Wanna work for a great low-carb company? Join Atkins Nutritionals!

Before I had the privilege of working full-time as a professional freelance writer and low-carb blogger as a career, I worked for nearly two decades in customer service. From sit down and fast food restaurants to Christian retail management and marketing to customer relations and risk management for a large national restaurant chain, I’ve seen it all when it comes to providing high-quality customer satisfaction. It was probably inevitable that all those years of training would positively mold the way I interact with the people who grace my web sites each day.

One thing I’ve tried to bring to my blog and corresponding sites is a genuine sense of care, commitment, and concern to my customers–MY READERS!–and making sure the experience you have here is the BEST it can possibly be. YOU DESERVE IT! Whether it is the simple gesture of responding to your e-mail when you have questions or even when I have the opportunity to call you up on the telephone and offer some timely advice to give you the confidence and direction about continuing on your low-carb path. That’s what I’m here for!

If you have this deep-down desire to give yourself fully to customers and want to work for a company that is completely sold-out to the concept of livin’ la vida low-carb, then I have quite an opportunity to share with you. Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. (ANI), makers of the bestselling low-carb Atkins bars and shakes, is looking to add some Atkins Information Agents (AIA) to their growing family of employees at their corporate offices in the downtown Denver, Colorado area. This is an important position that is responsible for providing customer care services via the telephone as well as e-mail inquiries through the Atkins web site.

Each AIA will utilize the Atkins Knowledge Base to handle in-bound telephone inquiries that require responses explaining the various elements of the Atkins Nutritional Approach and it is the responsibility of the AIA to handle all types of in-bound e-mail inquiries, including but not limited to order status questions, Atkins Nutritional Approach questions, and ANI product questions. In other words, you’ll be a part of educating the public about the healthy low-carb lifestyle. SWEET!

The DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES of this position include:
- Responding to customer inquiries
- Accepting calls and e-mails from customers
- Explaining the Atkins Nutritional Approach
- Answering order status and other questions
- Using product training to answer customer questions
- Providing pleasant, positive, and professional responses
- Using customized software to communicate via e-mail
- Operating computer system to document customer needs
- Responding to customers within 24-48 hours of contact
- Attending company training sessions
- Bringing ideas and suggestions to management at meetings
- Maintaining an open communication with supervisors

What QUALIFICATIONS is ANI looking for?
- Experience providing customer service
- An enthusiastic telephone voice and personality
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- A positive an enthusiastic demeanor
- Strong customer service skill set and focus
- Proficiency in communicating via e-mail and Internet
- A willingness to be trained on internal computer system
- Must be able to read, write and speak fluent English
- Speaking a second language is a plus
- An ability to accurately compose business communication

If this sounds like the dream job for you and you live in the greater Denver, Colorado area, then please forward your resume to Careers@atkins.com or mail it to Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., 1050 Seventeenth Street, Suite 1000, Denver, CO 80265.

NOTE: This job is located in Denver, Colorado and ANI will be unable to relocate any prospective employees who live outside of this area. Additionally, there are no “work at home” positions available with this job offer. They are looking for full-time or part-time people with good computer skills, excellent communication, and stellar customer service skills who are also well-versed in “livin’ la vida low-carb” to represent the company to the public. GOOD LUCK!

High-carb junk foods Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Twinkies a dying breed

The message is getting out there and more people now than ever before are starting to believe it. Consuming carbohydrates in the form of excessive sugar and flour is extremely unhealthy and should be avoided as much as possible. Regardless of your dietary philosophy, cutting out refined carbs is a nutritional must if you want to control your weight and improve your health. And the impact of such an epiphany happening in the minds of Americans is hitting some of the most famous American junk food brands hard.

Click here to read how the makers of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Hostess Twinkies, and Wonder Bread are suffering financially because of a consumer base wising up to the harmful effects of sugar and refined carbohydrates on their weight and health.

Did you know that sugar contains miraculous “healing powers”? YEP!

Of all the God-given natural creations that we have been bestowed with on this here planet Earth, there is one that stands out above all others as the greatest and most spectacular of them all. No, it’s not human beings, animals, or even TiVo! Believe it or not, I’m referring to SUGAR.

That’s right, folks, you heard it here first! Everybody’s favorite little white granular substance has been given such high prominence in the world of science and medicine now that it has been discovered to have great “healing powers” according to a press release I received from the Vice President of Public Relations for the Washington, DC-based Sugar Association Melanie Miller this week. She boasts of these amazing “healing” properties as a reason why people should not be shunning sugar so quickly.

At the same time, the Corn Refiner’s Association says in a new television ad campaign that you’re in for a “sweet surprise” about high fructose corn syrup and encourages you to visit their new web site to “get the facts.” Claiming that HFCS has “no artificial ingredients,” is “nutritionally…the same as table sugar,” and has “the same number of calories as table sugar,” they think they have hit a home run with their ads.

CLICK HERE to see these two desperate attempts to make sugar and HFCS look healthier than they really are and find out the truth about these two major contributors to obesity and disease in modern-day society.

Fresh Express giving you two more reasons to eat your greens

You can’t eat your vegetables on a low-carb diet, everyone knows that! It’s just meat, meat, and more meat followed with a few eggs and some cheese when you go on a low-carb diet, so you had better say goodbye to EVER eating another vegetable again if you choose to eat this way. No wonder that low-carb diet is so unhealthy. Who would eat this way?

Do you ever get the feeling the world has gone absolutely mad and we’re the only sane ones left in the world now? As someone who has been low-carbing and loving it coming up on five years now, it gets more than a little nauseating to see how the healthy low-carb nutritional approach is so unfairly maligned and described this way by the so-called health “experts” and the media which in turn is regurgitated by the average Joe and Jane around the water cooler at work. It’s frustrating trying to reeducate people who have been so grossly misinformed.

In Episode 50 of “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb On YouTube,” Christine and I talk about some new low-carb vegetables (yes, there are indeed some great-tasting and healthy veggies that are PERFECT for your low-carb lifestyle as we talked about in Episode 3) that you may want to know about coming to store shelves in September 2008. It’s from our friends at Fresh Express and you’re gonna absolutely LOVE adding these greens to your low-carb menu.

Check out these delicious new Fresh Express flavors in today’s video:

You get to hear about the new Tender Ruby Reds and the Sweet Tender Greens–two GREAT new flavors from Fresh Express that are perfect for your healthy low-carb lifestyle. Look for them on your supermarket store shelves coming soon. You’re gonna love…just don’t choke on them like I did! Speaking of choking, at the end of the video, I tell you about the very special FitCamp experience I will be participating in beginning tonight through August 31st with former “Biggest Loser” contestant Isabeau Miller. Since her incredible final four appearance in Season 4 of the hit NBC-TV show last Fall losing well over 100 pounds, Isabeau has become a personal trainer and is dedicated to helping people lose weight and get healthy and fit like she did. That’s what this two-week experience will be about and I’ll be doing updates of this experience in a special FitCamp video series on YouTube. Wanna see Jimmy Moore get his hind quarters beaten to smithereens? Then you WON’T want to miss these next two weeks.
We love making videos for you and look forward to sharing them with you every time we do them. Watch our previous YouTube videos and you’ll make our day by subscribing to our YouTube videos. As always, you can leave us your feedback at livinlowcarbman@charter.net. THANK YOU for watching “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb On YouTube” and don’t miss our special FitCamp videos these next two weeks.

Would Dr. Atkins approve of this “sweet sexy science” marketing campaign?

Have you seen some of the advertisements featuring the Atkins shakes and bars from Atkins Nutritionals lately? It’s RADICALLY different from what it has been in the past as you will quickly notice when you see it. I’m not saying it’s bad necessarily, but it’s certainly different. However, there have been some concerns that the company that the late great Dr. Robert C. Atkins founded is now bastardizing the high-fat, low-carb message he promoted for three decades. So I made contact with a friend within Atkins Nutritionals to ask her about these issues that so many of you have shared with me in recent months.

In Episode 167 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore,” we hear directly from Atkins Nutritionals spokeswoman and nutritionist Colette Heimowitz who has a whole lot of explaining to do with this new move toward “lean protein” and “healthy whole grains” in the new advertising for the company. And she explains why they decided to promote this version of Atkins which she says “hasn’t changed”–it’s only being better communicated now to overcome the myths that STILL persist today. Check it out and see for yourself whether you agree if this is an effective marketing strategy.

Click on the “LISTEN NOW” link below or download it to your iPod to hear Episode 167:

“The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore” Episode 167 [36:24m]: LISTEN NOW | Download

Colette Heimowitz has been at Atkins Nutritionals for a long time and even worked with Dr. Atkins at the Atkins Center for several years looking at the science behind the Atkins low-carb lifestyle. Through all the ups (like the tremendous sales success in 2003-04) and the downs (when the company filed for bankruptcy), Colette has always kept the focus on the science behind the Atkins Nutritional Approach even when the investors in the Atkins Nutritionals company were merely hanging on for dear life and feeling tempted to take the message off of low-carb and on to “healthy living” (check out my blog interview with Colette in October 2006). She discusses quite a bit of information about the changes that have been happening at the company over the past couple of years.

Much of the new marketing of the Atkins diet is communicated and promoted in the new book Colette co-wrote with Dr. Stuart Trager called The All-New Atkins Advantage: The 12-Week Low-Carb Program to Lose Weight, Achieve Peak Fitness and Health, and Maximize Your Willpower to Reach Life Goals. We hear from Colette in the interview explaining why there was a need for a new Atkins book after Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution has been out there for over a decade. There’s a lot of information shared in this interview with Colette Heimowitz that I’m sure will instigate quite a discussion. Don’t hold back!

Hear from company representatives like Colette Heimowitz anytime by:

1. Listening at the official web site
2. Calling 818-688-2763 to listen via Podlinez
3. Subscribing to the RSS feed
4. Going to iTunes–Click here to subscribe!

Check out this witty video tutorial from my podcast producer Kevin Kennedy-Spaien about how you can sign up for the podcast RSS feed, listen on iTunes, and all the other ways to access the show.

So how about what you heard from Colette Heimowitz at Atkins Nutritionals? Did she make a convincing argument for the latest marketing that is happening with the company or do you feel they are moving away from the original intent of the company that Dr. Atkins founded? Tell us what YOU think in the show notes section of Episode 167. Visit Atkins.com to see the newly updated Atkins Nutritionals web site and you can order Atkins Advantage Bars or the Atkins Advantage Caramel Bars if you’d like to stock up on these for your healthy low-carb lifestyle. Special THANKS to Colette for sharing time with me for this interview to answer your questions.

Coming up next week, we’ll have Becky Gandy, cruise director for The 2nd Annual Low-Carb Cruise To Mexico, on Monday talking about the biggest low-carb event of 2009 featuring special guests Dr. Jonny Bowden, Dr. Eric Westman, Jackie Eberstein, Dana Carpender, Judy Barnes Baker, Dr. James Carlson…and Christine and I will be there too! Find out all the details in this podcast. Then on Thursday you will hear from famous diabetes blogger David Mendosa who is now a big-time believer in the healthy low-carb lifestyle for managing and controlling his blood sugar and insulin levels. This is one amazing interview you WON’T want to miss!

Request True Lemon samples and give a soldier a nice care package

Ever since I partnered up with an up-and-coming company called True Lemon in January and brought them on as a sponsor, I have been extremely pleased with the way they conduct their business. From their stellar customer service to their commitment to providing a quality low-carb product to flavor your foods and beverages, True Lemon is indeed the real deal and I’m proud to be working with them to get the word out about their products.

True Lemon has teamed up with Operation Gratitude

Today, I am so thrilled to be able to share with you a new joint venture that True Lemon is doing with a non-profit group called Operation Gratitude. As our brave men and women in the armed forces serve our country so valiantly in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are people here in the United States putting together some amazing care packages for these soldiers willing to sacrifice so much. To date, around 320,000 of these packages have been placed in the hands of troops who have desperately needed to hear from home.

But now Operation Gratitude is getting ready for their big Patriot Drive in May 2008 and here is where YOU can help. It won’t cost you a a single dime of your money, but all you need to do is REQUEST YOUR FREE TRUE LEMON SAMPLES and 10 packets of True Lemon/True Lime will be provided to Operation Gratitude. Yep, that’s it! Sign up for samples and tell all your friends and family to do the same and you will receive two packets of True Lemon, a packet of True Lime and a packet of True Orange along with a coupon. In turn, you will be sending 10 packets of True Lemon products to our fine servicemen in a care package.

Click here to find out how you can order your FREE True Lemon samples and invite everyone you know to do the same for the sake of the troops!

My latest sponsor, True Lemon, stands ready to serve you

Starting on January 1st, I was very proud to introduce you to a brand new sponsor at my “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog called True Lemon. This company creates some pretty amazing crystallized lemon, lime and orange substitutes that contain ZERO calories and ZERO carbs along with NO artificial sweeteners in them whatsoever. As I am quoted as saying in the banner ad at the top of my blog, this product really is “a low-carber’s dream come true” since you’re not allowed to have those citrus fruits on your low-carb lifestyle. And I’m very proud to be affiliated with True Lemon.

Whenever I share with you about a new product like True Lemon and partner up with a company like them in telling you about their products, one thing I demand of them before they’re even considered becoming a sponsor here is a 100% commitment to customer service to YOU. That’s been my underlying philosophy from day one here at my blog to provide my readers with the information they need in a timely manner with a smile on my face doing it. It’s the very least you deserve for allowing me to play a small role in your life day in and day out. I guess it’s all those years of working in retail and marketing having that customer service message hammered into my skull hard that I just EXPECT it now from whoever I work with.

Thankfully, I’m proud to say that True Lemon is indeed devoted and committed to their new “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” customers because they have immediately addressed some concerns that a few of you have expressed to me about the quality of their product after purchasing it at your local store (it’s literally found EVERYWHERE in grocery stores and Wal-mart usually next to the Splenda).

The following e-mail is an example of the problem that was shared:

Hi Jimmy! I have a question about the True Lemon. I bought some but it’s all clumpy and stuck together in the packets. Is it supposed to be that way or did I get a bad/old batch?? I made your cheesecake recipe with it and it tasted fine to me so i just wanted your input since you’ve used it for a while. Thanks so much!

Interestingly, this same issue was echoed by a few others and I’ve even got a box of True Lime with the “clumpy and stuck together” products right now, too. See for yourself:

As my reader pointed out, this does not impact the flavor of the True Lemon products in any way (although if you bite into one of the clumps, it’s one of the most intense flavors you’ll ever put on your tastebuds–I found out the hard way!). But even still, that’s not the way the product is supposed to look like and True Lemon stands ready to take care of anyone who has “clumpy” product that they purchased.

Company Vice-President Heidi C. Carney said their stand behind the quality of their products fully with a complete customer satisfaction commitment.

“True Lemon, True Lime and True Orange should always be free-flowing crystals. While the True Lemon you bought is completely safe to use, it’s not at it’s best,” Carney reported to the “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog. “We always have a 100% guarantee of satisfaction so I would be happy to send anyone a replacement box. As a small company, we really appreciate having you as a customer and your complete satisfaction is most important to us.”

If you have any True Lemon products that are of poor quality like me and several other readers have experienced, then please do the following:

1. E-mail True Lemon at customercare@truelemon.com.
2. Provide the name of the store where you purchased True Lemon.
3. If you still have the box, provide the embossed numbers under the UPC code.
4. Give you name and mailing address where they can ship replacements.

Plus, just for doing that, you’ll receive some complimentary True Lemon coupons as well as FREE samples of all three flavors–True Lemon, True Lime, and True Orange. I appreciate your enthusiastic response to these truly amazing products for your low-carb lifestyle and encourage you to continue using them to enhance the foods and beverages you consume while livin’ la vida low-carb. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns about True Lemon or any of my sponsors. THANK YOU for your continuing support for me and the sponsors who make the “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog possible!

Six months after getting my iPhone, it was stolen from me

Can I whine just a bit for a moment? WAH!

I’m just a little bummed out right now because earlier today my beloved iPhone was stolen. Yep, right from under my nose, the dad-blamit thing just disappeared on me. What makes it worse is that it happened at the gym likely while I was using the abdominal equipment to do my 150 crunches (as part of my new commitment to resistance training). Double whammy! UGH!

I know, I know, some of you are laughing hysterically right now because you feel utter glee that I would allow myself to lose something like an iPhone which I paid $600 for back in August 2007 (they’ve since dropped the price to $400). Alright, got that out of your system now? Good. For the rest of you without iPhone envy syndrome, I have to tell you that little gizmo was one of the best business investments I’d ever made. Besides my computer, that phone was my lifeline to so many facets of what I do. And it had EVERYTHING about me on it (but I’m not worried about identity theft since I got LifeLock four months ago to protect me).

But now my iPhone is gone in the blink of an eye. Shoot!

Click here for all the sordid details about what happened and all that I had to go through to resolve this missing iPhone dilemma.

Olivia Brown takes advantage of the new video review format at Amazon

You really have to admire the marketing brilliance of a company like Amazon.com. They are true innovators and undeniable leaders in their industry because they never just settle for the amazing success they have been able to achieve. Instead, they keep improving and improving by offering their customers unique features that keep them coming back.

The latest such improvement is the addition of a brand new feature that allows for video reviews of the products on Amazon. Yep, now not only can you WRITE about what you think of your favorite CD, book, electronic device or whatever else you purchase on their site, but you can also TELL everyone by making your own video reviews. It’s the new wave of technology in product reviews and I think it adds a personal touch to their web site.

One of the most enthusiastic reviewers on Amazon who has taken this new video review format and run with it is Top 1000 Amazon Reviewer Olivia Brown. What a spunky woman this is and she’s a self-described “a voracious reader and consummate blogger.” Her blog is Happy Luau and I’m impressed by how elaborate it is because she has a lot to say. In fact, Olivia reads MY blog and has commented there quite a bit lately.

Because of her prestigious position at Amazon as a highly-respected and prolific reviewer, Olivia’s opinions carry a lot of weight. So when she started video reviewing beginning a couple of weeks ago when Amazon rolled out this new format, people began taking immediate notice. And when she reviewed what is arguably the most compelling book about diet and health in the last century, I took notice.

Check out Olivia Brown’s video review of Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes to see how detailed she gets with her reviews. This woman is absolutely amazing and thorough in her analysis of the books she reads and I was impressed with what she said about the Taubes book. It sounds like that book has genuinely changed her life.

But Olivia didn’t stop with Good Calories, Bad Calories for her video reviews. She also did an awesome one for Jonny Bowden’s classic book Living The Low-Carb Life which compares the various low-carb plans and gives an overview of each one to help you decide which diet is best for you. I reviewed this book and have spoken very highly of it for anyone who is livin’ la vida low-carb. Olivia was inspired by this book to continue her new low-carb lifestyle journey.

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised to see Olivia’s video review of my book Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb. She was very kind in her remarks about the book I wrote about my low-carb weight loss journey. And she saw EXACTLY what I was attempting to do with my book: help motivate others in their own journey to lose weight and get healthy. THANK YOU Olivia!

Check out more from Olivia Brown as she is adding lots of new reviews–both the “old school” written ones and the hip new video ones, too! GREAT JOB, Olivia! Keep ‘em coming!

As more and more Americans make a point to steer clear of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) because they believe that it’s unhealthy for you, more and more manufacturers are responding to consumer demand by bumping the sweetener from their foods and drinks.

Companies are increasingly touting the fact that their products are “HFCS-free” in order to position them as healthy, a phenomenon observed by NutraIngredients.com, which learned about this trend from market researcher Datamonitor.

In fact, Datamonitor found 146 new foods and beverage products worldwide that claim to be free of the corn-based sweetener, which has been linked with obesity and other health issues.

Read more here.