A healthy, low-carb diet will help you lose weight, but staying sugar-free this time of year is tricky.

It's that time of year when the candy companies are gearing up for one of their biggest campaigns of the year and if you are on a low-carb diet to lose weight, this is a hard time of the year for you to succeed because they are out to trick and treat you.

Just think, your mouth is the gateway to your stomach. Ultimately, if you don't put something in your mouth, it won't go into your stomach. It's so simple, and yet we gain weight just because we are able to go unconscious when we're tempted. Candy company executives have a secret credo and it's tattooed on every exec's chest: the mouth trap:the butt stops here! 

If you're a chocolate lover and you're not careful, you'll eat way too much chocolate this month. So I've come up with a solution to help you stay relatively sugar-free.

My husband and I went to a neighbor’s surprise birthday party last Saturday night. It’s always exciting to go to this home. The couple is exotic. The birthday man was a concert pianist and opera singer, turned executive of a large company. He has an adorable French accent and is movie star gorgeous. His wife, who is also stunningly beautiful with a tall, slim body crowned by a head of flaming, (not from a bottle) red hair, was an opera singer turned wife, homemaker and mom. The house is enchanting. It actually looks like an Italian villa perched high on the hill overlooking its own vineyard (all the neighbors are wondering when our resident herd of 36 elk will decide to frisk among the rows of pinot gris grapes). 

We arrived with our donation to the potluck, hot chili from my freezer. I always make double batches of stews, soups and chili and freeze half. For this party I mixed three different batches (no two are ever alike) spanning three different seasons from last year. The combination was an interesting melting pot of past chili feeds.

Michelle, one of our neighbors brought a homemade German Chocolate Cake for dessert. She’s the best baker in the neighborhood and the cake looked alluringly attractive. Nelly (my inner child) said,

“We can have some can’t we?”

“No, sugar is poison, remember what we read in Why We Get Fat?”

Wanting What Others Have Hurts You

“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.”

That quote is by Vernon Howard and he was probably never dazzled by brochures for fancy vacations or a catalogue from William Sonoma. We are continually tempted to buy what we don’t need. 

There was a recent ad on the Internet hawking the latest autumn purses (referred to as bags). It said in the email subject line: 9 Bags You Must Own This Fall. With suggestions like this, it’s no wonder we can hardly move in our closets!

Really the only thing we need to buy regularly is food and gas. Vernon would not be happy with some of my purchases. Like this crab hat my granddaughter Sophia is wearing. What was I thinking? I know, ‘I’ve gotta have it!’

Vernon’s quote resonates with SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) because we’ve experienced the clutter and resulting chaos that comes with not learning when enough is enough and being tempted by advertising. Yeah, we have duplicates of many items but that’s only because we lose an item and have to buy another. And yeah, we have more babies than BOs (Born Organized) because we never pay much attention to a calendar.

I remember the day Marla Cilley called our Sidetracked Home Executives office and poured out purple puddles. She wanted to help other SLOBs like herself. 

If you’re a parent you have the most valuable job in the world.  

You are raising citizens of the United States of America (or put in the name of the country where you live).

It’s no secret that countless families are deluged by household clutter.

Flylady says; “The most common clutter hot spots are children's bedrooms, home offices, attics, and garages.” What does it take to create a clutter-free space? Here are my 10 best home organization strategies straight from my book, The Joy of Being Disorganized.

1. Stop Homelessness

One of the main reasons stuff piles up on counters, dining tables, coffee tables and floors is that it’s homeless. When an item has no "home," it gets added to an IPOD
 (Important Pile Of Decisions). The free chapter I'm giving you has great information about the IPODs in your home and how to eliminate them. That’s why it’s important to make sure everything in your home lives somewhere. “Homing” items in the room where they're used, helps ensure that they get put away when you're finished. For example, I keep a sewing kit in a drawer of an end table in my living room, because I like to mend garments in that room and not in my sewing room in the basement.

2. Stop Clutter at the Cash Register

Use that, waiting-to-buy time when you’re standing in line at the cash register, to re-think what’s in your hands or cart. Imagine it as clutter. What you buy today can turn
into clutter tomorrow. The better you are about keeping things out of your home, the less likely you’ll be to create IPODs when you get home.

3. Baby Step your Way to Clutter-free

Start with the room that’s bothering you the most. (In my almost 40-year career helping moms get organized, the kitchen is the room most picked by baby-steppers.) Marla Cilley, the Flylady
says, “Start by shining your kitchen sink.” That’s so brilliant! In order to keep your sink shiny, you have to keep it empty. In order to keep it empty, you and your family have to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher. In order to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, it has to be empty!

We want a happy home.

We intuitively know there is peace when there is order. We want our homes to be peaceful, organized and a joy in which to live, love and play.

In a book called The Tipping Point, the author, Malcom Gladwell, really grabbed my attention when he wrote about the Broken Window Theory. It was the brainchild of criminologists James Wilson and George Kelling. Kelling wrote, “Crime is the inevitable result of disorder.” Getting organized reduces crime.

I’m not saying because your house is a mess you’ll inevitably rob a bank or shoot your husband, but it’s a fair guess you’ve been late for church because you couldn’t find your car keys and broke the speed limit to get there on time, or you’ve been pulled over for driving under the influence when really you were just trying to put a little lipstick on while getting to your meeting.

Wilson and Kelling claim, “If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge.” They tell about the horrible crime in the New York Subways in the 90s and that by cleaning up the graffiti on the outside and inside of the cars, crime plummeted! A cluttered room, among other things is like graffiti. It’s symbolic of the collapse of a system. It sends a message that no one’s in charge and no one cares.

Here are 6 simple household tasks that convey the same message as the graffiti-free subways did.  

Is there a broken window in each room?

Let’s use the metaphor of the broken window in each room of our homes and make “repairs” that will take you less than five minutes each. That means that in about 20 minutes you can fix five windows and you’ll show yourself and your family that you are back in charge and that you care.

We’ve got a whole basket of clever gift ideas in this funny video clip of a national television show way back in the nineties. You’ll laugh at the prices quoted in the piece (like the cost of popcorn at the movies), but the ideas still work today.

This video is from when Peggy and I were on the Mike and Maty show. 

Enjoy!

For most of us, to lose weight has been an ongoing...and losing..battle.

For four years I have maintained my weight right where I want it....okay, okay close to where I want it....and have eaten delicious food. 

To lose weight, cut out anything wheat, white or sweet. Here's a recipe that cuts out the wheat and the sweet, and you and your family will love it.

It's for delicious, healthy low carb flourless tortillas.

They'll chop out about 60 carbs from your day.

That'll help you lose weight and that'll help you be healthier.

This is just one of many of my low carb videos.

Learn a Life Lesson from it and It’ll go Away!

Your clutter has something important to tell you.

If you follow a religion, do you think the guy who started yours had too much stuff? Of course he didn’t. Jesus, Moses, Mohamad, Buddha, Krishna, none of them was bothered by owning too much stuff! So here you are today, sick of your clutter, trying to find peace and joy in your day, as you fight over clutter, look for it, stash it, rearrange it, dust it, and cage yourself in chaos and frustration.

Your clutter will continue to get in the way of your peace until you learn a very important life lesson, letting go.   Here’s an excerpt from my latest book, The Joy of Being Disorganized:

Our lives are hectic in this 21^st century, which makes establishing peace in our homes more of a necessity than ever. We need a sanctuary from the frenzy. When our homes make us feel safe and cozy, they become a refuge where we can recharge our spirits that can get pulled in so many directions out in the world.

Peace is a personal matter. What defines peace for me may not come close to your definition. When I think of peace, a lot of “R” words fly around in my mind—like release, rejuvenate, refresh, relax, and rest. Whatever your definition of peace, consider that you are not just a homemaker or a housekeeper, you are a peacemaker and a peacekeeper. The tone of your home rests in your hands. That’s a tall order, but when you reduce the clutter in your home, it’s much easier to keep the peace.

You have the right to live in it “joy” fully and “peace” fully.