PWG Writers Archive

Friday, February 21, 2014

Eating Before Bed?

Image Credit: Sam

Sleeping and eating are both vital components in maintaining proper physical and mental health. But when the two are combined, things can go terribly right or terribly wrong.

People gaining weight because they ate prior to sleeping is a myth. The calories consumed and not burned off is what will result in weight gain. It does not matter when they actually ate.

While eating before bed is okay to do, there are foods one should not consume. Fats, fiber and protein should be avoided at all costs. Foods that have a high content of any of the three will have a negative impact on digestion and sleeping. They break down slowly thus causing discomfort in the stomach, which can lead to trouble falling asleep. The best way to avoid poor results is to eat a meal two to three hours beforehand or carefully choosing a light, healthy snack to have soon before bed.

Some foods to avoid before bed are foods that are either fried, spicy or considered junk food due to the high level of sugar content. Another poor choice is red meat due to the fat and protein content. The fiber in oatmeal will also cause gas and digestion to slow.

Eating before bed isn't a bad thing as long as it is the right kind of food.

No changes were made to the image and is used under the Creative Commons License.

The Three Bucket Retirement Strategy

Jane Bryant Quinn, the personal finance expert and author of "Making the Most of Your Money NOW" and AARP money columnist, has an interesting take on the traditional methods of retirement planning.

Traditionally the four percent rule is used to fund a retirement. The four percent rule is the amount of funds one can annually withdraw from a retirement fund to provide a steady income stream. Also to be considered is the ratio of stocks to bonds in a retirement portfolio; experts have traditionally recommended to allocate more money to bonds than stocks as one progresses through retirement.

However the traditional retirement strategies are being reconsidered due to the recent recession, unstable recovery, retirement fund liquidations, people working longer and people living longer. Social Security Administration (SSA) estimates the average lifespan of American women at 86 years, men 84 years.

Are your retirement monies sufficient to fund a twenty or thirty year retirement? The days of a five percent return on a CD are not only gone, but their reappearance seems unattainable with the current economy. Funds need some growth to hedge the increased number of years and low interest rates. Ms. Quinn has reconsidered the traditional retirement strategies and finds the Three Bucket Strategy has merit.

A thumbnail of the Three Bucket Strategy where funds for retirement are allocated into three buckets:

Bucket One

Funds for current year expenses which are not covered by income such as pensions, social security or part time jobs.

Bucket Two

Short and intermediate term bonds with the dividends reinvested. Each year funds from bucket two are used to replenish your cash flow and bucket one.

Bucket Three

Thirty percent of total remaining funds to invest in mutual funds and stocks. Funds earmarked "do not touch" for 10-15 years.

It seems a strategy worth considering and perhaps integrating into a retirement plan.

Public domain image pixabay.com

Preferred Writers Group: The soldier

Why My Son Will Not be Boxed In

"If my son wants to be a princess for Halloween, I promise you this; he will be the most amazing princess you have ever seen." (unanimous parent regarding son wanting to dress as princess for Halloween)

I am the proud mommy of an adorable two-year-old boy and from the moment that I found out I was having a little boy, gender-ideas, gender-specific toys and clothing, and gender-related questions and advice came blazing in from friends, family, and sometimes even strangers like wild-fire.

According to psychologist Elaine Aron, PhD, gender is one of the earliest expectations parents have for their children. Children do not have to be schooled in what to like or how they should act, they simply internalize the millions of messages from toys, clothing, media, advertisements, and role models around them.

What is a parent to do? I do not have an exact plan, but I do have a couple ideas that I would like to share. I promise to present my son with a range of toys, movies, and activities and allow him to choose what he likes. Also, I would like to think that I am creating an environment for my son that allows for him to "just be a kid" nothing more, nothing less. Time to play, create, explore, make mistakes; without judgement.

The soldier

He is sitting down beside her pregnant wife discussing about the birth of the baby.Phone rings and duty calls.Goodbyes are said

and now he is off to another country far away from home.
While patrolling the war stricken country he just hope war would be over.He needs to go back home and be with his wife during her labor pains.Sirens sound and gunshots heard.War is not over.Bullets everywhere,childrens cry everywhere and people running for their lives.
Meanwhile she is in labor .Delivery room is busy.Doctors and nurses are busy.Push and a little push more.It's a boy.Tears with joy as she hugged her and say, you look like your father.
More gunshots and missiles fired.Buildings going down.Smoke all over the place .When at last shout of joy is heard.The battle is won.Time to go home his comrade say as he hug him.He smiled and handed his pregnants wife picture and whispered ,hug my baby for me.His last words as he close his eyes .

By:Adeline Addog

Ginger's Health Benefits

Ginger is one of the most important digestive herbs in the world and has many health benefits. It can be used for a nauseous stomach, morning sickness, motion sickness, and other intestinal problems.

Ginger is a good remedy for patients who are going through chemotherapy by helping with stomach discomfort and nausea. This herb can ease stomach upset because ginger has a warming and blood moving effect that is helpful for people with poor circulation.

Drinking ginger tea with a splash of lemon can help flush out inflammation triggering toxins, reducing joint aches, and also as an extra bonus can trim up to four pounds of trapped fluid in our body, an easy way to lose that excess fluid.

Just drink daily three cups of ginger tea with a little lemon and soon you will see and feel the results.

Ginger can be taken in extract form, capsules, or tea. I personally

have experienced the results from drinking ginger tea.

For more info read:

Christopher Hobbs

American Herbalist Guild

ID Post mac217

Walmart and Their Decline in Profits

Image Credit: Nicholas Eckhart

Things will only get worse before they get better. Walmart is still going downhill. At first, the holiday season did not go so hot for them as shoppers did not spend very much at their stores with increasing competition and prices. Competition continues to increase as they lose more and more customers. They still had to cut their prices after the holiday season in order to attract consumers. In addition, the bad weather has forced them to shut down many of their stores due to the result of poor sales. Very little shoppers wanted to go out to shop during the snowstorms. But who can blame them, right?

What hit them the hardest? What do they claim is the biggest factor in their major 21% decline in profits for the fourth quarter? Walmart says it's the cut in food stamps after the temporary increase. Consequently, it has made it difficult for their customers to spend at their stores. Walmart believes if they were to eliminate the impact of the reduction of food stamps, the numbers would have remained the same.

Reference: HuffingtonPost

No changes were made to the image and is used under the Creative Commons License.

Did you know that your sleeping style says a lot about your personality?

The way on which we sleep tells a lot about the kind of personality we likely have. We might be positive thinkers, negative thinkers, a dare devil, over-protective of ourselves and much more. We tend to reveal more with our sleeping positions than we might with any other form of body languages.

Take for example the fallowing sleeping positions:

1. Those who sleep in their backs tend to be opening minded and face life head on without being afraid of change.
2. Those who sleep in their bellies tend to be less risk taking, rather hard headed and hard to persuade, or change their ways.
3. Sleeping on your right side is a sign of mental and life valance and will often indicate a very positive person with a very good control in their life.
4. Those who tend to favor their left side more for sleep will have less valance and control in their life and be more of a pessimistic person with closed and fixed opinions and views.
5. If you are one of those who sleep in a curl up position then that is an indication of self-protection, self-control and dependency.
There are plenty of other sleep positions and each one will have something to indicate about a person’s personality, character and mannerism. Some will find they belong to a specific type of personality while others with more than one sleeping position will find that they have multiple trades, or a mix of other personality trades.

Barry Eisler Calls Publishing a Lottery

Barry Eisler on J.A. Konrath’s blog suggested this morning that publishing is a bit like a lottery. I find that to be an absolutely accurate portrayal of the publishing industry. He suggests that you take a chance and put in the time to write and self-edit your manuscript. That’s like buying a ticket. You can increase your odds of winning the publishing lottery by putting in more time writing and more time editing and submitting more and more manuscripts, but in the end it’s still a lottery. Then you submit and you wait for the million to one chance of winning the lottery and landing a deal. Even self-publishing is a bit like a lottery. Only the chance is tied up more in if people will see and buy your work.

The purpose of his post was to discuss the fact that less people would play the Big 5 Publishing industry lottery if they knew 3 key factors in their playing the lottery, and the Big 5 Publishers are only telling writers 1 of those factors: the payout. The other two factors are the cost and the odds. You already know the payout. They tell you all the time “Stephen King. J.K. Rowling.” Face it. If you buy scratch off lottery tickets, you have checked the back for the odds of winning. Also, you know when you buy a lottery ticket what the odds are roughly. You want to know the odds. It would be nice if the Big 5 released how often then brown file manuscripts at the door. You also need to know the costs up front. Like what percent of your royalty rate you are losing by going with Big Publishing.

There are pluses and minuses to both types of publishing. That’s for sure. I think that one side of the coin is weighted a bit more than the other at this point though.

I will leave out Konrath’s exposition and let you get that from his blog directly. But I agree a bit with his point too, except he is a bit more caustic about it than Barry.

You can read a bit about my experience with playing the lottery over at my blog M. D. Reynolds Writes.

images used with morgueFile License (Free to Use) http://www.morguefile.com/

The Pendle Witch Trials in Lancashire UK

Did witches really exist? I have been doing some research on witchcraft and witches lately and I have found a story on the Pendle witch trials. Do you want to know more?

If want to know more, then click below to read this post:

The Pendle Witch Trials in Lancashire UK

Photo credit: Morguefile.com (Lancashire old country)

Denise Larkin:
Denise Larkin is a writer who lives near London in the UK. She writes about television shows, movies, travel reviews, restaurant reviews, sometimes product reviews and anything else that inspires her. She has been writing for about 15 years. She is, also, the Author of a fiction romance novel titled The Island of Love available in print and on kindle at Amazon, a travel book titled Cyprus Travels, along with 3 genre short fiction story books all available on kindle at Amazon.