My Busy Life

Life... sometimes it really gets the better of me. One day I'm graduating high school, the next I'm 34 and my son is a Sophomore in high school. Taking a good look at myself I realize, I have lived too much of my life as an overweight women!!

So, I have a goal of losing 100 lbs. Yep, 100. It may take a while, since I didn't gain it overnight, but I'm determined. Between my husband, my trainer, the workout equipment and videos, and joining Weight Watchers, I really have no excuse now. I'm already down 22 lbs!

I have my good days, and my bad days. The trick is to recover from the bad days, and recognize that I'm not perfect, but I'm trending in the right direction. So I've decided to bring my Random Thoughts back to life, and post about my weight loss efforts along with other things in my life.

Who knows, maybe something in my journey will help someone else.

Until next time,

The Blogoholic

Do Your Part Against Childhood Obesity

For no cost, you can help this problem, and get a little something in return too.

Childhood is a growing problem, and we can all do our parts. The First Lady, Michelle Obama is running a contest for "apps for healthy kids." One of my favorite little companies, Break Pal, is a finalist in this contest. They are trying to get their app into the schools to help kids, not just to help with the obesity rates, but the mini exercise breaks help with concentration too (this is true for adults as well). Break Pal integrates exercise right into the daily routine in short bursts, I've been using it and it helps with my productivity at work.

Please take a moment to register and vote for them, it's a great product that could really benefit our youth and give them longer healthier lives.

If not for the kids, do a little something for yourself. Here's part of a message I received from Phil at Break Pal (he and his wife are the owners):

Our application is the only one to integrate exercise into the day and also teach about nutrition.

Unfortunately we are a very small organization. Just my wife and Myself. We bootstrapped the entire project and built the app without outside funding.

We are competing against huge national corporations and unfortunately they are using their marketing power to garner votes for their apps and are leaving us in the dust. Some of them have PR firms working for them to get votes and I'm sure many ask their hundreds of employees to vote.

This is Where You Come In

I think that maybe bloggers can compete against these PR firms. It's worth a shot. Who better is there?

So I've decided to do something drastic.

I'm going to give out a premium version to anyone who votes for our app. They just have to contact me and tell me they voted and I'll give them a premium account. No catch. A free premium account and a thank you for voting.

It takes less than 90 seconds to vote.

What do you think? Would you vote for us? Would you be willing to spread the word? Maybe post it on your blog. It wouldn't take a full review or anything (unless you felt like it). Just a post saying we're giving away as many free memberships as people will vote for us.

As a blogger I'm sure you know all about contests and how great it is to win one. Getting into this contest has been the biggest thing that's happened to us and we really hope it can launch our program. This will bring it nationwide exposure.

If your interested here's some information

Easy voting instructions (this will take less than 90 seconds):

1) The fastest way to vote is to go directly to the registration page first. https://www.appsforhealthykids.com/register

2) You'll then need to confirm your email address (don't worry they won't spam you)

3) Go directly to our app and click vote http://www.appsforhealthykids.com/application-gallery/break-pal

4) Bonus - Share on facebook and twitter.

That's it!!!

We've produced a video on the subject with the help of our local 
Public access Television station. If you've got time there's some great information here.
http://www.breakpal.com/blog/help-end-childhood-obesity

Thank You, we really appreciate your support

Phil Weaver
www.breakpal.com
(209) 772-1954
139 Main St.
Valley Springs, CA 95252



So please, take a moment and help out our pals ant Break Pal. And if your really feeling generous, share on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking site you use. You can link to this post for instructions.

Until next time,

The Blogoholic

Meditation

In order to deal with the stress in my life, I have started meditation. After much research, watching programs on meditation, reading books, talking to others, and searching the internet, I decided on what was right for me. My meditation consists of a quiet environment, and a burning candle. For 10 minutes I concentrate about seeing nothing but the flame of the burning candle, staring calmly at the yellow tip of the fire, allowing my eyes to relax and the images around that flame to fade to darkness. When it feels right, I close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing, when I feel my mind start to wander, I open my eyes just enough to see that flame again and re-concentrate on that flame to quiet my thoughts.

The goal of my meditation is to relieve the everyday stresses I've been letting get to me, and calm my thoughts. My hope is that relieving these issues I will be able to sleep better, won't feel like I need to play games to relax, will be able to get a good night's sleep, and will have the centering of body that will allow me to naturally and safely drop some excess weight I've been carrying. I also hope to see an improvement in my immune system, my energy level, my drive to complete things I've started, my memory, and concentration. I think my family would be happy to see an improvement in my mood swings too.

Sounds like a lot for such a simple thing as meditating for 10 minutes a day, and who knows I may be hoping for too much here. But my research has shown me that stress can cause immune problems, moodiness, difficulty sleeping, and weight gain, so why wouldn't relief of that stress cause a reversal of those problems? We'll see how it goes.

Until next time,

The Blogoholic

I Hate Ironing!

Why can't we make more fabrics that don't need to be ironed? We can make a car that can plug into our house. We've put men on the moon. We can make a box that can decode images sent from satellites in space (TV). So why do I have to stand by an ironing board with this silly gadget and try to get wrinkles out of my clothes? Is this really necessary? You'd think that somewhere along the line, someone with influence would just shout ENOUGH!!

People of the world unite! We will not iron our clothes. We will not pay someone else to iron them for us. We will not get to the hotel for a business trip, pull out a nice outfit for a business meeting only to realize that it's so wrinkled from the trip that we need to spend an hour ironing it! I'd rather spend that time in the jacuzzi. Now I know, there are some places out there making wrinkle free clothes, and I applaud them. {Hooray! Bravo! Clap, Clap, Clap} But it's not enough. Clothing manufactures everywhere, listen to me. Make more wrinkle free clothes! And make them less expensive. I can't pay $200 for a skirt, and $500 for the jacket to go with it. I don't even spend that on shoes!

But what difference can one little person make (OK, so I'm not all that little, but you know what i mean.) So until I can get a suit in wrinkle free fabric, I'll hang out in my t-shirts, jeans, and workout pants. . . Now look what you've done. If I'm in a t-shirt and workout pants already, I won't have a decent excuse not to workout. So now I'll start working out more, lose weight, and none of my clothes will fit. So I'll have to go out and buy more clothes (that probably won't be wrinkle free!) to replace my wardrobe. *Gasp* They're doing it on purpose... It's all a plot to get us to buy more clothes! How sneaky and manipulative. Will they stop at nothing. How dare the clothing manufactures trick us like this. It's appalling. Unite against the beast, don't fall for it, stay strong my sisters (and brothers), don't let them fool you into working out and potentially losing weight because the only thing that doesn't get wrinkled is your workout wear! Don't let them trick you so you have to buy a new wardrobe! . . .

....... I wonder if I've let my mind wander too much today.....

Until next time,

The Blogoholic