• WOWOW: Starred Sodium Lightbulbs

    by Alexander Becker

    What have salt and lightbulbs in common and why should you care?

    Both have issues. While I think that Eat To Live is potentially superior to many, if not most, dietary recommendations, the salt question is an interesting and apparently emotional one, culminating spectacularly in the Salt Wars: The Phantom Menace --

    Salt also pulls out calcium and other trace minerals in the urine when the excess is excreted, which is a contributory cause of osteoporosis. If that is not enough, high sodium intake is predictive of increased death from heart attacks. In a large prospective trial, recently published in the respected medical journal The Lancet, there was a frighteningly high correlation between sodium intake and all cause mortality in overweight men. The researchers concluded, High sodium intake predicted mortality and risk of coronary heart disease, independent of other cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure. These results provide direct evidence of the harmful effects of high salt intake in the adult population.

    Without implying an actual call for prohibition, ... there is a great line in the movie Demolition Man which is the vehicle to deliver today's point --

    Stallone:
    Do you have the salt?
    Bullock:
    Salt is not good for you, hence, it is illegal.

    ... hence, it is illegal. Does anyone see a problem with this kind of reasoning?

    Let's take a look at the call to ban inefficient lightbulbs in EU --

    Germany's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel has written to the European Commission proposing that inefficient light bulbs be banned in the EU.

    It gets even better with House Inspectors checking your light bulbs --

    They will go into every room to calculate the number of low-energy light bulbs and while in the kitchen they will even examine the cooker to see if has automatic ignition or a permanent pilot light.

    It is the verboten approach which rings bells -- at least it should do so -- all over the world.

    While we're there, this is what you'll do --

    Stallone:
    You'll get a little dirty...
    ... you, a lot clean.
    And somewhere in the middle...
    You'll figure it out.

    Just take action and change things for --

    ... each event triggers -- almost domino-like -- the next and the following ones with the result becoming inevitable because of cause and effect.

    Moderation is important to break up black-and-white thinking since nothing is perfectly black nor white. Moderation is the complete scale from black to white and so is life which is -- to stay with colors -- taking continuously and simultaneously from the whole spectrum, including the extremes, incorporating every color that is imaginable, all side by side.

    Or is the old concept of moderation all of a sudden broken? I don't think so.

    Note: The weekly Linking Park editions will become less weekly and more themed, for there is no day and night on the internet, nor are there timezones and certainly no weeks to adhere to. In the meantime, please check out the starred items provided in the sidebar.

    To your excellence.

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  • Tracking and Evaluating Progress

    by Alexander Becker

    The habit of regularly recording and comparing specific data -- as much diverse, significant data as possible, is an easy to implement measure and the most efficient tool to use while working on your goals.

    • You want to lose or gain weight? Start by measuring and recording your weight once a day, at a fixed time. As a note, I always suggest not to count calories but you may want to count your calories and are free to write them down too.
    • Keep your financial goals in front of you and make sure to update and track the progress and evaluate the development over time regularly and often.
    • Workout: Make sure to log the number of repetitions for each exercise you do. Try to ignore people making fun of your training journal, success is much harder to achieve without clear, measurable, and visible goals and subgoals. Besides, how would you ever be able to improve your marathons without being able to compare your runs over time?

    The mere sight of comparable records and the recognition of often obvious trends -- ups or downs -- is a great motivator. You don't want to write down a higher weight than yesterday, or a lower balance on your account for today. Just make sure to be brutally honest with yourself.

    Archive your data! You may motivate yourself with past achievements in different, measurable fields by looking at your goals' and eventually your life's statistics. You can archive your files in basic ways or you can go creative with printing out graphical charts, pies, or whatever technique suitable for visualizing your progress.

    The medium you use to keep your records is not important, you can use pen and paper, your computer's text editor, a spreadsheet program, or one of the various online tools like Backpack or the convenient Google Spreadsheets which lets you import and export your data in various formats.

    For fitness-related data, I use a pen and paper solution with custom forms printed out and neatly kept in a binder. This way, the records are always accessible without the need for a computer or internet connection. I do transfer some data into a spreadsheet on the computer to have progress automatically calculated but the initial recording is tree-based.

    If you can measure it, you can improve it.

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