'Egg' Cellent Facts

I love eggs, but never realise how nutritious it can be!

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Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

This is worth watching, or just play it whilst you're doing something! As long as your ears are open :)

Picked out a few pointers to 'advertise' it better but it's really really really worth watching!

Most of the time we numb vulnerability. This is through being in debt, obese, addicted and medicated. You can't selectively numb vulnerability, here's shame, here's depression, here's anger, here are the hard feelings. We numb it make things uncertain certain. Blame is a way to discharge discomfort.

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BOSU - What is it?

So I do teach this class every week and some would probably want to know what it is all about. Here's a snapshot of what it is to satisfy your slight curiousity:

So what is it all about? Dr. Mercola speaks more below. Enjoy trying! 

The BOSU ball is a deceptively simple, relatively inexpensive piece of fitness equipment that can expand your workouts and fitness level by leaps and bounds.

With a flat platform on one side and a rubber dome on the other (resembling half an exercise ball), BOSU originally stood for “Both Sides Up,” meaning you can use either the flat or the rounded side depending on your workout.

Since being invented in 2000 by David Weck, BOSU has come to mean “Both Sides Utilized,” and is meant to help expand your movement capabilities, reshape your body and even strengthen your mind.1

BOSU Provides a Total Body Workout

Because the BOSU is inherently unstable, it adds intensity to your workouts, requiring you to engage your core muscles in order to maintain balance. It’s a form of functional training that can not only get you in shape but make you better equipped to better perform the movements you need to get through the day, which becomes especially important as you get older.

For instance, every time you walk your body must adapt to uneven terrain. The BOSU ball also forces you to maintain your center of gravity while performing various activities, providing a phenomenal way to prepare and tone your body for everyday life.

Plus, virtually any workout can be enhanced by incorporating the use of a BOSU ball; because it requires you to use more muscles to stabilize your body, it means your workout will be more intense and you’ll burn more calories too. BOSU benefits include:

Balance training	Enhanced flexibility	Cardio workouts
Building strength	Fine-tuning sports skills	Core training
Kinesthetic awareness (an awareness of how your body is positioned, which often declines with age)	Proprioception (sensing the relative position of neighboring parts of your body)	Increased endurance

Balance Training May Reduce Falls in Older Adults

The real-life benefits of balance training using an unstable surface like the BOSU have been scientifically proven. In one study, a 12-week proprioception training program in older adults, which included work on the BOSU ball, was found to help improve postural stability and static and dynamic balance.2 Researchers concluded it:

“ … could lead to an improvement in gait and balance capacity, as well as to a decrease in the risk of falling in adults aged 65 years and older.”

A Total Body BOSU Ball Workout to Try

About.com recently featured a total body workout using a BOSU ball3 that is definitely worth trying. You can complete each exercise in order, increase it to two or more sets of each, or break the routine down to focus on just upper or lower body moves, if you’re short on time. A sample of the exercises include:

Warm-Up 

• Triple Squats
With the platform side down, stand to the side of the BOSU with your right foot on top. Squat down, then step onto the dome with your left foot and lower into another squat. Next, step to the other side of the BOSU and squat, repeating the sequence of triple squats for about a minute.

Lower Body Exercises

• Power Lunges
Perform a typical lunge, but start with your right foot on the BOSU dome. As you rise from the lunge, jump up and switch legs in the air so your left foot lands on the dome and your right foot is behind you. Continue this jumping/lunging motion for up to 16 repetitions for excellent endurance and heart benefits.
• Hamstring Tilts
With the dome-side down, lie on the floor on your back with your knees bent and both feet on the platform. Lift your hips a few inches off the floor and press the dome forward and backward with your feet to work your core muscles and hamstrings (repeat up to 16 times).
• Hip Extensions
Get on your hands and knees with your knees on the dome-side of the ball and your hands on the floor. Lift one leg up in-line with your hip, keeping your knee bent, and press your heel toward the ceiling. Repeat up to 16 times and then switch to the other leg. A weight can be placed behind your knee for even more intensity.

Upper Body Exercises

• Pushups
Perform a regular pushup, but place your hands on the platform-side of the BOSU instead of on the floor. Along with working your chest and arms, this move also works your core.
• Back Extension
With the BOSU ball platform-side down, lie over the ball on your stomach with your hands under your chin. Contract your abs to lift your head and feet off the ground, extending your back. Lower and repeat while holding your abs tight, for a total of one to three sets of 8-16 reps.
• One-Armed Row
Place the BOSU platform-side down, then kneel with your left knee on the dome and your right hand on the floor. Your right leg should be extended straight out behind you. With a weight in your left hand, bend your elbow and pull it to your torso. Lower and repeat for one to three sets of 8-16 reps, then switch to the other side.

Core Exercises

• Plank
With the dome side down, get into a push-up position but keep your elbows straight, not bent. You can keep either your knees or toes on the ground, holding the plank position (with your abs tight) for up to 60 seconds.
• Full Crunch
Place the platform side down, then lie on the ball on your back. Pull your knees into your chest and keep your hands behind your head. Squeeze your abs and lift your shoulders and hips off the dome in a full crunch. Repeat up to 16 times.

An Inexpensive Fitness Essential

The BOSU ball is on my list of inexpensive fitness essentials that you can pick up to start your own in-home gym. The home version of the BOSU ball is about $100, or there is a professional version, which is designed with extra strength in the platform, for $130, both available on Amazon.

As with most things in life, a balanced routine works best, so you'll want to avoid placing too much emphasis on cardio, strength training or any one type of activity, as this can lead to imbalances that may actually interfere with optimal health.

This is why it's so important to maintain a well-balanced fitness regimen that includes not just functional training with a BOSU ball, but also strength training, stretching, and high-intensity interval training like Peak Fitness. The use of the BOSU fits in nicely to just about any comprehensive fitness routine, and can be used with virtually all of your activities, from stretching and strength training to aerobics.

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2 Easy Ways To Increase Willpower — Courtesy Of The Cookie Monster

Really useful to start anytime :)


I want cookie!

Willpower Is Destiny

Haven’t we all heard of Mischel’s Marshmallow Self-Control Test by now? If not, here’s a quick summary:

1. Stick a little kid alone in a room with nothing but a marshmallow.
2. Tell the kid they can eat it now or, if they wait 15 minutes, they get two.
3. Then you leave the kid alone.

Some children eat the marshmallow immediately, others wait and earn two.

Big deal, right? Wrong.

It’s a huge deal.

Check with those kids 20 years later and you find this silly test of self-control predicts who gets good grades, goes to jail or gets rich.

Via Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence:

The big shock: statistical analysis found that a child’s level of self-control is every bit as powerful a predictor of her adult financial success and health (and criminal record, for that matter) as are social class, wealth of family of origin, or IQ. Willpower emerged as a completely independent force in life success— in fact, for financial success, self-control in childhood proved a stronger predictor than either IQ or social class of the family of origin.

Watching the kids during the experiment is pretty cute:

So how do you use this to teach kids (and blog readers, for that matter) about improving self control?

Enter Sesame Street.

COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE

Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster underwent a similar trial:

The above was just a promo. In the episode there was more of a detailed lesson for Cookie Monster about fighting temptation.

How did Sesame Street assemble such a lesson? They consulted Mischel, of course.

Via Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence:

To get the self-regulation strategies right in this segment, says Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president for education and research, they consulted with none other than Walter Mischel, the mastermind behind the marshmallow test.

After testing so many kids, Mischel had learned a good deal about what does and doesn’t improve willpower.

What’s really important? Attention is one of the most essential elements of self-control. Distraction is a powerful tool.

Via Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence:

How we focus holds the key to willpower, says Mischel. His hundreds of hours of observation of little kids fighting off temptation reveal “the strategic allocation of attention,” as he puts it, to be the crucial skill. The kids who waited out the full fifteen minutes did it by distracting themselves with tactics like pretend play, singing songs, or covering their eyes. If a kid just stared at the marshmallow, he was a goner (or more precisely, the marshmallow was).

So Mischel gave Sesame Street a few strategies related to attention that might help Cookie Monster.

One was a type of refocusing: “Think of the cookie as something else.” 

Via Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence:

Mischel proposed teaching Cookie cognitive control strategies like “Think of the cookie as something else” and reminding himself of that something. So Cookie sees the cookie is round and looks like a yo-yo, and dutifully repeats to himself over and over that the cookie is a yo-yo. But then he gobbles anyway.

So that didn’t work for Cookie Monster.

But then they tried another method: Delay and focus on reward.

Via Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence:

To help Cookie take just a nibble— a major triumph of willpower— Mischel suggested a different impulse-delay strategy. Alan tells Cookie, “I know this is hard for you, but what’s more important: this cookie now, or getting into the club where you’ll get all kinds of cookies?” That did the trick.

Success! Cookie Monster was able to hold out for the bigger plate of cookies.

How This Can Help You

I’m seriously hoping you’re already more disciplined than a five-year-old or a blue puppet.

Meaning if these methods worked for them, they’ll definitely work for you.

What are the effective strategies you can start using immediately? To review:

1. Distract yourself. Willpower is tied to attention. Focusing on something else increases self-control.
2. If you can’t distract yourself, just delay the impulse and focus your attention on the reward ahead.

For more tips check out my round up of self-control research and my interview with NYT bestselling author and willpower expert, Roy Baumeister.

(After all these years, how does Cookie Monster still make me smile like that every time I see him devour a cookie?)

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The 45 Most Powerful Photos Of 2013

Something to inspire or really make you stop and feel grateful about :). They really etch into my heart. Thanks BuzzFeed

1.

ADREES LATIF / Reuters

A couple pauses between salvaging through the remains of a family member’s home one day after a tornado devastated the town of Moore, Oklahoma.

2.

AP Photos/Discovery Channel, Tiffany Brown

Aerialist Nik Wallenda walks a 2-inch-thick, quarter mile long steel cable over the Little Colorado River Gorge in northeastern Arizona in June.

3.

Christophe Simon / AFP / Getty Images

A demonstrator is shot by rubber bullets as riot police charge after clashes erupted during a protest against corruption and price hikes in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

4.

Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA / Landov

Michael Knaapen and John Becker, who married seven years ago in Toronto, Canada, react to the news that the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

5.

Nacho Doce / Reuters

A man dressed as Superman smiles at patient Joao Bertola, 2, and his father at the Hospital Infantil Sabara in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

6.

Tim Holmes / AP

Tammy Holmes and her grandchildren take refuge under a jetty as a wildfire rages in the Australian town of Dunalley.

7.

AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn, File

An anti-government protester gives a rose to a Thai soldier at the Defense Ministry during a rally in Bangkok.

8.

Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

Thania Sayne leans on the headstone marking the grave of her husband, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2011, at Arlington National Cemetery.

9.

Tó Mané / Barcroft Media / Landov

Garrett McNamara attempts to break the Guinness World Record for largest wave ever surfed on in Nazare, Portugal.

10.

Reuters/Romeo Ranoco

A boy carries his dog through floodwaters brought by the monsoon rain in Manila, Philippines.

11.

Michael Sohn / AP

Catholics take photos with their phones and tablets of the newly-elected Pope Francis as he speaks from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.

12.

Samantha Sais /The New York Times / Redux Pictures

Renata Teodoro, 25, right, holds hands with her mother, Gorete Borges Teodoro, who was deported six years ago from the U.S., through the bars of a border fence in Nogales, Ariz.

13.

Mohammed Abdel Moneim / AFP / Getty Images

A woman tries to stop a military bulldozer from hurting a wounded person after clashes between security forces and opposition groups that left hundreds dead in Cairo.

14.

Sanjay Kanojia / AFP / Getty Images

An Indian youth dangles from a power line before diving into the floodwaters of an overflowing Ganges river in Allahabad in August.

15.

Mohammad Sajjad / AP

A Pakistani man carrying a child rushes away from the site of a car bombing in Peshawar, northwest Pakistan.

16.

Fred Dufour / AFP / Getty Images

A man kicks a topless activist of the Ukrainian feminist movement Femen as she raises her fist to protest against Islamists in front of the Great Mosque of Paris

17.

STR / AFP / Getty Images

A young man jumps from the Yangtze River Bridge in Wuhan, China, into the river following another person who committed suicide minutes earlier.

18.

John Kolesidis / Reuters

A man rescues a woman from her car on a flooded road in the Athens suburb of Chalandri in February.

19.

Superbonnie via Reddt / Via reddit.com

A boy looks into the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., which was temporarily closed due to the government shutdown.

20.

Wong Maye-E, File / AP Photo

A woman sits prayerfully while her head is shaved to mourn the late Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk ahead of his funeral in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

21.

Parwiz / Reuters

Afghan boys play with toy guns on the first day of Eid al-Adha in October.

22.

Hasan Jamali / AP

A Bahraini anti-government protester is engulfed in flames after a shot fired by riot police hit the gasoline bomb in his hand that he was preparing to throw.

23.

John Tlumacki / The Boston Globe / AP

Bill Iffrig, 78, lies on the ground as police officers react to a second explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

24.

Luke Macgregor / Reuters

Runners observe a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings before the start of the London Marathon in Greenwich, southeast London.

25.

China Stringer Network / Reuters

Visitors watch water gushing from a section of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir on China’s Yellow River during a July 6 operation to remove built-up silt.

26.

Noah Berger / AP

Sue Rochman, left, and Robin Romdalvik hug their son Maddox Rochman-Romdalvik, 8, at San Francisco’s City Hall, after the Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for same-sex marriage in California.

27.

Jonathan Palmer / Herald-Leader

Figo, a Kentucky police dog, pays his last respects to his human partner, Officer Jason Ellis, who was killed in an ambush five days earlier.

28.

Philippe Lopez / AFP / Getty Images

Survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left 1.9 million homeless, take part in a religious procession in Tolosa on the eastern Philippine island of Leyte.

29.

Dmitry Lovetsky, File / AP Photo

Riot police guard gay rights activists who have been beaten by anti-gay protesters during an authorized gay rights rally in St.Petersburg, Russia.

30.

AP Photo

Rescuers pull out a female survivor, Reshma, alive 16 days after a garment factory building collapsed in Bangladesh.

31.

Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel / AP Photo

George Zimmerman winks at his lawyer at the start of his trial in Seminole Circuit Court.

32.

Jason Lee / Reuters

A boy holds his mother’s leg as he cries in front of their damaged house after a strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake at Longmen village, Lushan county in Ya’an, Sichuan province.

33.

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

Capt. Michael Potoczniak marries his partner Todd Saunders, in a ceremony in San Francisco on June 29.

34.

Osman Orsal / Reuters

A Turkish riot policeman uses tear gas against a woman as people protest against the destruction of trees in a park brought about by a pedestrian project, in Taksim Square in central Istanbul.

35.

Brad Penner / USA TODAY Sports

An Air Force sergeant surprises his wife and daughter during the second quarter of a game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers.

36.

Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

A couple runs near riot police gathered at the Mane Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sept. 7 before the international friendly soccer match between Brazil and Australia.

37.

Evan Vucci / AP Photo

President Obama looks out the “Door of No Return” on Goree Island off the Senegalese coast, which was the last stop for millions of slaves sent to the New World.

38.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

Women carrying children run for safety as armed police hunt gunmen who went on a shooting spree in a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya that left 67 dead.

39.

Reuters

Rescue workers carry a child who was rescued from the rubble at the site of a collapsed residential building in Mumbai, India, in September.

40.

Claudio Peri / EPA / Landov

Pope Francis blesses and prays with a severely disfigured man.

41.

Roni Bintang / Reuters

An Indonesian child watches as ash spews out of Mt. Sinabung.

42.

Erik De Castro / Reuters

Newly-born Bea Joy sleeps as her mother recuperates in a makeshift birthing clinic at the airport in typhoon-devastated Tacloban. Ortega was in an evacuation center when the storm hit and had to swim and cling to a post to survive.

43.

Jerard Julien / Reuters

The first same-sex couple to be married in France kiss on the balcony in front of the crowd after their marriage at the city hall in Montpellier.

44.

Jae C. Hong / AP Photo

Inmate firefighters prepare to battle the Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park, Calif., in August.

45.

Make-A-Wish Bay Area / sf.wish.org / Via Twitter: @SFWish

Miles, a five-year-old battling leukemia, is dressed as “Batkid” as part of a day arranged by the Make-A-Wish Foundation in San Francisco on Nov. 15.

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