Tag Archives: fitness

Enter to Win “The Everyday Supermodel” by Molly Sims

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Supermodel, actress and mother Molly Sims is revealing the secrets to living a balanced and beautiful life in her new book “The Everyday Supermodel.” The book which comes out this week features Molly’s road-tested beauty, fashion, fitness and wellness tricks.

While we all know Molly Sims as a flawless magazine cover girl, like all of us, she too has battled weight issues, bad hair days, career setbacks and fashion disasters.  So what’s the secret to her effortless supermodel look and confidence? Hard work and trying absolutely everything. Having tested nearly every weight loss, fashion and beauty trick, Molly is ready to share what actually works with women everywhere.

Be on the lookout for the following tips and tricks:

· Weight-loss strategies to help you end your love/hate relationship with food, like how to identify which “health foods” are fakers and a “Molly-fied Meatless Monday” plan for incorporating more veggies into your diet.

· On-the-go workouts to help you move, dance, spin, and stretch your way to a hotter, healthier and happier you—think treadmill tricks like sidestepping and skipping and tips on how to turn up your sweat in order to reduce bloating, smooth cellulite and glow.

· Chic and figure-flattering style advice for every budget, from a list of luxe for less labels to key undercover agents and hidden helpers that will help you look polished from head to toe.

· Easy-to-follow hair and makeup tutorials that will take you from the everyday to the runway, including a makeup-less, untouched close up of Molly and how she tackles her “issues” like breakouts and melasma.

· Look-good/feel-good advice to help you bounce back from setbacks, decide what you want, and make your dreams come true!

· Tips and tricks from Molly’s celebrity pals, like Rachel Zoe, Jessica Alba, Joey Maalouf and more!

· Supermomma extras from Lori Bergman’s Fertility Smoothie to natural therapies and tips to keep your body supermodel ready before, during and after pregnancy.

You can enter to win a copy of “The Everyday Supermodel” in three easy steps:

1.  Follow both Aspiring Socialite and The Everyday Supermodel on Instagram.

2.  Comment on this post telling me what makes you an everyday supermodel. Be sure to include your email.

3.  Stay fabulous!

Disclaimer: You must provide an address in the continental United States to be eligible to win. Contest ends January 22, 2015. 

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Vampire Academy: Self-Defense Training at the Anderson Martial Arts Academy

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Last week, in recognition of National Self-Defense Month, I showed off my inner Buffy the Vampire Slayer at a Vampire Academy-themed self-defence class hosted by the Anderson Martial Arts Academy. Having long been a fan of The Twilight Saga and True Blood, I wasn’t about to miss the chance to work out in style at a vampire self-defence class.

On a serious note, it’s important for everyone, especially women, to know how to defend themselves in an attack. Basically, there are three types of self-defense. They include avoiding a bad situation (i.e. taking a cab home instead of the subway or staying in a public area), unarmed combat, and armed combat. Surprisingly, you don’t need a lot of fancy training to be able to defend yourself. One of the simplest ways I learned is to go for the eyes. No matter how big someone is, if you poke them hard enough in the eye, they will stop dead in their tracks leaving you time to run away. If you haven’t already, sign up for at least one self-defense class. It’s a great way to kick ass and an excellent workout.

Vampire Academy is the movie adaptation of Richelle Mead’s 2007 best-selling series, Vampire Academy. The film was made by the writer of Heathers and the director of Mean Girls. It opens on February 14th.

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Can’t wait to see it!

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Always go for the eyes

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BOOM! Here I am showing off some Buffy moves.

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2014 Resolutions to Stick With All Year

Some New Year’s resolutions notoriously fall to the wayside by mid-January or early February, but there are some important and reasonable changes you can stick to from now to 2015 and beyond. The World Health Organization (WHO) states true health is a state of complete physical, social and mental well-being, rather than the mere absence of disease. According to a list compiled by USA.gov, many New Year’s Resolutions reflect this truth. The most popular New Year’s Resolutions are eating healthier, getting fit and reducing stress. While most people lose the drive for these resolutions mid-year (at the latest), there are ways you can go strong all year long.

1. Get Fit

Getting fit helps your well-being in numerous ways. Regular exercise and physical activity reduces stress levels, increases energy, promotes creativity, helps you remain alert and stimulates the release serotonin and endorphins (making you feel happier).

Photo by bepositivelyfit via Flickr

If you were completely inactive in 2013, start slow by taking a 15-minute walk three days a week. Once you are comfortable with this amount of activity, increase your walk to 30-minutes three days a week. According to Mayo Clinic, you should eventually begin to exercise 30-minutes every day. You can gradually begin incorporating other physician-approved activities into your lifestyle and visit sites like Laser Spine Institute to watch videos that demonstrate how to exercise safely and offer first-hand patient experiences.

2. Reduce Stress

To reduce stress, you need to stop worrying. Constant worrying can keep you up at night and make you tense throughout the day. If you believe that your worrying protects you in some way, breaking this habit may be difficult. Once you recognize that worrying is a problem, not a solution, you can regain control of your mind.

Telling yourself to stop worrying is not the answer. You can suppress these thoughts, but you cannot eliminate them for good. To test this theory, close your eyes and picture a yellow zebra. After seeing this zebra in your mind, stop thinking about it. Chances are the yellow zebra continues to reappear. This is why ‘thought stopping’ does not work.

Photo by RelaxingMusic via Flickr

Choose a place and set time where you can worry. Make sure the time you choose will not affect your sleep schedule. During this worry period, you can worry about anything. Throughout your day when a worry enters your head, make a note of it and save it for your worry period. Postponing worry works because it effectively breaks the habit of worrying in the present moment. You save it for later and as you develop the ability to postpone your worries, you will begin realizing you have more control than you previously thought.

3. Eat Healthier/Lose Weight

Excess weight adds more stress to your back and joints, losing weight can help relieve some of the pain you are experiencing.

Photo by fiverlocker via Flickr

One of the best ways to get on the right track is to eat a healthy breakfast. Breakfast truly is the most important meal of the day. Your metabolism does not begin to work until you eat breakfast. Just like exercise, eating breakfast increases your energy levels and ability to concentrate. However, to benefit from eating breakfast, you need to choose healthy foods. Avoid the jelly-filled doughnut and instead opt for homemade trail mix, hard-boiled eggs or chopped fruit. Starting your day off the right way will help you keep your New Year’s recharged every day. And don’t forget, if you fall off, you can always jump right back on track. Tomorrow is a new, fresh start.

Healthier Food Choices

  • Low-Fat Dairy
  • Vegetables
  • Fruit
  • Whole Grains
  • Oatmeal
  • Yogurt Smoothies
  • Ground Turkey Omelet
  • Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes

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The Pros and Cons of Doing a Juice Cleanse

I’ve never done a juice cleanse before, but I’ve been seriously thinking about it for the last few months. When making all major life decisions, it’s always important to weigh the pros and cons. As a young professional in New York, my life is crazy so it’s not always easy to eat healthy. Therefore, I’ve become very interested in the juice cleanse craze. But, wonder if it’s really the diet phenomenon it’s made out to be or just a silly fad.

Pros:

  • Cold-Pressed Nutrients: Many of the juices used in juice cleanses are cold pressed so they are packed with nutrients. There are many benefits to cold-pressing juices, but the most significant is that the pressing action won’t oxidize the fruit and vegetables like grinders often do keeping the nutrients and enzymes intact. Not boiling the juice also keeps in the optimal amount of nutrients that your body craves. These nutrients are also said to give you extra energy.  
  • Weight Loss: Since permanent and healthy weight loss is based on a lifestyle of exercising and making the right food choices, you shouldn’t do a juice cleanse just to lose weight. However, immediate weight loss is a pleasant side effect.
  • Healthy Eating Reset: All of my friends who love juice cleanses always say that introducing raw foods somehow resets your body into craving healthy nutrient rich foods rather than high-calorie splurges. So once the cleanse is complete it’s easy to continue eating well and losing weight.
  • No Cooking: I don’t know about you, but I’m not a huge fan of cooking. I usually don’t make anything that can’t be prepared in the microwave. So doing a juice cleanse would eliminate cooking altogether giving me a preset menu of delicious juices.

Cons:

  • Hunger: Though the juices used in most juice cleanses are rich in amazing nutrients, I can only imagine that days of being on a liquid diet can often leave you hungary.  
  • No Drinking: Not only can you not eat on a juice cleanse, drinking anything, but water also must be given up. Like any socialite, I’m going to miss my champagne. Though I love a good cocktail, I think the drink that I would miss the most is coffee.
  • Lack of a social life: Eating isn’t only necessary for survival, it’s also a major social activity. When you’re invited to go out to eat with your friends or co-workers, it’s not going to be fun drinking your juice while everyone else orders rounds of drinks to go with their favorite dishes.
  • Super Expensive: At an average of $65 a day, a juice cleanse is a major investment.

Conclusion:

After taking a look at the pros and cons, I’m still very interested in trying a juice cleanse. Diet fad or not, I love the idea of resetting your system with raw cold-pressed nutrients from fruits and vegetables. Since I don’t think I could handle not eating for more than 3 days, I’m looking to do one of the 3-day cleanses from either BluePrintCleanse or Liquiteria. Before committing to a juice cleanse, it’s important to try all the juices first to make sure they taste good. I’ve tried both BluePrintCleanse and Liquiteria and can tell you that they are both delicious.

In order to avoid the temptation to break my cleanse early, I’m going to pick a weekend to do it where I don’t have anything going on. As long as you time the cleanse well avoiding holidays, birthdays, or vacation getaways, a juice cleanse is absolutely worth trying. Though a juice cleanse isn’t good to do during a wedding or vacation it’s great to do one before to give you some extra energy and a slimmer look. Even if you decided that a full juice cleanse isn’t for you, you can still be part of the juice craze by drinking a juice as a meal replacement or with a healthy meal to take in the nutrients.

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4 Smartphone Apps to Get You in Socialite Shape

4 Smartphone Apps to Get You in Socialite Shape

It’s not too late to get into serious shape for summer! If you have a smartphone, then you already have a health coach in your pocket. Your smartphone is always with you, can track how you are doing, and can make recommendations as to how to improve your health. If it gets too annoying, there is always the power button.

A 2013 study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found most people are open to using personal health apps on their phones, since they offer good information about users’ current health and provide ways to track progress.

Additionally, the design and manufacturing of medical equipment is an expensive task. Smartphones can be a platform on which new medical technology can be implemented and used at a much lower cost than normal. Inexpensive, disposable sensors can be developed that plug into a smartphone to monitor everything from heart rate to blood glucose levels, according to Newsfactor. This means everyone can have a personal health-monitoring machine in their pockets.

Current personal health apps focus on recording your state of health and tracking trends. You can watch these trends to reward yourself for positive progress and make adjustments to your lifestyle to improve your long-range health outlook. Of course, these apps can also tell you how poorly you’re doing. You still have the choice of staying with your fitness program or not.

Here are some personal health apps to help you get started with your own pocket health coach, whether you’re a loyal iPhone user or love your phone with bluetooth from T-mobile.

1. Nike Training Club

This app will get your heart rate up with a set of your choice from 90 cardio workouts. You can set your own personal goals and track your progress toward them, making adjustments so you’ll see steady improvement. Once set up, several 30-45 minute sessions are created to get you to your goal. You still have to do the work, but this app takes the planning and tracking off of you. This app is free and available on the iTunes Store for iOS or Google Play for Android devices.

2. Moves

This app turns your smartphone into a device that tracks your footsteps throughout the day. It can also record miles cycled on your bicycle. This app helps you analyze your daily movement patterns and tells you where you can make adjustments for better health. After a couple weeks of collecting data, you may discover that Wednesday is normally a day of little activity for you, so you can build in a walk at lunch to balance the day out. This app is free for iOS devices.

3. UP by Jawbone

UP looks at your entire life to understand your health. Sure, you’re faithful to your circuit training, but if you’re angry all the time, your health will suffer. Using a wristband to monitor movement and sleep, this app also lets you record your eating habits and moods. The app is free, but you’ll have to buy a wristband at $129.99. The app is available for iOS and Android

4. Fooducate

Learn more about the food you eat with this app. It helps you understand food labels and tells you what is “good” and “bad” about the food. This is a free app for iOS and Android.

What health app is your favorite? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Cover photo: the yoga studio at Blue Sprit from Flickr user Amanda Hirsch / creativedc.

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