Day 2 and 3

I'd call them sunshine :)

I forgot to wtrite yesterday. Came home from work at 22:00 and then started Skyping about a possible internship place (was also quite cool :P), and then after doing that, reading some text and having a shower, when I finally remembered, I should write a post, I was already in bed and just couldn't be bothered.

But anyway - I am doing way better with the assignment. I still haven't written basically anything (ups), but I figured out what my research question is, what it means, and how am I going to answer to it. And I have also found good texts for references - gonna go with sociology classics - Bordieu, Focault and Jenkins, so should be safe.
And google :D. but that just to demonstrate "how world is" and what do you see, when you google these "ideal body" or "beautiful body". So I hope noone is going to be upset about that reference either.

training is cool - love my new running shoes and the sunny weather
and eating is good too :D. I have started to have really big breakfasts. Usually I dont do it because I have to bike to school right after and that's 13km uphill, so I really don't feel like eating a lot before. But now that I'm at home, I eat a lot of porridge and a piece of fruit and some yoghurt. It's crazy - i feel how I can focus better and am like more "awake". And I dont have to eat again after like 1h, as I usually do :/.

So me all good for now.

Weekend is going to be filled with working, so I dont know how much time I have to write the assignment, but we'll see.

Right now, I am going to sleeeeeeep :)

Because second conclusion (not of the assignment, but of life):
better wellrested and stupid than smart and tired.

I promise :)

Good weekend!

Day 1

I know if I count the exam days starting from today, then it is not going to be 3-weeks at all, but 16 days instead, but today was the actual starting day, so I'll do it like that, and here we go my first update:

If I'd have to call Day 1 something, I would call it confusion.

It just went wrong. To start with, I sat down and discovered that my computer has stopped working. I am kitty-sitting in an appartment in central Aarhus and apparently the cats (or one of the two, I am pretty sure, I know which one it was), had completely destroyed my charger. So I had to bike all the way home and back, to get my other computer. At that moment, I was really thankful for getting my things stolen last autumn, so I had that other computer at home at all, and that I started using Dropbox after that. Otherwise it could have been pretty bad.
Anyway, I got back with it and started the confusing assignment.
:/
I am still confused, so I am not going to start explaining thoroughly why I got confused, but basically, I have troubles with my research question, what I mean with it, and what the outline that I got approved by my supervisor, would actually include. It seems now that they are all different things and I am not sure how to make it better.
And we only have 1 supervision left and that's pretty much just before handing the paper in, so I can't ask my supervisor if it's ok to change something, and just have to do it. I hope my nerdish brain will help me out, though.
But my whole confusion started because it seems to me, that skinny-ideal is out of fashion and old. And fit really is the new skinny. :). Other than causing problems in my paper, I like it a lot :).
Anyway, I write more about the paper when I know what's it gonna be :)

Training was the other thing I was supposed to write about in these daily-updates. I woke up at 6am without an alarm clock to go running. So that part of life is fine :). Of course it was because of my new running shoes..and they're soo good :).

And eating was as it's supposed to be too. I'm probably not going to write exactly what I ate here every day - that could be a waste of exam-time, not keeping me on track. But I promise I'll be honest about it all the time :)

And I didn't plan to write about sleeping, but one of the rules for the assignment-writing time is, that I have to sleep at least from 23:00 - ca 07:00 and not longer than 09:00. So now I am going to go to bed and hope that I'll wake up smart and completely sure about what I am going to do with the exam, instead of staying awake and trying to figure it out right now (but my nerdish brain is really having a hard time with that decision)

So the first conclusion of this assignment:
Skinny ideal is not in anymore.

Keep myself on track (and the Paleo diet)

Heyhey!

Finally it is sunny outside and seems that the last snow is melting too, soon it's going to be nice and warm. and my birthday :).

Paskeferie last week went quite fast -  I spent a lot of time working, prepared for my 3-week assignment and from Thursday, had a long weekend. My cousin from Estonia came to visit me and so we had a nice time shopping, chilling and sightseeing here in Aarhus. Was so much fun :).

But now it is time to turn more attention to my 3-week assignment. It is supposed to be like a miniature Bachelor thiesis and we have 3 weeks (1-19th April) to do it.
A while ago, when I was going trough this blog to find inspiration for topic, I also noticed how it always seems to be that I am writing about some kind of assignment and exam, and then afterwards, just suddenly, about "getting back to shape" :D. Obviously, there is an (unmentioned?) connection.

To avoid turning into a unhealthy nerd this time, I have made a plan. I mean like a real plan for every day of these three weeks (and even further), where I wrote down how far should I be with my assignment, what other things I have to do that day (like go to work or grocery shopping (:D), Skype meetings etc), my training plans and even what I eat. The food plan is not very strict or precise, more just like a "buy these things now then eat that that that and that, then they'll be used before they go off and then buy that and that", but in all other ways the plan is made to be followed.
And to keep myself on track, I will, on most days, write down here
-what have I written to the assignment
-about training
-about eating
-about general wellbeing (:D)

So that's what I'll do.


Quite irrelevant for this post here, but when I hadn't yet decided for another theme for my assignment, I was thinking to write something about why popular diets seem to attract more people (and work better?) than the official health guidlines. And (without any research or back-up theories though), I think I've reached my conclusion.
It is not that all people are seriously believing that "this magic diet here will help you lose 8kg in 3 weeks" (or whatever), it is just the "identity" you get. Suddenly you are "on that diet" or following that diet, you have concrete and straight forward rules about what you can and can't eat and what you should and shouldn't be doing. You kind of have already made a decision about following the diet for some amount of time. And don't, therefore, have to decide again before every single mealtime or health activity. And then it all seems to be working. As long as you follow the rules. The thing is, just, that usually the rules are so strange and limiting, that it is very hard to follow them, and then people "get off the diets" and gain weight. However, it's quite clever - the memory of the whole experience will probably sound somethink like 'I lost 5kg on that diet, but then I failed, stopped the diet and gained the weight back", so the diet will still seem successful in itself, it was just the person who didn't follow it, that gained weight. So maybe another person would still be successful on it. And that's how all fad diets manage to keep on excisting.

Following official, scientific health information can be more complicated. One day some health scientist says that something is very healthy and on the next day someone else claims it might kill you or cause cancer. The information is quite confusing and often times even controversial. Therefore, a person should make some kind of decisions all the time - Do I believe that? Do I stay to what I thought it was? Do I start avoiding that thing?
And making these kind of decisions without actually having enough knowledge to make these decisions, is of course very difficult.

That's how I started thinking about the Paleo diet, and how it's just genius!
Basically, (who doesn't know yet), Paleo diet, aka the stone-age diet promotes living like people in the stone age: eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, berries, meat, fish etc, but no dairy, wholegrain or highly processed foods. (http://thepaleodiet.com/)

You see what I mean? Or not yet?
Basically, they have made up a diet. Have a catching "theory" and a matching name for that diet, to make it sound appealing (remember "The South Beach Diet", for example? :) - just a catching name, I'm not pointing at any other similarities) And to make more people follow it, they also talk about weight loss.

But the actual diet information and how one is supposed to eat on the diet, is taken from scientific sources. I claim, Paleo diet is a real healthy diet, that has just (in order to have everything a fad diet has to have?) taken a fancy name, and came up with some unneccessary rules:
How do you make someone who is eating healthy, to loose weight quite fast? - You make her consume less calories.
How do you make her consume less calories? - You exlude the most calorie dense foods and the foods highest in saturated fat.
Therefore: exlude breads, pasta, rice, potatoes and dairy products.

Of course people start losing weight when they eat less than they are used to. And think about it - how many times a day you eat a slice of bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, drink milk, put cheese on your food? On  Paleo diet you exclude all these, but other than that,  have quite a normal healthy diet. So without knowing, or knowing, but just doing it for other reasons (to "live like a stone man", rather than "to lose weight"), people consume a lot less calories.

So from my point of view:
Paleo diet is just like a regular normal healthy diet, and that is why it works. (-people feel better and loose weight.)
But in a way, it is just another (low-carb) fad diet. It has its name, its theory and its reasoning. It has a set of concrete straight forward rules, it gives one the "identity" of being on Paleo diet, people know that these are the rules they have to follow, so they won't get confused, and then the diet works. And as it is quite nutritionally balanced, people  manage to stay on it for a long time.
However, excluding wholegrain and dairy is completely unneccessary from a scientific point of view, and only necessary for the diet "identity" and to make weight loss more likely.
And this is why  I say it is genius.

...I wonder, if I'd name the normal healthy diet something cool, and then make one book to describe the basics of healthy eating, (and then maybe 1 cookbook with normal healthy foods and maybe 1 desert book or baking book, and then maybe some key holders or pens or notebooks or whatever things to "get for free when you order the book!") would I then became really rich and people really healthy? :P
seems so


But enough is enough. These were my thoughts about the Paleo diet.
Thoughts about "How can body ideals influence people's health beahviour in modern Western Society?" will be showing up in this blog during the next 3 weeks together with my eating-training plans. Meanwhile, I will just brag with my little early birthday present to myself :) :

xoxo

veery happy,

k

Take care or your friends :)

And just so you wouldn't get too carried away with the microwave cooking, I found this:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/yourlife/food/diet-nutrition/2010-11-05-obese05_ST_N.htm

Not to, in any way, say, that people shouldn't be friends with obese people, but apparently obesity is socially contagious. This article is quite old, but newer research supports the statement.

So after being filled up with your microwave-meal-in-a-mug, go out excercising and take your friends with ;)

18 microwave meals

:) Just found this link here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/arielknutson/delicious-snacks-in-a-mug
that has 18 microwave recipies that look delicious :).

I am not saying they're healthy - to be honest, none of them really is, but I am saying that it is all about portion sizes. And as all these foods come in a cup and are ready in like 5 min, I think they're so cool :).

BUT I haven't tried to make any of them myself. I dont even have a microwave. So don't blame me if they'll end up more like that:

or that :D :

Good weekend :)

Kirsi

Good training, guys :)

In search for insipiration for my upcoming 3-week-assignment in school, that is something like a miniature bachelor thiesis, I was going trough my blog.
First of all I have to say I'm so sorry for the lack of grammatical correctness :D. I think the thng is I write so fast and want to say everything on the same time, and then end up missing letters or whole words or phrases and using the wrong words. It seemed to be quite difficult to understand from time to time.

But what I really noticed is, that the newer the posts the more serious or problematic they seem to be. It almost seems like from month to month I have become more serious and complaining about everything I find is not right. Maybe it is due to the fact that I usually write about the things I have been thinking about the most. And I think most about the things I learn in school. So the currenct "stress" semester and the one before - "obesity" maybe are just more serious.
So I just wanted to note that I am not all that..troubled..all the time, as I might sound in the latest posts :D.
I still think life is good and health is fun :). And hope so do you :).

Happy Sunday :)