Healthy B.P.M.

I can be as cool as a sage but there are anger triggers that change me to an angry monster. It could be anything…silly things like things that thoughtless people say, frustration that I messed up an assignment….you must have those bad-mood days too. Days when everything you do and say take you to a dead end.

Some ideas that help:

1. Counting to ten doesn’t ever occur to me. When I’m angry I’m angry. I just become my ego and see red in everything.

2. Breathing does help. But as usual I forget to take in those deep breaths. Do you see yourself breathing deeply durimg a terrible traffic jam?

3.Thinking in the long term is an idea that really works for me. Is it worth it getting angry over this moment? Will it make any difference a decade later? When the answer is no way,I’ve calmed down.

4.Thinking from the other person’s point of view is so difficult, especially when you’re having an argument. But a moment in another person’s shoes will make all the difference.

5.Avoid confrontational situations. If you can’t adjust with someone, try not to meet them. If you have to, be amiable and not on the defensive.

6. Talk less when you’re angry otherwise you’ll just end up saying things you don’t mean and that you’ll regret.

7.Don’t take your anger to bed.

8.Tap on your funny bone. Sometimes humor defuses a bad situation.

9.I think sometimes saying how angry you are helps. Being quiet and unhappy about a situation doesn’t help. EXPRESS, don’t yell.

These tips are swell too.

anger, anger management, temper, stress, tips

What would you prefer doing?

Yoga or Botox?

Have you heard of the navarasas? Well it’s the Indian equivalent of the nine facial expressions-from pleasant to raging mad. Facial yoga is booming business now with yoga teachers giving you tips on how to look young by stretching your face all over the place. Stick out your tongue till your mouth hearts. Stare till your eyes look like saucers. It’s a lot of fun and you end up looking like Jim Carrey, as Katy Buchanan put it in her fun article: Yoga exercises keep mouth, cheek and brow toned

The idea is to perk up circulation and make your face more mobile. It’s always tightness that your body feels, when you’re on the phone or in a board meeting. So facial exercises help you loosen up and if you look at a mirror it makes you laugh too.

Botox paralyses your problem spots. It changes the way you look, no doubt and Hollywood will go the Botox way but ordinary people who don’t have to look like gods and goddesses on a daily basis, they can try this. And see if face contortion puts an end to crow’s feet.

What would you go for?

boomers, yoga, botox, facial yoga, anti aging, Jim Carrey

I can’t really put my finger on where I read it but astrology is a kind of psychotherapy. Where I live, bad times and good times necessitate consulting the astrologer. You need to know the exact moment you were born to the last minute and then you visit those forebearers of the future. Marriages are fixed that way. Businesses are built. If you feel I’m stuck God…I don’t know what to do. Give me some hope. Astrologers tell you where to go to atone for your sins. They give you solutions.And they help you calm down.Every sceptic would secretly like to have his palm read.

Another funny thing about Zodiac signs is when they help you break the ice. The lunar calendar comes up with a lot of personality traits and sometimes bizarre conversations like “So and so sign tends to put on weight” leave you gasping in awe and debating about possibilities. Camaraderie is born.

Just a thought.

overweight, astrology, Zodiac

Does your attitude toward food have a serious problem? Is it getting harder to just dig into your meal with single-minded focus? To just sit at the table and enjoy all that tasty food without feeling guilty? Chances are that you have started hearing voices in your head like “Count all those calories”,”Eat in SMALL portions”, “I’ve read somewhere that a glass of red wine is good for you.”

Suddenly everything that you’ve read and heard and images of obesity that have been plastered in your imagination come popping up. In a diet-obsessed urbanity, eating almost equals gluttony.

This superb post on bloggerdygook called Are we having health problems because we obsess about what we eat? expresses a perspective that the diet-obsessed don’t think about. A lot of the way we react to food comes from our inability to eat heartily.

Sulz quotes Desmond Morris:
“The simple truth is that my mother had lived through almost the whole of the twentieth century without ever giving a moment’s thought to what was ‘correct’ to eat. She never suffered from even a momentary pang of anxiety concerning the possibility that certain food objects might be bad for her. If they tasted good, they must be good, and that was an end to it. I think it was her lack of anxiety concerning diet that kept her so fit. If you are perfectly relaxed about what you are eating, your parasympathetic nervous system rewards you by helping you to digest it well. If, on the other hand, you are tensely nibbling a lettuce leaf and agonising over whether to indulge yourself with another spoonful of low-fat yoghurt, the tension of your mood ill-suits the pleasures of the table. ”

Interesting way to think about the obesity obsession.

obesity, diet, calories

What do some doctors do to help children who are over weight? Put them on prescription drugs. Check out Alex Waith’s story. Since he was over weight at a young age and was moving toward a higher risk of succumbing to Type 2 diabetes, he was put on a dosage of Adderall, a drug used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder.

Alex lost weight as the drug suppressed his appetite but his family did not seem to be aware of the dangerous side effects of taking a drug of this sort. There is a risk of cardiac arrest and psychic disorders. Although Alex is fine now, the question is why should he be treated for Attention Deficit Disorder when he has a completely different problem to deal with?

Is the ADHD(Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) drug an easy way out? A short term solution with unhappy results? The debate is on. It’s up to parents to be aware of what they are getting their kids into.

childhood obesity, Adderall, Attention Deficit Disorder

You must be thinking how everyone is telling us that what we did all these years is bad. Watching T.V, eating junk food, being couch potato….that’s all wrong and the health critics are getting too preachy. There’s nothing wrong with us. We’re happy unlike some skinny people(Is there some bias there?) out there who die on the ramp.

I’ve heard this kind of open bias against healthy living(eating good food doesn’t necessarily make you skinny and being skinny doesn’t mean you’re the healthiest person on earth)so many times. Watching T.V is something we all do. The houses are all lit up with the blur of television in the evenings. After work, it’s the couch and some random channel changing. But watching T.V means you’re eating alongside- either it’s potato chips or fruit juice. That’s really enough to make you fat. So what you can do is cut T.V time and catch up on other things.

You will suddenly find that you have a lot more time than you did.

Check out Twelve Year Sentence for watching T.V. Research suggests that we spend twelve years of life watching T.V….that coupled with unhealthy foods can really change the way you look.

This trend begins in childhood. Check this out.

obesity, television, couch potato, childhood obesity

As if teenagers didn’t have enough problems with their raging hormones, binge drinking is one more issue that tops their list of problems.What could go wrong if anyone indulges in binge drinking? Well it’s mostly negative. And the worst part is that teens who fall into the habit early on in life find it hard to stop.

Intervention programs in colleges can help. Read Binge drinking: can students be trained to avoid it? in the That’s Fit blog.

Putting a stop to binging has some interesting solutions to put an end to adolescent hedonism. Check it out.

binge drinking, alcohol addiction, teen drinking, substance abuse

What do women talk about when they get together?

It seems fat talk is in. Women like to speak in a self-degrading manner when it comes to their bodies and if they continuously do that, their social standing among friends goes up. At least that’s what research says. While one woman will say I’m fat and sigh, her friend reassures her with No you look great. It seems to be an important part of female friendships.

Now if you happen to be skinny, it’s another story. It kind of gets awkward to sit in a room full of big-breasted women who worry about how big they are. Then you get that sinking I’m -flat -feeling and somehow no one talks to you about bra size and the bizarre vocabulary that comes with being woman.

I loved this story If I hate my ass enough, will you love me? on Pandagon.net

What do you think?

fat talk, obesity, skinny, body image

Now this is interesting- The Mental Diet. Found it on the 1 health tip blog.

It’s great and next to impossible. Try to feed your mind with only positive thoughts for seven days. No negative thoughts.

I tried to watch my thoughts an entire day. And it was funny how the most absurd things came up while I was cooking a meal or blogging as usual. It’s hard to block out negative sad thoughts.

I don’t know if it’s me but I thought of disease and death and misfortune for no particular reason.

When you look at your thoughts they surprise you. They frighten you. It’s an experiment that really triggers off the need to meditate and go within.

Try it out and tell me what happened.

thoughts, meditation, stress

I loved Jimmy Moore’s (in the 30-in-30.blogspot.com blog)fantastic post on the intuitive knowledge of children when it comes to dieting. When I read All I Really Need To Know About Diet I Learned In Kindergarten, I was thinking that’s absolutely true. When you are a kid you never finish your meals. You never eat more than you need to and you eat several times in a day. You only eat when you are hungry. Moms don’t seem to understand that and try to get their kids to eat the entire meal. Kids eat in smaller portions and they play enough to get all those calories incinerated!

Kids have a lot of in-built wisdom. They never do too much of anything though we may think that they do(why some kids are obese is a different issue altogether). I think they are more tuned to their body’s needs than we are. Maybe we have to start listening to ourselves a little better.

Jimmy Moore, 30-in-30, kindergarten, weight, obesity, exercise

The ups and downs of your life affect your weight.

When you get married, you usually gain weight. For one thing you are happier, more relaxed and oblivious of dieing norms. Then when you have kids, you know what happens. Maternal bliss and calories go hand in hand.

Now suppose all that happiness falls like a tonne of bricks, if you divorce the weight could actually go up. When you eat alone, you don’t tend to think about calories. A friend of mine told me how he would embark on binge eating when he was under stress- be it in relationships or at work.

When you retire, you are suddenly faced with the prospects of a day without a deadline and you make up for it by clearing the fridge, eating more than you need and resting for no apparent reason.

So every time your life is punctuated by an event, your body is affected. Looks like stress can put on the pounds rather than reduce it.

Read A lifestyle change can bust your diet

stress, lifestyle, marriage, divorce, retirement, binge eating

What a lot of couples are missing out on today is intimacy. There’s no time for it. Life is one long list of chores and responsibilities and once the spark is gone, the kids are in school and you’re vying for promotions, togetherness becomes a kind of ritual.

The thing is that intimacy is more than sex though fulfilling sex leads to intimacy. It’s a vicious cycle. Where do couples go wrong? They take each other for granted, they get involved in life’s petty issues to the point of forgetting what got them together in the first place, they don’t see eye-to-eye on everything any more…..the reasons are endless.

A good sex life can drive out the stress. What do you do to get it back?

-Own up to your responsibilities. Stop blaming each other and help each other out.

-Have eyes-open sex. That’s a daring way to get to know your spouse better.

-Be honest. It can hurt but it builds up the trust.

This article Lust for the long haul is a great eye-opener.

sex, intimacy, love, divorce

Which is your all-time favorite health and well-being book?It would be great if you could send in the name of the book and author. I’d like to feature some of the best entries.

fitness-related books, fitness writers

Have you ever wondered why some people shy away from having heir pictures taken? Well maybe you don’t want to look fatter than you are. Take the Academy Awards for instance. Bad camera angles could endanger an actor’s career. Taking pictures in open spaces without the right kind of lighting could increase the chances of you sporting a fatter tummy. Telephoto lenses play games with your overall width and sometimes you could appear slightly pudgier than usual.

You’ll love this story:
Smile and say “Fat”!:Why does the camera add 10 pounds?

picture, photograph, Academy Awards, red carpet, camera angle, fat, lighting

Summer M from the Mom is teaching 451press blog posted me a link and I thought it would be an interesting follow up to the previous posts this week. I remember the time when we used to get our report cards; there was no grading back then and we all looked to see who got the ‘highest’ marks. We’d argue over decimal points and look smug as we argued. To have your BMI on that report card would be really embarrassing if you are a student and ridiculous to a parent who already knows that his/her child is bordering on obese or already obese. Suddenly the teacher knows that personal number that you don’t want the whole world to know. And your peers in school have another thing to make fun off.

While doctors insist that more and more children are ‘gaining’ from this weight loss idea as they are forced to do something about the problem now that it’s in the open, others protest that peer pressure is leading to a more depressed bunch of over weight children. It’s up to the doctors to fix the problem, the parents to provide nutritious meals and the students to become nutritionally sensible. The Thinking Mother puts it so well in her post My Thoughts About Child’s BMI On School Report Cards:

“The report card is a scoring of the child’s academic progress as a measurement of the content taught at that school. The child’s weight status is none of the school’s business.”

Absolutely true. No one is perfect and school shouldn’t turn into some kind of continuous judgment day where you are judged on the base of your grades, communication skills, sports abilities and now your BMI. If the BMI has to be discussed at all it has to be a deal between the student, parents and physician. Getting the school authorities involved might just lead to resentment on the student’s and parent’s part. You have two kinds of parents: one kind take criticism in a better light and try to make a difference, the others get insulted,outraged and either brave their children to a life of proud obesity or a series of eating disorders.

Read As Obesity Fight Hits Cafeteria, Many Fear a Note From School

public school health, obesity, BMI, overweight children, report card