Blogger Sucks

Why I Moved to WordPress

Well, today’s the day. I’ve finally had it with Blogger.com. Now I’ m having to move, by hand, all the posts from my old blog, since there’s no way to do it automatically if you’re not hosted on Blogspot. Fine.

Why am I moving? Suddenly you can’t even make a simple post without seeing the “Your publish is taking longer than expected. To continue waiting for it to finish” and you click and click and … nothing happens. I don’t know what went wrong but it seems Google’s dropping the ball on Blogger.com.

Hopefully I’ll get it moved, find a great new template and all will be well with the world soon enough, but meanwhile, if you find a broken link, or just want to gripe, drop me a comment. 🙂

Losing Weight with 100 Calorie Snack Packs

The New York Times printed a story in July, 2007, “In Small Packages, Fewer Calories More Profits” that you can portion out the full-sized bag yourself and save money, but who does that? We’re a nation of food and beverage guzzlers. With self discipline at an all time low, 100 calorie mini-packs are perfect. More importantly they’ll slowly train consumers to eat a more reasonable amount at snack time. I applaud the manufacturers for getting this one right.

Check this list of 100 -calorie snacks that actually keep you full and satisfied.

Drop a Load – No, not in the toilet!

Targeted Google Ads Not so Smart

Google is pretty simple minded, I’ll tell you. I wrote a post in my other blog, Katy’s Morning Rant, (my personal place for just dropping bits of info as I find them), and I posted about a site called DropLoad.com where you can post a large file rather than sending it via e-mail. The funny bit were the Google ads that popped up; all about toilets! Drop a load = toilet ads? Google, you slay me.

Update: Apparently DropLoad was too popular and went the way of the other Web sites with zero revenue. Buh, bye!

Alternatives to try include JetBytes and SentuIt. Try these instead of emailing someone 20mb of photos.

What’s this got to do with weight loss

It’s about distraction, pure and simple. Keep busy. Find something that’s so interesting, you forget to eat. It happens. If you are working and find you keep wanting to go to the kitchen, it may be you are either anxious, bored or both. I know when I get involved in a project, I don’t think about stopping, in fact, sometimes I get hungry but don’t want to stop what I’m doing, and guess what? Hunger leaves for a time. It returns later, but you won’t drop dead if you miss hunger’s call now and then.

One-Size Fits All Diets Do not Work

Learn to incorporate healthier eating habits into your daily life, rather than trying to eat according to someone else’s plan. Even if you can stay on a strict diet, what’s the sense when you finally quit the diet and just gain the weight right back?

There is no One-Size Fits All Diet. Why do they serve a 5 foot, 120 pound woman the same plate of food as a 6 foot, 215 pound man? Why do they suggest the same 1200 calorie diet for an active woman and a sedentary one? It makes no sense — better to create a diet plan that works for you based on what you usually do (activity wise), your age, size, and other health factors.

The Day You Quit the Diet Turns into the Day You Decide to Gain Weight

Usually it’s the day you choose to eat something “off plan” that tosses your plan straight out the window. This is exactly why restrictive diet plans don’t work for the long-term. If you don’t learn how to eat what you love responsibly, or you try to avoid the foods you love entirely, you’ll obviously not be able to stick with it for very long.

Far better to learn how to eat within your usual lifestyle and create new habits that you then can live with, so even though it’s summer and there are weekend picnics and lots of those “special occasions” to indulge. It’s okay if you overeat today because you just get back to your new usual habits tomorrow. That’s how you can lose the weight and maintain your loss from now on. Eat a reasonable diet the majority of the time and indulge once in awhile instead of the other way around.

If you want a treat, have a treat, and no, it’s not a treat if you eat it every day; That’s a habit. Work on your habits, one at a time until you turn them back into the treat they once were.

Check out Wahines: One Size Fits All from the post pic above. I absolutely love these and want them. I’d like a pair in chocolate too!

Lose 5 Pounds – TV Turn Off Week

Researchers agree that family dining (meaning families dining together) creates healthier family members. But lookout, a recent study showed the benefits of eating together as a family were negated if dinner was served in front of the television.

In other words, turn off the tube. April 23-29, 2007 in the U.S. is TV-Turnoff Week. I doubt advertisers are too excited about it, but you might be when you realize you can lose up to five pounds by trying this. If you can’t go cold-turkey then just try turning it off for dinner.

Weight loss is also accelerated by less TV watching simply because you’ll do less mindless eating. Think of how often you’ve eaten an entire dinner yet missed the experience because your attention was on the TV set? It’s no wonder we go back for seconds and thirds, and start eating snacks shortly after. We’re missing the joy of eating!

Visit the Center for Screen-Time Awareness for TV Turnoff Week.

Food Porn: Not Your Daddy’s Banana Bunker

Gotta love the Banana Bunker. This nifty gadget has all the earmarks of porn, but it’s functional. All kidding aside, the Banana Bunker allows you to take the King of Fruits wherever you go with no worries about crushing, mushing, or generally making a mess. Banana Bunker
I’m talking about bananas. Now you can carry one in your bag, keep it in the car (of course it’ll ripen fast if it’s warm), even toss one in your briefcase. Going camping? Got bananas? The Banana Bunker completely protects your banana in a hard plastic sleeve resembling a … well, picture a banana and you’ll get the idea.

If you can keep people from laughing and telling bad jokes, this is a real weiner, er, winner. I got one in every color.

For weight loss, carrying a piece or two of fruit for those “I’m starting to get hungry but it’s two hours until dinner” times is a great way to get more nutrition, and stave off the cookie grab. Nature made fruit sweet for a reason.

I use my Banana Bunker. It works and they always get a laugh so it’s two-for-one.

Perfectly Sweet Winter Sale

The 2007 Winter Sale at Perfectly Sweet is in progress. Now through February, although they say quantities are limited, so they may run out on certain items.

Perfectly Sweet is a business born of necessity. The owner’s father had Type II Diabetes and something had to be done. Today they sell only sugar free or “no sugar added” products.

My Scale of Woe: Adventures in Weight Loss

The Scale Is Not My Friend

I got a surprise when I stepped on and found I’d gained over five pounds. In one week! Now how does that happen? I don’t know all the answers but I do know I haven’t done anything unusual so there’s no logical reason. Because of that I’m not going to knock myself around or say, “I’m gonna start a diet on Monday,” since it’s most likely water weight that’ll come off all by itself when my body’s ready to let it go.

It’s quite unusual to wake up and suddenly be heavier, so if you quickly gain five or more pounds in a week with no obvious reason (I’m not talking about the five pounds you gain because you’re eating everything in sight but when it comes out of the blue, unexpectedly–you know the difference) and it doesn’t disappear on its own.

Looking for clues. Have you changed or started any new medications? Eaten any foods you don’t usually eat? Water retention can be a side effect or reaction to other things you’ve ingested so be a detective.

Notify your doctor if rapid weight gain continues as it can be a sign of illness or drug reaction. Generally it’s nothing to get worked up about and if you’re eating a reasonable amount of healthy foods it’ll fall back off all by itself. Don’t go all crazy and jump on the latest fad diet andwagon. Just Relax. Have a cup of tea. You will be fine.

If you know EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) use it on your anxiety: “Even though I’m huge, I deeply and completely accept myself.” If you don’t know EFT, it costs nothing to learn and you have everything to gain in learning how to lose weight for good. Get The Daily Bites, Little Lessons in Losing Weight the Easy Way