It is just starting to snow and I thought the best way to keep warm would be to look at some of my Flip video footage, especially of warm weather, and make a couple of one minute Wow! videos for your viewing pleasure.
This one was taken in Chicago on the short stretch of sand by the lake and features words of wisdom about looking fabulous and chic – in other words, not fat, according to the Son of Mildred, Seth Krakauer.
Here’s to your svelteness!
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
I was watching yet another morning show urging everyone to join in the lose-weight-now! hysteria sweeping the airwaves. The best infomercial exercise products! Cutting calories while keeping huge portion sizes! Five minute exercises guaranteed to flatten your belly!
Hey, weren’t these the same people who clobbered us with cookie recipes a month ago?
We are a yo yo nation of weight watchers. I suspect we are the only place on the planet where over eating is a cultural norm. In a way, I am almost ashamed by the endless aisles of choices that assail me in the supermarket. The effort and enterprise invested in bringing us to this point serves a profit motivated incentive, not nutritional, not humanly beneficial.
So we are obese from option overload. How many different brands and varieties of potato chips really need to exist in the universe? Why must I feel compelled to taste test them all to find the truly best bag? Are you addicted to them like I am?
Thankfully, I get up and run every other morning whether or not it is cookie platter season or not. The discipline it takes to do that trickles down into eating right and treating my body respectfully. It also takes me away from the television screen where most of the people are who are busy ordering Shake Weights for $29.95 for a limited time only.
Weight Loss by Walking
I am willing to bet you that if you decided to put one hour of walking in your day no matter what, that determination would affect your whole attitude towards treating your body well. You would feel better and become addicted to that feeling. Eventually that will overpower your desire to eat randomly and recklessly.
Prove me wrong.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
When I go to work, I get to work so that I have a great day.
When I go out to run, I get moving so that I have a great workout.
You have to get great to be great.
Now that we have cookie plattered ourselves into the a new year, I am detaching myself from the refrigerator and working on having less of me around. My two favorite demons, diet and exercise, are back with a deliciously wicked twinkle in their eyes as they hover over my alarm clock set to go off at 5:00 am.
Getting up to run on the beach sounds very romantic and evolved when I am having my second cup of coffee with skim milk, no sugar, in the late morning. Sitting groggy eyed and reluctantly throwing off my blankets in the dark and early morning is another story.
Of course, the reward is afterwards. The feeling of having run five miles before the sun is up infuses my entire day with an energy that can only be described as amazing. It is so worth the effort.
For any of you who want to exercise daily, the challenge will be the same for you as it is for me whether you do it at 5:00 am or at a more civilized hour. And that challenge is consistency. Doing it every day, every other day, or whatever schedule you choose for yourself.
Of the many things I have tried to help me achieve this, I offer three tips that always work for me:
1. Get a friend
There is nothing like guilt to get you going. Knowing I have to meet Andrea, who has also dragged herself out of bed to meet me and would never let me hear the end of it if I rolled over and went back to sleep, gets me up and out.
2. Get through the first five minutes
I let myself whine and complain for five minutes. That usually wakes up the rest of my brain.
3. Get moving
Don’t just lay there. Sit up. Wiggle your toes. Swing your legs over the edge of the bed. Put one foot in front of the other. Keep doing that until you find yourself actually running or exercising.
See you on the beach!
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
People don’t change. Window treatment, socks, seasons, taste in boyfriends do.
Only a tremendous amount of focused willpower will change a habit or a pattern of behavior. ”In the long term, willpower alone won’t work for difficult behaviors. You need to take a different approach, such as changing your environment, removing triggers and taking baby steps.” says Stanford psychologist BJ Fogg.
So how do we apply this to, let’s say, losing weight?
Here are some ways to do it:
Change your environment
Put the carrots, celery, fruit and spring water up front in the fridge. Make it a pain in the neck to reach for the stuff you know is bad for you. If you are an evolved creature like my mom, the Buddhist from Bayside, you probably can live with that duality of fattening and nonfattening. Me, forget it. I have to toss out the stuff that tempts me. But I do live in a house with my husband Seth and my thirteen year old son, Sky who both have an addiction to Cheezits and potato chips so I do practice what I preach.
I try to recreate the produce section of the supermarket in my kitchen. It is easier to eat the things that are good for you such as fruits and vegetables if there is a lot of it in your house.
Remove triggers
Use what you can to change your attitude. I personally find a combination of vanity and fear works wonders for me. My trigger is really a goal. I want to look and feel fabulous in my size 6 jeans. This desire triggers my stumbling down to the beach at 5:00 am every morning to run, my focus on the number I see on the scale every morning, my decision to make my eating style changes into lifestyle changes.
“Oh honey, you look perfectly fine. I just love the way you look.” I hear that a lot. But deep down I know you will love me more when there is less of me.
Taking baby steps
Do not try to lose twenty pounds in a week. Focus on achieving one lifestyle habit change like not eating after six pm. Make that an automated behavior so that after a while you don’t even think about it and the thought of eating anything at night does not occur to you. I recently made the decision never to snack while driving. This has eliminated my second cup of coffee, the temptation of a toasted bagel and a mid afternoon snack, easily 800 – 1200 unnecessary calories a day.
Structure your successes strategically.
Willpower is highly overrated. Who has it, who needs it?
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Egg nog. What is a nog? Why would anyone drink that with an egg?
And fruitcake? Two words – Puh leese!
I have now completed my second week of festive fressing (Yiddish for stuffing yourself with food) and refuse to even acknowledge the presence of my scale. How can I be Wow! when I am wide?
Sigh! This is so not good.
Do you find yourself starting to expand, physically as well as spiritually, as we descend deeper and deeper into delicious Decemberness?
Fortunately for you, I have figured out a way to remain fit and fabulous. Simple to say, difficult to do but I am sure we can do it.
Here it is. The Law of Five Things for People Who Love to Eat.
On the days you do not have a lunch date, dinner, or holiday office party where you will be surrounded by food, do the following:
1. Do not eat anything with more than 5 ingredients. That will immediately eliminate junk food, fast food and processed food. Eat an apple.
2. Walk 5 times a day. That’s right, make it a point to get up from your couch, your chair, your divan and walk. Take the stairs instead of the elevator, that counts as a walk. Park your car a block away from where you have to be and walk. Make up any excuse to walk and you will be surprised at the difference it will make.
3. Drink at least 5 glasses of water a day. Water is good for you.
4. Avoid eating more than 5 times a day. All of those snacks you casually pop into your mouth between meals can really add up.
5. Eat your last meal way before 5 pm. This really works especially if you like to graze through the evening with your hand in a box of Cheezits. No food after 5. You will love how that lower number on the scale looks in the morning.
You know this is all common sense and a little self discipline – something we all have and something we all can pull together before we all begin to look like a fruitcake.
Try it and see.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
I write for love and money. It is my everyday passion. What's yours? 
