Manufactured homes are a practical and popular living option for those who want the security of home ownership but do not have the capital to invest in a traditional property. Over the years, the quality of manufactured homes has increased considerably, with many state-of-the-art features that truly turn a house into a home.

There are some important factors to consider when choosing parts and supplies for your manufactured homes so you don’t have too much trouble, these include

Good quality baseboards are required to keep your house looking good and keep out vermin that can get between the concrete base and the foundation of your house. Pests may seem harmless, but they can easily chew through electrical and plumbing, which can be expensive to repair. Good quality skirting boards look good and make your home look and feel more secure.

A solid floor should be a definite investment, as skimping on the quality of the wood will only lead to moisture and rot problems a few years down the line. If you currently live in a manufactured home and have a soft spot in the floor, you’ll need to fix it as quickly as possible so you don’t crack the entire floor.

A solid roof is essential to keep out rain, cold and pests. A leaky roof can quickly cause mold inside your home, and if left unchecked, the entire roof could give way. A well-constructed roof will also provide great energy savings, as it will keep heat in during the winter, and in summer, a cool roof covering can reflect up to 80% of sunlight.

Good ventilation is a legal requirement when owning a manufactured home with 4% of its floor area in the form of windows or a vent that provides ventilation for the entire house. There are a number of ventilation systems available with different levels of energy efficiency. You will need to explore all the options to see which system suits your needs.

A good plumbing system is another integral part of a manufactured home. The last thing you need is a clogged toilet or blocked sink when you’re trying to unwind after a hard day at work. Plumbing is likely to be one of the most expensive aspects of building or renovating your home, but spending money up front will save money on repairs in the long run. An electric water heater is a must if you want a reliable hot shower in the morning. A plumbing system for a manufactured home is different from a site-built home, so you should do your homework before rushing to install it in your new home.

If you own a manufactured home or are looking to renovate your existing home, making sure you’ve covered all of the above needs will ensure you have a happy home and many years of content.

The ten most common file name extensions are file extensions that are most commonly used by computer users. Here are the ten most common filename extensions (not necessarily in order):

1. .doc – This is the file extension for a file created by Microsoft Word, the most popular word processing software. The latest version of Microsoft Word is based on OOXML and has the .docx file name extension.

2. .jpg – This is the file name extension for the compressed graphic format standardized by JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). Most of the digital images we see on the Internet and on computers are in JPEG format and have a .jpg file name extension. This file can be viewed in most image viewing and editing programs.

3. .exe – This is the extension for Windows or DOS executable programs. If a file has this extension, it is a program and runs when opened. Self-extracting archives also have this extension.

4. .htm or .html: The extension for the HTML web page. HTML stands for “Hypertext Markup Language,” the language used to write web pages. This very page that you are viewing now is a web page with a file name extension of .htm.

5. .mp3 – The file name extension for the compressed audio format developed by the Moving Pictures Experts Group. This audio format is very popular these days because its size is many times smaller than Wave or AIF file. This makes it easier for people to download music from the Internet. The disadvantage of .mp3 is that the sound quality is not as good as the Wave or AIF file.

6. .mpg – This is a video format standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). This file can be played with Windows Media Player, Winamp, Roxio Easy Media Creator, Apple QuickTime Player, or VLC Media Player.

7. .zip – This is the extension for any file compressed using ZIP compression, a type of compression that allows each file in the archive to be compressed separately. Programs that can open .zip files include WinZip, PKZip, and the popular WinRar.

8. .pdf – This is the file extension of the document created by Adobe Acrobat or other PDF production programs. PDF stands for “Portable Document Format” and can contain images, text, forms, outlines, and links. PDF files are usually created from another file, such as a web page or a Word document.

9. .xls – This is the file name extension for the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet created with Microsoft Excel, the most popular spreadsheet program.

10. .msi – This is the extension File extensions used for misc files, files that contain information about a particular installer. This is used for Windows updates and other software installers.

As I’ve said so many times, “fortunes change very quickly in the MLB.” Just the latest examples are the current destinations of the LA Dodgers and the St Louis Cardinals. The Dodgers won 3-0 last night in the debut of Greg Maddux’s team (six innings and no hits!) and enter the weekend with the longest active winning streak in MLB (six in a row).

My free game for Friday is Oak A’s over the Sea Mariners at 10:05 ET. Tonight in the MLB, I’ll be throwing one of my signature LEGEND plays (4-0 in the 2006 MLB), as I look to snap out of an ugly nine-day skid. Be sure to check out over the weekend my play at this year’s NFL Hall of Fame Game on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals were blown out 8-1 by the Phillies last night as Chase Utley had three hits for the Phillies and extended his hitting streak to 35 games. The Cardinals have now lost seven straight games, the longest active losing streak in MLB. Not too long ago, things had been very different for these two teams.

The Dodgers opened the second half of the season by losing 13 of their first 14 games (they were outscored 81-29) and had lost eight straight before their three-game home series with the Nationals last Friday. The Dodgers won a week ago tonight by a score of 13-1 and have outscored their opponents by a combined 42-16 in their winning streak.

The Cardinals were struggling going into the break and had lost 13 of 16 games after dropping the first game of their four-game series with the Astros in Houston on the final weekend of the first half of the season. However, the Cardinals took the last three games of that series and then opened the second half by sweeping a four-game series in Los Angeles against the then-slumping Dodgers.

Now the Cardinals are struggling again, allowing 34 hits and 24 runs in their last two games while being outscored 50-26 in their current slide. The Dodgers will try to extend their winning streak this weekend in Florida as the Cardinals try to end their streak against the Brewers at home. St. Louis opened with a minus $1.85 favorite despite their losing streak as Chris Carpenter starts and starting money already has them hovering around minus $2.00.

Speaking of $2.00 favorites, Carlos Zambrano and the Cubs open Friday’s 15-game schedule as under-$2.15 favorites when they host the Pirates at 2:20 ET. Zambrano (12-3, 3.26) has won his last nine decisions, last losing on May 31. He is 7-2 with a 3.45 ERA in 11 career starts and two relief appearances against Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh starts Tom Gorzelanny, who is coming off his first ML win in his last outing. However, at 13-40, the Pirates own the worst road record in MLB.

Three American League teams opened as $2.00 favorites on Friday and they’re all playing on the road! Randy Johnson goes for the Yankees when they visit the Orioles tonight at 7:05 ET and is 11-9 with a 5.07 ERA. However, the Orioles send Bruce Chen to the mound, he’s 0-6 with a 7.07 ERA, if he’s wondering why the Yankees are such a heavy favorite.

The Red Sox visit the Devil Rays in Tampa tonight at 7:15 ET and with Curt Schilling on the mound, they opened as under-$2.30 favorites. Boston dominated the series at Tropicana Field from 2001-04, going 28-10 in that span. However, since the start of last season, the Red Sox have gone 6-10 in Tampa Bay and have lost their last three series there, including both this season.

Curt Schilling (13-4, 3.84 ERA) has also had his problems at Tropicana Field this season, losing both of his starts there to account for half of his losses. Meanwhile, Boston’s starting rotation has posted a 2-5 record, a 7.47 ERA and a .342 batting average over his last 11 games. So why are the Red Sox big favorites? The answer is Tampa’s rookie starter James Shields. The right-hander is 0-5 with a 7.26 ERA in his last seven starts after going 4-0 in the first five outings of his career.

Minnesota’s Johan Santana (12-5, 3.11 ERA) is 9-3 with a 3.74 ERA in 25 career appearances against the Royals, including 14 starts. He’ll attempt his 10th career win against the Royals tonight at 8:10 ET, a team that owns the worst overall record in MLB (38-70) and is just 8-22 against starters. lefties this season. Mark Redman (7-6, 5.40) goes for KC and the Twins have had little trouble hitting Redman. He lasted just 1 2-3 innings in a 7-3 loss to Minnesota on April 27, allowing six hits and five runs. Redman is 0-3 with a 6.14 ERA in seven career starts against the Twins.

NFL ratings

The 2006 NFL preseason kicks off Sunday night from Canton, Ohio, with the Hall of Fame Game between the Oakland Raiders and the Philadelphia Eagles (8:00 ET on NBC). The Eagles are favored by three points with a total hovering around 36 or 36 1/2. I’ve been teasing the upcoming NFL season all week and will begin my countdown to the 2006 season in earnest next week.

It’s important to note that fortunes change quickly in the NFL, just as they do in the MLB. Consider that since the NFL expanded to 32 teams and two four-division conferences, 21 of the 32 teams have won at least one division title (65.6 percent) and 26 teams (81.3 percent) have made at least one appearance in the playoffs.

The six entrants who have not made the playoffs in the last four years are the Cardinals (who last made the postseason in ’98), the Bills and Lions who last made the playoffs in ’99, the Saints (who last made the playoffs in ’00) and the Dolphins and Texans. Miami, which incidentally ended the 2005 season with a six-game winning streak, last made the playoffs in 2001, while the expansion Texans are 4-0 in their four years since becoming franchise number one. 32 in the NFL in 2002.

Speaking of the playoffs, last year’s 12-team playoff field included seven teams that hadn’t qualified for the postseason in 2004. The league adopted its current 12-team playoff field in the 1990 season and, beginning in 1991, it is not unusual for a year’s playoff roster to be populated with teams that had not qualified for the postseason the previous year.

Last year’s total of seven was high, but one short of the 2003 playoff season, when eight teams in that year’s postseason field had not qualified for the previous year’s playoffs. The average playoff season (over these past 15 years) has seen their playoff roster filled with an average of 5.67 teams per season that hadn’t made the postseason the previous year. The 1994 season saw only four entrants who did not make the previous year’s playoffs, as five of the six NFC representatives had also been to the 1993 playoffs.

The AFC West has been the most volatile division in the league since 2002, as all four teams in that division have won division titles in the past four years. The Raiders won in 2002, the Chiefs in 2003, the Chargers in 2004 and the Broncos last year. The most stable divisions have been the AFC East and South, where the Pats (East) and Colts (South) have each claimed three straight division titles.

The Packers had won three straight NFC North titles prior to the 2005 season, as had the Eagles in the NFC East, but both streaks came to an end last year with the Bears 11-5 winning the North (GB had only 4-12). and the Giants 11-5 won the East (Philadelphia was just 6-10).

Ness Notes is available Monday through Friday at 1:00 ET.

In fact, keywords when used correctly in your website content have exponential power. They are the most magnetic force to attract search engines. Most of Google’s $25 billion annual revenue is based on keywords. These simple little magnifying words are the lifeblood of every SEO ranked website.

keep reading…

The way you write your article and how your conversation flows with injections of “magnetic keyword juice” will determine your ranking with Google.

Here’s something to think about and keep at the tip of your pen as you craft your mighty article.

Think about the offline world, words are magnetic too. Words do amazing things for all of us. They are the most influential form of conversion that man has ever known.

We are like search engine snipers looking for those nuggets of wisdom. We are looking for words that satisfy our wants and needs in a gravitating, free-flowing way.

keep reading…

Search engines do the same in the online world. If a potential client types into the search bar, “Billings family lawyer”, search engines look for those same words and show visitors pages of lawyers with those keywords in their content. The top ranked sites fit Google’s criteria and are the most satisfying for snipers.

Now bear with me for the icing on the cake for you when creating your content for your website. It doesn’t matter if you are a dentist in Alabama, a nurse in Hawaii, a mechanic in Arkansas, a plumber in Timbuktu, the power of magnetic keywords for SEO remains the same.

Google and search engine sniping are smart. They will search your website and determine if your content is worthy for their search engines. They are looking for fluid informational sites with images and videos.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• No duplicate content, do not copy from another online source.

• Exaggerated with the same keywords. (1-2% keywords per 500 words is enough)

• Avoid poor content, make it a good article so that your readers get quality information.

• Use synonyms instead of keywords, eg for the word attorney, solicitor, or professional legal adviser.

• Keep your anchor text varied, for example: links to quality external sources and links within your website to other pages of worthy content for your reader.

A great example of a website with expert internal linking is Wikipedia. This is one of the reasons why they are highly regarded by Google and is one of their top ranked websites.

Google wants your reader to have a great informational experience when visiting your website. They want to rank it high because the visitor likes what it has to offer and keeps coming back to it.

Just like you and me, Google and all other search engines are also in business to keep returning customers happy. They give you all the tools and want you to understand and implement proper SEO and keyword magnetism.

Since you can literally do anything with your phone or tablet these days, it’s not surprising that you can also invest and trade stocks with apps. Why spend a fortune paying a broker to trade for you when you can do it yourself? Even if you don’t have a lot of experience or knowledge, the best online stock trading app platforms come with tips and resources to help you better educate yourself.

You only need one or two good apps to make all your investments. It also depends on your level of experience and trading style.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the most popular trading apps:

Robin Hood

This was launched even before the Robinhood website. It’s free to start using, although you won’t have access to the full range of investments. Recent support for Bitcoin has been added. The application interface is intuitive and the information you need to help make decisions is easy to obtain and understand. Robinhood uses only the best security and privacy measures to protect investors’ personal data and assets.

acorns

This is a great option for beginners. College students can take advantage of the free management feature, and select retailers can even get some “cash back.” There are no free surprises, and you can make small transactions for just $1 – $3 dollars.

Acorns is not for everyone, especially more active and versatile traders who want a larger portfolio.

Booking

The great thing about Stash is that it’s not just an online stock trading app, it’s also an educational app designed to help you learn on the go. It allows users to start investing with as little as $5 and offers advice on which stocks might be right for you as you go. Investments go into individual actions/EFTs, which are used on various topics, such as “environmental” or “innovation.”

Handy Trader

This tool was created by Interactive Brokers and is available to Zacks Trade members. If you’re not familiar with Zack’s Trade, it’s a great platform for active traders and those interested in foreign stock exchanges. There are a variety of investment options to choose from, including options, EFTs, bonds, mutual funds, etc. To help you with your decision making, Handy Trader supports real-time charts and market data, and allows you to place orders instantly or via order ticket.

In addition to offering the best online stock trading app, Zacks Trade and Interactive Brokers offer a web platform for those who prefer to handle transactions on a PC.

What is the Special Merchandise Corporation?

You’ve probably seen advertisements on television for Specialty Merchandise Corporation (SMC) and have become interested and wanting to investigate further. The ad says that SMC gives you the freedom to work from home and achieve your goals. So what is SMC and how does it allow you to work from home? They are a huge warehouse full of merchandise and allow their members to buy their products at wholesale prices and sell them at a high markup without having to stock any inventory of their own. This business model is known as dropshipping. Drop shipping is where you, as a business owner, advertise and sell products on your website. When someone makes a purchase, they order the product from the drop shipper, which in this case is SMC, and they ship it directly to their customer. The CEO of the company says that his main motivation is to put people in the business. When Abe Levine started this business, he claims that he had two options. One, to hire a sales force, or two, to put people in business for themselves selling your product. I’m not sure there’s a huge difference here from his point of view. Whether he gave people the opportunity to start a business or hired them, his products still sell. For the business owner involved in SMC, the benefit is that he has the freedom to be his own boss and gets some tax breaks. He always wonders when business opportunities make statements like “Our ultimate goal is to help you start and build a successful business.” The ultimate goal is to make money, and executives believe that helping people start a business is the best way to move products.

Advantages of the SMC business model

As you may know, there are many advantages to SMC or similar companies. First you have the opportunity to become a business owner. This means scheduling your own time and having the freedom to work for yourself and not someone else. Owning a business also offers people the opportunity to reap huge tax benefits that are always attractive. Another big advantage that SMC offers is that you are buying the products at deep discounts, which means you have the flexibility to sell the product and different price points to beat the competition. Due to the fact that you have no inventory, your costs are low, you don’t need a lot of storage space, and you don’t need to hire a lot of people. In fact, you can probably do it all yourself, which makes success even more powerful. Because you don’t stock any inventory, you also don’t have to worry about shipping and packaging. Any fees or costs associated with the operation may be incorporated into the price of the product. That is why SMC offers such an attractive opportunity.

Disadvantages of the SMC business model

One mistake many people make when going into this business with SMC is thinking that SMC will set a framework for you and help you run your business on a day-to-day basis. Running an online store, selling SMC items, is essentially the same as running any other business with a difference. You don’t have an inventory to worry about. You still have to know how to prepare for taxes and protect yourself from consumers. You still need to keep track of your accounting and keep good records. You may need to get a state and municipal retail tax license…all the things they don’t tell you about or help you with. Just because the infomercial makes this sound effortless doesn’t mean it is. In fact, most people don’t make money without trying at all. You usually earn money according to the effort or efficiency you put in. Dropshipping companies like SMC often charge a fee for their dropshipping services, which could reduce your overall profit margin. The other thing is that the Internet is the largest and most diverse market in the world. What this means is that no matter what you sell, there are probably quite a few people who are looking for it. The key though is if people are looking for what you sell, how do you make it visible to them? This requires marketing your website and optimizing it. SMC does not tell you in their infomercials or on their website what it takes to market their store and products. This is the key to making money online, not the specific business model.

I am in no way stating that this business model is bad or that you cannot make money using these methods. I am simply stating that it is not as easy as it seems on TV and it requires certain marketing skills to see any real profit.

Most of the time, when it comes to lighting design, the bedroom is quite neglected and is usually left without any lighting design at all. The living room and kitchen are usually emphasized with designs because they are often seen by visitors and the bedroom is shunned because guests usually do not enter the bedroom.

Although the bedroom is off-limits to visitors, it does not mean that you will have to leave it with simple lighting. In fact, you should even worry about putting in a lot of your own design and style when it comes to lighting because you are the one using that room, not your visitors.

Furnishing your home with different lighting should not aim to please your visitors but to please yourself. You are the one living inside your home, so you need to find ways to make it as comfortable as possible.

The principles of bedroom lighting are the same as any lighting principle. There needs to be the right kind of task lighting within the bedroom, there needs to be ambient lighting to see things clearer, and ambient lighting to get the right feel within the bedroom.

Task lighting is for you to finish your work or your favorite book. By placing lampshades and other forms of lighting focused on your work, you can set a tone within your bedroom as merely a place of solitude and comfort. This allows you to focus more on work and gives you a brighter light to work with.

Ambient lighting is for safety purposes. You will have to install luminaires that allow you to see the entire room and avoid mishaps.

Now, you will be able to see the whole room without the possibility of accidents or spills of the perfumes on your dresser.

Ambient lighting allows you to have a dramatic feel within the bedroom. Softer and dimmer lights allow for a more romantic feeling in the room, so you can sleep well or have a romantic atmosphere together with your partner.

Thinking of changing your marketing graphics?

Over time, your business will grow and evolve. You can offer new services or products, enter different markets, or target another demographic.

If this happens, you may need to consider changing your marketing graphics.

However, you must be careful not to undo all the hard marketing and branding work you’ve put in, and you must fully understand how to rebrand for the most effective results.

Your brand tells a powerful story and you don’t want to dilute it by fixing (or breaking) something that doesn’t need fixing!

Here are some times when rebranding your company logo is a bad idea:

1. You are tired or bored with the colors, the image or the font and you want something new. You may have built up a lot of brand equity, which refers to the value of having a well-known name and reputation.

If you don’t rebrand your company logo for the right reasons, you could dilute all this capital you’ve built up. You should take a look at your ideal customer and their data before making important decisions.

Here’s the “old” Gap look on the left and a new one they tried to implement in 2010. The negative feedback was so overwhelming that they soon went back to the classic.

2. Customers don’t understand what you do. Before you start working on your charts to clarify what you offer, take a step back. Is there something unclear in your positioning statement, mission statement, or website copy that is confusing people?

Sometimes a picture is not worth a thousand words; you may need to figure out how to rebrand your written marketing materials instead of your images.

So when should you think about rebranding your company logo?

I’m going to use a very personal example! We are going through a change. We originally chose the emperor penguin after Daniel and I went to see March of the Penguins.

We realized that these majestic creatures were symbolic of the qualities we stand for: Strength, Endurance, Pride, Trustworthiness, Commitment, Loyalty, Togetherness, and most importantly, Nurture.

We are based on nurturing our clients to achieve success and being the support system that a company needs in this technical age. The emperor penguin was the perfect symbol to portray these qualities.

So why change it?

We want to appeal to our existing demographic plus a new demographic: people who are leaving the corporate world for the exciting world of entrepreneurship plus micro-businesses looking for outside help to achieve their goals.

As we move into a new market, we wanted to better showcase our services and modernize our visuals.

Starting with our logo, we recently asked our Facebook followers the question: which one do you like best?

We got some interesting responses: Those who knew us and what we do tended to gravitate towards the more familiar layout (A). Others didn’t see a penguin in some of the designs or saw a woman’s face and hair in others.

While we’re now back on the drawing board, so to speak, this was an incredibly worthwhile exercise. If we had chosen the one we liked best and thrown it away, we could have alienated and confused the very people we want to attract.

Once our logo is finalized, we will move on to updating our website and other marketing materials.

Some other reasons why changing your logo and marketing graphics might be a good idea:

• You need to better differentiate yourself from another business: your color, images, and/or font are too similar.

• If your appearance is outdated, you could be turning customers away. I said tweaking things for the sake of change may be a no-no, but if your 1980s color palette or vintage font type makes you look bad, it’s time to take a hard look at your marketing materials.

• You are in the middle of a merger or acquisition and need to balance two companies in one design. When United and Continental Airlines merged, their creativity did too: You see the word UNITED with the globe that comes from the Continental Airlines guarantee.

• The personality of your organization has changed. Maybe you were a startup on a shoestring budget when you started your journey, and now you’ve increased your profits, customers, and employees.

Investing in your appearance may be a must if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

There are many situations where you need to change your creativity. But you need to focus on why you’re doing it or it could be hurting your reputation, brand value, and revenue. The best way to go through the process is to hire a professional marketing company to do it for you.

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If your child was in charge of his daily meals, all he would have would be desserts like cakes, ice creams, and sweets. But of course you won’t let that happen! Instead, opt for healthier alternatives when asked for a sweet treat—they’re just as good, if not better, taste-wise. And the best thing is that they are good for your health, so you won’t have to worry!

Serve up any of these delicious healthy kid-friendly desserts and you’ll get even sweeter kisses from your little one!

Delicious avocado brownies

What do you need:

• 1 large avocado

• 3 eggs

• 1/2 cup coconut flour

• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa powder

• 1/2 cup maple syrup

• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

• 1 teaspoon of baking soda

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Combine the avocado, applesauce, maple syrup, and vanilla extract in a blender or food processor. Blend until the ingredients are well combined and the mixture is smooth. Transfer to a large bowl and mix in the eggs. Add the coconut flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and sea salt and stir until all ingredients are well blended.

Add the dough to an 8×8 inch baking dish greased with coconut oil and bake in a preheated oven (350F) for 20-25 minutes. Let cool for at least 20 minutes. Cut it into squares and enjoy!

Keep brownies in an airtight container, shelf life is 2 days at room temperature. Store it in the refrigerator for a longer shelf life.

Grilled pineapple with honey and lime

What do you need:

• 1 pineapple

• 4 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut

• 2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup

• 1 tablespoon lime juice

• Coconut ice cream or sorbet

Cut pineapple into 3/4-inch slabs. This makes about 8 pieces. You can choose to keep the skin on or not, depending on your preference. Combine the honey and lime juice in a bowl and brush the mixture over the sides of each pineapple chunk. Cook pineapples on an oiled grill over medium heat until grill marks appear, about 3 minutes per side. Remove from heat and transfer to serving plates. Sprinkle the pineapples with shredded coconut and top with a couple of scoops of ice cream or coconut sorbet. Serve immediately.

Make snack or dessert time even more enjoyable for the whole family by serving up unique and delicious healthy desserts! Forget about calorie-free store-bought cakes, ice cream and other sweet treats for kids – serve up these delicious healthy kid-friendly desserts packed with nutrition and tender loving care!

Suppose you have a “fat meter” that would send out a loud “STOP!” message to your brain once you have accumulated enough fat. Suddenly, you wouldn’t feel like pizza, ice cream, or French fries. You would look at these favorite foods, even smell their tempting scents, and you wouldn’t even be tempted. Or maybe you decide to eat anyway, and your metabolism would just kick into overdrive to burn off the extra calories.

Nice fantasy, huh? Well, it’s not that far-fetched. Believe it or not, you have that built-in mechanism. So why do you wonder if you always feel compelled to eat, even when you consider yourself overweight or having a hard time keeping it off? And why do you gain weight when you don’t control yourself?

Well, maybe your meter is broken. Or maybe your alarm isn’t loud enough to trigger a reaction in your brain. And that is very bad. Because this mechanism is so powerful that the people it works for never have to fight the temptation to eat when they’re not hungry. Staying at a healthy weight comes naturally to them; It’s not something you have to work at with deprivation diets and long hours in the gym.

Unfortunately, for many of us, this powerful system of weight regulation has gone awry. Food still tempts us long after our caloric need is satisfied. And the extra calories result in packing on extra pounds. Our body no longer knows how to regulate its “set point”, the level that is biologically ideal for us.

But do not worry. I offer information to help you learn how to reset this powerful mechanism so that your body can naturally reach its healthiest weight. You will be able to eat normally without thinking about calories, allowing your hunger/satiety/appetite levels to regulate what and when you eat in a remarkably efficient mechanism. Eating will be simple and pleasant.

Reference point: your ideal weight

When working properly, this weight regulation mechanism is as accurate as the most sophisticated scientific instrument. You do not believe me? Think of a fifty-year-old woman who weighs five pounds more than she did when she was twenty. If she eats about 2,000 calories a day, over the course of thirty years she eats about 22 million calories. Since five pounds of body fat stores about 17,500 calories, that means her body was only 0.08 percent less in energy balance compared to 10%. power output. This equates to a difference of about 50 calories per month, less than the calories in one egg!

In other words, his energy balance was regulated with greater than 99.9 percent accuracy! How many things in life can you say that about? There’s certainly no way you can be that precise trying to exert your own willpower over what you eat and how much exercise you get.

Until recent decades, weight stability for adults over long periods of time was the norm and an effortless process. A research study from the 1970s showed that the average weight of a sixty-year-old man was only four to five pounds more than the average weight of a thirty-year-old man. That kind of weight maintenance is not an accident.

So why fight? Stop counting calories and try to control your eating through diet. Instead, let your body regulate for you. I promise you will get much better results.

The healthy weight your body is aiming for is called your baseline weight. Think of it like the preferred temperature on a fat thermostat. Like any thermostat, this one can be set to whatever point is most comfortable. The system then works tirelessly to do everything it can to align your body with that point. It acts like a biological force: the further you go from the center, the stronger the pull will be to get you back into comfortable range.

However, this system only works if we let it. If you keep “moving” with the thermostat through the diets, the mechanism breaks down. This jolt is like a power struggle to wrest control of your body’s innate weight-regulating mechanism, and in the end, it only makes your body fight harder to maintain control. The result: Your body forces you to not only regain the weight you’ve lost, but you may even pay a penalty with additional weight gain, and a set point now set higher to guard against future dieting.

Instead of continuing to engage in this weight battle with your body, you could declare a truce and join forces with it to help achieve a healthy, natural weight. You will find that you will lose interest in eating when you are full. And your own body will compensate for those occasional excesses at parties without you having to deliberately deny yourself.