9 Promises To Bring You Happiness - By John Wooden

1. Promise yourself that you will talk health, happiness and prosperity as often as possible.
2. Promise yourself to make all your friends know that there is something in them that is special and that you value.
3. Promise yourself to think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best in yourself and others.
4. Promise to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are of your own.
5. Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
6. Promise to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements in the future.
7. Promise to wear a cheerful appearance at all times and give every person you meet a smile.
8. Promise to give as much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
9. Promise to be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit trouble to press on you.

http://www.ginaparris.com/9-promises-to-bring-you-happiness/

7 Pieces of Fitness Advice We Actually Want to Follow

There are a lot of voices shouting fitness tips from the rooftops, but not a lot of it is advice that we actually want to follow. Take, for example, the popular slogan among some fitness fanatics that says, "Unless you puke, faint, or die, keep going." If one more person tries to tell us we just have to run a marathon or try their favorite CrossFit box or take up barre classes, maybe we will just puke, faint, or die.
And while fitness (and diet, nutrition, sleep—heck, health, for that matter) is incredibly personal, and definitely not "one-size-fits-all," there are some pieces of advice that really might work for most of us (and certainly won't result in blood loss). Here are seven recommendations we find pretty easy to accept.

1. Just Do 20 Minutes
You don't have to be a marathon runner—and thank goodness. Just 20 minutes of daily activity, while not as effective as 40 minutes of exercise, has been shown to lower body weight and fat, increase fitness, and lower potential markers for type 2 diabetes risk.

2. Take Days Off
We're not saying slack off, but... yeah, okay, every once in a while, slack off! There are very good—and very scientific—reasons to take time off from training. Over-exercising can mess with everything from your muscles and joints to your menstrual and sleep cycles. Not to mention you could end up totally burnt out, seriously injured, or frustratingly stalled in your weight-loss efforts.

3. Find A Workout You Love
We repeat: You don't have to be a marathon runner! If there's one surefire way to continue dreading exercise, it's to force yourself to be active in a way that you don't enjoy. If you hate running or swimming or barre class or yoga, stop doing it! Shoparound until you find something you truly enjoy, whether it's CrossFit or Zumba or Pilates or softball or gardening, and then make it a habit.

4. Stop Doing Crunches
Let's settle this one once and for all: Crunches are not the path to six-pack abs. Research shows that we cannot spot reduce fat in the precise areas we'd like to (in this case, the stomach), no matter how many thousands of crunches we do. Not to mention, crunches are unnecessarily taxing on the spine. That doesn't mean ignore your abs: Core strength is essential to balance, stability, and power in your arms and legs. Just try something safer and more efficient, like a plank

5. Caffeinate
If you've been torn by debates over the health effects of caffeine, consider this: That jolt can give your stamina and endurance a boost, "making a long run or ride feel easier," sports dietitian Molly Kimball told SHAPE in an earlier post. Whether you prefer coffee or tea is up to you. Just go easy on the sweeteners, as sugar may negate the pick-me-up from the caffeine.

6. Sleep InIt's a classic conundrum: Both exercise and sleep are crucial, but if you get a lousy night's rest, do you still get up for that a.m. workout you had planned? Research is on our (sleepy) side here: Skimping on sleep to exercise may actually put your health at risk. "If you're short on sleep, you experience higher levels of inflammation and a decrease in the hormones that help you lose fat and stabilize your appetite," Ben Greenfield told HuffPost in February.

Plus, we know from daylight saving time research that losing just one hour of sleep increases your likelihood of dangerous side effects like car accidents, heart attacks, and workplace injuries. Permission granted to stay under the covers and feel good about it

7. Drink Chocolate MilkWe couldn't help but rejoice when we first heard the news that chocolate milk is a pretty solid combination of the carbs and protein your body needs while recovering from a workout. The sweet sip was long maligned for being high in sugar and fat, but recent research gives us permission to feel like a kid again. (In moderation, of course!)

http://www.shape.com/fitness/workouts/7-pieces-fitness-advice-we-actually-want-follow

What Is The Secret Of Success?

What is the secret of success? According to a new study by Talent Smart and published in Psychology Today, the secret of success in the workplace may be having a high emotional quotient (EQ). Emotional Quotient or Emotional Intelligence “is the ability to understand, manage, and effectively express one’s own feelings, as well as engage and navigate successfully with those of others.”

Their research showed that 90% of high performers in the workplace possess a high emotional quotient, while 80% of low performers have a low EQ.

There are many different tests (and whole books written) on the topic of emotional intelligence and how to determine your emotional quotient. Here’s a short one from the University of Washington. Of course, most of these tests are self-graded so there may be a bias if a person is unrealistic in their self-assessment.

According to the Psychology Today article, here are five ways to boost your emotional intelligence:

1. Improve the ability to deal with so-called “negative“ emotions. While the author of the article defines some emotions as negative, the reality is that most emotions can be constructive if we learn to express them in a helpful way. Learning to deal with anger, frustration, and other difficult emotions in a way that doesn’t overwhelm us or affect our judgement is critical to success. There are many ways to deal with difficult emotions, which include: writing them out, going for a brisk walk, waiting a while before sending out that angry e-mail, or spending time in nature. Of course, these are just a few. I’d love to hear from you about the ways you deal with difficult emotions.

2. Stay cool under pressure. Boosting the ability to remain calm under pressure is one way to handle stressful situations in an assertive, rather than a reactive, way. Simply breathing deeply and counting to ten prior to expressing anger can be helpful. Similar to number one, vigorous activity or spending some time in nature can also help us keep our cool.

3. Pay attention to social cues. People with a high EQ are generally more accurate in their interpretation of others’ emotional, verbal, and physical expressions. They also tend to be effective at communicating their intentions. The author suggests coming up with multiple interpretations of someone’s expressions or actions instead of jumping to conclusions about his or her behavior. And, avoid personalizing someone else’s behavior. Seek clarification about someone else’s intentions or feelings if you are uncertain.

4. Be assertive and express difficult emotions when necessary. Set boundaries. Say “no” if you really need to and don’t feel guilty about it. Avoid trying to be superwoman or superman, taking on every responsibility that someone throws at you. I’ve been asked on occasion why I seem to have a positive outlook on aging while so many people desperately try to look and act younger. My response is simple: I would never want to go back to being younger now that I’ve gained more confidence and a stronger sense of myself, along with the ability to say “no” and set clear boundaries, without feeling guilty.

5. Express intimate emotions in close relationships. Another key to success is building and maintaining strong intimate relationships and one of the best ways to do that is to learn to share emotions in a constructive way and respond positively when another person does so. Of course, knowing with whom to share these emotions is also imperative. Some emotions are best reserved for strong personal relationships, not just acquaintances. But finding ways to let someone know they are important, cared for, or loved is important to relationships but also our self-worth and our emotional quotient. As John Donne aptly wrote, “no man is an island.” Strong relationships give us a solid foundation from which to experience life.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-secret-of-success.html

The 6 Weight-Loss Tips That Science Actually Knows Work

When it comes down to it, the things we know to be true about weight loss are relatively simple, and certainly few. They’re also extremely effective when actually carried out. So, from the researchers who have studied this stuff for decades, here’s pretty much everything we know about weight loss today, whittled down to six points about how the body actually gains, loses, and maintains its weight.


1. Dieting trumps exercising
We hear a lot that a little exercise is the key to weight loss – that taking the stairs instead of the elevator will make a difference, for instance. But in fact it’s much more efficient to cut calories, says Samuel Klein, MD at Washington University’s School of Medicine. “Decreasing food intake is much more effective than increasing physical activity to achieve weight loss. If you want to achieve a 300 kcal energy deficit you can run in the park for 3 miles or not eat 2 ounces of potato chips.” It’s as simple as that. Of course, both together would be even better.

The problem is that when you rely on exercise alone, it often backfires, for a couple of reasons. This is partly because of exercise’s effects on the hunger and appetite hormones, which make you feel noticeably hungrier after exercise.

The other problem with exercise-without-dieting is that it’s simply tiring, and again, the body will compensate. Some of the calories we burn come from our basic movements throughout the day – so if you’re wiped out after exercise, and more likely to sit on the couch afterwards, you’ve lost the energy deficit you gained from your jog.


2. Exercise can help fix a “broken” metabolism, especially during maintenanceWhile exercise may not be as important for weigh loss as calorie restriction, it’s important in another way: It begins to repair a broken metabolism. Within a couple of days of non-activity, the metabolism becomes inflexible. You start moving again, and it does start to change.” Your metabolism may not ever go back to “normal” (more on this below), but theevidence indicates that it can indeed pick up again, in large part through moving your body every day.

This is a large part of why exercise is critical in the maintenance phase, which is well known to be more difficult than the weight loss phase. We think it’s partly because in the extra calories burned from physical activity, you have a bit more flexibility in food intake, so you’re not so much relying on ridged changes in eating habits; it makes it more tolerable.”


3. You’re going to have to work harder than other people – possibly forever
Though exercise can help correct a metabolism that’s been out of whack for a long time, the grisly reality is that it may not ever go back to what it was before gained weight. So if you’ve been overweight or obese and you lose weight, maintaining that loss means you’re probably going to have to work harder than other people, maybe for good. Building muscle can help your body burn a few more calories throughout the day, but it’s also likely that you’ll have to work harder aerobically in the long run.


4. There’s no magical combination of foods
There are low-fat diets, low-carb diets, low glycemic diets, Paleo diets, and a lot of iterations of all of these. There doesn’t seem to be any “right” diet, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that one particular diet will work better with an individual’s specific metabolism. We know pretty much that any diet will help you lose weight if you follow it. There’s no magic diet. The truth is that ALL Diets will work if you follow them.”


5. A calorie IS a calorie!
And for energy balance, it’s the number of calories that matters. You can gain weight eating too much healthy food as well as unhealthy. From the standpoint of health, it’s better to eat your veggies…. It’s just a lot easier to overeat calories from junk food than healthy food. But the source of calories obviously matters for other reasons. First of all, no one overeats veggies, so on a practical level, that’s a non-issue. In fact, the food industry has carved out a whole new area of food science to study the “bliss point,” in which foods are created to increase the amount it takes to feel satiated and full.

It’s true that types of foods you eat may, over time, affect your metabolic profile, so they may also matter in this way, but when it boils down, sticking to any reduced-calorie diet will create the energy deficit needed to lose weight.


6. It’s all about the brain As my colleagues have reported, it’s not the body or the metabolism that are actually creating overweight or obesity – it’s the brain. We all know intuitively that poor decisions are what make you gain weight and better ones are what make you lose it. The problem is that over time, the poor decisions lead to significant changes in how the brain governs – and, amazingly, responds to – the hunger and satiation processes. 

While there may be some degree of “damage” to the brain, particularly in how hunger and satiety hormones function, it can correct itself to a large degree over time. The key is that the process does take time, and like any other behavior change, is ultimately a practice.


So boiling it down even further: reduce calories, eat better, exercise, and most of all, remember it is a practice that has to be repeated over time – months or years. The fact that you’ll have to work harder at maintenance than your never-overweight best friend is depressing, but it’s worth coming to terms with. And, most important to remember, your brain (the organ behind all this, after all) is plastic, and it will respond to the changes you make – better than you think. And so will your body.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/09/04/the-6-weight-loss-tips-that-science-actually-knows-work/

The Exercise Secrets Trainers Won't Tell You

YOU might be under the impression that losing weight requires you to spend hours slogging away in the gym. But according to scientists, just one extra minute of brisk activity every day can help burn off unwanted kilograms.

Researchers monitored the activity of 4,500 adults, and discovered that how often you exercise your heart and lungs matters more than the duration of the workout. They found that several short bursts of exertion had the same effect as longer, but less frequent spells of exercise. Those short bursts could include taking the stairs instead of the lift, parking further away from the shops and walking, or getting off the bus one stop early.

Lead researcher Dr Jessie Fan, from the University of Utah, said: "What we learned is that for preventing weight gain, the intensity of the activity matters more than duration. "Knowing that even short bouts of brisk activity can add up to a positive effect is really an encouraging message for promoting better health."

In the study, volunteers wore accelerometers - devices which can accurately measure movement and activity.

Participants also had their body mass index (BMI) recorded. This measures weight in relation to height. Researchers found that, for women, every minute spent in higher-intensity short bouts of activity each day was associated with a BMI reduction of 0.07. The results showed that one minute of brisk activity each day offset the calorie equivalent of 0.41pounds in weight.

The scientists explained that this means if a 5ft 5in woman regularly took the stairs at work, she would weight nearly half a pound less than a woman of the same height who took the lift. The results were similar for men, with each daily minute of higher-intensity activity lowering the likelihood of being obese by 2 per cent for men and 5 per cent for women.

But the study found that, on average, the women who were having their movements monitored were less physically active than the men.

The report, which was published in the American Journal of Health Promotion, said: "Taking the stairs, walking to the store or between errands are choices that can add up and can end up making a positive health difference.

"The message is: a little more effort can have an important health payback."

In a separate study published last year, an academic at Aberdeen University suggested that short, sharp bursts of exercise were better at warding off heart disease than longer, less strenuous sessions.

That's because they helped speed up the rate at which fat left the blood. Fat lingering in the blood is known to trigger the first in a series of steps that can lead to clogging of the arteries and heart disease.

The study found that walking cut fat levels by 11 per cent, compared with not doing any exercise. But short bursts of sprints on a bike cut it by 33 per cent - the sort of effect expected from a 90-minute run.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/the-exercise-secret-trainers-won8217t-tell-you/story-fni0dgzm-1226708972620

September Is The Best Month To Kickstart Weight Loss Success, Says Leading Nutritionist

IF LOSING weight was at the top of your wish list for 2013, it's time to get cracking. September leaves us three months until Christmas and a great incentive to really focus on getting rid of extra kilos we're carrying before the end of the year.

"If you stick to a sensible eating plan now you can aim to lose half a kilo every week, which adds up to 10 kilograms by the end of the year," said Susie Burrell, a leading nutritionist.

According to the most recent study taken by the Australian Institute of Health, cardiovascular disease remains the biggest killer of Australians. Being overweight, having high blood cholesterol and diets loaded with saturated fat are among the most common root causes.

Depressing? The good news is the most effective changes are the small, everyday tweaks you can make to your diet and exercise program.

Here are Ms Burrell's top tips for making the most of the next four months.

1. Eat much less at night
An easy way to do this is eat more at lunchtime and then have a soup or salad for dinner. Try and stop the habit of getting home from work, stuffing your face with a heavy dinner and a dessert.

2. Be honest about your worst diet habit. Then change it.
Do you drink too much at night? Do you eat chocolate after every meal? Do you avoid exercise? Do you drink too much coffee? Just a couple of weeks making this change will help you drop a kilo or two.

3. Limit alcohol to just one or two times a week
This one is a no-brainer. Alcohol is basically a glassful of empty calories and drinking too much can easily lead to overeating. So cut things off at the pass and minimise your drinking.

4. Focus on vegetables or salad to reduce calories from carbs and proteins
Drink a vegetable juice in the morning, eat soup before each main meal and snack on vegetables. They're high in fibre and nutrients and low on calories.

5.Track your calories There are so many Apps around for your phone and you can also put something on your work computer. Even the act of writing a food journal can keep you accountable.

6. Limit eating out to one to two times a week
We eat at least 400-500 extra calories when we eat out so limiting the number of times we do it automatically supports weight loss quickly and efficiently.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/september-is-the-best-month-to-kickstart-weight-loss-success-says-leading-nutritionist/story-fni0d7e5-1226710220234

Physical Techniques: Deep Breathing, Progressive Muscular Relaxation & The Relaxation Response

Introduction:
This tool introduces three useful physical relaxation techniques that can help you reduce muscle tension and manage the effects of the fight-or-flight response on your body. This is particularly important if you need to think clearly and perform precisely when you are under pressure.

Deep Breathing:
Deep breathing is a simple but very effective method of relaxation. It is a core component of everything from the "take ten deep breaths" approach to calming someone down, right through to yoga relaxation and meditation. It works well in conjunction with other relaxation techniques such as Progressive Muscular Relaxation, relaxation imagery and meditation to reduce stress.
To use the technique, take a number of deep breaths and relax your body further with each breath. That's all there is to it!


Progressive Muscular Relaxation (PMR):
Progressive Muscular Relaxation is useful for relaxing your body when your muscles are tense. The idea behind PMR is that you tense up a group of muscles so that they are as tightly contracted as possible. Hold them in a state of extreme tension for a few seconds. Then, relax the muscles to their previous state. Finally, consciously relax the muscles even further so that you are as relaxed as possible.
By tensing your muscles first, you will probably find that you are able to relax your muscles more than would be the case if you tried to relax your muscles directly.

Experiment with PMR by forming a fist, and clenching your hand as tight as you can for a few seconds. Then relax your hand to its previous tension, and then consciously relax it again so that it is as loose as possible. You should feel deep relaxation in your hand muscles.

For maximum relaxation you can use PMR in conjunction with breathing techniques and imagery.


The “Relaxation Response”:
We mentioned “The Relaxation Response” in our article on Meditation. In a series of experiments into various popular meditation techniques, Dr. Benson established that these techniques had a very real effect on reducing stress and controlling the fight-or-flight response. Direct effects included deep relaxation, slowed heartbeat and breathing, reduced oxygen consumption and increased skin resistance.

This is something that you can do for yourself by following these steps:

• Sit quietly and comfortably.
• Close your eyes.
• Start by relaxing the muscles of your feet and work up your body relaxing muscles.
• Focus your attention on your breathing.
• Breathe in deeply and then let your breath out. Count your breaths, and say the number of the breath as you let it out (this gives you something to do with your mind, helping you to avoid distraction).
• Do this for ten or twenty minutes.

An even more potent alternative approach is to follow these steps, but to use relaxation imagery instead of counting breaths in step 5.
Summary:
“Deep Breathing,” “Progressive Muscular Relaxation,” and the steps leading to the “Relaxation Response” are three good techniques that can help you to relax your body and manage the symptoms of the fight-or-flight response.

These are particularly helpful for handling nerves prior to an important performance, and for calming down when you are highly stressed.

http://www.mindtools.com/stress/RelaxationTechniques/PhysicalTechniques.htm