%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |   As the first blog entry got exhausted. My second book |
| Evolution of Love Part 2 |
| A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Indifferent to whether your mood is grumpy or cheerful, Nature always sings her passionate song of joyful celebration. You can never stop the happy song of life, so join the celebration - sing along, dance, smile your biggest smile, and cheer on God's music. - Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth. May this splendid festival spread colorful joy, wealth, celebration and remove sorrows and ignorance in your life. Happy Holi! |
| There is a story in Indian mythology. After God created the world, God wanted to have a place of rest where no one would disturb him. God asked the celestial sage Narada (an angel) for advice. Narada suggested heaven. God said, “The human beings I created are so intelligent, they will find a way to come to heaven.” Then Narada suggested the moon. “The moon is too close” God said, “They will easily come to the moon.” Narada started thinking again as to what would be a really good place. Then God announced that he would live in the heart of each and every person and that way they would never be able to find him. Narada was surprised. If moon was close then why did God want to be in the hearts of people where he would be much closer? But there was the trick. People have forgotten God’s presence within them. They have forgotten that God is with them all the time, watching them. They are searching for him outside. Looking at a flower, they see only a flower but not God’s beauty in it. Looking at a fruit, they fail to realize it is God’s fruit. You are never alone. One who has created you is hiding within you and looking at you. Are you looking back at him? Prayer and meditation help us to live in the presence of God. Experience the presence of God in every breath. |
| I don’t blame the client at doubting the benefits of eating regular dal-roti-sabzi. Eating dal-roti-sabzi is so ingrained into our upbringing that it’s more like a case of ghar-ki-murgi-daal-barabar. 🐣 We don’t see its value. If you enjoy salads and you eat them regularly in addition to cooked sabzi, that’s great. But one shouldn’t assume that to stay healthy and/or lose weight, eating salads is “essential”. Vegetables cooked in Indian style STILL supply your body with fiber, water, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants & essential phytonutrients (the small & many-unknown vital nutrients found only in plant-foods). Sure, raw salads do ‘look’ more nutritious. And, every health-freak you know is eating fancy salads everyday. However, when it comes to the good-for-you components of foods, “It’s not what you eat, it’s what you absorb.” When you cook your veggies, you lose some nutrients. But - and here’s the catch - other nutrients become more available for your body to use. For example, raw spinach only has 30 mg/cup of calcium, but cooked spinach has 245 mg/cup … because heating releases the bound calcium! And cooking has other benefits too…. A 2009 study conducted by Harvard University showed that COOKING : 💪 Aids chewing 💪 Increases digestibility, and 💪 Improves the net energy value of foods The IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER, when cooking your vegetables, is to: 🥕 Be mindful of the QUALITY of oil/ghee used. Steer clear of refined oils, buy the kachchi dhani oils (angrezi mein kehte hain ki “cold-pressed” oil) whether mustard oil, groundnut oil, sesame oil, etc. 🥕 Be mindful of the QUANTITY of oil/ghee you add. One small kadchi is enough for a family of 4-5. After you finish eating the sabzi, do you see traces of residual oil on your bowl/plate? If yes, chances are there IS too much oil in the sabzi. 🥕 Buy the sabzi when it is in season (and no, bhindi is not in season right now) & those that are local to your region 🥕 Try and befriend all the colours. Eat the rainbow, like they say 🌈 🥕 Limit deep frying (koftey/pakodey etc) to once a week or lesser depending upon how fast you want to lose weight 😊 🥕 If you’re cooking them in water, make sure not to throw the water away. Use it in that sabzi or save the water & knead your dough in it. 🥕 And most importantly, EAT them, knowing fully well that they are doing as much good to your health as a bowl of salad. As far as possible, at every meal. So - cook them / boil them / steam them / eat them raw - do what you need to make sure you “eat” your vegetables. After all, the food that was never eaten, never managed to get its nutrients absorbed into our bodies. |
| I am from the village of Parra in Goa, hence we are called Parrikars. My village is famous for its watermelons. When I was a child, the farmers would organise a watermelon-eating contest at the end of the harvest season in May. All the kids would be invited to eat as many watermelons as they wanted. Years later, I went to IIT Mumbai to study engineering. I went back to my village after 6.5 years. I went to the market looking for watermelons. They were all gone. The ones that were there were so small. I went to see the farmer who hosted the watermelon-eating contest. His son had taken over. He would host the contest but there was a difference. When the older farmer gave us the biggest watermelons to eat he would ask us to spit out the seeds into a bowl. We were told not to bite into the seeds. He was collecting the seeds for his next crop. We were unpaid child labourers, actually. He kept his best watermelons for the contest and he got the best seeds which would yield even bigger watermelons the next year. ------------------------------- His son, when he took over, realised that the larger watermelons would fetch more money in the market so he sold the larger ones and kept the smaller ones for the contest. The next year, the watermelons were smaller, the year later even small. In watermelons the generation is one year. In seven years, Parra’s best watermelons were finished. In humans, generations change after 25 years. It will take us 200 years to figure what we were doing wrong while educating our children. --(Excerpt from a speech by India’s Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at an event hosted by the Federation of Gujarat Industries in Vadodara, India on 11 September, 2016) |
| Growing up, if your parents were anything like mine, all you heard from them was to finish everything on your plate 👈. Well, I’m going to advise you to do the opposite. Let your stomachs decide whether to finish or to leave unfinished. (Bless my dear mother in heaven, for keeping her patience with the slow picky eater that I was!) I recently posted about how eating slowly and mindfully helped me reach my goal weight while including all my favourite foods. If you read that post and have actually taken the first step to “slow down” while eating, you’ll discover that when you eat slowly & mindfully, you feel fuller much sooner & with lesser food. This is because, our stomachs have natural stretch receptors that, well, receive the stretch signals as the stomach stretches with food and gets full. But, the receptors need a little time to send their ‘fullness’ signal to the brain - about 20 minutes ⏰. So, you can binge-eat to double your stomach’s capacity (after all they’re built to even stretch to up to 6 times their normal capacity!) and still not “feel” full, if you’ve not yet hit the magical 20 minutes. After which, of course, you may end up feeling like a sick, belching, bloated buffalo 🐃🥴. Our bodies are the best guide for “how much” food we really need. Without any frills or fancies of a calorie-counting app, your body will “allow you” to eat a little bit more if you’re physically active, and if you have a sedentary lifestyle/job with little movement, you’ll find yourself feeling pretty satisfied on less food. We just need to slow down to hear the 🎼“I’m satisfied & how! Let’s stop eating now!”🎼 tune that our stomach plays 20 mins into each meal. So, coming back to the plate, I often find that, once I slow down and eat mindfully, even if the food is extremely tasty & I wouldn’t actually mind eating more, I just hear my stomach protest silently. And then I want to be kind to my stomach and to myself😇. If that means that sometimes I have to leave some food on the plate, I do it 🤷♀️. Like this quarter of a sandwich that didn't find it's way into my tummy at breakfast today. Without guilt. I save it for my next meal, refrigerate it or sometimes just put it in a cow-food pile that we have here in Rajpur (thanks to all our house-help having cows in their house - perks of small town life!). In our fast-paced multi-tasking distracted lives, we’ve forgotten HOW to listen to our bodies, our stomachs in particular. Our tummies are still sending their fullness cues. But they don’t have a listener anymore. It takes time, practice, and patience (and sometimes, access to a Nutrition Coach like me 😉) to develop the fullness awareness through slow eating. And when you do, you have to honour it. By stopping the eating. As soon as you “feel” full. Regardless of the food left on your plate. Maybe next time you’ll just take a smaller first helping? |
| For good health, slowing down ageing, fat-loss, clear skin - you name it. Look at all the people around you who you think are ageing really well e.g. I love the way Akshay Kumar is ageing (or rather, not ageing!). They’ll usually be the ones treating their sleep-time as sacred. We live in a culture where rest / slowing down is looked down upon, as something that you have to do when you’re unwell. This can’t be more far from the truth. A good sleep routine is the biggest investment you can make in your health. As important as nutritious food, mindful eating & exercising. Ask any new mom or doctors on long shifts - how much lack of sleep affects their functioning! Why is good sleep so important? 😴 Sleep = recovery, rejuvenation, repair. Sleep is the time when the body recovers from wear & tear. Mental and physical. 😴 Good Sleep is the magic pathway to sustained fat loss & muscle-building. If your fitness results are not to your liking, then the answers may well be in your sleep-routine. 😴 More hours spent waking simply also means more time available to eat, and those snack commercials look super-appealing @ 11 pm. To get "sciency", lower hours of sleep stimulate hunger hormones (ghrelin) & suppress satiety hormones in the body (leptin). Then, WHY the h@#* do we IGNORE our sleep quality so much? 🤯 Even though we might attribute less sleep to more work/tasks, research shows that it’s actually “voluntary bedtime delay” - meaning, spending that time watching TV, browsing social media or going out for late dinner / drinks - that’s keeping us away from our beds. 🤯 Most of us treat ourselves as modern-day warriors - juggling work, family, commute, stress in our crazy schedules. Sleeping for 7 hours just looks like a complete waste of time! HOW to develop a good Sleep Routine? 🧘♀️ As far as possible, stick to the same bed-time & wake-up time. Aim to sleep for at least 7 hours. 📺 Avoid screens & gadgets at least 1 hour before bed. 🍲 Aim to finish your last meal 3 hours before bedtime. 🤫 Make your bedroom dark and quiet at night. 🎼 Play some relaxing music an hour before bedtime 🚿 Take a hot shower if that works better to relax your body. 🥺 Avoid caffeine (tea/coffee) etc 6 hrs before bedtime SO, YES, even if you can't make time for exercise daily, make sure you make time for good sleep daily! |
| Mr Opana Joseph an Ethiopian businessman told his wife on Phone that he was on board the Ethiopian 737 boeing airlines for a business trip to Nairobi, he even sent a text message indicating he has taken his seat in the plane and was just waiting for the plane to take off. Meanwhile he was in a hotel room with his side chick.. Now Opana Joseph can't go home because everyone knows he's dead 😀 The family is currently in a meeting to plan for his funeral. What should he do?? |
| In a Lighter Vein! 😂😂😂 1.Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards the local swimming pool, so I gave him a glass of water. 2. I changed my password to "incorrect" so whenever I forget it the computer will say, "Your password is incorrect." 3.Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. 4.I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at once. 5.If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame. 6.Doesn't expecting the unexpected mean that the unexpected is actually expected? 7.Take my advice — I'm not using it. 8.Hospitality is the art of making guests feel like they're at home when you wish they were. 9.Television may insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer. 10. I bought a vacuum cleaner six months ago and so far all it's been doing is gathering dust. 11.Every time someone comes up with a foolproof solution, along comes a more-talented fool. 12.If you keep your feet firmly on the ground, you'll have trouble putting on your pants. 13.A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. 14.Ever stop to think and forget to start again? 15.When I married Ms. Right, I had no idea her first name was Always. 16.My wife got 8 out 10 on her driver's test. The other two guys managed to jump out of her way. 17.There may be no excuse for laziness, but I'm still looking. 18.Women spend more time wondering what men are thinking than men spend thinking. 19.Give me ambiguity or give me something else. 20.He who laughs last thinks slowest. 21.Is it wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly? 22.Women sometimes make fools of men, but most guys are the do-it-yourself type. 23.I was going to give him a nasty look, but he already had one. 24.Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. 25.The grass may be greener on the other side but at least you don't have to mow it. |
| Sip your whiskey, nice and slow, No one ever knows when it’s time to go, There’ll be no time to enjoy the glow, So sip your whiskey nice and slow. Life is too short but feels pretty long, There’s too much to do and so much going wrong, Most of the time you struggle to be strong, Before it’s too late and it’s time to go, Sip your whiskey nice and slow. Some friends stay, others go away, Loved ones are cherished, but not all will stay, Kids will grow up and fly away, There’s really no saying how things will go, So sip your whiskey nice and slow. Just sip your whiskey nice and slow..... |
| A 50 year old lady, who suddenly started learning how to swim instead of her usual routine work of going to a temple !!!! Everyone was curious and asked her: "why the change in your interest to swimming now a days?" The lady, with a look of helplessness replied: "Whenever my son and daughter-in-law quarrel each other She ( Daughter-in-law) always asks my son : - "If your mom and I fall in water, whom will you save first?" And because I do not want to put my son in a difficult position, so I am learning how to swim!" A few days later husband and wife were quarrelling again, and the daughter-in-law unreasonably asked: " now tell me! If your mom and I fall in water, whom will you save first?" Husband replied: "I don't have to get down in the water, my mom knows how to swim, she will save you." Wife refused to relent: "No, you have to jump in the water, and have to save one of us" Husband replied: "Then you will surely die.... because I don't know how to swim .... and my mom will definitely save me first." 😂😂😂😂 |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
