Free 7 Day clean eating challenge

How would you like to join a 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge? 
What you will get is:
* Free Meal Plan
*Clean Recipes
*Shopping List
*Mini workouts (free)
What you need to do?
*Commit for 7 days
*Take your before pics and measurements
*respond daily via email
*BE DETERMINED
**** Leave your email in the comments to be added 

Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese

Sticking to a healthy diet does not have to mean living a life without mac and cheese! We asked our culinary team to create a rich and creamy macaroni and cheese casserole that would taste as good as the original, but wouldn’t wreck your diet…and it had to be something kids would love to eat. What they came up with was even more delicious than we imagined. It has less than 300 calories per serving and 15 grams of protein!The recipe makes 10 servings, so it can feed a hungry family or make several servings for healthy meal prep.

This recipe boasts two types of cheese – yes, real cheese! – sharp cheddar and Gruyere. The secret is using extra-flavorful cheeses, so a little bit goes a long way. They blend with a silky butternut squash puree to create an intensely flavorful sauce. We added peppers, onions, and a sprinkling of parsley to make the dish even more tasty and nutritious.

photo courtesy of Kirsten Morningstar


Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese
Total Time: 1 hr. 16 min.
Prep Time: 15 min.
Cooking Time: 61 min.
Yield: 10 servings, about 1½ cups each
Ingredients:
1 lb. dry whole wheat macaroni
1 tsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 medium red bell peppers, chopped
3 cups cubed butternut squash
1¾ cups low-sodium organic chicken broth
1 cup low-fat (1%) milk
2 Tbsp. low-fat (1%) plain Greek yogurt
1 cup shredded Gruyere (or Swiss) cheese
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
Sea salt and ground black pepper (to taste; optional)
Nonstick cooking spray
Finely chopped fresh parsley (for garnish; optional)
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375° F.
2. Cook macaroni according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
3. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.
4. Add onion and bell peppers; cook, stirring frequently, for 4 to 6 minutes, or until onion is translucent. Set aside.
5. Combine squash, broth, and milk in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium; gently boil for 22 to 25 minutes, or until squash is tender.
6. Place squash mixture in a blender or food processor; cover with lid and kitchen towel. Blend until smooth.
7. Combine squash mixture, macaroni, onion mixture, yogurt, and cheeses. Season with salt and pepper if desired; mix well.
8. Place macaroni mixture in a 13 x 9-inch ceramic or glass baking dish that has been coated with spray. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until sauce is bubbling.
9. Garnish with parsley if desired.
Tip: Blend small batches of hot liquids in blender or food processor since they expand during the blending process, therefore decreasing the chance of overflowing.

7 Secrets to Sticking with Exercise

Staying fit is a super power, wellness-wise. Exercise can improve your energy levels, sleep quality, body composition, and overall health. While these perks are great, hectic lives can make sticking with an exercise program tricky. Simple shifts in your behaviors can help minimize these barriers, making reaching and maintaining your fitness goals almost as easy as pushing play.
Set reasonable goals. Start with activities that seem attainable and reasonably challenging, then set a goal to engage in that activity at least a few times per week. Most wellness perks, according to the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, kick in if you do a minimum of 150 minutes of moderately-intense exercise per week. That’s just over 21 minutes a day.

Schedule it. Prioritize workouts in your calendar like anything else. Schedule routine sessions at times that make the most sense within your lifestyle. Many people find it’s easier to stick to an exercise routine in the morning while others find they have more energy in the afternoons. But neither is ideal if the time isn’t convenient for you. Experiment with various options until you find one that works.
Get the gear. Ideally, your workouts won’t require a lot of equipment. Regardless, stock up on whatever you need to get started and choose quality gear, especially when it comes to particularly important items, such as athletic shoes. Wearing colors and textures you enjoy may also help keep you motivated to suit up and head out.
Plan ahead. Prepare your gear ahead of time to prevent skipping workouts. If you schedule your workouts for the morning, set your fitness attire out the night before. If you plan to exercise on your way home from work, pack a workout bag in advance and bring it with you.
Buddy up. Most everything is more fun with friends. Use the buddy system for increased workout accountability and enjoyment. If showing up or making time to exercise is your biggest challenge, having someone to be accountable to could be all you need.
Sleep and rest well. Quality sleep makes for effective exercise, and helps ensure that you have the mental gusto to show up. Cultivate a healthy sleep schedule, and stick to routine sleep and waking times as often as you can.
Cut yourself some slack. Aiming for perfection can work against you. If you miss a workout, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, consider it a rest day and get back on it the next day. If you find yourself unable to stick to your goals, reassess. It’s better to work out at a lower intensity or for less time for a while than not at all. If you’re still struggling, seek guidance from a qualified sports trainer or one of the Beachbody experts. Doing so doesn’t show weakness, but strength.

7 Real World Tips to Get More Sleep

A while back, I decided to take back my night. It had been three years since my divorce, a hellish experience that had completely robbed me of my ability to sleep. 3 hours was an average night. 5 hours was a miracle.

Much like a good yoga workout, time heals all wounds, so eventually my pity party ended—but the sleep thing didn’t correct itself, so while life was okay, it was by no means awesome. My performance suffered athletically, mentally, and (most horrifically) in terms of that other thing people do in bed.

It’s by no means surprising. From an athletic perspective, a study from Stanford University shows that athletes who slept 10 hours a night showed a marked increase in performance. Another study out from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that healthy sleep habits help to “reboot” your brain, making room for new knowledge. As for the sex thing, just take my word for it.

The first step I took in addressing my sleep issue was to take all the tired, old advice you’ve read a thousand times. Some of it actually worked quite well.

1. I instituted a regular bedtime of 10 PM to give my body’s natural rhythms a cue.
2. I stopped drinking coffee after noon, giving myself substantially more time than the 6 hours caffeine typically takes to get through your system.
3. I took natural sleep aids. Melatonin didn’t do squat for me. Some experts theorize this is because supplementing this hormone only works on people who are naturally low on it. Valerian root, however, worked like a charm—despite the stink. Finding the right natural sleep aid might take you a few tries, but don’t give up until you’ve tried all the different (safe) sleep supplements out there. One of them is bound to knock you on your keister.

While these tricks certainly helped, my sleep was still less than perfect. I wanted to trythe other tips out there, but they just didn’t make sense to me. For example, “Turn your bedroom into calming place.” The walls of my room are covered in neon rock show posters and garish Hindu tapestries. Awesome? Yes. Calming? Not so much—but I’m not about to take them down. But one day, on a whim, I strung some blue holiday lights across my window. They bathed my sleep space in a soothing, cool light, despite the wall hangings. That’s when it hit me.

Generic advice is just that: generic. That doesn’t mean it’s bad; it just means you shouldn’t be afraid to adapt it for your own needs. It’s a question of trying variations on the theme until something clicks. From there, I started to have some serious fun with my sleep project. Here are a few more tweaks that worked:

What they told me to do: “Make your bedroom an electronics-free zone.” The basic notion is that all those magnetic waves and glowing screens mess with your circadian rhythms and distract you from sleeping.

What I did: Like most Americans, not only do my iThings entertain and delight me during the daylight hours, but I use them as an alarm clock, a white noise machine, and a place to jot down things that occur to me in the middle of night—all crucial to a good night’s sleep. I wasn’t willing to give all that up.

However, I was willing to pare down. I use both my iPad and my iPhone for all of the above. However, I also use my iPhone for receiving phone calls and texts. Even if I disable the alerts for these features, it’s just so tempting to check texts manually at 2 AM because, you know, Commissioner Gordon might need me to go fight the Riddler or something. My simple solution was to sequester my iPhone to the kitchen each night and keep the iPad in my bedroom for more relaxing tasks. Bye-bye late night texting. Batman will need to save Gotham without me.

What you can do: Look around your bedroom. What do you really need in there? Even if you don’t believe in the whole magnetic waves thing, there are probably a bunch of buzzing, blinking lights you could do without. Ditch some, hide others in drawers, and put blankets over the rest.

What they told me to do: “Work out at night.” Why? Because the post-exercise cool-down process helps make you sleepy.

What I did: If I work out before bed, I’m amped. My brain’s on an adrenaline groove and I’m ready to take over the planet. What I need is something to wind down. Enter yoga. Yoga has a host of benefits, but it helps me around bedtime on two fronts. First, it acts as a mellow series of stretches that relax my muscles for slumber. Second, matching your breath to your movements—ujjayi breathing, they call it—takes focus. That, in turn, takes my mind off the baggage I accumulate every day. When I’ve mentally distanced myself from that pending 10,000-word deadline, it’s easier to hit the sack.

What you can do: Start noting how you feel after your various workouts. What pumps you up? What mellows you out? Maybe even track this in a journal. When you see relaxation patterns, start doing those workouts at night.

 What they told me to do: “If you’re not asleep in ten minutes, get up.” This one comes from the idea that you’re probably not ready to sleep and lying there will only stress you out.

What I did: I have a Tempur-Pedic mattress and a down comforter. They’re reallycomfortable, so if insomnia hits me on a cold winter’s night, the last thing I want to do is press my feet on the cold, hardwood floor and go mosey. Instead of changing locations, I changed mind-sets. When I can’t sleep, I resign myself to the fact. I say, “I can’t sleep. Bummer. Oh well, I’ll just lie here and be comfortable.” For some reason, relieving myself of the burden of slumber works like a charm and I typically drift off in ten minutes.

What you can do: Some of us struggle with sleep. It stinks, but sometimes we just need to embrace it. A long-term sleeping issue can cause health issues, but if you have one lousy night of sleep, it’s not that big of a deal. So when you have a bad case of “the awakes,” think of it as an isolated case. Shrug your shoulders and accept that, worst case, you might be a little sleepy tomorrow.

What do you do when you can't sleep?

Should You Work Out If You Are Sore?

by Steve Edwards

I often get complaints from clients about being sore. Statements like “I thought exercise was going to make me feel good, but now I feel worse than ever” are somewhat common with people who are new to exercising. And there’s not too much for me to tell them. The fact is that if you have any designs on changing your body for the better, you are going to spend some time being sore. It’s inevitable. Fact of life: there is some pain associated with the ultimate pleasure of being fit.

Also, if you anticipate, plan, and take the proper steps, you can minimize your soreness.

I’ll get to this in a sec but, first, let me tell you a little story—a very short one—that might help you out a bit. When I say we all get sore, I mean all. When I originally wrote this, I was very sore. And I got that way by doing one set of lunges. Yes, that’s right. One set!

I wasn’t out of shape. Quite the contrary, I was climbing harder than I had in years and a member of the U.S. National Duathlon Team. So by most people’s definition, ultra fit. However, I’d not been doing lunges. I hadn’t done a single one since finished 10,000 of them over a four-month span the year before. My body wasn’t used to lunges and, whenever you do something physical that you’re not used to, you usually get sore. What this means is that most of you reading this are going to get sore—maybe really, really sore—somewhere along your road to fitness.

But I can help, because I’ve been through every level of soreness possible, from the “ahhh, I’m starting a new program” feeling to “@#&!, I can’t walk” misery. Here are eight ways to achieve the former statement and avoid the latter.

Learn good pain from bad. There are generally two types of pain associated with working out: pain from muscle soreness (microtrauma) and pain from injury (trauma as you know it). It’s not always clear which is which, so tread lightly until you know the difference. I’ve had quite a few clients over the years who thought they were hurt but simply had muscle soreness. There is no absolute way to tell, but if your soreness lessens as you warm-up, there’s a very good chance you’re dealing with microtrauma. Increasing pain doesn’t necessarily mean you’re injured, but it means you shouldn’t exercise that day. If this doesn’t change in a day or two, injury is likely and you should see a professional. Microtrauma always improves over time.

Embrace the pain. This idea is going to be foreign to many of you but eventually you’ll learn that a little soreness means you’ve embarked on something that is good for you. The first time, however, you’re going to have to show a little faith. Whenever I switch up my training, I go through an initial period of soreness While it’s always bothersome, especially say, when it hurts to take off my shoes or wash my hair, I know that it’s only temporary and that it’s an important step along the road to my goal. So I embrace it. Sure, it hurts. But it hurts in a good way. A great way even. I love the beginning of a new training cycle because I know that once I work through the pain, I’m going to be fitter than before. In fact, when I haven’t had a period of soreness in a while, I start to feel like a slacker.

Anticipate. Remember that I said I knew I was going to get sore? You are too! So go easy on your first day. And I mean E-A-S-Y! It’s normal to get excited on day one. You’ve got a new package in the mail and visions of you walking down the beach turning heads are probably dancing in your head. This is great, but keep your wits about you. You’re not going to get that way tomorrow or the next day. Hammering through your first workout could end up delaying your program two weeks while you recover from your exuberance. Instead, start slow. Do much less than you feel like you could. You’ll get sore anyway. Next day, push a bit harder. Next day, a bit harder still. Easing into a program is the best way to make steady progress.

Eat well. The more you exercise, the better you need to eat. Junk won’t fuel your muscles properly. This is especially true if you are trying to lose weight because you are eating less than you need to sustain your body. So what you eat becomes vital. The better you eat, the less sore you’ll be. Try to exercise on an empty stomach and then eat a small snack that is approximately 4 parts carbs to 1 part protein within an hour of finishing your workout. This will greatly help the recovery process and reduce soreness.

Stretch after you work out. The more time you can spend doing extra stretching at the end of your workout, the better you’ll recover. Don’t stretch your muscles when cold, as you’ll risk injuring them further. An extra 10 minutes after you work out, however, can do wonders. Also, easy movements and stretches night before bed and again first thing in the morning helps your blood circulate better and will also improve your recovery time.

Massage. You don’t have to go to a masseuse; self-massage is a great tool to aid recovery. The only time you don’t want to massage your muscles is right after you work out because you will interfere with the natural recovery process. But at any other time, just five minutes of self-massage can do wonders.

Ice. More on the circulation theme—nothing moves blood around like ice. It causes blood vessels to contract at first, and then open as you get used to it. If you’ve ever watched a locker room interview after a sporting event, you probably noticed that a lot of the athletes were icing parts of their body. That’s because it’s one of the greatest recovery aids we have available. Almost all injuries heal quicker if you apply ice. And soreness is “microtrauma,” or slight tears in your muscle tissue. These are necessary in order to get stronger, and they will heal faster if you ice them. You can ice any sore body part up to 20 minutes at a time, a few times throughout the day—if you can stand it, though you get used to it the more you do it.

Work out. Often the last thing you feel like doing when you’re sore but it gets back to the circulation thing. Working out promotes circulation. Sitting around while you’re sore is worse than working out, even though you probably feel like exercise is the last thing you should do. What you should do is not work out too hard. Warm up and then do part of your scheduled workout. Maybe half, maybe just a quarter. Use the extra time after the cool-down to stretch and/or ice. It’s a good excuse to be slightly lazy, since you are doing what’s often called a “recovery workout,” which is aimed at not breaking down too much muscle tissue. However, if your legs are sore, you don’t have to go easy on your upper body, and vice versa.

What real people look like working out!

By Rebecca Swanner



Set to a backdrop of Missy Elliot’s you-can’t-help-but-groove-to-it thumping “Get UR Freak On,” this new video released by the UK organization This Girl Can is a testament to how amazing we all look — and feel — when we move it and is a great in-your-face reminder that beauty doesn’t come in one shape or size.

While the organization’s mission is aimed at celebrating “active women up and down the country who are doing their thing no matter how well they do it, how they look or even how red their face gets,” we believe the positive message of the 90-second video below applies to both men and women.

If you’ve ever felt self-conscious when working out, we hope the video below empowers you. After all, most of us don’t look like models when we work out. We sweat. We jiggle. We get red-faced. And you know what, we look hot.

And then we show up the next day and do it again.

Exercise May Be Able to Mitigate the Negative Effects of Bullying

by Hannah Rex

Unfortunately, parents, as much as they try, can’t shield their kids from all troubles, including being bullied by their peers.

According to the National Center for Education Studies (NCES)’s 2013 report, 21.5% of children reported that they were bullied during the school year, a drop from 27.8% in 2011. But, while bullying percentages seem to have decreased, that doesn’t mean the effects it can have on a child are any less intense.

“Teens that experience bullying have increased rates of depression and anxiety, and are twice as likely to experience psychosomatic symptoms including headaches, stomachaches, dizziness, bedwetting, and sleep disturbances,” explained clinical psychologist Dr. Michelle Golland via email. “This cluster of mental effects can create a serious downward spiral which can lead to suicidal ideation.”

There are many things that need to be done to help stop this widespread issue of bullying. But, exercise may be a part of the solution when it comes to helping a child bounce back. A recent study published in Child & Adult Psychology found that when bullied adolescents exercised four or more days per week, they experienced significant reductions in their negative feelings and thoughts and a 23% reduction in suicidal thoughts and attempts.

The study surveyed 13,583 adolescents across the United States between grades 9-12 who anonymously answered questions about their behavioral and exercise activities. The researchers found that among that group, the bullied students who exercised six to seven days per week reported a lower percentage of feeling sad or hopeless, having suicidal ideation or attempting suicide, as compared to bullied students who exercised zero or one day a week.

Why might this be? “Regular physical activity can increase endorphins and dopamine, which is a natural anti-depressant that can lift mood, improve self-esteem, and decrease anxiety,” Dr. Golland explains. “For children involved in a sport or a group that does regular physical activity, it also can provide a positive and healthy social environment that differs from their bullying experience while at school.”

In addition to regular exercise, there are a number of resources parents can use if they are worried about their child being bullied. “The most critical organization that parents, teens and schools can get involved with is The BULLY Project,” says Dr. Golland. “This is the latest intervention and education organization around the issues of bullying.”