How Does Drinking Kale Make You A Better Writer?

KALE SMOOTHIES AND STARTING OVER

Eating better + getting back into shape = No. 1 best seller.

I'm making Kale a big part of that. After giving it try for a week, I did feel better.

SO... KALE IS MY NEW BFF.

Kale helps with high cholesterol, is a good source of fiber, has the best most assimilable protein and a whole bunch of other nutrients. Kale is one of the bodies first line of defense against--all kinds of bad stuff.

The up shot... you feel crummy if you're low on what you find in Kale.

So eat more kale. Or drink it.

Yep, drink it--Juicing kale helps all that good stuff get into your blood stream faster, is important for fat digestion and absorption, is a component of insulin and to building collagen so you'll look younger.

Hold on.... You'll look younger? That's a natural face lift! Whoa, I'm up for that.

Not to mention proving my tough chickedness in downing the first one.

Believe it or not, you really can't taste the kale. These drinks taste just like what ever frozen fruit you put in them. One of these for breakfast and you're good to go.

The end of the fuzzy head. And the not being able to think.

Banana

Pineapple

Apple

Banana Blueberry

Watermelon

So, chugging all of this down is supposed to make me a fantastic writer.
It better.

Health Retreat - Starting Over - Contest winner

FOCUSING ON HEALTHY EATING

I've spent that past few days at a health retreat...

Sort of....

Where I was plied with yummy stuff like green drinks.

This first thing I was handed was this drink.

Ummm. I agreed to this so I braced myself for... Orange. Wow.
It was really good.

Next, lunch was a salad with the yummiest salad dressing I've ever tasted.

I never wanted to just drink a salad dressing before.

The rules... I could eat whatever I wanted. There were no food nazis here. If I wanted something that wasn't being offered I could have it. The only request was I try all the healthy stuff too.

So I ate the food because... well... because it was really good. There was no cardboard or wood chips anywhere.

I could have all the organic fruit I wanted.

All the Mangoes I wanted... ho boy, I had died and gone to heaven.

Mango Lassie Smoothie

We made my very favorite sorbet...Mango Orange.

There were all the avocados I wanted. YUM.

There was so much food around I felt like I was eating all the time. Who wouldn't think this was HEAVEN?

When I was tempted with other things, like pancakes, I honestly didn't feel like eating more than one or two. I snitched one chicken nugget at lunch. Loved it, but it was enough. Shocking.

There was a lot of coconut... used in the drinks, salads, and main dishes. Because the coconut was green I couldn't really taste it.

Coconut milk was the base for almost everything.

Again, I couldn't taste it. My favorite...Ice Cream made out of coconut milk... homemade and store bought.

I chose chocolate.

David Farland contest - SURPRISE!! There were only five people who qualified for the contest, so... All of you get a book. I'll be contacting you via email (since I happen to have all your emails) to find out which book you want.

Beginning Isn't So Easy - The Come Back

THE BLAST OFF ISN'T SO EASY TO DO

Just because you make up your mind to change doesn't mean its going to happen.

Well, yeah... I knew that going into this come-back thing.

The hardest part is always the beginning.

Kind of like the space shuttle.

The facts - At liftoff, when the shuttle is fully fueled it weighs about 2.0 million kilo... something.

The two solid rocket boosters carry the entire weight of the external fuel tank and the orbiter, plus each solid rocket booster weighing in at about 589,569.16..... um... a lot.

The upshot - The solid rocket boosters provide 71.4 percent of the thrust for about 120 seconds (two minutes) before they burn out. The orbiter's other three main engines provide the meager 28.6 percent thrust to reach orbit.

So it takes 71.4 percent of the effort to just get started. Once on a roll you don't need as much effort to keep going.

The overall power of a space shuttle at takeoff is about 12 GW or 12 billion watts of power. That's about 16 million horsepower!

Sounds easy. Not really.

So why am I focusing so much on the space shuttle? Because I haven't quite found all of those 16 million horses to get me clear off the launch pad.

How did I do in my first week? I didn't get in as much walking as I wanted. I definitely drank more water. Discovered that the walls in my bathroom could use a good scrubbing down.

Eating healthier- not so great.

Making myself sit and work on writing - Better.

But I'm not giving up. This is something I want... so I'm taking a breath... backing up... and going for another try.

Staging a Comeback

STARTING OVER

I've decided today is a good time to make a new start. Since I 'm self-employed (after a fashion), I can't be laid off as so many have been in the past few months. But I could lose my livelihood all the same. When the economy hits a difficult spot, the non-essentials are laid aside for a while. Unfortunately, that's me. Besides being a writer I'm a piano teacher. Piano lessons are optional, so I've been losing students. A lot of people are now thinking about retraining so they can be hired somewhere else. I'm going to do the same... Sort of.

What I'm going to do is start over. Remake myself.

STAGE A COME-BACK.

The very first thing to do is set some goals.

1 - Commit to walking at least five times a week, either on the treadmill or around the block. Not only will I start feeling better--so I've been told--but I might catch up to Jaime and Lori-ann on our Virtual Walking Tour. Ha! I've done terrible so far. Besides, I've heard exercise helps the thinking process--an added bonus, because it's really hard to write when you can't think clearly.

• How Exercise Helps Your Brain

• Train Your Brain With Exercise - make yourself smarter and better at what you do

2 - Start eating better. No more junk food that saps the energy and shuts down the brain. How can you write when you're asleep on your computer?

• See my sidebar for all the great stuff on healthy eating.

3 - Drink more water. Supposed to help with the fuzzy brain.

• Water for Your Brain

• Water for the brain - How water can help your child's (and your own) thinking skills

You might wonder how all of this is going to help with getting a new start and making a big splash with my do-over.

Feeling and thinking better, so I can get past the staring at the computer screen, seems to me to be the best place to start.