Author: signordal

Cellulite Causes and Prevention Tips

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You’re reading Cellulite Causes and Prevention Tips, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Cellulite is among a woman’s worst nightmares. Unfortunately, it is the women who mostly suffer from cellulite problems. Many women have to deal with more than just the physical appearance of the unsightly uneven skin texture cellulite create while some have to deal with the emotional and psychological distress that accompanies these.

cellulite

What cellulite?

Just when you thought you’ve learned everything there is to know about cellulite, the skin specialists finally understand the root causes of these orange peels.

Just beneath the top layer of your skin are tough fibers that pull down on your skin and trap fat cells in. As the fibers become more desperate, the harder it pulls down on your skin and the tighter space it creates for the trapped fat cells. Meanwhile, trapped fat cells may continue to enlarge, and so space becomes even more uncomfortable.

The force of the fibers and the bulging trapped cells are what’s causing your cellulite to appear dimpled and rippled, respectively. To directly address the problem. Therefore, it takes a mechanism that cuts the fibers and frees up the fats to smoothen the skin’s appearance on the surface. It’s a mechanism that can hardly be fulfilled by any cellulite or firming cream, such as Avon cellulite cream.

Must you lose your hope on these products then?

Facts and myths about cellulite creams

Make better judgments about your cellulite cream by knowing the facts and myths surrounding these products:

Myth: Cellulite creams can vanish cellulite with regular use.

Most local product ingredients, regardless of the divine promises their marketers and manufacturers swear by to attract more buyers and loyal consumers, hardly make it past the skin’s surface layer.

Keep in mind that your skin is designed to be impermeable, waterproof. Unless the ingredients are tiny enough to penetrate its pores, even the most beneficial skin ingredients are put to waste, including those which cellulite creams are often formulated with.

Fact: Cellulite creams can cause temporary improvements in the appearance of orange peels.

In fact, the most useful improvements which you can derive from cellulite creams, including most Avon cellulite cream brands, is the instant skin plumping and smoothening you get from the time of product application. The effect can last up to a few hours.

Myth: Cellulite creams can address the root causes of your cellulite problem.

Since very few cellulite cream ingredients, perhaps only except retinoids, are known to have the ability to penetrate the skin, these products are hardly addressing the root causes of the problem, that is, tough fibers and trapped fat cells.
Fact: Cellulite creams combined with exercise can help slightly improve cellulite.

This combination can also contribute to preventing cellulite from becoming worse or, from showing up at all. Some firming creams and cellulite creams work by heating up your skin and enhancing the rate of fat metabolism which helps melt away and eliminate excess fats.

Myth: Cellulite creams are inexpensive alternatives to pricey cellulite reduction procedures.

Cellulite reduction products are among the most expensive beauty products available in the market. Just think about the minimal results you get and the continuous use it requires. When you sum it all up, these products are likely to spend as much as or even more than the cellulite reduction procedures available in the market today.

A BodyFX or Cellulaze procedure can easily cost anywhere between US$ 1,000 to US$ 5,000 depending on the severity of the cellulite and the size of the skin area that needs to be treated.

Fact: Cellulite reduction procedures are FDA approved. Cellulite creams are not.

Talk about efficacy, cellulite reduction procedures that have received FDA approval, namely, BodyFX, Cellini and Cellulaze are guaranteed to work. It does not mean that all cellulite creams don’t deliver, perhaps some do, it’s just that these products did not have to go through the rigorous process of getting the nod and certification of the FDA.

Conclusion

Cellulite creams are likely to provide instant, albeit temporary, improvements to your cellulite problems. Sometimes, it is the only solution people need but, if your cellulite bothers you so much then, now at least you know, you have other options available.

Cellulite: Causes and Prevention Tips

You’ve read Cellulite Causes and Prevention Tips, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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Nobody is below me and nobody is above me

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Joe had managed a successful company for 25 years and during those years the company had grown substantially. When asked what his secret was in management and human relations he replied “I deal with every person in such a way that we can meet again knowing that our last encounter was an enjoyable one. To me, nobody is below me and nobody is above me, except, of course, my consciousness. I have to live with myself every minute of the day. If I’m not at peace with myself how can I possibly make others feel comfortable around me? I’m not into sales, accounting or fancy terminology. When my heart is at ease at the end of the day I may have succeeded that one day. Then I try again tomorrow. This my life and I love it!” @signordal

How to Conquer the Fear of New Beginnings

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You’re reading How to Conquer the Fear of New Beginnings, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

conquer the fear of new beginnings

Although many say that new beginnings are good for you, what they avoid to point out sometimes is how scary they can be. The fear of what comes next, that unpredictability of a situation, is not easy to accept. Often you will stay frozen in front of opportunities and maybe even miss a chance or two just because you were too afraid to take a step forward. If you don’t lose that fear, you might miss your window to fully experience a new beginning and all the excitement it carries. For that reason, take a look at these tips on how to beat that fear.

  1. Take a deep breath before doing anything

    make sure to take a deep breath first

The next step is always hard, the new one is even harder. Before you decide you can’t do something, take a break and take a deep breath. Life-changing events are not supposed to be easy or predictable, but they can be overcome and manageable if you think it through and stop thinking about negative outcomes before anything has even happened. Take it step by step, know your surroundings, slowly ease into the different settings and be willing to give yourself a chance to start over. The most important thing to understand is that this is your big break to reinvent yourself.

  1. Have a safe haven

    pet cuddling time

Whenever there’s some big event, make sure you have a safe haven to go to if it becomes too hard or too frightening. This safe haven can be a person or several people, a place like a park bench or coffee shop, or just staying at home watching feelgood movies and cuddling with pets, a hobby or even working out. It’s very important to have something to turn to in order to avoid accumulating stress because too much tension can easily influence your feelings and opinion and, unfortunately, ruin this new start for you.

If you go to your loved ones for comfort, make sure they understand what this means to you and that they support you and help you overcome it rather than pressure you and judge you.

  1. Don’t put yourself down

When faced with something new, especially something like doing everything from scratch, we automatically tend to re-examine ourselves and momentarily decide that there’s something we can’t do even if we haven’t tried it. It’s great being aware of your self-worth, but putting yourself down without any evidence is just fear playing tricks on you. Instead, be excited that you’ll do something you haven’t done before, learn something novel and gain extra experience. New beginnings are more than just doing something for the first time, they are all about reinventing yourself and discovering new layers of your personality and believing in your own worth.

  1. Take help everywhere you can

People tend to think that asking for help, or using it is a sign of weakness. Actually, it’s only logical behavior since not all humans are the same and with the same abilities. For instance, Your Mates Removals can help when moving across Sydney, but generally, when moving to a new city or to a different place, specialized services are the first thing to come to your mind instead of moving boxes and furniture with your car. If moving within a big city you’d have to do several trips back and forth before you transferred your things, not to mention that some belongings can’t be moved in a car.

So using professional movers is not a sign of weakness, but it will take stress off your shoulders and let you concentrate on settling into the new surroundings and enjoying your new home. It will let you be relaxed to meet new people and feel more comfortable with yourself in that new environment.

  1. Different is welcome

    look at things from a different perspective

After a divorce or any other emotional trauma, people need new surroundings, but are scared to leave the nest they created thinking it protects them from further hurt. It’s very important you understand that nothing can protect you from that completely, because this is life and it gets hard and painful sometimes. What you should consider is that after the rain there’s always a rainbow, and anything different than what you are used to is more than welcome in your life. This will bring you much-needed change and encourage you to move forward and reinvent yourself, something necessary after a traumatic event. In order to stop being slaves of the past, people must embrace the future, and they can’t do that unless they defiantly look the present straight in the eyes.

After all

You can’t avoid new beginnings, no one can. They may come rarely and scarcely, but still they will happen. Stop wasting your time on overthinking everything that comes your way and just make that first stride along the path of surprising opportunities and bewildering events. Because everyone deserves to start anew, and so do you.

You’ve read How to Conquer the Fear of New Beginnings, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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Colosseum’s Highest Levels Are Open to the Public for the First Time in Over 40 Years

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colosseum opens fifth level

Photo: Dezalb

Rome’s Colosseum, historic home to gladiator battles and the symbol of the ancient Roman Empire, will now have all levels open to the public. Built up five levels, the amphitheater—built between 70 and 80 AD—once held 50,000 to 80,000 spectators who cheered on as battles took place on the circular floor.

Though the Colosseum is one of Rome’s top tourist attractions, many areas have remained closed to the public for safety reasons. New areas have slowly been offered to the public, with the opening of the subterranean area and third level in 2010. And now, from November 1, 2017, tourists will be able to visit the top two levels of the Colosseum for the first time in over 40 years.

Towering 130 feet above the circular stage, these nosebleed seats were reserved for plebeians—lower class commoners—who would sit or stand on wooden benches to see the spectacle below. One advantage of the seats is the incredible sweeping views over the city. Perched on the fifth level, visitors have magnificent views over the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, and the surrounding areas.

The opening of the top levels comes at the end of a long restoration financed by Tod’s. The Italian shoe and leather goods company invested €25 million (almost $30 million) into the restoration of the Colosseum in 2011. What was once seen as a controversial move—permitting a private company to restore public historic monuments—has continued to move forward, allowing locals and tourists the opportunity to rediscover the beauty of Rome.

Visitors will be able to access the fourth and fifth levels of the Colosseum by booking a guided tour—available in Italian, English, and Spanish—in advance with CoopCulture.

The top two levels of the Colosseum were reserved for ancient Rome’s lowest social class, but afford incredible views of the surrounding area.

Colosseum Opens Fifth Level

Colosseum Opens Fifth Level

In addition, special access areas previously closed to the public will now be viewable.

Colosseum Opens Fifth Level

The new openings are part of the €25 million restoration project funded by Tod’s, an Italian shoe and leather goods company.

Colosseum Opens Fifth Level
Colosseum Opens Fifth Level

h/t: [ArchDaily]

All images via the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism except where noted.

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Learn How Hand Lettering Can Elevate Ordinary Text into Extraordinary Art

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The world is full of text, and not all of it is designed to be pretty. Typography, like any creative field, can be dry and boring. One area in which it shines, however, is in hand lettering. This approach adds a distinctive flair to ordinary text and infuses it with personality and unique flourishes you wouldn’t find in ordinary typefaces.

So, how does hand lettering differ from conventional typography? For one, it’s often project specific. Artists and illustrators will write a word that fits with, and is designed especially for, a single composition and the overall style it’s trying to achieve. A fancy greeting card, for instance, might call for an elaborate typeface that has large, sweeping curves. But if you’re designing invitations for an eight-year-old’s robot-themed birthday party, perhaps stout block letters are more appropriate. With hand lettering, the creative possibilities are seemingly endless.

The fact that a letter form is hand drawn lends itself to idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies—like the spacing in between letters—which might drive some designers crazy. This is, however, what attracts many people to hand lettering in the first place. It’s a characteristic to celebrate as you draw.

Popular Uses for Hand Lettering

Stationary is one of the most common places you’ll find hand lettering. Things like greeting cards are considered special occasion purchases, so it’s fitting that they have characteristics that also feel distinctive. It’s also a perfect place to emphasize a letter with an illustrative flair.

Emily McDowell, one of our favorite greeting card designers, is a fantastic example of how hand-lettering can elevate a card. All of her witty work looks like it’s written by hand, which makes it feel personalized. Looking closely at her work, she often mixes cursive with printed text to give even her longest sentences a visual flair. But if she’s only illustrating a few words, she will pick one or two to emphasize by drawing it at a different scale or in a different font.

While stationary is a popular source for hand lettering, it’s also a creative way to adorn the things we use every day. An otherwise ordinary notebook can have a fabulous cover when decorated with a written word, or it can be even more unconventional than that; lettering artist Jen Mussari uses her skills—and interest in sign painting—to draw on motorcycle helmets and leather jackets—places you wouldn’t expect beautiful painted text to be.

Hand lettering also offers a valuable opportunity to let your voice be heard. Drawing quotes, whether they’re funny, sad, or motivational, is a popular way to practice the art. Social media apps like Instagram allow for interaction between the artist and viewer to have a dialogue about the words on the page. Zachary Smith uses his popular account as a way to inspire his thousands of strangers to keep trying their best.

Learn Hand Lettering

Aside from its charming visuals, hand lettering is something that anyone can produce with some creativity and a lot of practice. It  might look daunting, but have no fear—there are many resources for learning how. We recommend taking the time to understand the basics and best practices for drawing letter forms. Even though it looks effortless, there is a lot of practice and planning that goes into making it appear just right.

Online classes are a great way to get introduced to the art. Here are three that can help you get started:

Hand Lettering Essentials for Beginners, Skillshare: In one of the e-learning site’s most popular classes, lettering artist Mary Kate McDevitt covers everything you need to know about drawing, inking, and transforming handwriting into art.

Hand Lettering 101, CreativeLive: Designer, illustrator, and sign painter Annica Lydenberg shows how to build the skills for your hand lettering—no software required.

Simple Methods for Custom Lettering, CreativeLive: If you’re more comfortable with the computer, Brandon Rike will show you how to hand letter through Adobe Illustrator. He also teaches another valuable skill—how to “match the typeface to the mood of your project.”

There are also blogs dedicated to showing hand lettering tutorials. Hand-Lettering for Beginners is a site dedicated to showing you where to start. It’s the perfect way to easy into it without feeling intimidated; in fact, one of the first things they do is tell you to “embrace your inner amateur.” Creative Market takes a similar approach with their detailed how-to.

Other artists like Dawn Nicole and Abbey Sy lay out the basics of the tools they use and different tips that help them create their letter forms.

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Generals Warn Trump of “Horrific” Consequences of Military Action Against North Korea

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The foreign policy in Trump’s Twitter feed is competing with the foreign policy of the U.S. government.

via Trump Touts Military Option for North Korea That Generals Warn Would Be ‘Horrific’ — Foreign Policy

Consciousness: An Object Lesson

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Manzotti: Perhaps it’s time to ditch the word “consciousness” and simply talk about experience….Your body is such a thing and when your body is there, an apple is there, too. Not an apple reproduced like a photo in your head. An apple there on the table, in relation with your body.

Parks: So, anything the body experiences as an effect—which is to say, anything it experiences—is an object?

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Woman Who Just Gave Birth Shares the Delicious Food Served to Her in a Japanese Hospital

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Hospital Food in Japan

Omuraisu, macaroni salad, chicken soup, squid rings, fruit, and green tea

When it comes to hospital food, the dishes often feel like an afterthought. Bland and uninviting, there’s a reason that people in the U.S. want their loved ones to sneak in a burger and fries from the outside world. In Japan, however, it’s a different story; the hospital food looks like a gourmet meal! A Redditor with the username hadababyinjp documented the dishes she ate after giving birth in a local clinic, and there was no weird jello to be found on any of her trays.

The dishes included things you’d find served in a restaurant. During one of her meals, she had chicken with mushroom sauce, braised pumpkin and pork, and a daikon carrot side salad. The Redditor snapped photos of all of these preparations—including the rest of what she was served. It not only sounds appetizing, but looks it, too; seeing these trays might make you unexpectedly crave some hot soba noodles.

In the comments of the now-viral Reddit post, hadababyinjp sheds more light onto labor and delivery in Japan. “The standard here is 4 days for all women,” she explains. “My delivery was very standard, no complications.” Of the food, she recalls, “All the calories were posted every day so we could see how much we were eating. All three meals always added up to between 2000-2500 calories, plus they gave us a small afternoon snack like a cream puff or small piece of cake and tea.” This, she says, “is a bit much for most Japanese women,” but that the overfeeding was probably to help with recovery and offer options in case there were food that a patient didn’t like.

The Reddit post, aside from offering a fascinating look into hospital food across the world, also yielded an interesting discussion on giving birth in different countries. Read the entire thing here.

Redditor hadababyinjp documented the hospital food she ate after giving birth in Japan.

Hospital Food in Japan

Salmon with mushroom sauce, soba noodles, rice, eggplant and beef, broccoli, and hijiki salad

Hospital Food in Japan

Sea bream, pasta salad, chicken meatballs, pickled daikon, rice, miso soup, chawan mushi, and green tea

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself getting hungry from the menus…

Hospital Food in Japan

Chicken fingers with shredded cabbage salad, bitter melon stir fry, agedashi tofu, carrot salad, rice, and miso soup

Hospital Food in Japan

Mackerel, konbu salad, natto, spinach salad, miso soup, rice, milk, and green tea

Hospital Food in Japan

Mushroom pasta, potato salad, broccoli and bacon salad, chicken soup, fruit, bread, and green tea

Hospital Food in Japan

Cod, shredded cabbage salad, pasta salad, sweet potato and peas, rice, and green tea

Hospital Food in Japan

Salmon, tofu, spinach salad, natto, miso soup, rice, and milk

… compared to the United States, they look like gourmet meals!

Hospital Food in Japan

Fried fish with tartar sauce, braised mountain potatoes, hijiki salad, spinach and carrot stir fry, rice, and green tea

Hospital Food in Japan

Unknown fish, braised vegetables, niku jaga (meat and potatoes), cucumber and baby corn salad, rice, miso soup, and green tea

Hospital Food in Japan

Final “Oiwai (Celebration) Dinner”: Camembert and raisins, roast beef, mashed potatoes, kabocha, lotus root with gravy, corn soup, rice, salad, tiramisu, fruit, orange juice, and green tea

h/t: [Reddit]

All images via hadababyinjp.

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Dialogue With God

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What is the correct reaction when we open the Confessions? It should, perhaps, be one of acute embarrassment. For we have stumbled upon a human being at a primal moment—standing in prayer before God. Having intruded on Augustine at his prayers, we are expected to find ourselves pulled into them, as we listen to a flow of words spoken, as if on the edge of an abyss, to a God on the far side—to a being, to all appearances, vertiginously separate from ourselves. The measure of the success of Sarah Ruden’s translation is that she has managed to give as rich and as diverse a profile to the God on the far side as she does to the irrepressible and magnetically articulate Latin author who cries across the abyss to Him.

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Devotion

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Patti Smith opens Devotion with a riff on inspiration, which she invokes as “the unforeseen quantity, the muse that assails at the hidden hour.” Yes, the unforeseen quantity . . . although we might refer to it as the unforeseen quality as well. Who understands how inspiration operates, the way a set of glimmers or observations coalesce inside the mind and are transmuted into image, thought, or narrative? Even those who do creative work are hard-pressed to offer more than homilies. I think of William Faulkner, who once explained that “the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.” Or Albert Einstein, who suggested that “imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.” What they — and Smith — are saying is that it’s impossible to pinpoint how, exactly, an idea or piece of work comes into being, that if not mystical exactly it is at a level beyond conscious reckoning. “Most often,” Smith elaborates, “the alchemy that produces a poem or a work of fiction is hidden within the work itself, if not imbedded in the coiling ridges of the mind.” In that regard, perhaps, the most definitive statement she or any artist can make is something like this one: “I had inadvertently produced evidence, annotating as I went along.”

For Smith, that is a matter, as much as anything, of process, the way our work often surprises us as it finds its form. And yet, lest this seem too mechanical, Smith remains attentive to what she might refer to as the holiness of the task. There’s a reason her new book — which grew out of the Windham-Campbell Lectures she delivered at Yale last year and kicks off Yale University Press’s series “Why I Write” — is called Devotion; she is, as she has long been, devotional in her approach. Think of that famous opening to her debut album, Horses: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.” The line projects a tone of punk rock swagger, a sneer in the face of expected pieties — until the verse resolves in an unexpected couplet: “My sins my own / They belong to me.” Attitude becomes acceptance, or better, a posture of responsibility. “[T]here are precious words to grind,” she writes in Woolgathering, which is my favorite of her books, an impressionistic anti-memoir in which childhood memories blur into imagination, or spiritual practice, or something that is equal parts of both. I don’t want to make too much of this; like all artists, Smith recognizes that what she does is hard work, days and months of staring down both blankness and self-doubt. Nonetheless, as she observes in her poem “The Writer’s Song”: “it is better to write / then die / a thousand prayers / and souvenirs / set away in earthenware / we draw the jars / from the shelves / drink our parting / from ourselves / so be we king / or be we bum / the reed still whistles / the heart still hums.”

Devotion emerges directly from such territory: The book is a meditation on creativity and its (dis)contents. Divided into three parts, it asks us to consider the relationship between inspiration, work, and aftermath — not by explaining but by illustrating the ways they interact. How does Smith achieve this? She begins with a section entitled “How the Mind Works,” which could be a missing chapter from her preceding book, M Train. What makes M Train so vivid is its quality of serendipity, of unfolding in the present; reading it feels like accompanying Smith on a journey, both exterior and interior, physical and emotional, in which neither she nor we are sure where we’ll end up. The first part of Devotion has a similar quality, beginning with a description of a film about the 1941 forced deportation of Estonians by the Soviets, then offering a few lines, a few brief sequences, in response. Afterward, we follow Smith to her neighborhood café, where she reads Patrick Modiano while pondering her inchoate desire to put something on the page. The references to other artists, other work, have long been part of Smith’s method; she likes to wear her influences on her sleeve. Here, that means less her usual heroes (William Burroughs, Rimbaud, Robert Mapplethorpe) than a related set of ghosts, mostly French — Camus and Simone Weil, primarily — which is only fitting since much of “How the Mind Works” takes place in France.

Smith’s point — that we can never shed the artists who have come before us, nor should we want to, for they make us who we are — sits at the very center of her project, which has always (among other things) positioned her in a lineage. Thus, she invokes Schiller and Joyce and Goethe, as well as other “ghosts of writers” who have walked the path she now treads. “I knew Genet,” the head of the French publisher Gallimard tells her, “softly, looking away so as not to appear immodest.” For Smith, this is all part of the atmosphere — of Paris, yes, but also of her inner life. The writing, when it comes, grows out of both impulses, or maybe it begins at the moment they coalesce. Either way, it is at the seaside town of Sète that she begins what will become the second part of the book, a long fable named Devotion, which traces the relationship of a teenage ice skater, the daughter of an Estonian couple lost in the deportations, and an older man who becomes her fateful love. “Her mind was a muscle of discontent,” Smith writes, describing her protagonist, a line so stunning it stops me short. This is how the particular bleeds into the universal, how the experience of this young woman speaks to a condition that is shared, I believe, by nearly all of us. “Languages are like chess,” she tells the man, to which he replies, “And words are like moves?” The porousness, the extent to which we are aware of, although undistracted by, the presence of the author in the background, is a key intention of the book.

On the one hand, this has everything to do with Smith herself; she always sits at the center of her work. For her, writing (or music or photography) is an interior exploration, although it also is, it must be, something more. At times, this has led her to indulgence: Radio Ethiopia, for instance, an album I adored when I was younger, if much less so now. Still, this is what is so astonishing about her career and what motivates Devotion — the way that, as she has gotten older, Smith’s vision has expanded, framing her self-awareness not as self-absorption but rather a deep dive into everything, the exhilaration and the terror and the transcendence that we all share. “What is the task?” she wonders in the closing lines here. “To compose a work that communicates on several levels, as in a parable, devoid of the stain of cleverness . . . What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists.”

I’m not entirely sure about the God part, although really that’s a matter of semantics, since what Smith is asking for has less to do with any deity than with the intention to write beyond oneself. That is the point of Devotion, and its message also: art making as inspirational act. Such inspiration is less a search for a starting point than a mechanism for connection, a desire to communicate. “Why do we write?” Smith asks, and the answer comes encoded in the question, as of course it must. “A chorus erupts . . . Because we cannot simply live.”

 

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