Must Watch: How to Stream ‘Just Mercy’ for Free This Month

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To help everyone learn and understand more about the systemic racism that plagues our country and legal system, Warner Bros. has made Just Mercy free to rent on digital streaming platforms this month. The film is rated PG-13, and it’s an important movie for families to watch together and discuss.

Just Mercy was adapted from the book of the same name and the film follows the story of civil-rights attorney Bryan Stevenson (played by Michael B. Jordan) as he fights to overturn the wrongful murder conviction of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) and free him from death row.

Bryan Stevenson is a Harvard graduate who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit dedicated to criminal justice reform, racial justice, and public education.

Walter McMillan was released from death row in 1993 after the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that he had been wrongfully convicted in 1988. He died in 2013.

Author Interview: Always Eat After 7 PM by Joel Marion

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If you missed my earlier post, I’m currently reading ​Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. I promised to keep you updated, and I’m back with some more info including a Q & A with the author.

I decided to try this rule-breaking diet because I’ve been struggling to lose weight and the plans that worked in the past haven’t been working for me recently. This diet is a really different approach, so I decided to shake things up and give it a shot!

Based on surprising science, Always Eat After 7 PM debunks popular diet myths and offers an easy-to-follow diet that accelerates fat-burning and allows you to indulge in your most intense food cravings. We’ve been traditionally taught to avoid carbs, have an early dinner, and never eat before bed, but the fact is, the latest scientific research shows us this earlier model is not the most ideal. The most challenging times to curb hunger are just before bed and in the morning. By following the Always Eat After 7PM program, you have the most willpower to stay on the diet because you are eating during the hours when you are most hungry. This also puts you into both intermittent fasting increasing testosterone and your metabolism, while putting you into ketosis.

One interesting thing I’ve learned from the book so far is related to thyroid function and why it might be better to eat later in the day than some other diets suggest: “Avoiding carbohydrates and restricting calories later in the day can have an adverse effect on your thyroid hormones, which play a major role in metabolism. When the thyroid fails to secrete enough of the hormones that control metabolism, this can trigger symptoms like fatigue, depression, weight gain, thinning hair, and dry skin.”

Best-selling author and fitness expert, Joel Marion

What inspired you to write the book?
After authoring 6 best selling books it was glaringly obvious there were 2 huge misconceptions about dieting that needed to be exposed. The first is that you can’t eat late at night or before bed, which science now shows is NOT true. And second, you can’t eat large portions that satisfy your natural instinct. This book solves both these problems by providing an evidence-based, enjoyable approach to dieting that can be used by any person to quickly achieve their weight loss goals.

What was the most surprising discovery when you were researching scientific data for the diet?
That almost everything my college education and certifications taught me was NOT grounded in published scientific research.

How difficult is the Always Eat After 7 PM plan to follow?
It’s not. And that’s exactly why I wrote the book. While any diet is never truly easy, it can be more enjoyable and much easier to adhere to when you understand how Always Eat After 7pm works because it caters to our bodies natural instincts.

Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion is now available to purchase. Learn more about the book and how to purchase here.

A New Rule-Breaking Diet?

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My usual healthy eating routine has gone out the window with the coronavirus shutdown and stay at home order. I’ve been wanting to start a new diet but find most are too restrictive and kept putting it off til I received a review copy of a new book called Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion. I receive a lot of books to review but the title of this one REALLY caught my attention.

Most diets, at least the ones I’ve tried, say that eating after 6 or 7 is forbidden. Bestselling author, Joel Marion, is a fitness expert and nutritionist debunking the myths underlying traditional dieting and offers a simple, highly effective weight loss program. The author explains in the very first pages of the introduction why you absolutely should rethink eating at night. In the introduction, Joel writes:

“I’m a science geek, so I dug through peer-reviewed journals and databases. I took a deep dive into the research to learn what really happens in our bodies if we eat late at night. I reached out to my circle of contacts in the natural health field—the doctors, scientists, and innovative experts I’ve built relationships with over the years, people who stay on top of the latest research studies and cutting-edge information. I even talked to my bodybuilder friends, who tend to be pretty lean. Even they were eating late at night, they told me, because it helps develop muscle! What I was discovering blew my mind. The research was crystal clear: eating your largest meals at night can actually be the hidden key to losing fat quickly and safely and won’t necessarily make you gain weight. I had to experiment on myself first to see if it would work. Well, the results were nothing short of remarkable. I dropped 12 pounds in under two weeks. My abs were significantly flatter. My cravings for unhealthy food vanished. After 16 weeks on my new plan, I had lost a total of 46 pounds. At my next medical checkup, my doctor was shocked at how good my blood work had gotten, so quickly.”

The introduction was enough to make me want to learn more and try it for myself. Over the next 4 weeks, I’ll be sharing my experiences with the book and diet.

Basically, the Always Eat After 7 PM plan consists of: The 14-day Acceleration Phase to kick-start the program and see rapid results, The Main Phase where you’ll learn exactly which foods to eat when in order to achieve your weight-loss goals, The Lifestyle Phase to keep the weight off for good.

After struggling to get back to a healthier weight for a while now, I’m excited to try something new and hopefully will drop some pounds and increase my energy levels, too. I’ll keep you posted on my progress, so stay tuned! In the meantime, check out this intro video from Joel on his background and what motivated hi to write the book.

Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion is now available to purchase. Learn more about the book and how to purchase here.

High School Author Book Proceeds Help Animals in Need

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There’s a new book for YA Fiction Fans from high school student author, 17 year old Gracie Dix. It’s Welcome To Superhero School (The Vork Chronicles Book 1). It’s an action-packed adventure of friendship, hardship, and humor.

You’ll be interested to know that Gracie is an animal lover and one of the characters in Welcome to Superhero School was actually inspired by her own dog, Snowball.

To help give back, Gracie has decided that $1 from each book sold, up to $10,000 will be donated to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals International (SPCAI). 100% of this donation will go directly towards advancing the safety and well-being of animals.

With Stay at Home orders still in place, now is the perfect time to do some reading and help support this young author. Use this link to read more and order a copy.

20 DIY Hideouts to Give Your Cat More Privacy & Personal Space

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This article originally appeared here, but since we are all sheltering-in-place during the Covid-19 outbreak, I thought it might be nice to share some ideas on how you can stay busy, entertained and distracted while you are stuck at home. Not only are these projects fun for the family, but they will also give your cat the extra privacy and space they probably need right about now!

Want to treat your favorite feline to a new abode? Grab a copy of DIY Cat Castles: 20 Cardboard Habitats You Can Build Yourself and learn how to build homemade habitats with easy instructions and common materials you have at home. (TIP: you can “look inside” the book online if you just want some free ideas and inspiration)

Shoeboxes and paper bags are fine for other cats. But your favorite felines deserve luxurious living spaces! This DIY construction guide includes fun and easy instructions for making cardboard trains, ships, food trucks, rockets, and other hideouts. Also included are tips for making cat climbing towers and scratching pads that they can use to stay sharp.

All twenty projects are quick to assemble and require inexpensive and easy-to-find materials. You can customize them to match your cat’s wildest desires.
Get the book for yourself or send it to your favorite cat lover!