Don't Quit Smoking! Immediately Part III

The ultimate Stage Staying off

Hey, are you still with me?? Good. You have made it.

The changes you feel :
You will find a lot of changes in you. Improvements mostly. You feel more umm.. lets say Able. You have more stamina, you can walk faster, you cough less, perhaps your palpitations have stopped, you feel better with yourself. Medically, there are a thousand ways in which you have helped yourself and others.

One laughable change that I noticed was change in my body odor  Funny, try sniffing your armpits and notice the difference.

Now What??

Now you have to protect yourself against a relapse. There is nothing much new to this. The keystones are the same as those for Strengthening Your Resolve.

There are likely to be some psychological effects e.g. depression, anxiety, mood disorder, increased appetite, maybe weight gain etc. but if you have prepared your grounds well, you will be able to overcome these.

If you have consulted a counselor/ friend/ medical worker, continue reporting your progress to them. You will find them co-operative, understanding and encouraging. If you are using any medicines / substitutes, do so under medical supervision and your doctor will wean you off them slowly.

What you really need at this tentative stage is the environment. You need to be around people who dont smoke, who don tolerate smoke, who dont even tolerate the smell of smoke. You need to be in no-smoking zones.

Also, this is a very good time to begin some aerobic exercises or better still Yoga. Sounds funny, huh? But the truth is, the worst times to control are the ones when you are by yourself. When you are with others, you can stay off. There are enough excuses as well as your pride to keep you off. But alone is the testing time.

This is when you need to occupy yourself with Physical exercises. The reason you can reach out to smoke when you are reading or watching TV, but you wont if you are working out.

I never said that quitting is easy. Its hard, very hard. But since you know that by now, you are prepared for it.

Also, now you begin to notice the smell of smoke. You will find yourself getting intolerant of cigarette smoke.

You will notice how, if someone smokes in your apartment or office, the smell can linger on for DAYS. It is also the time to turn into an evangelist and induce others to stop smoking.

Are you ready to quit smoking?

We can take this quit smoking journey together and make real progress to a healthier life.

This concludes Part two of the Don't Quit Smoking Series

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WiMax, Competitors Vie To Create Powerful EcoSystems

Several very interesting issues are at play in the rollout of wireless broadband technology. Indeed, the landscape that will dominate the next decade and beyond is being created now, as WiMax increasingly consolidates on one of two initial versions and steels itself for competition against other approaches.

The situation is fluid. Initially, the WiMax plan - to the extent that one existed - was for stationary and mobile versions to share center stage. Soon, however, it became clear that the mobile version could do just about everything the stationary version could. Thus, the impetus behind the stationary version began losing steam, said Monica Paolini, the founder and president of Senza Fili Consulting, in an IT Business Edge interview.

A lot of operators currently are deploying mobile WiMax. They are using it for fixed services. It's called mobile, but they can use it for both. On the other hand, fixed pretty much is just for fixed. mobile WiMax allows you to roll out a network that supports fixed and mobile. The issue is having an infrastructure that can support all users. A lot of carriers will skip fixed WiMax, but offer fixed services using mobile WIMax technology.

The big issue is what operators will do after 3G. mobile WiMax is one option. Two others, according to this piece in internetnews.com, are LTE (Long Term Evolution) and ultramobile broadband (UMB). So far, WiMax has gotten most of the press, though the technology may be hitting a speed bump. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal speculated that sprint, which had publicly anointed WiMax as its 4G technology, may be looking to make a deal with Clearwire, a company that now has a proprietary version of the platform in the field and will roll out the standardized version when it becomes available. While such a deal may make sense, it could be perceived as a diminution of Sprint's embrace of the technology.

This is a sector in which partnerships and joint ventures will be vital. Paolini thinks that a battle between LTE and WiMax will not be decided by a drastic difference between the technologies, but by the direction in which the industry, as a group, decides to go.

Both LTE and WiMax use OFDMA [Orthogonal frequency Division Multiple Access]. Both have IP cores. There certainly are differences in the technology, but one is not a lot better than the other. performance itself does not determine selection for mobile operators. It's more what the ecosystem is like, what the mobile community as a group wants to do.

Though the race will be close, one technology will dominate because of the fundamental support of vendors, service providers and others.

We expect whichever direction they take, they will move together because then roaming is much easier.

In this context, it's interesting that Paolini says it is likely that a new device will emerge. Cell phones and laptops are great, but neither is optimized to harness all the tremendous capabilities brought by wireless broadband.

But when you think about it, a laptop is a little too big to carry around all the time...most people just don't want to be bothered. On the other hand, a phone is a good device. Maybe a cellular phone has WiMax, but it is just an add-on that doesn't use the advantages of WiMax to the fullest extent. We need something in between, a data-centric device in a new form factor that allows you to capitalize on the advantages of mobile broadband. The other thing is to have consumer devices that have WiMax built in. It's a very good opportunity because the device is not likely to have a cellular interface.

The two points are connected. On one hand, she says the "ecosystem" - the intricate web of vendors, service providers, integrators and other assorted companies - will be influential in the relative success of WiMax, UMB and LTE.

On the other, she says a new type of device will be a deciding factor. Clearly, device makers, along with the companies that make the chips and other elements that are packed into them, are key members of any ecosystem. The immediate future of this sector would be easy to predict if one of the technologies was far superior to the others. This isn't so; it will be a confusing and hotly contested arena until one platform takes control. The key will be to follow the ecosystem.

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Healthy Salad Dressings Made Easy

With warmer weather looming on the horizon in Northern america, many women and men start to simplify and streamline their diets. Gone are the heavy chili dinners and beef stews that fill our bellies in the dead of winter. Enter the salad: cool, fresh, crisp bursts of flavor - but not necessarily a significant caloric savings over a meat and potatoes dinner. The culprit: creamy, oil based dressings. The solution: for most, it's to take their dressing on the side.

Traditional commerically prepared salad dressings are an easy way to turn a healthy salad into a calorie-dense, fat-laden disaster. Bottled dressings can have anywhere from 8 to 20 grams of fat per serving.

Take your dressing on the side? Never! At least, theres never a need when you make your own healthy salad dressings.

Of course, you can buy decent commercial low-fat dressings, or even organic dressings but, more often than not, they are loaded with unhealthy elements like sugar and heavy amounts of heart-unhealthy sodium.

Its hard, however, to beat a homemade dressing!

The key to making delicious healthy dressings at home is to reduce the oils and other fats, and bump up the ingredients that add texture and flavor.

The oil in any salad dressing serves several functions, including providing a cling" or "binding" factor, so your acidic and other flavorings (such as vinegar and herbs) dont end up in a puddle at the bottom of the bowl.

Oil also serves to soften and balance the acids so that they're more pleasing to the pallate.

When thinking of healthier dressings, most people eschew creamy dressings in favor of lighter vinaigrettes. But classic vinaigrettes often use a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 ratio of fat to acid (for example: olive oil and red wine vinegar). Such a ratio can yield at least 10 grams of fat per tablespoon! And who uses just one tablespoon?

So what constitutes a healthy salad dressing?

Let's look at oil.

When choosing oils for your dressing, think carefully about flavors. Extra-virgin olive oil is almost always an excellent healthful and flavorful choice. But so are nut oils such as almond, macadamia and hazelnut. Each contributes complex yet subtle flavors that can complement a salad. Olive and nut oils also are rich in healthy monounsaturated fats.

You can reduce the amount of oil, however, in any dressing by approximately 40 percent if the other ingredients that balance the dressing are not too acidic.

A common complaint when reducing the oil content of a dressing recipe is that one often misses the thick texture that oil adds to your recipes. Try adding Dijon mustard as an emulsifier to make up for the reduced oil. Like oil, mustard is thick enough to bind the other ingredients and adds a tangy flavor.

In creamy dressings, the emulsifier often is sour cream or mayonnaise (and sometimes oil, too). Providing a healthy option for these ingredients is an easy fix.

Nonfat yogurt, reduced-fat sour cream, and reduced-fat mayonnaise all make good substitutes. They each have good flavor and produce dressings that hold together and coat vegetables quite well.

Or try buttermilk. Buttermilk is always either nonfat or reduced-fat. Its thick texture and mild, tangy flavor makes it a useful ingredient.

With a little bit of ingenuity and creativity, it is possible to make healthy salad dressings without sacrificing good nutrition by cutting calories, fat and chemicals.

Deborah Carraro is an avid nutrition, health & fitness enthusiast with a passion for sharing knowledge and experiences. As VP Operations for a successful online Natural Health business she has worked with the best nutritionists, fitness professionals and health experts.

You can find her online at http://www.yogaforoptimalhealth.com/HealthySaladDressings.html

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