...First off, depending on how you want to measure, you should track weight consistently and then compare 1 month apart. I'm a bit OCD and weigh every day. There's lots of blips up & down with weight gains losses that amount to 3+lbs in a day (~1.5kg) and large people can fluctuate up and down 3-4 kg or even more due to - hormones (twice a cycle for me)- salt (far less/more than usual)- exercise (with sore muscles you hold onto more fluids)etc..In the long run, when you're absolutely sure that 1lbs was fat and not just water, 1 lbs a month is an excellent goal. The older a person gets, the slower metabolism. It is not unheard of that a female will only need 1600kcal/day. A young whippersnapper like your son who is exercising may need 3000 kcal a day (or more?) To lose 1lbs, you need to cut around 3500kcal For losing 1lbs in a month that's still over 100kcal less to eat on average. This means that in general, most diet days are a 200kcal cut. Going faster is possible but that means cutting out more foods you cherish to eat. Where is this about? Health or fat loss? Both? Maybe focus first on changing one habit at the time and then the rest should follow. Drastic changes may go well for a week or so and then persons give up because it was too much at once.Keeping weight off is about making permanent changes.. forever.This makes me realize that after years and years of careful eating, I'm still a junkfood lover at heart. I know that. Which is why I try to replace the habit to reward with food with scent rewards. Not yet working very well. I wish you luck. Maybe you would want to read a book a friend wrote. It has a crazy title but it is not what you would think it is: "Man on top" by Roland Denzel. It is for both men and women. He very much emphasizes taking 1 step at the time. Another book that is well worth reading is more scientific : "Guide to flexible Dieting" by Lyle McDonald. Check both of them out.. they are very good. Both also stress the importance of exercise. Pay attention :)

...Pre-cut/washed fresh veggies may be more expensive, but they save time. Frozen veggies don't have that disadvantage, they are even cheaper and fresher than fresh veggies. Timer on the cooker is my best friend! The type of meals also don't need to vary very much, just the actual veggies/fruits/meats being used. The only thing that can barely be avoided is having to wash the dishes, but one can minimize by using the same plate for breakfast and 'lunch'.

...No, don't stop... you have good observations!I wished to have found what is fitting and what is not.Maybe others can smell it better than I do. But that is why I am not on this perfume journey, it is to smell interesting things. An interesting fragrance can be horrible on my skin, yet be so totally intrigueing I keep sniffing at it. And vice versa, something very fitting may be booooring. My (former) signature was/is Green Tea by Elisabeth Arden.. boooooooooring , but I think it fits me very well. An expression I read the other day was "the Abyss of Nice' (smelling fragrances). You could also say 'abyss of meh'.

...Still thinking about a good answer to your question.$$$$/€€€€ =/= expensive smelling. It is a combination of everything: a very cheap fragrance, as good as it may be , will not convey that luxury feeling an expensive fragrance does, so the manufacturers that sell cheaply, may be short-selling themselves.. or not. The vast majority of buyers prefer cheaper fragrances. It is the snobs with money that will overlook great fragrances because they are too cheap. Did Amouage not raise their prices greatly in order to attract more rich customers?So price definitely is part of it and a nice looking bottle is the same. For me, things are different since I don't want a small collection but a hyooge one and don't mind having samples. The most expensive one (per ml) sofar was a sample of vintage Vol de Nuit. Yet, that isn't the one that 'smells expensive' to me. It is 24, Faubourg . "24 Faubourg: this perfume of light, composed by Maurice Roucel in 1995, is a Hermès signature right down to its bottle – the square glass is gently curved with a sense of movement, like a breeze blowing through silk. 24 Faubourg is an invitation on a journey where the sun is the destination.Top notes of brilliant white flowers, matched by a floral heart, are enveloped in iris,wood and mystery. Vanilla and ambergris lend the tone to its afternote. " Accords: chypre floral: white floral - citrus - floral - sweet - powderyI'd say: expensive is white flowers, powdery , chypre. That and the original bottle that I imagine to have but don't.

...Sometimes I think to stop counting calories, but then I remind myself how hard it is to hit sufficient amounts of protein w/o it.. 100g of protein/day is the minimum (aiming for 150g on workout days). Not easy when you are 'just eating whatever you fancy' and very hard when you try to maximize protein and minimize calories.Fortunately there is always fragrance.. and what better choice today than to wear something of which the only reviewer on the German side writes it is like "Apfelmus aus dem Schlaraffenland". It sure sounded good even w/o knowing what it was. Just looked it up and it seems to translate like "apple sauce in Cockaigne". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockaigne

...On an empty stomach, fragrance can cause nausea. Vice versa, fragrance can be a perfect end to a good meal and then make your nose happy for the many hours following that meal.So, ideally a fragrance follows the meal. This means mostly in the morning when drinking the coffee and then after the lighter meal when sending out emails to clients. Very occasionally there will be a bedtime frangrace which of course once again, follows the last meal of the day, but generally those would be really simple fragrances that require little processing time.Speaking of processing time, the other day I read a fascinating article about selling your house (or just anything) successfully: it was not the complex scents that made people buy most/that house but simple linear scents, because they gave a 'feel-good' feeling but required little processing time so people would not try to pick their minds about what this particular scent was, but feel happier and buy that house! Back to the food thing: I really believe that beautiful scents can keep me away from eating foods I don't need. Staying busy with tasks you like very much helps! Having to do boring or frustrating tasks don't. The perfume diet is an expression coined by one of the contributors to Oprah magazine: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Perfume-Diet-Guilty-Indulgences#ixzz1jpvEhA3yPerfume diet: "The result was not a diet so much as an invasion—the infiltration of perfume into nearly every aspect of my life touched by food." That person used to spend every free moment to read about food. Over time she started getting interested in fragrances and switched passions.. lo & behold, most of her surplus weight just fell off.Oh.. finally while eating too little may make the nose overly sensitive, eating too much might have the reverse effect. This made me wonder how /when 'noses' eat. Do they like spicy foods, do they want bland foods? I remember reading Serge Lutens only eats one meal a day at night. Now I know he's not the nose behind his scents that has little significance but it intrigued me.

...Ah...well, as you may know (unless it is forgotten), I'm on a perfume diet. Trying to replace lust for (naughty) food with a lust for fragrances.I've probably been a bit up to quite a bit overweight all of my life since age 18 (BMI of 27 up to 34) with actually a high of 34 just 7 months after the best sports performance ever.. so as an aside, fitness =/= leanness, but generally speaking yes it does.The conclusion is easy: mouth/eyes being bigger than the metabolism warrants. So what do you do to keep your weight stable and improve health? Eat satiating foods and satiating meals. Currently the stupidity of 'eat many meals to stoke your fire' or '3 square meals and 2-3 snacks" is finally ebbing away , the opposite seems to happen. The new hype is 'intermittent fasting' with everyone following the leader like sheep saying (bleeting?) : "it doesn't matter when you eat your first meal.. postpone it and your weight will fall off".Well, sorry.. I did that often and that was when I succumbed to the worst kinds of foods. Tried again but now consciously after all the publications (Fast till 5 is a famous one by Brad Pilon, with fitness dudes and dudettes going after alcoholic Martin Berkhan saying 'iifym') .. and guess what, same thing happens.What works for me is 3 meals a day spaced as widely apart as possible with 2 large meals at breakfast (1hr after getting up) and the very last meal of the day (1 hr before bed time) and a 3rd lighter meal at around 6-8pm , mostly a salad.The type of meal is nearly always the same: omelette for breakfast, a protein-rich salad as 2nd meal and either a protein-rich soup or stir-fry at night. With starches thrown in on workout days.. plus about 1 free meals (eat whatever you want) once or twice a week. This means: having something with gluten or ice cream since gluten & me are enemies. But it still doesn't always work.. what used to work brilliantly was trying to hit both calorie & macro targets within 'spitting distance' and seeing it as a game. For now, the interest in perfumes has won ... plus that menopause is coming and maintenance has dropped from a nice and humming 2300kcal/day to just around 1700ish kcal. NO fun at all!ETA, when asking what 'type' or 'style' of eating has preference, Asian is preferred or maybe what Americans like to say "fusion". There are so many interesting foods in the world and yet, so little time. I like eating, but don't like spending hours upon hours to cook,so elaborate meals are not my style. It has to be tasty and easily prepared (fast is not always requires, a timer on a stove or microwave-oven is). I just wrote down how I try to manage calorie-intake: high satiety meals due to volume (salad/soup) and high protein content (meat/eggs/fish/some dairy some legumes esp easily digested ones like lentils)

...In the NLs we don't even have the option to choose for surface mail anymore, at least not that I know of.. they did away with that choice maybe 5-8 years ago?

...Did anyone read the booklet by Turin , called "The science of scent". It took me a long time to get through and didn't understand everything, despite a (bio)chemistry background .. Anyhow Turin has a very interesting hypothesis about how the nose detects scents.. it is worthwhile reading it when you don't mind the science details.

...Well let me then make it up by rephrasing it differently and quoting a professor in Management Science who himself quoted a Dutch pilot who is the spokesman of the aviation professionals."We should never make security top priority, because if we do so, then either democracy suffers or business processes come to a halt".These incredibly difficulties arise from an aim to make it less likely something bad will happen and diminish risk to almost zero. As a result, we had TSA which slowed down check-in procedures at the airport so much that many countries abandoned it again.Another quote from yet another professor, this time in traffic safety, I overheard many months ago, was about how people accept a certain level of risk. When risks are diminished on one level, they will seek risks on another level. In our country hundreds of millions of euros were spent on roundabouts. This has perhaps saved the life of less than 10 persons, yet in other ways people still manage to kill themselves.. last weekend there was a very tragic casualty of young kids (16 & 18 ) in a car, where the driver slalommed around the beams of a train crossing in order to get at the other side.. and got killed. You can try to rule out dangers and it will pop up on another (unexpected) side you had never imagined.Maybe this crazyness will come to an end some day. Sofar I have little hope.

...Sorry about touching a nerve Cryptic, that was not the intention. It is not the same obviously but the the mindset is similar. Not re the goal, but the mindset of people who are 'only doing their work' w/o thinking why they do it and if they would actually stand up, they would get in big trouble.. so they just do it.

...Honestly, I'm inclined to think it is just dumb application of ever stricter rules to prevent 'terrist attacks' rather than a clever plot. Both politicians and bureaucrats are too dumb for this. I also can't really see how the general perfume industry profits from it, thhough indeed as you noticed, the more expensive courier service as well as surface mail (road/ship) is not affected.

...2 days apart: no less than over a hundred of manufactured carded samples ranging from nobody every heard of this (probably crap quality like Miss Etam, Markenteam?) to very good/cherished names : Opium and Poisonincluding 3 miniaturesYves Rocher Rose IspahanDolce & Gabbana Light BlueIceberg Universethe second day another 10 miniaturesKenzo Jungle OlifantBalmain Ivoire de BalmainLanvin ArpègeNina Ricci L'Air du tempsWeil Secret de VenusRalph Lauren Safari Calvin Klein ObsessionVivienne Westwood BoudoirChopard CasmirGuerlain Jardins de BagatelleDana tabu

...From Digindirt's wardrobe.. amazingly easy: the very first one, since it is supposedly one of the better oud fragrances/perfume oils. Attar Al Kaaba !

...AFAIK, these rules re shipping applies world-wide, they are just not applied as strictly everywhere. In China they were already firmly in place. In Britain the crackdown started more or less a week ago .Crackdown will start elsewhere soon as well.. don't you 'worry' (ahem). :roll: :evil:

...Dolby , that is the infuriating part.. there is NO rhyme or reason, just strict application by dumb officials who can not see the difference. Remember what happened to the Jews in Nazi-time? Everyne NOW claims they would have acted upon it.. in reality everyone just obeys the rules and thinks it will not be so harmful.But in the end this can mean the end of business for indie perfumers and smaller webshops that sell perfume and don't have the means to send entire (or partial) containers over the ocean. And why? Because dumb officials rigidly apply rules that make NO sense whatsoever... As I stated elsewhere, shipping by air is still possible but it requires higher fees due to the items needing to be handled by special couriers like e.g FedEx who has their own FedEx planes and as such can decide what to ship and what not. There are only very few of such couriers.. and of course those are expensive!Of course it is a bunch of crap but what can small businesses do other than to bend themselves backwards in order to comply?? Individuals have much more freedom.In earnest.. I am LIVID absolutely LIVID about these rules .. not because I deal with fragrance but because I know exactly what happens.. in a different vein my own business is suffering as badly from other equally crazy and strict but different regulations. Many of my collegues have decided to stop their business.

...Except when you use an excpensive courier service for dangerous goods, all mail is affected because all mail is transported through air nowadays and the same rules apply all over the world. They were simply not as strictly enforced before as they are now.There is a lively discussion too on a FB-group with members from all over the world and one is in China. He told us every single parcel was opened in advance when it was in the post office if there was only a small suspicion. If it contains perfume you are in BIG trouble.Tauer will be in the same trouble because all parcels get routinely checked before going on the plane. When it contains perfume and the destination is not one of the allowed countries with different/expensive carriers , the fine would ruin business. As simple as that , which is why UK businesses that do not use an expensive courier stop doing business....

...A new scent that I sniffed for the first time exactly 2 months ago on a meeting with the nose in the perfume store where they carry his scents. Using the listed accords (over at F) it just so happened that Feb 2 became the day to wear it... and what coincidence that this day was the 2nd time of going to the same type of meeting.A scent that made a big impression both times and yet, it is so simple in its composition when you read the notes. http://www.parfumo.com/Perfumes/Magnetic_Scent/Untitled_2

...Amalia, is a lovely, yet uncommon name. The fun part.. Amelia is a very unique niche fragrance by Grossmith. :)

...Hmm, the one I got a decant from for my 25th university reunion was 24, rue Faubourg :)As Njdeb wrote in her review The definition of elegance and classEdit, there are many other scents .. I'd consider Chamade as well, which I now also have as a miniature .