Always Eat After 7PM: Challenge Accepted

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.

For the past few years (ok, my entire life), I have been on a mission to get healthy. I say "get healthy" instead of lose weight because while losing weight is always the best part, I started to have too many health scares pile up that I began to get concerned. My husband suffered a non-fatal heart attack a few years ago at just 36 and it ramped up my resolve to get better.

I began fairly simply and made a few small changes that ended up being the biggest changes. I decided that I was going to stop being my couch's best friend and get up and move more and I was only going to drink diet soda, if I drank any at all. THAT was hard only because I think I have more soda running through my veins than actual blood. I fully admit to being a full blown sodaholic. Since those seemed like the biggest hurdles to overtake, I wanted to start with them. That first month, just by doing that alone, I dropped 14 pounds!

As you can imagine, this rocketed my motivation straight up into deepest space and I can not even begin to tell you the new life it breathed into my soul! I began to really look into different diets and fitness routines and successfully shed 68 pounds. Not only did I lose that weight, I've kept it off for three years now.

Now that I am stuck just 20 pounds from my goal weight, I wanted to get a little tougher and push myself a little further and see if I can accomplish that goal I set for myself three years ago. I began looking into all sorts of different ways to do that and happened to come across the book 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.

This caught my attention because if there is one thing that I have always heard about dieting, it is that by no means do you feed your gremlin belly at night. This never worked for me as I am a notorious insomniac night owl so you can imagine my excitement when I came across this in the book:

       “A research paper published in Sports Medicine in 2014 showed that people who eat the majority of their carbs at dinner actually sleep better. Carb-induced, quality sleep decreases cortisol (a fat-storing hormone) and ramps up the production of your sleep hormones, serotonin and melatonin. Restorative sleep increases fat-burning hormones—the main one being growth hormone—overnight.” - Always Eat After 7PM, Joel Marion

It's like tackling two issues at once for me! So far, I have already learned that although we have been traditionally taught to avoid carbs, have an early dinner, and never eat before bed, the fact is, the latest scientific research shows us this earlier model is not the most ideal. Based on this surprising science, Always Eat After 7 PM debunks popular diet myths and offers an easy-to-follow diet that accelerates fat-burning and allows you to indulge in your most intense food cravings: Eating the majority of your calories at night. 

It's incredibly interesting so far and I am more than ready to get started! Once a week, I will be posting updates on how I'm progressing and I would love if you would join in with me! Here is a short video that can tell you more and I will see you next week!

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.

Personal Finance Tips For A Pandemic

This current coronavirus pandemic has really made me stop and think about my financial situation. There are people protesting to go back to work as I type because everyone's finances are on such a tight string these days that they can't survive without going to work, even if it costs them the very lives they are trying to save.

Now that we are beginning May, I am starting to see through the cracks and I am not liking what I see. NBC reported that the chairman of Tyson Foods has said that the food supply chain is breaking due to the coronavirus.  We still don't know if there will be rent and/or mortgage relief in the United States. An economic stimulus/coronavirus relief bill passed but most people still haven't received the checks yet, and will still be waiting as website outages and technical errors have slowed down distribution.

It's enough to make anyone nervous.

I am trying to stay positive and hopeful for all of us, though so I decided to take a moment in a whirlwind of panic to pass on these personal finance tips for a pandemic:

• Hey, you know that toddler book, Everybody Poops? Yeah, everybody does that so stop buying up all of the toilet paper. I know, I know. Your first instinct is to rush right out and buy it all up but don't do that. Maybe only 2 loaves of bread instead of 12? Possibly one case of bottled water? Buy what you need and smile over all of the money you just saved. That way, supply chains don't break and we won't have people robbing commercial establishments.
• Do not pull all of your money out of the bank and bury it in the backyard. You're going to forget about it in your old age and someone is going to find it in 2145 (but it will be useless because the Xytron overlords will feed on fear and not money). Also, it can crash the (already super fragile) economy.
• You can make your own masks. It's incredibly easy and you can find infinite resources online on how to make one. I made a crazy soft black one because I am the night.

Now, those are obvious common sense financial tips for regular life as well. It's easy to get caught up in the present and not worry about the future in a crisis like this, I understand the panic. However, other countries are slowly beginning to economically recover and return to normal.

Well, this new normal, whatever that may be until we find a vaccine.

Being forced to assess my finances to make sure my family could survive this pandemic got me thinking about finding better personal finance tips for every day. I found two websites that have helped me immensely: the Calculator.me website and Pigly. I discovered so many resources on both of these sites! I spent a lot of time working on making a frugal living budget plan and I already feel a lot better about the future.

Do you have your own personal finance tips to share?