Tag beach

Meditation & Diet?

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy
Ponder the Puffy Clouds!

Lying on a beach, under the shade of a palm tree, cold one within reach … now that’s calm-inducing, stress-alleviating & the best kind of meditation, & medication, I can think of. Can’t do that, in Canada, during the Canadian winter, without some serious risk of frostbite!

But there must be an app for that, right?

I tried a few meditation apps & they just didn’t work for me. Worse, I actually found them stressful to listen to. First one I tried starts out counting a breath in on one, out on two, in on three & then this soothing voice tells me to carry on doing that up to twenty. On my own! Is she kidding me or what? Am I going at the right pace? Maybe she counts more quickly than I do? Will I get all my breaths in before she’s back with the next activity? What if she’s slower? Do I have to hold my breath ’til she catches up? OMG, I’m hyperventilating, this is driving me nuts!

I was a trembling wreck by the time I got to twenty. Enough of that nonsense, let’s try another one.

This time it’s a guy. Great voice. Calm, soothing, very relaxed & reassuring. We’re going to do this body thing, a routine that goes from the head to the toes. With some pretty peculiar internal organ stops along the way, I might add! But this turns out to be even more excruciating. First, he tells me to get comfortable & relax. Next he’s telling me it’s okay to move uncomfortable body parts. Pick one for cryin’ out loud! I know it’s really not okay though, & I’m just screwing up, am I not? And he’s just saying all that to make me feel better about it. Right out of the gate, he knows that I’m no Zen master & that I’ll almost certainly have to move. Maybe even all the time. That’s exactly what I did, of course. I just kept squirming. And I hated every second of that little medication exercise. Next!

Then I tried this one with an irritating little bell chime thing. I’m sure if you had a real bell, while sitting cross-legged in the Himalayas, it would work far better. You know what I mean, you’d have the right atmosphere for meditation all the way up there. With the monks & robes & whatnot. But the mind-numbing consistency of a mathematically accurate & repeatable digital ding just did my head in.

I know, I know … I’m probably doing it incorrectly. I know I should probably chill out & just try it again. But my heart rate is up, I’m sure my blood pressure is too, so I’m going to resort to something I have more practice with. Something I know works.

A slice of deep dish cheesecake. With a big blob of whipped cream.

And afterwards, when I’m cheesecake-calm, maybe I’ll try that meditation thing with the sound of the waves lapping on the beach. 😜😁

PS … Happy International Women’s Day to all the ladies out there. And to the National ladies too! 🤪😁

THE Best Exercise for Fat Burning

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy 1 Comment
My favorite part of gardening?
Watching plants grow!

Just what you need, exercise advice from a fat guy, eh! But hang with me for a minute.

If you subscribe to the notion that you can burn off the fat with exercise, good luck with that. Trust me. Or even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, you likely still can’t. But … and this is big … there are so many more reasons to do exercise that we can’t afford not do it. No matter how poorly the scale tells me I’m doing, I try to do something physical every now & again. Ideally, we probably all need to move about an hour or so a day. For a fit person, that may be pounding a bicycle up a mountainside. For someone like me, who previously considered thumbing the remote control exercise, it may be a leisurely walk around the mall. Though I will skip past the donut counter, of course!

I like to find a nice natural place, with trees & water. I called it water therapy ’til I heard about Shinrin-yoku. That sounded so cool, I started calling my walks by that name! From Japanese, it means forest bathing. Doesn’t that sound so anciently mystical? It’s not, it was “developed” in the 80s. But it’s something we all know instinctively. We are meant to be one with nature. Every now & again, I need to walk, ramble, amble, shamble my way through a forest path. Or by a lake. Better yet, a little saunter along an ocean beach. Even a park, or my back yard, will do in a pinch. No need to think of burning calories. No headphones glued to my ears. I don’t worry about what my heart rate is. No thoughts of how many steps I’m taking. I just like to take in a little of nature’s music every now & again.

So how does that help with weight loss?

For starters, I simply feel better. Feeling well is a positive contagion that helps me make better choices throughout the day. Maybe even through tomorrow. It’s easier to make better food choices when I feel well. I’m a little nicer to people after a walk. I’m even a little nicer to myself! I find myself going to bed happier. And sleeping better. I don’t even mind a little muscle ache every now & again. That just proves that I did something good. All of those effects can reset our stress hormones too.

If you can already ride your bicycle for miles, lift a 50 pound sacks of spuds over your head with one hand, & do 100 one-arm push-ups, just keep on doing all that. If, on the other hand, the remote control & the couch is your gym, make just a little change. Get up, slowly, & sneak outside. Amble, shamble & ramble awhile. Take an umbrella & enjoy the rain. Leave the electronics behind. Try a little Shinrin-yoku every day & let me know what happens. It can works wonders … for mind, body & soul.

Now if only I could follow my own advice more often! 🙂

Visualization for Weight Loss

Paul - The Wry Eye Guy Leave a comment

Visualization for Weight Loss

The Beach

Visualization has been a thing for years now. Athletes imagine themselves breaking world records. And then they do. Golfers see themselves making the perfect swing and  … Wow! … they get that magical hole in one. Okay, some golfers just visualize themselves hitting a fairway and that, for me, would be an achievement! But can that stuff be used for health & weight loss?

In an effort to motivate myself to walk more, I’d lie on the couch first thing in the morning (often catching up with news that mostly does nothing but stress & depress me!), and then I’d try to visualize myself walking. Our waterfront is a magical place to walk in the morning. A long expanse of sandy beach, with a cobbled walkway at the back for those who don’t want to feel the sand between their toes. Or for when it’s -10°C with a swirl of white fluffy flakes in the air! Catching a sunrise there, summer or winter, is an almost mystical experience. Not a difficult place to walk.

In any case, there I am, lying on the couch … visualizing! I visualize myself walking, and I’m a hundred pounds lighter, with a youthful spring in my step. My sore knee and aching back are miraculously relieved of pain. Perhaps I’ll have my earbuds in. And maybe I’ll even do a few salsa steps along the way. I’m wearing off-the-rack jeans, and not some baggy anti-style statement thing that I have to hunt down on the discount rail in the fat-boy store. And a tight fitting red t-shirt. Why red? Because it’s in the closet, the new tags still attached, a constant reminder of days past! And I’ll be wearing those matching cool red sneakers that I bought five or six years ago. But that I haven’t felt cool enough to wear yet. I’ll be meeting people’s gaze as I trip along, smiling bright and breezy good mornings to all. They can’t help it, they smile back and wish me the same.

Then I come to. And carry on watching the news. Next, I’ll probably grab a coffee and head to the deck for a smoke.

So why has visualization never worked very well for me? I think, perhaps, that I’m doing it incorrectly. Or maybe I’m so good at it that with the mission accomplished in my head, why bother doing it in the real world!

How we handle our dreams can be challenging stuff sometimes.