LIVESTRONG AND CREATE MORE ART!

This blog entry has very little to do with ART directly, except that it relates well to a previous blog of mine titled: 8 REASONS YOUR ART ISN'T SELLING AND YOU CAN'T LOSE WEIGHT, which I lifted (with proper attribution) almost word for word from leading fitness and nutrition expert Tom Venuto.

One of the eight reasons for failing to sell (or maintain excellent health) was Number six:

No planning: you winged it. You didn't plan your work into your weekly schedule; you didn't have a “menu” on paper, you didn't make time (so instead you made excuses, like ‘I'm too busy.’)

What follows in this blog has a great deal more to do with maintaining good health than how to create art. The healthier you are, the more energy, imagination and discipline you will have when you want to create great, salable art work.

There are tons of “how to” articles on the Internet and in artists’ forums, such as Wet Canvas and Art Print Issues, but just a few with planning aids that help organize your non-art working hours with daily logs, goals and practical help by saving time in the other important areas of your life that can reward you with more time and power to create art.

Health and Creativity, go-hand-in-hand. Take it from a 79 year old who still loves to create.

There is one outstanding website you should know about and try if you believe that good health is as important as your creativity.

Anyone who has tried to stay on, or maintain, a healthy balanced diet knows how hard it is! All of the nutrition and fitness experts I’ve read agree that keeping daily food and exercise logs are important if you want to succeed.

A major reason many dieters fail is because they underestimate the amount of food they eat and overestimate the amount of calories they burn when they exercise. They may have a calorie goal, but unless they carefully weigh the food they consume or can accurately estimate the size of the portions, their daily food log, if they keep one, is at best, a rough estimate – and who has the time to weigh portions and then look up how many calories each contains? And forget about tracking sugar, salt, fiber, carbs, protein and fats accurately even if you are a careful label reader when you shop.

I’ve found the answer and am now using a marvelous Internet site: http://www.livestrong.com/ - totally free (although there is a modestly priced “upgrade” with a few more “bells and whistles,” which I’ve found well worth the cost.)

It’s built around a database of hundreds of thousands of food items. Just type in the brand name of almost any grocery item or entre at nearly all the major restaurant chains and the site knows and tracks the serving size (which you can adjust according to what you’ve actually eaten), plus the calories, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, fiber, protein and sugar, with a click of the mouse. Did you know things like cough drops or multi-vitamins may contain calories, or what amount of fat you add to your diet if you take fish oil? The site knows.

Not only that, it allows you to choose your average daily activity level (from a number of choices from sedentary to vigorous) then type in almost any exercise activity from walking, swimming, gardening, water aerobics, weight lifting, standing while doing art or crafts, etc. etc. you do in addition and it computes the number of calories you’ve burned, based on the number of minutes you’ve spent.

Based on your age, gender and weight, it computes the number of calories you should eat each day to maintain your current weight. If you want to lose weight or gain it and at what pace, (such as “a pound a week”) it adjusts the number of calories left for the day to reach your desired daily calorie goal as soon as you type in anything you have eaten. It also computes every component and tells you what percentage of the recommended daily allowance you‘ve consumed. All of this with the click of a mouse!

Beyond that, if you eat certain foods together – say for breakfast – you can store those as a “typical” meal and one mouse click puts each of those foods into your daily list. If you have a favorite personal recipe and can list the ingredients, it will compute the calories plus all the components and remember them whenever you serve that dish.

If you find an item that isn’t already in their huge database and the brand has a website or if you look at the food label and type in what it says on to the form the site provides, that item will be added to their database after it has been checked for accuracy.

http://www.livestrong.com/ stores the daily data, will allow you to print it out, show you totals by week or month, recall it by date, see it as a graph or pie chart. There are also hundreds of professionally written articles and videos on almost any nutrition or exercise subject for which you want additional information. It may be the most accurate and useful Internet site I’ve found!

My advice is: LIVESTRONG and create more art!