Giveaway: Put on Your Crown by Queen Latifah

Product Description*:

Modeled after Maria Shriver's Just Who Will You Be, Queen Latifah's goal with Put On Your Crown is to help young women build a strong sense of self-esteem. A US Dept. of Justice survey found that females ages 16-24 are more vulnerable to partner violence than any other group, almost triple the national average. Cases like Chris Brown's assault on pop star Rihanna showed an ugly side of adolescent life. However, Queen Latifah has always been a shining example of a woman happy with herself and unwilling to compromise to fit into the "hollywood ideal" of what a confident beautiful woman should look like. The result: She's one of the biggest A-list celebrities in Hollywood.
*Taken from here.

Put on Your Crown by Queen Latifah

Grand Central Publishing

9780446555890

5/6/2010

208 pages

$20.00/$24.99

3 of my readers a copy of this book
Open to residents of the US and Canada
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The book(s) will be mailed out by the publisher

ENTRIES:

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+5 for sharing this contest -make sure you leave the link in your comments (on your blog, -sidebar counts, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) THIS CAN BE DONE ONCE A DAY
+1 for following my other blog It’s My Life.
+1 for friending me on Facebook here.
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+2 for following my girl Krista's blog

*Current friends/followers receive the extra points as well - just make sure you remind me in the comments*

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Winners will be chosen May 20th and notified via email. The winners will have 48 hours to send me their mailing info or another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are 100% mine. If you purchase a book using my Amazon or Barnes and Noble link, I will receive a small portion of the purchase price.

Review & Giveaway: Happy by Ian K. Smith

All of us go through a time in our lives when being happy just doesn't seem realistic. When I was going through my divorce, I wasn't even able to remember what that five letter word meant. I wish that I would have had a copy of this book back then.

Ian breaks the emotions down for you in an easy to understand manner that has such a positive feel to it that you can't help but feel better. Here is what you will learn from reading this book:

--How to be optimistic

--Why optimism and realism are not opposites

--How to get outside yourself

--The importance of family and community

--Why involvement leads to contentment

--Shedding the treadmill mentality of getting and spending

--Tapping the power of simple pleasures

--Mastering modern life to live in the moment

--What we can learn from the Danish people

--How to be, not just to do

Ian is a natural writer who motivates and reassures readers that they are capable of happiness by setting their mentality and not giving up. This book would make a great graduation gift.  I really enjoyed this book and all the lessons it taught me.

Happy by Ian K. Smith

St. Martin's Press

9780312606350

April 2010

240 pages

$23.99 US

One of my readers a copy of this book
Open to residents of the US
The book(s) will be mailed out by the publisher

ENTRIES:

Leave all entries in one comment or separate comments:
+1 for commenting
+1 for following this blog
+1 for following me on twitter
+5 for sharing this contest -make sure you leave the link in your comments (on your blog, -sidebar counts, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) THIS CAN BE DONE ONCE A DAY
+1 for following my other blog It’s My Life.
+1 for friending me on Facebook here.
+1 for grabbing my button and placing it on your sidebar - leave link or your this entry does not count.
+2 for following my girl Krista's blog

*Current friends/followers receive the extra points as well - just make sure you remind me in the comments*

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Winners will be chosen May 15th and notified via email. The winners will have 48 hours to send me their mailing info or another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are 100% mine. If you purchase a book using my Amazon or Barnes and Noble link, I will receive a small portion of the purchase price.

Giveaway: The Pocket Therapist by Therese Borchard

Description*:

Whenever Therese Borchard was weathering a personal storm, and help was nowhere to be found, her one guiding light was the question, "What would a therapist say?" The result was a sort of therapy scrapbook for rough days--a quick reference for anyone who needs a dose of encouragement, support and tried and true ways to cope.

THE POCKET THERAPIST is a compact and accessible guide filled with techniques and advice to help combat everything from addictive behavior to negative thinking.
*Taken from here.

The Pocket Therapist by Therese Borchard

Center Street

9781599952994

4/15/2010

224 pages

$13.99/$16.99

Visit Therese's website.

Read her blog at BeliefNet.com and at the HuffingtonPost.com

Hachette wants to give 3 of my readers a copy of this book
Open to residents of the US and Canada
Cannot mail to a P.O. Box
The book(s) will be mailed out by the publisher

ENTRIES:

Leave all entries in one comment or separate comments:
+1 for commenting
+3 for following Therese on Twitter
+1 for following this blog
+5 for "liking" this post on MyLikes here
+1 for following me on twitter
+5 for sharing this contest -make sure you leave the link in your comments (on your blog, -sidebar counts, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) THIS CAN BE DONE ONCE A DAY
+1 for following my other blog It’s My Life.
+1 for friending me on Facebook here.
+1 for grabbing my button and placing it on your sidebar - leave link or your this entry does not count.
+2 for following my girl Krista's blog

*Current friends/followers receive the extra points as well - just make sure you remind me in the comments*

**Must leave an email address in comment or must be visible in blogger profile**

Winners will be chosen May 10th and notified via email. The winners will have 48 hours to send me their mailing info or another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book so that I could write an honest review. All opinions expressed are 100% mine. If you purchase a book using my Amazon or Barnes and Noble link, I will receive a small portion of the purchase price.

Review & Giveaway: The 3-Day Cleanse by Zoe Sakoutis & Erica Huss

I had read in articles that celebrities and such would take part in a cleansing program. I always wondered what that would consist of and if I could really handle it. I have had problems with my digestive system for as long as I can remember. This book gives you step-by-step instructions on how to get rid of toxins, boost your immune system, help with allergies, PMS and more.

I really liked this book because I've been wanting to take better care of myself. This is the perfect manual if you're interested in learning about this for yourself.

The 3-Day Cleanse by Zoe Sakoutis & Erica Huss

Wellness Central

9780446545716

3/25/2010

240 pages

$15.99/$19.99

Hachette has given me permission to give away 5 copies of this book
Open to residents of the US and Canada
Cannot mail to a P.O. Box
The book(s) will be mailed out by the publisher

ENTRIES:

Leave all entries in one comment or separate comments:
+1 for commenting
+1 for following this blog
+1 for following me on twitter
+5 for sharing this contest -make sure you leave the link in your comments (on your blog, -sidebar counts, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) THIS CAN BE DONE ONCE A DAY
+1 for following my other blog It’s My Life.
+1 for friending me on Facebook here.
+1 for grabbing my button and placing it on your sidebar - leave link or your this entry does not count.
+2 for following my girl Krista's blog

*Current friends/followers receive the extra points as well - just make sure you remind me in the comments*

**Must leave an email address in comment or must be visible in blogger profile**

Winners will be chosen April 13th and notified via email. The winners will have 48 hours to send me their mailing info or another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: I received this book free from Hachette as part of their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” If you purchase a book using my Amazon or Barnes and Noble link, I will receive a small portion of the purchase price.

Review: New From The Inside Out by Kim Vazquez

People tend to think that the grass is always greener on the other side. Life isn't quite that simple. If you really saw into another persons life, you would probably find that they have problems just like you, yet different. You see someone with a brand new house, brand new car and always looking fresh. Then you see another person who lives in a home, car and looks decent. The first person may be dealing with a cheating husband or her husband could be an abuser. The second person may not have material things but they have a great relationship. Which is more important?

I really liked this book because it opened up my eyes a bit. It's in our nature to see what others have and feel like we want that too. The thing is, when you really think about it, what is more important to you? I have to say that I would rather know true love (I'm not just talking about loving a spouse, I'm talking about truly loving anyone, a friend, a child, a dog). Some of my thought patterns were damaging me in ways that I didn't even know possible. Kim helps shed some light on why we think certain things and how to turn them into something positive. I love Kim's spiritually and how she gently brushes each subject so that the reader doesn't feel overwhelmed. Five stars!

New From The Inside Out by Kim Vazquez

CreateSpace

9781449916930

December 2009

108 pages

$12.95 US

Visit Kim's website.

Disclosure: I received this book free so that I could write an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” If you purchase a book using my Amazon or Barnes and Noble link, I will receive a small portion of the purchase price.

Love in 90 Days by Diana Kirschner Ph.D.

Guest Post & Giveaway: The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.

Are you worried about cholesterol? Don’t be!

I’m going to tell you a secret-- something that the smartest, most cutting edge health professionals all know and have been talking about amongst themselves for a very long time. This information isn’t widely known or accepted yet, but it will be—at which point we will all be shaking our heads looking back on this period in medical history and saying “What were we thinking?”

Get ready to be shocked.

High cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease.

Yes, you read that right, and before you recover completely, consider this: Fully half the people with heart disease have “normal” cholesterol and fully half the people with elevated cholesterol are healthy as a horse.

Yet talk to people about living longer and living free from heart disease (or any of the other conditions that rob us of life and vitality) and you’ll invariably hear someone say, “Yup, gotta do something about my cholesterol”.

Why are we so darn worried about cholesterol when it has practically nothing to do with living long and living well?

Well, for one thing it’s easy to measure. For another, lowering it is an extraordinarily profitable business. Zocor and Lipitor, two cholesterol-lowering drugs, remain in the top ten of every Forbes list of best-selling drugs, and bring in over 20 billion a year for their makers. And for a third, the idea that high cholesterol causes heart disease is so embedded in our national consciousness that to dislodge it- even with the considerable amount of emerging scientific evidence that the cholesterol hypothesis is simply wrong- would be a massive undertaking. Heck, we’re still buying “low-fat” cookies and margarine based on information that’s been out of date for 10 years.

So- if not cholesterol-- what should we be paying attention to if we want to live longer and live healthier?

I’ve identified four major processes that age the body and rob us of vitality. These four processes are so insidious and so systemic that I’ve named them “The Four Horsemen of Aging”. They are:
1) Inflammation
2) Oxidation
3) Glycation
4) Stress

Those four processes will kill you. Cholesterol won’t.

Inflammation is a silent killer, a contributor to every major degenerative disease from Alzheimers to diabetes, from heart disease to cancer. It comes in two flavors- chronic and acute. Acute inflammation is the one we’re all familiar with- it’s what you feel when you stub your toe, get a toothache, pull a muscle or have an allergy attack.

But chronic inflammtion is the killer and it flies beneath the radar. It’s your body’s response to small but continuous insults like exposure to toxins, bad diet, stress, cigarettes and the like, and it causes damage to your vascular system. In fact the body uses cholesterol to try to patch up that damage—so blaming cholesterol for the damage is like blaming a St. Bernard for an avalanche!

We can do a great deal to fight inflammation by eating anti-inflammatory foods (fruits and vegetables abound with natural anti-inflammatories like quercetin and other flavonoids) and by taking anti-inflammatory supplements (top of the list: fish oil!)

Oxidation is another process that ages us. Oxidation is what you see when apple slices left in the air turn brown; that happens inside our bodies every day, the result of attacks on our cells and DNA by rogue molecules called free radicals. Diets high in antioxidants go a long way towards fixing the damage.

Glycation is what happens when excess sugar in the bloodstream “gums up the works”. Sugar gloms on to protein in the blood, making it too sticky to pass through small capillaries. It’s one reason why diabetics often have amputations in the extremities like toes and feet and problems in areas like the eyes and the kidneys which are served by small, narrow blood vessels. High blood sugar is far more damaging to the body and to life than cholesterol. And it’s relatively easy to “fix”.

Finally, stress is one of the biggest killers on the planet, and, like sugar, far more of a danger to us than cholesterol ever was. Stress hormones age (and shrink) an important area of the brain called the hippocampus which is involved in memory and thinking. Stress can excacerbate nearly any disease, not to mention that it can slow (or even prevent) recovery. And stress actually makes you fat- the major stress hormone, cortisol, causes the body to store weight around the middle.

In the “Blue Zones”- areas around the globe where people routinely live to 100 in extraordinary health with all their faculties intact- no one worries about their cholesterol or their saturated fat intake. They don’t have to. Their lives have built in stress-reducers like extended families and community events; they eat natural whole food diets filled with antioxidants and anti-inflmmatories. And their sugar intake is naturally low, so they don’t have to worry about it gumming up the works and destroying their health.

Aging may be inevitable, but unhealthy aging is not. If you know what to do you truly can have an extraordinary life well into your 9th and 10th decade, filled with vitality, joy and purpose.

Best of all, it’s not all that hard to do.

The payoff is worth it.

Just ask the people in the Blue Zones.

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, a board-certified nutrition specialist with a master’s degree in psychology, is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. A popular speaker and a former personal trainer with six national certifications in exercise, he was the acclaimed “Weight Loss Coach” on iVillage for twelve years, and is now a regular contributor to AOL, a columnist for Better Nutrition and Clean Eating magazines and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Men’s Health. He’s also the nutritionist for the popular website, www.eatdrinkordie.com, where his entertaining videos on food and nutrition can be seen daily.

His books have been acclaimed by a virtual who’s who in the field of nutritional medicine, garnering endorsements by Christiane Northrup, MD, Mehmet Oz, MD, Barry Sears, PhD. (who calls him “one of the best”), Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD (who calls him “the personal health coach I would want in my corner no matter what”), and many others. His book, “Living Low Carb: Controlled Carbohydrate Eating for Long-Term Weight Loss” has more than 100,000 copies in print. He is also the author of the Amazon best-seller, “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: The Surprising Truth About What to Eat” as well as “The Healthiest Meals on Earth” and “The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth” and “The 150 Most Effective Ways to Boost Your Energy”.

He has been featured in The New York Times, The New York Post, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, Time, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Oxygen, Remedy, Family Circle, Self, Fitness, Allure, Essence, Men’s Health, Pilates Style, Prevention, Woman’s World, In Style, Fitness, Natural Health and Shape and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS as an expert on nutrition, weight loss, and health..

Dr. Bowden is a member of the American Society for Nutrition and the American College of Nutrition and is adjunct faculty for Clayton College of Natural Health. He lives in the Topanga Canyon area of Southern California with his three dogs, Woodstock, Emily and Lucy.

His DVD “The Truth About Weight Loss” as well as his popular motivational CDs, programs and free newsletter can be found at www.jonnybowden.com.

Book Information:
The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
Fair Winds Press
9781592333400
Jan. 2010
288 pages
$24.99 US

Visit Jonny's website.

One of my readers will receive a copy of this book
Open to residents of the US and Canada
The book will be mailed out by the publisher

ENTRIES:

Leave all entries in one comment or separate comments:
+1 for commenting
+1 for following this blog
+1 for following me on twitter
+5 for sharing this contest -make sure you leave the link in your comments (on your blog, -sidebar counts, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) THIS CAN BE DONE ONCE A DAY
+5 for following my other blog freebies4meandu.
+5 for faving me on Technorati (right sidebar)
+1 for friending me on Myspace here.
+1 for friending me on Facebook here.
+1 for connecting with me via Networked Blogs (right sidebar)
+1 for friending me on GoodReads here.
+1 for friending me on Book Blogs here.
+1 for grabbing my button and placing it on your sidebar - leave link or your this entry does not count.
+2 for every meaningful comment you leave on any of my posts - excluding giveaway posts - make sure you come back and leave a comment on the giveaway post you would like to add your entries to
+10 for following my girl Krista's blog
+10 for clicking on my Social Vibe icon (left sidebar) and filling out the information These entries can be used in any of my giveaways (both blogs). Email me or leave a comment somewhere on my blog letting me know how you want to use your entries.
+10 for following Krista on Twitter
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+100 Make a purchase using the icon below, email me the receipt at bjhopper(at)me(dot)com and receive 100 extra entries (per item) into the giveaway of your choice. This goes for both of my blogs.

+100 entries for each item purchased from my Amazon aStore (at the top of my blog). You can use those entries in any of my giveaways (both blogs). All you need to do is email me at bjhopper(at)me(dot)com your receipt and let me know how you want to use your entries.

*Current friends/followers receive the extra points as well - just make sure you remind me in the comments*

**Must leave an email address in comment or must be visible in blogger profile**

Winners will be chosen Feb. 6th and notified via email. The winners will have 48 hours to send me their mailing info or another winner will be chosen.

Prime-Time Health by William Sears, M.D.

Now is the time to start paying more attention to your health. What better way to take charge than to get the advice of a medical doctor? Dr. Sears has come up with a program that covers you from head to toe and will help you live healthier and longer. Making a few simple changes can improve your quality of life as well as it's length.

I found this book to be very informative. There were times I had to put it down for a little bit because there was so much information to process.

Book Information:
Prime-Time Health by William Sears, M.D.
Little, Brown and Company
9780316035415
1/6/2010
464 pages
$25.99/$31.99

Exclusive to THE VACCINE BOOK ebook, Dr. Robert Sears has updated its flu chapter to include all you need to know about the Swine Flu.

Visit AskDrSears.com

Anna over at Hachette has given me permission to give away 5 copies of this book
Open to residents of the US and Canada
Cannot mail to a P.O. Box
The books will be mailed out by the publisher

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+1 for faving me on Technorati (right sidebar)
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+20 entries for each item purchased from my Amazon aStore (at the top of my blog). You can use those entries in any of my giveaways (both blogs). All you need to do is email me at bjhopper(at)me(dot)com your receipt and let me know how you want to use your entries.

*Current friends/followers receive the extra points as well - just make sure you remind me in the comments*

**Must leave an email address in comment or must be visible in blogger profile**

Winners will be chosen Feb. 4th and notified via email. The winners will have 48 hours to send me their mailing info or another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book so that I could write an honest review.