I picked up a new copy of HomeLife Magazine at church Sunday and immediately turned to the “Living Well” section.
Dino Nowak’s article, “Sneak Attack,” was absolutely shocking. The subtitle explained, “If you’re battling your weight, hidden calories may be the enemy.”
Here’s the opening:
You walk into the local coffee shop and order a large white chocolate mocha (with whipped cream of course), accompanied by an apple pastry. Congratulations! You just consumed more than half of the average adult woman’s entire caloric intake for the day.

What! Nowak explained that the coffee and pastry add up to more than 1,000 calories, including …read more

I used to skip breakfast pretty often. I just wasn’t hungry. And it made me feel kind of good — like wow. What a woman I am — who needs breakfast?
Well, I was wrong. Skipping breakfast is a big no-no if you want to be healthy long-term, and in the short-term, if you want to lose weight. Eating breakfast somehow … mysteriously … raises your metabolism, so your body says, “Woohoo. We’re happy. Let’s get moving and burn those calories.”
If you skip breakfast, your metabolism slows down — your body kicks into starvation mode and won’t let any of that …read more

OK. This morning was the grand weigh-in. After two weeks on the South Beach Diet, here’s my moment of truth:
TEN POUNDS … GONE. I’m ten pounds lighter than I was 2 weeks ago. People, this diet rocks! I’ve written before about what you cut out of Phase 1 — I gave up pasta, rice, bread, potatoes, fruit, and anything with sugar. I stuck to the diet pretty well until last weekend when I ate a few spaghetti noodles and some potato chips. And sure enough, the scale was up a little the next day. So I might as well just …read more

After reading reviews of The Devil Wears Prada in The Writing Life and Mom Writes blogs, I decided to give this movie a whirl. It’s definitely a chick flick — but one that’s worth going to see.
This was my first time going to the movie theater since starting my new diet. I’m basically eating the same way a diabetic needs to eat — avoiding sugary/ high carb foods. So there was nothing we could eat from the concession — is this how all diabetics feel? Why don’t theaters offer anything healthy? My mom and I split a chocolate Atkins protein …read more

Are you a lady blogger? Interested in why women blog? Then you’ll want to check out the Carnival of Beauty at Mary DeMuth’s Relevant Prose blog today. Lively Women is among the 26 participants. I think this falls under the category of “emotional wellness,” right? Many of us blog for a sense of community and … uh … sanity.

Do you exercise regularly? Or do you dread it, thinking you just don’t have time or energy to do a real workout, so why bother? The National Institute on Aging recently conducted a study of 302 active adults over age 70 to measure their fitness levels. They discovered that any type of simple physical activity may lengthen lives — no sweating required.
For a period of six years, the participants in this study kept track of how many calories they burned every day. Here’s what researchers found, as reported in WebMd:
The most physically active participants were nearly 70% less likely …read more

You’ve heard the expression — is the glass half-empty or half-full? I’ve discovered the older I get, the more I want to be around optimistic people, who see it as half-full. Sometimes I turn to books or the internet to find people whose attitude I admire (especially since I’m a stay-home mom surrounded by young kids most of the time).
Here’s an article, Optimism Comes With Age, from Science.com that explains research from the journal, Psychology and Aging. The study’s leader, Derek Isaacowitz of Brandeis University says:
By focusing more on positive things and avoiding negative ones, older adults are able …read more