Tag Archives: tips

How to Look Red-Carpet Ready by Saturday

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This upcoming Saturday is one of my favorite days of the year: the New York Junior League Winter Ball. It’s a black-tie event at The Plaza, and Mary J. Blige and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (one of our members!) will be guests of honor this year. As co-chair of the league’s PR committee, I’ve been working with my committee since before the new year to try to get press coverage for this event.

Since I’ve already put so much time and effort into this event, I want to make damn sure I look hot. While I think I already look pretty damn good, there’s a few things I’m going to do this week to prepare for this weekend. While they are things that I *should* do all the time and generally do most of the time, they’re particularly important before a big event (whether that be the kind that you dress up for or the kind you don running gear for.)

  • Lots of water. I don’t want a puffy face in photos from this fab event, and water helps flush out impurities from the rest of your body.
  • Fiber, fiber, fiber. It keeps you full and keeps your digestive system moving so that you’re not bloated by the big day. (If you’re prepping for a race, you should actually decrease your fiber content in the last few days before a race and switch to easy-to-digest food.)
  • Cut back on the salt. Salt makes you retain water. (Again, in the case of race prep, you should probably up the sodium count in the last day or two before the race.)
  • Quit the booze. It can also lead to bloating.
  • Consider cutting back on dairy and wheat. Dairy can cause inflammation and our bodies will store wheat if you don’t burn off the calories. If you can’t cut back on wheat, at least make sure to go for whole-grain.

Okay, so that’s a lot of don’ts. What should you eat if you’re trying to look a little leaner by the weekend? Lots of protein and fat (they’ll keep you full!) and whole grains like quinoa and brown rice. You should also make sure to get in some strength training and yoga this week.

Do you have any healthy tricks to make you feel (either physically or mentally) ready for big events?

Sneaky Sugar

You + Sugar = Fat.

I’m sorry. There’s no other way around it. If you eat a lot of sweets, you’re not going to lose weight. You might maintain weight, and you definitely might gain weight, but you’re not going to lose weight. 

Okay, you probably know this. And you think you’re watching out for sugar. You eat yogurt, not cupcakes. You’ve switched to natural sweeteners like agave or stevia in lieu of the white stuff. 

But look again at that yogurt. Check out how much sugar it has. Chances are, if it tastes really good, it’s probably not all that good for you. I’m not saying that something has to taste bad to be healthy, but that sweet yogurt? It’s probably filled with sugar. I was foraging for a decent snack at my parents’ this weekend, when I found some yogurt my mom had bought. It was low-fat, and it had something like 23 grams of sugar. (And my dad has diabetes!) 

I showed my mom the nutrition facts and explained to her some stuff you might not know if you’re new to this healthy thing. (This applies to all food, not just yogurt.)

  • If it’s “low-fat”, especially if it proclaims so on the label, it’s probably making up for it elsewhere. It might have more sugar or more of something else.
  • Brown rice syrup or high fructose corn syrup (and really, anything that ends in -ose or “syrup”) are probably not ingredients you want to see on ingredient lists, or at least not in the first few ingredients.
  • If your fruit is in a cup, it probably has syrup in it. Syrup has sugar in it.