November 08, 2019 at 05:08PM by CWC For anyone who leads a busy life (so, like, all of us), there are nights when it feels impossible to eat dinner at a respectable hour. Even when it only takes a few minutes to prepare a meal, I know I’m not the only one who is curious what makes for a healthy late-night dinner that won’t mess with my sleep or digestion. Whatever keeps you from sitting down to dinner at a reasonable hour, there are a few food rules to follow for late-night eating. During an Ask Me Anything with Well+Good’s Facebook group Cook With Us, registered dietitian and author of The Better Period Food Solution Tracy Lockwood Beckerman, RD, shared her recommendations for putting together a healthy late-night dinner. How to navigate late-night eating, according to a dietitian 1. Choose something rich in magnesium Magnesium-rich foods might help you sleep better better. “Go for foods like oily fish, beans, lentils, brown rice, and seeds,” says Beckerman. Proteins like fish, beans, and lentils are easier to digest than meat, which makes your digestive system work a bit harder—something you definitely don’t want when you’re trying to sleep. 2. Add a high-calcium food Beckerman points out that calcium is another nutrient linked to good sleep, so she recommends pairing your magnesium-rich food with something like spinach, broccoli, or cheese. 3. get your probiotics “Add a side of kimchi or sauerkraut to sprinkle some probiotics into your gut before bedtime to help ease Sunday
Category: Your Regeneration
This month’s full beaver moon basically doubles as a time-out from Mercury retrograde
November 08, 2019 at 03:00PM by CWC If you’ve been feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, the November 12 full beaver moon in Taurus might just provide the help you need in order to power through. “Taurus is a tenacious sign. It’s stable, reliable, and stubborn at times,” says Rachel Lang, intuitive astrologer and healer. With the moon in Taurus and the sun in Scorpio, the potent combo of these fixed signs can “give you staying power to commit to anything you start,” Lang says. “This could be favorable for working through a relationship challenge or for finishing up a home project.” This full moon gets its name from—you guessed it—beavers. It marks the time of year when beavers start to retreat into their lodges for the winter. And the major theme for this specific full beaver moon is the practical versus the esoteric. “The Taurus-Scorpio axis line features themes of self-reliance (Taurus) versus merging with others (Scorpio),” Lang says. “Taurus is grounded in the material, while Scorpio plays in the unconscious realms.” You may also find yourself dealing with issues regarding money, whether that means having difficult conversations about money with your partner or rethinking your budget. “It’s the time to lay everything on the table and be real with yourself and your partner,” Lang says. If you’re worried about having difficult conversations while Mercury is in retrograde (through November 20), Lang says not to worry. This full beaver moon gives us a much-needed break from the communication issues that can
“Alphabet workouts” are the most fun way to stay fit since H-O-R-S-E
November 08, 2019 at 02:00PM by CWC Graphic: Well+Good Design For some, running is the be-all-end-all; for others, it’s a yoga 365 love affair, and while loving and leaning into a workout that fires you up each day is all well and good, sometimes variety is necessary. So, bless-up that we’ve found yet another way to bring the childhood game of H-O-R-S-E into our adult fitness lives using “alphabet workouts.” Alphabet workouts are pretty much what they sound like: Each letter of the alphabet corresponds to a short burst of basic strength training or a cardio move. While you can spell out whatever you want (or just go through the entire alphabet), my fave option is to spell out my name—last name optional—or ya know “horse” if it’s a TBT. About a zillion alphabet workout variations exist all over the internet, but we at Well+Good created our own, which will have you doing burpees (sorry!!), squat jumps, push-ups, crunches, and the list goes on, but you are certainly very familiar with all of the moves. We tried to make it as well rounded as possible, targeting every square inch of your body. If you’re ever crunched for time but still want to squeeze in a workout, this one’s really easy to knock out. I tried doing “Rachel” the other day at the gym, and was winded (I’m assigned 20 squat jumps, for goodness sakes). You’ll definitely work up a sweat and get in some cardio and fire up a ton
How to eat healthy and hearty at Panera Bread, according to a registered dietitian
November 08, 2019 at 01:00PM by CWC As far as fast-casual restaurant chains go, Panera Bread is pretty up on it in terms of catering to the wellness set. The chain ditched all artificial ingredients years ago, launched a health conscious wellness series, and most recently, expanded their menu to include protein-rich grain bowls. When deciding the best place to eat healthy after spin class, you could certainly do worse than Panera. That said, if you adhere to a specific eating plan—such as gluten-free, vegetarian, or the Mediterranean diet—it does require a little menu decoding to figure out what’s truly best to order. Here, registered dietitian Chelsey Amer, RD, shares her top recommendations for what to choose for each of the aforementioned eating plans. Gluten-free Menu picks: Baja grain bowl with chicken; turkey chili What an RD says: If you’re can’t eat gluten because you have an allergy or intolerance, Amer says it’s important to stick with the recs on Panera Bread’s gluten-free menu. (The restaurant recommends that people with celiac disease or who are highly allergic to gluten should consult with their doctor before eating at Panera Bread due to potential cross-contamination.) Her top picks are the Baja grain bowl with chicken and the turkey chili bowl. The grain bowl has 31 grams of protein, while the turkey chili has 23 grams of protein—both high-protein wins in Amer’s book. Order tweaks: While the grain bowl has great fiber on its own (11 grams of fiber of the 25 grams you want to
How to use the 80-20 ratio for financial wellness, no matter how much money you have
November 08, 2019 at 12:00PM by CWC No matter who you are, what you make, or how much you have saved, anxiety about money in at least some form is a common denominator for most of us. Sure, the way in which we freak out about it differs (maybe you essentially hold your breath until your next payday, or maybe you’re more concerned about stock market fluctuations, or maybe both). No matter where you stand in your financial journey, the concept of money itself can be freakout-inducing to an extent that forging a friendly relationship with it can feel impossible. But during our latest Well+Good TALKS, which focused on financial wellness, panelist Paco de Leon, financial expert and founder of the Hell Yeah Group, offered a quick tip for maximizing good feels about cash that anyone with any amount of money can use. And, by the way, it’s a simple reimagining of the classic 80-20 rule. “I think financial wellness is 80 percent of the time being chill, and then 20 percent of time freaking out,” de Leon said. “Even people who are wealthy and are going to be fine—they still worry. Human beings are hardwired [this way]. But if you can, 80 percent of the time, just be cool about it, that’s financial wellness for me.” What’s interesting about de Leon’s suggestion is that it cuts back on the day-to-day way that we worry about our finances. (And, as a former full-time freelance writer, I really wish I were
If I could use only one makeup product for the rest of my life, it’d be this $18 foundation stick
November 08, 2019 at 03:00AM by CWC I remember the day the Flesh Beauty foundation sticks came across my desk. It was about a year and a half ago, and the just-launched line (a brainchild of beauty industry vet Linda Wells) exploded into the makeup world with its 40 shade range and other fun pigmented products. I plucked my best shade match out of the pack—adorably named “Crème Brulee”—and started playing around with it. Cut to today, and I’m still using that exact same Flesh Thickstick Foundation Stick ($18)… and I haven’t used another foundation or concealer since. Seriously. While it’s technically called a foundation, it does it all. Wanna color correct some under-eye circles? This stick’s got you covered, literally. Into wearing concealer without any foundation? That’s what I do practically everyday. Full-coverage more your thing? You’re in luck, because it’s fabulous as a foundation, too. Photo: Flesh Beauty The stick’s got a nice, thick circumference, which makes it super easy to swipe or dab on. It’s also easily portable, so you can do that swiping and dabbing wherever you go. You can choose to make it really subtle and light, or build it on for fuller coverage. It goes on really creamy, so it never cakes, and still makes me look like I’m not even wearing makeup. You’d have to be Nancy Drew to figure out that I’m spot concealing with the sneaky, natural-looking foundation. There are 40 shades to choose from, ranging from a very fair “Froth”
3 body language tricks to memorize if you wear your emotions on your sleeve
November 08, 2019 at 02:00AM by CWC When someone says you “wear your heart on your sleeve,” it’s almost always a backhanded compliment. In certain company, being in touch with your emotions can lead to deep conversations. But at work, for example, it often pays to know how to cloak your true feelings to avoid unnecessary attention or conflict. Some people are simply more emotive than others, says body-language expert Patti Wood, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to hide when someone is really pushing your buttons. “First, always ask yourself if not disclosing how you feel is the best course of action,” says Wood. “If someone is doing something, like criticizing a friend of yours when she’s not present with you, it might serve you better to to say, ‘I don’t like to hear criticism of my friends.’” Knowing when to speak your feelings and when to hide them is a skill worth developing, but while you’re still trying to figure it out, use Wood’s three tips for concealing how you really feel when you’d simply rather not discuss it. Wear your heart on your sleeve? Hide your true feelings with these 3 tactics 1. Place your tongue on the roof of your mouth ‘This is an exercise used by audiologists and speech pathologists to relax, and it’s also a yoga exercise used to center and calm,” says Wood. When your tongue’s resting just behind your teeth, it becomes difficult to grimace, so even if you’re teeming
Restrictive eating plans continue to dominate the healthy food landscape—where does that leave eating disorder survivors?
November 08, 2019 at 01:00AM by CWC Plant-based eating has never been more popular, as people have slowly become more aware of the negative health and environmental impacts of meat and dairy products. But for Melissa Stanger, LCSW, a love of animals and the planet was not the primary reason why she decided to go vegan in college. She did it, she says, because she was grappling with an eating disorder. “[Going vegan] was a way to control what kinds of foods I allowed myself. It was not a healthy way of doing things,” she says. She became extremely rigid about her exercise routine and eating patterns, and was ultimately diagnosed with anorexia. After she recovered, she earned her masters in clinical social work with a focus on eating disorders. She’s now 30, and works as a psychotherapist in New York City. This is not to say that becoming vegan is inherently going to lead to an eating disorder. But as the healthy eating space continues to be dominated by restrictive eating plans like the ketogenic diet, Paleo, Whole30, and intermittent fasting (IF)—all of which require people to cut out certain food groups or limit what and when a person is “allowed” to eat—experts warn that the continued trend is dicey for anyone with a history with disordered eating. The link between eating disorders and diets The DSM-5, the manual psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose patients, identifies three eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. While
The top 5 reasons you wake up in the middle of the night, according to a sleep doctor
November 08, 2019 at 12:00AM by CWC Name me something more annoying than waking up in the middle of the night and then having trouble heading back into slumber. I’ll wait. Well, big plot twist ahead, because the top reason for waking up in the middle of the night is that doing so is simply part of your normal sleep cycle. But how many times is too many times? And if that number does err on excessive, what could be causing the wake-ups? “Everyone wakes up five to seven times per night between finishing complete sleep cycles,” says sleep expert Shelby Harris, PsyD, author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. “Each awakening is extremely brief in nature, and we fall right back asleep with amnesia for it.” Furthermore, having two or three wake-ups that you actually remember is common, and NBD for your snooze time, so long as you’re able to return to sleep relatively quickly. Age plays a factor here, Dr. Harris says, given that younger people tend to awaken once or twice a night briefly, whereas older people tend to have more “broken, shallow sleep.” No matter your age, what matters more than the number of times you wake up (and remember it) is the the duration—and if your mornings feel messed up as a result. “You could awaken only twice at night, but if one awakening is for an hour many times a week, that’s likely a problem,” Dr. Harris says. So, if you’re feeling exhausted from
What you should ask instead of ‘How many people have you slept with?’
November 07, 2019 at 10:45PM by CWC It’s a huge bummer that despite rapidly changing social norms, number shame still exists—particularly for women. I’m talking about the question: “What’s your number?”—how many people you’ve had sex with. According to a recent study, horny (heterosexual) people are likely report a lower number when interacting with someone attractive of the opposite sex so as to appear more selective and less promiscuous. Everyone is entitled to partner with someone—or many someones—who shares their values and interests, but a focus on past sexual partners may eclipse a more objectively important conversation that should be had between two people who are planning to become intimate with one another: “When was the last time you were tested for STIs, and can I see the results?” Broaching the topic—that is, how to talk about STDs with a new partner—is often easier said than done. “How many past sexual partners your partner has had is completely irrelevant,” says Laurel Steinberg, PhD, a psychotherapist, certified sexologist, and adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University. You should wish for your partner a past spent doing whatever made them happiest, she says. “What is important is for you to know is what they are currently involved in sexually as well as their health status and what, if any, STIs you could contract by being with them so that you can make an education decision about your own health.” STD rates have risen to a record high, and yet large numbers of women and