As someone who has always been interested in low carb dieting, I do find it interesting to keep an eye on the Ketosphere, even though I am no longer eating this way.   I actually deleted a majority of the low carb diet channels I'd previously watched on YouTube, with the exception of 2 Krazy Ketos and Dr. Ken and Neisha Berry.  I like their personalities and feel that they offer a more practical and realistic approach to people who are looking to start and maintain a keto lifestyle.  Also, I like their interactive Q&A formats, and they've helped me get some great ideas about being a nutrition habit coach in the future.   That said, YouTube still offers up a few other keto/carnivore "influencers" to me, and once in a while, I will admit that I do take the bait and watch to see if there's anything I can learn.   And watching sends me down a slippery slope of thinking...do I want to do an extreme keto challenge?  My answer is no , but honestly, I do find t...

As you may have guessed, I love a good Halloween costume.  When you're 50something, you don't always have an occasion to wear one, unless you dress up for work or attend a party.   Last year, William and I dressed up on the spur of the moment just to hand out Halloween candy, and we had a good time eating homemade pizza, drinking red wine, and loading up our neighbors with the good chocolate (by which I mean the chocolate everyone wants to get for Halloween.) I remember one little girl who was so excited to meet "a real princess, just like me!" She was quite impressed with my crown and dress but slightly distressed that I'd already kicked off my shoes for the evening.   This year, I thought it would be fun to be a little more deliberate about our costumes.   We really enjoy watching the  Aurora Teagarden mysteries from Hallmark Movies  and have watched the entire series more than once.   I love Aurora's sassy librarian style, and William...

Welcome to the fall version of 50 Something Stories!   Fall-En Yes, it is technically fall in Southern, California.  Yet, the temperatures have not fall-en (not for longer than a few days), and as the rest of the country celebrates pumpkin spice lattes, flannel shackets (shirt jackets, yes, it's a thing), and chili for dinner, I am sitting in the bedroom with the air conditioner turned on to write this blog.   Even though the temperature is 91-92 all week, it still feels like fall to me.  Or fall as I've experienced it while living in other states:  I still feel like organizing my fall capsule wardrobe and including long sleeves, sweaters, and new jeans.  I still feel like buying boots.  I still feel like cuddling under a blanket while watching Hallmark movies about pumpkin bake-off contests.  Fall-Ish  So, when it's technically fall but the temperatures tell a different story, what am I doing to enjoy the new season?  Planning my fall ...

  Last night, we attended the 10th Diner En Blanc in San Diego.  (William has attended 9, and I have attended 4, if you include the pandemic version we hosted at home in 2020.)   My favorite parts about Diner En Blanc include:  Dressing Up  It's always fun to find a new white dress to wear for the event.   The guidelines state that you have to wear all white and silver accessories are allowed.  I love to see what everyone is wearing.  I usually buy at least 2 dresses and then choose my favorite one to wear.  I liked this one with the fun ruching for this year.   Some people make up their own rules, and I saw a few non-compliant items like brown shoes and gold accessories (yes, they still let them in!) This year, I also went and had my hair done for the event, which was fun.  My stylist is Dan from Pret A Porter Salon in La Mesa, and I think he did a great job.   Between the dancing and the secret location, I didn't have many cu...

One of the best parts about living in Ocean Beach (2018-ish) was that I discovered that I really loved hot yoga.  It helped that a great hot yoga studio was just a 5-minute walk away from my house, and that I felt very comfortable going there from my first class, which was taught by a new yoga teacher named Ruby.   I would always leave drenched in sweat and feeling happy and accomplished.  During this time, I had a stressful family situation in my life and hot yoga on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays always provided me with a 90-minute "self-care" break as well as the stress relief I needed to be more present during the times when I needed to be calm.   When I moved to Point Loma, I no longer had the hot yoga studio down the street...and then the pandemic happened so all the studios were closed, anyway.   Hot Yoga at Home (HYH, v.1)   I met William in July 2019, and when I was ready to start doing yoga again, there were still no yoga studios open. ...

I've worn the Amazon Halo device for almost a year now.  It's a band that you wear on your wrist, and it doesn't show anything on the face, which I like because I don't need to wear a screen on my wrist.  However, the data is useful to me as the Halo also tracks sleep, steps, heart rate, and tone.    Yes, tone.  Which some find really creepy, but I actually like it, and I think it's pretty accurate.  I'll sometimes set "tone" when I'm presenting at a meeting so I can make sure I'm coming across as knowledgeable, interesting and confident.   I originally bought it because I felt like my sleep needed help, but I wasn't sure how many hours I was sleeping or how many disruptions I was experiencing at night.  (I'll post about sleep at another time.)  Most of the time, I forget that I have the tone set, and I don't see a reading all the time.  When I do, it's fun to see if I feel like the tone matched the situation.  A Valuable Vocabu...

My nutritionist recently encouraged me to make sure that I am getting 8,000-10,000 steps a day (now revised to just walking an hour a day, which is closer to 6,000 steps a day.). William has a saying in his family that you should always buy the best tool you can afford to get the job done, so I decided that if I was going to start walking more, I needed better walking shoes as my cute footwear is not cut out for the job.  (Picture here of William and I walking around Laguna Beach last weekend to try to get my step count up!)  Honestly, I don't like tennis shoes or athletic shoes because there's just nothing cute about them. My brother Ryen told me that ugly shoes are trending this year, so that makes me feel a little bit better about taking our loop around the the neighborhood wearing Amazon fashion + ugly shoes.  I spent hours researching the most comfortable+best looking tennis shoe, and I ordered a pair from a company called Hey Dude.   However, my HD shoes got tr...