that represent those needs.
In an L.A. Times article:
“Economists generally support that two-step remedy as appropriate for the times: fiscal stimulus in the short term to keep the economy from slipping further, alongside a long-term plan to reform tax and spending policies to reduce the debt load.
Republicans, though, are in no mood for compromise. Fresh from holding the line on new taxes during the debt ceiling debate, the GOP is pursuing a vision of government that relies on larger tax breaks, spending cuts and regulatory relief to fuel economic growth.”
And that is why we have elections. We may have started off as the Federalists against the Republicans and the parties may have switched who they represent, but the underlying economic struggle remains the same; rich vs the not so rich.
Why Oxygen is Our Best Friend and Worst Enemy
Posted by: | CommentsAnimals evolved from bacteria and plants from algae.
They were the life forces back billions of years. When oxygen entered the earth’s atmosphere, bacteria formed mitochondria to burn it. When oxygen became more plentiful about 500 million years ago, life forms absorbed the mitochondria into cells. Now there was plentiful cheap fuel for energy.
This gave rise to an explosion of life forms. Larger life forms could exist because they had cheap available fuel for movement. The oxygen in the cells provided energy, but the oxygen that existed out of the cells were destructive.
Life forms fed on anti oxidants in the forms of vegetation. The greens from vegetables and fruit was nature’s way of protecting living organisms from natural forces. Without anti oxidants, life forms may not have evolved.
Enter modern man. He substituted Big Mac’s for greens and vegetables. He obviously knows more than earlier life forms. Look how healthy he is.
Why We Love and Hate Routine
Posted by: | CommentsIn a Face Book conversation recently with an old friend I commented that I had never been good with routine.
Now I live by routine. What I didn’t like in the past was the predictability, the thought that I would be doing the same exact thing for the rest of my life. It would make my skin crawl and create the desire to bolt and run as fast as I could.
Now I love the predictability of routine because I associate it with improvement. I have been writing almost every morning for a year and a half. I have struggled and triumphed. It has become easier in many ways. It has become part of me. Many of my friends who could not write could not get into the routine because there was too much thought in the way.
I love to surf. In the mornings, I see surfers join at the top of the stairs over looking the beach and decide whether it’s a good day. Wanting to improve, I often joined in their judgments. That means I wouldn’t surf on many days. Now I have learned to just go in. The surf is always a surprise and more than it appeared.
I know exercise is important in my life and want to continuously get stronger. The process of exercise makes me feel better and continues to turn fat to lean. I know in the process I am making every part of my body healthier. I do my morning stretches and then later a warm up, then surf, and now in the afternoons a run.
I don’t really think about whether I want to do it or whether it is a good day for it. It’s just part of my commitment to becoming better and healthier. In the background I am continuously improving my eating. I have the challenge of feeling strong enough every day to complete my routine. I need fuel and recovery. I eat the best foods for each and take the most important supplements.
Having passions is great fuel for enjoying life. Learning for me is a passion. I read continuously and sometimes fear I will go through my local library and have no books I like. But I find my routine of going each week to change out my books allows me to find new ones that I would not have thought I liked.
If the routine means improvement we will continue to experience change.
How to Tell If You Are Getting Healthier
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the first questions you should ask is how often do you get sick?
A good immunity system counters inflammation and fights sickness. Following pretty simple guidelines, I have not been sick in at least ten years.
How is your weight compared to your high school weight?
Most people were there leanest in high school because they were active and their energy was off the charts with very high metabolism. As we get older and eat the same food our lower metabolism causes us to pack on those extra pounds. It would seem right that we have to eat differently, not less.
Are you exercising daily?
When you are a child you are in constant motion. This continuous exercise allows the tearing down of muscle tissue and rebuilding into stronger muscles. The human body is formed from hundreds of species that pre date us by millions of years. We started as algae and progressed to sea born animals, then amphibians, then dinosaurs, and finally ape like creatures.
The body still thinks it is living in nature. Modern man has only lived in civilizations where he can shop at a market for a few years in evolutionary time.
How much sugar do you eat?
Most refined foods that come in cans, packages, and restaurant menus have lots of sugar. A 1,000 calorie fast food meal of a hamburger, fries, and soda have more sugar than a large hunk of elk. Your body uses sugar to estimate how much food you ate. A 1,000 calorie fast food meal translate to a 10,000 calorie intake which signals a call for enormous amounts of insulin, gastric acid, and several other dangerous chemicals.
When man foraged and hunted, food didn’t have refined sugar. He would eat fruit, vegetables, nuts, and meat. When man exercised daily and ate natural food, the body did not have to store much fat. It used the fats as fuel to do more hunting and foraging. We no longer train the body to use fat as fuel unless we do anaerobic exercise.
Exercising everyday and eating natural food makes the body healthier. Everything else creates decay, sickness, disease, disability, chronic ailments, and early death.
Live to 85 Exercising 6 Days a Week
Posted by: | Comments“Younger Next Year” by Chris Crowley and Henry S Lodge M.D. is preaching to the choir if you already exercise everyday, but is a great motivator if you live a sedentary life or are near retirement and have worked to hard too exercise regularly.
Henry Lodge takes us back 3.5 billion years when bacteria were the only life forms. Since then, all creatures except modern man have exercised until they die. The need for exercise is built into our DNA. When we stop, we are giving our primordial brain the message that we are ready for death.
When we exercise we utilize the Cytokine-6 that is master chemical for inflammation and decay which then instigates Cytokene-10 which is the master chemical for repair and growth. The body is 50% muscle and needs to go through a process of tearing down and building up.
When you are not exercising, C-6 is circulating anyway. It is creating inflammation and decay. These sisters lead to sickness and death. With exercise, C-6 is swept away and C-10 creates growth and vitality.
It can be that simple. If you exercise six days a week, your brain and body are getting the message that you are hunting and gathering and need to stay strong. Further explanation shows why trying a new sport takes time to develop the new muscles.
The authors are skiers and couch their lessons in terms of many sports. Those of us that have gone through the learning process in surfing can tell you that you are only good for twenty minutes the first few times of surfing and that it takes months to build up muscle stamina.
The muscle gets torn down each time you exercise and built back stronger in the rest period. We have all heard this at the gym. Their explanation helped me see something else I already knew. The body learns to burn fat for exercise if the exercise is at a slow heart rate. We trained our bodies for this process when I was long distance running.
For quick exertion like sprints, the body uses glucose. For sports like surfing, you need to burn glucose and fat. As you are capable of surfing over an hour, your body is reaching deep to burn all your fuels until you are exhausted. You use glucose to paddle out through the waves and to catch waves. You burn fat as you are paddling against the current to maintain your position on the break.
If you eliminate the bad foods and exercise your six days a week, your body reverts to its premium weight. I have dropped 45 pounds through diet and exercise and enjoy my high school weight where I played sports all year round.
Not only will you live longer, but your quality of life is supreme. You find that you no longer get sick nor worry about illness and health care. You start noticing how 85% of humanity in the U.S. is obese and clearly out of fitness. It seems we begin the downhill descent as soon as we leave high school.
College should be called “Get Fat U”. Working for a living and maintaining a family can also be distracting. By the time people are ready to retire, they are already feeling the signs of death and decay. The earlier you start, the greater the foundation the body enjoys for building muscle, burning fuel, and repairing decay.
I have never read a stronger and clearer expose for exercising to vitality.
The Dollar Stores are Out Performing Wal Mart
Posted by: | CommentsJust like the Volkswagon and the super saver stores like Price Club and Costco met success by attracting the affluent, the Dollar Stores seem to be doing the same.
There is a story in the news today that the 99 cent stores maybe the target of a buy out. Where the group of various Dollar stores are dramatically increasing sales, the largest of the of super savers, WalMart is facing competition as they are slowly picked apart.
Target is a sizeable competitor that decided it needed a greater mix of food in its merchandise to address the issue that faces more consumers, saving on the basics. It is clear that two trends are strong; saving money and reducing family budgets to prioritize necessities.
Businesses are capitalizing on this mentality. EBay not only brings great prices, but allows bidding. Craig’s List is certainly the bottom line on finding what you need on the cheap. Travel is not immune as TravelZoo, Travelocity, Kayak and others scour the providers to find the cheapest prices.
Services reflect two different situations and mentalities. The fully employed and optimistic can purchase from the outlets that serve their need to feel special. Those that feel cramped and see difficulties in their future can start conserving.
Sometimes we gulp as we realize that we should venture into territory not visited before in order to face our new reality. The rise of the Dollar Stores indicates more people including the affluent are making that venture.
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Read more in an article about Dollar Stores in the NY Times
How Does Past Life Reflection Affect Our Future?
Posted by: | CommentsRecently, I met up with an old college friend and room mate on Face Book.
I was going to follow him to Hastings Law School after college, but a family tragedy sent me in a different direction. He has spent his life in law and says it has been interesting. I spent most of my life in real estate and it was interesting.
Who doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night sometimes thinking about the past? Sometimes its good and sometimes it isn’t. We regret our mistakes and maybe the paths we missed that might have taken us to greater glories.
Some of the mistakes were also mixed with blessings. Without one we might not have had another. Everyone has a batting average. No ones hits everything out of the park. Accepting that some things were in our control, some were not, and Chaos Theory had as much influence on our lives as anything.
But today is part of our future. I know people fighting addictions that attend several meetings a week and everyday is a new beginning. Every day we can make good decisions that we will be proud of when we look back. Everyday we can build new relationships and make old ones better.
In this current environment we can live more conservatively and build reserves for an uncertain future. We can take better care of ourselves because we are not sure what kind of safety nets or health costs we could face in the future. We can keep our minds sharp by continuously learning. We can build happiness by engaging in our passions and having gratitude for the beauty that surrounds us free of charge.
Each day we build a more positive foundation, we loosen the grip of past errors. The elders in tribes are respected for a reason. The more mistakes you have made, the more you know.
Keeping Our Cool When Its Raining Cats and Chaos
Posted by: | CommentsThe best way to fight fear is have a good plan in place.
There is no one who isn’t worried about something these days. China, India, and Brazil are emerging solidly while the westernized countries are suffering and they are worried about inflation.
The Westernized countries and citizens are focused on income. In our future the road could diverge to recovery or recession. We could see inflation in commodities and deflation of assets. Currencies could be the rogue wave that upset every apple cart.
A solid top to bottom plan that is improved everyday (kaizen) keeps our mind focused on progress not on regression. A top to bottom plan includes our health, our family, our community, our income, and our assets.
We have approximately 80,000 days on earth and we want to make each one meaningful. It becomes more significant when the remaining days are fewer. Life is precious and we want to have experienced everything the earth has to offer.
Outside our occupations, there is a life force that propels us forward. The earth is continuously changing as it provides and takes away. Our lives are continuously interwoven as we build and maintain relationships. Our bodies have their own dynamics that are dependent on our care.
Our minds can grow and flourish up until the day we die. The plasticity of our brains allows new patterns to evolve as long as we are willing to provide new learning. In the end it really doesn’t matter what we accomplished in the material world. We will judge our lives by how much we enjoyed our own existence.
If we rise above the daily turmoil of hunting and gathering we will see our emotional reactions to everything that happens to us. Having a perspective that we need to improve in all areas and that each day is our pallet will give us something to look forward to even though life is full of obstacles we often have to dodge.
Looking for the emotionally satisfying experiences should guide our path through worry about the obstacles.
Its The Food We Don’t Eat that Matters
Posted by: | CommentsThere is a lot of money in coming up with the right combinations of foods for people to eat and hitting the magic button between delicious and no calories.
There is no money in telling people what not to eat. The second problem is that people won’t avoid the foods they shouldn’t eat, they just want to cut back. Calorie counting is about cutting back so that you can maintain your life and hopefully control your weight.
I see people trying to exercise their way to lean or losing ten pounds and most of the time it doesn’t work. I know, I tried it for years. I have been an excessive exerciser and a less than excessive exerciser. When I was less than excessive, I thought I was doing enough to take off twenty pounds.
What I found and what I see is that it is usually wishful thinking. The body was conditioned not that many years ago in evolutionary time to not allow excessive weight loss from exercise. Early man did not have the means to consume enough calories to offset the exertion required to hunt and kill. What if it took several days to find meat?
The body is synchronized to store fat for a rainy day. If it thinks you are starving because it is not getting the nutrients it needs, it will hold on tighter. Cutting back on calories while maintaining an American diet sets of the starvation alarm. Exercising in this process doesn’t relieve the body’s sense of security. It thinks you are out looking for food.
Eliminating food the body doesn’t recognize is the best process. It would normally store these foods as fat or encapsulate them in fat. The foods it doesn’t recognize are the foods that didn’t exist 100,000 years ago. McDonalds only had one outlet back then.
I really don’t need to tell you the rest, but just so you don’t feel cheated, one should eliminate flour, sugar (fructose), foods fried or dipped in hot oil, and dairy. Meat is not bad, but you should avoid meats with hormones and anti-biotics, and produce with pesticides.
Where as the meats with harmful ingredients are not making you fat, they are setting you up for problems later. An oncologist told me that fruits and vegetables soaked in a half cup of salty water for twenty minutes will neutralize the pesticides. I have been doing this for years.
If you eliminate the harmful foods, what is left? Food a gorilla or bear would eat. The bonus is you can eat as much as you want because these foods have few calories; fruits, vegetables, natural grain cereals, seeds, nuts, good oils, beans, and some pasta without cheese sauces.
Now when you exercise, the body doesn’t feel it is hunting for meat because it is getting all the food it needs and it will quickly release the bad food encapsulated in fat. It is not beyond reach to lose ten plus pounds a month. I easily lost 25 pounds in four months on a raw diet with lots of exercise. Now I just maintain with good eating habits.
One of my friends has a heavy exercise routine and wants more muscle to show eating the same diet. He says he will exercise the excess fat off. My bet is his body never changes.
Why the Downsizing Trend Will Continue Globally
Posted by: | CommentsSeveral months ago I started a website called InnovativeDownsizing.com. At that time after the 2008 melt down, the unemployed were mainly affected by the recession that ensued from the collapse.
In the recovery that followed, big banks, large corporations, certain niches, and developing countries were solvent, profitable, and growing. The governments had pumped a lot of money into the economies and saved several sectors.
The problem we are facing all too quickly is that the last thirty years of over spending by the populations and governments of developed nations is reaching a point where servicing the debt and unemployment are crossing paths.
If productivity, exports, and therefore tax revenues were increasing, everyone could be whole. When the opposite occurs in each sector for developing nations, consolidation follows. The stock markets are reflecting the consolidation predicted for the future.
How do individuals protect themselves? Even though I have been posting some mild articles about protecting health and considering food storage in a crisis, I see civil disorder ramping up. The fact that gold rising over $1,800 is leading to increased home robberies leads to concerns about safety if there is a shortage or difficulty in food supply.
This run on the markets will probably bottom out soon, but the trend has been established. There is no way out until the consolidation that could have been created by letting all the banks and big corporations fail originally, has played itself out.
That would have been an ugly scenario and we would be a few years into sorting it out at this point. The governments have forestalled that scene with massive injections of capital that have had no affect other than promising to make the final consolidation more frightening.
There is not enough real capital in the form of profits and wages being created to allow servicing of sovereign debt. Individuals will be caught in the squeeze as nations try to save themselves. There will be dislocations. In a sense, everyone will be on their own.
Hopefully, it will be years before we face the final axe of currency collapse, but as we see the reaction to recession in stock market drops, public concern could accelerate the panic. We need to set up our security, if possible, in all areas.
Jobs are out of our control, but food and personal safety is still within our grasp. Families should be setting up supplies for short term disruptions and discussing personal safety in case of civil unrest. It seems that an orderly and cooperative solution to issues that make people fearful is going to be sorely tested.
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You could read a sobering but not dramatic account of what will happen in Stephen Vickers’ “After the Crash of the Dollar”. Available in libraries.
What Food Would Be Available in a Crisis?
Posted by: | CommentsI would love to live out my years surfing and living in peace at the beach. It just doesn’t seem that even though I deserve it, the planets are aligned for me.
The more I read in the news (that might be the first problem) the more economic, political, and social unrest I see. The new move by the U.K. to punish the boys who promoted rioting on Face Book might be warranted but creates certain social concerns for the world’s population still ruled by tyrants.
We have seen a great deal of destruction in the riots of Greece and Ireland over austerity measures taken by the government. We have seen violence in the Mid East for deposing dictators. The London riots could be said to be racially based. We have experienced years of unrest in Iraq as power changed hands. We saw looting in Haiti as a result of a natural phenomena.
The message seems to be aimed at governments to correct the problems. Or if there is no government, people take the law into their own hands. These messages don’t wait for elections. What happens when there is a crisis that affects everyone like a currency collapse or a shortage of food?
This could occur as governments battle debt and try to keep order in the bond and stock markets. The bond market is the world’s main medium of finance and in which the stability of most sovereign nations rely. The ability of a nation to sell bonds affects the their ability to govern and the value of their currency. We are on a slippery slope.
It is not too early to consider what would happen to your family in case of a natural or financial disaster. In either case, you might not be able to drive for help. You may have to rely on what is in your household for up to a month.
In the extreme, you might have to take to the streets to barter with either food or something else with intrinsic value. Currency may or may not be the answer. There is no need to panic but it might be naïve or idealistic to think you won’t see it in your lifetime.
Are We Denying a Locomotive is Headed Our Way?
Posted by: | CommentsI have often been a good predictor of down trends. I have had success with gold and silver investments by seeing the discord in not only the markets but the public psyche.
They say don’t let your life be ruled by fear or you will bring what you fear. I have also found that to be true. But this new trend might not be influenced by how we think. What would be important is how we prepare.
I don’t consider myself a pessimist. But if I see a tsunami, I don’t think I can jump over it. There are plenty of indicators that major investors and governments are preparing for severe disruptions. The Chinese and Indian governments are two that are buying gold. China and major investors are eating up arable land in Africa.
If the global systems hit the wall, we can expect currency issues and even food issues. If currencies lose value the most important commodity on earth, food, becomes unaffordable. Several sources predict inflation in food costs which reflect currency issues as well as shortages.
There are early predictors of a global currency with hard assets as a foundation. Damon Vickers in “The Day After the Dollar Crashes” ,which would be the day no one wants to buy our Treasuries, predicts that the IMF would step in to negotiate a world currency. He predicts this could be a ten year window or less.
Therefore, guessing which currency or precious metal would be a good storage of value is not as crucial as determining how we will get food if super inflation hits. If currencies crash, it will most likely lead to panic and a run on food.
Even though our government would like us to believe increased GDP will take us out of trouble, the discussions behind the scenes are that we are in more trouble than we can escape. The hand writing is on the wall. It is also more likely that we will see disruption in Europe before we see it in the U.S.
The most important point is that we not panic, but prepare. There may not be anyone that can tell you exactly what to do. It is possible very few will escape a change if the world has to realign currencies and debt. What is advisable is that everyone get healthy, create reserves, and contemplate how they could be productive if everything changes.
Developing countries in which people are already at the poverty level would be minimally affected. Developing countries might also have greater insulation because they are running a positive balance of trade. If you can produce and export, you can work yourself out of problems quicker.
An article in the NY Times about Europe also reflects problems in the U.S. These have also become global problems.
“Given the problems in the euro zone — sovereign debt, undercapitalized banks, aging populations, imbalances in trade, growth and competitiveness between northern and southern countries — many analysts and some officials have been pushing for the introduction of eurobonds, which would combine the credibility and collateral of all the members of the currency union. “
Habits That Make You Fat
Posted by: | CommentsWe tend to see things in generalities rather than detail.
We might generalize that we are over weight, have trouble keeping weight off, or can’t for the life of us take off that ten pounds. We accept that the extra weight is just the result of what we do during the day to stay alive.
In a great slide show, an article from Men’s Health printed in MSN.com by Dave Zinczenko lays out 20 different little habits that accumulate to add extra pounds. What to avoid is important for losing those pounds, but when confronted with a long list we are likely to pick and choose.
The list includes the usual habits such as drinking soda, eating too late at night, and ordering combo meals. It also has some tips about choosing smaller plates, don’t face the buffet table, don’t eat the freebies on the table at restaurants, and don’t hang out with fat friends.
It results in slapping your hand for all your violations but doesn’t set out a plan for being proactive and avoiding the bad habits. Results come from eating natural foods and avoiding most combinations of ingredients that come in packages or are prepared in a restaurant. You don’t choose bad ingredients, they are included in the foods you do choose.
You don’t choose fructose or fried fats but they are included in soda, fries, chips, and other foods we crave. Breaking cravings is not easy. It has to be done a step at a time. I lost 45 pounds over four years by selecting the most harmful foods and finding a substitute. I still do that.
The first substitution doesn’t always have to be healthy. If you are addicted to something harmful like ice cream after dinner, find something that you would like just as much and start eating it. After a week move to something more healthy and the habit is then probably broken.
I have found over the years that my healthiest meals are prepared at home. Then I have 100% choice of ingredients. If I have to eat out, then I would have my breakfast and dinner at home and just have to find the best alternative for lunch.
Evolving to a diet of fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, protein, and good fats becomes the food we crave. This means fruit and hot grain cereal or eggs for breakfast; salads soups, chicken, tuna or even spaghetti for lunch; soups, salads, spaghetti, meat, and vegetables for dinner. If your diet is 85% on target, your body will start to release the harmful foods you have eaten that it has encapsulated in fat.
When you start dropping those pounds and inches you become more enthusiastic. You don’t ever have to starve. You can eat all day if you are eating natural non calorie foods. You can drink water and green tea in between and feel satiated and they keep your mouth busy.
If you want to accelerate the process and build your health, add some exercise. Even though walking is great, some aerobics really please the muscles and organs. The amount of time you exercise is almost as important as the intensity. An hour walk can be as good as twenty minutes on the tread mill.
The devil is in the details. Look at what you should be eating in the long run like the list I included above and start substituting now. Consider how fit you would like to be in the long run and start adding exercises now.
The biggest impediment to success is thinking you can reach your goal in 30 days. It’s a much longer life process that will last you the rest of your life.
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http://fitbie.msn.com/slideshow/20-habits-make-you-fat
By Dave Zinczenko