Tag: Fitness

Have you ever heard of Psyllium Husk? Psyllium is a type of small seed that is almost pure fiber. Taking a lot of fiber is supposed to help you to control your digestion, lower cholesterol and perhaps even lower the chance of Diabetes.

Flax Seed Oil has become really popular lately as a very high Omega 3 supplement. The advantage of taking Flax seed meal is that it is a powder that can be used for cooking as an addition to flour in recipes or as I will illustrate below.

What is Psyllium Husk and Flax Seed Meal?

Psyllium Husk when you buy it in the store comes in a small bag (at least mine did) and is very dry and looks like sharp pieces of dust. Flax seed meal on the other hand is a bit darker colored but is still very small pieces.

This is the way I have been told to take this so you can try to follow my lead or use these two products in some other way.

Get your flax seed meal and your psyllium husk and mix them in a bag or container in a 1 to 1 ratio. Now that you have this together you will quickly mix one tablespoon of the mix in a glass of water and drink it down. The mix does not taste good or bad but it is a kind of crappy consistency. After you drink this down it is important to drink a couple of more glasses of water.

I take this mixture once in the morning and once at night before bed.

What happens once this mix goes down your gullet? The flax seed is a nice and healthy addition to your Omega-3 and your fiber but the Psyllium Husk actually swells up and turns into a gel. The way this is supposed to help your body is by scraping and pulling off any toxins from the walls of your intestines.

Psyllium seeds swell 10-20 times their size when they come in contact with water

The Effect of Psyllium Husk and Flax Seed Meal

In my case I have been gassy a bit over the last few days in taking this. From the people that I talk to that are taking this mix they tell me that this flax seed meal with psyllium husk makes their digestion better and also makes them feel healthier with better concentration and clearer thinking.

Try this with only a teaspoon morning and night instead of a tablespoon and see how your body reacts. Everyone is different so you want to try it slowly and increase over the days or weeks if you feel comfortable.

Never just jump into a workout, do a preworkout jumpout stepsIf you thought workouts are hard, you are not completely correct, if not complete wrong. Do you think the successful bodybuilders and athletes exert themselves as hard as you do for getting their workouts done?

Prepare Before Your Workout

Absolutely not. In fact, most of them are probably aware of a cool formula that lets them perform even the most intense workouts without any feeling of exhaustion. In this article I will tell you about that formula.

Can you imagine a time when the heavy s you hate now would seem like light feathers in your hand? Imagine being able to workout for hours without any feeling of fatigue. Imagine your muscles actually asking you workout more and more because they are hungry for it.

All these could be possible if you apply the formula of Category 5 Intensity. Let me tell you the three quick steps you should follow to get the most out of this workout strategy.

PreWorkout Jumpstart Steps

Step 1: Relax: Even before you start your workout regimen, you need to relax, both physically and mentally. This is pretty simple and something you should do only at a peaceful corner of your home where you don’t expect any kind of irritable disturbance or noise. You can relax by lying down on your back, or by stretching yourself out in an E-Z chair.

1. Lie as if you are relaxing.
2. Let your arms relax by your sides as well.
3. While sitting in this position, take very long, deep, relaxing breaths.
4. Keep in mind that you should inhale through your nose but exhale through the mouth, and with each exhalation, you would utter the words (if you want you can do it mentally instead of verbally) “RELEASE” or “RELAX”.

This is only the first part of this relaxation exercise. In the next step, you should imagine coming down from six or seven steps of a staircase. As you descend each step, you should utter the word “Coming Down” or simply “Down” (again you can do it mentally instead of verbally if you wish).

Step 2 – Jog Your Memory: If you have done a series of workouts, there must be at least one workout which stood out from the rest for its uniqueness.

It could be anything from an arm workout to a leg workout, and even though the workout itself might have been physically nerve wrecking for you, you were able to complete more reps than you were supposed to do, because mentally you never felt tired or frustrated.

Throughout the workout session you maintained a certain focus that allowed you to complete the workout even though physically you felt as if your bone would break or your skin would pop out. Can you recall any such workout?

You should be able to. As the memory of this particular workout becomes more and more vivid, you should feel a certain sensation in your body – as if you are ready to do it all over again.

This is a great example of how Category 5 Intensity can help you.

Step 3 – Imagine doing that workout: Now that your body badly needs that workout, you must do it, but hey, since this is an exercise for your subconscious mind, you don’t need to lift any weights just as yet.

Just imagine that you are physically doing the same workout as the one you recalled in step 2. Imagine yourself doing all the things you normally do during the workout session; your eyes, nostrils, facial expressions, mindset, voice, words, breathe, etc., should all be focused on this particular workout.

Next, clench your right fist for about 20-30 seconds, and utter words that describe your strength, such as “Power”, “Terrific”, “Force”, “Strong”, etc.; in fact, you can utter any word or words that enhance your mental strength.

If you follow this exercise and do the three steps above for the next few weeks, you would feel much more comfortable even when doing workouts of the highest intensity. In fact, after spending just 15-20 minutes on this mental exercise per day during the next five days, you should be doing it everyday, preferably either before or after hitting the gym.

I am confident it would certainly make a difference in the way you look at workouts.

Do you ever feel like you are not moving forward? That there are great things that you want to do but are missing out on? Well usually this is due to the fact that you are not working towards your goals and are instead just grasping at things and opportunities as they come by. This leds to the idea of Life Mapping

Life Mapping: A Vision of Success

Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, provisions, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say something like, “Hi, I’m Jean, I’m 17 and I’m a senior in high school.” This does not tell you anything about who Jean is; it only tells you her present circumstances.

To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. You can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses.

For example, Jean might realize that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity. Of course, she might not say all of this to everybody she met; but the knowledge would inform all of her words and actions.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do want to be?” This is your vision. Once you know who you are, you will also have a clearer idea of who you want to be, and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future will also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual planes.

Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated to serving her fellow human beings.

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself.

Jean had recognized that she wanted to help humanity. Now she needed to identify a vehicle, a way to do this. It seemed to her that she was suited to becoming a medical doctor. She also wanted to travel and promote peace. Describing her vehicle or mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.

Provisions: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are the provisions that you take on a journey. Applying this concept to your life map, you will need certain knowledge, skills, and training to carry out your mission successfully. So you need to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present (what provisions you already have) and what else you need to gain along the way.

Clearly, Jean would need to go to college and medical school to gain the knowledge and professional qualifications to become a doctor. She also knew that she had a tendency to be impatient with people and this was something she wanted to change.

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have a route and landmarks.

The landmarks are your mini goals that measure your success on your way to your main goal. These mini goals, like your main goals, must be S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound.

Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medical school by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of her town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control, or a genuine change of mind.

For example, during her medical training Jean might find that she became more interested in pediatric medicine than in infectious diseases. Switching to pediatrics would change her route, but would not stop her achieving her goal.

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