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March 6, 2010

Do Fad Diets Work?

A fad diet is a fashionable diet plan that promises to help you lose weight more often than not in a relatively short time. A fad diet frequently attracts a lot of media coverage, which then attracts a large number of overweight people to try it in order to get back in shape. Fad diets are often soon discredited, but they keep raising their head from time to time.

The grapefruit diet was or is an example of a fad diet. People wanted to believe that you could lose weight just by eating. The food in this case was grapefruits, but there is also a cabbage diet. The trouble with these fad diets is that their slimming effect is only short-term, because you cannot eat just cabbage or grapefruit for the rest of your life, so the weight comes back as soon as you go back to normal.

‘If you always do what you always done, you will always get what you always got’ is a true saying. But what is worse is that a lot of of these diets can be injurious to your health.

However, do not think that fad diets are a new phenomenon. Fad diets or fad medicines have an ancient history going back to fake witch doctors, medicine men and quack doctors who doubled as barbers! Fad practitioners have a long and scandalous history and they are still alive and doing very well, thank you very much, today.

These days, medicine is too tightly regulated for them, so they have turned their attention to gullible, desperate dieters. Most of those that take up a fad diet are overweight teens longing to look like their favourite film idol.

Fad diets usually concentrate on reducing or completely cutting out carbohydrates. It is the low intake of carbohydrates that brings about the rapid loss of weight. In fact, this rapid loss is due to the quick loss of water that these low-carb diets stimulate. Much of the fat might still be there, so that when you stop the diet, your body regains its normal amount of water and the lost weight is put back on just as fast as it was discarded.

In the normal course of events, carbohydrates are the basis of energy for work and activity, but with these fad diets, the carbs are no longer there, so the body begins to break down its store of fat. This may seem advantageous but it is not necessarily so. The ketones resulting from the breakdown of fat are excreted via urine and often increased quantities of urine, which can cause dehydration. People with certain medical conditions have to be very cautious too; diabetics, for example.

Fad diets are popular, but they can be very detrimental to your body and when they do not have the desired result in the long-term, it can be very depressing leading to comfort eating. This is why many people begin a fad diet, lose weight and are radiant for a month or two, but then slip back when they are approaching their ideal weight. They go back to their old ways and the weight begins to come back. They become depressed, certain that they will never be able to lose weight; they comfort eat some more, maybe giving up any hope of regaining a normal weight permanently.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

Weight Loss For Teens

No one has to read a study or a report to know that there are a lot of overweight or obese people in the USA and the UK. You can blame this on the food being sold or a lack of understanding, but the real bottom line is that you are the one who is putting that stuff into your mouth.

Most people do not think about it, but everyone has a choice whether to eat decent food or not. If you are seriously overweight, then you chose to allow yourself to get yourself into that state. No one else, you!

Nevertheless, there is always a way out and it is never too late. There are thousands of weight loss programs, so you should be able to find one that suits you. I made that sound easy and it should be, but people still have trouble choosing one.

My advice is to read the weight loss advert aloud to yourself or a friend. Does it sound laughable? Then it probably is. Dump it. The bottom line is that you can only lose weight by expending more energy than you consume. Having said that there are a couple of ways of achieving that.

The two basic methods are either counting calories or counting carbohydrates, that is Weight Watchers or Atkins. Start by going to their web sites and reading about their philosophies. Choose the one that suits you and stick to it.

One note that I would like to stress here for teens is that at your time of life your body is going through a radical change. You are metamorphosing from a child to an adult and your body is filling up with hormones, you only had a little of before.

Let the change finish, before you start worrying too much. You were a bug, now you are a chrysalis and soon you will be a butterfly. Just wait and your body time to sort itself out.

There really is not much you can do to stop what your body has to do. Spots mean that you have poisons in you and your body wants to get rid of them. Help it by not putting any more junk into it. Keep your skin clean and make sure that everything that touches your skin is clean too. Hands, hair, pillow cases, et cetera.

Exercise! Now is the time to embed an exercise routine into your way of life. Exercise raises your rate of metabolism which helps you burn calories more quickly. If you can burn calories quickly, then you can allow yourself more treats.

The other point about exercise is that if you do not establish a discipline for exercise when you are young, then you will find it harder when you have your next bodily change in your forties or fifties.

The bottom line is not to worry too much about what you look like now, you are a chrysalis. Help your body out by eating healthily and take up a sport you enjoy and stick with it.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

March 5, 2010

Are You Hobbling Your Weight Loss Program?

If you want to lose weight, you have to have a plan, a route map to success. This is called a program or programme. There are thousands of programs, but many of them are just plain batty. If they sound daft, they probably are. Have you heard of the ‘cabbage water diet’? It sounds daft and it is. You cannot only drink cabbage water all your life!

Although there is a lot of nonsense talked about losing weight, there are some truths that play a part to play in nearly any program you choose to follow. One of these truths is that it is better to eat many small meals throughout the day (about 5-6), than to go all day without eating and then gorging yourself at dinner in the evening. This is popularly called ‘grazing’.

Have you ever wondered why this might be so? Well, the fact is, that the average human body can only process about 250 calories an hour. If you consume more than that, you are almost certainly overloading your digestive system. This is why it is important, because if your body cannot handle all the calories that you give it, it will stockpile them.

Your body can only use up what it requires to fulfill the job that it is busy with, that is, what you are putting it through. If you are watching TV, a lot of of those 250 will be stored. If you are exercising, most will be burned up. It stores the remainder as body fat. Your body has learned through evolution that tough times will come, so it prepares for them. It is like us putting excess money in a savings account or people hoarding food if a bad winter is predicted.

However, these days in the West, we rarely face those lean times anymore. So, that fat is never used up and we just keep adding to it until we resolve, by choice, to limit our intake of calories or increase our amount of exercise.

Knowing this information, what can we do with it? Well, if you were to want to lose weight, you ought to be consuming no more than 1,500 calories a day (or whatever your program tells you), so 1,500 divided by 250 is six. if you ate 250 calories every other hour, that would give you twelve hours.

Therefore, eating light but often would be a beneficial strategy or program to follow, because first of all, you are only providing your body with what it needs, when it needs it and secondly, you are able to better maintain a steady blood sugar level, which means that you level out the spikes and troughs you experience in a normal day’s cycle.

Two hundred and fifty calories does not seem a lot, but it is surprising what it will stretch too, if you take the trouble to investigate. It is true that you will have to rigorously restrict some foodstuffs, like bread, pasta, rice and potatoes, but whoever seriously thought that you could lose weight by eating that stuff anyway?

If you do not have time to cook several times every day, look in your supermarket. There are loads of ‘250 calorie’ microwave meals. You don’t want to eat that? I can’t blame you. so get a good cookbook, which shows calorie content. You are at work all day? OK, eat some fruit, but choose wisely. It can be done, it only takes a little determination and planning.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight programs. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

Are Fasting and Fitness Compatible?

A lot of people do not understand their bodies. That much is obvious because they think that fasting will help them become fitter. They feel convinced that their bodies will burn off their excess fat and that they will lose weight as a result. They also appear to think that they will automatically end up with more muscle, just in the right places too. Some take up fasting for fitness because they believe that it will rid them of the toxins in their bodies.

Another belief that these fasters have is that they are will be able to flush out all of the toxins in their bodies by drinking plenty of water while not eating food. Even if this is true, it would be a lengthy procedure that would mean that you would have to fast for at least five to seven days though in order to conclude the detox process, although it is still not clear scientifically whether fasting is the right tactic for those that seek fitness.

There are many other routes to fitness that do work well though. For instance, you can cut back the amount of food that you eat. Cutting back is not fasting, it is dieting and it is not only far more effectual, it is also far less painful. This, together with drinking lots of water and increasing your amount of physical activity will help you to get fitter.

If you drink a lot of soda like cola or lemonade, which are full of sugar, like a lot of kids do, or lots of cups of sugared tea or coffee, like a lot of adults do, then just replacing those drinks with water or weak tea will help you lose weight quite rapidly even if you do not make any other changes to your diet or your level of exercise.

It is also likely to damage your body if you embark on a demanding exercise routine only relying on body fat to keep you going. Your body probably will not be able to supply enough energy to fuel such a change, because your metabolism will be too low.

Someone going about it in this way, can become very weak and dizzy. It is not a good idea to risk injury because you have not given your body all the energy it requires to accomplish the tasks you are asking it to perform.

It is best to consult a physician before you make any changes to either your diet or your fitness program. Confer with your doctor about your thoughts on fasting and fitness. They will be able to inform you whether they feel it is something you can try or whether it is simply too dangerous.

Fasting is all right if you have do it for religious reasons, but do not take on much physical exertion. Ask a Muslim how he or she feels during Ramadan! Fasting for long periods can lead to high blood pressure and even liver damage. So, be very wary before attempting to starve yourself fit, there are much better ways.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with losing weight quickly. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

February 26, 2010

Strategies for Treating Acne

Most people with acne try to treat their blotchy skin with creams, face washes, soaps, lotions and treatments. However, the best way to cure acne is by changing your diet and getting rid of acne-producing things such as fried food. A healthy diet, rich in organic unprocessed foods like vegetables, fruits, grains and beans is the first recommendation for treating acne.

Foods containing trans-fatty acids, milk, milk products, margarine, shortening and man-made hydrogenated vegetable oils, as well as oily foods, should be avoided. It seems that the high occurrence of acne in the United States is exacerbated by the typical American diet. Americans typically eat fried food in great quantities, usually cooked in the most harmful of fats and oils.

However, not all fats are bad, but the fats that average Americans eat make them more susceptible to develop acne and other skin problems. Products that can irritate are ice cream, cheese, bacon, chocolate and milk. Furthermore, acne can’t really be cured using creams and soaps because the basic cause of the condition is beneath the skin.

Pimples, spots and blemishes are produced by bacteria and other irritants lying beneath the skin’s oil glands and hair follicles, which are generally caused by insufficient hygiene, scratching and poor diet.

This poor diet could be a result of too high a proportion of such items as processed, fatty, fried and sugary foods in your diet. A diet that is good for your skin emphasizes raw and lightly cooked vegetables, especially green leafy vegetables that contain valuable trace minerals and are rich in fibre. Fresh green vegetables are essential. You should also include in your diet lean protein sources and complex carbohydrates, like rice, whole-grain bread and potatoes.

These fibre-rich foods should help ensure a clean gastrointestinal tract, which is especially important in the management of acne. Eat three healthy meals every day in order to provide you with sufficient vital nutrients and to decrease your craving for sugary or greasy fried foods.

Moreover, you should consume lots more food that is rich in vitamin A, like apricots, watermelons, and broccoli, along with lean beef, nuts, beans and whole grains, because they are rich in zinc, which is also be useful in preventing acne breakouts. It is also vital to drink plenty of water to help clean out of the body all the poisons which contribute to the development of acne.

Are you having problems treating acne? If you are or you would like to find out more about acne, please go to our website entitled http://treating-acne-scars.com Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.

February 22, 2010

Dieting And Exercise: Two Tools For Fitness

When it comes to living a long and healthy life, there are two necessary ingredients: diet and fitness. While some believe that they are inseparable, nothing could be further from the truth. It is quite possible to have a perfectly healthy diet with deplorable fitness habits. It is equally possible to be physically fit with less than perfect eating habits.

There’s a clever little line in the Jimmy Buffet lyrics “Fruitcakes” when his ‘lady’ is lamenting: “I treat my body like a temple, You treat yours like a tent”

I can’t help thinking about this line whenever I think about all the people around the world who are on these garbage in, garbage out diet regimens hoping to achieve the weight loss triumph of those who are promoting the products.

To be totally honest, it is possible to shed pounds by dieting alone. It is difficult but possible. It is also possible to be physically fit and still have a few extra pounds. To a large degree, we are what we eat. If we consume a high fat low fibre diet our bodies are going to lack the fuel needed to burn the fat. At the same time if we are not providing our bodies with the tools it requires to create muscle it does not matter how many weights we lift.

When it comes to diet and fitness, the best results are achieved when they are combined together rather. Use your fitness routine to burn surplus calories and use your diet in order to provide your body with the nutrients and fuel it requires to build muscle.

A pound of muscle takes up less space on the body than a pound of fat. Pound for pound, I would much prefer mine be composed of muscle than fat. Dieting alone does not build muscle and that is something you would do well to remember.

You should also understand that as you are building muscle you may be shedding inches while not showing a great deal of progress on the scale. It is very important that you bear this in mind throughout the weight loss process. Do not measure your progress by the scales alone or you will observe deceptive results.

The problem is that far too many people do just this, get discouraged and give up when they are in point of fact making progress. Do not allow yourself to be a victim of the scales. Look in the mirror, try on your tight slacks, and measure your waistline. Measure your success by how you feel after climbing a flight of stairs not by the scales.

By building exercise into your diet routine you are also enabling your body to burn off any extra calories you may have consumed during the day. This means that if you want to have a small ‘cheat’ during your day, you can make up for it by burning a few more calories than normal in the evening. This is not something that should happen often but an infrequent incidence is not going to make or break your diet.

You should also consider dieting and exercise as a hand and glove type of relationship. They fit together. Diet and fitness when combined can create incredible weight loss results for those who take them both seriously.

The thing to remember is that neither works well alone and neither will work unless you are willing to do the work. You must make this a priority in your life in order to achieve the best possible results.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with why can’t I lose weight. If you have an interest in losing weight, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

February 12, 2010

How To Keep To Your Resolution To Lose Weight.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the most common New Year’s resolution in the West is to lose weight. However, it is also the first New Year’s resolution most apt to be broken! Losing weight is not difficult in theory, but practice is oh, so different. This is because it involves lifestyle changes.

Our bodies change as we get older and typically our level of activity decreases too. Maybe, we get an office job with a promotion, whereas we used to work ‘in the field’. But people in general, do not regulate their diet to match their change in circumstances. We sit behind our desks or in retirement and think we can still eat and drink like we did twenty years ago. Big mistake!

Luckily, there are dozens of diets available to help us attain our weight loss goals. There are the traditional calorie counting diets, as advocated by Weight Watchers; there are the ‘new era’ diets like Atkins, which have us counting carbohydrates and there are no end of fad diets which are frankly not worth wasting time talking about.

The choice of which diet you would like to follow is all yours, of course, but it is well worth examining the main types of diet to see which one will suit you. Then you must determine whether you will require the help and encouragement of a weekly visit to a club or not, or whether you can get that camaraderie from an online club of slimmers, where you talk to fellow slimmers in the club forum online.

It is also worth fixing in your mind, why you want to diet. Is it to look better? Or to feel more at ease in yourself? Or is it for health reasons? Or all three? Have a think about your reasons and let them motivate you. Whenever, you feel like packing it all in, remember your motivation. Get a book and journal your progress, but first write your motivation in bold capitals on the front page or cover. Keep it before you and read it aloud to yourself every day.

Consult some of the slimming sites online and work out a few key numbers like the typical weight people are for your height, sex and body type and your BMI or body mass index. Write these figures on the first page of your book too and use them as the eventual goals.

You could produce a graph and plot your weekly weight to see how you are doing. Set realistic goals and targets. You can get loads of free information from the Weight Watchers and Atkins websites or / and visit your doctor for advice and leaflets.

Aim to lose something like 10-20 pounds in the first month and eight to ten per month after that. Go slowly and aim to go slowly, because then you will hit your targets and you won’t feel like giving up. When you get within five to ten pounds of your target weight, assuming that you have lost a lot of weight, rein back a little and allow yourself a little more leeway. Drop your target to one pound a week, so that you will get a feel for ‘eating normally’.

The dreaded exercise; you have to face it, you will need to do more exercise, but two times thirty minute walks a day is ordinarily enough. You could swim once a week too or get an exercise machine, if you are tied to the house by family.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

February 11, 2010

The Rapid Weight Loss Myths

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to be slimmer just to have a sexier body. Many people have moulded their bodies to make them look more healthy and more desirable. However, there is no way to attain this new look in a day of two. The problem is that most people do not want to wait, they want it now.

This can lead to these people making rather rash and, it has top be said, rather silly decisions. They are not willing to wait and they are not prepared to work for what they want. This is why so many people turn to rapid weight loss diets. Some ‘guru’ brings out a new fad diet and a good proportion of the ‘I want it now’ crowd jump on the band wagon. Only to be disappointed again within the year or less.

Speed diets or rapid weight loss diets tend to put out great advertising copy that is very hard to resist. However, all diets, no matter which one you choose, Weight Watchers, Atkins or fad diet, depend on overweight people making lifestyle changes in order for them to work permanently.

There is a very apposite saying: if you always do what you always did, then you will always get what you always got. That says it all. You can lose weight with all but the silliest of diets, but if you go back to your old ways when you hit your target weight, you MUST slowly, but gradually creep back to your old weight.

If you give your body more calories than it needs, it will store them for when it does need them. The problem is that that day never comes for too many people, because they never exercise themselves. This is especially true of fad diets like the ‘cabbage water’ diet. Yes, you will lose weight on it, but you would lose weight by fasting whatever you did. For a while, and then you might get sick. For a diet to work, it has to be adaptable and enjoyable enough for you to be able to stick with it for the rest of your life. Make no mistake, dieting is long-haul.

Many rapid weight loss programs actually only squeeze the water out of you. Just like a wet sponge. But a good dieter maintains his or her grip on that sponge, not letting it soak up water again. The problem with short term dieting, is that you let go of the sponge underwater.

This is why serial dieters first lose weight and are happy; then finish dieting, go back to their old weight and become depressed. In that state of depression they are suckers for the advertisers of the next latest craze diet. In other words, they are being manipulated and literally squeezed dry, but of their money too.

These silly rapid weight loss programs also include fat loss pills. They are not making you lose fat, well, maybe a tiny amount gets washed out with all the surplus water you are carrying. They are only diuretics under another name. How many pills would I sell if I called them diuretics? How many more would I sell if I called them miracle fat loss pills?

Type the word diuretic into a engine and find out more about them. They are all around you in mild healthy forms. A diuretic will essentially cause your body to lose more fluid than was in the diuretic. Tea is a diuretic, for example.

This list of these dopey dieting aids to rapid weight loss goes on and on, but someone must be buying them and you can bet your bottom dollar that it is the sad, depressed dieter who let go of the sponge.

Slimming soap! Slimming soap is being advertised as being a rare Eastern remedy for corpulence. Well, let me tell you, I live in the East and I have never seen it here. Asians are slim because they do a lot of physical work and do not come under the pressure to eat junk food that Westerners do, although that situation is changing rapidly too.

Magnetic weight loss earrings, I ask you! Even being drunk without a present for your wife ten minutes before Christmas Day is not a good enough excuse to fall for this one, surely? The advertisers say that the secret of this set of earrings is that they are magnetic.

Well, if you believe this, why not get a pair of $1 children’s toy magnets or even a pair of fridge magnets and put one in each hip pocket? Two? Well, after all, you would not want to lose weight from only one side, would you? You would be lop sided.

Just keep this in mind, when you are looking for a rapid weight loss diet: there ain’t one ( that will work for life). If you are putting on weight, then your lifestyle is wrong and it is up to you alone to change it.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with how to lose weight online. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

The Best Ways To Lose Weight

If you make your mind up that you want to keep to a traditional style diet, as a rule of thumb, you ought to find a weight loss plan that is rich in fresh fruit and vegetables; low-fat dairy products; white meat and fish; whole grain cereals and a lot of drinking water and by that I mean at least eight to ten 250mm glasses a day.

Being overweight can cause a lot of other issues, besides it being a problem in its own right. Obesity makes rapid movement, stretching and reaching difficult. Surplus sweating can be an embarrassment and it can result in rubbing. The assortment of fashionable clothing obtainable can be constrained too. In addition to these issues, studies have shown that being overweight nearly always leads to health problems such as hypertension, heart troubles, sleep apnea and diabetes.

The only solution to this bundle of problems is to lose those spare pounds around your waist by embarking on a healthy weight loss diet plan and following it faithfully. I will give you a few general pointers below to help you slim down and decrease the risk of spending your latter years running in and out of hospital.

Nearly all of the traditional weight loss diet plans suggested by dietitians and nutritionists begin with the simple exhortation to reduce your food consumption to the amount you require to carry out your daily routine. The problem is that it sounds simple, but it is one of the hardest things to do. It takes a lot of willpower on your part. However, you could start by eating and drinking three-quarters of what you normally consume. Once you can handle that, reduce the percentage again.

Try to make every calorie count. By that, I mean, if you are going to eat 200 calories, make certain that they are contained in food that will do you good and keep you feeling satiated. A bar of chocolate will give you a blood-sugar rush for 20-30 minutes, but a doorstep of a cheese and salad sandwich made from whole grain bread washed down with a glass or two of water will give you plenty of fibre and vitamins and fill you up for a couple of hours.

It is always a good idea to keep a diary of what you consume and when. This way you can compare days and weeks and see what works best. It also helps if you are reducing your consumption in stages. Mark what you eat with the amount of calories in that portion. If you do not know exactly, estimate it. Writing something down is better than nothing.

The next part is the part I don’t like – exercise. Regular exercise. The good news is that it does not have to be too much. Two thirty minute walks a day is pretty useful. Once in the morning and once in the evening. Or walk in your lunch time and after your evening meal. If you like, regular visits to the fitness center are even better, but they are also easier to skip or give up altogether.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight programs. If you have an interest in losing weight too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight? This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.

February 10, 2010

Treating Acne Scars

Acne scars are an awful memento of the having suffered pimples or even acne before. They are unbearable because of their seeming longevity and their non-complimentary appearance. Generally speaking, acne scars are rather difficult to eradicate, but tissue regrowth is not impossible these days with all the fantastic technological developments.

In general terms, by acne scarring, we are referring to the healed lesions caused by an acne infection. While most scars are temporary and disappear naturally in time, those from the more severe forms of acne can become permanent.

Acne scarring can be prevented if the sufferer visits a doctor when it is in the incipient stage, particularly if nodules or cysts accompany the red pustules on the skin’s surface. If the bouts of acne have marked your skin, you will have to approach the issue from another perspective, which most of the time means surgery.

Laser resurfacing is one possibility of removing the damaged skin areas and stimulating the natural regeneration of the tissue beneath. The procedure requires only local anaesthesia and can take between a few minutes and an hour depending on the extent of the problem.

Fractional laser therapy is one of the most recent methods of eliminating acne scarring. It involves surgical intervention at deep skin layers. The treatment is superior to both dermabrasion and laser resurfacing in terms of quality and involves a much reduced healing period. Nevertheless, fractional laser therapy lies within the reach of only those few fortunate people, who can afford it, since it is the most expensive acne treatment available so far.

It can happen that other sessions are necessary to improve the condition of the superficial layers of skin, before they can tackle the deep level treatment of the acne scarring. The doctor may inject collagen into the scars in order to elevate the existing skin level or she/he may suggest micro-dermabrasion for the same purpose. Trying to carry out chemical peels at home is a bad policy given the chance of aggravating the condition by irritating the scars even more.

As for the types of acne scarring, they can be classified by the way they look. Scarring can result because of an increase of tissue or due to a loss of tissue They both have an adverse impact on the way the face looks. Specialists’ evaluation of the nature of the scars is a very important factor for the decision of adopting one form of treatment or another.

Are you having trouble treating acne scarring? If you are or you’d like to know more about acne, please go to our website entitled http://treating-acne-scars.com Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

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