If change is so good for you, why do so many people resist it? Well, change can be good, but it can also be a hassle. Even though you may loathe your job, at least you have security, but if you decided to change your job you have to update your CV, start looking around at the other jobs available and apply to different positions. You might be successful, then have to attend an interview or several and you may even secure a new job, but for all you know you could end up hating that as much as your old job. It is therefore easier to simply accept your situation, even if there is the potential to actually improve your life.
Just look at how many people are unhappy in a relationship, yet they continue to stick with it. Again, it's a case of 'better the devil you know than the devil you don't.' If you leave your partner, you don't know what might happen and that is a scary prospect. Friends may abandon you; you might end up fighting with your former partner over the custody of your pets or children or about who gets the house; you could end up struggling financially. Plus, you could end up alone, and even if you argue with your partner frequently, at least there is someone who's there for you.
There are other changes you can make to your life, such as moving to a different place - whether house, city or country - or changing the way you live your life - avoiding clubbing and alcohol and becoming more health conscious, so that you eat less junk food, exercise regularly and adopt a healthier lifestyle in general. Clearly, moving gives you new and exciting opportunities, as you can meet people, find a different job and improve your prospects. Changing your lifestyle can also have benefits, enabling you to extend your life and feel better in yourself. Yet, to embrace change requires motivation.
Where does this motivation come from? Often the motivation to change comes as a result of an unexpected event. It could be that you're forced to change your lifestyle after suffering from health problems, or to move to a new town because you have lost your job. You may be happy with the job you have, only for a new manager to be appointed who you don't get along with, or your circumstances may change so that you need more money and, thus, a new job. Sometimes, people realise they're stuck in a situation that's making them unhappy and decide to set a date for them to get their act together.
Obviously, many people choose to make New Year's resolutions, because they want to change, but need some kind of impetus. You know you're not alone in wanting to make a change during the New Year, and if you fail, you know there are also others in a similar position to yourself. Change can be good, but finding the motivation to change can be more challenging, especially when you don't know what the outcome will be. Sometimes, it's easier to just stick with the familiar, even if you don't find it to be completely satisfying.
Showing posts with label good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label good. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
Monday, 2 December 2013
Are Meal Replacement Diets a Good Idea?
When you're overweight you just want the extra pounds you're carrying to be gone straightaway. You don't want to have face months of calorie-counting and deprivation just so you can call yourself skinny and so it is obviously tempting to look for the quickest route to weight loss. Clearly, if you're more than just a few pounds overweight, and are actually recognised as obese, you may be inclined to take drastic measures to reach your weight-loss goal as quickly as possible. One option is to go on a meal replacement diet, as this saves you the hassle of counting calories. Although there are lots of meal replacement diets to choose from, they are all designed to be nutritionally-balanced and very low in calories in order to speed up your weight loss.
Are meal replacement diets really a good idea, though? You have to be pretty desperate to stick to such an extreme diet. For a start, they aren't exactly cheap and if you have difficulty following such a restrictive diet to the letter you may be throwing money down the drain. With these kinds of diet you cannot eat 'normal' food; instead you have to rely on the pouches and packets you're given. All you have to do is mix the powder with water and you have a shake or soup ready to consume. You don't have to worry if there is too much or whether you're getting the right balance of nutrients. However, you may grow tired of eating the same bland 'meals' every day for months at a time and when you 'cheat' on such a diet it can be extremely difficult to get back on track.
Mind you, sticking to any kind of diet can be a challenge. However, meal replacement diets are very low in calories and so it can be hard to live an active lifestyle without the necessary amount of energy. You may lose weight quickly, but there is also a danger you will be left with excess skin that has become stretched due to your excessive weight. Plus, the chances are you will feel hungry and not particularly good for the first few days of the diet. This will probably pass in time, but there are other health risks associated with losing weight rapidly. You could develop gallstones, for instance, and end up in a lot of pain. There is also the possibility that you may not even be able to keep the weight off once you finish your diet.
This is true of all diets, though, which is why meal replacement diets are not automatically the solution to a weight problem. Clearly, if you're so heavy that your health is beginning to deteriorate, you may need to take drastic action to kick-start your weight loss, especially if you are easily demoralised and need to see huge losses to keep going. However, in the long run, going on a meal replacement diet isn't going to fundamentally change your relationship with food. If you simply go back to eating too much junk food once you finish with the diet, you will end up right back at square one – just as heavy as before and miserable about it.
Thus, in the long run you have to get used to exercising control over what you eat – in terms of the type of food you eat and the quantity – and the amount of physical activity you do. Going on a meal replacement diet may help you to lose the weight, but it certainly won't do anything to help you keep it off and so you have to determine whether this is really the best way to go about weight loss.
Are meal replacement diets really a good idea, though? You have to be pretty desperate to stick to such an extreme diet. For a start, they aren't exactly cheap and if you have difficulty following such a restrictive diet to the letter you may be throwing money down the drain. With these kinds of diet you cannot eat 'normal' food; instead you have to rely on the pouches and packets you're given. All you have to do is mix the powder with water and you have a shake or soup ready to consume. You don't have to worry if there is too much or whether you're getting the right balance of nutrients. However, you may grow tired of eating the same bland 'meals' every day for months at a time and when you 'cheat' on such a diet it can be extremely difficult to get back on track.
Mind you, sticking to any kind of diet can be a challenge. However, meal replacement diets are very low in calories and so it can be hard to live an active lifestyle without the necessary amount of energy. You may lose weight quickly, but there is also a danger you will be left with excess skin that has become stretched due to your excessive weight. Plus, the chances are you will feel hungry and not particularly good for the first few days of the diet. This will probably pass in time, but there are other health risks associated with losing weight rapidly. You could develop gallstones, for instance, and end up in a lot of pain. There is also the possibility that you may not even be able to keep the weight off once you finish your diet.
This is true of all diets, though, which is why meal replacement diets are not automatically the solution to a weight problem. Clearly, if you're so heavy that your health is beginning to deteriorate, you may need to take drastic action to kick-start your weight loss, especially if you are easily demoralised and need to see huge losses to keep going. However, in the long run, going on a meal replacement diet isn't going to fundamentally change your relationship with food. If you simply go back to eating too much junk food once you finish with the diet, you will end up right back at square one – just as heavy as before and miserable about it.
Thus, in the long run you have to get used to exercising control over what you eat – in terms of the type of food you eat and the quantity – and the amount of physical activity you do. Going on a meal replacement diet may help you to lose the weight, but it certainly won't do anything to help you keep it off and so you have to determine whether this is really the best way to go about weight loss.
Sunday, 1 December 2013
What Makes a Good Article?
As a writer, it can sometimes be difficult to look at the articles you write in an objective way. When you put your heart and soul into a piece of writing, you want to believe that what you have created is a work of brilliance! This is hardly ever the case, though, because there are always things you can do to improve your writing, although you don't always know what exactly you could have done differently. Sometimes, it boils down to the fact that practise makes perfect and so you just have to get writing more to improve your writing skills.
There are a few basic things to consider when writing to ensure that you create interesting articles that other people enjoy reading. First of all, you are not writing a novel and so you need to be alert to the fact that you only have so many words to play around with. When you have decided upon the title you intend to write to, you have to ensure the points you raise relate to the article topic. Otherwise, you could find yourself waffling on about issues which aren't directly related to the title. Indeed, if you are writing about a complex topic, you may even be able to get a number of different articles out of it.
Thus, as an article writer, you have to learn to be selective with your material, as if an article is too long someone who has clicked on it might not bother to read the whole thing. At the same time, you don't want to make your article too short, because you will end up with a lot of frustrated readers. If you are trying to create lots of articles quickly, you may be inclined to cut corners and produce as few words as possible, but how can you possibly explore an issue in any depth in fewer than 300 or 400 words? A good article is one where there are enough words to provide analysis or an explanation of a topic, but doesn't go overboard.
If you want to produce a good article, it is also worth dividing your article up into paragraphs. You need to create an introduction that introduces the reader to what the article is about, then write a few paragraphs which explore your chosen topic, before writing a conclusion that rounds up what has just been said. This linear structure ensures that the reader can see where you're going with the article. It is better to be clear about what the article is about and to make relevant points, rather than including random ideas which don't seem to connect with anything else you've written.
Another simple thing to bear in mind is that an article littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors is unlikely to be considered a good article. Even if your ideas are original and what you have to say is interesting, a reader is not going to be able to see past the mistake-strewn article, especially if it doesn't appear to make any sense, and so may give up on it before reaching the end. If you don't take the time to proofread your work, why would anyone else bother to read what you have to say? You therefore need to pay attention to the small details to ensure you produce high-quality work.
Of course, everyone has 'off' days when they're not at their best and end up producing substandard work. The chances are not every article you create is going to be what other people consider to be good. However, there are plenty of opportunities to write articles and the more you practise, the better you become, so that the incidence of poor-quality articles will be less frequent. The main thing is that you keep on writing, reading what you write and learning where you went wrong and consider ways to improve, so that you will be able to implement new ways of doing things which could benefit the quality of your writing.
There are a few basic things to consider when writing to ensure that you create interesting articles that other people enjoy reading. First of all, you are not writing a novel and so you need to be alert to the fact that you only have so many words to play around with. When you have decided upon the title you intend to write to, you have to ensure the points you raise relate to the article topic. Otherwise, you could find yourself waffling on about issues which aren't directly related to the title. Indeed, if you are writing about a complex topic, you may even be able to get a number of different articles out of it.
Thus, as an article writer, you have to learn to be selective with your material, as if an article is too long someone who has clicked on it might not bother to read the whole thing. At the same time, you don't want to make your article too short, because you will end up with a lot of frustrated readers. If you are trying to create lots of articles quickly, you may be inclined to cut corners and produce as few words as possible, but how can you possibly explore an issue in any depth in fewer than 300 or 400 words? A good article is one where there are enough words to provide analysis or an explanation of a topic, but doesn't go overboard.
If you want to produce a good article, it is also worth dividing your article up into paragraphs. You need to create an introduction that introduces the reader to what the article is about, then write a few paragraphs which explore your chosen topic, before writing a conclusion that rounds up what has just been said. This linear structure ensures that the reader can see where you're going with the article. It is better to be clear about what the article is about and to make relevant points, rather than including random ideas which don't seem to connect with anything else you've written.
Another simple thing to bear in mind is that an article littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors is unlikely to be considered a good article. Even if your ideas are original and what you have to say is interesting, a reader is not going to be able to see past the mistake-strewn article, especially if it doesn't appear to make any sense, and so may give up on it before reaching the end. If you don't take the time to proofread your work, why would anyone else bother to read what you have to say? You therefore need to pay attention to the small details to ensure you produce high-quality work.
Of course, everyone has 'off' days when they're not at their best and end up producing substandard work. The chances are not every article you create is going to be what other people consider to be good. However, there are plenty of opportunities to write articles and the more you practise, the better you become, so that the incidence of poor-quality articles will be less frequent. The main thing is that you keep on writing, reading what you write and learning where you went wrong and consider ways to improve, so that you will be able to implement new ways of doing things which could benefit the quality of your writing.
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