Ever notice how pretty much all of the breadcrumbs for sale at traditional grocery stores have bad-for-you ingredients like high fructose corn syrup or hydrogenated oils? Occasionally, I find myself at the store with breadcrumbs on my shopping list to make a yummy casserole or spinach loaf (hey, it’s okay to splurge sometimes!). I always read the ingredient labels in disbelief, I guess hoping that they have made a change and removed the bad stuff! Admitting defeat, I usually grab the crumbs with a frown on my face and proceed to cook with them.
Crushed Wasa Crispbread for Breadcrumbs!
Fortunately, I discovered a great substitute while making some impromptu homemade macaroni and cheese. The recipe called for breadcrumbs sprinkled on top near the end of baking, but I didn’t have any. That step sounded way too good to leave out. What to do? I scoured my pantry, hoping I might find some. I noticed some Wasa crispbread which I love, and wondered if I it would be a good substitute. What a discovery! I crushed a couple of “Hearty” variety Wasa crispbread to bits inside a zipper sandwich bag and topped the mac & cheese with them the last 10 minutes of baking. They were amazing and so much better than any breadcrumbs I had before.
I would imagine the whole grain, multi-grain and sourdough varieties would also make great breadcrumbs. So give it a try next time you are making a recipe that calls for breadcrumbs. Simply break a slice of crispbread into small pieces, place them in a zipper bag, and crush with the bottom of a glass or jar.
I did several posts a while back about my journey to juggling five, and I’m happy to say I think I’ve finally got it. You can judge for yourself from the video. I know I have a long way to go and need to get many more throws!
I found the following things to be the most helpful in learning (in order of importance):
Make sure all of your throws are of a consistent height. Little did I know I was 99% there a long time ago, but my throws were getting a bit lower after about the third throw. I didn’t realize what a big hindrance this was until I experimented with throwing them as high or higher instead. It worked like magic. I was able to continue if the throws were higher than the rest, but it was extremely difficult and eventually fell apart if I threw them even a bit lower.
Practice at least five days a week. Even if it seems like you will never get there, keep practicing and you will get it! I think it took me about a year. However, do take a week off if you have not made progress in a few weeks to reset and come back fresh.
Throw almost straight up, with the slightest angle. At first, I experienced a lot of collisions doing this, but I was soon able to move the pattern out just a bit. I found this way easier than having to move in closer from juggling to wide. Probably because juggling wide looked good for a few throws and felt “safer.” Working through the collisions of a tighter pattern really paid off for me.
Hold the juggling balls with a light grip. I found that gripping onto the juggling balls too tight affected the smoothness of my throws. Barely gripping at all, and just “elevating” or hoisting the balls, especially on the first throw, seemed to work well.
Hope these tips help you in some way on your journey to learning to juggle five balls. And if you think you’ve “almost got it”, take a video of yourself and you might discover that you actually do!
While I usually discuss the physical benefits of juggling and how it’s a great form of fitness, I’ve discovered many other positive effects it can have. One of these is that juggling is a great way to bond with family and friends, and on Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d write about why juggling is a great activity for couples.
1. Laughter. We all know that laughter is important in a romantic relationship. Unfortunately, some couples have not laughed together in a long time, and it can be tough to break that ice that has formed. Juggling has an excellent chance of breaking it. Not only does it always elicit smiles and laughter, it breaks down walls by bringing couples down to a level playing field where they are both dropping balls and working things out. It’s a great analogy for problems in a marriage or any relationship. When a couple learns to juggle together, it helps them to not take life too seriously, and gives an example for building something up with a light heart.
2. New & Exciting Activity. A recent study by the State University of New York showed couples that engaged in a new and exciting activity for 2 hours a week experienced greater marital satisfaction. When people learn to juggle, they always get excited because it’s often perceived as something reserved for highly skilled performers. So learning as a couple provides excitement, memories, and a shared hobby you will have for life.
3. Exercise.Studies have shown that couples who exercise together have more sex and enjoy it more than those who do not. Keeping in shape helps people stay and feel physically attractive, and it also enables couples to motivate each other in workouts which strengthens the bond between them. Exercise has also been shown to reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction in men; a study by the Boston University School of Medicine showed burning 200 calories a day had this effect in sedentary men. Juggling is a cardio activity that burns 280 calories an hour, and it can be done almost anywhere with minimal equipment, so it’s the perfect exercise for busy couples.
4. Accomplishment. In relationships, it’s important to have individual goals as well as common goals. Individual goals help to prevent co-dependence and boost self-confidence. A healthy dose of independence and self-confidence is what many people find attractive, so improving on these could make you increasingly attractive to your mate and vice-versa. Common goals are also important, as they bond you together as a couple and give you something to work towards together. While learning to juggle might not be the most “serious” goal, it can certainly provide a sense of accomplishment for you as an individual and as a couple. Saying something as simple as “honey, let’s learn to juggle together” or “let’s get 20 throws without stopping” will set a goal that you can accomplish together. After having taught so many to juggle, I can tell you that when people learn, they really feel a sense of accomplishment. I think it’s because many of them thought they would never be able to do it. (It’s my job to make sure they can!)
5. Good Mood Generator. We all experience bad moods or have rough days from time to time. And sometimes it’s all too easy to take it out on your spouse or significant other. So what if you could generate a good mood before he or she got home? Juggling really does lift the mood for many reasons, but the most surprising way is that, when you learn to juggle (or learn a new juggling move or pattern), it’s almost impossible to think of anything else. So this has the effect of clearing the mind, relieving stress, and lightening the load of things that may be weighing you down.
Learn to juggle for free with the video below. If you don’t have juggling balls, try small oranges. Just don’t try it with sharp, hard, heavy, or dangerous objects!
Wall of Chocolate bars Photo Courtesy of Janek Mann
I admit it, I am a chocaholic; I must have chocolate everyday. While research has shown that chocolate has health benefits, such as lowered cholesterol and blood pressure, we all know it should be eaten in moderation. Otherwise the negative impacts squash the benefits, since chocolate is also high in calories and fat.
In my opinion, one of the major challenges for chocaholics is resisting the temptation to eat more chocolate than they should when it’s sitting in a cabinet (or even worse, in a jar on a table) in their home or office. A perfect example is a bag of Hershey’s kisses. There is no way I could ever have that in my house. I would eat it within a day or two, three at most. That’s a surefire way to add on pounds.
Some people say that placing each reasonable serving of chocolate in a storage bag, freezing chocolate, or hiding it may help people resist the urge to overindulge. This has never worked for me. If I buy a lot of chocolate on sale, or buy large bars of gourmet chocolate, I wind up eating way more than I should.
But the good news is, I have found a solution that works for me, and I hope it works for you. I discovered that there are certain types of chocolate that I can resist. I can eat less than one ounce, sometimes even less than a half-ounce, and satisfy my daily chocolate craving. It must be chocolate with very little sugar and high cocoa content, which rules out regular candy bars and bagged chocolate. The one that always works for me Lindt Excellence 90%; two squares is .7 oz and only 110 calories, and sometimes I am fine with only having one square. I have consistently been able to limit myself to at most two squares enough times to say it works for me.
I’ve also learned the hard way that calorie content does not matter if you will only be eating a small amount. Choosing the right chocolate, one that you will be able to resist, is the crucial element. For example, once a store was out of the Lindt Excellence 90%, and I had to choose something else. Of course I read all of the nutritional information, and noticed that some of the sweeter bars actually contained fewer calories. A perfect example is Lindt Excellence A Touch of Sea Salt, which in the past had been very dangerous for me. Even though 2 squares contains only 95 calories, I couldn’t control myself around this chocolate. But I had been so successful with the 90%, I was convinced I could limit myself to 2 squares. So I chose the lower calorie sea salt chocolate instead of the 85% or 70% bars that were also available. Huge mistake! While my intentions were good, to save that 15 calories when I ate two squares, I wound up eating pretty much the entire bar. This also happened with the 50% bar, although I don’t think I ate as much. A better choice in the future would be 85% or 70%.
So the best thing to do is experiment with different chocolates and see which ones do not make you crave more and more. I’d recommend the darks with very little sugar and high cocoa content, but if something sweeter works for you, go for it (I envy you). When you find a good one, stick with it! Don’t be fooled like I was – when they are out of your chocolate, buy the one that most closely resembles it (check ingredients), and you should be able to stick to 2 squares, or whatever your limit is.
Here’s to daily chocolate without guilt, weight gain, or mad sugar rushes!
I’d love to hear if this or other techniques have worked for you in the comments.
I am not affiliated with Lindt Chocolate.
P.S. – In creating this post, I discovered there are two acceptable spellings for “people who are fond of eating chocolate” – chocaholic and chocoholic!
So it wasn’t a fluke the other day that I was doing a lot better at juggling five balls than I was last year. I’ve been practicing every day and it’s feeling relaxed, comfortable and easier than ever before. It’s so crazy how much slower and more controlled it feels, but I’m sure that’s the way it was when learning three.
I’m excited that I can use this experience to relate even better to my juggling students and assure them that the initial chaos of learning to juggle will subside! Sometimes in my classes I attempt five so they can see me struggle; it helps them realize that learning to juggle is difficult for everyone at first. And just because my 3-ball juggling looks automatic doesn’t mean I wasn’t where they are at one point. I think it actually took me a lot longer than many of my students to get it.
Focusing on “launching” and following through on each throw is really helping me. I had a tendency to throw lower or possibly hesitate on later throws for fear of throwing too high and losing control of the pattern. Each fearless high throw proves to be a success and lessens my fear of “launching” every throw.
So at this point, it seems to be a mental game. In order to get more throws and catches, I need to do what I tell my students – accept that I know how to juggle (five balls) and press on. If I can get 13 throws and catches cleanly, there is no reason I can’t get 20, 50, etc.
I’m thinking the book The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey might help me at this point. It emphasizes the importance of mental approach when learning tennis or any sport, and I’ve heard great things about it. If anyone has used this book to improve their juggling, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
It’s a new year and my shoulder has been feeling fine, so I figure it’s a great time to continue learning to juggle five balls. If you are interested in my journey up to this point, you can check out my older posts at this blog.
I’ve been testing the waters the past few days, picking up five balls at various times. I have not regressed as much as I had thought, and it seems my break from it might have changed my perspective.
A big breakthrough came this morning, after I watched an Ignite talk by Jonathan Kahn entitled “Stop Killing Your Best Work.” Inspired my Kahn’s message that one needs to push ahead and “ship”, I picked up the juggling balls to see if I could attempt to deliver. I started by flashing five without a hitch several times in a row. My throws were higher than they were when I used to practice before, but it felt right. I continued past the flash and was shocked that I executed 9 perfect throws and catches. As I continued, I consistently got 7 – 9 catches each time. All I was concentrating on was getting the throws high and consistent!
Was I making the whole thing too difficult before? Maybe. There are plenty of people that can juggle five, so there’s no reason I can’t get there. It’s possible my strict practice requirements were making this a huge mountain to climb. This is not to say that being able to juggle five is not a major accomplishment, I’m just trying to find the right attitude/mental state to get there. So this year, I’ll ditch the practice rules and requirements and simply try to pick up the balls at least once a day.
Here’s to getting more catches with five balls in 2011!
If you’re like me, you’re still feeling a bit heavier than usual after this past weekend’s Thanksgiving festivities. While the turkey, stuffing, amazing casseroles and pies are mouth-watering, this week brings on many a best intention to shed a few pounds. With that in mind, I decided to offer my Shake a Snack app free now through Dec. 12th to help iPhone and iPod touch users shed some of that holiday weight, and get on track for healthy eating around the holidays.
Shake a Snack is a virtual food slot machine full of tasty ingredients. Just shake your iPhone or iPod touch to get the reels spinning, then watch them land on one of over 200 tasty, creative 3-ingredient snack and mini-meal recipes. You can lock in ingredients you have on hand or filter out those you don’t like.
Shake a Snack has received great reviews on FitSugar.com and 148apps, and is currently in the ‘Top Paid’ free apps and ‘What’s Hot’ in the Healthcare & Fitness category on iTunes. It was also selected as ‘App of the Week’ by Dallas-Fort Worth CW station KDAF-TV.t.
Find out more about Shake a Snack here, or go straight to iTunes and download it now, for free until Dec. 12th.
I never anticipated that the app I developed, Shake a Snack, would get a spot on television (as archaic as it is), but it did, and I thought I’d share some thoughts on how you might be able to get similar coverage, whether it be on TV or on the internet.
The app was featured on a Dallas TV station in an ‘App of the Week’ spot. They talked about the app and showed a demo of it using a YouTube video I had posted. I think the folowing factors contributed to the coverage:
Issue a press release. This was my first time issuing a press release, and I am now kicking myself for not having done it before for my startup’s DVD releases and other notable events. I think this is how the TV station found my app. I chose to use PRWeb for press release distribution, and opted for the most expensive option, ‘Advanced Features Plus.’ I later found out from PRWeb support that the ‘Advanced Features’ option will reach pretty much the same audience and media outlets as the ‘Plus’ option. The main difference is that you can’t add a video to your release. Even though I chose the ‘Plus’ option, I didn’t include a video, so I guess I wasted a bit of cash there. Lesson learned.
Give Your Press Release a Title That Evokes Curiosity. The title of my release was ‘New Snack App Helps Curb Visits to the Drive-Thru.’ Not having done much promotion before, I was pretty happy that I came up with this title. Notice how I did not even use my startup name or app name in the title. At first this may seem like a bad idea, but what if I had said ‘JuggleFit Releases Shake a Snack App.’ Would anyone really care? The media is looking for a story, something that can help them get their job done under a deadline. JuggleFit is not a household name (yet!), and the app name, while catchy, wouldn’t really draw anyone to click on the title either.
Keep Your Press Release Title Short. I don’t know the perfect formula for this, but I looked at all the press release listings on PRWeb and noted how many characters were displayed in the title listings – around seventy. I wanted my full title to display, so I kept it under that limit and used forty-nine characters. Of course, displays on other sites and news wires have their own character ranges, so keep it as short (and sweet) as you can without sacrificing the quality of the title. Reporters are pretty busy, so I would think they quickly scan the titles of releases. If you don’t grab their attention immediately, they most likely won’t read the release.
Make a video demo of your app available. While I didn’t add a video to my press release, I uploaded a video demo to YouTube and also placed it on my app info page. I’m guessing that without the video, the station might not have covered it. They used the video in the spot and did their own narration on top of it. To make my demo, I downloaded the Camtasia free trial and recorded my app running in the iPhone simulator, narrating as I stepped through the app features.
Contact as many app review sites as you can. While I think the press release is what got the TV station’s attention, there’s a chance it might have been the review of Shake a Snack on the front page of 148apps.com. It seems plausible that the reporter doing the ‘App of the Week’ spot might go to that site and pick one of the apps for the feature. 148apps was one of the many review sites I emailed, closely following their instructions and suggestions posted here. I did email them a promo code, since it seemed like they were one of the top review sites. In the first line of the email, I said ‘Here is a promo code for Shake a Snack.’ I recommend providing the code up front to the top review sites (unless they explicitly say not to) since it makes it pretty convenient for them to download your app right then and there. There are a bunch of review sites out there, but here are a couple more to get you started: AppCraver, The Unofficial App Weblog, Appmodo.
Create an app with a wide appeal. Let me first say that, I think you should create the app you want to create, whether it has wide appeal or not. Shake a Snack was something I was passionate about, and had been talking about doing for a while. I finished coding it before doing any research on marketing an app. However, I do think the fact that my app addresses the needs of a wide audience, namely, healthy eating and simple recipe solutions, might have influenced it’s being covered in the TV spot. While I intended for my first app, JuggleFit Tracker, to appeal to a wide audience, it does not and will not until I succeed in making my startup a household name. However, it does appeal to the niche juggling crowd, and has done well without any marketing. But as you can see, it would never get on a TV spot at this point.
Here are links to the TV Spot and my marketing efforts up to this point:
I will try to keep the buzz for Shake a Snack going by continuing to email app review sites, as well as magazines editors and bloggers. I may even try a few TV stations….
For more detailed information on marketing your apps, I would highly recommend The Business of iPhone App Development: Making and Marketing Apps that Succeed by Dave Woolridge. It has a comprehensive list of app review sites, advice on writing a good press release, and other ideas for creating quality buzz. I haven’t yet come across anything in the book mentioning how to get your app featured in a TV spot, though!
If you have any other tips for iPhone app marketing, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Many smokers report that one of the toughest obstacles in kicking the habit is getting used to not holding a cigarette. The absence of something in the hand seems to create a restlessness that amplifies the temptation to light up. While several alternatives for keeping the hands busy, such as walking the dog or doing Sudoku, are well known, another little-known option is juggling.
While my primary goal in teaching juggling is to get people excited about fitness, I never dreamed it could actually help someone quit smoking. So I was thrilled to hear smokers I have taught tell me it has helped them beat their cigarette cravings and, in some cases, even quit smoking.
I’ll never forget when one of my students called me up and said he had an idea that might seem crazy, but he wanted to see what I thought. He suggested that I might want to offer my DVDs and classes to smokers, because he believed learning to juggle is what enabled him to quit within two weeks (he learned from one of my DVDs). He had no idea that others had mentioned this to me before. I told him he was definitely not crazy, and thanked him for the feedback. He had been smoking for over ten years, and without even intending to quit, learning to juggle did the trick for him.
Although I have never smoked myself, I can see how juggling might help kick the habit:
Juggling keeps the hands occupied, and it’s easy to grab juggling balls or oranges when the craving for a cigarette strikes.
When learning to juggle it’s difficult to think of anything else, including a desire to smoke. Many students who smoke tell me how they went home after class, juggled all night and later realized that, much to their surprise, hours had passed and they hadn’t had a cigarette. They are so focused and absorbed in it that they forget about the urge to smoke. Their focus is directed away from cigarette cravings to to the goal of learning to juggle.
There is an addictive nature to juggling; usually when my classes come to a close, most of the people continue to juggle and simply do not want to stop.
As addictive as it might be, juggling is a much healthier habit than smoking. It’s an aerobic workout that burns as many calories as walking and even exercises the brain. According to a study published in the online open-access journal PLoS One, juggling actually increased gray matter in the brain in one week. And the fact that juggling burns 280 calories an hour means it will also help combat the weight gain that many experience when trying to quit.
To make it easier to fight cravings, it’s important to keep your juggling balls, scarves, or even small oranges in plain sight. This way, when the temptation to smoke strikes, you can quickly grab the oranges or balls and start juggling. I would imagine that even the few seconds it might take to find something to juggle might enable the craving to take over.
So if you smoke, next time you have three oranges handy, check out my demo on how to juggle with three balls and give it a try. I hope juggling helps you cut down and eventually quit smoking!
Recently, I started having an issue with my Macbook Pro where, when using the mouse/trackpad, everything on the screen was being selected. Not only was it preventing me from getting anything done, it was driving me crazy! Luckily, I discovered that others were having the same problem, and several solutions were offered on the Apple discussion forum.
I was happy that the simplest solution offered worked for me: “a quick double-tap” on the trackpad. Doing this will deselect everything and the trackpad will behave normally (until the next time it happens). This worked for me on Mac OS X (10.6.4). Hope it works for you as well!
