Aprovechar

Dear Sally,
I know the age of 20 is confusing for you, so I’m traveling back in time to give you a heads-up about what’s coming in life. Feel relieved? Good.
Right now, at 20, you’re a girl consumed with swirls of emotions about nearly everything in life.  You feel battered by some of what’s come your [...]

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The first week of the no-spend month has come and gone.  We spent more than I thought we would, yet I’m still pleased, because we’re on track for the month:
$31—groceries at the farmer’s market
$13—headlight bulb (plus a spare) for the car and a bag of chips
$21.50—eating out ($2 taco and $2 margarita night at a [...]

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I’ve always loved flipping through the LL Bean and Lands’ End catalogs, daydreaming about what to buy.  It took me until a couple of years ago to realize that those catalogs were very good at selling me products through a vision of myself as a hale, attractive, adventurous, outdoorsy person who hiked, skied, snow-shoed, canoed, [...]

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Nearly two years ago now, from a period of being quite sedentary, I started out exercising very gradually.  I started by taking all the cliched-yet-valuable advice about taking stairs instead of elevators, parking further from the store, holding my groceries in a basket instead of in a cart, etc.  I also started walking—not any particular [...]

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Are you adjusting to a gluten-free and/or allergen-free diet? I now run a business to help people like you! Click here to find out more.
Note: I originally published this post in April, but my friends and I have tweaked the bread recipe since then, so I’m making the changes and bumping it up for the [...]

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What a week this has been! Let’s recap the highlights:
Early in the week, I bought a pair of size-8 jeans!  These are the smallest-size pants I have ever worn. I had to whip out my cell phone and call my husband and my best friend from the store’s dressing room when I put the pants [...]

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Though the year actually starts in January, some part of me will eternally cling to August and September as the time of new beginnings.  My mother was a teacher until recently, so my life took on the school year rhythm from birth.  Growing up, every year in fall, as the light turned golden and, at [...]

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My official weigh-in for this week is 159.2.  It’s been 159-point-something nearly every time I weighed myself this week (I weigh daily), and the first time it happened, I called my husband in to see and then I jumped up and down with happiness.  But it’s not official till it shows up in a weekend [...]

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Last week I visited a practitioner of Chinese medicine–acupuncture, herbs, and diet.  I’ve done too much research into diet to discount the wisdom of cultures around the world and the traditional ways of healing within those cultures. Several blog readers had suggested that I go, and when the latest suggestion came in, I guess it [...]

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My 100th post on this blog: a great time to celebrate a new level of fitness. It’s me . . . in a size-8 top and size-10 jeans! This isn’t the first size-8 top I’ve bought lately–it’s the fifth or sixth one in the last few months–but this is my first size-10 pair of [...]

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