I will soon be saying goodbye to many teenagers that I work with as I am leaving the school where I work. This is an open letter of advice that I will be leaving the young people with.
1. When walking past someone on the street or in the corridor, never look down as you go past, it telegraphs that you are intimidated by them and it is a submissive gesture. If you absolutely must look away from them, look up.
2. Always excuse yourself if you phone goes off in the middle of a face to face conversation. Apologise profusely if you must answer, but the majority of times, you can just call them back when you have finished talking.
3. Kindness is the best way to make friends with people.
4. Study body language, it is a great way of finding out peoples intentions and feelings towards you. If someone’s feet are often pointed towards you it means that there is a high chance (but not certain) that they like you in a romantic way.
5. If you are walking with two friends and there is not enough room for all of you to walk in a line, don’t walk behind, walk in front of them. It makes you look very ‘alpha’
6. Listen and ask relevant questions when you are being told something. And wait your turn in the conversation. There is no bigger compliment that when someone is telling you a story, and something similar has happened to you, you don’t rush in and say ‘me too’ – Wait until they have finished and then tell them. Don’t just wait for your turn to talk when they are talking, really listen.
7. Spitting on the street is dirty, it makes you look like a pig. Don’t do it – same goes for dropping litter.
8. Learn proper table manners – it is one of the best life skills I can pass on, eat with your mouth closed, use your knife and fork elegantly and don’t show your dining companions the contents of your mouth when telling a story. (relationships have ended because of this)
9. When you are feeling down or depressed about something, try your very best to not think about other sad things. It makes it worse. If you are sad, think about happy things to get out of it. With practice it becomes second nature.
10. Learn to punch correctly, but never punch anyone unless absolutely necessary. (Reasons for punching people include – If they punch you, if they have made your other half cry through meanness or pain or if they publicly humiliate you) Do not punch people to show off, if they insult your family (and the said family member is not there to hear it) or to win an argument. It looks weak.
11. Don’t tweet, text, blog or facebook anything that you wouldn’t want put on a billboard outside your house.
12. Always apologise for your behaviour, it is amazing what a genuine, heartfelt apology can do.
13. Look after your mum and dad. They have sacrificed a lot for you, you will never be able to pay them back – the best you can do is treat them with respect. Never swear at them.
14. You will get broken hearted at some point in your life – you deal with it by losing yourself in a hobby, by talking to your friends and family. Do not get over it by sleeping with the first person who shows interest, and certainly do not try and get over it with meanness.
15. Lust/infactuation lasts for 18 months, once it wears off, do not start looking for a new partner, try looking at the one who you have invested in with new eyes. It saves a lot of time, money and heartbreak.
16. Do not work exclusively for money. No matter how much you earn you will always want more. Rich people are no happier than less well off people. You need enough to live comfortably and after that there is no correlation between money in the bank and happiness. And in work, never do your best, do what is necessary. Work much harder when the boss is looking.
17. Treat people of the opposite sex with respect, kindness and honesty, you will get much father.
18. Don’t just work out your body to look good. Work on your personality and your intellect too. It is no good being buff if you cant converse about current events, politics or football. Read a lot.
19. Fill your life with fun. This is not a rehearsal, this is it.
20. No one has ever said on his or her death bed: ‘I wish I had had less sex’ or ‘I wish I had traveled less.
Part two will be along shortly.
Sunday, 24 June 2012
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Weight a minute
Dieting is hard, so is losing weight. What makes it worse is the fact that there are so many unhelpful fad diets around and every single fad diet starts off by explaining the fact that there are a lot of fad diets around. (And of course, how they are different – they will help you get the weight off, and keep it off)
The sad fact of the matter is, that most people will put any weight they have lost back on. This can be seen by celebrities such as Vanessa Felts, who lost a shit load of weight, got loads of media attention, then put it all back on. Why? The clue is in the word ‘attention’.
Losing weight feels good, we talk about it to the point of obsession when we are ‘being good’ and like to update our facebook feeds with how fast we can now run a mile or how much weight we have lost this week.
When we first start losing the weight, we, like celebrities, get a lot of attention, praise and compliments. It is brilliant to hear comments from acquaintances saying how good we look, asking about our progress and telling us how jealous we are. We wear their compliments in all their shiny (and slim) gloss and it motivates us to keep going because we adore all the favorable looks and attention we are getting.
This inevitably stops, you eventually stop being the person who lost 2 stone and once again become part of the furniture, the chat around the water-cooler becomes about a scandalous affair or, heaven forbid, another weight loss champion. This makes you lose one of the main motivations for being slim in the first place – attention. This of course makes your will power decline to the point of binge eating.
I digress – I, at this stage in my life, am reading a lot about how to be healthy and how to lose excess body fat – This means I am on a lot of websites that offer advice on how to do it. I read an article today that inspired me to get out my pen (Microsoft word) and start up my blog again.
The website article in question was entitled ‘4 Reasons You Don't Have The Body You Want’ and can be found, in full, here: Livestrong.com
Have a read – go on.
Back? Right, this is one of the most badly researched and plain wrong articles I have ever read.
There is absolutely no evidence that stress directly causes weight gain. There is one thing that makes you fat, or put on weight, and that is eating more calories than you spend. Stress only has correlations with weight gain, not a causal relationship.
Now that is not to say that stress can cause eating more calories than you expend. It is true that if you are stressed, you may drink more alcohol to cope, or you may comfort eat to relieve the stress a bit. You may be too stressed to go to the gym, thus reducing your calorie expenditure. But, as per the article, stress does not make the body hold on to fat.
It gets worse.
OK, number 1. Stored in fat cells? Fat cells are made up of triglycerides and lipase (If I can remember my GCSE Science lessons) They do not store toxins from cigarette smoke. They do not store metal fillings. This is scare mongering and it could, if widely read, lead to fat people making the excuse of ‘ah, I’m fat because I have too much mercury in my body from tuna that my fat cells are too scared to ‘let out’ in case they kill me. Which brings me to my next point.
Fat cells are not conscious – they do not think along the lines of ‘Oh, the body needs energy, quick, lets break down some glycogen into simple glucose molecules, or wait, this cell has some stored Paracetamol. Better not, it may poison the body.’ Doesn’t happen and is absurd to think it does.
Finally – If cigarette smoke, cosmetics, metal tooth fillings (so bizarre) and Paracetamols are so toxic, why do we need fat cells to protect us? They are already in our body. I have an image of the fat cells, a bit like sheriffs rounding up all the toxins from these things we put in our body, and locking them up in little fat prison cells (excuse the pun). And keeping them there forever, as they are scared of what will happen to us. Then the prisons get full so we put on weight, as we must keep them locked up. Preposterous.
‘The efficacy, safety, and much of the theory behind these alternative practices are disputed by the medical community. In 2001, researchers at the university of Calgary reported that cardiac patients receiving chelation therapy fared no better than those who received placebo treatment.’*
There are also side effects to this therapy, and to be fair, most of them are better than lead poisoning symptoms but if there is nothing wrong with you it is unnecessary and will cause pain. This is irresponsible and dangerous to be putting on a reputable website that people trust to help them become healthier. Its wrong!
Ill save you all some time and money. Eat less and exercise more!
P.S. The way around the point at the beginning about keeping the motivation when everyone stops complimenting you and giving you attention is to keep a photo of how you used to look, and do it for that person.
*Knudtson ML, Wyse DG, Galbraith PD, et al. (2002). "Chelation therapy for ischemic heart disease: a randomized controlled trial". JAMA 287 (4): 481–6.
The sad fact of the matter is, that most people will put any weight they have lost back on. This can be seen by celebrities such as Vanessa Felts, who lost a shit load of weight, got loads of media attention, then put it all back on. Why? The clue is in the word ‘attention’.
Losing weight feels good, we talk about it to the point of obsession when we are ‘being good’ and like to update our facebook feeds with how fast we can now run a mile or how much weight we have lost this week.
When we first start losing the weight, we, like celebrities, get a lot of attention, praise and compliments. It is brilliant to hear comments from acquaintances saying how good we look, asking about our progress and telling us how jealous we are. We wear their compliments in all their shiny (and slim) gloss and it motivates us to keep going because we adore all the favorable looks and attention we are getting.
This inevitably stops, you eventually stop being the person who lost 2 stone and once again become part of the furniture, the chat around the water-cooler becomes about a scandalous affair or, heaven forbid, another weight loss champion. This makes you lose one of the main motivations for being slim in the first place – attention. This of course makes your will power decline to the point of binge eating.
I digress – I, at this stage in my life, am reading a lot about how to be healthy and how to lose excess body fat – This means I am on a lot of websites that offer advice on how to do it. I read an article today that inspired me to get out my pen (Microsoft word) and start up my blog again.
The website article in question was entitled ‘4 Reasons You Don't Have The Body You Want’ and can be found, in full, here: Livestrong.com
Have a read – go on.
Back? Right, this is one of the most badly researched and plain wrong articles I have ever read.
‘Bad relationships lead to stress, and there are few things worse for your body composition than stress.’First of all, what about burgers?
There is absolutely no evidence that stress directly causes weight gain. There is one thing that makes you fat, or put on weight, and that is eating more calories than you spend. Stress only has correlations with weight gain, not a causal relationship.
Now that is not to say that stress can cause eating more calories than you expend. It is true that if you are stressed, you may drink more alcohol to cope, or you may comfort eat to relieve the stress a bit. You may be too stressed to go to the gym, thus reducing your calorie expenditure. But, as per the article, stress does not make the body hold on to fat.
It gets worse.
‘Environmental toxins -pollution, cigarette smoke, cosmetics, metal tooth fillings, prescription drugs, and mercury in fish – are stored in fat cells, and have the potential to wreak havoc on your body.
Since your body is smart, and prioritizes survival over ripped abs, it refuses to use these fat cells for fuel. Doing so would release these toxins into general circulation. Essentially, you are holding onto these fat cells so the toxins don't make you ill.’
OK, number 1. Stored in fat cells? Fat cells are made up of triglycerides and lipase (If I can remember my GCSE Science lessons) They do not store toxins from cigarette smoke. They do not store metal fillings. This is scare mongering and it could, if widely read, lead to fat people making the excuse of ‘ah, I’m fat because I have too much mercury in my body from tuna that my fat cells are too scared to ‘let out’ in case they kill me. Which brings me to my next point.
Fat cells are not conscious – they do not think along the lines of ‘Oh, the body needs energy, quick, lets break down some glycogen into simple glucose molecules, or wait, this cell has some stored Paracetamol. Better not, it may poison the body.’ Doesn’t happen and is absurd to think it does.
Finally – If cigarette smoke, cosmetics, metal tooth fillings (so bizarre) and Paracetamols are so toxic, why do we need fat cells to protect us? They are already in our body. I have an image of the fat cells, a bit like sheriffs rounding up all the toxins from these things we put in our body, and locking them up in little fat prison cells (excuse the pun). And keeping them there forever, as they are scared of what will happen to us. Then the prisons get full so we put on weight, as we must keep them locked up. Preposterous.
So how do we get rid of these unwanted guests, become less toxic, and drop that last chunk of stubborn body fat? You could take measures ranging from infrared saunas, detoxifying foot baths, chelation therapy, all the way to liver and GI tract detoxifying diets. These methods can help you remove metals and toxins from your system.Infrared Saunas, Foot baths, Chelation Therapy. This from one the most reputable fitness websites there is. Chelation therapy is a detoxification of metal therapy that is used to treat lead poisoning, or arsenic ingestion. It was also used to try to prevent mercury poisoning causing autism in children (all unproven by the way).
‘The efficacy, safety, and much of the theory behind these alternative practices are disputed by the medical community. In 2001, researchers at the university of Calgary reported that cardiac patients receiving chelation therapy fared no better than those who received placebo treatment.’*
There are also side effects to this therapy, and to be fair, most of them are better than lead poisoning symptoms but if there is nothing wrong with you it is unnecessary and will cause pain. This is irresponsible and dangerous to be putting on a reputable website that people trust to help them become healthier. Its wrong!
Ill save you all some time and money. Eat less and exercise more!
P.S. The way around the point at the beginning about keeping the motivation when everyone stops complimenting you and giving you attention is to keep a photo of how you used to look, and do it for that person.
*Knudtson ML, Wyse DG, Galbraith PD, et al. (2002). "Chelation therapy for ischemic heart disease: a randomized controlled trial". JAMA 287 (4): 481–6.
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