My Day on a Plate: Carl Barât
11am Pass the time on our tour bus playing guitar, watching classic sitcoms and sleeping.
2pm When lunch arrives we get stuck into bread, cheese and meat. There’s a pile of crudités but no one ever touches them. Have a cup of tea and some water.
3pm Stroll round the town with a coffee before doing some press interviews.
6.30pm After the sound check I eat something quickly before I get too nervous about the gig, otherwise I can’t keep it down. Chicken and rice is usually safe.
9pm A couple of bananas, some chocolate and a large swig of rum to steady my nerves before we go on. Keep it nearby, next to some water, which I never drink.
Use Mindfulness to Eat Healthier
Mindfulness is a practice with Buddhist roots. It is aimed at bringing full awareness to the present moment, such as the current sensations of the body and breath, instead of letting thoughts wander to the past, future, or anything that is not essential to the here and now. Living mindfully is a way to make intentional decisions on behalf of our highest values and to fully enjoy what is currently available to us, gaining fulfilment and contentment. Luckily, for anyone trying to eat healthier, this technique can work well in regards to food.
Americans are notorious as rushers and multi-taskers. Unfortunately, this habit merges into our eating as well.
Medicine isn’t about blame, it’s about treatment
Yesterday this blog saw a guest posting from Lillian, a Nova Scotian who fears she’ll likely die before she reaches the head of her province’s 10 year cue for bariatric surgeryA great many folks left comments both here and on my Facebook page Some were supportive Some were full of self-righteous indignation Others I chose not to publish as they were incredibly rude and hurtfulThe bottom line for virtually all of the upset commentators was that Lillian just ought to do something That she ought to fix this problem herself That clearly she’d just given up That she wasn’t trying hard enoughIt was the good ole, pull herself up by her bootstraps and take things into her own hands crap, or a variant of I did it, so so can she, and while I’m thrilled for the folks who’ve experienced their own successes, they don’t necessarily translate to othersFor readers who don’t know, I’m not a surgeon I’m the medical director of a behavioural weight management program And while I’ve seen with my own two eyes many a person lose enough weight to preclude surgery, I don’t delude myself into thinking that downloading the solution to extreme obesity onto personal responsibility is everyone’s answerIf there were a non-surgical, reproducible and uniformly effective plan for the management of extreme obesity, I’d agree with you, but the fact is, there is no such planOf course, even if you do want to embrace personal responsibility as the sole cause of obesity, medicine isn’t about blame We patch up drunk drivers and folks who don’t wear seat belts We offer smoking cessation programs We treat asthmatics who don’t bother keeping up with their puffers, pneumonias exacerbated by the early discontinuation of antibiotics, and the psychotic breaks of folks who stop their antipsychoticsOh, you want surgical examples?How about lung reduction surgeries in smoking induced emphysema; liver transplants in former alcoholics; or how about one that doesn’t involve a so-called vice at all – heart bypasses on folks who simply didn’t bother to take their blood pressure, cholesterol or diabetes medications?We operate on them all in a timely manner, and so we should, and the public doesn’t generally say booBut yet in the case of bariatric surgery, many people are up in arms about its timely provisionWhy?Because for obesity, many folks feel justified discussing its treatment on the basis of blame based causationThe thing is, aside from obesity it would seem, medicine isn’t about blame, it’s about treatment, and if there’s a proven and viable treatment option, at least here in Canada, people believe it should be readily accessible by our heavily taxed population, regardless of how and why their conditions developed in the first placeAt the end of the day, Lillian rightly sees bariatric surgery as hope Emotionally it would see her bolstered by a success which for whatever reason, and it’s not for anyone to judge, you haven’t walked in her shoes, has eluded her Economically it would save Nova Scotia likely tens of thousands of dollars of care and may improve the Province’s GDP by increasing Lillian’s ability and duration for gainful employment Statistically and medically, it will prolong her life, cure her diabetes and sleep apnea, and potentially provide her with a springboard to retool her world, meet her grandchildren, and enjoy a fuller lifeCan you think of any other area of medicine, with an equally dramatically effective treatment option, where people would feel comfortable preaching about personal responsibility trumping a patient’s desire or right to access said treatment?I sure can’tLillian shouldn’t have to wait 10 years on a wait list for a gastric bypass, and blame has no place in the ethical practice of medicine
EUGENIE JONES | Exercises that boost the runner in you
Running season is in full swing. Good weather and a plethora of community race events have both novice and experienced runners outdoors taking full advantage of their sport, and there’s one question they all have in common: “How can I improve my P.R. — my personal record?”
Many will vary the distance and intensity of their training runs to gain speed and strength, but they’ll miss an additional training component essential to going longer, stronger, and faster.
Resistance training is that component. It is fundamental not only to improving your P.R., but also to improving your overall fitness level, reducing your risk of injury when you do run, and increasing your metabolic rate so that you burn more calories when you run and even when you’re doing absolutely nothing at all.
If you’re a runner who has avoided weights out of fear that you’ll get bulky and slow, allow me to put your fears to rest. D
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