Wednesday, March 31, 2010

March Review

Monthly Review - Photo by Galina Barskaya, Dreamstime

Free Photos Dreamstime






Another month has gone.
How quickly time goes.
To recap, here were my aims for March



• To maintain a sugar free diet.
• To experiment with low carbohydrate diet. At first, I want to take notes on the effects of eating or not eating carbohydrates on the teeth.
• To backup internet research on teeth with conversations with professions from the industry.
• Read up and publish a blog on Vitamin D
• Cut down on the number of days I drink, especially the number of days I drink more than 3 pints (UK measure)
• Exercise 14 times. I also want to include swimming and tennis this time.

My diet has been basically sugar free and I usually have no problems avoiding it. I ate sugar, knowingly, on three occasions this month. Two were birthday cakes and the other was high cacao chocolate - a chocolate night. At the moment, there's loads of chocolate in the house, so will probably have another chocolate soon.

Low carbohydrate diet, I did at the start of the month, had many meals without carbohydrates. I felt that my teeth feel cleaner if I didn't eat carbohydrates but to be honest this is just a feeling. I didn't consciously check. On the 14th I went to Japan and since then I haven't been avoiding carbohydrates.

I didn't contact any professions about teeth care.

Vitamin D - I didn't do anything on this. Perhaps, my motivation is low because I probably get enough Vit D as I live in a hot sunny country and I'm spending more time outside these days.

Drinking, the breakdown is thus; 17 days I had some drink, 14 days I didn't. I drank more than 3 pints on 9 days and less than 3 pints on 7 days. I feel this is still too high but I did a lot of thinking why I drink like I do. I'll publish that in a separate blog.

Exercise, Low energy exercise for more than three hours - 14 times (mostly in Japan), high energy 5 times (jogging and sprinting, and biking). I didn't go swimming or play tennis, though I went swimming today.

In general, I'm happy with the process I've made this month. I want to push up the amount of high energy exercising I'm doing. I'm pretty sure this will go up in April. I'm also still flossing everyday and I usually swill my teeth with water after eating. I had no problems with my teeth this month.

The only downside, health wise was getting a cold just before going to Japan.

Royalty Free Images

Monday, March 22, 2010

Zen Meditation

Zen Garden












I've been in Japan for 10 excellent days and had the opportunity to take a Zen meditation class. The class was at the Shunko-in Temple, Kyoto, with the Rev. Takafumi Kawakami giving the class.

Rev. Takafumi Kawakami said that Zen Buddhism is concern with making the right choices in the moment. Focusing on now, can change your past and your future, with every decision opening up a different set of options. Unfortunately, most people are not focus on the moment but are lost in the past or the future. This is especially true with modern life.

Meditation is one way to help you focus on the moment.

In the class we focused on our breathing in two 15 minutes sessions.

First, we focused on the bridge of the nose when we breathed in. The focus is here because the area is very sensitive. We were told to breath in deeply.

Next we held our breathe for a short time.

Then we exhaled slowly and after we had finished we paused before repeating the cycle again.

After the sessions, I felt very relaxed and energized.

The Rev. Takafumi Kawakami said that it's best to practice often, even for a minute or two a day rather than doing a long session.

Shunko-in Temple website - if you go to Kyoto, you can stay at the temple. They have rooms.






Stock Photography Community

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The 10 Minutes Exercise Routine

No time to exercise? Dreamstime Free Image



Free Photos Link








I came across this last year and I used it for a while, especially on days I felt lazy.

The Routine

3-4 minutes slowly warming up.

If on an exercise bike

1. 30 seconds pedaling as fast as possible.
2. 30 seconds slow pedaling.
3. Repeat four times.

I ran on the spot.

It felt good doing it and it was fun in a mad way. Last spring, I used this exercise, with running and swimming and I felt great and very alive.

The only worry I had was that I was running bare feet on tiles and I wasn't sure about the impact on my knees.

Studies in Scotland and Canada shows that the exercise has many benefits.

• Reduces the risk of developing Diabetes.
• Reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

The Scottish study was done on young men aged 20 or so.

Further reading

Independent Article

Video on a simalar workout

Royalty Free Images

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Time is Wealth

Antonio Ovejero Diaz - Time is Wealth Free Image Dreamstime



Dreamstime Free Photo Link










This is how travel writer Rolf Potts sees it and it makes perfect sense to me too. But in this modern world of endless distractions it's difficult to keep to this in mind.

To make the most of my time, I've been writing down the 2 or 3 most important things I need to do each day. This has helped and last week gave me some very productive days at writing. I managed to contact two editors and sent an email to the local English Newspaper asking for editorial contact detail, as well as drafting some articles.

But I'm still distracted very easily.

I used to waste a lot of time reading the news. I've managed to cut this down dramatically but sometimes the headlines grab me and I find that I've wasted 10, 20, 30 minutes. But why not read the news? Why not; Because it's usually depressing, you can't do much about it and it's mostly irrelevant to your life. The same could be said about celebrity worship.

Microstocks - I need to streamline my time on this. I need to concentrate on more profitable pictures, streamline my workload and constantly ask myself, am I doing something valuable now. The biggest waste of time, is constantly checking to see if I got any new sales - usually there isn't and I feel disappointed. When I check for sales, I also just click on random stuff as something to full in the time.

E-mails - I've subscribed to many streamlines of information and I've found my inbox is now overloaded. I think I will change the way I use email, so that I only check it twice a week and at those times, I'll response quickly to urgent emails.

My home is cluttered, which is a big distraction.

I'm going to take notes on what distracts me and I'll see how I can make better use of my time.

Next post - Exercise for People short of time.

Links



Zenhabits on limiting distractions

Rolf Potts Travel Blog

Royalty Free Images

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

March Aims

Healthy Girl eating an apple by Petar Neychev of Dreamstime


Check out Free photos on Dreamstime here





Since the beginning of the year, my health has been going in the right direction. I haven't stuffed any colds this year, I feel that I have more energy and I'm doing more exercise. I've cut down drastically on the sugar in my diet and I've learnt a lot about health that I didn't know before.

There has been set backs, like the teeth incident last month, but even that has turned out to be positive as I took the opportunity to learn more about what people could do to take care of their teeth. Also, I'm still drinking too often to get drunk.

From this the experience of the last two months and from what I've read, I'm confident that if you want to be healthy, you can. It's up to you!

Here are the targets for this month


• To maintain a sugar free diet.
• To experiment with low carbohydrate diet. At first, I want to take notes on the effects of eating or not eating carbohydrates on the teeth.
• To backup internet research on teeth with conversations with professions from the industry.
• Read up and publish a blog on Vitamin D
• Cut down on the number of days I drink, especially the number of days I drink more than 3 pints (UK measure)
• Exercise 14 times. I also want to include swimming and tennis this time.

Royalty Free Images