I love Twitter. It’s my favorite social media platform. I love that it provides an easy way to start a conversation with someone you wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to talk to other than sending an awkward email. One lesson that’s been drilled into my head by my social media expert friends is that social media is a communications tool. It’s not a digital billboard.

From Improv AZ’s 2010 No Pants Light Rail Ride by Devon Christopher Adams

One thing that annoys me on Twitter is what I call “digital panty throwing.” This is when a person (male or female) asks a celebrity for a retweet because they think the celebrity is hot, or it’s their birthday, or they want the celebrity to help them bring attention to a cause. There’s no real communication going on there. The person is using the celebrity to get attention and too many celebrities are indulging these people. Stop it!

I became aware of his problem during the 2012 Olympic Games. I love gymnastics so I followed the U.S. men’s team. I figured they could share insights and experiences from inside the games without the obnoxiousness teenage girliness that would be all over the women’s profiles, because well, they’re teenage girls. Unfortunately, the men flooded their feeds with retweets of girls telling them how cute they are. I understand they wanted to keep their fans happy and they appreciated the attention, but it added nothing to the online conversation and it was more insufferable than anything else.

I had the pleasure of talking with Gary Vaynerchuk this year. He said retweets like this are simply bragging and quite unattractive. I think the only time it’s ok to retweet what other people say about you is when you’re enhancing the conversation or sharing something that you suspect a significant portion of your followers will want to read. Otherwise, enjoy the attention by yourself. If someone wants to know what other people are saying to and about you, they’ll look it up themselves.

The novelty of Twitter has worn off. It’s just a tool to talk with people – not at them. If there’s a celebrity you want to talk to, engage them in a meaningful way. No one cares if you think they’re hot (we already know that) or you want them to wish your brother a happy birthday.

If you’re someone who has a strong following, please don’t encourage digital panty throwing by conceding to these requests for retweets. I know you’re awesome. Retweeting stupid requests from fans makes you look less awesome.

Related articles

• The Thank You Economy, Social Media By Gary Vaynerchuk (knogimmicks.com)
• Twitter: Four Reasons You Don’t Get Retweeted (business2community.com)

Evo & Me at our Final Weigh-In

Would you ever do the diet again?
Probably not. I’m glad I did the diet and I’d consider doing it again for 1-2 weeks or do 1-2 smoothies a day plus a regular meal if I needed to lose weight. Doing this diet for 30 days was hard towards the end. The novelty of the diet also made it easier to stick with it. As Dr. Terry Simpson said, people generally don’t like this diet, just the results.

What smoothies you recommend and what smoothies you don’t recommend?
I loved my breakfast smoothie (almond milk, nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt, coffee, and sugar-free chocolate pudding) and smoothies that combined almond milk, nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt, mango, and either raspberries or pineapple. Those were my favorites.

The only smoothie I didn’t care for was the peanut butter smoothie, but I’m not a big peanut butter fan.

What was your mindset going into the diet? Do you have any recommendations for others on how to stick to a diet like this for 30 days?
In my mind, not sticking to the diet was not an option. I was going to finish it without cheating no matter what. Having my friend Evo Terra doing a crazy diet at the same time helped. We could compare stories and commiserate about missing real food.

How did you deal with the ebb and flow of cravings?
I just accepted that cravings were part of the deal. I’ve done raw diets before so I’ve had experience craving things that weren’t on my diet. You just ride them out like a wave. Posting my cravings on my Google+ profile was somewhat validating.

How much pre-planning time did the diet take?
Not that much. I went to my neighborhood grocery stores and figured out who had the best deals on my primary ingredients and made sure the fridge and freezer were always well stocked. At the beginning of each day, I jotted down a few notes about the smoothies I wanted to do that day to make sure my expected calorie count was between 1000 and 1250 calories.

How much clean up did you have to do every day?
I just had to wash my blender(s), cup(s), measuring cup, cutting board, knife, spoon, and spatula.

When you were out with friends what it harder? Any will power strategies? 
I didn’t do meals out during the smoothie diet. If I had a reception or networking event, I just drank water or club soda. The only really hard part was when my parents stayed with me for a long weekend and had friends over for dinner. I sat with them at the table and watched them eat real food while I had my smoothie, but even then it was mostly a non-issue.

Did you have more trips to the “powder room” on this diet? How was your poo?
I didn’t need extra trips to the restroom after I lost the initial water weight and I could definitely tell that I was on a very low fat diet.

What was the total volume of smoothies you consumed?
I drank 2404 ounces of smoothies on the diet, or just under 19 gallons. It would have almost filled a big party tub.

Did you win?
Dr. Terry will declare who won after he looks as Evo and my labs. Evo lost 14 pounds and 3.3% body fat on the diet. I lost 8.5 pounds and 4.3% body fat.

Dr. Terry’s fancy scale will tell you what your basal metabolic rate – the minimum calories your body needs to maintain itself if you did nothing but wake up and breathe. At the beginning of the diet my BMR was 1331 calories. At the end my BMR was 1294. I asked Terry if all I had to do to maintain my weight loss was reduce my pre-diet caloric intake by 37 calories (which I can easily do by adjusting the cream and sugar in my coffee). He said, “Yes!” It’s that easy. I guess little changes do make a big difference in the big picture.

Photos taken on 3-31-2013, weight = 121.5

This post is coming out on April 30th, but I’m writing this on April 26th. So far, I’ve lost between 9 and 10 pounds, and according to my last weigh-in, I’ve lost 2.5% body fat and my BMI is down to 19.7. One thing I’ve learned on this diet that’s really interesting is the fact that my bathroom scale says I’m 1-2 pounds heavier than the official scale at Dr. Terry Simpson’s office.

My smoothies all consist of almond milk and nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt. In the morning I add coffee that’s been frozen into ice cubes and sugar-free pudding and/or unsweetened cocoa powder. For the rest of my meals, I add frozen fruit and maybe some spinach. I learned the hard way that I tend to have more energy when my smoothies have banana and spinach in them. The spinach tends to turn my smoothies kinda gray or green depending on what other fruit is in it. If I get too hungry or tired, I get to have black coffee or a sugar-free gelatin cup.

Photo taken on 4-28-2013, weight ~ 113.5lbs

I’ve been keeping track of my calories and my average intake is 1077.40 calories per day. I try to stretch my smoothie calories out by keeping my smoothies in the freezer and every 15-30 minutes I go to the freezer and eat the newly frozen portion. That can make a smoothie last for 2-4 hours. That’s definitely helped me stave off hunger, which was my biggest fear about doing this diet.

Of course I’ve been having weird craving, especially as the month’s been going on. Lately I’ve craved tortilla chips, a gyro with tzatziki, red velvet cheesecake, a toasted bagel with butter, glazed doughnuts, and pasta with cream sauce and bacon. As of this writing, I have no idea what my first real food is going to be. I have a feeling I should go easy on the fat and sugar at first, even though part of me would love to start my return to real food with dessert or pizza.

It’s been really easy to set up both my blenders with ingredients and let them defrost in the fridge at the beginning of the day and then blend them up when I get hungry.

Here’s my favorite breakfast smoothie that I’ll probably make on a regular basis once the diet is over:

• 1 cup Almond Breeze original almond milk
• 5oz Lucerne nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt
• 3oz sugar-free chocolate pudding cup
• 1 cup of coffee, frozen into ice cubes

Put all the ingredients in the blender. Let it stand for ~15 minutes to let the ice cubes melt a little. Then blend until the ice cubes are broken down and the ingredients are blended.

I hope I keep off some of the weight I’ve lost, but given how low my calorie counts have been, I know I can’t/won’t keep it all off.

If you want to see how my dieting counterpart, Evo Terra, has been doing on his beer and eggs diet, check out The Beer Diet page.

And can I just say that I won the dog lottery when I got this creature? She’s so sweet, well-behaved, and just a good dog. Her worst habit, which I find endearing, is the fact that she howls when the phone rings. When she wants attention and you’re sitting down, she walks up to you and puts her head on your knee or the chair – whichever her head can reach.

She’s a basset, so she’s a bit stubborn by nature. When we go walking, she’s not an alpha dog, so she doesn’t like it when people or other dogs are walking behind her. She just plops her butt down and waits for you to come to her, hopefully give her attention, and then follow you after you pass. At 60 pounds, she’s quite an anchor when she wants to be.

I’ve tracked her likes and dislikes on Facebook this year. It’s been pretty fun to see what turns her crank:

• Rosie Likes: rawhide bones, tennis balls, belly rubs, fish, beef, chicken, rice, apples, mango, pineapple, peanut butter & butternut squash.
• Rosie Dislikes: squeaky toys, stuffed animals, strawberries, lemon, carrots, & celery.

I love my baby girl. I nearly cry every time I have to travel and leave her at the kennel (or “camp” as I call it). I can’t sleep when she’s having medical issues – like when she got a lung infection. I was up every couple of hours to make sure she was breathing. Then there was the time I learned the hard way that she’s allergic to fabric softener. She was wheezing until I ripped the recently-washed sheet off her bed at 1:30 in the morning.

Did I mention Rosie’s smart? She knows she’s not allowed on the couch, so she doesn’t do it when I’m around, but occasionally I’ll find a throw pillow on the floor from when she knocked it off while finding a place to snuggle in. She also knows where the UPS Store keeps the dog treats and will help herself to one if the box isn’t kept out of her reach.

So here’s to my baby, Rose Louise Carter, and to many more years together.

I don’t have much time to watch TV, but this show is a staple on my calendar and the only one I make it a priority to watch.

I’m not a fan of fabricated reality shows – things like The Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars, The Real World, and anything involving the Kardashians where we’re watching real people but it’s anything but real life. These people are in irrelevant competitions and you can tell a lot of them are hoping to become famous for doing nothing or get their own show out of the deal.

Me with Captain Keith – Summer 2011

Deadliest Catch has real people doing their real jobs fishing on the Bering Sea. They don’t need to fabricate drama because the risk that every day you could die is drama enough. The relationships between the people real, which I think makes for much better TV because we actually care what happens in their lives. And according to the reports, everyone acts the same on camera as they do off camera. They’re there to do a job first, not create good TV. (That comes in the editing.) Apparently there’s at least one guy we almost never see on the show because everything he says contains profanity.

I love watching the captains on all the boats, well except Captain Elliott. They’re hard asses when it comes to pushing their crews, but these big strong (sometimes scary-looking) guys each have a compassionate side. We’ve seen them all shed tears when another boat is in trouble or loses a crew member and they feel guilty when a guy gets hurt under their watch.

And I love that they’re real people. I follow a lot of the captains on Twitter and I saw a panel at SXSW that featured Captain Sig, Captain Keith, and Captain Jonathan talking about how they use Twitter. (Captain Andy was still fishing.) I also got to the hotel before their panel and invaded their coffee time on the patio next to the hotel. They were totally sweet and let me sit with them for a few minutes. I thought about asking them for a picture, but I wanted to treat them like normal people too and respect their down time.

Captain Sig was the best during the panel. His first tweet was “Twitter rhymes with shitter.” He also said that when he gets home from being on the Bering Sea for months he doesn’t want to tweet, “I want to screw my wife.” They all do a good job of interacting with their fans online and letting us be part of their lives. It was fun when Captain Keith was getting his boat ready for crab season and tweeted a picture of the receipt from Costco and let fans guess how much it was.

SXSW was the second time I got to meet Captain Keith. The first time was an appearance he did in Phoenix two summers ago. Props to him for coming to Arizona in the middle of the summer. He was a total sweetheart and signed an autograph for me and one for my friend Stacee who was serving in Afghanistan at the time. I lived with her during my 1L summer with the JAG; we watched a lot of Deadliest Catch because we were living in the middle of nowhere.

I’m looking forward to the new season of Deadliest Catch. For one hour a week I get to feel a sliver of the exhilaration and exhaustion that comes with working on the Bering Sea.  I will definitely have that time blocked on my calendar so I can be sure to see each episode when it debuts if I don’t have other obligations.

Every so often I think it might be fun to be a deckhand for a season, but then I remember that I’m freezing when the temperature drops before 70 degrees, I’m so accident prone I’d be injured the first day, and I’m so small they’d have to put a leash on me to make sure I didn’t blow overboard. Maybe I’m better suited to work on a boat in the summer.

North wall of my closet

I don’t think my closet has ever been as clean as it is right now. It feels so good to have one space in my house that is completely organized and clutter-free. When I find myself needing to clear my head, I often walk in there because I know the clean environment helps me to settle down and focus on what I need to do next.

East wall of my closet

You can see from the pictures of just a portion of my closet, I still have a lot of stuff. I didn’t get into this adventure to become a hard-core minimalist. I just wanted to get rid of things that didn’t add value to my life. I have a lot of things that have simply accumulated over the years that need to go. For the clothes that I’m keeping, I’m still using the flipped hanger method to determine what things I’m not wearing. My plan it to get rid of any hanger that holds a garment that hasn’t been worn by the end of the year.

Cleaning out my life has been a lot of fun for the most part. Whenever I find myself waffling on whether I should keep or get rid of an item, I think of what my friend Chad tells himself when he’s cleaning out his stuff: “Just let it go.” Sometimes it’s a little painful to add an item to the growing pile of stuff on the couch that will be given away, but by the next day, I have no problem with it.

I find myself jumping ahead in my clean out schedule. Sometimes I’ll be looking at a bookshelf and see something that I know I don’t use and I’ll snatch it off the shelf and add it to the pile of stuff for charity, even though I’m not scheduled to clean out that space for weeks.

Part of the pile that’s going to charity

It’s even been easier to get rid of things I’ve been holding onto for sentimental reasons. I am keeping some things that only have a sentimental purpose, but I’m being much more selective than before. One of the best things I learned at the minimalism seminar at SXSW was that objects are not a substitute for memories. Getting rid of the thing does not make a person or an experience any less special.

One of the byproducts of cleaning out my life, is I have to get the stuff that I’m getting rid of out of the house. Right now there’s a growing pile of stuff on the couch in the den and the hall closet is equally full. My parents are visiting soon so I’ll have to get what’s leaving out of the house before they arrive. I’m curious to see how I feel once these things are out of my life officially and forever.

Related articles

• Minimizing My Life (undeniableruth.com)
• How to Organize Your Closet (thejewelrylady.co)
• How I Motivate To Clean My Closet (A List!) (therunawaymama.com)

Evo & Ruth

Whenever Evo does a crazy diet, he is supervised by bariatric surgeon, Terry Simpson, who is an expert on weight loss. I asked Terry if he could design me a diet around desserts. He said, “Of course.” I was so excited by the idea of eating ice cream and pie for a month. Then he came back and said he could a month of smoothies. That’s not exactly milkshakes, but I was already committed to the diet idea. So Evo and I are going head-to-head for 30 days to see who gets healthier (as determined by Terry).

So for this entire month, I will be drinking my calories. My smoothies will have a base of almond milk and Greek yogurt, and I can add virtually any food I want to it. I’ll probably start my day with a mocha smoothie and have fruit-and-spinach smoothies midday in the midday and evening. My expected total calories for each day will probably be between 1,000 and 1,250. I’ve already declared I get one ice cream smoothie for PMS purposes. I also get to have water, carbonated water, and black coffee.

For anyone who is freaking out because I’m already small, calm down. According to the fancy scale at Dr. Terry’s office, I weigh 121.5 and my BMI is 20.9 (my bathroom scale said I was 123.8 that day). A healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 24. I’d have to drop below 108 pounds to be considered underweight. I’d be surprised if I drop below 112 on the fancy scale (114 on mine).

Photos taken on 3-31-2013, weight = 121.5

Why am I doing this? I like challenges. It’s the same reason I ran half marathons and trained to climb the seven mountains in Phoenix in one day. And I want to beat Evo.

I will be documenting my daily intake on my Google+ page. Feel free to add me to your circles if you want to keep up with the daily update on what I’m drinking, how I’m feeling, and what I weigh.

I’m looking forward to having a month where I don’t have to think about what I’m eating or what to get at the grocery store. And I won’t really have to do dishes except for my blender, measuring cups, cutting board, knife, and cup.

I think this will be fun once I settle into the new routine. I have a feeling I’ll be sipping on something most of the day rather than drinking large quantities at three separate times, but we’ll see how it goes.

A snippet of my Star Trek collection

Star Trek occupies a very special place in my heart. Some people say The Godfather has the answer to every question. For me, it’s Star Trek.

When I was a kid, Grandma Lou would send my parents cash to get us Christmas gifts from her. I think my parents always gave us the money so we could get whatever we wanted. I always saved mine for the summer. I went to gymnastics camp and one of the activities was a trip to Great America – one of Paramount’s theme parks. I spent every cent at the Star Trek shop on postcards, t-shirts, figurines, and stickers.

Starfleet Academy sweats

When eBay came into existence, it opened a new world for my Star Trek collection. I remember bidding until the last minute for the Women of Star Trek t-shirt. That thing was awesome. I did a lot of bidding on autographs of the Star Trek actors too. At last count, I have 46 autographed 8x10s. They used to hang on the wall, but now they’re in protective sleeves in a binder, on a shelf with my Star Trek Encyclopedia and Hamlet in Klingon. (I love that I have a book in Shakespearean English and Klingon – 2 languages I can’t understand.)

When I started my minimalism project, it made me think about my Star Trek collection. I’ve gotten rid of quite a few things over the year, some of which I regret, but most that I don’t. A significant amount of what I have is in a box. It makes me wonder how much good it’s doing me in there. Depending on how much shelf space opens up, I might display more of it. I think I’m going to get rid of a fair portion of it too.

I love this shirt, but it’s too big now.

When I lost weight in law school, I shrunk out of all my Star Trek attire. I have the Starfleet Academy sweatsuit that was always too big for me and now it’s really too big. I was really bummed last spring when I realized I’m too small for my captain’s white dress uniform jacket. (I want to replace that because I liked wearing it and being called “Captain.”) And there’s also the cheeky, “If you’re wearing a red shirt – run!” t-shirt that makes me smile but is too big.

There are other pieces of my Star Trek collection that may be leaving too, like my mini lunch box and The Original Series Pez dispenser set. I have a feeling my Klingon dagger will be part of the collection that I keep. We’ll see how many pieces from my collection that I used in this video will survive the clean out.

As I’m cleaning out my stuff, most of the things I don’t use or need will be given away to charity. I don’t think I can do that to my Star Trek collection. Instead of giving those things away, I think they will be re-homed to other Star Trek fans, people who will appreciate them.

Related articles

• Every ‘Star Trek’ Episode Is Free on Hulu Until April (mashable.com)
• Star Trek’s William Shatner Turns 82 (celebs.gather.com)

I attended an amazing session at South by Southwest (SXSW) called How Minimalism is Changing Entrepreneurship. This session had an amazing panel featured minimalists Joshua Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus, Courtney Carver, and Joshua Becker. They shared how being minimalists improved their professional and personal lives.  It helped them promote what they valued and remove things that detracted from that focus.

I know that I think more clearly and I feel more focused when my space is less cluttered. I get more work done in less time when I have fewer distractions. During the session, my head was buzzing with ideas and I was frantically writing notes on how I would put these ideas into action when I got home – like turning off my email and alerts on my phone when I’m working on other projects.

The bottles & travel mugs that were cluttering the cabinet.

Incorporating minimalist ideas into your life takes self-discipline. While I was at SXSW I was thoughtful about which free shwag I picked up. One of those items was a Nalgene bottle. I wanted to get it to replace the plastic bottle I’d been using. When I got home and was looking for a place to put my new bottle, I realized I had a shelf filled with travel mugs and reusable water bottles that I’d gotten for free. I pulled them all down, put them in a bag, and put them in the closet with the rest of my items I’m donating to charity. I filled my new bottle with water and put it in the fridge to chill. (Yes, I’m using it.)

The thought of cleaning out my life has been so overwhelming that it’s prevented from cleaning things out in the past. During the minimalist session, I started breaking down areas of my home into manageable pieces. My plan is to tackle one section, drawer, or shelf every week. I wrote it all out and it will take me about six months to get through it all, and I’m ok with that.

Garments that have been removed from my closet since January 1st.

My first project was to clean out my closet rod. I’m in the process of cleaning out my wardrobe by reversing each hanger until I wear the garment it’s holding. When I flipped my hangers, I removed 21 items from my closet because I knew those were items I probably wouldn’t wear again. I put them in the hall closet in case I was wrong. I went through everything that’s currently in my closet and tried on everything that I didn’t know for certain if it fit. I’ve lost 12 pounds since I started law school so some of my clothes were just too big. And there were some items that just didn’t fit my personality or my life anymore. I also found some garments that I thought were too big but actually still fit. I removed another 20 garments from my closet and put them in the hall closet.

I have no plans of becoming a complete minimalist who only owns 100 possessions or someone like Andrew Hyde who gave up everything except 15 things. I just want to get rid of things that serve no purpose in my life anymore. It might be hard to get rid of things that hold sentimental value, but it’s just stuff. Giving an item a new home doesn’t take away the memories it has for me and it’s not doing anyone any good if it just sits in a box.

I’ll keep you in the loop on my progress.

The Minimalism Project Update – One Month Later

Charlie Todd and Me

Charlie and I have exchanged emails and messages over the years after I helped co-found Improv AZ and I started digging into the legal issues surrounding flash mobs and pranks. He was always friendly and helpful, but since we lived on opposite sides of the country, we never met in person.

A few weeks ago, I got a note from Charlie saying that he was debuting his film “We Cause Scenes” at SXSW. The film follows the story of Improv Everywhere from the beginning to where it is now. I love this story because Charlie didn’t start out trying to create this group. He was just a guy who was having fun with his friends and he embraced the opportunities that allowed it to grow into his career. I was so excited. I immediately put his film at the top of my SXSW to-do list.

I met Charlie about an hour before the film in the convention center. When I saw his familiar face, threw up my arms, and screeched, “Charlie Todd!” I gave him a big hug and chatted for a few minutes before claiming my spot in line. It was so great to meet him in person but because we’ve been conversing for years, it was like seeing an old friend.

The movie was fantastic. If it comes to your city, go see it. It’s a great story.

During the Q&A after the movie, Charlie announced that Improv Everywhere was doing an MP3 Experiment in Austin. I of course rearranged my schedule so I could go. We were given a place, a time, an MP3 to download, and we were told to wear a certain color shirt and bring an uninflated balloon. You’ll have to wait to see the video to see what we did, but we had a blast. It was so great to do a mission with my prankster brothers and sisters.

I give my friend Jeff Moriarty a lot of credit for helping me become the person I am today. If he hadn’t organized the first No Pants Ride in Phoenix, there never would have been an Improv AZ and I wouldn’t be a flash mob attorney and blogger. Watching Charlie’s movie reminded me that I have to give him a lot of credit too. He was the one who came up with the idea for the original No Pants Subway Ride and he was the one who decided to invite the world to participate in 2009. If he hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have given Jeff his launch into the official prank/flash mob world.

So thank you Charlie. Without you, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

Related articles

• We Cause Scenes, A Film By NYU Students, Premieres At SXSW This Week (nyulocal.com)
• We Cause Scenes, Feature Documentary About Improv Everywhere (laughingsquid.com)
• Storytelling – Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity (nextlevelofnews.com)
• The ideas behind a prank: Q&A with Charlie Todd (ted.com)