Diet or Lifestyle Change? That IS the Question

As healthy living goes, I consider myself to be relatively healthy.  I have been a vegetarian for over 39 years and eat lots and lots of fresh fruit and veg.  My love of cooking allows me to make most things from scratch like pasta etc.

I'm now in my fifties and  those thoughts of 'looking after yourself' enter my head now more than ever.  Like lots of other men and women, I have put on weight, 'baby weight', 'middle aged spread' call t what you will but the TRUE fact of the matter is that I found myself in the 'obese' category.

As Diets go, I think I can tick off lots of the boxes, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Diet Chef, I seem to have tried them all.  Nothing ever stayed with me, yes I could get to goal weight, yes I could lose weight, but it would always come back.

Then one day on Facebook, this link popped up on my news feed 10 day Green Smoothie Cleanse I a sat in the background, read the posts and just was amazed by some of the testimonials and pictures.  Could this be for real?  The group at that point was just under 60,000 members, surely some of it must be true?

So after about 3 weeks I decided to order the book from AMAZON I mean upto 15lbs loss in 10 days - is that healthy? Was it possible?  So I got the book, read it and decided that a Monday would be a good place to start.  Now at this point, I am the only person on this group from 'across the pond'.  That so did not matter, I got lots and lots of words of encouragement, if I had a question it was answered and lots of tips and advice came back and forth.  A few things were harder to find but actually it was all rather easy.

The interesting bit for me was that as most of you know I'm 'busy' now my 'busy' and others 'busy' seem to be worlds apart, this is mainly based on my ability to survive on between 3-4 hours sleep for the last 40 odd years!  Yes I know 'Margaret Thatcher was like that !!!! (how many times I have heard that!)  The second bit was more often than not I would skip breakfast! The first part of this plan is based on 3 smoothies a day for 10 days.

At this point, I need to bring you back to the title - the 10 day GREEN smoothie plan so guess what? they are all green!  to me that is not an issue and actually they all but one tasted fine to me. ( I still did drink it though!)

My Nemesis was day 4 - I was irritated and it was a tough day - but reaching day FIVE the half way mark kept me going.  Day ten arrived and I decided to weight myself the next morning - I did feel better - what was my loss going to be?  Wowzers I had lost 12lbs!  This then spurred me on to start phase 2 - the modified plan, based on two smoothies and a healthy meal - and this could be any meal so you could switch it around.  I then went on to lose a further 10lbs.

The book makes everything easy, like most books it has a beginning, a middle and a end, the beginning is all about the plan, how to get yourself prepared even a shopping list!!! ( I like lists!)  the middle is what to expect and lots of questions answered that will just pop into your head ! The end is how to carry on with your new 'lifestyle' yes this is a lifestyle !!!

Now a bit of the gushy part, how many books have I bought, well the answer is too many, yes they are mostly cookery books, I blogged about them, posted pics on social media etc.  Well at under £10 this book is possibly my most thumbed, most read and inspirational, also the author JJ Smith does a huge amount of pay it forward and to find out all about that then please go take a look on the Facebook Page She and the rest of her 'family' will help and encourage and if you are lucky she will answer some of your posts.  Now to get that into perspective she is The New York Times No1 best seller author! Businesswoman and has a full time job as well as writing books, so I guess she knocks my 'busy' down a bit .

My Books!!!

The best bit, my weight loss is not yet that huge that everyone notices, but they do notice my hair, my skin, my nails and just how 'healthy' I look, I know this is not for everyone, but I do know it IS for me and the other 100,000 plus men and women that are taking part.

Disclaimer: All of this is my own story, its not endorsed in any way by the GSC Cleanse.  I just wanted to share on what it has done for me.  Oh and I'm no longer the only ONE from across the pond!

Plastic Fantastic! And all that Jazz!

I'm very  happy with the payment system used on our  website it is simple, safe and secure.   I did up until its demise also use Google Checkout, but alas that has gone to Checkout heaven.
So all credit cards can be used to pay via Paypal or indeed you can use your own Paypal Account to make your purchase.

However as I went to so few outside events, did I really need a card reader?  So here my research begun. How much did they charge? how much did they cost? Did they work and so on and so forth.  Would it work with my phone?

At events I talked to people who used them, good and bad, I talked to customers and more and more I was asked 'Can I pay by card?'  For every person I directed to the nearest cashpoint,  probably one in three would return to complete the purchase, so these 'lost opportunities'  were exactly that.

So I registered my interest with Paypal to get a Paypal Here card reader.  This was before they had been launched in the UK.  My reader arrived  late September and my first event was October.  Setting up the reader was easy, I also managed to list a few of my best selling items complete with pics! I paired it with my Ipad (at this point I had a android phone and decided that my Ipad was the best way to go).

It was amazing, a few days before the show I decided to post on Social Media and my website that we could take card payments over the phone.  Within two hours it had far exceeded my expectations. It was fantastic and I could send my customers a receipt by using either a mobile number or email!  Boy this was just too easy!!

So the day of the show arrived, we were busy, very busy, we put signs up to say we could take card payments, we even made little badges to wear.  Almost 50% of our sales over the three days paid by card.  We were astonished!  We even took the decision not to have a minimum payment (some other stall holders did)  Yes we took lots of small payments, but every small payment adds up!  The charges for payments taken are low and the fact the money is in your bank within hours is perfect!

It was worth noting that quite a few of my neighbours could not get a signal from their readers (not paypal here) so they were amazed we were able to take payments over all three days.

Since then, I have used it to take payments over the phone and also to take payments from abandoned baskets on the site, by sending a simple email to advise their payment did not complete. You can also send Invoices and set the payment to either be a Total or itemised items.

Having done more research since I have had our reader, I know of other stallholders that have 'rented' card readers.  This is 'dead' money but a good way to test the market, however my card reader was the best £99 I have ever spent on my business.

Disclaimer:
All views on this blog are my own, this post is not endorsed by anyone.  Links and pictures are those used from the Paypal Website.