Are you a food snob? And no, I don’t mean you have to have the crème de la crème. Roughly 1.3 billion pounds of food are wasted every year (that’s nearly one-third of food produced annually!). Meanwhile, 805 million people suffer from daily hunger. In a society characterized by jam-packed social calendars – dining out means there are plenty of untapped refrigerators. Are you, then, being so picky with what’s on your plate that you could be contributing to these numbers? Before you start beating yourself up, know that we’re all guilty of wasting perfectly good food. But the simple fact is many of our habits are unconsciously setting us…
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OVERTRAINING: I Let It Happen, You Don’t Have To
Wake up. Workout. Repeat. That was my jam for a number of years. It still is…to an extent. Working out feels good; it invigorates me, it strengthens me, and most days – it supplies much needed alone-time. But my workouts look quite different than they once did. My workouts used to consist of back-to-back cardio group classes because one just wasn’t enough. Double days, 3+ hour bike rides, and hitting the pavement one mile after the next were commonplace. Notice any themes here??? Endurance much?! I was logging A LOT of hours of cardio. Yes, I occasionally threw in some strength training and yoga but the consistent element was cardio. …
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ENDURANCE: Are You Built For It
Endurance Sports are understandably hard. They take a long time to get from the start to finish line. They require a considerable amount of training. AND, they take a toll on the body: joints, synovial fluid, muscle catabolism, adrenal fatigue, nutrient and hormone depletion all come in to play. That being said, there is huge psychological benefit to endurance training and racing. But the question begs asking; does endurance training, at least from the standpoint of physical consequences, love me? The answer: perhaps – sometimes. And others – not so much. The truth is not everyone is built for endurance training. At its most basic, endurance training is the act…
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Treats 4 Less: tips to healthier sweets
One of my gal pals recently asked for some suggestions on healthy sweets to satiate cravings without feeling too guilty. After writing what felt like a tome – I decided to construct a pithier form for you all 😉 The notion of a healthy treat may be somewhat controversial, but I absolutely believe healthy treats exist – it’s all relative after all. If, for example, your normal treat is a box of double stuffed Oreos then homemade chocolate chip cookies are a better bet since you’ll skip all of the preservatives and added sugars that can cause an addictive response (ex. high fructose corn syrup). If homemade chocolate chips are…
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To Make The Bed…or Not?
What’s your post-wake up routine? Do you make your bed immediately? Maybe throw the comforter up and call it good? Perhaps you go the other direction, dedicating yourself to tightly tucked sheets and perfectly fluffed pillows? And what about the timing of this exercise? Do you do it soon after waking up? Or do you wait a while? I recently heard Michael Cazayoux discussing his morning routine on a Girls Gone Wod podcast episode and it got me to thinking about my own habits (ps. LOVE their podcast). Making my bed each morning is important to me. By why? The answer is simple; making the bed sets the tone for…
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Protect Your Heart
While many women know that heart disease is the leading cause of death in our sex, we still can be guilty of reserving our most dogged concern for other areas. Over the past 20 years, breast cancer awareness – and the push toward regular mammograms and early detection – has done wonders to support female longevity. Yet at the same time, heart disease has struggled to gain similar traction in the women’s public health conversation. Why? Is it simply a question of prioritizing the present over the future; in other words, breast cancer detection requires my attention now, while worry over heart disease can come later? As someone in her…
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Stress…It’s a B!$@#
Stress sucks. But, it’s inevitable. We all experience it, some times more than others. It’s how you handle stress that effects your health in the long run. Fingernail-chewing, sleep deprivation, and more coffee – these are less than ideal forms of compensating. More traditionally, proper stress relief has involved coping mechanisms, unwinding, and downloading. Whether it is sipping on a glass of wine, taking a bubble bath, watching a favorite tv show, going for a run or getting a massage, it is important to identify what works for you once stress rears its ugly head. But what about mitigating stress’s impact before it starts? In other words, how do we…
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Sleep Hygiene
In order for me to start getting ready for rest, the first objective is getting the babe(KMJ) to bed; this usually happens between 6:30-7 pm. KMJ has his own pre-bedtime routine: first dinner, then a game of chase (get all the last minute friskies out), followed by wind-down of quiet play in his room. Finally, we conclude with a bath, supplements, reading, nursing. Then it’s mom (and dad) time. While we aim to go to bed around 9 pm (I know I’m an early bird – always have been and I presume always will be), my sleep routine starts around 7 pm. It entails everything I need to do to…
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Scales Suck. Here’s Why.
Food for Thought: All of these beautiful women weigh the exact same amount on a scale. A scale measures one simple thing – weight. Regardless of if you choose to go by pounds or kilograms, the end result is the same – weight. Weight does not take into account how much lean mass (muscle mass) vs. how much fat mass one has. Here’s a fact – muscle weighs more than fat. Let’s take a hypothetical to play this out…Jill weighs 150 lbs. Jill can gain weight on the scale AND have looser fitting clothes, feel better about the way she looks AND be stronger! o How? She put on lean…
