healthy and beautiful

If you read our manifesto, The Little Book of Thin, from cover to cover like you better have (wink wink), you know sleep is one of lauren’s 10 Steps to Svelte. When you sleep your hunger hormones recalibrate. We’ve known that less sleep generally means more hunger but a recent study found that sleep deprivation could trigger eating similar to the “marijuana munchies”.   Uh oh.  In the study, participants slept for different amounts of time (8.5 hours vs 4.5 hours). On the 4.5-hour nights, subjects report significantly higher scores for hunger and a stronger desire to eat. On the sleep-deprived nights, they ate about 400 more calories and almost twice as much fat when they were given access to a buffet full of cookies, chips and candy. What does this have to do with POT? Sleep deprivation produces higher peaks of a lipid in our bloodstream known as an endocannabinoid that seems to make eating more pleasurable – our endocannabinoid system is the same one ta...

It’s hard enough to walk the healthy walk with our own “stuff”. Our sleep, work stress, family life, hormones and cravings are obstacles on any given day. But so are other people and sometimes it’s not even the people closest to you. We spend a lot of time at work and coworkers can affect your behavior. In the Little Book of Thin I talked about the candy bowl person.   There’s usually one candy bowl person per workplace but there’s another type of office offender. A few weeks ago, I opened the door from my office to our waiting room. A client* sat on the white couch with an It’s Sugar shopping bag next to her. She noticed that I noticed and said, “It’s not for me” and stood to come into my office.   I had to ask, “So who is it for?” “It’s for someone at work, she loves Reese’s” my client said and proceeded to pull out a package of peanut butter cups the size of a shoebox (a shoebox lid). We joked a little, she told me to take a photo for Instagram (I passed not knowing it wou...

I was reading Shape Magazine’s March issue (double Foodtrainers in there, Carolyn discusses “souping” and I explain the pros of pistachios). Kate Hudson is on the cover looking pretty damn good. In her interview she tells a story about an experience in France. I don’t have the article it in front of me but she describes a meal she was having in Paris when she was a little younger. There was lots of food and wine and she was partaking in it all (if you have Goldie’s genes I guess there’s some leeway). Cake arrives for dessert and an older French woman approaches the table. I’m not sure if she spoke in French or English but as Kate was about to taste the cake said, “no, no, no dear this is your cake” and gestures to the wine. You simply cannot eat it all and look like Kate Hudson on that cover. We may not be able to look like Kate Hudson regardless but that’s another story. However, feeling good doesn’t mean you’re trapped at destination deprivation you just have to pick your pleasure. ...