It doesn’t matter if you are already fat and goes to gym but at the end of the day you still eat lot of food. And probably you might have convinced yourself that since you are going to gym you are allowed to eat more thus end up eating more and more carbs (carbohydrates including sugar) and fatty foods. Its a great feeling I must agree, to eat like a king. But its not so great feeling when you get a king size belly too. Your hard work at the gym is wasted and so does your money and time.

So how do you get it right? It depends on your current situation, i.e., you are already fat or not, and your goal, i.e., what is it that you really want to achieve, a lean body, big muscles, etc. This article is for people who wants to be lean. You need to understand how your body works when it comes to digesting food. Your body needs food as a source of energy. Which means the energy that your body required is generated through breaking down food and burning them, just like a car would burn petrol. The main source of energy is carbohydrates. This is the easiest and the fastest to break. Next is fat which is hard (required more energy to break itself) and slowest. And then the body has proteins.

As your primary source of energy your body will always use carbohydrates to generate your energy requirements. If there is not enough carbohydrates it will start burning fat deposits in your body failing which proteins will be burned. Since your body always keep enough carbohydrate deposits in your body (converted as glucose to glycogen in your muscles and liver and then as fat) this burning fat upon lack of carbohydrates in your food will not initiate overnight. If you keep eating high carb food like rice, bread and rottee, too much, even though you think there’s no fat, unless you burn all the carbs that you take, excess will always be convert in to fat thus you will hardly loose weight. If you are successful in burning all the carbs you eat, by exercising, you will not put on more weight. But you will hardly loose weight either.

The key to loosing weight is, in my opinion, adopt a low carb diet. Because most of you don’t really go to a gym or work hard and burn your calories, your energy requirement is lower. Therefore you need not to provide your body with so many carbohydrates. The goal is to eat less carbs so that they all will be burned during the day and nothing will be deposited in your body. Then you can maintain your weight. But to loose weight if you are over weight you need to activate the fat burning mechanism as your primary source of energy in your body. Cut down carbs as much as possible and eventually, after few days, your body will start depending on your fat deposits and thereby you will reduce your weight. If you go to a gym this process will be much faster. But remember, your do need to feed yourself within this period. So adopt a high protein/low carb diet. The low carbs in your diet will quickly burned and protein will help to build your muscles. Zero carb diets are bit riskier too. High protein food are, eggs, fish (especially tuna), meat, milk, cheese etc. You can even opt in for a high protein milk such as, whey protein, if you know what you are doing. Extra Protein will hardly converted in to fat but always flush out of your body as nitrogen and Ammonia though urine.

Once you achieve your goal, you need to start eating appropriate amount (to match your body’s energy requirement) of carbs again making sure you burn them all thus adopting active lifestyle. Because now that you have burned your body fat, to meet your energy requirement you need carbohydrates again. I hope this article be a first step in finding more about balanced diets and eating more healthy in order to be lean and healthy. I was once a confused kid not knowing how to get rid of my fat, wasted hours and hours in the Gym but didn’t really bother about controlling my food habits. However I was able to loose 10kg (from 82kg to 72kg) of body fat after concentrating on my diet and adopting more healthy and balanced diet. To gain more weight I suggest protein but not fat.

This is not me though

How I got to this conclusion? Simple. Think about this. When you start worrying too much about something thats exactly happens. And it happens over and over again. If you think you are not good at science and constantly worry about this you will never be good at it. Sometimes you fear of loosing someone you love, and you cannot get over this and you constantly think about this negative thought. In fact it gets into your dreams and you start believing that this person will not stay but leave. And sooner or later that happens. Lets look at some positive thoughts now. When you think that you are good at something, like sport, and you become confident that you are good at it and believe you will be great, you are going to be great. If you think you need something, a house, and have faith in your own belief you will get that.

What happens here is that your thoughts will vibrates the energy surrounds you and that will create a picture of who you are at that moment. So if you are being negative that will create something negative picture and you will attract negative outcomes. This is why being positive is so important. That makes you a positive person and everything including people around you will like you because you create a nice image of you. People who becomes rich have thought they are going to be rich and believed in that. They had never let anything else distract their thoughts. In fact, the key here is to think that you need something. Not that you “Don’t” need. For example, think that you need to be healthy, or you are healthy. what happens if you think you “don’t” need to get sick is you get sick because your thoughts are on being sick, not being healthy. Your mind tend to omit the word “Not”, it does not understand this. When your thoughts are on “sick” you become sick.

Very simple example to demonstrate this is, like me and my house mate was talking, when you tell a young child, not to do something, he/she often do the same. Children’s mind are in developing stage and they behave the way they understand what is set by, lets say, default. So when you say a child, don’t run, they run. Don’t spill food, they spill. Don’t drop the glass, they drop. They in fact do it over and over again. But have you noticed that if you tell them, walk, eat carefully, hold the glass carefully, they follow exactly the same and abide. Like the same way, your brain/mind is preset to ignore the word “not” by default therefore when you think constantly in order to achieve something you must think positively and what you need. Not what you don’t need.

If you are really interested in being positive and how this thoughts matter read on Law of attraction, which is a beautiful but powerful concept I was introduced by my house mate. I have been positive ever since and as far as I can so understanding this concept was easy for me. And the point is, even if you have hard time believing this Law of attraction, being positive and thinking positive do not harm you in anyway. Therefore you are better off anyway. But it is something really worth reading and understanding. You just need to believe in yourself that your thoughts are who you are, just like Lord Buddha said.

So not knowing what to do and what’s the best response, I decided to follow simple rule “when in Rome, do as Romans do”. Yes, I start asking the same question “you alright?” with a smile on my face. And I start getting some responses. Out of them, I remember, “Yes mate I’m alright, you alright?”, “Not too bad, how about yourself?”, “yeah! you?”, “bloody hell mate, its freaking cold” and my favorite “yeah yeah yeah I’m alright mate, do you have a quid I can borrow?”. Well you shouldn’t be too nice to people after all.

Anyway its a part of their cultural. You need to learn that and not be taken back. My initial reaction however was based on the assumption that may be they think that I need help because I looked total foreign. And now whenever I see someone I know the first thing that comes to my mind is to ask “You alright?” Even though they look extremely happy, or Sad. So in a way its a good line since it hints a gesture of care. And an opportunity to share the feelings.

Its not just a greeting, but it is also used when you actually think someone need help. For instance, if you see a customer wandering around in aisles you can ask him “Do you need any help sir?” Or you can also ask “are you alright?”. I have seen people use it as a straight pick up line to chat with girls. Rather than saying all those flowery lines, they just ask “you alright” of cause in a different tone. But that might backfire if she said “Do I look like I’m not?”, in that case she could be French.

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Life is a continuous struggle, once somebody told me. It’s proven to be correct too. I wonder why it has to be that way though. Why is it a continuous struggle? Because in life nothing comes easy and free it seems. You have to work for it and earn it. Even love.

What makes most people’s life a continuous struggle is their constant hunger for success in terms of wealth and respect. Popular belief is level of education is directly proportionate to level of your future success which I have hard time in believing. This is not true with most of self made billionaires in the world today. But it seems to be working with the general public. Higher education leads to better jobs and higher wealth and social recognition. There is a point here as educated people are demanded in higher paid jobs. And the other popular belief is its important to get a higher paid job to be respectable and wealthy. I again have hard time in believing this. For me there is more to life than just doing a job so that one day (probably when you are 50) you can be rich.

As a graduate I have been in touch with job market so have a sound experience of what the process of getting a job like. This is a highly competitive area, so many people competing for very limited number of jobs available. This is worse in UK due to economic crisis. On the other hand employers can pick good talents among large group of talents which would otherwise have been impossible. Most of the employers employ third party recruitment companies who are specialized in recruitment.

Employers advice that we look into company profile, products, values, policies and its culture to ensure whether we really want to work for the particular employer. This is a good start since in the recruitment process they see if you fit into their culture and what interests you to apply for their organization. And then think about your competences which will help you to perform the job you applied for and, demonstrate them throughout the recruitment process.

It seems the degree that you earned after so much of hard work only matters as a minimum requirement. Most of the graduate jobs often require a degree in any discipline. So doesn’t matter if you have a degree in music or finance you can still apply for a job at a bank. One of the reason for this strange selection criteria is I believe getting a degree qualification push you through some of the toughest times you could have. Getting through this is a serious business which make gives you certain skills which you wouldn’t have gained otherwise. On the other hand I believe as one of the largest recruiters in the UK banks have emphasized that their graduates have a degree and it has become the standard entry requirement. The more people enroll in degrees the more income banks get through student loans which average around (if I’m not mistaken) £30,000 per student for a 3 year degree.

Life continues to be a struggle for most of us. If you don’t need success you are nobody. After all you have to pay back what you got from the society by working for it. That’s how it is. And the more you get on with this struggle the more it will shape up your life, make you stronger and experienced. So in a way this struggle makes us different from other species and it keeps us alive.

Have you seen how drunken people behave? How they talk? Ever since I came to England there have been plenty of entertainments thanks to these guys. And not to mention the women. They are sometimes scary though. They tend to take out all the frustration against the world when they are drunk. Often these entertainments starts with a verbal abuse calling someone standing or sitting next to them “you fucking…”. And if the other party is drunk too then it’s more fun. All these people wants to be a hero which they can’t be in real life. They often challenge, bet on, and assure extremely unrealistic things. They also cause accidents some of which have to be ignored because there is no point of blaming them. They in their heroic mode often don’t accept responsibilities and by the time they are sober it’s too late. However some other set of drunken people become extremely polite when they interact with other people. They act like as if they are dealing with very delicate materials. Believe me it’s annoying sometimes.

One day I remember one drunken guy was refused to sell alcohol because he was obviously too dunk. Like with all the other drunken people this followed the same events. In general the moment a drunken man is refused the sale the show begins. First he tells the shopkeeper loads of excuses, often bollocks, as to why they looks drunk. He tells that he is on medication. Or some of them even kill their brothers and sisters. When nothing works out he started abusing the shopkeeper and threatening to call his “mates”, often don’t exists, and burn down the shop. The funny thing is he also tells the shopkeeper how he plans to do that. First he is going to call his mates. if they do exists probably be some punks who’ve been watching too much hollywood actions and assume they actually have balls to do such thing. Then he is going to wait till the shop is closed and till nobody is around (see the size of his balls) and set fire in a way it looks like an accident. He keeps abusing the shopkeeper and after few minutes he looses the track of why he is doing so and start walking away or pick up another topic altogether. If he is luck he will walk away or if he managed to annoyed the shopkeeper too much he will get beaten. And our hero will not even remember what happened to him when he wakes up next day.

Apart from pissing on the street sometimes they sleep on the streets, puke and I have see someone who had shit on his pants too. Drinking makes you hungry so you can see kebab shops and fish and chip shops are busy during night times. I remember there was once a drunken guy broke a window of a kebab shop and got beaten by the shopkeepers. It sounds not so funny though but when you see how fast the chain of events happens it is something entertaining.

Drinking too much or binge drinking has become a part of British culture. There are laws to control the public nuisance caused by binge drinking and also to prevent alcohol related violence. For instant sale of alcohol is regulated by Licensing act 2003 which prohibits sale of alcohol to anyone who appears to be drunk and ban him from alcohol for 48 hours. Effectiveness of these laws are continuously being argued though because even the above mentioned law is applied in off license shops. When you go to a pub or a club you can drink down to your last penny if you wish.

I feel that alcohol has become very close to these people’s lives even some kids and youngsters want to try it badly. I think when they drink alcohol so early stage of their life they get use to alcohol and become heavily rely on it to gain courage and self confidence thus becoming a puss cake hero.

There are people who drink responsibly and make no drama who are often labeled by their counterparts as “boring”. I’m not promoting drinking to such an extent you loose control over yourself(even though once in a while you need that too). But drink if you are happy so that you can enjoy and probably let others enjoy as well. But to take your frustration out or to forget your difficult life drinking is obviously not helping. Others will enjoy but you.

Remember out of respect how we try not to argue or talk back but keep listening when our parents say something that we don’t like? Especially when we are to take an important decision about our life or, going to take a risk. When we finally decide to air our voice it becomes a heated argument and result in hurting everybody. And you may regret of some words you spoke since you can’t take them back. It would be better if we all be sensitive to each other and communicate. In this case parents are not that insensible. They just assume we are too young. And its down to us to make them believe in us and make them trust us. After all if you don’t have a good track records you will get told off from everywhere. Parents becomes understanding only if you talk with them with respect and make clear what you want. After all I don’t think any parent would wanna take chances with their children.

Listen carefully and talk wisely.

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Filed under: Experience, Feelings, Life ]]>