What does the 4th of July mean to you? Fireworks? Freedom? Fried food? All of the above? Most definitely! Moderation isn’t exactly a word that comes to mind during the 4th, or most holiday weekends. But I’m here to tell you, friends of the 50 Million Pound Challenge, you can enjoy the 4th to the max and still maintain your fitness momentum.

If you’re hosting a 4th of July jamboree, that puts you in the driver’s seat to provide a delicious, healthy spread. Nobody’s going to miss played out potato chips and greasy pre-packaged snacks if you provide a lush raw veggie tray for starters. Slice up red, yellow, and orange peppers, add some baby carrots, cucumber spears, and sugar snap peas — serve with low fat ranch, black bean dip, and hummus et voila! Easy, fresh, bright, delicious. And you can do the same with a fruit platter — apple slices drizzled with lemon and honey, fresh canteloupe, honeydew and watermelon, and lots and lots of berries. Skip the caramel dip, save the calories for more fun fare.

One of my favorite crowd pleasing recipes is a version of this vegetable pizza, made with Pillsbury crust, cream cheese, powdered ranch dressing, and lots and lots of fresh chopped veggies. I swear to you, people who don’t like veggies LOVE this pizza. And I don’t usually include the olives because I married someone who thinks they are gross.

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I’ve been reading Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food. The first sentence grabbed me right away.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

He makes it sound easy, right? But when you’re living in a city, or on a budget, if you work long hours or if you have kids who are picky eaters, eating according to Pollan’s plan can seem almost impossible. Unhealthy food is cheap and it’s EVERYWHERE. Eating healthy takes a bit more effort. But believe me, bellas — it’s worth it!

I have big, big admiration for First Lady Michelle Obama for getting her hands in the dirt and encouraging kids to plant a vegetable garden at the White House. 36 students from Washington DC’s Bancroft Elementary helped her, and just this week they harvested their veggies. 73 pounds of lettuce, to be exact. Then, together with White House chefs, the FLOTUS and her elementary school assistants dined on baked chicken with brown rice and peas, salad with carrots and honey dressing, and garden cupcakes with fruit topping.

Delicious! Michelle Obama explained her motivation in a speech following the harvest.
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There are some killer bargains to be found in the world of spas these days, bellas. Trust me - look in the ads at the back of your local paper, or take a gander online. Spas are hurting bad (just like so many other service industries are), and the consumer reaps the rewards. There are spa specials galore, if you get to looking. But if you’re in my unemployed condition, sometimes even a spa special isn’t enough to make the experience affordable. Times like these call for at-home spa treatments! Investing a little in a new product can pay off alot. A trip to the spa may leave you glowing and overjoyed, but being able to recreate that effect at home? Priceless.

Here’s a tip I got at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach. The treatment I enjoyed at the Eau Spa was among the most fantastic spa treatments I have EVER had (and I’ve had some good ones!) It’s called the Elemis Exotic Frangipani Body Nourish Wrap, and involves being anointed with a heavenly scented oil blended from coconut and frangipani flowers and then basically wrapped up in what feels like a giant waterbed that’s inflated while you’re in it. It is the closest thing I can imagine to being in the womb. OK, so that part would be impossible to do at home. But the treatment begins with a dry body scrub using a cactus body brush and let me tell you — this will change your life. Never before could I have imagined skin this soft.

A little research reveals that dry body brushing has a ton of great health benefits — from helping to reduce cellulite to improving immunity. It’s extremely popular in the world of detox, and rumor has it (according to the lady who scrubbed me down), this has been done since the era of the Greeks and Romans.

There are some insanely pricey dry body brushes on the market, but I skipped past all of them and got the $15 cactus body brush from The Body Shop. It’s made from all natural materials and yes - cactus bristles are spiky! Ouch! But brush gently, and it isn’t so bad. Really it isn’t. And the softness of your skin afterwards is sooooooo worth it!
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May was a bad month for me and discipline. Moving will do that to you. No food in the fridge, no pots left to cook in, working hard to pack all your stuff in boxes all day long… the next thing you know someone says “french fries?” and you respond like Pavlov’s dog.

Forgive me, Dr. Ian — I fell off the 50 Million Pound Challenge wagon again. Way, way off.

There was a week in May where I ate practically nothing but fast food. Arby’s and Subway. Five Guys Burgers and Fries. And most shamefully of all — Krystle Burger and *heavy sigh* White Castle. Which I regretted eating almost instantly. Someone explain to me — WHY did Harold and Kumar want to go to this place so bad?

I could blame my overindulgence on my friend in moving, Frank, who is practically obsessed with sliders. From the minute he saw Krystal’s big red sign, he was raring to go.

But I can’t blame someone else for my own weakness. I should have just said NO.

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My first yoga class was an unforgettable experience.

I’d been yoga-curious for a while, experimented with videos and online tutorials. But finally a friend I knew through my old job convinced me to join her at the local free yoga classes at Bayfront Park in Miami. It’s a stunning venue — the lapping water of Biscayne Bay to the front, the glittering buildings of Miami’s downtown to the back. I got down and tried to bend and stretch with the best of them. The instructor was a smokin’ hot dude with flowy white pants. When he moved into a headstand position I was sure nobody else could do, I was astounded to look around and see at least half of the class standing on their heads right around with him. Needless to say, I felt out of my league. And at the end of it, we discovered that my yoga friend had exacerbated a pre-existing injury. That class landed my friend in the hospital with back and neck problems, and made me steer clear of yoga classes completely.

So I kept trying, I gave it another whirl with videos. But it isn’t the same, doing yoga by yourself in your living room with no guidance. I grew to love the Wii Fit yoga — it’s super precise because of the Wii Fit platform, which can detect even the slightest tremor in your feet. But still, I wasn’t motivated enough to want to practice every day.

I wanted that passion the diehard yoga fanatics seemed to exude. I wanted the inner peace yoga seemed to almost-guarantee anyone who practiced it. I wanted to have a transformative yoga experience.

I got what I wanted, when I went to a Voluptuous Vinyasa class.

Billed as yoga for plus size women, it’s all about nurturing your soul, adapting your body, and freeing your mind. The class I attended was led by Yamilee Bastien, a Miami-based yoga instructor who is all about creating a haven for women who may be hesitant about contorting their bodies into pretzel shapes, or who know a headstand isn’t in their immediate future. Yamilee helped to shatter some of my preconceptions about yoga. Number one — it really CAN be for everybody!

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I love those new Weight Watchers commercials featuring Hunger as an adorable orange monster. (And I’m not the only one!)

Not only does the furry little guy appeal to my ongoing Muppet obsession, and not only does he look exactly like Gossamer, the monster from the classic Looney Tunes cartoons… but he pretty accurately depicts how it can feel when you’re on a weight loss journey — temptation abounds, and for me it’s never ever for healthy snacks. I sit around fantasizing about awful-for-me white flour demon snacks, and it can be a challenge to resist their lure. Life isn’t like that equally funny 50 Million Pound Challenge commercial, where Dr. Ian is there to thwart a would-be dieter’s fast-food sabotage. When temptation comes a-calling, sometimes you have to find motivation from unlikely sources. That’s why I follow a variety of weight loss gurus, diet divas, and exercise experts on Twitter and Facebook. Every day they help me say GET BEHIND ME, hunger monster.

Daily reminders from them help to keep me on track, if I wind up skipping a workout day to camp out in front of the computer all day. Cause y’know, sometimes that happens. Allow me to introduce you to the wonderful and inspiring world of social media’s finest fitness motivators!

The remarkable thing about Twitter is, it’s becoming so enormous that literally anyone you dream up probably already has a profile on there. For example, the other day I wished aloud that Richard Simmons was on Twitter. And lo and behold — he already was! Richard Simmons, AKA The Weight Saint, posts daily affirmations and reminders. It’s a little scary that the man who works a pair of red-and-white-striped shorts like none other is possibly following what you eat, but I’ll admit - Richard Simmons’ tweets have made me think twice about what I was about to put into my mouth more than once before.

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