This is what it’s really like to be involved in an intervention

August 01, 2019 at 07:49AM by CWC By the time she was 30 years old, Peg owned a house at the beach, was building a career—and was, as she puts it, a full-blown alcoholic. “I started drinking in eighth grade, and I drank heavily from day one,” she recalls. “I never went out for just one drink, even for business.” During her 20s, she lived in New York City and was able to hide her habit from her family members by avoiding them as much as possible. But when she moved back to her hometown in New Jersey, it wasn’t as easy to keep her big secret—and, at the same time, alcohol was clouding her mind to the point that she started to fall behind on her bills and other responsibilities. Naturally, her loved ones started to worry. Then one summer, Peg* returned home from a trip to Ireland and found her brother and mother waiting at her house. “They said, ‘We think you should get help,’ and they had paperwork with them from a [treatment center] called Hazelden,” she says. Caught off guard, Peg blew up, ordering them to leave and refusing to consider their offer. “At that time, although I knew I needed help, I just didn’t think I could stop drinking,” she explains. “I was afraid I’d lose my relationship and my job.” ad_intervals[‘406124_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’] = setInterval(function () { if (ads_ready) { clearTimeout(ad_intervals[‘406124_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’]); googletag.cmd.push(function(){googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’);}); } }, 100); But over the next few months her situation got progressively worse,

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This is how the world’s most famous makeup artist applies foundation in 2-minutes flat

August 01, 2019 at 07:22AM by CWC When I get a notification that Pat McGrath—the mother of makeup—is going live on Instagram, I drop literally everything I’m doing to tune in. Considering she’s been trusted to perfect the faces of pretty much every uber-glamorous famous person you could fathom, and her work has appeared on countless runways and magazine covers, it’s likely that she’s got some tips worth taking to heart. So last night, after three(ish) glasses of wine, I watched a solid 20 minutes of McGrath putting foundation onto a model’s face, and let me tell you—I learned a lot about the right way to do it. Fast. McGrath, who just launched a line of foundation of her own, uses what she calls “the system” to make foundation look flawless. And after years of practice, she’s able to do it in under two minutes. She starts by applying primer with her fingers, then moves on to foundation. To begin with, she puts the product in the palm of her hand—which is particularly helpful if you need to mix to shades to achieve the perfect match—then uses the Skin Fetish: Sublime Foundation Brush ($55) from her own line to apply it. She starts on the model’s cheek, and blends outward from her nose in soft, short lines. Then, she focuses on the facial contours around the chin and hairline. For the most natural looking, seamless results, McGrath also takes great care to apply the foundation to her neck and ears (something I’ve never

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Meet orthosomnia, the on-the-rise (and counterproductive) cultural obsession with hacking your sleep

August 01, 2019 at 05:00AM by CWC Like many people, my mom is pretty obsessed with her fitness tracker. We could be walking the dogs, completely immersed in a deep conversation about life, death, and the meaning of it all, only to be interrupted by her vibrating wrist and her subsequent message she just has to relay the message to me about how she hit her step goal for the day. While fitness trackers provide a metric for daily activity (and whether we’re getting enough of it), the next iteration is coming for your sleep. In fact, for many, it already has—Well+Good even called for sleep tech optimizing the bedroom experience being a 2018 wellness trend. Need evidence? Consider the Apple Watch and certain FitBit editions, which promise to not only tell you how many hours you sleep a night, but how much of that is deep sleep. Then there are smart beds and mattresses, like Eight Sleep, that give you a “score” of how well you sleep each night. Or, you could consider the Oura Ring, which uses body temperature and heart rate to let you know how much time you spend in light, deep, and REM sleep. ad_intervals[‘409252_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’] = setInterval(function () { if (ads_ready) { clearTimeout(ad_intervals[‘409252_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’]); googletag.cmd.push(function(){googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’);}); } }, 100); On face value, this seems like good news for our data- and metric-obsessed culture that intends to invest in and use such information to better our lives. For example, if you know you’re only 150 steps away from

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4 actually helpful empathetic phrases, since you can’t *know* how someone feels

August 01, 2019 at 04:00AM by CWC A few lonely months back, I was having a conversation about how I shed friends like a snake sheds its skin. This reality is largely because I live in New York City, have no plans of leaving, and it seems like no one else I’m friends with in New York City shares my sense of geographic loyalty. As it stands, the majority of my top-tier friends have long left for other cities, and the ones who remain seem to always have half their attention on a one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles. And when I recently tried to express to a friend my sense of isolation as a product of what feels like a scattered social standing, her reply fell short because her attempt at words of empathy didn’t really land. In response to me waxing poetic about people I love living thousands of miles away, she tried to relate with her personal situation: “I feel like even living 30 minutes south of the city has affected my friendships,” she said. ad_intervals[‘410387_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’] = setInterval(function () { if (ads_ready) { clearTimeout(ad_intervals[‘410387_div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’]); googletag.cmd.push(function(){googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-7435403-3’);}); } }, 100); Yeah, that’s like…not the same. Admittedly, this is a low-stakes example because it didn’t leave me feeling misunderstood in a dangerous way by any stretch of the imagination. But, it does highlight the reality that words of empathy have their limits. It’s a common knee-jerk reaction to try and share in other people’s pain by offering vignettes of what

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Prevent lower back pain by working on this key muscle

August 01, 2019 at 03:00AM by CWC As someone who still struggles to stand properly (it’s true), I’ve developed all sorts of muscle pain—especially in my lower back. I’ve tried a lot of things to deal with this lower back discomfort—which makes me feel more geriatric than I truly am—from trying a posture trainer to doing all sorts of back-strengthening workouts. But when a trainer told me that I should actually pay more attention to my hamstrings, things started to make a lot of sense. “Your hamstrings originate on the bottom of the pelvis, the sitting bones, and insert over the knee on the tibia or fibula,” says Paul Searles, CSCS, a certified strength and conditioning coach with New York’s Sports Science Lab. “If the hamstrings are tight, they will pull on the pelvis, causing it to tilt.” If your pelvis is tilting, rather than straight, it’ll impact how your spine is aligned, which leads you to use your lower back more in movements like bending over. So your hamstring strength is key because it’ll help “keep your pelvis in its proper position, which in turn will help to keep your spine in its proper position,” he explains. ad_intervals[‘409517_div-gpt-ad-9261280-3’] = setInterval(function () { if (ads_ready) { clearTimeout(ad_intervals[‘409517_div-gpt-ad-9261280-3’]); googletag.cmd.push(function(){googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-9261280-3’);}); } }, 100); This explains a lot, considering the fact that I always catch my pelvis tilting in whenever I’m standing up for a long period of time (whoops). Pilates expert Erika Bloom also points out that the fascia is involved, too

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