Tag: weight loss

How YouTube Can Help Your Health and Personal Finances

by Mike Mabrouk

YouTube is probably where I put most of my time at when it comes to boredom entertainment. And it’s definitely for a good reason. This platform has everything that can both entertain you and be educational. The whole framework of everyday random people posting content trying to teach you from their learnings or simply even just exploding stuff is awesome to me. Endless hours of content are online for you to watch basically free. This is why I wanted to write a blog post on this. I want to make sure everyone capitalizes their time with this platform for improving themselves at no investment whatsoever.

What I like about YouTube

So, I like learning and I like learning in an easy digestible fashion. And that is the power of YouTube. Screw the I have to read a textbook to get familiar with a topic. What I love about this platform is the freedom to watch whatever videos you want in the topic you are interested in from different perspectives too. The traditional textbook is written by an author who updates publications with new “lingo” just to pocket more money. The best is when a professor themselves has written a textbook that you have to buy for three hundred dollars. Now while I do have some jokingly not jokingly comparisons with the traditional form of schooling in this writing, I am not by any means saying you should substitute school with YouTube. The platform of YouTube though does provide an outlet of content that can assist with your schooling efforts along with learning about what life has to offer that a classroom will never teach you.

What topics I like to watch

There are many subscriptions I have that align with topics I love to watch videos on. Everyone is unique with what they are interested in and what they would like to learn more about and explore with. For me, there have been some topics especially of recent that I love to focus on and learn more about. I am a huge sucker for personal finance videos on YouTube. Personal finance is a category that is not really talked about or brought up a lot with daily conversations and learning efforts. I believe it to be very important to know what the heck to do with my own money, the money I owe, and the money I will earn. There are a plentiful number of channels that have their own tips, tricks and strategies for personal finance, what they recommend and how to go about it in a quick and easy fashion.

Two other topics that I also enjoy binge watching are success stories with personal health & entrepreneurial efforts, along with traveling abroad videos. The success story videos show you people who have actually took action in their lives to improve themselves and make a success out of their situation. The two categories that fall into this topic that I enjoy watching are weight loss stories and people who have started up their own business from scratch whether that is an online business or even running a franchise. Both of these topics directly and indirectly motivate me to push myself as well since I am literally watching people who have pulled it off and are doing it as we speak. I think it is good to have this kind of content in your life to spark some motivation in you and to push yourself even further with whatever goals you have in mind.

Now the traveling abroad videos are simply awesome. You can learn so much on YouTube from peoples’ personal travels whether it being a country that you have always had on your bucket list to visit some day or even tips and tricks for the best ways to handle expectations and preparations for visiting a country. I love love love watching travelers visit countries that are not so common travel destinations and may even be considered dangerous to the everyday person living in a westernized country. These videos show the true insights of how the media does spin things to make it seem everything is awful but in truth, we are all human and while there is bad everywhere there is good everywhere as well. These travelers and documenters show the insights of how the locals live, the traditions they have and even the cuisines they indulge in. It is a real fun category to spend hours on learning more about what is truly going on with the rest of the world and how the media never focuses on the good sides with some of these “unpopular” countries.

The real danger of YouTube

Recommended videos can lead to binge watching YouTube. And I am talking worse than Netflix. At least with Netflix you to a certain degree know what you are getting yourself into, but not YouTube. Two hours can pass by in a blink of an eye and before you know it, you just absorbed so much good learning content that makes you think why the heck is this not the traditional form of learning compared to sitting in a school classroom for two hours.

Conclusion

Yeah YouTube is just awesome. I myself spend a lot of time on it and I believe it is a better form of entertainment to learn from and improve yourself than many other mediums including television. While I did list some of the topics that I love to watch, keep in mind YouTube has everything and anything that you may have an interest in and want to learn more about. I definitely recommend taking advantage of this platform. With that being said, thanking you for reading this post and check out some of my other previous blogs posts I have written on topics dealing with health and wealth.

Thanks everyone,

Mike M.

Arrow Pointing Up

Don’t Let Eating Like Crap Make You Feel Guilty

by Mike Mabrouk
Photo by Ja San Miguel on Unsplash

Your watching the football game with a bunch of friends and all of a sudden, it’s half time and everyone starts to feel a little hungry. You of course are used to eating your salads for lunch and can not wait to have the one you meal prepped for the week but then realize that…well everyone is in your living room and you will end up being that person who just eats in front of everyone while everyone just stares at you starving out of their minds. I am sure you know what I mean and may have experienced it with being the person eating and the friends staring. That’s a tough situation. First of all, you are eating in front of everyone when you know everyone is dying to have a bite of anything healthy or not. And the worst part is you have the audacity to whip out a salad. Everyone is currently mentally judging especially since we all know football season equates to football food. And I am talking pizza, wings, buffalo chicken dip, all the goodies.

This is a scenario I would say definitely applies to the situation of eating like crap but not having to feel guilty. I am a believer in situational treat yourself days. These are the type of days where you get to create memories and enjoy the little things in life. In the scenario above, this is enjoying the football game with you best friends and the best food on this planet. It is important to understand and have the mentality that it is okay to take a break from healthy eating to live in the moment. Mentally, you need to be able to teach yourself that no one is meant to be eating healthy every single moment of their life. There is a reason why all this delicious horrible food has been invented and is consumed on the regular.

Scenarios like these are unique to everyone as each individual has their own fun days and own unique ways of having fun too. This includes being social which tends to entail having some drinks or a nice meal put together. And when I mean nice meal, I mean order every appetizer imaginable. 

The way through my weight loss experiences of justifying and not feeling guilty for having a day like this goes back to my favorite concept of the numbers game. By some freaky universal law, luck and results are created through more opportunity and mindset (aka energy from you but that’s a little too out there for me and this blog). And opportunity to maintain your healthy status or even lose weight is created from having a lot of days where you move towards that goal you set with eating healthy and/or exercising. So, if you have a routine of eating healthy normally, the every now and then occasional day of being social to live life and have fun will not truly haunt you. To give a number to this, if out of the seven days of the week, you decide to have one bad day of eating and let’s throw in a half day for the after-work party of course, then the law of numbers still has you at five and a half good days of eating. This overall, is excellent when trying to achieve your health goals. The majority of your time is focusing on being healthy and it will show good results for you. And it is up to you to realize this and not feel guilty when you (everyone) has those days where we just simply let it go to enjoy life.

PS: When talking football, I am a big Cleveland Browns fans so when its time to eat during gameday, I tend to indulge out of frustration. So, plenty of experience from my end.

Thank you for checking out this blog post and please give it a like and follow the blog. Much more content on here with everyday issues we face. Trying to provide a perspective of how best to overcome these obstacles and use them to our advantage.

Mike M.

ArrowPointingUp

Psychological Goals for Weight Loss

by Mike Mabrouk

So, in my last blog post I provided a few helpful tips I have used to lose weight and continue to use. From being almost 300 lbs to now around 175 lbs, it can take a lot more than utilizing hidden tricks and secrets for many and that lot more ties into STATE OF MIND. What I consider to be state of mind is an individual’s overall grasp on how they can handle the challenge they are facing and how they WILL overcome that challenge. And let me tell you, its pretty important.

From my experience with losing weight, here are some goals to acknowledge to help in the weight loss journey from a psychological standpoint.

  1. Create small goals and keep track of them. It’s important to have small obtainable goals during the process that can be easily achievable. The little wins help motivate us to push forward since we have the mindset of if we can do that, why not go for more. It provides a check to the checklist of your weight loss objectives and shows that you are making progress even when goal number 2 comes into play.
  2. Get ready for setbacks. Oh, hey speaking of goal number 2, I don’t care who you are, you will experience setbacks in your weight loss journey which can be due to a variety of reasons including holidays, birthdays, weddings, new Popeyes chicken sandwiches etc. It is tough to maintain a healthy diet in the process as well as a good exercise routine. That is why it is important to understand that setbacks will happen, and you should not let them defeat you. This is where goal number 1 comes into play as well with having minor goals that are easily achievable and that show to yourself that progress is being made.
  3. Get ready for setbacks…again. Yeah, I just really want to emphasize to expect a lot of obstacles and setbacks but hey we are feeling good about our mini goals already achieved.
  4. Have a hidden driving factor. This goal may not be so obvious but yet is so obvious. There will be days where you ask yourself is this even worth it and what the heck am I even doing, but having a hidden driving force that provides you a strong reasoning to pursue the goal will make the whole process a lot easier. Maybe the hidden force is the half marathon you always wanted to run. Maybe it’s the certain outfit you used to fit in and now no chance. Maybe you want to catch the eyes of someone in particular. I don’t know what your hidden driving factor is, but create one and keep it to yourself too (hence the word hidden).
  5. Create a Visionary board. This has been very impactful to my young life thus far. Vision boards sound like a lot of bs blah blah mystery tools used for achieving goals but boy do they work. Don’t just ask me, I am sure you can find all over the internet how it has helped others. Visionary boards allow you to see the bigger picture and to have a point of reference right in front of you at all times. This could be a whiteboard with your target goal in writing or even a picture hanging up on the wall. The idea is that you will see it all the time and will not be able to get it out of your head. My recommendation is put one up where you spend your most time at to always have that goal right in front of you.

These are some goals that have helped me in my weight loss journey and with general goals in my life. Hope you have enjoyed this blog and please get a chance to like and follow. Now my visionary board is telling me to finish up my book so crap, I better go.

Thanks everyone,

Mike M.

Arrow Pointing Up

Quick Easy Hacks to Weight Loss

by Mike Mabrouk

Just another wanna be writing about how to lose weight blah blah blah…but this wanna be actually did lose weight and A LOT. I like to say right now on a good day I am 5′ 10. I used to weigh almost 300 lbs when I wasn’t even 5′ 8. And growing up as a kid, I have always struggled with my weight. Food was just darn good and readily available. Not wanting to move at all certainly helped too. Now I weight around 175 lbs and there are a few key attributes I like to say contributed to the weight loss journey that I always tell people. Some are obvious and some are not. They also are pretty simple and work if you aren’t fully dedicated to a workout regime like the Rock.

Here are some helpful tips that actually can be put into use:

  1. Avoid going out to each as much as possible. There’s a reason why restaurants and fast food options are now putting out their calorie labels on there food cuisines cause they are INSANE. Hidden calories one wouldn’t think of are used to make the food (example: extra delicious stick of butter) and they add up quickly. It’s hard to keep track of what you are putting in your body when going out to eat and Peer Pressure. Maybe not down a beer in 3 seconds peer pressure, but peers will invite you to go out to eat and order an appetizer of potato skins to share. Before you know it, your bill is pricey and your stomach is asking what the heck just went down. What I recommend doing to help lose weight is either to have a limit of how many times you will go out to eat, and/or order menu items that fit into your calorie count goals and always order the healthy options even if it costs a little extra more.
  2. Avoid Calorie Drinks and stick to water. Wow do calorie drinks add up. I mean think about it. For every beer you drink, it is around 150 calories per to be generous and you have 3 of those and that’s 450 calories right there. Yeah and that is one meal only. Imagine the orange juice for breakfast and the soda for lunch. Calorie drinks are an easy way to add up unnecessary calories. I found that losing weight was assisted strongly by drinking a lot of water mostly which can fill you up too (kinda sorta). But limiting calorie drinks allows for more calories to be put into food which is safe to say we all enjoy and love that idea of more food in our bellies.
  3. Avoid small samples of high calorie foods. This doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone, but I struggle with control when I eat something delicious. For Thanksgiving dinners and spinach dip, one bite and goodnight the bowl is mine. I recommend to limit the bad foods you eat as much as possible even as samples as it will leave the taste and craving in your mouth for more which becomes a much tougher challenge for you. And once you avoid those delicious foods that are extremely bad for you during long periods of time, you come to find that they don’t actually seem appetizing after a while. Kinda surprising but true.

Oh thank goodness, first real kinda sorta blog post is wrapped up. I need a beer now.

Just kidding. Hope you enjoyed though as I want to start creating more blog content on healthy habits as well as some personal financial planning and career goals advice. So I am supposed to end with some type of call to action but honestly not quite sure yet what to have…so stay tuned for my next post.

Thanks everyone,

Mike M

ArrowPointingUp