The Discovery Training is more physical than I expected.

I’m in the best shape of my whole entire life.

And yet . . .

The peeing my pants in public is just too much.

Stupid post-birth incontinence.

I finally went to my room for the Diva Cup. It helped.

Today I ordered the bizarro Berman Center Isis Beginner Pelvic Kegel Trainer Muscle Exerciser.

I saw it on Oprah.com during the Best Life Web Cast with sex therapist Laura Berman.

Evidently my vajayjay needs her very own workout – with weights. It’d be humiliating if it weren’t so hilarious.

In a few weeks, she says I’ll be strong enough to graduate to this bad boy:

Post from: Blisstree

Kegel Olympics

It occurs to me, watching all those angry, frustrated, fed-up women. . .

Perhaps it is only hormones that makes women put up with so much of everyone’s shit.

Maybe, when we’re in our mid-to-late late 30s, 40s, and 50s – we’ve had enough already.

Perhaps it’s the lack of estrogen that makes women finally stop. Putting up with the world’s shit, I mean.

Post from: Blisstree

Hormones On Oprah

Blog Fabulous is participating in Bloggy Giveaways by giving away the very popular Fit Girl T-shirt from The Girl Revolution.

We’re tackling this pesky childhood obesity epidemic by running a Fit Girl Series (Obese Teens on Oprah & Weight = Moral Failure) and our lifestyles and how it’s effecting our kids’ health. There will be many more aspects of the issue to explore.

I want to give you a Fit Girl shirt.

The Girl Revolution (that’s me, Tracee Sioux) has been nominated to win Best Mommy Blogger from Scholastic Parent and Child Magazine. Go to Scholastic entry page and type in your email address and www.thegirlrevolution.com website address. It would be very prestigious and exciting.

Leave a comment on this blog post saying you did so and you’re entered to win! Will ship to US Addresses.

Easy peasy!

Oh and visit other great Bloggy Giveaways, including winning a Red Goddess Box for your daughter’s first period.

Post from: Blisstree

Win Fit Girl T-Shirt

A tip for your self esteem during a lifestyle change. . .

Don’t weigh-in if you’re on your period and experiencing the PMS Pain Body. If you do – you will take it personally that you’re right back where you started.

Take the week off. Not from exercise – because I’ve found that if you are carrying the pain of all women, everywhere, since the dawn of time – that vigorous exercise and yoga is a really good thing to do with all that negative energy. The endorphins to the brain are priceless too.

But, definately boycott the scale during that time. It’s just another way to show yourself some kindness.

Post from: Blisstree

Boycott the Scale during Pain Body PMS

–Barack Obama, Speech in Washington, DC

November 10, 2005

Fixing the Nation’s Health Care System: More than 19 million women are uninsured in this country, and women are more likely than men to delay or not get medical care because of high costs.

Empowering Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last twenty years.

Supporting Research into Women’s Health: Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women, accounting for nearly 39 percent of all female deaths. Also, arthritis, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and depression.

Fighting Cancer: Ovarian cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer-related death among women in the United States

Reducing Health Risks Due to Mercury Pollution: More than five million women of childbearing age have high levels of toxic mercury in their blood and more than 630,000 newborns are born every year at risk.

Supporting Stem Cell Research: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that we owe it to the American public to explore the potential of stem cells to treat the millions of people suffering from debilitating and life-threatening diseases.

Supports a Woman’s Right to Choose: President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him.

Preventing Unintended Pregnancy: President Obama was an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims.

Reducing Domestic Violence: One in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Family violence accounted for 11 percent of all violence between 1998 and 2002.

Strengthening Domestic Violence Laws: Approximately 1,400 women a year — four every day — die in the United States as a result of domestic violence. And 132,000 women report that they have been victims of a rape or attempted rape, and it is estimated that an even greater number have been raped but do not report it.

Fighting Gender Violence Abroad: The genocide in Darfur has had particularly devastating consequences for women. Tens of thousands of women have been killed, raped, and displaced since the conflict began in 2003.

Fighting for Pay Equity: Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Expanding Paid Sick Days: Today, three-out-of-four low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. It is fundamentally unfair that a single mom playing by the rules can get fired or lose wages because her child gets sick.

Investing in Women-Owned Small Businesses: Women are majority owners of more than 28 percent of U.S. businesses, but head less than 4 percent of venture-capital-backed firms.

Protecting Social Security: Americans are increasingly at risk of working their entire lives only to face retirement in poverty.

Raise the minimum wage: President Obama and Vice President Biden will raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.

Helping Low-Income Workers: The President and Vice President will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce.

Protecting Title IX: President Obama and Joe Biden support eliminating gender discrimination in American schools.

Expanding Early Childhood Education: President Obama has been a champion of early childhood education since his years in the Illinois legislature, where he led the effort to create the Illinois Early Learning Council.

Post from: Blisstree

Obama Administration Agenda On Women

I’ve been reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.

He introduces the idea of a Pain Body. The Pain Body is also discussed in great detail in his other book A New Earth.

Basically, he says that one part of the human condition is a pain body. We have personal pain bodies that result from things that happen specifically to us. But, we also have collective pain bodies that come from being members of a group – women, for instance.

Tolle says that because of several thousand years of oppression, repression, violence, rape, battery, harassment, slavery and sexism baby girls are born with a collective pain body associated with being female. Carl Jung spoke of a collective consciousness, a similar idea.

PMS and menstruation is when women tend to identify with or lose ourselves in our pain body, Tolle says. This results in physical symptoms like cramps or headaches for some women, but also in bad attitudes, negativity, anger or frustration in many women.

In other words – one explanation of PMS would be psychic pain for all crimes against femininity throughout history – starting with Eve. There’s a great deal to be pissed about.

The degree to which this affects women is determined by how much they identify with the collective pain body of women or being a woman.

Feminists, for example, might identify with the pain body deeper because their identity as women is stronger and they are aware of and focus on crimes against women in general. Feminists identify strongly with “what men have done to us” and the resulting pain.

Likewise, a “submissive wife” would feel a high degree of the feminine pain body as she associates a large part of her identity with “the curse of Eve” and taking care not to step out of her “proper role.”

Both are a version of a “victim identity” and keep women in bondage to the past. But, there is true power and peace available to women in the present moment, says Tolle.

The cure for PMS and identification of the Collective Feminine Pain Body, Tolle says, is to stay present during our PMS or our menstruation cycles and recognize our bad attitudes, cramps, emotional roller-coaster as “just the pain body” and try to dissolve and “transmute” the anger, pain, unforgiveness into forgiveness, love and peace for the crimes against womanhood historically.

Thus transforming our psychic pain into true psychic and spiritual power.

Post from: Blisstree

PMS = Women’s Collective Pain Body

Man, I really wish I could post on Blog Fabulous today. But, I’m swamped giving away a bunch of prizes elsewhere.

I do have this to say. Fruit makes me gassy and bloaty. Had to stop at the health food store for some enzymes to handle my new eating habits.

I love taking Mondays off my workout routine instead of Sundays. I always have time on Sundays and too much work on Mondays.

Also I’m learning to understand the value of outsourcing.

Photo credit: Newly redesigned and relaunched The Girl Revolution

Post from: Blisstree

Too Busy to Post

At RealAge.com you log on and take a test about your exercise, eating habits, vitamins and supplements, social habits, diseases or illnesses and vices like smoking and drinking.

I updated my Real Age this week and I’ve gotten SEVEN YEARS YOUNGER as a result of my lifestyle changes in the last two years. Since last year I’ve reduced my Real Age by nearly THREE years.

Chronologically I am 35.4 years old, yet my Real Age is only 32.5.

When I began my dramatic lifestyle change two years ago, I took the Real Age test. I was 33 at the time, but because of my lazy-ass lifestyle, my pack a day smoking habit for 20 years, and the demon of anxiety and depression that controlled my life, not to mention living in a horrendous environment that made me sick with allergies all the time – I was 38.5 years.

Screw That.

In 2009 I’m upping the ante again. I never want to make any changes I can’t consistently do for the rest of my life. Last year I maintained my weight at 166. Being able to maintain for one year has given me more confidence because I know I made a true lifestyle change that will last. Now, I’m ready to step it up and make more – as I wrote last week in The Secret to Weighty Resolutions.

I started on Christmas Day so it’s been 14 days. I’ve been dedicated to running before the family starts their day. And I’m doing it. Few logistical issues I’m working out, but overall I’m loving it.

It’s dark when I head out to the 1 mile track at the park, so I get to see the sunrise during my run. Awesome. That scary looking guy – the only other person out there at that hour – was sent by God to protect me. He’s getting in his morning run in, the same as I am.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I follow my run with an hour of yoga. It’s still the kindest thing I do for myself.

I’ve lost 2 pounds. I’m logging my calories and educating myself about what I’m eating. In turn, I’m making better choices based on actual facts and not just my own theories about how many calories might be or probably are in foods I eat. It’s impossible to eat consciously if you don’t even know what’s in your food.

Go take the Real Age test and come back and tell me how old you really are. Are you happy with the results? What are you going to do about it?

Oh, and check out Weighting Line if you started the year with a weight loss goal in mind.

Post from: Blisstree

I Keep Getting Younger Every Year

Five-Stars, Two Thumbs Up, Absolutely Fabulous – I’m wearing it right now and I’m not even on my period – that’s how much I love the Diva Cup.

I was skeptical. I didn’t want to spend $20 in case it didn’t work.

But the thought of never having to buy tampons and pads again pulled me in. As much as I’d like to declare that it’s because I’m terribly concerned with how my period impacts the environment, it’s really because I’m terribly concerned with how my period impacts my underwear.

There were leaks every month. Super tampons just don’t stay where they used to stay when I was young and before vaginal births. Pads shift and feel like wearing Depends.

The Diva Cup is a silicone cup. It’s flexible enough to fold up to insert (I recommend sitting on the toilet to insert, then standing to adjust depth and angle for comfort) but, rigid enough that it won’t flop around or tip over when you’re pulling it out. There is a small silicone stem to pull it out. You simply pour the blood into the toilet and reinsert it. I only had to empty it twice a day. There are no known health risks.

Let me tell you what I love about the Diva Cup:

Post from: Blisstree

Green Period, Post-Birth Incontinence & Ovulation – Diva Cup Review

Whatever they are saying about the economy I’m not seeing the negatives.

Everywhere I look there is potential and opportunity.

There’s an Economic Women’s Revolution going on right now in the world and we’re going to see women explode onto the landscape. In large part because so much business can be done on the Internet. More and more of us are asking, Why not me? Why don’t I start that business I’ve always dreamed of?

This year, women will stop the futile wait for The Market to give us equal pay and we’ll create our own opportunity. We’ll create jobs , not apply for them.

We’ll have the backing of a pro-woman government to help assist us.

I’m a part of that. I’ve got my own business going and I expect it to really take off in 2009. I’ve laid the groundwork, crested the learning curve and I’m ready to push it into a new stratosphere.

My husband has a freelance design company that’s also really going to take off. Together our economy will be better than it’s ever been our entire married life. We’ve learned the hard lessons and sucked it up through the hard years and dedicatedly applied ourselves to become disciplined about money. We know what to do now and money is coming our way in 2009. Phew. Finally.

I’m redesigning and republishing my girl blog on Jan. 12 and I’m so excited about it.

I’m excited to be with b5media and Blog Fabulous and hope to take it and my relationship with my readers to a new level.

I’ve also found some local resources that I’m taking full advantage of. I’ve joined Toastmasters, an International public speaking club and I’m joining the Northeast Texas Writers Association. I’m getting a huge adrenaline rush from speaking in public.

This year I expect to make a real professional income consistent with my education and experience. In fact, I will accept nothing less.

My husband and I will help other couples be happily married.

We’ll be more happily married.

I will continue my organizational strategies, I’ll work 35 pounds off my body by putting in the effort and energy to care about what I eat and how much I move.

Is anyone else feeling this optimistic and enthusiastic about ‘09?

Post from: Blisstree

2009 Predictions