A long time ago in the middle 60′s I had my own trio with Josie playing the organ and Frank from Omaha, NE playing the piano and I played the drums. If you need some great support for your feet check out our Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports at www.lionfootweardirect.com. The Dave Clark Trio played Friday and Saturday night at the Gold Crown Inn in Red Oak, IA. The Gold Crown was a new restaurant with a coffee shop, dining room, and bar with a dance floor and a small stage. The dance floor was a gold epoxy floor coated with a urethane coating and went with the theme of it’s name, the Gold Crown. The Gold Crown was owned by Keith Hunt who owned the Super Value Super Market next door west of the Gold Crown. Keith Hunt had a lot invested in the Gold Crown and every thing in the place was quality including the kitchen. They served steaks and sea food and other specials on Friday and Saturday nights and drew people from surrounding towns. We started playing at 9:00pm and last call was at 12:30pm and we took a 10 minute break every hour. The music we played was mostly old standards and some popular and country tunes. We developed a following that came out often on Friday and Saturday for an evening’s entertainment. Frank sang and this added to our musical offerings. We played the Gold Crown regularly off and on for a year. We eventually stopped playing when Frank moved away. A year or so later I started another Dave Clark trio and had Merle Douglas playing bass and Bill Knittle both from Shenandoah, IA. We started playing the Gold Crown and also got a job playing a club in Atlantic, Iowa. This trio also played old standards and Bill was a very good piano man. We worked together for a year or so till we went our separate ways as all bands do. I played with a couple of country western bands playing jobs around the area and went as far as Rulo, NE. Later on I played for Del Anderson’s Band and my last band jobs were with the Gib Krisinger Band working bars and clubs around southwest Iowa and some in Maryville and Tarkio Missouri. The last few years I played in a band my trap case started to fall apart and the case was held together with ropes and the band leader complained about it. He thought I should buy a new trap case. I never did and my last band job was at the Legion Club in Walnut, Iowa. The sax man was drunk and he kept saying over and over again that “I was an ornery critter from the ol’ corral!”
The band was playing the same songs and it came to me I didn’t need the money so I quit. I haven’t played in a band for years now but I have since begun playing in the praise band at our church and I am enjoying doing it. The church has a drum set so I do not have to haul my drums to church. The music we are playing is contemporary gospel music, some by the Gaithers which is up beat and positive. Tim, our choir director leads this group and we practice after choir practice on Wednesday evenings. Check out our internet store www.lionfootweardirect.com for great prices for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Encounter, Rockport Margin, Birkenstock Tokyo, Birko Sport clogs, Birkenstock chef shoes, Ryka Studio, Sandro Moscoloni, and Ultimate Protein.

Dave Clark

I took a trip to New Orleans, LA with Kirk, Mark, and Doug to play golf back in the late 90′s. If you need more support for your feet go to www.lionfootweardirect.com and order a pair of Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, or Blue heeled arch supports. We stayed at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in the French Quarter and played golf two days in a row at Eastover Golf Club in East New Orleans as a guest of Kirk’s friend Jim Davies. We were invited by Jim to play golf at the New Orleans Country Club and we accepted the invitation. Driving up the lane to the club you see the caddy shack with caddies milling around in coveralls waiting for a caddy job. We each had our own caddy and his main job was handing you the club you needed and finding your ball after you hit it. We had golf carts so the caddies didn’t have to carry our clubs. I was standing in the fairway and I asked my caddie to drive the cart up closer to where I was standing and he told me he was not allowed to drive the golf cart. The golf course was interesting and it had some difficult holes on it. I got angry when a shot went straight up in the air landing a few yards from where I had hit it and I swung my club hitting the post that holds the golf cart roof up and I snapped the graphite shaft of my 8 iron in two. This was the last time I did anything like that. I had to have the shaft replaced and it was not cheap. After the round we stopped in the bar so my friends could have a few beers and we were surprised at how unfriendly the members were. That evening we went to Kirk’s friend Mike’s house for a wonderful dinner. Mike’s home was very nice and has been remodeled several times after his home was flooded in the past since it is located in a low area of New Orleans. The goverment flood insurance paid for the remodels and his house was spectacular. The following day we headed to the airport for our flight back to Omaha, NE. When checking our bags in at curb side at the airport I tipped the porter that checked in our bags $5.00. He took the five dollars and looked at it with a look of disdain on his face. We had probably 8 bags and I should have tipped him $5.00 a bag or $40.00. We stood around and made sure our bags got moved into the airport for the flight home. At the airport I bought a couple of boxes of pralines with the idea of bringing them home but my friends and I ended up eating both boxes before we got on the airplane. We had a great time in New Orleans and I had planned to take my wife on a trip there the fall of 2001 when the twin towers were hit in New York and we decided to skip the trip to New Orleans. We have not been on a plane since. We offer Free Shipping for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Encounter, Birkenstock Tokyo, Super Birki clogs, Birkenstock chef shoes, Sandro Moscoloni, and Ultimate Protein at www.lionfootweardirect.com

David Clark

In the late 1990′s I went on a golf trip with 3 other friends to New Orleans, LA. Our internet store has the best price on the web for Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko Motion, and Blue heeled arch supports. We flew from Omaha, NE to New Orleans where my friend Kirk had a car left for him by his friend Jim Davies who was the sales manager at a Cadillac dealership in New Orleans. We had reservations at the Bourbon Orleans in the French Quarter and we headed down there and checked in. I shared a room with Doug and Kirk and Mark shared a room. The room was nice but old like everything else in the French Quarter. The other three guys went off to see the bright lights of New Orleans but I went to bed since I was tired from the trip. The next morning we had an excellent breakfast before heading to Eastover Country Club to play golf. This golf course is located on the east side of New Orleans and was about a 30 minute drive from the hotel. When we arrived at Eastover we found out we did not have to pay to play the golf course because we were guests of Kirk’s friend Jim Davies. Eastover golf course is built around the canals running through this area and has some challenging golf holes. To my surprise the short hole number 3 par 3 hole had an alligator near the green sunning himself. We never see anything like that here in Iowa. When we carefully approached the green the alligator jumped in the water that was surrounding the green. The golf course had other surprises like bushes that had thorns in them and you did not stick your hand in them to get your ball out so you used a club to get your ball out of them. The golf course had wonderful homes built on it and had a mansion near the gate to the club that belonged to Schilling the former New Orleans Saints football player who was traded to the Oakland Raiders. My friend Kirk had a hole in one on a 175 yard par three and this was the first and only hole in one I have ever seen. I enjoyed playing Eastover and it is a shame that the golf course is gone since it was swept away during Hurricane Katrina when the dike gave way. New Orleans is a wonderful place to visit and we had some great dining experiences on this trip. At night we could go out on the roof of the Bourbon Orleans and sit on lawn chairs and watch the tourists stumble down Bourbon street on their way to the next bar. All too soon we were flying back to Omaha after a fun trip to the Crescent City of New Orleans, LA. Check out www.lionfootweardirect.com for great prices for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Encounter, Rockport Dressport 2, Birkenstock Tokyo, Super Birki clogs, Ryka studio, Birkenstock chef shoes, Sandro Moscoloni, and Ultimate Protein.

It is cold outside here in Red Oak, Iowa on this 11th day of February 2010 and I am writing an article about a motorcycle I owned over 40 years ago. If you need more support for your feet check out our Birko balance, Birko Sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports at www.lionfootweardirect.com. Back then Honda started out selling very small motorcycles with small cc motors and the one that comes to mind was the Honda Dream.
We had a local Honda dealer here in Red Oak, Iowa and he was selling a lot of Hondas. Soon Honda started building larger cycles and the 350cc motorcycle was the largest they made. There was a local business that rented the small Hondas for local people to ride. From time to time I stopped in at Roger Otto’s Honda dealership to look at the motorcycles and see what was new. Roger had just unloaded a new Honda 450 Scrambler and this was the largest cc motorcycle Honda was making at that time. When I was growing up my father hated motorcycles because he thought they were extremely dangerous and he did not think much of the people he saw riding Harley Davidson motorcycles. I always wanted to have a motor scooter when I was growing up but there was no way my folks would let me have one. When Roger got the new 450 Honda Scrambler assembled he called me and invited me to take a look at it. When I saw the Honda 450 I knew I had to have it so I bought it. I had never ridden a motorcycle before so Roger took me out to the city park so I could ride it. The first time I tried riding it I fell over and since I was not going very fast I did not do any damage to it. I tried again and I started to get the hang of it and before you know it I was riding it all over town. The 450 was fast and I got a lot of looks from the kids around town when I went by on it. I rode the Honda 450 for a season and ended up selling it. I later bought my first Harley, a 1972 model FLH that I bought from a friend who need money. I went on to own a 1973 FLH that ended up getting stolen. I recovered it in Sioux City, Iowa and sold it. My last Harley was a 1989 Springer which I rode for a couple of years and then sold to a man from Germany who was going to ride it to California and then ship it back to Germany where he said he could sell it for a lot of money. I do sometimes miss riding a motorcycle. I rode a newer Street Glide that was an amazing machine, but, spending that amount of money is a huge commitment to motorcycling and I would rather have a newer 7 series BMW or a Lexus. We offer great prices for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Encounter, Rockport Dressport 2, Ryka Studio, Super Birki clogs, Birkenstock Tokyo, Birkenstock chef shoes and Ultimate Protein at our website
www.lionfootweardirect.com .

I used to travel most of southwest Iowa making calls on schools, hospitals, nursing homes, churches, and commercial buildings selling commercial cleaning supplies. Our internet store www.lionfootweardirect.com features Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports at the best price on the internet. After I had made my last call of the day I would sometimes seek out a tavern to stop and have a beer before coming home to Red Oak, IA. I often traveled through Walnut as it was a good way to travel north to Harlan or Elkhorn, Iowa and it was a good way to get back home to Red Oak. One afternoon when I was taveling down main street in Walnut I noticed a small tavern on the east side of the street called Louie’s Place and I decided to stop in and see what the place was like. I walked in the door and behind the bar stood Louie, a tall man with unruly hair and suspenders. Walking into Louie’s Place was like walking back in time to the 1930′s and 40′s. The tavern had a tin plate ceiling that looked like a red and white checker board and the back bar was very ornate. I had never seen anything quite like it. I ordered a beer and Louie took my money and threw it up on the back bar. I was surprised to see that Louie had no cash register. Louie asked the usual questions like where I was from and what was I doing in Walnut. He was friendly and when I took out a cigarette, Louie whipped out a lighter to light me up. I asked Louie about his ornate back bar and he was thrilled that I had asked as this back bar was Louie’s pride and joy. He told me the back bar had been shipped up the Missouri River years ago and that he had been offered a lot of money for it but refused to sell it because he enjoyed it so much. I found out he opened up his tavern around 4 p.m. in the afternoon and closed early in the evening. I finished my beer and headed out the door for my 30 minute drive to Red Oak. Over the years I always stopped in at Louie’s Place when I was on my way home and I was going through Walnut, Iowa. Louie was always glad to see me and I enjoyed listening to his stories. Louie said he spent time as a young man traveling around the county as a hobo. He said he had stopped in Walnut many years ago and met a lady and they fell in love and he moved in with her and had stayed in Walnut ever since. Louie was a big Iowa Hawkeye fan and this endeared him to me as I am a big fan too. Louie was always a gentleman and he told me how he hosted poker games in his back room back in the 40′s and 50′s and he knew Webb and Hiberly who were professional gamblers from Red Oak. I liked stopping in at Louie’s Place but I quit stopping there when I stopped drinking. One afternoon when I passed by Louie’s I noticed his sign was gone and so was Louie. I never found out what happened to Louie and I wondered what had happened to the back bar that Louie said was so valuable. Walunt, Iowa is known as “Antique City” and it has many antique stores in this little town near I-80 here in Iowa. Check out our website www.lionfootweardirect.com for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Encounter, Rockport Dressport 2, Birkenstock Tokyo, Bikenstock chef shoes, Super Birki clogs, Ryka studio, Sandro Moscoloni, and Ultimate Protein.

Bloggy Award

I grew up in Oelwein, Iowa in the 1950′s and I had a lot of fun in the winter spending time outdoors. Our internet store www.lionfootweardirect.com has great prices for Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports. My friends and I did a lot of sledding on the hills and streets near our home. There was one hill going down 7th St. in Oelwein I really enjoyed sledding on as it was a long hill with no intersections from the top to the bottom of the street. I can still hear the sled’s runners sliding over the ice that was on the pavement. We would try to grab the other guy’s runners and throw him sideways to slow his momentum. We had a lot of snowball fights and as I got older we liked to throw snowballs at cars which would result in some drivers pulling over and chasing after us. It would give us a rush of adrenilin when a car would pull over and the driver would get out and yell or chase after us. My dad liked to ice skate and he would take my brother and I to Lake Oelwein to skate. A big problem would be how rough the ice was so he started flooding the city softball field using a fire hose and he would stay up all night doing it. There was a lot of low spots in the field so it would take a long time to cover the area he wanted for ice skating. The next morning we would be the first to skate on this wonderful smooth ice. We helped dad flood an area on Lake Oelwein by shoveling snow around the area he was going to flood. We played hocky and enjoyed skating on this smooth pristine ice and so did a lot of other local people. Winters were harsher in northeast Iowa and we did miss some school because of big snow storms that hit our town. I had a Des Moines Register newspaper route that I delivered daily and I rode my bike most mornings but when we had a snow storm I would have to walk the route and it was more work since I had to carry the papers in a paper bag and took me a lot longer to finish making the deliveries. My dad liked to scoop snow and he would scoop the neighbor’s walks as well as ours and if we were out of school because it was cancelled he would make us help him. I have lived here in Red Oak, Iowa for over 40 years and I have found the winters here to be milder than the winters we had in northeast Iowa. This winter has been the exception because starting in December we have had snow storm after snow storm and this morning it was 2 below zero when we left the house to come to the office. Quite a few years ago I learned to snow ski at Crescent Hills ski area about 10 miles north of Council Bluffs, Iowa and have taken our family to Summit County Colorado several times for skiing trips. There is park a couple of blocks from our home that has a fairly steep hill and our kids liked to go sledding there when they were growing up. Our three children are all grown up now and they can take their kids sledding and enjoy the winter fun. Our website www.lionfootweardirect.com has good deals for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Encounter, Birkenstock Tokyo, Super Birki clog, Rockport Dressport 2, Sandro Moscoloni, and Ultimate Protein.

When Bill and I started www.lionfootweardirect.com it was to help people who work on their feet get high quailty footwear at a price that was affordable. We started contacting corporations and universities offering our discount internet store to their employees so they could have high quailty footwear and save money too. We first used a user name and password so our discount partner’s employees could enter our discount internet store. We now furnish our discount partners with a link http://store.lionfootweardirect.com/mpp2.html to be displayed on the companies intranet website so when their employees click on it they will be taken to our internet store where they can save 10-30% off retail for Dansko shoes, Dansko women’s Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Birkenstock chef shoes, Super Birki clogs, Sandro Moscoloni, Birkenstock Tokyo, Nautilus safety shoes, Skid busters, Standing Comfort, Sanita, K-Swiss, Avia, Alegria Classic, Ryka studio and Ultimate Protein. Lowe’s Stores has become a discount partner with Lion Footwear and we have enjoyed talking with their employees and store hr managers about our footwear discount program. A lot of the people who work at Lowes walk over 8 miles a day on hard concrete floors and they need high quality footwear that is durable and comfortable to wear. Rockport has wonderful footwear for these people to wear and we recommend the Rockport World Tour Classic for both men and women since it has a great foot support system and is made for walking. Dansko’s women’s Professionals have terrific support for women’s feet and are extremely comfortable to wear. Check out what customers who have ordered the Dansko Professional say about them in product reviews on our website. We try to stress to people to alternate wearing their shoes so they will last longer. Men should use cedar shoe trees in their shoes and this will increase the life of their shoes. American Airlines is another large corporation that is a discount partner of Lion Footwear. Both ground and air personnel need high quaility footwear as they are on their feet a lot during their busy days and nights. Airline stewardesses love the Dansko Professional. The ground crews and pilots like Rockport’s new line of airport friendly footwear. Since Rockport has been merged with Adidas they have added adPRENE technology to the footbed in their men’s footwear and are offering many new styles for spring 2010 for men and women. Our discount partner Compass’ employees who are chefs and food service employees order Birkenstock’s Profi Birki because it offers them an extremely non-slip shoe that is very comfortable and durable to wear in the kitchen. We added Alegria Classics to our store because these padded rocker style shoes are a perfect choice for nurses and healthcare professionls who work 12 hour shifts on their feet. Sandro Moscoloni offers men’s high styled hand made shoes from Brazil and most models feature a sheep skin lining for added comfort and fit. We offer the best price for Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion and Blue heeled arch supports. Our discount footwear program is available to many large universities including University of Iowa, Ohio State, Vanderbilt University, Kentucky University, Louisville, University of North Carolina, Wolfpack of South Carolina, Texas UT. In healthcare we are with Trinity Healthcare, Mayo Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare. Lion Footwear is always looking for more discount partners to offer our wonderful brand name footwear discount program to. We always encourage our employee and retail partners to sign up for our mailing list so they can receive a money saving coupon and future special offers on Lion Footwear. All our employee partners and retail customers can call us at 800-831-0940 for a recommendation or information about any of the items we offer on our website. We enjoy helping others find what they need to help them be more productive in their work. If people’s feet don’t hurt them they will get more done during their work day. Let us know if there is anything we can do to improve our product lines or our website. Email us at waterman711@yahoo.com or call 800-831-0940.

I lived in Oelwein Iowa from 1951 till 1961 and I lived across the street from my friend Marvin. Our website www.lionfootweardirect.com has the lowest price on the internet for Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports. Marvin lived with his family in a house that was almost falling down and it even had an old outhouse behind it and it drove the neighbor to the north of them wild because they could see the outhouse out their kitchen window but I liked going over there. I would be invited to eat supper there and I always accepted because they had Kool Aid with supper and we never had Kool Aid at our house for supper. Marvin’s mother was very kind to me and I enjoyed going over there to visit. Marvin and I played a lot of army in the woods across the street from our house. Marvin had a black lab that they called an incorrect name for black people and Marvin’s mom would call for the dog in a real loud voice and my folks couldn’t believe she was doing this. Marvin’s dad Doyal was in the 2nd World War and he had brought back with him a German Nazi flag and two helmets. One Saturday Marvin and I put on the helmets and tied the Nazi flag onto a pole and we ran around the neighborhood pretending we were German soldiers. We were having a great old time. When I went home for lunch my mother said the phone had been ringing off the hook with people calling about the Nazi flag and helmets we were displaying. We never did that again but we did other things we should not have been doing. We stole a couple of packs of cigarettes from a downtown business and went into a corn field behind the football stadium a couple of blocks from our house and smoked one cigarette after an other. I started to turn green and became very ill. It was a long time before I tried smoking again. Marvin and I got along well together most of the time but Marvin did something that made me very angry and I threw him on the driveway at our house and started banging his head on the cement. I got into a lot of trouble for that. Marvin and his family moved away and I lost track of him. Its funny how you can remember things that happened a long time ago. The house Marvin lived in has been torn down and a new house was built in its place. I have been back to Oelwein for class reunions and have been through there on trips to Wisconsin. I always go by our former house at 220 7th Ave in Oelwein. I have fond memories of Oelwein and I am sure we will attend my 50th class reunion coming up in July of 2011. We offer name brand footwear like Dansko shoes, Dansko Professional, Ryka Studio, Birkenstock Tokyo, Rockport World Tour Classic, Rockport Margin, Sole Rockers by Alegria, Rockport Encounter, Super Birki Clog, Children’s orthotics, and Ultimate Protein at www.lionfootweardirect.com.

I have lived in Iowa 62 of my 66 years and have spent 45 years living in southwest Iowa. If you need more support for your feet go to www.lionfootweardirect.com for Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports. The winters in northeast Iowa where I lived for 14 years in Waverly and Oelwein, were colder and snowier than in southwest Iowa. This winter here in Red Oak, Iowa has consisted of snow storm after snow storm with lows of below 0 temperatures and highs of hardly 10 degrees above. We have had storms that left 14″ and 12″ and some with high winds causing blizzard conditions. We are a bottled water distributor delivering 5gal bottles locally and in surrounding towns. We have had to delay deliveries because of the weather and road conditions and we have had delays in getting deliveries to our warehouse from the bottling company Deep Rock Water in Omaha, NE. They are forecasting icy rain turning into snow tonight with a possible accumulation of 3″ and another 3″ during the day on Friday. They are also forecasting very low temperatures early next week. The last time we had a brutal winter was back in 1998, twelve years ago. We have always had trouble with icy rain here in southwest Iowa. Our city street department has been overwhelmed removing snow piles on our streets and it has cost the city plenty for employee overtime along with sand and salt. When the second big snow storm hit us, our Ford Explorer with four wheel drive got stuck in our driveway and we could not make it to work until the local Ford dealer came by with a tractor and pulled us out of the driveway. We finally got to work at 3pm. My wife and I both wear Yaktrax on our shoes to keep us from falling on the ice. I had to get the oil in the Explorer’s transfer case changed because it seemed the four wheel drive was sticking. Changing the oil helped it to stop dragging. The mechanic says I need shocks but we are going to wait and replace them next winter since we don’t drive it much in the summer. Today is February 4 so winter is going to be here for awhile longer. We have a Sunlite Heater in our office. It has been wonderful to have and we hope to save money because we keep the thermostat turned down to 55 in the rest of the building. It is warm as toast in our office. If you are living in Iowa you have to handle weather extremes but you can always go south if you have the time and the money. Looking for a good deal on Birkenstock Tokyo, Dansko shoes, Dansko Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Ryka studio, Super Birki clogs, Rockport Margin, children’s orthotics, Rockport Dressport 2, and Ultimate Protein? Check out our website www.lionfootweardirect.com

My wife and I go to the local Y.M.C.A. here in Red Oak, Ia almost every day but take Saturday and Sunday off. Looking for the best price for Birko balance, Birko sport, Birko motion, and Blue heeled arch supports? Check out www.lionfootweardirect.com for the best price on the internet. The Y.M.C.A. was opened 9 years ago and we joined as soon as it opened. Our Y has Body Master equipment, walking and running track, 4 eliptical trainers, 6 treadmills, leg press, 2 basic benches, incline bench, and 2 flat benches, dumbbells through 100lbs. lat pulldown, roman chair, chinup bar, and several olympic bars, 4 leg machines, and plates ranging from 5-45 pounds. They have a scale like they have at the doctors office so you always know whether you are losing or gaining weight. If I have eaten too much over the weekend I am not too eager to get on the scales. I lift weights three days a week doing pulling on Monday, pushing on Wednesday, and legs on Friday. I walk on the treadmill every day 30-40 minutes at a moderate to fast pace. I use dumbbells for incline or flat bench presses, arm curls, and overhead presses. I try to use as much weight as I can using good form. I recently added deadlifts and bent rows using a barbell to my pull day. I studied how to do deadlifts on the internet. It is extremely important to use good form when doing this lift. When I am done doing a set of these lifts I am gasping for air but I like the feeling I get from doing them. I have found out that it is better to do exercises that work your large muscles because your smaller muscles will get a good work out executing lifts for your large muscles. Before beginning a weight training program it is a good idea to have a complete physical exam. Start out slowly and do not do over 2 sets of any exercise until your body adapts to your workouts. Use good form and only light weights to begin with. There is lots of information on the internet about weight training including videos that will show you how to do exercises and lifts. I am going to add more core training to my training program. It is easy to get into a rut and do the same routine, but, change is good and it will keep you interested in working out. Once the exercise and iron bug bites, you will not want to miss workouts and you will feel better mentally and physically. I have changed my diet and have cut back on sugar and the amount of food I eat and I do not eat anything after supper. I have a shake for lunch using Ultimate Protein with a cup of skim milk and two tablespoons of sugar free Metamucil mixed in a blender. Ultimate Protein is very high in protein and is low in carbs but the taste is wonderful! The other supplements I use are two fish oil capsules and a liquid vitamin B I put under my tongue. I wash them down in the morning with a glass of orange juice. There are a lot of supplements available but I am not sure they are good for you but I am sure they are good for the people that sell them to you. I have lost 16 pounds and I would like to lose another 16 pounds in the next two months. It seems the older I get the harder it is to lose weight since I am sure my metabolism has slowed down. When I was in my twenties I could eat anything I wanted and I would not gain a pound. So if you want to lose weight and get in shape you need to make a committment to get started working out and the sooner you start the better. Eat moderately, drink lots of pure water, and get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. I’ll see you at the gym! For brand name footwear like Dansko shoes, Dansko Professional, Rockport World Tour Classic, Birkenstock Tokyo, Super Birki Clog, Rockport Margin, Ryka Studio, Children’s orthotics, Rockport Allander, and Ultimate Protein visit www.lionfootweardirect.com