healthy and beautiful

  Oh structure we missed you so. We are midway though our Foodtrainers’ September Squeeze fall reset weeks.   Week 1, led by lauren, concluded Sunday and week 2, my week, is off and running (shout out to our Squeeze achievers doing both weeks). We design a new program, with new recipes each time (why do less work when you can do more?) but we never really know how it will go until we have a group of all ages, living in all different places, going through it. Many of lauren’s week 1 squeezers told us it was our best squeeze yet…nice!   We asked our week 1 Squeeze grads to tell us how they felt: I feel back on track/more confident/able to say no/in control/clear-headed, rested and resolved to continue. This Squeeze is NO booze, grains, sugar, cheese or scale (yup a full week no weigh ins).   While it sounds like a lot of no’s we have a lot of yes’s too. We select special ingredients and what we call “secret weapons” to spice things up. My favorite this go around is ash...

lauren and I have the travel bug in a major way; we are both Semester at Sea alums and plan our lives around our next trip. She’s off to Nicaragua; I’m Moab and Amalfi coast. But first we have a quickie work trip to California this weekend (Expo West, anyone?). Quick trips can actually wreck you more than long ones. There’s little time to recalibrate or workout but there are still restaurant meals -- ok and drinks too. We all can all fall victim to “plane pounds” if not careful. So here is a sample day or a “walk through” for my travel day tomorrow: Night before I’ll pack my Foodtrainers’ Food First Aid Kit. I never go away without it. Contents vary but I always have our nutcase and nuts (current love: Organic Living cinnamon pecans), 1 snack per day away (I’m thinking Yes Bars) probiotics, tea, cocochia, natural calm and green magic. En route to airport Water spiked with with apple cider vinegar + coffee, coffee, coffee. Pre flight fuel:  2 hard-boiled omega-3 eggs ( lauren will l...

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...

Lent feels sort of like an anniversary for me at Foodtrainers; lauren had posted a great blog years (omg .. many years) ago on Non-Religious Lent that introduced us. The rest is Foodtrainers history (appropriate that it’s Valentines day too L, xx). There’s something really powerful about fully committing and giving something up for a period of time. I’m reading this book The Power of Habit  (one of my new years resolutions: read more, insta less) and it turns out you really can rewire your brain but you have to start with a single thing. Don’t try to tackle on 15 changes at once. I tried Dry January and in total honesty I failed (not miserably!).   So for our annual non-religious lent, I’d rather give up something a little outside the box— in the past it has been giving up elevators, plastic water bottles, and dating loser boys. This year I am giving up COMPLAINING, going on Instagram more than once a day, and snacking after dinner. I realize I said to start with one thing bu...

I’m a clipper. Even though everything is available online when I read an article I like, I rip it out of the newspaper or magazine(when it is my newspaper or magazine, I mean I have manners). This weekend, for some reason I was fascinated learning Tupperware parties are huge in Indonesia . Of course I left thinking that I hope the Indonesian women do not microwave in plastic, do they know about BPAs? How can I tell them? Then, I moved to the Style section.   I’m always a sucker for the Modern Love column but this one about a mother and daughter and poems in her shoe ? I saved that. But there’s always one article each weekend that is my #1. I am still thinking about “ Medicating Women’s Feelings ”.   While the author, Julie Holland, discusses that mood meds are overprescribed, particularly to women, she also explained that part of what makes women women is our moods. “But we are under constant pressure to restrain our emotional lives. We have been taught to apologize for our te...