Importance of Diet in Healthy Life

Diet is extremely useful in certain aspect of our life such as sports, modeling, and so on. But in the case of chess match, diet has no important role to play. There are no specific healthy diet foods that anyone can follow, dietary plans preparation depends on the suitability of an individual goal. For example, diet to prevent heart diseases, for weight loss, weight gain, for glowing skin, to maintain calorific value and so on. From this, we can understand that the healthy foods list diet of an individual depends upon the goal he wants to achieve.

Diet can be defined as the amount of food consumed by a person, which contains required amount of all nutritional values to maintain energy level. Carbohydrates, proteins and fats are the key elements in a healthy diet. These three significant ingredients provide vitamins, minerals and energy which help to prevent severe diseases such as heart attack, stroke and diabetes, prevent obesity and overweight. Usually, many of us give importance to the quality of taste in food instead of giving importance to nutritional values contained in the food. This is one of the healthy eating tips to maintain a good physical and mental fitness. It is a fact that we cannot fully avoid taste aspect of a food, but we should realize that all tasty foods are not healthy food. One easy way to prepare a rich nutritional diet is to make a list of common foods that you consume and find out the nutritional contents in that food. Then avoid those foods which are unhealthy and prepare a healthy diet according to that list.

Here is a small list of nutritional contents of fruits and vegetables and healthy foods to eat:

Spinach

Calories – 23 g
Fat – 0.4 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 79 mg
Potassium – 558 mg
Carbohydrate – 3.6 g
Protein – 2.9 g

Carrot

Calories – 41 g
Fat – 0.2 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 69 mg
Potassium – 320 mg
Carbohydrate – 10 g
Protein – 0.9 g

Cabbage

Calories – 25 g
Fat – 0.1 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 18 mg
Potassium – 170 mg
Carbohydrate – 6 g
Protein – 1.3 g

Tomato

Calories – 18 g
Fat – 0.2 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 5 mg
Potassium – 237 mg
Carbohydrate – 3.9 g
Protein – 0.9 g

Apple

Calories – 52 g
Fat – 0.2 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 1 mg
Potassium – 107 mg
Carbohydrate – 14 g
Protein – 0.3 g

Orange

Calories – 47 g
Fat – 0.1 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 0 mg
Potassium – 181 mg
Carbohydrate – 12 g
Protein – 0.9 g

Grapes

Calories – 67 g
Fat – 0.4 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 2 mg
Potassium – 191 mg
Carbohydrate – 17 g
Protein – 0.6 g

Banana

Calories – 8 9
Fat – 0.3 g
Cholesterol – 0 mg
Sodium – 1 mg
Potassium – 358 mg
Carbohydrate – 23 g
Protein – 1.1 g

Nutrients can be categorized in two, macro nutrients and micro nutrients. Macronutrients can influence the growth, size, shape, metabolism and other body functions. There are three types of macronutrients

  • Protein
  • Carbohydrate
  • Fat

Protein

Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. 20 different types of amino acids are combined together to make a protein. Proteins are large and compound biological molecules that have important affect on the functionality of our body. Protein constructs, sustain and recover the tissues in our body. Our muscles, organs and immune system are built up largely of protein. Chicken breast, tuna fish, cheese, pork loin, lean beef and veal, tofu, beans, eggs, yogurt, milk, soymilk, nuts and seeds are the foods rich in protein.

Carbohydrate

Carbohydrate is a complex biological molecule that provides the body with glucose, which is converted to energy required for bodily process and physical activities. Carbohydrate consists of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. The essential functions of carbohydrates are energy production, energy storage, building macromolecules, sparing proteins and lipid metabolism. Fructose and granulated sugar, drink powders, hard candies, and gummies, sugary cereals, dried fruits (Apples, Prunes, Dates), low fat crackers, rice cakes, and potato chips, flour, cakes, and cookies, jams and preserves, potatoes (Hash Browns and French Fries), sweet pickles, sauces, and salad dressings, and pizzas are the foods rich in carbohydrates.

Fat

Fat is also a key nutrient needed for our body growth and activity. Fat plays a major role in the correct development of brain and nervous system. The important functions of fats in the body are provide energy, forming structural materials of cells and tissues, carry fat soluble Vitamins A, D, E and K, and provide essential fatty acids.

There is not a certain healthy diet to everyone, a diet is prepared in accordance to suit the goals of an individual. Goals may be to prevent diseases, to reduce weight, to gain mass muscles, lean muscles and so on. The importance of diet cannot be avoided from our life, we should have to prepare a healthy diet and follow that diet to maintain healthy growth and metabolism.

How to Deal With Depression – Living With Depression

Overcoming depression is not easily possible. The consequences of depression that can affect every aspect of your life, especially long term depression. Depression makes you sad, lack of energy and good mood, talk little and feeling of hopelessness. Living with depression makes your simple day to day activities such as eating meal at right time, working, going outside almost impossible to handle.

Depression Definition

Many of us feel sad and unhappy sometimes, but when these feeling keep going through out most of your life time and this can create obstacles in your life by reducing your productivity, energy, and enjoyments in your life. When you are in this situation, then you are depressed.

What Causes Depression and How to deal with Depression?

There are a lot of factors or events in our life which is responsible for depression. Usually, depression is not caused on the occurrence of a single event, but sequence of occurrence of different events in life. Here some of the common factors that causes depression:

  • Family history
  • Personality
  • Drug and alcohol use
  • Serious loss in life
  • Working long hours

Natural Remedies For Depression

Yoga

Yoga involves various yoga practices, techniques and meditation which help to reduce various mental and emotional problems such as depression, tension and anxiety. With the practice of yoga techniques, people suffering from depression get relieved by calm down their body and mind.

Exercise

Regular exercise not only good for body but also well for mind, and helps to maintain an energetic mood throughout the day. Our body releases a chemical known as Endorphins, when we exercise. The interaction of endorphins with the receptors in our brain reduces the approach of pain. Research studies revealed that regular exercise helps to reduce feeling of depression, anxiety, stress and other mental and emotional issues. The foremost important benefit that anyone can achieve from regular exercise is self esteem.

Sleep well

Nowadays, people don’t get enough sleep due to busy activities, lack of sleep can support depression. But too much sleep can also lead to increased depression. Six to seven hours of sleep per night is ideal for an average person. Beside reduces risk of depression, there are other benefits from well sleep such as maintains our heart healthy, reduces blood pressure, stress, enables our body to recover from damages, increases productivity and so on.

Love to take responsibilities

When we have to take some responsible job or anything else, we often make different kinds of excuses in order to avoid that responsibility. You may think it will lead to depression if you won’t do that responsible job perfectly or you may think you are incapable to do it. But when you undertake responsible jobs and complete it perfectly, this increases your self esteem and thinks yourself that you are more capable of doing any kind of job. In this way, you are developing your responsible character, commitment and good relationships with others.

Be Positive

We should have to convert our negative thoughts into positive thoughts. When we see the world in a positive manner, we can see that the world around us also support us. Depression can be reduced to a great extend by positive thinking, other benefits such as happiness, boost self confidence, reduces stress, improve immunity and leads to meaningful life.

Follow a healthy diet

We all have to eat to survive in earth. But many of us give more importance to tasty food rather than nutritional contents in food. Quit eating high sugar content food, junk, fast and processed food. Foods such as refined sugar, artificial sweetener, hydrogenated oil, foods high in sodium, caffeine may contribute to your depression. Include more fruits and vegetables in your diet and drink plenty of water.

Have Fun

Maintaining humor sense in your life not only makes you happy but also keeps you healthy.

Depression can significantly affect your emotional and physical condition, dealing with depression is not an easy task. Chronic depression makes your every aspect of your life miserable and dry with decreased productivity, mood and activeness. But the practice of above effective techniques helps anyone to get relieved from depression.

Do you have your own personal tips about the topic “How to deal with Depression?” Please share with everyone in the comments below.

7 Excellent Ways to Stop Snoring

Majority of us snore sometimes, but when it occurs again and again it will adversely affect your quality and quantity of sleep, family members and room-mates. If your frequent snoring makes your partner stay awake all night, it can create major relationship problems. Regular snoring can lead to serious health problems such as long disruption of breathing, short period of sleeping, strain on heart and poor night’s sleep.

What Causes Snoring?

Snoring occurs when airways through the mouth and nose are partially obstructed. When we sleep, our throat muscle relaxes, so that our tongue falls backwards and our throat becomes tight and weak. The walls of the throat begin to vibrate while we breathe (usually, it vibrates more during inhaling air and less during exhaling air). The basic reason for our snoring is because of these vibrations.

How To Stop Snoring Naturally?

1. Reduce Weight

Loss weight can help a fatty person to stop snoring. In the case of a fatty person, weight around his neck adversely affects his throat. This in turn leads to snoring. But loss weight doesn’t fully guarantee to stop snoring, because skinny people are snores too. So we can conclude by saying that loss weight is only a partial remedy to stop snoring.

2. Quit Smoking

We all know smoking is injurious to our health and life. Smoking can increase chance of snoring. Smoking blocks and disrupts the airways through nose and throat. This increases the chance of walls of throat to vibrate while breathe. Quit smoking is one of the effective snoring remedies which everyone can follow easily. And other benefits such as reduced stress, depression, anxiety and controlled anger.

3. Regular Exercise

Excessive weight can increase the risk of snoring. Regular cardio exercises like swimming, walking, jogging, and bicycle riding help to reduce fat around your neck and makes your airways( especially throat way) more clear which diminish your snoring habit.

4. Change Sleep Position

Foetus, Log, Yearner, Soldier, Freefaller, and Starfish are the most popular sleeping positions. While you sleep in Soldier position (Sleeping on your back with both arms and legs stretched inwards) and Starfish position (Sleeping on your back with both arms and legs stretched outwards), bottom of your tongue and soft palate touch to the back wall of your throat which in turn lead to snoring while you sleep.

5. Avoid Alcohol

Drinking alcohol increases the chance of snoring adversely. Alcohol consumption reduces the strength of muscle in the back of throat. A normal snoring noise can be transformed into a loud snoring with the usage of alcohol.

6. Drink Water

Drinking water is completely good for your health. In order to keep your body function stable and healthy, you should have to drink a minimum of 8 glass of water per day. Being dehydrated makes your mouth and throat dry which increases the risk of snoring. One simple way to reduce the harmful effects of snoring is to drink plenty of fluids.

7. Open Nasal Paths

Snoring can occur due to the blockage in the nasal path, especially during cold. This makes airway through nose narrower and makes it difficult for air to pass. Clearing nasal passages is one of the natural snoring remedies that anyone can follow easily.

Now, you get basic ideas about “How To Prevent Snoring?” Any person can snore. But to some extend, snoring problems are caused by our bad habits such as alcohol consumption, frequent smoking, over weight, lack of exercise and incorrect positions of our sleep. Many of us think a fatty person snores frequently because of fat around his neck. But, a thin person with a small neck can snore, even louder than a fatty person. From this we can understand that people who snore can have any body type. All the methods mentioned above are completely natural snoring remedies. Hence by following these remedies doesn’t provide full guarantee to stop snoring during sleep. But in certain person, one of these remedies is enough to stop snoring. While in other cases, these methods can make some changes in their snoring. So we can conclude by saying that snoring can be completely stop by following natural methods, if not seek medical attention.

How to Overcome Procrastination – Living With a Purpose

Procrastination is a common bad habit facing by many people all around the world. Surely, you get disturbed if you have dragging important works over and over again. When we procrastinate sometimes that won’t affect us adversely, but if we procrastinates chronically that will affect our potential performance in our career. Overcoming procrastination is not a challenging situation, it is possible by simply understanding when you are procrastinating.
What Is Procrastination?

Procrastination is the action of a person to slowing or delaying about doing something that should be done.

Usually, we procrastinate difficult tasks because we may think it will be difficult to accomplish, fear of failure and getting nervous. Procrastination will negatively effect on our mental, physical and emotional stability. Stability in this entire field is essentially required for the active performance in our life career.

How To Stop Procrastinating?

Create a Smart To Do List

Create a list of entire activities that you have to do in a day. This list enables you to know exactly what you are going to do. Based on the list, you can allocate time for the completion of each and every activity. The do list enables you to compare your actual performance of activities with the predetermined activities in the list. If there are any deviations in actual performance from predetermined, you can rectify it by taking correct actions at the right time.

Avoid Multi Task

It is wise to do a task at a time which enables us to give our entire attention on the performance of that particular task. It leads to effective and appropriate attainment of our purpose without wasting too much our time and energy. The result of multi task is just opposite of single task. It is not possible to achieve the expected result effectively and easily while doing multi tasks.

Prioritize Important Task

Everyone has felt a situation in which that they want to do a lot of task with less available time. This often leads you feeling of stress and depression. Only solution for this problem is to categorize tasks into important and unimportant items. So that it enables you to utilize available time for performing important tasks.

Dividing a Task Into Sub Tasks

You are going to have a big piece of cake. It is always very difficult to deal with big things, so you will slice that piece into smaller one which enable you to have it more comfortably. The same theory is also behind while doing large complex task or anything. Diving a complex task into various small task which enable you to perform it very easily and complete within a reasonable amount of time.

Ask Someone To Help You Complete Task

Some tasks cannot be done by yourself, at that time we can ask someone to help you to complete a task. In this way you are developing a friendly relationship with others and learn to trust others.

Take a Break

If we continuously do something without taking a break, it will be so boring and may slow down our activeness in performance. It is good to take an interval while doing a long activity. But you shouldn’t take a break for a long period of time, because it makes you in a challenging situation to getting back on track.

Encourage Yourself

Love to take responsibility is one of the effective methods of encouraging and motivating yourself. Surround yourself with positivity can help you to strive towards your goal. You can use self soothing words such as “I won’t give up, I can do anything, Nothing is impossible, stop procrastinating”, it helps to boost your self esteem and confidence.

After reading and follow the above steps, everyone will get a definite idea about “how to not procrastinate”. Always remember, YOU ARE THE CREATOR OF YOUR OWN DESTINY. When you become a common avoider, automatically you are creating obstacles in your path towards your journey to success. The above techniques can help you to attain a good habit which leads to good performance in your life career.

Do you have your own personal tips about this topic? Please share with everyone in the comments below.

How To Improve Listening Skills – 6 Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills

Communication is the exchange of information and understanding from one person to another. Listening skills are crucial for effective communication. Lack of listening skill results in ineffective communication. This will adversely affects on the productivity of the individual. As a result it widens the gap between the communicator and the other person. Without effective listening, there is always the possibility of misunderstandings and a breakdown in exchange of information. There are many factors act as barriers to our listening. These barriers include giving attention to more than one communication, you are confused or not interested, focus on communicator’s features instead focus on communication, noise and other environmental factors and so on. By aware about these barriers of effective listening help you to develop the required listening skills. Follow these six effective techniques to get idea about “how to improve listening skills.”

Stay Focused

Staying focused is one of the effective listening exercises. Stay focused can help you listen to people better and achieve almost anything without wasting much time and energy. So you can use that time and energy in other productive areas. When we do many things at a time, we don’t get the expected result. But when we do one task at a time, we will get a good result. So we should focus on single task at a time instead of multitask.

Remove Distractions From Mind

With many distractions around you, it becomes very difficult for you to focus your attention on any subject. You must aware about the fact that you are distracted by the factors around you because your mind is allowing your attention to those factors. The vital solution to avoid distractions is to control your mind. Hence you can improve your listening skills.

Keep Eye Contact

It is very difficult for many people to maintain eye contact while they are speaking to someone. Shyness and lack of confidence stand as a barrier to keep eye contact. The other person considers it as boredom or not interested. If you focus completely on the conversation, so you are completely listening to the other person. Then, you will just naturally maintain eye contact with the person.

Let The Speaker Complete

Interrupting in a conversation is one of the main indications that you are not listening. To others, it indicates disrespect. You should have to wait patiently for a turn to speak and let the other person to complete.

Show That You’re Listening By Your Body Language

When you listen to the speaker, he feels accepted, important and understood. Show that you are listening by bending forward toward the person speaking, maintain eye contact, and shake your head to agree his point.

Respond At Right Time
Listen to the other person that what

he is speaking instead how to respond. This enables you to process his idea and make a good replay from his idea. Respond at the right time shows your intelligence and knowledge to communicate with people.

Listening is a skill which can be achieve through continuous practice of listening exercises. Better listening skills help you to achieve good personality which in turn helps you to attain success in your life. Effective listening enables you to give respect to the speaker as well as receive their respect. Being a good listener, you can organize your thoughts perfectly. The problems in your communication can be solved to a great extent through better listening. In this way, you can maintain better relationship with others.

Do you want to share your thoughts on the topic “How to improve listening skills”? Feel free to comment below.

Role Of Diet In Bodybuilding – The Most Important Factor

Gironda, a legendary bodybuilder once said that, :Bodybuilding is 80% nutrition!”

When a champion bodybuilder says something like that it should not be taken lightly. But, unfortunately diet & nutrition are the most overlooked aspects in gyms across India. Gym trainers are mostly looking to make profits by selling supplements to their clients. Believe it or not, neither your most expensive supplements nor the weights on your barbell are going to you any gains if your diet is not optimized according to your goals.

“Ahhh screw the diet I’ll work harder and make all kinds of gains.” Most of the people use this as an excuse when not wanting to give up their current diet. Well, I hate to tell you that all your intense effort and diligence to your workout won’t add even a pound to your muscles if you don’t focus on your diet.

How am I so sure, you ask?

I’ve made this mistake in the past and I want to spare you from making the same. So here, let me tell you my story.

I started weightlifting as a skinny guy. My aim was to build an aesthetic physique similar to that of a fitness model. I was very hardworking and loyal towards my training schedule, I never skipped a single day, but even after 1.5 years of training I wasn’t even close to my goal.

I became frustrated, wondering what went wrong. And then I realized that I hadn’t done anything the right way. I didn’t know what I was eating and more importantly HOW MUCH I was eating. My foundation about nutrition had not been laid at all. I started to clean up my diet and started to keep a track of my macro-nutrients. And only in a few months the results I saw were astonishing.

Further, by enhancing my knowledge of nutritional science I was finally able to own the physique I always dreamt of.

If you’re still reading, I’m sure you’ve realized that nutrition plays a very important role in achieving your fitness goals than you ever thought. So what makes diet and nutrition so pivotal? Why working out alone doesn’t help us grow muscles?

Because by only working out you’re damaging your muscles without helping them get repaired. Yes, the growth actually takes place when you feed your muscles with proper nutrition and allow it to repair. And that is how you grow bigger and stronger faster.

Wondering what your diet should include? Food is our source of fuel. But many forget that this fuel has 3 types i.e. protein, fats and carbohydrates (macro-nutrients). For athletic performance, muscle building and daily well-being you need all three. We’ll focus on muscle building here:

1. Protein

The most important macro-nutrient for muscle building is protein. You just learnt that in the gym you damage your muscles while working out.

This is where protein comes to the rescue. Proteins are broken down into amino acids which are used by our body to repair & build muscle fibers. The ideal recommendation for protein intake is 1 gram per pound of body weight. So if you weigh 80 kg, which is 176 pounds, you need 176 grams of protein everyday combined with efficient strength training to build muscles.

Good protein sources: milk, cheese, peas, legumes, pulses, chicken breast, fish, soya, whey protein.

2. Carbohydrates

Only eating protein would get you nowhere to your muscle building goals. You need to lift and you need to lift heavy. To be able to do so you need carbohydrates. They are the preferred source of fuel for our body. If you felt weak and lethargic at the gym, that’s most likely due to lack of carbohydrates in your pre-workout meal. Roughly 40-50% of your calories should come from carbohydrates, if your goal is muscle building. So if you’re consuming 2,500 calories a day, 1,000 calories (40%) should come from carbohydrates.

Good carb sources: legumes, pulses, fruits, brown rice, oats, and sweet potatoes.

3. Fats

I can’t emphasize enough how important fats are. Unfortunately, because of their name they suffer a lot injustice. People imprudently reduce fats in their diet thinking it makes them fat. But fats are crucial for healthy hormonal function especially testosterone. And you don’t want your testosterone levels to go down because it’ll be a nightmare if you’re pursuing muscle building. Regardless of what a person’s goal, is 30-40% calories should come from healthy fats. For an 80 kg person consuming 2,500 calories a day it would be 740 calories(30%) i.e 83 g of proteins.

Good fats sources: Egg yolks, fish, chicken, olive oil, coconut oil, mustard oil.

These were some general guidelines to follow while planning your diet for healthy muscle building. Remember, you’ll need to customize these nutrients according to your own body’s need.

How Often You Should Train & Eat – Body Building Basics

Dieting, supplementation and weight lifting- all these actions are done for one reaction and that is muscle gain.

The process of muscle growth is called hypertrophy. And in order to cause hypertrophy in our muscles we need to train them. So here’s the BIG question. How often should we train each body part?

Arnold “The Austrian oak” used to train each body part twice a week. Modern body builder Jay Cutler trains his body parts once a week.

But how often should ‘”you” train?

Well, you can’t look like Arnold or Cutler without being blessed by those superior genetics and without consuming body enhancement substances.

But to answer your question, let us lean a bit on Science.

Hypertrophy (myofribal) refers to an increase in the actual size/protein content of the muscles. This is the “real” muscle growth.

Now, let us slightly get into how hypertrophy takes place.

The first step is a high tension stimulus (muscle damage that we do in our workouts). Now you know why many athletes say to focus on negatives as maximum muscle damage takes place that time. This activates certain genes in the muscle cell which tell the nucleus to produce messenger RNA (mRNA), which is simply a blueprint for proteins. mRNA comes out of the nucleus, from where it eventually runs into a cellular machine called a ribosome. With the mRNA an instruction, the ribosome starts grabbing amino acids out of the intracellular amino acid pool and starts putting them together into new contractile proteins, which are then integrated into the existing fibers. In short you built some lovely precious muscles.

This entire process which might have sounded like rocket science to some of you is termed as ‘Protein synthesis’

Why working out one muscle once per week is bad?

Because the mRNAs do not hang on forever, they start to degrade quickly. In fact, increase in protein synthesis is gone within 36 hours.

Guys on steroids have an enhanced protein synthesis going inside their body along with a hell lot of good things. But for naturals, training every muscles in 48 hours is not only beneficial but I will say it’s necessary. Therefore, for the best output of your time in gym, start training your each muscle group more than once a week and see your muscles grow.

How Many Meals Should You Eat In A Day?

If you’ve ever googled this question, then you must’ve found diversified answers that must’ve lead you to nowhere. Different athletes and bodybuilders have different opinions about this. But at Fitness Monkee we love to give our readers an unbiased and scientific explanation.

Most fitness trainers recommend eating 6 to 8 meals per day whether your goal is to burn fat or to build muscles. Voila, Kris Gethin eats 12 meals a day.

But you’ve a life outside the gym as well. You can’t spend your entire day in the kitchen cooking. So let’s bust two prime myths because of which the suggestion of eating 6 to 8 meals a day is perpetuated.

Myth #1 You can only digest 30 g of protein in one serving and remaining gets wasted.
This is entirely based on a wrong concept. Though human body can absorb only 30 to 50g of protein in one serving but excess of it never gets wasted. The body converts it into amino acids and it’s released slowly whenever required.

Myth #2 Eating more meals sets your metabolism on fire.
Most myths are held in the grain of truth and this is one of them. Though eating a meal raises your metabolism but it’s a very minute and momentary rise. Your metabolism goes back to normal as the food is digested.

At last, let us bring in light the “adaptive ability” of human body. It works against us in the gym as our bodies adapt to our training protocols but in the kitchen it works in our favor. Our body can adapt to our eating habits easily. Hence, it is not necessary to eat 6 to 8 meals a day. The prime concern should be full filling our macro-nutrient intake.

Remember, consume three meals per day if it fits your macro-nutrient requirements a

Personality Development – Can You Change Someone’s Personality?

Personality development or personal development means a collection of decisions made by people throughout their lives. Personality development is the improvement of the organized pattern of behaviors and attitudes that makes a person distinctive. Personality development occurs by the ongoing interaction of personality, character, and environment. Personality is a combination of attitude, emotion, decision and behavior.

Personality Development and Childhood

You start developing a personality when you are a child. Each child has his own unique personality. Most parents are able to find out the nature of their child at the age of six months. At the ages between three to ten, their nature become stronger and continues to develop during adolescent periods. The personality development of a child not only depends on the nature but also on the parent’s nurture. Parents must have to help their child to develop their personality by providing good positive advice at the proper time. Kirby Deater-Deckard, psychology professor at Virginia Institute of Polytechnic explains that these are the preschool years when the child is learning to cope with a number of new experiences and express his own feelings. They are becoming more active. Hence it is during this time that the major personality traits begin to emerge quite clearly. Major personality study finds that traits are mostly inherited; determined by the influence of parents, home environment and other experiences in life. The personality of a child has determined far more by the environment, or nurture, than genes, or nature. We all have unique personality, there are certain personality traits our parents may have passed on to us. Our need or refusal of control may also be a habit learned from our parents. If you grew up with controlling, over protective parents, you may become a neurotic perfectionist. Meantime if you grew up with nonchalant and careless parents, you may lead a life without any control.

Personality Development and Adolescence

The basic personality is attained by age five and then continues to develop through the life. Adolescence is a varying stage between childhood and adult life which is characterized by quick physical growth and physiological, mental and social maturity. This development usually begins at puberty and enables the person to achieve a level of maturity to deal with and manage the realities of life. The development in this stage makes him to take responsibilities of his actions. We accept the changes in our body and appearance during the adolescent personality development stage, become independent from parents, develop morals, attitudes, traits and values needed for living in the society. According to Erik Erikson, appropriate social development in adolescence requires solving the major challenge of ego‐identity vs. role diffusion. To resolve this life crisis, adolescents must form an ego‐identity, a strong sense of “who I am and what I stand for,” or they may suffer role diffusion (running from activity to activity), with the increased likelihood of succumbing to peer pressure.

Personality Development and Adulthood

Major personality development studies has shown that personality of a person continue to change in adulthood. During adulthood, people show increased self confidence , self control and emotional stability with age. Developments during this stage are very crucial in our life to progress our thoughts, feelings, and behavior to lead a good life. There are various factors that influence an individual’s personality changes. Such factors are time, biological and social transitions in life. When age increases, we must show some maturity in our behavior to take responsibilities in our life. Biological transitions are stages during the process of physical changes by which a child’s body matures into an adult. Biological parts strongly determine our physical characteristics such as eye color, height, hair color, body type, and general looks. Even if biological factors plays no direct affect on our personality, the way we look certainly affects how we see ourselves and how others interact with us. In other sense, these factors plays indirect affect on us, at minimum, play a role in how we develop and who we are as adults.

Personality is the aggregate of behavior, attitude, emotions, thoughts, decisions and more created by a person’s characteristics. A person should develop characteristics to fulfill his personal and social needs. The concept of personality, have to be determined from a person’s personal life as well as his social life. A person’s viewpoint of his own personality is known as the self concept of personality. The social angle of a personality is called social concept of personality. The factors that affect personality are changeable and unchangeable. Unchangeable factors like hereditary, eagerness for new experience. Changeable factors like clothing, knowledge and behavior. However, personality can be developed by giving more importance to changeable factors through proper guidance, education and training.

How to Select a Gym? 10 Features To Look For Before Joining a Gym

Selecting an ideal gym can be challenging, exciting but also confusing. Today, there are several gyms in almost every block of every neighborhood. With the lucrative packages that gyms across the city now offer, most people opt for an annual, half-yearly or quarterly membership.

So, if you select a gym that’s not appropriate for your needs, you’ll end wasting your time and money!

Follow this guide and learn how to analyze a gym before selecting it:

#1 Minimum distance from your home

The most important criteria for selecting a gym is to ensure that its distance isn’t more than 5kms from your home. More often than not people select a gym that provides world class facilities but is considerably far away and end up missing a lot of training sessions. If your gym is so far away from your dwelling going there will become a tedious eventually, even more so when you’ve exams or a time-consuming job. Always ensure that it takes no more than 10-15 minutes to reach your gym. Also, it is better if your gym is close enough for you to walk to, saving previous time that would have been spent on warming up!

#2 Locker facilities

Having lockers in the gym can be of great help especially if you’re a busy person. You can keep a pair of workout shoes, training gear and towels so that you don’t have to rush back home in case you forget it or if you have to rush straight to work after your workout.

Also, lockers provide you with a safe place to store your valuable belongings.

#3 Separate aerobic section

With people increasingly moving towards alternative forms of fitness many gyms now offer Zumba and aerobics training. You need to ensure there is a separate section for that so you do not bump into weightlifters while doing your exercises.

#4 Open from morning to night

Life will throw at you all your problems at once giving you an excuse miss a training session. Most modern gyms have two timings: morning to mid noon and evening to night. The problem is, many times you might only be free during the mid afternoon to evening hours. if your gym remains closed that time sadly you’ll end up missing your daily training session.

Hence, for perpetually time crunched, corporate drones it is important to choose a gym that functions at odd hours of the day as well. Be it very late that night or during lunch hours of the day.

#5 Separate section for deadlifts and squat

If you’re familiar with my training articles on FitnessMonkee you already know I preach: “the stronger you are the bigger you are”.

Deadlifts and Squats give you an opportunity to lift a tremendous amount of weights which help you become stronger.
But squatting or deadlifting with heavy loads in a small area, with people around, can be dangerous for you as well as them. Imagine losing your balance while squatting with 150Kg in your arms, Horrible right?
Always ensure your gym has a separate area allotted to dead lifts and squats training.

#6 SQUAT Rack

Unfortunately, most small gyms don’t even have a squat rack. Instead, they offer a silly smith machine squat rack which only allows you to perform up and down motion with some loads. Smith machine squats put immense pressure on your spine and knees. A squat rack, on the other hand, allows you to do authentic-squats. You can also perform more great exercises on a squat rack such as low incline bench guillotine presses, floor presses, and rack-pulls.

The presence of squat rack is a must if you’re interested in getting stronger over time.

#7 Multiple pairs of dumbbells

You don’t want to wait for 2 other folks to complete their sets before you can start yours, do you? While looking for an ideal gym check out the dumb bell rack and confirm that it has more than one pair of dumbbells, especially the moderate weights such as 15kg 17.5Kg and 20Kg.

Waiting can be time-consuming, annoying with the added disadvantage of you losing the adrenaline rush and tempo that built up during your warm up.

#8 Heavy loads

If you’re a serious weight lifter you know the loads reach a high value on exercises such as shrugs and leg presses.
The gym you train in should have weights according to your strength, not the other way round.

Dumbbells up to 50Kg and plates up to 400Kg is a must.

#9 Pull up bar with neutral grips and parallel bar dips with thick grips

This is not something very crucial but will help you to improve your pull ups and bar dips. Neutral grips allow you to do a few more reps of pullups and parallel bar while thick grips prevent painful pressure hitting your palms.

Keep an eye out for these two things while examining gyms.

#10 PRO TIP- Don’t fall for fancy looking treadmills and cardio machines

Many gyms invest a lot in buying expensive treadmills and cardio machines and make it the center of attraction. Although they might look like a big deal but they’re nothing special.

You can burn the same amount of calories by doing a jog in a park. So don’t select a gym based on how fancy its equipment is, because to those wanting to get fit a gym is a weight lifting temple.

Do keep these 10 tips in mind before selecting any gym. Selecting the right gym is the first step towards muscular and strength goals.

Reverse Periodization- Modern Way of Growing Muscles

If you’ve been lifting weights for a while & noticed that the gains have come to a halt, this article is going to be your savior.

I’m quite sure if you go to a gym, the usual way for you (or anyone) to train is likely similar to this:

  • Set 1 15 reps
  • Set 2 12 reps
  • Set 3 10 reps

The rep range might vary but most trainers advise to start with light weights and gradually move up.

There is nothing wrong with this. The body needs a stimulus to grow muscles and if done with proper form and technique this method allows for that to happen. But over time this method leaves us on a strength and muscle gain plateau. This is a phase of all work and no gain where no lifter wants to be stranded.

Let me explain how. Let’s move to the bench and perform the classic bench press. Suppose you start set 1 with 50 Kg, move to set 2 with 60 Kg and at last channel all your energy to lift your heaviest set i.e set 3 with 70 Kg.

So here’s the catch; This Set 3 which you thought was your heaviest set and your maximum lift for the Bench Press isn’t actually so.

How & Why you ask? The answer is because you pre-fatigued your muscles doing the lighter sets. It’s very much a possibility that you could’ve even lifted 72.5 or 75 Kg had your muscles not been tired.

What Reverse Periodization all about? Reverse Periodization is the modern science of strength and muscle building. Though not very popular it’s proven to work. And you’re obviously concerned with the results, not the popularity. Reverse periodization is a training protocol where you make the heaviest lifts during the starting sets and reduce the weights very slightly or allow it to remain the same in the successive sets.

What is the benefit of doing this?

1. You’ll be able to make maximum lifts in accordance with your true potential.

2. Faster muscle growth
Science has proven that heavy lifts are superior muscle stimuli and put you in a greater muscle building mode. With Reverse Periodization your overall lifting weight will be heavier, making your body a muscle building machine.

3. Faster strength gains
The heavier you lift, the stronger you get. With reverse periodization, you’ll be surprised how quickly your weight numbers go up especially on the compound moves.

Let us go back to the bench and see what happens when you incorporate reverse periodization in your training. Previously you were starting your workout with

  • Set 1 at 60 Kg
  • Set 2 at 65 Kg
  • Set 3 with 70 Kg

If you use reverse periodization in your training you’ll begin your Set 1 with 70 or probably 72.5 Kg. In your next set, you’ll reduce the minimum weight you can lift. And on your third set, you’ll again do the same. You’ll notice that within 2 weeks you’ll be starting your set 1 with 75 Kg. Because by then your body will have adapted to the 70 Kg load more efficiently, which was not happening previously.

Previously the total load you lifted were, 60+65+70= 195 Kg

Now with reverse periodization, you’ll be able to lift 70+67.5+65= 202.5Kg
The numbers may differ a little but it’ll surely be more than your previous protocol.

Note: It is very important to do proper warm up before you jump on to Reverse Periodization because your CNS is not prepared to make such heavy lifts during the start of your workouts.

Warm up routine:
Set 1: 50% of your working set 5 reps. (so if you aim to start your first set with 70 Kg your warm up will be at 35 Kg )
Set 2: 70% of your working sets 3 reps.