Finding Love:

Where are you looking for love?  Chances are that you’ve already found it.  Whether in a child, a mother, a puppy, or a lifestyle, love in always there.

I’m no Megan Fox, but I do think she struck it right on the head.  Most people don’t/can’t understand love until they’ve experienced what it means to lose it.  I’m not condoning breakups I’m just saying.  Throughout your life love will come and go as of its own accord (or so it seems.)  Many chase love for years to end up never finding it.  And some have it right infront of their face, but look past it.

No matter your quip on love, it seems as a whole, it will stay.  Even if you dread it so much, that every time you hear cheerful music you want to tear your ears off in spits of rage and desperity, you’ll find that you will start crawling back to love eventually…

Love, I’ve found, is as instictual as breathing.  Most days you don’t even notice your doing it, it just comes naturally.  Love can be fluid, almost as a slow reciprocating relationship between your lungs and the air around you.  Or, it can be brittle, like half melted icicles waiting to shatter.

Whether or not love is healthy for a person, I think it is essential for a happy life.  No, it doesn’t have to be between two people.  If you ask yourself what you love, what comes up?  Books, musc, movies, video-games, football, and school are a few that I can name that have nothing to do with people (ok, maybe school and football, but they aren’t exclusively me and some “special” someone.)

For example, music.  Wihout music, allmost 70% of my alone time would be in silence.  I think that music shows individuality, and individuality is golden.  Whether I’m happy, sad, angry, or just bored, music will always be my little own love affair.

The title of this post is “Find Love,” but it sorta sounds that people don’t really have to look far at all.  Love is all around us (just ask about eight of my classmates doing their entire blogs on love lol)  and if you can’t find something that you aren’t in love with, you aren’t opening your eyes wide enough.  There’s one key factor I’ve found in people who have found love though.  Being a loving person is the best peice of advice you can ever get.  A smile can go a mile (no rhyme intended) and being caring can (and will) help in the search for a soul mate.  And with that last peice of info, I’m signing off.  It’s been an amazing ride, and I plan on continuing over the summer.  Thanks to the (insert pathetic number of viewer/followers here) and good bye.

End.

Now that I’m looking back on the year, I feel my heart welling up with regret.  I feel I should have been more open about my feelings to the people that are meaningful to me.  I really am going to miss everyone I know.  This is my last day of high school, and I plan on spending it right.

I don’t want to leave my high school career to sit on the shelf and collect dust throughout the rest of my life.  I think its important that I don’t allow anything that I want to say be left unsaid.  To live a life with regrets is not one of my many aspirations.

I found this quote, it reflects the feelings that pass me by, as this blink of a day goes on.

“I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I’d been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I’d be there with you now instead of here. Maybe… if I’d said, ‘I’m so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,’ maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn’t do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I plan on saying a lot of I love you’s today.  Sorry, this post was a little rambly and off… but I think at the heart of this post is hope.  Hope that I can get past the petty regrets of my life so that I can look towards my future.  Thanks Ms. P, I learned a lot.  Good luck with everything,

Love, Dillan Owen Straabe.

‘ROIDS!!!! (but no, seriously)

It’s been a long time comming.  I have finally gotten to the post about strength training.

When I say weight training, what do you think of?

This?

This?….

Maybe this?

Eww……………

But anyways, no matter what you think of when you hear weight or strength training, they both can be extremely beneficial to your health.  If done right.  Weight training has a huge amount of benefits, such as performing everyday tasks, heightens balance, builds muscle strength, decreases the risk of osteoporosis, reduces blood pressure, increases calorie burn, and reduces low back pain.

Many people want to jump right into large weights and low reps, mostly men with egos (I should know), but this can be majorly harmful if they don’t know what they are doing.  Over lifting at an early stage can over exert your muscles, ruin your form, and quite possibly hurt you.  You have to be careful while strength training, because if done right, the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) states that “an intense strength-training workout of at least one hour provide a metabolism boost of over twenty-five percent for about 24 hours.”  This means more calories are being burned leading to a decrease in fat.  So not only will you lose fat from sweating, your body has a 25% higher resistance to keeping fat.

To survive weightlifting, there are a few things that should be watched out for.

1.  Jerks.  These assholes are the type that seriously irk me.  You know the type of person I’m talking about, the person whose already done what he has set out to accomplish, so he sits or stands around and criticizes people around him (or her.. you never know…)  You just need to learn to avoid them, many will try to push you around, or try to make fun of you.  But remember, everyone has their own pace, set your own, and keep to it.

2.  Safety.  Being safe in the weight room is something A LOT of people ignore.  If you’re new to the room, take advice from your lifting elders.  They may look like assholes, but hey, if you didn’t want to look like you had a little bit of asshole in you, you wouldn’t be in a weight room.  They are their to improve themselves yes, but I’d bet if you asked, they’d more than happily help, believe me, they’ve been in your shoes.  Try to stay out of situations that can possibly be dangerous.  If you’re worried about something going wrong, chances are that they ARE going to go wrong.  Don’t be stupid, follow you instincts, all that jazz.

3.  Starting.  Getting into weight lifting in my opinion is the most difficult part of the whole process, so I left it for last.  For some the drive to train is what pushes them, that instinctual primal feeling of the need for improvement can thrust them through any obstacle.  But for those of us who aren’t so lucky, about 70% of us. :p  It’s not such an easy thing to get into.  The best advice I can give is….  GRAB A FRIEND!  Though the choice of wanting to start is your-own, a friend will get you through the difficulty of excuse shedding (the I already did a lot today so I can skip my workout) feeling will come time and time again.  If you have a friend that’s doing it with you then you can help each other to stay committed.  For me, I am in between the two.  While I have the drive to improve, I find myself always working harder whenever working with somebody (especially someone who matters to me, friend, coach, ect.)  It varies from person to person, but I promise a friend will help keep you going.

Weight training can be extremely beneficial, the way it builds self-esteem and reduces stress.  The only things that give it a bad name are the subjects I’ve already listed, the jerks (steroids,) the accidents (preventable,) and the difficulty of actually getting into it.  If you can find how to be careful, learn how to fan away the assholes, and commit yourself to improvement, weightlifting and strength training won’t just be a hobby, it’ll become a lifestyle.  A lifestyle worth committing to.

EEHH, EEH, EEEH! (Says the Alarm Clock)

An odd title, leads to a very normal bland meaning.  Wake up.

To some waking up can be a form of emotional/intellectual revelation, to many it’s that droll experience we all have to go through in the morning.. or night I guess.  When I wake in the morning I hate it.  Not so much the fact that I have to go through another day, but that I’m constantly reminded of how terrible my sleeping schedule/habits are.

Generally I’ll wake up around nine on weekdays, and ten-ish on weekends.  Unless work/school prohibits the extra sleep.  From this I feel groggy and somewhat out-of-place whenever I wake up in the mornings.  Granted it’s not EVERY morning that I get this experience, but most.  I tend to fall asleep late as well, so this doesn’t always make the best pair with late waking.

There are a few days, a very few days, where I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to take the world head-on.  It has normally dodged my attention until as of late, but, being as I’m writing a blog and looking for inspiration, I dove into the question.

I started by keeping a mental list of when I woke, and when I fell asleep day by day.  And then writing down how I felt in the mornings.  I noticed that my hours (sleeping hours) didn’t matter all too much on how I felt when I woke up/throughout the day.  But I did recognize a few irregularities.  Why, when I received less sleep, would I feel more awake/aware I wokethrough the day and when ?  So I dove into my haandy daandy laptop and searched for clues.

Turns out I didn’t have to look very far to find the answer.  Right when I jotted “why is waking up early healthy” into Google (thank God for Google) I found a plethora of information to help answer my question.  The first I clicked on was a link to Zenhabits.net where I found an amazing Dhali Lama quote that goes like this,’

“Everyday, think as you wake up, ‘today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.’ ”

Waking up early has been said by many self-help guru’s including Robin Sharma and Anthony Robbins to improve your productivity and the quality of your life.  Even though I couldn’t find any specifics on why waking early is healthier for you, I’d suggest trying it.  I find it extremely calming and peaceful.  This peace you will find to be extremely therapeutic and an essential to starting your day if you experience it.  I honestly think that when you wake early your mindset is ready to continue the momentum of your early rise and be more attentive throughout the day.  I’ve noticed this mostly in hunting, where if I went hunting in the afternoon (I’d wake around ten) and it was a boring/slow day, I’d feel more groggy and less attentive.  But when I woke early I found that I’d be more awake throughout my hunting whether I was bored or not.

That stands true today even, as I only woke around twenty minutes ago, aka 7:50 a.m.  Right now I am groggy, inattentive/can’t hold an intelligent conversation, and I’m actually having trouble reading my blog as I’m typing it (thank God for spell-check.)  Whereas Friday, I woke at an early 6:00 a.m., I felt terrific throughout the entire day, excelling in every task I performed.

Bottom line, waking up early has proven to be very beneficial to me, and I’d suggest trying it yourself.  If you wake up daily at 8:00 try 7:45 for a couple of days, then go earlier until you feel that you’ve met your personal level of comfort.  I’m telling you, try it, its niiiiiceeee…. <–sleep talking.

Daddy Wasn’t There…

Over the years, I’ve grown in a mostly fatherless home, whether or not that has affected me in a positive or negative way no one can say.  But, that is why I’m here in this post to speak my mind about homes without fathers and the importance of having fathers in homes.

If you were to look back upon my life, you might be surprised.  I’ve always had a roof over my head (thanks mom), and never have I gone hungry.  But “daddy issues” I’ve had many.  My mother had me while she was completing her senior year in highschool with a man named Anthony Robert Smith.  I have no idea how she found a man with the most generic name on the planet, but I digress.  This man stook with her up until her pregnancy, then he left.  Now, when I’m oldermy mother has told me that he was never really “there” for her either, so it was only a matter of time until he left.

By the time that I was around three years old or so, another man came into our (my mother and I’s) life.  His name was Kyle, this man loved my mother and I like his life depended on us.  He was (and still is) a terrific man.  He has a good heart, but he tends to make the wrong decisions.  He treated me like I was his child, it was great.. Then my mother and he had a child, my younger brother Tristan.  After Tristan was born everything changed (or so my mother tells me).  Dad started to look past me, always choosing Tristan over me.  He never admitted to favoriting Tristan, but now, fifteen years and two more kids later its become evermore aparent.

My mother and Kyle divorced around three years ago now, and part of the reason they disbanded was me.  She gradually noticed how more and more he neglected me in favor of my other three siblings, his biological children.  Even when my father was home he wouldn’t see me.  There is little times that I can even remember spending any “Dillan and Dad” days.  I think the reason I can’t remember any of those days is because there weren’t any.  There were “Tristan and Dad,” or “Bri and Dad” days, but never would my father and I spend time together.

As I said, my mother and he split when I was thirteen.  And as studies show, the teenage years of a persons life are some of the most influential and important years in a childs developemental cycle.  According to Family Doctor.org,  “the teenage years are a time of transition from childhood into adulthood(,) they may also feel overwhelmed by the emotional and physical changes they are going through.  The teenage years are important as your child asserts his or her individuality.”

In fact there are many statistics on how fatherless homes can be detrimental to a childs well-being.  According to Criminal Justice and Behavior, an astonishing “80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes.”  That’s over FOURTEEN times the national average.  If thats not enough to scare some, I don’t know if I can find anything that will.

Not all statistics are so extreme, but many are just as eye-catching.  The fact that fathers are leaving/being removed from households is and should be a worrysome one.  A fact from the U.S. Census Bureau, Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support states that “five out of every six custodial parents are mothers (84%),  and one in six are fathers (16%).”  The mother to father ratio is just pathetic.  That last statistic is stating that out of every family that is split up, divorced, or broken up, only one-sixth of the time will the father take/be given responsibility of said children.  Is this the fathers or mothers fault?  No one can say, but the statistics don’t lie, families without a father/father figure possibly have scary consequeses.

Even in education the fact that a child has no father shows through.  “In studies involving over 25,000 children using nationally representative data sets, children who lived with only one parent had lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, poor attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived with both parents,” McLanahan. Growing up with a Single Parent. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.  If a persons word aren’t enough, how about the fact that 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes? (National Principals Association Report.)

Overall not having a father can lead to lower grades and self-esteem.  It can higher delinquency rates and chances of growing up poor.  But at the center of all of these problems is hurt.  When my father looked past me and played with the other kids it hurt.  When my father left, and whenever he’d call he’d forget to talk to me, it hurt.  Maybe, the reason why children from fatherless homes happen to get lower grades, is because their distracted by that same hurt that I’ve felt time, and time again.

A fatherless home is an empty home.  If you’re the child of a single parent you’ll know what I mean, something just feels missing.  Of course you get used to it, but its still there lingering at the dinner table where dad used to sit, or when you finally get to sit in dad’s chair, only to realize that he’ll never be there to sit in it instead…

Fathers, try not to leave.. no scratch that.  Fathers, DON’T leave you family.  The blame isn’t always on the father though, but if I get into the mother aspect I’d be on a completely seperate post.  I guess all I can end with is..

Families stick together.  Why?  Because that’s what families do.  For more Fatherless statistics follow the links below.

http://withoutafather.com/facts.php

http://www.dadsworld.com/parenting-statistics/importance-of-fathers.html

http://www.children-ourinvestment.org/T&TStats-ChildrenWithoutFathers.html

P.S.  If you find some of them that aren’t referenced sorry, just believe the ones that are referenced :p

O.M.G. PUPPIES!!!

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than it loves itself – Josh Billings

Today I’m on the topic of human/dog relationships, but before I can continue, I need to touch base on a topic I wrote about weeks ago, Stress.

The reason I’m talking about stress once more is because I forgot a VERY large part of venting stress.  The perfect thing in the entire world to vent to is your dog.  No matter what you say your dog will not contradict you, or judge you.  Dogs are the perfect listeners and are always on your side.  And the best part about them is that as long as you treat them well, your dog will never leave you unlike humans.

Ok, now onward to PUPPIES!  Sorry about the title, but this blog is about the relationship between man and pet that can be irreplaceable on an emotional, therapeutic, and healthy scale.

I remember my first dog Lucy, she was a mid-sized golden terrier whom I did everything with.  We played in the sandbox together, ate together, and even slept in the same beds.  I had Lucy from when she was a pup, all the way to the day she left.  In a sense, we grew up together.  Once I was out of diapers, she was finally house-trained.  Once I was old enough towalk there was no separating us.

We’d go on walks for hours when I was five.  I lived in an extremely small town at the time (I think to this day there’s only about 29 people living there)  so it was normal for kids and their pets to stroll around.  We’d walk through the park, explore the nearby swamps and woods, and afterwards go to the corner bar where Grandpa Al would buy Lucy and I a Kit-kat bar to share (split right in half.)

I loved my first dog, and she loved me.  I remember to this day the first time we played fetch and I “threw” the ball little did Lucy know that it was behind my back.  She searched for about a minute before she came back to look up at me with that “I know somethings up” look strewn across her face.  That was the first and only time I (or anyone else) ever fooled her in fetch.

My favorite memory of Lucy though, was not so light-hearted.  When I was around the age of seven a boy named Tyler, the school bully, slung an ice chunk at me after school.  The ice crushed my glasses, tearing the metal across my face, and simultaneously gave me an instant black-eye, and a bloody nose.  My body shook with a mixture of rage, surprise, and self pity.  I fell to the ground and bawled for what felt like hours.  I felt that the whole world had forgotten me, while I sat there clutching my body, eyes corkscrewed shut, in the cold, half/dusk twilight of a North Dakotan mid-winter, I felt a warm/cold feeling of a wetness stroke across my face.  through my swollen, teary eyes, the wet nose of Lucy appeared in my vision.

She must have been looking for me down the street, as she was used to me coming straight home after school.  I sobbed a little, and Lucy mimicked me.  She promptly licked my face and whined.  As if to coo that it was going to be alright.  I didn’t move, I didn’t want to, I felt like laying there and crying.  But Lucy was persistent.  She prodded my chest, trying to get me up to go home.  She wouldn’t stop, she couldn’t give up on me.  After the half hour mark passed on my little mickey mouse watch, Lucy succeeded.  She got me up and she walked me home that night.

I’ve never forgotten that memory, that cold winter night.  It’s imprinted itself into a spot in my mind that can never be erased.  Lucy showed me what love really is.  She showed me how to pick myself back up.  She showed me what a good friend can only hope to be.  And to this day, Lucy lives through me as the better, happier part that is me.

The last memory I have of Lucy is when I was eight.  We were watching BATMAN The Animated Series, as we always did on Saturday nights before going to bed.  We watched the show and fell asleep.  That was the last time I ever saw her.  The next day I woke and she wasn’t there.  I searched for hours before telling my mom.  I couldn’t believe that Lucy was gone.  The next two weeks I missed three days of school, and spent every waking hour looking for her.  I put up “Have You Seen This Dog” signs all over town, I don’t think I missed a telephone pole within city limits.  After the two-week mark my mother told me that she must have left because she was dying and she didn’t want me to see her die.  She also said that I had to quit searching and that Lucy was gone.  For the next month I searched for my dog in secret, telling my mom I was going to friends houses, but in reality I was still searching.  I never truly gave up looking until the day I moved to Minnesota.

I still today believe what my mother told me.  I believe it was Lucy’s time, and she left so that she wouldn’t be a burden to my family and I.  Lucy is one of the most influential beings in my life.  Through her I learned to never give up.  I also learned to love like there’s no tomorrow, (cliché but true) because with Lucy, there was no tomorrow, she was gone.  I never could have known that final night was my last with her.  I’m glad the way she went though.  My last memory I have of her was a good one.

The point of me telling Lucy’s story is to inspire a feeling of understanding in my faith in dogs.  I truly believe that dogs can be man’s best friend if given the chance.  When I grow to be a father, my kids are going to have a dog, because I believe that a dog is essential to the healthy upbringing of a child.

FAIL!!! 5/12/12

People fail.  I fail. You fail.  We all FAIL.  Failure nowadays is keyed as something funny in the younger/ teenage minds of America, and it should be seen as such.  Failure as a medium, can be quite funny in when looking back on it (however humiliating it was.)  It has been strewn across the internet as a form of comedy, such as Failblog, or in demotivationals like the picture above.

Thoughout life you will encounter fails beyond explanation, and you’ll have to learn to just roll with the punches to get along with your day.  Why just last week, a close friend of mine read her schedule wrong and was late for work.  But thats not the bad part, not only did she not realize she was late, but her boss had to call to make sure that she was going to open the store.  After a good ol’ chewing from The Boss, she went to open the store to find that over twelve angry customers were waiting for her upon her arrival.  And do you know what she did?  Nothing.  She acted like nothing had went wrong.  She just opened the store, clocked in, and went along with her job.  I came in a few hours after to work and talked to her about the mishap. She replied with laughter, explaining the story of her blunder to me like it was a joke.  Point is, she handled her situation in the best way she possibly could’ve.  She realized that she messed up, she didn’t let it ruin her day, and when she was teased about her mistake she laughed it off (though she was a little embarrased.)

Another example of failure comes from a president that many regard as one of the best.  His name was Lincoln.  First, at 21 years old Lincoln failed in business, after which was defeated in a legislative race at the age of 22.  Then he failed once again in business while 24; overcame the death of his long-time girlfriend at 26; had a nervous breakdown at 27; lost a congressional race at age of 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; at the age 47 he failed to become Vice President; lost a senatorial race at 49; and was elected as the President of the United States when he was 52.

Sometimes we fall, but when we choose to get back up again is where we truely fail.  Life isn’t going to end if on thanksgiving we forget to take out the turkey and burn it.  Your world won’t crumble if you fail an exam.  And people (for the most part) will understand if you mess up, because in all likelihood, they’ve been in the same situation as you.

Failing is a part of life, it is how we grow and evolve into someting greater than ourselves.  If not for failure I wouldn’t know what its like to be made fun of, and I wouldn’t stick up for the people who are.  And if it wasn’t for failure, I would never have understood what its like to have to fight for the things that matter to me.  I’d never have to worry about school or loved ones.  What would be the point of trying to get better at something if you’re never going to fail in the first place.  Without failure we wouldn’t grow, so when it happens learn from it, then laugh at it 😀

Good Eats – 5/5/12

Everyone knows that eating healthy is key to a good body.  Most know that eating healthy is key to a sound mind.  Little know that eating healthy, though stereotyped as the “bad tasting foods,” can actually be delicious and enjoyable if time is put into the meal.  Thats what this next post is on, tasty healthy food.

Healthy foods are essential in today’s lifestyle.  As I stated in my first post, people aren’t exercising as much as they should anymore.  Less exercising combined with an ever-growing fast-food market/restaurant business, American obesity rates are skyrocketing.  There’s also the fact that many people who are trying to lose weight, may only exercise, then go home and eat a juicy burger.  Or the other way around, when extreme dieters don’t exercise at all.

As I was flipping through blogs on WordPress I noticed one in particular.  This blog/post was on a recipe to make some sort of crab-mango-avocado-summer roll.  Needless to say it looked AMAZING!  In every recipe I list I’ll leave a link/a how to.  Without further ado…

Crab Summer Rolls,  these summer rolls are fantastic.  I’m not a quote unquote “health nut” but I love these;  you may have to do some searching to find a place with dehydrated spring rolls, but believe me, these are worth the effort.  With juicy crab back-fin, and salivating fresh cucumbers, this is definitely on my top ten healthy foods list, maybe even on my top ten foods list.

Jamba Juice Banana Berry Smoothie, Oh my God.  I almost forgot to include a banana recipe.  This is the perfect way to get hooked on healthy food.  It’s quick, its tasty, and its fairly cheap to make.  Though a few ingredients are hard to find, aka, strawberry nectar, and raspberry sherbet.  Most of the lesser ingredients can be exchanged for more readily available ones.  In fact I’d recommend taking out the raspberry sherbet if you’re looking to remove some extra calories from the drink.  Though Jamba Juice is a brand name, if you make it at home you won’t risk eating the extra preservatives, vendors have.  All in all this smoothie is the best tasting (and healthiest) smoothie I’ve ever eaten.

Tomato Bisque, I recently have tried this meal, all that can possibly be added to it is grilled cheese.  But without the grilled cheese aka the “healthy” version of this meal is terrific.  With fresh tomatoes, and delicious ground peppers this is a must for any soup fans.  Honestly, what more do I have to say, it’s tomato soup!  This really is one of the healthiest recipes on the list, I’d suggest trying it out.

Grilled Filet Mignon, I was honestly surprised to find a steak recipe in the midst of my “healthy” search.  Really, if your attention hasn’t been caught yet, this is where you’ll be changing your mind.  Versus the Tomato Bisque it may not look the most excentric, but it’s definetly much more hearty.  Eating healthy is nothing without enjoying what your eating, so why not pick up something that’s healthy and delicious.  It may not be the most healthy item on this list, but to me the taste-to-healthiness ratio is met perfectly in the recipe.  This is perfect for a person (man) who is cautious on eating healthy.  It’s an awesome meal that has “DELICIOUS” written all over it.

Lemon Pepper Chicken Salad, is my all time favorite food.  With only 300 calories per serving it is absolutely amazing.  The only change to the recipe I have is instead of a wrap/only salad.  Put everything into a Mexican-Style tortilla bowl.  Then the recipe has flavor, crunch, juice, and style.  Not only will your body thank you for the delicious treat, you’ll look like a five-star chef when your friends see this amazing meal.

Even most drinks can be healthier, its all up to the choice that a person drinks.  Here is a list of pictures to show exactly how unhealthy some drinks are.  If you pay attention to the drinks with a side to side comparison of, you’ll often (if not every time) notice that the homemade versions of the drinks are healthier than their brand name counterparts.  My personal favorite is the iced tea (next to the Snapple).

(I have no idea where you can get this, but I’m guessing if you want to die, drink it.)

If you haven’t tried eating healthy, any one of these recipes are great places to start.  If you are afraid of people stereotyping you as a “health nut” just eat the grilled filet mignon.  If you love seafood try the crab summer-roll.  All that it takes to start eating healthy is TO START.  Don’t drink diet soda, drink juice.  Don’t eat grilled chips, eat crackers/wafers.  If you eat healthy your body WILL thank you.  Be a trend setter, make the word healthy become synonymous with tasty, and try these recipes.

Let food be thy medicine, thy medicine shall be thy food.- Hippocrates

Stress – 5/9/12

The topic today is stress, and some of its causes.  Stress isn’t exactly something people can just not experience.  It’s something you cant avoid, but it is something that you can fight.  There are many sources to stress, to name a few, over complicating, over scheduling, feelings you bottle-up, ect.  Today I’m going to talk about the sources that are self-caused and with a little work and the right mind-set, can be avoided, remedied, or maybe even prevented.  Try to keep an open mind while reading, instead of just knodding some of these forms of stress relief off like they won’t work.

There’s only so much a person can do in a day, and there’s only so much people can take.  Sometimes people just have too much going on.   Over complicating things is extremely be detrimental to a persons health as well.  Over complicating leads to stress, and according to Melissa Stoppler MD, stress can cause  a syndrome specific to stress a.k.a. stress syndrome.  MD Stoppler goes as far to say that, “This syndrome consists of high blood pressure (hypertension), loss of appetite, weight loss, muscle wasting, gastrointestinal ulcers, loss of reproductive function, suppression of the immune system, and depression.”

Over complicating can be a serious source of stress.  According to multiple self-help-articles on stress over complicating can really stress you out.  I’ll speak from experience.  Two of the closest women to me in my life over-complicate FAR too often.  The first of the two, my mother.  She is constantly looking for things to do, and people to worry about.  Most times she’ll pull reasons to over-complicate her life out of thin air.  Needless to say this causes her, and I, an extreme amount of stress.  In fact, some of the only days I see her truely happy are the days she unwinds and makes time for her to vegetate.  Sometimes it’s as simple as finding a way to switch off, to get out of “work mode” and move into a little “veg-out mode.”  But with some people they just cannot switch off.  That’s where I’m led to close woman number two.

My girlfriend is the best person I know.  She’s got a heart of gold, but… she also has a life full of stress.  Most, if not all of the stress in her life is self-induced.  With a combination of over-complicating and over-scheduling, she’s constantly under the burden of stress.  She carries some sort of schedule around with her everywhere she goes(even if it’s only a mental one,) this of course leads her to constantly worry about being late, or not being able to complete her list of things to do.  Some days to calm her down, because she does become pretty high strung throughout the day, I’ll do a form of deep breathing exercises with her.  This form of stress relief is extremely efficient for both her and I.  Coming from experience it only takes about 3-5 minutes and you’ll start to feel your stress melting away.

Deep breathing exercises also help in other areas, such as anxiety, anger, and other ailments.  For more on deep breathing, click the hyperlink in the above paragraph, or watch the video below.

Throughout everyday-life, people in general tend to bottle-up their feelings so that they aren’t seen as politically-incorrect or any other form of being anti social/conflictional.  This so called “bottling” can (and will) affect a persons health if done too often.  Bottling emotions leads to not only stress, but also to physical harm as well.  Sometimes even crying can be beneficial to a persons health, crying is a form of emotional release after all.  People definitely SHOULD NOT go around crying and yelling 24-7  letting their emotions run wild, but a little emotional release is often key to living a happier, healthier, stress free life.  Actually, according to Dr. Jim Manganiello,

“If we deny and avoid our emotion(s), we run the risk of becoming physically ill,” and also, “Our immune system becomes weakened when we try to cover up our (emotions.) Studies at Southern Methodist University in Texas have shown that individuals who were encouraged and supported to express their emotions associated with traumatic experiences demonstrated an improvement in the function of their immune system. These people had less need to visit their physicians than did those who did not have the opportunity to express their feelings.”

And that’s where I’m led to my conclusion on stress.  There are many shapes and forms of stress to which we will all undertake.  Everyone goes through life and recieves their scars as such.  There are many ways to relieve stress, deep breathing exercises, relaxation time, and venting emotions.  If you cannot keep stress out of your life, try these few ways I’ve presented to cope and remedy stress.  With that, I’ll end on my two favorite and most used forms of stress relief.

1.  Deep Breathing Exercises:  As said before, I use it often to much prevail.  It’s quick, and extremely therapudic, especially if you listen to calming music while doing the exercises.

When you own your breath, nobody can steal your peace, Author Unknown.

2.  Venting:  Sometimes the most beutiful part of life is the fact that someone is almost always there to listen.  I wouldn’t recommend constantly complaining in a friends ear, but talk.  Friends can be one of the most therapudic and helpful things on the planet if you need to get something off your chest.

To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man’s heart,    Francesco Guicciardini.

 I can only say so much in one post, sometimes a little more research is needed in order to cure the stress that YOU have.  Some may need some help from the always relieable Dr. Oz, and some may need a stress ball.  You never know, everyone is different.   Overall I’d reccomend the one that you find works best.  For more information on stress relief, try the internet, or the links below.

Dr. Oz’s De-Stress Plan

25 Ways to Relieve Stress

10 MORE Ways to Relive Stress

Stress Relieving Tools

Yoga for Stress Relief

Do Something! – 4/26/2012

Who has ever gone skydiving?  What about B.A.S.E. jumping?  To do something so exhilarating has many beneficial effects.  Between  adrenaline, fun, to just flat out getting in shape, there’s so many ways to have fun and get some healthy exercise out of it.  For example, adrenaline/extreme sports.  It’s been found that utilizing your adrenaline can actually make you happier.   Adrenaline, once initiated, raises your blood pressure and makes your heart pump at a much higher rate than before the “rush.”  Though this could be detrimental if you have high blood pressure, it actually starts to positively affect you after the adrenaline wears off.  Once it’s worn off your natural feel-good hormones (including serotonin) are released throughout your systems to create a sense of calm and peace.  That’s why there are the thrill seekers in the world aka the “adrenaline junkies.”

One person that I can think of whose a world class adrenaline junkie is Felix Baumgartner.  Felix is one man whose not afraid to get out his front door and exercise.  He’s an extremist to say the least.  From B.A.S.E. jumping to skydiving, whatever makes his heart pump he does, needless to say he is a supporter of the outdoors.  In fact, he supports the outdoors so much he actually went SKYDIVING…  FROM SPACE!  Yes, the adrenaline junkies over at Red Bull and Felix collaborated together and pushed the edges of extreme sporting to go outside the stratosphere.  Felix is an international inspiration to get out the door and push the limits.

The morale of this post was to get everyone to get out of your house and do something!  Whether you’re going biking with friends, playing some basketball, or going spacediving….  The fact is that people (on average) aren’t exercising as much as they used to.  We all, with the exception of a small few, could gain a lot from going out for a run or maybe even on a treadmill.  Just run!  People on average only spend according to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) Americans spend approximately 90% of their leisure time sitting down, and on average over 80% of the time people have in their day is spent inside!  People of America, lose the chair, put on a pair of running shoes, and go outside!  Skiing in the winter, wake-boarding in the summer (it’s a blast,) and in the fall romp around in leaf piles your dad spent so much time on.  Well, besides that last one, seriously get out and enjoy some sun.

Put best by poet Carrie Latet, “Walking gets the feet moving, the blood moving, the mind moving.  And movement is life.”