I have some bad news for single men this Christmas season. The text messages you have recently been receiving from a beautiful woman aren’t real (shocker, I know). The messages usually read something like this, “Hey hun I’m town again, I’m here for the holiday break, we should definitely get together while out here.”

In the text message, the “woman” sends a photo along with the message about meeting. The first clue that something is amiss is the imperfect English. Obviously, this is a red flag for a foreign scam. In short, this new scam is simply a variance of the romance scam that has gone on through e-mail for years.

The difference is, this scam delivers its message in the form of a text message. The person behind the scam provides the bait (the chance to meet a beautiful woman) in order to extort the victim into sending them money or providing personal information so they can hack your identity. Often text messages contain a link to click, (to even see the picture of the woman) and when you click the link, it’s really a virus that infects your phone.

Unfortunately, with the fact that nearly everyone carries a smartphone these days, this is only the beginning of a growing trend of scammers targeting smartphones using text messages. With that being said, if you start noticing an increase is robotexts or spam text messages, here are a few ways to stop the spammers and scammers.

Do not respond. Legitimate companies include an option to text STOP to tell the company to remove you from their distribution list. But, that action usually just confirms to the scammer that you exist and that your phone number is valid. So, unless you know the text came from a legitimate company that honors such requests, you’re better off not responding to the message at all. If the scammer doesn’t think your phone number is working, they may not target you again. But, if you end up texting the word Stop, they know it’s an active phone and they will continue to bother you.

Report the spammer. You can report a robotext to your mobile carrier by forwarding it to a specific number. To do this, copy the original message and text it to 7726 (which spells out SPAM). This works for AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint, all of whom will use the information to try to block future spam messages. In addition, most phones, including the iPhone and Android phones will allow you to block numbers from the settings on the phone itself.

Use an app. There are several third-party apps to help protect you against spammers. Two popular apps, Nomorobo and RoboKiller, are both available for iOS and Android. Each app requires a subscription that costs a few dollars a month, but they are efficient at blocking and filtering robotexts.

The problem is, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google keep track of your online activity and may sell your phone number to advertisers. If your phone number is public on social media, assume it’s in various marketing companies’ databases. Another thing is, if you’ve called an 800 or 888 number, your cellphone number is collected by an Automatic Number Identification (ANI) system. In addition to identifying and storing your number, the ANI system can match it with other digital data associated with you. My point is, there are a number of different ways that scammers can obtain your phone number. So, the next time you get that text from a beautiful woman, delete it immediately, don’t click on any links and block the number.

Last month, I talked about intermittent fasting, such as only eating between the hours of 12pm-8pm. We got several questions about this, so I wanted to go deeper this month to show you how to get more energy over the next 30 days. So first, try daily Intermittent fasting for at least one month. Whichever method or timing you’d like to start with. There’s not a “golden ticket” in terms of one way over another, we just know intermittent fasting works. As I just mentioned, many people I know choose to do this by only eating between 12pm-8pm daily. Remember, eat for fuel, not pleasure and stress reduction. Eat like you want to fuel your life with great health, not like you just want to survive to your next meal.

Next, drink almost exclusively water for the next month. Drink 1/2 your weight in pounds, in ounces of water. In other words, if you weigh 180 pounds, drink 90 ounces of water a day. Hydration is so very important for all the biological processes in our bodies. As you probably know, we are approximately two-thirds water. Living in a dehydrated state zaps our energy, builds up toxins, kills our kidneys, promotes high blood pressure and limits our physical, emotional, and intellectual abilities. You must stay hydrated and Coke, Gatorade, Monster and Coors, don’t cut it. Drink until you pee clear and stay there. Dark yellow urine is a sign that you are not hydrated enough.

Third, calorie reduce long-term. Scientific study after scientific study have proven over and over that calorie reduction actually prolongs life when we reduce our caloric intake by approximately 30%. The converse of that is that calorie excess reduces life. Of course, there is a limit. We all know that starvation kills. So, what’s the happy medium? Well, it depends. It depends on your age, your activity and your personal requirements. Some athletes need 5,000 kCal/day. Some humans need perhaps as little as 1,200 kCal/day. Most of us need somewhere between 1,200 to 2,400 kCal/day. Interestingly, do you know which organ consumes the most calories, by far? Your brain. That’s right! Though the brain amounts to only 2% of our body weight, it is thought that it consumes up to 20% of the calories we consume every day.

How does calorie restriction work? Well, it is thought that a single cell has a certain number of predetermined divisions coded into its life cycle. These divisions are sped up by metabolism, which is determined by how much work the cell has to do. This work speeds up the aging process of the cell. So, the more we eat, the harder the cells have to work to metabolize the calories and the faster the cell ages. Reducing our daily calorie consumption by 30% over decades without minimizing nutrition is shown to significantly reduce disease and thus prolong healthspan. It does this by reducing cellular work and stress, thus maintaining telomere length and then by minimizing apoptosis (cellular death).

So, do intermittent fasting, drink a lot more water and eat less over the coming 30 days. Next time, we’ll talk about what to eat. It’s really not as complicated as many try to make it. Well, it could be, but it’s really not. Until then, stay alert. Stay alive.

I recently looked at one of my self-defense classes, which displayed an array of different types of people. Some were big, some were small, others tall and others short. I had both males and females in the class with varying occupations ranging from law enforcement to stay at home moms, executives to blue-collar workers. I taught them all the one move you must have in your self-defense arsenal.

It’s a simple move that will affect anyone, regardless of their size, gender, strength level or even pain tolerance. I asked everyone in the class what they thought it was, but nobody gave the right answer.

“It’s the eye jab”, I told them. Jabbing someone in the eyes is the one move that can literally disable any attacker with the least amount of movement on your end. Now, how you do it is very important. But first, grasp what I just told you. A quick eye jab can disable anyone regardless of how strong or big they are. There are few self-defense moves that can claim that label.

Bruce Lee even built his “Jeet Kune Do” combative theory around this elusive move. Lately, we’ve seen unintended eye jabs being used “too effectively” in mixed martial arts fights, as they have now been outlawed and come with hefty penalties. If this simple move can take down highly trained MMA fighters, I think it’s something that everyone should take a serious look at.

Performing an eye jab is easy, but that doesn’t mean that you and I don’t need to practice it. The steps to complete a successful eye jab are: First, stand in a bladed stance with one leg in front of the other. (Such as a boxing type of stance.) Next, use your front hand (ideally your strong hand, as it is stronger and more coordinated and it is closer to the target.) Then, flick out your arm, “whipping” your hand and fingers at the eyes. This is not like a “karate chop”, nor should you be “pecking” at their eyes. Simply snap out your fingers like you would snap out a rolled-up towel. Another way to think of this is a snake attacking and how a snake quickly strikes out at its victim.

If you don’t have a heavy bag or even a partner to train with, hang a piece of paper from the ceiling and snap out eye jabs to develop your distancing and timing. Although one good eye jab can take down the most hardened attacker, it is important to also have a couple follow up moves ready to go, such as a front kick, elbows and knee strikes. But, certainly don’t dismiss the simplicity of an eye jab, because it can do serious damage to your attacker and give you a chance to escape to safety.