Jul3

Fitness coffee

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I found a new coffee at my grocery store called Fitness Coffee and since I’m working out and trying to be more fit, I decided to try it. The package read that it has “3.5 times the antioxidants that green tea has and significantly more than red wine.” The price was about $1 more than my normal coffee, so what the heck?

Fitness Coffee

Fitness coffee does not taste like other coffee!! With all the extra herbs and supplements added, it tastes like my dieter’s tea, which is a diuretic. So, naturally, I was afraid when I drank it right before work one Tuesday morning. Luckily, there have not been any crazy side effects or sudden urges to run to the bathroom.

The website claims that it’s patented formula “could enhance your workout, speed up your metabolism, help you lose unwanted pounds, and speed up muscle recovery.” There are all sorts of ingredients including liquorice, mints, cinnamon, cancer fighting, and tumeric. I’ve been drinking it for a week, although not every day, and I do feel I have lost some water weight with it and maybe my metabolism has sped up a bit. After a few days I decided to only use 2 scoops (instead of 3) and add a scoop of my usual, decaf coffee to help with the bitter taste.

You can read more about it here. The company also makes a Fitness Barley, Fitness Orzo, Fitness Tea, Fitness Caffe Healthy Espresso pods, AND Sensual Coffee. (Don’t worry honey, I will only bother you for 3-5 hours.) You can read more about their other products here.

Jun10

Thalassotherapy

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So I’m watching this documentary on HDNet about the Baltic Coast (it comes on every Sunday morning and I’m a complete nerd for it). Anyways, they started talking about a spa treatment popular in Europe called Thalassotherapy. It uses red, green, and brown algae and they put a coating all over your body and then wrap you up in a heat blanket for 20 minutes.  The seawater mixed with the algae is supposed to flush out all the toxins and pollutants in your body and reduce cellulite and tiredness in your body.  The woman they interviewed about it believes in the healing of the sea and became a Thalassotherapist once she experienced the treatment herself.

I can’t freaking find this treatment anywhere except for Lake Austin Spa and that’s almost $200!!  So I’m on a mission. Maybe Lake Austin Spa wouldn’t be so bad because it is in town and if I head out of town then I will still pay the same amount to travel.

Here is some more information about Thalassotherapy if you’re interested:

http://www.traveltowellness.com/thalassotherapy

http://www.epigee.org/thalassotherapy.html

http://www.wellness.com/reference/health-and-wellness/thalassotherapy

http://www.seaweedbathco.com/thalassotherapy-and-balneotherapy

May1

Alcohol and Fat Metabolism

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Four weeks ago I started in a new diet program at work.  Diet is emphasized here because it’s not really a diet program so much as it’s a new way of living life.  The program is called Nuvita and allows you to track your exercise and calories burned through a watch and band you wear while working out.  You also track your daily food intake and mobility (stretching).  The program seems to be successful and we have a coach that meets with us every Monday to review the program and go over lessons.

Last week, our coach reviewed alcohol and what the intake can do to your body and metabolism.  I, personally, know that alcohol is a huge factor in my weight gain.  I’m pretty sure that if I stop drinking and limit it to only special occasions I will probably see a good drop in my weight.

I wanted to share the document she sent to all of us that discusses alcohol and weight gain.  I’m not a doctor but, it makes sense.  And, it’s interesting to see how long your body haults your metabolism when drinking.

I have written about the effects of alcohol on fat metabolism before.  During my recent interaction with employees, I was asked about this subject.  I was presented with several statements similar to the following, “I eat really healthy, but…… I like to have a few beers. Is that why I can’t lose weight?”  The article below should answer that question.

The main problem with alcohol aside from the number of empty calories it contains is  the effect is has on fat metabolism. A recent study, for example, has shown that even small amounts of alcohol have a large impact on fat metabolism. In this study, eight men were given two drinks of vodka and lemonade separated by 30 minutes. Each drink contained just less than 90 calories. Fat metabolism was measured before and after consumption of the drink. For several hours after drinking the vodka, whole body lipid oxidation (a measure of how much fat your body is burning) dropped by 73%.

The reason why alcohol has this dramatic effect on fat metabolism has to do with the way alcohol is handled in the body. When alcohol is consumed, it readily passes from the stomach and intestines into the blood and goes to the liver. In the liver, an enzyme mediates the conversion of alcohol to acetaldehyde followed by a rapid conversion to acetate by other enzymes. So rather than getting stored as fat, the main fate of alcohol is conversion into acetate, the amount of acetate formed is dose dependent on the amount of alcohol consumed.  The more you drink the more acetate formed. For example, blood levels of acetate after drinking the vodka were 2.5 times higher than normal. And it appears this sharp rise in acetate puts the brakes on fat loss.

Also alcohol, because it can be considered part way between carbs and fats, has more calories than carbs. That’s why even the low carb beers contain less than 100 calories even though they only have about 2.5 grams of carbs and .5 grams of protein. While the carbs and protein only make up 12 calories, the 12 grams of alcohol make up the remaining 80 or so calories.

• 9 calories per gram of FAT

• 4 calories per gram of PROTEIN

• 4 calories per gram of CARBOHYDRATE

• 7 calories per gram of ALCOHOL

Daily alcohol consumption will slow or stop your results. The drawbacks are probably going to far outweigh any health benefits. Your liver can’t metabolize alcohol and fat at the same time. It will always get rid of the acetate converted from the alcohol first. That means that as long as there’s alcohol in your system you won’t be burning any body fat. If you have one or two drinks, you might stall your fat loss for a few hours. If you have quite a few drinks, it might be as long as four days before you’re metabolizing fat again.

If wine with dinner is part of your lifestyle, and you’re not in any particular hurry to have abs like a cheese grater, you might experiment a little. See if you can have a glass of wine a few times a week and still be making progress. If it’s really slow going, keep cutting back the number of drinks until you’re satisfied with the level of your results.

Apr19

A new salt pig!

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“What is that?” you ask. I’m asking the same thing. I saw this cute fishy on Etsy.com when I was looking for a new way to store my salt and pepper.  The only problem is I don’t know what type of salt to put in it and how long it is supposed to good for.  Now I need a pepper mill!

 

Feb22

A nice conversation

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Right click on the link to open in a new window and hit play to listen while you read: We are young

 

The setting: Jacob and I were laying in bed.  He was asleep and I was up watching Conan.  The band Fun had just started playing their new hit “We are young.”

Jacob wakes up: I love this song but it sucks live.

Me: Conan said it’s their first live performance singing this song.  They’re supposed to be in Dallas at the House of Blues in March.

Jacob: Cool.  What’s the name of the group?

Me: Fun.

Jacob: Fun?  Can you text that to me?

Me: You want me to text Fun to you so you can remember it?

Jacob (very sleepy): Yes.  I don’t think I can remember it in the morning.

Me: Okay.

So I text Fun to Jacob.

The End.

Jan30

Ethics

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I’m writing a paper for my business ethics class.  It has to be 4-5 pages long and about an ethical decision I know of personally or something I read in the paper.  I decided to write about Martha Stewart and her insider trading conviction.  I finished the paper in about 1 page.  So, I started digging deeper to get more information and make my paper more interesting.  There are two things I’ve discovered about myself from this paper.

One! I’m not so sure I believe what Martha did was unethical.  Was it wrong and did she break laws?  Sure!  But, did you know she only gained $51,000 from selling her stocks early?  That’s pocket change for a billionaire like her!  She gives that out as Christmas presents each year (I’m assuming).  The company who she owned the shares of stocks in is a pharmaceutical company who primarily does research on cancer drugs.  Martha’s early payout didn’t bankrupt that company and didn’t ruin people’s retirement dreams the way Enron did.  I also think Martha is super smart and I don’t believe she did anything sneaky.  And, maybe I’m saying that because I get details to things going on in my company all the time and it’s never a big deal until someone makes it a big deal.

Two!  Why can’t I write papers like I write in my blog?!  I can sum up the facts about an event so well but teachers put these requirements that papers have to be a certain length.  Why?  Who says?  You will know what I’m talking about in a 2-page paper.  Oh well.

I’m determined to improve my writing skills with the blog and with that have something to write in the blog from my school experiences.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. — Gustave Flaubert

 

Jan26

D3 vitamins

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Last summer a coworker of mine told me that she may have found a vitamin to help with her mild rosacea.  She said it was D3 and she buys the liquid form and put drops under her tongue.  The maximum daily amount shown on most pill bottles is 4000 IUs, which is four drops for her.  She really noticed a difference in her skin and the redness and breakouts were not as bad as before.

I went to Walmart and bought my own D3 but I got it in the pill format.  I decided to only take 2000 IUs each day and see how that worked.  It took some time but at about four weeks of using it I realized I had not had any deep, bruising pimples I used to get.  And, any tiny blemish I did get was gone within 24 hours.  I continued to use the pills every day and never had an outbreak.  About 10 days ago I ran out of the vitamins and just held off on buying more until I went to the store over the weekend.  Five days passed and I got a breakout.  The deep, bruising pimples were back.  When I got home with the pills I immediately took 4000 IUs (4 pills) and then kept up with my daily 2000 IUs.  My skin is better again but it was amazing that just only 5 days of not taking the pills I broke out.

I’m not a medical doctor or involed in selling pharmaceuticals.  I’m just noting my own personal experience with these vitamins.  You can research vitamin D and see that it has a major play in skin and diseases that affect your skin, like psoriasis.  Besides helping the skin, vitamin D can help with rheumatoid arthrits, blood pressure, and PMS.  I also just read an article that researchers are in an early discovery to see how vitamin D can help out with Lupus and you can read it here.

If you want to try vitamin D3, be sure to follow the instructions on the bottle and if you have any questions, contact your doctor.

Jan26

More ways to save!

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I have mentioned in some of my recent entries that I love reading a blog called Daily Worth.  It a special blog designed for women who want to save for the future, whether it’s for their kids or for a trip to Italy.  I can’t remember how I stumbled upon it but you can sign up to receive blog posts, which come once or twice a day.

Daily Worth was also one of the places I had heard about www.mint.com.  More recently, they announced a $1,000 sweepstakes for those using mint.com to set goals and budgets.  All you have to do is to set a goal to save $1,000 using Mint’s goal features and send a print screen of the goal to dailyworth.  You’ll immediately get entries into the drawing.  Then, if you actually save $1,000 you could be one of three winners who will win $1,000.  You double your savings!!

To sign up for the Daily Worth, go to www.dailyworth.com.  To read more about the sweepstakes, go to here.

Jan24

Goal #2!

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Today I did it!  I woke up at 6am when Jacob jumped in the shower and talked my sweet butt into getting up and going on a walk.  Every night when I’m going to sleep I try to see myself getting out of bed the next morning full of excitement for a walk and it never works.  I told Jacob what I was doing and he told me it was cold outside.  It didn’t seem cold inside so I checked the weather.  It said 55 degrees but was supposed to rain.  I ran downstairs to check the weather myself.  Cool but no rain.  I ran back upstairs to get ready and get the dogs ready to go with me.

We started our walk.  The dogs have to do their business before we can actually get going.  Once they’re done and I get onto the street, here come the sprinkles.  I keep on going.  While I’m trying to speed up my pace, and keep the dogs from smelling every blade of grass, there are random drops just falling from the sky.  I tell myself to start jogging a bit to hurry.  Katie doesn’t feel like running so I’m basically pulling her along with me.  I get maybe .5 miles down and the sprinkles get heavier.  We turn around.  Now, Katie is ready to sprint back home.  (Keyword: treats) So we run all the way back.

When we get back in the house I thought I’d do some sit-ups since my walk was shortened.  While I’m laying on the ground, Ginger keeps dumping her frisbee on my chest to throw it for her to fetch.  I only end of doing about 100 sit-ups, but again, it’s better than nothing.

I’m proud of myself for not letting too many excuses get in the way of me actually exercising a bit this morning.  Tomorrow it’s supposed to be pouring rain so maybe I’ll dance in the living room to Wii.

Jan23

Unsubscribe!!

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One of my hoarding habits is keeping emails, especially the ones that offer discounts or coupons from retailers and online stores.  You just never know who may be offering a great deal right when you need that perfect birthday present for a friend or just need a new door mat.

New front door mat I bought from zulilly.com. Just arrived!!

I read on my new favorite blog, Daily Worth, that one way to help you save money is to avoid being inticed by sales and new products from emails.  I probably spend an hour of my day shopping online simply because of these emails.  In the back of my mind I’ve always known the emails made me spend more than if I never received them but I couldn’t stop receiving them because WHAT IF I MISS A SALE?!?!  This time I made a deal with myself.  I will give up all the emails until I pay off my debt and then I can subscribe to those that I really make purchases from.  Over the weekend I worked on this project and unsubscribed from all the notifications I receive except for two and the Groupon and Living Social sites (they are coupon sites, after all!)  Today the number of emails I received was minimal and I didn’t even go into withdrawl!  I feel a little liberated, too, like I’m no longer a closet shopper.  I’m another step closer to paying off my debt sooner!!

Just don’t unsubcribe me!!