Healthier and healthier

People are noticing “hey Stephane, you lost weight!” Yep! More than 40 pounds of it! The second question is always, “What is your secret? The Atkins?”
Not at all, here is what I’m doing:

80% vegetables (40% is raw and the other 40% lightly steams)
20% comprise legumes, nuts, and fruits.
Drink lots and lots of water at least 4.5l of it.
No pasta.
No processed food.
No sugar.
No chocolate.
No diary products.
No eggs.
No peanuts.
No mushrooms (because it is a fungus)
No vinegar (don't need the extra acid)
No meat.
No coffee, tea.
No alcohol
I jog 45 minutes or more at least 3 times a week
I lift weights 30 minutes at least 3 times a week

Here and here is why I eliminated meet from my diet. I could not believe how animal farming is a drain to the environment .
Notmilk and MilkSucks have compelling reasons to stop consuming diary products.
What about calcium, iron etc…

Better straighten up

Do you sit more than 2 hours a day? Worst, do you work sitting at a PC 6 hours a day and sit at home a few more hours in front of the tube. Do you still wonder why you are sore at various places and get frequent headaches? Moving only your fingers and one arm during those long hours is not healthy. Our body is a beautiful machine made to jump, run, band and twist. I don’t have to tell you this because you already know that muscles need to stretch and be stimulated to stay healthy. Consulting a doctor about your sore XYZ (replace XYZ with where you hurt) and the doctor will say "rest it, immobilize it, us a brace and adjust the ergonomic of your workstation." I’m sorry to tell you this but don’t you find that your sore whatever is resting enough all day? You will eventually feel pain somewhere if you exclude physical activities from your life for days, weeks or months, no matter how ergonomic your chair and workstation is. Pain is your body’s way of saying there is something wrong.

I was hit by a car and dislocated my left leg out of the hip socket when I was 10 years old. X-ray did not show the dislocation so I endure the pain for 6 month until I went to see a Chiropractor who helped me out. I could still walk with a dislocated leg but not as gracefully mind you. My right leg became stronger because my left one was hurting too much. It is a great survival mechanism that muscles in close perimeter will take over weak, sick or even missing ones. The mechanism allowing me to keep on walking even if I had a dislocated tibia end up being detrimental to me in the long run. 5 months ago (that’s 27 years after my accident), the muscles in my right leg were almost two times stronger then my left. You don’t need to dislocate a leg to find out if some of your strong muscles have taken over. If you sit at a computer all day like me, muscles used while sitting are nice and strong but if you don’t use any other nes, you develop many opportunity to have strong muscles take over weaker one.

Look at yourself in the mirror, how is your posture, when you walk is one leg stiffer. Look at any distortion in your body. To explain what I mean by distortion, let’s do a couple of real easy experiments.

Stand up shake your legs a little, look strait ahead and do a walking movement for 10 seconds but stay in place. Stop and look at your feet. You are not standing up yet? Come on! Be brave! Try it! Now that you really did the experiment, are your feet uneven? Are your toes pointing outward or inward? Your feet should be pointing strait ahead and fall evenly on the ground, if not, you are at risk or already live with pain. But it’s not my muscles that are hurting it’s my bones! Guess what is moving your bones… it’s the muscles that are moving your bones. What I call distortion is when your strong muscles are pulling your bones away from optimum position.

Stand up again to do another quick experiment. While standing up, close your eyes for 30 seconds or so. What happened? Was your body waving back and forth? I bet it was! When you have distortion, your body is trying to center itself but can’t because your bones are misaligned.

The good news is your body can be restored back. You must include in your daily routine more stretching and moving. Move all your body parts to their full range of motion. Yoga and Tai Chi are excellent at re-establishing full range of motion. You can also get help from a Chiropractor (such as Millar Sports Chiropractic in London, Ontario) who is aware of the Active Release Technic (ART) that can quickly realign your body. I also recommend Pete Egoscue’s books.

Pete Egoscue is the author of a few books about non medical pain relief exercises. His books will show you exercises that will relieve any pain you may entertain from being sedentary to pain acquired from playing sports. I am confident that you will find the Egoscue method simple and effective. I have been using his method for the last 5 months and it subdue all my pain. It also helped my posture. The Egoscue method is not a quick fix because a series of his exercise may take up to one hour a day but I tell you the rewards are incredible. Gee! Are you serious! One hour? Yep, very serious! If you are working at a PC for 6 hours or more a day, how much movement do you think you need to stay healthy?

Pete Egoscue’s books are probably available at your local Libraries. If you live in London, Ontario, his books are available at the London libraries and the University of Western Ontario. I suggest you check out the link for the University of Western Ontario and read the excellent summary. On Pete Egoscue’s website you will find archived audio files of his radio show. I've listened to a few of them and they are quite interesting.

See you at the gym!

Ups and downs of Performance Appraisals (PA)

I see two parts in a PA. Part one is your year in retrospect. Part two is an evaluation of your current skills. The well done PA helps determine your strengths and is also a wake up call that exposes your weaknesses. When you know your weaknesses it is easy to prepare a Personal Development Plan (PDP). Your PDP should have courses and things you need to do to improve your weaknesses. Your PDP should effectively direct your efforts to better yourself.

The feeble part of the PA process is the feedback. First you must ask co-worker who you collaborated with to give you a feedback. Co-workers in return are requesting a feedback from you. I end up spending half a day on a feedback while the work is accumulating. Ok… maybe I’m over doing it; I was told “spend 20 minutes to an hour, which should be enough”. Ha! Ha! Ha! Well maybe for a writer, but I’m neither writer nor pure Anglophone and it usually takes me hours (plural). Having two feedbacks to type, sets me back an entire day. What if I get more! Yikes! Don’t forget that every feedback you request, that person spends up to half a day typing it up too. In my opinion, in most cases, the drain on company resources does not amount to the benefit received from the feedback. I’m curious how long everyone else truly spend on a feedback.

I always try to get my Manager to do my feedback. My manager’s feedback is always rewarding and exposes the good and the bad. What if your manager is too busy? Of course you ask other people but what benefit a feedback has when it is filled with fluffy sentences and repeat of your achievements . In most feedbacks you can forget about the section asking “what could I have done better” because it is usually left empty. Is it because they are shy?

Feedbacks should expose the negative because this is how you discover what require improvement. When I’m typing someone’s feedback, I always try to write something constructive, something I think they could do better!

When it is the first time you complete a PA, the result can be traumatic because you only see the negative. On the other hand, looking back at your previous PA and compare it to the new one is very rewarding because you know that you are improving.

Surprise!

I am just as surprised as you to see me doing a blog. All I wanted to do is make a comment on my friend's blog http://writteninc.blogspot.com/. Clickety click and found myself here posting my first blog. It could not be simpler. While I'm here, mine as well start. In a matter of fact I may like doing this since the most interesting subject is usually my self. I want to thank my friend Carmi for his inspiration at getting me started. I actually hope to improve my English while I’m at it.

C’est tout!