New Study: Popular lipsticks contain even MORE lead
Read full story on The Green Beauty Guide
Popular lipsticks contain massive levels of lead, found the new study by FDA – and these levels are even higher than those reported in 2007 by the consumer advocacy group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. This analysis, conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, used a technology called “inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry” to assess lead levels in 22 different lipsticks, all in shades of red.
FDA does have authority to regulate color additives in cosmetics, but not other ingredients. No wonder, FDA is powerless against the cosmetic giants. Hence, they said: “Lipstick is a product intended for topical use, and is only ingested incidentally and in very small quantities,” said FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek.
“FDA does not consider the lead levels that it found in lipsticks to be a safety concern.” Read more
Home for the Holidays Gluten-Free Style & More
Home for the Holiday Gluten-Free Style is a daily blogging event that started on Monday and will go through December 23rd.
Each day a different blogger will share a recipe that means home and holidays to them. In addition there will be giveaway items each day and a grand prize of a VitaMix Blender!
You can find all the details including a list of the participating bloggers and the items being given away in Shirley’s
Don’t worry about keeping up with what blogger is doing which day. Just go to
Free Christmas Recipes eBook
The book is not gluten free, but it does contain some naturally gluten free recipes, especially in the candy and dips sections. Other recipes could be adapted to be gluten-free such as substituting gluten-free bread in her Blueberry Baked French Toast. Many of the recipes do contain dairy, but some can be adapted to be dairy free.
If you don’t mind skipping over a lot of recipes you can’t make, this is worth taking a look at.
Myth Busting: Junk Food is Not Cheaper Than Healthy Food [Plus 4 More Health Food Myths]
One more excuse to eat poorly bit the dust as Mark Bittman of the New York Times took apart the oft-quoted adage that one reason why people don’t eat healthier is because junk food is more budget friendly. He writes, “In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home.” He then goes on to compare a McDonald’s meal for a family of 4 ($28) with a home-cooked dinner for 4 of roast chicken, salad, vegetables and milk ($14). Debunking the second part of the myth, that junk food provides more calories for the money than healthier fare, he points out that first of all few people in America need extra calories and second that it is still cheaper to add calories to home-cooked food.
I don’t know about you but I was surprised. I shouldn’t have been. Even though I’ve heard this rationale for years - and just accepted it to be true – in my personal life as the head budget maker for our home, I have proven month after month that it is always cheaper to eat at home than to go out. And no I don’t coupon. My friend Shellie taught me a couple of years ago how to plan a menu that would feed our family of 6 for $3-5/person/day. Considering the food stamp program allots $5/person/day, I figure that’s pretty awesome.
But are we eating tasteless gruel every day? Not hardly. It may take more planning and shopping – planning my menu and shopping list each month takes me a couple of hours and then buying everything several more – but eating healthy on a budget can be done. Here are 4 more healthy eating myths busted:
Myth 2. Farmer’s markets are the best place to buy healthy food. Perhaps in California, where food actually grows on trees, this works but up here in the hinterlands the only thing Minnesota grows nine months out of the year are sno cones. The farmer’s markets here, while fabulous when they’re open, are not cheap. Think outside the big box grocery stores and check out local Asian markets for cheap produce (and also weird stuff – just had my first taste of lychee nuts!), hispanic stores for cheaper meats and beans and discount stores for deals on frozen foods, bulk grains and seasonal items. Whole Foods, sadly, is almost never a good deal.
Myth 2b. Warehouse stores are bad for your waistline. People like to decry warehouse stores like Costco and Sam’s Club pointing out that buying peanut-butter pretzels in bulk makes you eat more of them – which probably is true although preventable by portioning them out into individual servings at home – but the reverse can also work in your favor. Buying a 1 pound box of salad for the same price you’d pay for 5 ounces at a regular store might inspire you to eat more greens. In addition to lots of produce, you can often find lots of shelf-stable healthy staples (say that 5 times fast) like quinoa, brown rice, raw honey, oats and dark-chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds (hush, nobody tell me those aren’t healthy). I also buy my uncured meats at Costco; I can get nitrate-free organic breakfast sausage and Canadian bacon for cheaper than the crappy regular kind at the grocery store.
Myth 3. You have to be a great cook. I suppose it would probably be helpful if you were a great cook but if you’re closer to the Swedish Muppet Chef – skewer the berjdie! – than Alton Brown, don’t despair. I suck at cooking so if I can manage, you totally can. It doesn’t take much skill to learn how to boil beans (because eating them raw might kill you - whoops) and chop and sautee some vegetables. I cook pretty much everything I eat in a big cast iron skillet – and bonus, you have permission not to wash it afterwards because it “seasons” the pan! – so I have basically one cooking technique: hot.
Myth 4. You have to have specialty ingredients. Goat cheese. Chia seeds. Amaranth flour. Strawberries and cream hemp protein powder humanely squeegeed off dirty hippies. Us healthy types sometimes get caught up in some crazy food fads and while it can make you feel lame to be the only person not drizzling your shiitake mushrooms with white truffle oil, it doesn’t mean your simple dish of crap on a plate is less healthy. There’s a lot to be said for simple, whole, foods.
Myth 5. It’s time consuming. Like most hobbies, healthy cooking can be as time consuming as you’ll let it be but it doesn’t have to take any longer than hitting a drive through, especially if you’re okay with using your microwave. It really doesn’t get any faster than salad, especially if you have the forethought to pre-chop a bunch of veggies to keep in the fridge.
Some of my favorite cheap (about $1/serving), quick and healthy* meal ideas (that I totally am not the first to think of):
- Taco Salad: bowl of random greens topped with beans and/or meat, whatever veggies I can grab, sour cream and hot hot salsa.
- Yogurt parfaits: plain full-fat yogurt topped with all-fruit jam, nuts, frozen blueberries and raw oats
- Miso soup: microwave a bowl of water, a tablespoon of miso paste (another reason to hit up the Asian market!), chopped green onions and cubed tofu. My husband thinks this tastes like “dirty foot water” which cracks me up. I like dirty feet.
- Stir fry: meat, veggies, oil. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- Honey mustard chicken: whatever cut of chicken you want (I’m lucky enough to get my dead poultry cheap, straight from the farmer who just wrung their necks), mix equal parts of honey & mustard and spread on top. Sprinkle with a few herbs. Cook in pan. Tastes delish over rice.
- “McMuffins”: Top a whole wheat english muffin with 1 fried/poached/scrambled egg, a slice of cheese, a slice of Canadian bacon or ham and spinach leaves. If the muffin is too processed for you, just pile it all on top of the spinach leaves – still totally yummy!
* I realize that depending on what your personal food philosophy is, these may not be “healthy” per your definition. I’m not trying to make a definitive list – just saying these are examples of what works for me. I hope you’ll tell me what works for you in the comments!
What do you think about Mark Bittman’s assertion that healthy food is actually cheaper than junk food? Do you have a fave tip for eating healthy on the cheap? Do you have a $1/serving meal idea??
More Fat Burning Diet Secrets and Tips Revealed
The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on my Bonus Fat Burning Workout videos, but this week I decided to go more into some diet secret tips and tricks. Diet and more specifically the pre-workout meal in a fat burning diet is often overlooked. I decided to tackle this issue first.
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What Do You Eat to Fuel Your Workout? [Plus more exercise differences between men & women]
Man, I miss Calvin!
Burping noxious flavors is my primary concern when deciding what to eat pre-workout. I know some athletes carb-load while others swear by fasted-state cardio and still others strive for a balanced meal 1-3 hours before getting their sweat on. And let’s not forget the smoothie/shake contingent! ( The difference between a workout smoothie and a shake? Nothing except that women drink the former and men drink the latter.) But who cares about blood glucose levels if I’m regurgitating sausage and peppers between sets? Add in my fish-oil supplement and I might retch on the track. Therefore my pre-workout meals are generally pretty bland. Oh and I learned to avoid soy products the hard way when my gaseous emissions nearly asphyxiated an entire TurboKick class. (Yes, 3 years later and I’m still apologizing for that one.)
The issue of what to eat to best fuel your workout came up as I was reading an interview with Kiefer John that Meanliving tweeted called “Females, Fat Loss and Performance“. The gist of the article is that the differences between the male and female body require different programs. He says, “Most of the recommendations women read in mainstream media are actually recommendations for male athletes that are blindly carried over and applied to women. That’s a huge problem.” His main two points of difference are that women shouldn’t eat carbs because we burn proportionately more fat than men and that we should do less cardio if we want to be lean. His science was a little sketchy but I know a lot of people that wouldn’t argue with his conclusions.
In regards to the first point he writes, “ The hormonal situations occurring when you first wake up creates an optimal environment for fat burning, the moment that you eat carbs this environment is ruined. That’s why I always tell everyone, ‘as soon as you get up, bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs’.
This idea that the body awakes from its overnight fast in a state particularly attuned to burn fat has been around for a long time. But is it true? According to one of my all-time fave fitness writers Tom Venuto (and the first one I ever fell in exercise-love with – his book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle was my very first Great Fitness Experiment ever!), the research supports this theory.
“1. When you wake up in the morning after an overnight 8-12 hour fast, your body’s stores of glycogen are somewhat depleted. Doing cardio in this state causes your body to mobilize more fat because of the unavailability of glycogen.
2. Eating causes a release of insulin. Insulin interferes with the mobilization of body fat. Less insulin is present in the morning; therefore, more body fat is burned when cardio is done in the morning.
3. There is less carbohydrate (glucose) “floating around” in the bloodstream when you wake up after an overnight fast. With less glucose available, you will burn more fat.
4. If you eat immediately before a workout, you have to burn off what you just ate first before tapping into stored body fat (and insulin is elevated after a meal.)
The real question however is if this makes any difference to fat loss or performance. Venuto quotes Lyle McDonald, an expert on bodybuilding nutrition and author of The Ketogenic Diet.
“All that research says is that you burn a greater proportion of fat this way, which I agree with 100%,” says Lyle. “The majority of research shows that as far as real world fat loss goes, it doesn’t really matter what you burn. Rather, 24-hour calorie balance is what matters. Because if you burn glucose during exercise, you tend to burn more fat the rest of the day. If you burn fat during exercise, you burn more glucose during the day. The end result is identical.”
The second key difference between men and women athletes says Kiefer is,
“For women in particular, one 45 minute bout of cardiovascular exercise at a heart rate above 65% will shut down the major metabolic regulator, T3 [Thyroid hormone] for about a week. So one day of over doing it, and you’ve shut down your metabolism for a week. This is unique to females. That’s a huge misconception, ‘if I need to lose weight, I need to run more, or be on the bike more, or get more cardio’; for women, it’s the opposite. This will make it much, much, harder.”
From my personal experience I would say his second point is right on the money – hello Rachel Cosgrove Experiment and the best results the Gym Buddies and I ever got! – but I’m still not sure about his first one.
In my years as a fitness nut – emphasis on the nut – I have tried everything when it comes to meal and workout timing. I did the only-fruit-for-brekkie thing courtesy of the Skinny Bitches (the book, I’m not calling anyone that) which ended with me leaving class light headed and nauseous to sit next to an old man who asked me if I was pregnant. For a couple of years fasted-state worked great for me but that was because I worked out at 5 a.m. (I miss you L!) and my stomach definitely did not want food that early. When I went through my carb-fearing phase, I loaded up on eggs and spinach which wasn’t bad but I felt like I was lacking some spring in my step. And then there was the 5 straight years of some kind of oatmeal concoction every morning – not bad with a chopped apple and walnuts, gag-worthy with a whole scoop of protein powder, most creatively done as an egg custard.
These days however it’s anything goes. That’s the beauty of Intuitive Eating – I eat what I feel like. Yesterday I had eggs scrambled with salmon and veggies (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!). The day before it was an apple. This morning it was German pancakes, whipped cream, berries, a fried egg, two strips of (pastured, all beef, nitrate-free) bacon and half a pound of asparagus. What? I was hungry! Like many other things in my life, I find that my pre-workout nutrition is best when I just go with what I feel like that day. But maybe what makes me happy isn’t best for my body? Why does research always generate more questions than it answers??
What’s your pre-workout eating philosophy? What do you think about women needing less carbs and less cardio than men because of our physiology? Anyone else burp up nasty stuff during a workout??
What Do You Eat Pre-Workout? [Plus more exercise differences between men & women]
Man, I miss Calvin!
Burping noxious flavors is my primary concern when deciding what to eat pre-workout. I know some athletes carb-load while others swear by fasted-state cardio and still others strive for a balanced meal 1-3 hours before getting their sweat on. And let’s not forget the smoothie/shake contingent! ( The difference between a workout smoothie and a shake? Nothing except that women drink the former and men drink the latter.) But who cares about blood glucose levels if I’m regurgitating sausage and peppers between sets? Add in my fish-oil supplement and I might retch on the track. Therefore my pre-workout meals are generally pretty bland. Oh and I learned to avoid soy products the hard way when my gaseous emissions nearly asphyxiated an entire TurboKick class. (Yes, 3 years later and I’m still apologizing for that one.)
The issue of what to eat to best fuel your workout came up as I was reading an interview with Kiefer John that Meanliving tweeted called “Females, Fat Loss and Performance“. The gist of the article is that the differences between the male and female body require different programs. He says, “Most of the recommendations women read in mainstream media are actually recommendations for male athletes that are blindly carried over and applied to women. That’s a huge problem.” His main two points of difference are that women shouldn’t eat carbs because we burn proportionately more fat than men and that we should do less cardio if we want to be lean. His science was a little sketchy but I know a lot of people that wouldn’t argue with his conclusions.
In regards to the first point he writes, “ The hormonal situations occurring when you first wake up creates an optimal environment for fat burning, the moment that you eat carbs this environment is ruined. That’s why I always tell everyone, ‘as soon as you get up, bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs’.
This idea that the body awakes from its overnight fast in a state particularly attuned to burn fat has been around for a long time. But is it true? According to one of my all-time fave fitness writers Tom Venuto (and the first one I ever fell in exercise-love with – his book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle was my very first Great Fitness Experiment ever!), the research supports this theory.
“1. When you wake up in the morning after an overnight 8-12 hour fast, your body’s stores of glycogen are somewhat depleted. Doing cardio in this state causes your body to mobilize more fat because of the unavailability of glycogen.
2. Eating causes a release of insulin. Insulin interferes with the mobilization of body fat. Less insulin is present in the morning; therefore, more body fat is burned when cardio is done in the morning.
3. There is less carbohydrate (glucose) “floating around” in the bloodstream when you wake up after an overnight fast. With less glucose available, you will burn more fat.
4. If you eat immediately before a workout, you have to burn off what you just ate first before tapping into stored body fat (and insulin is elevated after a meal.)
The real question however is if this makes any difference to fat loss or performance. Venuto quotes Lyle McDonald, an expert on bodybuilding nutrition and author of The Ketogenic Diet.
“All that research says is that you burn a greater proportion of fat this way, which I agree with 100%,” says Lyle. “The majority of research shows that as far as real world fat loss goes, it doesn’t really matter what you burn. Rather, 24-hour calorie balance is what matters. Because if you burn glucose during exercise, you tend to burn more fat the rest of the day. If you burn fat during exercise, you burn more glucose during the day. The end result is identical.”
The second key difference between men and women athletes says Kiefer is,
“For women in particular, one 45 minute bout of cardiovascular exercise at a heart rate above 65% will shut down the major metabolic regulator, T3 [Thyroid hormone] for about a week. So one day of over doing it, and you’ve shut down your metabolism for a week. This is unique to females. That’s a huge misconception, ‘if I need to lose weight, I need to run more, or be on the bike more, or get more cardio’; for women, it’s the opposite. This will make it much, much, harder.”
From my personal experience I would say his second point is right on the money – hello Rachel Cosgrove Experiment and the best results the Gym Buddies and I ever got! – but I’m still not sure about his first one.
In my years as a fitness nut – emphasis on the nut – I have tried everything when it comes to meal and workout timing. I did the only-fruit-for-brekkie thing courtesy of the Skinny Bitches (the book, I’m not calling anyone that) which ended with me leaving class light headed and nauseous to sit next to an old man who asked me if I was pregnant. For a couple of years fasted-state worked great for me but that was because I worked out at 5 a.m. (I miss you L!) and my stomach definitely did not want food that early. When I went through my carb-fearing phase, I loaded up on eggs and spinach which wasn’t bad but I felt like I was lacking some spring in my step. And then there was the 5 straight years of some kind of oatmeal concoction every morning – not bad with a chopped apple and walnuts, gag-worthy with a whole scoop of protein powder, most creatively done as an egg custard.
These days however it’s anything goes. That’s the beauty of Intuitive Eating – I eat what I feel like. Yesterday I had eggs scrambled with salmon and veggies (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!). The day before it was an apple. This morning it was German pancakes, whipped cream, berries, a fried egg, two strips of (pastured, all beef, nitrate-free) bacon and half a pound of asparagus. What? I was hungry! Like many other things in my life, I find that my pre-workout nutrition is best when I just go with what I feel like that day. But maybe what makes me happy isn’t best for my body? I don’t know.
What’s your pre-workout eating philosophy? What do you think about women needing less carbs and less cardio than men because of our physiology? Anyone else burp up nasty stuff during a workout??
The No-Laps Pool Workout [Plus more workout tips, parenting articles and photoshoot outtakes!]
Some of you saw this pic when I Facebook/Tweeted it and were wondering what the Gym Buddies and I were doing at the bottom of the pool (and some of you also wondered how I have lived this long and not learned how to be underwater without plugging my nose – in my defense, in all the other pics I’m NOT plugging my nose but they turned out blurry so you’ll just have to take my word for it.) and now I can finally tell you about our Shape Magazine swimsuit photo shoot! (Never thought I’d be typing those words! Don’t worry we’re not standing thigh high in the water wearing bikinis and a fake tan.)
Lap swimming is one of the most intense workouts there is but if you can’t swim laps or you’re like me and just hate it (it feels like controlled drowning!), you can still get a great total body workout in the pool this summer. Anything you can do on land, you can do in the pool but the resistance from the water makes it that much harder. Chris Kost, who in his 20 years of aquatics experience working with pro athletes like baseballer Joe Mauer says, “Most people think of aquatics as just for gray hairs but you can do boot camps, power x and other high intensity classes that incorporate everything from therabands to kettlebells in the water.” Try using some of these moves as part of an existing routine or make up your own circuit. Either way you’ll get a great workout – no lap swimming required. To read the rest of the article on Shape.com (and see how much fun we had with the underwater camera) follow the jump…
If you didn’t catch my fitness series on Workout Junkie, check out my posts Workouts for People With No Money, Workouts For People With No Equipment, Workouts For People With No Time and Workouts For People With No Childcare.
For Redbook this week, I wrote articles on “Mom Debate: Do You Spend Too Much Time on your Smartphone When You’re With Your Kids?” (So do I win the award for longest post title ever??), My 8 Worst Parenting Mistakes (According to my kids) (If you read just one of my articles today, read this one – hilarious!) and “One Mom Confesses To Not Liking Her Own Child: Did she cross the line?” (this one I still feel really conflicted about – super sad.)
And if you want to know why Forever 21 gives me a guilt complex, check out my book review of Lost In Translation for the BlogHer Book Club.
And most importantly: the outtakes from our underwater photoshoot!
Turns out the laws of physics will not be thwarted and so to prevent us from floating to the surface while snapping those underwater shots, another Gym Buddy had to hold us down. Here, Krista is holding Allison under the water while (5-months pregnant!) Daria models and her son watches.
Daria on the bottom side of “the otter roll” – she obviously learned how not to plug her nose!
I am laughing hysterically for some reason – because Krista told me I look like a hyperactive 5-year-old? Because someone took an underwater shot of me picking my swimsuit wedgie (aHEM!)? Because the old folk’s pool class right next to us was playing oldies?? The whole hour was one long laugh fest.
Krista and Allison had way too much fun with the underwater camera!
Daria takes a snuggle break with her son – you can see where he gets his gorgeous grin!
Allison is too cool for school. Or the pool.
What happens when you take a picture half in the water and half out. You can see why we didn’t do any more this way!
An Even More Special Birthday.
hehehee I’m not 3, I just act like it sometimes! BOOYA! It’s my birthday today y’all. I’m 42 years old and this year, in 2011, my birthday is even more special, even more significant. It’s not about this age as much as it about this moment, this birthday is marking the BEGINNING of a new chapter in my life.
I’ve been blabbing talking about this for the past couple of months- since I read some of these very enlightening books and started realizing what’s been WRONG in my life and what I want and need to do to make it better again. And even BETTER in this next chapter. In fact, I can honestly say that it feels like my life is just beginning! Amazing. How blessed I am.
So celebrating this birthday is simply more significant to me this year because this is a mark…..from here forward it’s all about building my new future, letting go of fear and doubt, treating ME better and directing my path to a whole new place.
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER TWO YEARS, I AM FULL OF HOPE AGAIN, FULL OF REAL EXCITEMENT AGAIN.
You’ve heard me talking about this for a while now. But kids, the first peek at what’s coming is here. FitFluential, Inc. is not just a concept, it’s REAL. I would love nothing more on my birthday than for you, if you are interested, to CLICK HERE and see our Facebook page, where we will inevitably be announcing our launch and well, some KICK BUTT FITNESS GOODNESS. You want some?? Tell us! And…..tell your friends kittens. If you want to be a part of this fitness family, spread the word. I promise you this, you will be SO GLAD YOU DID. If you are a fitness blogger and you have not yet been officially invited or you have not yet applied to join, WHATCHU WAITING FOR?
SIGN UP HERE. This ain’t no spam list y’all. This is about goodness you DON’T wanna miss.
And on that note, I’ve got a workout to do this morning, before my nail appointment and my massage tonight. Good day, a really good day. 
Finally, I’m really NOT looking back. There is a big difference in WANTING to do that and to actually IMPLEMENTING it. I’m finally there where I am making it HAPPEN. It’s not just talk.
I’ll shoot a vlog later, but I wanted to get in a short blog post this morning and say HELLO!! LOVE YOU ALL AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY WISHES AND GIFTS! TOO KIND!!
B Vitamins for Better Health or More Supplement Hype? [Getting Health Advice From the Costco Taste Test Guy]
Zipfizz is healthy energy in a tube! Give your body a rush of vitamins, minerals and key amino acids to protect the immune system. Zipfizz has created an advanced formula that provides a significant amount of vitamins, fewer calories, lower carbohydrates, superior taste, variety and unique packaging! Simply put, it’s different because it’s good for you!
“Contrary to what ads would have us believe, B vitamins aren’t little packets of energy. It’s brilliant marketing but it doesn’t have any basis.”“It’s true that the vitamins help unlock the energy in foods, Barkoukis says, but weary office workers can’t expect to get a jolt from extra B vitamins in any form. The reason, she says, is simple: Just about everyone in America [with the exception of some of the elderly] already gets all of the B vitamins they could possibly need in their diets.”
for more of my crazy antics and uncomfortable over-shares!
More Fat Burning Diet Secrets Revealed
The last couple of weeks I’ve been working on my Bonus Fat Burning Workout videos, but this week I decided to go more into some diet secret tips and tricks. Diet and more specifically the pre-workout meal in a fat burning diet is often overlooked. I decided to tackle this issue first.