Maintaining Weight Quotes

[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both. These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight... She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind.

The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It was the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law.

Being thin created intense anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that weight for life, and I couldn’t.

I'm only trying to pull my own weight. I don't want to be a liability.' She reached out, smiling. 'And I would imagine I'll still be required to maintain close contact with you while I learn. At least in the beginning.' He looked at their joined hands before turning his eyes to hers, a slow smile spreading across his own lips. 'It would be, ahem, wise to maintain physical contact while learning, that is true.

Break the rules and make up your own rules.

Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one in ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it another way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business.

I suffer from severe nerve damage in the hands, arms, legs and spine. My right leg is numb all the time and there are times when I cannot move either of my legs. In addition to this my C-T-L spine has severe disc herniation. I have Fibromyalgia, asthma, severe allergies, heart problems, bleeding ulcers and I eat maybe once every two or three days. I maintain body weight by drinking an average of 36 Pepsi’s per day.

Eating healthy can become a habit. Get past the first 30 days and it will be easier.

Regardless of what you do, your body is the subject of public discourse with family, friends, and strangers alike. Your body is subject to commentary when you gain weight, lose weight, or maintain your unacceptable weight. People are quick to offer you statistics and information about the dangers of obesity, as if you are not only fat but also incredibly stupid, unaware, delusional about the realities of your body and a world that is vigorously inhospitable to that body. This commentary is often couched as concern, as people only having your best interests at heart. They forget that you are a person. You are your body, nothing more, and your body should damn well become less.

Before you let your doctor give you testosterone shots or pills, try to boost it naturally by dramatically decreasing or even eliminating sugar, wheat, and processed foods from your diet. A sugar burst has been found to lower testosterone levels by up to 25 percent. If you and your sweetheart share the cheesecake at the restaurant, no one is likely to get “dessert” when you get home! Another way to naturally boost your testosterone level is to start a weight-training program. Building muscle helps your body increase its testosterone levels. The supplements DHEA and zinc can also help. Zinc is necessary to maintain

I slammed the water off hard enough to make it clack, got out of the shower, dried, and started getting dressed in a fresh set of secondhand clothes. “Why do you wear those?” asked Lacuna. I jumped, stumbled, and shouted half of a word to a spell, but since I was only halfway done putting on my underwear, I mostly just fell on my naked ass. “Gah!” I said. “Don’t do that!” My miniature captive came to the edge of the dresser and peered down at me. “Don’t ask questions?” “Don’t come in here all quiet and spooky and scare me like that!” “You’re six times my height, and fifty times my weight,” Lacuna said gravely. “And I’ve agreed to be your captive. You don’t have any reason to be afraid.” “Not afraid,” I snapped back. “Startled. It isn’t wise to startle a wizard!” “Why not?” “Because of what could happen!” “Because they might fall down on the floor?” “No!” I snarled. Lacuna frowned and said, “You aren’t very good at answering questions.” I started shoving myself into my clothes. “I’m starting to agree with you.” “So why do you wear those?” I blinked. “Clothes?” “Yes. You don’t need them unless it’s cold or raining.” “You’re wearing clothes.” “I am wearing armor. For when it is raining arrows. Your T-shirt will not stop arrows.” “No, it won’t.” I sighed. Lacuna peered at my shirt. “Aer-O-Smith. Arrowsmith. Does the shirt belong to your weapon dealer?” “No.” “Then why do you wear the shirt of someone else’s weapon dealer?” That was frustrating in so many ways that I could avoid a stroke only by refusing to engage. “Lacuna,” I said, “humans wear clothes. It’s one of the things we do. And as long as you are in my service, I expect you to do it as well.” “Why?” “Because if you don’t, I  .  .  . I  .  .  . might pull your arms out of your sockets.” At that, she frowned. “Why?” “Because I have to maintain discipline, don’t I?” “True,” she said gravely. “But I have no clothes.” I counted to ten mentally. “I’ll  .  .  . find something for you. Until then, no desocketing. Just wear the armor. Fair enough?” Lacuna bowed slightly at the waist. “I understand, my lord.” “Good.” I sighed. I flicked a comb through my wet hair, for all the good it would do, and said, “How do I look?” “Mostly human,” she said. “That’s what I was going for.” “You have a visitor, my lord.” I frowned. “What?” “That is why I came in here. You have a visitor waiting for you.” I stood up, exasperated. “Why didn’t you say so?” Lacuna looked confused. “I did. Just now. You were there.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have brain damage.” “It would not shock me in the least,” I said. “Would you like me to cut open your skull and check, my lord?” she asked. Someone that short should not be that disturbing. “I  .  .  . No. No, but thank you for the offer.” “It is my duty to serve,” Lacuna intoned. My life, Hell’s bells.

You can eat anything you want, just not everything you want!

It's never too late to start eating right.

Every maid in court has been told that we must maintain a certain weight for the aesthetic preference of the Sea King and his mer-men.

It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.     41

We leave partners using the framework of opportunity costs as we’re convinced there are better options out there; we lose weight to become more appealing and raise our value in the marketplace. We maintain beauty because attractiveness is an endowment, which improves one’s chances of finding love.

Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she, From water the color of sky except where Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver, Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips With fluent silver. The man, Some ten strokes out, but now hanging Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet Cold with the coldness of depth, all History dissolving from him, is Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees The body that is marked by his use, and Time's, Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air, Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is, And is the stab of, suddenly perceived grace, breasts bulge down in The pure curve of their weight and buttocks Moon up and, in swelling unity, Are silver and glimmer. Then The body is erect, she is herself, whatever Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand, Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but With face lifted toward the high sky, where The over-wash of rose color now fails. Fails, though no star Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten, Does not move now. The gaze Remains fixed on the sky. The body, Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light In the sky yet lingers or, from The metallic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body, With the towel now trailing loose from one hand, is A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high sky. This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits Of no definition, for it Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which Definition might be possible. The woman, Face yet raised, wraps, With a motion as though standing in sleep, The towel about her body, under her breasts, and, Holding it there hieratic as lost Egypt and erect, Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds Into the clamber and tangle of growth. Beyond The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man, Suspended in his darkling medium, stares Upward where, though not visible, he knows She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only He had such strength, he would put his hand forth And maintain it over her to guard, in all Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather Might ever be. In his heart he cries out. Above Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, he sees The first star pulse into being. It gleams there. I do not know what promise it makes him.

I tend to imagine the self-regulating system like little gremlins hoping on the pain side of the balance to counteract the weight on the pleasure side. The gremlins represent the work of homeostasis, the tendency of any living system to maintain physiologic equilibrium. Once the balance is level, it keeps going, tipping an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain. In the 1970s social scientists Richard Solomon and John Corbett called this reciprocal relationship between pleasure and pain "The Opponent Process Theory". Any prolonged or repeated departure from hedonic or adaptive neutrality has a cost. That cost is an after-reaction, that is opposite in value to the stimulus, or as the old saying goes: "What goes up, must come down".

Don’t you think I understand? The hopeless dream of being. Not seeming, but being. Conscious at every moment. Vigilant. At the same time, the chasm between what you are to others and to yourself. The feeling of vertigo and the constant desire to at last be exposed — to be seen through, cut down, perhaps even annihilated. Every tone of voice is a lie, every gesture a falsehood, every smile a grimace. Commit suicide? Oh, no. That’s ugly. You don’t do that. But you can be immobile. You can fall silent. Then, at least, you don’t lie. You can close yourself in, shut yourself off. Then you don’t have to play roles, show any faces, or make false gestures. You think…but you see, reality is bloody-minded. Your hideout isn’t watertight. Life seeps in everything. You’re forced to react. No one asks if it’s real or unreal, if you’re true or false. It’s only in the theater the question carries weight — hardly even, there. I understand you, Elisabet. I understand your keeping silent, your immobility. That you’ve placed this lack of will into a fantastic system... I understand and I admire you. I think you should maintain this role until it’s played out, until it’s not longer interesting. Then you can leave it, just as you bit-by-bit leave all your roles.

I have argued that this sort of thinking is problematic in at least two regards: First, the notion that nonhuman animals do not have an interest in continued existence—that they do not have an interest in their lives—involves relying on a speciesist concept of what sort of self-awareness matters morally. I have argued that every sentient being necessarily has an interest in continued existence—every sentient being values her or his life—and that to say that only those animals (human animals) who have a particular sort of self-awareness have an interest in not being treated as commodities begs the fundamental moral question. Even if, as some maintain, nonhuman animals live in an “eternal present”—and I think that is empirically not the case at the very least for most of the nonhumans we routinely exploit who do have memories of the past and a sense of the future—they have, in each moment, an interest in continuing to exist. To say that this does not count morally is simply speciesist. Second, even if animals do not have an interest in continuing to live and only have interests in not suffering, the notion that, as a practical matter, we will ever be able to accord those interests the morally required weight is simply fantasy. The notion that we property owners are ever going to accord any sort of significant weight to the interests of property in not suffering is simply unrealistic. Is it possible in theory? Yes. Is it possible as a matter of practicality in the real world. Absolutely not. Welfarists often talk about treating “farmed animals” in the way that we treat dogs and cats whom we love and regard as members of our family. Does anyone really think that is practically possible? The fact that we would not think of eating our dogs and cats is some indication that it is not.

I recently read that 99% of dieters fail to maintain their weight loss and, given my past experience, that statistic feels true to me!

Feast and fast. It has been easy for me to maintain my weight loss and health since.

Remember only to learn

We have to face the truth that we detect each others thoughts, no matter how far the distance.

Avoiding temptation is much easier than resisting it.

What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.

Eating when you’re hungry helps maintain your setpoint and keep you at the weight that’s right for you, and denying your hunger leads to compensatory mechanisms that trigger fat storage and weight gain.

Suddenly, she couldn't breathe. He was close now, his eyes bright, burning. She'd never seen such tightly restrained emotion in his face or in the lines of his body. His desire was so potent it was intoxicating; she felt herself tremble under the weight of it. He wanted to touch her--she knew this, she saw it in the rigid control he maintained over his hands, in the stiffness of his stance, in the way he moved incrementally closer until she saw nothing but him. His eyes dropped to her lips and his own lips parted, drew breath. He exhaled shakily. She worried that if she said a word, she might combust.

Based on the newly discovered function of leptin in muscle, the necessity of consistent exercise to maintain health has never been more important.139 People who have been in a consistent exercise program and have slipped out of the pattern will notice that this was an adverse turning point in their health. Conversely, people who get into a good exercise pattern notice an improvement in health. Individuals

Things that we do every day make up who we are and the results we have in our life. Bank accounts collect from constant deposits and good health is achieved or maintained from what we put into our bodies daily.

Wrangham cites several studies indicating that in fact humans don’t do well on raw food: they can’t maintain their body weight, and half of the women on a raw-food regimen stop menstruating. Devotees of raw food rely heavily on juicers and blenders, because otherwise they would have to spend as much time chewing as the chimps do. It is difficult, if not impossible, to extract sufficient energy from unprocessed plant matter to power a body with such a big, hungry brain.

Your setpoint is: • The weight you maintain when you listen and respond to your body’s signals of hunger and fullness. • The weight you maintain when you don’t fixate on your weight or food habits. • The weight you keep returning to between diets.

Unhelpfully, a friend of the family reminded me, 'You know, Andrea, losing weight is the easy part. It's maintaining it that's really hard.' This sentiment made me seethe. How dare anyone minimize that struggle, that agonizing journey of losing weight?

Contrary to the popular belief that educators across the world have typically been agents for progressive racial change, the weight of the evidence suggests that most educational systems and most educators operate to maintain racial hierarchy rather than to challenge it.

When you are inquiring into any subject, maintain a due regard to the arguments and objections on both sides of a question; consider, compare, and balance them well, before you determine for one side. It is a frequent, but a very faulty practice, to hunt after arguments only to make good one side of a question, and entirely to neglect and refuse those which favour the others side. If we have not given a due weight to arguments on both sides, we do but willfully misguide our judgment, and abuse our reason by forbidding its search after truth.

(1) Sit erect, in an easy posture, being sure to hold the chest, neck and head as nearly in a straight line as possible, with shoulders slightly thrown back and hands resting easily on the lap. In this position the weight of the body is largely supported by the ribs and the position may be easily maintained. The Yogi has found that one cannot get the best effect of rhythmic breathing with the chest drawn in and the abdomen protruding. (2) Inhale slowly a Complete Breath, counting six pulse units. (3) Retain, counting three pulse units. (4) Exhale slowly through the nostrils, counting six pulse units. (5) Count three pulse beats between breaths. (6) Repeat a number of times, but avoid fatiguing yourself at the start. (7) When you are ready to close the exercise, practice cleansing breath, which will rest you and cleanse the lungs.

In addition to the potential to cause health problems, lectins can also stimulate weight gain. The reason that wheat became the grain of choice in northern climates is thanks to a uniquely small lectin in wheat, known as wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), which is responsible for wheat’s weight-gaining propensity. You read that correctly. Wheat helped your ancestors gain or maintain weight in ancient times when food was often scarce; back then, a “wheat belly” was a great thing to possess! And guess what? That WGA in the “ancient” forms of wheat is just as present in modern wheat—hence the weight gain.

Any diabetic can maintain normal blood sugars eating a stick of butter; only a cured diabetic can maintain the same feat eating a banana. As I detailed in How Not to Die, diabetes truly can be reversed this way with a healthy enough diet, sometimes in a matter of weeks and even without weight loss.4205

Now, I’m not a fan of fad diets. They simply don’t work long term because they’re either too restrictive or they don’t emphasize a lifestyle that can be maintained. The truth is that the people who follow fad diets do so in a “yo-yo” fashion. They lose weight and then put it back on. Sometimes they’ll even gain more weight. In my opinion, fad diets are usually one step forward, two steps back. Really, the only way to maintain an optimal weight is to focus on lifestyle modification. Weight loss is a simple equation, but is hard to do in the real world. The “magical” formula is to expend more energy than you take in.

Leon's life was all about discipline. He'd heard a weight-loss guru once explain that the key to maintaining a slim figure was to really "listen to your body" and only eat until it signaled that it was full. Leon had listened to his body. It wanted three entire pepperoni and mushroom pizzas every single day, plus a rather large cake. And malted milkshakes, the old fashioned kind you could make in your kitchen with an antique Hamilton Beech machine in avocado-colored plastic, served up in a tall red anodized aluminum cup. Leon's body was extremely verbose on what it wanted him to shovel into it. So Leon ignored his body.

Nor need we fear that this philosophy, while it endeavors to limit our inquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever. Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger that these reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery. If the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step, it must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its influence as long as human nature remains the same. What that principle is may well be worth the pains of inquiry.

Feeling Faint Issue: I’m happy losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet, but I’m always tired, get light headed when I stand up, and if I exercise for more than 10 minutes I feel like I’m going to pass out. Response: Congratulations on your weight loss success, and with just a small adjustment to your diet, you can say goodbye to your weakness and fatigue. The solution is salt…a bit more salt to be specific. This may sound like we’re crazy when many experts argue that we should all eat less salt, however these are the same experts who tell us that eating lots of carbohydrates and sugar is OK. But what they don’t tell you is that your body functions very differently when you are keto-adapted. When you restrict carbs for a week or two, your kidneys switch from retaining salt to rapidly excreting it, along with a fair amount of stored water. This salt and water loss explains why many people experience rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks on a low carbohydrate diet. Ridding your body of this excess salt and water is a good thing, but only up to a point. After that, if you don’t replace some of the ongoing sodium excretion, the associated water loss can compromise your circulation The end result is lightheadedness when you stand up quickly or fatigue if you exercise enough to get ‘warmed up’. Other common side effects of carbohydrate restriction that go away with a pinch of added salt include headache and constipation; and over the long term it also helps the body maintain its muscles. The best solution is to include 1 or 2 cups of bouillon or broth in your daily schedule. This adds only 1-2 grams of sodium to your daily intake, and your ketoadapted metabolism insures that you pass it right on through within a matter of hours (allaying any fears you might have of salt buildup in your system). This rapid clearance also means that on days that you exercise, take one dose of broth or bouillon within the hour before you start.

Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism describes how despair Of the future leads people to fixate on youth. The Rites teach women to fear our own futures, our own wants. To live in fear of one’s body and one’s life is not to live at all. The resulting life-fearing neuroses are everywhere. They are in the woman who will take a lover, go to Nepal, learn to skydive, swim naked, demand a raise, “when she loses this weight”—but in the eternal meantime maintains her vow of chastity or self-denial. They are in the woman who can never enjoy a meal, who never feels thin enough, or that the occasion is special enough, to drop her guard and become one with the moment. They are in the woman whose horror of wrinkles is so great that the lines around her eyes shine with sacred oil, whether at a party or while making love. Women must await forever the arrival of the angel of use, the bridegroom who will dignify the effort and redeem the cost; whose presence will allow us to inhabit and use our “protected” faces and bodies. The expense is too high to let us fire the wick, to burn our own fuel to the last drop and live by our own light in our own time. Where the Rites of Beauty have instilled these life-fearing neuroses in modern women, they paralyze in us the implications of our new freedoms, since it profits women little if we gain the whole world only to fear ourselves.

If your people spent less time maintaining their own devalued myths about themselves and more upon studying the world as it is I think your city would have a greater chance of surviving. As it is, the place is crumbling beneath the weight of its own degraded fictions. The legends which offer a race their sense of pride and history eventually become putrid.

Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the Word of God itself begins to grow in us, comes to fruit in us, ripens in us the spiritual journey of a lifetime. So goes the liturgical year through all the days of our lives. /it concentrates us on the two great poles of the faith - the birth and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But as Christmas and Easter trace the life of Jesus for us from beginning to end, the liturgical year does even more: it also challenges our own life and vision and sense of meaning. Both a guide to greater spiritual maturity and a path to a deepened spiritual life, the liturgical year leads us through all the great questions of faith as it goes. It rehearses the dimensions of life over and over for us all the years of our days. It leads us back again and again to reflect on the great moments of the life of Jesus and so to apply them to our own ... As the liturgical year goes on every day of our lives, every season of every year, tracing the steps of Jesus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, so does our own life move back and forth between our own beginnings and endings, between our own struggles and triumphs, between the rush of acclamation and the crush of abandonment. It is the link between Jesus and me, between this life and the next, between me and the world around me, that is the gift of the liturgical year. The meaning and message of the liturgical year is the bedrock on which we strike our own life's direction. Rooted in the Resurrection promise of the liturgical year, whatever the weight of our own pressures, we maintain the course. We trust in the future we cannot see and do only know because we have celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus year after year. In His life we rest our own. ― Joan D. Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life - The Ancient Practices Series

Like other forms of mass, fat can’t just disappear, and it tries to maintain a state of equilibrium. So if one person in a given microcosm loses weight, someone else in the same group has to gain. It’s the basic physics of fat and, unfortunately, my little niche of the universe seems to be populated with a bunch of persistent, consistent losers who keep trying to shift their share of the fat onto me.

He broke the kiss. "Say my name, Martise." He snarled the command, but she wasn't afraid. His hips rocked against hers, and she was impaled on his cock, reveling in his fierce possession. For a few brief hours, he was as much hers as she was his, and she could tell him how much he meant to her in a softly spoken name. Every desire, every craving, every forbidden wish—she infused into her voice. “Silhara.” He gasped, a tortured sound, and his eyes rolled back. Martise clutched him to her as he shuddered, felt the sudden pulse of his shaft, his release followed by a wet heat as he came inside her. He hunched over her, chest heaving as he strove to breathe. She clasped his hips with her legs to maintain their connection, reluctant to give him up. He slowly lowered his weight onto her, careful not to crush her.

But maintaining the primacy of the individual-lifestyle focus—without being transparent about larger influences—is an affront to people living in disadvantage, as it reduces their ill health to poor “choices”and blames them, all the while contributing to the stigma and judgmental thinking that fuels their oppression, worsens their health, and expands the health divide between the advantaged and disadvantaged.

board, and as the law of energy balance dictates, you’ll still lose weight. But if you hold the protein steady, or even increase the protein, it’s more likely that all the weight you lose will be fat. Maintaining muscle isn’t the only advantage: Protein also suppresses hunger and increases metabolism more than any other macronutrient. That makes three major advantages to keeping protein high when calories are low.

It was at that moment that Markisha decided to apply for CalWORKs. She’d rented a room in an apartment she shared with a barber in her neighborhood, and she needed some help paying for it. CalWORKs meant three hundred dollars a month, plus food stamps. So she went to the local welfare office—a “Family Resource Center,” known as an FRC—and walked inside. She was barely sober, emotionally a wreck, literally penniless, and her entire ambition in life was to keep and maintain a room and a half in a rundown section of west San Diego without having to sell her body to pay the rent. This is the kind of person at whom the weight of the state’s financial fraud prosecution apparatus tends to be trained in America. Markisha entered the financial fraud patrol zone when she walked through those doors at the FRC. For three hundred dollars a month, she was about to become more heavily scrutinized by the state than any twelve Wall Street bankers put together. The amounts of money spent in these kinds of welfare programs are very small, but the levels of political capital involved are mountainous. You can always score political points banging on black welfare moms on meth. And the bureaucracy she was about to enter reflects that intense, bitterly contemptuous interest.

Evil is by nature fearful and superstitious; therefore it boasts. And thus boasting it succumbs, not to the power of good, but to its own inherent weakness. The premise of evil is a lie that must be compounded to be maintained, until it collapses of its own weight. Hence its downfall, though not immediate, is inevitable. This then is the true power of good: that good need exert so little to flourish, while evil must give all, and still fail.

Everything goes away; your dark circles, your wrinkles, your spots and your acne. The layers of your skin don’t define who you are as a person, who you are to yourself, to the people around you and who you are to the world. Take care of your health, try to maintain a proper weight and diet. Always take care of yourself, your mind and your heart. Eat healthy, exercise, run, jump, relax but, don’t chase beauty. Don’t spend hours worrying about your skin or hair color.

Our body is like a machine. If we constantly run the machinery at high speed, it will wear out faster. Since animals with slower metabolic rates live longer, eating more calories, which drives up our metabolic rate, will cause us only to age faster. Contrary to what you may have heard and read in the past, our goal should be the opposite: to eat less, only as much as we need to maintain a slim and muscular weight, and no more, so as to keep our metabolic rate relatively slow.

Curran smiled. “What’s so funny?” “Your panties have a bow,” he said. I looked down. I was wearing a short tank top—not mine—and my blue panties with a narrow white strip of lace at the top and a tiny white bow. Would it have killed me to check what I was wearing before I pulled the blanket down? “What’s wrong with bows?” “Nothing.” He was grinning now. “I expected barbed wire. Or one of those steel chains.” Wiseass. “I’m secure enough in myself to wear panties with bows on them. Besides, they are comfy and soft.” “I bet.” He almost purred. I gulped. Okay, I needed to either crawl back into bed and cover myself with the blanket or get the hell to the bathroom and back. Since I didn’t fancy peeing on myself, the bathroom was my only option. “I don’t suppose you’d mind giving me a bit of privacy for my trip?” “Not a chance,” he said. I tried to get off the bed. Everything was under control until my weight actually hit my legs and then the room decided to crawl sideways. Curran caught me. His arm hugged my back, his touch sending an electric shiver along my skin. Oh no. “Need some help, ass kicker?” “I’m fine, thanks.” I pushed away from him. He held on to me for a second, letting me know that he could restrain me against my will with laughable ease, and let go. I clenched my teeth. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll be back on my feet soon. I walked away from him, successfully maintaining vertical position, and zeroed in on the nearest door. “That’s the closet.

Is it true it takes thirteen months for a female to carry and give birth?” “Minimum.” He said it with such casual dismissal that Bella laughed. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to lug the kid around inside of you all that time. You, just like your human counterparts, have the fun part over with like that.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. His dark eyes narrowed and he reached to enclose her hand in his, pulling her wrist up to the slow, purposeful brush of his lips even as he maintained a sensual eye contact that was far too full of promises. Isabella caught her breath as an insidious sensation of heated pins and needles stitched its way up her arm. “I promise you, Bella, a male Demon’s part in a mating is never over like this.” He mimicked her snap, making her jump in time to her kick-starting heartbeat. “Well”—she cleared her throat—“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.” Jacob did not respond in agreement, and that unnerved her even further. Instinctively, she changed tack. “So, what brings you down into the dusty atmosphere of the great Demon library?” she asked, knowing she sounded like a brightly animated cartoon. “You.” Oh, how that singular word was pregnant with meaning, intent, and devastatingly blatant honesty. Isabella was forced to remind herself of the whole Demon-human mating taboo as the forbidden response of heat continued to writhe around beneath her skin, growing exponentially in intensity every moment he hovered close. She tried to picture all kinds of scary things that could happen if she did not quit egging him on like she was. How she was, she didn’t know, but she was always certain she was egging him on. “Why did you want to see me?” she asked, breaking away from him and bending to retrieve the book she had dropped. It was huge and heavy and she grunted softly under the weight of it. It landed with a slam and another puff of dust on the table she had made into her own private study station. “Because I cannot seem to help myself, lovely little Bella.

2 cups water 1 tablespoon whole cloves 1 teabag green tea 1 teaspoon FOS powder 2 teaspoons allulose (optional) Additional sweetener to taste 1 cinnamon stick (optional) In a small saucepan, combine the water and cloves and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cover to maintain a low simmer for 10 minutes. Add the teabag in the last 1–2 minutes of simmering, then remove from heat. Discard teabag. Stir in the FOS, optional allulose, other sweetener, and optional cinnamon stick, and serve or sip throughout the day. MATCHA,

One might object that [debt peonage] was just assumed to be in the nature of things: like the imposition of tribute on conquered populations, it might have been resented, but it wasn’t considered a moral issue, a matter of right and wrong. Some things just happen. This has been the most common attitude of peasants to such phenomena throughout human history. What’s striking about the historical record is that in the case of debt crises, this was not how many reacted. Many actually did become indignant. So many, in fact, that most of our contemporary language of social justice, our way of speaking of human bondage and emancipation, continues to echo ancient arguments about debt. It’s particularly striking because so many other things do seem to have been accepted as simply in the nature of things. One does not see a similar outcry against caste systems, for example, or for that matter, the institution of slavery. Surely slaves and untouchables often experienced at least equal horrors. No doubt many protested their condition. Why was it that the debtors’ protests seemed to carry such greater moral weight? Why were debtors so much more effective in winning the ear of priests, prophets, officials, and social reformers? Why was it that officials like Nehemiah were willing to give such sympathetic consideration to their complaints, to inveigh, to summon great assemblies? Some have suggested practical reasons: debt crises destroyed the free peasantry, and it was free peasants who were drafted into ancient armies to fight in wars. Rulers thus had a vested interest in maintaining their recruitment base. No doubt this was a factor; clearly, it wasn’t the only one. There is no reason to believe that Nehemiah, for instance, in his anger at the usurers, was primarily concerned with his ability to levy troops for the Persian king. It had to be something deeper. What makes debt different is that it is premised on an assumption of equality. To be a slave, or lower caste, is to be intrinsically inferior. These are relations of unadulterated hierarchy. In the case of debt, we are talking about two individuals who begin as equal parties to a contract. Legally, at least as far as the contract is concerned, they are the same.

The nature of this steel is odd. I found that as I increased its weight little by little, the effect was like a pair of scales: the bulk of muscles placed, as it were, on the other pan increased proportionately, as though the steel had a duty to maintain a strict balance between the two. Little by little, moreover, the properties of my muscles came increasingly to resemble those of the steel. This slow development, I found, was remarkably similar to the process of education, which remodels the brain intellectually by feeding it with progressively more difficult matter.

While physical activity is a key aspect of the Foundation and has many emotional and physical benefits, people often assume that its most important benefit is something that, ironically, it doesn’t provide: exercise doesn’t promote weight loss. It seems to help people maintain their weight—active people are less likely to gain or regain weight than inactive people—but it’s not associated with weight loss. There are many compelling reasons to exercise, but study after study shows that weight loss isn’t one of them. The way to lose weight is to change eating habits. Third:

Top 10 Actions to Reduce Your Risk for Illness Taking these actions today can reduce your risk of becoming sick, especially for the two most dreaded diseases in later life: cancer and dementia. 1. Eat real food on a regular schedule. 2. Avoid vitamins and supplements. 3. Discuss aspirin and statins with your doctor when you are staring at age forty. 4. Follow the prescribed cancer screening schedules. 5. Exercise regularly and move during the day. 6. Maintain a healthy weight. 7. Avoid tobacco products. 8. Avoid direct sun exposure without sunscreen. 9. Avoid sources of inflammation. 10. Get a yearly flu shot.

What can we do to maintain slowness in the face of those periods of busyness? How can we avoid overload, exhaustion, or even burnout? Perhaps unsurprisingly, my answer is simply to pay attention. I recognize the way I'm inclined to stay up late, the way I will procrastinate at every option- and instead of spiraling into that overwhelming sense of too much, I check in with myself. Why am I feeling this way? What has changed? What is there more of? What is there less of? Become better at recognizing the signs of a looming backslide and pay close attention to the areas of our lives that have the greatest impact, ensuring they never slip too far out of hand. Nicholas Bate refers to this regular checking in as "taking your MEDS" or more specifically, paying attention to: - Mindfulness - Exercise - Diet - Sleep Once I recognize which of these areas has changed, its simpler (not necessarily easier) to recognize the issue and start fixing it. Sometimes the changes aren't in my control, so I need to look for ways of finding slow by creating more opportunities for a moment of deep breathing or paying close attention to whats in front of me. But other times, I've simply lost sight of what works, and its a matter of adding more of these things I've neglected- Mindfulness, simplicity, kindness- and reducing the things that don't serve me well. Above all else, though, I simply go back to my Why. I call to mind the foundation of this life I want. The vivid imaging of a life well lived. The loved ones, the generosity, the adventure, and the world I want to leave behind. And if that feels too big, I call to mind even smaller reminders, like the warm pressure of my kids hands in mine, the wholeness of a good conversation with Ben, the lightness of simply sitting quietly. Our Why is the antidote to overload. Its a call back to the important things and a reminder that we don't need to carry the weight of everything- only those things that are important to us.

Downstairs in the body, sleep restocks the armory of our immune system, helping fight malignancy, preventing infection, and warding off all manner of sickness. Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. Sleep further regulates our appetite, helping control body weight through healthy food selection rather than rash impulsivity. Plentiful sleep maintains a flourishing microbiome within your gut from which we know so much of our nutritional health begins. Adequate sleep is intimately tied to the fitness of our cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure while keeping our hearts in fine condition.

Seeking, finding, maintaining, and safeguarding our well-being is the great project to which we all are devoted, whether or not we choose to think in these terms. This is not to say that we want mere pleasure or the easiest possible life. Many things require extraordinary effort to accomplish, and some of us learn to enjoy the struggle. Any athlete knows that certain kinds of pain can be exquisitely pleasurable. The burn of lifting weights, for instance, would be excruciating if it were a symptom of terminal illness. But because it is associated with health and fitness, most people find it enjoyable. Here we see that cognition and emotion are not separate. The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it.

Sadhana You can experiment: arrange the best possible meal for yourself, get angry with something, curse the whole world, and then eat it. You will see that day how food behaves within you. At the next meal, approach your food with the reverence that the life-making material deserves and eat it. You will now see how it will behave within you. (Of course, if you’re sensible, you’ll ignore the first and only do the second!) Most people can bring down the quantum of food they are eating to a third and be much more energetic and not lose weight. It is just a question of how much receptivity you have created within yourself. Accordingly your body receives. If you can do the same amount of work, maintain all the bodily processes, with thirty percent of the food that you eat, that definitely means you are running a much more efficient machine.

Future Europe’s problems are many, but four stand out. The first is energy: The Europeans are more dependent upon energy imports than the Asians, and no two major European countries think that problem can be solved the same way. The Germans fear that not having a deal with the Russians means war. The Poles want a deal with anyone but Russia. The Spanish know the only solution is in the Western Hemisphere. The Italians fear they must occupy Libya. The French want to force a deal on Algeria. The Brits are eyeing West Africa. Everyone is right. Everyone is wrong. The second is demographic: The European countries long ago aged past the point of even theoretical repopulation, meaning that the European Union is now functionally an export union. Without the American-led Order, the Europeans lose any possibility of exporting goods, which eliminates the possibility of maintaining European society in its current form. The third is economic preference: Perhaps it is mostly subconscious these days, but the Europeans are aware of their bloody history. A large number of conscious decisions were made by European leaders to remodel their systems with a socialist bent so their populations would be vested within their collective systems. This worked. This worked well. But only in the context of the Order with the Americans paying for the bulk of defense costs and enabling growth that the Europeans could have never fostered themselves. Deglobalize and Europe’s demographics and lack of global reach suggest that permanent recession is among the better interpretations of the geopolitical tea leaves. I do not see a path forward in which the core of the European socialist-democratic model can survive. The fourth and final problem: Not all European states are created equal. For every British heavyweight, there is a Greek basket case. For every insulated France, there is a vulnerable Latvia. Some countries are secure or rich or have a tradition of power projection. Others are vulnerable or poor or are little more than historical doormats. Perhaps worst of all, the biggest economic player (Germany) is the one with no options but to be the center weight of everything, while the two countries with the greatest capacity to go solo (France and the United Kingdom) hedged their bets and never really integrated with the rest of Europe. There’s little reason to expect the French to use their reach to benefit Europe, and there’s no reason to expect assistance from the British, who formally seceded from the European Union in 2020. History,

When researchers with the National Weight Control Registry examined the tactics used by successful dieters, they found that two characteristics, in particular, stood out. People who successfully maintain weight loss typically eat breakfast every morning. They also weigh themselves each day. Part of the reason why these habits matter is practical: Eating a healthy breakfast makes it less likely you will snack later in the day, according to studies. And frequently measuring your weight allows us—sometimes almost subconsciously—to see how changing our diets influences the pounds lost. But just as important is the mental boost that daily, incremental weight loss provides. The small win of dropping even half a pound can provide the dose of momentum we need to stick with a diet. We need to see small victories to believe a long battle will be won.

In retrospect, the influential figures in the clinical investigation of human obesity in the 1970s can be divided into two groups. There were those who believed carbohydrate-restricted diets were the only efficacious means of weight control—Denis Craddock, Robert Kemp, John Yudkin, Alan Howard, and Ian McLean Baird in England, and Bruce Bistrian and George Blackburn in the U.S.—and wrote books to that effect, or developed variations on these diets with which they could treat patients. These men invariably struggled to maintain credibility. Then there were those who refused to accept that carbohydrate restriction offered anything more than calorie restriction in disguise—Bray, Van Itallie, Cahill, Hirsch, and their fellow club members. These men rarely if ever treated obese patients themselves, and they repeatedly suggested that since no diet worked nothing was to be learned by studying diets.

The Neanderthals had it tougher; their long spears and canyon ambushes were useless against the fleet prairie creatures, and the big game they preferred was retreating deeper into the dwindling forests. Well, why didn’t they just adopt the hunting strategy of the Running Men? They were smart and certainly strong enough, but that was the problem; they were too strong. Once temperatures climb above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a few extra pounds of body weight make a huge difference—so much so that to maintain heat balance, a 160-pound runner would lose nearly three minutes per mile in a marathon against a one hundred-pound runner. In a two-hour pursuit of a deer, the Running Men would leave the Neanderthal competition more than ten miles behind. Smothered in muscle, the Neanderthals followed the mastodons into the dying forest, and oblivion. The new world was made for runners, and running just wasn’t their thing. Privately,

And on the horizon, along the Cordillera where rock and sky met, there was that strange color, somewhere between violet and purple, which he had seen reproduced on so many Indian skirts and shawls and on the woolen bags the campesinos hung from the ears of their llamas; for him it was the color of the Andes, of this mysterious, violent sierra. Besides, thanks to these hills, Naccos had an aura, a magic power. Danger always attracts us. Doesn’t it represent true life, life that’s worthwhile? But security is boredom, it’s stupidity, it’s death. These mountains are full of ancient tombs.Without those presences there wouldn’t be so many spirits in this part of the Andes. In the old days people had the courage to face great troubles by making sacrifices. That’s how they maintained the balance. Life and death like a scale with two equal weights, like two rams of equal strength that lock horns and neither one can advance or retreat.

A highway, a bridge, a navigable canal, for example, may in most cases be both made and maintained by a small toll upon the carriages which make use of them: a harbour, by moderate port-duty upon the tonnage of the shipping which load or unload in it. The coinage, another institution for facilitating commerce, in many countries, not only defrays its own expense, but affords a small revenue or seignorage to the sovereign. The post-office, another institution for the same purpose, over and above defraying its own expense, affords in almost all countries a very considerable revenue to the sovereign. When the carriages which pass over a highway or a bridge, and the lighters which sail upon a navigable canal, pay toll in proportion to their weight or their tonnage, they pay for the maintenance of those public works exactly in proportion to the wear and tear which they occasion of them. It seems scarce possible to invent a more equitable way of maintaining such works.

CIT INTERNATIONAL OFFERS NINE techniques of nonverbal communication (for example, “Maintain limited eye contact . . . and . . . a neutral facial expression”; “Minimize body movements such as excessive gesturing, pacing, fidgeting or weight shifting”; “Place your hands in front of your body in an open and relaxed position”) and fifteen for verbal de-escalation (for example, “Remember that there is no content except trying to calmly bring the level of arousal down to a safer place”; “Do not get loud or try to yell over a screaming person”; “Do not be defensive even if comments or insults are directed at you”; “Be very respectful even when firmly setting limits”; “Do not try to argue or convince”; “Explain limits and rules in an authoritative, firm, but respectful tone”). The long list of tips and techniques ends with this pearl: “There is nothing magical about talking someone down. You are simply transferring your own sense of calm and respectful, clear limit setting to the agitated person.”13

Without carbohydrates, the body will use protein and fat as fuel—this is called ketosis. When your body is in the metabolic state of ketosis, it turns fat into ketones in the liver, which will supply energy instead of glucose, as if you were fasting. You may have heard of the ketogenic diet, in fact, which focuses on protein and fat intake, while maintaining a very low carbohydrate intake. This diet, newly trendy, may have benefits such as weight loss and improved blood sugar levels. However, it is very restrictive; eliminating healthy fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other nutritious complex carbohydrates seems unnecessary and no fun. Also, we don’t know the long-term effects of ketosis (though if you do go too long without any carbs, it can lead to heart or kidney disease). What I do know, after years of studying nutrition, is that any diet that is very restrictive or eliminates entire food groups can be unrealistic and difficult to sustain. That’s why Zero Sugar Diet eliminates added sugars—but allows natural ones. Pretty sweet deal.

To make matters worse, as you get older, your cells gradually become less sensitive to insulin's effects, so insulin levels must rise even more to produce the same results. This leads to a state of insulin resistance, which leads to even more insulin production. Over time, these increasing insulin levels, especially when combined with a poor diet, promote the weight gain and increase in body fat so typical of the aging process. It's not a pretty picture, but this deterioration is far from inevitable. Commonsense lifestyle changes can help you keep your insulin levels under control: Following the major themes of our TRANSCEND program will help you keep your insulin at low, youthful levels. Maintaining a regular vigorous exercise routine burns blood sugar and drives it into your muscle cells, decreasing your body's need for insulin. Following our recommendations for a low-sugar, low-glycemic-load diet will lower insulin levels further. Finally, controlling your stress will lower your cortisol level and avoid the vicious cycle of cortisol-raising insulin.

Humanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated string of experiences. Every human being is a singular ray of light, which illuminates the world from a different perspective, and which adds colour, depth and meaning to the universe. Hence we ought to give as much freedom as possible to every individual to experience the world, follow his or her inner voice and express his or her inner truth. Whether in politics, economics or art, individual free will should have far more weight than state interests or religious doctrines. The more liberty individuals enjoy, the more beautiful, rich and meaningful is the world. Due to this emphasis on liberty, the orthodox branch of humanism is known as ‘liberal humanism’ or simply as ‘liberalism’. It is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics maintains that the customer is always right. Liberal ethics advises us that if it feels good, we should go ahead and do it. Liberal education teaches us to think for ourselves, because we will find all the answers within us.

After the show, everybody would go out drinking, but I was always in bed by eleven thirty. There was no partying for me; I was the boring one. I lived in constant fear that my voice would give out on me, so I tried to rest it, eat right, get lots of sleep. I ate chicken breasts and whole potatoes like they were apples to keep up my energy and maintain my weight. When I came home after the show, Nan would leave my dinner ready and waiting in the microwave, and I would just heat it up. The Ballases always had a thing about not eating alone. Even if it was midnight, Nan would hear me banging around the kitchen, come downstairs in her robe, light up a cigarette, and keep me company. We’d chat about our day for about an hour while I ate, and it was our time together. I don’t know if it’s an English thing or what, but getting my Nan to say “I love you” was like pulling teeth. I came from a family where it was said often, and I was determined to teach her. So I would joke with her and grab her: “I’m not going to bed unless you say you love me back!” She would kind of mumble it, but I would insist she say it properly until she eventually caved in. I continued doing this whenever we parted ways, until eventually it became natural for her to say.

My general philosophy regarding endurance contains four key points: 1. Build a great aerobic base. This essential physical and metabolic foundation helps accomplish several important tasks: it prevents injury and maintains a balanced physical body; it increases fat burning for improved stamina, weight loss, and sustained energy; and it improves overall health in the immune and hormonal systems, the intestines and liver, and throughout the body. 2. Eat well. Specific foods influence the developing aerobic system, especially the foods consumed in the course of a typical day. Overall, diet can significantly influence your body’s physical, chemical, and mental state of fitness and health. 3. Reduce stress. Training and competition, combined with other lifestyle factors, can be stressful and adversely affect performance, cause injuries, and even lead to poor nutrition because they can disrupt the normal digestion and absorption of nutrients. 4. Improve brain function. The brain and entire nervous system control virtually all athletic activity, and a healthier brain produces a better athlete. Improved brain function occurs from eating well, controlling stress, and through sensory stimulation, which includes proper training and optimal breathing.

Kevin Arthur liked cutting hair. I reckoned his desire was a good one, considering he was a barber. However, Kevin always wanted to cut more inches off my hair than requested. We argued every time I came into his shop. I told him my hair needed weight, otherwise it stood straight up and out, and my head—which was larger than average already, likely to accommodate my massive brain—resembled a cantaloupe on a toothpick, with cantaloupes being the least esteemed of all fruit. He maintained I needed a short cut, with the sides clipped close, and the top longer and thinned. He said the thickness of my hair was responsible for its propensity to misbehave. He said the cut would bring all the girls to my yard. This was doubtful. First of all, I didn’t want girls in my yard. I didn’t want anyone in my yard. My yard was fine just as it was: self-maintained. Secondly, I’d never been popular with the women folk. Women, or at least the women I knew, didn’t much enjoy my lack of willingness to deal with bullshit. For that matter, most men I knew didn’t enjoy this about me either. Bullshit was the adult version of Santa Claus. For reasons I’ll never comprehend,the general population seemed to enjoy wallowing, spouting, and believing in bullshit. But back to my barber

We see the universal harmony in the wondrous sky and on the wondrous earth; how elements essentially opposed to each other are all woven together in an ineffable union to serve one common end, each contributing its particular force to maintain the whole; how the unmingling and mutually repellent do not fly apart from each other by virtue of their peculiarities, any more than they are destroyed, when compounded, by such contrariety; how those elements which are naturally buoyant move downwards, the heat of the sun, for instance, descending in the rays, while the bodies which possess weight are lifted by becoming rarefied in vapour, so that water contrary to its nature ascends, being conveyed through the air to the upper regions; how too that fire of the firmament so penetrates the earth that even its abysses feel the heat; how the moisture of the rain infused into the soil generates, one though it be by nature, myriads of differing germs, and animates in due proportion each subject of its influence; how very swiftly the polar sphere revolves, how the orbits within it move the contrary way, with all the eclipses, and conjunctions, and measured intervals of the planets. We see all this with the piercing eyes of mind, nor can we fail to be taught by means of such a spectacle that a Divine power, working with skill and method, is manifesting itself in this actual world, and, penetrating each portion, combines those portions with the whole and completes the whole by the portions, and encompasses the universe with a single all-controlling force, self-centred and self-contained, never ceasing from its motion, yet never altering the position which it holds.

Sometimes while sitting there staring out the window, I imagined a place in my mind, a white room. A simple space coated in white paint. The white represented responsibility, obligation. It didn’t require what responsibility and obligation required, but it had the same effect. It maintained the person in the room; it kept the person alive and well, along with everything and everyone that person cared for, but nothing the person held dear existed in the room. The person was alone. The person experienced no joy from bearing the weight of responsibility, earned no prize. I imagined a particular person in the room—a woman, also clothed in white. This woman constantly faced a dilemma. She longed for freedom. She longed to be the bird. Her open palms grazed the rutted expanse of the wall. She knew that something lay beyond—beyond the white. She could burst out into the world of grass, sky, and lavender, but she knew that if she broke through the barricade, everything she protected would crumble, suffocate, and wither behind her. Her own freedom would last only moments because she, too, couldn’t survive without the white. Earth and water would smother her, and radiant light would slice through her like a blade. I imagined her pressing with both hands, weighing freedom against existence and all that depended on her, but in the end she lightened her stance and stepped away. She always chose to stay, to fulfill her obligation. I thought of the woman in the white room—she chose to sacrifice her freedom for the people who relied on her to survive, but how long could she possibly survive without freedom? How long could she last before choosing the alternative?

5. Move toward resistance and pain A. Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

What is certain is that the immutable classes, the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, the people, had loftier souls at that time. You can prove it: society has done nothing but deteriorate in the four centuries separating us from the Middle Ages. "True, a baron then was usually a formidable brute. He was a drunken and lecherous bandit, a sanguinary and boisterous tyrant, but he was a child in mind and spirit. The Church bullied him, and to deliver the Holy Sepulchre he sacrificed his wealth, abandoned home, wife, and children, and accepted unconscionable fatigues, extraordinary sufferings, unheard-of dangers. "By pious heroism he redeemed the baseness of his morals. The race has since become moderate. It has reduced, sometimes even done away with, its instincts of carnage and rape, but it has replaced them by the monomania of business, the passion for lucre. It has done worse. It has sunk to such a state of abjectness as to be attracted by the doings of the lowest of the low. ...cupidity was repressed by the confessor, and the tradesman, just like the labourer, was maintained by the corporations, which denounced overcharging and fraud, saw that decried merchandise was destroyed, and fixed a fair price and a high standard of excellence for commodities. Trades and professions were handed down from father to son. The corporations assured work and pay. People were not, as now, subject to the fluctuations of the market and the merciless capitalistic exploitation. Great fortunes did not exist and everybody had enough to live on. Sure of the future, unhurried, they created marvels of art, whose secret remains for ever lost. "All the artisans who passed the three degrees of apprentice, journeyman, and master, developed subtlety and became veritable artists. They ennobled the simplest of iron work, the commonest faience, the most ordinary chests and coffers. Those corporations, putting themselves under the patronage of Saints—whose images, frequently besought, figured on their banners—preserved through the centuries the honest existence of the humble and notably raised the spiritual level of the people whom they protected. ...The bourgeoise has taken the place forfeited by a wastrel nobility which now subsists only to set ignoble fashions and whose sole contribution to our 'civilization' is the establishment of gluttonous dining clubs, so-called gymnastic societies, and pari-mutuel associations. Today the business man has but these aims, to exploit the working man, manufacture shoddy, lie about the quality of merchandise, and give short weight. ...There is one word in the mouths of all. Progress. Progress of whom? Progress of what? For this miserable century hasn't invented anything great. "It has constructed nothing and destroyed everything...

Develop a rapid cadence. Ideal running requires a cadence that may be much quicker than you’re used to. Shoot for 180 footfalls per minute. Developing the proper cadence will help you achieve more speed because it increases the number of push-offs per minute. It will also help prevent injury, as you avoid overstriding and placing impact force on your heel. To practice, get an electronic metronome (or download an app for this), set it for 90+ beats per minute, and time the pull of your left foot to the chirp of the metronome. Develop a proper forward lean. With core muscles slightly engaged to generate a bracing effect, the runner leans forward—from the ankles, not from the waist. Land underneath your center of gravity. MacKenzie drills his athletes to make contact with the ground as their midfoot or forefoot passes directly under their center of gravity, rather than having their heels strike out in front of the body. When runners become proficient at this, the pounding stops, and the movement of their legs begins to more closely resemble that of a spinning wheel. Keep contact time brief. “The runner skims over the ground with a slithering motion that does not make the pounding noise heard by the plodder who runs at one speed,” the legendary coach Percy Cerutty once said.7 MacKenzie drills runners to practice a foot pull that spends as little time as possible on the ground. His runners aim to touch down with a light sort of tap that creates little or no sound. The theory is that with less time spent on the ground, the foot has less time to get into the kind of trouble caused by the sheering forces of excessive inward foot rolling, known as “overpronation.” Pull with the hamstring. To create a rapid, piston-like running form, the CFE runner, after the light, quick impact of the foot, pulls the ankle and foot up with the hamstring. Imagine that you had to confine your running stride to the space of a phone booth—you would naturally develop an extremely quick, compact form to gain optimal efficiency. Practice this skill by standing barefoot and raising one leg by sliding your ankle up along the opposite leg. Perform up to 20 repetitions on each leg. Maintain proper posture and position. Proper posture, MacKenzie says, shifts the impact stress of running from the knees to larger muscles in the trunk, namely, the hips and hamstrings. The runner’s head remains up and the eyes focused down the road. With the core muscles engaged, power flows from the larger muscles through to the extremities. Practice proper position by standing with your body weight balanced on the ball of one foot. Keep the knee of your planted leg slightly bent and your lifted foot relaxed as you hold your ankle directly below your hip. In this position, your body is in proper alignment. Practice holding this position for up to 1 minute on each leg. Be patient. Choose one day a week for practicing form drills and technique. MacKenzie recommends wearing minimalist shoes to encourage proper form, but not without taking care of the other necessary work. A quick changeover from motion-control shoes to minimalist shoes is a recipe for tendon problems. Instead of making a rapid transition, ease into minimalist shoes by wearing them just one day per week, during skill work. Then slowly integrate them into your training runs as your feet and legs adapt. Your patience will pay off.

We often assume that maintaining a normal weight is a sign of health, but in reality scientists have found that 24 percent of normal-weight people have chronic diseases that are often attributed only to people who are obese.

Maintaining low levels of insulin also stimulates adrenaline secretion, which has been shown to inhibit muscle loss.

Weight is all about calories (sorry, it is). If your body needs 2,000 calories per day to maintain its weight, those calories can come from just about anything digestible.

This study, which we published in 2007, provided strong evidence that the brain’s attention systems can be trained. Like any form of workout, from weight lifting to cycling to learning a second language, it causes an enduring change in the system that is engaged. In this case, that change is the ability to maintain laser-sharp concentration with less and less activity in the brain’s attention circuit.

Fielding’s research group suggests that rapid weight lifting as opposed to the slow mode of traditional lifting may help maintain fast-twitch muscle power with age.

Regardless of how much weight you have to lose to get to your ideal weight and maintain it, the steps to get there are the same. You must make daily healthy food choices and exercise routinely.

You want people who are self-starters. You want entrepreneurship. You want people to pull their weight and don't depend on government to somehow spoon-feed them success. But you also want enough of a sense of shared destiny, enough common commitments that we can keep our air and water clean. That we can maintain our technological edge. That we can ensure the next generation is well educated. It's part of the reason why the one institution that has been more successful in our society than just about any other has been our military—because that's one area where everybody understands we're one nation, and we all have to make sacrifices.

Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

Numerous studies have proven that physical health and longevity are linked to eating a balanced diet, maintaining proper weight, exercising regularly, abstinence and proper sexual conduct, avoiding tobacco and alcohol, maintaining a clean and hygienic living and working environment, knowing and keeping track of your health status all the time. How do you rate yourself on all these?

There is a tendency for many of us to want to believe in magic. People want to believe that in spite of our indiscretions and excesses, we can still maintain optimal health by taking a pill, powder, or other potion. However, this is a false hope, a hope that has been silenced by too much scientific evidence. There is no magic. There is no miracle weight-loss pill. There is only the natural world of law and order, of cause and effect. If you want optimal health and longevity, you must engage the cause. And if you want to lose fat weight safely, you must eat a diet of predominantly unrefined foods that are nutrient-and fiber-rich.

Data matters. It’s the very essence of what we care about. Personal data is not equivalent to a real person—it’s much better. It takes no space, costs almost nothing to maintain, lasts forever, and is far easier to replicate and transport. Data is worth more than its weight in gold—certainly so, since data weighs nothing; it has no mass. Data about a person is not as valuable as the person, but since the data is so much cheaper to manage, it’s a far better investment. Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, points out that a user’s data can be purchased for about half a cent, but the average user’s value to the Internet advertising ecosystem is estimated at $1,200 per year. Data’s value—its power, its meaning—is the very thing that also makes it sensitive. The more data, the more power. The more powerful the data, the more sensitive. So the tension we’re feeling is unavoidable.

To meet the demands and marketability of lowering fat in foods while maintaining flavorful options, food manufacturers got busy adding increasing levels of sugars in everything from spaghetti sauce to salad dressings. Labels and packages touted health claims because of low-fat ingredients, while completely forgetting to mention that the fat, that actually wasn’t bad, had been replaced by an overload of Sugar Calories that cause weight gain.

pain have often been quoted as two of the major benefits of yoga, there are many more which can be discovered if one explores the practice further. Physical Benefits Yoga first and foremost is a spiritual exercise; however, it achieves spiritual discipline through creating and maintaining discipline in the physical body. Practicing yoga thus has a physical benefit even for those practitioners who ignore the spiritual aspects of the practice. Yoga

The only way you will successfully lose weight and maintain it long-term is to understand and accept that you have freewill to do so. That is the ultimate winning mindset!

This brings us back to the questions we asked earlier: If people eat less on carbohydrate-restricted diets, why aren’t they hungry. And if they don’t eat less, why do they lose weight? If the restriction of carbohydrates works to ameliorate this defect in fat metabolism, as Pennington speculated, then weight will be lost, hunger will be absent, and calorie consumption may decrease, while energy expenditure will increase. This is no more than the consequences of the law of energy conservation applied to a biological system that works to conserve body composition and maintain a healthy flow of fuel to the cells and tissues.

Behavioral adaptation is one of the fundamental mechanisms by which animals and humans maintain homeostasis. Our responses to hunger and thirst are manifestations of this, replenishing calories or essential nutrients or fluids. Physical activity, as Richter suggested, is another example of this behavioral regulation, in response to an excess or dearth of calories.

energy balance must be regulated involuntarily, without conscious intent, and that the mechanisms that do so adapt both intake to expenditure and expenditure to intake. Our bodies work to minimize long-term fluctuations in energy reserves and maintain a stable body weight, and they do so, as with all our homeostatic systems,

Hirsch and his colleagues interpreted their observations to mean that the human body seems surprisingly intent on maintaining its weight—resisting both weight gain and weight loss—so that the obese remain obese and the lean remain lean.