My husband and I attended this year’s South by Southwest interactive conference in Austin, TX and had an amazing time.  For those of you who don’t know, South by Southwest is the combination of an interactive conference, film festival, and music festival.  Prior to my attendance, I had only heard of the music festival and had no idea about the other two parts (which is the case with a lot of people, it seems.) My hubby works in the technology field and he was attending the conference for work.  I decided to join him and see what this conference was all about.  Plus, who wouldn’t want to see Austin, TX?!  If you don’t know what the interactive part of the festival is all about, this blurb from the website describes it brilliantly: 

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One of the thing that really helped kick my weight loss into high gear this time around has been smoothies.  Everyday for lunch I now have a protein/fruit packed smoothie and that has seemed to make a very big difference overall.  My favorite smoothie is here.    The only change that I made was to use a whole banana instead of just a half.  And I must say, this is a delicious way to have a 350 calorie lunch!  I have a major sweet tooth and I used to crave something sweet everyday after lunch (probably because for years I had a Starbucks white mocha everyday after lunch!).  This smoothie has enough sweetness to wipe out any desire for something more after. 

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    Check out this article I found today that discusses the benefits of giving to others.  The article primarily focusses on financial giving and how good people feel when they give money or gifts to others.  Kinda like that great feeling I get when I find the “perfect” gift for someone at Christmas and watching their face light up when they open it.  Seriously, that feeling can be captured year round!  Giving of yourself provides huge happiness benefits!  Don’t believe me?  Try it. 

    Better yet, try it when you are pissed off about something.  Try it when you are having a crappy day.  Try it when you are feeling blue or just can’t seem to make anything go right one day.  Take the focus off of how YOU are feeling and put it on what will make someone else happy.  You’ll love the results.  Now go on, dang it, give and be happy!

Each week I am going to present you with a website that I consider to be useful. It might be about health & fitness, parenthood, technology, politics, recipes, funny stuff, or whatever, just as long as I consider it useful and something you should know about.

I believe that one of the ways to finding happiness in life is through giving. Whether it be allowing someone in front of you in traffic, donating used clothes, going around the world to do missionary work, serving our country, or visiting lonely folks in nursery homes, it’s all about doing something to help someone other than yourself (and yet, that does help you).

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Accountability.  It’s funny how being accountable can change things.  I discovered on Saturday that if the people around me know that I am on a “diet” or as I prefer to say, “being healthy”, then I tend to eat more responsibly. 

My in-laws were in town this past weekend for Easter and after my father-in-law offered me some Burger King breakfast sandwhiches and other breakfast treats for the third time, I finally explained that I am trying to eat healthy.  It wasn’t a big deal or anything but they’ve seen me pig out on cookies and other yummy treats at their house before so it was important for me to let them know. 

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Those are words that used to make me cringe!  I’ve been high and low more times on the scale than Oprah… maybe.  I was always on the chubby side growing up and I could give a very detailed tale of each way I would lose weight and the reasons I would put it back on. 

Let me just put it like this:  I never lived a healthy lifestyle that included owning my body and being responsible for my choices. 

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I want to share something that has truly helped change my life in so many ways. I was a member of Narcotics Anonymous for 6 years and this is something that I learned there.Write on the top of a sheet of paper,

God, please help me to be:

And on the bottom of the paper,

God, thank you for helping me be:

In the middle of the paper, write down your every desire for the person you would like to become. Some examples from my own list are: responsible, helpful, loving, an awesome wife and mother, a better decision maker, etc.

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I am a procrastinator at heart. And there is a side of me that is lazy, selfish, and gluttonous. If I let this side of me out, watch out world, let the negativity fly! Actually, there’d be nothing to watch out for because I’d be asleep, watching tv, stuffing my face, or doing some other non-productive life-wasting activity. And wow, is that an unhappy me.

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