Monday 

Breakfast

Omelet of 2 eggs, with 20 g melted cheese, pickled cucumbers and one slice of whole wheat bread

delicious omelet

A cup of coffee (with a tsp stevia sweetener)

Snack

5 olives

50 g cottage cheese


Lunch 

Tuna steak (120-140 g net)

A slice of whole wheat bread


Snack 

One apple


Dinner 

75 g chicken breast

100 g mixed vegetables


Tuesday 

Breakfast 

A banana

A yoghurt (simple or what you like) – around 120-150 ml

20 g cereals

An espresso


Snack 

An apple or kiwi


Lunch 

4 olives

20 g cheese

Tuna steak (around 120-140 g net)


Snack

An orange


Dinner

70 g grilled chicken breast with Mediterranean salad (grated carrot and beetroot, 30 g feta cheese with topping – mix of honey, mustard, sunflower seeds and olive oil, one tbsp. of each one)


Wednesday

Breakfast

Omelet of 4 egg whites

Omelet of 4 egg whites

A banana

A coffee


Snack

Un apple


Lunch

Tuna (120-140 g net)

One slice of whole wheat bread


Snack 

100 g mushrooms (cooked in water with salt) with 30 g feta cheese


Dinner

65 g chicken breast

60 g rice

One orange


Thursday 

Breakfast

Omelet of 4 egg whites

One slice of whole wheat bread

A yoghurt

An espresso


Snack 

An apple


Lunch

25 g feta cheese

70 g tuna

3 olives


Snack

An orange


Dinner

A portion of chicken with paprika-sauce (a portion means around the dimension of your palm, 1,5-2 cm high – depending on what you make of: if you are using chicken breast than cut the breast in pieces, if it’s made of chicken limb, than you’ll eat the upper “thigh” part of it, of course without skin).

One tomato

Friday

Breakfast 

Omelet of 3 egg whites, 100 g mushroom, a few chopped paprika pieces and 30 g cheese

An espresso

Omelet with mushroom

Snack 

An apple


Lunch

Mediterranean tuna salad with one slice of whole wheat bread


Snack 

An orange


Dinner 

A portion of musaka and one grapefruit

Saturday and Sunday

If you resisted till now, than you probably had enough of not eating what you have always been eating before and also have a lot of cravings. Everything is all right! This is the first part of the meal plan, where one of the rules is: don’t stress yourself! You don’t have to feel anxious because on Saturday and Sunday you can eat whatever you want, you’ll just have to respect some rules: try to eat something every 3 hours. That thing, whatever it is must not exceed the dimension of your palm or what you can grasp in your palm. For example: if you desire salty, roasted peanuts, than you may eat it, just first grasp in your hand some, eat that quantity but not more. So, take it out and put in a bowl, sit by the TV or wherever you desire, and eat what you could grasp. If you sit down with the whole package and swear you won’t eat a lot that is not gonna happen because especially while watching TV you may eat 2 kg without even observing. Of this reason, it is better if you sit somewhere and eat the peanuts meanwhile concentrating on their taste, and not on TV. Eating while your senses are occupied with hearing and seeing they won’t concentrate enough on the food you are ingesting and afterwards you may have a feeling that you didn’t even eat it…but you did, and calories don’t forgive. Never!

You have a lot of choices: pork steak, again it must not exceed the dimension of your palm.

If you opt for spaghetti the quantity is what could fit in a soup-ladle.

If you want a cookie, than eat a cookie, but resume yourself to only one piece.

If you eat anything, like chips, tortillas, peanuts, biscuits, etc. this must be considered as a meal, not a “dessert” after or snack before. So, after consuming any of these, you’ll have to wait 3 hours to eat something again. Of course you can drink water, tea, but no juices, nectars, or anything that contains calories. The rule is available for sugary juices, beverages also. If you opt for them, you have to think of them, as a meal. And then you’ll make your choice to eat something nutritious, or waste a meal with something that will only make you feel even hungrier afterwards and doesn’t have any nutritious value.

3 hours before bedtime you won’t ingest any food.

You may eat desert, instead of a heavy cookie…

Healthy dessert

An orange, one kiwi, half of a banana, one tablespoon of whipped cream and two pieces of dark chocolate. One grated, the other one on the side.

Rules of the week for the meal plan

This meal plan is for two weeks. You’re going to eat maximum in every two till three hours. If you eat as many times, the sense of hunger may not occur, but even it does, you’ll be able to deal with it, because you’ll know you’ll eat again in just an hour or so. If you are not hungry after three hours, still eat. Doing so you will teach your organism that there is no need to store and preserve, because it will get food all the time. Avoid eating 1-2 hours before bedtime.

You can drink coffee and sweeten it with one teaspoon brown sugar.

If you feel hunger make a hot tea, you can sweeten it with one teaspoon of sugar, if you feel to, or eat a small to middle sized apple, orange or half of a grapefruit.

Tuna can be replaced with chicken breast, tilapia grilled, the quantity remaining the same.

If you think, that you won’t have time to clean an orange or a kiwi at work, do this at home, cut in pieces, put in a box, so you can quickly eat it with a fork at the office.

Meal plan for health and silhouette

Before you start:

   Before you start you’ll have to sit down and meditate a little, think and understand that “dieting” is something stupid. In the moment you think about starting the diet, it probably means, that it is not just your imagination, but you really have some extra pounds to get rid of. So, that also means that you don’t count between the lucky few, to whom is very difficult to get fat…because there are also people like that…. So, if you were able to pile up those pounds once, you’ll be able to pile them up again. So why diet? You wanna look good the rest of your life or two weeks?

   “Dieting” doesn’t exist. The idea is not to hunger yourself a few weeks, in which your desire for all kinds of food items increases in such a measure, that you’ll transform yourself in a huge green scaled dragon, which at a certain point will decide to go after the beautiful princess from the palace and kidnap her. This story in your case transcripts itself, in you going and attacking the fridge and kidnaping everything that is inside. So, obviously it is not a great idea making the yogis and the Somali jealous. We will avoid to hunger ourselves and we will not let weeks pass by without eating some of our favorite food items. The point is not to eliminate them, but to regulate when we eat them, and how much we eat from them.

   The meal plan should have a balanced carbohydrate/protein/fat rapport. It is not important to consume every single day the same proportion of these, because we want to avoid our organism getting used to something, because in that case the fat loss goal may be pushed further away. Days may and must vary, because also we are not the same every day. Our mood can differ, our thinking, so our food need.

   What it is also important is, getting used eating more times a day, accelerating your metabolism. High metabolism = more optimal calorie burning = long term weight loss. What we ingest, we consume, we don’t pile! We do not make a diet, we live this way and period! Also we do not expect huge results after one week. Think that one week is nothing compared to the years, you got that fat on yourself! You needed a long time to get fat, don’t expect to get lean in no-time! It will happen that is for sure, but not one week after another. When? This depends on every individual. Some are more receptive, some are less, but eventually we all see result.

    Changes begin to happen after two weeks, and two weeks are really not a long time. When you are living “the normal way” two weeks fly away, you don’t even notice, so don’t. To get used our systems with new things takes a long time, we are the slave of our habits. We do have some stupid habits as well, and we stick to them no matter what. Actually not certain food items are the problem, (they may well exist, because there are a lot of things on this world that exist and we just don’t care about them), but our love towards our habits. For example chocolate by itself, is not a problem, the problem occurs only in the moment when you begin to relate eating it to happiness. Once your mind made this association, is like a mafia in your head, everything is related to everything, nothing is what it seems. But we learn all this in our childhood. When the grandma gives a cookie, if the kid does something right, than she plants the seeds in the child’s mind of associating sweets with laudation. Cookie = certificate of merit. You made something good? Than eat something “good”. You are sour? Than eat something sweet! Our parents educated us in this sense, but also they were victims of their parents, and so on. So the habit is not even only in your life, is related to our evolution, generation after generation. Breaking it is not easy, but also not impossible. Is sound scary, but losing a war can occur by underestimating the enemy!

    Have you ever seen something valuable that is easy to achieve for everyone? What everybody can have doesn’t count between major revelations, discoveries or successes. If everybody had Lamborghini, it wouldn’t mean such a big thing, would it?

    Just don’t expect that after you ingest junk food for thirty years, suddenly you’re going to start to sing “hallelujai!” in front of the altar of broccoli for instance… or in front of a plate of broccoli…

How do some bodybuilders become so huge?

    Men or women, some bodybuilders have gorgeous muscles. Some may like, some may not, more or less, but one thing we have to admit, if it is not very-very extreme, everybody looks with envy on those great bodies.
    How do they achieve that awesomeness? How is it possible for some women, to gain that much muscle, and not to put fat on the problematic “womanly” areas?
    Lets’ star from the beginning: what is muscle building? How does a muscle “get big”?
   The muscle’s “getting big” action is called muscle hypertrophy, and it means that the skeletal muscles increase their size due to stimuli. Hypertrophy occurs as a result of training – anaerobic exercises- and the right kind of nutrition.

     For men is somewhat easier to build muscle, because of the testosterone hormone of which men produce higher quantities than women. The difference is pretty much, as males produce between 300-1000 but females female between: 15 – 70 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL = this is the unit in which laboratories measure testosterone levels). So, as with laic eyes, is also easy to observe, it is pretty obvious to tell the big difference between the two sexes.

     The testosterone is a predominantly male sex hormone, which is responsible for guys looking the way they do: developing the sex organs, muscles, bones, body hair, deepening of the voice, etc. So, the fact that men have a more muscular body, with narrow hips and wider shoulders, stronger arms is determined by the testosterone. For woman to achieve the same, meaning wide shoulders, back, muscular arms, narrow hips is difiicult, because they don’t produce the sufficient testosterone hormone to make them look like that. And here comes the question, how on earth get some women so “manly” bodies anyway?
      Well, one thing is a fact: it doesn’t happen as a natural result of going three times a week to the gym. Nor would you get the result going every day to gym, for 5 years. So, the subject women, who desires a muscular body , when does not get help from nature, she’ll get it from the “pharmacy”. (men also rely on steroids to make body changes occur faster and have literally “bigger” results)

      For a woman, to get very muscular, must be administrated some “help”, for example anabolic steroids, which contribute to achieving the male sexual characteristics, a more apple-shaped body, skeletal muscle growth, deepening the voice, body hair growth. Some of these, like a certain muscle growth is welcomed, but sadly, this is a package and you are allowed to buy only en-gros, that means, you as a woman, can achieve a great biceps, you won’t be that much predisposed anymore to having the muffin-top, but also may get hair all over, thickened vocal chords and so on.

      Some people do rely on steroids, mainly because achieving anything in the natural way takes long time, and genetics together with nature also make certain achievements impossible. 

What to eat when you have cravings?

   Are you going through a hard period in your life? Are you stressed? You are having your menstrual cycle? Whatever the reason, you have craving. What to eat when you are having cravings? Do satisfy your urge of sweet, to give a fulfilled feeling to your stomach, but not to ingest too many calories nether?

    Here is a great recipe for something sweet!

Banana/peach milkshake

You’ll need the following

     -juice extractor

     -half of a banana, cut in pieces

    -half of a bigger peach or one whole smaller one, cut in pieces

    -sugar substitute “stevia”

    -cold milk with 1,5% fat 2 dl

Extract the juice of the fruits.
Put half of the milk, one teaspoon of stevia in a glass and mix with a nescafe mixer, so it gets some foam.
Mix the juice with the rest of the milk and one more teaspoon of stevia. Pour this over the foamy milk and serve it with a straw.
This way, you will consume around 300 ml (10 oz) of sweet and healthy drink, that will make your stomach feel full and will help serving your sugary drink craving, by consuming only 180 calories.

Cravings due to being a woman

   For women losing weight, keeping it off, building muscle is much more difficult as for men. The women’s body puts a certain kind of bull-headed resistance to getting lean and ripped. That’s why is so hard, and it is especially so hard on the specific “womanly” regions.
   Our body just doesn’t give a damn what looks good, what is aesthetic or what our rational mind would like us to be. Everything is just about the survival of the human race and nothing else. When I was younger, I have been thinking that certain “muffin top” is due to over eating and that’s it. Well, I wasn’t wrong in that, but I must affirm, that it is not the whole truth, only a part of it. Yes, our organism does “deposit” fat, because we ate more than what we would have needed to cover our daily activities, from an energetic point of view. But why the heck does it deposit almost in one single place? If those 10 pounds would be equally distributed all over, starting from your little toe, through your calves, till your arm, shoulders, including every body part, we wouldn’t even notice it. But when it settles only on your hips or belly, it becomes annoyingly visible.

   And then starts the “diet”, not eating or low-carb diets, or other forms of self-torture, to get rid of the bump from wherever the certain woman is genetically predisposed to accumulate the fat, and after comes the sharp conclusion that it will start to come off from everywhere you wouldn’t like it to come off from, maybe your boobs will get smaller and you’ll become looking like a skeleton from waist up, meanwhile, your thighs and butt stays firm whit it’s fat. Or, if you are the other type, your waist will stay large and abdomen fatty, but your legs will become like two sticks. Of course there are some lucky women, who are very proportionate and get fat all over and also get thin equally from everywhere. But their number also isn’t so numerous.

    Why does the fat deposit itself around your hips/butt/tummy? Easy. Because you are a woman, supposed to have babies and that is just the area where they form. The uterus, where the fetus develops is inside. So, Nature was thinking, how to protect “future generations” better during development ?! And Nature was thinking and thinking and came up with an ingenious solution: what is the best thing that protect our organs, inside stuff? Ok,ok muscle…but, when you think, of gym classes at school, what was the thing that was used for some exercises keeping you not to hit yourself? That’s right! Mattresses! And why? Because they are puffy!
     My mother told me, that when she was already 8 and a half moth pregnant with me, she stumbled and fell. She was very afraid that I was hurt or will have some problems, because it was a big fall, and she ended up like a big frog on the street, but eventually I wasn’t hurt and didn’t affect the fetus or the pregnancy at all. Why is that? How can that happen? It can because Nature does take care of these situations. Just imagine, how many times have had been hit or fell the prehistoric women. Our race wouldn’t have been survived this well, if women and fetus would have been so fragile. But because Nature’s ingenious solution of many protecting layers functioned so well here I am and here we are. Have been for that the fat necessary? It wasn’t the only thing but it played a role, just like everything else out there. Everything is linked and forms a chain. That’s how the chain is strong, otherwise it would fall apart.
   

     Our empirical problem is that we don’t live in the Paleolithic anymore. Modern women can rest, they don’t get attacked, (at least usually), saber toothed tigers don’t chase them and many of us don’t even want to have children, but that is some modern choice and Nature didn’t hear about it yet…
     Although the “exemplification” may run wilder as our smilodon, it is true. “That” hard headed fat, that tough stuff of yours it is very hard to fight with, because your organism is biologically and evolutionally programmed to lie in ambush and wait every second of your life, to “over-eat” and immediately it will store it, of course, for worse times (because that’s what fat is, deposit of extra energy, that you may need at some hard, starving point in your life) and it will deposit it exactly where you hate it more, because you are “doomed” to have children and be a woman.
     This is the reason, why it is so hard. Keeping the fat off your system requires stamina and a will power of a mammoth (as we still look like in the prehistoric period). Fighting evolution is hard, mainly because the stuff has been going on since around… hundred fifty thousand years…and the idea, that the muffin top is not esthetic is relatively new with its fifty years. You know… 150 000 against 50. With 150 000 dollars you could buy a house, with 50 bucks you can’t even buy a quality pillow… you get the difference, right?

      But we are strong women and resist. We struggle to eat right, to work out…at least most of the time, but Nature again has something else, a hidden card in her sleeve and she’ll play it right. After 2-3 weeks of doing everything right and resisting the temptations something comes along which will turn your world up-side down and somehow destroy almost everything you did, to gain that dream figure of yours and that is, the menstrual cycle. This is also just as womanly, as the muffin top and belly fat and another thing you just can’t get rid of.

     As a first step, in the majority of the cases before even starts, you will be struck by what the scale says. Suddenly you will be with two pounds heavier than before due to water retention. Afterwards, this will most likely increase due to farther water retention and due to a larger calorie intake. Yes. Because you may watch what you eat and generally be very motivated, on that particular week you’ll just lose that ability and will have heavy sugary and salty food cravings, where you’ll eventually through in the towel, because it is just too damn hard to fight against your hormones, against nature itself. Ingesting sugary stuff will inevitably lead to weighing more, also eating salty foods will contribute to water retention. Water retention will cause you being heavier. As a result, the whole process will lead to some weight gain, but only because of you eating more and eating more of the “wrong” stuff, but the water retention will vanish in a few days, and you’ll regain your normal weigh. So, don’t get disappointed because of the first few pounds and try not to say: “I can eat, because now anyway it doesn’t matter”, because two pounds are only water…what above that comes may be something else…
     The bad news is, that anyway you fight, you’ll make only your life bitter, because in this time your organism just craves and period. The only thing you can do is to limit the cravings and substitute chocolate with grapes or chips with some puffed cereals. From two till four pounds depending on the person is normal. The fat gain, can be around half, till one pound, which in one week you can get rid of, when you’ll return to your normal lifestyle.

     The most important thing here to remember is not to panic and end up eating everything, “because it doesn’t matter anyway”, because it does matter.

The risks of over ingesting protein

    Protein is a basic “ingredient” of your body, cells and also an important part of your nutrition. It may come from products of animal origin or fruits and vegetables. A well known protein source is meat : the best are turkey and chicken, tuna, salmon, but we can’t ignore the dairy products, such as milk, cheese, yoghurt. Fruits with protein content: dried apricots, dates, figs, prunes, avocado, blackberries, raisins, watermelons, bananas; vegetables: beans, broccoli, spinach, soy, lentils, peas; all kinds of nuts and seeds: almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, etc. As you see, anything that you eat, in smaller or bigger quantities contains proteins. So, you don’t have to worry about not eating enough, because it is practically impossible not to eat them, even if you embrace a vegetarian lifestyle.
    I hear a lot in the gym, that I should consume 2-2.5 g of protein per kg of my bodyweight. Well, I began counting the calories and found out that is like a circle made by the devil, because if, let’s say you have a 1500 kcal goal, and want to lose some kilos, and you are 65 kg, that would mean, that you would have to eat from between 130 and 162 g of protein a day. Well, that is enormous, because you have to stay in that 1500 kcal range. As a result you will probably eliminate fruits and vegetables and mostly nuts and seeds from your meals, because fruits have a lot of carbohydrates but a relatively small amount of protein, the vegetables that mostly contain protein are also high in Kcals and seeds and nuts although have proteins, also have a great caloric value. So, you will probably reach to meat, because meat has 25-30 g of protein per 100 g, and because you wouldn’t probably be able to eat meat all the time, and would like some fruits from time to time also, you inevitably will have to rely on the protein powders, because they have a very reduced caloric value but huge amount of protein. For example a protein isolate may have 30 g of protein to only 100 g of kcals. Well, that is something you will never find in nature. And then, the big producers of any powder out their got you right there, where they wanted.
    But wait and just think about nature. Do you really think that if we would need such a great amount of protein, God wouldn’t have created the fruits and vegetables also with bigger protein content? Why is than that only certain foods have it, and the majority of foods don’t? Or do we think that nature is absolutely non-sense? Even if you go to the gym. How many of us do we train so many times, with such an intensity and for enough time that such an amount to be justified? The common mistake comes from the fact that protein is a building block of any live organism and then after the logic of a five year old, it is assumed, that the more you consume of it, the bigger your muscles will become, because the amount of protein eaten will somehow go and “put” itself on your biceps, for instance. If it would work like that, than anything would be sooooo easy. A lot of arnolds and cutlers would walk around. But they do not work like that. As I wrote in my other article about protein, a reasonable recommendation of the American Dietetic Association and International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends 0.8 g/kg for average people and 1.2-2 g/kg bodyweight depending on the activity for sportsman. That would mean for a 65 kg individual around 50-60 g of protein if he or she is an average person and if is a sportsman we are talking about 70-130 g, depending if the practiced sport is endurance (than should be close to the lowest level), for strength training the intake should be closer to the higher amount. Why is like this? Simple. If you do not have such a great muscle activity, you also will have nothing you would have to repair with the protein. Remember! The proteins main characteristic is to build, and only as secondary it is used to fuel the body with energy. (For that we use more carbohydrates). If you feed yourself with excessive portions of protein it will be deposited as fat, such as anything else. But fat is still, if not in very large quantities, it is not life-threatening, but over-consuming protein can be from other reasons. Over-doing something means that you also over-solicit your organism by having to digest it. Meat, for example stays 6 hours in your stomach. Just try it: eat meat for lunch and you’ll see that you won’t get hungry as soon as if you would from some kind of vegetable. So, you didn’t even digest one meat, you would put some more in your stomach? Everything you have, may that be your leg muscles, your brain, your hair or your nails, they need rest. You can not put pressure on your leg all the time, because they will get tired and will start to ache, maybe you will have problem with your knee joint also, you can not iron your hair all the time, because if you do, it will lose its brightness, the ends will split and brake easier, you can not wear nail polish all the time, otherwise it will dry your nails and maybe they will split easier also, becoming yellow meanwhile...
    So, everything you do, you have to make breaks time-to-time, otherwise the organ will get tired. A split nail won’t cause you much besides some anger, but a sickness in your stomach, liver or kidney, of any kind it may be, it is much more serious business.
    Yes, protein builds in some sense, but whatever the quantity is, it will not all end up becoming muscle. When you want to blow up a mountain, you’ll need a certain amount of dynamite, if you want to blow up a little hill, you’ll need a much smaller quantity. The same it goes for muscles. If you don’t have them, anyway you kill yourself in the gym, and eat tubs of protein shakes, it won’t make you “go big” in no time. Hard, long work and genetics does.

Ingesting food as a mental substitute for happiness

    "I have kids, so I am happy", "I have a great job", so I am happy, and I don’t care that I meanwhile look like a hippo. Some say that, but do they really mean it or they say it loud to find a reason, an alibi why they really look fat and ugly? I don’t know how somebody of a family happy can be, but from a job, no way, in the latter I have experience in. A few years later, I read somewhere, that don’t “get married” with your work, cause it won’t bring you no glass of water when you’ll be sick. And so true, it is. But why get sick at first place?
     In our life we the most important thing is, to keep some kind of balance. This is the hardest thing to do. We all have ups and downs. Sadly our mental state does reflect itself on our body, also on our well-being.
     I heard someone, say, that fat people are happy. Great, if they are that happy, why do they eat that much? In the moment they start a diet, don’t seem as happy anymore…does that mean that they were happy at first place? Or that happiness was only related to food? If so, how can somebody, whose happiness depends on only one thing be called happy at all? Feeding is a physiological need, just as going to the toilet or drinking water. Would you call someone happy, who likes to shit?
     Eaters are like smokers or any other addicts. Smokers are often attacked, I don’t even mention drug users. They are scorned, they are all the time spoken against. But what happens with fatness? Yes, we acknowledge that it is unhealthy, we also acknowledge the fact, that would be better not to be obese, but it is still considered to be a tabu in adult conversations. If a group of friends, or just acquaintances, even newly met people allow themselves to take the speech against for example smokers, and immediately someone starts to smoke a cigarette give lecture about how unhealthy that is, but if someone at the table is obese, everybody just shuts up. Nobody would mention the fact, being polite and don’t wanting to hurt the person’s feelings. So, we are allowed to hurt the smoker’s, alcoholic’s and drug user’s feeling, but we are not allowed to hurt the fat guy’s feelings? Because he or she is already in a bad shape or depressive maybe? (This may not be the happy fatty from above) But does anybody think that somebody uses drugs because he’s so hell of a happy guy? Or the difference would be, that on a drug user or alcoholic at first glance you can’t tell which addiction he really has, but on a fat one is clearly visible, that the instrument of addiction is food. Ok… huuuge difference…. At least for our society, it is.
     If we would go harder on it, not with gloves it would be much easier. We wouldn’t torture ourselves as much. We tolerate in this matter just too much. I remember, my mom at every diet I begun, she would make long speeches about how good I look, how my jelly cellulite is normal, my father saying, that what do I want? My ass is just fine, because that is how a woman should look like… with at least 3 stomachs one overflowing the other, and some hips that hang down from every chair, accompanied by a jelly-but?! If we would just as a group, as a society and not just isolated fitness sites recognize that even the puffiness is just not right (don’t necessarily have to be obese) we could treat it much easier. It is not just a “little mistake” we laugh about. I’ve been down on that hill, I know, that 22 pounds can soooo easily turn into 44. You won’t even notice it, and in no time! And how much abstinence, self-denial, will power, stamina, ambition and only God knows what else is needed to shred those piled stones?! It is not a “hihi” or “ups” thing. Some people can destroy their whole life.
      I strongly believe that the matter has net been taken seriously enough. It should be taught in schools, that over-feeding is just like taking heroin. I’ve got “lightening” in school about drugs, but never about food. Neither from my parents, nor from my teachers.
    We must auto-educate ourselves in this matter. And remember, you can only treat a problem, if you recognize at first, that you have one!

Get a hobby, be inspired! Create!

Get a hobby, be inspired! Create!

Fats

       Besides carbohydrates and proteins, fats represent a very important part of our nutrition. They are tricky, mainly because of the various misleading information that circles around them, but we can not deny the fact that our body does need them. The problem is which one of them, because there are a lot of kinds of fatty acids having different physiological impacts on our organisms, they come in different forms and they can also be found in various food items in different quantities. At first glance this sound a little bit too much and complicated, but we’ll try to lighten it up a bit.
       Fatty acids group themselves in two categories: saturated and unsaturated fats.
       None of them can be avoided, because also plants and food originating of animals can contain both fatty acids. It is also not recommended avoiding any of them, contrary to some believes, we can not affirm, that one of them is 100% bad and the other 100% good. A lot of studies proved that saturated fats cause cholesterol and in this way contribute to heart disease. But this is not entirely true, because the most important factor in categorizing them in good or bad doesn’t really lose its wind in their name, but mainly in their origin. And in origin, I do not mean, if they come from a plant or an animal, but what have been the processes in which it went through before it ended up on our table.
       Saturated fats can be found in any kind of processed meats, salami, sausage liver, kidneys or other organs, fast food items, duck meat, bacon, palm oil, butter, cheese, pork, coconut, sesame seeds, cashews and a lot more. But are these all the same? It is just “whatever” if we eat a thick hamburger from the well known Macky or a palm full of dry roasted, unsalted cashews? No, it is not the same. Both contain saturated fats? Yes, they do. But the hamburger is definitely unhealthy, the cashews are rich in fibers and actually do you good. How do we make the difference then? Easy: we have to think a little bit about our surroundings to understand. Think about nature and yourself as a human being. You are made of natural stuff, meaning you don’t have any plastic parts or anything, at least when you’re born. Then you would want to support that natural system of yours, also with natural means. Nothing that is over-processed would support your system. So, if you eat a plastic bag you will not get any nutrients from that which would make you go on. I don’t advise you to try it. This is of course an extreme example, but not very far from the actual truth. You don’t have to think about, “uups, this is bad because has saturated fats!” No, you have to think about how many processes were involved till you got the thing. The cashews are picked, their shell is being taken off, they are dried and packaged. At least in gross. If the nuts would be roasted, salted, enhanced with this or that taste, they would immediately become “over-processed”, and would contain unhealthy substances. This is the way to think about all foods, the closer they to nature are, the more nutritious they are, more you can use of them for your own well-being.
       Unsaturated fats are considered healthy and can be found for example in walnuts, avocado, trout, herring. But again, this label doesn’t mean a thing, because the after process decides if the end-product indeed is good for you or not. The “best” trout could be deep fried, enhanced, conserved and become a biological nightmare. But it can also be grilled with a little salt and served with a salad and could become the healthiest meal. (Just be aware what salad…)
       We don’t have to be afraid, when we hear “fat”. This is only an unhealthy and improper correlation of two things, the fatty acids and the word fat, which in our western society is considered a negative attribute. Fats doesn’t make you fat, at least don’t make you fatter than you would be from protein or carbohydrates. If you consume more than you need, whatever nutrient it may be, you will indeed get fat. From the over-processed ones you’ll get fat very easy, from the natural ones harder, but eventually a big quantity will manifest itself.
       The three macro nutrients (carbs, proteins and fats) do exist in nature, so they represent a power source, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. God doesn’t make mistakes. In the Stone Age, 25% of the human’s meal was represented by fats. That was natural, what our ancestor felt they needed. Back then they didn’t have TV, and didn’t ingest food because they were damn bored of their life’s, just as we can not find any obese lions. Studies do show, that around 20% of our food intake should be represented by fats, 40% of carbs and 40% of proteins. There you have it. Use caloric charts, to find out about each food, what does it contain, so can orient yourself. Nothing must be 100% exact, because eating is not rocket science, but having a clue, is always good. Knowing is power, and in this case, the power over your body!

Fear

     Fear is the greatest enemy of our happyness. Fear makes us decide hastily and to take the wrong decisions, fear is not a good friend, but like a neighbor from the other flat, who is repairing his apartment on Sunday afternoon, when you would rather lie down and take a nap than listen to the sound of a boring-machine. Fear is forced on you and you have just no escape. At least so it seems.
      When do we have fear anyway?
      We may fear our life, heights, the world crisis, God… but are these the very fears that make the average person’s life miserable? No. Usually not one time, spectacular fears do make us unhappy, but those “non-theatrical” ones, like daily misunderstandings with your co-workers, fear of losing your job, not being able to pay the credit you took from the bank, and so on… These make us nervous, these make us feel unhappy all the time, although they may not let us know that they are causing it. And in the case, when we do know, what makes our life indeed miserable, even than we refuse to take a step towards something else, something new, because we just FEAR. The past in certain, the present is too, but the present already gives us the opportunity. In this moment I can still act. This very moment in which I didn’t act or acted in the same way as I did in the past is a dead moment, and what is even more sad, that it was a wasted moment, which was wasted not toward moving to something better, but paddling in the same swamp we did before.
      A lot of questions may occur. But what is there to do? You can not change your life from one day to another?! What about your family, what about the credit? The only way out is You! The only way out is yourself! Not the credit! Not the boss! Not the husband, children, society, work, love, hate, necessity, friendship, rain, or whatever God created.
      You do know, that God didn’t create all the other things in universe to stop you or anybody else being what they truly are?! You do know that don’t you?! He didn’t create only you as a fact and all the other things in the universe just to bother you. Because that is how in this point looks like. They exist. For the fly that would like to taste from your melon slice, you are the bothering factor. You think wrongly of the fly! We are very egoistic. We do think that the whole universe is around us and there are three categories of things, the first, the best category is to make us happy, the second is to make us feel bad and the third doesn’t interest us at all. Would that be it? That means that most of the existing things are in vain. That would only mean that at least 66 % of all things that surround you have no purpose at all. Well may be, but who decides what is really in vain and what is not. Or when is that decided? Even if you decide it, how would you do that? Because today, you may not need the red shirt, but could you be absolutely shore that you’ll never ever need it? Could it be destroyed? Why don’t you through it away then? Are we happy because we do have that, and gives us another opportunity to maybe use it in the future, or we should destroy it and afterward complain maybe that we can’t wear it anymore? Or you should destroy it, burn it, through it away because otherwise, although you don’t like the red shirt, at a certain point you’ll have to wear it, and so it will keep you buying a new one, that at least for a few moments would make you happy again, thing that the red shirt could never do…because it had its time already.
        Who can say what the right thing is? The neighbor, your mom, boyfriend or the fortune-teller? Nobody, but you. You have to seek and find your answer. Let that be your answer, only yours, and take full responsibility of it. How to find out, what the “real thing” is?
        The only way to find out any answer, is to ask the question. Start asking yourself questions. At first you’ll ask irrelevant ones. But every answer will lead to another question. Dig. Dig in your own mind. This doesn’t happen by itself. Doesn’t happen automatically. You have to use that brain, God gave you, for the purpose which for, it was given to you: and this purpose is not, to make your boss happy with it, but yourself. And it is paradoxical, that although we think that the most part of the universe is actually in vain, we do use our entire knowledge to make other people’s life happier but don’t really use it to make ours “cool”. How does that come?!
        All those studies at school, university or whatever…what do they teach you? Do they teach you how to think for yourself or they just teach you how you should work for somebody? You accumulate just to make it better for mankind? Now…that is what I would call a big bullshit. Mankind is better or is anybody happier because of Van Gogh? Most of us don’t even know who the hell Van Gogh was…and of course they are very far from being happy because of him. Was even he happy because he existed? What is talent for, if we can’t use it to make ourselves happy?! “The first part of our life make our parents miserable, the second our children”… I read this somewhere… when do we live for ourselves? why don't we?

Omelet of egg whites

Omelet of egg whites, the healthy dinner!
How to make an interesting dinner…but having also, “the usual omelet”?
Why omelet of egg whites, at first place? Briefly because egg whites contain very few calories, but comparing to that, are high in proteins, and that’s also the very thing you would like to eat for dinner. How to make it a little bit crazy though?

Here’s how:

Cut small pieces a little bit of onion (1/4 % of an average size onion)

Cut about two slices of tomato and red or green pepper- cut these also in small pieces.

Cut thin slices of some kind of mushroom (it’s up to you what you prefer).

Break 3 eggs, and put the egg whites in a bowl, you may want to add a little bit of salt and pepper. Mix them.

Put a few drops of olive oil in a frying-pan, through the onion/mushroom/pepper pieces on it, mix it and stew them for a few minutes, than through the tomato pieces in, and stew for one-two minutes more. Then pour the egg whites on the vegetable mix and wait till it hardens of the already hot frying-pan.(This is again up to your taste, how hard you like it to have… the omelet of course…J)). 

Tasty omelet

Nail care

      Long and beautiful nails… isn’t just that a dream of most women? Many of us go to nail studious and apply fake ones, because their natural nails never grow as long as they would like them to have. They break, split easily and never look good.
      Nails, as everything else, they need to get care of. They don’t just “exist” looking good. Many of us don’t have very strong nails. Weak ones may be hereditary, as your hair or skin color. Somebody of your ancestors had it, and you have it too. Here, the question is not whether you inherited it or not, but what can we do about it?
      First you may take a look at your nutrition, if you are consuming enough quality food, packed with essential vitamins (fruits, vegetables, seeds, – but not roasted and salted, because these aren’t doing good, but are actually bad for your skin and nails). If in this direction things somehow look acceptable the problem must been taken care of directly, meaning not only through nutrition, so inner help but also from the outside. 

How to treat nails in order to make them look gorgeous?

Accessories for nail care

There are a few steps you need to follow:

     1.Hand washing
Although washing your hands is necessary for your personal hygiene it is not the best thing when it comes to nails. Try not to over-wash your hands. When you wash them be careful what kind of soap you are using because cheap soaps usually dry hands and nails. You may want to try soaps that are PH neutral, so they won’t interfere with your “natural chemistry”.
     2.After hand-wash
After washing your hands, especially if you used an unknown soup, or feel you washed them a lot try to put hand cream on your hands and on the nails. I am emphasizing “on nails” because many people when cream their hands, don’t pay attention and may be, that the nails get from only a little till none of the cream, which will lead to dryness and they may become easily breakable. So, insist to cream each nail on your each finger, even if you don’t have problem with all of them.
     3.There exist small hand creams that fit easily in every purse. Purchase one and keep it always in your purse. (This way it will always be at hand, when during the day it will occur to you to use it. It will take some time to get used to using it, but don’t quit, even if you use it ones a day it is more than nothing!)
     4.To use hand creams during the day for many may be not possible, because a certain work, that exclude using solutions that include some fat, or just never remembers, whatever the reason, you are still not hopeless. You may write somewhere (the fridge, by the door, etc.) to use a hand cream in the morning before you leave home and/or to use it every evening when you go to bed. This last one, in the evening should be accessible for everyone.
    5.Use a hand cream always after a shower, or bath, because than not only the pores of your skin get larger, but also your nails, which are much more permeable than your skin, become more receptive and the   nutrients, can get much better in them. If you don’t do this, they will dry even more after the contact with the water.
     6.In the evening, before you go to bed the creaming must be abundant, if you have longer nails, than don’t concentrate only on the top of your nails, but put an amount also on the inner side, because there the hand cream may stay longer, doesn’t wipe down as easily during your sleep, so the nails can get a 7-8 hour hydration!
     7.Use a nail hardener at start 2-3 times a day, after two weeks, if you start to see a difference, than it may be enough only once. But this depends how your nails react. Some may see a difference and get stronger nail faster, for some may take a while. If they got strong enough you may use the nail hardener only once a week.
     8.Do not use nail enamel all the time. Make breaks. For example, after 2-3 weeks of using make a break of 5 days, or even a week, when you cream them, use a nail hardener on the whole nail or only on the tip of them, after case. They also need to breathe, just like you need vacation.
     9.Don’t over use the nail file. Use it only when you cut them and need a little bit smoothing and when you use it, than make sure that you file only in one direction, otherwise you will make micro-fissures that may become bigger and eventually lead to breaks.
    10.And finally equip yourself with some patience, because repairing broken and nails in a poor state takes time, a general estimation is around 1 month, till they can regenerate.

Beautiful nails

Why motivation slumbers after a while?

Stamina is precious. Is like a fire, when it burns, can do a lot… but when it goes out, it is very hard to restore it! So keep it burning, don’t let it go out!

Why can it go out? Because you can not erase 25 years of habit with a few months or even a year.

Motivation is not something that happens over night or in a fraction of a second, is not a huge revelation you have after seeing a girl in shape, to whom you want to be similar to…no. Motivation is something you have to work hard for, you have to build it up and take care of, just like a baby. If you will not feed him regularly, he will die. That’s your motivation. Feed him in the morning, and noon and in the evening. That way it will grow, and make you happy. If you don t want to go to the gym, than don’t. A day or two off, lying the whole day and reading, documenting yourself, sometimes it is much better, and adds more to your progress as a lousy workout. What has to come, it will, but takes time to build the “cathedral”. Habits are like a text carved in stone, it will take a lot of rain, sun, wind to make it disappear. Your bad habits, unhealthy eating style are carved in stone, it is not impossible to destroy them, but it will take you time.

The winner doesn’t get disappointed from not winning all the time. A winner doesn’t care about losing. He will just fight more, no matter what. Think about your “bad” genetics, that they aren’t a force that pulls you back, but a strong motive to push you forward. You have the muffin-top issue going one big time on your bottom area? No shit? Then you’ll work twice as hard to crush it, and you’ll have the most beautiful ass, more round and lean as the others who were born with no such issue…and never did a thing…because they had it anyway. For example I have no idea, from whom did I get my big ass full with cellulite, because my mother had less cellulite at 40 as I had at 18. But certainly someone had it…and the sweaty appeared again in the family, naming: on me. What can I do? Fight it of course! Very little people are born nice, most of us, we have “issues”. Don’t complain, because you are not the only one. Sometimes we look at people, who achieved a lot, and say, well, for them it was easy…for me is not. Undoubtedly there are differences, but not everyone wins the lottery ether, doesn’t it? And we get sad of that? No. We keep on!

Who keeps trying at one moment succeeds. The only one who never succeeds is the one, who never tries.

Between you and a dream body stands only your mind. Your body is much easier to transform than your mind, the only problem is, if you don t change your mind, you’ll never change your physique. Never.

Motivation

Suffer from discipline or suffer from being sorry!

The body achieves what the mind believes in!

The power doesn’t come from things you can do, but from things you are due to achieve.

Not eating shit and a lot is not a punishment, is a reward!

Going out to walk or do any kind of moving, when you least want to, is not a punishment, but a reward!

By eating like a pig at Christmas time you don’t give a gift to yourself, but a punishment.

If you go out of your track just for one week it is enough to fuck 3 months of  hard work.

Stamina is precious. Is like a fire, when it burns, can do a lot… but when it goes out, it is very hard to restore it! So keep it burning, don’t let it go out!

Weight loss obstacles

 A lot of times, there exists one ore in worse cases more, obstacles that keep you from achieving your weight loss goal. Failing in keeping yourself to a certain meal or exercise plan is due to some kind of disturbance in your life, because in most of the cases a person knows exactly what they should not eat in order to lose weight, but no matter this knowledge he or she is unable to stick to a healthy meal plant. It is just like, when you know that you should cross the street where is marked to avoid getting hit by a car, but you anyway cross in the wrong place, and although you’ve got hit already before, you keep crossing in the same place and keep yourself being hit again and again… it sounds stupid, but it is exactly what it happens with food. You know that it is too much or too sugary, unhealthy, full of fat or whatever, but anyway you keep ingesting.  So, you do not want to commit suicide and don’t want to die, but you throw yourself down from a 50 store building anyway… you wouldn’t do such a thing, would you? We can affirm that we do know that what we eat may be wrong, but we eat it anyway, and meanwhile we dream of having a slim body.

 So, what is making you do eat what you shouldn’t? Some may say that it’s the devil, but I don’t go for this version. I would put the question also in another way. What keeps your mind getting off the track, losing the goal from sight? The question have two sides, just like a coin: what makes you do things and what makes you don’t do things? A physical obstacle? It may be, but usually it is not a disability, or some bad person, or big green dragon that would have locked you up in a tower full of chocolates…no. Usually it is some kind of mental “background” issue that grabs your attention and makes you focus on the wrong things. And stopping eating in the right time requires a strong mental state, till it becomes a habit.

Why do we become week? What is the mental barrier that keeps you off the right track? The answer is very bad news for you: I have absolutely no idea, but you know why? Because I don’t know you and your life. One thing I do know though: the obstacle is there and it is there in your life. So, you are missing an item, but you are given a big sack where 100% you can find your item. You just have to look.  In this case what would you do? Obviously you would search the bag till you find your thing, because it is there. But because things don’t talk and walk, you have to search for it yourself in order to be in its possession.

Start to analyze your life:

 Is there someone or something with which you are not comfortable with?

 Is there a certain person, event, thing which causes you to be anxious?

 Ask yourself one thousand questions. Your brain works in fractions of second. It can ask those thousands of questions in no time. The only thing you have to take care of, is to answer every single one honestly. You will find what is bothering you. You will find it if you want to find it, if you are honest. Don’t judge. Just answer. And when you get your answer, don’t say without thinking, that it is something you can not change. Maybe you already know the disturbing factor. And may be, that you just locked it up in your closet, and put the label on it as: can’t be done, or can’t be changed.

 There is no such label as “insolvable”. God doesn’t have a big printing  company where such tags are made. There isn’t! This is something you “manufacture”.  And you do it so, not when the problem really inextricable is, but just when you don’t see the solution. Because there is, and probably not just one, but from reasons only by you known, you refuse to open your mind, to widen your vision. You may have fear in your heart. Change means steps towards new. And steps towards unknown need a brave heart. God made his wonder already. He gave you the most powerful weapon that exists in the world: your mind. Is his fault that you just refuse to use it for finding new ways?

 You have to eliminate the disturbing factor from your life, because it makes you unhealthy and keeps you away from achieving your dream.  This doesn’t mean that you have to divorce your husband who loves french-fries. No. It means that you have to find a way to make yourself to be strong enough not to eat of it, when he does or eat only a very small quantity, or to be indifferent and not want it at all. Or may be a lot more variations, which for your case, your life are suitable, but may not be for me or anybody else. But non of these will work if you don’t use your mind! Make it as they do in court. First hear the whole case. Be a good judge and grand-jury. You must not be unilateral and must not judge the case before you have seen every witness and had every hearing.  After it analyze and only after it make the judgment. 

 Preconceptions never got the world farther, only sat back. It will not do you any good either.

Set a date to weight loss?

 Often we put a term to our weight loss plan. We should get lean and beautiful till the first of June, for example. We’ll calculate the time…1 kg in every week…in three months, and we get a mathematically accurate result. And it should function.

 Than why do we fail so many times? Why do so many people fail than? Because although getting slim and rid of fat is a matter of mathematics, namely: you use more kcals than you consume. In theory every weight loss plan that is based somehow on reducing your calorie intake, should lead to results. The failure of the plan is due to the “metaphysical approach” of the problem. Making body changes of this kind may have at its base calculations, but we can never shut out the human factor, and namely us. Because we do have to deal with ourselves here and with our lives. We do have moods, that can occur due to a lot of factors: boyfriend left us, you go through a divorce, your period is coming, the weather gets worse, you have part of a long winter or too much rain, or lose a friend or relative, have problems at workplace, but you also may have part not just of bad things, but also have celebrations, like the marriage of your daughter, picnic with your friends, official dinner with clients and so on. No need for me to enumerate any further, because we all know how many causes overeating can have. But don’t make it count. If you get off the track and over eat for two weeks in a row and gain a pound instead of losing it, you may calculate again, that you will not be able to achieve the weight loss goal till your set date. And then what you do? You will probably start ingesting again, because it doesn’t matter anyway… because you calculated that till that damn first of June, you can’t make it now…

 What is there to do? Set the goal, not the date! If you never have set that first of June, than you could have got your dream figure till the first of July. Now, you won’t get it even till the second of October. Ignore events, wedding, party, holiday etc. You slip a little, whatever the reason, don’t worry, a week or two is not an eternity. Even a month is not an eternity. The so called “important-event” till which you wanted to look “perfect” went by? So what? You have a goal no matter the event. Yes it is welcomed if it happens everything as it was planned, but almost always gets something in the way, so not to get disturbed by different issues, take the events and enjoy them as they are, and make your fitness goal be a separate thing, don’t tie it to social events.  You do it for you, not for others. As long as you do it for others, you will not be able to dedicate yourself as deeply to it as you should to achieve success for the long term.

Persian poet quote

 “When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it” Jalad ad-Din Rumi, Persian poet and mystic

 Eat always in a correct way. Do not over-hunger yourself and do not over-exercise. Respect your body, because only the fat is which you want to get rid of, not your entire body and also not your life or health!
Do not torture yourself!

Meal plan for health and silhouette

Before you start changing your eating habits or wrongly called "dieting" there are some points which you may take in consideration:

 Before you start you’ll have to sit down and meditate a little, think and understand that “dieting” is something stupid. In the moment you think about starting the diet, it probably means, that it is not just your imagination, but you really have some extra pounds to get rid of. So, that also means that you don’t count between the lucky few, to whom is very difficult to get fat…because there are also people like that…. So, if you were able to pile up those pounds once, you’ll be able to pile them up again. So why diet? You wanna look good the rest of your life or two weeks?

 “Dieting” doesn’t exist. The idea is not to hunger yourself a few weeks, in which your desire for all kinds of food items increases in such a measure, that you’ll transform yourself in a huge green scaled dragon, which at a certain point will decide to go after the beautiful princess from the palace and kidnap her. This story in your case transcripts itself, in you going and attacking the fridge and kidnaping everything that is inside. So, obviously it is not a great idea making the yogis and the Somali jealous. We will avoid to hunger ourselves and we will not let weeks pass by without eating some of our favorite food items. The point is not to eliminate them, but to regulate when we eat them, and how much we eat from them. 

The meal plan should have a balanced carbohydrate/protein/fat rapport. It is not important to consume every single day the same proportion of these, because we want to avoid our organism getting used to something, because in that case the fat loss goal may be pushed further away. Days may and must vary, because also we are not the same every day. Our mood can differ, our thinking, so our food need. 

 What it is also important is, getting used eating more times a day, accelerating your metabolism. High metabolism = more optimal calorie burning = long term weight loss. What we ingest, we consume, we don’t pile! We do not make a diet, we live this way and period! Also we do not expect huge results after one week. Think that one week is nothing compared to the years, you got that fat on yourself! You needed a long time to get fat, don’t expect to get lean in no-time! It will happen that is for sure, but not one week after another. When? This depends on every individual. Some are more receptive, some are less, but eventually we all see result. 

 Changes begin to happen after two weeks, and two weeks are really not a long time. When you are living “the normal way” two weeks fly away, you don’t even notice, so don’t. To get used our systems with new things takes a long time, we are the slave of our habits. We do have some stupid habits as well, and we stick to them no matter what. Actually not certain food items are the problem, (they may well exist, because there are a lot of things on this world that exist and we just don’t care about them), but our love towards our habits. For example chocolate by itself, is not a problem, the problem occurs only in the moment when you begin to relate eating it to happiness. Once your mind made this association, is like a mafia in your head, everything is related to everything, nothing is what it seems. But we learn all this in our childhood. When the grandma gives a cookie, if the kid does something right, than she plants the seeds in the child’s mind of associating sweets with laudation. Cookie = certificate of merit. You made something good? Than eat something “good”. You are sour? Than eat something sweet! Our parents educated us in this sense, but also they were victims of their parents, and so on. So the habit is not even only in your life, is related to our evolution, generation after generation. Breaking it is not easy, but also not impossible. Is sound scary, but losing a war can occur by underestimating the enemy!

 Have you ever seen something valuable that is easy to achieve for everyone? What everybody can have doesn’t count between major revelations, discoveries or successes. If everybody had Lamborghini, it wouldn’t mean such a big thing, would it?

 Just don’t expect that after you ingest junk food for thirty years, suddenly you’re going to start to sing “hallelujai!” in front of the altar of broccoli for instance… or in front of a plate of broccoli…

“I hate exercise”

 The exercise issue is pretty simple and has to be related to general life. If you don’t overdo something, you won’t end up hating it. For example if you are madly in love, but spend with your lover 24 hours a day together…every single day…there is a very high risk that in a short time you’ll get bored of him. If you want a long term relationship, than give room. Don’t make severe habits, don’t force and don’t overdo. If you suffocate someone, or someone “suffocates” you with his or her non-stop presence and demands, than sooner or later you will want to quit. How do you think that exercising is something completely different than any other relationship? You want to build up a long-term relationship with exercise but you don’t give room for “him”? As a respond, it will suffocate you. So, it won’t work.

 What is there to do? Don’t try to build Rome in a day. It took a long time to build…you know… A stone house persists, a tent is flown away by the first stronger wind. Make exercise your friend. Use it when you want, but not every morning and every evening. You are no athlete. A body can be very grateful even for a smaller effort. If you hate it, it will hate you too. If you are not a friend of exercise, it also will not want to be your friend. Start for example three times a week making 30 crunches on an exercise ball, and lifting your leg laterally also 30 times. It will take only a few minutes and can be performed while you are watching your favorite serial. If you force yourself a few times in the gym, the following will happen: if you survive the attempt without injuries, than you will develop a certain “hatred towards gym” state of mind, and when you think the next day at work, that you’ll have to go “there” again, you’ll start to feel nausea and fear. It’s like you would have an aggressive husband who would want to beat you up every single day.

 To exercise in the correct way, you will have to go happy to the gym, get used to it. If your plan says that you should do 9 exercises, 3-4 sets each, but you want only 5 exercises to perform and after that you don’t feel like it anymore, than go home, and return the other day and finish, or work on other parts of your body. You must avoid to get a “forced” feeling. Think that even to brush your teeth, you had to get used to in your childhood. This is a new habit you have to include step after step in your life. I hated to wash my teeth when I was little, although it is not something I am especially in love with now, but it is something I don’t question, just do. I don’t wonder every day if I will do it or not, I know that is good and keeps me healthy and I just simply perform it. With exercise it’s tricky. You can’t really ignore the “myself” factor here. You have to choose exercises and training plan that matches your needs, not just physically, but also mentally. Are you a choleric, sanguine or melancholic person? How do you live your life? Are you always on the run? Can never stay still or you are more a meditative, low-key individual? Did you ever thought of these or you just went a few times in the gym and wondered afterwards why you failed and didn’t want to go back there ever…?

 So, don’t ignore yourself! Read about yourself, see what type you are and according to that, what needs you have. A wrong choice can do a lot of harm, because may cause some mental injuries. You may develop fear and an uncomfortable feeling towards the gym, when you would want the contrary to happen. Think about your parents, if they wanted you to do something, or generally the parents when they want children to teach something, what do they do? Yes, the bad parent gets angry after the first unsuccessful attempts of the child and starts to shout. And what happens then? Suddenly the child starts to do it extremely well? No! It gets scared and maybe refuses to do it at all or does it with no pleasure. A good parent starts to play with the child. Also a good teacher plays at the beginning and doesn’t want to force the children to do this or that, but gives them lead! The good educator does this in a way that the child doesn’t even realize but learns anyway!

 Be your own parent! Be your own teacher! Lead yourself and don’t constrain! Love never develops from fear or compulsion. Flowers never bloom because you stand near the plant and shout at it, they bloom because the weather is good. Than make your weather good! Create the atmosphere where the sentiment of sympathy towards the gym or exercising can freely unfold!

Are we equal?

 Do we store fat in the same way? Do we all get easily fat, in the same time and with the same speed? Do we accumulate the fat tissue on the same places? Do we all get rid of the fat in the same way, during the same time? And I could continue with these questions. Only one thing is a fact, namely that everybody can get rid of the bulk. (I am talking about healthy individuals, not persons with hormonal disorders or illnesses which can intervene and obstruct any kind of slimming attempt) Now, the problem is, with which kind of effort, with what kind of fight can you win over your pounds? In how long time? These are collateral questions, however they are very decisive ones, because they determine most of the time the success of the thinning-attempt: if it goes easy and fast enough, than the chances that you are going to succeed with the thing are much higher than when it takes an eternity to get rid of two pounds. But even in the almost non-existent case of sticking to a torture-diet every single day with your every single meal for a few months, does your pounds shred as easily as your friends? Or your friends friend? Well, may be… but there is no guarantee to that. And why is that?

 Well, let’s start from the beginning, not considering food, or diet or whatever similar. We go general and think: are we born the same way? Does every child-birth take place in the same way, taking the same amount of time? No. Are we born in the same kind of families? One is born in an expensive private-hospital, the other in a dirty nursing from a third world country. One is born a princess in a rich western European country, having the main job all her life, actually not to do anything (making photos with elderly people and fate-stricken African kids doesn’t count, work of smiling at photo-making in the name of the poor or sick or some similar bullshit also doesn’t count, just to fool the people). Meanwhile the other is born in an ex-communist poor eastern European country as a child of a sewing-woman, who gets paid 200 dollars for a month of daily 10 hour work. Then I ask again: ARE WE EQUAL? The hell we are! If somebody thinks that “they” , the privileged ones, also have problems, I say, that is self-delusion. If you can not decide between a Mercedes and a Porsche, that can be frustrating…but if you can not decide between a butter and margarine, because you would like the butter, but it is twice as expensive as the margarine…than we are talking about two different kind of problems. The first is frustrating, may be, but if you are so damn poor, not to allow yourself a butter weekly, than you have a much bigger issue with your life as the guy with the Merc-Porsch problem, don’t you think?

 Some people are struggling between the butter and margarine all their life. Just as some people are struggling with fat all their life, when some others never even think about it, because the issue never occurs. Also it is much easier for rich people to get and stay fit. If you can hire a personal trainer, who will motivate you all day, exercise with you, prepare your meals, etc. than you must be really an impossible chick to be fat. My mother says sometimes…”Madonna has the same age as I and look how good she looks like….and how I look like” well yeah. It is easier for her than for my mother, who works and sits in an office 12 hours a day, after goes home stressed and tired, and no personal trainer is waiting for her…this is excuse, I know. But makes also the issue much more difficult. Are we than doomed? No way man! I read a very good saying somewhere: “If is important enough you’ll find a reason, otherwise you’ll find an excuse”. Well said…even sounds so motivating. At least for a few seconds, doesn’t it? J) the fight is not always the same. Sometimes it is longer and it is accompanied by more bloodshed, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t win it! You just have to be prepared. Don’t do like the Germans in the second World War, that they weren’t prepared enough for the Russian winter, so they lost… that is why we lose, because we start without preparation. The preparation has to be well done, afterwards like the troops of solders, they must get reinforcements all the time, otherwise they run out of ammunition. Also the first losses do not mean a loss of the whole war! So, dears, do not look in your neighbors garden. That is absolutely irrelevant. One of my friends told me, that she shred a lot of pounds making the “cabbage-soup” diet. Great, I said. And what do you do? She said, that she is eating only cabbage soup. And she told me proudly, that she can eat as much as she wants from the thing, and she loses weight anyway! Holy Manna… than I asked the obvious question: and till when are you eating that stuff? Till I shred all the pounds I planned, she said. Yeah. Cool, and after that? The moment you stop with this enormous aberration, your body lacking all the nutrients you refused for such a long time, and your brain, that always wants more, that it is necessary, will conspire against you and not take the pounds back, but pile them! Or you wanna do that forever? Eating nothing but cabbage soup all of your life? Well, you could try, because if you do that, probably you won’t live so long, so may even succeed eating only that for a lifetime… if your lifetime consists of 3 years from now, for example…

 I had a friend. When she gained weight, she put it mainly on her breasts, and everywhere else very-very little. I, instead, if I put on 22 pounds, 2 will end up from the waist up, and the other twenty from the waist down: tummy and buttock. Also shredding goes shitty as well. The two from up are the firsts to go than comes the big battle… but does that mean that now, when I found a way to live with the body type God gave me I look worse than her? No way, man. Do I have to take more care of what I eat? Yes. Do I have to insist more on the gluteus exercises than her? Yes. But I had a choice: complaining of the body I have, not doing anything and looking chubby or shutting up and doing something about it. 

So, stop crying and complaining! You are not the only one who has a “huge” problem. Deep down your soul you are shy and believe you can not do it. But it is wrong. Look at Obama, even he says that you can do it. And the guy must know something, after all not everybody becomes the president of the United States!

Overeating as comfort…STOP! Get a hobby!

 The most general cause of over-eating is that we use eating as a substitute for something. This can be boredom, sadness, lack of self-confidence, etc. This is very dangerous, and when we get used to it, it is a hard battle getting ourselves “unused” from it. It is like a drug, and in the moment you start using food as a drug, it will be as dangerous as any other substance we use for making ourselves happy. Food is no better or safer than alcohol or drugs. And giving up with it is much more difficult, because we can choose, let’s say not to smoke from tomorrow, or not to drink anymore and we can very well survive, but without eating we can not. How could somebody stop using cocaine if must … but not that portion, but a smaller? It sounds stupid, because it is stupid. Society doesn’t seem to give a damn. And the world economy, not that doesn’t give a damn, but the only thing that they do in a society where most of the people are becoming overweight is, to censor cigarette ads? So, you can not see cigarette ads on the television, but there is absolutely no problem making commercials about chocolate, or huge hamburgers or toxic beverages. It is like you forbid LSD, but promote amphetamine?! By the way… did you see a lot of commercials about broccoli? No, you didn’t, because that is not the thing some people get really rich of.

 

 The world is so constructed, that even if you wouldn’t go to the fridge, on the TV which probably goes in the background, while you may have other activities in the house, will appear all kinds of commercials about tasty biscuits, lickerish pizzas or whatever. Those stuffs remain in your mind, and the first minute you will get bored, they will come up and make you go to the store, buy it and eat it. It is a very serious business, for the people they are making it, but also for your health and shape. Nobody seems to want to forbid commercials about food during films or TV shows. So, you are a victim. It is almost beyond human to avoid junk food and over-eating all the time. And this is the reason, why we do not have a choice. We have to incorporate the “bad” stuff in our life and meals. You can say, yes, you will eliminate everything from tomorrow. But be honest. How long will it stay? May be there are so powerful people with such a strong will, that they can achieve this. Well done for them. I don’t count myself in their group. I also believe that we, normal people, who are not so strong all the time, in every hour of every day, we are more than those. I am also not addressing myself to them because I learned, that first I have to accept myself and work out a way for ME, something that makes me do things, and not to copy patterns that may have been good for somebody else. Learn to think! This is the most important thing. By thinking you will realize. Realization leads to knowing what the problem is, and when we already know the problem we can work our way up to accomplishment.

 When you realize that you are fat due to over feeding yourself because of boredom that is already a step. There is also a lot of things you can do not to be bored. You need something that grabs your interest enough, that you are no longer interested of eating. Something, what you do, when keep doing it makes you as happy as the process of ingesting food. Some of you already may have realized this, and may have even tried doing something. Something is not enough. You need an activity that captivates your interest, with other words, it captivates your mind. Because you already realized that when you are already 160 Lbs heavy, it is not your body that craves for more and more, but your mind… This activity should be a hobby. 

 

 Hobbies are in some way reflections of our mind, it reflects your mind and soul that is repressed of your job, life, society, etc. But finding a hobby is not easy at all. And only having ideas of hobbies is not enough. You may have a lot of interests, but when you start to do them, some fade away with time and you will wake up one day and realize, that the hobby you supposed to be doing every other day, didn’t take place since two weeks. Well, that can mean two things: 1. It didn’t grab your interest enough and doesn’t reflect your mind and didn’t match your personality or 2. You simply didn’t allow enough time to build itself up. It is very easy to think about the first one, but usually what happens is the second. Why? Because in the moment you think about something, when a certain activity comes into your mind, it tells that has something to do with your circle of interests. You may also have more hobbies. This is even better. Because it is sometimes boring getting occupied all the time with one certain thing. Don’t be misled by the fact that you don’t want to get busy with your theoretical hobby. This is also human. We get bored all the time of everything. You need more, don’t be stuck with only one. You may like sometimes to go for a long walk with your dog, sometimes you don’t, and when you don’t than you have to have something else that keeps you again busy and interfere in your minds plans making you eat again. And why eat? Because it is the easiest. And why we choose the easiest way? Because again we are humans and we evolved being clever, finding great easy ways of doing and achieving everything. This is not bad, actually it is good, for example we evolved a lot from the “cave-man” status and have internet now. You can be on any part of the world and read this, what I am writing thousands of miles away. You can have any interest. Internet makes it much easier to find out things about the certain interest of yours. The world is really one click away. Use it. Use the opportunities human evolution gives you, use the chances and the knowledge, don’t use only the “supermarket” as the top discovery of the homo sapiens. Also it can help you not just to find but even to build up a hobby or as many as you want. It can help you find activities that somehow are related to one another. For example, I am interested about losing weight and keeping myself fit, so I have a blog dedicated to that. I bought an expensive camera and make photos with it, and then I publish them on faceboook, twitter or my blog. Sometimes I want to make a certain kind of photo, so I have books about photography, I read and learn about using the camera properly. I have arthritis, so I read a lot on the net about it, document myself, how I can improve my condition. I do write articles that you read, I document all the time, so everything I write down is accurate information, and so on. I use my interests keeping me in the shape.

  I am convinced that this is a goal for life –keeping myself, my mind always busy- otherwise other thoughts will enter and lead me and I do not want that. But all this circle of interests didn’t occur by night. It took years and months to build it up and I am going to share my own story. See the article “making your weakness strength” !

Making your weakness strength

…or how to build up a hobby?

I am a tall person. I never engaged myself in any kind of sport activity in my childhood, but grew and grew. I was borne with two melted vertebras in the lumbar region, later I developed scoliosis and lordosis, afterwards arthrosis. I began to have severe pain in my lumbar region even at an early age, beginning around the age of 12. My parents didn’t know much about my condition, although they are great people, somehow accepted it, as something normal for tall people, they also suffering all the time from pain in the lower back. Well, she “inherited” they said, and with that the issue was closed. I have never been a fan of the gym, and being young also didn’t understand what was happening with me and didn’t occur to me, that with proper exercise it could go away or at least improve my condition significantly. And also it took me more than ten years to realize it. But no matter how long it took, the important thing is that the “revelation” came finally. But it wasn’t anything spectacular and realizing that I needed to stay fit and exercise was still a long way from introducing it into my life. And this “long way” I call building up a hobby. It is like when you plant a tree. It is still a long way till it grows big, has a lot of branches and leaves and till you can rest underneath it in the cool shadow and it is able to protect you from the rays of the sun. But when it is already grown, believe me, it can protect you from sun and rain, whatever it comes, but first you have to take care of it, to water it and wait.

 Nature does not hurry, this you’ll have to learn. Anything that grows fast, too fast it is not natural anymore, and what it is not natural it is never healthy and may last also short. You are a natural thing. You need time. Accord it to yourself. You have to acclimatize yourself having a hobby, you have to learn how to have an interest for something that may not be related necessarily of making money. It may be related to your health. This is way more important than anything. In my case it was my physical condition that triggered the change initially. My friends, class-mates had no idea what a back-pain was when I was already suffering from it. Sometimes I went partying with my friends, and while dancing, from a sudden move I got so severe back pain, that I could barely move. It made me really miserable. I had a weakness that nobody else in my entourage of my age had. So, for me it was not just about looking good, it was also about feeling good. Eventually I went to the doctor. Besides, that they told me the diagnosis, they weren’t much of a help. So, I began to document myself about the conditions I had. Read a lot, tried out a lot of things. With exercise I managed to improve the shape of my spine, because the stronger muscles make wonders with bones. This approach I had also with my arthrosis.  Made a lot of mistakes, by sometimes following training programs of fitness celebs which were absolutely not proper for me, but also made huge progresses deepening my interest in the conditions, processes and reactions of the human body, till I got to the point, when after a long and stressful day at work, I am not interested anymore in ingesting a big chocolate, but I have an eager to lay down a little and read some more, to search some more, and the other day in the morning to try out some new exercises that I found, or techniques, movements that I thought about the evening earlier. And this documenting activity relaxes me more than a piece of cake would. But as you see, meanwhile I got from school, to work, so it took some time… This is in a “nutshell”, but an example of the flow of things. The trigger and development of a hobby. The trigger was the weakness, of which I was able to make strength. Look in your own life. You surely have a need, a dream, or a weakness that needs strengthening.  When you recognize it you will have to insist on it.

 I don’t have just one hobby. I have more: photography, exploring Photoshop, collecting fashion dolls, laying on the grass in the mountains, watching old crime-serials, etc. Yes, I do collect fashion dolls, which are childhood dreams. This is the reason why I am saying: look in your life and recognize, remember the dreams you had. I grew up in a horrible eastern European communist country, we had no cartoons on the TV, no nice dolls and toys in the shops. I was dreaming of beautiful dolls when I was little…and now, as I am a grown up, I do order some time to time beautiful fashion dolls from over the sea. I look for them, I order them, I wait and receive. This makes me again very happy. So I have another substitute for food.

I worked hard, because I was weak, and became strong. Some are strong and gamble it away, and become weak.

You need or miss something psychically and you are replacing this need with something physical. Your body is a body. The soul, the mind makes it to be what it is, what actually you are.