Grocery Shopping in Pictures

OnSugar blogger Running Nina shared with us this picture of her recent trip to the grocery store. Looking pretty healthy, Running Nina! Today I went to Jewel because we desperately needed some groceries in the house. I took my big green lululemon bag and decided that once the bag was full, that would be it! Look at all those goodies! I did take out the bananas and bread from the bag so they wouldn’t get squished, but they would have fit in there! Loads of deals to be had here . . . I got all of this for a mere $40. To see the stylish lululemon bag that she fit all of her groceries in, head over to Running Nina . And why not start your own OnSugar blog , and show us what’s in your grocery bag? Your posts could be featured here on FitSugar.

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Grocery Shopping in Pictures

Graphotherapy Exercise For Relaxation

Stressed out? Grab a pen or pencil and some paper, and do this relaxation exercise from the OnSugar blog goddessbody . I call this exercise the Phone Cord (before the cell phone and cordless phone). It promotes calmness and relaxation and relieves inner tension. It also helps improve balance and coordination. Learn how to do this easy exercise when you read more. Tools and Process All you need to do graphotherapy exercises is a pen or pencil and paper. It’s ideal to use unlined paper but if you need to use lined paper to begin that’s okay. A blank journal is a great tool for graphotherapy because you can see your progress over time. To do the exercises, simply start at the top of your page and draw the exercise across the page just as if you were writing. Begin a new line and draw the exercise again. Continue until you reach the bottom of the page. Keep your hands and body as relaxed as possible. Try to work in a smooth, continuous manner. The goal of this exercise is to make continuous loops across the page. Make the loops round and the same size; keep an even and continuous flow and use light to moderate pressure. If your loops have pointed tops or begin to shrink, this is a sign of inner tension and possibly moving too fast. Take a deep breath, slow down and continue the exercise. Keep notes on each session. Notice how you feel while doing the exercise (bored, tense, stiff, relaxed). Do any thoughts repeat as you work? Over time you should notice that you feel more relaxed doing the exercise. Frequency This particular exercise can be done anytime you’re feeling stressed out and need to calm down. However, in general, I recommend doing one exercise for at least 10 minutes a day. This may be 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening or just 10 minutes at one time.  After seven days check in with yourself and look back over your notes. Think about whether your behavior has changed in the areas you wished to impact. If so, then you’re probably done with the exercise. If you still think you need a little improvement, continue to do the same exercise for another 7 days. Repeat for a total of 21 days if necessary. Discontinue the exercise after 21 days even if you haven’t seen any improvement or change - it just may not be an exercise you need. Check out my previous post on graphotherapy for creativity and emotional release. Get more fitness tips, videos, and exercises by following goddessbody . And why not start your own OnSugar blog ? Your posts could be featured here on FitSugar.

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Graphotherapy Exercise For Relaxation

A Reader’s Recipe: Brown Rice Protein Pancakes

Looking for a healthy breakfast treat? Try this recipe that FitSugar reader sunshineee posted in the Healthy Recipe Group . See the recipe when you read more. From my blog: Sunshine ‘n Spice 1/4 cup brown rice flour 1 scoop vanilla protein powder 1/2 tsp baking powder 3/4 cup egg whites 2 tbsp soy milk (I used vanilla) 1/2 tsp vanilla sprinkle of cinnamon dash of salt Top with whatever your little heart desires. In my case - cherries and bananas. Cherries are such a pain to pit, they’re lucky they taste good. More so, Whole Foods is lucky they taste good, or else I wouldn’t buy them. For a chocolatey version - use chocolate protein powder and 1 tbsp cocoa powder! We love when you share your healthy dishes and desserts, so head over to the Healthy Recipe Group and post your fave recipe with an original photo. It could be featured here on FitSugar’s homepage.

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A Reader’s Recipe: Brown Rice Protein Pancakes

Class Act: Power Pilates

In my experience, if the word “power” appears in the title of a fitness class, be it yoga or weight lifting, be prepared for a challenging workout. My expectations were in no way dashed when I tried Power Pilates at Sports Club LA recently. This was definitely a Pilates mat class on steroids. Classic moves like the 100s and single leg stretch definitely made an appearance, but only after many, many upper ab cruches. The class featured high repetitions, which is not common in traditional Pilates classes. The class began using a ballet barre for moves reminiscent of the Dailey and Bar methods, and then moved into a twisting lunge sequence away from the support of the bar. The instructor called this challenging exercise series, which worked the obliques and the glutes, part of her “muffin top project.” We used the old-school magic circle , a classic Pilates prop also known as a toning ring, for both arm work and leg work. Push-ups with a wide variety of hand positions peppered the class. And these weren’t careless and quick push-ups, but the slow, painful, methodical kind. I really enjoyed the class and appreciated the challenge. It’s nice to see Pilates concepts, like alignment and deep ab engagement, meld with more traditional moves from toning and sculpting classes. Two days post-class, my abs and glutes are still feeling the challenge. Have you tried a Power Pilates class? Share your opinion below. Photo courtesy of Pilates Unlimited

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Class Act: Power Pilates

Shop Gilt to Avoid Guilt: Sale of Fitness Gear Galore

If you’re a fan of fashion and great deals, then you’re probably already familiar with the Gilt Groupe , the online high-fashion sale site. To help you get back on track after your Summer holiday, the site is offering great deals to help you de-stress, detox, and get back in shape with style. On Aug. 26 at noon EDT, the Get Back in Action deals begin with a focus on wellness. Look for offers for Exhale Spa beauty treatments and fitness classes, BluePrintCleanse detox packages (if juice until dinner is your thing), a Stott Pilates At Home Reformer Machine, and Beyond Yoga (a FitSugar fave) tanks and pants. The following day, the offers turn toward fitness. With the US Open beginning in a week, you might want to take advantage of deals on tennis fashions created by Venus Williams for her EleVen label made exclusively for Gilt. Running shoes and gear from New Balance , Saucony , and Puma will be featured, too. For a more private workout, you can also save on fitness DVDs from Tracy Anderson and AeroSpace founder Michael Olajide. To participate, you do need to join the group, and you can do so here . Check out the deals below to see what your savings could be. Remember, everything is on a first-come, first-served basis. Happy shopping! View 5 Photos ›

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Shop Gilt to Avoid Guilt: Sale of Fitness Gear Galore

Reader’s Recipe: Carrot Breakfast Cookies

Looking for a yummy Sunday brunch treat? FitSugar reader summer m posted this recipe in the Healthy Recipe Group . A little less sweet than a regular cookie, I packed mine with carrots, oats and raisins, all the good wholesome stuff breakfasts should be made of. Pair a cookie with some eggs , some yogurt or even a glass of milk and you have a complete meal. I took these to work today and they went pretty fast from the break room, so it just goes to show if healthy food tastes good people eat it. To see the recipe, read more. Carrot Breakfast Cookies 1/4 cup canola oil 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce 1/2 cup Sucanat 2 egg whites 1 egg 2 cups grated carrots 1/4 tsp salt 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice 1 tsp baking soda 1 1/2 c oats 1/4 cup flax meal 1 cup spelt flour 1 cup raisins 1/2 cup chopped walnuts   Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix together oil, applesauce and Sucanat. Add eggs and beat well. Mix in grated carrots. Add remaining dry ingredients and beat until just blended. Stir in raisins and nuts. Using a tablespoon, drop large spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool a bit on the pan and move to a rack. Makes 24 large cookies. Breakfast cookie stats per cookie: Calories: 122.9  •  Fat: 4.7 g  •  Carbohydrates: 21.1 g  •  Protein: 2.6 g We love when you share your healthy dishes and desserts, so head over to the Healthy Recipe Group and post your fave recipe with an original photo. It could be featured here on FitSugar’s homepage.

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Reader’s Recipe: Carrot Breakfast Cookies

Terrence’s Vegan Quest Led to 60-Pound Weight Loss

Filed under: Motivation , Success Stories Terrence Before Every week, we introduce you to bloggers who share their weight loss journeys and hefty doses of inspiration with their readers. This week’s featured blogger is Terrence from My Vegan Quest . Name: Terrence Lavin Age : 42 Start Weight: 302 pounds Current Weight: 240 pounds Goal Weight: 225 pounds My Weight Loss Approach: I have an all-or-nothing approach to eating and drinking, so moderation was a foreign concept to me. After gaining so much weight throughout my 30s and early 40s on a steady diet of steak, scotch and late-night pizza, my efforts to trim back down to my athletic form were constant failures. Healthy efforts never lasted longer than a week or so. Through a girlfriend at the time, I became friends with a vegan activist and entrepreneur named Heather Mills , who asked if I’d go 100 percent vegan as an experiment for six months. I dismissed it as ludicrous. Being an advertising salesman in New York City, my tools of the trade revolved around dinners at steak houses and late nights at the bar. I could not live in moderation, and I realized that to successfully lose weight I would have to be as extreme in improving my health as I had been in destroying it. My approach was 100 percent veganism and 100 percent abstinence from alcohol for six months. This was a complete disruption of my world, and I had to find a way to accommodate a business life and a social life so dependent on living in New York’s finest steak houses, sushi bars and taverns. Although it was quite painful in the beginning, this extreme approach swiftly eliminated any and all cheating — I couldn’t negotiate with myself or reward myself with decadent food. There was no room for “a little bit of butter to cook the vegetables” or “just a few shavings of cheese for my salad.” Extreme faithfulness to this vegan quest was the only way I could turn my life around — my cholesterol was over 300, and at 227, my LDL (bad) cholesterol was a heart attack waiting to happen. My extreme approach paid off: My LDL is now at the near optimal 105, and I lost 60 pounds over the six months. I still have 15 pounds to go to meet my goal of weighing the same as my rugby-playing days in college. Even more amazingly, I didn’t miss animal products as much as I thought I would. Some of the best meals I’ve ever had were at NYC’s vegan and vegetarian restaurants, and I would pit my special vegetable wrap against any burger in the city for pure taste. I still entertained clients at steak houses and bars, but instead of a steak dripping in blood and butter and an 18-year-old scotch, I ordered the salad , a side of vegetables and a glass of seltzer. Did I envy my guests stabbing that porterhouse? Certainly! But because I was feeling better every day, I was addicted to this healthy feeling. I found friends and clients would go out with me for the same reason people go to Nascar: to see a wreck. They were just waiting for my resolve to crack, so my competitive nature helped keep me on track , although sometimes I was forced to dig deep within myself to give it just a little more effort every day. The rewards are so worth it! Staying active was obviously key, and I would go to the gym three times per week. Eating so healthfully gave me the energy and desire to exercise , and seeing the immediate weight loss gave me motivation, so even on days I dreaded going to the gym I would go anyway. Today, although my personal six-month challenge is over, I find that moderation is now my friend. I loved the vegan lifestyle so much that at least 80 percent of my weekly diet is plant based. Why I wanted to blog about it: I love to write — I enjoy describing the food I’m eating, how I’m feeling and where I’m going. When Heather Mills told me she was going to put my blog on her website, it served as a terrific motivator because I wanted as many people as possible to read about my journey. The larger the audience, the more pressure there was on me to stick to it even when I wanted to give up. Plus, writing kept me focused during all the ups and downs of my radically changing life. Terrence Now The best part of blogging is: Not long into this experiment, a few people who wrote in to say how motivated and inspired they were by the blog to get healthier. That totally blew me away. What started as a self-centered, attention-seeking project turned into a dialogue with people around the world about the vital importance of healthy living . I would feed off the encouraging words of others and learn so many tips and recipes from them. The blog also served as a confessional — even though I never wavered from my veganism , I would sometimes eat a meal or snack that was technically vegan, but wasn’t nutritionally dense. People would encourage me to get back on track, and some would even admonish me, which helped. All along, this social community kept getting larger, and I can honestly say that the blog is what made me stay faithful to this new lifestyle. I was also quite flattered when a Tennessee couple who read the blog daily asked if they could meet me when they came to NYC — it was a great experience that would never have happened to me if I hadn’t become a blogger. Best comment I’ve received: Receiving all that encouragement has been an amazing feeling. I also loved hearing from the people who bet their lives that I would not go through with my vegan quest writing in to tell me that they were wrong. However, by far the best comment I got was a personal email from a guy in Ireland I have never met who said he needed to lose 100 pounds. He asked me for advice and wrote back to say he was inspired to start his own journey that day. Now we communicate every week or two about his successful weight loss. What’s next for my blog: Even though my six months are up, I found I couldn’t give up the blog — not only was I just shy of my goal but my new social community wanted the blog to continue. So these days, I’m still writing about my mostly vegan lifestyle, and I’m working on a book about this entire life-changing endeavor. Terrence’s vegan adventures in NYC are well documented in his blog — check out his tips and recommendations . Blogging helps — just ask Cammy, who lost 100 pounds while writing about her weight loss! Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Terrence’s Vegan Quest Led to 60-Pound Weight Loss

A Reader Reviews Lululemon Groove Shorts

Check out this reader review of Lululemon groove shorts from the OnSugar blog Running Nina . There are many reasons why I love Lululemon groove shorts . First is because they are a fitted short, which means no chafing! They don’t ride up very often - only if I am running a long distance, but even then I’ll only have to pull the legs down about two times during the course of my run. The waistband is comfortable, not too big and not too tight, it is just right. I use them for running, boxing, yoga, bikram yoga, cycling, weightlifting, you name it! No matter how much I sweat, I never feel sweaty and the shorts don’t bother me at all. Nothing is more annoying than when you cannot enjoy your workout because you are fiddling with your clothing. I have three pairs, including the grey/purple combination pictured above, which are reversible as well. Turn them inside out for a completely grey short! At $48 I think they are well worth the money, especially if you work out in them constantly. The material is thick and super durable. Keeping a health or fitness blog is great motivation. Post healthy eating tips, recipes, your workout routine, or photos of you at your first 5K. Start your own OnSugar blog and your posts could be featured on FitSugar.

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A Reader Reviews Lululemon Groove Shorts

Cammy Quit Yo-Yo Dieting and Lost 100 Pounds

Filed under: Motivation , Success Stories Cammy Before Every week, we introduce you to bloggers who share their weight loss journeys and hefty doses of inspiration with their readers. This week’s featured blogger is Cammy from the Tippy Toe Diet . Name: Cammy C. Age : 51 Start Weight: 250 pounds Current Weight: 147 to 153 pounds, depending on the day Goal Weight: 150 pounds My Weight Loss Approach: After spending most of my adult life yo-yo dieting , I finally figured out that dieting wasn’t working for me, or, more specifically, “other people’s diets” weren’t working. They always seemed to require foods I didn’t eat, or were too restrictive in what was allowed. I like a lot of healthy foods, but these diets never seemed to use those foods in ways I could sustain — man may not live by bread alone, but this gal doesn’t live without it! Inevitably I would veer from the prescribed path and go back to my normal, unhealthy habits. Another problem I had with “other people’s diets” was that they focused on scale results. That was fine as long as the scale cooperated, but that beast is fickle . I could do everything right and not lose an ounce (or worse yet, I could gain!), or I could go off the plan and the scale would show a loss. It made no sense, and it was both frustrating and demoralizing. I’m sure scale drama (or is that trauma?) contributed to more than one failed weight loss attempt. In 2007, a friend who’s fit , but not thin, inspired me to try something completely different, to actually take the focus off losing weight and make the effort more about health and fitness. Sure, I wanted to drop some pounds, but I didn’t put any pressure on myself to lose a certain number. I knew that if I could change my habits so that I ate healthy, nutritious foods most of the time and exercised regularly, the pounds would follow. My first change was to stop looking at all foods as “good” or “bad” and start choosing them simply for their nutritional components. Instead of checking a list to see what was required or forbidden, I used SparkPeople to record my meals and snacks, and through its free online resources, I learned how to use the healthy foods I liked to meet my nutritional goals, while still allowing a smattering of my more indulgent favorites. Knowing myself as well as I do, I built in splurges — my term for “cheating,” a word I don’t like — such as a weekly splurge on a burger or a slice of pizza, as long as it fit within my calorie count for the day. I also allowed myself a monthly splurge meal (not a full day, just one meal.) The only rule was that I had to otherwise be eating healthy foods. While I was working on changing my eating habits, I started walking regularly and doing some basic yoga poses. As my endurance increased, I knew I needed to add some new forms of exercise . The thought of going to a gym and learning with an audience made me slightly nauseated, so I first went to a personal training studio and worked with a trainer in private. What a difference! Working out with weights , in addition to cardio -type exercises, resulted in amazing changes to my body, both in strength and shape. Even when the scale wouldn’t budge, I was still dropping sizes. Now I’m my own trainer (which has to be amusing to watch), and I exercise consistently five to six days per week. I love it, and I miss it when life gets in the way. I approached all the changes I made slowly to avoid feeling overwhelmed by trying to change everything at once. I didn’t worry about doing everything “perfectly” but focused on doing as many things right as I could. I found this shift in thinking to be energizing and liberating. It was actually fun to seek out new changes and challenges for myself. Some were serious, some were silly, but they all helped me maintain my enthusiasm and build my momentum. The really amazing thing about the whole process was that in giving up the notion of a specific weight or a single-digit size and focusing instead on changing to a healthier, sustainable way of living, I actually achieved a weight I never thought I’d see again. I’m not sure what to make of this little twist, but I like writer Martha Beck’s take on it: “We manifest only what we surrender.” Life, especially a healthier one, is so much fun! Cammy Now Why I Wanted to Blog About It: Like so many people, I initially started blogging for the accountability factor. I don’t mind recording that I ate one brownie, but it would be embarrassing to have to report eating six of them. Thank goodness I haven’t had to, so far, and I give the credit for that to blogging! I also enjoy sharing what I’ve learned along with new tricks and tips I discover. Plus, I like to think that I serve as a reminder to people that it is possible to lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off. The Best Part of Blogging Is: Hands down, the most rewarding aspect to blogging is the friendships that have developed along the way. Some folks I’ve met in person, others I’ll meet someday, and still others will likely be people I know online only, but I consider them all friends and treasure their place in my life. What’s even more wonderful is that new people are always popping in to share their stories, triumphs and struggles, and it’s just so much fun getting to know them and cheer them on. Best Comment I’ve Received: Oh, I couldn’t single out one comment. Supportive comments are always valuable, but nothing thrills me more than to receive a comment that the reader achieved some sort of enlightenment or encouragement from me or my blog. It makes every minute spent writing or commenting worthwhile! What’s Next for My Blog: I’ve joked about having a goal of becoming the oldest living blogger. For all I know, I already am! My plans are to continue sharing my story and to continue to serve as proof positive that significant weight loss is possible, even for us middle-agers,– and that the process can actually be fun ! Who knows what I’ll get up to next? I’m always on the lookout for new changes! It took Cammy a year and a half to lose 100 pounds, and she’s maintained it for the same amount of time. Cheer her on as she maintains her healthy habits and tries new things, like her first official yoga class. Getting fit after 40 sounds daunting, but it is possible — here’s how one woman, like Cammy, refused to let middle age slow her down . Permalink | Email this | Comments

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Cammy Quit Yo-Yo Dieting and Lost 100 Pounds

Healthy Snack Idea: Skip the Jam

Looking for creative ways to incorporate fruit into your diet? Take this tip from FitSugar Community member Wiggle in the Snack Attack group: skip the jam. And go straight to the berries. It’s good on peanut butter too! We’d love to hear from you, so share your snack ideas in the Snack Attack community group. Include a photo along with your post, and your snack could be featured here on FitSugar. You can even mobile blog your photos straight from your phone .

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Healthy Snack Idea: Skip the Jam

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