The Health effects of being Over Weight – Diet
The Health effects of being Over Weight
Paul Marsland
Both men and women around the world are becoming fatter and its partly because of our modern lifestyle, too much fatty food and too little exercise. Some people say, Why should it matter if Im overweight as long as I feel okay But being overweight does matter because it increases the risk of health problems such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers. Being at a healthy weight on the other hand, can help lower blood pressure, make you feel better and give you more energy. If you need to lose some weight, heres some good advice from the National Heart Foundation.
Change your eating habits gradually
Everyone knows that losing weight partly involves cutting down on foods which contain a lot of fat. But this doesnt mean you have to change your eating habits overnight. Youre more likely to make permanent changes to your diet if you make them gradually. Allow two weeks to stop eating biscuits with tea or coffee, for instance. When youre comfortable with this change, make another such as using less butter or margarine on bread, or switching to using low fat milk.
Remember you dont have to exercise strenuously
The secret of successful weight control is a combination of sensible eating and regular exercise. Aim for 30 minutes at least four times a week. You dont have to do 30 minutes all at once. Its okay to do ten minutes exercise three times a day. Walking, swimming and cycling are good.
Dont expect to lose weight quickly
Its quite common to lose weight one week and then lose none the next week. If you are exercising, you may find your weight doesnt drop at all. This is because your body is gaining more muscle which weighs more than fat. Youll still continue to lose fat and tone up, even if the scales dont show any weight loss. The way your clothes fit is a better guide to weight loss than weighing yourself all the time. As long as you are keeping to your plan of regular exercise and less fatty food, periods of no weight loss dont usually last more than two weeks.
Eating to lose weight
Fruit, vegetables, beans and lentils are the foods to eat most of every day. By filling up with these healthy, satisfying foods, youll be less likely to want fatty snacks. You need only moderate amounts of meat, poultry, fish, nuts, seeds, dairy products. A moderate serve of meat, poultry or fish takes up about one quarter of your plate. If you eat dairy foods, choose reduced or low fat varieties. Use only small amounts of margarine, fat reduced spreads, butter, lard and cooking oils. Drink only a little alcohol.
Reducing fat in your meals
Trim all fat from meat and remove fat and skin from poultry before cooking. Use low fat cooking methods such as grilling, steaming, baking, stir-frying in as little oil as possible, microwaving or using non-stick frying pans. Avoid fried or deep fried foods. Let soups, casseroles and curries cool - this makes the fat harden on top so you can remove it before reheating. Snack on fresh fruit but limit cakes, biscuits, pastries, chocolate and packet snack foods.
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You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.
About The Author
Paul Marsland and his wife Annette have been working as wellness coaches for the last 3 years. Using scientifically proven, balanced nutritious programmes they help people lose weight and improve their health, energy and vitality safely and effectively. For more information visit:
http://slim-n-trim.org/refid=artcit-30495
ezybucks4u@hotmail.com
PIM Team Case Study: Creating Text Effects With PHP and GD – Web
PIM Team Case Study: Creating Text Effects With PHP and GD
Bobby Handzhiev
See how you can create graphic effects on text with PHP and GD - drop shadows, arcs, fonts and colors.
Problem
A-tec Signs and Sraphics Inc. launched a web site with the idea to sell decals online. To achieve better customers ineterest the website had to integrate online decal builder. The company is offering also decals for vehicles which brought some specific requirements to the builder like having the decal text turning arround 4 types of arcs.
Goals
Provide users with preview area
Allow visitors to choose font and color
Allow adding drop shadow and selecting drop shadow color
Allow turning the text into arcs
Real Time calculating
Solution
Because of the need for increasing customers interest we had to think about not for perfect math formulas when showing the graphs in the preview area, but for the people who will look at them.
As we will reaveal below, there were few problems going arround human appreceptions for something perfectly smooth and the matchematical perfect figures.
Methodology
We were going to extensively use PHP GD library for the text effects. It provided easy changing of fonts and colors, adding drop shawdows and rotating the texts.
We had also to create color palletes which to appear when user click and disappear when color is selected You can personally try the decals creating here. Using hidden layers and javascript was supposed to do the work.
The main problem in this site was to create 4 types of arcs so when the user selects one of them the text is created arround imaginary arc like in the vector graphical softwares. We were going to study Bezies formulas and create these arcs with its help.
Implementation
PIM Team Bulgaria had the task to build the full functional online decals builder with the following features:
- Decal background
Some users were supposed to have their decals placed on colored background. We had to allow the preview area to be painted in a selected background. First we created the image in temp folder:
// the name of destination image
$dest=decals/.time..jpg;
//the background
imagefilledrectangle $im, 0, 0, 590, 60, $colors[$_POST[bcolors]];
$colors array contains the available color which are stored by the administrator in the database.
Thus, when the visitor selects a background it is passed as parametter to imagefilledrectangle function.
- Font selection
Users should be able to select fonts for their future decals. Knowing that we cant consider all the fonts will be available on all visitors computers we had to upload them on the web server directory.
We allowed the admin to manage the fonts, adding their names and uploading files in admin area.
The fonts in the select box came from the database. Selected font was passed in the call to imagettftext funtion which is drawing on the previously created image.
- Color Selections
The color selections had to be a palettes which appear when user clicks and disappear when color is selected. The palette had to look as a table with colors and these colors are also defined in the
admin area so they had to come dynamicly. We had to seed a static javascript function with dynamic content.
We created a PHP cycle which was taking the colors from the database and then creating a string for HTML table. This table is then passed to a javascript function which creates the palletes with the help of hidden layers:
function showTabletable
{
mouseX = window.event.x + document.body.scrollLeft+25;
iftable==background
{
var content="";
var y=460;
}
iftable==fonts
{
var content="";
var y=690;
}
iftable==shadows
{
var content="";
var y=810;
}
document.getElementByIdtabler.style.pixelLeft=mouseX;
document.getElementByIdtabler.style.pixelTop=y;
document.getElementByIdtabler.style.visibility=visible;
document.getElementByIdtabler.innerHTML=content;
}
Of course, once the user select the desired color we had to hide the pallette:
function setColorelid,color,fromid,shc
{
document.getElementByIdelid.value=color;
document.getElementByIdtabler.style.visibility=hidden;
}
Thus we created nice palettes which appear and disappear on a single click and dont take much space on the screen.
- Drop Shawdows
The decals offered has the ability to have a drop shadow added so we had to add this option to the online builder. PHP however didnt offered a nice function for that. We created a procedure which draws the texts twice - once the original 100% saturated text and once the shadow with a percentage of the color and appropriate displacement. Of course the shadow was drawn on the image before the main text.
@imagettftext$img, 20, $gr[$i], $x+$dx, $ys[$i]+$dy, $scolors[$shadowcolor], "fonts/".$_POST[fonts],$word[$i];
- Arcs
The main problem came when we had to rotate the texts thru arcs. First we created perfect Bezie funtion which to draw the curves and adjust the letter above them. But what a surprise - the curves looked perfect alone, but when we adjusted the letters above them they seemed rough.
After studying this problem we realised that the rough screen resolution and the disability to antialise the images wouldnt allow us to create nice arcs. We were standing against insoluble problem.
We decided to create few arcs with a graphical software CorelDraw and to see what could be wrong.
We noticed that Corels curves were looking great after they are manually adjusted. However you cant just leave the program to create perfect curves automaticly. A human eye was needed to judge when a curve looks right and when not.
We got a totally different direction. There wasnt an universal function to help us. The solution we found was to manually adjust each letter. We created a procedure with cases which were adjusting each letter on the appropriate place and with appropriate rotation depending on how long was the text. It worked!
We created 2 arrays for each arc type - one array with the positions and one array with the rotations.
The rest was simple:
if$arctype
{
$start=35-$l/2;
if$start%2 $start+=1;
$gr=array_slice$gr,$start,$l;
$ys=array_slice$ys,$start,$l;
}
if!$arctype
{
$ys=array;
$gr=array;
//making the arrays
for$i=0;$i
You can go on the atecs site and try the arcs we achieved http://atecsigns.com/decal/step_1.php.
Results
Now A-tec Singss web builder creates perfect decals with graphs, calculates the price and allows you to add the decals to your shopping cart and chgeckout the shopping cart software is also created by PIM Team Bulgaria.
The builder allows the visitor to create the desired decals with any color, dropped shadow, background and shape, to preview it and to calculate the cost for different sizes and quantities.
The website and builder were promoted with massive radio advertising company. At that time it was the only decal builder which allowed creating texts arround arcs.
Conclusions
Use GD to create text effects
Do not forget that you can create you own functions for what GD does not offer
Do not always search for math perfect formulas. The graphical effects are intended to the human eye
Load fonts in the server
Use javascript and hidden layers to achieve great flexibility
About The Author
Bobby Handzhiev is a senior developer in PIM Team Bulgaria
http://pimteam.net
admin@pimteam.net
Concerta: Benefits and Side Effects – Parenting
Concerta: Benefits and Side Effects
Jeannine Virtue
A number of ADHD medications are hitting the market, joining the old Ritalin standby. Concerta, in its relatively short existence, has already grabbed a sizeable portion of the ADHD medication market share.
Although Concerta offers a number of advantages over the older ADHD medications, it also has several side effects that people with Attention Deficit and parents of Attention Deficit children should be aware of before administering this medication.
Concerta medication for ADHD and ADD is a once-daily treatment and, when introduced, was the first time-release formula. A modified version of Adderall, Adderall XR, followed with a time-released delivery system.
The Concerta capsule has an outer coat of medication that dissolves quickly and then two small compartments of medicati