Lately, my obsession with ClassPass has resulted in a significant wardrobe change. I’ve become obsessed with looks that can go from studio to street which means lots of fab brightly colored yoga pants.
I think I’m really starting to understand the appeal of basically living in workout gear. I often find myself wearing it to places like the movies or a casual dinner even if I don’t have a workout class after. Here I am going from barre to brunch in my Cory Vines Lane Print Leggings. Life is good!
We’re all familiar with the feeling of pure exhaustion. As an Aspiring Socialite, that feeling becomes inevitable when you’re constantly gallivanting from shows, meetings and parties. Luckily, this socialite has a few official yet humorous tips to stay energized in this fast paced world.
My number one go-to quick fix when I’m running around like a mad-woman is…yes… coffee. A Venti Latte from Starbucks, to be precise. Starbucks coffee is the strongest coffee I know and therefore the main brand of caffeine I resort to. However, the reason why I suggest you drink a latte is because of that small dose of protein intake. Protein is a “macronutrient”, which means that the body needs a relatively large amount of it. The body does not store protein and therefore can’t draw the nutrient from a reservoir when the body is lacking it. So it is necessary to intake protein whenever you can.
Having a balanced diet is extremely important as well. A daily balanced diet includes a combination of plenty of fruits and vegetables, starchy foods including bread, rice, potatoes and pasta and proteins including eggs, beans and dairy. You must also drink about eight glasses of water a day (that dirty-martini does not count). Don’t ever skip breakfast! This first meal is literally the fuel that gets you ready for the day. Those who eat breakfast are known to have more energy and do better at work overall. Those who skip it tend to be irritable and tired. So go ahead and have that egg sandwich with your Venti Latte.
Third, it is recommended that you take a daily multi-vitamin to keep you healthy and balanced. Vitamins, when taken overtime become stored within the body, thus your body will use the fuel from those nutrients that are already stored whenever necessary. Moreover, Magnesium is particularly important when it comes to your energy, so make sure that this is included in the multi-vitamin. Women are advised to take around 300 milligrams and 350 milligrams are recommended for men. A healthy dose of magnesium can also be found in a handful of almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, ran cereal and fish.
I am sure that you have heard of the old expression “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Well, a daily dose of moringa powder, the dried and powdered leaves of the Moringa tree, keeps the doctor at bay. The powder is filled with a number of nutrients, minerals and vitamins and benefits your health entirely. Because of the dense and purest form of nutrients within this plant, the body is able to keep its energy levels up in an effective manner. In other words, sprinkle this stuff on everything.
It’s also important to stay physically active to keep those energy levels up and any stress and anger down. Doing cardio about three times a week is enough for you to feel rejuvenated and mentally stable.
Lastly, get some sleep. Turn off that phone, get under the covers and watch an episode of your favorite show one night a week, followed by at least eight hours of sleep. No one likes to feel exhausted, let alone look exhausted. Remember, the only kind of bags you should ever have are designer bags. Not those under your eyes.
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post, but the opinions are all my own.
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.
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.
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.
My number one go-to quick fix when I’m running around like a mad-woman is…yes… coffee. A Venti Latte from Starbucks, to be precise. Starbucks coffee is the strongest coffee I know and therefore the main brand of caffeine I resort to. However, the reason why I suggest you drink a latte is because of that small dose of protein intake. Protein is a “macronutrient”, which means that 
