Eat Dance Live

On January 1st of 2011, I'll be celebrating my third year as a full-fledged dedicated gym-goer. While I had always been active growing up, it was never something I really put any thought into nor did on a regular basis. Like most girls, I adopted more of a gym "lifestyle" in my first year of my undergrad, which usually consisted in some form of cardio when I wasn't screaming at my friends to "lemmesleep lemmesleep lemmesleep" when they came pounding on my door for gym time at 7am on weekdays... we were crazy yes. Still, while it was fun and kept me in shape (sorta), it wasn't anything regular. On January 1, 2007, I committed to delve in Andrew's hardcore gym world by getting really psyched up to give the Body for Life 12 week program a shot with him. While he'd done it before, I decided I wanted to take my health in my own hands, and doing it with a partner was probably the best way to go at it. Three years later, and with fitness highs and lows ...

This week was all about Gina's Summer Shape Up Week 1. It's been awesome, and with the humidity and heat out, it's been a killer... in a good way! All workout days include a 2 mile walk to the gym. Her Speed Day really kicked my a**. For the first time in years, I pushed through the workout like the out of shape 13 year old struggling to laps in PE that I used to be... scary stuff, and I know I have the oppressive weather to thank for that, but by the end I was super energized and felt amazing. In fact, I felt great every day. Because of dentist appointments, parental visits, and the like, I had to switched things up just a bit (plus I added stuff), so here was the run down, but do visit her blog if you're interested in knowing more! Also, I know I should be doing yoga more regularly. Last summer I got into the habit of getting up early and doing 20 minute Yoga Download sessions every day and I felt amazing, my back never hurt, and I was energized throughout the whole...

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...

Oops... Time slipped by last night and I forgot to post. I'm hoping that posting early enough will make that go unnoticed. One of the things I love to figure out when preparing foods, whether raw or not, is aspiring to combine tastes and textures in creative and tasty new ways. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes pretty simple to know which ingredient will go nicely with another, how to mix sweet and salty, crunchy and soft, foods with a bite with foods that are 'thicker', etc. However, one of the challenges with raw foods is how to actually make things edible. Obviously I don't mean how to make them tasty, that's definitely not the hard part, but how to actually make one able to pick up the food you they're served without making a mess. Some foods were by definition not meant to be eaten in a non-messy fashion, think burritos or burgers or nachos or something, but some things were, like most desserts. While it can be a challenge to make a wrap stuffed with ...

Thank you Gina for your amazing post today for what I didn't even know was National Love Your Body Day! For those of you who are too busy and/or lazy to click on that link, here are the two main take-aways from that article I think everyone including myself should listen to: 1) "Our bodies are always talking to us and it's up to us to actually stop and listen to what they're saying." I totally agree with this and I think that this is the most important thing of all. We think we know our bodies but half the time we are too busy listening to our egos to figure out what are physical bodies are actually asking for. Most people ask me why I went vegan, and even more people ask me why I went raw... the honest answer is, my body told me to. There's nothing more to it than that. I just woke up one morning and knew that's what I had to do. It was only after I became vegan and more recently raw that I looked into all the additional environmental/health/ethical/phys...