Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.- Jim RohnRealistically, I could write a complete book on discipline… Hey wait, that’s a good idea… Anyway, discipline is such an exciting concept to me, I am so motivated by the thought that with each and everyday we can exact discipline in our lives and one day master the concept entirely. I have always been fairly good at putting my mind to something and eventually getting what I wanted. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I could do this with focus and manifest specifically what I wanted, what I desired at a more expedient rate. And with that said, take it from me, discipline is a virtue, a thing to practice that takes you where you want to go and gets you what you want, yes…it’s really that simple. As for nutrition, because there is so much conflicting and misleading information out there, I will try to simplify the disciplinary elements of nutrition and provide the tangibles on how to exact results from plain simple practice. After all, practice makes perfect!My guess is with the plethora of conflicting advice abound and so ubiquitously present; you’re still mystified, yet still seeking a real solution to your nutritional dilemma, good for you. And again, I’ll bet you’re probably still wondering… Does anyone out there even know what the heck they’re talking about? Will the experts, those guru’s of gnosh really ever reach a consensus on anything? Is the health and fitness industry only about profit, or is there anybody out there whose integrity and desire to teach the gospel truth about nutrition alive and kicking? These are all good questions and very justifiable, you are not alone my friend. Yes and no is the ambiguous answer or answers, it depends on what side of the fence you are on and who is buttering your bread, unfortunately most people are still looking for the quick fix, the magic bullet, so it does make it quite hard to speak to an audience that doesn’t even ‘show up’, let alone listen. But because you found yourself here, that means you showed up and are listening, therefore this one is for you, those who seek shall find, so without further adieu, here you go……You’ve picked up every book and e-book on the subjects of food and nutrition and you’ve perused every web site on the net and now you speculate whether you’ll need a degree in either nutritional biochemistry or food science before you can lose that stubborn abdominal or inner thigh fat.So what’s the deal? Why so much confusion? Why does one guru suggest that high protein is best for everyone, while another guru suggests high carb and yet another guru suggests high fat? Whew, thats a lot of gurus. Anywhoo… What exactly do high protein, high carb, and high fat really mean? And why are other experts, those pesky guru’s telling us that food choices should be based on our “metabolic type,” our “blood type,” or our “pedigree” or “point of origin”? Such confusion!Antithetically speaking, one authority declares; “Eat like a Cro-Magnon” and another loudly and proudly utters, “Eat like a Neandertal”, or perhaps you should consume like an ancient Norseman, what gives? But while searching for nutritional Valhalla, most folks just go astray and eat like a Modern American–and end up appearing more like a Sumo than a Samurai.These days, we have a dissonance of expertise: lots of confusing noise from the pros drowning out the signal of truth. Where is the beacon of clarity?Confusingly, on the surface it does appear as if today’s nutrition technology is quite advanced. After all, we have at our disposal more nutrition information than ever before. More money is being spent on nutrition research than in any time in history. Every day, impressive strides are being made in the field. Tons of nutrition experts are rising and or being eleated to prominence, fame and fortune. Yet simultaneously and quite sadly, we’re witnessing a steadily increasing rate of obesity, an increase in nutrition-related illness (Diabetes, CVD, and Syndrome X), and an increase in nutrition-related mortality.A major contributor to the quandary is that much of the information hasn’t reached the people who need it. While another part of the predicament is that even when it does reach those people, they often don’t use it, it’s too much work. And certainly, the dilemma is multi-factorial–there are probably many more reasons than I can list here, like with anything most of the issues are cumulative and not isolated.So I ask… How much more information do we need?Strangely, the overwhelmingly curious thing is that many people try to solve the problem by seeking out more information. They know it all and still want more. If there’s one thing of which I am absolutely convinced, it’s that a lack of good nutrition information isn’t what prevents us from reaching our goals or attaining what we desire. We already know everything we need to know. Sometimes the real problem isn’t too little information but too much.All the fundamental principles you need to achieve good health and optimal body composition are out there already, and have been for years. Unfortunately, with 2500 experts for every fundamental principle and very little money to be made from repeating other people’s ideas, the gurus’ must continually emphasize the small (and often relatively unimportant) differences between their diet/eating plans and the diet/eating plans of all the other experts out there.In the world of advertising and marketing or profiteering, this is called “differentiation.” By highlighting the small distinctions and fleshing out the large similarities between their program and all the others, they’re going to the mat for your next nutritional dollar.Now…and let me be clear on this, I’m not accusing nutrition experts of quackery, I stand for unity not division! Yes, some programs are pure unadulterated rubbish, mindless drivel. Those are generally quite easy to pick out and are not worth discussion here, or in my opinion anywhere. And the truth is most professionals/experts do know what they are talking about, can get results, and wholeheartedly believe in what they’re doing. Many of the differences between them are theoretical and not practical, and on the fundamentals they generally agree completely.In fact, many of the mainstream programs out there, if not most of them, will work. To what extent and for how long, quite obviously will vary. As long as a program is internally consistent, follows a few basic nutritional precepts, and as long as you adhere to it consistently, without hesitation, and without mixing principles haphazardly taken from other programs, you’ll get some results. It’s that simple and that hard…as you can see; results depend as much if not more on psychology as on biochemistry or physiology.But if you’re like most people, you’ll first review all the most often discussed programs before deciding which to follow. And in this assessment, you’ll get confused, lost, and then do the inevitable. That’s right; you’ll revert back to your old, ineffectual nutrition habits.You see, most commercial weight loss programs work in the short term (initial lean mass loss), they are not effective fat loss programs because they are deprivational by nature, which means the body is starved of a sufficient amount of daily calories to maintain proper function and the first thing that occurs is a loss of muscle tissue; translating to weight loss. But this is not the solution; no it usually is the beginning of the downward spiral of confusion and frustration.So, let me give you something that is unbiased and unfettered…I call these applications:”10 Disciplines of Effective Nutrition”These definitely are not new or innovative techniques and procedures, nor are they cutting-edge. More blatantly, they are simple, time-tested; no nonsense traditions that you need to apply when subject to an effective ingestion program.1. The majority of your daily caloric intake should be in whole foods, except workout and post-workout drinks.2. Always eat a complete (containing all the essential amino acids), lean protein with each meal.3. Consume either fruits or vegetables with each meal.4. Eliminate starchy carbohydrates from daily consumption, except morning oatmeal.5. The majority of your carbohydrate intake should come from fruits and vegetables, with the exception of workout and post-workout drinks & meals and the morning oatmeal.6. Do away with all simple sugars and nutrient barren carbohydrates (e.g. candy, cake, cookies, pastries and the like).7. Make certain that 20-30% of your energy intake comes from fat, with your fat intake split equally between saturates (e.g. animal fat), monounsaturated (e.g., olive oil), and polyunsaturated (e.g. flax oil, salmon oil).8. Drink only non-caloric beverages, the best choices being water and green tea.9. Imbibe no less than 10, eight ounce glasses of water per day. More if you exercise and you should be exercising.10. Consume every 2-3 hours, no matter what. You should eat between 5-8 meals per day.FinaleMost people can achieve optimal fitness and a desired healthy body composition using the 10 disciplines alone. In fact, with a good deal of my clients at Synergy Fitness Systems, I spend the first few months just supervising their adherence to these 10 fundamentals. But, if you have explicit needs, or if you’ve reached the ninety-percentile, you may need a bit more individualization and or specific fine-tuning beyond the 10 disciplines, so feel free to call or email me.
10 Disciplines of Effective Nutrition
Lifestyle – Joan Fonebone’s 10 Point ‘Live-Life-to-the-Full’ Ultimate Lifestyle Plan
Joan Fonebone is a 48 year old, three times divorced, mother of seven who lives in a trailer home on the outskirts of a large city in mid-western USA. She shares her “lovenest” with her 28 year-old drug addict boyfriend, Trevor.Joan drives a green and rust Datsun 120Y with three tyres down to the canvas and a “slightly” smoky exhaust. She is 63 pounds overweight, smokes two packs of “low tar” cigarettes per day and gets through two cartons of full strength beer and two bottles of Johnny Walker red label per week.Now that you know Joan’s “qualifications” here is her 10 point plan so that you, too, can lead a similar lifestyle to the one that she has forged for herself.I asked Joan about a range of subjects including reading books, attending seminars, associating with influential people, budgeting and a number of other issues. In her own words, here are her candid answers:
Joan’s lifestyle tip #1: “Books. I ain’t never read a book since school. Come to think of it… I ain’t never read ‘em there either. They only mess with yer mind. Don’t believe in ‘em. Never have. Books are fer geeks and nerds.”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #2: “Seminars. Huh? Yer mean those meetin’ things? Nah. Wouldn’t be caught dead goin’ to any of that crap.”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #3: “Hang around wealthy people? Those snotty nosed bastards? Not likely. They’re all crooks an’ cheats an’ liars. Look at the houses they live in … an’ the cars they drive. No honest people have those things. They gotta be crooks, don’t they?”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #4: “Take advice? You gotta be joking! Advice? What could anybody tell me that I ain’t already heard of?”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #5: “Mentor. What’s that? Oh, role-model. Gotcha. Nah. Wouldn’t waste me time. Why would I want to copy some other freak?”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #6: “Take-aways. Seven days a week. Take-aways means no mess, no fuss, no cleanin’ up. Ya don’t need no knives an’ forks an’ plates an’ things. Saves money. Tastes real good too.”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #7: “Smokin’? Nah… can’t give up me smokes. Tried to cut down once but couldn’t. Anyway, I only smoke two packs a day. That ain’t that much!”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #8: “Me kids? Yeah, well, they’s all growed up now. They don’t need me no more. Give ‘em the best years of me life, I did. And fer what? Never see the little bastards any more. Me oldest, Calvin, he calls me a loser. Ungrateful little ****!”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #9: “Trev? Oh, he’s outer it mostly. Sleeps durin’ the day. Does some odd jobs at night – only when it takes his fancy, mind you. He just makes enough for his next hit. Good ole Trev. He ain’t never hurt no-one. Had a tough life. Poor little love.”
Joan’s lifestyle tip #10: “Me best bit of advice? Hmm. Let me think a minute… well I buy lotsa lottery tickets. One day a girl’s gotta win. Yer gotta be in it to win it. That’s what I always says. ‘Course, yer could always pretend to slip over at the casino or tha local shoppin’ center. Should be good fer some easy compensation money. Watch those damn kids come moochin’ back then!”
Now that you know Joan’s ten-point lifestyle plan you will be able to follow it and live life to the full just like she does.Seriously, Joan Fonebone is just a figment of my rampant imagination. Sadly, there are plenty of people like her in this world. I actually meet people like this from time to time. They blame everyone and everything for their lot in life. Too bad they cannot see that they are the architects of their own lifestyles.
Considerations For a Car Purchase and Finance
There are many things to consider in your purchase of a motor vehicle. There are many choices and it can be confusing to which vehicle to choose. Once you have decided on a car then to what price and possible trade in price to be negotiated. With most car purchases financed, it is also important to remember everything when going through comparing car finance packages.Australian car loans can vary because of many factors. Car Finance direct from a bank is quite often not the cheapest solution.When time to purchase a new car, the next question is usually how you are going to pay for it rather than which car you are going to buy.Financing your next car is a very important process, as you want to choose a finance package most suitable to you. There can be many things to check including car loan interest rates, fees and charges, break fees if you paid it out earlier or if you can pay extra payments.Remember to consider the time it will take to approve and settle your car loan. Does the car finance company suit your criteria to approve the finance?You can have unsecured or secured car finance, which can be very different costs on your loan.It can be a requirement of the car finance company to have fully comprehensive on your car before and while you pay off your car loan.Finance companies can assist to ensure you have a hassle free car purchase and help with additional resources like encumbrance checks to ensure that there are not any outstanding loans from the prior owner left against the motor vehicle. They could have available title checks to confirm the ownership of the car you are purchasing. Most will arrange clear transfer to seller of the amount financed on the car purchase.Car loans, subject to the finance company’s approval can be financed to the full cost of the purchase including on-road costs and taxes, car Insurance, motor vehicle breakdown warranties, loan protection for death, disability and unemployment.Older cars can be ok. Car loans can apply for all ages new and used depending on the car loan lender.Finance structures can be flexible to suit your circumstance. Options to consider on your car loan could be delayed payment car loans so you first payment starts at a extended time into your finance contract, interest only payment options including balloon payments, extended finance terms and structured car finance payments to suit your life style or your work cash flow.There are many motor finance options available for imported cars.Commercial car finance options are available that could be suitable for business use. Some choices to consider that relate to business car financing are chattel mortgage vehicle finance, commercial hire purchase, car lease, operational car lease and fully maintained car lease packages. Be careful because the structure of your business car finance can affect your taxation claim.Dealing through a reputable car loan broker can give you a choice of car finance lenders. It is important to know that you may get car loan interest rates and loan fees and charges cheaper than banks.
Photography’s Place in the Art World
I am an artist and a photographer. My work is posted on various art and photography websites for sale and has been for several years. Day after day, I log into these websites to see how many visitors I’ve had, to read new comments, and check on sales. My work attracts a lot of visitors which always delights me, and I adore it when my work has moved someone enough to comment, yet I’m invariably disheartened and frustrated that all this attention results in minimal sales.One of the websites where my work lives offers continual member-sponsored contests designed to help artists get their work seen. I enter them even though it seems this particular artist community holds a certain prejudice toward photographs, evidenced by entry rules that state “NO PHOTOS”, “paintings only”, “all mediums accepted and photographs”, and “all media including photography”. (The last two suggesting photographs are not art or something of an afterthought.)Another of these websites offers artists an opportunity to be a featured artist. I submitted my application over a year ago which to date hasn’t been acknowledged, and it saddens me to say that every artist that is featured is a painter, not a photographer.Truth is, I’m not only frustrated but angry as well, and I’ve been silent on this for far too long! There needs to be a shift in perception on what is constituted as art and where photography stands in the art world.The generally perceived wisdom, it seems, is that photography is easy and painting is hard or more skillful. Consequently, the thinking is that culturally painting is generally more valued than photography, even though there are a lot of bad paintings with little or no value. The same can be said about some photography, but the notion that photography is easy and not as skillful as painting is simply wrong thinking. To think that this is so is to invalidate world-renowned photographers like Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, and Dorthea Lange whose works hang in places like the Guggenheim, and who in general, made more money as photographic artists than painters and didn’t have to die to become wealthy or noticed. The only true difference between painting and photography is that one is in a different medium than the other.I use digital photography to capture something amazing that I see and for raw material for my art. To capture what I see is often a lengthy process because of technical limitations. The limitations of digital cameras are due to the state of the technology, which is in its infancy, and not to the skill of the photographer. These technological challenges are particularly evident in outdoor shots taken in bright sunlight. Moreover, certain corrections for perspective, lighting, color, tonal range, and composition might have to be made, which I make on my computer in Adobe Photoshop. On average, I think I spend 40 hours (5 eight-hour days) or more per picture. Making corrections like these requires learned skills and talents, which in essence is no different than skills and talents needed to create a painting masterpiece.To me, art is the expression of ones self and how it is portrayed by the artist regardless of medium. On one hand, I’m happy to share my love of the visual world through simple photographs (notwithstanding subjective alterations or enhancements). On the other, some of my art I create to look like paintings not only because I like the overall effect, but because I’m concerned about the term “photo” and its’ often negative or cheap connotations. I hate that I sold out to that idea, but I felt I had to in order to be competitive (not that it has helped sales). Now that I have, I find, in attempting to submit my photo paintings to various contests, rules such as, “must not be digitally altered in any way” and “no photographs or digitally altered art”.This is preposterous! Throughout history new materials and techniques have evolved at different times and in different parts of the world. Artists have progressively had an increasing range of options to choose from. Up until the last 140 years there was only paint to be used. Much of what was attempted in the past was to reproduce reality as much as possible. There is, in fact, a debate whether Da Vinci and Michelangelo used concave mirrors to create their paintings, wherein the real life image wishing to be painted stands outside, while its image projects onto the canvas. Devices like the camera obscura (from the sixteenth century onwards) and the camera lucida (early to mid nineteenth century) were employed by the likes of Caneletto and Vermeer to help them achieve that faithful reproduction objective. The old master’s for the most part were just taking snapshots of reality using the tools available to them at the time. Had Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caneletto, or Vermeer had access to digital photography, I’m sure they would have used it, as all were creative visionaries.But it’s not the tool that makes the art. In the creative process, it’s the responsibility of the artist to do the best they can in terms of materials, knowledge, and techniques. This means using any means that will help them produce better work, including computer software.I understand that it is frustrating to all you painters that you had to learn and practice to get it right and then along comes artists that can do what you do (perhaps even better) with a click of a button. But keep in mind that photography, good photography, is an art form that is learned and practiced to get right too, and to correct, enhance, or alter that photography requires even more learning and practice.According to Weston Naef, senior curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, photography underlies almost all the visual culture of the 20th century. He states that at his museum the exhibit recognizes once and for all that photography is no longer a stepchild of the art world. So please painters, get off your high horses and accept that photography is an important part of society. Painting is no better than photography and beauty is, after all, in the eyes of the beholder. Granted, not all photography is art, but then not all paintings are either.