Loosing Weight

Loosing weight is difficult when you don't know how to go about it. What most people don't realize is that going to the gym to exerciser is the easiest part - the diet is the hardest.

The Diet:
I'm not a believer in diets that cut out a specific food groups in order to achieve weight goals. Currently, the "Keto" diet is all the rage but I can't see how it can be sustainable, longer term, considering that your body needs the nutrients that the diet is removing. You can only go so long, without a food group, before you start noticing problems.
No energy? Body aches? Feeling depressed? Those could all be problems related to the diet. The best diets include items from every food groups sized according to your goals.

The Exercise:
It is possible to loose or gain weight simply by dieting but it's best to accompany a diet with a good exercise regiment tailored to your goals. Remember that the diet needs to compliment your workout - not go against it. If your goal is to loose weight, and you're not noticing any changes after 3-4 months, it could be because your calorie intake far exceed the calorie burnt during your working. You can't outwork a bad diet because it's easier to consume calories than it is to burn it. It can take 30 minutes just to burn the calories you got from eating a cheese burger. Think about that next time you eat a burger and you're trying to loose weight.

The Rests:
Resting is important in order to loose weight and is probably the easiest thing to implement. When we rest, it not only regenerates our energy but it also helps with healing our broken muscles.

The Discipline:
Another thing to consider during your wellness journey is the discipline required to reach your health goals. Weight goals are the easiest to make but they are also the easiest to break. "Cheat meals" can turn into cheat days, weeks, months and next thing you know you've quit on yourself entirely.

Loosing weight is possible. Set the goal, follow your diet, exercise appropriately and do it even when you don't feel like it and you'll do it.

Aren't We All Created Equal?

Its been said before that all men are created equal but we've created a world where hierarchy exists. If there's an hierarchy, can a man still be considered equal to another?

Everywhere you look, there's a ladder with someone at the top bumping his chest showing the world that he's all that and a bag of chips.
We have create money to figure out who among us contributes the most to society. We have trophies that rewards the fastest, the best teams or the smartest individuals. We keep track of people that can put "the most cigarettes in their mouth", who are the "fattest" or who "sleeps the most" in the book of Guinness World Records.
When the Titanic sank, recovering the bodies of the wealthy took precedent over those that weren't wealthy.

Everywhere you look there's someone that wants to show the world that there's something special about him.

Essentially, we are all equal: We are all equally flawed as we've created a world where our worth is defined by how much better we are compared to others.
Most definition of success is to be "at the top" of something and you're considered a failure if you are at the bottom.

There's nothing wrong with being at the bottom and you are not a failure, as a human being, for being there.

The most annoying thing about this hierarchy is that it is forced unto us. Being a human on this planet means that we are part of it - we don't yet know how to live without, or beyond, it.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what society tells you. Winning is primarily an inside job before it is an outside one. True success is being at peace with yourself.

A Runner's "High"

According to Scientific America , "a Runner's High is a feeling of euphoria coupled with reduced anxiety and a lessened ability to feel pain."
I'm not the biggest runner around. When I do cardio, i'm usually only on it for 30 minutes in order to put a "check in the box" and call it a day. In other words, I don't care for it that much but I have experienced a Runner's High and totally understand why some of you like to run that much.

What did it do to me?
I'm a pretty anxious person and that reduced anxiety, mentioned above, was definitely felt. It's almost like the clouds in my mind had gone and I could think clearly for the first time in a while. As a kid, I would get that feeling while playing soccer but never really paid attention to it.
The feeling started to fade roughly an hour after the workout. As I write these words, it's been roughly 8 hours since I was at the gym and only have distant memories of how it felt.
I remember feeling like that as a kid while I was playing soccer but I never really paid attention to it until today. As we get older, we get less and less of those euphoria moments because life doesn't really push us to move all that much.
But I get it.

I "get" why some of you crazy folks are running for hours on end. You guys are chasing the feeling.

How Mature are your Finances?

Budgeting, saving, investing can be difficult to some. Personal finances is almost as important as a family member and it needs a higher degree of attention than what most people are currently doing. In this blog, I will compare finance to the 3 stages of human life.

• As a Baby - This is where your personal finance is the most vulnerable. Money is your master - the slightest life mishap can derail your life significantly. As a baby, your personal finance needs to be nurture and taken care of. This means that you have to make sure that a big chuck of your money goes towards your savings and paying off debts. This is when you start figuring out a budget that works for you.
• As a Teen - As a teen, you personal finance is starting to be comfortable. You have savings, your debt is reduced to a minimum and you started looking at insurance to protect what you've accumulated. Unlike the baby phase, if you were to loose your job at this point you could go a few months before needing another one.
• As an Adult - Money is your slave. Your personal finance is matured to the point that you no longer need to check on it every second day. Some of your money has been invested and is working for you. Your budget is optimized. If you were to loose your job at this stage, you have other avenues that generates money for you. You could take a job that pays you less and still have a comfortable lifestyle or you could retire altogether. You have insurances to protect your assets.

The finance of most people never really leaves the baby phase. Some are able to reach their teens but only a few is ever going to reach adulthood. Which stage do you identify your finance?

Less Self-Help & More Philosophy

I get pretty annoyed with LinkedIn nowadays because most post you see on there are from some random people giving some superficial "a la Self Help" type of advise. Don't get me wrong, it's great to have so many people dedicated to personal improvement but my problem is that they don't seem to be adding anything new to the conversation. If all they do is share 2-3 quotes then what's the point?

Stop putting 2-3 quotes together and calling it a day (I can be guilty of this too).

There was a time in my life where I spent roughly 3K a year on self-help materials. I read/viewed/listened to my fair share of them. What I want now is to listened to people that have actually put some thoughts into what they say. Give me your perspective rather than reading the back of a book.

When I travel, I always bring the same book with me. "Living Issues in Philosophy" as been my travelling companion ever since I bought it for a buck 10 years ago - best book I ever purchased.
The reason why I like this book is because it takes a deep dive into various philosophical ideas. Think of it as Self-Help on steroids.

I see the self help industry as a deluded form of philosophy and maybe that's the problem. Just a bunch of superficial ideas duck tapped together for the purpose of making the reader happy by giving him hope. Hurray! It works and it sold well but it ultimately didn't change anything.

We need to figure out what it means to be human, find out what our core values are and continuously listen to them. To me, this is only achievable by reading philosophical material.