It’s so sad, there once was a time in my life when I was so comfortable with myself. I never thought about what others were thinking about me, I wasn’t plagued with thoughts of self-doubt, I didn’t hide in the shadows hoping people wouldn’t take a notice of me. Frankly, I was pretty happy-go-lucky plodding along in my existence not paying attention to these kinds of things. But when I’m fat I am so utterly uncomfortable in my own skin, it’s almost painful… we’ll I guess it really is painful.. emotionally at least. And no, being comfortable in my own skin doesn’t mean I need to be a size 2 or anything. I was quite comfortable even at heavy times when I was taking really good care of my self like exercising, eating right, and taking vitamins, despite still being heavy. I guess that’s what it’s really about though, isn’t it? It’s not the physical reason of being fat that makes us uncomfortable.. it’s the mental and emotional reasons behind the fat that make us miserable. And when I’m doing the right thing for my body (the working out and healthy eating) I really do start to feel great about myself again. It ties all into that mind body connection. Take care of the body and your mind starts to feel great! We all got fat for some reason, and for most of us it was emotional. I’ve always said you need to get your mind into a better state to really tackle weight loss, but maybe that isn’t the best approach after all. How can you get into a happy place when your body is just wearing you down and weighing you down.. physically and emotionally? I think starting to eat right and exercise is key no matter how fat, how depressed, how miserable you are. Over time, something magical starts to happen in your brain… maybe a few happy endorphins from the exercise, less blood sugar and mood crashes by eating better, and hell.. you start to lose a little weight.. the clothes get a little loose.. damn, if that doesn’t shoot you through the roof I don’t what will. Guess it’s all about a step by step process… and the first steps are by far the hardest, but you just have to do it. It’s really a feedback loop in your body… fat, sad, and depressed now… work at it… get a little less fat, sad, and depressed… work at it more… gets a little easier… even less fat, sad and depressed… and it just keeps snowballing. But it’s the starting that’s key. There will never be a “best time” to get healthy. You WILL feel like crap when you start. I had hit my rock bottom when I started this weight loss journey. I just couldn’t stand being in my own skin anymore. You know, even though I’ve lost 65 pounds, I’m looking better, feeling better; I’m still not comfortable in my own skin. Yes it’s getting better, but I’m not there yet. I just have to keep plugging away, not beat myself up when I have set backs, and always look to the future. Because I know, one day I’m going to wake up and not even think about all this stuff anymore. Someday I’ll just be comfortable and content with me. I know that day is coming and I can’t wait for it!

I don’t know if you guys saw my post about the hacker but we were attacked last night. Then over night we were attached by some crazy SPAM blast that took our home page hostage. MAN! It just makes me so mad that there are mean people in the world. I mean, can’t everyone just leave us alone?!?!

Anyway, it’s seems to be over now. I took care of the SPAM and the hosting company tool care of the Hacker. You may notice some inconsistencies as the hosting company had to roll back to a backup-ed version.

So this has propelled me to release the new community a little early. Both of these things probably wouldn’t have happed if we were on that system. Not that it’s impossible to anything to go wrong but the security is much higher and I’ll be paying for support.

I will post an update and progress in a few days.

Thanks you guys for understanding and begin patient with me.

-Roni

I’ve just come back from Israel where we opened a new distributorship. I have to admit that I didn’t want to go. The media is always full of the bad things and none of the good. It took exactly five minutes for my distributor to persuade me. Looking back, I don’t know what I expected – perhaps a tent in the middle of the desert. What I found was that some parts of Israel look like Provence – lush and green with vineyards covering the hills. It also has wide beaches, white villages, ancient ruins, fabulous restaurants and a warm welcome wherever we went.

I had a unique experience in the Negev desert near the Dead Sea where we picked up sand of almost every color in the rainbow – ochre, red, green, blue, lilac. There I was looking at mineral powders millions of years old and still full of color. Cleopatra makeup! However, the FDA would have had a fit if we put it anywhere near our faces because of all the impurities the minerals must have contained.

Of course, we had to take a dip in the Dead Sea and slather ourselves in the black mud that stands in tubs along the beach. It felt wonderful going on and I must say that my skin felt smooth and alive afterwards. It seemed to take all the winter dullness away.

So I suppose this blog is to say thank you to all my new friends in Israel and to say how excited I was to see your excitement at discovering mineral powders that were pure enough to put on your faces. Don’t forget Powder-Me SPF, you’re going to need its easy protection as you get closer to those hot, steamy months.

Hey All!!

I’ve been working feverishly on the new community. It’s becomming quite an obsession to be honest. I love it!

I have learned so much already and the community features are even better then I thought! Here’s a quick update…

• You will have a “My Page” where you can change the theme, add blog posts, widgets, photos, your favorite RSS feed. You could even display your own blog feed (from another blog) on your “My Page” and continue blogging where you are blogging while participating with the community! How cool is that?!? :~P
• The Who’s online and chat features are working like a charm!
• I’ve designed a whole new look and created the same board structure there that we have here (although they will be called forums-which I actually like better).

Once I feel ready to have you guys test, I will send you out an invitation first before announcing it on my main page and opening up registration to everyone. This way it will give us a chance to create and custimize our main pages and become orientated. I would also love to get feedback from you as well!

And have no worries, I do not plan on shutting down this blog community. I will continue to host and support it. I will just prevent new sign ups once the new community is live. This way I don’t have to manage the spam blogs anymore.

If you can’t tell, I am SUPER EXCITED. I’m having fun developing it and I can’t wait to share it with you guys!!

I’ll post another update soon!

Hey guys! I just wanted to drop a little note to tell you that I am here and I am ok. I’ll get back to posting soon again. The events of the past few months were very jarring on my life and I didn’t think I could write humorously for a while. But life has a way of repairing itself and even the few months that have just past have been good ones for me. So stay tuned! I will write again!!

My beloved Labrador just sliced her ear. She loves to make snow angels and we’ve had plenty of snow this year for her to indulge her passion. This time there was a piece of glass.

When she came back from her run with her other Labrador friends, she greeted me as always by picking up the nearest stuffed thing – this time a walrus – and wagged her way towards me.

Then I saw this nasty flap hanging off her ear. Intent on greeting me as if she hadn’t seen me for six years, she was immensely surprised when I insisted she stop the celebration to let me examine her ear – the indignity of it all. I could practically hear her saying, “What’s all the fuss about?” A quick trip to the vet and several stitches later she was safely ensconced on her chaise longue and wondering when the next adventure was going to happen.

I, of course, was consumed with worry – the ear is an extremity, infection, losing her ear, death – hmmm! Then I remembered reading these words, “Don’t believe your thoughts.” This phrase comes from a book by Marci Shimoff called Happy for No Reason. She was the keynote speaker at our recent Sales Conference and changed our lives. I’m offering Marci’s book to you now as a way to raise the happiness level of your life.

My dog, by the way, is always happy for no reason. Oh, her name is Ceilidh which is the Gaelic word for celebration and pronounced kay-lee. In case you think that’s awfully fancy, it’s a word that’s used often in Scotland like this, “Let’s have a bonnie wee ceilidh.” Translation, “Let’s kick up our heels.” The name really suits her.

Her ear is healing nicely, incidentally. She was never worried about it.

You guys ARE the best.  Ok… here’s what I think I’m going to do (this after some planning last night).

• I am going to create a new community on the new system (as I said this may take a some time).
• Once it’s finished I will invite all of you to join
• blogs.weightwatchen.com will remain active for a few months. After which I will not allow any new sign ups, but I will keep the current blogs active so you can access your old posts even linking to them if you want.

Sound like a good plan?!?

I have to admit, I’m SUPER excited about this!

Ok, everyone I have a real serious question for the community.

You may or may not know I’m a one women show. I’ve created and launched the community all on my own and it is larger then I every thought it would be. I stayed up many a night staring at computer code trying to figure out weird bugs, stressing over upgrades, and adding new templates. The community requires a pretty hefty time commitment and where I used to be spending that time reading and meeting all of you I now spend it fighting spammers, debugging and worring about running out of space on the server.

Anyway, I think you know where I’m going with this.

Honestly, my intent with the community was to offer people a friendly environment where they could blog about thier weight loss jounrey as I did, make some new friends along the way and reach their goals. I truly believe blogging made all the difference in my weight loss success.

Ok, I’ll get to the point. I want to upgrade us. I’ve been researching other community platforms and I think I found one that is perfect!! It offers all of the community features I’ve wanted to add here but haven’t been able to becuase of time and my techical knowledge. Hoever, just with everything in life there are some pro’s and cons.

The Pros! The new community would have….

• Member profiles with pictures
• See who’s online
• CHAT!!!
• member blogs
• forums
• upload media
• Users can have blogs elsewhere and still JOIN and be active by placing badges on their other blogs. (I have seen this as a problem of ours for awhile)
• Easier to share photos
• More user friendly
• Weight loss tables are easier to add (no more visual/code displays)
• Uploading images would be easier.
• I can build widgets easier – like a weight tracker!!
• This ones for me…. Management of the data would be easier.
• Super easy to sign up
• A main page that would show all activity in the community, not just blog posts.
• built in SPAM CONTROL!!!

The Cons

• No way to import users
• You’re blog posts can not be imported (at least I can’t find a way – although you could manually copy and paste)

I know the pros are really out weighing the cons but those are really 2 big cons, I think. For me not bing able to upload my currents posts would hurt a bit but I’m not sure it’s a deal breaker

So I pose the question…. Should we upgrade if it requires you to sign back up in a different system?

Be honest. I want to hear all your pros, cons, thought, complaints, questions, etc.

OH! and this wouldn’t be an overnight thing, it would probably take me a month or two.