No matter our age, it’s hard not to think about how 5 or 10 fewer pounds might make us happy. It can mean the difference in a dress size. It can be a boost to self-esteem.

It can mean a compliment from an observant friend or spouse. It can give us a sense of pride that we’ve passed by enough tempting delicacies that we now are 5–10 pounds slimmer.

While all of these experiences can lift the spirit, what I’d like to focus on today are the health benefits of losing that seemingly small amount of 5 or 10 pounds. If the aesthetic benefits aren’t enough, these statistics will surely enlighten you.

Minor Weight Loss and Joint Pain

Let’s say you are in your mid-60s and you are 10 pounds overweight. You love being outdoors, walking your dog or just taking in the surroundings. But lately, your knee is bothering you to the point where your outdoor time is just not enjoyable the way it once was.

You now are walking less, and you worry that by being inactive you will gain even more weight. You think about this knee pain leading to eventual knee replacement.

Here’s where a small amount of weight loss enters the picture and changes your life. A study found that for every pound of weight you lose, you decrease the pressure exerted on that sore knee by 4 pounds!

Yes, every pound of weight places 4 pounds of pressure on the knee joint. Lose one or two, or even 5 pounds and you’ll give your sore knee a helping hand. Build up your quads and hamstrings and you’ll help it even more.

Other Benefits of Minor Weight Loss

But joint pain relief isn’t the only positive of losing even those small amounts of weight.

Blood Pressure

Losing just 10 pounds will lower your blood pressure! Heart disease remains the number one cause of death in the United States. Lower your weight and your heart won’t have to work as hard to move blood through your body.

Diabetes

Weight loss lowers your risk for Type II diabetes. This condition is closely related to diet. As you grow into your 60s and 70s, you may be more prone to it. Lose those 5 or 10 pounds and your risk decreases.

For anyone needing to lose 5 or 10 pounds, or a great deal more, the techniques I describe below will get you started.

Small-Step Formula for Weight Loss

There’s nothing more daunting than setting out intending to lose 50 or 60 pounds. Much better to think in segments, or small steps. Lose 5 or 10, then do it again. It makes it achievable when you change your lifestyle in phases.

Change Your Language

Tell yourself you decided to eat well instead of dieting. Dieting suggests deprivation. We want to create a lasting lifestyle that energizes you and gets your weight where you want it to be.

Focus on Your Habits

If your habits push you in a direction of weight gain, then change them. Dedicate to eating three meals daily and eat most of them at home. Cooking your food will put you in a positive mindset that will help you with those pounds.

Observe Your Eating Style

Become conscious of your eating style. Is it too fast? Are you enjoying your food or are you distracted by media? Change the variables that deprive you from enjoying your meal.

Select Your Foods

Eat simple whole foods. These are foods that are fresh. Organic when possible. They have no added sugar, salt, and oils. You get to season them as you like – with herbs. Take no more than 20 minutes for meal prep most days.

Avoid night eating

After having a healthy meal, don’t continue snacking well into the evening/night. Don’t take in anything but water for 3 hours before bedtime. Check out the Circadian rhythm study for more information.

Stop Weighing Yourself

Daily or even weekly weigh-ins can discourage you. Wait at least a month. Keep moving. Moving is hard at first, but after a short while you’ll find it is an amazing source of energy. How else could athletes keep at it day after day?

To do all of the above with less of a struggle, it might be wise to follow this action plan:

• Clear your cabinets of poor-quality packaged foods and replace them with dried whole grains, lentils, beans, vinegars, broths, nuts, and raisins. Stock up on teas that you like.
• Check out the refrigerator. Increase your fresh and frozen favorite vegetables inventory.
• Stock some good protein like fish, poultry, humus.
• Have a good water filter and drink frequently.
• Go outside every day, doggie or not!

What is your experience with weight loss? Have you had experience with minor weight loss changing your health for the better? Please share your story – and questions – in the comments section.

It’s not surprising that downsizing has become a big trend in the United States and other Western countries. After all, we are simply drowning in stuff! How much stuff? Well, according to the LA Times, the average U.S. household contains 300,000 items. 300,000! That’s insane!

Unfortunately, most of us wait far too long to clean out our closets. As a result, we miss out on a big opportunity to increase our retirement savings.

Today, I want to argue that simply moving up your downsizing date from 65 to 50 could have a dramatic impact on your financial future. In fact, depending on your situation, you could save as much as $200,000 extra for retirement, just by downsizing early!

Why 50? By the age of 50, most of us are empty nesters. With our kids out of the house, we have complete control over the stuff in our lives. And, with so much money at stake, why not downsize early?

Here are a few of the benefits to organizing your life at 50 instead of 65.

Downsize Now, Stop Paying Storage Fees and Start Investing Your Savings

The average price for a storage unit in the U.S. is about $90. This doesn’t seem like much, but, let’s run a few numbers and see what would happen if you saved this money and invested it for 15 years.

According to my calculations, if you took the money that you saved each year and invested it at a 7% return (the historical S&P average return after dividends and inflation), you would have $29,000 at the end of 15 years!

By the way, if you had your kids a bit earlier and could start downsizing at 40, you would have about $50,000 after 20 years of compounding!

Move to a Smaller Home Before Retirement

The value of moving to a new home is hard to calculate because everyone’s situation is so different!

If you are still renting, moving from a 4-bedroom to a 2-bedroom could save you $500 a month. Reinvesting your rent savings every year at 7% could leave you with as much as $160,000 more for retirement. Yes, you read that right… investing (and reinvesting) $6,000 a year for 15 years could give you $160,000 more to work with in the best years of your life!

If you own your home, then, moving into a smaller house could free up cash for you to invest. Or, if you still have a mortgage, it could reduce your monthly payments significantly.

I’ll leave it to you to crunch the numbers with a financial professional, but, the bottom line is that some families could save $10,000s, even $100,000s more over 15 years by moving to a smaller house early.

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure… Sell Your Old Stuff and Profit

Think about all the stuff that you have in your basement, storage unit and house. It may not seem like it, but, many of the items that you have squirrelled away have value. This is especially true of big-ticket items like furniture, electronics, clothes, bikes, motorcycles, paintings, sports equipment, TVs, game consoles and video games.

This doesn’t even count family heirlooms or items that have high intrinsic value. We’re just talking about the excess weight that your family is carrying around.

According to Bankrate.com, the average renter owns about $20,000 – $30,000 of “stuff.” Since this is an average, it’s safe to assume that older adults are on the higher end of this range – and probably considerably higher than $30,000.

Now, to be clear, this is the replacement value for the items in the average home. This doesn’t mean that you could sell your items for this amount. But, it’s an interesting statistic none-the-less.

Let’s say that selling everything you don’t need on eBay, you end up with $3,000. If you invested this amount in the stock market over 15 years, you might end up with something closer to $8,000.

Free Up Your Cluttered Mind and Reduce Future Spending

Downsizing is a humbling experience. It’s not until you dig into the clutter that you realize just how out of control your spending has become.

When I left the United States to move to the U.K., I managed to fit all of my possessions into one room. This was, of course, after some serious sorting and selling!

Then, when I moved to Switzerland from the U.K., I took my downsizing a step further and packed all of my worldly possessions into 8 suitcases. This is approximately the amount of stuff that I have had for 4 years now.

What I and many other people who have downsized early found is that buying stuff is an addiction. And, like an alcoholic who is confronted by a neighbor about the amount of “recycling” that he or she is doing, it’s not until we really dig deep that we see how big the problem has become.

How big a problem are we talking about? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, Americans spend $1.2-trillion a year on nonessential goods. That’s about $11,000 per family!

If these numbers match your situation and you could reduce your nonessential spending by 30% and reinvest this amount for 15 years at 7%, you would have an extra $80,000 or so for retirement. That’s huge!

Wrapping it All Up… Downsizing = $200K More for Retirement?

Now, I’m no math wizard. Heaven knows I’ve made my share of financial mistakes. So, you should definitely talk with your financial advisor about the potential impact that downsizing could have in your life.

That said, by my calculations, a couple that canceled its storage unit, moved into a smaller home, sold its old stuff and reduced its spending on nonessential items could save an extra $200,000 for retirement over 15 years.

Best of all, nobody is asking you to sacrifice here. Trust me, when you get to retirement age, you were going to throw away all of your old stuff anyway! So, why not do it a little early and give yourself a better retirement?

Are you considering downsizing? What do you think of the idea of downsizing in your 50s instead of your 60s? What downsizing tips can you share with our community? Please join the conversation!

Teresa Giudice’s Layered Jacket in Italy

Season 10 Episode 16 Real Housewives of New Jersey Fashion

Teresa Giudice’s layered jacket lewk in Italy on last night’s season finale episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey was super cute and although it may look like she layered two jackets on top of each other, we’re here to confirm that it’s actually just one. However we wouldn’t be surprised if she pulled that trick by adding on a few others at the airport to reduce the baggage fee on her 124786574 pounds of luggage. 

Fashionably,

Faryn

Purse Also Seen on Tamra Judge:

Click Here to Shop Her Baci Jacket

Click Here to Shop Her Saint Laurent Purse

Jacket Info: @CharlottesWebTowaco

Originally posted at: Teresa Giudice’s Layered Jacket in Italy

The World Health Organization recently analyzed research from over 900 global publications and concluded that engaging with the arts and culture can significantly benefit both mental and physical health.

I’m
reminded of an essay by Robert Fulghum, author of the book Everything I Really
Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, observing that if you ask a
classroom full of kindergarteners how many are singers, artists, and dancers – all hands shoot up!

Visit upper
grades and fewer and fewer hands go up until by high school very few students
will claim any artistic abilities. What if, as a gift to ourselves, we reclaimed
our love for and belief in our inner artist?

What if we
channeled our 5-year-old selves and sang, danced, drew, painted, and sculpted
without self-criticism. To do that we’d have to drown out not just criticism of
abilities but also ageist expectations. I’m sharing my story to illustrate what
I mean.

I Used to Be a Dancer

In my 20s
and 30s, I taught dance and co-directed and performed with a university dance
company. In my 30s, I became a mom and a published author and started a career
as a senior wellness consultant.

My life allowed
so little time for dancing that, when I eventually uttered, “I used to be a
dancer,” when chatting with a colleague, I felt actual pain as my kinship with
strength and grace and joyful movement fractured.

So, at age
48, with a “now-or-never” urgency, I leaped into a local dance performance. The
problem was, my mind lagged behind.

The Aging Myth

As a
heathy aging specialist, I fully understood the power of ageism to undermine
well-being, but professional knowledge failed to stop my subconscious “aging
scripts” from running the show.

Long story
short, my return to the stage failed. I learned the dances and went through the
motions; injured myself on dress rehearsal night and couldn’t perform. The
flood of disappointment was immediate, and then resignation swept in as strong and dangerous as an undertow – “I
used to be a dancer.”

Much
later, it hit me. I’d fallen prey to ageism. Even though I know that
inactivity – not age – causes the majority of functional loss, at the first signs of my
own physical decline I’d let the constant accusations linking age with decline sideline
me.

So, at age
52, a busy professional, wife, and mother of two, I found myself standing on
stage in a skimpy leotard, fishnet stockings and heels, seconds from performing
a Fosse dance piece (think the movie Chicago) with eight other dancers
ranging in age from 18-28.

But it
wasn’t an easy path. The physical retraining paled in comparison to what it
took to overcome both external aging stereotypes and internal beliefs.

Floor to Ceiling Mirrors and Indifference

Walking
into the dance studio was my first trial. Approaching dance like a work project,
I identified the resources I needed to be successful: strength, flexibility,
balance, and a good friend to confide my mission.

I was
stretching, doing cardio and strength training, and attending dance classes twice
per week. But surrounded by a roomful of dancers, none of them over 25, and not
one of them meeting my eye, I encountered an unexpected wall of indifference.

I had taught
dance 5 days a week for over 10 years, right in this studio, but none of these
dancers knew that! I was going to have to start at the bottom to earn my place.

Overcoming Challenges

My resolve
was tested continually: when I had to choose between attending a professional
conference and dancing; when I doubted my ability to choreograph a dance; when
my knee started to hurt; and when I started to feel anxious about performing.

I had been
one of the best dancers – could I stand average, or just being good “for my
age”? I had to make a conscious effort almost every day to override aging
stereotypes and self-doubt.

My knee hurts. Maybe I should stop. “Well, my knee hurt when I was a young dancer and off-and-on
through the years when I wasn’t dancing,” I would remind myself. Advil, ice,
stretch, strengthen, better warm-up.

I probably shouldn’t use that move; I could
hurt myself. Then, I’d counter, “Do I have the necessary strength,
flexibility, and balance? If so, get with it, if not, what can I do to gain
them?”

Reclaiming Joy

My inner
dialogue danced with class interactions. Gradually, some eye contact and
smiles, and more confidence and joy in movement, graced my hours at the studio.
When a dancer asked, “Can you show me that move?” I knew I’d graduated from being
a mere curiosity.

When I
regressed to the attitude of doing well enough “not to embarrass myself,” my
friend Toby challenged my thinking then drove seven hours to be with me the
week of the show.

Curtain
up, lights on cue, music – friends,
husband, and kids in the audience – what a rush! The piece was good. I was
good. And the experience was life affirming.

Fast Forward 8 Years

I’ve since
danced in every yearly show, and, as a 60^th birthday present to
myself, choreographed and performed a physically challenging piece to Aretha
Franklin’s classic song, “Rock Steady.” And here’s the deal – I was stronger,
leaner, and more flexible at age 60 than I was at age 52.

I’m
sharing the video to Rock Steady (I’m center stage – long hair); not as
a “Yay me, look at what I can do,” but as a YAY, YOU – what can you do?

What artistic
activity have you given up that you used to love to do? What steps could you
take to reclaim it? Is there a form of art you have always wanted to embrace? If
not now, when? Please share with our community!

Teresa Giudice’s Pink Mules at the Jersey Shore Party

Season 10 Episode 16 Real Housewives of New Jersey Fashion

Teresa Giudice’s pink mules at the Jersey Shore party on last night’s season finale episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey made for the perfect lewk along with her pink metallic dress. And considering they’re currently on sale for 60% off, when it comes to clicking “add to cart” we’re of course 100% pushing you to “do it.” 

Fashionably,

Faryn

Click Here to Shop Her N°21 Mules on Sale

Click Here to Shop Them in Black on Sale

Click Here to Shop Them in Green on Sale in Limited Sizing

Click Here For Info on Her Dress

Originally posted at: Teresa Giudice’s Pink Mules