Low-cab foods are spendy, trendy, and tricky. In fact, "low-carb" is not what it seems. Benefits these foods might offer for weight loss or nutrition are debatable, at best.

Hundreds of newly available "low-carb" foods may actually make weight loss more difficult. Dieters are falling into trap of thinking that eating "low-carb" foods will automatically cause pounds to drop off.

1. You may conclude, logically enough, that a food lower in carbs is also lower in calories. If you replace carbohydrates with protein (that’s main change), you still have just as many calories, if not more.

2. You may also conclude that "low-carb" claims must be true and meaningful. In reality, labels are, essentially, misleading. The FDA has no definition of "low-carbohydrate" and has never approved any "low-carb" labels. Any food can be so labeled. Food companies – not nutrition experts or government sources – have generated terms like “net carb” or “effective carb” to promote new products.

This is just time of year to take a look at that reoccurring problem – how do you keep passion alive? Because it’s February, you may be thinking of “romance” when I say “passion.” But I mean it in a larger sense. I’m talking about energy that drives our lives.

This is time of year when life may look like getting up, shaving, doing laundry, feeding dogs, and having same fights with same people over same things. It can be uninviting and uninspiring, a case of “been there, done that, and not too thrilled about prospect of going there and doing it again.”

Whatever zap of energy we got from New Year and New Year’s Resolutions has likely worn off. If we’ve dropped our resolutions, there’s a letdown. If we’ve achieved them, there can also be a letdown. I think of woman who told me once, “I lost 30 lbs. and still my life isn’t perfect.”

It isn’t about life being perfect, it’s about life BEING. Let’s take a look at that. What woman meant was that losing 30 lbs. made her look and feel better, and did a lot for her health, but baby still cried, secretary still missed deadline, traffic still piled up, she still didn’t like her mother-in-law, dishwasher still needed to be emptied, and she still was unable to streamline her projects at work she way she’d like to.

So how do we recharge our batteries when they’re running low? Here are some tips.

WORK OUT

Putting out energy brings in energy, and important thing is that this isn’t just physical. Work out MENTALLY by starting a new course, online or on-site. Continual learning throughout life is one of hallmarks of resilient people. Get in on this early and stay with it.

Work out EMOTIONALLY by taking focus off yourself, and helping someone else. If you’ve got blahs and start focusing on that, you can dig yourself into a hole. If you turn outward, toward others, you’ll soon become interested in world about you and that’s it’s own antidote.