7 Helpful Tips for Losing Weight

Hallo fantastische Neue Preußen!

I hope you all are doing quite well. My school is almost out. We have nine more days of class. I am so very excited. You all know what that means. Days out at the beach, lake, and being out and about in general. For those of you who do not know, I recently went on a diet to lose some weight. Not that I am horribly overweight, but I could drop some pounds.  One of my friends, James, has also gone on a diet and I am so proud of him! He has lost so much weight by going on a healthy diet. You know one of those ones where you do not take a bunch of diet pills and starve yourself. He is such an inspiration to me and such a great guy.  So, today I am going to share with you some tips that have helped me lose some weight.  I hope you all find these helpful!

•A friend of mine recently took a job at a hospital and a cousin of mine is just now finishing up nursing school. Both have told me that the key to any diet is this: DO NOT MAKE SUDDEN CHANGES IN YOUR DIET! By this they mean, do not suddenly stop eating or shrink your potions drastically.  This will cause your body to go into starvation mode and you will actually put on weight because it is trying to compensate for a drastic change in its calorie intake. Instead, you should slowly decrease your portion sizes to give your body time to change.  This also makes it easier on you since you are changing a part of your lifestyle. The easiest way to shrink portion sizes is to cut out a snack or choose a more filling one like a handful of unbuttered popcorn.

•Strange as this one sounds, drink coffee and not the decaf kind. The caffeine helps with metabolism.  When I say coffee I mean plane black coffee with nothing added.  Not only this, but coffee has a bunch of really good benefits for you.  It has antioxidants in it that help fight cancer. Not only that, but it is a good pick me up when you start to feel tired.

•If you already drink coffee, but insist of having sugar and creamer in it a good way to slim down is to take out the sugar and cream.  However, if you just have to have your coffee sweetened and flavoured Splenda has you covered. They have flavour packets for coffee that have sweetener in them.  They are quite tasty actually. That is how I got myself off of drinking coffee with my cream and sugar. That being said, I am actually quite fond of European coffees. They brew them so dark and rich that I am not really sure you can really call it coffee.

•If you are not fond of coffee, then drink green tea! It is really tasty and has a bunch of antioxidants as well.  A really good way of brewing this is by filling a sun tea pitcher or jug with water and two small tea bags, or one large tea bag. Take some fresh peach slices and put them in there with the tea so that as the tea brews it flavours the tea and sweetens it naturally.  After the tea is brewed you can take the slices out and eat them.  Peaches also help you slim down! You can add any fresh fruit to your tea while it brews to flavour and sweeten it.

•Eat yogurt this includes the sugar free and non-fat frozen yogurt. Not only is it tasty, but it helps with digestion and helps you slim down.  That means treat yourself to some of that delicious stuff at your local frozen yogurt bar. Keep in mind that you should not pile on all those extras to the extent of mostly having toppings. Personally, I like the espresso flavoured frozen yogurt with almonds and kiwis at Cherry Berry. You can also replace ice cream during the summer with frozen yogurt! Regular yogurt comes in so many flavours it is not even funny. I like Greek yogurts.  I find that the texture of it is better than regular yogurt. I guess that comes from being European though.

•For the gamer nerds out there, this is for you! Do not feel bad, I too am a gamer nerd. I know we love to sit there in our super comfy chairs and play, but there is a fun and easy way to lose some weight while gaming. Ready for this? Sit on one of those giant exercise balls when you are playing. For this to work make sure that you are sitting up straight and have your feet directly in front of you. This makes you work to stay up right. So, not only is it good for losing weight, but it also helps with your posture.

•This is a very easy and helpful tip that helped me a lot. Drink less soda or cut it out altogether. I gave soda up for Lent last year and lost 15 pounds! Awesome! Because people drink so much soda today, cutting it out or reducing your  soda intake will help you slim down. Do not drink diet sodas! It contains ingredients that are known to cause muscular dystrophy. That is not good and you do not want it.

I hope this is helpful to you! It has helped me quite a bit. These are very simple changes to make. This is a great way of jump starting your diet or keeping some of the weight off once you have lost it.

Until next time!

Fashion Trend! Hatpins

Guten Morgen schöne neue Preußen!

I hope you all are doing well. I have been doing a lot of school work and work at the store lately. As such, I have not had a lot of time to blog. No worries though! I have not forgotten about you all. Today I will be talking to you all about a trend that I have seen coming back into style. In Brittan it never went out of style. I say Brittan, but it is really most of Europe that still has this trend. In American women do not wear a lot of hats. That is because we all want to be tan! I really do not have a desire to be tan as it brings out my awkward skin tone. I am Native American and Prussian. *Sigh* It is Baltic Prussian not Germanic Prussia so I have that almost faire, almost tan skin tone. When I tan I do not burn, but I get this interesting almost olivey tint to my skin and then I look Mediterranean. Oh well. 

Lately I have been seeing a lot of sun hats being stocked in stores. No, I am not referring to those hideous things that are made of straw that people wear when gardening. I am talking about the pretty white ones that you tie various bows around to match whatever sun dress you are wearing. When it is windy outside this becomes a bit of a problem. Thankfully there is help for this! It is a wonderful thing called a hatpin. Hatpins are kind of hard to find in America. The jewelry store that I work at carries them though! So, if you live in Kay County Oklahoma you can come in and see our selection of hatpins. Some people collect hatpins and the more expensive ones are made by hand. Handmade hatpins are amazingly intricate and look like a fancy flower or a bow usually. They are very pretty.

Hatpins were not originally used as an ornament for one’s hat though. Originally they were very plain and looked like a regular stick pin that was about three or twelve inches long. Hatpins keep your hat from flying off your head or keeping it in place. They are very useful when used right. There are some tricks to getting them to stay in though. I will post some instructions and tips for hatpins later and post a link here when I do. Hatpins will add something special to your hat if you buy a plain hat. Most of my hats are fairly boring except when I wear a hatpin or a ribbon with it. Sometimes I put both, particularly when it is windy out. When I do this I place the hatpin in the middle of the bow. That makes it look really cute.

If you decide to start using hatpins I must warn you that if you go online to buy them about 90% of all hatpins that claim to be antique are not in fact antique. If you must buy online make sure that what you are getting is the real deal if you are spending a lot of money on them. A good place to buy hatpins that are new and unique is on Etsy. If you want the whole experience of buying a hat pin buy them at a jewelry store or an antique store with a good reputation. If all else fails, buy a hatpin collectors book and take it with you. Remember that hatpins need to be taken care of and wiped off when you are finished using them. They are just like every other piece of jewelry that you own and if they are highly ornamented with various jewels you should take it into your local jeweler to have the prongs and settings check. Many jewelers will do this for free especially if you buy the pin from them. There are special cases you can purchase for your hatpins to keep them nice and undamaged.

Hope this is interesting to you and you find it helpful!

Until next time, stay wonderfully snazzy.

Medieval Fair Time!!!

Hallo schöne neue Preußen!

I have been so incredibly busy with this last quarter of the semester.  This past weekend was the Medieval Fair and I had so much fun! Now, I know a good deal of you probably think that Medieval Fairs are full of nerds I am here to tell you that that is indeed the case.  However, that being said, I am a nerd. I am a major nerd. That does not mean that we are a bunch of people that sit in front of the TV and play video games or have our head in books all day. The Medieval Fair is when we get to show off how nerdy and awesome we are. This year my college’s Medieval Society went out and showcased our studies of the Byzantine Empire. You know what that means don’t you? Awesome costumes!

That is me holding a battle axe, you cannot see the top of it though. Oh, well. I was a Byzantine Turk. This year we had a wide range of “nationalities” in our group this year. Here are some more pictures of me and my fabulously nerdy friends!

 

Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Go out and support your fellow nerds and go join them at Medieval Fairs, Renaissance Fairs, and Comic Book/Anime/Star Wars/Star Trek Conventions. We spend lots of time doing what we love and we are good at it. Parental Figures, look at it this way, would you rather have a kid that is a huge nerd that becomes the CEO of a company or gets another high paying job, or would you rather have a kid that is super popular that drops out of school and become a drug addict that flips burgers for a living? I know that is a little extreme, but what can I say? I am an academic after all.

Abschied für dich! Halten schön zu sein!