What Jean Likes

Aloha Friday... Blog Hop Style....Last Week to Enter January Giveaway!

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(If this button is too small or too big, click HERE to view all the different sized buttons you can use instead! )

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What Jean Likes A Cat-Like Curiosity

The Aloha Friday Blog Hop is more than a "Friday" hop, it's a way to share aloha and friendship to our fellow bloggers all weekend long!! I consider this particular blog hop to be more of a weekend hop because Fridays are so hectic that a lot of people function on what we like to call "Hawaiian Time" here in Hawai'i which means they link up on Saturday or sometimes even Sunday which is just fine and dandy with me! That's why I keep it open from Friday through Wednesday because I sincerely believe, the more the merrier!!
Can you believe we've been doing this for 41 weeks? Time flies when you're having fun! This is the last week with our lovely January team.

{ Just A Few Simple Requests }

Follow your Aloha Friday Hop hosts and team members.

{You can follow us via GFC easily by clicking on the "Follow" link under each of our buttons above!}

(Please leave a comment with a link to your site and we will be sure to follow you back)

Link up your family friendly blogs

(Or other sites and projects you'd like to share)

Share this hop so that others might join in.

(If you'd like, you are welcome to post this hop on your site and/or add our button to your site!)

Visit at least three other blogs and let them know you've come to share aloha.

(How lucky are we to start our wonderful weekends together, let's have fun with this)

The last Aloha Friday Blog Hop had 323 lovely participants. THANK YOU!!! What a wonderful way to start the New Year! It's really helping us all get more followers and more exposure!! Make sure you link up because every single button in the last link up was clicked at least 8 times, some as many as 100 times. It really helps get you followers!

If you're interested in co-hosting next month's Aloha Friday Blog Hop, please email jean@whatjeanlikes.com for more info. We are all booked through April but there are spots open from May on.

Here's the extra special addition to our lovely hop. It's an oh-so-easy opportunity for you lovely participants of the Aloha Friday Blog hop to get some exposure to your blogs!! What do you have to do to enter? Just link up to the Aloha Friday Blog Hop Below!! It's that easy!! No extra forms or hassle, just link up! Each week we will pick a linker to featured at random and invite you all to say ...

Grab a button if you were featured this week!

Aloha Hoapili translates as Hello Close Friend. So, without further ado let me introduce you to this week's featured friend ...

Tori at My Thrifty Chic.

Tori blogs about fashion, jewellery and lots of lovely thrifted and vintage goodies.

Want a little taste of her blog? Check out these DIY posts to find out what you've been missing: DIY Silver Collar Necklace DIY Tassel Earrings How To Spray Paint Shoes Want your link to be one of the first people see? Sponsor What Jean Likes by purchasing an ad space!! All Sponsors are automatically linked up! More info on becoming a sponsor {here}

Link up below!
ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY RIGHT BELOW THE HOP!!

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, by WhatJeanLikes

health

On Juicing, Slipping, Exercising and Time Management...

Oh man, what a crazy few weeks it has been for me. I honestly never thought life would turn so drastically because I changed my diet and exercise routine. After all, I've dieted tons of times before and I'm no stranger to working out although I hadn't done so in several months. Here are some photos from my iPhone that I recently posted on Instagram. Love that site...

So for my juicing update, it's been almost a month since I started my juice fast and in the last week or so...I slipped. Yeah. I made it about 18 days with absolutely no food. But man, I was hungry and I was out with my mom and niece and I didn't have my usual juice for lunch because of a work meeting so when my mom bought a veggie plate from Starbucks with hummus....I gave in. Yeah. It was delicious and super healthy and a very small portion but I slipped.

Since then (about 6 days ago), I've been eating super small bits here and there. It's about the equivalent of one small meal and one snack a day. I know, you're probably thinking.... um Jean...that's not even a lot of food, seriously... but when I make goals (I made a 30-60 day juice fast goal), I like to keep on track and not veer from it. So it looks like I'm going to be restarting my juice fast tomorrow (giving myself one more day of a small healthy meal). I want to at least wrap up another month of my juice fast. I think my cheating also had to do with the dreaded PMS monster

In the last month, my health has done a complete 180. My hair isn't having as much fallout, my skin is clearing up, my time of the month is back on track (yeah, I know...TMI but it's a big deal for me), I've gone down 2 pant sizes, I've lost a total of 23 lbs, my eyes are brighter and I sleep more every night than I had in years. Not gonna lie, the adjustment hasn't been all perfect and easy. In fact, my bloggy life and web presence has suffered at the hands of this new diet and workout schedule because I get tired around 9-10 pm and I go to bed and wake up early to work out (most mornings)... I used to do almost all of my writing on this little blog of mine at night and my networking and my researching and all that jazz.... So now I have to compensate by slipping in a few moments here and there during my "day job" to catch up... Not the easiest task since the day job has been super busy as well.

I am literally going the entire 17-18 hours a day that I'm awake. I have little to no "down" time because the day job and being a full time single mom to an energetic and growing 11 year old boy takes up any spare second I have. I'm not complaining, I'm blessed on both fronts, it's just a tricky transition.

So it's back to juicing for the next 30-42 days (so I complete my 60 day goal) and then I take on a vegetarian diet. I couldn't do a full vegan diet. I love fish and being a vegetarian allows for lean fish and lean chicken but I think I'm going to forego the chicken and just allow myself fish for my non plant based protein. Red meat and eggs are like walking death for me because I love eating them so much and doing so wreaked absolute havoc on my health so the doctor agrees with me that red meat and eggs are to be avoided (at least for me)... Oh man, will I miss them.

So in addition to the juice fast, I started working out 3 weeks ago. I walk/jog about 4 miles in the evening and every other night I do high intensity training videos (varies between P90x, videos on YT like Bodyrock.TV and ZuzkaLight), and then on days I don't do the HIIT, I wake up at 4:30 am and go to the gym and jog or do eliptical for about an hour and then do some weights and abs. Total overhaul. I want to lose weight and tighten everything up. It took a long time to get as big as I've gotten and it's gonna take a lot of time and hard work to undo the damage I've done.

I'm both excited and apprehensive about the new change once the full juice fast is over. I have to research some healthy and yummy vegetarian recipes. If any of you have some that you like, please do share!! The fact that Lent is almost here is kind of kismet because I am going to use my juice fast as a way to give up what I have loved for so long and been addicted to...food. I'm going to use the time that I have, especially when cravings for food come on to pray and focus on how blessed I am and how thankful I am.

It's kind of like spring cleaning for my life!! Oooh...on that topic...I need to do some home spring cleaning. Thinking of having a garage sale. I have a lot to get rid of. A mother's work is never done!! Sorry I'm all over the place these days. To be honest, the juicing is taking over my life in so many ways but I'm kind of sick and tired of talking about it. I miss the other content on my site. I miss the beauty and the product reviews and photography. Don't worry though...I have quite a few reviews and posts in the works and tons and tons of photos to edit and post. Stay tuned. Happy Thursday!! Time to work on the Aloha Friday Blog Hop!! Last week with my January sponsors!!

Aloha,

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, by WhatJeanLikes

health

Flame Retardant in Gatorade?

I have never liked Gatorade or any of those sports drinks. I'm the type of person who prefers straight water to those flavored "electrolyte" drinks. Reading this story courtesy of Food, Inc. just disgusted me. I quit drinking soda, canned juices, even certain brands of bottled water about a year ago because I refuse to support companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi Co (who both bottle water as well). You have to know what you're putting into your body. Soda is terrible for your health. I used to be addicted to it and the "diet" or "zero" or "calorie free" versions of the soda are even worse for you than the full calorie versions because of the artificial sweetners they put in it. Oh man, I'm fired up to write about that topic this weekend. Until then, please read this helpful article from Food Inc. about the flame retardant in Gatorade...whaaaaat?

Gatorade contains brominated vegetable oil, a flame retardant.

Gatorade is among the commercially-sold drinks that contain brominated vegetable oil. (Photo: David Young-Wolff)

Still reeling from the news that Vitamin Water does not in fact serve any medicinal purpose, nationwide consumers were recently shocked to discover that Gatorade, a sports drink presumed to promote physical health, contains a chemical that's also used as a flame retardant—and no, we're not talking about water.

Amid consumer complaints, including a Change.org petition started by a Mississippi teenager, Gatorade’s parent company, PepsiCo Inc., announced yesterday that it will remove brominated vegetable oil from its Gatorade products.

According to Scientific American, the compound, also known as BVO, is patented as a flame retardant by chemical companies, and its use in food is banned in both the European Union and Japan—for compelling reasons. Studies show that it can build up in the human body. And it's been linked to some serious health issues, including impaired neurological development and altered thyroid hormones. However, in the U.S., the chemical is still approved for use in commercially packaged drinks; it acts as an emulsifier that keeps artificial flavoring evenly distributed. Critics say that the only reason BVO has retained its FDA approval is because the agency hasn't adequately tested its effects on human health.

When curious 15-year-old Sarah Kavanagh investigated the list of ingredients in her favorite Gatorade flavor, she discovered that it contained BVO and decided to call out PepsiCo with an online petition asking for its removal. At last count, over 200,000 people signed it.

Despite Kavanagh’s success, a PepsiCo spokesperson reported to theAssociated Press that the petition had nothing to do with the removal of BVO from its Gatorade line, and that it's been investigating an alternate emulsifier for the better part of the last year.

However the change came about, it’s important to note that Gatorade isn’t the only flavored beverage that contains BVO; PepsiCo's Mountain Dew, Coca-Cola’s Fanta and the Snapple Group’s Sun Drop and Squirt drinks also list it as an ingredient. So far, there have been no reports about whether these beverages will also remove the chemical from their formulas.

For the manufacturers of soda and flavored drinks, the call to stop using BVO serves as the latest in a list of bad press. As consumers continue to demand healthier alternatives to high fructose corn syrup and other artificial additives, companies are furiously trying to repackage their products as healthy. Vitamin Water serves as one example, but so does Pepsi’s attempt at selling a “fat-blocking” soda in Japan and Coca-Cola’s proposal to manufacture a line of beverages in France that “promote physical beauty.”

Stateside, Coca-Cola even released a commercial aligning itself with the fight to cure America's obesity epidemic, but in it, still managed to eschew responsibility for the decades it's spent serving kids sugary sodas.

Perhaps what soda conglomerates should be taking more seriously is their newly savvy consumers, almost all of whom have access to the barrage of nutritional information available online. Case in point is Sarah Kavanagh and the almost quarter of a million people who signed her petition. Even if Pepsi was in the process of changing Gatorade's formula prior to that petition, the message here is clear: Consumers have power—to identify issues and mobilize and fix them—and they're not going to accept anything less than responsibility from the companies they patronize.

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, by WhatJeanLikes

aloha

Aloha Friday... Blog Hop Style Week 40!! Can you believe it?!

Grab our button!!

(If this button is too small or too big, click HERE to view all the different sized buttons you can use instead! )

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.whatjeanlikes.com/search/label/aloha" title="Aloha Friday Blog Hop" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1226.photobucket.com/albums/ee419/whatjeanlikes/AlohaFridayBlogHopbutton.jpg" alt="Aloha Friday Blog Hop" style="border:none;" /></a></div&gt>

What Jean Likes A Cat-Like Curiosity

{ Just A Few Simple Requests }

Follow your Aloha Friday Hop hosts and team members.

{You can follow us via GFC easily by clicking on the "Follow" link under each of our buttons above!}

(Please leave a comment with a link to your site and we will be sure to follow you back)

Link up your family friendly blogs

(Or other sites and projects you'd like to share)

Share this hop so that others might join in.

(If you'd like, you are welcome to post this hop on your site and/or add our button to your site!)

Visit at least three other blogs and let them know you've come to share aloha.

(How lucky are we to start our wonderful weekends together, let's have fun with this)

The last Aloha Friday Blog Hop had 357 (WOW!) lovely participants. THANK YOU!!! What a wonderful way to start the New Year! It's really helping us all get more followers and more exposure!! Make sure you link up because every single button in the last link up was clicked at least 8 times, some as many as 100 times. It really helps get you followers!

If you're interested in co-hosting next month's Aloha Friday Blog Hop, please email jean@whatjeanlikes.com for more info.

Grab a button if you were featured this week!

Aloha Hoapili translates as Hello Close Friend. So, without further ado let me introduce you to this week's featured friend ...

Megan at The Remodeled Life.

Megan blogs about charities, real life and remodeling projects for the home.

Want a little taste of her blog? Check out these posts to find out what you've been missing: DIY Sunburst Mirror Clutter Confessions Giving Thanks Want your link to be one of the first people see? Sponsor What Jean Likes by purchasing an ad space!! All Sponsors are automatically linked up! More info on becoming a sponsor {here}

Link up below!
ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY RIGHT BELOW THE HOP!!

Giveaway Time!

Enter our lovely giveaway below!

What's the prize you ask? Well, just the opportunity to share your lovely blog or website with the world on 5 different sites. But wait, there's more!

Five of our lovely hosts are so generously giving away freebies for your lovely site ! It's a lot of great opportunities for exposure to your lovely blog! There are over 100 easy ways to enter this giveaway so take your chances and improve your odds!