Assisted Suicide Revisited

I don’t mean to flag a dead horse here and no pun intended either but with the news a week ago that the woman from Winnipeg who went to Zurich to die by assisted suicide had died, I can’t help but revisit this very sensitive issue.  Read my take on that here.

After reading about her final moments, a few questions came to me.  take this excerpt for example:  In the moments before she died, Griffiths walked, talked and sang with family members in a sunny, warm garden on the Dignitas property just outside Zurich.  So she had all her faculties before she died, right?  So then why spend all that money when she could have done it herself in the privacy and comfort of her own home?

Next excerpt:  “Then Griffiths settled in and took the first of two drinks that would end her life. The first was bitter, so she ate chocolate to temper the taste.” If someone is really dead set on killing themself, do they really care about taste?  And why does it take two glasses of whatever it was?  Why complicate the process?

Coincidentally, I read in the papers today that the founder of the place where Susan Griffiths died, admitted to disposing of the ashes of those that died there by throwing them in Lake Zurich in the dark of night.  I hope Susan did her research.  She wanted to die with dignity but I doubt being dumped into the lake is dignifying.  

Just my take.

Related articles

• Winnipeg woman dies with aid of doctor in Zurich; wished it could have been in Canada (globalnews.ca)
• Susan Griffiths’s final blog entry (cbc.ca)
• Winnipegger’s assisted suicide completed in Swiss garden (cbc.ca)

A Hand For The Dying

What do you give to someone who already has everything?  Some people are stumped by this but I think the answer is ‘your time’.  When a person is rich and has just about everything money can buy, real friends are usually what they need most.  Someone to spend quality time with.  Someone who is not hanging with them because of ulterior motives.  Now, what do you say to someone who is dying?

There’s a young woman in our church who has terminal cancer.  She has been given a short time to live. Before her situation became almost hopeless, it was easy to talk to her.  “Hey, how are you doing?  How is everything? Praying for you.”  It wasn’t awkward.  As soon as it was public knowledge that she her life was numbered, I couldn’t find words to say after ‘hello’.  I wanted to ask her how was everything but then I already knew how everything was.  If someone asked me that while I was sick and dying, I would be tempted to answer with some smart answer like, “Oh I’m fine.  Never felt better.  I am thinking of taking up rock climbing.”  So I don’t ask that.  Saying “I am praying for you” seems acceptable but what if she’s trying to keep her mind of her illness and just enjoy her last days? Can’t I just pray for her without telling her?  So too is “You’ll beat this!” That’s a bit facetious and misleading.

What do you say?  What should I say?  I sometime just place a comforting and reassuring hand on her shoulder and I think that must convey more than words.  In that touch, I let her know that she’s in my thoughts and I’m praying for her.  It also says to keep fighting and “We have your back, kiddo!” So maybe if you are in that situation, a hand on the shoulder could really speak volumes.

In some cases, the very words I hesitate to say could very well be the words that the sick person wants to hear.

Related articles

• The Last Words of the Dying (thepenbullet.com)
• Are You Really Sorry?

Goals and Resolutions

I gave up on resolutions a few years ago.  I used to make them like they were a batch of cookies.  Made so many that by January 2nd, I would forget what I was supposed to do or not do.  By March, I would forget them all.  They were fun to make but a pain in the butt to keep.

Read the Bible daily, exercise more, eat better, don’t listen to gossip, and that’s for one year.  Like I said, I never got too far from home plate.  Now I set goals instead of resolutions.  What’s the difference?  Well by setting goals, I can afford the odd stumble or even a fall or two.  As long as I keep my goal in sight and keep striving for it, then I’m ok.  I don’t beat myself up as much as I would do for a broken resolution.

Now some of you might say, ‘But aren’t they both one and the same?’ Not really.  You see, at least in my interpretation, a resolution is a formal intent or a will to do something.  A goal is basically the result you hope to attain.  So instead of making a bunch of hard-to-keep resolutions, I can now make a goal that could maybe envelope them.  A goal to maintain a specific weight would mean exercising and eating right but will also leave room for little hiccups like a day off from exercising or an evening pigging out on pizza, without the guilt.   Get where I’m coming from?

It reminds me of a runner in a marathon.  He falls and hurt himself but he gets up and heads for the finish line.   When he crosses, it would not matter how many spills he had or how many times he walked.  What matters is that he crossed that line.

Whether you made resolutions or goals for the new year, make them realistic and don’t go too overboard.  I have a friend that would always have these big and drastic resolutions.  He once said he was quitting coffee altogether.  ”Buddy, why don’t you just cut back your daily consumption instead?”  I said to him.  He didn’t listen and no, he didn’t quit drinking coffee…well maybe for a couple of days.

So whether you are setting goals or making resolutions, I hope they are/were realistic.  Don’t be too drastic as I don’t think any of us could change who we are in one year.  I know, I have tried.

Happy New Year to you and yours!

Related articles

• 5 Reasons Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work (transformationalchoices.wordpress.com)
• You: Top 10 Strategies for Making Your New Year’s Resolution Stick (lifehacker.com)
• Realistic Resolutions (imconfident.wordpress.com)
• My 2013 New Year’s Resolutions (christianitymatters.com)

Food Glorious Food!

 

mmmm….so filling

 

Do you know what is the best food for filling you up so you don’t go eating like a pig all day?  Me neither.  I doubt there is any, at least in my case.

 

I don’t have a weight problem, thanks to good genes (or is that jeans?) and a high metabolism, but I do have a problem with portions.  I eat it all! All of it! At any time.  So quite naturally, I am always on the lookout for foods that the pros recommend for keeping us feeling full longer.  As I call them ‘Filler-upper foods’.

 

Here is a list of the top ten and how they stack up.

 

Porridge – This apparently is supposed to be the top dog for filler-uppers.  Have it first thing in the mornings and you should be good until lunch.   Who are they kidding? Porridge fills me up for a good two hours and that’s it!  By lunch time, I am starving.  I should know, I have a bowl or two every morning.

 

Potatoes – Um, yeah? Do you mean potato chips?  Maybe if I munch on chips all day long I’ll be full.

 

Soup – SOUP?  Are you kidding me?  Soup tells you that your food is on its way, so warm up the digestive system.   Seriously folks?  You want me to eat a bowl of soup and stay full?  Just for the records, I don’t like soup much.

 

Pasta – Now we are talking! After a few bowls of pasta, I am usually good for a while.  I said a while,  don’t get carried away now.

 

Oranges – If you offer me an orange when I say I am hungry, I will throw it back at you.  I eat an orange AFTER my meal, not before.  It’s a snack or a dessert and not intended to fill anyone up.

 

Popcorn – Say what? I have popcorn during a movie and when the movie is over, I can hardly wait to eat  real food.  Maybe it’s from seeing all that food in the movies. I love popcorn!

 

Beans – This turns to gas in your tummy so it’s a case of  ’fill er up’.  Beans is part of my meal, as in a side dish.  It doesn’t do the trick. My father-in-law would sing, ‘Beans beans, the national fruit.  The more you eat it, the more you toot’.

 

Peanuts – Where is banana on this list?

 

Salad – Bush! If salad was a filler-upper food, do you think they would serve it before your entrée at restaurants?   Think about it.  A comedian once said,  ’Salad ain’t food.  Salad is what food eats.’

 

So my quest for the perfect filler-upper food continues…stay tuned folks!

 

 

 

Related articles

• Fill ‘Er Up! (theafterburnsg.wordpress.com)
• http://www.womenfitness.net/top10_stophungryfoods.htm

 

Food, Glorious Food!

Yes please

Let’s get to the meat of this,  pardon the pun.  I love food. Gimme! Gimme!  Burgers, Pizzas, especially pizzas, Thai, Chinese, (We are still talking about food), Caribbean, (oh I love me Island foods), whatever the food, I love it.  In fact, I am hungry now just writing about food.  It really is a good thing that I am blessed with good genes or I would be obese.  As luck or genes would have it, I think I actually lose weight the more I eat.  Sorry!

With age and a young family of three healthy boys, it became top priority that I pay more attention to my lifestyle and make necessary changes.   I want to play with my kids, not watch them play from the confines of my bed or couch.  I also realize that I do not have to be obese to be unhealthy.

So what am I doing about this?  About two years ago, I discovered the magic of hot water with lemon.  Read my blog about that here.  With this elixir, I went from 195lbs to 180lbs within a few months.  (I am 6″1′).  I also recently joined a weight loss or weight management as I prefer to call it, program.  My work sponsors it for all employees and their spouses.   It is called The Enforcer Ecoaching and is a venture put on by Cleveland Clinic.  Participants receive pedometers to track their daily steps and report to a health coach.  The minimum steps required a day for a healthy lifestyle is 10,000.   This sounds easy until you check your pedometer at the end of the day and find out you have only put in 2000 steps.  You never want to email those figures to Dr. Mike as he would admonish you for not trying.  This means running around my bed trying to add some much-needed steps to the meter.   Working a desk job is no excuse.

Dr. Michael Roizen who is famous in the field of healthy living and the co-writer of a series of books with Dr. Oz called ‘YOU’, is the Ecoach.  He is also the wellness guru at Cleveland Clinic.  Him and his team reply to all my queries and give me regular pats on the back and recommendations.  I once sent in my steps and they were around 6000.  (slow day),  Dr. Mike was not impressed.  He urged me to get them back up to acceptable levels and recommended that I not try for close parking when I go shopping.   I took that one to heart.  All participants of The Enforcer program were also given a free ‘YOU’ book, ‘You On A Diet’.   I am also required to send in my daily foods but I said nay to that.   Trust me Dr. you really don’t want to know.

For exercise, I have been doing the one hundred pushup challenge for almost a year now.  I came across it online and shared it with a few of my friends.  Great program!  I more than tripled my pushup reps in a matter of a few months.

Now when it comes to all those weight loss programs out there,  Weight Watchers for me, carries the most weight. Pardon another pun.  The thing is, with The Enforcer, I don’t have the luxury of eating whatever I want.  I am destined to life without the fun foods.  No more Burger King and Pizza hut and what kind of life would that be?  Weight Watchers on the other hand promotes a diet based on enjoying your foods BUT eating it in moderation and tracking your calories intake.    Now that’s more realistic and that I could live with.

My take? More cake

Related articles

• Charles Barkley Weight Watchers Commercial Promotes Bad Stereotypes, Not Healthy Weight Loss For Men (blisstree.com)
• Simple Steps to Lose Weight and Slim Down for the Summer (rattleandhumsports.com)
• What are Cravings? (inspired-weightloss.com)
• Best Exercise to Lose fat Goes to Weight Watchers (foodstaycation.com)
• Rant #2: Food Thoughts (testingtruechange.com)

You make me sick!

People who ‘forget’ to wash their hands after using the bathroom make me sick! Both literally and figuratively.

After encountering this unhygienic practice a few too many times, I had decided to blog about it but kept putting it off as it was not really the most interesting thing to blog about.  Relevant and serious perhaps but not compelling.  Finally, I had enough and now must dust off that draft I had made about a month ago and tell it like it is.  Drop it like it’s hot as the cool folks would say.

Being something of a germaphobe flirting with the edge of mysophobia, I am constantly on the lookout for unsanitary practices, especially in places where I eat.  I look to see if the cooks are wearing hair nets and gloves and are not cross contaminating my food.  So imagine my dismay and disgust when I see someone leaving a bathroom without washing their traces of their visit off their hands.

Face it, it could very well be the dirty, unwashed hands that you or I, especially I, shake unknowingly.  Or indirectly, I could have held a hand that shook that hand…You get where I’m going with this?  If not, then you won’t feel hurt if I ignore your offer to shake hands with you.  Nothing personal, just doing my job to keep my germaphobia intact.

There are germs lurking in those washroom! Yes, you naysayers, I know they are everywhere but so is STD but that doesn’t mean I should go dabble in it and share it with everyone.  You touch your most private parts and then walk out with proffered hands to shake with the next person? Sharing whatever germs is on your hands? (I feel dirty just writing this. Just kidding. Or maybe I’m not…)

Anyways, if you are one of those people who doesn’t see fit to wash your hands after visiting the mens/ladies room, then you make me sick, seriously you do.  And that’s not just my take.

Related articles

• 5 Steps to Effective Hand-Washing (everydayhealth.com)
• Cold and Flu Prevention (everydayhealth.com)
• Wash your hands, not wet your hands! (yummy365.wordpress.com)
• 8 Ways to Prevent Getting Sick at Work (fitsugar.com)
• How to stay healthy (examiner.com)
• Diarrhea Prevention Tip. (theexplodingrobot.com)
• Hand-washing (lessonsfromresidency.wordpress.com)

More about Happiness

Everyone wants to be happy and deserves to be happy.  (That may be up for discussion).  Happiness is very elusive and fleeting.  One can be extremely happy one minute and unhappy the next.  The good thing about Happiness is that there are ways to achieve and enhance your happiness.  Much like maintaining good health, there are things we could do to make sure we enjoy some degree of it.

I often look for self-help articles to learn how I could better enjoy my life and today I found an article entitled Train Yourself To Be Happier. There are some very good points that I and maybe you could use in our quest for Happiness.  I would like to list a couple that I found applicable but try and read the article for yourself,  it’s worth the time, unless of course you have found your own recipe for lifelong happiness or have no time to be happy.

Keep your distance from Debbie and David Downer. People who gossip and complain incessantly are sources of negative energy. “Instead, aim to surround yourself with good energy and people who have the outlook and vitality that you are seeking,” says Jonathan H. Ellerby, PhD, spiritual program director at the Canyon Ranch in Tucson, Arizona, and author of Return to the Sacred: Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening. 

My take: I liked that one.  There are always a lot of those around whether you need them or not.  You can’t help feeling the positive energy draining right out of you when they are around.  The worst part is I don’t know how to escape these types.

Don’t wait until your life is in order before reaching out to help others. Someone who’s just lost a job might think he’s got nothing to give at the moment. But in fact, volunteering or helping out a friend — especially when we’re feeling distressed — is an amazing way to enhance our overall mood. “Helping others gives you meaning and purpose beyond your own life. It also distracts you from your own woes,” says Dr. Peterson. “It’s a standard therapy technique. Depressed? Go work in a soup kitchen and you’ll understand what problems really are.

My Take:  Oh yeah, don’t we all wish that we could win the lottery so we could donate, give to the poor or do charity work? We all could subscribe to that one.

Don’t rely on others to validate your physical beauty. The rush that we get from seemingly positive comments like “Your hair looks great!” or “Wow, you lost a few pounds!” is fleeting, points out Catherine Baker-Pitts, PhD, a New York City–based psychologist specializing in cosmetic surgery and body image issues. She says that when the aura fades, some of us get depressed and start seeking out this validation again. Her advice:
• Gravitate toward people, activities and interests that feel nourishing, not punishing.
• Look at yourself with rose-colored glasses, and emphasize your own competencies rather than dwelling on critical observations.
• Connect with how you feel in your body and what your body can do for you, rather than treating it as a mannequin to be looked at in a shop window.

My Take:  Another gem.  We crave compliments and even though we think we are looking not-too-bad, we are never fully satisfied until someone tells us that we do look good. Right?

Each morning before you get out of bed, do two things:
1. Focus on something that you’re going to do that day that holds meaning for you and think about how you will do that. Let’s say you want to weed your garden. Even if you can devote only 15 minutes to it today, think about how that will help the garden look better and allow it to thrive.

2. Next, be appreciative of something and hold that thought for 20 seconds. (Do it again before lunch and at night before sleep.) “Even in difficult times, we can find something to appreciate,” says Dr. Baker. Be sure to build up your inventory, and don’t overlook something as simple as being appreciative for your cozy slippers or the soothing sound of rain tapping on the window.

My Take:  I just like this one as it is simple and I do that sometimes. It really helps to put me in a good place mentally.

These are only suggestions for Happiness. You may already have our happy places and if so, good luck.  If not, reach for it today.  I wish you Happiness!

Note:  After publishing, I was discussing the blog with my wife and she said it was missing the spiritual side of obtaining happiness.  I had already thought of that but I have an earlier blog on Happiness that already addressed that.  The Time To Be Happy Is Now .

Related articles

• Simple Things That Make Your Life Happier (healthyliferecipes.wordpress.com)
• The Time To Be Happy Is Now (myvuze.wordpress.com)
• Elusive Happiness (teachingsofmasters.wordpress.com)
• The secret to happiness is… (qwestore.wordpress.com)
• The Foundation of Happiness (psychologytoday.com)
• Am I Happy? (bepaulin.wordpress.com)
• The Happiness Manifesto – Part 5 – Give (sbwealth.wordpress.com)
• Negative energy has no place in my life (worldofhina.wordpress.com)
• ~ True Happiness ~ (heartfeltpoemsandinspirationalthoughts.wordpress.com)

My Magic Elixir

For the last few months, I have extolled the virtues of drinking warm water with lemon regularly.  I have had family and friends on it but unfortunately, not too many of them stuck around to see any noticeably change.

I drink a glass or rather a big cup of my Magic Elixir first thing in the morning, at least half an hour before eating a breakfast.  I will usually have another one sometime in the afternoon or evening.  (Mostly when I eat something greasy for lunch or dinner).  It has become a part of my lifestyle and through it, I lost 20 lbs within a few months.  (coupled with exercise, it’s 100% effective).

The beauty of this drink is that it not only helps you lose weight but also helps your body from PUTTING IT ON!  I sometimes over indulge on my favorite foods.  I step on the scale only to see that I actually LOST a pound or remained at my weight! (I am starting to sound like an infomercial).

Where did I get all this? I found it online while surfing for useless information.  Decided to put it to the test for the heck of it as it was inexpensive.  I use the real lemon juice from the bottle.   That or real lemons will do the trick.  I also add a bit of honey to my drink as it helps clear the throat.

Read here for some more info.

http://www.quantumbalancing.com/news/lemon%20water.htm

No ‘care’ in Healthcare

Whenever I am in a hospital, I always have this safe feeling.  I think to myself that if I am going to have a heart attack, I am in the best possible place and my chances of survival are excellent.  Turns out that I was having a false sense of security all along and I probably have a better chance having a heart attack in my home.  An 82 year old woman fell while visiting a relative in a Canadian hospital and broke her leg.  She was ignored as she lay there and told to call 911 to get an ambulance. (ambulance was called and took 1/2 an hour to arrive).  Read the rest for yourself and see how much the CARE has disappeared from Healthcare.

 

Related articles

• Hospital to Injured Woman Already at the Hospital: ‘Call an Ambulance’ [Healthcare] (gawker.com)