I kid you not, Sept. 1 is Ginger Cat Appreciation Day! Part of why I exercise is so that I can pick up this chonk, get on the floor with him, and run from/after him in play! He plays a LOT! Anyone else got a ginger?

The weekends (even if your days off are not the traditional Saturday & Sunday) are important for resetting and getting prepared for the week ahead. But if you are anything like me, I also feel like I have a million things to do - chores, errands, projects around the house, things I have no time for during the week, etc. 🏃‍♀️‍➡️ And if I do not plan intentional downtime, it won't happen! So how do we do that? Here are some ideas: - Pick one day that you will not schedule anything firm on your calendar 🗓️ - I try for Sundays when I can. It does not mean I won't do anything productive, but it means I can ease into my day and have time for self-care and rest. - Schedule downtime on your calendar - with pen, not pencil! 😁 When we treat downtime and self-care as something we have scheduled, rather than squeezing it in, it is more likely it will happen. - Make plans with a friend who fills your bucket - it could be in person or over the phone/video chat. Connecting with people who bring good energy to our lives is important to our mental health. - Say no if you want to say no - sometimes our weekend gets too busy because we have a hard time saying no, and then end up overcommitted. I for one, have learned to love the word no. What would YOU add to this list? Or which of these ideas will you try out?

Let's take a minute and send some shout outs to someone who has inspired or motivated you this week. Could be someone here in this community, someone at home, or a friend. Send some good vibes their way and let us know why you picked them! I am going to kick us off below...

Oh, this made me laugh. 🤣 I think we've all been there, at one time or another. The amount of dismay that's conveyed here because something beat her to the M&M on the floor smacks of a particular level of desperation, doesn't it? 😬 But we've all experienced it. You're fantasizing all day about that last piece of the sweet treat, or the last portion of ice cream. Or the last handful of chips. You can smell it. You can feel it. You can taste it. Alllll day long. And then you get home, and some jerk has already eaten it!!! And you feel like you could absolutely cry. Do you know why your reaction is so intense? Actually it's a multifaceted kind of thing, but it boils down to this: The food industry is not your friend. The sweet, salty, or crunchy stuff that calls to us with an indescribable power is designed in a lab and tested multiple times over to keep us coming back for the most amount of seconds and thirds, the greatest portions. It is designed, ON PURPOSE, to light up the pleasure centers of our brains much like alcohol and drugs do. That's why it's so hard not to eat an M&M off the floor. You're like Pavlov's dog, drooling the minute you think about it. We've all been, at some point. Here's the good news. The meme will stay funny, but it's totally possible to NOT be the person IN the meme! That's exactly what we teach at Lifestyle Evolution. When you replace the manufactured lab food-like products with real food your body was designed for genetically, biologically, the magic happens. You stay full. Chronic hunger goes away. Cravings diminish. And these biological effects can actually happen really quickly. I'm thinking about my breakfast today. It was full or protein, fiber, and fat, and while I sampled a few bites of my meal prepping for the week (just for taste) three hours later, I really wasn't hungry. It's now 5 hours later, and I'm not hungry. It's SO liberating! We will teach you how to eat like this, and we'll also work with you on how to handle it when you're really mad, sad, stressed, lonely, etc., and the cravings kick in psychologically. That's a part of it too. Our culture teaches us that food solves EVERYTHING, but it doesn't.

I don't know about you, but I am always trying to sneak in some time for a good book! 📖 Reading a good story is one of the ways I decompress. Right now I am reading Latchkey - the 2nd book in a series by Nicole Kornher-Stace (the 1st book was Archivist Wasp). Post apocalyptic world meets ghosts and other crazy stuff is right in my wheelhouse, and if you feel the same, check these books out! What about you? What book is on your nightstand/table right now?