Struggling with Weight on a Busy Schedule

Struggling with Weight on a Busy Schedule

Managing my weight has always been a monumental task for me. When I get busy I forget to eat, and then when I finally get hungry enough to stop and take a bite suddenly I’m eating an entire day’s worth of calories. Some people will try and tell you it’s just a number. As long as you don’t exceed the calories you can have and lose weight it doesn’t matter how much you eat at a sitting or how many times you eat a day. In my experience, this isn’t true.

My muscles ache like crazy if I only eat one meal a day. I feel significantly more tired than I should. I need more sleep than otherwise and I tend to overdo my required calorie intake once food finally is in front of me because I feel famished by then. Moderation is good in theory but if you’re not eating multiple meals a day you end up eating significantly less calories than you need. When you short yourself too much you don’t lose weight either based on my experience.

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2015 in Review

I wanted to share this with all of you. Thank you for making 2015 an excellent year. I hope to have an even better year in 2016! ❤

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Getting the Playroom Back Under Control

Getting the Playroom Back Under Control

Shopping for kids around two years old must be fun because our son received a lot more toys than I expected this Christmas. The toys themselves varied widely between battery-run, which talk non-stop, and old fashioned 1″ blocks. When we first brought them home I didn’t have the energy to do much else besides assemble them and toss them into a pile for him to scatter to the wind. Now that things have calmed down I’ve been able to organize them a bit more intelligently.

I’m resuming the, “one thing with small pieces out at a time,” rule. I broke it spectacularly right after Christmas and couldn’t really expect anyone else to follow it when there were 4-5 toys with small pieces strewn about the house. So far he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s much more interested in playing with my vacuum anyway, at the moment at least.

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Eligible for Government Assistance? Please Take it.

If you’re eligible for government assistance of any kind, you need to use it. I understand that some are embarrassed about needing the help. In reality, not taking the help you need puts you in a position where you’ll need even more help in the future. Allow me to explain.

Say you’re eligible for Medicaid but you would prefer not to sign up. You feel fine and have no obvious medical problems so you’d prefer not to fill out all of the paperwork and wait in the lines required to prove you’re eligible for medical assistance. Sounds logical, but the longer this goes on the more likely you are to have a health problem which goes undetected because you haven’t gone to the doctor. By the time you find out you need to watch your sugar you’ve gone past being pre-diabetic and you now need insulin to control your blood sugars. If you had known you were pre-diabetic years before you could have put off having full-blown diabetes for years.

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4 Ways to Save Money in Less Than 5 Minutes

4 Ways to Save Money in Less Than 5 Minutes

Tip #1 – Huck cloths. These towels will not only replace your need for paper towels, they also absorb significantly better. I find these to be especially helpful for vomited formula. They will add a little to your laundry load, but not very much. I put them in a rinse cycle with the rest of my son’s vomit-drenched clothes, sheets, etc. before washing on a regular cycle.

Estimated savings: ~$20 / month after the initial investment. This will vary significantly from family to family. We probably saved more because of how frequently our son tends to vomit. We spent ~$45 on our towels and have had them for about a year.

Tip #2 – Slow Cooker. A lot of busy people end up ordering out because they simply don’t have the time or free hands to cook. Most of the things I use my slow cooker for, I would never be able to do otherwise OR they come out much better when they can spend more time over heat. It also makes it significantly easier to have food ready when you need it ready as it can easily stay on “warm” for an hour or two without negatively impacting the food in most cases.

Estimated savings: ~$70 / week if you eat out daily. It will probably be closer to ~$10 – $20 / week if you are already eating in, but the slow cooker allows you to buy and cook in larger quantity. You also may be able to buy less expensive dishes than you already prepare now that you have the additional cook time. For example, a roast with potatoes and carrots is an inexpensive staple which is much easier to prepare in a slow cooker.

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5 Tips for Transitioning Insurance Companies

This is never fun for anyone but it can be especially difficult for medically complex children. Instead of a doctor’s office or two, there’s a medical supply company, the pediatrician, and all of their specialists. Prior authorizations have to be submitted to the correct insurance, so you may need to update insurance information with doctors you haven’t even seen yet!

Tip #1 – Call the new insurance company. They won’t be able to tell you much until the insurance activates, however, you can request a case manager be assigned before the transition. This gives you an advocate on the inside that already knows your situation before the paperwork starts flowing.

Tip #2 – Call and update insurance info with all of the doctors who write a perscription for your child. That way if there are any issues at the pharmacy which require additional paperwork from the doctor’s office the responses get sent to the correct location.

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Christmas? Not Ready!

I’m not ready for Christmas. All the gifts haven’t even arrived yet. One box is scheduled to show up Christmas Eve. I’m going to be wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. It’s going to be glorious. I already have all the food for “Christmas dinner” on Christmas Eve thankfully. My husband asked me last night to pick up something from the grocery store “when I go” and then asked if I was going today. Today? The 23rd of December? Go to a place where they sell gifts? Hah! He’s a funny man. No more stores for me until after Christmas and even then, only stores where the returns and checkout counters are seperate.

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Morning Ritual

I’ve started doing my makeup every day. Part of it is, as my son gets older, I’m better able to do something with both hands while he plays on his own. The main reason is more complex than that. I don’t think of makeup like I used to.

It used to be something to cover up my flaws and I hated the process. Staring in the mirror identifying each of my deficiencies and attempting to thoroughly hide each one was a miserable process. I avoided it and only put it on when the situation absolutely required. Even then I may have skipped it from time to time.

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Unpredictable Digestive Hiccups

It’s always so unpredictable what’s going to set our son’s digestive system off. You would think since he eats the same thing every day for most of his calories that he would be relatively consistent. You would be wrong, unfortunately. No matter how consistent we keep the external factors he has his own ways of surprising us.

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Big Plans for 2016

Big Plans for 2016

I recently dropped health, vision, and dental insurance at my job because they’re talking about switching me to a part time position. I asked them to wait until the end of the year and they were kind enough to do so, so I dropped insurance and my husband picked up insurance through his work during this year’s open season. In and of itself this wasn’t a big deal, but it’s put some things in motion that I wouldn’t have considered beforehand.

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