January 01, 2020 at 11:30AM by CWC Have some empathy for the “She Doesn’t Even Go Here” chick from Mean Girls; it can be hard to have a lot of feelings—and to know how to productively channel them. That’s why, for the next four weeks, we want to encourage you to focus on your emotional health. Per clinical psychologist Carla Marie Manly, PhD, author of Joy From Fear, emotional health means being in touch with your emotional state in a “balanced, grounded way” and being aware of and able to process and regulate those emotions. Because it takes 28 days to make a habit, we’ve compiled 28 daily tasks to help you get more in tune with your emotions and mental well-being. By the end of this month, you should have the tools to make checking in with the way you feel and the headspace you occupy a priority every single day. Get to know the plan now, sign up for our special email to have each week’s tasks delivered to your inbox* (in the box below), and sync the plan’s tasks onto your personal calendar now. On January 5, get ready to get emotional. Keep reading for the full 28-day emotional wellness challenge: Graphic: W+G Creative Day 1: Set goals It’s easy to make a resolution December 31 and have your efforts swan dive before you return to the office. So to set emotional-wellness-related goals in a manageable way, Dr. Manly says it’s best to set only one or
Month: January 2020
Make healthy eating a reality with this delicious 28-day plan
January 01, 2020 at 11:00AM by CWC Year after year, “dieting and eating healthier” tops the list of most common New Year’s resolutions for Americans. But this is a different kind of healthy eating challenge from others you might see in January. We’re not here to tell you to follow a specific kind of eating plan, nor are we ever going to focus on eating for a certain kind of body. Instead, we want to help you prioritize whole foods over processed ones, and make doing so super simple so you might consider keeping it up throughout the year. Why? Simply put, it’s one of the few healthy eating “golden rules” that experts can agree on, no matter if they’re a fan of Paleo or keto or the Mediterranean diet. And it’s something that can be adapted to nearly any way of eating, regardless of a person’s unique nutritional or dietary needs. But it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew when working towards a new goal, no matter how gung-ho you feel on January 1. Because it takes 28 days to build a habit, we’ve set up our food challenge to give you a piece of actionable advice every single day for the next four weeks, all with the goal of getting you to eat more whole foods while meeting your own individual healthy eating goals along the way. Ready to join us on four weeks of change? It all starts on January 5. Read up on
Get your finances on track with our 28-day financial wellness challenge
January 01, 2020 at 10:30AM by CWC The end of the year is rough on the money front. Budgets are blown traveling to see loved ones for the holidays, buying gifts, and indulging in holiday sales shopping. All worth it? Sure. But now that it’s January, you’re paying for it (literally and figuratively). The good news is, this is the time to get back on track, and we’re here (armed with some of the best budgeting experts in the biz) to help. This four-week-long money challenge is thoughtfully constructed to set you up for financial success by taking inventory of your spending and making realistic-yet-impactful changes that will help you meet your goals. We know the idea of tackling your finances can sound overwhelming, which is why the challenge is broken down into daily “mini” tips, all of which are totally quick and manageable. You’ll first start the 28-day challenge by taking stock of all of your finances—your income, spending habits, debts, the whole nine yards—before moving into ways to optimize your spending, boost your savings, and get smarter about investing. No matter your money knowledge, there’s something that you can benefit from. The challenge kicks off on January 5; join us by signing up for our special email that will deliver all the plans to your inbox* (in the box below) and downloading the tasks onto your personal calendar. By the end of the month, you’ll not only be a lot more organized, you’ll also be more on track
Get stronger in 28 days with our trainer-approved fitness challenge
January 01, 2020 at 10:00AM by CWC The new year—and in this case, the new decade—is the perfect time to start fresh in your fitness routine. But according to research from the running and cycling app Strava, January 19th has been dubbed “quitter’s day,” because that’s the day people are most likely to give up on their fitness-related New Year’s resolutions. It makes sense. What might have seemed manageable when you had all of that January 1st energy can feel impossible two weeks later once the reality of dragging yourself to the gym in the cold kicks in. But fear not: We’ve got a program that will help you stick to those fitness resolutions not only for the entire month of January, but for the rest of 2020 and beyond. It takes 28 days to form a habit, and this four-week plan sets you up to do exactly that by giving you simple challenges that work with whatever exercise style (and schedule) you prefer. The goal isn’t to lose weight or to work out more, but rather to help you get excited about movement and mix things up a bit. To start things off, you’ll take a fitness test that will establish your baseline so you can set your goals. Then, each day will present a new activity in the strength, cardio, or recovery departments to help you reach them. The program officially starts on January 5th, which should give you a few days to get everything you’ll need in
If you’re looking for a less-is-more $4 solution to skin care, it’s time to get ‘slugging’
January 01, 2020 at 02:00AM by CWC I only buy Vaseline when my skin looks like it’s been through the shredder, and that’s how I started slugging. After a no good, very bad cold, my nose and mouth were dry and chapped to tatters, but my go-to lip balm had been contaminated with sick-kid germs, so I’d tossed it. Left only with a tub of petroleum jelly (aka Vaseline), I started Googling how it could help my cause and wound up on a Reddit thread all about “slugging.” Slugging is a K-beauty practice that simply means layering on the (notoriously thick) moisturizer overtop your entire skin-care routine. Vaseline has been around for 100 (I repeat: 100!) years, so while “slugging” itself is a new-ish concept, for all intents and purposes, people been doing this for years—even dermatologists. “I’m obsessed with using Vaseline as a facial moisturizer,” says board certified dermatologist Mona Gohara, MD. While Dr. Gohara doesn’t slug (or apply it quite thickly all over the skin), she does apply it every day. “I use it morning and night, but I don’t slug. I just use small amounts to repair my skin barrier. In small amounts, it rejuvenates and hydrates the skin to help it glow.” Now the fine print: If you have dry skin, slugging is great because it creates an occlusive (locked-tight) barrier that traps other skin-care ingredients within the skin. Using it in large amounts (as with any skin-care ingredient), however, isn’t advisable. Research from the Journal of
The flexitarian diet lets you go mostly plant-based without *totally* ditching burgers
January 01, 2020 at 01:00AM by CWC If there’s one food lesson we learned this year, it’s the importance of plant-based eating for health and the environment. But it’s one thing to know that eating fewer animal products and more plants is associated lots of benefits—from reduced risk of heart disease to better digestive health—and another thing entirely to commit to it 100 percent. Sometimes you just need a real beef burger, you feel me? If you feel seen by the above, then you’d probably be down with one of the buzziest eating plans right now: the flexitarian diet. The term has been around for about a decade; it was coined by dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner, RDN, in her 2008 book The Flexitarian Diet: The Mostly Vegetarian Way to Lose Weight, Be Healthier, Prevent Disease, and Add Years to Your Life. But it’s something that really started to pick up steam in the healthy community in recent years, as more and more people became aware of the health and environmental consequences of eating tons of meat. “The flexitarian diet gained momentum because it’s perfect for those looking to increase consumption of plant-based foods without having to commit to a 24/7 vegetarian or vegan lifestyle,” says Charlotte Martin, MS, RDN, CSOWM, CPT. Also, with sustainability efforts on the rise, many people are looking for ways to decrease their carbon footprint, and reduced meat consumption is definitely one of those ways. But how does this eating plan work, and is it too good
The mental health benefits of exercise are worth their weight in sweat
January 01, 2020 at 12:00AM by CWC That exercise is good for you is not exactly a revelation; however, according to research, the more you know about those benefits, the more likely you’ll be to engage in physical activity. And you might be surprised to read how the mental benefits of exercise stack up against the physical. If you, like me, consider watching Jeopardy or playing Candy Crush to be mental exercise, you may be thinking about things all wrong. According to Gregory Scott Brown, MD, FAIHM, founder and director of the Center for Green Psychiatry, physical activity actually grows the brain in size, just like it does your muscles. It also increases the brain’s complexity. “Aerobic exercise, specifically, has been found to lead to an increase in blood flow in brain regions like the hippocampus, an area involved in learning, memory, and controlling stress,” he says. “Some theories suggest that exercise increases a protein called brain derived neurotrophic factor which supports brain health, improves cognitive skills, and helps reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.” So, physical exercise not only upgrades your brain to make you “smarter” but also enables better moods. “We know that exercise decreases our risk for type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but it also decreases our risk for developing depression and it may help reduce symptoms of burnout, stress and anxiety,” says Dr. Brown. He tells me that really any type of exercise—cardio, yoga, or strength-training—helps improve mental wellness, so it’s dealer’s choice. “When it