Last weeks blog talked about the weight loss tips of “eating our biggest meal earlier” and eliminating carbohydrates by late afternoon or early evening. This brought up the question of “what can we eat if we get hungry in the evening?”   I’m always looking for a better choice. A better choice than eating any snack at night is to have eaten sufficiently during the day so we aren’t hungry in the evening. This includes enough carbs too. When choosing a snack late in the day or at night, eat what you need so you won’t be distracted by hunger but try to limit the amount.

Here’s a list of food choices I came up with for myself that I now share with my clients.

Low or No Carbohydrate Snacks   One “serving” or less is the suggested amount in the evening.

Cheese– string, cottage, one slice or one ounce
Nuts– any kind, plain (1serving is 1/4 cup, usually 10-20 nuts depending on type. Best to check the label
Peanut butter– (1 or 2 Tablespoons) on celery
Hard boiled egg– 1 whole egg or 3 egg whites
Greek Yogurt– 1 cup, or 1/2 cup with a Tablespoon chopped nuts sprinkled on top
*You can also try a sprinkle of cinnamon
Pumpkin seeds– 1/4th cup, preferably non-salted
Sunflower seeds– 1/4th cup, preferably non- salted
Most Vegetables– for evening snacking this excludes corn, peas, potatoes of any kind, and winter squashes like acorn butternut and spaghetti
Meat– any meat, including lunch meat (preferably with no nitrates), fish, including tuna and shrimp
Jerky– preferably with less than 5-8 grams of carb per serving
Avocado-1/4th of a whole one
Possibly sugar-free treats-check label for carbs. Sugar-free doesn’t mean carb free
* if you aren’t sure if something is low or no carb you can read the label, or look it up online

With Love, Jackie
P.S. Don’t worry about the “perfect” choice, there isn’t one. It’s better to focus on making a slightly better choice than you might have in the past.

When it comes to weight loss many “little” things can add up to success.  Adopting new habits or changing old ones can become interesting if we look at them as experiments.   Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Switch your biggest meal of the day to breakfast or lunch.

2. Move the carbohydrate foods you would normally have at dinner time to breakfast or lunch. Substitute another vegetable or a salad for the carbohydrate you would normally have at dinner.

Note: Carbohydrates include grains (examples; bread, rice, cereals, pasta, sweets and anything that contains sugar or flour), legumes (kidney, garbanzo, black, and pinto beans, as well as dried beans and peas, lentils and chickpeas), fruit and dried fruit, some dairy products, (examples; cow’s milk and yogurt) and some vegetables (winter squashes, corn, peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams). These vegetables are higher in carbs. They’re all good to eat but treat these higher carb vegetables as you would other carbohydrates and have them earlier in the day. Remember, “earlier is better” for all of these foods.
This not meant to be a complete list of carbohydrates. If you have any questions you can type them in “comments” below or send them to me at jackie@worthweightingfor.net.

3. Somewhere in the afternoon or early evening (3-6pm), stop eating carbohydrates.

Many clients (me too) have found these ideas to be very helpful when it comes to weight loss. Try them on and see if they’re a “fit” for you (do they feel comfortable and do they make a difference?). Things that “fit” we can easily continue, things that don’t, “we’re done”. Some people may lose weight just by rearranging the time they eat certain foods. Though experts disagree on whether it is necessary, I encourage people to experiment and see if it works for them.

You may be wondering, “what can I eat if I’m hungry in the evening?” I will post my list of food suggestions on next week’s blog. Things you can try the next day if you’re hungry in the evening include:
1. add a snack mid morning or mid afternoon
2. eat a bigger breakfast or lunch.
3. eat more protein at breakfast and/or lunch
Generally, the more we eat during the day the less hungry we will be in the evening, the opposite is also true.

With love, Jackie

Feeling good regardless of the circumstance is one thing that I teach. Here’s a simple, inexpensive way to look and feel better.

Do It Yourself Facial (for men and women because everyone likes to look and feel good)

1. Wash face using a gentle cleanser
2. Gently exfoliate (gently rub face with something that removes dead skin cells). I like to use the Peter Thomas Roth X Foliating Gel (see blog entry Feb. 7, 2015). You could also slowly and gently go over your face with a damp washcloth.
3. Steam your face for five minutes using about 2 or 3 cups of hot water in a bowl, leaning over the bowl while placing a bath towel over your head. Please be careful here as it can be very hot on your face. You adjust the temperature by the distance your face is from the bowl and by lifting a part of the towel to let air out or keep it in.
4. If you like you can apply a facial mask while your pores are still moist and open from the steam treatment. The type of mask you use should be based on your skin type, dry, normal or oily. You can buy one  at a drug  store or make one yourself (homemade mask recipes can be found online).
5. Finish with your favorite face cream or potion. Because my skin is dry I like to use Pure Argon MILK by Josie Maran at Sephora (Nope, I don’t get these product for free or at a discount for mentioning them. Before purchasing, try a free sample.)

Bottom line: you deserve to feel good and treat yourself with extra kindness.
BTW, you deserve to be treated with kindness and respect by others too

With love, Jackie

Last Saturday I took a wonderful class at the Junior College entitled “Building Your Financial Portfolio on $50 a Month”. This might not seem like a daring move, but in my life it was huge. I had to get over three of my fears to accomplish this.

The smallest fear was just navigating the unfamiliar junior college campus. My second fear had to do with the timing of the class, the weekend, when I normally have my disabled son home with me. Third was my fear of dealing with investing, a subject I had always thought too complicated for me to understand.

I believe and teach that there’s always something we can do to empower ourselves in the face of fear, anxiety or discomfort. To challenge my fear of the JC campus, I went ahead of time and scoped out the parking, the machines and the classroom. I figured out how much money and time I would need so that I wasn’t stressing early on a Saturday morning.

For my son, I needed to arrange for him to stay at his group home. I don’t have much experience of weekends without my son. I wondered how this would affect his sense of well-being. Before the weekend I took things to the group home that he might need, and of course, they knew how to contact me.

And lastly, to challenge my fear of investing I told myself that taking the class is just gathering information and I didn’t put any expectations on myself to become an investor. If I felt comfortable after the class to take some action great, and if not I would know more than I did before. My intention (see blog entry March 7, 2015) was to treat it like a new adventure, have fun, and learn something about myself and investing and I did.

What about you? Is there anything you’ve thought about doing and put off or decided it was too difficult? Would it be liberating to take it off the shelf labeled “too hard to do” and try on something new? Adventure, exploring the unknown, contributes to the richness of our lives. How do you know what yours might be?   Check in with the desires of your heart, your next adventure is waiting there.

With love, Jackie