chasidic weight loss program

thank hashem, and my mother, i'm healthier than a race horse!

how do i know?

recently the company i work for, in an effort to put down our healthcare costs worked out a deal that if we get health screenings, we can get a big discount to our weekly healthcare costs.

i appreciated it greatly. after they give you these tests you get a one on one sesion with a nutritionist. the woman told me that thank hashem i am very healthy.

how am i so healthy? its from god. and possibly the way that mu mother trained me to eat, and possibly the fact that i use citibike daily.

then it occured to me why dont i teach others to do like o do?

here is my weight loss program, mostly designed by my mom, based on jewish concepts and ideals

step one

designate one day a week to eat things you enjoy, because you enjoy them. 

in Judaism we call this shabbos. while eating to your hearts content does not in any way capture the essence of shabbos, on shabbos there is a command to enjoy it. the rabbis learned that this means to enjoy by eating meat and drinking wine, or whatever is considered a delicacy. make sure you have one day a week to enjoy, or you will give up on the rest of the program. 

shabbos teaches us that this world was created by god, and that you have to take a break from the stress once a week. 

note! make sure its the same day every week, because if you make your shabbos of one week on Saturday and the proceeding sunday your shabbos foe the next week, well you haven't really accomplished much.

step two

eat healthy the rest of the week

my mom always made us oatmeal in the winter and cereal in the summer, some days. she always mixes it up to this day, sometimes buckwheat pancakes, or bagels with lox and a salad. always some form of carb high in fiber, and some salad

for dinner, she had a rule; you can eat your french fries (etc) once you eat something green! i live with the motto "a salad a day, keeps anything that makes you uncomfortable except "suits" away". okay i just made that one up, but i do try to have a salad a day.

step three

find something to do for exercise at least twice a week that is fun!

it must be fun, i repeat, it must be fun.

if its not fun you will give up unless you are very angry and have something to prove. i bike thank hashem. it is fun zipping through the city with an orange helmet, and seeing all thats happening while getting fresh air and feeling like my own effort is making me go almost ad fast as cars. if you like swimming, join a sports club. if its rock climbing you prefer, i know in nyc there is Brooklyn boulders. if you like intense sword fighting and cosplaying, join NY Jedi. or learn decelerated kung fu and join a tai chi group, there are some in the morning at the manhattan entrance to the manhattan bridge( then you can defeat all those evil guys who move in slow motion). if you look you will find.

it says in the torah "nothing stands in the way of will power" i hear that phrase over and over throughout my high school/beis-medrash years and it annoyed me to my core. "its not true" i would scream! its not true because there are things i really want and i don't get them no matter hard i try, trying harder or smarter. for instance, if i want to fly without wings, or external propulsion can i? if you really want to… 

an this past year i realized it is true. but it comes with a catch. the catch is sort of common sense which is why nobody mentions it.

 i guess hashem wanted me to learn the hard way.

you can do anything you want to that fits into the laws of what god established as reality, but you cant do everything.

so pick one thing, focus on that, daven to hashem, and you will succeed 

electronics, dreams and god

have you ever had a life changing thing happen to you, that didn't involve marriage , life or death? no?

me either.

i believe in hard work and determination.

right now i am working for a big electronics company that i cannot name, for reasons that i cannot tell you. every day i see, play with and test electronics. and it dawned upon me that i dont REALLY know how all this stuff works! 

im not talking about the basic functions like using ios, or that radios use radio waves. im talking about what is the difference between watts and volts and amps? and if everyone cares about watts , then why do we ask people if they feel amped? they should feel watted. 

the truth is i already know allot of this stuff, but there is an old chasidic teaching  "yeridah tzorech aliyah" a decent for the purpose of an ascent. 

so im going to pretend that i know nothing about electronics and start from the bottom with basic circuits and fundamental concepts, and work my way up to the engineering level im yirtza hashem. (with khan academy, and OSW from MIT, its possible!) and i might learn some new things about what i thought was simple. i might also learn some more about G-D.

i will however learn things my way, the way that works for me. that means i have to have practical experiments and projects to prove and understand how these things work. and if there are concepts that have to be written out mathematically, g-d should give me the strength and knowledge to make some good animations. 

-yoni

fashion statement

im your typical hipster, i eat a strict diet which consists of kosher food and allot of salad

i have a beard, i wear a hat like Fidel Castro, lehavdil, i use citibike.  I even have a good photo on instagram of my mustache action.

and its time that i started a new trend. this was an inspiration from my african american neighbors who walk around with a considerable amount of thier boxers showing out their pants. and i thought "these guys are truly expressing themselves! they have taken the norm of dressing in an organized way, and added an artistic touch to their dressing routine!" 

My idea was this, why stop by the bottom, go down to the shoes! and i am now walking around with my laces untied. i maybe tripping more often, and my laces are leaving trails of knotted  pieces of hair and garbage they sweep up., but these are the sacrifices we must make for fashion.

Sometimes people come in to the secret place that i work and ask me, "which one LOOKS better". looks better? i know a little about design and the effect of colors on the brain, but my job is electronics! not fashion. i wondered why would someone ask my opinion on the way something looks. i don't dress all that well, and i don't quite know much about what looks good on myself. but people kept on asking me. 

I was always of the opinion that one should make wardrobe decisions soley based on function and maybe a little fun, i.e. wearing costumes of fantasy characters. 

why were these people asking my opinion. 

and then i realized, they want me to tell them what to do.

everyone has some aspect of their life that they are not the most confident in and ask for advice, and as a responsible caring individual i believe that we should all provide useful truthful advice to anyone who asks in ernest. 

if not, i may just be starting a movement of people walking the street with one tied shoe

fashion statement.