Okay, did you think I was talking about a two-minute quickie? Not exactly… But this two minute wonder will definitely contribute to a sexier, happier, healthier you.

Something Cassandra Carr said on Facebook this week made me think of this – she was struggling to keep from stress eating, and turned to her FB friends for support to avoid it. I shared my two-minute solution with her and decided I should share it with you, as well.

Basically, this is an effective, easy and quick response to reduce any symptoms or experience related to stress and anxiety, whatever the source.

All you do is move, for two straight minutes, in any activity or motion that gets your heart rate up into your target zone. That’s all! Could be anything – jumping rope (with or without an actual rope), burpees, grapevines, yoga frogs, jazz squares, (these last two are my personal faves), standing still and punching your arms, whatever bumps your pulse up into the zone.

I’m here to tell you it works miracles – and whether you wanted to know or not, I’m here to tell you how it works and why. In a nutshell, getting the heart rate into the zone triggers a hormone that shuts down our stress response.

It turns out our experience of “stress” is simply our body’s archaic response to prepare us to fight or flee from whatever is stressing us. Not so useful, most of the time, in resolving the stressor. But just like our body has an “on” switch for the cortisol/adrenal system that ramps us up, it has switches to turn the system off. One of these is (stay with me here…) ANP, or atrial natriuretic peptide. Produced by a muscle in the heart, it “directly tempers the body’s stress response,” and it has been shown to increase in production as the heart rate increases during exercise.

Here are some other things this two minute wonder can do:

– Focus. I have very mild ADD. This means I often have trouble prioritizing and staying focused on things I’ve gotten started – and if I’m feeling pressured (which is likely, if I forgot to keep going on a deadline project), stress builds, and I can’t think. These were the moments in my former day job when I’d shut my office door, and my colleagues knew I was in there doing yoga frogs and jazz squares. It worked every time.

– Headaches. Not always, but most of the time, if I catch a headache early and put in my two minutes, I can head it off at the pass. It’s always worth a try.

– Motivation. By now you know I do a cardio/strengthening workout nearly every day. Some mornings it’s hard to make myself get started, but if I can convince myself I’m “only” going to put in my two minutes and then see what happens, often I can keep going.

– Depression. Basically, when our body’s moving, it increases production of dopamine and all those other feel-good neurotransmitters. When it’s not moving, production slows down and we feel depressed. Two minutes all by itself might not make much of a dent over the long haul – but the more often we do it, the more our body continues to increase production, leading to an upward spiral in which we feel better and become more motivated to pump our heart rate up more often. It goes without saying that not moving sends the spiral in the opposite direction.

– Memory and Learning. Overall brain health, in a nutshell. We’ll feel more alert, retain new information better, improve our ability to think, and use our marvelous minds more effectively.

– Staying Sexy. You knew I’d get around to it – even two minutes can make us feel better; over time it’ll help us look better, which makes us feel better – which is bound to improve our sexy quotient and our sex life.

All this information is available in great detail in a marvelous little book about our brains, from which the quoted material above is taken. Spark, by John Ratey, talks about the benefit to our brain from just staying active, and the positive impact on anxiety, stress, depression, ADD symptoms, addiction, and women’s health. I highly recommend it.

Have fun, and Stay Sexy!

It’s raining. It’s been raining most of the last two weeks, plus it’s cold, even for North Iowa. Having spent the winter in the southwest, we’re not used to cold and rain. Our exercise routines are outdoors, as much as possible.

We did have one sunny day, two days ago, when things had dried out enough for us to walk our favorite river trail and see if any ephemerals were in bloom – they were, and here are some pics (Bluebells, Anemone, May Apple). Walks like that feed both body and soul.

But it’s still raining. Our hopes for an afternoon bikeride yesterday between storms were dashed, and both of us are weary of the stationary bike in our basement. Boring. Repetitive. Burdensome.

Enter my husband, about 3pm, into the living room where I was editing. “Let’s dance.” Music to my ears! We spent the next half hour dancing to music from our high school days, laughing, trying new moves, making mistakes, laughing some more – and keeping our heart rates in that magical target zone.

Good for body and soul.

How do you stay sexy when you’re dog tired? I shouldn’t complain – my exhaustion stems from a good thing (I hope). We’re in the throes of putting our house on the market so we can resume our full time travels in our motorhome. We’ve signed with an agent, she gave us a “to do” list and we’ve been busting our butts sorting and tossing and packing and selling and de-cluttering and spackling and painting and carrying and…

And, the last thing on my mind, most of the time most days, is staying sexy. There. I said it. I flunked!

I know what I would tell anyone else in this spot – perspective, and balance.

Perspective means remembering that for the last five glorious months we got a chance to taste what our future will be once we’ve emptied the house and downsized our belongings. We spent November through March living simply in our house on wheels and traveling to follow our interests and our climate of choice. It’s kind of like having dessert first – now we’ve got to eat our vegetables (which is silly, really, since I like vegetables). But keeping my focus fixed on what those five months felt like helps me tolerate what feels like a seismic shift in our daily life.

Perspective also means realizing the current state of our life is temporary. Hubs has long been fond of the saying this too will pass. We won’t be pushed like this forever. Actually, the agent will come take photos Monday and will bring other agents to tour the house on Wednesday, so the rush of intense preparation to showcase the house will in fact be done in three more days.

Balance is actually even harder for me than keeping perspective. Balance means I’ve got to stop and replenish often enough that I don’t let myself get dog tired in the first place. Running ourselves into the ground compromises our immune systems, makes us more prone to illness, and in general depletes our health and our resources. I’ll get nothing done if I’m sick. Several times a day I need to stop and breathe, stretch, read, relax, maybe even take a power nap. Haven’t been following those instructions very well, but I’m hoping that fessing up on these pages and writing about it will help me do better down the home stretch.

I’d love to hear from you – how do YOU stay vibrant, healthy, excited and sexy when the pressure’s on?

Erotic Romance Author Gracen Miller has lost 28 pounds and counting – and it’s not a diet, it’s a life change. She’s here to tell us how and why!

Welcome, Gracen, and thanks so much for joining us to talk about staying sexy and healthy! As you know, hubs and I launched our weekly column, Stay Sexy, in February. Both of us have faced some health challenges, and we’ve thrown ourselves into learning and doing whatever’s in our power to maximize our health and our future.

Over the last year we’ve noticed other erotic romance authors posting about weight loss, diet issues, workouts and health challenges, so we decided it would be great to involve you and others like you in the conversation and give our readers a chance to benefit from what you’ve learned.

You caught my eye on Facebook when you posted about losing twenty two pounds (more, now!) and successfully lowering your cholesterol – congratulations! That’s an amazing achievement. I’m excited to hear how you got started, what worked for you, and any tips you’d like to pass on.

Adriana: Let’s open with how you got started – what tripped your trigger? I think it always helps us to learn how someone made that first step, from inaction to action.

Gracen: I’ve been trying for years to lose weight, but very little works long term. I might lose 5-10 pounds, but then I wouldn’t lose any more regardless of diet change or workout regimen. I hit a slump, felt like nothing ever worked, so why bother. That sent me into a downhill spiral of depression, which meant I ate to fill that emotional void. I woke up one morning and said to myself, “Enough whining about your weight. Get your ass up and do something about it.”

Adriana: That’s fabulous self-talk, sounds like it worked! And you are so right – not moving enough triggers depression, whether or not we’re eating right. Actually there’s a great book that explains how that works: Spark, by John Ratey. I’ll be reviewing it in this column sometime next month.

Did you set a specific goal? Has your goal shifted as you made progress?

Gracen: I wanted to lose 50 pounds. I’m only a little halfway there at the moment, so I still have the same goal, but at the same time, I’m thinking how can I make this work long term. I don’t want to lose it and spiral back up to where I was before I started the “life change”. That’s another thing…every time I’ve wanted to lose weight, I’ve called it a “diet”, now I’m trying to think of it as a “life change”. I don’t want to go back to that sluggish, always tired chick that I was before I started my life change. I want to stay heart healthy and energetic. Most of all, I want to feel good about myself regardless if I’m a size 4 or a size 10.

Adriana: I love your attitude – feeling good about ourselves is definitely part of staying healthy and sexy! Also, it’s so important to be building food and exercise habits we can live with long term, and not just thinking of our change as being “on a diet.” Kudos to you!

Is there a particular person or event that serves as inspiration and motivation for you?

Gracen: Right now, my inspiration is swimsuit season! LOL That’s a great motivator.

Adriana: Love it – vanity can be a huge motivator. I’m with you. I want to like what I see in the mirror J.

What about these changes has been most difficult for you?

Gracen: Cooking dinner for my family and not being able to eat the same foods. I really love pasta and fries, but neither is part of my program. Also, taste-testing. I never thought about the minor calories I was consuming as I taste-tested dinner.

Adriana: That must be really hard, watching them eat what you can’t. I know it was much harder for me to stay on track when the kids were little. Now, with an empty nest, it’s pretty easy – plus my husband is a cardiac patient, so we’re both focused on following the same healthy eating habits. Kind of like having a diet-buddy, except we’re not calling it a diet, either.

When you bump up against one of these hurdles, what are your most tried and true tactics for overcoming it? What works for you?

Gracen: Adriana, I’m not a cardiac patient, but I have a heart valve problem that I see a cardiologist for yearly. That issue was becoming worse as I gained weight and now that I’ve lost 28 pounds, it’s gotten a lot better and hardly gives me any issues. As for what works for me when I bump up against hurdles, I remind myself that I’m going to feel guilty if I eat something I’m not supposed to consume. That doesn’t mean I don’t cheat on occasion, but I prepare for it with my other meals that day rather than it being a spur of the moment indulgence. At least I try!

Adriana: So glad you’re already experiencing improvement with your heart condition. And I love your other responses – guilt can be a great motivator, as long as we don’t overdo it. And planning for cheating episodes – brilliant!

What do you find most rewarding so far?

Gracen: The weight loss is fantastic, but the most rewarding is how good I feel, not just about myself, but my energy level is through the roof. I didn’t know I felt so bad until I made the life change.

Adriana: The energy level is one of my prime motivators, too. If I don’t start my day out with something active, even if it’s only five minutes of elevated heart-rate, I’m sluggish all day. Remembering how I’m going to feel helps get me started, even if I don’t feel like it when I wake up.

Sometimes we start out with one purpose and goal, and as we get going, we find that the changes we’re making spill over into other areas of our lives, hopefully in a good way. Has anything like that been happening for you?

Gracen: Well, if I understand your question, with my increased level of energy I’ve been able to get more writing done.

Adriana: Spoken like an author! What has been the reaction of other people you’re close to – family, friends, support? Any undermining?

Gracen: My husband is extremely supportive. My eleven year old son that I’ve nicknamed NoNo is the diet Nazi. If I want to cheat, he’s the first one to tell me I’m gonna ruin my diet. He went with me to weigh in the other week and I only lost 8 ounces. Since then, if I even look at a piece of food like I want to sample it or stray from my diet he’ll say, “Do you want to lose 8 ounces or 2 pounds this week?”

My 15-year-old son is horrified by how little I eat. He says he’d starve to death. LOL But he plays high school basketball and football, so he burns like a billion calories a minute. 😉 And watching him eat is scary!

Adriana: Have you written a character who faces any of these same issues? Tell us about him or her.

Gracen: I write paranormal romances and so far I haven’t written any of these types of issues into the storyline. All my characters have worse things going on in their lives than this. Although, I did write a 1NightStand story where the heroine was curvier than the current rage, but it was about a brief fling and didn’t allow for the time necessary to tackle such a heavy issue.

BLURB: Fairy Casanova

Las Vegas lawyer Sadie Sinclair has hit rock bottom. Bankrupt, with her reputation ruined, and her fiancé is yachting Aruba with a hot babe. Desperate for a break from reality, she contacts 1NightStand and is shocked to discover she’s been paired with a sexy fairy.

Jace is about to become King of the fairies. One minor glitch, he’s obsessed with humans. Before becoming King, he wants one night with a human before he’s forever forbidden from crossing into the human realm.  After a stellar night of sex, Jace is surprised to discover Sadie isn’t just a human, but his mate.  Complicating everything with the revelation, he’s willing to forfeit his kingdom for her, but Sadie must decide if he’s worth the biggest gamble yet.

Buy links:

Decadent Publishing     Amazon    B&N    ARe

Adriana: I love seeing authors write a curvy heroine – kind of goes with that notion of feeling good about ourselves, whatever our body type.

What advice or tips would you like to pass on to our wonderful readers?

Gracen: Drink at least 96 ounces of water a day. When I drink that much or more, I lose more weight a week than when I skimp on the water.

Adriana: That works for me, too – sometimes when I feel what I think is a hunger pang, all it really means is I’m thirsty. If I reach for the water first, I can decide whether I really need to eat something or not.

Thanks so much for stopping by to chat with us today! We’ll look forward to all those paranormal stories you’ll be writing with the extra energy from the life changes you’ve made. Please feel free to stop by the Stay Sexy column any time and leave us a new tip or idea as you continue your journey!

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Anal Sex 201: A Little Deeper Now
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Our Recommendation

We highly recommend this fun and informative website for all our readers. A major reason the two of us write erotic romance together is to spice up our own and others’ sex lives – we feel like Erika and Tim must be kindred spirits, though we’ve never met them.

GetLusty on the Web

Website http://getlusty.com/
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Disclosure

Not long after we discovered GetLusty, we approached them about contributing content and cross-posting from our weekly Stay Sexy column. We now write occasional articles and reviews for GetLusty, without remuneration.