Flashback Friday: On Emotional Eating, Cravings & Everything In Between

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Time for another week of Flashback Friday, where I dig deep into my past life as a chronic, unhappy dieter to shed some light on what I’ve learned since then. This week I tackle emotional eating, cravings and everything in between. Are you ready?

I have a confession: Back when I was in college & hardcore dieting, my #1 vice was peanut butter. Fat-Free Skippy Peanut Butter to be exact. While everything else (like bread, real cheese, Mexican food, margaritas, pasta, certain meats, real sugar, full-fat anything) was off limits and “bad”, I still allowed myself to eat peanut butter. Fat-free peanut butter.

I’d eat it straight out of the jar with a big metal spoon, mindlessly scooping away until before I knew it half the jar would be gone. It made me feel really good — it was my “drug” of choice. I went through a jar of peanut butter a week (give or take).

While Skippy & I had a love affair throughout college, I labeled most food as “bad,” avoiding them like the plague. My “good” list was definitely lacking, and contained things like fat-free dressing, lean chicken, carb-free, low-cal “noodles,” fake cheese, rice cakes, … Read More!

Friday Flashback: Why Confidence Plays a Role in Your Weight Loss Journey

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Good afternoon lovely ladies, and Happy Friday! This week’s Friday Flashback has to do with something that’s  been on my mind a lot lately: confidence.

To me, confidence means trusting your inner self to guide you & feeling certain that things will work themselves out. It’s knowing that, even though things aren’t perfect just yet, everything is going to be OK.

Often times, confidence gets a bad rap, mistaken for cockiness or being arrogant. But today I’m going to talk about the other end of the spectrum…when you let your confidence (or lack there of) hold you back and prevent you from living your greatest potential.

Back when I was dieting and in a pretty messed up relationship with the scale, my confidence level was about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 100. While I went about my day all smiles pretending everything was “perfect,” in the inside I was struggling.

I felt unhappy with my weight, weighing myself 2, 3, 5 times a day hoping that a drop in numbers would make me truly happy, only it didn’t. Every time the scale went up a pound, my confidence (and self-worth for that matter) would take a … Read More!

Friday Flashbacks: Forget Fads & Be True to You

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Good afternoon ladies and welcome to this week’s feature for Friday Flashbacks, where I share with you personal life lessons from my past.

Do you remember in highschool when everyone would drive the same car, wear the same clothes and eat the same lunch because it was cool? It was “the thing” to do/eat/drink/be. I swear my lunch table was like an ad for Abercombie & Fitch (and bagels with cream cheese).

I remember one day, one of the girls in our class plucked her eyebrows super thin, and then everyone started doing it including myself. Soon it was trending like wildfire. Only problem was it completely backfired and I ended up over-plucking to the extent where I just looked plain scary. Not to mention the fact that I used to pile on two pounds of makeup…because that’s what all the girls were doing after all.

This continued in college with oversized designer sunglasses, blonde highlights, fad diets and Vera Bradley bags. Whatever was “in” at the moment all the girls would buy, making us look and act like one big clone. There was the day Junior year of college where a chunk of the girls were doing the … Read More!

How to Make it Happen (and Get What You Want in Life)

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[Now is the time to stand up on your two feet and make things happen]

Good aftenoon chickies!  Sorry I haven’t posted in quite some time, but I’ve been super busy living the life, which is what it’s all about after all right? From working (and attending) some pretty amazing events like the Top Chef Tour of Boston and the Boston Organics Food Festival (recap on the blog coming soon!) to writing and publishing my little heart away, growing my business and planning my first workshop, I’ve been one busy lady.

Now that summer is just around the corner, I’m dedicating these next few months to making it happen. More specifically, that is putting my “wants”, “needs” and dreams into effect.

Last night while at the Dave Mathews Band concert with The Boy, the lyrics to one of their new songs Gaucho really struck a chord with me:

“We gotta do much more than believe if we really wanna change things
We gotta do much more than believe if we wanna see the world change…

I know its hard to imagine

But we could do anything

Under the stars.”

I know it’s easier said than done, but what I … Read More!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

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As you can tell from the title of my post, today I will be talking about all of my favorite things. However, I now also have that song from  the classic The Sound of Music stuck in my head (and I’m sorry if you now do as well). Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…OK I’ll stop now. Those most definitely are not a few of my favorite things. I hate cats. But I do have a BUNCH of my very own favorite things and that’s what I’d like to share with you today. Enjoy!

My Favorite Perfume: Asteria by Marina de Bourbon – not only is it in a pretty purple bottle, but I fell in love with the scent the very first day I discovered it. It’s feminine, sexy and sweet all at the same time. 

My Favorite Lip Balm: C.O. Bigelow My Favorite Lip Balm, Bath & Body Works – this one is easy as it’s actually called “My Favorite Lip Balm.” My sister got it for me as part of a Christmas gift last year, and I’ve been in love with it ever since. It makes my lips perfectly smooth and shiny, … Read More!

What's on My…iPod, workout schedule, mind?

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Happy Friday fellow healthy chicks, and hooray for the glorious weekend ahead! Since it’s Friday and I know you’re all just itching to get out of work and get your hands on a martini, I’ll keep this post short ‘n’ sweet. Today we’re going to play a little game over at Healthy Chicks so that you all can get to know me better, and I too can hopefully get to know YOU better along the way. 

What’s on My…? 

iPod: Newly downloaded songs= Katy Perry’s “Firework” (totally motivating and great for an energy boost, plus she totally rocked it at the VS Fashion Show), One Republic’s “Secrets” (also gets me going in the morning along with my coffee), Paramore’s “The Only Exception” (how can you not love this song?), Sad Brad Smith’s “Help Yourself” (have been obsessed since watching the movie “Up in the Air“), George Harrison’s “What is Life” (an oldie but a goodie).

Refrigerator Shelves: Honestly, I’m embarrassed ’cause there isn’t much right now- definitely time to hit up Trader Joe’s. Currently I have eggs (I heart making egg white omelets), a bunch of veggies (including spinach, cucumber, carrots and zucchini), marinara sauce (leftover from Read More!

Impatience is Not Pretty

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This morning a side of me I don’t like came out: impatience. Blah. Impatience. It’s both unnecessary and unhealthy. It even sounds unhealthy. I would say in the grand scheme of life I’m a pretty patient girl, but this morning I was far from patient, and I don’t like to be that way. I don’t know if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or what, but something was up. It may have been the fact that my mother woke me up at 7:30 a.m. and tried to have a conversation with me while I was half asleep (sorry mom, it wasn’t really me). Anyway, my not-so-patient mood increased when I was informed that UPS was indeed not going to redeliver my package I missed on Saturday, and that I had to go pick it up. Grrr, I don’t have a car. They expect me to walk? Why can’t they just bring it to me? (impatience getting the best of me in my head. They are busy too. I’m not entitled for royal treatment). 

Once I realized that I was not going to win this battle and that the package was not … Read More!

Friday Shenanigans: What's On My Mind

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Today was a pretty random day, hence making for a pretty random blog post. I started my day off amazingly with a nice 3-mile run in the sun with my best friend, followed by an even more amazing breakfast that consisted of an egg white omelet with veggies and feta and two pieces of Ezekiel toast (I guess it was more like brunch since we ate at 11 a.m.) Anyway, I then threw on my cute, new sundress for a meeting at Panera, only to be graced by rain later this afternoon. (Go away Earl!) Now I’m sitting here on my couch half-soaked, hair a mess but still ready to write, write, write. Random, I know. Alas, five random thoughts on my mind this lovely, rainy Friday evening…

1. People Watching : Seriously, I think this is one of my favorite hobbies of all time. This afternoon I went to a cafe, ordered a large iced coffee, then parked myself on a window-side stool facing the busy streets of Boston. I not only got to write and enjoy my deliciously perfect coffee, but I also got to observe hundreds of interesting people walking by. From construction workers who stared at … Read More!