healthy and beautiful

Last week, I was bargaining with myself to get on the treadmill. I was sick of my playlists and glanced at my podcast roster. I saw a Dear Sugar podcast on body image. It was 40-something minutes on what sounded like a juicy topic. I chose this over Adele for the thousandth time. If you’re unfamiliar with Dear Sugar , it’s Cheryl Strayed (author of Wild and my favorite BraveEnough ). Cheryl and her podcast partner Steve Almond (best last name ever) tackle all things interpersonal and touchy. If you’re not familiar with podcasts, I’d resolve to change that this year. This podcast was called “ The Weight of Love ”. Cheryl opened by sharing about her own weight fluctuations. She admitted she felt better when her weight was toward the low end of her range but appreciated that her husband told her she was beautiful regardless of her weight. I’m summarizing as the podcast really focused on two letters written by listeners. The first letter writer was a guy in his twenties. This guy was in ...

Last night, on Instagram, I read a blogger’s caption for her photo. It read “New year, same food.   My eating doesn't change just because it's January first.” I say, good for her. She’s probably one of those people who says “I’m thankful every day” on Thanksgiving. Call me a cliché’ (I’ve been called worse) but I love a clean slate; I'm not shy about my glee when goal setting.   I’m not suggesting “whole new you” type aspirations.   I like the majority of myself; however, I am perpetually tweaking. If you’re feeling resolutiony, here’s how I’d channel your newfound motivation. Be a creature of freshness I can’t find the right, uplifting word that’s the opposite of habit. Habits and routines are great but monotony is not. Especially in the wellness realm, mixing it up is vital. Kale all day and night would make me find a new profession. What do you want to try in 2017? You can experiment anywhere. Maybe it’s a new form of self-care. I believe I’ve written about my adoratio...

Sure you want to eat that? What are you uncomfortable discussing? Sex? Money matters? I would normally add politics to this list but most of us have extinguished that fear this election season. Today I’m shooting a news segment on couples and food. The producer joked to me “it’s easier to get heroin users to talk to us.” I sent a few emails to clients and friends. We have two women and one man on board to open up about food differences in their relationships. However, the majority of the responses I received went something like “this is a huge issue for us but I’m not sure we want to air our dirty laundry.” Really? We weren’t asking people to strip naked. Rather “he’s a health nut and I’m not” that sort of thing. When a client enters into a new relationship I always ask, “what kind of an eater are they?” While this may seem unimportant initially, while everyone is on good behavior, you eat three times a day, it will matter. If you love to stay home and cook and he wants to go out every...

You can be successful in every area of your life and fucked up with food. Oftentimes, you can’t even take in that success if “food stuff” is casting a pall. I recently watched an interview Oprah did with songwriter/composer Carole Bayer Sager (pictured above with the "That's What Friends Are For" crew). Carole described the semi-spiritual way she approaches writing. She spoke of her desire is to help people feel less alone via her songs. There’s a universality to her lyrics that always made her seem like someone who got it. But you can “get it” and not internalize it.  As the interview moved along Oprah, as Oprah tends to do, delved into Carole’s personal history. In her words, she was a cubby child born to a narcissistic mother. Carole shared a memory where her mother said “fatty, walk behind me”. As we know, those comments sting and stick. I watched his (almost 70 year old?) accomplished, beautiful woman say she had never solved her relationship with food. That chatter ...

In the time I’ve been practicing nutrition I’ve become a mother twice (three times if we count Bronco). I’ve seen clients have children and younger children grow up. I’ve had clients refer their parents to me and of course parents “urge” children, of all different ages, to start Foodtraining. The weight dynamic within families is something Carolyn and I spend a lot of time sorting out. Last week, I read a letter a father submitted to Social Q’s in the Times. His letter opened with “my 9-year-old daughter is fat” ouch, no mincing words with that sentence. The father felt his daughter was old enough for a dialog about making good choices and indicated that his wife disagreed. “She worries about the effect on our daughter’s self-esteem.” Philip Galanes blasted the father in his response. He pointed out the father’s bluntness, lack of apparent love and interest in how his daughter’s weight reflected on him. He warned this father that he would increase the chances of developing an eating d...

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...

Perhaps you’ve heard of Jordan Younger, she’s a blogger known as “The Balanced Blonde” (formerly known as the Blonde Vegan). Jordan built a massive following when she turned vegan and detailed her vegan creations on her blog. She made national headlines when she made the decision to shift from veganism (zero animal products) to incorporate fish and eggs in her diet. If you are puzzled why that’s national news, it wasn’t because the vegan community berated her for defecting (she claims to have received death threats). Rather, Jordan’s story brought an eating disorder called orthorexia into the spotlight. Orthorexia, and this is my definition not any official one, is when the focus on healthy eating becomes obsessive. This obsession can have deleterious health consequences.   We’re hearing more about orthorexia, a client sent this Refinery29 story to me. The author writes: Health was an easy way to hide my eating disorder because it was so culturally on-trend. Weight obsession seeme...

I read two types of books. For work it’s mostly non-fiction. There’s a stack of books staring at me on fascinating topics such as probiotics, hormones and seeds. On the weekends, I’ll treat myself a novel, something I can read more than one chapter of at a time. Though I like anything nutrition-related, rarely am I captivated by something I’m reading for work. However, I spent most of Saturday on the couch with It Was Me all Along. And if you’ve ever struggled with food or family, you will cherish Andie Mitchell’s story. I do something weird while I read (and I randomly found out another friend does too). I fold the bottom of the page in a book if there’s something I want to return to. I had so many corner flips as I read this one. A few of my favorites: Where does emotional eating begin? Without giving too much away, in the first part of the book you learn about Andie’s early years. In a way both of her parents were absent. But it was her mother who was “scared of scarcity” and baked...

Well, actually don't We’ve just shifted out of summer mode and the holidays are upon us. While it can feel like September presents one thing after another, we're hoping that since  many of us are still casting off our summer holiday treatsare slightly less alluring (maybe?) Here are Foodtrainers’ tips for a “sweet” new year. The only thing sweeter than honey cake is feeling svelte when September ends. Agree? Thought so.  Rosh Rules (and YK too)  Create room for holiday meals . If you’re familiar with Foodtraining through the holidays .you know that we believe in utilizing pre and post holiday days. For every holiday meal, have 1 day where you skip anything sweet (wine  and  fruit are sweet).  Secret Holiday Weapons : have lemon squeezed in water before your holiday meal, this will prevent your blood sugar from rising sky high and may displace a glass of wine. The morning after holidays, try our magic green elixir.  Employ o ur “traditional” 1 plate rul...