GottaLoveMom

"Your cholesterol numbers are high. Since your family has a history of heart disease, I'd like to put you on Lipitor." Cholesterol. High. Lipitor. These three words from my primary care doctor felt like I got in hit the head - really bad. My rationale: I was turning 50 and I was having a tug-o-war with my hormones. Not my fault! For the past 2 years I struggled to keep the weight. In addition, I'm petite so when I whined about the 10 pounds I gained and that my clothes were tight, people dismissed me like I had weight and body image issues. For the past two years, Mother Nature had a blast with the snow machine. I practically lived in stretchable work-out clothes which made it easy to not notice that I was gaining weight.  I was in denial because I always had this genetic power to lose weight fast. You see, when I was 25 years old, I was pregnant with my first. I weighed 95 pounds but by the time ...

Do you like to walk? Do you like to run? What if you can turn those miles into something powerful -- something that can help donate funds to help purchase lifesaving pills which can help put an end to mother-to-child HIV transmission? Bank of America, (RED), and Nike+  joined together to "TURN YOUR MILES (RED)" - a campaign that started on October 12 and will go on through December 7, 2014.  For every Nike+ Running miles pledged to (RED), Bank of America will donate 40 cents - up to $1 million dollars. As posted in Bank of America's Newsroom: "Today, it costs as little as 40 cents for two lifesaving pills called antiretrovirals (ARVS) which, when taken daily, can prevent an HIV-positive pregnant woman from passing the virus to her unborn baby. Still, 650 babies are needlessly born with HIV every day. TURN YOUR MILES (RED) is an initiative designed to enable people at every fitness level to play a part in delivering up to $1 million to HIV med...

Everyday we struggle to find time for ourselves - to listen to what our heart truly feels, what our mind wants to discover, what our eyes wish to explore, what our ears can hear, and to experience the healing powers of our touch. Not everyday do we get to appreciate the benefits of just being able to breathe. Breathing sounds like a basic act that we often tend to forget that breathing alone is a proven stress reliever. We're in an age where we've trained our minds to focus on short bursts of data, we're always fidgety   -- always in a rush that we don't have time to fully take advantage of the powers our own body possesses. Today, I was blessed to have been re-introduced to the benefits of breathing and mediation through a practice with my friend, Gwen. Gwen founded " Nurtured Soul Yoga".     If you ask Gwen how her yoga journey began, she would say that it was "Divine Intervention". She was at the poin...

Kind of  a silly title, but recently, that seemed to be my goal. There were times I wished video games weren't invented. Don't get me wrong, I, too, benefited from having my kid played video games. He learned a few techniques, some I wished he never discovered. The past few days had been challenging in terms of finding something to do that we both enjoyed. Earlier this week, I drove him and his friends to the skateboard park. He was concerned at first that I would be worried that him and his friends would get hurt that he suggested that I just drop them off and come back. Of course, that would never happen. I stayed at the parking lot looking over them while they skateboarded. I experienced a few pins and needles as they fell off their boards, but I tried not to make a scene -- I didn't want my son to revoke my invitation to sort of hang-out with him. Today, we were supposed to head to the City, but I just found out that my 13 year-old son didn't l...

"The present moment is filled with joy and happiness.   If you are attentive, you will see it." - Thich Nhat Hanh's The day started out on a positive note. I have a bad habit of checking my email every morning. You see, my family lives continents apart and the only way I keep in touch with them is through social media or email. That morning, my dear friend happened to email me about her 21-Day Complaint Free Challenge, and one of the quotes she mentioned was that of Thich Nhat Hanh's, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk. So is it true that the present moment is filled with joy and happiness? I was up early because I needed to be in uptown New York to find answers to a medical concern that was haunting my child for months. Spending time with my son is always a happy event. So I guess, so far so good. Fortunately, the neurologist gave us good news. To celebrate such a day, my son and I had an impromptu breakfast at a diner nearby his school. Anoth...