Tanuu Blog

Kids often start using the Internet at about the same age they go to primary school, or perhaps a bit later. If your son or daughter is new to the Web it means he or she is relatively young — and you, a parent, are an indisputable authority. Your kid tries to imitate you, bombards you with questions, listens to your advice (and sometimes even follows them), asks you for help, appreciates your tutoring him. It’s the best time to tutor your child how to avoid various online dangers.

Kids and young teens can freely access the Internet from computers at school, at their friends’ homes and in public places such as libraries and even from cell phones and video game consoles. Internet is everywhere, that is why kids and teenagers (and their parents, too) should be well aware of its perils and know how to avoid them.

Searching and Surfing

Kids and young teens are usually content with resources aimed at kids and teens and rarely look for more — in case you don’t make one mistake. Introducing these search engines to kids for the first time,don’t contrast special search engines for kids and those which you use. Don’t say that they are “clean” — unlike those used by grown-ups. Don’t just declare that dibdabdoo or Yahooligans are “cleaner” than Yahoo or Google.

You’d better say that their search results on dibdabdoo will be more interesting. People who know what kids like and what they are looking for built these engines SPECIALLY for them –isn’t it nice? You certainly will have to mention explicit sexual content, porn sites, gambling sites and other junk one can meet while surfing the Web. But please show no fear of it — just disgust. And don’t overwhelm your kids with plenty of negative info all at once.

There are plenty of search engines and resources for kids. Here is just several links to look for them:

http://www.ivyjoy.com/rayne/kidssearch.html

http://www.kidinfo.com/Search_Engines.html

http://www.searchability.com/children.htm

Look for more links. A simple search will bring you plenty of information.

Chats and Strangers

Even before your kid reaches his teens, he or she will be actively mixing with other kids in chat rooms and probably will start a blog as well. It is YOU who must warn your son or daughter about the risk of posting private information for everybody (both good and bad people) to read.

What kids and teens say in chat rooms, whom they communicate with and what they post on web logs and other public Internet places can get them into much more serious trouble than just viewing some inappropriate websites.

These figures are taken from the telephone survey made by the Pew Internet and American Life Project:
81% of parents of online teens say that teens aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online and 79% of online teens agree with this.

Unfortunately, kids and teenagers carelessly post online their first and last names, postal addresses, phone numbers, pictures and give lots of personal information about themselves. It enables an online predator easily identify and find any of

In order for muscles to grow, three things are required:

1. Stimulus - exercise is needed to make the muscles work, use energy and cause microscopic damage to the fibers.

2. Nutrition - after intense exercise the muscles need to replenish their stores of fuel.

3. Rest - it is during the rest or recovery phase that the muscles repair the microscopic damage and grow.

Muscle size increases due to hypertrophic adaptation and an increase in the cross section area of individual muscle fibers. Intensive exercise impacts more on the strength influencing fast twitch type II fibers, therefore the increase in muscle size is accompanied by greater strength.

This will deplete the muscle’s energy stores and cause microscopic damage to the muscle tissue. During recovery, these stores of glycogen and phosphocreatine will replenish from carbohydrates and creatine ingested as food or supplements. Amino acids supplied in the diet will trigger the protein synthesis that repairs the damaged muscle and lead to the creation of bigger muscle fibers.

To achieve continuous improvement you will need to keep reaching for higher levels of training intensity otherwise the improvement process will grind to a halt. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to plan for provided certain basic principles and rules are clearly followed. Subsequent articles in this series will examine these principles in detail.

In the meantime you can find out more about building muscle by visiting the site listed below.

Richard Mitchell is the creator of the bodybuildingadvisor.com website that provides guidance and information to athletes at all levels of bodybuilding experience. Go to Bodybuilding Advice to learn more about the issues covered in this article.

Maybe you’ve heard about body dysmorphia - it’s a mental image many victims of anorexia nervosa have that tells them they look fat, even when they are emaciated. Bariatric patients can suffer from body dysmorphia as well.

When we were morbidly obese our emotional coping mechanisms kicked in and many of us were able to convince ourselves we really weren’t that big. It is emotionally kinder to avoid body criticism, the whole issue seems hopeless. In fact, many morbidly obese patients will say they see themselves normal sized. That is until a rude moment reminds them they are not normal sized: a skinny chair, a turnstile, a bathroom stall, a flight of stairs, a photograph. This false perception is a subconscious coping strategy to protect us from the brutal truth, the truth about how big morbidly obese really is.

My sister and I were clothes shopping one day with our morbidly obese mother. She tried an outfit and complained to us, “but it makes me look fat.” And gently we told her, “Mom, you are fat.” Intellectually my mother knows she is morbidly obese, but the emotional issues run over reason and she doesn’t see herself fat. She is in serious denial that is preventing her from getting the help she needs - bariatric surgery - to save her life.

After surgery, there is a tendency for the body dysmorphia to reverse. Before surgery we denied how big we were, after surgery we judge ourselves critically - like the anorexic - and fail to see an honest reflection. One woman, down from size 24 to size 10 wrote, “I feel fat daily. I never felt this at 248 pounds - I saw a thinner person in the mirror than I see now. I look at my size 10 jeans and they look like tents. I don’t feel as attractive as I did when I was heavy. I don’t understand it,” she continued, “but I think it has to do with learning to accept yourself fat so you didn’t see all the fat. Now I just have to learn to accept myself as thinner.”

Many patients report hyper-judging their figures after weight loss. It seems the thinner you get the more judgmental of your body you become. To this day, the first thing I see in my reflection in my pudgy tummy - I think it’s enormous. I don’t see long slender legs or a tiny waist or trim arms. I see a Buddha belly. I’ve even apologized for my chubby tummy to others when they compliment my new figure. The apology usually goes, “Yes, but I can’t get rid of this stomach.” I say this while pointing to my “flaw”.

That is wrong and brutally unfair to myself. I am working daily to keep this hyper-judgment in check, reminding myself the days of belittlement and self-loathing are over. Now is the time when I love myself.

Patients report universal success when they do one thing in the face of body dysmorphia: dress to impress! Get rid