Fabulously Cheeky

Lose neck skin is the number one thing that really reveals someone’s age, but luckily, there are other options than facelift to make it tighter. One of the things you can do, is a small exercise that really works.

This is what you do: Lie on your bed with the head over the edge. Then slowly lift the head up until it is even with your torso. Hold it there, and count for 60 seconds (if you can). Then rest for 15 seconds, and hold again, this time for 30 seconds. Rest 15 seconds, and the third time, hold for 15 seconds.

Don’t be surprised if you can’t hold it this long the first time you try it, or even the first week! It takes a while to get in shape. This exercise. which only takes about 2 minutes daily, will tighten both the muscles and the skin of your neck.

Cheap, easy and effective. No cutting or snipping involved. I like it!
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Tags: Beauty

It isn’t just makeup that is full of chemicals – you’ll find terrible things in food as well. One of the most harmful, and also most common, are hydrogenated oils, which you’ll find in most crackers, chips, snacks, breads and lots of other things as well.

What are hydrogenated oils?
Hydrogenated means that the oil has been mixed with hydrogen. When it reacts chemically with the hydrogen, you get a solid fat instead of liquid oil. This solid fat is much cheaper than for example butter, and is therefore a popular ingredient in the food industry. It always comes down to money, it seems. Too bad money has become more important than preserving people’s health…

Anyway, once the oils are hydrogenated, they create an unnatural fat molecule that the body doesn’t know what to do with. However, the body needs fats. Every cell is surrounded by a membrane that consists of mainly lipids, which is another name for fat. The problem is, that in the US, where everyone is obsessed about dieting and low fat diets, there is a possibility that the only fats that you eat, are actually hydrogenated. And, if that is the case, the body has no choice – it has to use the hydrogenated fats instead of natural fats!

Why is that a problem?
Like I said above, hydrogenated fat molecules are not natural molecules, so when the body tries to use the hydrogenated fats to create cell membranes, they become stiff and sticky instead of soft and flexible.

Here is what normally happens:
Every time you eat, the sugar from the food will get into your blood stream so that the cells can use it for energy. The body then creates insulin, which lets the cell receptors know that sugar is available, and these little chemical “transporters” go out and grab the sugar and bring it through the cell membranes into the cells. However, if the cell membranes are made from hydrogenated oils, the sugar molecules have a hard time getting through so most of the sugar stays in the blood stream.

The body will then produce more insulin to get the sugar levels down. Perhaps the cells didn’t get the message? The sugar has to be taken to the cells! The cells have no energy, and all this sugar is in the blood! And the body works in overload, trying to push the sugar through cell membranes that are sticky and stiff. And because it takes a lot more time to get the sugar into the cells now, the sugar levels may still be too high by the time you eat your next meal, and if that is the case, the sugar levels will now peak to dangerous levels.

This puts the body into a state of emergency. What to do with all the sugar? Store it as fat? Good idea! Urinate it out? Yes! Drink more to dilute the concentration? Definitely!

This is fine, as an emergency measure, but if you keep eating only hydrogenated oils, it will become a permanent state of imbalance. And if you look at the symptoms, they are all symptoms of diabetes!

I have heard that 25% of Americans now have diabetes!!! And if you read the labels on the food they eat, they all have at least one thing in common, hydrogenated oils!

So, can diabetes be reversed?
If you haven’t destroyed your pancreas yet, yes it can. To reverse it, you must NEVER touch anything that contains hydrogenated oils - I don’t care if it is your favorite cookie! Keep reading labels until you find one that is made with natural oils, or just make your own cookies! Then, start using natural oils, like butter, olive oil, almond oil, and so on. As soon as you start using natural oils, the body will replace the hydrogenated oils with natural oils, your cells will be repaired, and you might even lose the extra weight.

The dummest solution – dieting
Because people don’t understand why there is so much sugar in the blood that people keep getting obese, they promote low fat and low carb diets. Why low carb? To keep the sugar levels down, of course! But that doesn’t deal with the real issue, which is – Why are the sugar levels high in the first place?

If you want to resolve a problem, you have to first of all, understand the problem, and second, go to the root of the problem. And the root of this problem is simply hydrogenated oils! So, do yourself a favor – scrap the hydrogenated oils, and your body will thank you for it!
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Tags: dieting

Today, I did a really dum thing. I started looking at pictures of women before and after plastic surgery. I was going to write a post about the stupidity of plastic surgery, and put in some pictures, but before I could even finish looking at them, I felt so sick to my stomach that I had to close the page (so no pictures in this post). I can’t even imagine how people dare to have plastic surgery done, when looking at those kinds of before and after pictures! It is sad and horrible to see what has happened to those poor, desperate women.

The question is, why do women allow this to happen to themselves? Is it fear of getting old? Fear of losing their husbands? Fear of losing their jobs? What husband worth having would leave you just because he saw a younger woman with less wrinkles on her face? If your husband is that shallow, it is better to simply let him go! Have we really become so shallow that we can’t see past the wrinkles to the person within? Does who you are no longer matter?

It is time that we stand up to all the nonsense and refuse to participate any more. We must take back our power as women and embrace all the stages of our lives, not just the stage of the maiden! We must stop the madness, and refuse to live up to an ideal of perfection that is not realistic at all. We must trust in our inner beauty and start honoring ourselves and each other. We must say NO to any more surgical abuse of women!
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Tags: Beauty

So far, the beauty we are most concerned with, is the outer beauty, beauty that is no more than skin deep, even though real beauty supposedly comes from within. Unfortunately, what most of us feel is that it is criticizm that comes from within, not beauty. There is always this little voice telling you that you have gotten another sunspot, or 3 more wrinkles around your eyes. Better stop smiling, or you’ll be getting more wrinkles by the minute!!!

What madness! What beauty can be there, if you can’t even smile? Who is this inner judge of lack of perfection, always telling you how you don’t measure up? How can you possibly feel beautiful when you carry around an inner voice that always tells you how ugly you are?

The culprit is called the mind. Mind is another name for madness. Mind is never happy with anything. Watch it, and you’ll see. Mind judges, criticizes, dissects, cuts apart, and when it has destroyed everything, it becomes unhappy, dissatisfied, miserable, looking outside for some kind of fulfillment. If you can’t be perfect, maybe botox is the answer? You are so ugly, you just need a new face! That’s it!!! A new face will make you happy! NOT….

Ekhart Tolle says that mind is completely incapable of seeing or creating beauty, and that true beauty can only be created from a space beyond mind. Mind also makes it impossible to love. How can you love yourself, or anybody else for that matter, when mind is always in the way, nagging, judging and criticising?

The only way to experience beauty and love is by going to a place that is beyond mind. Go inside, become silent, listen to the wind and the birds, feel the sun or the rain on your face and let the silence of nature go deep into you. Do you feel beautiful when you close your eyes? When you don’t wear makeup and don’t have anyone to compare yourself with? Can you feel the beauty of existence flowing through your form? Beauty is so much more than physical form! Too bad we are so attached to the physical, when the physical is only temporary.

The other day, I was rushing through the supermarket with a shopping list in my hand. As I walked passed the flower section, there was a huge section of just easter lillies. I caught a whiff of their scent as I rushed by, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I forgot both the shopping and the list, and had to go back just to smell them. As their fragrance filled me with gratefulness for their generosity, I realized what incredible beauty there is everywhere we look!

The flowers didn’t care if anyone bent down to smell them – they were still pouring their fragrance out, sharing with anyone who had enough awareness to notice it! It totally blew my mind! This is real beauty! Beauty beyond mind! I’m grateful to the easter lillies for teaching me another lesson of truth! We still have so much to learn…
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Tags: Beauty

It is time we rebel against all nonsense, especially when it comes to fixed beauty concepts and fashions. Every year, runway models show off the newest fashions – fashions that are made to look good on them. These models are about 6′ tall and most weigh less than 120 lbs. Would you really want to look like them, honestly? The last time I saw catwalk pictures on MSN, I looked at the pictures, long and hard, and my conclusion was that the poor models looked like they had been starved for months and months before they were allowed to walk down that runway. That kind of skinniness didn’t look healthy, or natural, at least not to me. And these are the people extreme fashion is made to look good on!

Are these our ideals? I don’t think they should be! Women are supposed to be round and soft. We are supposed to have babies and nurture those babies. Tight, skinny bodies with no curves aren’t as soft and nurturing as someone with a few extra pounds here and there. We have to create our own ideas of what is beautiful – and it should be based on how nature has made us. We need to celebrate our differences, rather than trying to fit into a standard of beauty that doesn’t fit any of us.

So, we need a new approach. We need to start defining our own standards of beauty by discovering and celebrating each individual’s own beauty! We have to stop comparing ourselves to anyone else, and we have to stop criticizing ourselves. We are all different from each other, we are all beautiful in our own ways, so let’s celebrate our differences instead of trying to be all the same.

First of all, we need to work with the bodies that we have. We shouldn’t have to cut and suck, stitch and tuck so that we can all have the same bodies in the end. All we have to do is think how we can balance out what we have been given. This can easily happen with clothing. Because we all have different body shapes, each of us have to also develop our own individual clothing style.

Both the shape and the color of the clothes we choose can make a huge difference when it comes to balancing out the features we have been given. In the next week or so, I am going to write a series of posts about how we can create our own individually flattering clothing style.
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Tags: Beautiful, Beauty, rebel

It wasn’t just in the old days that fashions were extreme. In our days, plastic surgery is big business because nobody feels beautiful just the way they are.

I first experienced, second hand, the curse of plastic surgery when one of my girl friends decided to get breast implants. She had a beautiful, petite body, but after she nursed a baby, her breasts were never quite the same, and she wasn’t happy. She told me that men like big breasts, so she was getting implants.

The surgery was extremely painful, with big scars under each breast, but she was so excited about her beautiful round new breasts that she showed them to anyone who wanted to see them. A year or two went by, and somehow, she started having a reaction to the implants. Her breasts turned as hard as stones and became extremely uncomfortable.

She went back to the doc, who suggested to have them removed. So, again she had to have surgery, and after taking the implants out, the doc had to try to reshape her old breasts by doing a bit of tucking and stitching. Poor girly – she really went through a lot.

Another example I remember was when I took all the clothes I had designed to a photographer to get my portfolio done. She had picked a model who was so pretty that I felt like Cinderella next to her. She was the most perfect person I had ever seen – absolutely gorgeous -until she did something that I’ll never forget!

All of a sudden, the photographer asked her to lift her breasts a little, so the dress would hang better. The model lifted her breasts, and they stayed in that new place!!! I couldn’t believe my eyes and said “How is that possible???” Silicone implants! I should have guessed. Hers were starting to get hard, as well, so she was actually able to position her breasts up/down/right/left so the pictures would come out better.

Oh, my God! I can’t believe that someone so pretty could even consider improving her looks! But it only shows one thing – nobody is happy with the way they look – it doesn’t matter how gorgeous they are!

The time has finally come to question all this nonsense and draw the line. It is time we start celebrating who we are. It is time we learn how to appreciate our own, unique beauty. It is time we get together with our girlfriends, not to criticize, but to encourage and help each other find our best assets. We must learn to enhance these, and stop obsessing about what we don’t have, or what we have, but don’t want. Enough is enough!
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Tags: Beautiful, Beauty

The easiest way to achieve your ideal weight is to STOP EATING MEALS. I can guarantee you, that every time you eat a so called meal, you’ll eat more than you need. It is so tasty, so yummy, just a little bit more…

I’m not saying “don’t cook.” Cook a meal, if you like, feed your family, but don’t join them when they eat unless you are actually hungry, too. If you aren’t hungry just then, keep the food in the fridge, and wait until you are hungry before you eat your share. And, when you eat, stop as soon as your hunger is no longer gnawing in your guts. You can eat again any time you want (but only when you are actually hungry!), so there is no need to stuff yourself or fill your stomach to the limit. “Full” is different from “satisfied.” Stuffing yourself to the brim is not healthy!

You can basically eat anything you like, without counting calories – as long as you only eat when you are hungry, and stop as soon as the hunger isn’t bothering you any longer. If you still have food left on your plate, just put the rest of the food back in the fridge with some plastic over it for the next time you get hungry. And NEVER eat out of boredom or because you happen to be watching a movie. If you are bored, find something to do instead, like knitting, or going for a walk.

If you follow this super simple rule of only eating when you are actually hungry, and never stuffing yourself, the excess weight will fall away and your body will stabilize itself at a level that is natural for you. Who knows if you are supposed to have curves? You’ll know when the weight stabilizes itself. Whatever that place is, that is your ideal weigth.

Being overweight or obese is not natural. You never see an obese deer or an obese bobcat. Obese animals only exist in domesticated animals, and it only happens when we feed them regular meals, instead of letting them eat the way they do in nature.

In nature, the animals eat when food is available, and they don’t go looking for food until they are hungry again. There is no breakfast, dinner and evening meal! There is no automatic nibbling when they watch TV. There are no snacks!!! They just look for food when they are hungry, and they eat until they are satisfied and leave the rest. That is the NATURAL way to eat!

Unfortunately, we have forgotten how to be natural. It is time we remember it again…
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Tags: diet, dieting

Did you know that lots of people don’t actually know what real hunger feels like??? Any time you hear people say “I am hungry for…” (you fill in the blank), that is NOT hunger, that is simply craving combined with boredom. You can’t be hungry FOR something. Either you are hungry, or you are not! Real hunger gnaws and grumbles in your guts. If it doesn’t gnaw, you are not hungry, and if you are not hungry, you shouldn’t be eating!

If you follow this super simple rule of only eating when you are actually hungry, and never stuffing yourself to your limit, the excess weight will fall away and your body will stabilize itself at a level that is natural for you. Who knows if you are supposed to have curves? You’ll know when the weight stabilizes itself. Whatever that place is, that is your ideal weigth.

If your goal is to achieve a weight that is right for you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others. You don’t have to go on a diet. You don’t even have to step on a scale, because it is all about finding YOUR ideal weight, which is basically the weight that is natural for you.

Diets don’t work anyway, because they are simply suppressing your habits. The weight may come off, but when you quit your diet, how long do you keep it off? You can only keep your weight off if you actually change the way you eat!

Being overweight or obese is not natural. You never see an obese deer or an obese bobcat. Obese animals only exist in domesticated animals, and it only happens because we feed them regular meals, instead of letting them eat the way they do in nature.

Eating regular meals is a very un-natural way to eat. In nature, the animals only eat when food is available, and they don’t go looking for food until they are hungry again. If they are not hungry, they don’t even think about food. There is no breakfast, dinner and evening meal! There is no automatic, unconscious nibbling when they watch TV. They just look for food when they are hungry, and they eat until they are satisfied and leave the rest for someone else – no need to be greedy, or finish everything on the plate – that is just conditioned nonsense. Animals don’t operate under this kind of nonsense. The way they eat is the NATURAL way to eat! We have so much to learn from the animals!

Unfortunately, we have forgotten how to be natural. It is time we remember it again…
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Tags: Beautiful, Beauty, diet, dieting

When I lived in Norway, I spent quite a bit of time around a group of Africans. The men came to Norway first, and established money flow and a place to live, and then they helped their sisters and girlfriends to come later.

Because the boys were in Norway for a while before they were able to bring the girls there, it didn’t take very long before the boys started appreciating skinny white women and started putting pin-up pictures on the walls in their rooms. By the time the African women came, the boys had already adopted a different idea of what was beautiful, and when the women discovered this, they went on strict diets almost right away.

The African girls were beautifully curvy when they arrived. After seriously dieting for a while, they lost their curves and started looking lanky instead. They had long arms and legs that needed some curves for a balanced look. So, we told them that they looked silly when they were too skinny, and that they should start eating so they could gain some curves again. Skinny just didn’t suit them!

We also told them that if the African boys no longer appreciated their curves, we were sure that there would be lots of Norwegian boys who would. This idea went over well with the girls, who were laughing and clapping, but the boys were extremely unhappy about the whole idea. No white boy was going to go out with one of “their” girls!!! Thereafter, the African boys had to let go of their stupid ideas of beauty, and the girls went back to being what they were in the first place, beauties with CURVES!

Everybody is different, and everyone has to decide for themselves what works for them. We have to do whatever it is that makes us feel good about ourselves. If dieting makes you feel miserable, don’t diet! Just eat when you are hungry and see what happens.
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Tags: Beautiful, Beauty, diet, dieting