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I live in Los Angeles and am a stay-at-home mom with two children. When my son was starting kindergarten, my husband and I expected certain adjustments for him—separation anxiety, socialization issues, exhaustion from the demands of learning. What we didn’t expect was an adjustment issue of our own: the birthday party predicament.

Having lived in L.A. for a few years prior to kindergarten, we had heard birthday party stories: glamorous, high-powered parents with lots of money, lots of guilt and not much time trying to top each other with piñatas stuffed with $5 dollar bills, swimming pools drained and filled with salt water and barking seals, goodie bags from MOCA! To these people, their child’s birthday party is a tone setter, a first impression that says, “This is who we are and would you like to get your face painted?” But we thought we had avoided all of this.

We had chosen our son’s school—a low-key Episcopalian one—for its committed teachers, its sweet and polite children, and its uniforms. We saw the uniforms as a great leveler of class and affluence barriers in the land of “I can do anything better than you.” What we didn’t realize was that at school in their light blue shirts and dark blue pants everyone might be equal, but after school, the gloves were off.

The first birthday party we attended was a catered affair in a private room at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard—the flagship location of the chain of rock ‘n roll nightclubs. Walking in, I felt slightly guilty about the $9.99 tub of plastic dinosaurs from Ross I had brought as a gift, but I ate a lot of pasta salad and soon I felt better. After the kids had feasted on pizza and chicken, there was a reptile show with iguanas, chameleons, and an absolutely huge snake that was passed around and then placed on a mom’s head. The kids had fun, but for me it was less like a birthday party and more like going out to lunch. I enjoyed sitting on the overstuffed furniture, eating food I didn’t have to cook off a china plate, chatting with the other parents.

But I wondered, who was the party really for? Was all this really necessary? It was probably costing more than my wedding. I mean, my wedding didn’t have valet parking. I also couldn’t help but wonder if, for the kids, the same effect could be achieved with, say, a rented video and a little cereal tossed on the floor.

To compete or not to compete—that was the question we faced for the next few months before our own son’s birthday. Should we pull out all the stops so people wouldn’t think we didn’t care, or, God forbid, we couldn’t spare the money? Or should we just low-key it and blame it on our own Generation X-ness? We agonized over a party at a gym (too expensive), our apartment (too small), our backyard (we didn’t have one). Then we struck upon an idea: bowling and pizza. What could be more wholesome and fun? It even had an anti-establishment, blue-collar feel to it. Bowling and pizza? Three hundred dollars. That nixed that. The money we’d need to even contemplate becoming serious contenders in this contest was being spent on tuition.

In the meantime, the competition was closing in from behind. At party for a friend of my younger child, a petting zoo was set up in the backyard complete with “farmhands” dressed in overalls and red-checked shirts. The children could enter a sparkling clean corral filled with fresh straw and pet bunnies, ducks, and goats while Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring” played on a boombox. I couldn’t stop thinking about what they had given the animals to keep them from pooping. In that respect, it was certainly unlike any farm I had ever been to. Then I overheard a man reminding a toddler that they had met before in Hawaii while he and her mommy were making Jurassic Park—didn’t she remember? It was at this moment that I grabbed my husband’s arm and told him we had to leave. “The party?” he asked. “No, Los Angeles,” I answered.

Whatever happened to Musical Chairs? Remember when a birthday party was at someone’s house, and they decorated the dining room with crepe paper and balloons, and you played games? Pass the Parcel? Pin the Tail on the Donkey?

We finally decided to have my son’s party at the beach. It was a gorgeous cool February day, and the kids flew kites. My son loved his Pikachu cake that my husband had cleverly crafted and iced a fluorescent yellow. At the very end of the party, a California Grey Whale rose up out of the ocean, shooting spray out of its blowhole. All the kids ran down to the water, screaming and pointing. The whale breached, rolled over and flipped its tail up in the air as if it were waving at the children and wishing my son a happy birthday. There was a stunned silence as everyone absorbed this vision of nature’s power and beauty.

My husband and I looked at each other and smiled. We had pulled it off. Not only had we thrown a terrific party for about 50 bucks, including bagels, cream cheese, fruit salad, cake, and $1.99 kites as party favors, it had all been capped by a perfect moment—a celebrity sighting of one of the largest mammals on earth.

It was a day we would all remember and our son was thrilled. We turned away from the water and walked slowly back up the beach, chatting about how beautiful and rare it was to see a whale. Then one of the dads tapped me on the shoulder. His own child’s birthday was coming up and he wanted to know if I would mind giving him the whale’s card.

The post The Great Conundrum of Planning Children’s Birthday Parties appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

You have decided to go for it. You have talked to your doctor, cleared your cupboards, and had some tests done. As you will soon discover, the Blood Sugar Diet isn’t quite as tough as you may fear. Yes, you are going to be living on 800 calories a day for the next few weeks, but your body should adapt reasonably quickly.

Below are guidelines of what to expect at certain check points during the diet.

The First 2 Weeks
Once you’ve started, you will find that you begin to lose weight fast. Some of it will be fat, but initially you will also be passing a lot of urine. It is essential that you drink at least two to three quarts of calorie-free fluid a day or you will become constipated and get headaches. What you drink is up to you, as long as it doesn’t contain calories. It could be ordinary tap water.

If you are not thrilled with plain water, try disguising it by adding a squeeze of lemon or lime, or fresh mint and cucumber. I love seltzer with lots of ice and lemon, fruit-flavored tea, and the occasional coffee (with only a splash of milk). Some people like drinking hot water; oddly enough, there is evidence that heat alone can soothe hunger. Drink zero-calorie sodas if you must. But avoid fruit juice and smoothies.

The first two weeks are likely to be the toughest, as your body adapts to fewer calories, but this should in turn lead to some dramatic changes.

The 4-Week Review
The next key moment in your dieting odyssey will be the four-week review. By now you will be halfway through the diet, and hopefully things are going well. You will have lost a lot of weight, with much of it coming off your waist. Your blood sugars will be starting to stabilize at close to normal levels. Your sugar cravings will likely be much reduced. And ideally you should revisit your doctor to repeat blood tests and scans, if you’ve previously done them.

So, what changes can you realistically expect to see in your weight and blood sugars by the end of four weeks? Well, in Dr. Taylor’s original study, his volunteers, who started out at over 200 pounds, had lost an average of 22 pounds by the end of four weeks, most of it fat. They had also lost nearly 3 inches from their waist. Everyone reported feeling better, sleeping better, and being more active. Blood pressure and cholesterol levels also improved across the board.

At the End of 8 Weeks
By the end of the eight-week diet, if not before, you will see some big changes in your body shape and biochemistry. You should be sleeping better and feeling a real sense of achievement.

Perhaps you need to buy some new clothes to fit your new, slimmer self; maybe you stop and look in mirrors to admire the difference. So pull out that old photo. Take a new one. Post them on Facebook or Twitter.

By the end of eight weeks most people will have reached their targets, but some won’t. Perhaps you have more weight to lose; maybe your blood sugar or A1C results have not improved as much as you’d hoped for. If you feel you are heading in the right direction but are just not quite there yet, I suggest that rather than continue eating 800 calories every day, you move to the more flexible 5:2 approach

The Blood Sugar Way of Life
As I’m sure you know, many people who go on a diet end up gaining back some, if not most, of the weight they have so painfully lost. But this is not inevitable. The main thing you have to do is create a lifestyle you can stick to. If this involves avoiding all your favorite foods and running twenty miles a day, then it will fail. Be realistic.

Don’t despair. Lots of others have lost weight and kept it off. I lost 20 pounds three years ago, and occasionally I put a couple of pounds back on. But I find I can rapidly lose them again. I’m sure the main reason I’ve succeeded in keeping off the weight is because I’ve gone from gorging on sugary carbs to following a Mediterranean-style eating plan. That, along with increased activity and practicing mindfulness, has helped me keep diabetes at bay. The following are a few other things I’ve found useful and which are now a way of life for me. They are based on numerous conversations with diet experts.

• Try to sit down at the kitchen table for every meal. If you eat on the run or in front of the TV, you will eat badly and go on eating well beyond the point that you would normally feel full. We pay little attention to what we are eating when we are distracted.

• Try to eat slowly. It takes time for the food you eat to reach the parts of your small intestine where cells release a hormone, PYY, that tells your brain, I’m full. That’s why you will eat less if you eat slowly.

• Eat a lot of soup. It is filling, cheap, and practical.

• Don’t drink lots of alcohol. Alcohol contains plenty of calories and makes you disinhibited, so you are more likely to snack. I have switched to drinking red wine and try to drink only when I am eating. I also leave the bottle on the other side of the room because I know that I am less likely to fill my glass regularly if I have to get up.

• Keep tempting foods out of the house or out of sight. In a fascinating study Cornell University researchers found they could predict family’s weight by the foods left out and visible. If breakfast cereals, for example, were visible, then the owners were on average 21 pounds heavier than people in households where the cereals were tucked away.

• Know your weaknesses. Mine is toast. So I keep unsalted nuts by the toaster, so when I am tempted to snack on toast and jam, I eat nuts instead.

• Wear a belt. One of the surest ways of telling that you are putting on unhealthy fat is when your belt starts to feel tight again.

The post How to Have Success on the 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

Exercise is hugely important for health, particularly if you have difficulty controlling your blood sugar levels. As we have seen, the starting point for most Type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance, a condition in which your body stops responding to insulin, forcing your pancreas to produce ever larger amounts of it. And the quickest and most effective way to reduce insulin resistance is to do more exercise.

The problem is that many people find doing exercise tedious or unpleasant. In this post, I present the strength training portion of my program that will give you the maximum benefit in the minimum time.

Up until you’re 30, your muscles get bigger. Then, if you don’t use them, they get smaller. You can lose 5 percent of your muscle mass every decade from age 30 onward.

To keep your muscles, you have to do some form of resistance training. You could go to the gym, or try what I do, which is a simple regime designed to be done anytime, anyplace, anywhere. With my plan you exercise as many major muscle groups as possible, and alternate between them, so the ones not being worked get a bit of a rest. I start with push-ups (working the upper body), then follow these with something that works the core (abdominal crunches) or the legs (squats).

What I do is based on a paper in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health and Fitness Journal, and I do it at least three times a week, first thing in the morning. It only takes a few minutes. My favorite exercises are push-ups, squats, abdominal crunches, the biceps curl, and the plank.

Push-ups. Get into a push-up position with the palms of your hands under your shoulders and the balls of your feet touching the ground. Keep your body straight. Lower your body till your elbows form a 90-degree angle and then push up. If you find this too hard, do it with your knees on the ground.

Squats. Stand with feet apart. Bend from the hips, keeping your weight on your heels. Make sure your back is straight. Keep bending until the legs are at a 90-degree angle—imagine you are preparing to sit in a chair. Push back up without bending your back. Squats work the biggest muscles in your body. If you want to make this harder, add weights.

Crunches. Lie on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the floor, and your hands by the side of your head. Curl up your upper body without lifting your lower back off the floor. Make sure your chin is tucked in toward your chest. When your shoulders and upper back are lifted off the floor, curl back down.

Biceps curls. This requires a small handheld weight. Stand with feet apart and hands by your side, with one hand clutching the small weight. Then, with your arm kept by your side, raise your hand by bending your elbow. Transfer the weight to your other hand and repeat.

Plank. Lie on the floor and then raise yourself onto your forearms and toes so that your body forms a straight line from head to toe. Make sure your midsection doesn’t rise or drop. Squeeze your buttocks and hold the position for as long as possible. Remember, this position should never cause pain in the lower back.

I suggest you start in week one of the diet by doing one set of 10 repetitions of each of these (with 20-second holds on the planks): 10 push-ups, 10 squats, 10 crunches, 10 biceps curls, and 10 planks. Do this three times in the first week.

Aim for two sets of 10 repetitions in the second week, and three sets by the fourth week.

The post 5 Exercises Essential to Your Health appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

This year we’re getting a head start on the Easter Bunny’s to-do list and offering a wonderful prize pack for kids 4 and up. Enter for a chance to win by clicking on the graphic below. Hop to it!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Prizes include a 3-book set from our partners at Downtown Bookworks and PBS Kids, plus Hide N Squeak Eggs and a cute little basket you can use to collect toys long after the bunny hits the trail.

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“Before everyone are life and death. Whichever they choose will be given to them.” —Sirach

After being burned on 100% of my body nearly 30 years ago, I needed this reminder, but more importantly I think it is a reminder we all need each and every day. We must choose to not just be awake, but to truly live.

My challenge to you today is one that shares hope, possibility, empowerment, and life and allows you to inspire all those around you to not just get out of bed each day, but to instead be On Fire for their lives.

Watch the video and Live Inspired.

The post Which Do You Choose: Life or Death? Fire or Water? appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

The Mediterranean diet has become incredibly popular ever since studies showed it can significantly cut your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and possibly Alzheimer’s.

It’s a diet that emphasizes the importance of eating fruit, vegetables, oily fish, nuts, and olive oil. Yogurt and cheese are warmly embraced, as is a glass of red wine at the end of the day (though this is optional). There are carbs in this diet, but the sort that your body takes longer to break down and absorb. That means legumes (beans and lentils), not pasta, rice, or potatoes. I think it is a fantastically healthful and tasty way to eat. It takes many of the best features of a low-carb diet and makes them more palatable.

Indeed, the Mediterranean diet is the crux of the Blood Sugar Diet. Below are three recipes, one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to show how much 800 calories really is. It’s more than you might think but less than you’re used to. The key to this diet is that every single mouthful packs a punch. And it scores high on what dieticians call the satiety factor—the feeling of fullness after eating that suppresses the urge to eat between meals. You should feel satisfied by smaller portions and won’t stay forever hungry and preoccupied by food. As you watch the weight fall off you will get a lot of positive reinforcement to keep you going.

Below are some sample recipes from my book to demonstrate how filling 800 calories really can be! Try these recipes, and see how satisfying the meals can be!

Portobello “Toast” with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts
150 CALORIES
SERVES 1

2 Portobello mushrooms
Drizzle of olive oil
Salt and black pepper
1 1/2 ounces goat cheese
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1 handful snipped chives

Preheat the broiler. Place the mushrooms on a baking sheet, drizzle with the oil, and season with a pinch of salt and plenty of pepper. Broil for 3 minutes.

Remove the mushrooms from the broiler, top with the cheese, and sprinkle with the pine nuts. Return to the broiler for 2 minutes more. Remove from the broiler and sprinkle on the chives.

Skinny Spicy Bean Burgers
280 CALORIES
SERVES 2

4 mushrooms
1 handful cilantro
14 ounces canned cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
14 ounces canned kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 egg
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 chile, finely sliced
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon chili powder or a few drops of Tabasco sauce
Flour
Olive oil
Bag of salad greens
1 tomato, sliced

Place the mushrooms and cilantro in a food processor and process until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.

Add the beans and egg and blend together to form a chunky mixture. Stir in the rest of the ingredients.

Dust your hands with flour and shape the mixture into 4 burger patties.

Heat a drizzle of oil in a large pan and fry the burgers over medium heat until brown and hot all the way through.

Serve with handfuls of salad greens and thick slices of the tomato.

Zucchini Ribbons with Shrimp
390 CALORIES
SERVES 2

1 large or 2 small leeks, thickly sliced
1 zucchini, spiralized or cut into ribbons with a peeler
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
1/2 red chile, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
7 ounces shrimp
7 ounces canned cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
Salt and black pepper
2 handfuls cilantro, chopped

Steam the leeks for 4 to 5 minutes, until tender, adding the zucchini for the final 2 minutes. Set aside.

Using a food processor or a mortar and pestle, make a paste with the ginger, chile, garlic, and lemon juice.

Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat, add the paste, and sauté for a couple of minutes.

Add the shrimp and beans and cook for 10 minutes, until the shrimp are pink and cooked through. Add the leeks and zucchini to the pan and toss.

Season with salt and pepper and then top with the cilantro before serving.

The post Why the Mediterranean Diet Is a Proven Favorite appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

It’s March. I know. It was just New Years, and now it’s March, which is the start of spring, and spring leads to summer. Even the mention of summer conjures up images of bathing suits and, well, more bathing suits. But it’s ok right? You made another New Year’s resolution to lose weight back in January. And […]

Call it The Good Girl Effect: Women are taught from an early age to be nice and accept what they can get. Asking for more than they’re offered, or worse—what they really want—is always a no-no. When little girls grow up and enter the workplace, the shame that they carry around negatively affects their financial lives. Women are four times less likely to ask for a raise than men. And over the course of a lifetime, that can take a huge financial toll. So take a deep breath and have that conversation with your boss. Here are a few tips to get you through.

Be Prepared
Timing is everything, especially with raises. Are cost-cutting reminders being sent to everyone on a weekly basis? Did the holiday party get downgraded to a potluck in the lunchroom? Be conscious of the overall financial picture of the company. Wait for a moment when you know there is some wiggle room in the budget.

If the time is now, then do your homework. Find out what other people in your field are making to come up with a ballpark figure. Come armed with information, and ask for a merit raise between 1% and 5%. Be judicial: If you are just getting by, you are unlikely to get more than a 1% raise. But if you are putting in a lot of overtime, try going as high as 6%.

Don’t Whine
No one likes a complainer. You’re working too hard? Guess what, your boss is working harder, most likely in ways that are not obvious to you. And even if she isn’t, she believes she is—so either way, your complaints will fall on deaf ears. Going negative will get you nowhere. It’s best to stick to the facts and positive figures to win over the higher ups.

Demonstrate Why You’re Worth It
Are you personally responsible for increased revenue for the company? It’s important to point out specifics about how your contributions are growing the company. Use numbers, statistics, and any other concrete facts you have to make your case. You should be integral to the overall success of the company in order to get that bump—show them that you are.

Don’t Compare Yourself to a Coworker
If you know a coworker is making more money than you for the same job, it is inappropriate to bring that up in this meeting. Your boss already knows that the other person is making more, and may be upset that the other person let the news out. Don’t rat out your friends, just stick to demonstrating why you deserve a raise.

Talk about the Future
How are you going to contribute to the company moving forward? By describing in detail to your boss how you will help her and the company as you all grow together, you are showing that you are worth the investment that they’re making in you. And be sure to follow through on those promises. That will keep you in good graces for more money next year, too.

The post How to Ask For (and Get!) a Raise appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

Divorce is a huge life transition, but unlike other major changes, we may come to it totally unprepared. We plan for other upheavals—especially good ones. We save for years to send a child to college. We make lists months ahead of a major move. We might take a year to plan a wedding. But we don’t spend the waning years of marriage flipping through glossy divorce magazines, or zip down to the bank to open a Divorce Savings Account the minute friction arises. We continue to invest in our marriage, as we should. To some, it feels disrespectful to a marriage—or even morally suspect—to actively plan for a successful, calm un-marrying.

This not-planning is understandable, but it contributes to what can feel like a whirlwind of chaos. As with a natural disaster, an emergency preparedness tool kit can help you weather the storm. A divorce tool kit doesn’t contain canned frankfurters and bottled water, but rather the tools you need to establish order, resume calm, and remind yourself that you are in control.

A Divorce Tool Kit contains:

New routines for daily chores. In marriage, we tend to divvy up the duties. One cooks; the other does the books. The stronger partner hauls the carry-ons into the overhead bin; the more fastidious one swipes the tray tables with scented wipes. Now you have to figure out how to handle both partners’ tasks alone—or line up others to help. Mastering the routines calmly and confidently might involve asking neighbors for the name of a good handyman or tech support person, and meeting that person in advance. You might want a reliable babysitter, housekeeper, lawn maintenance person, or even cook, if that’s within your budget. Try to be honest about the household tasks your partner really did handle. If you fought over these basic routines, this is a chance to reestablish systems in your home that suit you better.

So many adults live alone today, with or without children at home, and services have cropped up to enable us to manage solo living more easily. You can buy single-serving salads at grocery stores, a single-cup coffee maker to replace the large pot you used together—even a split of champagne for celebrating a victory. You can order pretty much anything you need online, from groceries to cleaning supplies to paper goods to furniture. As alienating and lonely as this transition can be, it’s also an opportunity to break any limiting or destructive home-based habits that developed in your marriage, and replace them with more supportive, uplifting productive routines—whether that mean switching to an organic diet, taking time to call your distant relatives at night, or even catching up on reading.

A plan for dousing emotional flare-ups. Connection with others helps us regulate our emotions. This is one reason your former spouse might act “crazy”; he’s missing out on the salutary connection he had with you. In divorce, our emotions can ricochet wildly, and we no longer have another adult in the house to catch them—or talk us down.

When we feel bad, the natural reaction can be to lash out. Picking a fight is a common response to an inner whorl of negativity, but riding out moments of anger rather than acting on them can prevent a decent divorce from devolving into a disaster.

One man told me he’d sent nasty e-mails to his ex in the midst of their divorce. She showed them to their children, something it had never occurred to him she might do. “Those e-mails still affect my relationship with my kids,” he said. “I apologized to her, but they still have those e-mails in their minds. They’re in college, and it stands between us.”

Note to self: Never hit “send” in anger.

In divorce, most of us need to identify a new verbal support partner or team. Many people turn to a professional counselor, coach, or spiritual guide. Some people find help from cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of talk therapy based on the premise that our worst feelings often arise from twisted thinking and can be argued down by marshaling real evidence against it. Emotions are feelings, not facts. They feel like facts, but they aren’t.

We probably also have to expand our repertoire of self-soothing techniques—physical and mental activities that reliably shift our mood. Different things work for each of us. Think about what has helped you calm down and right yourself in the past, and have these approaches ready when you feel overwhelmed, anxious or angry. If running along the nearby trail reliably soothes you, make sure your shoes and socks are ready, and head out whenever you feel yourself becoming lonely or scared, or itching to pick up the phone and yell at your once-spouse. Have easy, at-home options too, such as listening to your favorite music, flipping through art books, calling a friends, even taking a nap. Emotional regulation is a key to having a good divorce, and it’s a skill that improves with practice.

An emergency responder. Who will take you to the ER at 2 a.m., or stay with one child while you take the other? In marriage, it’s usually that live-in emergency responder, our spouse. Identify other people you could turn to in a crisis, and ask them to be on your emergency support team. Give an extra key to your house to a trusted friend or neighbor. Offer to be the emergency responder to someone else—helping others is empowering, and reminds you of how much you do have to give.

You may never need to reach out for help, but lining up emergency responders lessens the feeling of being vulnerable, due to divorce. For many, myself included, our ex remains our emergency responder, at least in the immediate aftermath of separation. This worked for me, but with time, I could see how it might be more empowering to have someone else’s name to write on the “in case of emergency” line on standardized forms. I wanted to be less dependent on him, and to fully know that I lived within a community of support, and that there were people around I could turn to, should I need

With time, most of us learn to handle many of the tasks we once delegated, or perhaps never learned. So many people I interviewed spoke about the real pride that came with the challenge of “fending for themselves.” This is one stealth benefit of suddenly going solo—you can gain new competence, and the confidence that comes with knowing you can do so much yourself.

The post Divorce Tool Kit: 3 Items for a Successful Unmarrying appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.