Monday, June 29, 2020

The Hollow

In the

hollow

of your elbow

I bend
to
your will

In the

hollow

of the valley

I follow
the
wind to the

hollow

of your cheek
and lay
silently so I may catch every

hollow

word
that spills from your lips.


Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Always Eat After 7PM - Final Thoughts

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This post is sponsored by Always Eat After 7PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks-While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. All opinions expressed are my own.  Click here for full disclosure.

I have come to the end of my review of Always Eat After 7PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks-While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion and I am incredibly happy with the results! (Click here for part one, part two, and part three)




Out of all of the diet programs I have tried in my 44 years of life, this one has been the easiest to follow, satisfying, and most of all, effective. With the most challenging times to curb hunger being just before bed and in the morning, by following the Always Eat After 7PM program, you have the most willpower to stay on the diet because you are eating during the hours when you are most hungry. This also puts you into both intermittent fasting increasing testosterone and your metabolism, while putting you into ketosis.  

The Always Eat After 7 PM plan consists of: The 14-day Acceleration Phase to kick-start the program and see rapid results, The Main Phase where you’ll learn exactly which foods to eat when in order to achieve your weight-loss goals, and The Lifestyle Phase to keep the weight off for good. After following the program for a month, I am happy to report that I have lost 19 pounds total!


Did I think I was going to be successful? Nope. Did I think I would be able to follow the program completely? Nope. Did it actually work for me? DEFINITELY.

I went into this skeptical, as I am with most things, but I really think that this is a program that anyone can follow. I had never tried intermittent fasting but it is incredibly effective for me and I never ever felt like I was depriving myself of anything. I could eat delicious food, it didn't interrupt my normal schedule, and I got closer to my goal than I had in the year I was trying my hardest! The most interesting part of the book for me was this:

     “Those who ate breakfast ended up eating about 260 calories more a day, the review found. Those who skipped breakfast were about one pound lighter than those who ate breakfast. These findings led the researchers to conclude that eating breakfast isn’t necessarily a good strategy for losing weight. The science isn’t really there. Breakfast could very well be the least important meal of the day." - Always Eat After 7PM by Joel Marion

I was practically FORCING myself to eat breakfast every day for years. I am 100% not even close to hungry when I first wake up in the morning and the thought of eating anything besides a giant cup of coffee made me physically nauseous. Of course, most diet programs require you to eat breakfast to "kickstart your metabolism" but that simply is not true! I cannot emphasize how happy I was to find out that I no longer had to stuff something down my throat when I was sure it was just going to come right back up. With this program, no more of that!

I am truly glad that I was able to participate in this program. It's absolutely something that I was easily able to incorporate into my daily life and I am positive that I will be following it for many years to come. Joel Marion’s Always Eat After 7PM program makes dieting easy and eliminates 90% of reasons for resistance!

Thank you for taking this journey with me. I'm so thankful for all of the encouragement and I hope you will check it out! Click here to learn more about the book and how to purchase here.
This post is sponsored by Always Eat After 7PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks-While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. All opinions expressed are my own.  Click here for full disclosure.

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Always Eat After 7PM - Update

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This post is sponsored by Always Eat After 7PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks-While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. All opinions expressed are my own.  Click here for full disclosure.

It's been an interesting month, that's for sure. I have really enjoyed trying the Always Eat After 7PM diet program and I am amazed at the results I have seen! Most of all, I can't believe how delicious the recipes turned out to be!



The worst part for any diet for me is always, always the food. There are so many I have tried that I thought if I had to eat ANY more tuna, I was going to turn into sea life myself! There wasn't a lot of variety and I quickly got bored and turned right back to my terrible eating habits.

Not with this one, though!


There are so many delicious recipes that I don't feel like I am depriving myself of anything at all and that has been the key motivation for me. I am the world's worst cook (which is why I married a chef, ha!) so that was really the only challenge I faced. I am glad to report that I have jumped that hurdle and my family is MUCH happier about that than I am! Not only have I learned how to cook, I've learned how to cook better food for my family! We have all fully embraced intermittent fasting and it has worked out incredibly well for all of us:

     “Intermittent fasting really shines when it comes to improving the hormones that directly affect your hunger, blood sugar, and metabolism. One is insulin. IF combats insulin resistance, meaning that it helps your body use insulin more normally, thereby lowering your diabetes risk and boosting your metabolism. Your brain will release the neurotransmitters and hormones that will help you regulate your hormones and burn more stored fat each day. You don’t have to be burdened with trying to eat every few hours. With intermittent fasting, dieting becomes much easier to adhere to and the benefits are remarkable." - Joel Marion, Always Eat After 7PM

This one was my favorite!

I did not know anything about intermittent fasting at all until reading this book and I was definitely skeptical at first. Within the first week, I fell in love with it. It's so easy to follow and you truly don't feel like you are denying yourself anything. I cannot tell you enough how much this program has changed all of our eating habits for the better. I wish I had known about this much sooner, but I am so glad I know now! 

I'll be back next week with the last update! Click here for part one, and here for part two.
    This post is sponsored by Always Eat After 7PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks-While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. All opinions expressed are my own.  Click here for full disclosure. 

Friday, June 12, 2020

Traffic Secrets By Russell Brunson Is Perfect For Your Ecommerce Goals

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This is a sponsored post on behalf of Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers. For full disclosure, please click here.

The world of ecommerce is highly competitive. Many business owners have their work cut out for them on the world wide web. The easiest part of a business these days is thinking of your product and getting it manufactured. The hardest part is making your presence known on the web. Every year, tens of thousands of businesses start and fail because the entrepreneurs don’t understand one essential skill: the art and science of getting consumers to find you.

I will say that again: the hardest part of getting your product out to the public is making your presence known on the web.

As a blogger, I have seen this for myself. There are millions of guides out there that will walk you through how to bring more traffic to your blog/website. I have read quite a few of them but wondered how Traffic Secrets could work for my blog. I decided to try it out and see!


In Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers, entrepreneur Russell Brunson reveals the classic foundational direct marketing techniques that will allow you to be the first to recognize new trends and see the opportunities that are invisible to everyone else. This guide shows how to master traffic strategies in order to fill your website and funnels with your dream customers. By completing the 30-day challenge, you'll learn key strategies to increase your site traffic. I began the 30 day challenge at the end of May and am just about done. I cannot even begin to tell you every single thing I have learned because we will be here all day. Even for blog traffic alone, it has been invaluable to me so I can only imagine how useful it can be to those beginning their ecommerce journey!
The chapters I found to be most useful were in Section II of the book, which goes into Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube traffic secrets. I really started to see progress in those places, minus YouTube as I am not a vlogger, just a blogger. However, even those YouTube tips proved helpful in surprising ways for me and I have been able to implement them as well!


What I liked the most about this book is that these secrets are not mired in the trendy or faddish ways to build your traffic, but focuses on time-tested strategies that never change. It's easy to follow trends and such but once those trends die, how will you still bring traffic? By focusing on what will work no matter what the "hot" fad of the moment, you can be confident that your traffic will be consistent and will bring more eyes (and wallets!) to your product. The strategy is simple:
  • Start with identifying your dream customers
  • Focus on where your dream customers are congregating online
  • Learn how to "work" your way in
  • Understand how to "buy" your way in
  • Create your own publishing platform
  • Build your own distribution lists
With the workbook exercises included, the traffic secrets become even more clear. I spend a lot of time on these exercises as I am doing the 30 days challenge and am constantly shocked at how simple it is. I was expecting this to be something that I would have trouble understanding or implementing into my own blog growth strategy, but I was very, very wrong. In less than a month, I have received more traffic to my blog than I EVER have. As you can guess, it's quite motivating and liberating to know that I now have the perfect strategy in my hands that actually works!


I am in the middle of the 30 day challenge and the information I have learned so far is invaluable. I am looking forward to what I will learn during the rest of the challenge and am so thankful for what I have learned so far. If you are struggling with building traffic for your ecommerce shop, blog, or website, this book is perfect for you! 

Will you take the challenge?




This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Traffic Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Filling Your Websites and Funnels with Your Dream Customers. For full disclosure, please click here.

Monday, June 8, 2020

Always Eat After 7PM - Author Interview

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This post is sponsored by Always Eat After 7PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks-While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. All opinions expressed are my own.  Click here for full disclosure.

It's been a couple weeks now and I am off to a great start with the Always Eat After 7PM diet. (For my first post in this series, please click here). Everything is going pretty well, I'm enjoying the recipes and doing much better at adding more exercise in different ways to my daily goals. I am happy to report that I have lost 7 pounds! I wasn't expecting to lose anything as I hit the dreaded plateau months ago. I tried everything I could think of and still wasn't able to get past it. I had almost given up but was content with the weight loss I had achieved anyway. This program, however, has given me new hope. I think I will FINALLY hit my weight loss goal. I'm still motivated for a few reasons. The most important reason:  I am pretty sure that this diet might even finally teach me how to cook.



I was able to interview the best selling author, Joel Marion, who is a fitness expert and nutritionist debunking the myths underlying traditional dieting while offering a simple, highly effective weight loss program. Joel Marion’s Always Eat After 7PM program makes dieting easy and eliminates 90% of reasons for resistance.  It was really interesting to learn more about the book and program so I am ecstatic to share this interview with you today!



 What inspired you to write the book?

After authoring six best-selling books, it was glaringly obvious there were two huge misconceptions about dieting that needed to be exposed. The first is that you can't eat late at night or before bed, which science now shows is NOT true. And second, you can't eat large portions that satisfy your natural instinct. This book solves both these problems by providing an evidence-based, enjoyable approach to dieting that can be used by any person to quickly achieve their weight loss goals.

 How long did it take for you to develop the diet?

It actually took several years of researching for me to discover the real science of eating late night. After a few years of tweaking and refining, I finally came up with a rapid fat loss solution that overcomes all the pitfalls of traditional diets.

 What was the most surprising discovery when you were researching scientific data for the diet?

That almost everything my college education and certifications taught me was NOT grounded in published scientific research.

 You’re a six-time best selling author, what is different about this book compared to your others?

Although many of the concepts are similar, the biggest difference is that you don't have to deprive yourself of your favorite foods. You don't have to deal with the burden of eating every few hours. And you don't have to skip the carbs at dinnertime or avoid eating before bed.

 How difficult is the Always Eat After 7 PM plan to follow?

It's not. And that's exactly why I wrote the book. While any diet is never truly easy, it can be more enjoyable and much easier to adhere to when you understand how Always Eat After 7pm works because it caters to our body's natural instincts.

 If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

Born to impact!

I hope you enjoyed this interview. I'll be back next week with another update 💖



Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion is now available to purchase. Learn more about the book and how to purchase here.

Monday, June 1, 2020

Turning Your Blog Writing Into A Professional Career

fountain pen on spiral book


When most people start something like a blog, they won’t be imagining that they will be able to make a living out of it. People tend to go down this sort of route for fun, with the idea that they will have the chance to write about things they love being a good enough reason to get started. Of course, though, as time goes on and your audience grows, you will have the opportunity to start making money out of your blog. There are a few different paths you can take with this, and some of them can land you in a professional career.

News & Journalism

Becoming a journalist can be much trickier than you might expect. While you don’t need to speak perfect English for this sort of role anymore, there is a lot of competition, and this means that those who start out on their own blog can often give themselves a head start. It will be a challenge, but you need to make sure that you’re following the same strict standards that large publications will follow to ensure that people respect and value your content. It’s usually best to choose a niche topic when you’re doing this, or you may struggle to cover enough on your own.

Copywriting & Creative Writing

Writing exquisite copy and crafting intricate stories can be a lot harder than a lot of people realize. This has opened a huge market for writing services on the web, making it easy to pick up roles that will enable you to write. Of course, though, you need to make sure that you have the right skills before you can take on a role like this one. Copywriting workshops have been becoming increasingly popular over the last few years, and you can find loads of great options with a quick search around the web. This will be an incredibly satisfying role to have, while also giving you a lot of freedom.

Reviews & Opinion Pieces

Finally, as the last type of content to consider, it’s time to think about reviews and opinion pieces. Much like news and journalism, you have to be careful to make sure that the content you’re writing in this category is well-informed. You can write reviews for products and services, music and movies, and just about anything else that people have to spend money on. Writing a piece like this can be tricky, and it’s always worth spending some time reading other reviews before you get started, ensuring that you know exactly how to format your work. Of course, though, this doesn’t mean that you should copy other people.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to start making your blog into a professional career. A lot of people like the idea of making money from their blog, but it can be hard to know what sort of content to make when you’re doing this. Each of the roles above can be taken on as a professional career, but you will need to get some practice in your free time before you can get started.