WriterGuy

Marionette: Basically grill chicken and then decide what to do with it every day of the week? That sounds pretty good, though I honestly have to say, I get a huge rush from cooking from scratch. I may be hiding a 50s homemaker inside me. FyreFlies: Most of the times, I can distinguish. Sometimes though, I can't be quite sure, which is why I'm drinking a tall glass of water and wait to see whether I still feel the urge to snack on something. That or bubble gum. Works so far. I have diminished in-between snacking to none at home and to almost none at work. Though it's been six days, so we will see how that sticks.

I agree with you both. Hard work can get you ahead in every field. I can't discredit this. Yet, I feel you need to have something in you that pushes you to grow better in a chosen field. To go back to arts, I have the following to say. For performance arts - singing and dancing and acting to a point - genetics do play a role. Skills can be taught, but if you have small lung capacity or no vocal ability whatsoever, spending hours honing the craft won't get you anywhere. You can learn to sing in tune, but never become a voice to be remembered. It's a pinch of talent with lots of training that goes a long way and even talent and practice alone don't guarantee you will become a recognized name (it's easier for me to think of the form of evolution people usually dream about when they picture a singer or a dancer). Drawing, sculpting, playing an instrument and writing demand something else and that's attunement to their craft. These arts concern creation and yes, you learn how to the chords, the elements of style, brushstrokes, but without the attunement to create within that medium, what you create is not going to be that good. That's why not every novel submitted to a publishing house is published. You can grow to the best of your ability, but it doesn't mean you don't have limitations. I write because I have no other choice (I spend a lot of my time in my own head and these stories creep on me) and I'm not sure whether I have hit my limitations or not. You never know and taste levels are always in a state of flux, so you never do know. Also, these kinds of thoughts are the reason why most writers are alcoholics. OK, so tips on writing. - Find what your character wants and make sure everything he or she does falls in line with what s/he wants. Also make sure it's pretty darn hard for him/her to get what he/she wants. - Edit once done. Like many times! - Write what really moves you and what interests you. Write what makes you feel fear, love, joy, anger. Most often people think about publishing and try to mimic what's being sold now. - Experiment and be bold. You can always go back and change it, if it doesn't work out.

I-Jo: Thank you. I guess I will have to experiment & yeah, I somehow have the time to do this, even though I'm quite busy. Everyone else: Eh, I don't know where the appeal is. I get nothing from it & my stomach gets irritated for some reason.

Nara & Evil Midnight Bomber: Goodness gracious. Now that will be some weird smores. I can only hope we get to frolic with satyrs and swim with mermaids. Wolfhorde: I tried out several other artistic venues, but I don't really have the talents, so I had to channel the energy somewhere. Ever since I was a child, I liked to say crazy things and make up stories, so this sorta happened since I got into puberty when I would write in Bulgarian. Then when I was a high school senior, I switched languages and started to write in English, which suited the stories I wanted to tell all the better. That's pretty much how I got my start. As far as English is concerned, I had a very gifted private tutor, who gave me terrific basics and taught me to love the language. The rest is passion and countless hours writing words over and over and over. I have written shorts (those are what I have managed to sell). I have poetry (though it's pretty generic) and I have vignettes. Longer works are usually incomplete or in need of editing. I write speculative fiction, so fantastic dark tales are my thing. I'm pedantic when it comes to recipes and I follow them to a T, which is why I can cook specific meals, but the whole experimenting thing doesn't really work for me as of yet. Later on probably. I can prepare basic meals and bake cakes, but I wish to expand my knowledge and skills.

PrincessHeather: Yes, I have been reading recently about the addiction sweets cause, even discussed it with friends and how abruptly shutting it will cause going into withdrawal. Kinda scary, because people don't expect food to be dangerous. Yet, it's the silent killer. Bizarre to me. I-Jo: I will take this into account, because I tend to have enough time to cook every day for the following day(s). Generally speaking, but I tend to have periods where I have to hop from place to place without a chance to eat properly. Another question. Doesn't cooked meals, which stay in the fridge for two days or so, change in taste (as in taste inferior) than being freshly prepared? This has been most of my experience with home cooked meals that have become left-overs. If this is something I have to adapt to, how do I spice it up so to say? Do you add other condiments or something.

Okay, I have some explaining to do about the title. For me, the biggest issue with being healthy comes from my eating habits. Whether I need to eat or not, there's this hunger in me. Now, I'm channeling the hunger into something positive and establishing the right habits so I can transform. Goal 1: Cut down on the dough, sweets and needlessly processed foods one step at a time. Right now, introduce an entirely healthy meal for breakfast, reduce bread intake to one meal per day, eat more vegetables at lunch and conquer between-meal snacking. - Monday has been good on this, because I have really eaten natural food. Huzzah! Today has been less of a success, because I was invited to a crepes party and Nutella has flowed freely. Talk about high calorie intake. Moderation in eating at social events has been my biggest challenge. Nevertheless, I had no breakfast today (woke up closer to noon) & my dinner consists of tomatoes with feta cheese (my favorite summer combo). Goal 2: Walk every single day. Right now I'm doing 60 minutes of walking to and fro work, so that's an hour five days per week. I look forward to introducing this over the weekends as well. I need walking to relieve my stress. - I think I held the 60 minute on Monday (errands I had to do with the bus, but there was walking), but today I was off work, so definitely a lot less walking (perhaps 40, after the birthday ended). Goal 3: Master the basic workout as soon as possible, preferably within a month. - I have done my first circuit today (only 1 circuit) and it is as bad as I have imagined. My muscles, the poor dears, have forgotten why they exist in the first place. Also, I will probably have to research how to do some of the exercises, because I think I'm failing to do the squats as they are meant to be done and the walking lunges results in really bruised knees (creaky knees). MOAR research. Goal 4: Write every day. - As a writer I need to write every day to improve, which is something I have been neglecting... Life is tough, but you gotta prioritize. I have yet to get to this one. My brain feels completely fizzled out. Nevertheless, I have started a project called The Hunger Diaries, where I put my pain about eating and the toxicity of my relationship with food as short stories and vignettes. I will place a few snippets of my work here as well. Once I get to new material, I post from it. Now, I will post my from my first short story in the project: "The Pain Eater". "There was once a boy who ate pain. He ate all kinds of pain. He ate the pain of losing a limb. He ate the pain of burying a sin. He ate the unrequited love of a broken heart and the agony over a piece of art. For desert he preferred remorse and regret, though would never say no to morsels of guilt."

I can honestly sympathize with you. I have been feeling the same way for quite some time, but I can honestly say that this is the place to ground yourself and go for a more stable life-changing set of habits.

Welcome! Those are some killer goals. Good job on your progress, so far. I'm a complete newbie, when it comes to weight and have just started the changes, but I am excited. Do tell, what is Wing Chun?

Hey there, Nice to meet you, Amy. Welcome and it's good to see other people choose walking as well (I'm fond of it as well). Hope you meet all your goals here and make them stick for you.

Raggedsweater: Thank you. I feared it might sound a bit pretentious. Nara: YES, no more burgers. I have sworn on the grave of Grandfather Croissant to never, ever commit such sins. Oh well, you know, eventually trim them down to a smaller and smaller number. AND yes, I will post some excerpts from the Hunger Diaries within my Battle Log, which I should get into. Terrormortus: Yes! I really want to get the hang of this cooking deal. I already know I can cook (I make a mean chicken pot pie), but I want to level up and write recipes in a thick, roughed up cooking book. I will give the zombie thing a spin, because I think it will really get me motivated to move. Though I will probably make muppet hands through it all. Do tell me how the mace training goes! I intend to pick up archery at some point in the summer and see how that will feel.

Welcome. Great that you have set these goals ahead. I also learned that weight as a number matters little. It's what it's made of that counts. And I can't say that I'm into gaming. Not at all. So you have a partner in non-gaming, I guess.

Sylkamaru: I have two main goals at the moment. One is to break down my bad eating habits and slowly move from processed foods to a food regiment where I eat food I have cooked or someone else has cooked for me. I have been quite dependent on sugar for quite so while, so resisting sweets will be one of the bigger challenges. I have started, but it's a slow process. Temptations lurk everywhere. Second is introduce more movement in my life, which I'm doing by walking mostly as I have a weird, mysterious respiratory problem, which doesn't allow me to breathe properly and renders my circuits useless. Nara: Oh dear, you are quite the handful. I adore your comedic flair. I wish I could write quite as funny, but I instantly go for darker stuff. I have a project called The Hunger Diaries, where I write some increasingly disturbing tales that resolve around food. Now that I have graduated from my Masters, I will have more time to go back to it, but I actually have short story deadlines to keep me reading. Calamedes: I'm glad you're having fun. This is the fun thread! Evil Midnight Bomber: I don't have the education actually. Technically, I have no certificates or degrees in English (something to remedy). I graduated economics and now marketing and advertising, so you can say writing is my vocation. I write about bad, twisted things happening to weird people. Dark stuff - Kafkaesque to a degree.

Thank you, everybody. I have been reading on food a lot, because it's the most important thing and it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole. Thanks for clearing up that I have to move from processed foods to cooked meals and once I transition completely, get into the nitty gritty. Marionette: What my friend prepares sounds incredibly delicious. I adore eating just about everything. It's just that I'm a processed food junkie... Why does it have to taste so good? I-Jo: Preparing before hand it is, then. I have a thing for schedules, so preparing weekly menus ought to be fun!

Hello there! I plan on being a druid once I get the hang of eating healthier and doing general routines to get me in shape. I swear my muscles have atrophied, so I’m really happy to see another druid in the making. What’s your favorite game to play? I don’t do video games much (they unleash the inner Hulk when I lose and there goes the keyboard), but I do adore the Torchlight series for casual play.

Thanks. I have always associated with working out with pain and never with fun. If you want to look good, you have to go through a painful regime to achieve a certain look. It has never been about feeling good on the inside and emotional growth along with body improvement. This is what I do see in NF and why I have signed up. I have never done something of the sorts before, because I don't really like to involve people with something as private as my body, but I need the help. Thank you for stopping by and chatting. Also, things with the publishing have been going well with several shorts out and about. I'm really happy.

Yes, I believe so. The past is in the past and I have my own path to walk. Hope I can achieve it here. AND yes, Clarke has done an impressive job, though I have yet to read the books. I'm waiting for Martin to finish the series, so I can read them one after the next for maximum pleasure. A bit of a masochistic wait, but I think I can deal with it.

I have been reading about healthy eating for quite some time and have been hearing contradictory opinions about constitutes healthy, so I have decided to ask about my specific case and get some opinions that will help me out. First, I'm a hedonist when it comes to food, so I have adopted a dietary plan, which involves eating dough, processed foods, fried foods and artificial sweets with lots of sugar. So any change will benefit me. Second, I’m far away from paleo. I would like to try it, but I want to make the transition as smooth as possible. I’m not obese (yet), but overweight (for now; I have no idea given how I eat and how I don’t do any exercise), so I’m looking to allow my body the chance to slim down. I want to substitute the breakfast I eat now (usually some greasy dough confectionary) and one of the things I see one of my friends eating is a mixture of yogurt, raw cocoa powder, banana and oatmeal. He says it’s awesome, filling and healthy. Yet, will it serve the purposes of losing weight? I hear the banana is a fruit people should be careful with and I’m not sure how the raw cocoa powder fits in the equation. I welcome suggestions for breakfast. Also, how do I combat the awful between-meals-snacking situation? My stomach has learned to be hungry at random times during the whole day and I want to establish three key times to eat, so I don’t crave something every two hours. And how do I go about cutting out bread step by step? I love bread, but my body is less than thrilled about my dependency on it to feel as though I have eaten well. Basically, I’m a bit of a mess, so any assistance and ideas to help me plan meals ahead and control my eating will be really appreciated.

Ice cream, chocolate, confectionary, pastries, dough-based products. I have served as a Champion of Processed Foods for ages... So basically, almost everything in my diet at the moment.

YES! Skillet! This really made my blood pump. I personally go for Nine Inch Nails or anything with upbeat synths.

Welcome. You sound just like a friend I know. He has the same body type and has a washboard abdomen, even though he looks like an elf. I come from the same place emotionally, though I have a different body type - predisposition to become fluffy. Currently, I'm a Care Bear. Also, great picture of Hemsworth. *swoon* is right, though I have read he's not really happy with the regimen he has to go through in order to look like Thor. Speaking of Star Wars. What do you think of the sequels coming along? I love the movies, but I find that the franchise has been pushed a bit too much in my face.

I'm sorry to hear about your husband. I live in a family with a well-documented history with diabetes and heart conditions, so I fear I will get something hereditary, if I do not act on the spot. I'm already at the point where a steep incline challenges me, so I have decided to just change how I live. With a move to a new home, I hope I will get there. Also, how cool is Daenerys?! I love her and Arya.

Once you become the ninja superhero you have always meant to be, you will have the best origin story. Certainly a worthwhile goal. I'm really glad that I'm seeing people like you joining the forum (newbie myself). This will be quite a lot of fun.