Month: October 2019

October 31, 2019 at 02:00AM by CWC You typically wouldn’t eat your main course before your appetizer. And yet—so many people (including moi) tend to skip right to the meat and potatoes, if you will, of our workouts. Specifically, in our arm workouts. More often than not, a waltz around the gym will show you people starting their upper body workouts with good ol’ bicep curls. There’s nothing wrong with this, but: It’s actually wiser to start with your triceps instead. So, as Missy Elliot would say—put your weights down, flip it, and reverse it. “The biggest advantage of starting your arm workout with your triceps is that the tricep is tied to more muscle groups where people are naturally weaker,” says James Mingle, a trainer from Fitness Together. “One example is that your tricep is connected to your rear delts, AKA the back of the shoulder, which can affect your posture.” By lifting weights for your triceps in the beginning of your workout, it’ll warm up those smaller muscles—including your bicep, he says—for a more optimal workout, with your upper body more reared to slay its exercises. It’s similar to how skipping before a run gets your lower body primed for more efficient movement, or starting your workout with a plank, since your core is so crucial to your overall fitness game. Though starting your upper body work with the triceps seems backwards, once you really start thinking about it, it makes more sense. Your triceps are your largest arm

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October 31, 2019 at 01:00AM by CWC If you had $20 million to study anything, what would you choose? This weekend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) directed the very generous sum—a gift from philanthropists Jennifer and Matthew Harris—to open The Bedari Kindness Institute, the first research center in the world to focus solely on the power of good will. The Institute expects to dive deep into the effects and applications of kindness in society, but Harris says that in his experience, kindness starts with the self. “Whether it’s being judgmental, holding yourself to a higher standard or insisting on perfection—all the ways I lived my life—it became my experience that if you’re not kind and compassionate to yourself, it’s hard to do the same for others,” Harris told the Washington Post. “I simply didn’t want to live my life like that anymore.” In a press release, UCLA announced an interdisciplinary approach to the study of kindness that looks at evolutionary, psychological, economic, sociological, and other factors that facilitate kind actions toward others. Without a doubt, the root of compassion (the self) will be considered in a holistic view at the mechanisms of kindness. Multiple studies have already confirmed the life-changing magic of uttering a few kind words to the person you see in the mirror. Research conducted by the universities of Exeter and Oxford in early 2019 found that the very simple step of thinking kind thoughts about yourself can lower your heart rate and increase levels of self-compassion.

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October 30, 2019 at 11:00PM by CWC Gloria Estefan is my bad mood hero. Allow me to explain: There are occasions where, when I’m left all alone, I can find myself getting a little too lost in my thoughts (a staple Aquarius trait, BTW). Overthinking plus a gloomy gray day and a mellow soundtrack—Frank Ocean, to be specific—and it becomes the perfect storm for an existential crisis. On a recent occasion like this, I texted my boyfriend about how I was spiraling into a really sad mood. “Turn on Miami Sound Machine! Flip it, flip it!” he wrote back. Three seconds into “Conga” and I was back to my normal, chipper self. It’s been a recent discovery that Gloria Estefan—of Miami Sound Machine fame, if you’re not familiar—music has the utmost power of putting me into a good mood no matter how sad or angry I might have felt just moments before. It’s actually not surprising though, once you think about how much research backs the powerful influence of music on your psyche. What you’re listening to, music-wise, has been proven to help with mood regulation, and with making you feel good, so something more upbeat boosts how you’re feeling on a psychological level. Hence the power of Gloria Estefan, whose voice infiltrates my body its core and sends actual dopamine to my brain to quite literally turn my frown upside down “Even just listening to a song is one of the most direct routes to emotional control, because music makes

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October 30, 2019 at 09:30PM by CWC [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUCn7BbXgwA] Want to know what Sarah Michelle Gellar is reading? Watch the full video here. Nobody has been waiting for the Sarah Michelle Gellar renaissance like I have. Her Instagram is my self care; every time I need a burst of wholesome, glowing energy, she rises to the top of my newsfeed. Clearly I’m up to speed with the goings on of her world she feels compelled to share, but those who don’t follow as diligently usually associate Gellar with her status as a ’90s icon, half of #couplesgoals with Freddie Prinze Jr., and, yes, Buffy Summers. But, she’s so much more. In the latest episode of The Avocado Show, Well+Good’s YouTube series where our favorite celebs sit down with our favorite fruit, Gellar reminds us that she’s an entrepreneur, a mom, and—AHHH!!!—returning to TV. In fact, Gellar is cast in not one but two upcoming shows: Other People’s Houses and the Ellen Degeneres-produced limited series Sometimes I Lie. While sitting down with beauty and fitness editor Zoë Weiner over tuna tartare with avocado and caviar, Gellar divulges what she missed most about television: “I missed my trailer,” she says. “No, I’m just kidding. I miss telling stories, I’m a storyteller. And the beauty of my life now is I get to be both; I get to be an entrepreneur and have a company, and I also get to be a storyteller.” ICYMI, Gellar is a co-founder of Foodstirs, an organic and non-GMO

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October 30, 2019 at 07:57PM by CWC I wanted to be the Princess of Darkness, and that’s my fault. I was 14 and eager to amp my goth street cred by dyeing my hair purple. I had taken enough “Are you gothic?” Quizilla quizzes to know that blonde hair was for “preps only,” and my mom had little sympathy towards this plight. Finally, the summer before my freshmen year, she caved with a compromise: She would dye my hair a semi-permanent, wash-out plum color with the expectation that it wouldn’t do any irreparable damage. Oh, but it did. I’m not a colorist, but here’s some “Home Dye for Rebellious Teens 101”: To get that really vibrant hue, you’re supposed to bleach your whole head and Manic Panic the hell out of it. I was not allowed to do this, because my mother was afraid the peroxide would make my hair fall out in clumps. And so, we slathered the dye over my dark blonde strands late one summer. When I leaned back in the sink I could feel the magenta foam seep into them, guaranteeing I would be a true Lord of the Underworld. When I looked in the mirror, though, all I could see was a monster. Spoiler alert: The demi-gloss that sat over my dusty, not-bleached blonde hair and created a sort of shadowy plum tinge that was not at all what I was going for. My olive skin gets a pretty Trumpian glow in the summer, so

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