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Pretty much all carbohydrates breaks down into glucose (your body's common energy source) in your body, but how fast and how effectively it does differs.

Fructose and glucose are usually present in most sweet food and are the most "dangerous" carbohydrates to ingest, as they pretty much get absorbed directly into your bloodstream, forcing your body to react with a shock of insuline to make sure you don't die. This sugar/insuline rollercoaster is what makes your body less sensitive to insuline in the long run, resulting in a higher risk of diabetes.

But to keep on track with your question (though I really don't know what you're actually asking about, so I'll just give a general information about this).

Wheat (which is what pasta and most bread is made of), rye, oat, corn, potatoes, rice are all converted into glucose by your body. But they need a bit of work before they turn into sugar, starting right in your mouth when you chew by enzymes in your saliva that begins this process. If you try to take just some ordinary bread and keep chewing it for a while you'll start to notice that it gets a bit sweeter right in your mouth.

But a big difference between these are their other properties and their overall nutrition. Potatoes, rice, rye and oats are the "best", as they have a lot of proteins and other good vitamins and minerals, especially oats, and they aren't as taxing on your body like wheat.

Wheat, especially processed flour on the other hand is actually really bad you. It has both inflammatory properties (puffy eyes in the morning for example), and the least amount of nutrition compared to the rest.

Rice, which is eaten a lot in the middle east and asia, is awesome. It's one of the reasons why obesity is so low in asian countries, and it's a good source of vitamins and minerals.

I personally try to keep wheat out of my diet as much as possible and instead focus on getting more potatoes, oat, rye and rice in my diet. I always start the day by making a breakfast by cooking some oatmeal (just the oatmeal with some cinamon on top is delicious) coupled with two slices of Swedish crispbread with some butter and cheese on (it's kind of a dried thin and crispy bread made of only wholemeal rye, water and salt that is really common here in Sweden: linky).

And then for other meals during the day I try to alternate between potatoes and rice, though most of the time I end up with potatoes since it's so delicious and simple to make.

Stay away from pasta! I mean, if you work out and go for long runs it's a nice energy source to load up your body with beforehand, but pasta is absorbed pretty fast in your body and should only be eaten once in a while, because a nice pasta meal is delicious ;)

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I guess I just wrote some random stuff, but I guess any knowledge is good knowledge?

Edit: Amazon has the crisp bread if anyone wants to get some: http://www.amazon.com/Leksands-Original-Swedish-Rye-Crispbread/dp/B0017OATPE

> I can temporarily be very disciplined and stick to my plan, but once the motivation wears off (give it a few weeks), i relapse into my old ways.

Motivation is not a source for long-lasting change. It's a quick rush, like sugar. What you want to develop are habits. Habits are hard-wired neural pathways that your brain chooses based on the path of least resistance. When you've performed an action over and over in the same environment, that behavior pattern creates grooves (metaphorically) in your brain, making it easier for you to do it next time.

What motivation/willpower does is give you the initial energy to overcome your existing grooves and to change that neural landscape in a way that suits you. If a river wanted to go a different course than how it usually does, it would have to summon the energy to lift itself out of the riverbed and rush out over open land. Over time, this would create a new riverbed, which will be very easy for the river to follow.

If you want to learn more about motivation and the science of habit formation, I recommend Henry Hazlitt's The Way to Will-Power (a little old-fashioned, written in the 1920s, but very useful) and Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit.

Kaizen is a cycle of continuous improvement. <act> <plan> <check> <do>.

it's a bit simplified when you put it like that, because it oversimplifies some process that ought to be given full attention (goal setting, plan making as examples, and sometimes it's not as simple just to <do> a 'thing'.) but... but there you go.

For a quick little overview, i suggest this pocket-book... super quick read. it's a bit business oriented rather than self improvement, but it's pretty casually written regardless, so you should be able to apply it to whatever you want in your own life.

so, to answer your questions - i generally start with the goal-setting part, develop a loose plan, and then act on it.

goal setting can be easy, especially if you keep it simple, but if you want to go big life-goal stuff, start looking 'how to make a 3-5 year life plan'). you can follow the internet advice, but i suggest embellishing their basic structure a bit for personalization and function. Also look up s.m.a.r.t. goal setting to give yourself an extra set of guidelines.


then planning... that's pretty goal-specific. just start with big picture stuff, sometimes it helps to put it (action points/tasks/activities on a timeline.

Then the doing... I'm a big fan of /r/thexeffect. I highly suggest taking a look thru there and see what they do. very useful tool.

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

The Way to Will-Power

The Power of Habit

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