New Years Resolutions.

[Warren W]

So is anyone going to make any changes for 2012?


I know my goal is to stop eating so much crap, cut down on cigarettes, start hitting the gym and getting into good shape and start some kind of Martial Arts, Kickboxing or somthing at some point

http://images.thebestexercisebikes.net/images/smile.gif
Merry Christmas All

[wittdooley]

I'll do this twofold:

Personal:
I need to lose some lbs. I was able to last year, then got laid off, and lost a bit of the motivation. Now that I'm happy and fully employed, I just need to get back to the routine.

Gaming:
I need to complete the painting of at least one of my WHFB and WH40k armies. I think this will end up being Blood Angels and Ogres, if only because of the low model counts :D. I would also like to get my Malifaux forces fully painted, so that'll make up around 40 total models between my faction and my lovely wife's faction.

[eldargal]

Hm well:

1) Not wreck my sleep pattern with SWTOR and ridiculous study sessions.
2) Try to get over my resentment at being displaced as youngest in the family by potential nieces and nephews.
3) Spend more money in local businesses. I don't mean buy less foreign stuff, I already do that, I mean spend even more.
4) Try and get some photos of my Eldar.

[DrLove42]

1) watch less Youtube videos at work and do more work
2) Finish painting what I got before I buy more (yeah right)
3) Survive

3 is a very important point. Its not even 2012 yet and i've already got 2 weddings to attend (one of them mine, the other being best man), 3 conferences to attend (thats just before March), transfer thesis, experimental work, 2 week holiday....

Its going to be busy year

[Lord Azaghul]

Never made 'em, don't believe in 'em.

:D

You can chance you're life any day of the year!
:p

[eldargal]

I have to admit I don't believe in them either, my resolutions tend to just be reminders of things I want to do rather than exhortations to improve myself.

[Aldramelech]

Win the lottery, divorce the wife and rescue Eldargal from her stuffy academic life :)

[Denzark]

I'm going to find out where Mr A is living with Mme L'Eldargal post-lottery win. I will then break in and watch them sleeping.

[Aldramelech]

Dangerous Twilight territory there mate, Melissia gonna get you!

[eldargal]

Aw, but I like mystuffy academic life.:p I also like sleeping, speaking of which, its past my bedtime.:rolleyes:

[Psychosplodge]

Sleep more.....

[DarkLink]

For those looking to lose weight (particularly Americans), here's something that might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNYlIcXynwE. Excuse the corny production.

Long story short, your diet controls your insulin levels, and your insulin levels control how much fat your body stores. The old "calories in-calories out" thing is actually useless, because your body adapts your metabolism to match what you consume. It isn't really how much you eat, it's what you eat.

If you eat a diet high in carbs (lots of pasta, bread, candy, soda, etc) relative to the other nutrients your body takes in, the excess blood sugar increases your insulin levels. Insulin is a hormone that causes your body to store energy as fat. Prolonged periods of elevated insulin results in insulin resistance, which causes even higher levels of insulin. This causes your body to store more and more energy as fat, and if the problem becomes severe enough it can lead to type II diabetes.




So if you want to lose weight, don't bother simply switching over to low-fat yogurt or some crap like that. It won't help much, if at all. Instead, eliminate refined carbs and sugary foods. No candy, no soda, no salad dressing or croutons, and bread/pasta should not be the main component of your meal.

Instead, build your diet around meat, veggies, fruits and nuts. Yes, veggies and fruits are all carbs, but they have a very low carb density and very high levels of other nutrients, so it's very hard to go overboard. Meat is extremely good for you despite whatever bull**** veggitarians might try to pull out of their ***. For one thing, saturated fat cholesterol intake isn't necessarily bad for you. Turns out the causes behind heart disease is much more complicated than a 60 year old idea based on bad science that saturated fat in meats causes heart disease. There's a more in-depth explanation here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/#axzz1hKhZS7bU




Note that I don't mention diary products or legumes (beans, peanuts, soy, etc). Both cause various digestion issues that make them less healthy than what the nutrition label might tell you. Bread and pasta, or to be more precise any cereal grains, have issues as well. Even whole wheat products are very high in pure carbs with much lower nutritional value than veggies, meats or fruit. Wheat isn't as bad as candy, obviously, but suffers from the same essential problem. It's just on a lesser scale than with pure sugar.

And, of course, you don't have to completely eliminate foods from your diet. Just don't expect a big pile of fettuccine alfredo to help you lose weight. Start with meat, veggies, fruit and nuts, and if you want some bread to make a sandwich that's fine.



Lastly, eating fat does not make you fat. Avoiding fat does not help you lose weight. While it sounds logical, it isn't actually how your body handles fat loss/gain. A low carb diet is actually much more effective for shedding fat than a low fat high carb diet is. That doesn't mean you need to eliminate carbs completely, though some people do talk about 'very low carb' diets, but carbs shouldn't make up the bulk of your diet.

Protein, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have too much of an effect on weight gain/loss. Your body uses protein firstly to repair itself and to produce various enzymes, and secondly breaks it down into sugar to use for energy. Eating nothing but pure protein can actually cause protein starvation, as your body can only convert so much protein to sugar each day. So you need enough protein to maintain your health, and enough other nutrients that you don't starve. Serious athletes can play around with their protein intake, but aside from that, don't worry about protein.

And meat is the only quality source of protein. Yes, legumes and stuff has protein in it, but they're much lower quality proteins than meat. Vegetarians aren't going to starve from a lack of proteins by any means, but there isn't really a very good substitute for meat as a source of protein.





As a bit of a disclaimer, human nutrition isn't actually that well understood. Particularly in America (why do you think we're so fat?), nutrition seems as driven by politics and tradition rather than science, and what advances might be made by research and studies are often thwarted by people's love of candy and sweets. Ironic that I'm drinking a soda while typing this, isn't it. Anyways, some of this is very controversial, and some areas of nutrition that are dealt with here haven't been thoroughly studies, or what studies have been done are based on bad science or have been poorly conceived.






Oh, and exercise has a pretty negligible effect on weight loss. It helps a little bit, but if you want to lose weight it's much quicker to do so by changing your diet as opposed to taking up running. You should exercise for plenty of other reasons, just don't expect going out for a jog every once in a while to cause you to lose a lot of weight.







BTW, if you want testomonials or more information, check out Crossfit. Crossfit has a very large community spread across the world focused improving physical fitness, and as a while firmly believes that diet is the foundation upon which fitness is built. The less healthy you eat, the harder it is to be fit, and a many crossfitters have adopted various diets similar to what is described above. Though it's no formal study, within the community there is a pretty strong general consensus that such a diet shift will improve your health while maintaining muscle mass and allowing for intense physical activity, for anything from long distance running to heavy weight lifting. A healthy diet will make you lean and you will feel more energetic. And if you don't believe it just try it out yourself for a month or two. If you like it, stick to it, if you don't then try something else. I personally know that it works for me, I just haven't been very disciplined lately.






Edit:
A bit more on the saturated fat vs heart disease thing.

First off, there have been a lot of studies done that have had pretty mixed results. There's a lot of controversy here, particularly in recent years.

Cardiovascular disease is caused by certain types of cholesterol. There is "good" and "bad" cholesterol, and the ratio between the two is related to what you eat. There is a mild correlation between saturated fats and bad cholesterol, but the controversy surrounds the fact that this is inconsistent and it isn't very clear if there is any causation. In fact, the levels of bad cholesterol has much more to do with other aspects of your diet, specifically insulin (http://www.medhelp.org/tags/health_page/32718/complementary-medicine/Its-insulinnot-cholesterol-you-should-watch-like-a-hawk-?hp_id=694). Yes, the same thing that makes you fat also contributes to heart disease. In fact, this is the reason why there is a correlation between obesity and heart disease.


So basically, it's not necessarily saturated fat that causes poor cholesterol, it's elevated insulin levels caused by very high carb diets. It just so happens that you'll also lose excess fat in the process.

[Aldramelech]

Wow, I feel really....................................Informed ? :)

I'm of the opinion that handing back my body at the end of my life in good condition is a waste of time, I'm gonna **** it up before I do! :)

[eldargal]

Teehee!

For those looking to lose weight (particularly Americans),

Honestly I know its just a stereotype and around the same number of British are fat as all hell as Americans, perhaps more. Though I think the extreme levels of obesity found in America are unrivalled, my doctor once told me the fattest British subject is only around half as fat as the fattest American. That may have changed.

You know, American food gets a bad reputation also, but in my experience its really rather nice. My father took us all on a Bourbon trail thing earlier in the year and I think it wa in Louisville I had something called Hot Brown which was really nice. I'm also fond of cheesesteak though I use a good cheddar not that orange goop they served up in diners I visited. On the downside I did have biscuits and gravy, American gravy is apalling and their biscuits are like poorly made scones. Not a good combination, use real beef dripping for the gravy and we might be getting somewhere.

Another thing to thank Americans for, cocktails. I just drank four sidecars and a cosmopolitan.:rolleyes: One of the sidecars may have been a n old fashioned.

[Col.Gravis]

You know, American food gets a bad reputation also, but in my experience its really rather nice.

My emphasis

I think thats the problem, I put on a stone when I spent a couple of weeks in America, for a skinny buggar like me who back here can basicly eat whatever I want, when I want with no obvious efect, thats alot. :rolleyes:

[Necron2.0]

Resolutions? Nope.

I'm perfect.
;)

[Grailkeeper]

I only make one resolution every year. That way I keep it. 2 years ago- stop looking like a nerd. Last year get fit (only moderately successful, but enought for my purposes) This year- learn to drive.


I'm giving up booze for January but thats not a resolution, just a month off.

[DarkLink]

My resolution is to run an 18:00 3 mile (5k). I've got a few minutes to drop:rolleyes:.



Honestly I know its just a stereotype and around the same number of British are fat as all hell as Americans, perhaps more. Though I think the extreme levels of obesity found in America are unrivalled, my doctor once told me the fattest British subject is only around half as fat as the fattest American. That may have changed.

In 1991, there wasn't a single state in the US where more than 15% of adults were obese, which isn't bad at all. Twenty years later, and it's 33%.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/USObesityRate1960-2004.svg/432px-USObesityRate1960-2004.svg.png


Incidentally, you'll notice the obesity rates really picked up in the mid 70s. That also happens to be about the time when the USDA changed its nutrition recommendation to the 'food pyramid', which is a high carb diet based on bread and cereal grains. Under those guidelines, you can actually eat more servings of bread and pasta than dairy, meat, veggies and fruit combined. And now some people want this same government to be in charge of all aspects of our lives:rolleyes:.



You know, American food gets a bad reputation also, but in my experience its really rather nice.

And that's exactly the problem;). You can spend half a week around any given holiday eating candy and dessert and crap like that, and it's sooo delicious.

[eldargal]

Though I will say you tend to ruin perfectly good fruit pies by oversweetening them.

I just don't put on weight, in fact I'm borderline unhealthy for a girl, I have just over half the % of body fat I'm supposed to. But no matter how much or what I eat I stay the same. I'd be more worried if my mother, grandmother and aunts weren't all the same and they didn't have any health problems associated with it. Having said that when my weight dipped lower a few years ago I did start getting sick a lot. Had to start eating a good poound or two of chocolate a day to get up to healthy weight and stay there. It isn't just as simple as having a low carbohydrate diet (lots of meat, fat and vegetables, little bit of bread and potato and sugar) as even when I increase the carbohydrates I still don't gain weight, I just get sleepy after meals.:rolleyes:

Oh, about meat. While vegetables do often have higher nutritional values on paper, we actually expend more energy digesting them that we do meat. Obviously you should eat vegetables as well, we are omnivores, but a vegetarian diet is just as unhealthy and unnatural for us as an all-meat diet. We learnt about this from an evolutionary perspective in some archaeology seminars on human evolution, the outrage from the vegetarian and vegan students was hilarious. Hard to argue with some of the worlds brightest minds in the field though.

[Aldramelech]

Zark, She cooks too!:D

[eldargal]

Well I eat a lot.:p Sometimes I help daddy in the kitchen, but I make a terrible mess so I'm not trusted in the kitchen. Mostly things are prepared for me.:rolleyes:

[DarkLink]

We learnt about this from an evolutionary perspective in some archaeology seminars on human evolution, the outrage from the vegetarian and vegan students was hilarious. Hard to argue with some of the worlds brightest minds in the field though.

Exactly. It's pretty funny that so many people who claim to study purely nutrition get caught up in the politics surrounding it and get blown off course by all the bull out there, but go to any anthropologist and they'll tell you exactly what humans are designed to eat.