Posts Tagged health
Buy or Lease?
Having both bought and leased in the past, this weekend I found myself rehashing the pros and cons of buying versus leasing a new car.
Because of how my brain works, it got me thinking about health and weight loss and how relevant the buy vs. lease notion really is.
Confused? Promise I’ll explain. But first, a little back-story that leads me to today’s theorizing. 
Back in 2004, I leased my first new car, a 2004 Honda Civic, which I adore. I bought this car with my dear friend Jason.
He’d just bought a new Accord, and so we’d gone to “look” for me, since I’d been in the market for wheels. I never needed them living in DC, but I was living in Arlington and was about to move to Silver Spring … grocery shopping is tough when you’re without a car.
February 28, 2004, I took the Metro to meet him at the Greenbelt station to go to Owings Mills, MD … and found myself driving home in my new car! (I-95 and the Beltway is scary when you’ve never driven them … !)
Anyway, the salesman brought out Black Pearl (my car) for me to drive and it was love at first sight/first drive. The car was mine. I called my parents and my now-hubby, who was still living in El Salvador, to share my news before I signed any papers, got her insured, and was on my way! (more…)
2 comments May 26, 2009
On-Message/Off-Message
After a few months of blogging, I had a frank phone chat with Steph at Back in Skinny Jeans (one of the first blogs I’d ever read religiously) about paid advertising and blogging.
She’s fantastic and I might be speaking with her on a panel at the BlogHer 2009 Conference … still waiting to hear!
Anyway, we talked about being true and authentic to yourself, and how blogging gives you the opportunity to make 100 percent of your own decisions. You’re your own boss, your own editor … the content is yours to decide upon, the images, the timing … it’s all up to you.
This means you can choose to accept advertising … or not. You can choose to accept guest posts … or not. (more…)
12 comments May 14, 2009
Kids and “Bad” Food Anxiety?!
I found this recent New York Times article that piqued my interest, called, “What’s Eating Our Kids? Fears About ‘Bad’ Foods.”
I want my kids someday (when I have them) to have a healthy relationship with food. I want them to know fruits and veggies and whole grains and low-fat dairy are yummy, but I also don’t want them to freak out if someone offers them an ice cream cone. I want them to be able to enjoy the special treat without another kid (or mother) commenting.
I’m not a mom yet, but I still have an opinion on this: it’s one thing to encourage healthy eating habits (recently Michelle Obama’s been talking a lot about how her family find that balance between health and pleasure with respect to food), but it’s another thing to ban foods altogether — which can lead to binge eating behavior later in life or an unhealthy relationship with food (like I’ve experienced). (more…)
7 comments March 25, 2009
Soar With Your Strengths
… Which I’ll be honest, I thought sounded totally cheesy and ridiculous at first glance.
But after a brief perusal of the little pocket-sized book, I realized just how on to something the author was.
The book spoke reality: all too often in school or at work, we’re encouraged to fix the things that are “wrong” with us. To get better at this or improve that. Well, this book’s premise is the exact opposite.
If a student isn’t good at math, the book argues, don’t try to make her love it. Rather, let her flourish in her passion for British lit or pyschology.
If an employee is really good at Excel and administrative tasks, don’t put him on the phone making cold calls to new business prospects.
Sure, every corporate executive can benefit from media training. But that doesn’t mean that shy executive X should necessarily be the face of your company in a live interview on CNN to the world … especially not if he’s better at the written word or telephone interrogations.
If we strengthen the things we’re good at, the book proposes, instead of spending energy and money trying to fix what’s “wrong” with us, won’t we be better students and more productive employees? Better friends, better lovers, better partners? YES! (more…)
11 comments January 5, 2009
The Health Halo
I found a great article in Tuesday’s Health section of the New York Times, titled “Health Halo Can Hide the Calories”.
The article’s author (John Tierney) and Pierre Chandon, a Frenchman who has been studying what researchers call the American obesity paradox, conducted an experiment in New York City (which banned trans fats in restaurants) to discover “Why, as Americans have paid more and more attention to eating healthily, have we kept getting fatter and fatter?”
Dr. Chandon’s answer, which was derived from laboratory experiments as well as field work at Subway and McDonald’s restaurants, is that Americans have been “seduced into overeating by the so-called health halo associated with certain foods and restaurants.”
So what is a health halo exactly? It’s certain restaurants touting their low-fat entrees or sandwiches that delude consumers. The authors argue that this “health halo” ends up cushioning us from the realities of what lies beneath the surface. (more…)
10 comments December 2, 2008
