PAULA NEAL MOONEY

...so I'm taking that as a good sign about tenfold blessings. And it's even better that I gave the $50 away to a waitress for her tip.

#StraightOutta A photo posted by Paula Mooney (@paulanealmooney) on Aug 7, 2015 at 1:59pm PDT Do you ever look at old stuff you've written and wonder who in the hell you were trying to be? Who you wanted to impress? That's kind of how I felt looking back at this old blog, with my last update nearly one year ago. Well, I'm done with the fakeness and almost considered deleting this blog -- until I realized it would be 10 years old come December 2015. That's something else! So onward and forward and upward...but only in a more truthful, interesting manner.

Might as well pop off a blog post where I can capture my latest weight loss updates and more, seeing as  though I love to track this info for reference's sake when I look back over my journey. Back on December 3, 2013, I wrote about trying to deny that my home scale read that I weighed 180.4 pound s. Today, August 1, 2014, nearly eight months later, I'm grateful that my home scale showed that I weighed 157.8 pounds, about 23 pounds down from where I was on the day I realized it was seriously time to turn things around. (Yes, my weight above from my trainer 's scale shows 161.6 pounds currently, because I weighed myself the first thing this morning -- and I love to go with the lowest weight!) So the strength training is working, along with running those 5Ks on the treadmill or sweating it out on the elliptical machine -- and let's not forget how much I love the MyFitnessPal app to keep track of my calories. I love that the app asked me if I wanted to adjust my new

Yes, I've been a busy little bee, writing and working out and walking and riding my bike and so much more. Bless the Lord I'm down to 161-something pounds, all thanks to my fun bootcamp classes at Max Life Training , that lovely MyFitnessPal app, and an epiphany I had in Cincinnati that I wanted to try and elimination diet that included going gluten-free and dairy-free to see if that would clear up my adult acne. Thankfully, it's working and I'm losing weight in a good and healthy manner. Plus, I'm writing to much for my Elance clients that I've barely put much focus on this blog, but I always come back. One of my clients is a photo-editing service, and I thought it was a cool perk to have him transform my pic above into something so different and creative. Just another perk of writing online. Okay, so stick with me if you're still looking for freelance writing tips. (I tell all my friends to try and get jobs through Elance -- whatever ty

Trying to look thinner... There I am, taking a weight-loss progress selfie in the hallway mirror to find my skinniest looking pose. The last time I wrote about my weight on this blog I confessed that I had hit 180 pounds , even though the gym's scale said 183 pounds back then. I thought 180 was a nice round number -- and it was lower than the gym's scale because it was my so-called flush weight, what I weighed first thing in the morning -- my thinnest poop-everything-out weight. Anyway, today I'm grateful to God that the scale is going down in a good way and my weight read 175.8 pounds this Friday, on my weigh-in day, which is nearly 5 pounds less than that 180-pound point that I knew had to be my turn around. What changed?  Well, the last time I wrote about my love of Robek's green smoothies and I have still been doing plenty of those kale and spinach combined with fruit and protein smoothies that I absolutely love. (My kids like them, too.) And I&

I've got that "Bad Girl Ri Ri" song lyric kind of stuck in my head, whilst I feel like I'm doing 10 things at once. But I love to give myself link love and inform anyone who's reading of the latest business ventures I'm undertaking, so here goes: #1 - I just published a book letting people know how I made more than $7,000 in 6 months by finding paying freelance writing clients on Elance . #2 - I wrote a long blog post about an impressive kid who has published 70 Kindle books that made him $7,247 in one month in December 2013. #3 - Still writing for the jobs I like on Elance, the ones who appreciate my writing skills and public platform. #4 - Considering selling a website -- my first go at using Flippa to sell a successful website . Part of me is thinking of dropping the price for the sale. The other part of me is perfectly fine with holding onto the website, since it brings in around $300 per month easily, and I hardly have to touch it. Okay, I th