Using the secrets of qigong to live a more effective life

Calming the busy mind, healing the wounded heart and cleansing the toxic body
by John Du Cane

QIGONG PRACTITIONERS INSIST there are three central intelligences in our beings, all equally important. There is one in the head, one in the heart area, and an intelligence system in the stomach. If only one intelligence receives attention, the other two suffer. One of the central insights in qigong practice is that all of these intelligences have to be recognized, otherwise they become like abandoned children.

The head or ‘monkey mind’ is very dominant in our culture—we’re very, very busy in our heads. The mind lives to create disturbance—it loves the surges of sudden excitement and wild fluctuations that arise from its addiction to stress as a avored lifestyle.

When we allow ourselves to live in this highly analytic, stressed out state we become preoccupied and inattentive and therefore less effective as human beings. When you’ve got 101 things going on in your mind, you end up not really paying attention to any of them. And all of your relationships—business, family, social, romantic—suffer accordingly. Because, really, nobody is at home anymore. Just an empty, preoccupied husk. One of the skills you learn in qigong is how to stop, let go, and be attentive.

You have to seduce the monkey mind, while its back is turned, to calm down and allow you to get back into your heart and stomach intelligences.

Our modern civilization has become a society of wounded hearts, busy minds, and toxic bodies. A wounded heart could be a neglected or abandoned heart. A busy mind is distracted, inattentive, and preoccupied. A toxic body is tight, closed, and stagnant.

We have become fragmented beings. We have lost our integration and joie de vivre and ability to operate in a connected, passionate way with life. If you want to be effective in business, if you want to be competent and truly help people, you need that passion in your life. If you allow yourself to get stressed out as a matter of course, it’s going to affect every aspect of your life, including the most practical. How practical is it to be sick in bed? How effective is it to be dead?

Qigong teaches us to get in touch with the subtle, bioelectric energy that we need to be alive. It’s important to learn to play with that, like a musician. Learn to be fluid with your energy, in touch with it, massage it, as it were.

When you train yourself to move in a very slow, relaxed way, you can remove all of the tension and blocks in your body, and become more like a wild animal. If you have to, there can be a sudden release of strong energy. But for the most part, you stay in a buoyant, relaxed state, rather like a little kid. As we get older, because of the way we create stress in our lives, we tend to lose that buoyancy, which is so essential to our overall vitality.

Our addiction to stress is one of the most devastating aspects of our modern culture. According to the Chinese, your vitality is intimately bound up in your adrenal and kidney areas. When you allow yourself to respond to pressure by stressing out, you’re depleting yourself and becoming sick and toxic inside. You start feeling run down. That’s your life-wax melting away.

The irony in our society is that in our quest for creature comforts we’ve actually created more stressors. We’ve produced a competitive environment. When the telephone rings, or when a fax comes in, our bodies react to these stressors. When a car cuts in front of you on the freeway, you have a potential stressor. Going to action movies, reading the newspaper, watching TV—all of these activities trigger that adrenal/steroid surge. Most of us have come to associate stress with pleasure—to the point of being addicted. Many of us, when not in a state of excitement or arousal, don’t feel that we’re enjoying ourselves. There are these lulls when we feel sort of depressed and out of it, so we start looking for the next excitement. That’s a roller
coaster.

And then, there is the qigong-induced state of “harmonic balance.” You find this state when you look into a lover’s eyes, sit on a beach in Hawaii and watch a sunset, or listen to beautiful music. It’s that sensation of gentle beauty. Just appreciation and the feeling that everything is okay. But being competitive and yammering at people, arguing, screaming at the computer, freaking out at the emails you’re receiving, dealing with the telemarketers calling just as you’re about to eat, easily destroys this appreciative skill. You start to lose the ability to fall into harmonic balance. It becomes like a distant memory. You’re anxiously looking for it a lot of the time, but you start to lose the ability to manufacture it for yourself. One of the beauties of qigong practice is that you get seduced back into what I regard as your birthright—harmonic balance.

Why is this important? In terms of daily living, when we go into a state of stress, a number of things happen. We tense up, and instead of relaxing when the cause of stress disappears, we stay tight. In this way, we become more and more blocked and rigid in our bodies. Health and responsiveness in your daily life comes from the ability to respond to things with fluidity and flexibility. If you get into the habit of tightening and closing, sooner or later it’s going to impact the way you do business, the way you are with your family and friends, and your health.

Qigong practice starts to take you back into the heart and stomach areas, and allows you to get in touch with how it is to be relaxed and fluid. One of the keys to this is abdominal breathing. If you want to get back to that childhood buoyancy, learn to breathe like a child. The optimal breathing technique is that of a little baby, where the stomach gently inflates on the inhale and softly contracts on the exhale. Your attention and breath is low, near the stomach brain.

What happens when you breathe down in the stomach is that your lymph system is activated. When this system is stimulated, an automatic relaxation response is triggered, which puts you into that "aaahh" state. The lymph system is the body’s trash removal system. It is more extensive than the circulatory system and it’s responsible for removing crud from the body, including excess blood proteins around the cells. If the cells are going to be vibrant and alive, they need to receive blood and oxygen on a regular basis.

Imagine if one day the garbage man just didn’t show up anymore. That’s essentially what happens in a lot of our bodies. When the lymph system gets sluggish, as it tends to do as we age, the body starts to stagnate. It starts to have literal sludge. So no matter what you do, you’re not able to do it with optimal vibrancy or health. And sooner or later, you’ll almost certainly get cancer or some other major disease. When you breathe from the abdomen, and do certain types of upper arm movements, and when you bounce, as in rebounding, you stimulate the lymph system. This crud, if you take these measures every day, will be removed from the body.

We want to avoid disease, because it’s very impractical! But we procrastinate enough about our health that we set ourselves up for disease all the time. Want to be practical in your life? Then adopt a daily practice that stops you getting sick.

When you adopt a practice that takes you into a more serene, contented state, it helps you change how you react to stressors. There are two ways to handle someone cutting in front of you on the freeway. You can grip the steering wheel, shout at the person and treat them like they were stealing your time, stealing your life; or you can just smile and relax and breathe. It’s not going to help you to shout and curse; in fact it’s just hurting you. When you get into a daily practice and gain the ability to relax and breathe, you’re able to handle so-called stressful situations in a much freer, easier way. And this applies to your business. When something doesn’t go the way you want it, you can go ballistic and get all worked up about it, or you can relax out of that state. You need a daily practice to build the skill to be relaxed.

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John Du Cane began his study of qigong in 1975 and has taught qigong for over ten years. Du Cane is the author of four acclaimed qigong videos, Bliss Qigong, Serenity Qigong, Power Qigong and Vitality Qigong and a qigong workbook entitled The Five Animal Frolics. To receive more information about John Du Cane’s qigong, to purchase his qigong resources or to receive a free Dragon Door Publications catalog, call 1-800-899-5111, visit Dragon Door or write to: Dragon Door Publications, PO Box 4381, St. Paul, MN 55104.

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Learn How Qigong Can Help You Relax Out of Stress!

Do You Know Your Food Label?

Whether you're concerned about cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or simply losing weight, you want to eat a healthy diet and focus on foods that are high in vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients, and balanced in fats, carbs, proteins.

There is only one way to incorporate healthy foods into our diet and that is to make the decision to do it! Practical information about the nutrition and safety of the foods we consume is absolutely vital in making this decision.

One way to learn more about what we eat, is to snoop around the supermarket. Check-out package labels to see what manufactures are adding (or removing) from the foods we eat. Read the information on the package and start making comparisons to determine which foods are the best for YOU. Know about nutritional labeling and the sometimes sneaky ways that manufacturers have of hiding what is in the food. Know and understand ingredient declarations, how they are used, and what a few of the "technical" terms mean. Are the unfamiliar ingredients good or bad for your health?
Since 1994 food manufacturers have been required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to include food labels (or Nutrition Facts labels) on product packaging so that consumers have accurate nutritional information about the food they purchase. But food labels are more than just a federal requirement – once you understand the information they provide, you can use food labels as a guide to planning healthier meals and snacks.

Food labels are required on almost all foods, except those that don't provide many nutrients such as coffee, alcohol and spices. Although some restaurants provide information about the food they serve, they aren't required to have labels. The FDA recommends that sellers provide nutritional information on produce, meat, poultry and seafood, but it's strictly voluntary.

What Is a Serving?

At the top of a food label under Nutrition Facts, you'll see the serving size and the number of servings in the package. The rest of the nutrition information in the label is based on one serving.

Calories, Calories From Fat and Percent Daily Values

This part of a food label provides the calories per serving and the calories that come from fat. If you need to know the total number of calories you eat every day or the number of calories that come from fat, this section provides that information. Remember that this part of the label doesn't tell you whether you are eating saturated or unsaturated fat.

On the right side of a food label, you'll see a column that lists percentages. These percentages refer to the percent daily values (%DV). Percent daily values tell you how much of something, whether it's fat, sugar or vitamin A, one serving will give you compared to how much you need for the entire day. It will help you gauge the percentage of a nutrient requirement met by one serving of the product. One way to use this section of the label is when you comparison shop. For example, if you're concerned with sodium, you can look at two foods and choose the food with the lower % DV. Are you trying to eat a low-fat diet? Look for foods that have a lower percent daily value of fat.

The %DV is based on how much or how little of the key nutrients you should eat whether you eat 2,000 or 2,500 calories a day. So if you eat a 2,000-calorie diet, you should eat less than 65 grams of fat in all the foods you eat for the day. If you're eating 12 grams of fat in your one serving of macaroni and cheese (remember that's one cup), you can calculate how much fat you have left for the day. You can use the bottom part of the food label in white to compare what you are eating to the % DV you're allowed for that nutrient, whether it's fat, sodium or fiber. If you need more or less than 2,000 or 2,500 calories, you'll need to adjust this accordingly.

Fat, Sugar, Sodium and Carbohydrate

The sections on a food label shows the name of a nutrient and the amount of that nutrient provided by one serving of food. You may need to know this information, especially if you have high blood pressure, diabetes or are eating a diet that restricts certain nutrients such as sodium or carbohydrates.

Food labels also include information about how much sugar and protein is in the food. If you are following a low-sugar diet or you're monitoring your protein intake, it's easy to spot how much of those nutrients are contained in one serving.

Vitamins, Minerals and Other Information

The light purple part of the label lists nutrients, vitamins and minerals in the food and their percent daily values. Try to average 100% DV every day for vitamins A and C, calcium, iron and fiber. Do the opposite with fat, saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol. Try to eat less than 100% DV of these.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Reading a Food Label

Until you become accustomed to reading food labels, it's easy to become confused. Avoid these common mistakes when reading labels:

-A label may say that the food is reduced fat or reduced sodium. That means that the amount of fat or sodium has been reduced by 25% from the original product. It doesn't mean, however, that the food is low in fat or sodium. For example, if a can of soup originally had 1,000 milligrams of sodium, the reduced sodium product would still be a high-sodium food.

-Don't confuse the % DV for fat with the percentage of calories from fat. If the % DV is 15% that doesn't mean that 15% of the calories comes from fat. Rather, it means that you're using up 15% of all the fat you need for a day with one serving (based on a meal plan of 2,000 calories per day).

-Don't make the mistake of assuming that the amount of sugar on a label means that the sugar has been added. For example, milk naturally has sugar, which is called lactose. But that doesn't mean you should stop drinking milk because milk is full of other important nutrients including calcium.

Reading Label Lingo

In addition to requiring that packaged foods contain a Nutrition Facts label, the FDA also regulates the use of phrases and terms used on the product packaging. Here's a list of common phrases you may see on your food packaging and what they actually mean.

No fat or fat free - Contains less than 1/2 gram of fat per serving Lower or reduced fat: Contains at least 25 percent less per serving than the reference food. (An example might be reduced fat cream cheese, which would have at least 25 percent less fat than original cream cheese.)

Low fat - Contains less than 3 grams of fat per serving.

Lite - Contains 1/3 the calories or 1/2 the fat per serving of the original version or a similar product.

No calories or calorie free - Contains less than 5 calories per serving.

Low calories - Contains 1/3 the calories of the original version or a similar product.

Sugar free - Contains less than 1/2 gram of sugar per serving.

Reduced sugar - at least 25% less sugar per serving than the reference food.

No preservatives - Contains no preservatives (chemical or natural).

No preservatives added - Contains no added chemicals to preserve the product. Some of these products may contain natural preservatives.

Low sodium - Contains less than 140 mgs of sodium per serving.

No salt or salt free - Contains less than 5 mgs of sodium per serving.

High fiber - 5 g or more per serving (Foods making high-fiber claims must meet the definition for low fat, or the level of total fat must appear next to the high-fiber claim).

Good source of fiber - 2.5 g to 4.9 g. per serving.

More or added fiber - Contains at least 2.5 g more per serving than the reference food.

With a little practice, you will be able to put your new found knowledge about food labeling to work. Reassess your diet and decide what needs to be changed. Start by eliminating the foods that don't measure-up to your nutritional wants and needs, and replacing them with more nutritional substitutes.

And while you're at it, visit the FDA website and learn about the new labeling requirements, including those for "trans" fat. Like saturated fats, trans fats can raise levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and increase your risk of heart disease. The "Nutrition Facts" panel on food packaging must provide this information beginning January 1, 2006, but most manufacturers will start providing it sooner.

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Eat Out and Lose Weight - 25 Easy & Healthy Tips for Dining Out

Diners have become more health-conscious the last few years, and now want healthy choices whether eating at home or at their favorite restaurants. Luckily, the restaurant industry has been quick to accommodate the demand, so you'll find you have many options to "eat healthy" these days.

Whether you're eating at home or dining out, the same rules for watching your weight apply. You need to eat more vegetables, fruit and whole grains. Choose smaller portions of lean meats, fish and poultry. Eat a variety of foods, and fresh, raw foods are better. Cut back on salt, sugar, saturated fats and alcohol. Drink plenty of water, and include exercise every day as part of your daily lifestyle choice.

So whether you're having lunch with the gang, or enjoying a romantic dinner for two, you can enjoy delicious-tasting foods that are low-in calories and good for you, with just a little forethought and planning.

Here are some easy tips to remember when ordering out that will help you to lose weight even when eating at your favorite restaurants:

1. If you know the menu from the restaurant you're going to, plan what you're going to have ahead of time. This will help save you from making a last minute decision that could result in high-calorie choices.

2. Drink at least one full-glass of water or iced tea before eating your meal. This helps your digestive process, and, because you'll feel full sooner, you will eat less.

3. Don't be afraid to ask for the "senior citizen" special or kid's-sized portions. Most restaurants will accommodate you -- and often you'll pay less as well!

4. Order first. That way you're much less likely to be influenced by the choices of your companions.

5. If you're not sure how something is prepared, don't be afraid to ask. And if the dish is cooked in oil or butter, you can always ask if they have a "fat free" option.

6. If everything on the menu is high in fat or calories, ask if the chef could prepare a plate of fresh fruit and vegetables. Many restaurants offer a vegetarian selection, so if you don't see it on the menu, ask.

7. When ordering meat or fish, ask that it be grilled or broiled, and prepared without oil or butter. (When you eat it, use lemon or herbs and spices to give it flavor rather than heavy sauces).

8. Order an appetizer and a salad as your meal. Or a soup and salad. For dessert, choose fresh fruit.

9. When choosing soup, remember that cream-based soups have many more calories than broth-based ones.

10. If you're having a full meal, split the appetizer and desert with your companion.

11. If you decide to order pasta, tomato sauce has fewer calories than cream-based sauces, just like soup.

12. Choose breadsticks over bread, or if you eat bread, don't add butter. Stay away from muffins and croissants, and choose whole grain over white.

13. Choose steamed vegetables instead of baked potatoes or other starches. Again, use lemon and herbs and spices rather than butter to flavor them with.

14. Whenever possible, eat like the Europeans do, and have your biggest meal at lunchtime. Not only will you save money, but you'll cut down on calories at the same time!

15. Take the time to enjoy your meal. Savor the flavors and textures of your food, and enjoy the company you're with. When you eat slowly, you give your body's internal clock the time it needs to know when you've had enough. When you're full, stop eating. Ask your server to remove your plate so you're not tempted to keep eating while you wait for your companion to finish.

16. Ask for salsa on your baked potatoes, rather than sour cream and butter. Not only is salsa much lower in calories, but it adds a "spicy" flavor to potatoes.

17. Order salad dressings and sauces "on the side." This gives you more control of how much to use. Another tip for salad dressing -- rather than pouring the salad dressing on your salad, dip your fork into the dressing first, and then into the salad. You'll get the same amount of flavor, without all the added calories!

18. Choose brown rice over white rice (or french fries), whole grain breads and rolls over white. Not only are they lower in calories, but they are better for you.

19. Stay away from "all you can eat" buffets and salad bars. It's too easy to lose track of the amount of food you're eating, even when it's salads. If that's your only choice, then stay away from the pasta, marinated salads, cheeses and fruit salads with whipped cream. Stick to soups, raw vegetables and fresh fruits.

20. Have your soup first. It will help to fill you up, and most soups have fewer calories.

21. If you're craving something sweet, and don't want fresh fruit, choose sorbet. If you absolutely HAVE to have the chocolate sauce, use the same trick as you did with the salad dressing -- dip your fork into it first, then your dessert.

22. Split your dessert with your companion. You'll still feel like you got to be indulgent, and you'll only have to exercise half as long to burn off the extra calories!

23. When ordering sandwiches, order them with mustard only, rather than mayonnaise. Not only does mustard have almost no calories, but you won't miss the mayo!

24. If the portion you were served is large, only eat half of it. Take the other half home. Not only will you get two meals for the price of one, but you'll cut the calories in half as well!

25. Go for a walk after eating. Stroll along the beach, walk through a park, visit a zoo. You'll burn calories and get your exercise at the same time!

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Invest in Your Health

What if a trusted friend were to tell you about an investment where you could not possibly go wrong...what would be your reaction? And what if there was a virtual mountain of credible information that supported the investment claims...wouldn't you be inclined to take advantage of the opportunity and not miss out on the rewards? Although the answer to these questions seems apparent, when it comes to investing in our health and quality of life we often choose to ignore what obviously works. Take for example, exercise...

Physical fitness may be the ultimate investment opportunity. Think of it this way. If you are willing to make the commitment (investment), you will feel and look healthier, have an abundance of energy, be more self-confident, more productive and discover a more joyous and fulfilling life. These are rewards that money cannot buy and the substance of high quality living. And, the investment of exercise becomes even more attractive when you consider that there is absolutely no down-side risk. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose. How much better can it get? How many times can you remember ever having a better offer? The honest answer is probably never, and yet many of us fail to act on this extraordinary opportunity. We simply choose to procrastinate or ignore the proven benefits of exercise!

Here are a few reasons that sometimes inhibit our willingness to "step out" and make a change or take a chance:

- Sometimes our vision gets clouded. We lose tract of what is really important. Forget about the less important activities that tend to clutter our daily routine and focus on exactly what needs to be accomplished to reach your goal.

- Looking at the "big" picture can seem overwhelming. And the bigger the task, the more overwhelming it can seem. Break the task apart into smaller pieces. If you want to lose 50 pounds try losing 10 pounds and repeat the process five times! Need to start an exercise program? Begin with short, simple exercises and then slowly expand your routine. Don't exercise too hard when first starting-out or you will become stiff, tired, disillusioned and soon quit.

- Have you ever not wanted to start something for fear of failure? Take the first step, acknowledge the fear and the next step will come easier. Once fears are acknowledged, they usually quiet down.

- Sometimes we start to think that a task is unpleasant or boring. Just like any other activity, this can also be true for exercise. There are days when we just plain lack the enthusiasm and motivation to continue. It's part of human nature. On days like these focus on 'why' you are doing it. Think about all the people you care about and who may need and rely on you. What would happen if you became ill or disabled and was unable to work for a period of time, or worse, if you were out of the picture completely. How would things change? If something happened tomorrow, how would your family or business manage without you? What do you want your life to be like in the future? There are many tasks or chores we do, that we may not like, but are necessary to live a happen and productive life. Focus on the bigger picture.

- Indecision can be defeating, but doing "anything" is better than doing nothing. There are no wrong choices and very few choices that can't be undone or done again. Can't decide on a particular exercise program or routine? Pick a few exercises and start with something simple. If you don't like it, go on to the next exercise.

- When you lack the confidence to start something new, take a deep breath and try to figure out why. Are you hesitating because you really lack the skill or is it just imagined? If it's real, try to find out where to gain the skills you need or find someone with the right skills who can help. In the case of exercise, finding a qualified personal fitness trainer can sometimes do the trick, but be wary...some PFT's are overzealous and tend to start newcomers on programs that are too strenuous.

- Life just seems too busy to find time for some activities. Large, uninterrupted chunks of time are very hard to come by. And if we're honest, when they do come, we'd rather do something totally pleasurable! Exercise has to become part of your routine. It can't be an option. Make it a high priority just the same as your career, and other areas of interest. You will be surprised at how easy exercise becomes when approached this way!

- Have you ever subconsciously (or otherwise) invited distractions so that you have a "good" reason not to get something done? Sometimes it's the simple things like answering the phone or sitting down to watch that "one" TV program, that distract us. When you find yourself doing this, take control of the situation and make a conscious decision to do what you are avoiding.

To reap the benefits of exercise, or any other health related endeavor, you must agree to become a willing participant. This will require due diligence on your part. And remember, as you embark on your mission you are investing in something near and dear to your own heart...your life and a future of healthy living.

Weight Loss Hypnosis

You’ve seen the stage acts where a hypnotist selects someone out of the audience and when he claps his hands, the unwilling participant struts around the stage clucking like a chicken. You’ve also seen movies where the hypnotist waves the pocket watch in front of the subject as he utters, “you’re getting sleepy … very sleepy.” Hypnosis is a little more than what Hollywood or Vegas make it out to be. Below is a brief overview.

Hypnosis is a naturally occurring altered state of consciousness in which the critical faculty is bypassed (mind in the conscious mode) and acceptable selective thinking established. Wow! That’s a lot of technical jargon! Simply put, this means that the reasoning, evaluating, judging part of your mind (conscious) is bypassed.

Hypnosis deals with the subconscious. Have you ever driven to work or home or anywhere, arrived at your destination but then had little to no recollection of the drive? Your reasoning, evaluating and judging parts of your mind were still intact and functioning (read: you safely arrived at your location) but your cognizant mind was bypassed. Hypnosis feels very much like that. It’s the same or similar feeling as ........

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Muscle Fiber Types and Contraction

Muscles generate heat and force for movement, help us breathe, and keep our bodies upright. Skeletal muscle tissue is composed of two fibers, actin (thin fibers) and myosin (thick fibers). These two fibers give the muscle a striated appearance. In order for muscle to contract it must first be stimulated by nerves called motor neurons. A single motor neuron and the muscle fibers stimulated by it is called a motor unit. The recruiting motor units play a large part in the force of the muscle during contraction. The more motor units (muscle fibers) recruited, the stronger the force of contraction.

Muscle fibers are classified as Type I, Type IIa and Type IIb fibers. "Fast" and "slow" twitch are also two other classifications for muscle fibers. Type I fibers (slow twitch) fibers are more resistant to fatigue than Type IIa or IIb fibers and have a high capacity for aerobic metabolism, fatigue faster and are mainly anaerobic.

Slow twitch fibers are mainly for endurance while fast twitch are for speed and performance. A muscle will generally have an equal amount of both fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. In regards to hypertrophy (muscle growth), fast twitch fibers grow faster and larger than slow twitch. Within the fast twitch muscle fibers, type IIa fibers are considered intermediate between fast and slow twitch fibers in relation to speed and contraction. For example, Type IIa fibers can become more glycolytic or aerobic depending on the type of training an athlete performs. If an endurance runner were to stop running and start weight lifting, then his or her Type IIa fibers would become more glycolytic in order to handle the stress of the activity.

Muscle growth and endurance is an adaptation to stress. For example, a sprinter will develop large quadriceps and hamstrings in order to adapt to the stress, while an endurance runner will develop more endurance to efficiently handle the stress. Type I muscle fibers respond to stress by becoming more efficient and stronger with slight hypertrophy, rather than the extreme hypertrophy seen with Type IIa and IIb muscle fibers. This is the premise behind trainers recommending 6 reps for pure strength/muscle gain and why 10-15 reps are recommended to "tone" a muscle.

Finally, there are four different actions a muscle can perform; isometric, eccentric, concentric, and isotonic. An example of an isometric contraction would be pushing against a wall. Lifting a dumbbell during a bicep curl is considered the concentric portion while lowering of the weight is called the eccentric portion of the exercise. There are also called the positive and negative portions respectively. And finally, isotonic contractions are those that involve full body actions such as skating or running.

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Cut the Fat! Cut the Carbs!

You've heard the popular advice on weight loss diets. Cut the fat! Cut the carbs! Cut the calories! Eat a balanced diet! But how can you cut though all of the confusion, and eat a diet that's balanced and healthy?

Here's the advice from nutritional science:

Cut the JUNK fats. Most people do not need an ultra low fat diet. But most of us could improve our diet by cutting out the junk fats. Basically, these are the processed fats: hydrogenated fats, polyunsaturated oils that have been heated, and fats that are combined with junk carbs. Processed fats are the fats most likely to put on flab and clog your arteries.

Cut the JUNK carbs. Most people do not need an ultra low carb diet. But unfortunately, so many people who go on a low fat diet continue to eat highly processed foods - they switch from processed high-fat to processed low-fat. And when food manufacturers create low fat foods, they tend to replace the fat with junk carbs, which tend to pile on the pounds. Basically, junk carbs are low-fiber carbs, like sugar, fructose (and all the other *oses), flour, cornstarch, fruit juice. Yes, fruit juice is a junk carb too! - After all, how much fiber is there in fruit juice? - Virtually none - it's yet another junk carb. You should eat the whole fruit instead, with its fiber intact.

Cut the JUNK calories. Most people do not need an ultra low calorie diet. But just think what your diet would be like if you dropped the processed fats and the low-fiber carbs. You'd be eating mainly natural proteins, with lots of vegetables plus whole fruits - and the odds are that you would be eating far fewer calories as well. That's the kind of calorie cutting most of us should be doing.

Eat a balanced NATURAL-FOODS diet. By natural foods, we mean the foods that would have been eaten by your hunter-gatherer ancestors: - lots of whole vegetable foods for vitamins and fiber; moderate to small portions of meats, fish, seafood, and other animal and protein foods, grilled, stewed or baked; and small portions of fresh whole fruit in season. This is the diet on which the human race evolved, and the diet which, for the vast majority of people, makes for optimum health

So the next time you're about to order a meal with fries and sugary soda, think about how it could be improved. Replace the fries with a salad, and the soda with mineral water, and you've already made significant progress towards a healthier, balanced meal.

And at home, look for recipes that use whole, fresh foods, with a minimum of processing. Make sure your meals include natural unprocessed foods, with lots of healthy vegetables, both cooked, and raw in salads. Avoid processed fats and processed low-fiber foods.

A sample menu:
- grilled fish with steamed green beans, and peppers
- large mixed salad, dressed with small amounts of olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice
- fresh fruit platter

Yes - A healthy, balanced diet can be that simple!

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Developing Your Will Power

Developing your will power is directly related to your success in weight loss and life. No one can over-estimate the power of your will to do.

Most people do not fail because of a lack of education. History is filled with uneducated or poorly educated millionaires who didn't let this supposed shortcoming hold them back. On the contrary, what they may have lacked in education was obliterated by their overpowering will to succeed, no matter how many times they failed along the way.

It is the lack of determination and will power that is the true reason so many people fail. Just as an athlete trains for a physical game that takes concentrated effort, the mind must be trained with the proper skills to win in life.

The process of obtaining this self-mastery -- the complete command of your mind's powers -- is a gradual one. It involves determination and the daily task of making it a habit. Once you have self-mastery, the cost of obtaining it will bring a real sense of accomplishment and a realization how minimal the cost really was in the long run.

You don't need to be a genius to succeed -- just make yourself do the thing you need to do when it has to get done, whether you like it or not. This is one of the best lessons you can learn.

When Henry Ward Beecher was asked how he could accomplish so much more than others, he replied, "I don't do more, but less than others. They do all their work three times. Once in anticipation, once in actuality, and once in rumination. I do mine in actuality alone, so I end up doing things just once."

Beecher could concentrate his mind on what he was doing at a given moment. Then he'd go do something else and concentrate on his new task. One of the secrets of a successful life is the ability to focus all of our energies on one thing at a time.

Don't waste time worrying as it only crowds your thoughts with worthless clutter. Focus on what you're doing when you're doing it, and stop worry before it stops you. Worry is an energy vampire. It reduces your chances for success and it can make life miserable for those around you.

Learning to focus your efforts is the only way you will achieve the success you're capable of achieving. The earlier in life you learn this simple fact, the more likely you will overcome everything that slows you down and prevents you from reaching true success in everything you do.

Here's a recipe for a wasted life -- just go about every day trying to do too many things all at once. Splitting yourself up into a hundred little parts leads to nowhere.

Yes, there are some people who like to juggle a number of tasks, and they may be good at it, but for most of us the need to concentrate on one task at a time is imperative to getting the job done. It's not the amount of work you get done in a day or week or even a year, but it's your persistence in constantly moving forward that will get you where you want to go.

Keep at it! And remember ...

Focus, Focus, Focus.

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