Hasta La Gadget!

In the past year I was sent 104 books on fitness, diet, and nutrition.

I’ll admit, I didn’t read all of them. This is what happens when you spend most of your life writing, editing, and helping publish health books. And after authoring seven books and ghost writing another three, I have gained a great appreciation for good writing, and an even greater understanding of health information that actually helps you achieve your goals.

In the interest of your time, I don’t want you to read 104 books to find out what works for you. Because for most people, that tends to be what happens.

Try one plan. Test it for a month. Get bored or frustrated, and then move on to the next one.

This happens repeatedly because there’s a fundamental flaw in most diet books. The vast majority try so incredibly hard to deliver what you want to hear; a promise that once you change this one thing then suddenly everything will become better.

This creates a universe of intense diet cliques that are the byproduct of the book’s magic bullet. Atkins vs. Zone, Paleo vs. Mediterranean, BulletProof vs. IIFYM. The wars wage on and the frustration grows as you simply wonder, “Who is right?”

I firmly sit in the camp that there’s not one way to do it correctly (though there are certainly better ways than others), with the understanding that all of our bodies, genetics, and personalities are different.

This is the byproduct of living in real life and what happens after you read so many books, coach so many people, and come to understand that the real health secret is accepting there’s no magic bullet.

Here’s what diet books won’t say but what needs to be heard: many diet approaches can work.

What to Look For in a Diet Book
I’ll be the first to admit that many diet books are not without merit, even if they take a slightly dogmatic approach to what works. I can’t deny the positive results for some people.

But the reality is, if we had a “one-change-that-will-fix-everything” book, everyone would be on that plan and the struggle with overweight and obesity would be significantly reduced.

The real struggle is finding what works for you, or more importantly, understanding why past diets have failed. Do that, and suddenly it’s no longer about a quick fix but rather finding the path to making one of these options stick.

That’s one of the reasons why I think anyone who’s trying to lose weight, get in shape, or re-think their health this year should take a look at what Ted Spiker has to say in his book, Down Size: 12 Truths for Turning Pants-Splitting Frustration into Pants-Fitting Success.

In full disclosure, Spiker is my mentor and someone I consider a close friend. But this is the first time I’ve ever recommended one of his books. Despite playing a key role in many of the biggest health titles (just one example, he co-authored The Abs Diet), he had never written his own book because he wanted to do it the right way and produce a guide that cast aside quick fixes in favor of honesty and effectiveness.

Not to mention, one of the bigger factors that held him back from writing a book earlier was his own weight struggles. Despite being one of the most prolific health journalists, Spiker has battled his weight his entire life. Which is probably why this book does a better job than most I’ve read about actually helping plot a road for successful weight loss. It’s real. It’s raw. And it’s not filled with false hype.

In his book, Spiker does what many “diet” plans and books don’t do: he mixes soul with the science. It’s entertaining, educating, personal, and relatable.

Most importantly, it doesn’t set the same traps of other diet plans, much in the same way as other great diet books such as,The Diet Fix , The Lean Muscle Diet, and Lose It Right.

In addition to citing experts and studies, Spiker tells his own (often funny and embarrassing) stories about his body fails and the success stories of others. Together, they become exactly what today’s dieter needs — not just information and programs and plans, but context and nuance and nuggets of inspiration that help people find and explore what will work for them.

This is not a diet book per se, and that’s exactly why I like it.

Instead of taking a cookie-cutter approach, you take the more effective approach of trying to find what will work for you. Whether you read a diet book or not, this is some of the best nutrition advice you can receive.

When you do that and add it to a plan that is not built around restriction or any other unrealistic approach that always ends in failure, then you have the ideal formula for sustainable weight loss. And that’s exactly the foundation of Down Size. It’s designed for consistent fat loss rather than continual frustration.

In the book, Spiker outlines 12 universal truths and principles that people can apply to their own lives. But in my mind, the heart of what Spiker tries to do — in terms of practical advice that will get you going — lies in these four essential ingredients to having success on a weight-loss journey.

Track More Than Numbers
One successful tactic for many dieters is some form of self-monitoring (some use calories, some use pounds, some use steps walked). While Spiker makes the case that recording numbers you can control (like steps walked) can be more helpful psychologically than numbers that fluctuate (like pounds), he also points out that subjective data should be valued as much as objective data.

Spiker uses the work and insights from performance expert Doug Newburg, Ph.D., to describe the concept of feel (different than feelings) and how dieters can something that’s abstract to help guide them: if it feels good when you have a good workout, if it feels good after you eat a healthy meal, if you feel strong after a set of pushups, we should value and use that data as much as other forms.

It might sound a little out there, but the approach works surprisingly well. To understand how and why, you can learn more about what “feel” is about in this blog post for RunnersWorld.com.

Manufacture Your Own Motivation
I know, I know. Depending on motivation is like expecting your airline to stop running behind schedule; great in theory, but probably not going to happen. But that’s exactly why this book pinpoints a new approach.

While we often think that motivation is passive — that we have to wait for us to wash over us like some sort of “let’s do it” wave of energy — the fact is that we can kickstart it ourselves.

Spiker details the many struggles he’s had with motivation (and outright walls — like getting a D in sixth-grade gym class and being tailed by a race ambulance in a half-marathon).

Talking to motivation experts about the characteristics of lasting motivation, he details the elements that we can all use to construct our own motivational model to get us going in the right direction.

One of those elements — connectedness to others — is a theme he refers to throughout the book. And frankly, it’s probably the most important for dieters. So many people who embark on a weight-loss journey want to do so in private, but the very thing that will help them is being in public — even if “public” is only some kind of online form or with just one other person.

Customize, Don’t Conform
The one thing we don’t need are more books professing that one “type” of food — sugar, wheat, gluten, dairy, carbs — is the reason for weight gain. So much has been said — and will continue to be said — about nutrition and food.

Your job is not just learning the nutritional aspect of weight loss (full disclosure: Spiker also interviewed me about the subject), but what makes us eat and why. This is a refreshing look that can help you self-identify where your own issues exist, rather than blindly throwing another delicious food under the bus — when you still could potentially enjoy it as part of your diet.

Instead, you should focus on eating well most of the time and giving yourself some flexibility to enjoy your favorites in small amounts. [As well as how to actually make this happen.]

While highlighting the good nutrients and the eating styles that are likely to blame for weight gain, this is more about encouraging you to do what is so hard to do in the diet industry — customize an eating approach that uses sound principles but works for you.

It’s not a sexy way to “sell” an eating approach, but it’s the reality of how eating should work. Rather than try to fit into something that fits others, but not you, find a method (whether it’s intermittent fasting or calorie-counting or Paleo or something else) that enables you to eat healthy — and sustain that approach.

Push Push Push
No matter what kind of exercise you do, it’s not going to help if your eating isn’t cleaned up. That said, there are all kinds of workout methods that are surprisingly helpful (from competitive endeavors to things you do just for fun, like dancing) and have a great impact than you might think. For instance, most don’t associate walking with weight loss, but it can work.

The point is if you have to start by finding what you enjoy in order to make exercise part of your life. After that, if you have to choose what will have the most effect on your body, it’s all about raising the intensity of your workouts and doing strength exercises to increase muscle (to increase metabolism, change body shape).

Maybe most important, though, is the fact that venturing into these areas of pushing yourself to places you haven’t been — with weights or high-intensity work — is also about creating a new kind of energy. An energy in which you feel strong, feel excited, feel better — and when all those things are in place, the rest of the journey does, too.

I have been traveling away from Palo Alto to L.A., Florida, and New York City. During this time there have been certain events in the news and others from my personal experience that have challenged my customary comfort zone of perception and cognition.

I watched on television the visit of President Obama to Saudi Arabia to pay his respects following the recent death of King Abdullah, the country’s governing monarch. So I asked myself: How is it possible for the White House to consider it more important for President Obama to go to Saudi Arabia than to Poland to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camps at Auschwitz? And how is it possible for the government of Poland not to extend an invitation to President Putin of Russia? It was troops of the former Soviet Union that liberated Auschwitz.

Moreover, how is it possible, 70 years after the death camps and the murder of 6 million Jews because they were Jews, that any Jew has to be hesitant or afraid to walk down a street in Paris or another European city wearing his yarmulke?

In New York I went to see the Clint Eastwood movie American Sniper. While waiting for the main feature to play, I watched one preview of a coming movie after another. The common denominator between all the previews was exhibits and glorification of techno-violence and general gun violence. Too many people dismiss any connection between the promotion and glorification of violence in motion pictures and video games and the ubiquitous gun violence that permeates our society.

As I noted in a recent post:

This year firearms are expected to surpass automobiles as the leading cause of death in the United States. Nationwide, young black men have the highest firearm mortality rate; the overwhelming majority of these firearm deaths were from homicides perpetrated by other black men.

When not traveling to or from a speaking engagement, I also see in New York City what I sometimes see in San Francisco: homeless people sleeping on the street, and people holding signs begging for money for food. Again, a personal confrontation with the parallel universes of our country’s reality: bounty and want. How is it possible that today, in the United States of America, with its vast abundance of wealth, some people are homeless and have to beg for food on our public streets?

Getting back to American Sniper, how is it possible for us to stand by for one moment when the criminal thugs of ISIS, under the guise of religion, can commit murder and mayhem in the name of establishing a caliphate, publicly behead their captives, and then have the audacity to ask for payment of ransom” money? Is our only response more bombing? The only question for me, after seeing American Sniper, is why Chris Kyle was not given greater opportunity to kill more of those persons bent on our national destruction.

Finally, how was it possible, no matter what your political views about our government’s intervention in Iraq may be (that country did not attack us on 9/11), to not be outraged over the failure of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to make the treatment of our volunteer veterans for things like injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder this nation’s highest priority?

I also read a recent op-ed by columnist Charles Blow of The New York Times. In 2015, how is it possible that the first response of police investigating a theft on the campus of Yale University is to stop an African-American Yale student, Charles Blow’s son? And how is it that their knee-jerk response after he has been stopped for questioning is to draw a gun and point it at him?

Have we learned nothing from the episodes in Ferguson, Staten Island and Cleveland regarding the precarious relationship between local police and young African-American men, 52 years after Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, 51 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and almost 50 years after the Selma march and the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

It has been reported that the Koch brothers plan to spend almost $900 million on the 2016 presidential election. When will we learn that a registered voter who actually goes to the polls to vote can match every dollar spent by the Koch brothers?

Speaking about voting, I also recently learned from a tweet by my good friend Roland Martin, the radio and TV commentator, that some black politicians in Alabama have expressed objections to a planned visit by President Obama to Selma, Alabama, in March to commemorate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In what universe are these politicians living? It must be an alternative version of the one we’re blessed to be living and participating in.

At the end of the day, does anybody care anymore?

DENVER (AP) — A passenger who was in a car when a 17-year-old girl was shot and killed by Denver police has disputed authorities’ account of her death, saying officers opened fire before one of them was struck by the vehicle.

The passenger, speaking late Tuesday to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, said her friend, Jessica Hernandez, lost control of the vehicle because she was unconscious after being shot.

Police have said the Monday morning shooting in a residential alley came after Hernandez drove a stolen vehicle into one of them.

Prosecutors on Tuesday promised a thorough probe of the shooting as a small group of angry protesters demanded swift answers and called for a special prosecutor to investigate the death.

The shooting occurred amid a national debate about police use of force fueled by racially charged episodes in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City.

It was also the fourth time in seven months that a Denver police officer fired into a moving vehicle after perceiving it as a threat, and the city’s independent police monitor now says he will investigate the department’s policies and practices related to shooting at moving vehicles, which he said poses unique safety risks.

Police spokesman Sonny Jackson offered no new details about the case on Tuesday, citing the department’s open investigation.

The shooting happened after an officer was called to check on a suspicious vehicle, Chief Robert White has said. A colleague arrived after the officer determined the car had been reported stolen. Police have said the two officers approached the car on foot when Hernandez drove into one of them, and they both then opened fire.

The car’s passenger said police had surrounded the car in the alley, and Hernandez was trying to flee, attempting to drive around one of the squad cars.

The officers came up to the car from behind and fired four times into the driver’s side window, narrowly missing others inside, the passenger said.

Hernandez wrecked the car into a fence after she was shot, according to the witness. Police said the officer suffered a leg injury for which he was treated at a hospital and released.

Officers with their guns drawn then pulled people out of the car, including Hernandez, who they handcuffed and searched.

The passenger was unaware the vehicle was stolen and provided only vague details about what the group of teenagers was doing earlier in the night.

By law, police are allowed to use force to stop and overcome the resistance of another person. They can use it to match the force and overcome it.

Both officers involved in the shooting have been placed on routine administrative leave pending the investigation.

Could you tell a 16th century Titian from a contemporary replica manufactured in China? London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery is putting its viewers to the test with a new exhibition called “Made in China”, conceived by conceptual artist Doug Fishbone.

The premise is as follows: amongst the museum’s substantial Old Masters collection of 270 authentic works will be hidden a single fake — a copy produced by Meisheng Oil Painting Manufacture Co., Ltd for the bargain price of £120 (about $180). The China-based studio is made up of around 150 artists who work tirelessly to recreate slightly altered takes on historical classics, originally by artists ranging from Botticelli to Magritte. It’s one of around 1,200 galleries crammed into China’s Dafen Village, which outputs around five million copies a year that can be ordered online.

“The replica is excellent quality, and when it arrived we were delighted with it — but when I put [it next to the original], it was a very interesting experiment. The difference was instantly apparent,” the museum’s senior curator Xavier Bray told The Guardian. Will the average viewer feel similarly? We’ll soon find out, seeing as the lone fake will remain a mystery to museum crowds, who can do their best to parse the replica from the originals, until its identity is revealed in April.

Although the show eggs gallery goers to identify the odd painting out, the exhibition is more than just an artistic dare. The exhibition raises pertinent questions about the value of authenticity, both in the contemporary world and the time of the original works’ creation, an era when the great 17th and 18th century masters often created replicas of their own work, hence the prevalence of “studio of” and “attributed to” in authorship.

A visitor looks at paintings at the artist village of Dafen near Shenzhen in southern China on February 19, 2009. The craft of copying, a vital element in China’s economic rise, has literally been turned into an art form in this laid-back enclave in the middle of the nation’s most thoroughly industrialized region but it too is feeling the effects of the global economic crisis. (PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images)

Is there a certain ineffable magic to the artistic original? Or is the allure of authenticity no more than a myth? Do we prize works primarily because of their aesthetic merit or their perceived originality? Why pay so much more for an original we can’t even certainly identify? Curator Bray told Hyperallergic the show was “about looking, about re-engaging with the original, as well as exploring “what happens to a replica when it enters the temple of art.”

“Made in China” runs from February 6 until April 28 at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. On April 28, the replica will be revealed and hung alongside the original for viewers to compare. For more exhibitions grappling with the ramifications of Chinese copies in the digital age, check out this show of Frida Kahlo replicas and this painting series recreating cheesy stock photos.

Time sure flies past quickly when you are having fun, and it was not too long ago – slightly more than a year and a couple of months since the Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation was released to the masses. Back then, it was touted to be the thinnest as well as lightest 15” mobile workstation in the world. Well, how much has changed since then? Not much actually, and the Dell Precision M3800 remains pretty much at the top of its game in terms of being the thinnest and lightest model in its class, but this time around, it has received a hardware refresh in order to keep up with the times – which means the Dell Precision M3800 will now arrive with a 4K Ultra HD touch display alongside Thunderbolt 2 technology, now how about that?

So far, there has been some benchmark tests run to show how the Dell Precision M3800 outperformed the Apple MacBook Pro while running Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud, going to show how the Dell Precision M3800 has continued to maintain its edge in terms of processing muscle. Now that it comes with a brand new 4K Ultra HD touch display option, you can be sure that working on the refreshed Dell Precision M3800 will be even more of a joy.

We are looking at a 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) resolution display and IGZO technology accompanying it on its vivid 15.6-inch UltraSharp touch display that is made with Corning Gorilla Glass. As a result, your eyes are treated to rich, saturated color and stunning brightness, letting one view content in even greater detail than was possible before. We are looking at over 8 million pixels, where the 4K Ultra HD screen option happens to be the highest resolution panel available on any 15-inch mobile workstation in the market today. Yes, this means having 3.4 million more pixels than the Retina display on the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch, not to mention being able to experience 59% higher resolution.

Having a Thunderbolt 2 port, it will offer transfer speeds up to 20Gbps, which allows the viewing and editing of raw 4K video, all the while backing up the same file in parallel. The new Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation is already available with an asking price of $1,699.

Press Release
[ Dell Precision M3800 mobile workstation gets refreshed 4K Ultra HD touch display copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]