Health & Beauty - Insect Bites and Sun Burn, how do you deal?

This past few weeks in Puerto Rico I encountered myself actively dealing with insect bites and sunburn. The first time we went to the beach I bought a Sunblock Spray for kids and waterproof 70 SPF. I sprayed my girls and continued to enjoy the time at the beach. At the end of the day my daughter Gaby had burned her shoulders, and I had burned part of my back, so I had to run to the pharmacy to buy some after sun care to relieve my daughter's pain. We were surprised because we did put sunblock on each other. But after taking a look back I realized that we made a few mistakes of sun safety.

#1. We put sunblock on ourselves at the beach. It is recommended that sunblock be applied 30 minutes before being exposed to the sun to give the lotion time to be absorbed into the skin and work better.

#2. We applied Spray sunscreen in a windy place. There was a lot of wind at the time we applied the sunscreen so most of it must have blown away instead of sticking on each other.

#3. We didn't double check that we reached all the needed spots. We did a quick spray and were not very thorough. It is necessary to make sure to put on sunscreen in all exposed areas for good protection.

And the other thing we had to deal with was mosquito and midges bites. For those of you who don't know what midges (or Majes in spanish) are, they are a tiny little bug, the size of a fruit fly more or less, and they gather in places near water and come out mostly at dawn.

The last day we went to the beach it was raining early so we were able to enter the water late, when the sun was not at it's peak, it was cloudy so we didn't even put on sunblock (another no, no of skin safety) and when the sun started to set and we gathered our seashells and towels and headed towards the car, we took a few minutes to stand at the peer and that's when I noticed the Majes flying around my legs. I didn't think much of it, I mean I had not been at the beach this late in more than 2 years so I wasn't really thinking the bites were going to be too bad, but there I was back in NYC with over 25 bites in my legs and back. Tiny little bites that looked like mosquito bites except smaller, as my mosquito bites tend to swell a lot and appear bigger than a quarter. These bites were more the size of a pea, but itched for over a week. I tried researching online about these biting midges but there wasn't much helpful information. So I just put on calamine lotion on them 2 to 3 times a day and wished for the itch to go away.

Now that the weather is getting better, how to you take care of your skin and protect yourself from sunburn and insect bites?

Health/Beauty - The struggle with the food.

Days pass and my husband has started a new dieting system, I find myself re-evaluating my own dietary habits. The new system consists of 5 mini meals, low in carbs, and 1 lean green meal, 6 to 8 oz of lean meat and 3 servings of non starchy veggies. I think I am going to try that approach, yet I have to organize myself and find substitutions for the mini meals. My hubby is going to be eating those protein bars, and some low-cal-low carb snacks (soy crisps) etc. Each mini meal is only 100 cals ea. and the regular meal it's like 500 cals so it's like 1000 calories in a day. This is definitely something that will make you loose weight, as you will be lowering your caloric intake a great deal and then because you eat every 2/3 hours then you can think that you are eating more than you think, also it recommends taking at least 15 minutes to eat each meal, and never allow yourself to get to a level 1 or Zero in hunger, Zero being that feeling when you are so hungry that you get cranky and will eat anything and everything in sight, and I noticed that I get to that level quite often, and I need to change that. But I'm such a picky eater that I have to find things I can snack on throughout the day that will agree with me. I don't like cereal bars, or granola bars, or shakes, or soups, I don't know I'm very hard to please. Yet I have simple tastes. But this week as I watch my hubby and help him out organize his daily meals I will try to get familiarized with the program he's in so that I can tweak it to my particular idiosyncrasies. What is your relationship with food like? Do you ever allow yourself to get so hungry that you are ravenous? Why do you do it? I do it many times because I am to lazy to cook and can't find anything that is quick and easy and that will satisfy me.

Before I go, I want to apologize for not being consistent in the past couple of days. Life has been hectic and my head has been spinning with all the things I have been meaning to do but haven't, and the worst of all is that once I skip a day from Blogging, the next day I find I have to force myself to write, because I get into a lazy streak or something. We need to push ourselves to be our best everyday otherwise we can slack off constantly until we find the strength to go back on schedule.
Do any of you a struggle with keeping a schedule?  I want to hear from you!

Health & Beauty - Deprivation

Today is Monday and Monday's for the most part will be about Health & Beauty. I am going to talk today about Deprivation. Many times when we go on diets we tend to deprive ourselves with something and for some this works well, I've heard that if someone is addicted to something, the best thing to do is deprive themselves from it. But for me deprivations just creates the opposite effect. I cannot deprive myself from something or I will binge on it. Right now I have had a King Size Hershey's Almond Chocolate Bar in my purse for over a week. I have not opened it. I rather have the indulgent item in my sight and know that I can have it whenever I want, and I will not over indulge in it. As long as I have what I want and it is my choice whether I eat it or not, I'm fine. The minute I am told I cannot have it, I start to crave it and as soon as I get my hands on it I will devour it and will not stop eating until it is gone.
My other problem with diets is getting bored with the food. Ever since we have stopped eating flour I have an extremely hard time cooking dinner. I mean meat and salad can be varied in so little ways if the only veggies I like are lettuce, tomato, carrots and broccoli. I can't eat rice and beans, or rice and sausage, or rice & chicken...Pasta is to be limited, potatoes are to be limited...and I don't know, all this limitation bothers me. My husband is doing great though, most of his shirts are too big on him now, and it's awesome, but I am over eating like crazy!!! Fortunately I'm still under the same weight range I am always in, so I am not gaining weight, so that's good. However, I made the active choice not to be on a diet, because I know that I will not be able to handle deprivation successfully. But I find that the most difficult time for me is dinner time as I never know what to cook. I get bored with the food. And weekends are horrible, I snack the days away hoping that I don't have to cook. I dread it now. I dread cooking! I don't know what to do. If I weren't such a picky eater and my children weren't so much like me, I guess we would have a better variety of stuff to cook.
Do any of you struggle with this?
How do you put variety in your meals when trying to loose weight?
Please share, I would like to hear from you! :)

Why does seeing someone diet makes me more hungry?

When my hubby decided to go on a diet, I was all excited, I figured that we could encourage each other and loose weight together. Even though we are both giving up on rice for dinner, and eating only whole wheat bread with no sugar on it, or whole wheat pasta in small quantities, I find myself snacking more than normal. I am eating more vegetables and less flour products yet I stay hungry after I eat so after I eat, I tend to keep snacking into the night.
Have you ever felt like eating something yet not really knowing what that something was? So you kept on eating different things to see if you could figure it out? You crave something salty but then you end up eating too much salt, so you try to eat something sweet to counteract it, then you feel like you ate too much sweets so you try and eat something else to take away the sweetness and it goes on forever. That's how I feel most days.

Before I started dieting I would eat a heavy lunch and regular sized dinner not too late and it would hold me up till the next day. Lately I've been so rushed at work that don't have time to eat lunch so I end up eating anything in the run and when I get home I'm so starved that at dinner it's like I barely ate at all. Meat and Vegetables seems like a good choice, but when you are not fond of vegetables then there's a problem. And I must say I am not much of a bread eater (unless I'm in Puerto Rico and presented with Pan Sobao then I can't stop myself) I don't miss the rice or the pasta, but there is something I miss, like eating corn tortillas in tacos, or flautas... Hamburgers, and cheese hotdogs, plantains or surullitos. Maybe it's the fried stuff that I crave. Alcapurrias, amojabanas, tostones...

I don't think dieting is for me, I have the things that I like to eat, and I try to eat them in moderation. I must say I am very proud of my husband for sticking to his diet, he is amazing, but for me, I just don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm not giving up on loosing weight though, don't get me wrong. I just will find other ways to do it. We are not all cut with the same scissors and that is perfectly OK. :)

The Price of Beauty

Today my baby girl turned 5 and we had an awesome birthday party. There were a lot of friends and family that came over for the party. We all were looking our best, we had brand new shoes all three of us, Gaby, Elsie and me. We chose the perfect shoes to look our best, but half way through the party we realized that even though our shoes where perfectly suited to make us pretty, they also killed our feet. Even Elsie had to run around barefoot for most of the time. And now several hours after the party is over I must say that I am still walking on my heels so as to take pressure away from the front of my foot, and then it's still very painful to walk, even barefoot. Why must we fall prey to the desire to be pretty at all cost?