February 02, 2020 at 04:00PM by CWC There are a lot of variables that go into having good posture. Keeping your shoulders back, your spine in its proper curve, and your pelvis straight (and not tilted) are key to keeping yourself upright, rather than hunched over. Lesser known, however, is that a foundational element of having good posture is all about your feet. “Imagine that your feet are the trunk of your tree,” says Carey Macaleer, founder of A-line Pilates. “If you’re not working equally throughout your feet, it will offset the alignment for the rest of your body, which could cause issues,” she says. Think: knees knocking inward or hips splaying outward. And that’s exactly why adjustments to foot posture when working out are so important. The key is to make sure that your weight is being evenly distributed between your toes, and that as much as is possible barring pronation, your ankles are getting even distribution on the inner and outer edges of your feet. “If you’re not working equally throughout your feet, it will offset the alignment for the rest of your body.” —Carey Macaleer According to Macaleer, this can allow you to activate other muscles throughout the body that might not be getting properly worked. “If you can push down into your pinky toe, that could help you connect with your pelvic floor,” says Macaleer. “If you have a hard time connecting to that, that affects the back chain of your body, into the lower glutes.” It’s
Tag: Well+Good
This is how often you should be washing your pillows, because dust mites love them
February 02, 2020 at 02:00PM by CWC Okay, so, confession time: I don’t think I’ve ever washed my pillows. Like, ever. I sometimes give ’em a good spray of Lysol when my sheets are in the wash, but other than that, they don’t get any attention. I’ve never considered the fact that they even needed washing—am I disgusting? The answer is yes. According to Lindsey Boyd and Gwen Whiting, cofounders of The Laundress, you should apparently be washing your pillows every few months. “Because pillows come in such close contact with your face and tend to breed allergens, they should be washed two to three times per year, and even more frequently if you live in a warm, humid climate—warmth is a breeding ground for dust mites,” says Boyd. Whiting shares that dust from the air, dead skin cells, dust mites, oil from our hair and skin, and other allergens live in our pillows. Even worse: dust mites feed off of dead skin cells. Just washing your pillow cases doesn’t cut it, they said, because pillow cases don’t fully encase your pillows. “A good way to protect them better is with pillow covers, which go over your pillows and beneath your pillow cases and have zippered enclosures,” says Whiting. “These should be washed on a monthly basis.” For pillows made of natural fibers like down, fiberfill, feathers, or synthetic blends, Boyd says you should pretreat any oil-based stains, like makeup. She recommends using The Laundress Wash & Stain Bar ($6), along
This 5-ingredient cookie dough bread is packed with protein
February 02, 2020 at 12:00PM by CWC When it comes to desserts, cookie dough is hard to beat. So much so that only a small percentage actually makes it to the baking sheet. But maybe you should skip the cookies altogether. One food blogger is proving the next best thing to eating it raw is baking it up into a fluffy loaf of bread you can enjoy all week long. Bethany Ugarte of Lilsipper decided to combine two of her favorite things with her gut-friendly, protein-packed cookie dough bread—a recipe that’s gotten rave reviews on both her Instagram and her website. The reason for that is simple: Despite using no flour at all, it’s super soft and spongy. It also only requires a total of five ingredients, including the all-stars that give it that beloved cookie dough flavor: cashew butter and unsweetened chocolate chips. If you want to try it for yourself, here’s everything you’ll need. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bethany Ugarte || Gut Health (@lilsipper) on Sep 23, 2019 at 6:39am PDT //www.instagram.com/embed.js Cookie dough bread Ingredients 4 eggs 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar 1 tsp baking soda 1 cup of cashew butter unsweetened chocolate chips to taste 1. Whisk all ingredients (except chocolate chips) in a stand or electric mixer until well incorporated. 2. Fold in desired amount of chocolate chips then pour batter into a standard bread loaf pan lined with parchment paper. The batter may be runny depending on the nut
Surprise, surprise! Cauliflower gnocchi is the Trader Joe’s fan favorite vegetarian item—but how do the runner-ups stack nutritionally?
February 01, 2020 at 09:00PM by CWC What came first: cauli-mania or Trader Joe’s cauliflower gnocchi? This is definitely a chicken-or-the-egg situation, but one thing’s for sure: the cruciferous veg owes a large part of its comeback-kid status to good old TJ’s. The grocery store’s 11th Annual Customer Choice Awards Winners confirms as much. Cauliflower gnocchi took first place of the vegetarian products at Trader Joe’s—but what of its plant-based runner-ups? We asked dietitian Amy Gorin, MS, RDN, owner of Amy Gorin Nutrition to spill the tea on each. A dietitian offers a nutritional breakdown of 4 of the most popular vegetarian products at Trader Joe’s (you know, behind cauliflower gnocchi) 2nd place: Soy Chorizo “I like that this is an excellent source of vegetarian protein, providing 11 grams per serving. You also get a slew of other nutrients, including eye-helping vitamin A, bone-helping calcium, and iron—which is important for many functions within the body, including the transport of oxygen,” says Gorin. Because the soy chorizo 730 milligrams, or 32 percent of your daily value of salt, so make sure you drink plenty of water and space out the yummy meals you include it in. “You can also include a source of potassium, which helps to counteract the negative effects of sodium on blood pressure, with your meal. For instance, pair the chorizo with some avocado slices,” Gorin recommends. Everything you’ve ever wondered about soy, answered: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lO254Ecgpo] 3rd: Vegan Kale Cashew and Basil Pesto Eat up, vegans! Our bronze-medalist
Rock-Star Energy: How to make the most of mystical and powerful February
February 01, 2020 at 08:00PM by CWC There is nothing more important in spirituality and healing work than honestly facing yourself, embodying your unique gifts and high vibrations, and not spiritually bypassing anything. With monthly Rock-Star Energy forecasts, “Rock-Star Shaman” Alyson Charles represents those elements by communicating the wisdoms of both Earth (rock) and sky (star). Focusing on these Rock-Star elements for monthly energy forecasts assures that throughout our respective spiritual journey, we are grounding, rooting, and working on our lower chakras and our earthly, human tasks and behaviors. At the same time, we are also expanding, rising, working with the upper chakras, and connecting to the cosmos and stars to collaborate with the divine energy of the universe. February is a very mystical and powerful month, delivering a healthy dose of rooting, rising, and expecting long-awaited miracles to reveal in deep, clear ways. Below, learn grounding techniques for channeling the earthly energy of the “Rock” and also the ambitious growth energy of the “Star.” Rock Right now, there is a feeling of holding Mother Earth’s blessed energies in an incubated way around the seeds we planted for our lives before the winter’s cold came in. Some essences of these beautiful seeds have already begun to rise to the surface, providing a miraculous glimpse of what’s to come. As this positive energy percolates, we must not become resistant to the still-evident dark, cold days. Instead, let’s revere them with knowledge that the roots of our greatest dreams are being fortified,
Therapist-vetted tips on how to get the most out of a ‘mental health day’
February 01, 2020 at 06:00PM by CWC It’s the resounding advice from mental health professionals that’s often said but rarely followed: Take a mental health day. But mental illness—particularly burnout—is a rising problem in the workplace that not only impacts a person’s well-being, it also can lead to poorer work performance and more missed days if not addressed early on. “Running on empty is never a good idea, especially when it comes to mental health,” says therapist and anxiety specialist Laura Rhodes-Levin, LMFT. “I encourage my clients to get used to filling their gas tanks when they are between half and three-fourths empty.” Taking a day off can help refill your mental tank, so to speak. Of course, there are a lot of barriers that prevent people from truly taking a day off for the sake of their mental health, from enduring stigma that makes it hard to be open about needing help to company policies that don’t support taking mental health days (much less sick days). However, if you’re in a position where you are able to miss a day of work in order to recuperate, you might wonder how to best optimize that day for your mental well-being. Here, mental health professionals explain how to know when to take a day off and how to structure it so that’s it’s truly time well spent and you go back to work feeling more refreshed. When to take a mental health day The short answer: When you need one. More
Criss-cross crunches will work the hardest-to-target muscles in your core
February 01, 2020 at 04:00PM by CWC If your harder-to-hit core muscles had a campaign slogan, it would be “stronger together.” Allow me to explain. Instead of working each of the 12-ish muscles that make up your trunk on their own, you’ll get better results when you work them together, particularly when it comes to strengthening those harder-to-target muscles (like the lower abs and the obliques). “When we use the body as a system instead of through isolation movements, we are able to really maximize the potential of our strength,” says Obé fitness trainer Emily Diers. This is particularly applicable to your core workouts, since incorporating numerous muscles at once makes your moves more effective. Sweating through combo ab moves is helpful in getting to spots like your adductors, lower abs, and obliques, which are hard to hit on their own in isolated exercises to begin with. “When we use our adductors and obliques together, they form a really powerful team to streamline our strength at the midline of the body,” she says. “Our adductor muscles help to draw the legs closer to the midline and flex at the hip, and our obliques help with rotation of the trunk.” When you do combo movements targeting all of them, it’ll stabilize your pelvis, improve your core rotation, and of course, strengthen your muscles. Below, Diers shares three go-to combo moves that’ll have your entire core quaking… and feeling stronger together, for sure. Lower ab and oblique workout 1. Elbow to knee: Start
How to heal cracked lip corners fast, because…ouch!
February 01, 2020 at 02:00PM by CWC Having perpetually chapped lips is one of those annoying side effects of winter weather or dry heat that you often have to learn to grin and bear (after slathering on copious amounts of lip balm, that is). But if you let things go totally untreated for too long, sometimes the dryness spreads to the lip corners and then even grinning and bearing it hurts. Cracked lip corners can happen for a few different reasons, the most obvious being that your lips are hella chapped and the dryness has started to spread to the outermost edges of the mouth, due to a lack of moisture. But, if you find this happens to you on repeat, take note that there can be some other things at play, too, which you’ll want to get checked out by your doc. “Chapped lip corners could be caused by an allergy to something you’re eating that’s causing over dryness in the corners of your lips or mouth, so some people need to figure out what that allergy is,” says Rachel Liverman, CEO and co-founder of Glowbar, who also points to acidic foods like oranges and grapefruits as purported culprits. Another condition, called angular cheilitis, that could also be at play, according to board-certified dermatologist Rachel Nazarian, MD. “It happens often because people breathe with their mouth at night, usually when their nose is stuffy, like during allergy season,” she says. “Small bits of saliva collect in this area and
How social anxiety can look different for Black women
February 01, 2020 at 01:00PM by CWC Watching the video footage of musician Summer Walker timidly accept her award for Best New Artist at the 2019 Soul Train Music Awards brings me back to my middle school days. In Ms. Turberg’s sixth grade class, I was standing in front of my peers to present a book report when suddenly, it felt like someone hit mute on the room—all I could hear was the loud thudding of my heart. My stomach started doing somersaults in place and my face was burning hot, as if I had a fever. I was completely unaware of the words coming out of my mouth, but I just kept moving my lips until the kids in my class started laughing and my teacher told me I could take a seat. Like many young Black girls, I didn’t have a name for what had just happened to me. We didn’t talk about mental health at home and I had no understanding of anxiety as a medical condition. Yet these strange symptoms followed me through the years, with different consequences: getting me kicked out of class in high school because the teacher mistook my nervous ticks for mocking, pigeonholing me as the “angry Black woman” in college because I wore my heart on my sleeve, and eventually creating a perception in the office that I was “unfriendly” because I kept to myself and preferred not to attend company outings. Summer Walker has gone public with her struggles when
This protein-packed meatless meatloaf is totally delicious—and 100% vegan
February 01, 2020 at 12:00PM by CWC Meatloaf has been a family dinner staple since ancient Rome, and—without giving you a full-on history lesson—let’s just say it’s changed a lot since then. (The recipe used to call for animal brains, okay?) It’s safe to say that a transformation was very necessary, and a meatless meatloaf recipe makes it worth a bite. Vegan meatloaf recipes are increasingly popular. But don’t let the all-veggie recipe fool you: It’s just as packed with protein as the real deal. Lauren Kirchmaier, the recipe developer behind Flora & Vino, created a Lentil Oat Loaf that—between the 3 cups of lentils and 1 cup of oats—offers upward of 165 grams of protein per loaf. “It’s super hearty and filling with just oats, lentils, and veggies,” she tells me. “It’s also the perfect vegan and gluten-free comfort food main dish for winter.” Even though this meatloaf is primarily made up of lentils and oats, along with flax eggs, bell peppers, carrots, and plenty of spices, it still has a similar taste and texture. “The secret to the best texture is a mix of smashed and whole lentils,” Kirchmaier says. “I also found I found sautéing the vegetables first helped to soften them and infuse flavor before adding to the rest of the mix.” After putting your mixture into a loaf pan and topping it with refined sugar-free ketchup, it’s ready to bake for 45 minutes. The next thing you know, you’ll have a meatless meatloaf ready to devour.