betsyschow

Snack Smart: Dessert Budget

Anyone who has ever tried to go without sugar or treats can probably tell you… it doesn’t last very long. And if you fall off the dessert wagon, it can be a rough landing. Here’s an idea to try.

Within your daily budget (caloric budget) allot 100-200 calories at the end of the day for your favorite treat. (chocolate!!) but there’s a catch. If you blow your budget by the end of the day, and don’t have enough calories left in your bank… no treat for you. Reward yourself for sticking to your goals and calorie count. And you are having just the right sized portion too.

Sometimes, this is what helps me resist the chips or the extra big lunch — knowing that at the end of the day, I have a favorite goodie waiting for me.

Guest Post: Bite of Magic Giveaway

Today I’ve ceded control of my blog to Danyelle Leafty with her magically delicious new book, Slippers of Pearl

Magic isn’t a handful of sparkling dust, a star-topped wand, or a tame word captured on parchment.

It’s alive. It has a mind of its own. And it’s hungry.

To celebrate the release of Slippers of Pearl and Bitten: A Novel of Faerie, I’d like to offer a bite of magic to all those who love kidlit–and fairy tales in particular.

There will be eleven winners and six different prizes available:

A Bite of Cobbler

3 Chapter Sample Here

Shoes, unlike magic, are predictable. They don’t change shape, bite, or alter a person’s destiny.

And that’s just how Faryn likes it.

But his Uncle Harvey has a bad habit of dying. While inconvenient, this hasn’t ever been a problem until now. Thanks to an evil witch and a poisoned apple turnover, Harvey is dead again—permanently this time.

As his uncle’s heir, Faryn has to give up shoemaking in order to accept and refine his magic.

Magic he never wanted.

Unwilling to let go of his dream, but unable to escape his destiny, Faryn combines the two and discovers a knack for making magical shoes. He also learns that turning a person into a goose is a lot easier than turning her back, and that he severely underestimated how much trouble magic can be.

The witch who killed his uncle is trying to control all the magic of the land, and it’s up to Faryn to stop her. If only he can get his magic to cooperate in time.

an autographed copy of Slippers of Pearl

a magical pouch to keep it in

and a Slippers of Pearl bookmark

A Bite of Faerie

(Available October 2nd-ish)

Fourteen-year-old Cherrie Wilding stopped believing in fairies after her Grams had a stroke that left her a silent, empty stranger. But whether she believes in them or not, one of them bit her, and now the venom is spreading through her system and causing . . . complications. Like an allergy to iron and a craving for milk.

It turns out that fairy venom has the power to turn mortals into small, winged versions of themselves. And it gets better. Grams’s stroke was the result of her light—her fairy soul—being stolen. The fairy who bit Cherrie demands her to help steal Grams’s light back.

As much as Cherrie wants to save Grams, her need to protect her older brother from the fairies and the rest of the real world wins out. Who knows what lurks in a world populated by winged menaces? But when the fairy talks Cherrie’s brother into going to the fairy realm, Cherrie mounts a rescue attempt to save him. To her surprise, it’s not her brother who needs rescuing—it’s the fairies. Someone is stealing their lights and imprisoning them, and it’s up to Cherrie and her brother to free them. But saving the fairies, keeping her brother safe, and returning home requires the help of the Phoenix. And the price for his aid doesn’t come cheap. If Cherrie wants to succeed, she must be willing to part with her greatest possession: her heart.

an autographed copy of Bitten: A Novel of Faerie

a faerie habitat

a Bitten bookmark

A Bite of Books

1 $25 Amazon Gift Card

Two Bites of Music

2 $15 iTunes Gift Cards

Six Bites of Braun Books Certificates

6 $10 gift certificates to Braun Books; redeemable in store or through Amazon

(A special thanks to Megan at Braun Books!)

To enter, leave a comment. Extra entries available through the Rafflecopter below.

Thank you to all, and best of luck!

You can friend me on
Facebook Author Betsy Schow

Twitter @betsyschow

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fitness Tip: Modifications

Now that I’m a fitness instructor, (sport yoga), I’ve come to really appreciate the importance of modifications.

A lot of people are afraid to go to fitness classes because they feel they might not be up to snuff physically. It might be too hard. A good teacher will be able to tell you low impact modifications or how to lighten up on weights.

I have people in my yoga classes that can put their feet behind their ears. In the same class I have a man that can’t touch his toes. So I make sure to give a few versions of the same pose so that everyone gets just the right workout for them.

So don’t be afraid to speak up if something is a little too tough for you to do right now. If you have a quality instructor, they’ll give you a few options to tone it down a notch or two.

Rich Tummy, Poor Tummy

Today I have a word of advice, a cautionary tale really. If you have been on a restrictive diet, or recently cut foods out – go slow when you re-introduce them.

For the last month, I have been eating really well as result of the No Crap challenge. Then a few days ago it was my father in law’s birthday. We had a birthday dinner in his honor. His girlfriend made yummy chicken enchiladas, but they were extremely rich and creamy. I haven’t really had anything rich for a long while, so while it tasted good at the time, I have been paying for it every since. My system just isn’t used to processing fatty foods like that, so my poor tummy has just been in agony for days.

The moral of this story is, when you haven’t had a food in a long time, don’t have a big amount of it. Just a dab will do ya. Give your body a chance to get used to it again. This can be especially true if you are going from a low or no carb diet, than all of the sudden start eating carbs.

It’s good to switch things up and confuse your body, like in muscle confusion strategies or calorie varying techniques. But be careful and don’t surprise your tummies too much or you’ll be moaning and groaning like me.

No Crap Challenge: Undone by pumpkin bread

It’s been a week since my last post. I apologize. When I’m under a book deadline all my time gets budgeted to that first

I thought I would take a minute to update you on week three of how the no crap challenge is going. Or isn’t.
I was doing great, feeling really good, actually lost about four pounds. Then disaster struck.

I was at kneaders having some chicken noodle soup with the family. They have a sample basket. This time it held slices of pumpkin bread. I love pumpkin bread! So, unthinking, I grabbed a slice and ate it. Did not even consider the sugar content. After a few weeks of no sugar I had completely curbed my cravings. After one itty bitty slice of the sweet bread, the cravings came back with gusto.

I want to shove everything in my mouth. It’s terrible. I’m using my will power, but it’s not easy or fun. But more interesting, I thought, was how that little bit of sugar ignited cravings.

Think about it. If you start your day with a sugary cereal or syrup on pancakes, are you dooming yourself to want more sugar for the rest of the day?

Food for thought.

Budgeting Time

If you read this blog regularly, you are familiar with the concept of the calorie budget. I have recently learned that other things need to exist on a budget… aside from my credit cards.

Time is a tough thing to learn to budget, and there is no way to borrow it. You can’t take out a line and pay it back later. There are only 24 hours in a day. How you divide that time is your budget. If you allocate too much time to a goal, and not enough for sleep, everything suffers. On the other side, if you don’t allocate enough time to your goal, like marathon training or fitness, reaching that goal will be next to impossible to read.

It’s a fine line of finessing. One I don’t have quite figured out yet. I’m done with marathon training, so I have that chunk free. I finished certifying as a yoga instructor. But now I am working on the rewrites of a third book, a young adult fractured Oz fairy tale, and it is eating all my time. If word count is any indication, it’s getting fat.

The point is, I am making a choice. By budgeting my time sitting and writing, that means less time to hit the gym. Less time reading to my kids. No time to do housework. If I was attempting to write a book and run a marathon and have the perfect house… guess how many of those goals I would actually achieve. A poor time budget often leads to quitting a project in the middle. Finish it. Put in the time and effort necessary to get it done.

Choose your goals wisely, then budget your time with equal care.

Snack Smart: Fruit Ap-peel

I don’t care what so called experts say, fruit makes a great snack. You’ve probably heard its bad since its high in fructose. Yes, that’s true. But not high fructose corn syrup, natural god made sugars. And the creator is pretty smart. Fruits have a build in mechanism to help break down and transform those enzymes.

The peal

The fiber of the peal has a chemical effect on how we digest the fructose. So it drives me crazy when people go to all the trouble of pealing an apple. Don’t! It’s not a PB&J sandwich you take the crust off of. Teach your kids to like it with the peel.

Obviously you are not going to eat a banana peel, or an orange rind. But things like apples, pears, peaches, plums… Leave em be.

Food is not a bandaid

This has been a tough week for me. The No Crap challenge has been tough to keep when there’s so much crap going on.
I’ve always been an emotional eater. When things are good I celebrate with a milkshake. When things are rotten, I devour a cake. It’s taken a conscious effort to break that cycle.
And I’m not going to lie. Sometimes that first bite still makes it to my mouth. And then I think, “Betsy what are you doing? Is this going to make you feel better? No. You will only feel worse because you let yourself down and you’ll regret it. So stop.”

Food is not a bandaid. It can not make the pain go away. I might cover it in chocolaty goodness for a second. But then the guilt will kick in and you’ll feel worse. If you really want to feel better, go for a run, or a walk, or a dance. Get those endorphins pumping and give your brain a pick-me-up.

Snack Smart: Read the label, not just the bold print

Here’s a little lesson for ya. I was in Costco today, buying protein powder. The muscle milk mix had in bold face on the front 32 grams protein per serving. The cytosport mix said 27 grams per serving.

Duh, I grabbed the muscle milk. While pushing around the cart, I took a closer look. Apparently, muscle milk’s had two serving possibilities listed. One scoop was 155 calories. 2 scoops was 310 calories. Guess which one they were touting on the front. That’s right 32 grams equals 310 calories.

I went back to check on the cytosport They were only one scoop equaling 140 calories with 27 g protein. Why the huge discrepancy? Because muscle milk puts more ‘stuff’ in their mix to improve the taste. But it doubles the calories. If they had put the single scoop count on the front, they wouldn’t compare and they would lose the advertising game.

Make no mistake, the food industry is playing a big game for your dollars. Pay attention and read the labels. Don’t let yourself be fooled by a tricky marketing ploy.

Fitness Tip: Cross Training

Having a sport or activity that you like to do is good. But it’s important to branch out and cross train too. Think about it. If all I ever did for exercise was run, my running muscles would get over worked, while my non running muscles would atrophy. So runners should cycle, and vice versa.

Cross training is an excellent chance to give your primary working muscles a break, but still make sure you meet you caloric burn goal for the day. My favorites are the classes at the gym. Like Zumba or insanity. Maybe pick up a tennis racket or go for a swim. You might feel like the literal or proverbial fish out of water when you do something different for a change. But that’s okay. Your body will thank you and become more evenly ‘un-rounded’ as a result.