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Tag Archives: diet

Beauty Journal: How to Glow from the Inside Out

19 June 201829 October 2018

It’s been some time since I wrote a beauty journal entry, so I thought I would update you on my latest beauty regimen.  I stumbled upon something called Glow 15 over a month ago and I have to say I am a changed woman!

First of all, as a woman who got hit with peri-menopause early, it is difficult to find a diet that will help you with the changes going on with your body, especially when you feel like you’ve aged 10 years in just a short amount of time. Between weight gain, your hair falling out (is that a bald spot?), feeling tired, light-headed, and sleeping more, you are just a complete mess.

In other words, you are getting older and peri-menopause/menopause can throw you deep into the thick of aging.  But what if there was a lifestyle that can help reverse the signs of aging?  Guess what?  Naomi Whittel discovered it.  [Please note this is for women only, not men.]

Glow 15



The reason why this book is called Glow 15 is because of what can happen in 15 days if you follow her recipe for success.  As a result of trying out this new lifestyle, in just 15 days I noticed a significant change.  A month and a half later, and I am still following the lifestyle, because it is the perfect fit for me.

Glow 15 is all encompassing in that it focuses on every single aspect of your health.   You will learn about autophagy and how to trigger it and turn it off.

Autophagy is a self-degradative process that is important for balancing sources of energy at critical times in development and in response to nutrient stress. Autophagy also plays a housekeeping role in removing misfolded or aggregated proteins, clearing damaged organelles…as well as eliminating intracellular pathogens. Thus, autophagy is generally thought of as a survival mechanism…

In addition to elimination of intracellular aggregates and damaged organelles, autophagy promotes cellular senescence and cell surface antigen presentation, protects against genome instability and prevents necrosis, giving it a key role in preventing diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration, cardiomyopathy, diabetes, liver disease, autoimmune diseases and infections.  – US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

In other words, autophagy is a removal of all of the bad cells in your body, while creating new cell growth.  Sounds crazy, right?

Peri-Menopause & Rapid Aging

For me, the reason why I started peri-menopause at 37 was because of a tumor in my parathyroid gland (the gland that synthesizes calcium).  This was also my fourth tumor in 10 years, as well as the most dangerous one of the four.

My body changed a lot after that surgery in 2013.  As a result, I changed completely.

While dealing with the emotional and cognitive issues, I put the rest of my body’s demands to the side.  My body changed completely in less than five years.  We’re not talking about weight gain or anything like that.  What was happening disgusted me because my body was deteriorating.  And I had no clue on how to stop the rapid aging process.

This is me with Matthew Lucifer on Mother’s Day (Day 13) sans makeup. One thing I noticed instantly was how much more supple my skin looked. I could visually see my skin looking younger.

When I saw Whittel’s take on anti-aging, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try to focus on a lifestyle that would focus on anti-aging.  Maybe it could reverse what was happening to me.  Did it deliver?  Absolutely.

After day three, I noticed my skin changing, becoming more supple.  At day five, I dropped eight pounds.  By day 15, my body was so used to the diet that I could not imagine living without it.  I’d lost ten pounds, had more energy, my skin looked amazing, and I was happy knowing that after 30 years of dieting, I finally found the perfect lifestyle for me.

When I went into this, it was about anti-aging.  What I came out with after 15 days was a guidebook on how to approach the last half of my life.  You see, that’s something most women approaching their 40s, 50s and beyond are not briefed on.  We know the ‘change’ happens, but what exactly is it beyond a bunch of pissed off women that don’t have to worry about getting their cycles anymore?

Well, first, you may or may not get your monthly cycle.  It depends.  Some women go months without it and then it magically appears like the great flood.  Other women watch as they go from 3 days to 2 days to 1.5 days to 5 days to…well, you get my point.  It is erratic.

But what happens to the rest of your body?  Maybe if you are like me…you age quickly.  The skin is the first place you notice where you are aging.  From wrinkles to larger pores to sagging skin in places you did not know skin could sag (I am not joking about this)…your body goes south very rapidly.

Last year, I went to see my doctor about the rapid aging.  I knew this had something to do with the changes going on in my body as a result of the parathyroid gland being removed.  She took 8 vials of blood for testing to confirm the peri-menopause (as well as check to make sure there were no signs of the next tumor), and to see what was causing the aging.  We discovered I was deficient in certain vitamins like Iron.  She prescribed a lot of different vitamins to help combat the issues.

As time went on, vitamin supplements were just not cutting it.  There had to be a way to stop the rapid aging.  That was why when Glow 15 came along, I was more than willing to try it out.  I just wanted to stop the rapid aging process.

Also, one of the other benefits that caught my eye was the ability to reverse cancer.  If I could not get that second tumor in my parathyroid gland when I hit the seven year mark, I had a better chance of surviving.  So perhaps the autophagy lifestyle was worth trying.

What is the Autophagy Lifestyle?

This lifestyle encompasses every single aspect of your health.  You’ll start your mornings with a cup of autophagy tea.  On high protein days, you will workout using simple exercises for half an hour.  Breakfast is an AvocaGlow (avocado recipe) with eggs.  On low protein days, you do not workout.  I usually add vegetables with my AvocaGlow so I don’t feel like I’m starving.

On high protein days, I stop eating after lunch in order to begin the 16 hour fast.  This 16 hour fast helps to reset your metabolism before going into the low/no protein day.  I skip dinner on high protein days so that I can have breakfast (the time I am the hungriest).  For those who have dinner on high protein days, you need to eat before 8PM so that you can start your first meal by noon the next day on the low protein day.

I’ve simplified my low days by calling these days my No Protein Veg Days.  Three days a week are my no meat days.  The other four days are protein heavy days.

Sugar, processed foods, bad grains, etc. are off limits.  Most noteworthy is you get to have dark chocolate and wine.  Yes, a diet that allows you to have wine every single night!!!

I do have to remind myself constantly that this is not a diet per se.  Usually when we think of diets, we think of not eating.  I have to remind myself every day that this is not about deprivation.  I can eat as much as I want to, but within in the confines of the types of foods I can eat.  This is about eating the right foods at the right times.

She also recommends vitamins you probably didn’t even know existed (that I believe works wonders with this diet).  But this isn’t just about diet and exercise.  This is about your overall general health.  It includes mental health, i.e. daily meditation and journaling.  It includes self-care, which means mandatory ME TIME that includes sex, spa days, etc.  If you’re single or not having sex on a consistent basis, get yourself a rabbit vibrator.

[amazon_link asins=’B07DBB6H5Z,B079JV241L,B001HO4ERS,B07DRDPCKZ,B0795NL99F,B079JXH51Z,B078Y97YTM’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’us-1′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’5d17882f-73dd-11e8-8f65-0b0a03861899′]

Seriously, this lifestyle is about taking care of ALL aspects of your general health.

No More Buying Beauty Products

While I am quick to purchase the best products from the cosmetics market to help fix X, Y and Z, I learned how to make my own beauty products using Naomi’s recipes.  I am going to tell you right now that I haven’t gone back to my $350 creams since I started making Naomi’s beauty products.  They are not only cheaper to make, but they work more effectively than any other product I’ve ever tried.

The facial mask is my favorite.  I put it on for 20 minutes two times a week, take it off and don’t have to follow with moisturizers or creams like I have with store bought facial masks.  My skin is so much softer and it feels like I applied an effective moisturizer to my face.

Yet, all it is…mayonnaise, wheat germ and bergamot oil.  Three all natural ingredients and they beat every single beauty product I’ve ever tried on the market.

[amazon_link asins=’B00AWNXMI2,B00CNC3SCA,B00EEGHPBI,B000QXAVO6,B00CM8ERPM,B07CQ9H6QC,B00ZAD36ZS,B01DP28C22,B017S2YHL0,B00PHQJWXS’ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’us-1′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’0d09138b-73df-11e8-b63d-97d69cd3854f’]

Ever since I started making my own beauty products based on Naomi’s recipes, the thought of putting chemicals on my face just seems stupid.  I mean, think about it…putting all of these chemicals on our faces is actually contributing to the aging process!  Then we run out to purchase more chemicals to fix the aging process, when we should be avoiding the chemicals completely!  The chemicals are aging us!  I mean, so many products have formaldehyde in them.  Why would we want to put that on our bodies?  Leave that for the dead, not the living.

The Current Results

So after being on Glow 15 for the last month and a half (almost 2 months), I am proud to say I am down one whole dress size for the first time in 20 years.  My hair is finally making a comeback and looking healthier.  My skin is more supple.  The keratosis pilaris on my arms started to disappear (this is without applying products to my arms).  My skin is also not as dry.

I can actually visually see reverse aging.  Not just anti-aging, but reversed aging.

I will be honest that I don’t follow Naomi’s program strictly.  I did during the first 15 days, but after that, I worked its way into my lifestyle by taking days off here and there.  I don’t reset my metabolism three times a week, maybe one or two times a week.  I have one cheat day a week (which is usually on a high protein day).

I will also admit that the only exercise I get is 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night, walking at New Yorker speeds through Manhattan.  Nothing extra.  I’m sure if I did 30 minutes in the morning like the book suggests, I probably would lose more weight faster.  Something to be considered…

I do feel much healthier and my gut feels happier.  I believe if I was stricter with this lifestyle, I would see even more incredible results.  I enjoy the diet tremendously.  I don’t mind the fasting to reset my metabolism.  I figured out ways where it will work for me.  Skipping dinner is easier for me than skipping breakfast, especially since I need to be in bed earlier.

Oh, that’s another thing Naomi talks about…the importance of sleep.  I changed my sleeping habits because of Glow 15.  Matthew wakes up at 3:30AM every single morning.  He immediately runs to me to wake me up because he wants breakfast.  He will not leave me alone until he is fed.  So I get up to feed him.  But the problem with this is that it was hurting my beauty sleep schedule because I can never fall back to sleep afterward.

So now I go to bed before 9PM.  At 3:30AM, I get up, feed him, meditate, get ready for the day and then head to the office early to either do research or write before my work day begins.

Simply put, I realized through this lifestyle that I needed to amend how I was doing life.  People may complain that I go to bed too early, but if you had no choice but to wake up at 3:30AM, no matter what time you go to bed, you’ll change your bedtime to make sure you get enough sleep knowing you have to be up at 3:30AM no matter what day of the week it is.

Realizations

The realizations did not stop with my sleep schedule.  There were a lot of things I needed to change in my life.  For instance, I hate the commute, so I decided to get around it by going to work earlier…before traffic begins.  I can’t write at home, because Matthew sits on the laptop or the piece of paper I’m writing on.  So I took my laptop to the office and scheduled two days a week for writing the novel and two days for blogging.

Mondays are research days for the book.

I have to say, getting to work 2.5 hours before I am scheduled to begin has been wonderful.  I get so much writing done.  It’s quiet.  I answer a few emails from my bosses when I get in (because they are up too), and wait for the first one to arrive at 8:45AM.  He usually leaves me alone, so I can still get 15-45 minutes more writing time in before my scheduled work day begins.

These early work mornings also mean that I get to punch out at 5:30PM every single day.  I don’t have to stay late as much as I’ve been doing for the last 10 years.  My guys got so used to me being at the office after 6PM, they would call me after 6PM, knowing I would be there.  Now, everything is done long before and they don’t feel the need to contact me after 5:30PM.

I found through all of this that I should stop creating excuses for why things are not turning out the way it should.  I needed to change my narrative.

If I’m tired of the neverending issues with the commute, I should just start my commute before the traffic begins.  Ever since I had this realization, I swear to you, I am not pissed off every single morning now that I get to work early.  The correct word to express my morning glow: RELIEF.

Instead of fighting with Matthew over who gets to use the laptop, I brought the laptop to the office to work on my book.

This is what it means to change the narrative, and let me tell you, I am a much happier person because I did something right for myself.  We need to find what works for us, and that usually requires us to change the way we think.  Instead of bitching about how life isn’t working out for us, we should ask ourselves: 1) What is not working, 2) What it is we want, 3) What solutions are available, and 4) Implement that solution.

For instance, say you’re late for work all of the time.  No matter what you do, it’s not working out.  There’s traffic, the bus is late, there’s a disabled vehicle, the trains are not running…basically, it’s the commute from hell and you are not winning.

What you want is to get to work early or on time.  So how do you do that?  What solutions are available to you?  For me, I tested out the train schedules.  I discovered that if I took the 6AM train (or bus), there are always seats (all to myself).  The morning commute rush hour hasn’t even begun yet and it is quiet.  There are also less people I have to deal with.

If I took the bus or train after 6:45AM, that’s when I run into problems, because that is when the commute gets crazy.  Too many people on the train.  You’re lucky to get on the train.

So the solution here would be to take the 6AM train.  I get in early.  I can write in peace and quiet without Matthew sitting on the laptop or typing up his own story.

With Glow 15, Naomi helped me tackle every single issue I was having with aging to reverse it.  It allowed me to contemplate what I wanted out of life in my meditations and gave me more time to live the life I’ve been wanting by adjusting my sleep schedule.

Most of all, this whole experience has been about learning how to live a healthy life for the 40s and beyond.  Just a few changes to my life from Glow 15 turned into so much more…living my life happy, healthy and with purpose.

I highly recommend this for every single woman out there.

 

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Mission 40 – Week 1 Journal Entry

1 September 20153 September 2015

September 1, Day One.

My high school friend came to NYC to visit me in July. We spent an entire week being tourists.
My high school friend came to NYC to visit me in July. We spent an entire week being tourists.

DIET:  Today, I don’t feel like eating.  This is nothing new to me.  I have days where I just don’t feel like eating.  I downloaded the app “MyFitnessPal” to track my food and water consumption.  I started using it last Friday and after a day of logging in my food, water and fitness, I awoke on Saturday to a note from the app saying that it’s apparent I don’t eat enough and that is my problem.

I’ve always found that when I eat more, I lose weight.  I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that wish they had this problem.  For me, food is a challenge.  I just want a little taste of it, not the whole thing.  I only want to take two or three bites to be satisfied.  I don’t want to consume the whole thing.  Then there’s the whole…when you workout, you need to add additional calories to your diet.  To me, that’s asking a lot!

The issue with not eating enough is that it causes problems in the body.  I’ve had doctors threaten to hospitalize me on several occasions because my blood pressure will spike as a warning sign that something is wrong.  This isn’t one of those…it’s been happening for a few days.  It means it’s been going on for a month or longer.  It is all because I’m not eating enough for the body to work properly.  I’m eating less than the bare minimum (800 calories a day).  This is an issue that goes all the way back to when I was in junior high school trying to be thin.  I barely ate.  I skipped meals and then went to basketball practice.  It really messed up my metabolism.

To this day, people always remark on how it looks like I barely eat anything.  To me, I feel like I ate enough for an entire village.  But the truth is…I only had a few bites.  There are occasions where my appetite catches up with me, but that’s maybe once a week, just like it was when I was a teenager.  But what I think is a lot of food may wind up being only 1200 calories…the amount of calories I’m supposed to be eating.  I always feel like I’m going to explode when I eat that many calories.

For those suffering from anorexia and think it is okay…it’s not.  It will fuck up your metabolism to the point your metabolism will become so sluggish, you’ll pile on the weight.  If you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, it actually adds to the complication.

I met a girl recently that was starving herself and she thought it was cool to do so.  She was anorexic and had doctors telling her they were going to admit her into the hospital if she didn’t stop doing this to herself.

I finally told her she could end up like me.  That’s why she needed to take care to eat what her body needed and stop starving herself, especially at her age.  Also, for the record, this little 80 pound girl ate three times more than I did and she even remarked how little I ate.  An anorexic telling me I ate less than she did.

She’s currently in the hospital for her eating disorder.

Eating food is a challenge for me.  It’s gone beyond it being just psychological.  The body is used to not eating a lot because it’s what I trained this body to do when I was a teenager.  I did not give it what it truly needed and that later led to complications with my health.  Teaching the body to eat more will be the biggest challenge for me.

CHALLENGE: My biggest challenge is learning how to eat what I need and eating enough food to optimize weight loss and better health.

SOMETHING NEW:  I read from Dr. Oz that having a glass of cold water when you first wake up in the morning kick starts your metabolism into high gear.  I’ve been keeping a bottle of lime water (using the Zing Anything Citrus Zinger I received from PopSugar Must Have) in the refrigerator so that when I wake up, I can pour myself a glass of ice cold water.  It can be tough to drink a whole glass of ice cold water first thing in the morning (because boy, I can feel it), but it’s a good way to get your body to start burning some calories before you even step into the shower!

DOCTOR’S NOTE:  I had to see my doctor last month because I caught a bit of the Legionnaire’s that was going around Manhattan.  It took me three weeks and a week’s worth of antibiotics to kick it.  While I was at the doctor’s office, he ordered blood tests for every single thing I could possibly need a blood test for since I was complaining about extreme fatigue and feeling lightheaded.  My blood pressure had also spiked.  He had to take my blood pressure twice because he didn’t like the results.

The problem was my diet and the fact I was dehydrated.  I drink a lot of water, but apparently not enough.  The doctor told me that the worst thing I could do to myself right now is drink WATER!  Imagine my shock when he said this.  He told me that I needed to start drinking Gatorade every day.  This, of course, does not settle well with the way I live, so I asked around for some alternatives.  [I’m not big on having high sugar drinks or chemicals in my body.]  My friend sent me a recipe for sports drinks using essential oils.  This was a bit of a godsend.  Essential oils are still a new thing to me, but people that use them swear by them and their restorative powers.  [If you’re interested, you can find Essential Oils HERE.  Amber is more than willing to answer any questions you may have about essential oils.]

ON THE SCHEDULE:  Tonight, I get to screen M. Night Shyamalan’s new film “The Visit” (due out in theaters on 9/11).

ON THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN: On the way into the office, Avril Lavigne’s “When You’re Gone” started playing.  I have to say it made me feel really sad.  It made me think of my grandfather (who died in 2007) and my soulmate (who killed himself in 1994).

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G3_kG5FFfQ]

“The pieces of my heart are missing you.”  Those words hit really deep inside those cracks that surround this mended broken heart.  It doesn’t matter how many years pass, the people you miss the most are always the ones you’ll never see again.  They’re the ones you love most of all.  I oftentimes think of my soulmate and remind myself that someone loved me greatly in this lifetime.  I was his first and last love.  It’s the last love that someone has…that’s the love that matters the most.  People have first loves and other loves along their journey in life.  It’s that last love that means everything.  I was lucky to have met him.  I was blessed to have incredible memories of him.  He has taught me about love in ways I never would have imagined, including how a heart in love with someone that’s gone will always be in love with them. That love never stops.  It still grows deeper with each passing moment.

There have been other loves in my life, but not a love quite like his.  That love was the perfect love.  I was blessed to be his last love…the love that meant the most to him.  I miss him every single day.

“To carry them within us – that is our task.  We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves.  Only they make us whole. If we begin to forget or cast aside those we’ve lost, then…then we are no longer present either. … All the love, all the dead, all the people we’ve known.  They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls.  If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too.”

–The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George

September 2, Day Two.

matthew4Journal: Last night I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit.”  Let’s just say that old people scare me now.  I’ll post up a review on the site later.

I’m now getting back into the swing of hockey and that included my first post of the season, the retirement of Bryce Salvador.  That means more tweeting on my hockey account after taking much of the summer off from social media.  It also means that I have a lot more writing to do.

Something I have been trying to do all summer is get up at 5AM to write and workout.  Matthew Lucifer (pictured here looking annoyed after I took the cup of coffee away from him) wakes me up around 5AM every single morning.  I naturally wake up at that time now thanks to his prodding.  That’s the time he wants breakfast.  [This comes from his days in incarceration (at the shelter).  They fed the animals at 4AM.  When the clocks fall back, it will be a 4AM wakeup call.]

I usually go right back to bed, but he usually follows me and tries to get me back out of bed by biting me until I kick him out of the bedroom and close the door behind him.  Some days he lets me sleep.

This morning though, he did something that made me think he’s not a normal cat (not like I didn’t think this already).  He has an unnatural obsession with water.  I forgot I left my glass on the coffee table last night.  So after I fed him this morning, I laid back down on the couch.  He kept trying to get me to wake up.  I kept grunting, begging him to let me sleep.

After falling back asleep again, I had water thrown in my face.  He had taken the glass of water that was on the far side of the coffee table, moved it across from me, picked it up and threw the water in my face.  A cat did this.

I sat up and wiped the water off of my face.  He just sat across from me looking at me like, “Now you’re awake.”  I want this to sink in for you…A CAT PICKED UP A GLASS OF WATER AND THREW IT IN HIS OWNER’S FACE TO WAKE THEM UP.

Matthew is a pretty good motivator when it comes to getting me to stay awake after 5AM.  He bites, leaves bruises all over my body, scratch marks, and there’s a lot of slapping across the face all in the efforts to get me to stay awake after 5AM.  As much as that little dude is successful with this, I still need to be motivated to write and workout that early in the morning.

CHALLENGE: 5AM wake up calls will now become my 2 hour ME time to write and workout.  I also need to focus on working harder on the things I want to do with my career.  I have so many ideas and goals.  This is the year I’m going to push myself to completing every goal and idea I set forth for myself.

DIET: As for food today, I cheated a little to try and get the caloric intake up so I had 2 candy bars.  Probably not the smartest thing to do after seeing how low I was in minerals and fiber.  I’ll have to change that starting tomorrow.  Also of interest, my sodium intake was 298.  I needed 2300.  Now I understand why the doctor told me I needed to start drinking Gatorade.

TECHNOLOGICAL HELP:  I am using three apps to track what I’m doing: 1. MyFitnessPal, 2. Pact, and 3. Samsung Galaxy Active S Health to track my steps.

My FitnessPal helps me log my food and water consumption.

Pact is a bet you make with yourself that you’ll go to the gym.  You set goals and you get paid for attaining your goals.  If you fail in your goals, you have to pay.  It’s a good way to get paid to workout and to motivate yourself to workout because if you don’t workout, you’ll have to pay into the kitty.

I have the Samsung Galaxy S5 Active phone.  I used apps prior to this phone to track my steps, but it burned up so much of the battery.  The S5 Active takes that issue away.  It also measures and keeps track of my heartbeat and stress levels.  It serves as a compass, barometer and stopwatch.  It’s a good way to keep track of your fitness.  I’m a huge Samsung fan and I highly recommend this phone for those who are active.

CHALLENGE:  My resting heart rate is really high (see yesterday’s entry).  After measuring it 4 times, the median was 100 bpm at a resting rate.  Normal average range for my age is between 66-82 (from ages 20-39 for females) and 57-95 for the total range (bpm).  It’s a little too high for my liking so that will be a major challenge…to get that resting heart rate down to normal.

Also, I took the test from Today.com that calculates your heart’s age.  If it’s 1 year older or more, then you are at risk for cardiovascular disease.  My results said my heart was 43.  That’s a very bad sign.  Healthy hearts are either the same as your age or younger.

CHALLENGE: Diet and exercise is the focus to get the heart back in shape and down to a healthy age.

There are a lot of components to getting healthy.  These three apps really help me see where I need to focus more.  I have to admit, if it weren’t for these apps, I would be so confused and inundated with all of this information.  There’s just so much information out there on how to be healthy.  It’s hard to figure out what you need to do to get this right.  Each person is different and figuring out what is best for you…now that is a challenge in and of itself.

September 3, Day Three.

This is an example of how big Maine Coon cats can get.
This is an example of how big Maine Coon cats can get.

Journal: So waking up at 5AM and staying awake was a fail this morning.  I put down in the original challenge that I wanted to get more sleep.  After one whole year, I finally got Matthew Lucifer to sleep through most of the night.  Although, he’s not really sleeping through the night.  He wakes up around 1AM or 2AM and just lays there waiting for me to wake up when I turn my body.

When he feels me move, he knows I’m awake, so he’ll walk up the length of my body, sit right on my chest and start licking my face.  Before, he used to just bite it.  This is also when he likes to start talking to me about whatever is on his mind.

matthew5Matthew Lucifer is a Maine Coon cat.  That means he’s a really big cat and will continue to grow to a rather large size.  Matthew is only three years old, but he will continue to grow until he’s seven years old.

I talk about Matthew a lot because he does some of the craziest things I’ve ever seen, as in, he’s not a normal cat.  Although, the stuff he does is very normal for the Maine Coon breed.

The reason why I’m not getting sleep is because of Matthew.  Training him to sleep all the way through the night has been a difficult task.  Also teaching him that if he does wake up, he should just leave me alone is another obstacle.  Surita, the other cat, knows to leave me alone if she wakes up.  Sometimes she gets cold and wakes me up to let her curl up under the covers or she wants to snuggle.  You know…the cute stuff.

Matthew…you should see my war wounds from our nightly cat fights.  He is the reason why I haven’t had a good night’s rest in a year.

Last night was the second night in a row he did not purposely wake me up.  He let me sleep.  When I did wake up, I saw him staring at me from across the bed waiting for this moment.  He came over and just started talking to me.  Maine Coons are talkers.  They talk a lot.  They don’t meow.  They have their own little language they use to communicate.  I usually have to really fake sleeping before he believes I’m asleep and will shut up.

Last night though, even though he was letting me sleep, I was awakened to planes flying very low in the middle of the night.  I don’t know why they were flying so low over a residential area (especially in the middle of the night), but the jet engines rattled me awake.  The way it sounded was like Matthew was screaming like he’d been electrocuted or something (which would not surprise me if this were to happen since he has a thing for chewing on cords).

I literally jumped out of bed, hearing the screeching and rushing of the jet, ready to run into the next room when I felt something licking my arm trying to calm me down.  I realized it was Matthew.  Then I realized what the noise really was and thanked God it wasn’t a fried Maine Coon.

Just when I had finally trained Matthew to stop waking me up, something else wakes me up.

In all honesty, I haven’t had a good night’s rest since I adopted Matthew a year ago.  I have probably had only one good night of sleep and that was because he sensed I was really sick.  As my friends say, Matthew is like a child in so many ways.  He does a lot of things a child would do including keeping their parents up all night long.  We sleep when they sleep.

CHALLENGE: Better sleep.

*Have you figured out why his middle name is Lucifer yet?

 

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Mission 40

1 September 2015

santorini14September begins a new season for me and this is what I have planned for the site.

Why is September the start of a new season?  

Well, consider it a little like going back to school.  Each new school year is the start of a whole new you.  That’s what I always loved about the fall.  Autumn marked the start of a renewal and a chance to do things differently…actually, better than you did them before.

It means new clothes, new books, new activities, new learning experiences, and a whole new workload.  September marks Fashion Week.  For me, it also marks the start of my hockey season when I go back to covering hockey for Inside Hockey.  The hockey season starts on September 17th for me.  I’ll still have plenty of film screenings and premieres to attend, as well as a few film festivals.  The Metropolitan Opera season also begins for me and I’m starting it off with Turnadot.

September also marks the release of many new books from various publishers.  We’ll be sharing what’s new, as well as have a few special interviews with authors.

Mission 40

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of sharing the new journey I’m on.  I’ve kept it under wraps these last couple of months because I’ve been trying to add some structure and thought into what exactly I wanted to do.  Next year, I turn 40.  With that, I have always had a specific goal in mind for myself of who I wanted to be at 40.

I’ll admit that I’ve laid that goal to the wayside for so many years because I’m a bit of a procrastinator.  I kept thinking, “Oh, next year…I have plenty of time.”  Well, I can’t say that anymore because next year is 40.  Now is the time to get my butt in gear.  I have to start being that person I envisioned myself to be at this age and that’s where Mission 40 comes in.  Mission 40 is a challenge I’ve created for myself to push myself into being the person I’ve always dreamed I would be at this age.

What does Mission 40 entail?  

The number one thing on this list is my overall health.  After dealing with four tumors in this last decade, it’s time to start improving my overall well-being.  Maybe instead of four tumors in this next decade it will be one, or maybe I’ll get lucky and not have another tumor again for the next 30-50 years.  I have the cancer gene, so it is inevitable that I will get another tumor or cancer in some form at some point in my lifetime again.

The goals I am setting with my overall health entail:

  • Exercise
  • Diet
  • Brain Health (i.e. increasing knowledge through learning and brain challenges)
  • Soul Health (i.e. Meditation)
  • Beauty (hair, nails, etc.)
  • Less Stress
  • Overall Happiness
  • Getting more sleep

There are also certain personal goals I’ve set for myself careerwise that I am putting into action as the new season begins.  There are certain bucket list items I’d like to check off, too.  There are so many things I’d like to do over this next year in order to increase my overall happiness in life.  A lot of that has to do with becoming more involved.

I’ve also started working more within the community, working on issues that we face in order to make the community better through service.  I’ve also been getting more involved globally on how to evolve humanity by working towards eliminating many of the problems people face like poverty, war, slavery, and inequality.  It’s time humanity evolved and I’m working to put that into action.

I’ll have a special section set up so that you can follow along with what I’m doing on a day to day basis…a journal, so to speak.

My ultimate goal is to reward myself with a special trip to South America next year to see Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands.  If I can get over my fear of snakes…maybe I’ll take a little trip into the Amazon as well.  All in all, this is the adventure I’m planning for…a little 40th birthday present to myself…a South American adventure.  Before I can do any of that, I want to be in a certain place in my life before I reap the rewards.

For those interested in joining me on my Mission, I’ll explain how you can become more involved with the adventure I’m on so you can construct your own Mission for yourself.

 

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