Am I a grump for disliking Christmas?

Here is an article I wrote a few years back when my kids were still at school.

Today some years later I can honestly say I hate it even more and most of my Christmas Holidays are spent outside the UK

If you love Christmas then it is not the article for you to read….it will ruin your day

If you dislike it like me then… enjoy!


 

Oh the guilt of disliking Christmas when “Tis The season to be Merry” but I just don’t get it.

I have thought about this many times let me tell you and so much so that I had to put my thoughts into words hoping that it may solidify some kind of answer in my mind.

Often when I write down what I think, the words start to make it real and come flowing out in great rapidity, giving me a reasoned and logical conclusion to my initial question. It perturbs me why I feel like this to say the least.

Known to my friends as Miss Positivity and known to my students as the great Motivator, how can a person like me be so negative about a time of year when we are all meant to be so happy?

Sitting in a Christmas traffic jam is the perfect time to really get to grips with what is going on around me.

The expectant and rushed faces in the cars make them look like members of a flock caught in some whirlwind of buying and shopping and buying some more…just in case.

After all the shops will be closed for 2 whole days and what on earth will we all do if we run out of things we need. Ah..there is that statement that jumps out at me …”things we need” or things that we think we need.

Now just in case you think I am one of those half naked tree hugging back to nature sorts ..I am not but I just cannot get into the whole hype of it all.

Yes… the music is lovely. Yes the mulled wine is even better! And the food is great. But what is it all about?

Is it about giving or about comparing the giving? My daughter was horrified last week at school when she deposited her presents on friends and one girl had given her a present that was in her mind more expensive than the one she had given. I got it in the ear the whole car journey back from school and naturally my renditions of “It’s not about the money its about the giving” fell on deaf ears.

Can I blame her for our different perceptions coming from a radically different childhood? She is growing up in a western consumerism society, I grew up in Africa.

At 12 years old the conditioning into believing that material goods bring self fulfillment has taken root. All around are tactics and advertising encouraging us to spend more, conditioning us to believe that the more we buy the happier we become.

Why is it then that the happiest people I have come across are African children in a village with a stick and the rim of a bicycle tyre to play with.

They roll the rim along the ground with the stick and their laughter resounds through the bushland.

Oh that life were so simple!

Our western society is engulfed in greed.

Greed that was allowed to grow out of control and to eventually put us in the mess we are now in. Yet it still continues, this constant pursuit of happiness through material consumption.

I remember a friend of mine in S. Africa telling me that one morning in his first week of freedom as he called it, he sat on a grassy bank watching the traffic pass by in the morning rush of Johannesburg.

He counted on both hands out of hundreds of cars how many people he thought looked happy. In the final analysis he amazed himself that for so long he had been one of the miserable faces continuing on the chore of going to a job he hated for years tied up in the belief that acquiring more money would make him happy.

Don’t get me wrong I do not go down the road of “money is the route of all evil” but I just feel it has all become too much.

Money is great when you are happy with what you are doing. If you hate what you do then never in a million years will it change that.

In my personal life at present I am faced with two teenagers with so called “needs”.

The constant battle of enforcing household rules and in particular the one where money comes from doing jobs sometimes feels like a battle against society as well.

How can we instill the ethos that to get rewarded you have to do something and you have to contribute. When I look around me today all I see are people who take and do not give back. It has become a way of life and something they feel they are entitled too.

If they want to give their friends expensive presents at Christmas then they should work for it . In that way they will feel a sense of achievement and self -respect …something that many teenagers today don’t have.

When I lecture in college I use my students as a window on Society. Their attitudes and aspirations by the time they reach me are usually molded by school and most of all they arrive with preconceived ideas of learning .

They have not learned  how to learn. Their curriculum is so tied up with results and stats that the joy of learning had been pushed aside. It has become results focused.

I take it upon myself to try and retrain their thinking.

To show them that anything is possible when you unleash your creativity and find that natural curiosity that will turn you into a lifelong learner.

I try my best using My stories of Africa to extend their boundaries of what will make them happy. Some of them get it and move forward ..some don’t.

So where do I stand?

I stand outside Western society right now looking in. I can see beyond it and what I can see is space, lots of flat open space off into the Horizon just to the point where the earth meets the sky. I can see myself there looking into the distance.

I have a plan for the future that is working and that’s what keeps me going for now.

Take care

Kathy

Are You Suffering From Ketosis – Dont Blame Low Carbs

If you have ketosis, low carb diets are not to blame. The high protein plan you are following is the culprit. Ketosis is where your system is producing too many ketone bodies putting pressure on your internal organs most notably your kidneys. It happens when your body does not get sufficient carbohydrates in order to replenish the stores of glucose you need for every day living. This usually occurs when people are advised to eat low levels of carbs and high levels of protein which is not healthy, unless your doctor has suggested you follow this diet plan for a specific reason.

Your body needs protein and carbohydrates in order to function properly as well as a variety of other vitamins and minerals. The main food for humans is carbohydrates. It isn’t carbs themselves that make you fat but the type of carbs you chose to eat, when and in what quantities.

You will lose weight following a high protein low carb diet but you are risking your health. I know you probably feel as if you are in a catch 22. If you don’t lose the pounds, your health is at risk anyway. But you will achieve more significant weight loss if you ditch the faddy diets and instead take a holistic look at your lifestyle. The only safe and sensible way to lose pounds is to follow a healthy eating plan, reducing your consumption of quick energy releasing foods and increasing your level of physical activity.

Eating complex carbohydrates, high quality but low quantity of protein, good fats and fruit and vegetables are the key components of a healthy eating plan. Your aim is to create an energy deficit i.e. you want to consume fewer calories than you use exercising. But you need to consume sufficient calories every day to prevent your body going into starvation mode where it stores fat and converts lean muscle for energy.

There are no quick fixes to long term weight loss and the sooner you realize that the less likely you are to suffer from ketosis. Low carb diets do work but only when you follow a specific plan and you get sufficient exercise as well. You should combine aerobic with weight training in order to get those pounds off faster and tone up quicker. One day do a cardio workout and the next go lift some weights.

Don’t get upset or disheartened. You can reduce your calorie intake quite easily once you realize where they hide. For example, if you regularly buy processed foods and ready meals, by switching to a home cooked menu you will decrease your calorie consumption. This is because manufacturers add sugars and bad fats to these foods in order to make them taste better. You do not have to go hungry and you do not have to count calories or measure points for the rest of your life. By re-educating your palate, having four or five small healthy meals every day and getting more exercise you will probably be surprised how fast those pounds fall off. Think about this, if you can manage to have 50% of every meal made up of vegetables with the remaining split equally between protein and complex carbohydrates you are well on your way to losing weight and avoiding Ketosis. Low carb diets do work. Try it and see for yourself.

How To Lose Weight Naturally Without Dieting

If you want to know how to lose weight naturally, you can pretty much forget spending too much time in the “weight loss” aisle at your book store. Of all the different ways to lose weight that you hear about these days, natural weight loss doesn’t see to be at the top of the list. Taking over-the-counter diet pills or those prescribed by a doctor isn’t a natural way to lose weight. Going on a liquid diet, or having gastric bypass surgery aren’t natural solutions either.

If you’re trying to learn how to lose weight naturally, most celebrity diet books aren’t going to give you the answers you’re looking for either. Even the books by non-celebrities all seem to have some sort of gimmick or catch to them. These plans are especially unnatural when the same company or individual releases food products to help you lose weight, like special diet bars or shakes.

That’s not to say you can’t loose weight doing any of those things. Almost any diet that you’ll find in a bookstore, no matter how lenient or extreme, will help you lose weight, at least for the first few days, but they rarely tell you how to lose weight naturally. Starvation, for instance, is not a natural state our bodies should ever be in. So if you find a diet plan that tells you to go without food for two or three days to do some sort of “cleansing fast,” ask yourself why that’s a good idea.

Before modern industrialization, when you went without food for two or three days it was because you couldn’t kill or grow enough to eat .Your body recognized that you weren’t eating, and slowed down your systems to use less energy. You burned less fat and had less energy, naturally. Why would you want to do anything to slow down your fat-burning furnace if you’re trying to lose weight? And why would you want your body, even for just a few days, to think it might die of starvation someday soon? A book on how to lose weight naturally should never promote fasting—fasting was once a natural way to die, not lose weight.

Any other extreme things like eating non-food items to “trick” your system (which amounts to starving yourself) are far from natural. So where do you find out how to lose weight naturally? One way is to avoid the diet books and find one on nutrition instead. A book on dietary nutrition—one designed for the dietary worker or professional will be an easier read than some others—will outline a healthy diet for just about every type of health condition, including diabetes, and diets for the perfectly normal and healthy person.

It’s not a weight loss diet, but it shows you what you should have been eating to stay healthy and slender. If you want to figure out how to lose weight naturally, eating a healthy diet like that lets you drop pounds safely until you’re your ideal weight.

Carb Pills How to Have Carbohydrates On the Adkins or South Beach Diet

If you are trying to go on a low carbohydrate diet such as the Adkins Weight Loss Plan or the South Beach Diet and find that you have trouble reducing your carbs, you may want to try anti carb pills. These are not actually medicinal products but rather dietary supplements made from all natural ingredients not chemical blends.

The reason carb smart diets such as Adkins and South Beach stay alive despite all of the negative media publicity is that they work. But, too many people find that they have trouble minimizing the amount of carbohydrates they consume for a long period of time. That is where the carb pills come in.

While more recent variations of the low carb diets have allowed more carbohydrates in the form of whole grains, it is still tempting to have a cookie from time to time. The carb pills absorb excess carbohydrates in the diet by blocking the carbohydrates consumed from being absorbed in the body.

One of the carb blocking ingredients in the pills is made from white bean extract. They are 100 percent natural and safe to consume.

It is best to take a carb blocking pill right before eating a carb heavy food or meal. They can also be taken during or after the meal, but this has a reduced effectiveness.

Here is how the carb pills work on the body. Fat accumulates in the body when carbohydrates are broken down by alpha amylase, which is an enzyme produced in the pancreas. When you exert yourself through exercise or daily energy, these carbs are burned off. However, if you take in more carbs than you burn, you will store the excess as fat.

Carb pills prevent the fat by preventing the excess calories from being converted through blocking the digestive enzymes from acting on them. This means that the major portion of the carbs are passed through the system without being absorbed.

So, do carb pills work? The scientific community has not really taken up this question because the major pharmaceutical companies fund most of the research. As the carb pills are not produced by these pharmaceutical firms, researchers have not found it worth their while to “independently” evaluate the pills.

However, the companies which produce carb pills have produced their own studies. They have shown that in the short term at least, the carb blocking pills do in fact keep up to 45 grams of carbohydrates from being absorbed in the system.

There may be some side effects from using the carb blocking pill. These include gastrointestinal distress, heartburn, excessive gas and diarrhea.

The two most common brands of carb pills are Carbo Lock and Ultra Carb. These pills can be expensive – a 30 day supply typically retails for $30. If you buy the products in larger quantities, you can often bring the daily cost down.

If you want to have the benefits of a low carb diet but occasionally indulge in carbohydrate rich foods or meals, you might want to consider investing in carb pills which block the carbohydrates in a pasta dinner or piece of chocolate cake from turning into fat.

Are You Looking For A List Of Weight Loss Programs

A list of weight loss programs is all well and good but looking at the list won’t help you to lose weight. The most popular programs are as follows but are not listed in any particular order:

1) Atkins Diet
2) Acai Berry Diet
3) Food Combining
4) Detox
5) Little Black Dress Diet
6) Blood Type Diet
7) The GI Diet
8) Jenny Craig Weight Loss Program
9) Weight Watchers
10) South Beach Diet
11) E-diets
12) Sonoma Diet

The popularity of one diet over another depends largely on which celebrity has been in the press. If a weight loss program is promoted on a show like Oprah, its popularity tends to go through the roof. This doesn’t mean that the product is good for you or endorsed by Oprah or that it even works. This is the problem with trendy diets. They go in and out of fashion and those that originally claimed them to be the new miracle cure for weight loss have long moved onto the next trend.

Looking at a list of weight loss programs will often confuse you. How can you know the one that will work best for you? Personally, I steer clear of any trendy diets. As far as I am concerned the Acai berry diet only causes you to lose pounds from your bank account. Whilst diets such as Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers or the South Beach plan may have a loyal body of followers, this doesn’t mean that it will help you.

I prefer to follow a more old fashioned approach to losing weight. I believe that you should ignore any diet that prohibits a food group. I find that as soon as something is banned, I immediately crave it. Also it is difficult to get all the nutrients and minerals we need if you ban an entire food group. I prefer to eat everything but to be sensible about it.
You will not lose weight if you insist on eating high sugar, high fat processed foods from the supermarket. The first change I would make is to try and cook all your own meals from scratch. Try this for a month and you will be amazed how much weight you could lose.

Your second change would be to increase the quantity of fruit and vegetables in your diet. These really are ideal slimming foods as they contain very few calories. Your hair nails and skin will really benefit from the additional minerals and nutrients you are consuming, as will your bowels!

Next you need to address the amount of exercise you are getting. If your idea of working out is changing the station on the TV, it is time for change. You need to start gently and increase the activities gradually.

Forget about compiling a list of weight loss programs and concentrate your efforts on making one small lifestyle change every day. Practice makes perfect and little steps will see you reach your weight loss goals.

New Trends in Weight Loss Medicine

For those who have tried to diet and exercise without success, weight loss medicine may provide a safer alternative to gastric bypass and other surgical procedures. While it should not be used as a replacement for eating healthy and being physically active, prescription medication may be the only answer for people who have medical reasons for not responding to lifestyle changes. There are a few things you should consider when deciding whether to ask your doctor about weight loss medicine.

There are different mechanisms used by the various weight loss medicines available. Some are designed to increase the body’s metabolism so that it burns more calories at rest, while others are geared toward suppressing the appetite or preventing the body from absorbing fat. Be careful when taking weight loss medicine as some of them have been shown to cause problems in patients with previous heart or blood pressure issues. Always tell your doctor about any pre-existing health conditions such as these or any medications you are taking, either over-the-counter or prescription.

Because of the risks of prescription medication, weight loss medicine has only been approved for treatment of those with a body mass index (BMI) higher than 30. People with obesity-related medical conditions are eligible for a prescription if they have a BMI over 27. Of course, consult your doctor to find out if this is an option for you. If weight loss medicine is prescribed, your physician will generally require periodic montoring to make sure there are no side effects and that you are getting the desired results. A medication that reduces appetite may not be effective if the problem is that your body’s metabolism is not high enough to burn off existing fat.

Some of the more common appetite suppressant weight loss medicines include Adipex, Bontril, and phentermine. Phentermine is well-known as the ingredient in Phen-Fen, the popular diet pill that was removed from the market due to the increase risk of heart failure. Didrex, or benzphetamine hydrochloride, is similar to amphetamine in the way it decreases appetite while also boosting metabolism. Phendimetrazine and Tenuate also increase your metabolism by boosting heart rate and blood pressure. Xenical is one of the few medications that target the absorption of fat within the digestive system. By preventing the release of a specific enzyme required for the breakdown of fat, the medication makes it so that fats in food cannot be digested and turned into fat in the body.

Meridia, which is the newest of the appetite suppressant medications, operates in a very different manner and is giving hope to people who were unable to take standard amphetamine-based diet medications. Instead of physically speeding up the body, it inhibits the reuptake of serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain. This is similar to the effect of today’s anti-depressants and serves to give the patient a feeling of being satisfied and content. This promising new type of weight loss medicine may be able to help those people who eat out of an emotional need rather than a physical compulsion or food craving.

What To Do If You Can t Lose Weight

You’ve dieted, you’ve exercised, and you feel like no matter what you do you can t lose weight. Many people say that no matter what they’ve tried they can’t seem to drop any of their unwanted pounds. Though the problem is the same, the reasons for having so much difficulty losing weight usually vary from person to person. Just like the same way of eating might not work as well for some people as it does for others, the problems associated with weight loss are bound to be different for many different people, too.

If you’ve been following a diet plan and still can t lose weight, you need to look very carefully at the diet and see if it’s really one that can work. You’ll need to look at things like how many calories you eat a day on the plan, and whether your diet seems to be heavier in things like fat or dairy products, or whether it leans the other way and focuses mostly on fruits and vegetables.

If the amount of calories you’re eating every day seems reasonable—enough to keep you healthy but low enough to let you burn fat—yet you can t lose weight while eating this way, it’s likely that the type of diet just doesn’t suit your metabolism. If the diet is calorie-focused and allows things like white bread, flour, potatoes, pasta and sugar, trying cutting down on those items. Maybe the diet is too high in carbohydrates for you and that’s sabotaging your efforts. Experiment to see if you start losing weight.

If the diet is already low carb and you can t lose weight on it, then maybe it’s gone too far in the other direction. Are you eating lots of red meat, fried foods, oil and other fats like butter? Some low-carb diets claim you can eat these foods in almost unlimited amounts, but that’s simply not true. All that fat adds up to hundreds of calories, and no matter how few carbs you eat, a calorie is still a calorie. It can be very easy to eat too many calories per day if you’re eating fatty meats, nuts or if you have lots of oil in your diet.

If your diet really seems healthy, with lean meats, lots of vitamin-rich fruits and vegetables, some diary and little sugar or flour and you still can t lose weight, then you could be eating too few calories and causing your metabolism to slow. Or you’re eating much more food than you think you are. Look at all the little snacks you have throughout the day, no matter how healthy they are.

Try keeping a journal and writing down everything you eat each day, including anything you drink that has calories in it like soda or coffee with cream. If you can t lose weight because you’re eating more than you think, a week or so of journaling should start to show you where those extra calories are sneaking in.

Think Your Way Thin With a Calorie Counter Guide

Your greatest weapon in the war against your weight is your mind, but you need to give it the ammunition it needs in the form of a calorie counter guide. Losing weight isn’t easy, so you need to be as informed and aware as possible to help make it as painless as possible.

The very first step is to know what you’re putting in your body, which is where a calorie counter guide will come in handy. The sad fact is most people don’t have any real awareness of how much food they’re putting into their body or how many calories are in what.

A calorie counter guide is the answer to that. Simply put, a calorie counter guide is a book or, if you want get high tech, computer program that tells you how many calories are in the food you’re eating. This will allow you to track how much you’re eating and finally get a grip on the calories you’re taking in.

With the multitude of diets out there, it’s very easy to lose track of the fact that whatever method they use; they’re all basically trying to do one thing: reduce calories coming in to below the number going out. This is the one fundamental law of weight loss; you must burn more than you’re taking in.

The thing is, if you don’t have some idea of how many calories you’re taking in, it’s going to be very hard to make any progress towards getting control of your weight. You could just started running ten miles a day, but getting hold of a calorie counter guide seems like a much easier solution.

Like anything else, though, even the best calorie counter guide isn’t going to do you a bit of good if you don’t use it. This means that you’re going to have to start measuring and recording what you eat. You won’t need to do this forever, but you will have to do it for a while.

Eventually, you’ll get a feel for eyeballing the amount you’re eating, but at first you need to measure them, either by eating things that are pre measured, or by using a scale. In a pinch, you can just estimate, but you won’t be getting the most out of your calorie counter guide if you do that.

What you’re trying to do here is establish a baseline of calories, the level where you are neither gaining nor losing weight. Once you know how many calories you need to keep your weight stable, you can look at reducing the level you’re taking in so that you begin to lose weight.

The best way to do this isn’t to just start eliminating foods willy nilly. If you do that, you’re just going to get hungrier and hungrier until you snap take out an entire all you can eat buffet.

The better method is to replace some of the higher calorie foods with lower calories foods, which is something that a calorie counter guide can help with. Most low calorie foods are actually higher in bulk, so this displacement actually helps in two ways. But you need to know to lose, so you need a calorie counter guide.

The 3 Hidden Dangers of Soy

Food Investigator Nick Pineault has a very important message to share today


The 3 Hidden Dangers of Soy

Over 81% of Americans have been deceived into believing that soybean oil and other soy products are “healthy” alternatives that can help you burn more belly fat.

These include Soy milk, Soy patties, and Tofu… among many others.

But as you’ll soon discover in the eye-opening new article below, soy foods might be one of the worst food scams in history.

New studies from independent sources now reveal that soy products can age you faster, increase your belly fat and disrupt your natural hormone balance.

Read about the 3 “Hidden” Dangers of Soy <==

The good news is that after reading this new article, you’ll know the truth about commercial soy and understand why it could be making you feel WORSE, while making your waistline bigger.

Discover the TRUTH About Soy <==

Lose Weight Fasting Hottest Diet Around

One of the hottest diet products on the market right now shows you how to lose weight fasting.

Fasting has long been associated with religious rituals. People have gone on fasts to protest political decisions. Of late, the trend has been to lose weight fasting.

Fasting can bring about weight loss quickly as you are not taking in any calories. Some long term varieties of the weight loss fast allow you to drink juice, eat grapes, or have a low calorie meal substitute over a period of several weeks.

While such a fasting plan will result in dramatic weight loss, there is a question as to whether you can keep the pounds off once you stop fasting. There is no behavior change component to this plan.

Another lose weight fasting plan involves a toxin cleanse of the body. While some medical professionals argue that the body has everything it needs to clean toxins without dramatic shifts in diet, many dieters disagree.

One popular colon cleanse diet involves drinking only lemon water sweetened with grade b maple syrup and spiced with ground cayenne peppers. You drink this while taking in absolutely no food for a minimum of 10 days.

Celebrities like Beyonce and Denzel Washington reportedly have gone on this lemonade diet which was first popularized 50 years ago by Stanley Burrows. You will drink 6 to 12 glasses of the specially formulated lemonade daily and eat no food.

You will experience a “cleansing” of the colon on this diet which involves running to the restroom frequently in the early days of the program. Many people who finish the diet report that they lose 7-10 pounds during the fast, feel increased energy, and want to eat healthier foods in the future. Some people recommend that you do the 10 day program twice per year to maintain the health benefits.

The final weight loss fast program I am going to talk about here is the alternating days fast. In this program, you can eat whatever you want on even days and then abstain from all foods and beverages except for spring water on odd days.

With a traditional calorie restricted diet, your metabolism slows down so that you actually have a harder time losing weight. This is because your body is trying to reserve energy instead of burning calories.

With the alternating fast, you will trick your body into keeping your metabolism high by having some days with a lot of food and some days with no food. In short, you will be taking in half of the calories but keeping your metabolism running at full throttle.

Some of the alternating diet programs suggest that it is possible to lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks.

You can lose weight fasting. The question is whether you can keep it off once the fast ends. Maintaining your wait involves more than doing an occasional fast. It requires you to eat mostly healthy food in moderate amounts.

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