Can Some Food Pictures Make You Obese?

After a long break, let’s just talk about something engrossing today, which is the kind of ‘food’ we all crave for. I’m not too sure about you, but I crave for interesting foodstuff when I see it well presented on display counters in cafes. However, does it happen because I feel hungry at that moment? As far as I’ve observed my eating behavior, it is not always the case. Sometimes, I crave for certain food items even when I am not hungry. It might have happened to you as well!

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

However, did you know that we crave for some junk foods suddenly after looking at their pictures only? It’s true that food pictures can make us feel hungry and eat at odd timings. When we are stimulated by food images, we forget our limits and continue eating even when we really do not need those extra calories. This craving behavior is bound to make someone obese over a period of time. Do you want to know how such pictorial content on food affects our eating behavior and how we can avoid it? If yes, simply read on.

The main reason we get attracted to appealing food images is the presence of certain chemicals in our brain. Yes, it is actually our brain that remains hungry, rather than our stomach. When we see fresh, interestingly presented, and colorful food items in pictures, the brain chemicals like dopamine get released and trigger some types of sensations in our brain. These sensations are mostly pleasurable and are caused due to a combined action of dopamine and a few other chemicals.

The resulting sensations force us to repeat our behavior, and that is why we continue eating junk foods repeatedly, even when we do not feel hungry. However, it is helpful to know that only specific food items cause such pleasurable sensations in our brain. What we crave for and what we do not crave for, depends on the looks of the food item, which we also like in taste. Thus, craving for it offers us satisfaction. In addition, our brain programming from prehistoric times drives us towards certain foods more than others.

I think a combination of all these factors leads to my craving for those items on counter display. Research suggests that we cannot simply resist such cravings. Does that mean I’d get obese one day? No, I take an oath that I won’t keep staring at those yummy food pictures and would actually avoid giving them a glance. However, is that really possible in this advertising world where most of the food advertising uses our taste buds to sell foodstuff?

Photo by Abhinav Goswami on Pexels.com

Did you know that a lot of advertising research is conducted to understand the kinds of tastes and smells that we all like? Based on such research, pictorial content is developed on appealing foods that trigger our brain to feel pleasurable sensations. This is how we get trapped by appealing food pictures.

Is there a way out? Yes, maintaining a strict fitness regime and keeping our cravings as controlled as possible can help to avoid taking an overdose of food and to move towards obesity. Does that work for you? Share your thoughts.

I think I am going to shift myself to a ‘veggies-only street.’ Think about what you will do! Until I get back with another thought-speak, enjoy your meal!

Forget Birthdays and Memories of Your Friends? – Who is the Culprit?

No, I haven’t forgotten you guys and am back with another shade of life that remains colorful because of your friends!

While we all agree that friends play a significant role in our lives, we all annoy them on many occasions when we forget their birthdays and special events. Sometimes, you have a friend on your friends list and you even forget their memories with you. Do you think it happens with time? Do you think it happens because your brain has ditched you recently? 😉

Well, let us understand it through an instance. I have a bunch of friends out of which I am too close to one. We share all good things of life and interests. This is what developed our friendship for a long-long time. She is so close to me that we even remember what we ate together when we went on that afternoon stroll three years back. I remember her sweet floral dress that she wore on her first date…come on, it was her date! Even she knows what hairstyle I carried seven years back. You might find it all funny, but that is true for all our friends who we love deeply.

In contrast to this, I have another friend in this bunch whose life events seem strange when they occur each year. I could never remember his birthday, wedding anniversary, dresses or even our shared memories. Now, I cannot blame my memory for it, because I know it works fine when I remember each of those details mentioned above. I am not even old enough to have drained out everything. It definitely has to be something else. So, what do you think is erasing some content from my mind while retaining some other?

Before telling you about the psychology behind this fact, I would first let you know that this culprit is called selective retention. Yes; it is one of the mind games that we play with our memory and does not happen the other way round. When we memorize things, our interests and beliefs play a very important role in the processing of information. When we set priorities according to our interests, we filter the details in our mind and only remember what seems relevant to us. Our mind is instructed to narrow down the entire content to a few selective things. It is the same that happened when I chose to selectively retain my close friend’s minute details and filtered out the other friend’s memories as those seemed insignificant to me. You may say that I preferred to favorite the memories of my best friend as and when these memories were formed.

So, it’s never about your mind or brain ditching you when you forget the birthdays and memories of your friends. Look deep inside you and think whether you really like those friends! If you truly want to retain them in your lives, then start retaining their life events when they occur and do not filter them out of your mind. If you do so, then would they want to keep you within the arena of their selective retention? Who knows!…So, give importance to every individual who you want to be with. Life is not about filtering out. Maintain your interest in a person and you will never forget anything about them. Start practicing retention and you will have more close friends by your side.

Keep making friends and keep your friendships healthier until I see you again with another post…:)

Have a lovely life!

How Comedy Adds Colors to Your Life

Humor

I have written about several shades of content that influence various aspects of life. Let’s take a comic turn today and see how humorous content can bring vigor in your life.

You would have seen several stand-up comedians making their presence felt on television or similar media through their comic content. Have you wondered why there are just a handful of those comedians that can reach your hearts? They not only make you process their jokes faster, but also create comic situations that appeals the masses. Not all types of content can make you laugh easily. Had it happened, you would have been laughing in your lectures too! 🙂

Well, that additionally indicates that it is also about your brain processing content in varied ways. That is why you laugh at different kinds of jokes in different ways. However, in general, some psychological studies indicate that the right frontal lobe area in your brain’s right hemisphere is majorly responsible for the way you appreciate humor or comedy.

Frontal lobes in your brain support you with language processing, indirect interpretation, content integration and tone differentiation. So, these make you differentiate between content like sarcasm and irony. Such verbal and non-verbal language processing helps you identify jokes in a crowded world of words. Now, you would be thinking why some comedians are more successful in activating your brainy frontal lobes while others are not!

The simple reason is that successful comedians are able to create such content that is more appealing to your brain and is perceived by your brain as good humor. For example, if I say that “a blind farmer picked up his sickle and went out,” will you laugh at this sentence? I can’t believe you doing that! But, if I say that “a blind farmer picked up his sickle and saw,” will you laugh at it now? I bet many of you will laugh at the second sentence, provided they have paid enough attention to the words.

Now, you might have gained an idea of how some successful comedians twist their content to make you laugh. Are you now thinking that you can also take up the profession of a stand-up comedian? You can surely do that if you are good at creating such ironical or twisted situations that tingle people’s frontal lobes.

Well, I leave that to you and just wish to convey that it is highly stimulating to appreciate comedy and humor. It not only boosts up your mind’s powers, but also refreshes your mind, body and soul! So, start reading or listening to some good jokes everyday so you could remain refreshed and deal with your life in a more positive manner. Comedy can really add bright colors to your life! Just give it a try.

See you soon in my next post. Till then, keep laughing and try making others laugh too… :))

Your Encounter With Content in Your Dreamland!

So, here I am back with a sequential post if you missed some connections in your dreams! I know a few of you might also be curious to know about the meanings of your dreamy encounters! So, let’s converse about a few of your dreams today. Let’s see what they mean so you could better relate to my dreamy encounter, as was discussed in my last blog post.

You brain experiences a variety of sensations and creates different types of images while you are in your dreamland. You may not only encounter a cherished moment, but may also witness your ambitions while traveling through a dream. Yes; it is about your daily interactions and experiences that determine your dreams either now or in future. You never know…today’s failure could be reflected in tomorrow’s success dream!

So, every dream is linked to your life in one way or another. It is you whose thoughts determine your dreams and it is again you who can turn your nightmares into the beauty of a dream! The only thing you require to understand is your dream itself…the negativity of a dream can be turned into purity and self-consciousness by receiving the essence of a dream that a dream itself wants to convey to you. So, let’s see how you may understand your dream’s essence and make it your inner power to fight all odds.

Did you know that your dreams symbolize something? Well…yes, they do…your dreams symbolize your deepest wants, desires, needs, fears, positivity and negativity, and almost everything that is innate and implicit. Sometimes, it is so deep that it is not even implicit!! So, how can you judge something that is not even known to you. In fact, you can do that, provided you are able to relate your dream to its reflection deep within you. It is similar to how you judge your physical self by looking at your image in a mirror.

So, you now might be thinking about the way to interpret every single dream…because you see innumerable dreams during your lifetime and multiple dreams during a single night! We may also discuss and interpret only a few cases here, even if we try to. So, what to do to interpret your own dreams? Don’t get disappointed, guys! I am trying to give you a tip that can be used to realize your dreams. 🙂

Though there is no formula to judge your dreams and it’s absolutely subjective, you may still give it a try. So, for example, we take a dream where a person sees himself to be flying high in the air or may be in a plane at a great height. He may also be moving around a place with complete freedom and pleasure. If his dream reflects freedom, then it might mean that he’s looking forward to gain freedom or achieve heights in his real life.

Dream of flying high

Now, it could either be interpreted in a positive or a negative way. On a positive side, this person has high achievement motivation that is trying to drive him to reach his goals. While on a negative side, he is being unable to achieve freedom in his personal/work life or is being hindered to achieve a goal by certain internal/external factors. As this person is facing restrictions against reaching somewhere or achieving something, his desires and motivations are subdued and these finally reflect in his dreams.

Now, you may also try making connections of your dream’s content with your real-life happenings or experiences. See how your dream’s ideas reflect yours and then try making connections. While it is easier to make connections sometimes (like in this example), it could be far more difficult and deeper to assess objects in your dreams that seem to be far unrelated to your real-life desires , wants and thoughts. In such cases, try the ‘matching magic’ formula. Haha…it’s not a written chemistry formula, but one that is mine and I try often. Let’s take another example below to understand this technique.

Dream car

Suppose you see a dream in which you are driving a car. Then, this means that either you have a passion to own your car but can’t purchase it or you wish to gain complete control over your life as you have done while steering a car. You are on a driver’s seat and this means that you have an innate desire to be there. Thus, when you match this car and the seating position to your life, you will find that you want to drive some aspect of your life your own way. On the other hand, this same car may mean something else if your dream’s context varies. For example, if this car is a cab that you are hiring, then it may mean that you require help in a real life situation.

Thus, both your dream’s content and its context together determine the real meaning of it. And believe me, nobody can interpret your dream better than yourself! I might help you find these connections, but it will be the best if you find those connections yourself. That will not only make you more mature and understanding, but also help you gain many more virtues. Just try it out and you will see how dream interpretation can help you become a better person and improve yourself by understanding your own needs and moods.

There is nothing on this land that you can’t reach or overcome if you have the knowledge of those indications your dreamland is sending your way. So, try to read the signals of your dreams and start this process without delay. Know your fears and challenges and then turn them into opportunities. You will only gain something if you are conscious about your want for it. So, be conscious and comment back if you need help with crossing any barrier. We all can together sort out our mutual confusions, as we all are starting toward bringing positivity into our lives.

Bring your deepest thoughts into conscious mind today so you can be a progressed person tomorrow…start traveling on your journey toward your dreamland now…!! I will always be a co-traveler.

Check out another fresh aspect of life influenced by content as we keep conversing…dream more and keep knowing more about yourself, until we meet again in my next post! Cheers to life! 🙂

An Encounter with Content in My Dreamland!

Hope you have been enjoying my present series of posts and finding content connections in your everyday world! Today, I am going to share something about my dreamland and its relation with content. Yeah, it’s not simply about my dreamland…It could be your dreamland too! So, catch the cadence of my thoughtspeak…

World of Dreamzzz…

Now, the story starts with my dreamland that pushes several dreams toward me every night. My dreamland not only involves beauty, fairies and angels, but also has demons and loud encounters with a negative world. But, all in all, my dreamland always throws upon me an encounter with content!

Although I don’t always remember all types of dreamy content that I encounter, I definitely remember a few…and more if I give it a try! It would also have happened with you that you saw a beautiful dream but forgot everything the next day. The only thing you remember is that your dream reflected sweet vibes and wasn’t a nightmare. Well, it all depends on the kind of content that your dreamland offers you.

When I visited my dreamland a few nights back, I saw something, which I remember, was a happy and delightful event. Now, I just have some faded memories of it that do not literally mean anything to me. In fact, I can say that I don’t remember any content from my dream. Were there some pictures or videos playing?!! Uhh…I can’t really say! 😦 Do you know why this is happening to me?

I don’t remember anything from that encounter with content in my dreamland, because my brain has stopped the telecast of this content. In fact, all of you meet many dreams while sleeping, but forget them when you wake up. All this happens due to various cognitive actions conducted by our brains. My brain was also acting in multiple ways while I was undergoing this encounter. Presently, I only have a beautiful feel, as my dream involved happy emotions that my brain found important to telecast.

Do you know our brains are very clever?!! While it is us who see dreams every night, it is our brains that have the authority to filter out all our experienced content. It’s like a film reviewer who edits our submitted script and allows us to show only those clips of a film that are suitable for target audience. 🙂

So, somehow, my brain clipped my dream…so I’m left with no memories of it. Now, it is about today’s incident that I saw some children who were planning for a house party. They were buying decorative objects and foodstuff for this event. The shop, where I saw them doing their purchases, was playing a rocking number in their background. Now, my brain acted clever again. It decided to give my dream back..all the content I had encountered in my forgotten dream!

Its telecast showed me celebrating a close friend’s anniversary party at a happening city club. We were a good bunch of friends who were dancing and singing together, and having a great time with the couple. The anniversary cake was cut…folks were munching on snacks and cheering others over drinks…all were making merry and shaking a leg on a peppy number on the dance floor…everything and everyone around us was celebrating.

So, could you make out the connection here? Yes, we sometimes come across such events in reality that trigger our brain to telecast to us all those related events that we might have met in our dreams. For me, I had forgotten my dream because my brain had already filtered out its content. My brain did not find this content so appealing that I should have remembered it.

Usually, our brains make us remember only those dreams that are seen at the end of our sleeping cycles or those that have some emotionally intense content. Our brains do not overload us with content…isn’t that a great phenomenon? We should be thankful to our brains to be saving us from staying forever in our dreamland…they bring us back to face the reality that could be sweeter than dreams at times! 🙂

Now, when my brain took a note of those children preparing for their party, that foodstuff, and that rocking song in the background…it made a connection with the content that I had encountered in my dream. So, I came to recall that dream due to the trigger from a real event..even though I had no previous idea on what I had seen. I would say: “It’s not always your dreams that trigger your actions; your actions or others’ actions could also trigger your dreams.”

Our dreams are a reflection of our realities and we can form more and more connections with them if we give an attempt…

…and I’ll talk more on this in my next blog that I assure to post very soon. Stay tuned if you would like to know more about the meanings of your dreamy words, as well as your dreamy worlds…Until then, keep dreaming and keep turning your beautiful dreams into realities! 🙂

Can Content Make Your Valentine’s Day Special?

Valentine’s Day

It feels lovely to come back here after a nice break…Well, lovely reminds me of the ‘love day’ or ‘Valentine’s Day’ that we recently celebrated. Though every day is a Valentine’s day with your beloved, why do you feel this day is special? For me, this day marks my birthday…so, I feel extra-special or loved!! 🙂 So, it is exciting to receive messages with wishes and letters filled with love.

Are you thinking that you feel the same when you receive love-loaded messages on this day? If you are, then content definitely makes your Valentine’s Day special…the way it does mine! Isn’t a love letter or a love message or even a love song some type of content? I’m sure you will agree with me on this. But then, how does all this content make your love day special? Read on…

Juts imagine that your beloved is annoyed with you a day before Valentine’s and you are sure that your special day is going to get spoiled. Now, how can you make your love day special? Yes, content is the only thing that comes to your rescue. You either send a lovely message on your beloved’s cell phone or drop an e-card in their inbox or forward a beautiful video to them.

So, what are you trying to actually do by sending them such content? Well, you are trying to make up their mood so they feel loved and want to return their love back to you on Valentine’s Day. Isn’t it seeking a reward by making use of different types of content? Yes, at least I feel that it is going to make your Valentine’s Day special…that could have been spoiled had you not done all this!

Now, you might want to know how some plain content has the power to make the day for you! Well, it is basically your brain working on this content to give you that feeling of love. Our psychological and neurological makeup makes us experience such a powerful emotion called love. There are several brain chemicals that work together to generate the emotion of love within you.

The major role is played by the chemical ‘dopamine’ along with other chemicals like oxytocin and vasopressin. When an individual looks at some content from their beloved, they create their beloved’s image in their mind. They might also look at the photograph or video of their beloved. When they do so, their brain activity gets affected by the increased level of dopamine.

Our brain has pathways to a reward system that is triggered by our brain areas called right ventral tegmental and right caudate nucleus. These areas are responsible for our motivation and reward systems. As these are dopamine-rich areas, these get hyperactive when dopamine levels increase. That’s why looking at some rewarding content starts a person’s romantic love cycle. The same happens when your beloved looks at your romantic messages or photos.

This content triggers dopamine pathways in their brain that further activates their reward system, thus making them feel motivated to take an action in order to receive the pleasurable reward of your love. Then, they respond back with love and you experience the same feelings that they did. This is such a natural process that you cannot control it, and so, you feel loved and want to love back.

Isn’t that wonderful to keep sending and receiving pleasurable content so we all remain in love with each other? When some simple content can make your Valentine’s Day special, why can’t it make everybody’s life so special!! In fact, it can…send love and you’ll see that you receive the same love back with an increment! With that, I hope that you will make each day of your life special and loved by exchanging content in any form with your loved ones!…Try it out and share your experiences with more and more people out there… 🙂

Wish all you readers a lovely life!! I’ll see you soon with another post.

Does content editing have psychological effects on people and businesses?

Edit it to perfection!

From this post onward, we will try to look at a few aspects of our lives that can be positively altered by a simple understanding of how varied content works differently on our brains. So, let’s start by improving our content itself so more people may get impressed. Well, there is no business improvement strategy that I am going to give you, but you may surely work out your own strategies by simply checking out this story.

Well, the story starts from one fine day when I was pondering over the value of my professional editing skills. I was actually trying to find out some techniques through which I could reduce my editing time spent on improving professional documents for my company and private clients. During these thoughts, I seriously wondered about my need to do intensive editing for documents that were written in an okay manner.

To understand this, I picked up an advertisement designed for a new business. Being an editor, I obviously spotted some glaring linguistic errors in that ad. While my brain did not instantly react to making better word choices and finding promotional reasons behind the ad content, it definitely went toward spotting wrong spellings and incorrect verb usage in that ad. Although I know that even I may have made hundreds of errors while writing myself (may be, in this post too! 🙂 ), I could not ignore those issues in that ad and felt disgusted. Now, why did that happen? Let’s see.

You would have heard about two sides of our brain – the left and the right hemisphere. Both these hemispheres and different areas of them help in controlling a variety of brain functions in humans. When writers create something, it is mostly the right side of their brain that is actively supporting their task. However, it is the exact opposite with editors who edit using the logical, critical and analytical side of their brain, which is the left side. Thus, when a person has a critical eye for some written stuff, their left brain works toward impacting their perception of that stuff.

I guess the same logic affected me when I was reading that ad. My critical left brain spotted errors in a simple ad and made me feel irritated about it being wrongly written. The result was my negative perception of that business that this ad was promoting. I thought if this business was not able to develop good promotional content for itself, how would it survive on to serve its clients. I actually doubted the quality of its services and products. Now, this happened because of the perceptual associations our brain forms.

As an example to explain this, you may think about a person who was once roaming around with another person you dislike. Did you not think negatively about that stranger who was associated with this person you hate? Now, if you have got this point, you will understand my feelings explained above. …and if I may develop such negative perception for a business only on the basis of its ad content, then there could be many other people who might feel the same. Thus, I think that businesses can keep those positive vibes coming toward them if they give a thought to the proper editing of their content (whether it is their marketing, advertising, website or internal communication-related content)!

For all businesses, consumers are the ones that bring bread and butter. It is essential for them to positively affect the perceptions of their consumers. Since the right content plays a critical role in their marketing strategy implementation, it becomes critical to take care of their written business content. Thus, some well-written content is also required to be reviewed by professional editors who can give it a great finish. Businesses always need to understand the psychology of their clients in order to impress them with the right services, as well as appropriate content.

You won’t believe but most of the people give critical thinking more importance than appreciation. When people read your erroneous content, they tend more toward finding faults in it without appreciating your business ideas and services. This gave a point to my story and queries too. I felt that it is the most important thing for me to give sufficient time to my editing, as I have always done. So, I take care to edit all my documents before sending it out to any client who may feel disgusted about me just because of a grammatical or spelling error in my work.

So, a good edit can add a feather in your cap, as you will be able to affect several minds positively so they will perceive you in a good light and feel great about being associated with your business. My thoughts also taught me a lesson that I should learn from those giant firms that spend millions of dollars in setting up their content review and quality assurance divisions. Have you ever given a thought to why business giants conduct consumer research and develop high-end QC units? If you have thoughts in a similar direction, do feel free to share them with others.

I would love to appreciate your thoughts…of course, keeping my critical thinking on an ‘off’ mode… 🙂