Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Weight Loss Tips: Things to Consider


The crusade towards thinness has been massive in popularity and lethal in its effects. The effect of proliferating a bias in the perception of beauty has persecuted those who are not deemed beautiful and thin. Even those that belong in the higher hierarchy of our social strata are not spared from the onslaught. Young girls these days just do not feel adequate.  As for the mass media, it did not even care to address the situation; at any rate they have even heightened their promotion that thin is what is beautiful: absolute. They have further their measures by proliferating the images of stick-thin personalities. The weight-loss conglomerates has kept the public magnetized and has made their products into commodities that are essential. 

Going beyond the superficial precepts, the health factors that may occur due to the urge to be thin are grave and can be permanent in sustaining damage in one’s physiology.

Firstly, motivation is what leads us into limiting our diets to celery sticks and half a bowl of oatmeal. The forms of motivation comes in an array of sorts from; getting noticed by your crush; fitting in your new little black dress; getting the approval of your peers for being a size 00, being the doppelganger of your stick-thin cousin; or just as plain as giving in to  the dictates of society as proliferated by the mass media. The different goals with which we wish to achieve are the motivating factor why we skip meals and do the treadmill like a guinea pig gone hay-wire. We turn to dieting and workouts to achieve a certain goal we desire. Before we even look into how we have been damaging ourselves through those ulcer inducing diets and the perennial drowning of thy self with water to kill the hunger pangs, we have to first recognize what has been driving us to do so. Reassess if your reasons are valid and consider if there is any thing to be corrected in the first place (in this case never use Monica Felucca as your point of comparison).

Second is the problem of technique and execution. We have been bombarded by different diets as disseminated by the shadiest of nutrition experts seen in years (you can exactly tell who they are from their surnames splattered all over those weight-loss programs). There has also been a surge in the establishment of fitness gyms offering from both the mundane aerobics to the exotic pole dancing. Not to mention the countless weight-loss products from vibrating sauna-belts to magical concoctions varying from soaps, creams, to pills, all with the promise of inches being shed off your bodies magically. The question of its effectivity not withstanding, we have been all too eager to chose and try one of them.  Indeed, weight-loss has become a multi-million dollar industry and they plan to keep it that way. With the sudden influx of options to beat the bulge, most if not all of us who have succumbed to this temptation have already chosen a technique to use. Diets vary from high-protein to strictly scheduled forms. Most of us have been following this religiously, while most who have reasons all their own, has taken  this to a whole new level. An example is doing the South beach diet which has three phases; most have been only doing the first phase which effectively removes 8 pounds. The program, used here as an example, is formulated to limit our craving for carbohydrates. In the first phase of the said program, carbohydrates are completely eliminated from the diet completely; subsequently whole grains are gradually reintroduced in the following phases. But not following what the program has explicitly devised can pose grave risk to our health. We need to follow what the plan requires us to do. Another is the intake of various pills and what have you. While most of them are generally considered good for you like L-carnitine; many of them are fat-soluble which means they remain longer in the body. Taking them in mega-doses can cause problems like dry mouth, nausea, headaches, and even toxicity. There is nothing wrong with losing a few inches, but we have to take everything in moderation. Overdoing it can only lead you to harms’ way. With the various options to choose from coupled with the urgency to shed the pounds most have taken drastic measures. Always take caution in utilizing a chosen form a weight-loss method. 


 Third is the Classical Conditioning.  Before going under the knife, there should be a valid reason. Health and well-being should always come first, but we would rather hurl ourselves in compromising situations all in the name of beauty. What do we consider beautiful? Or more importantly, what are we conditioned to see as beautiful? Conditioning of cognitive precepts can be considered as one factor in the rampant feeling of inadequacy among teens and young adults. What we perceive as defined by various agents becomes the truth for us. What lies in the beholder are images and notions that are manufactured. The culprit for defining beauty in nonnegotiable terms is of course (drum roll please!) mass media.  This comes as to no surprise if at all cliché, but we recognizing that the images we have elevated in the pedestals of our individual imaginings were just manufactured by a creative team in a highly furbished advertising firm can be as illuminating as a knock on the head. Redefine what is beautiful for you in your own terms.


Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Tips on Facebook Timeline Cover

I accidentally got switched to Timeline in Facebook but rather than get upset, I just dealt with it. After playing around with the new functionality that came with it, I went gaga over making timeline covers.

The size of the timeline cover is 850x315 and I used my PhotoScape to crop the pictures using an assigned ratio and maximized Picnik (before it closes on April 19, 2012) to edit my pictures. I especially like the photos with texture on it and I used stickers and different fonts for this blog's address (don't forget to use overlay on the text).

Below are the Timeline Covers I made for my Facebook account: