Don't you feel summer-y already? March is around the corner and people have started their usual gym buzz to get those much needed curves and bumps for the beach. You might be facing the dilemma now of getting in shape, so we here at Daily Anomaly thought it would be good to share some of the things that have helped us. Most of them are nothing new, you might have even done them before, but a little explanation and knowledge is always better.
1. Use a smaller spoon, fork, and plate and always chew your food. The mind can be fooled to thinking it has enough food. The good news is that it's really easy. Eating at a pace and using a smaller plate. According to research, the mind will interpret a full plate as enough food. Using a smaller plate which is easier to fill up with food gives you less food yet enough to make your mind think it's had enough. Another way is to chew your food completely and slowly. Properly masticated food is easier to digest. Also, the longer the time you eat, the more full up you're gonna feel. Research has it that after the first taste of food, the appetite can only last upto 20 minutes. So tie those two ideas up.
2. Take out rice from your diet and eat sweet potatoes instead. Filipino actor Aljur Abrenica popularized this diet as the Machete diet and people have since caught on to calling it that--much to my dismay. I know how sad that just sounds, but sticking to my observations, I notice just how quick the results for people who do this diet religiously. And I myself tried it and was impressed that in as little as a week, I have seen myself dropping weight and getting shapely-er.
3. Intensify your workout. Intense workouts, apparently, are very good for young people. A workout where you need to be catching your breath, or when conversation is impossible, uses too much oxygen that it burns calories hours after your workout. Thing is, the fitter you get, the easier your body replenishes its energy stores and will soon not yield results--this is called plateau-ing. To avoid this, get plenty of time outs, too, then push harder after.
4. Drink plenty of water and avoid salty foods. We all know that salt promotes water retention. To avoid this, lessen your salt intake while at the beach. When you eat too much salty foods, you will tend to feel thirsty more often, resulting to you drinking more and making you look bloated in the end. Drinking enough water will help flush out things in your system and give you that healthy glow. You will also avoid chapped lips with enough water.
5. Exercise with friends. People who quit the gym or any exercise routine after two or three months lose interest at the activity possibly because they have no one to do it with or they have less reason to visit the gym or continue doing it. Having like-minded individuals working out with you will only pique your interests especially if you're competitive enough to get going and beat them to a certain goal. Also, having friends helps you gain more knowledge on what you are doing.
6. Get enough sleep. Research has it that sleeping more than 9 hours and less than 5 can cause fat build up. Not only that, muscle repair also happens during our sleep, so little sleep begets less muscle repair, less muscle repair means greater possibility for injury and less performance.
7. Don't over-exert. Over-exertion may be subjective or on a case to case basis. Some people can be capable of running a full marathon, while others can only do 5K at most. The best way to know when you're over-exerting is when your body is complaining. Our body is designed to do a lot of things, and it can. But you have to let it adjust slowly. The Great Wall wasn't built overnight, but it was built anyway. Same thing with fitness, you cannot get it overnight, but you will get it if you are patient enough.
Hope this helped. Just finished with the beach, and all I can say is that my friends approved of my new figure.
I wouldn't say Samsung was new to Android. They've been at it since late 2008 or so with their first Galaxy model donning an AMOLED screen--which unfortunately was expensive for its featureset and was stuck at Cupcake 1.5. Then after that came the Spica which got an upgrade to 2.1 and nothing more after. Then they hit it big finally in 2010 with the first Galaxy S introduced last April 2010. The strategy for Galaxy S was pretty simple: bombard all US carriers with a usable SUPER AMOLED equipped model. Galaxy S was in a nutshell a smartphone with multimedia capabilities running on a very catchy screen and that is where their new flagship Samsung Galaxy S II seems to be going for, too.
LG almost totally snubbed Android until the later part of 2010. For a proper experiment, they released the lackluster LG Optimus, which was shipped with Android 1.6 and, of all the things, a resistive screen. They were pretty silent until they released the low-end solution LG Optimus One running Android 2.2, which was the latest Android OS during the time of its launch. This placed LG somewhat as an outsider on the Android race last 2010. But then they surprised everybody last December with LG Star or LG Optimus 2X, a handset rocking a dual-core CPU. When my non-Android friend heard this, he was like, "really, they have those on phones now?" Well, it's the proper way for things to go, anyway. But we won't see any use for the dual-core CPUs until probably Q2 when dual-core utilizing apps are available to use the dual CPUs. As for now, they're like future investments and would make for awesome synthetic test results. So where is LG headed? Apparently, towards the Innovation route. They are still experimenting and having fun tossing out devices with odd features that has no competition. LG Optimus Black, again another CES debutante has an S-AMOLED-rivaling NOVA screen, which was apparently better than iPhone's IPS LCD and scores a very thin 9mm. Their flagship smartphone goes for another first: stereoscopic 3D. LG Optimus 3D goes for wow factor as it comes with a 3D UI and 5.0 MP 3D imaging and 1080P 3D video capture. It doesn't go for thinness, though as it maxes out at 11.9mm, but it's not selling that. Thing is, the 3D ships with a 2.2.1 Froyo and given that the UI has been tweaked for 3D, I wonder how long it would take for its OS to get updated. Remember, though, that LG has not yet updated any of their Android phones so this is a test for them to see how fast they can update given that this is one of the things crucial to Android folks (ask Sony Ericsson).
Sad as it is for an SE fan like me, Sony Ericsson lost the 2010 Android race by not being able to provide timely OS updates to their XPERIA X10 line. Their flagship XPERIA X10 was lauded and met with so much hopes when it was announced at last year's MWC. Unfortunately, it shipped with Android 1.6, unable to do multitouch, and can't perform without lags thanks to TimeScape and Mediascape tied into almost everything. That and the fact that the phones are locked to their very core relegated the X10 to casual user / SE fanboy use. Given their learnings from the X10, SE now plans to recuperate with 4 Droids. First announced last CES was the XPERIA Arc famous for its slim and elegant profile and the first one among their devices to use the Bravia Mobile Engine when you turn up your video or Internet. Sadly, the MBE does not work on the main UI and we get a simple LED backlit LCD device. MWC debutantes were the Vivaz refresh aptly called XPERIA Neo (seems to be priced around 480 Euros or 28,000 Philippine Pesos, cheapest among the bunch), XPERIA Pro (500 Euros and has a slide out QWERTY keyboard), and their main differentiator, the XPERIA Play, which is touted as the first PlayStation-certified Android device (iPhone 4 being the first Playstation certified device). The XPlay is the first of its Android class having a slide out PSP keyboard which should come nifty when you need to play games those PSP games. But that's not all, Sony Ericsson seems to be going the Gaming route via Sony NGP's gaming ecosystem. If you knew about Sony's quad-core portable gaming console from the future, the NGP, you would know that it swaps out UMD games for OTA available games via the Sony Playstation Market--which will have games playable too on Android devices. As that seems the main qualification to have games published on the PS Market, it is quite inevitable for the Xperia Play to have titles eventually, especially since it seems quite no-brainer that the NGP will succeed and sell. This formula seems to me like a proper win readying to be cashed out, whether it is just for the Playstation Market (remember as long as the device is PS-certified, they can buy stuff from the market and play with other devices like an iPhone 4 or an NGP) or the XPERIA Play, or for them both, or for the whole Android community (remember how sucky Android games are). Aren't you glad they came up with this idea? My main contention with SE's flagship is that it is too expensive at 650 Euros (same price as the SGS2 or the Sii), too bulky, and can only take 480p videos via a 5MP module. No way for a flagship to be given that the race is about thinness and video recording these days. Seems to me, SE does not really want to participate that race and would be more than glad to have compromises. Oh well. We'll see if this is another XPERIA X10 waiting to happen or a winning formula to give SE enough cash for more R&D.
Motorola completely rose from the ashes in 2010 thanks to their Android efforts. They probably made the most Android phones among the manufacturers that it's been hard to keep track of their models: Droid, the Droid XT720, the CLIQ, the Backflip, the DROID X. Oh, the list will just go on and on. Then at CES 2011, they revealed two new phones: The Droid Bionic and the Atrix, the latter being their flagship phone for 2011. What makes the Atrix so good? Well, it has pretty much the same specs as the Galaxy S 2, save for the screen where Motorola still is stuck with LCD but graces the Atrix with a 540 by 960 resolution. So what differentiates Motorola Atrix from the rest of the Droids out there? Well, the Atrix comes with a desktop dock and a laptop dock. Come again. Yep, you heard it right, a laptop dock to put your Atrix on.
HTC had a laudable Android run in 2010. The Android veteran came up with Desire, Desire HD, Aria/Gratia, Wildfire, and Desire Z. Their timely Android updates on their units plus top-notch user experience gained them the goodwill of many patrons who turned in and became fans. Many looked at the experienced company as the role model for Android manufacturing, with HTC Desire being praised by techradar as the top GSM Android phone of 2010. So it was logical to anticipate what they have been up to. For all the hype and supposed leaks that have come out since they showed the world that they can throw out a Desire HD and Desire Z out of whim, the products they presented on the MWC was pretty underwhelming.
The MWC felt like an alliance more than a fight, actually. All these manufacturers gearing up to demolish Apple's dominance on the smartphone race. And what choice does the Cupertino giant have but fight back. New rumors have been swirling outside of MWC about Apple making a smaller iPhone so far being dubbed over the net community as the iPhone Nano. Speculations began from early leaks of information from trusted tipsters and the fact that Apple sourced affordable smartphone materials from Samsung. Several rumors about it have been spreading since then, but the most controversial being its lack of local storage relying completely on cloud-based apps and music service, which I find pointless for most developing countries--which I think is the target of this cheaper device. Engadget thinks this is a possibility but not a technology people of 2011 might be up to accept. Given that the iPhone Nano will be a cheaper alternative for those who can't afford real deal iPhones, teens and developing countries come to mind, save that a cloud service would cost so much more than what you have actually saved.
In case you've been living under a rock you would have missed the whole MWC, Nokia-Microsoft partnership and Pre's revival. Pre 2 which was met with much lukewarmth last year finds a worthy successor under the Pre 3 hood. Complains of the Pre 2's underwhelming specs were reworked with much success and zeal on the Pre 3--which is equipped with a 1.4GHz CPU and 512 RAM, pretty much ready to blow away your standard high-end Android smartphone. And while those specs do not match the dual-core might of LG, Samsung, and Motorola, the Pre 3 that runs Web OS 2.2 has additional skills other smartphones wish they have. It can communicate with the WebOS tablet! Yep, there's a WebOS tablet, too, which is another reason for HP to celebrate. And the way WebOS is being worked to make all HP appliances talk seamlessly seems like a good thing especially after seeing the Pre 3 and WebOS tablet talk.