Eat Dance Live

A number of events over the past few days have given me the drive to rant again. While I often go on about food or fitness, today's topic is beauty. My first point: Beauty is not vanity if it is pursued with self-love and care . I've talked about skin and " beauty regimens " before, but I'll stress again that if I learned one lesson from my mom (though I promise I've learned many), it's that your skin is your biggest organ and because it's on the outside, it deserves a lot of care. The problem is that most of us believe that taking care of our skin is a vanity. We have equated getting a botox treatment or splurging on some wrinkle cream with getting a natural exfoliation treatment or putting organic lotion on every night. To me, the first is unhealthy, while the latter is totally healthy, and is just basic health and wellness care. I've been made to feel that going for a facial was like I was going to commit a crime, that I was being overly self-in...

As I mentioned before, yet another one of the reasons I love my mom is because of the discipline she gave my sister and I to take care of our skin. Even better, she's always been very adamant that we use high quality and natural products, which is especially important given the amount of 'stuff' they now put in personal care products (here's a pretty straightforward guide for what to avoid written up by the Organic Consumers Association and the Green Patriot Working Group ). Having struggled with acne during my teenage years, I've been amaz ed by what a vegan and especially a raw diet has done to clear up any remnants of damage. However, putting body lotion on every day for as long I can remember has kept the rest of my skin silky soft for years (and I really believe in doing this because my mom's skin looks about 20 years younger than anyone else's her age)! My skin is one thing I feel like I can have bragging rights about (it's good to acknowledge y...

We just got back from the DC Green Festival and boy did we have an awesome day! I woke up so giddy to go this morning I felt like a five year old on Christmas or a kid in a candy store (a raw organic candy store that is!) Ready to stock up on food, energy and life awesomeness, we set out early in the morning to get there as early as possible. We got in pretty fast thanks to complimentary tickets I won from a VegNews giveaway (they're awesome because they now have online subscriptions to stop killing trees! Gotta love companies who walk the walk...) First stop was Pangea Organics of course. The mother of all organic care products. If you start a Pangea regime, you will honestly not know what hit you. My mom taught me early on that your skin is your biggest organ so you should take care of it. Moisturize every day and what not, but the other steps (exfoliating, cleansing, weekly masks, etc.) are just as important to keep you radiant and glowing. Plus, if you wear organic b...