Tuesday, November 13, 2007

How to Deal with Depression - Four Steps You Need To Take

By Flor Serquina

Depression is a negative mental state, a kind of disease that when left untreated may lead to a chronic situation. For some people, depression is a passing state. But for others, it is a progressive mental disorder that can later lead to serious intent of ending one's life. Knowing how to deal with depression is therefore a very important skill to learn.

Accept Your Situation

Dealing with depression starts with first realizing and accepting that you are suffering from it. It will be helpful to know the symptoms that are manifested by a person suffering from it. You will know that you are depressed when you experience a couple of the following symptoms. You may think that these symptoms are normal and negligible but if they happen to you in combination and they are recurring, it is a sign that you are probably depressed.

Signs of Depression

Physical manifestations of depression include very low energy level and loss of appetite or excessive appetite. You may be losing significant weight or gaining too much. You may either suffer from insomnia or you sleep excessively.

Emotionally, you are always bored and you are no longer feel any pleasure from usual activities that you formerly enjoyed. You have lost sexual drive and the ability to concentrate.

You have the feeling of excessive guilt and extreme worthlessness. You are always indecisive and at worst, you are contemplating suicide or you have the strong desire to do it.

Realizing that you suffer from depression is the first step in dealing with it. You can not start on the path of recovery unless you recognize it and you accept it.

How to deal with depression now that you are aware of the symptoms and you accept that you suffer from it?

Figure out the Cause of Depression

Deep and thorough soul-searching is the second step. Reach down to your deepest self and try to figure out what causes your depression. Depression is always a result of an experience that a person went through. This experience is ugly from his point of view and he does not like it. He hates it. Dig deep down yourself and try to see what this experience is.

Be Forgiving

After knowing the reason that causes you to be depressed, the third step on how to deal with depression would be forgiveness. Forgive yourself and forgive others. Forgive all the persons that have been part of that ugly experience that caused you to feel depressed.

This includes you. Forgive yourself and accept that you are only human, prone to make mistakes and to be a subject of other people's mistakes. You can not control everything and you can not be perfect. Forgive others and forgive yourself for whatever you have done. Accepting that you are only human and forgiving will set you free. It will liberate you from the experience and make you start living a normal life.

Have Fun

The fourth step on how to deal with depression is to have fun. After you realize what caused your depression and after you have forgiven all that needs to be forgiven, go out and have fun. Start living a normal life. Get involved with things that you enjoy and that bring you pleasure. Read a lot, see places, go to see movies and do many recreational things.

Most importantly, reach out to other people and talk to them a lot. You do not really have to tell them your experience although it will make you feel good if you can do it for even one time. You will have a broader concept about life and you will get to experience beautiful things. This is also a way to refresh your mind and free it from all the negative thoughts that haunt you.

If after the third step, you find that you are incapable of doing the fourth step, this is the time that you will need professional help. Seek a psychiatrist. You are already way too deep in your depression state and self-help may not be sufficient to lift you up. Psychiatrists have professional and clinical methods that can help on how to deal with depression.

Flor Serquina is a successful Webmaster and publisher of Facts-About-Depression.com. She provides more information on topics such as how to deal with depression, anxiety depression treatment center and depression warning signs that you can research on her website even while lounging in your living room.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Lose Weight Easy And Quick With Our 5 Top Tips

By Richard Ford

You can lose weight easy and quick with just a few simple tips. It really is not as hard as you might think once you know how.

1. Find someone who has already lost a lot of weight. This person will be able to share with you their tips on how to lose weight easy and quick. Not only that, but they will be able to give you important advice on how to cope psychologically with weight loss. There is plenty of this information that you can read, but when you hear it first hand from someone, it will give you an incredible boost that you simply cannot get from anywhere else.

2. Make a plan. Get a blank piece of paper and draw up a weight loss plan for between now and 3 months time. 3 months really is not a lot of time and will pass by quickly. Set a realistic target weight and work out how much you should be losing every two weeks. By regularly checking in on your progress as the weeks roll by, you will be more likely to lose weight easy and quick.

3. Don't associate food with happiness. Probably many of you are doing this and this is why you are overweight. Food should taste good - this is how nature works - food tastes good to encourage us to eat it. But don't eat food just because you are having an off day and do not feel happy. By realising why you used to eat too much, you can lose weight easy and quick and changing these habits for the rest of your life will make a huge difference in the long run.

4. Eat much more fibre. None of us get enough fibre in our diet and we need much more, especially to ensure good digestion and bowel movements. Fibre is also great because it won't get converted to fat in the gut. If you want to lose weight easy and quick then you must get a good dose of fibre in your diet. My recommendation is to eat something like unsweetened muesli or porridge for breakfast. This is a great way to get some good fibre into your diet.

5. Snack only on healthy food. Snacking is only bad for you if you eat chips, cakes and chocolates. If you carry on like this, you will never be able to lose weight easy and quick. If it is someone's birthday at work (isn't it always somebody's) then avoid eating any of the treats on offers. Remember, you eat healthily now and not the trash that everybody else eats. Instead, keep handy healthy food around such as apples, bananas and raisins. But don't eat too many of them - limit each snack to less than a fist sized portion of each, otherwise this is no longer a snack but a meal.

I hope you find these tips very useful. If you follow them to the letter then you should be able to lose weight easy and quick.

Looking for a way to incorporate weight loss tips into a full, easy to follow, tailored-for-you meal plan? Discover a secret new method at our website, Lose The Fat Quick.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Lose Weight Fast - You Too Lazy Top 10 Diet Tips and Facts That Burn Fat

By Norb Czufis

While it's true that many people seem to think that to lose weight fast, has to do with starving yourself or taking the newest diet pill; it's much more complex than that! Those who have tried desperately to get slim quick with these automated 'do nothing' methods will admit to their inefficient results.

The truth is, you need to eat! Even to lose weight quickly, you still need to consume a lot of food on a daily, however it's what you consume that will determine the difference between shedding fat or just adding to it! I'll tell you this: Low fat and low calorie diets don't work. Why? This method actually slows down your bodies fat burning engine, and once you lose that first bit of weight, all efforts will come to what 's known as the 'dieting plateau'. Low carb diets are also popular now, however these often come with very strict and hard to follow routines that the average person simply will not follow.

Weight loss programs usually take the 'slow and steady' approach, and you usually have to buy into meal plans, dietary supplements and again follow a routine that probably clashes with your day to day living to the point where you just give up! Isn't there anything out there that offers an accelerated fat burning diet without side-effects or crazy routines? Ehemm, actually.... there is.

Perhaps you've heard of this product that is making its way around the internet right now, and is eating up (no pun) all the competition WITHOUT the need to fill your head with insane promises or false claims. In fact, this plan boasts a very high success rate, and this is the reason for its continued growth among those that are just dying (again, no pun) to lose weight fast.

Very appropriately titled 'FatLoss4Idiots', this fat filer program takes you on a step by step of how our society eats, consumes the worst things our bodies can handle, and what the necessary course of action is to lose 9 lbs every 11 days. Yes you read that right, the average person that follows this plan actually loses more than 1.3 lbs day, but most importantly-IT'S SAFE! Not many accelerated fat burning diets offer these results without having to include its side-effects (don't you love those new commercials where the side-effects are rambled on for 10+ seconds and seem to outweigh the desired results from the pill/product?) because there are NO side-effects to this, and your weight WILL indeed stay off this time.

So? Do you already eat 3 times a day or more? Good you MUST eat, now let's focus on what you should/shouldn't be doing with those meals, and what to do before and after those meals to make sure you stay the course and achieve that slamming body you've been dying to have! Even Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and the Atkins diet have nothing on the Fat Loss 4 Idiots plan. Why? Due to it's shear 'end results' that thousands can attest to (and that number is growing, while they are all shrinking!).

Stay the course, never give up, and don't wait another second to get your health and body to where it should be! Your future and family depend on it.

Norb Czufis is a Toronto based media producer and digital author for many publications, websites, and media of all kinds. He has worked with various fitness and model pros over the years developing their marketing and campaigning materials. "This has got to be one of the crappiest designed sites out there, however the content and weight loss plan is by far the best!"- I would recommend this to anyone, even my own mom (don't tell her I said that though!) please have a look - http://www.fatfiler.com

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Tips for getting to sleep faster and sleeping better

by Josh

For practically all my life I’ve had trouble going to sleep. I’m not an insomniac…I just think a lot. I’ll lie in bed thinking about what I want to do tomorrow or what I should have done today or how much I love eating cold pizza or how absurdly messy my desk is….you get the idea. And when I say I have trouble going to sleep…I’m not talking 20 or 30 minutes…I’m talking 2 or 3 hours. Because what will happen is after about 45 minutes to an hour of trying to go to sleep, I start thinking about how I’m not asleep but I should be…and thus the cycle begins.

Now, I may be a bit of an extreme case here, but I know for a fact that there are others out there who have trouble going to sleep. So, I’ve pieced together various bits of advice I’ve received over the past few months that have not only helps me get to sleep faster, but helps me get a better nights sleep.

1> Don’t watch TV or even so much as look at a computer screen atleast 30 minutes before you lie down. The light from both a television as well as a computer monitor mimic the same intensity of light as sunlight. This fools your body and brain into thinking it’s nowhere near time for sleep.

2> Drink milk. Milk has an amino acid in it called Tryptophan that increase the levels of serotonin and/or melatonin in the brain which slow down brain activity. It’s science folks.

3> Go to bed when you are tired. Different strokes for different folks here. Just because your wife goes to bed at 9PM doesn’t mean you are ready. You might only require seven and half hours of sleep while she might require ten. If you aren’t tired, do something low-key until you are, like read a book, play solitaire (NOT on your computer), or play with some legos.

4> Reserve the bed for bed things (ie sleep and sex). I for one don’t strictly follow this rule as I’ll read some before I go to sleep, but for some people this is a must.

5> Meditate. No, don’t cross your legs and hum, but focus on relaxing…if that makes sense. Take deep, long breaths. Tense each muscle one at a time from head to toe. Focusing on doing this takes your mind off of other things and you’ll be in lala land in no time.

6> Excercise during the day. I emphasize during the day. Excercising at night just gets everything going instead of shutting down for sleep. But excercising during the day tires the muscles out and makes for a solid nights sleep.

Source : to-done.com

Friday, November 2, 2007

Meditation

Meditation describes a state of concentrated attention on some object of thought or awareness. It usually involves turning the attention inward to a single point of reference.[1] Meditation is often recognized as a component of eastern religions, where it has been practiced for over 5,000 years.[2][3][4] Different meditative disciplines encompass a wide range of spiritual and/or psychophysical practices which can emphasize development of either a high degree of mental concentration, or the apparent converse, mental quiescence.

The word meditation comes from the Latin meditatio, which originally indicated every type of physical or intellectual exercise, then later evolved into the more specific meaning "contemplation."

Eastern spiritual teachings, including meditation, have been adapted and increasingly practiced in Western culture. [5]

More... wikipedia.org