Warning: another monster post, you’d better be sitting down.

I am often asked how am I able to maintain my weight when in the past I wasn’t a consistent exerciser. So today I am going to talk a little bit (or a lot) about what I do; you can take what’s useful and leave the rest. This is what I have been doing for years and years, and I haven’t swayed from it based on what some media talking heads have said.

For this post I’m just going to focus on how I got started. I may talk about more details, tips and the modications I made in another post. If you’re used to eating out all the time or eating a lot of processed foods, quitting all of these things cold turkey can be a recipe for failure. Very few people have the will power to quit these things cold turkey for more than a few weeks or months. Sure, it is better to quit cold turkey and you will get faster results, but it doesn’t always work out in reality.

I’m trying to take the focus of dieting and put more focus on making this a lifestyle choice, so it is better to start easy and then slowly work your way up. In the beginning, I didn’t give up many of the processed foods that I eat only sparingly today. Inutitive eating, after all, is not a rigid set of rules and calorie counting – it is a philosophy of moderation.

I’m not going to be lording over you about not eating out, but you will have to balance it with healthier (read: less processed) foods more and more until you’re eating out 20% of the time or less. After a while you will develop less of a taste for processed foods. I used to love eating fried chicken every week, but now I really don’t like it as much except for a couple of times a year.

Understanding what “processed” really means

One of my core principles today is if a food was made by someone else (whether at any restaurant/take-out, I don’t care who, or through any over-processed foods) it’s probably not that healthy – even if the label says it is healthy. I mention this because I see so many people who swear they are eating very healthy while in the same breath are able to justify eating fast food and TV dinners every day. All while struggling with weight for years. Just the other day I was speaking with someone about this (yet another person who couldn’t understand what I was doing to maintain my weight).

This does not compute, but I can see why it is probably very confusing because it’s hard to find something that is not processed at all. So I’m going to focus on the word “over-processed.”

What do I mean by over-processed? Well most foods are processed in some way. For example, milk must be processed through chemical and physical means to produce cheese. This is a bare minimum level of processing needed to make basic cheese. This kind of bare-minimum processing isn’t necessarily bad. But pre-shredded cheese or something like Vel.veeta has added chemicals in it to make it last longer — this is over-processing, or more processing than needed to make cheese.  

Consider oatmeal that you can make from rolled oats and water vs. instant oatmeal vs. oatmeal you get at Mickey D’s. Each one is more processed than the one before it. Obviously rolled oats is processed because you need to separate the oats from the plants and do whatever else to it just to get a basic oatmeal. Mickey D’s oatmeal is way over-processed in comparison because they’ve added all sorts of chemicals and sugar in it to make it as uniformly tasty as possible — therefore people can keep coming back for more. I make these sort of comparisons all the time and the more I do it, the easier and faster it becomes to make necessary food choices.

Anyway this doesn’t mean that I never eat processed foods or that I never eat out, but I’ve developed a healthy distrust of labels and resulted in a clear mental distinction of what is actually healthy, what is not, and what is gray-area healthy (and needs to be eaten in moderation). That awareness alone makes it easier to make better choices.

Portion Control

One of the first thing I did as well was to learn about portion control and take into account what I am eating. Portion control is important, but many Americans have totally jacked-up perceptions of what a portion of something actually is. Some people try to do this by counting the calories of what they are eating but this isn’t always feasible to do. I’m not a particularly meticulous person and I wasn’t about to count calories all day, I’ve got better things to do as do many people. So intuitive eating and estimating works for me. I got better with practice and by listening to my body. I can look at a plate and know how much of it I could eat before getting full and I’ll stop right before I get full. If you really don’t understand portions, I’d recommend looking up everything you can about portion control and using that as a baseline.

In general, though, I would say that anything ”regular” sized meal you pick up from any fast food restaurant or chain sit-down restaurant is actually 1.5 or 2 portions. A typical beverage (with no refills) is actually enough for two people. With that in mind, you can pick the dish you want, eat half now and eat the other half tomorrow. If you know you’re going to eat out for dinner, don’t pig out or eat out for lunch and breakfast also. This is portion control for dummies. I am not even going to get into how big your chicken portion should be and how many cups of rice you should eat. It doesn’t matter right now, it’s just too distracting. Just get used to eating from a smaller plate of food no matter what and work from there.

I typically only try to do one big meal a day and the other two are small. Sometimes I eat two big meals a day and one snack. That would probably be the only instance I snack. We don’t have any snacks in our house except for things like crackers and peanut butter, bananas, and homemade granola. I would recommend making homemade granola because it is faaaar tastier than the cardboard stuff you can get at the grocery story and you can control what you put in it (so less sugar).

I usually don’t need a nutrition label to tell me what a portion is, but I had to train my body and my stomach, kind of like weight training because the stomach is basically a muscle. If you stretch it with more and more food, your stomach will stretch to accommodate and if you keep eating large portions of food, then your stomach will stay in a stretched state. Eventually your stomach will need more food to feel “satisfied.” Conversely, if you eat less, your stomach will eventually shrink a bit (up to a point) and take less food to feel “satisfied.” I can attest to this, because I was that girl who could eat a whole large pizza myself before I felt full and now I can barely finish two or three regular sized slices.

Do you have a  “fear” of feeling hungry? I believe many people fail with portion control because they seem to have this latent fear of hunger. It seems to me that if they are even the slightest bit hungry (or bored), then it needs to be rectified immediately. This is not about starving yourself, but hunger in its early stages ISN’T an emergency. Consider that centuries ago, humans did not have food at their reach 24/7. They didn’t have refrigerators to store extra food in and they didn’t have restaurants to drive up to at midnight. Most people had to work for their food, either killing it or preparing it, and then they had to either eat what they couldn’t store or slowly consume stored foods in a way that it would last as long as possible. So there are times when people felt slightly hungry for parts of the day, but they had to put it off until later. Consequently, there’s no need for your stomach to be full at all hours of the day. That’s why your body has energy stores all over the place.

I know that the feeling is uncomfortable if you’re not used to it, but you do get used to it. If I feel my stomach rumbling and I know I’ve eaten less than 4-6 hours ago, I will not be reaching for a snack, I’m reaching for some water or tea with no sugar added. Water helps offset the slight hunger you feel and it also prevents you from binging when it is time to eat. 

Breaking food down to its components

As for taking into account what you are eating, most people do not really pay attention that. That is because most people do not know what goes into food, nor do they truly care (even if they claim to) – they just want it to taste good while having a clear conscience about it. That’s why you see some people getting outraged about the whole Paula Deen fiasco, as if they didn’t know her food is the once-in-a-blue moon food- as if it is Paula Deen’s responsibility to save other people from themselves. Give me a break.

More importantly, it’s also why the public is constantly fooled by ”healthy” versions of things that aren’t inherently healthy in the first place.

For example does the idea of “healthy” ribs make sense to you? Sure it sounds like a joke if you understand that the whole point of ribs is the fatty flavors in the meat and the saltiness of the sauces, but I guarantee you I could find a huge market for it in a heartbeat. I don’t believe food companies themselves have gone that far yet (or maybe they have!), but there are many less obvious examples of the same concept right now. Just look up “healthy ribs” on Google and you’ll see 12,000,000+ laughable recipes and suggestions.

I don’t have to look them all up to know they are laughable, either, because I understand what ribs are made of - otherwise it’s not ribs! All of this indicates to me a huge misunderstanding or a miseducation about the foods we eat. Do you see the overarching theme here that so many people miss? A healthy food label does not a healthy food make.

Honestly if I wanted ribs, I would just eat some regular old ribs and be done with it. I just wouldn’t eat a lot in one sitting and I wouldn’t eat it all the time, maybe a few times a year and stop agonizing so much. I am someone who loves food, but I understand too much of anything is bad. Besides the  full-fat, full-sugar version tastes so much better when you eat it less often.

Anyway what I started doing early on in my journey is to mentally break food up into its parts (what does it take to make this food in general). You can do this even when you don’t have an ingredient label, but knowing how to cook various kinds of food makes this easier. All foods are made up of three macronutrients: carbs, protein, and fat. Keep in mind that vegetables, fruits, any and all kinds of sugar are carbs. Carbs in its simplest definition does not just equal bread and rice. This is why the carbs is evil argument is misleading.

With that in mind most natural foods is composed primarily of one of these macronutrients, but processed foods will often be composed of two or double portions of one. A regular vegetable like potatoes is a carb (complex carb, specifically starches), but french fries is potatoes (carbs) with a lot of oil (fat) added to it. A simple bread that you can make at home is a carb, but bread that you can buy from the grocery story has double the carbs in it (from the flour and from the added sugar that food producers like to add).

Another ingredient to watch out for is salt, which is a micronutrient. Salt is in everything, but some foods clearly have more than others such as cheese, most snacks, condiments, etc. All of this is a rough estimation since I am not a food scientist, but I am aware of what it takes to make a lot of food and getting this general idea has served me very well.

If I eat a cheeseburger, we have a meat patty (protein, fat), cheese (salt, fat), lettuce (carbs), bread (simple carbs from flour, sugar, fat from butter, seeds). You add condiments and most condiments are just fat and salt. Couple that with fries and you are getting vegetable, fat from the frying oil, and salt. So you see that this meal is mostly made up of fat and salt. without even knowing the exact percentages. There’s nothing wrong with a good hamburger here and there, but you know that the rest of the day you might not want to eat things loaded with fat and salt. You might want to pass on dessert also.

I have always hated when the media pinpoints any specific food group as inherently bad – popular scapegoats are fats and carbs. I consider this to be mostly untrue because your body needs fat and carbs. Your brain especially has a huge uptake of glucose for energy. I will note that there is a difference between simple carbs and complex carbs: you will want more of the complex kinds. So this means less baked goods (*cries*) and less “refined” grains such as white breads and white rice. As for fats – it’s time to stop seeing them as a villain, as long as you eat them in moderation you are fine.

In most cases, as I’ve pointed out before, it’s better to get the full fat (or sugar) version of something and eat smaller portions of it than it is to get the low fat (or sugar) version. Why? Because food companies substitute fat with refined sugar (or sugar with fat) to keep the foods “tasty.” Always keep that in mind. If something has a key ingredient taken out of it, it will be substituted with something else equally as bad or worse.

Similarily, I never buy into the “miracle food” thing either. It seems to change every season. Some foods are better than others, yes, but no foods is the cure-all for bad eating choices and bad health. I don’t care if you eat it by the truckload.

Wrap up

I realize that this is a pretty long post but I hope that I was able to break down the core values of intuitive eating, or eating in moderation, as I know it for people who don’t quite understand what’s happening behind the scenes. I tried including everything needed for that foundation.

By the way I actually hate all those teaser posts that some bloggers do by splitting up one topic into fifty-eleven posts and I try not to overdo that. Yes, I’d rather write one monster post and stop playing with people’s emotions. Yes, at the risk of scaring away the faint-of-heart with the novel-length posts.

You win some, you lose some.

So as I’ve said at the beginning, I may do another post adding onto that, because I can’t really cram everything about this in one post. So just process (pun intended) all this, see if it makes sense, and maybe some of it can be applied to your own life! : )

Related posts:

1. In the spirit of fitness
2. Reading between the lines (and why Americans need their arses kicked over their food choices)
3. Weekend tidbit 2: Sharing is caring

As part of my 12 Months of Focused Exploration and Self-Growth initiative, I’ll be exploring a different theme every month in my own life and here on the blog. This month you’re in luck, it’s Love Month. Actually - every month you’re in luck,  but that’s besides the point. : )

When most people think of love, they think of romantic love. But love takes on so many shapes and forms. You have self- love, love between friends, love between family members, love for children, love for animals, love for people in general, and even love of inanimate objects and concepts.

I will try to explore as many of these concepts as I can although I can’t promise I’ll get to them all and in my typical in-depth writing. Some of them will be simple, carefree posts — because that is what I believe love is at its root: simple and carefree.

Many people say love is complicated. But I believe that people make love complicated. I think love can be hard, because life forces you to make difficult choices sometimes. Difficult choices like letting someone you love go or not letting someone – such as a child – have everything they want because you know it’s bad for them. But the choice is often clear when you love someone, it is simply hard to follow through. So hard doesn’t always equal complicated.

In my own life, I have found that some forms of love are easier to enjoy and implement than others. This ease is typically not the case with self-love and romantic love. This is because of the many mental barriers we place on just letting things be and the many expectations that we have for ourselves and others. In the end, all of these function to get in the way of truly loving someone. So please do forgive me if I end up dwelling a bit too much on those that aspect. : )

And of course, if there is something specific you would like me to explore, I am open to suggestions. I don’t proclaim to be an expert at love but I most certainly am a student. To me, it isn’t a choice – it’s the whole point of living. So why would I not want to learn about it for as long as I’m alive?

With that said, I leave with a song from one of my favorite artists.

Related posts:

1. 2012: 12 months of focused exploration and self-growth
2. All is full of love
3. [Spirituality month] Distinguishing between intuition and indoctrination

This post wraps up the series for Spirituality Month of my 12 Months of Focused Exploration And Self-Growth initiative. For more information about this, read here.

Spirituality is such a hard topic for me to write about because I believe it to be a highly personal experience. As such my focus on spirituality this month has been somewhat lacking. I am not interested in dictating how things should be even when I am giving out a set of “rules” or “tips.” This applies to anything I write about and not just spirituality — just that spirituality has many more gray areas, I feel.

Rather I am trying to use my own experiences and observations to guide people in their own search for the “truth,” their own personal heaven, just as I look to others’ insights to guide me. Nothing makes me happier than seeing other people happy in their own lives — even if I have nothing to do with them — because I care about people in general and I know that as people find happiness, then humankind gets uplifted a little more. At best, my own insights will provide them with only a piece of the puzzle in their own journey. Nothing more, nothing less.

As I’ve alluded to in my first spirituality post, I have been all over the spectrum as far as my own spirituality goes. For the past couple of years, I have been in the process of exploring my own spirituality and I think it will be a life-long journey in which my perceptions and beliefs will change. No matter what though, I think I’ll always be a spiritual being.

In my opinion, an important part of being spiritual is the ability to be in touch with your intuition. Your intuition is that voice within yourself that is able to help you make decisions when you don’t have all the information at hand. Some people might call it their spirit and other people might call it their subconsciousness. Either way, this intuition could be seen as being connected to the greater whole in some way, dipping into a “universal knowledge” that is much deeper and more extensive than your own.

I believe that this knowledge is not constant, but that it is constantly dynamic as nature and people add more and more to it. That’s how, when you listen to intuition, you are able to feel so sure about certain things even though you personally have no experience or first-hand knowledge about it.

I take my own intuition very seriously. I don’t always “hear” it but at whatever rare opportunity my gut tells me something is off or that something could be a very good thing, I don’t ask very many questions after that point. I may do a bit of research and go against my gut a few rare times, but I try to do it with caution. So far, that strategy has not failed me yet.

The problem with this is that there is a big difference between your intuition and indoctrination. There appears to be, of course, a significant overlap between the two. But in my own (albeit limited) experience, these two things are separate and are not required to function with each other. Society and our own social circle has indoctrinated us with a specific set of beliefs. While helpful in many, many situations, these beliefs can at times be detrimental and even fail to have your own interests at heart.

Many people have a hard time distinguishing between these indoctrinated beliefs and intuition. I often have a hard time with this myself. This clash mostly comes up most when we are afraid of something or when we encounter something totally new — something that may potentially threaten our engrained beliefs. It is at this point that revert back to our indoctrination, whether it makes sense in that particular situation or not.

For example, many people out there have been indoctrinated to believe that homosexuality is wrong, whether through their religion or through the fact that they have never been exposed to the homosexual lifestyle before, or both. Person A may see everyone they know argue against homosexuality and gay marriage; the logic they use against these concepts may even appear to make sense because these people talk in the language and the context that Person A understands. So Person A may feel strongly and unavowedly that homosexuality is wrong.

Now I am not arguing for or against homosexuality and gay marriage. But I am trying to point out how easy it is for the line between indoctrination and intuition is blurred. Perhaps it is Person A’s intuition and perhaps it is just indoctrination. It could be a mixture of both. But how do you really know? I am trying to get you to ask yourself, whenever you get these sure feelings, where is it really coming from?

The only real way to answer that question is to practice, to constantly question these feelings and opinions that you get within yourself in reaction to life. In my opinion, there is really no fully right or wrong answer to this question. The belief doesn’t matter nearly as much as the process of getting that belief and the context to which that belief is applied to. As I said before this body of knowledge could be seen as cumulative and dynamic. With that in mind, the “universal knowledge” is not made up of a whole bunch of rigid set of black-and-white rules. Perhaps there are some, but I would like to think that it has a significantly larger grey area where “rules” are conditional and depend on the context.

This is where intuition diverges from indoctrinated beliefs, and why I believe it is a separate “entity.” Indoctrination is highly skewed toward teaching black-and-white beliefs: that something is always right or wrong no matter what the circumstance. Not always but primarily, that is how it functions because indoctrination aims to control people and guide them towards a very specific outcome by doing a very specific set of actions. If the specific set of actions are not done, then it isn’t possible to reach the outcome, which only takes on a very specific shape and form. If reaching that destination does happen outside of the specified set of actions, then it must be luck or not of this world.

Intuition is more inclined towards exception, customization, and duality — that there is right withing wrong and wrong within right. Intuition is similar to indoctrination in that it is guiding you towards more or less the same destination: bliss, peace, happiness, whatever you want to call it. It differs from indoctrination because it seems to know that the destination is always the same, even if it takes on different shapes and forms, and that there are many ways to get there.

I know that this is all very metaphysical and idealistic, but who am I if not metaphysical? Even if this does not sink in right now, I would suggest chewing on this idea. Think about how would it apply to your own life and to those of people around you. Think of how intuition and indoctrination play out in your life. How would you define them? How do they impact you? How do they impact others around you?

That’s all you can do. Don’t look for the right and wrong answers. There are none. Ask questions and accept the different possibilities. Explore them if you want, reject them if you must, but acknowledge them no matter how it comes.

Related posts:

1. [Spirituality month] The beginnings of exploring spirituality and religion
2. [Spirituality month] General thoughts on making time for spirituality
3. [Spirituality month] Ditch the “sin” word from your vocabulary – permanently

While interacting with people, I notice that there is a very prevalent attitude of me, me, me and thinking, “What’s in it for me?” Frankly I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with wondering what’s in something for you in the long run. If you consistently put in the work or you give away something, it makes sense to expect some sort of pay off in the end (even though life never guarantees the pay off you want).

However, over-focusing on that payoff in the short run can actually harm your ability to thrive in the long run. I am not innocent of doing this, and often I have to check myself from feeling too entitled. My recent interactions with people have made me more keenly aware of this.

Dealing with entitled people is extremely irritating, even when they legitimately have the right to feel entitled. Theoretically, you should be able to step up and demand your entitlements, but it goes much deeper than that. The law may be rational and clear cut, but human psychology is not – and at the end of the day, successfully applying human psychology will determining how far you can get.

Rubbing on the fact that you are entitled to something does not win you any favors and makes people more inclined to resist and eventually replace you in some way. That’s exactly what these people are: replaceable. Why would you want to be replaceable in people’s minds when you can be irreplaceable? Why strong-arm people into doing something for you when you can make it so that they are happy – or even excited – to do it?

Think about it, people want irreplaceable people to stick around, because these people benefit them in some way and that can not easily replaced. It is a pain point for people to replace a highly valuable person. Why? Because there are way too many people out there who do not do more than the bare minimum required to maintain the status quo in their lives. Forget about trying to uplift others, if they can barely uplift themselves.

Because most people shoot themselves in the foot this way, it is easier than you’d think to rise to the top and become irreplaceable. What about if you don’t know where to start the process of becoming irreplaceable? I suppose the answer is different for everyone, but this is what works for me:

1. Raise standards for both yourself and for others.

This is important to me because I feel that I need to have high standards for myself in order for me to produce high quality work and a high quality experience. I know that I also cannot expect much of others if I don’t expect very much of me. All of this may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out.

Most people believe that they just need to be as good as the next person and they are set. The problem with this is that it creates mediocre results because everyone else is doing the same thing. It is also a mediocre experience interacting with them, because what is interesting or enlightening about interacting with someone who is just like everyone else?

When you set your standards and expectations higher, not only do you produce quality results, you also attract other quality people who challenge you to reach those standards and even exceed them. They challenge you to grow and they reward that. You do the same thing to them by having high expectations for them.

People react better to high expectations than they do to low expectations – they typically want to rise to meet those expectations. It usually makes them feel good that you see potential in them and expect more of them. They benefit from that as well as from the quality results/work/experience they get from you.

2. Learn how to communicate in other people’s language.

Everyone speaks a different language. The first time I really understood this is when I was reading about neuro-linguistic programming a few years ago. Some people are visual, others take in information better by listening, and yet others learn best by doing. Of course, this is simplistic, but it still illustrates my point. On top of that, people are best able to take in as much as their “filters” allow them to take in.

Think of a filter with circle shaped holes. This filter is created by a person’s upbringing, experiences, and therefore, their perceptions. Speaking in a specific context and using certain words and tone of voice may better fit these holes and get the message through, than if you were to speak in a completely different context while using different words. There are many ways to say the same exact message, and different people are more receptive to different ways.

If all else fails, knowing how to communicate in a non-combative way can go a long way in getting people to calm down and give them a chance to chew on the message you send. In a sense you must become a mediator of sorts, even though you are one of the offended parties.

3. Get into other people’s heads.

Everyone says that it is important to walk a mile in other people’s shoes, but I don’t actually see many people doing that. Do you really know how to get into someone’s head? Are you able to get a grasp on their desires and their dislikes? Do you know what is most important to that person; do you know what truly motivates them? If you don’t understand that, you’re pretty much replaceable. You’ve already lost.

If you really want something from someone (whether it is their money, attention, love, appreciation, acknowledgement, respect, etc), this is the most important point to understand of all else. This is really where the buck stops. I know that this is difficult to digest. Many people think, as I once did, that they shouldn’t have to prove that they need attention or that they shouldn’t have to give something in exchange for appreciation. I agree with them. They shouldn’t have to.

As a human, you are technically entitled to be treated with respect at all times in some ideal world, just for existing. But this isn’t the ideal world. This is the real world. You should get respect just by existing, but you won’t get it unless you raise your standards and you most certainly won’t get it unless you do things and act in ways deserving of respect. To do that, you need to understand where their head is at. Otherwise, anything you get that you haven’t earned is from the graciousness of other people, who can decide to rescind it at any time (unfortunately).

Unfortunately lazy, self-centered people around the world insist on forcing people to give and punish them for backing out, even if they have no reason to keep giving. Oddly, these same people feel hard-pressed to simply give away respect, attention, money, love, and appreciation to someone who just sits around breathing. We’re all self-centered in that way, but we just don’t know it. Get out of your head for a minute. It’ll still be there to return to when you’re done.

4. Create solutions, not problems.

It’s a very bad habit of many people to point out problems rather than solutions. Even worse, they create problems or choose to be part of the problem by simply complaining and doing nothing. Part of it is because they haven’t gotten into other people’s heads: They don’t know how to get what they want by giving other people what they want. So instead they sit back, complain, do nothing, or they try to force others into finding the solutions by dragging them into the problem (as alluded to in point 3).

This attitude is not conducive to becoming irreplaceable. It only creates resistance and it creates an impression in someone’s mind that you need to be replaced or shut down as soon as possible.

Do you know anyone at your work place who complains about everything and keeps making demands on the management, no matter how small or petty it is? Perhaps they are entitled to many of the things that they are asking because the company policy dictates it. Perhaps the management asked for complaints and suggestions for improvements, so the employees are entitled to make requests.

But notice how the loudest complainers are often (not always) the ones that do the least. Oh, they may do their jobs, but they rarely do more than the bare minimum. Notice how these people are often the most worried about job security and are the least likely to be laid off or fired. These people do not understand their managers and they do not understand the company they work for, much less the company’s needs. If they do know the company’s needs, they aren’t interested in the solution because they know that the solution probably means more effort on their part.

When you go above and beyond what your managers expect and show them this — when you can give them possible and viable solutions, even if they reject them — it shows that you aren’t someone they can easily shortchange or replace, else they risk losing you to someone who will reciprocate. The same thing applies to relationships, just change “manager” and “company” to “significant other.”

5. Be interesting and engaging

When most people hear “be interesting”, they think they need to collect all sorts of brag-able knowledge and experiences. They think of being interesting in terms of their own ego. Oddly enough, you’re only as interesting as the next person thinks you are. It’s fantastic if you think you are an interesting person, and I think everyone should try to lead an interesting life (because you only have one life to live). But what you think won’t mean a lot to another person.

I find that most people think I am interesting when I give them the space to them to talk about themselves and their experiences. Being interesting actually means being more selfless in the conversation. It doesn’t mean being a pushover or being super nice. It also doesn’t mean that you never talk about yourself or that you never answer questions — but that you make an effort include them and their insights whether you are talking about yourself or about them or about any random subject. This ties into being engaging.

It does suck if you end up with someone who hogs all the conversation space and doesn’t return the favor — but then you’ll feel like they are the most uninteresting person you’ve ever encountered even if they have many things to be proud of and many things to share.

While I wouldn’t say that this trait is the most important trait needed for being irreplaceable, it is probably the most insidious one. It makes you a lot more likeable and it makes your actions go a longer way. A lot of famous people (both today and in history) have created a lot  solutions and know all the right things to say to get under people’s skin. But if they don’t have the quality of being interesting and engaging, then people do see them as irreplaceable — but grudgingly. The feeling is similar to what you get when you have to choose between two evils. Many successful politicians have this issue.

The reason why this trait adds to your being irreplaceable is because many people aren’t interesting or engaging in the sense that I am talking about. Almost everyone feels like other people never truly listens to them or engages them. And if they do, it’s for a short term gain of some sort.

So if you can be sincerely interesting and engaging - even if you are missing the first four traits I discussed – you might not be irreplaceable but people are less inclined to let you go or completely cut you off.

What do you think of these traits? Do you think I missed something? Do you do things differently in order to make yourself irreplaceable?

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This is Nala, the family dog.

As you can tell from the picture, she is a bit of an attention whore a trouble maker. Actually, that’s just an understatement.

We have a weird history with pets in my house. My mother, sister, and I are all animal lovers. My mother is probably the biggest animal lover of all and she ended up with a guy who didn’t care for them. Hate is too strong of a word, my father just didn’t like them in the house or anywhere near him. So growing up we had a lot of battles about having pets. My mother would often stop by any pet store or animal shelter she passed by just to “take a look” and my sister and I were sometimes there with her. So her love for them rubbed off on us.

Somehow animals would end up getting into our house and our yard, much to my father’s dismay. We ended up adopting or fostering a number of animals, especially dogs. We’ve had a German Shepherd, two Siberian Huskies, a Chihuahua, a Boxer mix, a fox terrier, and a whole slew of mutts. At first my father would adamantly insist that the dog (or cat) had to go immediately, but I guess my mother wore him down for a while until we had to give them back, give them away or they ran away. He usually stopped at letting the dogs inside the house, so the dogs we had would almost always stayed in the backyard, unless my father wasn’t home and my mother would let them inside for a few hours.

It wasn’t always my mother bringing in animals, though. My father would feel bad knowing that my mother loved animals and he didn’t, so he would occasionally bring in a stray dog as an olive branch, I guess you could say. Nala is one of the stray dogs my father found and brought home. At the time we got her, we had already moved to a new house and this house didn’t have a fenced yard. So we had no choice but to keep her inside the house. Of course, my father didn’t like that but what could he say? Bringing her home was his idea. Instead he imposed all kinds of rules, like no dogs on the couch or on the beds, and she had to sleep in her training cage every night.

Like I said, most other dogs that we had didn’t end up staying around long, except for one which died in a car accident. Because they spent most of the time in the back yard and in our large covered patio, we loved them but probably not as attached to them. Nala turned everything upside down though. This dog has truly snuck her way into every area of our lives. Now, she is all over the couch, all over the bed, never sleeps in her training cage anymore, and never even tries to run away.

The most unbelievable part is my father actually loves this dog now. They spend just about every Saturday morning laying on the couch watching soccer together. It gets worse. We would always give our pets a designated birthday. It’s an excuse to bake them a pet-friendly cake, and a people-friendly cake too. Well on this dog’s last birthday, my father so happened to be out of town. Well, wouldn’t you believe he asked to talk to this dog on the phone? And the dog is wagging her tail while he’s talking??? Hell has frozen over. I mean, even I wouldn’t do that.

Miracles do happen, I guess.

But, really, I shouldn’t be surprised. Pets really are a gift. Dogs especially define the meaning of unconditional love. They just seem to love you no matter what, or at least they know how to forgive. They’re so happy to see you no matter how long you’ve been gone. They just instinctively know how to make you feel better, whether with some silly antics (which our dog has way too many of) or by sitting next to you and keeping your company. Or maybe it’s just an accident, but it doesn’t matter.

Dare I say it, dogs (at least) seem to possess a high E.Q. I really can’t put my finger on it. So it’s no surprise Nala won over my father. You just have to let them in a little — you give them an inch and they take a mile. : )

Related posts:

1. Accept nothing less than (im)perfection
2. Weekend tidbit 4: Happy Holidays!
3. Weekend tidbit 7: Homemade pasta

When it comes to staying healthy, I have spent the last 7-8 years focusing on the diet and food part. I have never been much of a fitness nut, outside of playing a little basketball and my brief stint in karate. I have always believed that all the exercise in the world can’t save you if you eat like crap, so naturally food was my interest.

As far as food goes, eating is a lifestyle for me - I don’t do “diets,” unless you call moderation a diet. I see no point in depriving myself, but there’s no need to go overboard with it either. Despite my love for baking and all things chocolate, I really try not to eat them all that much, but my coworkers love me for this because I am always bringing the extra cakes to work.

Yes I can still do better and there are lots of things I would like to try, I think I’ve done pretty well for myself seeing that I’ve maintained my weight in all this time just from eating in moderation and avoiding as much overprocessed foods as possible.

In honesty, weight has never been my focus and it still isn’t. Weight by itself doesn’t really determine whether you are fat or shapely, it’s how it is distributed in the body. And I know that weight doesn’t always equal fat. So I never really had a target weight loss goal, on top of that it’s like watching water boil: the more you  it, the longer it seems to take. I was just interested in process and I was just tired of feeling sluggish. It was more of a food game that I was playing with myself, you could say. Before I knew it, I had dropped 15 pounds that I never intended and realized I how much better I looked that way.

In the past year or so, however, I have taken on a bigger focus on exercise. I know that a typical person’s metabolism slows down as they get older, no matter how healthy you eat. So I’d really like to take it to the next level — up from light exercise and activity several times a week.

In fact, I think it would be really cool to be part of an adult sports team, like basketball or rowing. Even a more individualized sport like tennis would do, but I like the idea of teams because I like the sense of community, that other people are depending on you and it’s much harder to quit. One of my regrets from high school is not being a part of a sport, although granted the majority of my time was spent on studying in the college prep program I was in. But better late than never I say. : )

I know I still have a lot of work and training to do before I feel like I am in the tip top shape needed to play on a team. Another motivation for doing this is to get in better shape in time for all the light backpacking I’m set to do in Europe. 

I’ve been doing a lot of speed walking / jogging and light weight training /stretching at home when I am in a crunch. But I am always researching and trying out different sorts of cardio activities (ix-nay on the gyms), from spinning to rowing and now kickboxing just to add some variety.

I recently found a really good 10-class deal for kickboxing so I am excited to show up there and see what it’s all about. I’m really looking forward to some upper body work out because I have practically none, all of my strength is concentrated in lower body and I have been told that I have a mean kick lol! I’ll definitely be putting both of it to work in these classes.

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One of the hardest things in the world is quitting something or someone that has the ability to make you feel so amazing but you know is no good for you. So very hard.

How do you quit something you love? How do you quit someone you love?

I used to wonder why people would keep doing stuff that was literally ruining their lives and keep making the same mistakes over and over. I used to wonder why people would keep taking the wrong person back again and again. I wonder why they couldn’t quit the person, and why they thought that settling  for being in the sidelines is better that than not being there at all.

I used to wonder what was going on in their heads. What were they thinking? Were they insane? Were they ignorant? Why were they self-sabotaging? Why can’t they see what’s happening right under their noses? 

My mistake is I try to analyze everything in a logical, rational way. But it’s not rational, never 100% rational. In a battle between rational and emotional, rational almost always takes the back seat; we just never want to admit it. Take it or leave it. Nothing short of death is ever clear. Everything is in the eye of the beholder.

Now I totally understand. I may not condone it, but I understand. Nowadays when I see that stuff I keep my mouth shut and hope that they find the courage and the strength to quit it and stay away. My knee jerk reflex is to tell them to quit, but I’m finding that harder to do because I know better. I know because I had the courage to quit and I know that quitting is just as hard as staying, if not harder.

The price of loving something or someone more than you love yourself – so much that you always need it/them around to validate your aliveness– is high. The price of loving yourself enough not to play a hand in your own self-destruction is higher. And the price of loving something or someone so much that you’re willing to let them go is beyond even that.

Nothing is ever free and many people aren’t willing to pay. So they pay as low as they can get away with. Sometimes, it is all they can spiritually afford.

My mouth opens but nothing comes out anymore. Words aren’t enough.

I just hope that they find some peace, their brand of peace, just as I am searching for mine. I hope that they can look up at the sky for a minute and soak in some rays. Even for a little bit. Peace comes in many shapes and forms, even if it’s an island surrounded by confusion, regret, and emotional turmoil. I can’t tell you how to find it. I can’t tell you what it looks like.

But I can say this: Love as hard as you’re able but never give up on finding your brand of peace. Never stop believing it is there, waiting to be found. Never, ever. No matter where you are at in your life.

Related posts:

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3. [Spirituality month] Distinguishing between intuition and indoctrination

I have reached 45 days of writing in my 90 day writing challenge, which started on December 1, 2011. Keep in mind this isn’t consecutive days, as I have fallen off track a few times. Consecutive days of posts was my original intention, but life happens and some of my writings, I felt, were not good enough to publish.

That said, I am proud I made it this far despite whatever setbacks I have had. So far I have written 47,497 words over 45 posts, with an average of 1,055 words per post. I don’t count this post as part of the 90-day writing challenge.

If you’ve missed any, here are the 10 most popular posts during this period (December 1, 2011 to January 25, 2012):

1. Why I don’t compete with other women

2. Weekend tidbit 8: Homemade pizza

3. 7 steps to developing womanly self-confidence (Part 1)

4. 7 steps to developing womanly self-confidence (Part 2)

5. 101 ways to discover yourself – I actually wrote this one years ago, so it is not part of this challenge, but it remains a favorite, apparently!

6. How to move to a new place with no job (and proving silly naysayers wrong)

7. Hurricanes for Dummies (who don’t understand meteorological terminology and don’t want to) and how it somehow relates to negative emotional states and… laughing(?) – Another oldie, but it keeps getting clicked on from the search engines. I’m sure I’ve disappointed a lot of people looking for real hurricane preparation advice (lol), but I hope I put a smile on their face at least. Or not. My bad! : P

8. Do women need to take more responsibility for their sexuality?

9. Weekend tidbit 4: Happy Holidays!

10. 10 unique reasons why I love being a woman

I’m slightly surprised that so many of my “woman” posts made it into the top 10, but in hindsight I shouldn’t be because they were some of my most well thought out posts. It also makes me wonder what this says about my readers and the types of readers that come here. Finally I wonder if I am actually helping and providing new insights or if I’m simply preaching to the choir.

Out of all the posts, the pizza post was the most fun to write. I enjoy learning and talking about the science behind food rather than just giving out a recipe. I think when you get that, food becomes more fun and creative.

What have I learned so far? The biggest thing is to get back up no matter how many times I’ve failed — especially not to feel guilty about it.  Guilt actually makes it worse and makes me want to quit even more. But when I don’t let the guilt of “failing” get in the way, the writing has become more more enjoyable and lighthearted for me. I do feel myself letting my hair down a bit more and I can’t wait to see what I come up with for the next 45 post.

If you have any comments or suggestions about anything in particular or any requests for something specific you want me to write about, feel free to let me know! : )

Related posts:

1. Fall down? Get back up and keep pushing! (And why I love writing)
2. Weekend tidbit 5: The great German Stollen
3. Rabid rantings of a frustrated writer (and challenges most writers will probably face)

I once created a oil pastel canvas of an abstract African mask I dreamed up one day. This was long ago back in 2004, during high school I took. Ever since then, masks represented something unique to me. It represents the different selves we have inside us.  Recently a mask has been haunting my thoughts for a few weeks now and I have a yearning to recreate it. The mask was split into different sections to represent the major different experiences/emotions, combined to make up the human experience.

You know me, I have to throw in some Star Trek reference in here somewhere, so bear with me. I mean, seriously? This blog would not be complete without that. The concept of the mask is very similar to an artifact that Captain Picard was gifted in an episode of The Next Generation. The artifact is a clay-like statue that can be opened to find several little statues that represent the different voices inside of us all. It looked like this artist’s rendering.

When I graduated, I gave away some of my artwork to the counseling department at the school, including the mask canvas. I had worked in there as an aide and many of the counselors had been very helpful and supportive. I took picutres of the artwork, but I regret that I can no longer find them. I think I lost them in the process of moving shortly after my high school graduation. A picture of the mask canvas would have been a great inspiration for creating another piece of work.

When you create artwork, it is helpful to come up with a concept of what you want to create before you even start painting or drawing anything. Many times this concept is the foundation for a large body of several works. Sometimes you get ideas for a concept by doing art history research or by studying your favorite artist and their works. Sometimes you get ideas from the events happening in your life first and then you research artists to find out ways to express that concept, with your own twist. Otherwise, it is very hard to illustrate a concept in a meaningful and constructive way in a vacuum. For this reason, artists keep and maintain an art journal.

For this particular piece of work, I am drawn to the geometric elements of cubism (of which Pablo Picasso co-founded) combined with the distinctive brush strokes of post impressionism (the most famous example is Van Gogh’s Starry night, but is far from limited to that). I am not sure if I will be able to combine these elements — or that if I want to in the end, but I just know that these two methods of expression are appealing to me the most. It is a start.

Vincent van Gogh

Another artist that appeals to me for this concept is Romero Britto, a rather popular Brazilian artist here in South Florida. Many of his works are exhibited around Miami and Miami Beach. He combines cubist elements with pop art, although I am less into the pop art aspect and more into his use of shapes to create people and objects.

Romero Britto

Anyway, when I think of the human experience I think of it as a sum of intense emotions rather than specific events. I believe that emotions are one of the major factors that separate humans from other animals; any living thing can be born, be joined, reproduce, and die. Actually, I am not sure that animals don’t experience emotions — I would think that they are able to experience particularly intense emotions, but rather they aren’t able to critically process it and act on it the way that humans do. In this case, I also do not include typical emotions and actions than one experiences in the daily grind of life, because again, this is not particularly unique to humans. 

The other reason is that one specific event may conjure different emotions at different levels for different people. So the event itself can be seen as emotionally unique to each person. For example, death can be welcomed with contentment and happiness to a well-lived person, but fear and regret in another person. Conversely, two separte events can conjure up the same general feelings within the same person.

These are the four general emotional states — or in this case, masks – that I feel sum up the human existence:

1) Euphoria, which includes feelings of intense happiness, contentment/peace, joy, excitement, and ecstacy. Another word I can think may qualify is joyfear, which is coined by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. However, I think this one falls in the gray area between euphoria and passion.

2) Passion, which includes feelings of love, lust/desire, hate, danger (as in fight or flight) and anger. I may dedicate another post to why I group these emotions under passion instead of placing passion in its own category. But in short, all of these emotions are motivators. They compel people to do something (often drastic) so in that sense they are different from euphoria which is not a motivator in and of itself, once you have it. Passion itself can be considered a combination of lust/desire and hate or anger (whether they are channeled into positive or negative actions).

3) Melancholy, which includes feelings of sadness, disappointment, depression, illness, and lethargy. Many people operate under melancholy on a day-to-day basis, but there are also acute forms of melancholy that don’t extend for very long periods of time. These occur when in some way your expectations have not been met and you are often forced to examine why you feel that way or why a situation turned out the way it did. This emotion can also be channeled into both negative and positive ways.

4) Fear, which includes fear of loss and actual feelings of loss. This is a more intense form of melancholy — think of suffering from a soul-crushing heartbreak. These emotions work similarly to passion but often in the opposite direction. Instead of working as motivators, they work as inhibitors. People suffering from these emotions withdraw on a grand scale and close themselves off from people and experiences completely. Unlike with melancholy, people operating under fear avoid trying to face these emotions and examine the situation at hand, Therefore it is much harder to grow away from it.

Even though I have categorized these emotional states into separate boxes, I am not under the illusion that there are no gray areas where more than one emotional states can exist at the same time and at varying levels (much like joyfear). Perhaps it is actually these gray areas that make us even more humans and less “instinctual.” I am not sure how to illustrate these gray areas within my artwork, but it’s something I need to ponder on.

Related posts:

1. Meaning is in the eye of the beholder
2. Getting excited about 2012 travels!
3. Stop trying to be like Buddha and give up some self-control, already

It’s so wonderful how exciting life is and how much energy you get when you always have something interesting to look forward to! I have said before that people often try to look for the next thing, thinking that it will make them happier. This isn’t what this is about.

Marco Island, South Gulf Coast, Florida

It is one thing to be on an eternal quest where you expect something to make you happy. It’s completely another to look forward to exploring different life experiences just for the sake of experiencing them.

With the latter, you expect very little from it save for being in the moment. If your plan falls through, it’s not a big deal because you know there are millions of other things to experience and, contrary to popular opinion, I believe that we get multiple chances to experience something — we just aren’t always open to the idea all the time. It’s never too late to experience whatever you want as long as you are open to receive!

London, United Kingdom

This spring, I will be embarking on my 3rd trip to Europe and I am in the process of planning where to go and booking plane and lodging arrangements. I am doing this with another travel friend of mine. As much as I’ll jump on a plane to go anywhere by myself, traveling just isn’t the same without someone you enjoy being around.  Even as an introvert, I prefer not to travel alone. So I completely understand why people are hesitant to just get up travel because they can’t find someone to travel with. I just don’t think it’s the greatest excuse, simply because waiting for the right travel buddy to show up represents a lot of missed opportunities and wasted time.

The second thing is, it is very easy to connect with travelers around the world who are willing to meet with you or room with you at your destination. Travelers are a relatively small group of people (especially when it comes to Americans who are pretty hesistant to travel outside of the US) — so they are more than happy to find another traveler like themselves. For them, the more the merrier. It is also easy to befriend people when you get there without any prior arrangement. If you are remotely social, this easy to do. So if there’s anywhere you’d like to go, I highly encourage you do it anyway. At the very least, peruse traveling forums and connect with people on there — there are so many to be found on Mr. Google — or look for group trips that are traveling to the destinations you want to visit.

Berlin, Germany

A quick way to find group trips like this is to combine it with a hobby of yours. So you can look for hiking trips in South America, or a volunteer opportunity in Africa, or a language immersion course in Asia. The combinations are endless and you don’t necessarily have to be a University student to participate in them. Many of these trips give you the option to travel for only a week for people who are short on time.

I like international cooking, so something like this would totally be up my alley: International Cooking Kitchen Vacations. Another dream of mine is to spend a few weeks or months learning Tango in Argentina. Look how awesome this Tango Tour package sounds! There are so many more and these things are definitely on my list of things to do before 30, that’s for sure! I might not get to them all, but that’s okay. : )

Barcelona, Spain

For this year’s trip, I am looking at visiting four cities/countries: London, UK; Berlin, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; and Croatia. This is what my travel buddy and I are really thinking of doing after days of back and forth chatting (she is currently in a time zone 5 hours ahead of me). Now it is just a matter of booking everything and things will be much more formalized. The best part is I already booked my ticket to Europe at $730, which I consider to be a steal. I have found some of the best plane ticket prices occur right around and after Christmas when everyone is winding down after Christmas travels and haven’t yet started thinking about their plans for the following summer. Seriously.

After my trip to Europe, I will be going to the Gulf Coast of Florida with my friend where we will just relax and possibly go on her family’s sailboat. I am going to be honest and say that I am very nervous about being on boats. It’s a silly story why but much like some people have flight anxiety, I have “boat anxiety” (I think I made that term up) and that includes cruises. But that hasn’t stopped me from getting on a boat a few times — although it’s rarely my first choice to do so. I have never been on a sailboat before, so I think it will be cool!

Croatia

I am also keeping my eye out for bargains to my second destination of the year: Cairo. Since I anticipate a lot of changes this year, I am not sure exactly when I will be able to go — if I can get there this year. But if I can get the plane ticket at a dirt cheap price, then I am set because I have a good friend there is who is more than willing to let me borrow a couch for the entire duration of the trip — yay for no boarding costs, but I always like to pay for meals and bring little trinkets from the US as a token of my gratitude! : ) *crosses fingers*

In any case, if I can’t get to Cairo, I’ll make it up somehow with a couple of domestic trips instead. That’s what I mean about no expectations and just trying to experience things to experience them. : )

Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza/Cairo, Egypt

Do you have any travel plans for 2012? Do you have any tips and tricks that you use? Tell me about them, I always like to hear about people’s travels. It inspires me!

Related posts:

1. Making the time (and money) to do what you want to do
2. The many masks we wear
3. Myers-Briggs Revisited: Extraverts, Introverts, Sensors, and Intuitives (Part 2)