Jena La Flamme is a Writer/Speaker/Certified Holistic Health Counselor/Weight Loss Coach as well as being the Jena Wellness Center. A real renaissance woman in the field of “being better”, Jena has an interesting and useful blog on her website JenaWellness.com.

Jena’s career in the healing arts began 11 years ago during her first visit to India. Touched by the message that the fulfillment we seek already resides within us, Jena launched into focused study of nutrition,yoga and meditation, where she experienced their power first hand, and her life was transformed.

Jena is now primarily a speaker. She speaks to groups of varying sizes, from small and intimate to groups of several hundred. No group is too big for Jena! Her ideal speaking opportunity? An organization that is passionately devoted to the health of its employees or a professional women’s group. (Via Her Blog’s About Page)

F&S readers who are interested in losing weight in the new year would be interested in checking out some posts from Jena’s blog such as:

• VIDEO – How to Break Your New Year’s Resolutions Before Jan 1
• Stop Your Sugar Binge Without Discipline and Watch the Pounds Melt Away
• How to Boost Your Body Image on Facebook

You can also find Jena IRL (in real life) at some of her live-workshops, which you can read more about on her homepage.

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Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, led a team of investigators who have come up with an answer to this age-old question. The research team surveyed about 700 people and asked them to describe their strategies for achieving their New Year’s resolutions. The most common goals told to the researchers were losing weight, quitting smoking, or beginning a better relationship.

A total of 78 percent of the participants did not meet their goals, and the researchers found that many of the individuals had focused on the downside of not achieving their goals. This included suppressing their cravings for food and/or nicotine, relying solely on willpower, adopting a role model, or fantasizing about being successful.

Luckily for us, we’re in 2010 and we have such useful tools as eHow, this video offers a solution to this problem:

What to Do If New Year’s Resolutions Fail — powered by eHow.com

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There are many blogs on the internet which are merely portals to sell some product or service. The Adonis Lifestyle is attempting to push a book, however this blog has a lot more to offer than pushy pitches. This blog features regular posts about health, physical fitness, and even social strategy for men. The blog also features a regular podcast which creates a much more dynamic experience for users.

Blog creator John Barban explains his intentions for the blog in the about section:

I’m John Barban, along with Brad Howard and Brad Pilon we are here to give you up to date no BS information on exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle tips for the modern man (if you’re reading this, then that means YOU).

I guess you could say we’re part mythbusters, part lifestyle coach, part nutritionists and part exercise coach.

Some posts from the blog that would be relevant to F&S readers are:

• Naturalistic Fallacy and How to Find Experts (podcast)

• Water Weight, Fat, Muscle, What is Signal vs Noise?

• How an Adonis Index Workout is Designed

• Fitness Marketing, Drugs & Taking Responsbility for Your Body

• How Many Calories Do You Need to Lose Weight?

Those should give you a pretty good idea of if The Adonis Lifestlye blog is one to add to your reader.

In case that you’re wondering what they’re selling check this out

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Quinoa = is a species of goosefoot grown primarily as a pseudo-cereal crop. Although technically neither a grain nor a cereal, it is generally considered to be a grain crop. Quinoa comes from the Andean region of South America, where it has been an important food for 6,000 years. Quinoa has come to be highly appreciated for its nutritional value, and the United Nations has classified it as a supercrop for its very high protein content (13%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete foodstuff. This means it takes less quinoa protein to meet one’s needs than wheat protein. Although technically a seed, quinoa is considered a whole grain and a good source of dietary fiber. Quinoa also contains omega-3 fatty acids, which provide benefit to the heart. Quinoa is a good source of phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest.

Olive Oil = 40% of the worlds olive oil comes from Spain. Many Italian olive oils are bottled in Italy, but bought from Spain. It decreases LDL, the bad guy cholesterol and increases HDL, the good guy cholesterol. Recently there is some speculation that a compound in Olive Oil is the same as Ibuprofen which is an anti inflammatory. Ibuprofen thins the blood and can aide in heart attacks, strokes, cancers and Alzheimer. Olive Oil is not only a great food , but great for your skin.

Lentils = A sample in India and is eaten twice a day there. Lentils are high in protein, B Vitamins, Folate and cholesterol lowering fiber. It has twice the iron of other legumes. It is also speculated to has anti oxidant qualities.

Wheatgrass juice and green juices = Wheatgrass is a young plant of the genus Agropyron, a relative of wheat. Fresh leaf buds of this plant can be crushed to create a juice or dried to make a powder; the unprocessed plant contains high levels of cellulose which makes it indigestible. It possesses chlorophyll, amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and enzymes. The chlorophyll molecule is similar in structure to hemoglobin, leading some to believe that wheatgrass helps blood flow, digestion and general detoxification of the body. These claims have neither been proven nor disproven.

Vegetables = is a culinary term. Its definition has no scientific value, and is somehow arbitrary and subjective.

Any part of a herbaceous plant that humans eat whole or in part is a vegetable, except for culinary fruits and arguably grains, nuts, herbs, and spices. Also, mushrooms are commonly considered vegetables, despite belonging to a different biological kingdom, namely fungi (which used to be classified as plants).

Vegetables include leaf vegetables (for example lettuce), stem vegetables (asparagus), root vegetables (carrot), flower vegetables (broccoli), bulbs (garlic) and botanical fruits such as cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, avocados, capsicums, as well as botanical pulses such as green beans, and fleshy, immature seeds such as those of peas or beans.

Since “vegetable” is not a botanical term, there is no contradiction in a plant part being a fruit botanically while still being considered a vegetable (see diagram).

In general, vegetables are thought of as being savoury, and not sweet (with some exceptions, such as rhubarb and pumpkin).

Fruits = In botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary-together with seeds-of a flowering plant. With most fruits pollination is a vital part of fruit culture, and the lack of knowledge of pollinators and pollenizers can contribute to poor crops or poor quality crops. Pollination is an important step in the reproduction of seed plants: the transfer of pollen grains (male gametes) to the plant carpel, the structure that contains the ovule (female gamete).

Almonds = Almonds are a rich source of Vitamin E, containing 24 mg per 100 grammes [1]. They are also rich in monounsaturated fat, one of the two “good” fats responsible for lowering LDL cholesterol.

Flax seeds = Alpha-linolenic acid is one of the two essential fatty acids that humans require. The other is Linoleic acid. They are called “essential” because they can not be produced by the human body. Essential fatty acids should not be confused with essential oils which are not required by the human body. Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is a polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acid. Omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fatty acids found in oil from oily fish and vegetable sources such as the seeds of chia, perilla, flax, walnuts, purslane, lingonberry, seabuckthorn, and hemp. Omega-3 fatty acids are classified as essential because they cannot be synthesized in the body; they must be obtained from food.

Important omega-3 fatty acids in human nutrition are: α-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

Brown Rice = Whole grains are believed to be nutritionally superior to refined grains, richer in dietary fiber, antioxidants, protein (and in particular the amino acid lysine), dietary minerals (including magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and selenium), and vitamins (including niacin, vitamin B6, and vitamin E). Manufacturers are sometimes required by law to fortify refined grain products to make up for the loss of vitamins and minerals.

The greater amount of dietary fibre, as much as four times that found in refined grains, is likely the most important benefit, as it has been shown to reduce the incidence of some forms of cancer, digestive system diseases, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Some of these protective effects occur because carbohydrates from whole grains are digested and enter the bloodstream more slowly (as measured by the glycemic index).

Whole grains are often more expensive than refined grains because their higher oil content is susceptible to rancidification, complicating processing, storage, and transport.

Root Vegetables = are underground plant parts used as vegetables. They are called root vegetables for lack of a better generic term, but include both true roots such as tuberous roots and taproots, as well as non-roots such as tubers, rhizomes, corms, and bulbs. Several types contain both taproot and hypocotyl tissue, and it may be difficult to distinguish the two.

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Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks—including death itself—at the university’s 114th Commencement on Sunday in Stanford Stadium.

Wearing jeans and sandals under his black robe, Jobs delivered a keynote address that spanned his adoption at birth to his insights into mortality after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about a year ago. In plainspoken terms, his address struck a balance between the obstacles he has encountered during his notably public life and the lessons he has gleaned—for example, from his high-profile ousting in 1985 from the computer company he helped start. (via Stanford News)

Check out the video here:

After the jump is the full text of Jobs’ speech, which is full of awesome quotables:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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* Sweating speeds up metabolic processes of vital organs and inhabits the growth of pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The vital organs and glands (including endocrine and sex glands) are stimulated to increased activity.

* Sweating Creates a fever reaction that kills potentially dangerous viruses/bacteria and increase the number of leukocytes in the blood, thereby strengthening the immune system.

* Sweating Places demands upon the cardiovascular system, making the heart pump harder and producing a drop in diastolic blood pressure.

* Sweating  Stimulates vasodilation of peripheral vessels, which relieves pain and speeds healing of sprains, strains, bursitis, peripheral vascular diseases, arthritis and muscle pain.

Finally

*Sweating Promotes relaxation, thereby lending a feeling of well-being.

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Christmas is traditionally a time of year when we enjoy ourselves, we let our hair down and are a little more relaxed. At least that’s the way it’s meant to be. For a lot of people however, it’s a stressful time of year. There’s the shopping to do, there’s the list of cards for all the family; god forbid we don’t send Aunt Betty a card, there’s the dinner to buy, there’s work to do, there’s family to contact, there’s a hundred and one things to do.

In a recent post called “100 Ways To A Stress Free Christmas” DLM blogger Steven Aitchison noted such suggestions as Stocking up on Chocolates as “emergency gifts” and tiring out your pets before the family arrives for your big holiday shindig.

Click here to read the entire list

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This week’s TEDTalk features Wofford College president Ben Dunlap tells the story of Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who taught him about passionate living and lifelong learning.

Before coming to Wofford, Dunlap held faculty appointments at both Harvard (as a visiting professor in 1972) and the University of South Carolina (1968-1992). While at USC, he won numerous awards for teaching and scholarship, including the Russell Award for Distinguished Scholarship (1980), the University of South Carolina Teacher of the Year Award (1974), the Outstanding Teacher of English Award (1974), the South Carolina College Outstanding Professor Award (1984) and the Mortarboard Excellence in Teaching Award (1991).

Before being elected the 10th president at Wofford, Dr. Dunlap was the Chapman Family Professor of Humanities for seven years (1993-2000). In addition to cross-disciplinary courses, Dunlap’s teaching fields include Asian Studies, European literature and creative writing. He continues to team-teach the Wofford College Presidential Seminar.

Dr. Dunlap is a frequent moderator for the Aspen Institute’s Executive Seminars as well as its Crown Fellowship Program. He was also on the 2007 Board of Governors of the Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce. He has taught and lectured widely in Europe, India, Thailand, and Japan. He has served as a Fulbright professor in Thailand and a Japan Society Leadership Fellow in Japan (Via Wikipedia)

Also, take a look at Dunlap giving the Woford College Commencement Address in 2009.

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Before we go into what this blog is about. let’s learn a little about what this GTD thing even is. GTD, is an acronym for “Getting Things Done” a  productivity method created by David Allen, and described in a book of the same name. “GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.” (Via Wikipedia)

Here’s a short video of Allen himself explaining GTD:

Now, about the blog. According to their about page, GTD Times is:

is the official blog of David Allen and the David Allen Company.  It’s the hub for ‘all things GTD’ where you can read the latest Getting Things Done^® and David Allen Company news, our reviews and personal experience with tools and GTD-supportive technology, as well as GTD tips, tricks and strategies to help each of us lead happier, healthier, and more successful lives. If you are new to David Allen’s approach, the article What is GTD? is a great place to start.

For those of you out there who are productivity enthusiasts, GTD is a great tool that can be utilized to achieve and maintain high levels of productivity.

Some posts on this blog that are relevant to F&S users:

• David Allen’s initial podcast, explaining GTD
• A takeaway from a GTD class
• How to feel Okay when You’re Not Doing Something
• Is Shyness Stopping You from Getting Things Done? 20 Tips to Help You Cope
• Brain Science and a Ringside Seat to a Stroke – A TED Talk Worth Watching

Godspeed to all of you future GTDers, it’s the people who get things done who change the world.

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So you’re doing well on your new diet/exercise regimine but that big party is on the horizon. Being the social drinker that you are, you’d really like to enjoy a drink or two at the shindig. After hours of hard work, careful consideration of food choices, and flat out willpower you don’t want to take a step back.

What’s a newfound health enthusiast to do?

The secret my friends is moderation (and making some smart choices). So What are the drinks of choice for the dieting public? let’s take a look:

LIGHT BEER

If you think it’ll make you less of a man to switch from bud to bud light, you’re correct. On average a light beer contains 38 less calories than it’s full flavored counterpart per 12oz serving. With the light beers clocking in at about 108 calories per serving, you’ll be looking like less of a man in no time. Be careful tho, each serving of light beer still comes with a side dish, 6g of carbs.

WINE

If you’re drinking a Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio, you’re getting about 4 fewer carbs than your light beer selection. A 5oz glass of wine will get you on your way to buzzville at about 100 calories per glass, as well as that “helping reduce the risk of heart disease thing” it does.

DIET MIXERS

If you’re going to be drinking  liquor, make sure you’re going with the calorie-free mixers like diet soda or diet tonic water. One shot glass or mixed drink will contain about 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. One excellent option is Bacardi and Diet Coke. One Bacardi and Diet Coke has 66 calories, less than the beer or wine.

If you’d like additional information SparkPeople.com has an excellent resource for fiding the caloric and carb content of a lot of popular alcohols.

Oh, and one more option.

DON’T DRINK

Not to sound like a old-fogie but you don’t really need to drink to have fun. Just saying…

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