Some examples of my work, if you have any questions you can with this form or email me.
Health and fitness example, original can be found here.


Weight loss without dieting.

Let’s face it, diets are a short term solution to a long term problem, they may work for a few week or month, but they don’t address the REAL problem, the underlying problem – WHY you eat. And after you stop, you’ll go right back to eating badly. But there are other solutions to this problem, and they don’t involve any kind of fad diet, counting calories, or limiting what you eat!

Using simple psychological and therapeutic tools, any one can start to lose weight, simply safely and without any restrictions, making simple small changes that will one day mean a total overhaul of the way you view food.

Eat what you want


I did just ask you to eat what you want, but it’s more like eat what you feel like. If you feel like something, eat it, feel like a cookie, eat it, ice cream – enjoy. Wait though; before you go and buy a pizza, read on, there is a catch.

Think about hunger


Food is supposed to satisfy hunger, except in our world of plenty, it’s used to satisfy much more, such as emotional need, greed, wish fulfillment, and indeed it fills the gaps in our lives where other things are lacking. So we are going to start with the basic – think about your hunger. Right now, if you had to rate your hunger from 1 to 10 – 1 being very full, and 10 being starving; where would you place it? Now, simply enough, I want you to do that every time you are about to eat; then I want you to decide “I wont eat unless I am at least a 7 or 8” you decide on which, and stick to it. I’m not asking you to eat only healthy things, remember you can eat whatever you feel like, but before you eat, write down in a little book or on some paper, your hunger rating. If it’s a 7 or 8, you eat, if its not, wait a bit longer.

Write down the food


Now you’ve decided you are actually hungry, before you eat, write down what the food is. Nothing complicated, just “sandwich” or “Cookie.” This will make you think about what you are eating, and how much.

How do you feel?


Finally before you eat that food, just make a quick note next to the food how you feel, has something just happened? Are you feeling bored, angry, tired, and sad? Why are you eating? This will help you think about distinguishing hunger from emotional eating, and you can look back and see patterns based on how you felt and what you ate.

Think about food


So, you’re eating what YOU want, not what you think is good for you, eating only when you are actually hungry (7 or 8 remember) and thinking about how you are feeling. Now think about your food. Don’t just eat it, first take a bite, now put your fork down, and slowly chew, every chew think about the food, what is it? Think about taste, texture, flavour, run it over your tongue and appreciate every single taste. I bet your thinking “that’s easy,” but just try it, you’ll be surprised how often your attention fades, and you eat without even noticing it. It’s surprisingly hard to do, at first you may want to turn off the TV and other distractions, just so you can focus on what you are eating.

This step is very important. Do this for everything you eat.

Stop


Before you finish, mentally rate your hunger, from 1 to 10 again, and if you are 2 or less then put your fork down and stop. Don’t eat until you are full, eat until you are just nice, and then stop, no matter how nice it is. Put it down, and when you are next at 7 or 8 hunger levels, you can finish it.

Using these steps, you will start to lose weight, it won’t be fast, it won’t be instant, but it will happen. You will be eating whatever you want, but you won’t be able to say eat a whole pizza! Because half way through or so, your hunger will reach 2, and you’ll have to stop! Before these steps, maybe you would eat huge amounts of food, but now everything is in moderation.

 Eventually you’ll notice yourself choosing more rounded meals, simply because of the taste appreciation during the “Think about food step.”  Sure this can be difficult to stick to, but not as hard as a diet right?

These small changes will begin to change your attitude towards food – it’s not your enemy, you can love it, and it can be your friend. You will soon begin to understand that treats are just that, treats, not to be eaten all the time, the next step is harder, but will come naturally.

Eat what you want – if it’s good enough


You carry on eating whatever you want, but when it comes to treats, not only does your hunger have to be 7 or 8, but when you take that first bite of that chocolate bar, ask yourself how good is it? Out of all the chocolate bars you have ever eaten, where does this rate on 1 to 10. If it is less than say a 5, stop! Put it down, it isn’t worth it, you deserve a good treat, and not one that doesn’t even taste that nice, why bother? Set yourself a minimum rating for treats and stick to it, a treat should be really tasty, so you don’t just eat for the sake of eating.

These steps examine your own attitude to food, you rate your hunger; you write down your food and your feelings; you appreciate every bite and you stop when you are full. It’s intuitive, and it’s what your body wants. These are lifestyle changes, not a diet, and they will help you make a gradual change in your life which will eventually lead to a huge change, loving food and yourself. And that’s what we all want isn’t it?  Good Luck.

 
Parenting and children example, original can be found here


Should parents enforce kids to abide by gaming age restrictions?

The US

The age restrictions on games differ from country to country. If we take the laws in the US for example, there is no federal law prohibiting the sale of violent or sexually explicit video games to minors. The entertainment software rating board (ESRB) suggest age appropriateness, but it is just that – a suggestion, not a law. The highest rating is an M rating, meaning “mature” and is likely to contain “intense violence, blood, gore and sexually explicit scenes,” one such example is, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” which requires the player to steal SWAT cars, gun down rivals and incinerate people, apparently it also has a patch that reveals a sex mini-game.


M rating

So it does have an M rating, as you would hope, but there are no laws in place to enforce it! So your 8 year old daughter could go out and buy and play this. What is the point in age rating if they don’t enforce it?


The UK

The UK on the other hand is much stricter, games are rated 12, 16 or 18 by the British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC) the same rating system as films. And it is an OFFENCE to sell a rated game to a minor! Simple as that, if you do so you can be fined up to £5000 or six months in prison. Great you say! That’s more like it, however over 90% of games on the market are exempt from this legal classification! The majority are rated under the Pan European Game Information System (PEGI), this is a voluntary rating system, the games manufacturers choose the rating, it is then reviewed before being finalized. However there is no law in place to stop someone selling a game under the PEGI rating system to a minor!


It’s down to the parents.

Without proper stringent laws in place, it is down to you, the parents to ensure that what your child watches, plays, or listens to is suitable for their age and cognitive development. Allowing your child to engage in a video game that is highly violent and sexually explicit, when they are too young to understand the significance of it, can be a dangerous decision.


Does violence breed violence?

But does watching, or playing violent images causes aggression in children? This is an age old debate, and many psychologists have tried to find the answer. Albert Bandura, a psychologist, in 1961 conducted an experiment of aggressive patterns of behaviour in children. He had a doll ‘bobo’ that was inflatable and about the size of a child; the participants were between the ages of 3 and 6 and there were 36 boys and 36 girls, with a control group of 24 children.
The non control group were tested individually; they were taken to a room, to play with some toys, the Bobo doll was in the corner of the room, after a few minutes someone came in and started to hit the Bobo doll aggressively with a hammer on the head and used verbal violence.  The child was present during the whole episode. In the control group the person would simply sit quietly and ignore the Bobo doll.

The children were then taken to another room with some toys and allowed to play with them for 10 minutes, after this time they were told the toys were not for them, they were not allowed to play with them – this was to spark some frustration. They were then told there were some toys next door they could play with. In the final room, there was the Bobo doll, a mallet, two dart guns, and a tether ball with a face on it, and also many non aggressive toys like crayons, balls, dolls, trucks, toy animals, etc. They were left in the room for 20 minutes to play while being watched form a 2 way mirror, judges measured aggressive behaviour.


The Results

Bandura found unequivocally that those exposed to the hitting of the Bobo doll were more likely to exhibit aggression than those not exposed to the violence. The number of aggressions for the boys was 270 and for the girls, 128; for those in the control there we was rarely if any aggression shown at all. Also it was shown that children were more influenced by same sex models. 


What does it mean?

Bandura was social constructivist, he believed that children learn by what they see in society, they see violence, they show violence. They do so because they think it is ok, they have after all seen if before, so it must be fine.
The point in age restrictions is to limit a young child’s exposure to violence at an age where they may struggle to understand that it isn’t real, or that in real life that behaviour is unacceptable. David Thompson at only 16 years old claims that Grand Theft Auto inspired him to kill three police officers, he told them “life is a game, and you’ve got to die sometime,” before he opened fire.  There are so many instances of violent games or videos causing violence, but many more where a child doesn’t grow up to kill.  No on is saying a violent game will DEFINITELY cause your child to become violent, but it is more possible than if they don’t play violent games at a young age. And why take the risk, you child is the most important thing in the world – they are the future, and we are the guardians of the future, we need to set restrictions and boundaries to protect them, yes one day they will know about violence, death and sex, but it doesn’t have to be now, not when they wont be able to understand the significance of what they are seeing.

It is your responsibility to ensure your children only see what is suitable for them, you need to enforce it, to allow your child to develop into an honest, kind, understanding person.

Let children be children.

 
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