A Watkins Business to Start the New Year - Quality Cooking & Baking Ingedients

I've been using Watkins products since I was a child. My mom bought JR Watkins cinnamon and vanilla, plus many of their Watkins spices to use in her own cooking. I've always loved cooking and baking so when I was looking for a new business to start the New Year, I decided to start my own Watkins business.

I've been buying Watkins products, from the spices and soup mixes, to the eco-friendly cleaners and body care products for a long time as a customer. I simply signed up on the website to create a free Watkins account and ordered anything I wanted.

To start a Watkins business, I merely paid a one-time fee of $39.95 to get me started. As a Watkins associate, now I receive a 25% discount on all my own Watkins products and also on everything I sell in my Watkins business.

This Christmas, all the daughters in the family, plus many on my gift list, received terrific Watkins products for the holiday. Apple Spiced bread mixes, Watkins lavender lotion and more filled holiday gift baskets. The Watkins opportunity allowed me to give the gifts at a discount and introduce friends and family to Watkins quality products.

Naturally, everybody got a Watkins Vanilla Recipe Cookbook, Watkins Vanilla and Watkins Cinnamon for a start.

If you'd like to check out Watkins products for yourself or perhaps start your own Watkins business, click here.

Easy Healthy Living Tips

Here are some healthy living tips that are easy to do:

Add lemon or lemon juice to your green tea before drinking - this helps you absorb up to 13% more of the antioxidants that are in the tea.

Don't drink tea with high iron foods, such as meat. This keeps you from absorbing the iron in meat or whatever you eat.

Remedies for Indigestion

Drink a cup of hot peppermint tea or ginger tea to ease indigestion. Candied ginger also works well for indigestion. If you often suffer from indigestion, drink the tea as a routine after dinner each night.

Tip for a Good Night's Sleep

Sip a cup of chamomile tea before bed to help you sleep. Avoid caffeine after noon and switch to decaffeinated products.

Tip for Stress

Drinking green tea slashes the fattening stress hormone cortisol by 20% helping to control your stress.

Healthy Supplement Tip

Take your iron supplement with orange juice or other vitamin C containing juice or purchase an iron supplement with Vitamin C in it. This helps your body absorb the iron better.

Take your iron supplement separate from your other vitamins as iron blocks the absorption of some vitamins. If iron bothers your stomach, look for a formula that is easy on the stomach.

Drinking 3 or more cups of coffee per day lowers women's risk of utering cancer by 60% according to a study of 54,000 Japanese women.

Easy Tips to Prevent Colds and Flu

Don't dry your hands with hand blow dryers in public restrooms. They blow bacteria back onto your clean hands.

Use your own pen when out in public. Germs can survive on pens for up to 4 days.

73% of the handles on grocery carts tested harbored the germs that cause diarrhea. Use the antibacterial wipes now provided by many stores for wiping down the cart handles. If they don't have some, carry your own in your purse.

Great Weight Loss Tip

Eating protein in the morning, soon after rising. This helps regulate blood sugar and decrease hunger all day long.

Prevent colds and flu with these natural remedies

Best Weight Loss Tools - Keeping a Weight Loss Journal

Did you know that keeping a weight loss journal was one of the best weight loss tools you can find? Most people think they are eating less calories on a day to day basis than they actually are. They don't pay much attention to portion size or how many calories are in each little snack they eat. Keeping a food diary for weight loss forces you to be honest and add up those calories.

My most successful weight loss efforts involved keeping a weight loss journal. I listed everything I ate, my measurements and current weight, how much exercise I got and other little tidbits. My problem is, I usually love snacks throughout the day and those calories add up more than I realized. After writing down all the food I ate, I saw where I could cut unnecessary calories and in 6 months, I'd lost 12 pounds!

Researchers at Louisiana State University asked dietitians to estimate their daily caloric intake — and even the professionals underestimated the calories by 10%. This might explain why losing weight is so difficult for most of us.

You need to burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat. No matter what diet plan or program you adhere to, that is the basic fact. Cut 3,500 calories from your diet, or cut calories and increase exercise to burn those calories and you will lose weight. A weight loss diary can be a good place to record the exercise you do to help burn those calories as well.

One aerobics class can burn 500 calories. If you also cut 500 calories from your diet, then you will lose one pound a week.

Before you try using the weight loss journal to lose pounds, try recording what you normally eat for a few days and add up the calories. You may be amazed at what you see and how many calories you are actually consuming. You'll also see easy places to cut calories, like smaller portions, switching to fat free versions of products or choosing lower calorie snacks.

Researchers at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research followed more than 2,000 dieters who were encouraged to keep a food journal and they discovered that those who did keep the weight loss diary, lost the most weight by far. Weight loss journals beat out exercise and even age as factors in losing those pounds. The number of pounds people lost was directly related to the number of days they recorded their calories in their weight loss journal.

Here's why keeping a weight loss journal really helps you shed those pounds:

1. Studies show most Americans underestimate their daily calorie intake by 25%. A food journal gives you a reality check. You also have to pay more attention to portion size. If you have a bowl of cereal, you might estimate 200 calories for it. But if you measure the amount of cereal in your bowl, plus the milk and sugar, if you use it, you may be adding 500 calories to your day.

2. Portion sizes are much smaller than you might think. In our super-size it mentality, we like to see our plates heaping high with food but this serving may be triple the calories you are estimating. Keeping a weight loss journal forces you to keep better track of portion size when figuring calories.

3. Keeping a weight loss diary puts an end to between meal munching. Or at least you will choose lower calorie options. Many people can't even remember what sorts of snacks they ate in the past few days, let alone estimate the calories consumed. Writing it all down lets you know where you can cut to save unwanted and unnecessary calories.

It’s easy to overlook taking a taste of potatoes from your hubby's plate or that "tiny" handful of nuts you popped in your mouth. Consider this - there are about 25 calories on average in each mouthful of food so a few little bites can add up.

4. Keeping a food diary for weight loss helps you chose better food options. If you know you'll have to record that 450 calories fancy latte, you will find yourself choosing the skinny version with 50 calories. If you want a snack, chips and salsa will add up quickly, whereas, you can eat a lot of carrot sticks and yogurt dip for many less calories.

If you aren't sure how many calories there are in a given food, check out some calorie counting websites. There are websites that even tell you how many calories there are in fast food and restaurant foods.

Due to a lot of time spent traveling recently, I found that the pounds had once more crept up on me. I just purchased a weight loss journal that I like a lot. It had 60 days worth of pages to count calories, write down exercise, measurements, weight and more. It also has great weight loss recipes, calories for common foods, how many calories burned for different activities and lots of weight loss tips and advice. This book is called The 60 Day Food and Fitness Program & Journal.