New Year’s Resolutions – Are Your Family and Friend’s Sabotaging You?

Posted by R. Michael Stone on February 9, 2012

It’s that time of year again. A new beginning and we all have ideas about how we are going to make this year much better than the last one. One traditional way is by making lists of changes we are going to make – the New Year’s Resolution list!

So here we are into the second month of 2012. How are you doing with your resolutions? Unfortunately, if you are like most people, all the good intentions have faded and you are back on the same path you were in 2011. Why is this?

The problem is your self image. For the previous year and a great deal longer, you have viewed yourself exactly as you are.  Overweight, a smoker, time waster and whatever else about yourself you wish to change for the better.

This picture is YOU! You see it every day and other people see it everyday. Yourself and others demand that it be you because to your conscious mind and the family and friends around you, it IS you!

Interestingly, making a change in yourself bothers other people! It doesn’t matter whether the change is positive or negative. So, not only are you having to deal with your own personal obstacles to change, you get piled on by those around you. Sadly, the people that are closest to you, family and dear friends, are the worst offenders.

If your self improvement program has been scrapped for 2012, you need to examine why. Look at things within yourself that blocked you and look at the people around you that contributed to keeping you as you are. I think you will be surprised at how much others have worked to maintain the overweight or smoker you.

When you realize this external, unexpected support to block your change, you can take charge of it. It’s not too late to get back on track. Want to lose weight? You CAN do it. Want to quit smoking? You CAN do it. But it requires a firm resolve to change and a resistance to those around you keeping you as you are.

Let’s look at the desire to be thinner as an example. A starting place to identify obstacles to your goal to lose weight is your family. If you are a man, look at a picture of your father at your current age; if you are a woman, look at a picture of your mother. Now, it is important to look at a picture of your parents when they were the  age you are now (younger pictures do not reflect the current reality). What do you see?

For myself, I saw that I was inadvertently looking just like my father. Who was out of condition and developed a large gut. It didn’t help that my relatives said, “Oh, he looks just like Jack!” Of course, my first inclination and I’m sure yours would be as well is to deny it. NO WAY! I don’t look anything like that!

But they were right. My father died in 1991 at the age of 61.  He was actually just 6 months into his 61st year and died of a heart attack. I pulled a picture of dad and had to admit, I was on that path.

Well, I am sure that my father did not want me to end up like he did.  With that in mind, I started a weight loss program and today, I don’t look like my father. I’m sure that he would be proud of that fact!

However, if your parents are still alive and they have weight problems, they may unconsciously support the current overweight you; it is the YOU they know.

You have to overcome this external support to be overweight. They are only doing it because they view that as YOU when of course, that is not really you. You have to realize that to be in better health is not disrespectful to your parents who may not be in good health.

You are your own person! Parents and friends may be uncomfortable with you changing your body image but, YOU have to live with the consequences. Just as I decided I did not want to end up like my father, you have to decide that you too, want to be healthy and have a positive body image.

So, if your New Year’s Resolutions fell apart, look at the people around you and see how they contributed. THEN, get back on TRACK! You can do it!

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The Christmas Season – A Time of Reflection and Movies that will Help

Posted by R. Michael Stone on December 2, 2011

For me, the holiday season is a time of reflection. A wrap up of the year that’s been and a preparation for a Great New Year! It is a time for good will to others and to revitalize one’s faith.

I have found several movies that reflect the spirit of the holiday season. I would like to talk about these movies and hope that you will watch and enjoy them as much as I do year after year.

A Christmas Carol – 1951

The first movie I want to talk about is the classic, A Christmas Carol from 1951 starring Alastair Sim. With an all British cast and authentic, ancient London locations, this movie brings Charles Dicken’s classic to incredible life. The acting is superb and the message is clear. The way you treat others affects your life.

Alastair Sim IS Scrooge. In the beginning, you can see how selfish he is and also, living a lonely, barren life. From the moment the spirit of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley comes to warn him, you see an intense transformation. At the end of the movie, Scrooge is a totally different person, a caring man who takes joy in helping others. Each time I watch this movie, I am moved. It is very touching and shows that you can change your ways, no matter where you are in life. It is a movie of redemption and the restoration of faith. I watch it every year and I hope you will too. I particularly like that the original b/w has a colorized version although you have to be careful when you order as some releases are only in b/w so read the description. I like color and the costumes are very colorful.

The Bishop’s Wife

The bishop is a man who has lost his way. Promoted to the office of bishop at a younger age than normal, he becomes obsessed with building a large cathedral to prove his worth. His obsession alienates him from his family and the congregation of the little church from which he came. The project is so expensive, he is constantly ingratiating himself to wealthy people for funding and losing respect. Desperate to build this cathedral, he prays for help and his prayers are answered.

Help arrives in the form of an angel, magnificently played by Cary Grant, but the bishop has been too buried in the material world and has lost sight of the spiritual one. Even though the angel performs numerous miracles, the bishop is doubting and suspicious, almost as if he doesn’t really believe in angels.

From the very beginning of the movie and throughout, the angel is constantly helping people. The angel realizes that this cathedral is not what the world needs and arranges things so that the primary donor decides to give the money intended for the cathedral to directly help people in need. Thus, the bishop’s crisis of faith is solved. He returns to his roots and his faith. The angel disappears with no one remembering he ever was there.

This is a wonderful movie. It makes one feel good to see the angel helping those in need and restoring their faith, something we each need to examine within ourselves. Again, I like the colorized version as I’ve never been a fan of b/w. It is available in both forms.

Miracle on 34th Street

This is another movie of faith and redemption. A young single mother, a manager at Macy’s Department store in New York City, is a cynic to the world because of her failed marriage and teachers her young daughter to be that way as well.  On the day of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the man who was hired to play Santa Claus has gotten drunk but she doesn’t realize it until she is informed by an plump, elderly gentleman with a white beard.

The parade is about to start and in desperation, she pleads with the elderly man to put on the Santa suit. Reluctantly, he does so in order to not disappoint the thousands of children.

Little does the cynical woman know that this elderly, plump gentleman with the snow white beard calls himself Kris Kringle and accepts himself to really be Santa Claus. After being hired to work as the official Macy’s Santa, his supervisor is infuriated to find that “Santa” is directing parents to other stores to find the toys their children want but Macy’s doesn’t have. However, the supervisors anger is quickly gone when the multitude of grateful parents thank the owner of Macy’s and he keeps Kris on. But the jealous, petty store psychologist who demanded that Kris not be hired sets him up for a psychiatric commitment, resulting in a court sanity hearing.

Is Kris Kringle the genuine Santa Claus or a mentally incompetent old man? Watch and find out.

I hope you enjoy these movies as much as I do. Have a happy holiday season and a wonderful New Year!

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Avoid Holiday Weight Gain: Are You Thinking Yourself Fat?

Posted by R. Michael Stone on November 28, 2011

Is weight gain during the holidays really necessary? Consider this:

If you talk with people about the holiday season, they always talk about gaining weight. Interestingly enough, just about everybody cites 10 pounds.

When people talk like this, it reminds me of research that shows attitudes affect weight. In other words, what you THINK results in effects on the body! Here are people programming themselves to put on weight over just a few days! It is likely, since they believe it, that these people will indeed gain 10 pounds.

Physiological psychology has studied the dynamics of weight and body image. For example, it has been said by many overweight people that they eat no more than people of normal weight.  This of course, doesn’t seem logical. However, a research project was designed to examine this claim and it was accurate. In other words, the people who were extremely overweight DID NOT eat any more than their normal weight counterparts. In some instances, they ate a great deal less!

When I was growing up, I saw a perfect example of this phenomena. A family lived across the street from us. Every one of them were extremely thin. No matter what they ate, they were all extremely thin. Further research provides a possible answer.

To study the impact of calorie consumption on weight level, a research study paid one group of people to over eat by a very large amount and another group to eat what is classified as a starvation diet.  So the two experimental groups consisted of:  Group 1 – The participants were paid to over eat in the extreme. Group 2 – The participants were paid to exist on a starvation diet. The experiment lasted for a couple of months.

As to be expected, Group 1 gained a great deal of weight while Group 2 lost a great deal of weight during the experiment. After they were released, they were told to go back to eating as they normally did and asked to return for a followup checkup in two months. The results were interesting.

In a two month period of time, all the subjects from Group 1 and Group 2 were within 10 pounds of what they weighed when they started the experiment.  This means that everyone, whether in the over eating or starvation group adjusted their diet to return to the weight they were before the experiment. This was without a specific diet plan; it just happened.

Think about this for a moment. Perhaps it is not so extraordinary that the weight loss group gained weight back but what about the weight gain group? If you’ve ever gone on a diet, and who hasn’t, you know how hard it is to lose weight. You can starve yourself for a month and maybe lose two or three pounds. The weight gain group, when they returned to their normal routine, lost over 20 lbs in a couple of months without dieting as we know it.

The people had a specific view of their appearance which was drastically altered by the experiment; they became either too fat or too thin. When the experiment was over, they naturally returned themselves to how they felt they were suppose to look.  None of them followed a plan to do this; it just happened.

The only conclusion to be drawn from this result is that the weight gain group not only had to adjust their food consumption down, but had to raise their metabolism to have such a fast weight loss.  In other words, their mind turned up the metabolism to quickly return them to the body image they believed they were suppose to have!

So, you have to ask yourself the question, How does your attitude affect your weight?

  • Do you believe if you eat a certain food you will gain weight?
  • Do you believe that because your parents are overweight, you have to be as well?
  • Do you believe that as you get older, you naturally become overweight?
  • Do you believe it is hard to diet and lose weight?

Examine your views about weight. You are likely programming yourself to weigh more than you need to weigh because you believe you should. Do you view the holiday season as an automatic weight gain?

Take charge of your thoughts about weight. Start programming yourself in a positive way to have the body image that you really desire! Remember,  if you think thin, and believe it, your body will follow!

Category Categories: Body Image, Health, Mind Power, Nutrition, Weight Loss  |  Tag Tags: ,  |  Comments No comments

Magnesium – Important but Forgotten Mineral

Posted by R. Michael Stone on November 14, 2011

My goal in this blog is to provide information for good health both mental and physical. One cannot talk about great health without talking about Magnesium.

Let me explain that although my professional background is in psychology, physical health has been an important field of independent study since junior high school.  Our bodies are the most critical piece of equipment that we have. It is important that we know how to maintain them. The topics that I address are ones that I have learned through study and/or personal experience. The topic of Magnesium is very personal to me because of my family history.

In the last post, we discussed the importance of Alkaline water. Alkalinity is important because the blood pH must be alkaline! Thus, the importance of the Alkaline minerals for our health.

There are four major Alkaline minerals that we all need for good health and to keep our blood pH Alkaline: Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium and Sodium. We need so much of these minerals they are called “bulk” minerals. Yet, you have probably only heard about Calcium and many people take Calcium supplements.

What most people don’t realize is that taking one Alkaline mineral without the others isn’t very helpful!

Before I talk about the specific importance of Magnesium, I want to give you a brief overview of how the Alkaline minerals work together. You see, it is really a biochemical equation.

  • Calcium needs Magnesium to work properly
  • Magnesium needs Potassium to work properly
  • Potassium needs Sodium to work properly

The volume of the Alkaline minerals that we need in descending order (Most to least) has the following list:

  • Calcium
  • Magnesium
  • Potassium
  • Sodium

If there is a shortage, the Alkaline mineral that depends on it can’t do its job properly. That’s why it’s important to get plenty of the Alkaline minerals and let the body balance the equation!

So the question is, what happens when you don’t have enough Magnesium to balance the equation?

There is a great book you can read that tells you all about it and I’ll post it at the end of this article. However, let me tell you about my personal experience with magnesium deficiency.

As I mentioned in the post about Alkaline water, by the end of 2005, I had become seriously acidic. This means that my Alkaline mineral reserve was depleted. In other words, I was in deficiency mode for Magnesium.

Here’s what I noticed: cramps in my feet and calves, cramps in my hands if I did simple things like turning a screwdriver, aching kidneys and many other issues right off the list from the book I’m going to recommend. However, the most disturbing was heart arrhythmia.

I can tell you there is no worse feeling than to feel your heart not working properly. I can remember being in bed at night and wondering if I was going to die. Very unpleasant.

When I was clued in by my medical clinic that I was too acid, I started researching how to resolve it. This led me to Alkaline water and a study of the Alkaline minerals. When I read the books, The Magnesium Miracle and the Magnesium Factor, I discovered the root cause of my symptoms.

The main thing I discovered was that I have a problem processing magnesium. This explains why as an infant, I had convulsions. I need a great deal more magnesium than most people. It also explained why my father and his father died early (61 & 64). They had been smokers which depletes magnesium.

Following the recommendations in the books, I began to recover. Now, my heart is fine and no more cramps.

I hope you read at least one of the books I recommend. The Magnesium Miracle is much less technical than The Magnesium Factor so you will probably enjoy it more.

To your great health!

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