APP - Emma Lorenzi

Today, I will explain how to play badminton.
First of all, badminton is an indoors sport very famous in Asia, China and India : they are producing the world's best players.

So what is the aim of this game ? It's very simple, you just need to hit the shuttle over the net. You need to have 21 points to win a set and generally there's 3 sets in a match. To win a point you need to send the shuttle into the court and if your opponent loose it you win ! But, if your opponent manages to hit the shuttle back, a rally begins. The game has only two rest periods coming the form of a 90 seconds rest after the first game and a 5 minutes rest period after the second game.

Now that the aim is clear, I will give some tips for beginner badminton players.
Firstly, you have to warm up : ensure your body is a necessity to play. Badminton involves stamina and agility so you have to concentrate on these areas in your warm up. For exemple, your opponent can give you a shuttle in front of the net and you have to send it back and then in the back of the court.
Now, you are ready to play. It's important to keep a central base position after playing a shot. Badminton is a fast-paced game so you must be prepared to move in any direction at any time.
Then, train yourself to serve, lob, drop and smash correctly as well as perform effective backhands and footwork.The technical part is a huge part in this sport : you need to master all the grips to become better (forehand grip, panhandle grip, thumb grip, back hand et neutral grip,..)
Badminton requires a workout of the mind too: you need to plan your attack to put your opponent in danger.

To finish, you always need to cool down after a training or a match because it's reducing your heart rate, helps you to avoid injury, and stretches you out.

I think that you can manage to win a match thank to me and to impressed the old lady to the beach (if you play beach badminton in Soulac ).

(Did I wrote enough ?)

I played Badminton before you were born and I think my mere presence will impress the "old ladies" on the beach in Soulac.

Are you of a level to beat an old man is the real question?

Nowadays, social media takes a huge place in our current society. If I decided to talk about it this week, it's because next week I will write about fitness and you will see that it's linked.
If you mindlessly scroll through Instagram whenever you get a few seconds of downtime, you will see a lot of pictures, a lot of women or men with a "perfect body". This is shaping our concept of beauty. As a result, social media influences how we look at ourselves both positively and negatively.
How does social media affecting the way we perceive our physical appearance ?
Firstly, we will demonstrate the negative effects of social media and then, the positive one.

There are psychological consequences for women’s body image when they compare their physical appearances to others. Indeed, an article of the journal "Body Image" explained that young women, who spend more time on Facebook, may feel more concerned about their body because they compare their appearance to others. But, it's not a "women only" thing : 67% of men also compare their bodies to images they are consuming on social media (for the women it's more than 87%).
Now, you may think that there's absolutely no problem to compare yourself to some pictures. The fact is that 50% of women and 30% of men announce that they have a bad perception of their self.
The new image of the perfect body is very hard to obtain. Women should have a very small waist, but with beautiful shape, and men need to be very muscly and tall.
Because of this new image of perfect bodies, some people can begin to have some disorder. Eating disorders like anorexia, or anxiety, and become completely introverted, sad or depressed. In the extreme case, some people want to die because they feel really bad in their bodies.

Fortunately, there's also a positive way of it. Health and wellness, fitness, and plant-based food accounts can be inspirational for some people. Social media users can maintain a "healthy" and positive look on their body image. The fact is that if people works (do sport and eat well) to obtain their dream bodies, it will have a lot of positive effects on their health and their life in general.

Social media can created disorders because of the idea of "perfect bodies". But, it can also help some people to take back their life, do some sport and eat well to have a healthy life. Next week, I will explain in what way fitness can be a good solution to shape our body.

Last week we saw the complexity of the perception of our own body and especially the fact that this perception can change because of the social media.
If people have some issues with their body image, in the common case, they will try to become their ideal.
The question is : how can we reach our « perfect body » goal ?
First of all we will see that some physical activities are better than others to loose weight efficiently and the we will see that we also need to eat well.

Some activities are better than others to loose weight and build muscles.
For example, the table tennis is a sport, but not a very physical one, excepted if you have a very high level (and it’s not my case). If you play tennis table with the only aim to hit the ball back, I will give you the advice to choose another sport.
My advice will be to take a sport quite « simple », that you can practiced alone with not a lot of equipments.
In that way, I recommend track and fields : running is one of the best forms of exercise for your overall health. It increase stamina and it’s very benefit for the everyday life. It can help to have a better sleep, a stronger heart and also improved mental health : the health benefits are extensive. 
You just have to grab some shoes and go outside ! And you don't need to be a world-class sprinter or marathon runner because even a slow jogging pace can help you achieve the following health benefits.
Running is efficient for weight loss because of the calories and fat-burning advantages. In 30 minutes of running, a person of 70kg burns about 450 calories.
But running is not the only activity efficient to loose weigh.

I truly recommend Fitness too. You can do cardio fitness at home. I will take the example of « TABATA » a Japanese method who largely prove its benefits.
You will have to suffer during 20 minutes : you have 20 seconds of efforts and then, 10 seconds to cool down. You will have to realized 8 exercises : 4 of cardio and 4 of musculation (with weigh). It’s the best way to brun calories and build muscles in a few minutes. The advantages is that you can do it at home.
But, Fitness is not only for cardio exercises ! If you never practiced fitness before, I recommend you to have a coach because you need to pay attention of the common errors (I will describe it next week). You also have to choose a motive. There are 3 types of motive, witch are « bulking », « strength » and « toning » (I will also describe how many series, repetitions, and amount of weight you should have for each motive next week when I will talk of fitness only).
In this subject, the aim is to loose weigh, so the best motive to take is the « toning » one.
As you can see, it’s really important to practiced a sport to loose weigh and build your body but it’s not the only thing to do.

If you're having foods and drinks that are high in fat, salt and sugar, have these less often and in small amounts. You shouldn’t be under diet because it’s frustrating and it’s not the point (we only have one life so go on and eat chocolate). But try to choose a variety of different foods from the 5 main food groups to get a wide range of nutrients, drink at least 8 glasses fo water and take some pleasure by eating well.

To reach the perfect body, you don’t need to take your pleasures away from you, you don’t need to be under diet ! You can eat what you want if this is balanced and sometimes, you can eat fat food. If you eat well and practiced a physical activity at least 4 times a week, you will have results soon I promise.

Good post but do you think it is desirable that we have the goal of " the perfect body"? Hasn't this image caused a lot of problems - especially but not solely for women?

In this new subject, I'm going to wonder if is it desirable that we have the goal of " the perfect body"?

     In the last post, I suggested ways for people to achieve this perfect body, stating that it was an achievable and desirable aim for everybody. Some feel that everyone can be healthy if he has the proper combination of diet, exercise and life-style, and it has been translated into an ethic.
The fact is that in our society, and especially nowadays with social media, people can become fixated on their imperfection(s) and think about their real or perceived flaws for hours each day. This is called the body dysmorphic disorder : they can't control their negative thoughts and don't believe people who tell them that they look fine.
I find some statistics of the BBD : A total of 78.8% of the students reported dissatisfaction with some aspect of their appearance. Regarding gender differences, females were significantly more concerned about being fat than male, and male students were significantly more concerned about being thin.

     To live better, they will try to achieve their goal and to develop another kind of disorder : the bigorexia.  It can be various issues in their relationship to exercise : from unintentionally punishing their body, to obsessively trying to get as muscular and defined as super humanly possible : this kind of disorder mainly affected men (because they think they are too thin).
In that way, we can say that these platforms (such as social media) are to blame for instilling insecurities in people.
Social media has become dangerous, especially for teens, who are most susceptible to suffering from insecurity and depression (they have to deal with their "new bodies", hormone and pressures from school). Moreover, they have a constant pressure from the media telling that they should be thin, brainy, cultured can be very overwhelming on the psyche.

We saw that this kind of disorder affects everyone, not only women but men too. It's also affecting children, teenagers, and adults.
I will now give my point of vu. It's ghaslty that in our society ,who become open minded, we can live this kind of bad experiences. For the sake of everybody, we should be happy of what we are. In my point of vu, their too much judgement to live that way. But, should we live for the others ? We can't please everyone anyway.

To conclued, this image of the perfect body is really not desirable and caused a lot of serious issues and not only for women but to everyone. It's necessary, our society needs to change and I think that we are on the good way. A hashtag "normalize normal bodies" is very famous on instagram. Women show their body, with all their "flaws" to erased this image of perfect body.
Maybe that in 20 years, the mentality will change for good.

Another good post.

I saw these stats for cosmetic surgery in the US. https://www.plasticsurgery.org/documents/News/Statistics/2019/cosmetic-procedure-trends-2019.pdf

It's frightening. I understand that South Korea is even worse.

I had plan to speak about fitness and to explain the difference kind of motives, but I think that "eating disorders" is more linked to my last post than fitness. I will try to explain why kids develop eating disorders ?

First of all, it might be interesting to give a definition of it. An eating disorder is when you have an unhealthy attitude to food, which can take over your life and make you ill. It can involve eating too much or too little, or becoming obsessed with your weight and body shape. A variety of social, developmental and genetic factors have been implicated in these disorders.
There's 3 main types of eating disorders : the first one is anorexia : somebody refuses to eat adequate calories out of an intense and irrational fear of becoming fat. Moreover Bulimia is a condition in which somebody overeats and then purges the food by vomiting to prevent weight gain. And the third one is binge eating somebody may stuff himself with food, but without purging.

These kind of eating disorders especially concerned teenagers. All of them worry about their appearance and it's clear that self-esteem can be precarious during adolescence. It's "regular" that teen experiment distorted body image: while other people see a normal kid, teenagers with eating disorders look into the mirror and see a very different person and nothing can change that condition. They are focused on their appearance while others stake their identities on their accomplishments. Of course, this lead to an extreme dieting, even starvation. Detecting anorexia can be very difficult. It mostly effect high-performing kids because they are perfectionist so they think that they have to maintain low body weight.

I think that this eating disorders are also caused by the society. Kids can develop fear because his classmates or the others in school may laugh at them because of their weigh or another flaw. It can create a sort of stress, even depression. Also, nowadays I think that children have access to social media very young. As I said in a latest post, social media create the « perfect body » idea. The parents need to be careful to this kind of disorders to prevent and avoid it, but sometimes, even a doctor can’t see it.

As a conclusion, we can say that disorders is hard to see, and it’s a serious issues who touch a lot of person and a lot of teenagers, thanks to issues like school, stress, depression, and even social media.

This subject takes me so much time, I needed to read a lot of articles about disorders and sometimes it was too technical for me. I’m sorry if this is not enough, tell me and I will try to go further if you want.
Moreover, I wonder how many subjects like this I need to write ? For some of them, I spent more than 2 hours (because the research were huge). But I really don’t know if this is enough for you or if you want more from me ?
Have a good break !

I watched a documentary on eating disorders this week and even though the society pressure on looking a certain way is a strong argument I think that most of these sufferers have a mental disorder which manifests itself into an eating disorder due to some stressful event in their life. There were people of 60 years old who have been fighting the disorder since they were teenagers.

In answer to your question you are supposed to do a total of about 7.5h of work. you can do more if you wish

For this new subject I will present you the Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I know that once again, the subject is quite « dark » but you give me this idea when you replied to my last post.
The PTSD is a mental disorder that people may develop after they experience a traumatic event. The traumatic event may be dangerous (the person might escape to death) such as an assault, a natural disaster, or a car accident. But sometimes the event is not necessarily a dangerous one, it can be for example an unexpected death of a close friend or a family member.

People with PTSD have intense and disturbing thoughts and feelings related to their traumatic event. They may relive the event through flashbacks or nightmares : which cause them to feel like they are going through the event again. I think that this is very stressful to them because the night is a peaceful moment, a time to rest. If this time is disturb by some nightmares, they can be « fear » to fall asleep.
People with PTSD may avoid situations (or people) that remind them of the traumatic event, and they may over react to something ordinary. They also can be easily startled, feel tense, having difficulties to sleep and have angry outbursts.

Besides, PTSD can be caused indirectly. For example, during the years of World War I and “World War II, PTSD were called as “shell shock” and « combat fatigue ». It was not considered as a post-traumatic event (or maybe it was, but they wanted to hide the fact that war was awful and that we can keep this trauma for the rest of our life). More indirectly, we can find some « patients » of PTSD who were police officers as a result of repeated exposure to horrible details of trauma. They are exposed to details of child abuse cases, crimes details ect..

You may ask « do women are more prone to PTSD than men?" The answer is yes, women are more likely to develop it. Actually, there’s a lot of things who determined if you’re at risk of this disorder such as : if you already had had trauma in your childhood. Then, if you already felt horrified, and having just little (or no) social support after the event, it will increase the chance to develop it. Moreover, if you dealing with extra stress, such as loss of a loved one, pain and injury, or loss of a job or home, it’s clear that the risk will be higher. And to finish with the risk, if you take drugs or others substances, you are more likely to develop PTSD.

Some research are done to know how genetics and neurobiology can affect the risk of PTSD, thanks to that, it will be possible to predict who is likely to develop it and in that way, it will be easier to prevent it.
My next post will be about gender dysphoria or anxiety disorders, I didn’t choose yet.
Unless if you want me to speak about a special subject ?

Very interesting subject again.

I'd be interested in gender dysphoria for your next topic.

In this new subject, I will present you one psychological issues called « Gender dysphoria ». To be honest, this subject is unknown to me, but it can be interesting to discover new things and doing some researches ! I said that it’s a « psychological issues » but it’s not a mental illness : some people may develop mental health problems because of gender dysphoria. It is a conflict between a person's birth gender and the gender with which he/she identify. People with gender dysphoria may be very uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned, sometimes described as being uncomfortable with their body (particularly during puberty).

Gender identity refers to our sense of « who we are » and « how we see » ourselves. Most of people have « binary » identities : for example, I identify myself as a woman. But it’s not the case of everyone : some people feel that their identity is different from their biological one. For example, some of them may be born with a man body and facial hair but do not identify as a male or feel masculine at all. In that way, they don’t define themselves as having a "binary" identity and the concept of gender is not relevant. The world the most used to « defined » their identity is "non-binary".

This interior conflict is affecting people in different ways. It can change the way a person wants to express their gender and can influence behavior, dress and self-image. Many people with gender dysphoria have the desire to live a life that « matches » with their gender identity. So they change the way they look and behave by using clothes and hairstyles or even change of first name. Some others may want to socially transition, and then to do change surgery or hormone treatment (medical transition is only relevant at and after the onset of puberty.)

You need to pay attention to the fact that children may show an interest in clothes or toys that society tells us are more often associated with the opposite gender (like barbie for girls and little cars for boys). However, this type of behaviour is very common in childhood it doesn’t mean that children have gender dysphoria or other gender identity issues. Only a small number of children may feel distress (and it gets worse as they get older). This often happens around puberty, when young people might feel that their physical appearance doesn’t match their gender identity.

I think that this subject is a current one : our generation inspire to express ourself as we are and to be confortable about who you are especially if you’re one of the LGBQT. Maybe that in your generation, the gender dysphoria was uncommon and totally unknown because it was « weird » for a man to feel like a woman or the opposite. As I said at the beginning, I didn’t know this type of « disorder » even if my generation is not like yours (it didn’t mean you’re too old !). Maybe in a few years it will be well-known (and I hope so).

Of course it did exist in my generation but the majority of society was not understanding and persecuted those who had gender dysphoria. It will be interesting to see how your generation adapt to deal with it.

For my last post, I will try to speak about the LGBT community.
The fight for LGBT rights has taken different forms across generations. In the 20th centurie, it was truly a fight. And in the 21th centuries, a judicial confrontation culminated in the US Court legalising gay marriage (in 2015). It means there are LGBT people working today who remember a time when homosexuality was illegal and coming out as trans was dangerous. Now it's not the case because decades of activism by LGBT residents helped produce the results we see today.
In the 18th century in Europe, same-sex sexual behavior or dress yourself like a girl if you are a boy or the contrary, were considered to be socially unacceptable, and were serious crimes. However, they were some exceptions. For example, in the 17th century dress like the opposite gender was common in plays : in William Shakespeare's plays since female roles in Elizabethan theater were always performed by males.
Nowadays, it's allowed to wear what you like, or more specially, it's legal : people in our society judged everyone for anything.
It's going to be too long if I recap all the fight they did but nowadays they are free, legal, and it's become to be common to see LGBT people walking in the street.
This last post were a little rubbish but it was really complicated to understand very laws and rights they haven't, ect..
If you think that I've not do enough post tell me but I'm sure that I've done more than 7h50 of work.

You've done well and been interesting. thanks Emma