Monday, May 31, 2010

A healthy body for a better YOU

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I promised you I’ll talk to you about staying fit. The most important thing is having a healthy body weight. It may happen that what you consider your ideal weight has nothing to do with being healthy. So, if you started losing weight make sure you don’t cross the line going under weight or fall into diverse eating disorders.
Consult a doctor – nutritionist or just google it – you’ll find some ways in calculating an ideal healthy weight in relation with your height. And very important stick to that!

You may have a body that consumes a lot – so, you may be able to eat more and not gain weight – or you may have a body that tends to be lazy and you`ll gain weight easily. If you know your body well, let`s start the process of keeping you in shape.

Breakfast – you really have to eat breakfast – so, depending on what type of body you have you may have a thin sandwich or an omelet, but better just have a boll of cereals (just one!) or 1-2 cookies with a cup of coffee, tea, jus or milk or a fruit or two.
I`ll tell you my preference – during the week days when I`m in a hurry for work I go for the easy breakfast, while during the weekend I may try some pancakes or an omelette.

Around 10 have a snack – ideally a fruit or a small yogurt or maybe a cereal bar

Lunch – don`t forget what I told you in my last post…the small plate! Ya! Stick to that if you know you may be unable to control how much you put in your plate. Avoid greasy food and roasted meals. Make sure you have veggies in your plate, or a salad aside. Add as desert a fruit.

3-4 pm - have a snack – ideally a fruit or a small yogurt or maybe a cereal bar – something different than before

Dinner – if you know you have a lazy body do not eat after 7.00pm. Or…follow instructions!
First of all – eat at least 1-2 hours before going to bed. Dinner is very important as well –but, don`t exaggerate. Keep your small plate measure if you have to eat something solid – but, ideally in the evening have a salad of vegetables or fruits or a soup. Nothing more!

Secrets of being fit and healthy:
1. Make sure every day you have– at least 5 portions of fruits or vegetables, eat milk products – in milk 6 liters (ok – including cheese, yogurt), and drink 1-3 liters of liquids.

2. You have to eat slowly! Enjoy your food and masticate well. Your body starts to feel fool after 20 minutes, so if you eat fast you`ll have much later on that feeling. Better find your limits in time!

3. Do some activities! A 10-15 minutes walk helps the food digest better…If you don`t have time for that – make sure you walk at least 15-20 minutes a day excluding other physical activities.

4. Sleep 7-8 hours per night.

Once in a while you may enjoy some pizza or fries or cakes. Make sure you don`t have fast food more then once a month, if you know you have a lazy body. And avoid all that synthetic jus that is on the market. Better something natural or a tea.

Stay fit! It`s in your power!

Friday, May 28, 2010

How to lose weight I - Incredible diet

Ok...this may sound crazy as coming from me - "the big fat girl"= almost underweight, but just because I`m fit I can share with you some of my tips.
But, let`s first start with the losing weight program.
You don`t have to cut from your favorite food- you just need to eat healthy and... to go under this diet. You`ll lose around 1Kg = 2.20 pounds in one Week.
Sounds crazy and incredible?
Just be with me!
You have to act like a baby and re-program your system.

Baby weight diet

Step one!
1. Clean your body - One day -first of all this should be on a day when you are staying at home - because you`ll lack energy. Drink just water...for the entire day. If you feel it is too much for you try one cup of tea with one small table spoon of sugar for breakfast, lunch and dinner (you may drink water in between, but no more sugar)
2. The next days the most important: Do not eat any solid food.
You are allowed to eat: vegetables, fruits, milk or tea, even some meat or fish. Just everything has to be prepared in a certain manner.
Make the vegetables as a cream soup. You can add some meat or fish as long as the soup still looks like a liquid and you don`t have to masticate. Don`t make it look as a thick cream, but as watery as you can, so you can even drink it.
Prepare the fruits as a natural juice.
Drink when ever you feel hungry: veggies soup, natural fruit juice, milk and tea. You`ll have all the vitamins you need and you`ll lose weight.
Still, avoid huge quantities and eat 3 main meals a day.No more then 4 liters a day.
Go under this diet as long as you need to arrive to your desired weight.Ideally try this diet for 3-4 weeks.

Step two!
Ok, you can't just drink forever your food. So, at a certain point you must go to the next step - mashed food. Introduce to your diet- yogurt, mashed potatoes, cream cheese - these type of foods that looks like a piuree when mashed.
Some as above. Do not exaggerate on quantities. To have an idea about the quantities - try to fit everything you eat at a main course in one small plate. If it looks very fool - that`s ok. You can add natural juice or tea as a drink.

Step three!
Ya, I know - you are like - and when I`m going to eat normal?
Just about now. It`s about time you start chewing. So you can introduce some solid food. Keep as a measurement the small plate. Cut everything in your plate into small pieces, as you are feeding a baby. Eat slowly. No huge quantities and no more then 3 main courses per day.

Even if your diet has finished - you may want to alternate this diet for 3-4 months more until you arrive to a healthy weight for your body.

Step four!
Eat...healthy! About this part...next time.

If you are interested in recipes for the above diet - just let me know...

Good luck in getting fit!




Monday, May 17, 2010

Plot for an ordinary nightmare -part II-



She returns to her car and starts driving again – this time towards the boulevard, the highway – straight to her home. She will call her boyfriend in the morning to tell him why she didn’t go. “…If he believes me!”, she said to herself with a smile.

On the boulevard, at an intersection she approaches a car in front of her that has loud music and some wild men are partying. They yell and tell her to join them. She wasn’t even sure if they were zombies or not, but she was sure she didn’t like their company. In the mirror she sees the zombie’s car and she is very scared. This is the worst nightmare of her life.
She breathes deeply, hoping for a miracle to happen. She starts a litany in her head:

“This is a nightmare and I want to wake up!”

Then she whispers:
“This is a nightmare and I want to wake up!”

Then she says it load to herself:
“This is a nightmare and I want to wake up!”
“This is a nightmare and I want to wake up!”
“This is a nightmare and I want to wake up!”



***
She opens her eyes feeling her heavy eyelids. A blurish image starts to contour in front of her eyes: it’s white and white beds and … She feels her face hidden under the cover, her body numb, her eyes foggy and… silence. She is in a hospital. She feels a sort of comfort: “At least, I’m in a hospital. It was just a nightmare.”
But she can not wake up. Something is keeping her frozen in the bed. She is sedated. In a way she feels something is wrong – but she doesn’t know why. Her eyelids are heavy, very heavy; she feels she is falling again to sleep and all her strength is focusing on:

“I want to be awake!”
“I am awake!”
“I am awake!”
“I am awake!”


***
The room seems worm and cosy. A bed is the only big object in the room. Through the curtains the street lights reach the floor leaving shadows in corners. A forced breathing as out of a running is pressing the air. She shivers and jumps up from her sleep with a cold sweet on her forehead. Near her, her boyfriend wakes at her sobbing. She is shaking.
He hugs her: “Is just a nightmare, darling.”
“I’m cold,” she says and she lets herself down under the cover and in his arms. But, he feels her body as ice; her skin has become tough and has change color to a bluish violet.

Plot for an ordinary nightmare -part I-

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The radio was the only noise she could bear at that late hour at night and even that was with a lower volume like a whisper to her tired ears. She was eager to get to her boyfriend home and sneak under the worm cover. The streets were empty, dark and silent. She was in that neighborhood that she never liked to cross at night because of its industrial old blackish buildings. Sometimes bands gathered in some hidden corner for some strange party. But now it was silence – silence like the entire neighborhood has died. If she wouldn’t have known that people used to come to work during the day in some of those buildings, she would have thought that area of town was just ghostly. From place to place a bulb with flickering light brought some color to the atmosphere.

Suddenly, a penetrating smell of putrefaction reached her nose. She thought that some dead animal was lying probably in some hidden corner, not far…, but then – a strong noise of voices – many disturbing voices disrupted her smell feeling. It sounded more then a party, like the whoops of a strike. When she turned left, she could see them coming from different directions chaotic, yelling, screaming, threatening and …bloody. And when she remarked that, the panic invaded her.

“What a hell?”
She was heading towards them, but she wanted to stop, so she lowered her speed as much as she could. There was something wrong with them. The street lights were blind, but in the light of the headlights she could see clearly the brownish red color spread over their clothes and faces and she sensed deep in her nostrils the putrefaction smell. Their walk was hindered as a baby walk. They saw her, men and women turning their frog eyes towards the coming car. She frizzed. She was seeing corps – zombies walking or getting into cars, coming towards her in a lamenting walk.

For a moment she didn’t know what to do. It was unreal. She turned in the middle of the street, hitting the curbs, and speed ed into the dark willing to return to the boulevard. Some car was following her, so when she reached a point of losing the follower, she looked for a parking spot on a street side, and she parked there. She was breathing heavily, profoundly scared. A second later she noticed there were people in the car behind her and a new wave of panic reached her brain again. But, they were hiding – same as her, balancing their heads out of the window sight. She thought fast: “They will recognize my car, so even if a lock it – they can break the windows.” She got out of the car – and decided to hide between the parapet and the car in front of her. But, out in the air, she stopped. A man, stunted was hiding behind the front weal. He saw her and made a sign with his hand for her to keep her head down. It was not a zombie, even if the lightening was poor; she could identify his clean face and clothes. They stayed there silent listening to the street noise. The noise of a coming car made them control even their breathing. The car rolled slowly, and then speed-ed again. They waited a few more moments and then turned to each other.
“How is this happening?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, but raised his eyebrows as surprise.
“Is the second time I’m seeing them. And I swear I’m not going to move from here till the morning. They will be gone or they will disappear in the day light.”
“I’m going home, she said. I’ll go to my place. I need a really good night sleep to get rid of this nightmare.”

Robotic love

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When she was a very young she dreamed she will marry a robot, a robot that had the feelings and the shape of a human being, a robot perfect for her self. Later on, when she grew older – she realized her dream is quite impossible now from a scientific point of view.

But, she never stop dreaming – and she put all her efforts in making her dream come alive.
Working in the robotic industry, she met him – a fellow with the same dream…

Realistic or not...their dream came alive in a different way. Mr. Shibata and Ms. Inoue, both working in the robotic industry share the same passion for the technical quite alive components. The couple was wedded May 16th in Tokyo by Kokoro Co.'s I-FAIRY robot. A 1.5 meters robot officiated (unofficially) the wedding ceremony. Part of their work lives, as well as the cause of their first encounter, the robot is now part of their sweetest memories, as well.

“…robots are our friends” says the bride.



And we shall all believe them…We become founded about the things around us, of course, we do not talk with our purse or our glasses, but when there is a sparkle of interactions we are ready to give in…

***
Talking about eccentric weddings – how about those people that married a dog to get rid of some curse? Or those that make their pets marry and they desperately ask for a legalization of this process?

A ceremony held by technological means seems so much normal now, isn`t it?

Note: I do not own the copyright of these pictures

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Babies born to be moral?

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This morning a new study came to my attention, a CTV reportage about babies that have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. We thought that babies are born with little sense and it takes time and learning and good examples, for a child to make such judgments.

An example of three characters – toys - is made: A- the good, B- the main character, and C- the bad. A is helping B, while C is hindering B actions. New studies show that babies, as old as six months old have the power of decision making and prefer good in their choices.Professor Paul Bloom from Yale shown through his research that babies will choose the toy that helped the main character. Does this make us moral by birth?

Some centuries ago Rousseau called babies “perfect idiots”. Different other studies show that babies tend to be selfish, impartial – but they tend to learn fast. They are like a sponge assimilating knowledge.
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A 6 months baby has already develop a sense of survival – he needs to cry when he is hungry, scream when he is wet or scared, and whimper when he is sleepy. Just because – this way he is helped and returns to a state of comfort. Does he care how his parents feel about his unorganized crying? Or will a baby stop looking for milk if his mother doesn`t have any?

By watching a puppet show, exemplifying the same thing – survival – maybe the only thing babies distinguish is helpful from unhelpful behavior. And from this the new linkage is good and wrong. Yes, we learn morality – just because we have the instinct of survival.

A baby doesn`t yet have a sense of others – just by interactions, smiles and good examples he starts to show an interest in good and starts to organize his expectations. So, a peaceful worm atmosphere for learning is the first thing we need in order to become moral.
Good luck parents – in teaching you little ones!

Note: Source CTV Matinee

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Like a Barbie Doll

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Sometimes you feel just like a doll - pretty and admired on the outside and empty inside. The difference is that you have the power to seize all these feelings.




When you have nothing to say, just look for those things that have inspired your joy.
















When you lose courage,
think of the moments you have won.

















When you wanna hide in the dark, think of those that languish for your company.

If you ever feel you have lost your beauty, just remember that this comes from inside.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Laws are made to be broken

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Did you know that in France, in May 4th 2010, it`s illegal for a woman to wear pants?

A 200 years old law prohibits any woman to wear pants – the law is still in place, even if no one really cares about it “"any woman who wants to get dressed as a man (in trousers) must present herself to the police headquarters (that will be in Paris) to obtain authorization".

In 200 years there were two amendments in 1892 and in 1909 allowing women to wear trousers "as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse” or "on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars". There were discussion about changing it…in 1969, in 2003 or 2010…One nice answer was saying that: "It is unwise to change texts which foreseen or unforeseen variations in fashion can return to the fore."

The funny part of it that actually those that should make sure the law is followed – if they are women – they wear pants – because that is the police uniform.

Can you imagine how much money would have the state made in the last 100 years for fining every woman wearing pants in France?

Note: Source the Internet