Earlier this summer, I went to a casual talk and heard some really great advice on life, and in particular, about marriage and what to consider when choosing a life partner. I think the advice is as sobering for those who are already married, since marriage has so many facets, phases, and challenges. I sat there, feeling like I was drinking out of a fire hose. The talk was also beyond just marriage, and journeyed through a man's life from when he was a boy to where he is today. I have the link for the video below. For those who want a preview, I wrote out a few points below (primarily on the marriage advice part)...
Insight: you can fall in love with someone whom you should NOT marry.
Don’t ever marry someone on a promise for what they are going to change. Going to be a better person, become a hard worker, not be lazy. They need to be successfully dealing with it today.
Look for a zeal in life. Their outlook in life will greatly impact you and your future with that person. If a man or woman is not actively improving whatever area - providing for a living, taking care of immediate family, etc. - it probably won't be that way in the future. Don’t marry on the promise. [However, I would conjecture that this is separate from marrying someone because you see potential, such as you think his character will make him great or something happens that sets her back, but she is facing and dealing with it].
If you are in a relationship because you don’t think you can do better or "reason" yourself through why you should be with the person rather than why you can’t live without the person, then you are probably in the wrong relationship.
Know yourself in order to deal with the brokenness in your family and in your potential someone’s family. If you don’t know yourself and (or can't accept) where you came from, your background, your upbringing and parents, then you won't be able to deal with the brokenness of the other person.
These are only tidbits; the vimeo video link is below. The speaker is Pastor Erwin Lutzer from Moody Church in Chicago, IL.
Boy oh boy, I was just perusing my blog posts over the last few months and I have written NOTHING on relationships. I have had requests (love you guys!), but finding it difficult to write or get to a point that makes sense, so have been putting this off. However, now, I think it is time to put something out there on relationships!
Last night I went out with a couple of friends to a happy hour. We walk in late (what else is new), scan the room, and see if anybody looks interesting enough to stay for the event (don't laugh, I bet you have done the same). You see a few people wrapped up in conversations. Some people at the bar are trying to look the part. Others are huddled with their buddies because talking to strangers can be overly unnerving.
So, wouldn't it be interesting to know just how the girls work the room as it compares to how the guys work their way around? And, by the end of the evening, who reaches their goals, and how did they measure their success? I think if both sexes can figure this out, couples would be coming out of the woodwork! (haha, if only it were that simple).
As the girl, it depends on how ambitious I feel that night. It may be easier to just hang with my girlfriends, but it makes it difficult to meet new guys, especially if the guys are a bit shy. I think for both male and female, it's all about getting into conversations or knowing someone there so you have an easier opportunity to. After you start having some trouble getting into conversations, you go back to your girlfriends as home base. I think the same strategy works for the guys, more or less. But this time I had no girlfriends as backups since my friends were guys, and therein, is where I think the silver bullet lies.
If girls walk in to the event with guys, the only drawback is that the people in the room might think this threesome or foursome are taken, but once you go off and try to talk with various people, the benefit really kicks in. If you are a girl, and want to crack into a group of standing guys, your guy friend will make a natural introduction, and when your guy friend wants to meet that group of cute girls, you can create a natural segway to introduce him.
And what about achieving one's goals? That is all determinant on personal preference. But from what I gather, guys do pretty well if he gets her phone number (one friend was successful last night!). And, I think for girls, if you meet an attractive guy, it's pretty good if you gave your phone number or got his. [We'll keep this post rated PG]. But, I think for most, having the option to get in touch again through exchanging contact information means that at least there is the possibility of seeing each other again.
Not sure if you heard but during this past week, Johnson & Johnson (who owns Tylenol), is lowering its recommended dosage of its key ingredient, acetaminophen, in its Extra Strength Tylenol to prevent accidental overdose because it causes liver failure. So, in the fall of 2011, Tylenol will pull its current dosage of Extra Strength Tylenol and replace it with recommend daily dose of six pills, or 3,000 milligrams, down from eight pills, or 4,000 milligrams.
Um, does this concern you? Did you catch the LIVER failure part?
The creators have said it themselves, taking Tylenol can lead you to liver failure! Growing up, my family rarely ingested medicine, and I hope to keep it this way since I don't know why I would take a medicine that might cause me liver failure? Whether liver failure of a little or a lot. Maybe if I were dying or at risk of heart failure or something else catastrophic and the question became, would you like to save your liver or heart first?
But, we're talking about Tylenol here, a medicine that is marketed and viewed as "safe" and some people take on a regular basis. Tread at your own risk!!
Medicine in urgent situations, ok I get, and would take if I absolutely needed to (and have), but the next time I get a headache, I won't be reaching for this medicine!
There are so many diets out there - Detox, Paleo, GI, Dukan, Weight Watchers, and the list goes on and on. But, here's a diet that seems really interesting, and in this post, I will take some liberty to surmise on the possibilities of why it could work, as it did for this woman in Japan.
It's the Sleep Diet. You change none of your eating habits, none of your exercise regimens (or lack thereof), and really nothing in your life except for the number of hours you sleep (and I assume this means getting non-stressful, non-wakeful sleep). The rule is to sleep a full eight hours a night (and a little more if your body needs it), EVERY night. That's it. You can still eat your ramen, pudding, desserts, bacon grease, but you must consistently sleep, and sleep around the same hour every night (the goal is consistency).
A woman in Japan tried this. At the start of the study, she was around 265 pounds. She always ate a HUGE breakfast, drank tons of pop (soda, for all you non-Midwesterners), ate lots of ramen and the spread was comprehensive! I have attached at the bottom the video, and even if you don't understand Japanese or Chinese subtitles, you will still get the gist of what is going on from the footage.
One thing to note is that before the study, she typically did not sleep 8 hours. She spent so many hours eating and her body digesting that she probably slept on average 4-6 hours, which is what happened in the first few days of the study. After 4-5 days, she started to adjust and sleep her eight hours. After the first week/week and a half, no progress, change or weight loss...(keep reading...)
But, one phenomenon that started was that she gradually had trouble finishing all the food she used to consume (she used to polish off the plate). She couldn't even get to the two packs of Ramen that she used to top off at lunch time. Another development, towards the end of the second week, her skin started to clear up. She is a regular patron at a certain restaurant, and the restaurant owner told her, your skin! It looks so good, it has gotten so clear! Wow.
By the end of the second week, she stepped on the scale and couldn't believe her eyes, with no change except for sleep, she shed a few pounds! Any less consumption of food she started this week was not forced on her, it was purely her body reacting with less cravings.
After a little more time in the study, she lost 11 pounds! Lost 11 pounds from just sleeping more!! When sleeping enough, it seems that the hormonal balance is more in check and our body (or brain) ends up craving less, therefore consuming less rather than thinking that the body is starved and needs to eat. I think this would explain my situation when I used to work around the clock, perhaps at first losing some weight, but over a long period of time, my body was going through major cravings for all food, especially unhealthy. The result of satiating those cravings was putting on weight.
The doctor on the show said that many of his patients lose somewhere from 5.5-6.5 pounds from just sleeping more (i.e. eight hours). Granted this woman's weight loss results are more than average, it is still amazing just how sleep can change our bodies!
Pressures from work, family, activities, etc. may be causing us to sleep less or get lower quality sleep, resulting in the hormonal imbalance as mentioned, producing more cravings, and putting on more weight. I think a very interesting theory, and seems to make some sense.
You're at the grocery store and looking for some fruit. Hey, these apples look and feel pretty crunchy, bet it's fresh. Wait a sec, you eye those juicy, plump white peaches. Oh actually, across the way, I can just taste that sweet and drippy mango! Drool.
Welcome to Summer!!! Summer heat just draws us (or I should say, me) to eating fruit all the time. Sweeter and juicier, the better.
Awesome to see all this fruit, but if you are like me and want to avoid eating genetically modified all the time, well actually, eat it never the time, you might want to know that the numbers on the little sticker actually mean something and tell you how that piece of fruit came into existence. That is, how it was reared.
The little sticker helps with the checkout process, but the numbers also represent the PLU code, or price lookup number in the U.S. Here's how the system works:
For conventionally grown fruit (grown with chemical pesticides), the PLU code consists of four numbers.
For organically grown fruit (which also may have pesticides but not as much), the PLU code consists of five numbers, prefaced by the number 9.
For genetically-modified (GM) fruit, the PLU code consists of five numbers, prefaced by the number 8.
If that was too hard to follow (don't worry, I felt the same at first too), here are visual examples.
Take a banana for instance.
Conventionally grown banana would read: 4011
Organic banana: 94011
Genetically modified or engineered (GMO, GE, GM) banana: 84011
So the next time you are at the grocery store, take a look, and decide how your fruit should grow up... Just remember, don't eat the stickers!
What are mollusks? Mollusks include all the shelled seafood found in the ocean. Mollusks include clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters and as a family of species with more than 80,000 known species. What diversity!
Growing up, these creatures were always a delicacy but sometimes the seafood-y smell didn’t make it as appetizing for me. Also, they are considered unclean in the Kosher diet, which I am conscious of and sometimes prescribe to (just pretty hard on the pork part given I eat a lot of Chinese food). So the mollusk family has only been an occasional part of my diet.
Recently, I have been looking hard for elements and food that are good for my blood. One essential element is iron. Amazingly, clams are one of the richest sources of iron, surpassing beef liver many times over. Get this, three ounces of clams yields 700% of the daily value for vitamin B12 plus 66% of the daily value for iron. Amazing, amazing.
Even on manganese, raw blue mussels provide 100% of the daily value which is important for growth, reproduction, wound healing, peak brain function, sugar metabolism, and cholesterol. And, zinc, which is crucial for a strong immune system, fertility, and male sexual health can be found in 1 cup of drained oysters, that is 100% of the daily value.
These sea critters are good deals all around. All high in protein, low in fat with the real benefit coming from the minerals our bodies can absorb from eating them. Now if only I can find good sources for this food, as many have toxins because of where they are caught or grown. And, if you have any chronic illness of the liver, stomach, blood or immune system, you should definitely not be eating these raw.
Source: 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, by Jonny Bowden
Happy 4th of July to you as you celebrate this weekend! A great time for BBQ's, fun with friends and family, and time off to enjoy the summer. I bet the 4th weekend is the biggest grilling weekend of the year in the U.S. (no stat to support, purely a guess). Steaks, ribs, hot dogs and throw in the potato salad, chips and dessert; pretty much all-American.
One part of the BBQ that I love, but too bad it always comes at the dead end, is when we cut up the watermelon. Someone with either some strong arms or a conveniently parked car will come and haul the big fruit to the BBQ site. The pink refreshing, crunchy, sweet fruit when served cold is the perfect quench to a hot summer day.
Watermelon quenches thirst because it is 92 percent water! If you are looking to lose some weight this BBQ season, load up on watermelon early. It is extra filling, a high-volume food, meaning that it takes up a lot of space in your stomach for few calories. Just what the dieter needs. So you feel less hungry, and the water bound to the food slows down absorption.
Even better, watermelon is super high in lycopene which is associated with lower rates of prostate cancer. It also has Vitamin A and carotenoids, which create a support system for the lycopene to work best. Many benefits from the enjoyment of eating watermelon.
Only moderate downside is the natural sugar content (or high glycemic index), but its glycemic load, which may be more important, is low (for those who track this). I think summertime is a time when we sweat more anyway, so the extra sugar from watermelon is a good thing. Would be much more concerned about the sugar from the pies and ice cream than that from crunchy watermelon.
Source: 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, by Jonny Bowden
Picture Source: http://kidsblogs.nationalgeographic.com/greenscene/2009/09/watermelon-powered-cars.html
