Author: @DanaMNelson

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Making Healthier Choices – Fruits and Vegetables

Photo courtesy of Vescovi Catering taken By NB Images

Yesterday I told you about starting my new year off TODAY, by making healthier choices.  Today’s choice is an addition to my diet.

I’m going to try to eat more fruits and veggies. I’m not saying I will become a vegetarian, or go all out and never have fries again.

Why don’t you join me? Start today.

Try to add one or two fruits or veggies a day more than your normal consumption. Add an apple instead of fries with your sandwich. Eat carrots and celery as a snack instead of chips.  You consciously make those choices.

The recommendation was generalized as 5 a day. (more matters) I loved the five a day the color way. It was a quick and easy way to make sure you got the right amount and the right variety of nutrients. Each color grouping of foods have different nutrients that they contain more of than another group. 

Raw foods have the highest concentration of the nutrients that you need. When you cook foods, you lose important things like nutrients, but also many enzymes are lost. Next would be frozen, then canned. Food is cooked at super high temps when canned. But a can of mixed fruit in its own juice, not syrup, is still WAY better for you than the snickers, and it really satisfies!

Raw has other benefits. They are a good source of pre-packaged snacks. Apples, bananas, celery, carrots, and grapes are all really portable ready to eat snacks. If you opt to eat your broccoli and cauliflower raw at dinner, then there are no pans to clean!

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Making Healthier Choices – Water

I’m so glad that I can call Bonnie Schnautz my friend. I’ve only been to a few events where she spoke, but they were great! She has had a big impact on my thought processes and my recognition of CHOICES.

I’m not going to resolve to lose weight this year. (Although that would be great.) I’m going to start my new year off TODAY, by making healthier choices.  Why wait?

I’m starting with WATER. WATER, WATER, WATER!!!! You should be drinking at least 8-10 glasses a day. Not juice, milk, coke, Kool-Aid, lemon-aid… just water! Do you really consume that much water daily?

If you set this as your goal to achieve every day right off the bat, do you know what is going to happen?

You will fail

Maybe not the first day, maybe not the second, but when you do here’s what will happen…

“Man, this is too hard! Nobody can do this, I’m not even going to try.”

Do you think marathon runners start off running 26 miles a day? No. They start slowly, with 1-3 miles the first week.

Why don’t you join me? Start today. Add 1 glass of water. At dinner, or lunch ask for water, not soda.  Continue to add only 1-2 glasses to your normal intake for a week.

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Finding Post Christmas Joy

What makes you happy?

 Really happy?

Do you do it?

Do you do it enough?

So often in life we spend too much time doing things we hate, thinking we will be rewarded at some point.

For some people,  that works. They perform well in school, go to college, maybe post-grad, and are “successful” people.

For some there’s a twist that loops into an infinite cycle like a Moebius strip. They work nonstop, pull over time, and take work home. They’re trying to get by and to give to their family the things they think they deserve.

The flip side of this is what does their family want.  Ask them.  Do you know what they want more than toys, or nice cars?

TIME

 Time with you.  And if you think about it, what makes you happy?  Spending time with your family is probably at or near the top of the list.

This year don’t resolve to make more money or save enough to go on the dream vacation.

Make a promise to spend more time with your family, with your children. Take the time to play games and sit on the floor and play Barbie.

What you will accomplish for yourself, and for the world, is a more peaceful place in the long term.

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Content

Day 9 of the Blog-a-Thon

Not just for a blog, but any social media. Content will provide your audience a reason to keep reading, to keep clicking and to return to your page.

Here’s a video of @CC-Chapman promoting his book.  Hope it inspires you to keep working on your blogs and to find your own definition of content.

[vimeo 16063606]

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Just Ask

 Day 8 of the Blog-a-Thon

Ever feel like you should be able to do something. That You KNOW it is possible, yet no matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t work for you?

Just ask

I have a friend, Kimberly Delcoco,  who reminds me to do this often.

In working on my blog I came across a video I wanted to share and share my thoughts about. I tried and tried to embed this video. I looked for known issues and resolutions. I spent a ton of time looking for an answer.

All along, I knew my answer meant asking for help, and I don’t like to ask for help.  (I did ask for help from @eppand)  But you know in life, we are surrounded by people, some of whom are smarter than us and some who just excel in different areas of knowledge than us.

We forget that they have abilities and skills that might just be able to save us hours of frustration.  Very often people like to know that their particular skill set is needed and useful. So next time you are beating your head against the computer… don’t forget to ask. (Even asking people you don’t know. This is a great example of a way to use twitter to learn. )

What have you needed help with but were afraid to ask?

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Finding Inspiration

Day 7 of the Blog-a-Thon

 Well, it’s been a full week! I’ve really enjoyed this journey with some fantastic bloggers. I’ve received several “you’re inspiring me, but __________ (insert reason here) I’m not starting it today.” But you can start this blog-a-thon in your own time; start tomorrow or next week. 

Two of the bloggers doing this with me are BG, and Jennifer. I really find myself looking forward to their posts. Please be sure to check them out yourselves, maybe you’ll be inspired to start yours today.  Let me know if you do so I can add you to the list!

                BgKahuna                                          www.bgkahuna.com

Jennifer Tallini        www.yogawithstyle.com/blog/

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Are you ready for Christmas?

Day 5 of the Blog-a-Thon
Day 3 of #getitout

Are you ready for Christmas?

7 Days until Christmas and 12 days until my surgery. Everyone keeps asking “Are you ready for Christmas? Do you have all your shopping done?” I wonder how we got here? Where Christmas turned into a mad frenzy of go here, go there, buy, buy, buy.

Doing it a little different

This year we’re having a relaxed Christmas. We are not having the big traditional spread. Big traditional spread means we work harder and longer to prepare enough food to feed our extended family and 3 more of equal size. We then eat leftovers until we can’t stand it. Why? Seems really wasteful, not just of money and food, but of time with the family that we’ve traveled to see.

We’re taking our kitchen time and trading it in for some floor time with the kids, maybe a nap or a walk in the snow together. Seems to me like a no brainer. (If you don’t really like your family anyway, this plan won’t work for you.)

So yeah, I’m ready for Christmas.  Ready for eggnog and playing with new toys that are the best ever, at least until next week. Ready to relax and enjoy my family.

Now, am I ready for day 12? NO. But with 12 days to get things together, I will be.

 I have a plan

 Day 1: Kitchen cabinets -seems like a silly place to start, but I’m use to my kitchen, I’m comfortable with it. But today, Day 1 is cleaning (sorting and organizing more than cleaning) the kitchen. Of all the things I don’t let go of freely, control of my kitchen is high on the list.

But when you’re physically not able to do things for yourself, you have no other choice but to let go.

I was surprised the first time I had this surgery.  I was certain I’d just have a day or two in bed and be able to enjoy the rest. I had a much longer recovery time and I wasn’t ready for letting others help me as much as I needed.

Organizing my cabinets lets me surrender control easier. After a conversation with Jennifer Hollander, an organizing professional, I felt much better about tackling the days ahead.  She said that people don’t know how or where to start and then get overwhelmed and quit before they begin. She told me to take it in little chunks.

Chunk one – the kitchen.

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The Current Situation

Day 4 of the Blog-a-Thon

Day 2 of #getitout

The Current Situation:

So here I am again, one side filled with stones. We knew they wouldn’t stay clean, but I was really hoping for a longer time in between.

I‘ve been passing stones again, and it’s sucking the life out of me. Remember the “I can’t do that” declaration? I can’t / won’t just take pain meds and be zoned out.  After evaluation, the doctor and I have decided that a repeat of the previous procedure is necessary.medication

I will be undergoing this procedure on Dec 30. I’m sharing this not for sympathy, but for growth. Talking about pain is not easy for me. I am one of the best at faking not being in pain, but this is the true reason I am doing the blog-a-thon.

I will be chronicling my journey to prepare for and undergo this event.  I have several friends who, like me, don’t discuss their health. It’s almost taboo. I also have friends that turned to social media in times of pain and distress. I am attempting to explore the latter.

Please connect

So do you get kidney stones? Are you a doctor or nurse or somehow in the medical field? Have you used social media to find support? I want to talk to you. Tweet me, Facebook me, or just comment here.  (If sending an e-mail or fb request please tell me who you are.)

Don’t forget to follow the other bloggers in the blog-a-thon, and let me know if you want to join us, I will add you to the list!

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They did it again…

Facebook has quietly rolled out another change. I said it on air last week when we were talking about the new profiles layout. I suspected that Facebook would make some major changes to the business profiles.

Fan pages. Like pages… Whatever you want to call them. Business pages are a tremendous resource for people to connect and communicate with businesses, and for businesses to respond and communicate to the people they serve.

Over the past year we’ve seen a growing number of social media companies that specialize in page “bling”. These companies are worldwide, and have been selling to the general business population a well done graphic, some slick code, and a lot of hype. They don’t talk to their clients about strategy and planning, and they don’t teach them how to utilize the basic factor that SOCIAL pages are all about – relationships.

In comes the silent killer; Facebook changes their design once again. There was little to no chatter when they slipped the big switch in on us today. The custom tabs are now all under the profile picture and are all <<>> coded in the FBML gray logo.

Along with this new profile layout they had a few other features there as well. Like logging in as an admin to the page, and notifications for the page comments.

This layout change came amid a really lagging response time for facebook this afternoon. And before this post was finished, they reverted back to normal. So I predict that this change will take place very soon.

 This sucks for the graphic only based business, but it also sucks for Pizza Hut and Harley Davidson who had some really useful Facebook tabs and customizations.

How will you deal with this change? (Hint: complaining won’t help… it’s free, so you take what they give you, like it or not!)

Usually a change like this is the precursor to something better. People will fuss for awhile, but after they do, the changes will stick and people will adapt and get use to the new layout – just in time for Facebook to change it again. They don’t want to alienate people. After all, look what happened to Digg when they changed their interface.