Amy Currioman

Lately I’ve noticed that there has been a lot of television stories, and written articles about the terrible pressures that are put on today’s women to be very thin. Knowing that television cameras add five or ten pounds on the person, and seeing how slender the models still look on television, I swear that many models must be anorexic!

I was looking though a catalog that specializes in fuller figured women’s clothes, and noticed that most of the models in that catalog still looked very slender. I’ve heard that many of those models are the smallest size that the clothes come in, and that does not surprise me at all!

I’ve just ordered some plus size suits from a catalog and I’m really nervous that it might not look as good on me as I hope it will. I’ve noticed that many of the plus size clothes for women look like maternity clothes, and I don’t want to look pregnant! I wish more of those plus sized clothes had belts to pull in the waist; that way the women would look more like they have the ideal hour glass figure.

This guest post from Lewis Beck

Being a small business owner is a lot of work but I really found out the true meaning of that when I got mono last year. I was more or less a one man shop and being so sick for so long nearly put me out of business. I learned the importance of having good people behind you when you need them most and also not to solely rely on yourself since it’s hard to really know when you’re going to be out of commission. Thankfully before I even opened the doors of my shop I did a lot of research on things like online billing and small business xo and really had the whole place ready to go for someone to take over so when my best friend Jim stepped in to help out while I was sick it wasn’t too much of a learning curve. He really saved me those couple of weeks and after a few months things were back to normal. I don’t know what I would have done without all his help!

Over the years I’ve learned some interesting things about tricks restaurants use on their customers. A long time ago I read some literature about how different colors effect different moods. For example, red, yellow and orange are “high energy” colors and are often used in fast food restaurants because the restaurants know that those colors will encourage the customers to eat quickly and leave (making room for more customers) and the “high end” restaurants will often use “calming” colors such as blues and greens to encourage their customers to linger longer (perhaps order more alcohol which is their big money maker) and order dessert, relaxing and enjoying their meal and the company they are keeping.

I was just reading an article on the Time.com website about “what makes you eat more food” and was surprised to read that one of the things that makes you eat more food in restaurants is that most restaurants turn their thermometers to cooler temperatures. When the body is cold, a natural reaction to warm up is to eat more food. So the restaurants are trying to get you to eat more food by making their customers cold!

Do you ever feel hungry but don’t want to eat anything? That happens to me all the time! My stomach is growling and my hands start to tremble, and I even get a hunger headache! But I don’t want to eat anything – nothing appeals to me! This is a dangerous time because now is the time that I would probably grab some empty-calorie type of snack just to head off the hunger pains! I’d love to be able to grab an apple – we were given a ton of them recently, but for some crazy reason ten minutes after I’ve eaten an apple I feel hungrier than I did before I ate it! Sounds crazy, right?

I was unusually tired last night, so I went to bed early – about 6:30pm!  I woke up a few times during the night and realized that my throat was starting to feel sore.  Well, I don’t think it was low humidity and mouth breathing because my mouth wasn’t dry!  When I got up at 4am this morning (yes, 4am – I am a morning person!) my throat was really sore!  So I’ve called the doctor’s office and they are going to see me in a short while.  I sure hope it isn’t strep throat!  But if it IS strep throat, I hope we caught it in time before it really gets bad!