Dream on! How to Get Started and Keep Going

16 06 2008

Has anyone ever begun a change in diet or activities without dreaming about it first?

The changes you make might have started from dissatisfaction or even desperation with your current situation but that’s not what drives change. Most of us start making changes when we start daydreaming about how things could be better. How nice it would be to walk up a flight of stairs without stopping for a breath. Wishing we could walk into any store and know that they’ll have clothes in our size. Or looking forward to seeing friends — not dreading that they’ll be shocked at how much I’ve gained.

And thinking about what it would take to make those things a reality.

On this Dreamy Monday take a few minutes while you drive to work or do the dishes or vacuum the living room to think about changing your routine. Whether it’s walking or measuring food portions, or drinking more water — the specific activity doesn’t matter at all — but it should be something you’ve been intending to do.

We’ll dream — I’ll dream — throughout the day. And I guarantee that we’ll all be energized by our dreams and ready to succeed.


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I’m Dreaming of a new Blog

9 06 2008

What happened to 2008?

While it might have been possible to recover my posts from the failed TypePad experiment, I sure couldn’t do it. Also, given a choice between keeping this year’s posts and the posts from the previous two years, I decided to go with them.

I have to admit that for a weak moment or two, I thought about dropping the whole blog thing all together. But two things made me decide to stick with it. First, Eat4Today has made a huge difference in my ability to monitor and maintain my weight (and health in general.) Second, my secret love, Lambert, says that blogging is good for you:

Blogging—It’s Good for You
Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off.

Oh yeah. Self-medication.

[B]esides serving as a stress-coping mechanism*, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

(snip)

Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” Flaherty explains. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively [moi?],” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.

Read more about it at Scientific American. I’m high on words, I guess.  And I might as well start using them for good.

:)


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