3 Ways to Love Yourself More This Valentine’s Day

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With Valentine’s Day a week away, love is in the air. While it’s fine to spoil your kiddos with candied hearts or splurge on a fancy dinner out with your sweetie, what about the love you’re giving yourself? That’s right, self-love baby! Here are three simple ways you can love yourself more starting now:

1. Quit Your Diet

Toss the scale, stop counting calories and look inward. Ask yourself how you want to FEEL. Then rather than focusing on the foods you need to take out, focus on fueling your body. This method is called crowding out; by incorporating more of the nutrient-rich, feel-good stuff, we naturally wean off of the foods that leave us feeling depleted.

What foods energize you? Make you feel vibrant? Fill you up? Prioritize those, but know there’s always room for a slice of pizza, a donut or your fave latte too.

2. Create a Morning or Evening Ritual

How do you start or end your day? If it doesn’t feel good to you, change it up. Bring in feel-good routines like journaling, DIY facials, hot lemon water, affirmation card pulls, a cozy cup of tea, or a juicy book. Here’s an … Read More!

what’s your love language?

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Good afternoon, lovelies! Hope you all had a glorious, love-filled Valentine’s Day. Stuffed teddy bears, candy hearts and expensive dinners aside, I hope you were able to feel the love in some way or another.

Speaking of love, I recently started “reading” (well, listening) to The 5 Love Languages on Audible as recommended by a friend. Sure I’ve taken the test in the past to discover my love language (which I found fascinating!) but wanted to dig a little deeper and see what the book was all about.

I must say, I’m 8 chapters in and can’t put the book down take my headphones off! It’s no wonder I was always so fascinated with Psychology and relationships throughout highschool and college. Perhaps that’s why I started off as a relationship blogger…which I’m so glad I put in the past (that’s a whole ‘nother story for another time!)

So what’s this whole love language thing about, anyway? Written by relationship counselor Dr. Gary Chapman, the book discusses how we communicate through 5 primary love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gifts and physical touch.

The catch is that we all have different love languages, meaning what works for … Read More!

{Our Story} How The Boy Popped The Question

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For those of you who don’t yet know, yesterday something incredibly magical and life-changing happened for me: The Boy & I got engaged. And for those of you who don’t know, The Boy’s real name? Jason. Let’s call him “J.”

And now for the million-dollar question, How did he do it? Well ladies (and gents), I’m about to tell you…

On Friday evening we were out in Rockport celebrating our beautiful friends Ross and Megan’s wedding. While we were dancing (and perhaps after a tad too much wine), J asked me if I’d like to go for a run with him in the morning on the Charles before we took off for his mother’s 60th birthday celebration.

I immediately laughed at him and teased him for suddenly showing such interest in exercise. While he most definitely works out from time to time, usually I’m the one pushing we go on runs together more often. He snapped back at me that it’s only going to be fall for so long and we should take advantage of the weather while we can. So I agreed.

The next morning I woke up exhausted and somewhat hungover. J was no longer in bed, so … Read More!

Just What I Needed: In Finding Love

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You know those moments when just the right thing comes along at just the right time? It’s as if it was planned that way on purpose, like a little special hug from the Universe. It usually sneaks up on you during one of those “off days,” rough patches or time of grieving. All of the sudden, a little pick-me-up sort of falls into your lap out of no where.

To be honest with you, I’m still feeling a bit off in coping with Monday’s events, and have been having a hard time writing let alone feeling myself. I just keep replaying the day over and over again up to the moment of the attack, thinking “What if it were me?” However, I’ve certainly been finding love & joy in everything around me to not only help myself cope, but also those around me. To help our city heal.

You see, when you look for love it’s everywhere, really. You can find love in things as small as your morning cappuccino or as large as an entire community coming together to pray & heal.

Love is in the eyes of your barista, your lover, the stranger on the street. In … Read More!

Gratitude & Love: A Personal Reflection on Yesterday’s Events

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This was the one photo I snapped during yesterday’s Boston Marathon.

It’s one of my favorite days in the city, a day that makes me proud to be a Bostonian, a day that makes me contemplate to run a Marathon one day myself. And for the past 4 years, I have gathered with friends and loved ones to watch at my go-to spot: the Finish Line. This year was extra-special as one of my friends was running her very first 26.2.

The Finish Line is a place you see strength, love, dedication, power, and victory. A place where families and loved ones come together to celebrate. A place where runners have their moment. A place where I always find myself tearing up seeing the faces of pure accomplishment.

Unfortunately, yesterday’s tears were tears of sadness, not joy; hugs of fear not celebration. As you can see in the above photo, I was right at mile 26 when the first bomb went off. Like most, I was startled at first but thought it may be a cannon or a celebratory gun shot. When the second bomb went off less than a block from where I was standing, I knew I … Read More!

Healthy Chicks in the Community: A Lover of Life, Barre, Cheese & Everything in Between

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Good evening ladies! Hope you all had a nice day. I’m feeling real good as I just got home from a sweaty spin class/ meeting with the ever-so-energetic Ali Balsassare at Equinox. I’m beginning to love evening exercises more than I thought, though I’m still a morning person at heart.

Alright, let’s get to it; it’s time for another week of Healthy Chicks in the Community. Remember how last week I mentioned that Jess had an equally awesome twin sister? Well, I thought it’d be fitting to feature her amazing twin (in fact, they are actually triplets) on the blog this week. I’m thrilled to introduce you to the Jolene, whose writing literally gives me chills, or makes me tear up every. single. time. By the way, she truly has one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever witnessed. I’ll let Jo take it from here…

NAME/AGE:  Jolene Bonina, age: 33

BLOG/TWITTER (If Applicable): Blog: Determined To Be: http://determineduncensored.com/ Twitter: jobo_determined

CURRENT CITY:  Andover, Mass.

PHOTO TAKEN:  This is one of my favorite pics with M (it’s a toss up, location takes the cake on this one!), in our favorite town in Sonoma County – Healdsburg. It’s … Read More!

Hump Day Lesson of the Day: When NOT to Say “I Love You”

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The L word has been flowing around everywhere lately…maybe it’s the Valentine’s Day season or something in the air but I’m telling you it’s EVERYWHERE. And unfortunately, lots of these L Bombs have been dropped on accident. EEK! Take the girl on the Bachelor the other night for example – I think her name is Chantal – who said “Everything you do just makes me love you even more…I mean like..er…oops.” AWKWARD.

Then there was my roommate who recently said “I love you poopsie” to the guy she just started dating after he took care of her while throwing up. That was another one of those “oops” moments. Luckily he told her to shut up and go back to bed (phew). I have another roommate in college who used to throw it out there to anyone and everyone, even the mailman or strange studdy buddy from her German class. Sometimes it just comes out. So take this lesson with open ears, and try to stick with “I like you a lottttt” until you really mean it.


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Lookin' Good in Them Genes

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The other day, I was complaining about being Color Blind to the boy I am dating. It’s extremely rare for a girl to be Color Blind, but I unfortunately got the bad gene – something about dominant traits in my dad mixed with my mom’s carrier trait turned into Rachel being Color Blind. I complain like it’s the end of the world, but it’s not like I can’t see color. Whenever I tell people, they ask me “What color is the sky?” “What color is the grass?” Yellow and purple, duh! Seriously, people. Along with my lovely Color Blind trait, I also got the brown hair and the brown (sometimes green, so I guess hazel) eyes, while my sister is blonde with crystal blue eyes. C’mon gene pool, why me?

But as much as I complain, I realize all my traits (weird, bad, ugly and good) come from my family, and that makes me love everything about myself all over again – even if that means calling a friend over every time I need to find the “green” in Word and not being a blonde, blue-eyed babe. In fact, I actually love the fact that I’m naturally brunette- it matches … Read More!