Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Freaky Friday

I must admit that I actually added to the rest of the people getting out early on what is usually called Black Friday. I have always wondered why the media called it Black Friday. There is really nothing black about it, except maybe the sky.

We tried Freaky Friday a few years ago and found the people that set their alarms and made it to the stores while the raccoons were still out were really nice people. But why did they do it. Was it the extra $10 gift certificate you got at one place, or the free breakfast you received at another? What made them participate?

It all starts with the ads that run on Thanksgiving. That paper in our area is bigger than the biggest Sunday paper we usually receive. So you pour over the ads, seeing who has the bargains that are on your list of gifts for Christmas. Then the decisions! Which store do I get to first? Do I have to get up at 3AM or 4AM? And, when will I have the time to get to the store that is giving away breakfast? Oh…the decisions…


So you roll out of bed at 3:30AM (the store is close) and hit the road while those raccoons are still scurrying the neighborhood. Under an almost party like atmosphere you line up outside the store. Bundled up…coffee in hand…then the doors open. BUT, unlike that you see on television when Feline’s has their sale on bride’s dresses. This group of shoppers is cautious, happy, helpful, funny, and calm for such a stressful time. Many consider this fun!!? Many do this every year! Stores reward these people with extras, bonuses, gift cards and more.

The one thing these Freaky Friday shoppers have learned is those items with the biggest discounts don’t last. In some cases…they don’t last to the end of that line outside. This is found primarily these days at the electronics stores; where a $200 laptop or a $300, 42inch plasma is waiting for the really brave who camped out all night for those bargains. Some stores are even using a way of handing out a ticket for their limited supplies. Starting at the front of the line for all the super specials they have in the store. That way they have order instead of chaos, and everyone still stays happy.

Here is the interesting observation. The people at the back of the line don’t leave just because they did not get a ticket for the super specials. They stay. They still shop, they still have the experience and fun and sometimes…people who have the tickets for some items give them away because they are already over their budget. So they get to play Santa Clause too.


What a great concept. Bargains, fun, new friends, food… that does sound like a party. So why doesn’t the media rename black Friday to something more fun; like Sparkling Friday or Freaky Friday. Yes it is freaky to get up that early to go shopping. But it is fun! And it’s only one day a year!

Amazingly Yours,
Dr Marlene


If you want a fun read that can also teach you the secrets I learned on losing over 170 lbs. pick up my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites. It will be a good one to have around just after the holidays. Or if you want to learn more about color, my book Marketing’s Silent Language includes how to use what the eye sees first, to your advantage.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Fast Time Usually Unsuccessful

The seasons are upon us and so are the weight loss ads. You think this is bad just wait till after the holidays. What can I say; I will be presenting a program on my radio show about losing the holiday weight and getting healthy. However, unlike most of the ads for this pill or that pill, we will be presenting a healthier way.

Back to the ads…the biggest problem that these ads and pills have is according to them, you can lose the weight FAST! The public on a whole, can’t wait for anything these days…change your hair color in an instance, have your teeth look like the latest movie star in one visit even surgeries are being done quicker. While all this is very true and it seems we are racing towards science fiction being science fact; our bodies haven’t gotten the message; it is still operating on its own schedule not societies.

If you gain the weight slowly over time, losing it fast just puts you in the category of the 97% of the people that gain back 110-125% of the weight. What is even more interesting is that of the people that have the weight loss surgery 60% gain back as much as 30% of the weight. Now for this category of weight loss people that can be a huge number.

The body is the body and will always win out. No matter where we are in science, the body is a machine that operates at a certain level. With some people that level is smarter than others. With others, that level is their muscles are better focused to sports. But on the whole, the body operates within a certain range to get all the daily functions completed.

So why even go on a “diet” to lose weight??? Duh! Function is very important to the body and if you carry around excess weight, that body starts to breakdown sooner. Ladies that means you get older faster!!! So losing the weight is like stepping back in time. (Sort-of) Haven’t you ever seen pictures of people that have lost a lot of weight…most look younger!
Because of those statistics the best way to lose that weight is slowly.

Amazingly Yours
Dr Marlene

My show this week is an incredible inspirational story of an amazing woman who loved, lost, lost again, and again then came back to a wonderful new beginning.

You can learn the secrets about my weight loss of 170 lbs. with the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites. Or if you want to learn more about color, my book Marketing’s Silent Language includes how to use it to your advantage.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Ode to a Cold

NOT!! I do believe that a cold is actually worse than the flu as aliments we humans go through. First it lasts longer. Second there isn’t much that you can do about it short of taking something to relieve your symptoms.

I just spent the worst cold week that I can remember in years; including losing my voice the day before last week’s radio show. Oh what fun that was. I don’t know about you but I think a cold is the biggest waste of time and energy there is.

And don’t you just love the term…we catch a cold. The visual to that is we run after the cold virus with our little nets till we catch it…like a butterfly. Oh Please! Why would anyone in their right mind want to have a cold?

Your head fills up….your nose fills up…your ears fill up…my word you feel like you are drowning! And In what!!! You know what it is! Then you take all that ‘stuff’ to make you feel better. I don’t know about you but when I take that stuff…I lose my brain power! It goes right straight down to running at 2 miles per hour instead of 65. After all you don’t want to go over the speed limit.

So off to the drug store (great term) your go to fill up your basket. You have the AM/non-drowsy ‘stuff’; the PM/help you sleep ‘stuff’(when I take it keeps me awake); and that wonderful ‘stuff’ you squirt up your nose to ward off the cold!!! So here you are at the counter with $50 of stuff for a cold that, with or without it, will last 7-10 days! What is wrong with this picture?

With all our wonderful science breakthroughs and all our great minds in medicine, you would think that after all these years those scientists could have come up with something? Maybe they just don’t want to…after all $50 times millions and millions of people each year with colds does add up to a nice tidy sum. Hummmmmmmmm?

Than about 7-10 days after all this starts…your body says okay I am done and that cold is going….going…gone! The head drains, the ears drain, oh yes…hand me the Kleenex…the nose drains! The voice returns to almost normal (I say almost because you kind of forget what it is suppose to sound like), and ‘they’ say you should be immune for at least 6-12 months. Obviously they have never had small kids in school where a cold is passed around all season.
Yes, my ode to a cold is a plea to the scientific community…please can’t you at least find something that can get rid of this waste of time illness in less than 7-10 days!

Amazingly Yours
Dr Marlene

We have a great woman on today that is a jeweler. Catch the show at 1PM Pacific time on Voice America Women or later in the archives.


You can learn the secrets about my weight loss of 170 lbs. with the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites. Or if you want to learn more about color, my book Marketing’s Silent Language includes how to use it to your advantage.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Entering the Season of Beige Food

We are now entering the season of Beige food. The Holidays of turkey (beige), gravy (beige), dressing (beige), sweet potatoes (almost beige), pumpkin pie (dark beige) get the picture?

Most people put on about 3-6lbs during the Thanksgiving four day holiday. WOW!! Just imagine how much food must be eaten to gain that much weight. Why do you continue to put on that weight and sometimes keep that weight on every year?

Tradition! Tradition started during the time of the pilgrims when adding a little weight during the fall to early winter, help the people make it through the winter months when food from the fields was scarce. We don’t have that problem today; in fact, we have the opposite problem. We have abundance!

Abundance in the form of a markets teeming with all the goodies of the season and more; because of world trade and markets open to everyone, we can get all the great foods of the world all year long. When it is winter in the northern hemisphere it is summer in the southern hemisphere and vice versa.

The other problem that we have is we no longer have to tend the field and go out and hunt for meat to put on the table. In fact we are more of a sedimentary society than ever. This computer that I am typing on is one of the big reasons.

So we stick with traditions and we gain, and we gain, and we gain weight each and every season. No wonder 67% of the population of the US is overweight, with the world catching up quickly. 38% of our kids are overweight, that number is frightening.

Now is the time to break with tradition and think before we buy this season. The turkey is wonderful; but hold back on the butter. (That bird will taste just as good and be better for you) Skip the dressing if you can, if not make as little as possible and go for no left-over’s. Skip all the potatoes and go for more than one vegetable. You will even be able to have more than one helping of those green beans. Make your own cranberry sauce (it is so easy) don’t use sugar…use something else and it still tastes great. Now that dessert! Try other pumpkin delights that are not a pie. You can get the same taste but cut the calories. You might even cut the nap time problem.

Stay in amazing shape for the New Year!

Amazingly Yours,
Dr. Marlene

I have a personal jeweler coming up on the show on 11/14/07 don’t miss this one she will give you hints for your holiday giving.


You can learn the secrets about my weight loss of 170 lbs. with the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites. Or if you want to learn more about color, my book Marketing’s Silent Language includes how to use it to your advantage.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Small World Getting Bigger

Talk about sending mixed signals. Big news this week…Disneyland is shutting down the Small World ride to make all the boats bigger to accommodate today’s larger people. At the same time there is news that schools are trying to get younger students to eat better. Studies have shown if the fat is put on at a younger age it is harder to get off later in life. (That is so right)

So here we are as a nation; making it easier to be fat and telling our younger people you should not be fat. HUH??

Talk about sending mixed signals. I still can remember when I was very fat the availability of larger size clothes was next to nothing. Today…not only do we have lots of choices, but every store, including the very high end, has teens and younger big size clothes.

Are we becoming a nation of fat people? What happen to the trying to get the weight off and get healthy trends of the last few years? I have noticed on some websites of large size clothes they are not offering size 40 or 6X for women. What size is that?? We have never heard of that size before.

I have been doing some research, and let me tell you this. If you want to shorten your life get fat! The body and the skeletal system can’t support all that weight. Why do you think fat people have a hard time walking? And those who are really fat sit most of the time. Remember the story of the 1200 pound man who had grown into his couch? He couldn’t walk!

I will get into this more on Friday. For my Amazing Women I will tell you this now. To slow it down or even bring that aging clock to a slow crawl…losing the weight and getting the body healthy and balanced is the number one thing to do. Until Friday…

Amazingly Yours

Dr. Marlene

You can learn the secrets about my weight loss of 170 lbs. with the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites. Or if you want to learn more about color, my book Marketing’s Silent Language includes how to use it to your advantage.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Small Color Change – Big Appeal Value

DON'T FORGET TO TAKE MY POLL ON COLOR
WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT IT WEDNESDAY ON THE SHOW

We will be talking about color this week on my radio show, but it will be in regards to clothes. Today let’s take a look at a small change I did for a huge change in visual value.

I have a glass top table in my family room that had granite stone (gray) pedestals since I bought it at auction. It was originally purchased for an office that was decorated by a blue base person that I moved out of a long time ago. The room that it is in has a warm wood floor, warm honey colored chairs, and one small wall above the bar that is a warm yellow base red. We are both yellow base people and we love this room.

The table had always been jarring to my eye in the wonderfully comfortable room. Fixing the problem was like a wonderful bolt of lightning that cost us nothing. Sunday morning, while drinking my coffee, I remembered that we still had the pedestals from the old dining room table. Those pedestals were made of stone (keeping the overall look the table) but the stone was a wonderful yellow base color, pretty close to the entrance hall stone color.

So we did a switch. We went from 4 corners of gray pedestals, to two center cream pedestals. WOW what a difference. Not only did it change the look of the table, but the whole room suddenly came together. An added bonus was the look of more floor space.

Why…because the eye did not stop at the gray corner pedestals any longer. Because the new pedestals were a warm base stone, the flow of the colors in the room was complete. The eye and the brain no longer had to “get past” the wrong color; they were no longer jarred. When the eye stopped at the old color the room suddenly shrinks to the brain and the room took on a cramped feeling. By keeping the warm base color in the room, the eye and brain no longer have a problem with the flow through the room.

The same holds true with color on the body. If you put on an outfit that you think suddenly makes you look old or fat…check the base color against your skin…if it is the wrong base color get rid of it! After all no one (male or female) wants to look old or fat. Do we??

Amazing Yours,
Dr. Marlene

You can read all about the systems and how they work in my book Marketing’s Silent Language, http://www.silentlanguage.com/ or…you can learn more about my weight loss of 170 lbs. and the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available at Amazon or under links to my sites.

Friday, November 2, 2007

A Little of This and A Little of That

Don’t forget to take the poll on my posting from 10/31/07.
We will talk about it on the show 11/07.

My mood today is about some of the following.

Speaking of Halloween…isn’t nature wonderful. Here is Southern California, after all the fires and all that heat with the raging winds…what happens…a couple of days before Halloween right on cue nature changes and fall weather slides in with coolness and great Halloween weather.

Speaking of nature…I wish that congress would just leave day light savings time alone. In fact we are not saving anything at all. Nature does what nature does on the earth with seasons and a few hundred people in a room really have no control of what the earth does at all!!
Yesterday I drove about 70 miles to an appointment. What I noticed was before 6:30pm it was starting to get dark and within a few minutes most people had their headlights on. (Some these days are automatic, yeah!) So where is the savings? I was taught in, way back when, in electrical engineering classes that you can’t save energy. It must be used or you will lose it. Hummmmmm isn’t the sun a HUGE energy ball?

Working on a program for the New Year for the radio show, it is going to be about getting into shape, losing weight, eating right and getting the right mental attitude to make it all happen and stay with you for life! OK so this is a teaser. The show is evolving and I will be adding more features.

Speaking of the fires…EVERYONE should stop by their local fire department and thank them for all they do. They are our first responders. Here in Southern California we love all our fire people. I know that during the summer our local department is out sometimes 4 or 5 times a day. These guys do it all. Just think what it would be like without them.
Have a great weekend!!
Amazingly Yours,
Dr. Marlene
You can learn more about color in my book Marketing’s Silent Language including how to use it to your advantage. Or you can learn the secrets about my weight loss of 170 lbs. with the mental methods that I used in my book: The Thinking Side to Thin: available on Amazon or under links to my other sites.