Seeing a beautiful object or person fulfills the senses.
That is beauty on the outside.

It is a pleasant experience when the senses are stimulated.
But what is the essence of this pleasure, and how long lasting?

What if the beautiful person one sees is heartless and insensitive?
What if they lack character or dignity?
Would that outer beauty suffice?
Looking at a beautiful person merely gives pleasure.

There is also a beauty that is magnetic and uplifts the soul.
such as when one sees the inner beauty of a person.
Beauty is one of the utmost quests of Humanity.
Many people are under the notion that this quest has to do with appearances.
 One sees a shapely woman with flawless skin and impeccable features.
And they think that’s what it’s all about.
But substantial beauty is often intangible.
It is beauty of the character, of the heart and of the soul.

It is easy to sometimes get impatient,
and be only attracted to something that is immediately seen.
To seek only the Material, something that can be grasped or touched.
But what is Material is temporal and passing.
And that which is invisible to the eyes is more lasting.

                    
Today I had the choice to either stay in bed
or get up and go about my daily activities.
I chose to get up.

Today I have the choice to either
eat small portions of foods that fit into my diet,
or eat as much as I like of whatever appeals to me.
I am choosing to eat small portions of “healthy” foods.

Today I have the choice to make better choices or not to.
I AM CHOOSING....... BETTER CHOICES.

Every day, every hour, every minute, we can use our "Power of Choice".
I am choosing to do the things that will cause me to maintain my weight-loss.
Yes I sometimes have slip ups, but that happens to the best of us.
I’m not going to let that get in the way of good things happening to me,

 Have a wonderful day, and CHOOSE WISELY.

                
Stress management is a necessary skill for everyone.

Learning to identify problems and implement solutions
is the key to successful stress reduction. 

The first step in successful stress relief
is deciding to make a change in how we manage stress.

The next step is identifying our stress triggers.
Some causes of stress are obvious —
job pressures, relationship problems or financial difficulties.
But daily hassles and demands can also contribute to our stress level.
Even positive events can be stressful.
Once we've identified our stress triggers,
we can start thinking about strategies for dealing with them.
Sometimes the solution may be as easy as turning off the TV
when the evening news is too distressing.
Or, when we can't avoid a stressful situation,
we can try brainstorming ways to reduce the irritation factor.

We don't feel have to figure it out all on our own. 
We can seek help and support from family and friends.
We can ask them what stress-relief techniques have worked well for them.
And many people benefit from daily practice of stress reduction techniques,
such as mindfulness, tai chi, yoga, meditation or being in nature.
Stress won't disappear from our lives.
And stress management isn't an overnight cure.
But with practice, we can learn to manage our stress levels
and increase our ability to cope with life's challenges.

Anne Barone's description of growing up in the 1950s mirrors my own experience,
and I am very entertained by her Puritan vs. French comparison.

"Blame it on the Puritans.
If you wonder why the French, the most food-obsessed people on the planet,
can eat all that cream, butter, and egg yolks and struggle far less with excess weight
than Americans who dutifully take home shopping bags of sugarless and fat-free,
the answer is: the Puritans.

The French never had any; the Americans did.
The French had Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte,
Charles de Gaulle, and Brigitte Bardot.
But no Puritans.

Back in 1620 when the Puritans stepped off the Mayflower,
they brought with them the intellectual baggage that if something feels good
and makes us happy, it is bad. Discomfort and sacrifice are good.
The more uncomfortable and unpleasurable something is, the Puritans thought,
the better for you. Of course this Puritan philosophy grew out of strong religious conviction.

The French were also religious -- in their own fashion.
When they wanted to give thanks to God, they built -- by hand, no less --
huge, architecturally magnificent Gothic cathedrals. The construction of Chartres,
no doubt, burned more calories than all the Jane Fonda workout videos ever sold.

For Thanksgiving, the American Puritans fixed a big dinner and ate it.
Our annual reenactment of this feast kicks off that part of the year
when the average American gains six pounds.

The Puritan legacy was still strong three centuries later
when I was growing up in the 1950s.
In that small Bible Belt town, drinking alcohol was a sin, smoking was a sin,
playing cards was sin, dancing was a sin, and going to the movies was a sin.
Any effort to improve your appearance was viewed with suspicion.
Once I arrived at a friend's house to find her grandmother in a rage.
Pointing a damning finger, she demanded, "What do you think about
a girl who would go against the will of God?"
My friend, it turned out, had straightened her naturally curly hair.

In that Bible Belt milieu, sex outside marriage put you on the fast track to Hell.
As for sex in marriage, you weren't supposed to enjoy it.
The only sanctioned pleasurable activity was eating.
I have witnessed church family night dinners that were food orgies
that would have shocked the un-Puritanical French right out of their socks.

The French seek equal pleasure in a well-prepared meal as in a session of
passionate lovemaking. Actually the French favor alternating one with the other.

But everything in moderation.
The French, after all, coined the phrase "la douceur de vivre, the sweetness of living".
Americans coined the phrase "No pain, no gain."
The way this works, you go through the pain of dieting.
Then you gain it all back.

THE NOUVEAUX PURITANS

In recent decades American Puritanism has undergone an evolution.
Activities no longer prohibited for religious or moral reasons,
are now on the no-no list as unhealthy. This has given the Puritan mentality
an in-road to spoiling our previously okay pleasure in eating. The rules are simple:
Anything that tastes good, like grilled steak, cheese enchiladas, fresh-brewed coffee,
or Key lime pie, are poisons, guaranteed to kill us. Foods such as tofu, bean sprouts,
and plain low-fat yogurt are cure-alls promised to put the medical profession
out of business and make us all live to 110.

Most new products the food industry has put on the shelves recently carry some
(mostly overhyped) health claim. And whatever the fad health food,
they add it to everything. During the oat bran craze about the only products
on the supermarket shelf without this gritty little addition was laundry detergent
and disposable diapers.

These Nouveux Puritans have studies to back up their claims.
But my faith in "studies" is weak. I remember one study that concluded that
wearing lipstick caused cancer. However, to ingest as much lipstick as they had
pumped into those poor little research mice, a human had to eat 90 tubes of lipstick per day!

Across the Atlantic the French hear the results of the American Nouveux Puritan
food studies, pause a moment from eating their pate de fois gras, cut a bite of bifteck,
sip their Beaujolais, and contemplate the cheese tray as they shrug and say,
"Il sont fous, ces Americains. They're crazy, those Americans."

I first became aware of this quote from the book Chic & Sllm (2001) by Anne Barone
several years ago when it was posted by wones, who is active in the No S Diet forum,
and is also registered here at DietHobby.

Life sometimes has problems.
How I look at those difficulties,
and what I tell myself about them,
and how I choose to deal with them,
makes a great deal of difference
in my mood and in the quality of my life.

For the past four weeks I have been recovering
from two broken bones that connect my arm to my wrist.
Because I am over 60 years old, recovery might be a bit slow.
So patience is necessary.

 My arm hurts, and I am unable to tolerate pain medication.
There are a great many things that are difficult to do with one hand,
and many more things that are impossible.
Therefore my normal activities are greatly restricted.

For example, yesterday morning I decided I wanted to cook dinner.
I chose my easy recipe for Mild Chili Beans
which is posted here at DietHobby under RECIPES, Mealtime.

It takes at least twice as much effort to do everything.
I got hamburger meat from the freezer,
a can of tomatoes, a can of kidney beans,
and seasoning mix from the pantry.

When I got out the raw onion, it then occurred to me that
I would be unable to peel, slice, and chop it.
Then I realized that I also couldn’t open the cans,
or access the pot that I use to cook this recipe.

These inconveniences were relatively minor and merely temporary,
but they interfered with my immediate plans, and I’m not fond of that.
I felt the emotions that are common to us all in such situations.
 So what to do?

I could give in to those negative emotions
…and wallow in them for awhile…,
or I could choose to deliberately focus my mind
on the positives of my life that still exist in my current situation
in a purposeful attempt to give myself a better day.
I have learned from my own experience
that this choice is what determines the quality of my life.

I began calling to mind all of the things I have to feel grateful for,
and all of the things that I can still immediately do.
This did make me feel better,
and soon a solution presented itself to me.
I decided to ask my husband to cut up the onion,
to open the cans, and to get out the pan.
He did those things for me when he got home from work,
and I was able to cook dinner.

This is a small example of a big principle,
and I’ve found that it applies to every situation in my life.