Tips On How To Keep Fit And Enjoy Life

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Cheap, Healthy Foods - Watch Your Weight And Your Budget

A major issue for those who are trying to create a healthy lifestyle is the cost of healthy food. There are many products on the shelves of your local grocery store that are healthy,

but most of them have a larger price tag than the unhealthy, high-fat foods. There are options. If you shop wisely, you can eat healthier than you ever have before and decrease your grocery bill at the same time. Nutritious eating doesn't need to be expensive.

Less Junk = More Savings:

In choosing healthy foods, keep in mind that you will automatically be spending less than before due to the absence of junk foods that you may normally purchase such as soft drinks, sugary snacks, and high fat meats.

Less Waste = Less Waiste:

Healthy eating is not just eliminating certain foods from your diet; it is replacing them with healthy foods. And, if weight control is your goal, you will also be reducing your portion sizes, which will mean less money spent on each meal.

Less Meat, More Veggies:

Reducing the amount of meat you eat and replacing it with vegetables is a great way to save money. Fresh vegetables are not nearly as expensive as meat or poultry and your body will thank you for it. Salad is another cheap, healthy food. The pre-packaged salads will cost a bit more than if you purchase the lettuce and other vegetables separately and prepare the salad yourself.

Frugal Fruit:

Fruit can be a somewhat expensive, but if you purchase canned fruits in low-sugar syrup or water, you will pay relatively little in comparison to fresh fruit. Apples and oranges are inexpensive compared to some other fruits and you can often find sales that will further reduce your expenses.

Beans and Rice are Nice:

Legumes and rice are very inexpensive and you can use either or both of these to replace meat several times per week.

Save on Meat:

Canned fish costs considerably less than fresh fish and still contains most of the nutrients. Canned tuna and salmon are very cheap and are very low in fat and calories if you choose the varieties packed in water rather than oil. Chicken is less expensive if you purchase a whole chicken and remove the skin yourself before cooking.

Healthy food does not have to be expensive. You can purchase cheap healthy foods and not only eliminate unhealthy fat and calories, but you can actually save money if you shop wisely.

About the author:
Would you rather spend time doing the things you love rather than being stuck in the kitchen? http://www.freequickrecipes.com-- has quick recipes for mothers... and others. And, if you are looking for a fun way to trim your thighs, don't miss http://www.funexercisevideos.com

Hypnosis - the state between sleeping and waking

Hypnosis is a state of consciousness one enters and leaves naturally all the time during your day-to day experiences. It feels very much like day dreaming i.e., the state between sleeping and waking. Hypnosis is a guided fantasy. In this state of relaxation you are more open to suggestions. In this state (also called alpha) your brain wave vibration rate slows down, giving you access to your Subconscious Mind. While your Conscious Mind is still completely aware of what is going on the whole time, in this relaxed state of mind, your subconscious mind has the ability to accept information given to it by the hypnotist.

Hypnosis is a valuable tool for self-empowerment and continuous personal growth.
Hypnosis is a state of heightened suggestibility. We are all influenced by suggestions. Hypnosis uses this natural human process to change negative patterns into positive patterns of behavior.

There is nothing mysterious about hypnosis.
There are five components necessary to induce hypnosis.

Motivation - You must want to be Hypnotized
Relaxation - Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation.
Concentration - You will use your ability to concentrate.
Imagination - You will use your vivid imagination.
Suggestion - You will hear and respond to suggestions.
Its application is based solely on the relationship between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind, having no power to reason, accepts and acts upon any fact or suggestion given to it by the conscious mind.
As long as there have been human beings, there has been hypnosis. We use this commonly occurring, and natural state of mind, unknowingly, all the time. It is just natural for us. For example, if you have ever watched a television program or a movie and became really absorbed into the program, you were probably in a trance.

Advertisers understand this. They use television programs to induce a hypnotic trance and then provide you hypnotic suggestions, called commercials!

Everyone has already experienced hypnosis, by accident or intentionally.

Another common example of this naturally occurring state of mind is when you are driving down the road, with your mind focused on some other task (a day dream perhaps), and next thing you know, you have passed your next turn.

The hypnotic state is an optimum state for making changes in your life.

During hypnosis you can set aside limiting beliefs that may have been preventing you from moving toward a more healthy, and happier you.

In order for you to understand how hypnosis works, it is very important for you to understand the relationship between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind.

Since everyone has experienced light levels of hypnosis at different times, don't be surprised if you don't feel hypnotized. All that is required to be hypnotized is a motivation to be hypnotized, concentration, imagination, relaxation, and the willingness to respond to suggestion. There are ways to check for the depth level of hypnosis, usually in a one-on-one session.

During hypnosis, you will remain conscious of your surroundings. Some of the sensations you may experience are:

Tingling in your fingertips or limbs
A sense of numbness or limb distortion
A sense of being light and floating away from your body
A heavy feeling like you are sinking
A sense of energy moving through your body
Feelings of emotions
Fluttering eyelids
An increase or decrease in salivation.
When you notice that you are noticing these sensations, do not become alarmed or you may shock yourself right out of your trance. Just expect the trance to occur gradually and it will. Suggestions stay with some individuals indefinitely, others need reinforcement. The effects of hypnosis are cumulative: The more the techniques are practiced and posthypnotic suggestions are brought into play, the more permanent the results become.

Brain-imaging study has shed light on why some people are more susceptible than others to hypnosis. By hinting at the brain processes involved, the analysis also suggests that hypnosis - both the stage and therapeutic varieties - does have genuine effects on the brain's workings.

Those who are easily hypnotized show different activity in a brain region called the anterior cingulate gyrus, which is involved in planning our future actions, reports John Gruzelier of Imperial College London. In a hypnotic trance, the function of this region may be impaired, he says, meaning that subjects are more likely to follow a hypnotist's suggestion: "The hypnotist tells you to go with the flow, and so you don't evaluate what you're doing."

Peter Naish
Open University, UK


This is consistent with the idea that those who are easiest to hypnotize tend to describe themselves as generally letting go of their inhibitions quite easily, Gruzelier told the British Association Festival of Science in Exeter, UK, on Thursday.

Mind games

Some experts have argued that hypnotism is not a real physiological phenomenon at all, but rather the result of hypnotists imposing themselves on their subjects, who may be simply swept along. Stage hypnotists are often accused of intimidating their 'volunteers' into playing along for the sake of the show.

This effect is certainly part of the picture in performance hypnotism, says Gruzelier. "Lots of it is due to personality and persuasiveness, but then that's showbusiness," he told news@nature.com. Such tactics can cause people to ignore the potential of genuine hypnosis to ease painful diseases, he adds: "Unquestionably, stage hypnotists give hypnotism a bad name."

"Humans like to comply; they don't like to be embarrassed," agrees Peter Naish, who studies hypnosis at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. But he insists that underneath the coercion used by charismatic stage acts, a physiological effect is occurring. "The evidence really is there; hypnosis is not miraculous," he adds.

Gruzelier studied 24 subjects, half of whom were categorized as succumbing easily to hypnotism, and half of whom were resistant. He scanned the volunteers' brains while they tackled a problem called the Stroop task, a test of mental flexibility that requires subjects to categorize a list of colours presented in a different colour - the word 'green' printed in blue, say - depending either on the name or the actual colour.

Gruzelier tested the subjects before and after they underwent a standard procedure used by hypnotists to put their subjects into a trance. In resistant subjects, the anterior cingulate gyrus was less strongly activated after the procedure than before, showing that their brains were working less hard as they got better at planning how to complete the task.


But in hypnotized volunteers, the anterior cingulate, and the regions that govern it, were more strongly activated when they were in a trance, showing that they were struggling harder to plot their actions, Gruzelier reported. He suspects that this impaired ability to plan for oneself makes people more suggestible.

This process may underlie hypnotists' ability to influence their subjects' behaviour, be it stopping smoking or barking like a dog whenever they hear Elvis Presley. Subjects frequently report that they feel compelled to do something even though they know they don't really want to.

Gruzelier also suspects that hypnotism may interfere with subjects' evaluation of future emotions such as embarrassment. A region in the brain's medio-frontal cortex, close to the anterior cingulate, governs our perception of how we will feel if we take a certain course of action, he says. If connections between the two regions are impaired, stage volunteers might happily act without thinking.

That may well be the final weapon in the showbiz hypnotist's arsenal, says Gruzelier. By not only making volunteers suggestible but also taking away their sense of shame, the possibilities for public ridicule are immense. "The structure that monitors the emotional consequences of future actions becomes disconnected," he suggests. "So you make a fool of yourself."

About the author:
For more information on Hypnosis please visit the Hypnosis resource center at http://www.hypnosis-explained.info


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