Tag: New Year’s Resolutions

breathing to get healthier

As is typical when the new year rolls around, people are making resolutions to be healthy and to lose weight.  This is a good thing, although continuing to follow through with them is a good thing, too.  (Good intentions don’t make you lose weight.  I wish it were that easy, but let’s not fool ourselves.)

take a deep breath, enjoy natureAlong those lines, Mango-Man sent me an article called “Healthful Resolutions: Breathing”, with the summary saying breathing exercises are portable, free, and help you manage unhealthy stress.  I couldn’t be bothered to read the article, because I’m already pretty good at breathing, if I may say so.  I’ve been breathing successfully for, um, a number of years now.  The actual number isn’t so important.  It’s been a lot of years, with the caveat that it’s not a LOT.

I’m not saying certain breathing techniques can’t help you feel better, especially if you’re exercising — there are techniques that can help.  But there are better ways of removing stress than just breathing.  For starters, laughing does the heart good, like a medicine.  That’s the primary purpose of this blog: to enjoy life more.  So if you want to feel better, deal with your problems as best you can, and find ways to laugh more.  I was going to say “and don’t forget about the breathing part”, but you don’t have to think about it, because it happens naturally already.

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BTW, while searching for this image, I came across an article that says:

Deep breathing exercises are a great way to lose tummy fat around your waist and get slim without strenuous workouts that seem to do more harm than good that or portable, which mean you can do them anywhere you go.

long breath dietThat’s the actual text to start the article.  Then on the same page was this image, explaining that you can get ripped abs in only minutes a day, that some 50-year-old Japanese guy lost 28 pounds and 5 inches from his waist in only 50 days with this diet.  And supposedly it’s “similar to Bruce Lee’s dragon breathing technique”. So that’s how he was so fit!  I never knew it was so easy!  So if I just do this 1 minute long breath diet, I’ll have ripped abs like Bruce Lee.  Amazing!  I always figured he had to do hours of weightlifting and fitness training to be so buff.  There’s no telling what you’ll learn just from surfing the Internet a few minutes a day…  That same page also had a Karaoke Diet.  Maybe we need to invent our own diets!

the special days of January, pt 2

Here’s part 2 of the special days and holidays in January.

  • 13 Make Your Dream Come True Day — Since making a big dream come true would probably take way more than one day, perhaps this means you should try to live your dream for just this one day.  While that sounds good, I don’t know how to get someone to pay me lots of money for playing video games and eating Cheetos all day…
  • 14 Dress Up Your Pet Day — Is this necessary?  I mean, if you want to dress up your pet, you probably already do.  If you don’t want to, you aren’t going to, even if it’s a holiday.  So whatever…
  • 15 National Hat Day — I know, most of you are probably wondering why I’m mentioning this.  Most of us don’t wear hats, so who cares?  But, consider this — what if you wear a pirate hat to work?
  • 16 National Nothing Day — This is more like it — a day for doing nothing.
  • 17 Ditch New Years Resolutions Day — I didn’t know there was an official day for it!  But it’s only halfway into the month — surely that’s not enough time for people to have lost their 15 pounds or so.
  • 18 Thesaurus Day — Using a thesaurus is a great way to expand your vocabulary.  It’s awesome, fascinating, inspiring, wonderful, spectacular, astounding, remarkable, etc.
  • 18 Winnie the Pooh Day — This is the birthday of Winnie’s author A.A. Milne.  Why do you care?  Well, you probably don’t, but it’s a good excuse for me to link to a sound clip you should listen to.  Note that it might have been modified (but I don’t know — somebody sent it to me, so I don’t know its origins).  It’s funny.
  • 19 National Popcorn Day — Mmm… cheese popcorn is scrumptious.  (And it’s about time for more food-related special days!)
  • 20 Cheese Day — Yeah, here we go!  Cheese is great.  On this day all restaurants should ask you if you want double cheese on your food as a free upgrade.  (On a side note, cheese should get a whole month.  Hopefully it does and I just haven’t seen it yet; otherwise someone should make it so.)
  • 21 National Hugging Day — This is a good idea, but that’s all I’m gonna say about it because we don’t get all sappy here.  🙂
  • 21 Squirrel Appreciation Day — Squirrels aren’t domesticated and thus don’t make good pets, but they can be fun to watch in the yard.  They can also be good to eat if cooked properly and covered in gravy.
  • 22 National Blonde Brownie Day — I’d never heard of a blonde brownie, but apparently it’s made with light brown sugar so it’s not as dark.  As long as it tastes good like regular brownies, I don’t care.  Brownies are scrumptious, especially when combined with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup.
  • 23 National Pie Day — Hallelujah!  Eat lots of pie.  (Note that the diet from your New Year’s resolutions doesn’t apply on holidays, so take an extra helping and don’t feel any guilt.)
  • 23 National Handwriting Day — Um, I guess we are supposed to write everything manually on this day.  So don’t use your computer for any typing — you must write it all by hand.
  • 23 Measure Your Feet Day — Uhh… I thought holidays were supposed to be fun.  I don’t know the point of this, because I know the size of my feet and they aren’t growing anymore, so I looked online to see what I could find about this.  My research dug this up : “Celebrate today by measuring your feet.  Both of them.  Measure the length.  Then, measure the width.  For a little fun, see if you can measure someone else’s feet.”  That sounds like a great time… oh, wait, I’m too busy celebrating National Pie Day on the 23rd, so there won’t be any time for me to measure my feet.

I’ve been told that some of my posts are too long, so I’m going to break this up into 3 parts this month.

New Year’s Resolutions, 2008

It’s time to start a new year, so I reckon it’s time to make New Year’s Resolutions.  I hear it’s the thing to do.  I made some last year, and I did well, I think.  My goals were to gain weight and to improve this blog.  Those resolutions worked out well for me, so I’m going to keep them for 2008 also.  Why change it if it’s not broken?  🙂

So there’s nothing new there, but I will include a New Year’s resolution themed quote for your enjoyment :

A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one Year and out the other.

It’s funny if it’s true, but if you make resolutions you can keep (like I did last year), then you feel good about yourself and you wonder why more people don’t make resolutions they can actually keep…  🙂