The Mind Body-Fat Connection

Negative thoughts, symbolic protection, being who we really are ….. we’re definitely getting closer. It does come from within, we believe that much. But how? How do we connect a de-railed inner state of mind to real life obesity without the hocus pocus element?We find the biological link. We find out where those resistive thoughts and feelings are going and what damage they are managing to do along the way. Or at least that is what I did!The first time I heard that being fat was all in the mind, I was intrigued. “How exactly would that work”, I found myself asking.A friend and I were casually chatting about being fat when he mentioned that he’d heard of a book describing weight gain as being a symbol of protection. Negative mental thought patterns were apparently responsible for making us all fat!I wondered whether he was talking about psychologically symbolic or a real biological connection that affected our metabolism. I was searching for something deeper at the time because I had lost faith in the traditional concepts of obesity. The medical, sports and scientific worlds promoted concepts that seemed too broad and genetically unfair to apply to all of us here on earth. It seemed that every new diet plan and book held a new and revolutionary theory about how and why we all gain weight Yet no one theory covered all situations and circumstances, like why we lose weight when we fall in love.Intrigued that thoughts and feelings could be responsible for my weight, I threw myself into this belief. I practiced affirmations and searched deep within my mind for the mental triggers that could be influencing my body weight.Although I celebrated this new concept and still do, I became disappointed and frustrated when I couldn’t pin point, precisely, which of my thoughts and feelings made my weight go up and down.I could see my weight going up and down from one week to the next but I needed to know exactly how it was all made possible. “Where was the connection?” I asked myself, “How could a feeling influence fat?” I couldn’t hold any exact thought or feeling responsible, which meant that I could not intimately control it, as I so desired to do.I went on wondering and speculating for two whole years before I fell happily pregnant. During the early months I started losing weight around my thighs, an area that had previously refused to budge no matter how strict a diet I went on or exercise program I took part in. I knew that I was changing on an inner level but once again, I could not pin point precisely which thoughts or feelings corresponded with my thighs.After the birth of my child, I didn’t do what most new mothers do and accept to nurture the tender moments alone with their baby. I stood up, tired and exhausted and pushed myself back into my old life at the same time as juggling the demands of motherhood. A change of scene occurred with a move to a foreign country both culturally and fluently removed from my own which led me to start questioning who I really was. My weight, having not recovered fully from childbirth started slowly creeping upwards despite what I ate. A good strict diet curbed it for a moment but failed me the moment I hopped off it.In the approaching winter of 1997, I stood still one day and took a minute to stare out the window. I was alone in the company of myself. My senses caught my attention because although I was standing completely still, my muscles felt like they were trying to stop me from going somewhere. They were busy working against me even though I was not moving. I was “tensing up” for seemingly no reason at all.Not too long after that moment of introspection, it dawned on me that the body fat I had slowly gained was only showing up in the areas where my muscles were tensing up. “Could there be a connection?” I wondered.I proceeded to watch this strange occurrence in the weeks that came and went. It didn’t take long to realise that my very own thoughts and feelings were responsible for setting my muscles off. I was desperate to lose the weight I was gaining and saw this observation as a saviour sent from heaven. I immediately set about soothing my thoughts and feelings. I was eager to find out if this situation could be reversed. Could it be possible to lose weight by relaxing?About a month later, it was obvious that my weight had gone down. I was over the moon. I hadn’t eaten differently and I hadn’t done any exercise. I wasn’t stressed and I wasn’t on any medication. The only obvious change was that I had begun to relax and let go, mentally. “Explain that!”, I thought to myself.It was incredible. I had observed that my body fat could come and go depending on how much my muscles tensed up or relaxed. My body fat would accumulate or disappear in the precise same areas where my muscles tensed up or relaxed, regardless of food intake or level of exertion.However, along with the elation came confusion. I was confused because I’d never heard of such a thing before and wondered whether my mind was playing tricks on me. I decided that the only way to find out was to ask. But who could I ask living in a foreign country far away from an English library?Intuition told me that the Internet was the answer. I started out searching for documents relating to weight gain, muscles, stress, metabolism, anything that would describe this strange experience I was having. When I could no longer find my keyboard for mountains of printed literature and reports which were proving to be dead-ends, I had to face the possibility that no one had yet realised what I had come to observe. I could not find one single document describing this strange phenomenon.As the months went by I would inquire timidly with as many people as possible about whether or not they tensed up a lot and where they might be doing this tensing up. I slowly became convinced that only overweight individuals chronically tense up and only in the areas where they are fat. As more and more of the slim individuals I questioned failed to comprehend my description of the feeling tensing up produces, I instinctively knew that this was a phenomenon that deserved to be explored.Through my own self-experimentation and sensitive introspection I embarked on a journey of exploration through the mechanics that bring about tensing up. I arrived at the belief that a mental conflict arises when we oppose the very action we are making or intending to make. This belief was further impacted by the realisation that we oppose our actions when we are scared and when we find it difficult to relax and be ourselves. Through my mind, I explored every inch of my body, intuitively listening to precisely what action was being opposed by tensing up and how I could turn it around and start relaxing and being myself again.Science was of no interest to me in high school, so I was really starting from afresh when I decided to broaden my knowledge of biochemistry. I had got myself caught up in a challenging bind. I couldn’t give up just because nobody else had come forth with this observation. Yet, at times I felt way out of my league sifting through mountains of scientific publications and looking up just about every word printed in them to make sense of what they were saying.This seemingly simple occurrence proved to involve a multitude of variables. However, it raised one obvious question to me. Was this yet another way to gain weight or was this the only way to gain weight, in which case why had no one ever noticed this before?At every corner I had to remind myself that the regulation of this occurrence was real. I had experienced it and observed it with my own eyes. Every piece of information I read on the causes of obesity was how things might possibly hang together, theoretically, or under particular circumstances.Having established a psychological link in the regulation of tensing up, I proceeded to investigate exactly how this activity could influence fat accumulation in specific areas. I trusted my intuition to guide me to the right reference material day after day, month after month.In order to know what was causing me to tense up, I also had to know what was not causing it. I very quickly learnt that when a particular trail became too difficult to follow or not enough information was forthcoming, then I was on the wrong track. In these instances, I went with the clues that were opening up for me. Key words emitted a strange energy as if beckoning for my attention.My mind became insatiable for information and new clues, ticking over loudly in any spare moment I had. I would lie awake at night pondering over why I should be the one to observe this phenomenon, having not been formally educated in the medical sciences.However looking back at it now, it had its advantages. Should I have been formally educated, I would not have started out in ignorant bliss. Fortunately, I was not blinded by any preconceived ideas about what was medically possible and what was not. I just trusted and expected that I would find the answer and slowly the pieces started falling into place.No sooner had I put a textbook hypothesis together, than I realised that I would have to find current evidence to support that hypothesis, if I wanted anyone to sit up and take notice. This was perhaps the most challenging part of my research. I would spend hour after hour sifting through the literature both current and outdated. I realised I had made a breakthrough when the pieces of my text book hypothesis started fitting into the gaps, holes and question marks posed in the latest scientific research and reviews.At this point, I knew that regardless of the mounting anecdotal evidence, facts and implications of this very real physical occurrence, I had seen proof enough in my own body to share this observation with other people. The fact that I could lose weight and keep it off without dieting or exercising was all the proof I needed, no matter how it came about.However, standing up and saying what I truly believed in ultimately turned this journey into an experience of believing in myself. I learnt to trust in what I was experiencing and watched it grow and develop into a fully-fledged phenomenon. I invested my love and energy into researching and proving to myself that this phenomenon is a reality to be believed in and followed.The Mind Body-Fat Connection eBook, is available from www.mindbodyfatconnection.com [http://www.mindbodyfatconnection.com] in both Microsoft Reader and PDF/Adobe Acrobat format.

Exploring the World of Data Science

Data science can be a vast subject and one cannot cover it in a single go. But then let’s try to understand it in a very simple and easy way.Every corner of today’s world is brimming with data in its raw form. When you are shopping, taking a medical test, watching a movie or show, using the internet or taking an examination. Everything is giving birth to loads and loads of data. But why is this data so important?Science is when one tries to understand anything using scientific tools. And data is a set of qualitative and quantitative variables regarding any subject. So comprising both these definitions one can say that; data science is a field where data is used as a raw material and then processed using scientific tools to extract an end result. This end result helps in increasing business value and customer satisfaction.PRESENT DAY RELEVANCE OF DATA SCIENCEYou see its products every day in your day-to-day life. Products which are the result of combing huge amounts of unstructured data and using it to find solutions to business and customer related issues. Some of them are:

Digital advertisements: at the same time two different people can see different ads on their computer screens. The reason is data science, which recognizes one’s preferences and shows ads relevant to them.

Image and voice recognition: whether the automatic tagging option of Facebook or Alexa, Siri etc. recognizing your voice and doing exactly what you told them to do, again it’s data science.

Recommender systems: when you go shopping on an online website or search for a show on any entertainment app, you get suggestions. These suggestions are created using data science by tracking ones past activities and likings.

Fraud detection: many financial institutes use it to know track clients financial and credit position, to know in time whether to lend them or not. This reduces credit risk and bad loans.

Search engines: these search engines deal with the massive amount of data, and to search the thing that you asked for in a second can be impossible if only the algorithms were not there to help in this mammoth task.

ACTIVITIES COMPRISING DATA SCIENCEIt is a big subject, it comprises of several different stages and steps before one can reach the final conclusion. They are:

Obtaining data from several sources.

Storing data categorically

Cleaning the data for inconsistencies.

Exploring the data and find trends and patterns in them.

Machine learning that is modeling the found patterns into algorithms.

And then lastly interpreting the algorithms and communicate it.

TOOLS USED IN DATA SCIENCE:There are several techniques used, and all these techniques have to be learned by a data science aspirant.

SQL or NoSQL for database management

Hadoop, Apache Flink, and Spark for storage.

Python, R, SAS, Hadoop, Flink, and Spark for data wrangling, scripting and processing.

Python libraries, R libraries, statistics, experimental designing for exploring and searching the data to find needed inferences.

Machine learning, multivariate calculus, linear algebra for modeling the data.

Communication and presentation skills along with business acumen for making the inferences useful in strategic decision making.

Bring Financial Discipline To Your Life By Credit Card Debt Management

The world is full of good things, which we can always acquire to make our life better. The urge to get them is strong as well. Moreover, we have credit cards to acquire them. Managing finance through credit cards is easy. However, are we also looking at credit card debt management at the same time?Am I Paying More For My Desires?Let us take up an example. I go for a luxury car for $27,000. I pay $7000 cash down through credit card with $100 monthly. At the first card due date, I revolve the credit and pay up minimum required $ 500. Now, on the unpaid balance of $6500, I will be paying interest @ 2.5%, which comes to $162. The interest is more than my monthly installment. If this continues, the car could finally cost me $30,000 or even more, with all interest and late penalties on overdue installments put together.Here Comes Credit Card Debt ManagementIn order to bring about discipline to your finance, you can always go for credit card debt management. To tide over the payment crisis, you can take help from professional credit card debt manager. You either can approach your mortgage manager or can go online. The credit card debt manager takes into account your income sources as well as your payment status. Then he will work out an alternate and cheaper option for you to pay your credit card overdue debts. Those who cannot afford a debt manager can look for free credit card debt management. This is a credit card debt service where you can get consultation and solutions to your debt related issues. By free credit card debt management, it does not mean that the service provided is sub standard or low grade. The free services provided by reputed companies in consolidating your high cost credit card payments are as good as the paid services.Therefore, there is no need to cling on to your high cost credit card debt. Just move over to low cost consolidated loan by an effective Credit Card Debt Management. Bring discipline to your finances.

Don’t Put 13 Entries On Your List Of Phobias

The list of phobias suffered by humans is as varied as we are as people. Many, like fear of snakes (ophidiophobia) are well grounded and serve us good purpose. Others like chorophobia (fear of dancing) serve less purpose, that is unless the fear serves to prevent you from embarrassing yourself.It has been written that phobias have existed since the dawn of man. The more esoteric of them, such as consecotaleophobia (fear of chopsticks) are more current. Although many snicker, even the silliest of phobias impact someone making their life more difficult. There are many applicable ones within this category.For instance, haptephobia (fear of being touched) is a real phobia which afflicts more sufferers than one would imagine. Strong versions of this phobia banish those who have it to lonely existences rarely leaving the confines of their own homes. Those with hodophobia (fear of road travel) can leave their homes, but not go much further.Lilapsophobia (fear of hurricanes or tornadoes) is an example of a phobia which can serve a good purpose within reason. Obviously, it is within our interests to have a built in aversion to being in the path of a tornado. However, as with the tendency for many phobias, when taken to an extreme it can lead one to run for shelter at the slightest hint of clouds.Some phobias can actually help us succeed. Those suffering peniaphobia (fear of poverty) are most likely to turn out to be good workers. Conversely, those suffering from plutophobia are more likely to be the opposite. No, that isn’t fear of a planet or theme park character. Plutophobia is a fear of having wealth, and believe it or not it does exist.Many common phobias, such as pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying) are able to be confronted and overcome. Others, like children suffering scolionophobia (fear of school), are quickly surmounted with parental help. Similarly, your spouse will quickly help you get over novercaphobia (fear of your mother in law). Phobias can’t get you out of everything.Many try to use them as a crutch such as the husband who forgot his anniversary blaming it on his anthophobia (fear of flowers). Others are quite logical and reside within all of us, such as atomosophobia (fear of atomic explosions). Ballistophobia (fear of bullets) also fits into this category.The list of phobias ranges from the common to the rare. It also goes from the serious to the comical. Anything on earth appears to be capable of triggering one. Growing everyday as we invent new things to scare us, this list will never end.