Making the right choices.

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays (Oxiclean guy), and a plane with 150 people on board....all dead. I know it sounds grim, but the coincidence this happened in the span of one week is an eye-opener.

My mom asked me one morning, "People said Michael Jackson was crazy, is it true?" and I said "Does it matter now that he died?" What's anything matter, right? Who cares if you don't have the body you want, the job of your dreams, the goals you think about, so on and so forth. "What the hell are you talking about Niel?!" The point is why are you doing things that don't help you attain your goal?

For example, if you watch TV every night or buy lunch every day from fast food places instead of making your own lunch in advance, but complain "so & so" bothers/hurts/aggravates my body or "I don't like how my stomach looks." Why are you complaining? Are a few cookies a day really that important for the couple minutes you have them in your mouth vs. the body you're not happy with? You chose the cause which resulted in a certain effect.

This was done (cause) and now this happened (effect). Every choice you make revolves around this. Think about the consequnces of your choices in the long-term rather than the enjoyment it may bring at that instant. Leaving the TV on while you make a meal in the kitchen is more than simply running up the electric bill. You're wasting electricity in a time where the world needs to figure out a renewable energy source. That's thinking in the long-run.

This applies to any aspect of your life. It should be implemented most in how you go about your health. You only get one body, don't screw it up.

Take this example for instance. On a forum, a user asked the following:

"I'm trying to lose weight and to do it I'm thinking of eat a granola bar for breakfast, then another one for lunch then a sensible dinner. The bars are only 140 calories and I feel pretty full after eating them. So I think/hope this will work."

to which I replied:

"Don't count on it. It simply isn't enough nourishment for the body, with or without exercise. Doesn't matter how many calories they are because 2 bars is 280cal + 700 (random # for dinner) = 980 calories. Now, the general recommendation for any adult by the FDA is 2000. By that number, you're severely under. You have to do a more reasonable approach.

But, let's say you do follow this plan and succeed in losing the amount of weight you were hoping for. Congratulations! Now what? Do you continue eating like this forever? You have to, right? How else will you maintain this goal you achieved? I mean, if you do increase your calories again, you're going to gain weight. Do you really want to have the majority of your week consisting of granola bars and 1 sensible dinner a night?

In my opinion, it doesn't sound too satisfying."

He didn't post back. But the thing is, he wasn't thinking what would happen after his weight loss; he wasn't thinking in the long-run. There were other things that I could have mentioned of not eating properly, but people don't care for the science sometimes. Rather, I elaborated on his given scenario.

There is a ton of free information on the internet in blogs, twitter, youtube, and who knows what else. Search for it and use it. Society has a wealth of information in this day and age, yet humans do some of the stupidest things possible.

The first 2 sentences of this post weren't for nothing. Those people are all gone. Old people, young people, famous people, regular people, but most importantly, they were people like you and me.

Don't regret wasting your life, but instead enjoy how you used it.

PC security & basic eating

PC Security
Back in May I got malware on my laptop. A google search informed me it was a serious threat and not your common spyware. To be 100% safe again, I had to wipe my PC clean. Upon reconfiguring everything, I had asked in forums what I can do to be more secure. The best piece of advice given was to use Firefox with the add-ons NoScript & Adblock.

What's NoScript do? It blocks automatically-loading website scripts. Adblock blocks ads from loading. Your system's chances of being infected by anything and everything are high if you ask me. Take a look at cnn.com when I visited it.
Look at all the extra things that aren't CNN. Now imagine a random website you stumble across; it could be 10x worse. When using NoScript, remember to allow the websites that you do want to load.

Basic Eating
People always want to lose weight, look good, and have good health in general. Yet, people struggle with weight loss. Is eating that hard? I don't think it should be. The easiest thing you can do for your body is don't eat processed foods. Simple, right? Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and lean meats. Grocery stores have items on shelves such as low fat Oreos. Is that Oreo still going to be good for you? Chances are it's not. Drink water instead of soda, falsely advertised juices, and sports & energy drinks. Basically, choose what mother nature has to offer you. I don't see any overweight elephants, lions, or giraffes....unfortunately, only humans.

First post and the beginning.

I'm always interested in reading others blogs, I thought why not start my own. While I'm still figuring out everything, expect the majority of posts to be health- & fitness-related. But don't let that detract you. I'm willing to bet the other posts will be better and applicable to any part of life.

That's all folks. And so this post isn't a complete waste, here's a word to improve your vocabulary.

innocuous (ih-nok-yoo-uhs) - adj. - Harmless; causing no damage.

See if you can ninja (sneak) it into a sentence and confuse someone.

Enjoy.