At the risk of jumping on a viral bandwagon, I have to share this with you on the off chance you haven’t seen it, yet. I think I’ve seen it from no fewer than a dozen sources, so I doubt you’ve missed it, but still…

Take a look, then I have a few questions for you.

First of all, could she be any cuter?

I wonder where she learned to be so positive? Perhaps she’s seen someone give a similar pep talk to herself before a job interview. Maybe Mom and Dad are that affirming to her and to themselves. Maybe they’ve actually taught her to find the good in the thing around her.

How can we get that confident about ourselves…and then pass that on to our kids?
 Ideas?

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I’m posting this in both the On Health and Fitness column and the Choose HER column because I think is a very important post for women of all ages. How we portray our outlook on our own health, fitness, body image, diets, and lifestyle choices to our daughters has a profound effect on how they view themselves. If you’re like me, you struggle with a lifelong battle with dieting. It’s a constant focus and an up and down fight with equal parts victory and failure.

But, here’s my question: Is that what God intended for us?

And here’s another question: Do our daughters deserve the weight of that legacy?

No. No. NO.

But what do you think happens when our girls watch our back-and-forth dilemma over every bite we eat? What do you think they feel when we don’t want to go out on Friday night because we have nothing to wear? How do you think they feel about us when we can never relax and enjoy a nice meal including dessert? And how do you think they feel about themselves when we refuse to put our insecurities aside to spend a day at the beach or a water park with them?… continue reading

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Here’s my health and fitness plan based on what worked for me before, with some new additions in efforts to respond to changing needs caused by age and pregnancies:

Low-carb diet: 20 gms of carbs a day until I lose 10% of my body weight. At that time, I’ll switch to a more long-term rate of 40-50 gms of good carbs a day.

To be honest, this is the way I always intend to eat. I wake up every day with a renewed commitment to eating low-carb, and I’ve done that for the past ten years. It started a long time ago when I had food allergy tests done (expensive and extensive) and found that just about everything I was allergic to was high in carbs: Wheat, Rice, Corn, Potato, most fruits, honey, oat, and other things. Seafood, fish, and other non-carb things too…and more allergies have popped up since, but it was interesting to see that initial list.

So, at that time, I cut out all of those thing and the weight literally melted off of me. When I was pregnant with the triplets and on my back on bed rest for weeks on end, I lost my stranglehold on that commitment and ate whatever they put in front of me.… continue reading

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I was 12 years old and had just returned home from Bible camp where the mosquitoes were as plentiful as the grains of sand on the lakeshore. As I became ill, it never crossed my mind that one of them were to blame. Days later, hospitalized, in and out of consciousness, enduring probes and spinal taps, I heard whispers of words I couldn’t pronounce and saw expressions I’d only seen at the one funeral I’d ever attended.

I had contracted encephalitis which is an infection and inflammation in the lining of the brain. To make a very long story short, I’ll sum it up to say that in lieu of dying, which had been a distinct possibility, upon recovery I had to face the fact that parts of my brain were ravaged. My thyroid, my hypothalamus, and some other things that regulate the metabolism and other such systems.

That summer, the summer before I started Junior High, I gained 40 pounds. When I walked into that new school for the first time, I felt like Gwyneth Paltrow in Shallow Hal. But, unlike Gwyneth, I couldn’t take my fat suit off when I got home. It was horrible. They called me names and they laughed at me.… continue reading

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