My Quit Smoking Challenge DAY ONE

Number of cigarettes smoked: 38. The ‘Think Quit Program’ allows you to continue smoking normally for the first 7 days and on the 8th day, you quit. But I can assure you there is nothing ‘normal’ about smoking 38 cigarettes in one day. I usually only smoke this many cigarettes when I’m having a crisis and I am – I’m thinking about how deprived I’m going to feel come quit day.

Like any other addict, I’ve convinced myself over a period of 20 years that I ‘need’ my drug of choice, especially in times of crisis and I’ve certainly had more than my fair share of those.

For example, when I was 22 I had a terrifying flash-back related to a traumatic event in my childhood. It scared the bejesus out of me, not to mention my poor husband who was awoken by the sound of my screams, as I clawed at the wall in an attempt to get away from the hallucination.  I was on the waiting list for counselling but until my name reached the top of the list, my husband (we are now divorced) and I just had to cope with it as best we could. Read more

My no-sugar, no-wheat, no-dairy, no-alcohol Challenge – DAY TEN

Woke feeling deflated about rice cracker blow-out last night.

Got on the digital scales and YET AGAIN my weight has not fluctuated a single gram. Banged scales with my first and gathered weighty supplies to hold and re-test weight to see if scales were broken. Alas, they were working perfectly.

Cursed my sedentary career choice and got the kids their breakfast. My breakfast was oats, nuts, pepitas, sunflower seeds and a scattering of dried cranberries with a little skim milk. Again. (Lucky I love it.)

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International Women’s Day 2010

International Women’s Day (IWD) 2010 is fast approaching and on March 8th, women across Australia and the world will celebrate their achievements and advocate for the continued empowerment of women across the globe.

International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. In some places like China, Russia, Vietnam and Bulgaria, IWD is actually a national holiday.

The UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) theme for IWD 2010 is “Empowering Women to End Poverty by 2015”.

UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman says “This reflects not only the commitment of UNIFEM to the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals but also the fact that women are critical to their achievement.”

According to the UN 1.3 billion people live in poverty and 70% of them are women. If the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved within the next five years, ensuring gender equality within all these goals needs to be a central focus.

UNIFEM provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies that promote women’s human rights, political participation and economic security.

UNIFEM Australia raises public awareness about gender and development issues, engages the support of governments and raises funds for selected UNIFEM projects.

Proceeds from International Women’s Day 2010 will be directed towards UNIFEM’s Program to Empower Migrant Workers in Indonesia. In Indonesia, large numbers of women migrate for work as a family survival strategy, often facing exploitation, discrimination and abuse. UNIFEM’s program supports women migrant workers and fights to protect their human rights.

I will be attending the UNIFEM IWD breakfast in Sydney on 5th March 2010. The event in Sydney has sold out but UNIFEM will also be hosting IWD breakfasts in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide. For more information visit the website www.internationalwomensday.org.au

For information about other IWD Events in Australia and around the world visit the website www.internationalwomensday.com.

You can also find information about IWD Events in Australia at the website http://www.isis.aust.com/iwd/

Women Make the News initiative 2010

To coincide with International Women’s Day on 8 March, UNESCO has joined with international and regional media organisations to launch the annual Women Make the News (WMN) initiative for 2010.

Women make up half the world’s population, but only 22 percent of the voices you hear and read in the news today are women’s. To address this gender imbalance, UNESCO (United Nationals Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) created the Women Make the News initiative to give prominence to the high professionalism of women journalists throughout the world.

This year’s theme for WMN is,”Towards Gender Sensitive Indicators for Media: Best practices for gender perspective in media and in media content”.

As part of WMN 2010, media organisations, professional associations, journalists’ unions, women and men working in the media, are invited to share their thoughts on how responsive the media are to gender issues in all aspects of their operations. To submit your story visit the Women Make the News website before 30 March 2010. Read more

Book Review: Stillwater Creek by Alison Booth

Book of the Month: March 2010. It is 1957, recently widowed Ilona Talivaldis and her young daughter Zidra move to the small fictional town of Jingera on the south coast of New South Wales. Ilona is a pianist and her love of music is now shared with a growing number of Jingera residents, the “Jingeroids”, as she establishes herself as a piano teacher and finds a place in her new community. For Zidra the challenge is to find her way through the minefield of playground culture in her small school with its tightly knit groups. She finds her greatest communion with Lorna Hunter, an Aboriginal girl of her own age; and with Jim Cadwaller the slightly older butcher’s son. He has a brilliant academic future ahead of him if his mother will only let him leave Jingera.

Stillwater Creek is told from the perspective of six of the districts residents, including Elona and Zidra. The others are Cherry Bates the publican’s wife, George Cadwaller the butcher, Jim Cadwaller his son, and Peter Elliot, a local farmer. Their stories weave in and out of the narrative and all become intertwined as the book reaches a tumultuous climax.

It is a book crammed with many underlying themes. All the characters have secrets and the issues of unhappy childhood and of displacement are particularly explored. Read more

Welcome to My Quit Smoking Challenge

Today I have taken my first step towards becoming a non-smoker. I will start blogging about my experiences with the Think Quit program tomorrow morning. But today, I thought it might be useful for you and certainly for me, to provide some background.

I have been a smoker for almost 20 years. My parents are smokers, my sister is a smoker and my brother is an ex-smoker. I was 20 years old when my 19 year old brother taught me how to inhale. Although I had shared many cigarettes with my girlfriends in high school, up until that point I had never really inhaled. Not that I blame my brother at all, like me he grew up surrounded by cigarette smoke and at the end of the day, the choice to start smoking was mine and mine alone.

It was April 1990 and there was already quite a lot known about the dangers of smoking. But like a lot of those I knew, I thought smoking was an effective way of managing stress. I also lost a lot of weight when I started smoking and being at an age when being thin was everything, I was soon hooked. Over the next five years or so my decision to start smoking and to continue smoking was reinforced again and again (I’ll go into that in more detail over the coming days).

Fast forward to February 2010. Read more

Looking for 100 Volunteers to Quit Smoking on TV

A free stop smoking seminar will be held in Crows Nest, Sydney, on Saturday the 13th of March 2010. Clinical hypnotherapist and author of Think Quit, Mark Stephens, will hypnotise the group live in front of TV cameras, for a national television program. Mark promises to send each and every one of the participants away with the tools they need to stop smoking forever and all soon-to-be non-smokers need to bring to the session, is a real desire to stop smoking.

Mark Stephens (pictured) says one of the main reasons so many people fail to quit smoking is a lack of preparation.

“If smokers are to kick the habit they need to be mentally prepared,” he said.

In his free stop smoking seminar Mark will teach participants how to overcome the desire to smoke and reduce nicotine cravings. This is done through a variety of breathing exercises, self-hypnosis sessions, stop smoking acupressure points and much more.

The first 50 people to reserve their space at the seminar in Sydney will receive a complimentary copy of Mark Stephens’ new book, ‘Think Quit: smoke free forever.’ Read more

Grants for small businesses to become more family friendly

Eligible small businesses with less than 15 employees can apply for a grant of up $15,000 to put in place family-friendly arrangements in their workplaces.

This second round of grants form part of the Australian Government’s $12 million Fresh Ideas for Work and Family Grants Program, created to support Australian small businesses to implement practices that help employees balance their work and family obligations.

Successful recipients of grants in Round 1 of this program put in place practices such as, agreements between employees and employers for flexible working hours, and agreements for some employees to work from home in order to spend more time with their kids. Some businesses installed family rooms within their offices.

Research shows that these kind of flexible working arrangements help businesses to retain their valuable staff, reduce turnover costs, increase productivity and improve staff morale and customer satisfaction.

The Fair Work System also provides all working families with access to a number of entitlements to help them balance work and family.

These are:

• 12 months unpaid parental leave for new parents – one of the ten legislated National Employment Standards. Like annual leave, public holidays and redundancy pay, unpaid parental leave is guaranteed to all employees covered by the new national Fair Work system.

• A parent’s right to request flexible work arrangements like returning to work part time or an additional 12 months unpaid leave to help care for children under school age. The ‘right to request’ will help Australia maximise workforce participation and ensure employers can retain skilled and experienced employees in the future. An employer can refuse a request on ‘reasonable business grounds’ but must provide their reasons for the refusal in writing. A refusal without reasons is insufficient.

The Australian Government is also introducing legislation for a government-funded paid parental leave scheme later this year to help working families better balance work and family responsibilities.

Applications for the second funding round of the Fresh Ideas for Work and Family Grants Program will close on 31 March 2010.

To apply for a grant, small businesses can go to www.deewr.gov.au/freshideas to complete the online application form, or call the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94 (open 8.00am–6.00pm, Monday to Friday) for further information.

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My no-sugar, no-wheat, no-dairy, no-alcohol Challenge – DAY NINE

Uh-oh. Day Nine became blow-out day, alas.

It all started well. Woke tired but not at all ‘hungover’ or headachey. Just sleepy.

Felt motivated but also wary that I’m not losing a single gram. Could have been the no-sugar chocolate bar (ok, it was only around 50g but it has to add up) I wolfed down last night to make myself feel better. Have to keep relying on the fact that my clothes are getting looser and that although I’ve stepped up the exercise, I do spend a great deal of my day sedentary (the curse of the writer!).

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My no-sugar, no-wheat, no-dairy, no-alcohol Challenge – DAY EIGHT

Woke on day eight feeling good. I feel lighter. No hungover feeling.

My whoozyness and headaches have stopped.

Husband is waking me at 6.30am – an hour later than usual – and I start the day in front of My Workout on the tele or on the treadmill.

NOT missing dairy. NOT missing wheat. I think it helps that I ate hardly any wheat to start with. Honestly, you can replace bread with so much – think corn and rice and rye. Also, once you’re off this regime, reintroduce wheat by eating flatbread and give that nasty old yeast a miss. Yeast feeds on sugar and creates nastiness in the bowel.

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