How To Eat Less Without Feeling Deprived

Who says you have to deprive yourself in order to eat less? Follow these simple tricks to eat less without feeling hungry:





1. Serve food in smaller portions
Limit food intake by serving less food and serving on smaller plates or containers. Stash away leftovers for later and keep food away from sight especially sweets and junk foods.

2. Drink more water
Whenever you feel hungry or bored, drink a glass of water. Water will fill your stomach and curb your hunger pangs. Drinking more water is also laced with health benefits. Water helps bodily functions such as digestion, absorption, and creation of saliva. It also helps the kidneys and hydrates the skin for a healthy radiant glow.

3. Eat a salad
Eat a salad before lunch or dinner to help you curb your appetite and limit your fat intake. Toss lots of veggies in your salad and use oil-based dressing to make a healthier and more filling salad.

4. Learn to eat slowly
By eating fast, you are taking in too many calories before feeling full. Slow down and take the time to enjoy the taste of every meal and snack you eat. Mindful eating will not only help you eat less, importantly it will enhance your experience of eating.

5. Don’t deprive yourself
Depriving yourself to eat something you really liked can lead to overeating. You can take anything you like (dessert, anyone?) but you can only have a few bites.

6. Keep busy
Occupy yourself you will have less time to think about food. Get out of the house, get a hobby, exercise. Doing something may exhaust you, but it will definitely benefit you and your weight loss plan to get moving.

7. Brush your teeth after every meal
The minty taste of toothpaste and the idea of ruining the cleanliness of your teeth should be enough to make you think twice about eating

http://bodybydesignweightloss.com/how-to-eat-less-without-feeling-deprived/

Start Building A Healthy Self-Esteem Today

Building a healthy self esteem can do wonders for your life. The way you deal with people on a personal and professional level are all affected by how you perceive yourself. Having a low level of self confidence may greatly affect your life; you end up having a harder time performing at work, maintaining healthy relationships, and enjoying life.

Your perception of yourself will dictate how you live life as a whole. You may feel unable to confidently face problems and make sound decisions. You may also begin to notice that the people around you are also losing confidence in you and your skills; the way you perceive yourself will dictate how people will see you and interact with you. Yes, your self esteem means so much more than you realise.

Having a healthy concept of yourself must come from within you and not from what others say about you or your physical appearance. Self-confidence is learning how to appreciate and accept yourself as you are. If your self esteem is only dependent on how people see you and what they think about you, then your confidence will be short-lived. You will have self doubts the moment people start saying negative things about you. You need to learn how to be happy and proud of yourself, your achievements, and experiences even if others are not there to cheer you on. Once you learn to do this, then you will have a healthy self esteem no matter what the situation is.

You never know what life will throw at you, but you need to start building your self-confidence to face life's toughest challenges. You need the self-assurance to make sound decisions and navigate through life on your way to success.

Here are a few simple tips to help build your self-esteem:

• Recognise your strengths, talents, and abilities and empower yourself with them. Learn to accept your weaknesses without allowing them to pull you down into a spiral of depression. Instead, work on developing and improving yourself.
• Conquer self-defeating thoughts. Stay positive and fill your mind with good things about yourself, people, and the situation you are in. Even if things seem really bad right now, focus on how things could be better and the small steps you need to take to make that happen.
• Be honest to yourself and others. Don't try to put up an image of yourself that's not real; don't project someone you're not. Allow people to accept you for who you are and not someone you just created to please others. No one is perfect, even if sometimes they appear to be. Perceptions of people can be deceiving as you only ever see a fragment of the whole person.
• Take responsibility for your actions and decisions. Empower yourself to make important decisions about life and your future. Stop allowing others to dictate the course of your life. Think about what it is that you really want to achieve. Even if that means you need to do something that would normally make you feel a little selfish. Remember that it's your life, not theirs. Who will suffer if things go wrong because you let others run your life? In all likelihood, you will suffer the most. The people who keep trying to control your life won't be directly affected by what happens to you.

Building self confidence isn't something that can be done over night. You need to work on it every day and the best way to do that is one step at a time, the smaller steps the better.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/paul-bailey/self-esteem-building_b_2971836.html

The Meditation Method That Might Save Your Memory

If someone told you that memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia could be reversed without drugs, in less than 15 minutes a day, would you believe them?
Although it sounds like the opening pitch of an annoying infomercial, research has been able to pinpoint a specific kind of meditation that seems to bestow special memory-boosting benefits on dutiful practitioners: Kirtan Kriya.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study that found that individuals with memory problems saw an improvement in their overall cognition after practicing Kirtan Kriya meditation once a day, for eight weeks.

The study was small (involving only 15 participants) but the findings were definitive—people with memory loss performed better on cognitive tests after incorporating Kirtan Kriya into their lives.

While the benefits of meditation are no secret to the millions of people who practice the ancient form of centering one’s thoughts, these results add further credibility to the ever-growing body of scientific evidence backing up what yogis have known about meditation for millennia.

According to the Mayo Clinic, some other advantages of adopting any form of meditation practice include: reduced stress levels, increased awareness and the ability to be able to concentrate more on the present. Science has also pointed to meditation as a way to manage or prevent certain health conditions including cancer, depression, high blood pressure, problems with sleep, asthma, anxiety and heart disease.

While the link between meditation and these conditions is far from definitive, it’s hard to deny that the practice has value that science is just beginning to understand.

A Kirtan Kriya sample practice
Kirtan Kriya meditation is a principle component of the Kundalini form of yoga. Kundalini yoga aims to enhance the physical energy and mental awareness of each practitioner by unleashing the power of the universal consciousness that resides within each person.


Here are the basic elements of a Kirtan Kriya meditation practice:

1. Take a seat: You can sit on the floor or in a chair, anywhere you feel most relaxed. Try to sit up as straight as you comfortably can. Place your hand on your knees, palms facing up.
2. Practice breathing: Practice slowly inhaling all the way down into your belly, and then, gradually exhaling fully.
3. Start to chant: Kirtan Kriya meditation incorporates a specific syllabic chant—sa (birth), ta (life), na (death), ma (rebirth). Together they form a mantra that proponents of Kundalini yoga say helps practitioners tap into their spiritual center. There are also hand movements that coordinate with each aspect of the Kirtan Kriya mantra. On “sa,” touch your index fingers to your thumbs. On “ta,” touch your middle fingers to your thumbs. On “na,” touch your ring fingers to your thumb. On “ma,” touch your pinky fingers to your thumbs. Each of these gestures is called a “mudra,” a symbolic movement meant to facilitate the flow of energy throughout the body.
4. Repeat: Kirtan Kriya meditation practices may last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. The typical practice is about 11-12 minutes long and involves cycling through several different ways of chanting the sa, ta, na, ma mantra; sometimes in a loud voice, sometimes in a whisper and sometimes silently, in your head. If you’re new to Kirtan Kriya, try this as a sample meditation: Chant aloud for two minutes, softly for two minutes, silently for three minutes, softly for two minutes and aloud for two minutes. You can play around with the times, but the important concept to keep consistent is the cycle—aloud, soft, silent, soft, aloud.
5. End with an affirmation: While it isn’t necessary, some practitioners suggest concluding a Kirtan Kriya meditation session by placing your palms together in front of your heart and proclaiming the mantra, “Sat nam,” as a verbal acknowledgement of the sacred truth that lies within you.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-meditation-method-that-might-save-your-memory.html

Take Time To Nurture Yourself

Women are often the primary nurturers. Women carry the pregnancy and breast-feed the baby. They are the epicenter of healthcare decisions for the family and are more likely to be the caregiver when a family member falls ill. They are often the limo driver, the chef and the chief financial officer of the household. And in addition to caring for kids and a partner, they are often the front line for caring and supporting parents as they age.

Does this sound familiar? If so, my question to you is this: Who is nurturing you? Who is nurturing the nurturer? Who is making sure that you are getting the time, attention and emotional support that you need and deserve?

If there isn’t a clear answer to this question, pause a moment and realize – the need is still there; the desire to be nurtured is still there; the impact of not being nurtured is still there.

So what can you do? First, realize it’s OK to have needs. Next decide who in your immediate world you can reach out to for nurturing. In some cases there may be no obvious choice to fill this role for you.

That’s OK, too. There is still you and you have a powerful position. You can allo­cate some of the time you are using to nurture others and reserve it for yourself.

Set aside some you-time for an ex­ercise or yoga class or a walk or for reading a book. Maybe it is eating lunch with a friend. Maybe it is two 15-minute meditations you do by your­self. Even talking on the phone with a woman friend can be very therapeutic.

What you do isn’t the goal. It’s taking time to restore yourself and your “self”; to focus on you and not onthem. Remember in the airplane, the person says, “In the unexpected case of an emergency and oxygen is needed, when the oxygen mask falls, place it on your head first and then place it on the head of your child.”

Every nurturer needs to be nurtured. Are you making you-time to nurture you?

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/you-time-take-time-to-nurture-yourself.html

4 Methods to Make Personal Development A Lot More Fun

Personal development can be fun. But often times, it can also feel like a chore. You have to do this, and practice that, and you don’t really feel like it, and you’re not seeing fast enough improvements, and you’re frustrated and disheartened.

In the long term, if you wanna keep developing yourself and see meaningful changes in your life, it’s important for personal development to be fun; to be able to enjoy the journey, not just the destination.

Over the years, being a big self-improvement fan, I’ve tested various methods to make it more fun. I’ve identified 4 that create mind-blowing effects, and I’m gonna share them with you in the following paragraphs.

1. Stop Thinking You Need Personal Development
Most people tend to go into personal development with the perception that they are broken and they need fixing. They see themselves as damaged goods at some level, and they see self-improvement as the necessary solution.

However, this is rarely, if ever the case. You’re not broken and you don’t need fixing. Sure, you may have your flaws and imperfections, but doesn’t everybody? And that doesn’t make them defective.

When you realize this and you accept it, you stop seeing self-improvement as something you need, and you start to see it as something you want. You want it because you know bettering yourself will result in a better life, but you don’t truly need it. It’s a personal choice.

Coming from this angle makes self-improvement a lot more fun. It takes the pressure off and it permits you to take pleasure in the process. It’s like: “If it goes well, great, if not, oh well, at least I enjoyed it”. And this is an amazing mindset to have.

2. Always Reward Progress
Personal development can be slow. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and the desired results frequently refuse to show up with the intensity you want them to have. And this creates frustration.

There is a workaround this frustration, which is to reward yourself for every small progress you make. It can take you years to reach your desired destination. But you’ll make progress every single day. Why not take pleasure in it?

Well, you can do this. Firstly by acknowledging all progress and being grateful for it, and secondly by rewarding yourself for it.

What gives you instant gratification? Movies, games, relaxation, going out? Use these elements as rewards for sticking to the process, and for every step forward. Just one disclaimer: try to use rewards that don’t damage your life in the long-run. Avoid rewards like drinking, smoking, etc.

3. Do It Together With Others
Most activities are more fun when done along with other people than when done alone. Personal development is definitely one of them.

When one or more other people accompany you on the same journey, you share stories, you learn from one another, you support each other, and the journey is visibly more delightful.

That’s why it’s good to have company in self-growth. This company can be a friend you have in real life, which you get to join you on your journey. If you want, for instance, to work on building your public speaking skills over the next year, tell some friends about this and see if you can get them to join you.

It can also be people on a blog or personal development forum. These environments often create a good opportunity for people with similar goals to communicate, help each other and make the process fun. So if your real friends are not helpful regarding your self-improvement, try some virtual ones.

4. Choose Fun Personal Development Activities
Most personal development goals can be reached through a range of personal development exercises or activities. And some are a lot more fun than others.

You can increase your communication skills by going to formal social events and carefully studying every word you say, or by going to chill parties, talking with lots of people, being genuine and seeing what happens. The second choice will likely be a lot more fun.

Whatever self-improvement goals you have, take some time to consider how to go about reaching them. Try to see the full array of possibilities and out of them choose the ones that seem most enjoyable.

Don’t jump on the first road you see. If you just look around a bit, you might find a much better one slightly to the side of the first one.

I can vouch from experience that personal development can be a lot of fun. In fact it can be so much fun that the destination becomes secondary, and you just wanna be on the journey. Because it’s a fulfilling, integral part if your lifestyle, and your life simply wouldn’t be the same without it. That’s a great place to be in.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/4-methods-to-make-personal-development-a-lot-more-fun/

Simple Ways To Prevent Dementia In Old Age

Currently, an estimated 5.3 million elderly Americans live with Alzheimer's dementia and many more live with other forms of dementia, impairing a person's physical and mental abilities, including Huntington's disease and vascular dementia. Cognitive functioning and behavioral development begin to falter as the damage to brain cells disrupts a person's psyche, says the Alzheimer's Association.

(Photo : Ian MacKenzie) Prevent the risk of developing dementia in old age with six easy ways that will improve your brain health.

According to Alzheimer's Society in the U.K., the number of people with dementia is expected to double because people are living longer. As one downside to having longer lifespans, women have a higher lifetime risk than men of developing Alzheimer's, which may be precipitated by a drop in estrogen, the primary female sex hormone, experienced during menopause.

Gains in average life expectancy are not the sole driver behind the increase in Americans with dementia; other illnesses have been shown to increase risk. If a person has diabetes before the age of 65, their risk for dementia doubles. In a study published in the issue of Neurology, researchers examined the relationship between diabetes as a risk factor for dementia in a group of 1,301 community dwellers 75 years and older in Stockholm, Sweden. They found that diabetes is indeed associated with an increased risk for dementia, especially vascular dementia — when the brain's blood supply is interrupted — in very old people.

Furthermore, the risk for dementia significantly increases when diabetes occurs simultaneously with severe systolic hypertension and cardiovascular disease. "People who know they are at risk of vascular dementia can act to help delay or even prevent symptoms if they eat well, take exercise and don't smoke," Dr. Charles Alessi, an adviser for Public Health England, told the BBC. While there is no known cure to dementia or specific treatment sufferers can follow, there are easy ways to prevent and alleviate symptoms of the disease in old age.

Eat A Mediterranean DietConsuming fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and healthy fats, such as omega-3 fatty acids, can help reduce inflammation of the brain. The rich fatty acid is seen as a dietary intervention to reduce the risk of dementia with regular consumption. In a study published in the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, researchers examined the relationship between the Mediterranean diet and the likelihood of incident cognitive impairment to evaluate race and vascular risk factors. A total of 17,478 individuals with an average age of 64 participated in the study. The study showed that higher consumption of the Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower likelihood of cognitive impairment.

Get 8 Hours Of Sleep
Dementia and sleep are closely associated with one another; the lack of sleep can increase your risk of dementia later in life. Sufferers of the disease tend to have a sleep pattern that is irregular, generally feeling sleepy during the day with difficulty falling asleep for long periods at night, reports the Sleep Health Foundation. The organization that raises awareness of sleep health suggests that dementia sufferers get into sleep and wake patterns that reflect sleep habits prior to diagnosis of the disease, with the help of their loved ones. To get people living with dementia to develop a healthy sleeping pattern, 45-minute naps can vastly improve memory, according to an article by Matthew A. Tucker, PhD and William Fishbein, PhD.

Get Out There and Socialize
Socialization has been been shown to help people sharpen their mental acuity. In a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers followed women who were free of dementia symptoms and at least 78 years old. Over the course of five years of follow-up interviews, there were 268 new dementia cases out of the 2,249 women who began the study.

After analyzing the effects of socialization, researchers found that 80 out of 456 women who did not socialize much, or 18 percent, developed dementia. In contrast, 188 out of 1793 women who confided in a number of friends and family members, or 10 percent, developed dementia. Remaining as an active member in society and socializing with those around you can help improve your cognitive functioning and behavioral development to reduce the risk of dementia even at old age.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/17469/20130716/dementia-alzheimers-prevent-old-age-memory.htm

6 Ways to Keep Your Family Healthy

“Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!” said Albert Einstein. An inspiring exhortation. But before we can fill our homes with smiles, we need to fill our lives with verve and good health. Some simple but essential steps in this direction can help you create a healthy, happy home. Here are some suggestions:

1. Have two apples a day: and I am not talking about ‘Apple’ appliances! The old saying of an apple a day has now changed to two a day. Scientists at Florida University have found that two apples can significantly reduce bad cholesterol, thus protecting you from stroke and heart attack. Get the family to enjoy apples, be it just on their own or in non-sugared cobblers. Make sure they’re organic!

2. Plan your daily meals: it is not always possible or easy, but worth trying to do. Before you go grocery shopping, try to chalk up a health-boosting menu—even a rough one will do—for the coming few days at least. This will help you ditch impulse buys such as cookies and chips, and shop for healthier ingredients and create a more balanced meal plan for the entire family.

3. Don‘t eat late dinners: eating a meal after sunset places a strain on the digestive system. As far as possible, eat together, and eat light at night. Not only will you sleep better, but also avoid putting on weight. Big bonus: shared meals bring you closer and promote emotional harmony.

4. Play! playing together helps you stay together. Besides, riddles, puzzles and brain-sharpening games can help ward off degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

5. Encourage early bed time: and that is not just for the kids in the family. Sleeping early is perhaps one of the biggest favors you can do for yourself. It helps you wake up refreshed, balances the emotions and promotes good digestion. Stay off those late night TV shows and put away the crime thrillers that lie by your bedside. Create a peace-promoting ambiance in your home post twilight.

6. Talk: Sharing promotes caring. In these days of online networking, it is easy to be distracted and disconnected from those who live with you and love you. It is not uncommon to see children messaging their parents from within the same house! Switch off the Internet, get off the phone, and have a cosy chat. This can go a long way in restoring emotional balance within your home.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/6-ways-to-keep-your-family-healthy.html