I started DietHobby in February 2011,
so it has now been in existence for 1 year.

Today, I'm taking a step back from the day-to-day involvement,
to look at the big picture, re-assess my progress, and perhaps
make adjustments to the project.

 I began the DietHobby website as an extension of my
diet forum involvement in order to provide a place of my own

that was under my own management and control,
to store my Thoughts about dieting and related subjects,
as it applies to my own Maintenance Progress.

I purchased my own Domain, DietHobby.com.
My web-genius-son wrote the code for this DietHobby website.
He brought it into existence and taught me how to use it.

People can easily learn about me and my dieting history
by reading the About Me page.

I've written frequent articles and stored them in the Archives
for easy accessibility for anyone interested.

I've made many recipe videos and put them in the Recipe section
to easily share them with others.

I've included some personal pictures in the Gallery section,
for those who would like to see my family or my stained glass projects.

I've completed a thorough summary of a best selling diet-book
and placed it in the BookTalk section.

I've organized and provided links to helpful sites,
and relevant videos in the Resources section,
including a Playlist of my Words of Wisdom video series
which is intended to be used as a positive motivational tool.

 DietHobby's companion channel on YouTube
began as a place to store the Recipe videos,
and the 30 second Inspirational videos
that I made for this website.

However, YouTube also has a community of its own
who view videos, make comments,
and subscribe to be notified of future videos.

This YouTube community includes all ages, from children through the elderly.
These are people of different tastes, interests, cultural backgrounds, education,
nationality, religion, race, sex, and political affiliations.

Although the YouTube DietHobby's primary viewers are in the United States,
there are also DietHobby viewers in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany,
the Netherlands, India, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand,
Turkey, Kazakhstan, and the Philippines, as well as other countries.

My web-genius-son suggested that I begin a third video series,
to better address the many needs and interests of the YouTube Community.
This video series is entitled "Ask Grandma", which answers questions from viewers.

 On YouTube, I am now known as Dr. Collins, the YouTube Grandma,
whose hobby is dieting. My recipe video series is known as, "Grandma's Recipes".
My Inspirational video series is known as "Words of Wisdom".
All of these video series tie in together to form an educational, how-to, channel.

This past year, in order to accomplish making videos.
I set up and learned how to use a Macintosh computer,
and many of the latest Apple software programs.
I learned how to use a camcorder with a tripod;
how to set up and use professional photography equipment,
including lighting, and backgrounds;
and how to set up and use a teleprompter.

I learned to prepare, set up, shoot, and edit all of my own videos,
and how to upload them into YouTube.

I've learned to navigate my way around YouTube,
and am learning more about Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Google +.

During this past year, I've also continued to engage myself
in my Hobby of Dieting, to connect with other dieters who have similar interests ,
and I have managed to maintain my weight-loss for yet another year.

At the beginning of 2011, I was a "windows" only computer user,
who didn't use a movie camera, seldom even took snapshots,
and knew nothing about photography technique.;
I knew very little about websites and knew nothing about
YouTube, or the other computer social networks.

 Now it's the beginning of 2012, and I've learned a lot.
So….what will happen this year?
I have no idea.

My primary DietHobby plan is to continue writing
and participating here at this DietHobby website,
and I hope that people with similar dieting interests will
come here and participate with me.

For the present,
I intend to continue my DietHobby involvement with YouTube.
and try to be helpful to the community there, while trying to attract
those adults who are interested in dieting and maintenance to
this DietHobby website.

YouTube is simply a massive website of it's own,
with millions, probably billions, of viewers from all over the world.
It is owned by Google, who is now in the process of
incorporating it into the "Google family". 

This is bringing a great many drastic changes to the YouTube website,
including the way it is set up, designed, and managed.
Right now, navigating through the New YouTube
is proving to be sort of a "crap shoot" for video "creators"
such as myself.

This is because YouTube…since being taken over by Google..
has many vague and poorly defined rules, and policies
that are sometimes shared, and sometimes kept private.
YouTube can pick and choose if and how they enforce these,
and any channel can disappear from the site without cause or notice.

YouTube is now moving toward a corporate goal
of becoming more like television…whatever that might mean to them….
and people who have video channels there…even those with
hundreds of thousands of subscribers, and millions of views…
are far less important or valuable to the owners of the YouTube website
than they were in the past years from its creation in 2006 to the present.

YouTube's new plans could benefit DietHobby,
or it could make the youtube website useless to DietHobby.
Either way, the process is interesting, and I am actually
very much looking forward to seeing how this develops over time.

 So…. this is what I've been doing this past year.
I'm hoping that this next year will be just as interesting.
But I also hope that DietHobby will take a lot less of my time,
and will be a whole lot less work.

  Here's my Ask Grandma Valentine's Day video.  

  I really want some patience RIGHT NOW !!!

Many of us struggle throughout our lives
because we want to be the best,
all the time.

The best wife,
the best mother,
the best daughter,
the best friend,
the best employee,
the best boss.

But we can't please everyone all the time,
and we can't be best at everything all the time.

Due to financial or emotional needs, sometimes our focus has to be our jobs
Other things will suffer: friends, family, and health efforts.
Other times, we will have a different focus.

I'm going to do the best I can today.
Tomorrow, I'll also do my best.
It will never be perfect,
but when we learn to stop demanding perfection of ourselves,
we will stop ourselves from being our own worst enemy.
We are all human.
We're all trying our best.

My struggle with food also involves this issue.
My mindset frequently is:
"I want it all, and I want it right now." 

Regarding everything in life ... including food...
We can have it all, just not all at once. 

It’s frequently difficult to please the people around us,
especially when those people are the ones that we love dearly.
Although Life is more than just pleasing others,
I've always found it difficult not to try to make other people happy,
even when it results in feeling like life has been drained from me.

For many years of my life,
I felt like I was never a good enough person,
never a good enough daughter,
never a good enough mother.

This is a problem shared by many people.
We often feel driven by the need for approval from those we love.
It is easy to allow the expectations of parents or spouses or children
or teachers or friends to control our lives.
Many adults are still trying to earn the approval
of unpleasable parents...
…or even unpleasable adult children.

There are many keys to success, but one key to failure
is to try to always please someone else.
It is impossible to do everything people want us to do.
If we don't know our own purpose,
we will always try to do too much,
and that causes stress, fatigue, and conflict.

In order to develop the inner resources
that are required for us to give to others,
we have to survive,
and to figure out how to make ourselves thrive.

It is important to always keep in mind that our goal in life
can't be to simply please others.
It is not a bad thing to do good things for the ones we love,
but our primary goal must be to figure out a way
to take care of ourselves.

Like in an airline emergency,
we have to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first,
in order to be able to help another person with theirs.

Here are some things that I've learned.

It’s okay to have my own thoughts and opinions. 
I don’t have to agree with the views of everyone else. 
This doesn’t mean I have to be in conflict with others over differing ideas. 
There’s a lot of value in the ability to “agree to disagree”, and
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
 
My feelings are important. 
It isn’t necessary to always downplay my feelings in deference to others. 
This doesn't mean that I ignore the feelings of others. 
It means that I have a right to my feelings, too. 
We often think of feelings as “good” or “bad”
when they just are what they are. 
 
There’s nothing wrong with allowing our own needs to be a priority. 
Sometimes we can think that we are weak to even have needs,
but that isn’t true. 
Having needs merely means that we’re human. 

Just because we recognize our needs
and try to find ways to meet them doesn’t  mean that we’re selfish. 
Some people are selfish with their needs,
but if a person has a strong tendency to please others,
that isn’t likely the case. 
 
It’s impossible to please everyone. 
I do my best to accept that and allow myself to be me. 
I am not responsible for other's expectations, their thoughts or their feelings.

It's sometimes worth considering,
that if others genuinely have unrealistic expectations of you
and take it out on you if you don’t meet them,
perhaps these aren’t healthy relationships. 
and it may be time to distance yourself from them.
 
We need to also consider
that we might perceive that others
have higher expectations of us than they actually do. 
People who are perfectionists,
and who have very high expectations of themselves,
sometimes believe that others expect the same of them
and that isn’t always the case.
 
Sometimes we may have worked so hard at pleasing others
that we aren’t even sure who we are. 
It's okay if it takes time for us to look inside
to see our own thoughts and feelings about things. 
 
It is important not to leave behind the person you are, 
or can become, for the sake of pleasing others. 
It isn’t a fair trade-off. 

Your thoughts, your needs and your feelings are important, too. 
There is no reason you have to ignore them in order to please others. 
Your weight-loss and maintenance efforts are going to take a lot from you.
Focusing on pleasing others can be a big distraction
and none of us needs that. 

Each of us is a special person in this world. 
Put your Focus on who you are and who you want to become.