Your body actually needs to relax at times

This sounds ridiculous, telling you guys to relax.

But it is so true and so important for your well being. I suppose there are a lot of different names on what it is called, but conditions like being "burned out" is real.

Let's take an example of a male that is 25 years old. He is working hard on his daily job to be able to provide good results and eventually get rewarded for all of his hard work with higher salary etc. He is so focused on the job that he even thinks about what he will do the next day to perfect his projects. 

When he is not focused at work he is eating healthy, working out and doing all these things that he believes will be great for him. 

It sounds like he has some really nice habits. But if his brain is focused on different stuff like work or how he can eat today to be as perfect as possible - his brain is not allowed to rest.

You should try to find some way to just relax. Disconnect all thoughts on the things you need to do in life, all the pressure needs to be lifted from you shoulders at times. 
If you are reading this blog, there is a chance that you are using video games for that purpose. 
I can take myself as an example of that. I ain't a kid anymore, I got responsibilities in life. But when I sit down and enter the beautiful world of gaming, I can shut all of the responsibilities out and allow myself to enter this virtual reality.

Find your way to relax!

Daily activity is cardio

Used low tech app to count distance I walk at work

Tried a free app to measure the distance I am covering every day at work. I know it is not something that is perfect. Even so, I would say it hints at the real distance I cover every day.

Turns out I have been hitting 15km on both of the days that I have been using it. It is somehow reacting to the movement that occurs when walking. And I double checked the data and for example riding a bike is not giving any readings on it.

No matter how accurate it is, it is still a lot of calories being burned. And when not thinking about it, trying to control a diet is a waste of time.

When I went from being a student to starting this job my weight fucking crashed. Like extremely. Doing this, I can see exactly why. During my shifts there are not a lot of time to get anything to eat either, which makes it even harder to not lose weight.

So if you are trying to control your diet. Don't forget all the extra calories you are burning while at work or similar activities.

Find out who you are

To achieve your goals, you need to know yourself

Most people have goals or dreams. I would say that hopefully these are the same thing. Dreams might seem impossible to achieve. Some are. But by going for it, you will at least get closer to your ultimate dream than you were before.

One major thing that everyone needs to remember is this. You are a unique person and your motivation to achieve something needs to come from within you. 

The method to achieve those great dreams will need to fit your personality. 

Lets take an example. Let's say you'd want to lose some weight. In order to manage to control your diet or make yourself go workout, you need motivation. 

One kind of personality is positively affected by having someone yelling at them, pushing them to work out harder etc. Which make them kind of getting motivation from others. But the initial motivation is coming from themselves. They have found their way of getting extra help.

I would say that there are not a lot of people that would like having someone screaming at them, yelling at them, telling them what to do. The entire universe is all about having an endless amount of options. So a lot of people wants to feel like they can do whatever they like. 

Unfortunately that is affecting things like diets and exercise. If opportunity presents itself, people want to eat desserts etc. And by living in an enviroment like that, a lot of people will struggle trying to keep any kind of diet. They simply want the freedom to eat whatever dessert they want to.
Some would call that weakness, lack of character. Not being able to resist. To the people that have those problems I have something that might set things in motion. Lets try tell such a person this.

Prove me wrong! Show me that it is not lack of character or signs of weakness.

No guarentee that it will work. But some people would react to that and be determined to prove me wrong. However, you better know the person you are telling that, if they are not that person - they will most likely be offended.

The path that most people will have to take is probably the one I will describe below. 

Step by step, little by little...
If we talk about the diet now. People who eat a lot of sugar, might struggle to cut that part of their diet out completely. By quitting straight away, they feel so bad that they simply give it all up. 
If that is the case, there is no point in going all out straight away. Because it will most likely fail this time too. But if they start step by step, they will give their bodies a chance to get used to less and less sugar. 

Drinking soda every day? Start by drinking just one glass, then only drink soda every other day, then next step is weekends only. By doing it like that the body will get used to you lowering the daily amount of sugar.

Find several strong reasons why you want to achieve something
Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to get bigger muscles? Whatever it is that you want deep down. For every reason to do it, there is a bigger chance of you succeeding. But don't get me wrong. It is not like quit eating sugar is going to be easy just because it is important to avoid obesity or diabetes. 
Those are not two valid reasons in this case. The reasons to succeed at something must come from within yourself. Unless you feel that you want to avoid diabetes it does not matter how much people around you keep nagging you about it. It will not help unless you grow those feelings yourself.

Get educated
Some things that you really fancy eating might be low in calories, some things that you hate and eat just because you think it is healty - might actually be pure shit. So by reading up on your favorite dishes, you might get a huge advantage.

Periodic Fasting & More

Lets talk fasting

This ain't no f-ing scientific article or some shit like that. This is me mentioning shit that that I find intresting. Got any questions or want some deeper knowledge, msg me on Twitter or leave a comment.

Fasting is something done by certain cultures to celebrate traditions. But it is also used by medical staff to relieve the intestines from stress in order to heal an inflammation and in the world of fitness it is used as a way to diet.

To have a full fast based on just drinking water is not something used by a lot of athletes regurarly, for obvious reasons. You simply would have no energy for your workouts.

There are however something called Periodic Fast. That means that you fast every day, but only for 16 hours. Then you have 8 hours left in which you are allowed to eat.
It takes some planning but it should be no problem to eat all your calories for the day during these 8 hours.

I did this for some time and I enjoyed it. But I failed to continue doing it when my working hours changed. And now I feel that there is no point in even trying to make a schedule that would work.

One day my working day starts at 7am and the next day it can start at 2pm. When the hours differs so much and I have not a lot of opportunity to eat while at work it is tough. I can't even work out at the same time each day either which make it even harder.

That means I would trying to perform a workout without eating before or after. And that would be catabolic, breaking down the body.

I have friends that do have regular working hours, being able to work out at the same time every day and they are happy about this method. Exactly like I was when I could keep it up.

A few years back there were soo many people soo sure that you had to eat every third hour not to be unhealthy. What a load of crap!

You don't have to eat every third f-ing hour to keep your metabolism alive. And when it comes to gaining or losing weight, unless you are suffering from a medical condition. The formula is calories in – calories out. Enough said!

When it comes to fasting longer periods of time, like for an entire day every once in a while. I suppose the main reason is to allow your intestines to rest. When you don't eat, there won't be anything to digest.

If you feel like you won't be able to do any fasting because your blood glucose dips too low. If you still are intrested in things like this, I suggest that you go see your doctor in order to take a quick blood sample for the glucose levels after you have been fasting for the night.

A lot of people that say they have to eat something because their glucose are low are probably experiencing something else. Not everyone! Not saying that you can ignore what you feel. I am saying, make an appointment before playing around with fasting if you think you will get affected in a bad way.

Because some people actually are sensitive for not eating regurarly.

Carpal tunnel syndrome

What is Carpal tunnel syndrome?

This is a name that is thrown around the gaming community at times. My favorite mentioning is on the Southpark episode where they play World of Warcraft non-stop. Kyle gets, what he claims to be, carpal tunnel during a gaming session.

The carpal tunnel syndrome is affecting the wrist. Your hand can feel numb, give you tingling sensations and be painful. It can show itself in different ways. 
One of the things that can cause this is highly repetitive tasks (even if they involve low force motions). Does that not sound like a pro gamer to you?
Or even if you are not a pro gamer but just a regular guy/girl who plays a lot this might be an issue.

The symptoms often occurs at night, so you might not connect the feelings of pain, numbness and tingling to your daily activities.

Besides that, which is the most relevant one in this post, it can be caused by stuff like diabetes, obesity, narrow-diameter carpal tunnel or if you have suffered damage to your wrist that created scarring tissue on the inside.

Normally the fingers that is affected is the thumb, the index finger and the middle finger. It often occurs at night. 
The fact that the symptoms often occurs at night when you basically are just going to sleep is something positive. Since you can use a wrist-aid when sleeping. That allows the wrist to rest and not being bent awkwardly. 

To go deeper on the subject I will add a picture on how the wrist looks like. 

To the right you see the actual tunnel. That Median nerve is trying to share the space with a lot of other things. And it is not hard to imagine that it sometimes becomes too tight. 

If things are not fixed by resting your wrist at night there is surgery to be had to fix the problem. 
It is not usually done until the symptoms are not just occasionally occuring, but constant. When the night-splinting and other such methods are no longer helping enough. 
It is called "carpal tunnel release surgery" and that is basically what it is. They cut the wrist open to remove the pressure on the nerve.

Before doing surgery, there are other treatments besides the splinting methods. And just because you get affected by this and even diagnosed, it is not a sure thing that it will last. It might be hard to continue to play computer games at a really high level without taking a break from it though. 

If it is an inflammation or something causing your problem, it will probably heal if you rest the wrist and maybe get some medicine.

Don't use the information in this post to diagnose yourself with carpal tunnel and start treatment. I would suggest that you go to the doctor to see what can cause your problems. 

To avoid problems there are lots of exercises to do. 

Just by searching google you will find images like this one with examples on movements that might help preventing it. And just by thinking about it, it kind of makes sense. By doing all the same movements for many hours, your wrist will need to do some other movements as well.