Be My Facebook Fan or Friend

Facebook-logo Have you joined me yet on Facebook?
I invite everyone to connect with me now on Facebook.
You can join me in two ways.
Join the Smart Habits Fans (that’s http://www.Facebook.com/SmartHabitsFans) to:
* Get a Smart Habit Tip of the Day to help you kick sugar or break other bad habits (or what I call babits™), improve your life and inspire you, I hope!
* Watch cool videos.
* Receive links to interesting articles and much more.
* Get tasty recipes.
* Connect with me easily.
* Ask questions.
* Get the scoop about upcoming talks, teleseminars and radio shows.
* Find out about how to work with me privately or in groups.
* Tell me what you think of my book SUGAR SHOCK!
Facebook_logo2 You’re also invited to become my Facebook friend — that’s http://www.Facebook.com/ConnieBennett.
When you ask me to be your friend, please let me know how I know you, because I always like to learn more about you first. I love meeting new people!
For instance, when you ask me to be your Facebook friend, please tell me:
* If we met at a conference or at one of my talks.
* If you read my book SUGAR SHOCK!
* If you’re a fellow health counselor, life coach, author, journalist, solopreneur or wellness advocate.
Connect with me now.
First, join the Smart Habits Fans.
Then, become my Facebook friend now. (Remember, please tell me how we know each other so we can make this connection more personal.)

Is Your Sugar Addiction Making You Crabby?

Are you moody, cranky and edgy for no apparent reason?
Well, it could be your sugar addiction that’s contributing to your embarrassing highs and lows.
Hurray to Well + Good NYC for pointing out this not-so-well-known fact about sugar’s effect on your moods.
Gratitude also goes to Well + Good NYC for interviewing me for this story, “Are you just cranky or addicted to sugar? A local expert explains the pernicious side of sweetness.
Do you live in or near New York City?
Please join me in my four-week course, which begins next Tuesday, Jan. 12 at the New York Open Center.
What are your questions or experiences about sugar, hypoglycemia or type 2 diabetes? We’d love to hear from you on the Facebook Smart Habits Fans page.

SUGAR SHOCK! Fan Writes

Thankfully, I often hear from fans of my book SUGAR SHOCK! But yesterday, I was honored and grateful for this amazing remark […]

New Year’s Resolutions: 10 Simple Steps to Stick to Them

Now that it’s a new year, are you wondering how how to stick to your new year’s resolutions? I’m here to help you.
In particular, I’d like to serve you if you’re seeking to shed excess weight, to create smart habits and set aside such health-harming habits as over-consuming sugar, coffee or diet soda, as well as procrastinating, smoking, being habitually late, obsessively checking emails or nail biting.
First off, know that you CAN Break Free of Your Bad Habits (what I call “Babits™”) for good.
Wondering why you would want to do that? Well, take the case of sugar. Indeed, as I recounted in my book SUGAR SHOCK!, just after quitting sugar and refined carbs on doctor’s orders in 1998, ALL 44 of my ailments, from crushing fatigue to brain fog, completely disappeared! I was amazed!
You, too, can learn that licking sweets (pun intended) and other health-robbing substances, as well as unproductive habits, can help you to:
* Shed excess weight,
* Get consistent energy,
* Boost your moods,
* Calm you down,
* Become more spiritual and centered,
* Increase your passion and productivity,
* Reduce your risk of getting type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer or hypoglycemia,
* Manage these conditions, if you have them,
* Rev up your libido,
* Reduce your PMS symptoms,
* And so much more!
In short, removing sugar and other negative patterns can help you get a Life That Rocks!™, you leave room for positive activities to fill their place. Here are 10 smart steps, which can help you break free of your babits™ (bad habits) and allow you to replace them with smart habits.
1. Congratulate Yourself. To begin your journey to health and wellness, I invite you to pat yourself on the back. You may wonder why you would want to do that, especially if you’ve spent years abusing your body. You want to applaud yourself, because the mere fact that you’re beginning to look at your sugar addiction or other bad habit is big! The first step to break away from sweets, refined carbs and other babits™ is to NOT beat up on yourself. Granted, you may have gobbled or guzzled high-calorie nutrient-poor sugary foods and drinks over the years, but now is a time to be gentle with yourself, to treat yourself with compassion and to take pride that you’re taking the much-needed first step to treat your body with love and care. Go ahead: Lavish some praise and kudos on yourself now that you’re finally confronting the bad habit that’s been plaguing you—perhaps for years. Share your excitement in your journal or in a heart-to-heart conversation with a loved one. Then imagine that you’re at the starting line of a race like a runner athlete and that you’re ready to make a massive positive shift. Please also remember to acknowledge and celebrate your every little accomplishment. For example, when you make it through a meal without sugary foods, diet soda or caffeine—or if you at least consume less of them—take pride and applaud yourself. After all, each time you make healthier choices, you get closer to more energy, a trimmer body and a better life.
2. Move With Your Mind & Mantra. Before you begin to try to kick your sugar addiction or another babit™, it’s time to embark on Seven Smart Starter Habits (through Step #8) to cement your confidence that good health, inner calm and new patterns await you. That’s because whenever you seek to remove an old habit and replace it with a new one, your work begins before you even try to make changes. In other words, before you begin to “diet” or make important lifestyle changes, you want to convince your mind that you CAN succeed. Begin each day knowing in the depth of your being that you’ve already licked your unhealthy habit. To get both your subconscious and conscious mind to accept that you’ve succeeded—or are on the path to succeeding—create an easy-to-repeat phrase, affirmation or mantra such as “I, [Your Name], choose only nourishing foods and drinks, which keep me slim, toned and healthy.” Repeat your positive statement at least 30 times a day. Make sure to say it in the morning, right after you wake up, and in the evening, before you go to sleep. Repeating it about 10 to 20 times before meals also can help. Back in 1998, when I finally kicked sugar, repeating my mantra enabled me to succeed. Now, my clients find this technique effective, too.

Facebook: Disabled & Waiting

A week ago tomorrow (or was it today?), my Connie Bennett Facebook account was disabled. Not only that, but my Smart Habits Fans public page has been disabled, too.
So if you’re wondering why I’ve been mum, that’s why.
You can learn about my awful “abuse” here. As best as I can guess, I was “Too Friendly Too Fast.”
Unfortunately, I’m still waiting repeated emails to disabled@facebook.com and other addresses.
Hope to be on soon to connect with you again.

Facebook Disabled My Account: Too Friendly too Fast?

Facebook has disabled both my regular account, (www.Facebook.com/ConnieBennett), and my public page, www.Facebook.com/SmartHabitsFans. (Although I can’t post to the latter, I believe you can still join and post comments to previous posts.)
Suffice it to say that I was shocked upon being told:
Your account has been disabled by an administrator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here.
I finally discovered my offense after carefully reviewing Facebook’s Warnings and reading such helpful blog posts as “13 Reasons Your Facebook Acount Will be Disabled” (from Thor Muller of Get Satisfaction) and “Facebook Account Deactivation, Can It Be Avoided” from Facebook guru Mari Smith.
Apparently, my violation is that I wrote too quickly to people who’d requested to be my friends before accepting them.
You see, I did what I thought was a great time- saver — I simply cut and pasted innocuous messages such as “Wow! Lots of friends in common. Look forward to your posts.” You see, I was just seeking to conserve my precious time.)
I guess you could say that a fun, apt way to describe my Facebook violation is this: I was too friendly too quickly for Facebook!
And the speed of my friendliness, along with the cutting and pasting of messages, was interpreted as being potentially “annoying or abusive.” (As far as I know, no one complained.)
Facebook, I’ve now learned, limits the number of times a user can send the same message or make the same post. (So much for saving time!)
Guy Clearly, Facebook needs to set limits to protect users from spam, but unfortunately in its zeal to do so, many of us innocents are tossed out of the site.
If you’re on Facebook, I would strongly advise reading all of Rights & Responsibilities so you don’t suffer similarly.
Anyhow, I hope to be back on Facebook soon to connect with you, but in the meantime, here’s what I discovered about the unsettling experience of being booted off the social networking site.
Every day, thousands of people are banned for a variety of reasons. Just do a Google search for “Facebook account disabled, and you turn up a whopping 38,100,000 hits.
Among those who’ve been disabled are Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, and actress Lindsay Lohan, who vented about it on MySpace.

Twitter: Are You Following Me Yet? Catch Up Via Short Updates

Many of you write to me often, asking for more posts, more information, more links to medical studies, more tips to kick sugar and more words of inspiration — in other words, you want more!
Usually, you can get a variety of fun things to read here, at the Sugar Shock Blog — unless I’m off at a conference or vacationing, as I was recently.
But you also can get more frequent, shorter tidbits from me as all.
Just follow me on Twitter to get quick, 140-character updates from me. FYI, I’m known on Twitter as the “Smart Habits Girl.”
If you haven’t signed up for Twitter yet, you should It can be fun, helpful and eye-opening. Just form your own account at Twitter.com to see what it’s all about.
So follow me on Twitter, where I post regularly (unless I’m on vacation, as I was recently).