Oil Prices And The Coming Revolution

What the media thinks is important news and what the average guy on the street thinks is important are worlds apart. To the media, politics and the things that impact the election are paramount. Then there is the war and the debate about the war and the latest scandal concerning someone of celebrity, these are a few of their favorite things. But how much do these issues impact the daily lifestyle and comfort zone of those who are working hard and raising families?

The one issue that impacts all our lives more than any other right now is the high price of oil. We feel it at the gasoline pump and in the price of home heating oil. The long arm of high oil prices reaches into every area of our lives. Anything that moves by truck or automobile is affected: groceries, building supplies, clothing, all forms of transportation, tourism, and even services such as lawn care, building maintenance, and house cleaning.

Financial gestures by the government to “…have mercy on the workin’ man,” have dealt with short term peripheral things rather than long term economic solutions. The greatest thing the government could help us with is to do whatever necessary to get oil prices under control.

In a CNBC interview with a fund manager responsible for over a trillion dollars under management, the correspondent asked how much impact the government give-away would have on the U.S. economy. His response was that the only thing that would have any long term influence on the economy is a large decrease in the price of oil. Clearly, the price of oil touches every sector of our economy.

High oil prices have become a threat to national security. We send money to the mid-east for oil and they in turn sponsor terrorist organizations. Then we get taxed to support a war against terrorism that is bankrolled by our own purchase of over-priced oil from Arab countries. They literally have us over a barrel, an oil barrel. I’m not a big fan of government intervention into the free market process, but the very survival of our nation is at stake.

There are signs of an uprising. Independent truckers are threatening to close down all deliveries. Trucking companies are beginning to lower driving speeds of their large national fleets, saving them millions, but slowing down the interstate highway system. Many independent truckers have turned in their truck keys, no longer able to buy diesel fuel and make their payments. People are losing their livelihoods, their homes, and all their possessions.

Make no mistake, the threat is great. More than any other one issue, this issue threatens the American way of life and the stability of our nation. Desperate families that would never have resorted to crime are out of work and doing whatever they have to do to survive. Anger among the disenfranchised and unemployed is reaching an apex of frustration. If things don’t change, a revolt will come as it has in similar times in history.

At stake, is our national security. We forget much too easily that this nation was created because another world empire looked the other way while colonists languished under a system of high taxation, a rising cost of living, and an erosion of personal freedoms. There is only one solution to the current economic crisis and that is to lower the cost of oil significantly and quickly. Anything less will result in the collapse of our economy and widespread political upheaval.

A loss of stability could birth something worse than the attack of foreign terrorists. We could see the social chemistry necessary for the rise of homegrown terrorism and chaos. The most dangerous move our government could make at this time is the act of turning a deaf ear to the suffering of it’s citizens at the unmerciful and relentless oppression of OPEC and the oil producing nations.

Raising Kids With Disabilities

When asked if they want a boy or a girl, I have heard expecting couples remark, “As long as it’s healthy.” No one wishes for a child that is less than perfect. In some sense they are all less than perfect. In our case we had identical twins with Down Syndrome twenty four years ago.

After walking around like zombies for two weeks, my wife and I found strength in God and rose to tackle the task of living and raising Joey and Matt. We had no manual on what to do or how to do it. One of the first things we did is join with a nurse in the area and start a support group for parents of children with disabilities. From there we attended conferences for families who were dealing with disabilities and even got involved in being volunteer lobbyists to our state legislature. All of these things helped our emotional well being but also put us in touch with cutting edge information on disability issues.

Talking to older parents of Down Syndrome children did not help much. Most were old school. Keep them clean and healthy and then put them in front of a TV. We wanted more than that for Joey and Matt. We shot high in our goals for them. The medical community and the education system kept telling us that we needed to shoot lower and be content with what we got. We ignored most of it and plunged onward.

Fast forward twenty four years. Joey and Matt have achieved a lot. They have worked in restaurants doing food prep until a recent lay off. The restaraunt they were working at laid off 20 people prior to selling. They are actively looking again at this time. They take Tae Kwon Do and take it seriously. It is based on mimicking the actions of the teacher and repetition, which they’re good at. They are active in church activities and a have friends and now have steady girl friends. They tried to get their driver’s licenses, but with a grade school reading level, they couldn’t pass the test. They know all the road signs and tell me how to drive. They have an awareness of their disability and are not afraid to take on new challenges.

I wanted to give new parents of disabled children a few short guidelines for your challenge that lies ahead:

1. Get yourself as emotionally healthy as possible. The support group was helpful and the help of grandparents and extended family was invaluable. Have quality time with your kids, but take time to go on a date without the kids. We went on a cruise for three days to the Bahamas. Joey and Matt “punished” us for a week which is a normal baby behavior. They ignored us after we got back, but those three days were like medicine.

2. Treat your child like a normal child. I’m not saying to deny reality, just don’t accept it as the finality. Take them to T ball, dance classes, karate, soccer, and scouting. We did, and they learned to model normal kids’ behaviors and socialize. The other people’s normal kids learned sensitivity at an early age.

3. Get all of the professional help you can as early as you can. Joey and Matt started getting early education from the public school system at 3 months old. About the same time they started physical, occupational, and speech therapy funded by state programs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this level of help is only for the rich. We weren’t rich and our kids got top drawer care their entire lives.

4. Keep them in the educational mainstream. I would add the footnote, “when practical and in their best interest.” Teachers and school administrators urged us to put them in an all-handicapped setting. During gradeschool, they spent some time in mainstream classes and some time in the special education classes.   This will vary according to the severity of your child’s handicaps and their need for specialized instruction.  In high school, they went to a special education class for academics and were mainstreamed for physical education. During this time they were water boys for the football team but joined the team in their junior and senior years. They participated in the practices and got to play in their last game.

5. Set realistic long term goals. Aim high, but don’t deny reality. As your child enters their high school years, both their abilities and limitations will start to paint a picture of their vocational abilities. Educational choices need to be made with some vocational goals in mind. You have to begin to get a feel for what they will do with their life once the school years are behind them. Educators are sometimes reluctant to allow parents access to the inner workings of the educational world. My wife was a constant presence in our school system, volunteering for committees, helping to write a grant, and pushing the envelope on multiple occasions. Some of the changes she pushed for and got are still helping the special education students today.

6. Be your child’s best advocate. The handicapped individuals don’t have the skills to go to bat for themselves, they need our help. Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle…..and if that doesn’t work, build a bonfire. Don’t be afraid to make people in the system uncomfortable. Your child has one chance to be all they can be.

7. Don’t let your child’s disability become the center of your life. This is the toughest point to follow. We reached a breaking point when our kids were in junior high school, when we realized that our entire lifestyle was centered around handicapped issues. Our daughter was about 10 and most people didn’t even know we had a daughter. We made a conscious decision as a couple to not let handicapped issues dominate all our time and energy for the rest of our lives. We dropped out of support groups, lobbying, and conferences, and focused our advocacy efforts on the local school system.

Siblings of disabled children are often neglected on some level, because of the intense struggle that parents of the disabled go through. Don’t deny love and attention to your other children in the midst of your crusade to help your disabled child.

If you are the parent of a disabled child, let me encourage you. You can make it with God’s help. Don’t become bitter against God. I don’t understand everything (especially about God) and trying to wastes precious time and energy. Ask for God’s help and get plugged into a bible based church that believes that God answers prayer. We made it through the storm with 2 kids with disabilities, you can make it with one. Please feel free to contact us for advice.

I am writing a book on this theme. If you would like to buy a copy when it comes out, email me at JLBURKE57@HOTMAIL.COM and you’ll go on a list to be notified by email when it is available. With God’s help, you can do this.

Stop Messin’ Around

The political media has become a tabloid, more concerned about personalities, emotional issues, and associations than actual issues that impact the daily lives of voters. The emphasis has been on the drama that surrounds the process rather than the purpose of the process, which is to serve and protect the people.

The empasis needs to shift from peripheral chit chat to a focus on improving the security and quality of our nation. Problematic to making that shift is the tendency of campaigns to focus on the short term rather than the long term. Politicians have a tendency to do what is popular at the moment and leave long term problems to future generations.

Perspective on priorities flows from our values. We have a value deficit in our culture. Life has become less protected for the very young and the very old. The family unit has broken down with less children being raised by two parent families. The moral lines have been blurred in issues of integrity and honesty. We have lost our moral compass.

For many, there is no definite measurable standard for morality. I am a conservative on moral issues, but more liberal in social issues. Having twins with disabilities, I tend to see more that government could do to help those who find themselves struggling on this planet without all the needed equipment. Having been raised in a Christian culture, I see the need for moral absolutes and a return to a sense of right and wrong. Having said all that, how can we get away from the he-said, she-said approach and get back to discussing real issues as we navigate through our process of choosing the leader of the free world?

First, the candidates must address their stand on the protection of human life. Which leads us to a debate on when life begins. For many of us, this is the fundamental issue of the election. Sixty million fetuses have been terminated since Roe v. Wade. Even if you are in the pro-choice camp and insist on calling them fetuses, you must deal with the fact that millions of viable fetuses have been stopped from coming to term. Every poll shows that the majority of Americans are pro-life. If they are babies in reality, then we have legally killed six times more innocents than did the Nazis. If the majority of Americans believe that we have a mega-holocaust on our hands, this is a serious issue that must be debated.

There are more important issues than what a liberal socialist pastor of a black racist church has to say. Innocent children are dying by the millions, wars are being waged, we have multitudes of unemployed and hungry, the homeless ranks are swelling, the economy is in real danger, the court system is replacing our democracy, and personal freedoms are shrinking. We have serious work to do, so let’s stop messin’ around.

Your Fabulous Fifties

I remember when my dad turned forty. The very idea of forty sent my dad into a mild depression. Some call it a mid-life crisis. Forty seemed so “old” to him. Now I find myself at fifty, which some say is the new forty, taking inventory of the past and musing about the future.

I read somewhere that most people’s biggest financial growth years takes place in their fifties. I like that thought. It seems it takes most of your life just to figure out how things work. Many of the greatest accomplishments of highly successful people takes place after fifty. In China, there is mandatory retirement from government jobs at fifty. Many of them start their own businesses at fifty. Seems it would be a great place for a seniors ministry.

If life experience means anything, and I believe it does, you have more wisdom at fifty and beyond compared with your young adult years. Wisdom comes two ways. One is by learning from older people with life experiences and wisdom. You can learn from their mistakes and pain, sparing yourself from the same mistakes. Sadly, like most other folks, I didn’t do that. That’s the easy way to learn wisdom. The other way, is to live life, make mistakes, and learn from our own life experiences. That’s the school of hard knocks, or the hard way to learn wisdom. I have my bumps and I wear them like war medals. Paul the apostle said that the only thing he boasted about was his sufferings. We talk (or boast) about our past war stories and what we learned, the young yawn, and life goes on.

Have you ever tried to convince a 20 year old that you know what you’re talking about? The problem is, they don’t know what they don’t know. So they talk about what they don’t know in a very knowledgeable way, and we grin in amusement. My take on the whole learning process is this – Pre-teens don’t know anything and they know it. (Maybe that’s why Jesus loves children so much.) Teenagers think they know something. Young adults in their twenties are convinced they know something. People in their thirties come to a realization that they don’t know anything. In their forties they set out to learn all they can. And when they reach fifty, they know enough to operate in the real world, make things happen, get things done, understand relationships, and generally start doing some things that really matter.

The landmark of fifty doesn’t bother me. The way I see things, I’m just getting started. So, look out world, here I come.

Long Term Mindset

God thinks long term. Everything he does or plans takes into consideration the long term implications. We often don’tunderstand why God does things, allows other things, or doesn’t do things. That’s because our tendency is to think short term. This short term mindset affects how we approach prayer, the reading of the bible, and relationships.

For instance, in prayer we may ask God to increase our finances and help us to get debt free. If things go against us over a period of days, weeks, or even years, we start thinking that something is wrong either with God or us. That’s because we think short term, we believe short term, and we also pray short term. Your thinking is what you are and it impacts everything you do.

We do relationships well in the short term, but what about the long term? We do well relating to people when they are making us feel good about ourselves. But what about when they offend us or hurt our feelings? Do we throw the relationship away forever or be a faithful friend? True friends think long term. They love you unconditionally, the way God does.

One look at the life of Moses, Abraham, or David, will illustrate the quality of thinking long term. Moses’ preparation for his life’s work took 80 years. Abraham had a life-long series of growing experiences to prepare and refine him. David was anointed King three times and it was many years from his first revelation that he would be king until he actually became king over all Israel.

Circumstances will happen to us during our life passage on this planet, that will seem as if God is against us. Never judge God’s favor for you based on your circumstances. Never try to define every life event in the short term. You will never have a complete understanding of every type of experience during our sojourn on earth. Many things will only be understood in the context of eternity.

In the practical scheme of things, plan for the best, be prepared for the worst. Relate to God and others from a long term perspective of life. Never give up your faith. Faith is eternal and grows over long periods of time. Many prayers do get answered in the short term. I’ll take all of those I can get. But for the prayers that don’t get answered in the short term, stand on God’s eternal word and always respond to every situation in faith. Whatever is not of faith is sin. Faith is not only an activity, but a lifestyle.

Most successful persons have a long term outlook. Thomas Edison, in his attempt to invent the light bulb, did thousands of experiments to reach his goal. Had he been impatient, we would all have oil lamps in our homes. A long term mindset is a winning mindset. Refuse to accept defeat. Don’t allow short-sighted people to define you. Have a long term commitment to your long term goals and never, ever give up.

Start Over

This is a brand new day. No matter what you have done in the past, God gives us the opportunity to start over. You start over by coming to God in prayer and asking forgiveness (cancellation) of every sin of the past. Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, paid our death penalty, so we could be forgiven. God’s justice requires the penalty of death for sin. But the only one who could pay that debt is someone who is sinless. Jesus is the only one who qualifies to pay our penalty, because when Adam sinned in the garden of Eden, sin came upon all human flesh. So we were born in sin and the only way out is through Jesus. Pray this prayer: “Father God, because of the gift of your son, Jesus, when he paid the full price for my sin on the cross, I ask you to come into my heart and be the Lord of my life and forgive me for every sin I’ve ever committed.” Give God your whole life, not just a little part of your life.

Once you accept Christ, there are three basic activities that will help you grow spiritually. Prayer, bible study, and fellowship:

In prayer, you can ask God for anything. He answers us according to his will. God is your spiritual source of strength. It’s like eating or plugging an appliance into an electrical socket. God is your food, your electricity, but you have to plug in. If you sin, immediately ask God for forgiveness and strength. God loves you like his own child, because you are his child.

As you study the bible, you learn what God is like, his likes and dislikes. As you prayerfully read the bible, you will grow in the knowledge of spiritual things and in your relationship with God. Start with a modern translation, such as NIV or NLT. The Gospel of John is a good place to start and then the book of Ephesians. You can get a one year bible that will give you an Old Testament passage, a New Testament passage, a passage from Psalms, and one from Proverbs each day. At the end of a year, you will have read the bible through.

Fellowship is simply gathering together with other believers. Like prayer and bible study, this activity must be scheduled and disciplined or it probably won’t ever happen. This is how we prioritize our lives by setting aside blocks of time for spiritual activities. The best way to do this is to join a local church. This will give you accountability. Jesus invested much time to relationships and discipling other believers. Look for a church that teaches being born again, or accepting Jesus as the Lord of your life.

This is the most important decision a person can ever make. Will you live your life for yourself or live for God? There is a real heaven and a real hell. We will all choose which of the two places will be our home for eternity.

Financial Recovery

Many Americans find themselves caught in a failing economy with mass layoffs and disappearing markets. Reduced incomes have wiped out personal equity balances in savings, real estate holdings, and portfolios. Individuals have been left with a mountain of secured and unsecured debt.

In a previous article titled, “When Everything Goes Wrong,” I discussed how to survive day to day when you hit the bottom financially. In this article I’m dealing with the next logical step which is financial recovery.

How does one start the long journey back to fiscal health? Here are 7 steps to financial recovery and prosperity:

1. Get your income up. Negotiating with creditors and even taking their calls is an act in futility without adequate income. It may require both spouses to work and do some extra jobs as well.

2. Establish a financial cushion. You can’t live your whole life from crisis to crisis and keep your sanity. Living on the edge is not healthy. It drains you of your energy and creativity. Once you get your income back, this step is necessary to get your mind back.

3. Make deals with your creditors. Many people don’t realize it, but creditors will negotiate debts for pennies on the dollar. Some are more negotiable than others, so start your offers low. Take your smallest bill first, and then the next largest, and negotiate the best payoffs you can and eliminate the debts. Starting with the smallest first will speed up the process and give you a feeling of accomplishment. If any are hard nosed and don’t want to work with you, put them on the bottom of the stack and come back to them later.

4. Don’t forget to pay yourself. Take a portion of what you make and invest it in stocks, bonds, real estate, or other sound investments. Establish a fixed amount such as 10% of each paycheck. You may have to cut back in other areas to be able to do this.

5. Change your spending habits. Learn how to budget and live on less. Make a list of areas that you can economize on such as housing, transportation, and entertainment. You want to make this a permanent recovery by creating as much surplus in your budget as possible.

6. Upgrade your career. This might require finishing your degree or getting technical training. Learn how to build a resume or allow a professional to do it. There are many online employment sites that you can put your resume into so that recruiters can see it. While searching for jobs online, many services allow you to immediately apply on line for the job you are looking at by emailing a resume.

7. Think long term. Upgrade insurance policies. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Take better care of your health. Lose weight, work out, and improve your diet. Plan ahead for college for your children.

Financial recovery is a process that takes time and discipline. The most important thing to do is to get started on step one today.

Finding Your Sales Niche

Selling is a numbers game. The more people you contact, the greater the number of closed sales you will make. But, anyone in sales for more than a day already knows that. Cold calling is difficult at best. It is the salesman’s tedious task to take the cold lead and warm it up. A small number of leads become sales and most end in rejection. The constant exposure to rejection contributes to the high dropout rate in the sales profession.

The secret to higher percentages of closed sales is the warm lead. While we can never completely eliminate the element of rejection in the sales process, there is a way to have warmer leads, higher closing percentages, and ultimately less rejection.

Whatever your product, you should work at developing a niche market. A niche market is a specialized market that you have in-depth knowledge of that has an above average need or desire for your product. An example is a man I knew who spent much of his childhood and adult life living in Central America and had contacts he knew personally who wanted to buy buses from the United States. So, he started locating used buses and shipping them. That is a niche market.

Some of the most successful salespeople in the country who earn in the millions, are in the service industries such as insurance or financial services in ethnic neighborhoods. Because they have intimate knowledge of the culture and the local people, they are able to provide a service to a community that is eager for it with little competition.

Finding a niche market involves specialization in a product, method of marketing, or a marketing area. Someone saw the high number of unwanted timeshare condominiums as an opportunity to have a niche market and now there are several competing companies that have used timeshares as their niche.

A struggling cartoonist named Walt Disney saw a mouse run across his kitchen floor. He named the mouse and built an international entertainment empire on the foundation of a mouse with a name. I guess you could say Walt found his niche, drawing animal cartoons and thinking of new ways to entertain families.

Within the financial services market, for example, there are those whose niche is certain types of commodities such as grain, minerals, or livestock. Within those niche markets some specialize only in gold or only in oil. I read about one investor whose niche is world famous disasters and their relationship to the financial markets. His investments are designed to have huge payouts when the unthinkable happens. He went for many years without a profit. When the 9-11 attacks came, he made billions.

How do you find your sales niche?

1. Find a need and meet it. Harlan Sanders noticed that the gas stations that served fried chicken to shift workers would often run out and it took time to fry up a new batch. During the lag time, sales were missed and money was lost. Colonel Sanders, as he is known, developed a recipe for cooking chicken in pressure cookers. It ended up being better tasting chicken cooked in a fraction of the time. The most common fast food franchise that I saw while in China was KFC. An old man with a niche market became an international food empire.

2. Do what others will not do. The Swisher Company has built a multi-million dollar company cleaning restrooms. They tout their service as “hygiene specialists,” doing what many would not do for any amount of money. When you do what others will not, the competition is low and the need and response is high.

3. Find out how to successfully connect with your market. A good meeting place might be conferences and trade shows. I know of insurance salesmen that frequent a local restaurant and talk to the patrons and set up appointments. Community civic clubs are a good place to make sales and get referrals.

In conclusion, a niche market is what we call in fishing “a honey hole.” It’s a magical place with less rejection and many more sales. May you find such a place in your adventures in selling.

Spring Break On A Shoestring

Spring break doesn’t have to cost a small fortune to be fun. The number one destination for spring breakers is the beach. Waterfront hotels can be quite costly during peak periods. Something I’ve noticed in every beach town I’ve ever visited is the modestly priced lodging just across the street from the waterfront. For the slight inconvenience of crossing the street to get to the beach, savings can range from 25% to 75%. Lower priced rooms could also make a single private room within reach of those who prefer their own space.

Another low cost option for spring break is to lease a sailboat for the week and split the cost between 5-8 people. Not only do you get some great savings on lodging, but you can have the adventure of sailing and staying in a different port of call each night. Of course it will require that someone in the group have their sailing certification for most leasing companies. I have a friend who does this every summer in the British Virgin Islands. He invites several friends who help offset the costs.

A cruise can be an inexpensive alternative for those who know where to look for the bargains. There are some travel agencies who specialize in last minute cruises or sell under-booked cruises. The nice thing is that once you get on the boat, all your food is paid for. There are also agencies that specialize in booking passengers on cargo ships that have extra crew cabin space.

For college students, some of the airlines now have special stand-by tickets. It may take a day of waiting for a seat to open up on a number of flights, but the savings can be significant. Off brand airlines that fly out of smaller lesser known airports also offer some great savings. My daughter in college and her out of state boyfriend use this method quite often.

Greyhound Bus Lines has a special for $89 one way for up to 2000 miles. They also have e-fares for as low as $13 in select markets. I can remember buying a ticket special from Greyhound back in the 70’s and traveling from Florida to California for under a hundred dollars. There’s one drawback, I’ve been to every gas station along I-10 in Texas.

If you want to go international on a shoestring, you can do volunteer work for a non-profit group such as a medical group or a religious group. I went on one such trip and spent half of a summer in the mountains of Guatemala. It’s a great way to experience another culture and help others at the same time. Some advance planning is required for this option. Since you are doing nonprofit volunteer work, you can even organize some fund raising events to help pay for expenses.

Don’t stay home from spring break just because you’re short on cash. With a little imagination and planning, you can have a trip you will remember and value for years to come.

Healthier Dining Out

In today’s fast-paced world, eating out often is difficult to avoid. Some would blame their weight problems on the restaurant industry. But, others who dine out often have managed to stay fit and trim. There are many unknowns when eating away from home like sugar content, fat content, and chemical additives. In the past, health advocates have encouraged a total ban on eating institutions. Such an approach is not realistic, so how do we make peace with the health and nutrition gods and still go out for dinner?

Lately, the general public, including the national restaurant franchises have become more aware of issues relating to trans fat. Years ago, lard was used for deep frying. Amazingly a few places still use lard. In Scotland they still use lard to cook their fish and chips and one report calls them the “heart attack capitol of the world.” Healthier frying products have become the rule rather than the exception in the last few years.

White sugar and white flour has been nicknamed “white death” by healthy eating advocates. High sugar intake in the American diet has produced near-epidemic levels of diabetes. While controversy surrounds the various sugar substitutes, whole grained breads have become more common and more widely used. Subway has been a leader in offering whole wheat bread on their sandwiches.

Food additives and preservatives are not as easy to monitor when dining out. Any produce products that are not organic potentially have small amounts of pesticides. Additives, preservatives, and pesticides have been linked to the rise in cancer.

While restaurant menus may never reach the status of healthy, there are some things we can do to make eating out healthier:

1. SKIP FRENCH FRIES – Some menus allow you to switch a side salad for fries. Others offer fruit bowls or other sides. The most fattening food you can order is cheese fries. A baked potato is a great alternative to fries.

2. AVOID SUGAR – Water with lemon is very healthy and will save you money, too. Drinking more water is one of the healthiest choices you can make. While it is near impossible to avoid sugar altogether, the case has been made for the health advantages of reducing our sugar intake.

3. AVOID WHITE BREAD – Ask for wheat bread or whole grain and if they are not available, it’s
okay to skip bread altogether.

4. CHOOSE BAKED RATHER THAN FRIED – Cracker Barrel has a great baked fish meal. Even Long John Silver’s offers a baked cod dinner.

5. EAT SMALLER PORTIONS – For those of us trained to eat everything on our plate, it goes against our upbringing not to. Many couples have begun splitting meals. I’ll order a breakfast sandwich from McDonald’s and eat half. Lunch portions are smaller and not as expensive. If eating supper, ask if you can order off of the lunch menu, many places will allow it.

6. RESEARCH – You can research and do some planning instead of just winging it. Most restaurants are now putting nutrition information online.

It has never been easier to eat more healthy while eating out. The road to better health is made of a series of small choices in our eating habits.