Oh those crazy Alaskans.  The AP reported that Mark Confer and Joanne Wainwright got married and “took the plunge” this past Saturday.  And they went all out.  The wedding cake was in the shape of a pool and the walk down the aisle was replaced with hurdling down the 136 foot long waterslide.

Senior Pastor of College Heights Baptist Church, Scott Coffman, blessed the marriage and admitted that this was definitely something he’s never been asked to do before.   The couple are both fitness fanatics. Confer’s obsession is skiing and Wainwright used to be a competitive swimmer and also teaches swimming.  Wainwright had already told her students that if she ever got married in Alaska that she would be married at the Nikiski pool which is an enclosed, heated pool that is open year-round and offers “excellent views of the surrounding terrain and wildlife.”

Seconds before they took their wedding vows, the couple climbed up the ladder of the water slide hand in hand. Confer sat down and Wainwright followed close behind him and then they slid down together into the pool below.  Confer flew out into the pool feet first and Wainwright followed right behind with a big “Whoo!”  The couple met on Match.com and have never been happier according to Confer’s new mother in law and Wainwrights’ daughters couldn’t be more thrilled.

Congratulations to the happy, wet couple from My Wedding Favors!  Next time someone plans to get married in a pool, make sure we know about the event in advance, so we can share some great ideas like floating candle tea-lights or personalized terry cloth robes for drying off afterwards.  Visit My Wedding Favors for these and other great themed wedding favors like Beach themed wedding favors, fairy tale wedding favors and much more.

Mr. Christopher here from the My Wedding Favors blog to share with you the ONLY weight loss tips you will ever need and they are offered to you at absolutely no charge. It’s so frustrating to watch these fat burner commercials, meal replacement commercials, super weight loss gadget promos and not think to yourself, are people really still searching for the magic whatchamacallit? The answer is a disappointing resounding “Yes.

I myself have sat there watching the lipo-fat-pill-ephedrine-flavor-of-the-month commercial and its claims to burn away fat with little to no effort on my part and thought, “Yeah, this can’t be good for you.” And I was right. According to USDA, over EIGHTY deaths have been attributed to Ephedrine. And you say, but only 80 out of millions sold? That’s good odds. That doesn’t even account for the deaths not officially tied to Ephedrine or the over 1400 cases of very bad adverse affects reported. Can you really afford to get lucky and be one of those 80?
So with all of the hype surrounding these supposed miracle pills, I’m going to give it to you straight and tell you EXACTLY what you need to do to lose weight and if you follow these steps, you’ll lose it pretty quickly.

1. Drop the sugar. – Your body has no idea what to do with sugar and the result is that it turns it into body fat along with sending your body really messed up signals and causing it to go into overdrive which causes you to crash. There was a really good book written years ago called “Sugar Blues” which talks about how this tribe learned how to grow sugar and they would teach other tribes how to grow it. Then when the new tribe they taught started using the sugar and eating it, they started to get lethargic and the tribe that taught them would then move in and conquer their tribe. Sugar is not good in any form, so if there is a sugar free version to your favorite foods, find it.
2. “Decaf, please” – That’s right. Caffeine is not good in soda, coffee or any form. This was the worst one for me. I love my morning coffee. The problem is that caffeine counteracts with what your body does naturally which is to produce energy. It makes your body get a lift along the same lines as sugar and temporarily fakes your body out. A fruit smoothie will accomplish the same thing here. Too expensive, you say? Buy quantities of your favorite fruits at the grocery store like bananas, strawberries, kiwi or whatever you like. Then throw them in a blender with skim milk and ice cubes. Your body will award you with more energy than any cup of coffee could give you. Try it for 3 days straight and see what happens.
3. No flour power – White flour is another one of those great ingredients that all of the good foods are made from. It’s also very bad. Your body can’t break flour down fast enough, so you have to really watch what you take in that’s made with flour in moderation. White flour is the worst of the varieties that are out there. Bread, pretzels, cake, cookies and much more is made from flour and they are all bad and take your body a lot of extra time to break down. So do what you can to avoid the flour.
   
   
4. Take your vitamins – Believe it or not, your body doesn’t like to be fat and will do whatever it can naturally to fight it. Help it along by taking your one a day vitamins and giving it the defense and offense that it needs. If you have kids, you should make it a family thing to take your vitamins in the morning together. If you get the children the yummy chewable or gummy kind, they’ll remind you every morning to get their vitamins and you’ll be doing your body a great favor by giving it a jump start needs.
5. Moderation – In a world that has “super size”, “mega” and “triple” whatever, you have to be your own cop. The best rule to train your brain is to only eat until you’re not hungry. Don’t keep going until you’re full, no matter how good it is. If you’re not hungry anymore, STOP eating. There are charts everywhere that will tell you what your ideal caloric intake should be based on your age and weight, but there’s a much easier way. Your stomach is about the size of large grapefruit. If you look at your plate and there’s way more than a grapefruit’s worth there, you’ve got too much food on your plate. Avoid the buffet’s or if you’re trapped into going, stick to the salad bar unless you can control yourself.
   
   
6. Exercise – For most people the problem here is time. Getting up extra early in the morning to work out is a big hassle because you have to get up so early, then shower and when you’ve got kids to get off to school or anything else, it’s way too hard to get that schedule right. And when you’re heading home from work, you just want to go home and relax. You have no energy left to throw at a treadmill. But the truth is that you need to figure out where you can fit a minimum of at least 3 times a week to get some exercise. For those with an XBox (Yourself Fitness) or a Nintendo Wii (Wii Fit), both of them have workout discs that give you an aerobic exercise right in the comfort of your home and in most cases even the kids will work out with you. They even offer record keeping, recipes, helpful tips and much more. That’s not even considering the dance mat craze for all 3 home systems that has left hundreds of used dance mats and games floating on Ebay for under $30. There are dozens of new and great ways to get the exercise your body needs and there is no excuse.
7. Night Night No No – Another tough one for me was not having my bowl of ice cream before going to bed. I loved to make my bowl of ice cream, go upstairs and sit in bed eating away and then watch an hour of TV and hit the sack. The bad part is that once you slip into unconsciousness, your body is going through a healing process to repair the damage that the day has done. But now you’ve thrown in a fattening bowl of ice cream into the mix, so it has to deal with that as well. Since all you’re doing is lying there, guess what? That ice cream gets a one way ticket to your rear end. Best tip to break this cycle? Have a glass of ice cold 100% cranberry juice. This hits the cravings in the back corners of your mouth and tames the urge really quick. If you must have ice cream at night, go for only ONE scoop of a fat free, sugar free version or even better a fat free Italian ice.
8. Common sense – This one is your worst enemy. Use your common sense. You know that the super fudge brownie crumbled over double chocolate chunk ice cream with chocolate syrup and whipped cream is going to go straight to your butt. But for some reason we’re surprised when we find ourselves sitting over that empty bowl and saying, “I shouldn’t have done that.” Use your common sense. You don’t need a foot long. The 6 inch is fine. “But it’s only 50 cents more to jumbo size it!” STOP! Are you really that weak minded that you don’t have any control? Use your head and your body will prevail.

Just following these simple tips will help you lose a LOT of weight and quickly and healthily. Get the weight off and keep it off. Avoid the miracle tabs or the medical processes like Liposuction. They are too dangerous and in most cases not safe at all. Anything that burns off fat or unnaturally removes it from your body is not healthy and in some cases even deadly. These common sense weight loss rules will get you to your target weight a lot faster than you could ever imagine and will do it in a healthy way that will leave you feeling like a million bucks. So whether you’re losing weight to get your body back after a pregnancy or getting fit for your big wedding day, these common sense tips will get you there quickly.

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File this under “My Worst Nightmare.” You wake up sick on your wedding day. It may be a cold, congestion, a wicked headache, a sore throat, raging diarrhea or perhaps bloating. Bottom line, it’s your wedding day–you know you can suck it up and make it through the ceremony and reception. But what about the physical manifestations of your ailment? What if you look like they had to dig you up to get you to the church on time?

Like Fernando used to say on Saturday Night Live, “It is much better to look good than to feel good.” On the very day you’re supposed to look your absolute best, this is not just a narcissist’s philosopy–it’s gospel. That’s why I’m going to start with a few things you can do to counteract the red or puffy eyes, the lack of color in your lips, a redder-than-normal face and a (gasp!) cold sore.

Red or puffy eyes–Get two small baggies and put a few ice cubes in them. Cover them with two fluffy washcloths and lay them over your eyes for 10 minutes. This will brighten your eyes up and reduce the puffiness by constricting the blood vessels.

Lackluster lips–Apply a rosy-pink lip gloss to your lips. The color brings a vitality to your pucker, unlike nudes, which can make you look corpse-like.

Red face–Apply a creamy bronzer. It counteracts the pinkness.

Cold sore–There’s no real quick fix here, but you want to start the healing as soon as possible. An over-the-counter medication like Abreva can speed the healing, and you can wear it under make-up.

OK. Now that you won’t scare the wedding guests, let’s see what we can do you get you actually feeling better.

Diarrhea–Relief is in your medicine cabinet or at the pharmacy. Immodium A-D, Pepto-Bismol and Kaopectate will all help stop the runs.

Headache–break out the extra-strength Tylenol, Advil, Exedrin, whatever you’ve got handy. 

Sore Throat–This tip comes from opera singers. Anything warm (not too hot!) and thin (like tea or broth) is good for relaxing the throat. You can add some things to your “hot water infusion” to increase the healing power like honey, lemon, ginger, cayenne pepper or licorice. If you’re a smoker–DON’T!

Bloating–Coated peppermint oil is a quick fix for abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea and gas. Peppermint oil is available in capsule form.

Cold, congestion–Sorry. No quick fix. Take what you normally take for a cold, and be glad you can make yourself look good despite feeling under the weather. Get into survival mode and do whatever it takes to enjoy your day.

Hello all. Mr. Christopher with some great tips for weight loss that popped up on the MSNBC website as it appeared from SELF Magazine. The tips are so straight forward, that it’d be incredibly easy to be successful if you just follow these simple steps. They tested these by giving one tip to each person for a period of 3 weeks to see what worked and what didn’t. Here are the ones that actually worked.

1. Stop drinking soda. – A simple enough statement that would make a world of difference to millions. A 20 ounce bottle packs the same calories as a chocolate bar and not anywhere near as filling. Even low calorie sodas with artificial sweeteners send bad signals to your body and you think you need to eat more to compensate.
   
   Their Test - A 45 year old test subject tries the tip and loses 8 pounds in 3 weeks.
2. Eat Breakfast – This is the biggest skipped meal of the day by most admission and the worst one to skip. Slowly teach your body to intake calories in the morning and you’ll end up needing less by lunch and dinner time.
   
   Their Test - Multiple subjects tested and weight loss recorded was between 3 to 8 pounds among the testers.
3. Use Smaller Plates & Glasses – If you use a smaller plates, then you’ll simply eat and drink less food. That’s the thought anyway. This tip yielded little results since the testers ended up being hungry by the time they were finished and ended up going back for seconds or snacking.
   
   Their Test - Testers lost between 1 and 3 pounds when they stuck to their smaller portions.
4. Get Low Fat Versions of Your Favorites – While this is a great tip and may work for some, most low fat or no fat versions of foods taste very nasty. And even if you do find a good tasting alternative, you’ll eat more. While this is a good tip, it’s better to give yourself the real thing, but with smaller, more reasonable portions. This test worked, but provided the least effectiveness of all of the tips.
   
   Their Test - Testers lost between 0 and 1 pound.
5. Get The “Trigger” Foods Out of Your House – If you have to leave your house to go get ice cream, you’re probably not going to go get it. Foods like ice cream, potato chips and candy should be removed from the home.
   
   Their Test – A big winner. The test netted a weight loss of between as little as 1 pound to as much as 10 pounds in just 3 weeks!
6. Rate Your Hunger – Between 1 and 10, rate your hunger. If 1 is starving to the point where you’d eat mustard packets to make the hunger pains go away and 10 being “I’ve eaten so much that I need to unbutton my pants”, be sure you eat at 3 and stop when you get to 7. Follow this rule and you’ll stop overeating.
   
   Their Test - Their testers lost as much as 4 pounds, but some lost 0. You could lose some good weight if you get used to this rule, but it’s tough one.
7. Start With an Appetizer – No, not cheese sticks. Starting your meal with a salad, soup or some fruit will take the edge off and it’s better to go in hungry and binge on a low calorie food than to start wolfing food down when the baked potato arrives. Penn State did a study that found that testers that started with a broth based soup lost 50 percent more weight then those that chose lowfat snacks instead.
   
   Their Test – In the 3 week period, weight loss was between 1 to 2 pounds, but when done habitually, that number skyrockets as your body learns to process the new intake style.
8. Stop Eating Out - Restaurants have started making massive meal sizes for their patrons ridiculously huge. Resist the temptation to supersize it. It may be a great deal for just a little more money, but you’ll pay for it in the end. Your REAR end. This one idea is the biggest winner of all 9 tips since meals made at home are typically much healthier.
   
   Their test – As mentioned, the biggest winner. Testers lost between as little as 2 pounds to as much as 11 pounds in just 3 weeks.
9. Eat Without Distraction – When eating, don’t sit in front of the TV. When your brain is distracted, you end up taking in more calories. Stay away from distractions when possible so that you can be aware of when your stomach is tightening and get your “fullness” cues and be more in touch with your body.
   
   Their Test – Their testers lost as much as 5 pounds in this test.

So there you have it, nine great weight loss tips that have been tested and proven. So whether you’re losing weight for your upcoming nuptials or trying the regain the beautiful figure you had before the pregnancy, these tips will get you back on track quickly and easily with the least amount of effort.