Friday Book Report: Dash Diet Recipes

This week’s reading report is more of a skimming report.  Dash Diet Recipes:  42 Delicious Dash Diet Recipes for Weight Loss by Sara Banks is not actually worth reading in detail and most of it is recipes.  I do not recommend it.  Perhaps the recipes are tasty.  Maybe they will help a person lose weight.  I do not trust them because there is absolutely no information about who Sara Banks is or what her qualifications might be.  She might be a nutritionist or a dietician; she might be someone who just likes to cook; she is probably someone’s next door neighbor, but that does not mean that she gives good nutrition advice.  Also, she either did not proofread the introductory material, or she did it poorly, which did not build my confidence.

I advise giving this one a miss and I will be donating it to the library book sale, where it may at least generate a small sum for a cause I care about.

How to be motivated, even on Thursdays

For a long time, Thursdays have been rough for me.  The burst of enthusiasm at the beginning of the week is gone.  The weekend is not here yet.  It somewhat helped to dub Thursday the Official Day of Getting Nothing Done because then anything actually accomplished on Thursday felt like bonus points.  If anyone else happens to be lacking in motivation on this particular Thursday, let me offer a few ideas:

• Moving makes us feel better.  It works better than antidepressants, especially if it becomes a habit.

• We get smarter when we exercise.  Getting in the workout before work will improve performance.

• We’ll live longer with a better quality of life.  I don’t particularly want another twenty years in a nursing home, but a retirement full of activity and travel sounds pretty darn spiffy.

• We will look cuter.  Maybe we will be thinner or more toned, but even if we don’t, we will have a better outlook and more confidence and that makes everyone cuter.

We can do this.

The Revolution starts at the spin bike...

We are all stressed out.  It’s a cultural phenomenon.  It sucks, really.

Fixing it in the long term is going to require cultural change and political action and a bunch of stuff that is well outside my scope of practice and areas of expertise.

In the short term, we can do our cardio.  This will help us as we work to make the world  better place.  We need the endorphins it provides to our bodies.  We need the mood shift and the stamina.  We need strong hearts.

Fight the power:  go to the gym.