Saturday, April 28, 2012

Obsession!

I sometimes get obsessesed with things.... getting healthy, my kids theatre productions, beer... and I like to share my obsessions with the bloggy world!


Well, I have a new obsession - Infographics.  If you don't know what an Infographic is, or what it is used for, allow me to count the ways!


  1. It is a graphic visual representation of information, data or knowledge.  These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly.  (This dry boring definition is courtesy of Wikipedia)
  2. It is a lovely picture that can make dry boring facts seem infinitely more interesting.
  3. It is a way to make sense of incomprehensible information.
  4. It is a way to say paragraphs, when you'd otherwise be limited to 140 characters
  5. It's a little like a comic book in the way that you read them
  6. They are entertaining
  7. They are pretty and creative
  8. There isn't anything you can say that can't be said better with an Infographic
  9. You will draw people's attention much faster with an Infographic than you will with text.
  10. and, when all else fails in explaining things... use a picture... or Infographic!


Until now, I would have resorted to finding someone else's Infographic to use.  But I just found Piktochart and I made my very own lovely Infographic all by myself, in under an hour! Now every thought, or question, I have, I see in the form of an Infographic! I truly am obsessed!

This week, I'm linking to Pink Saturday where Beverly invites us to Share Our Pink Obsession Inspiration. Infographics is mine... what's yours?

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

So Much Water Movin' Underneath That Bridge...



Just like the lyric quoted in the title, from probably my favorite Crosby Stills and Nash song, I feel like I've let a lot of water run under the bridge... meaning, I haven't written a blog post in a long time, and a lot of interesting and blogable things have happened! I just haven't had the time or energy to sit down and write it!  

"Look around me
I can see my life before me
Running rings around the way it used to be


I am older now
I have more than what I wanted
But I wish that I had started long before I did"


For one, I have somehow been lucky enough to fall into THE PERFECT job for me.  Trouble with that is that I spend most of my day with my head in blog posts, social media, and web pages.  Hence, I'm a little burnt out on all that by the time I get home.

Secondly, I'm doing that Healthy Lifestyle thingy, and I'm starting to spend quite a bit of time at the gym. So, if I'm not burnt out on pecking away at the keys, my muscles are so tired I don't even want to think of raising my arms to the keyboard at night. 

Also, some of these things that have happened are kind of deep emotional things. The kind of things bloggers need blogs in lieu of therapy for!  I'll write about them, I actually need to... I'm just not ready right now.

I'm really not complaining.  I'm making excuses, rationalizing. 

"So much water moving underneath the bridge
Let the water come and carry us away"

Yeah, that's all well and good, but right now I'm tired and sore, and I'm thinking more along the lines of Calgon's bath oil ad....Let the water come and carry me away....

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Abso-Flogging-Lutely!


So, here we are at the end of my second full week of active participation in the Healthy Lifestyle program.

I’ve met with all three legs of my “stool” (unfortunate pun not intended).
I have been weighed, and measured ten ways from Sunday by each of them. (Which sort of makes me wonder if they are working together here, but I’ll reserve judgment on that ‘til later.)

I should have a good idea of exactly what “BEFORE” actually means now.   Trouble is, I don’t actually HAVE any of that data.  What I do have though, is a pretty clear message from each of them, and that message is
Food Logging!

In order to get a clear idea of how I got to where I am, I need to keep track of how I eat now.  This means tracking what I eat, when I eat it, how much I eat, why I eat, and how I feel afterwards.  Ridiculous?  Yep, that’s what I thought.  Until I tried it.  Without changing too much of what I normally do, I’ve already lost three pounds!  Solely because of the choices I’m making about what I shove down my gullet, how much, and when.

So if keeping a web log is blogging, then keeping a food log must be FLOGGING, right? It’s sounds piratical, so I'm going to go with it!  There’s something about looking at what you’ve eaten for the past week, alongside those jeering calorie numbers and mocking quantities that makes you want to do better… that, or cheat.  Which I tried for a couple of days.  But then I thought, who am I kidding?

But keeping track of every single thing you eat is tedious. (Didn’t I promise there would be whining?) If you remember to write it down, then you’ve got all these little scraps of paper, and napkins, and things scribbled on your palm at the end of the day.  If you don’t remember to write it down, then you forget the muffin at 10:30, or the bag of chips at 3:30.  Then there’s the quantities, and the calorie count.  Waaaay to much to figure out.  What’s a Flogger to do?

Well, if you have a smart phone – there are some pretty cool answers in the form of apps!  A couple of the more popular options are available for free through Spark People, and Livestrong. Everyone has to use what works best for them, and both of those work very well, but for me, are just not that easy to use.  Their food listings aren’t very extensive, and there are too many places you need to enter things. The app I’m using now is called My Fitness Pal, available for free online, and for iPhones.


What I really like is that you can chose a goal weight, and a time frame.  It will give you a target number of calories for the day based on that goal.  And each day starts fresh - which is a great mindset.


It's as easy as clicking on the meal or snack you've just consumed and entering what it was.  You can even start with a brand name such as Smart Ones, or Campbell's Soup, or even a restaurant, like Taco Bell, and chose your food from the list.  Very easy!

The only smarmy bit, is that once you've completed flogging for the day, it totals up what you've consumed, subtracts any physical activity you've entered, then gives you a variation on this...

All in all, Flogging is becoming a habit for me, and I've read that people who do it religiously lose more weight than people who don't. I figure I'm checking my Facebook, and Twitter friends anyway, I might as well check in with my Fitness Pal!