Back in skinny jeans

Tips for a Happy & Safe Halloween For You All!

My lovelies have a wonderful and safe Halloween tonight! Here's some last minute tips:

• Brush your teeth or swish around some mouthwash before you go trick or treating. The minty fresh clean flavor may help cut down the candy over consumption.

• Ditto with water. Drink water before you go out to fill up your tummy. The water will be especially good too for you ghouls and gangsters who plan on doing some boozin' since hey it is Friday night.

• If you are boozing, drink a glass of water between cocktails to help prevent that nasty hang over the next morning, and if you eat a bunch of candy, stick to drinks that are lower in sugar because if you eat handfuls of Snickers, M&Ms, and Candy Corn, and then go drink your typical overly sweet chick drinks like an Apple-tini, Strawberry Daiquiri, or Lemon Drop, whoa! major sugar over load. Balance my friends!

• The bonus of eating a Snickers over a Muskateers, protein in the peanuts...Not saying it's healthier just saying you might as well get some protein while you're at it...lol!

• If you're wearing any kind of short skirt cuz you're going to be some kind of scantily clad maid, nurse, or pirate, please wear some under wear. Yeah, I said it out loud! Someone's gotta say it! Zesty is fine just please for the love of decency keep your coochie under wraps for private showings.

• If you end up getting freaky with a cute Martian or G.I. Joe, remember the condoms so you won't get any unwanted candies if ya know what I'm sayin'.

• Best treat of all? Be kind to yourself. If you want to indulge and have a free day or even just a free night, go right ahead and let the judgmental voice have the day off. Live guilt free for the day and celebrate all you have to be grateful for!

Fit Flashback: Move Your Jazzercise Boogie Body

This Jazzercise video clip is from 1982, and I sware if no one told me this was real, I woulda thought it was some SNL fitness spoof skit because of the spandex outfits, bare feet, and the seriously cheesy lines. The 80s workout outfits are a great last minute Halloween costume. Uh-huh!

The most hysterical part is at 1:30 where the ladies do "the circle." zOMG! I snorted the ice tea from my nose I laughed so hard. If one circle isn't enough for you, at 3:10 they circle a second time with a twist.

Another amazing thing is that in the entire 3:56 minutes, they don't lift their feet once, not once. It's quite remarkable especially for some Friday, "why the hell not, I'm killing time til I can go trick-or-treat" amusement. Enjoy!

An open letter to female celebrities about body image

Kelly from Grounded Fitness is guest posting today. Enjoy!

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Stephanie and I decided to do a joint open letter to female celebrities about how their attitudes towards weight and fitness send both positive and negative messages.  Its seems somehow "thin" and "healthy" got mixed up somewhere, and that exercise is only a means to get skinny.

Stephanie is taking the role of an optomistic body image blogger, and I as a frustrated fitness professional, posting here at Back in Skinny Jeans. To read Stephanie's letter head to my blog, Grounded Fitness.

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Dear female celebrities,

At risk of being called judgemental (me!? psh) I am specifically speaking to female celebrities who thank their genes for their physiques, claim to not work out because they are naturally thin, publically exclaim they are "fat" size 0s, or claim to love their curves, but then pose on the front of magazines after losing copious amounts of weight.

With that said, you, female celebrities, make my job very hard.

As a personal trainer, day in and day out I have to battle client mind sets of The Biggest Loser weight loss results, fad diets and unrealistic expectations of transforming their bodies with very little work.  As a personal trainer, I know what it takes to be slim, but also what it takes to be healthy.  I can tell the difference between someone that is naturally thin and someone that keeps an unnatural regimen to maintain that figure.

Regardless of whether it is natural or not, please don't insult us. We are not stupid.

I'm so sick of celebrities giving a shy smile and flicking their tiny wrist while saying, "Oh, I don't work out. I eat junk food. I'm just naturally thin."

Um, is that something to be proud of?

Working out and eating healthy isn't about being thin. If you ARE naturally thin, it doesn't mean you don't have to work out and you can eat whatever you want.  What about your heart? Your lungs? Your bones? What about preventing diseases like cancer, osteoporosis, and decreasing your risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke?

Those things don't matter unless you're thin, thin, THIN!

It's ok impressionable 11 year old girl.  I'm a celebrity you admire. You aspire to be like me.  I secretly have a personal trainer, a nutritionist, and a private chef.  Every picture you see of me is air brushed and photoshopped beyond belief.  However, all you get to hear is that I am just naturally this way.  I'm not naturally thin, but I will claim to be so that you envy me.  I will tell you I am naturally thin, and that I do not work out, and since you are NOT naturally as thin as me, you should take drastic measures to be. Take the easy route of starvation and extreme dieting. Its easy for me, so why should you put in the hard work? 
 
Health? What's that?

In your defense, we put just as much pressure on you to be thin as you put on us.  Recently, Cheryl Burke of Dancing With the Stars fame became the butt of many jokes after gaining a few pounds while taking a much deserved vacation.  She's in amazing shape, is an amazing athlete and could probably kick any one of our asses, but we choose to make fun of her for gaining some weight. 

The difference between us and you, however, is you have a platform.  I can blog till I'm blue in the face, but the truth is, Perez Hilton is never going to draw white stuff on my face, and no one is going to hide in my trash can waiting for a glimpse of, and perhaps a sound bite from, me.

The public's judgment of your bodies is unfair. We do it, however, to even the playing field.  We feel we can never measure up to you, so the second we see you looking like a normal person, with a few extra pounds, or no makeup on your way to Starbucks we jump all over it.  It helps us feel better about ourselves. It reminds us that you really don't look like what we see in pictures.

I would kill to be able to get out a message. I would kill to be able to shout from the roof tops for all the world to hear that HEALTH is what's important, not size! But, alas, I get buried under piles of magazines with you all in bikinis showing computer generated abs and too-tiny thighs.

Just be honest. We are all women.  We all know what we look like naked. Why lie? Why not focus on how important your health is?  There's no shame in taking care of your body. I value muscle over thin. Some people are naturally thin, but no one is naturally muscular. It takes work.  I have more respect for someone that admits they bust their ass to look the way they do, than someone that just happens to be graced with it.

Sincerely,

Kelly

Grounded Fitness

For Halloween, here's how to be Don Draper

I love Mad Men! Wasn't that some season finale on Sunday?

In case you missed it, Jon Hamm, was on SNL last weekend, giving satirical tips on how to pick up women as his deliciously naughty yet ad brilliant Mad Men alter ego, Don Draper. No doubt that there will be a many Don Drapers tricking their treat on Halloween tomorrow, so learn from the master. Step #4 is THE best! This skit was hilarious, and yet scarily kinda true.

Quote on fame

Wanna meet Stephanie and other top Fit bloggers in Chicago!

On the weekend of Nov 7-9, yours truly and her skinny jeans will be rolling into Chi town along with 15 other fabulous fit bloggers courtesy of Quaker Oatmeal. We bloggers are planning some kind of blogger/reader meet up so we can see your smiling faces in person and vice versa.

I want to literally hug all my readers in the Chicago area!

Details are not in stone yet as the first thing we need to do is gauge reader interest so we can calculate some kind of head count to determine a place.

This meet up will be completely casual, and we're trying to make it free or so cheap you wouldn't even blink. In fact, if it wasn't so cold, we'd do a picnic. We are thinking of either doing a Sunday brunch or a Saturday night (around 10pm-ish) bar thing. We have a Saturday night dinner planned til 9:30pm-ish already so we can't do Sat. earlier than that. Or why not, we might even do both for the party animals..lol!

In the comments below or you can email me, or Twitter me, let me know if you wanna come hang out and meet moi and a bunch of some of your favorite fit bloggers. If you live in Chicago, and have any ideas for great meetup places, please share. Here's the other fit bloggers you can meet:

Carla of MizFit Online
Roni of Roni's Weigh
Jennette of PastaQueen
Tanya of I Ate Pie
Lisa of Workout Mommy
Monique of Big Fat Deal
Leslie of Weighting Game (Leslie is TBD but hopefully yes :-)
Jason of Twit2Fit
Anne Marie of This Mama Cooks
Amy of Super Healthy Kids
Jenna of Eat Live Run
Kath of Kath Eats Real Food
Lyn of Escape from Obesity
Alanna of A Veggie Venture
Anne of Elastic Waist

We'll all be in one room. Cool huh! Can't wait to meet as many of my readers in the Chicago area! And I'm totally serious, I will hug you ;-)

Who are the famous fitness and wellness gurus of color in the US?

The other day I was at my favorite Barnes & Noble perusing around the Diet, Health, and Fitness sections to see what is currently on the shelves. I find that what may be popular on Amazon may not necessarily be popular in your local bookstore. Living in health and fitness obsessed California you imagine correctly in that choices in fitness, diet, and wellness books, DVDs, and products abound like famesters on the red carpet.

As a took a glance at the wall of books, it dawned on me that I felt like the same white woman and man was staring back at me. As well, not mutually exclusive, most of the covers had that homogeneous stock photo look to them. So, why does this even matter at all?

When it comes to health and fitness information, all I really care about at the end of the day is getting good solid information from people who are smart, sharp, warm, experienced, and humble sounding. I'm big on voice. Age, gender, race, body type, degrees or not, etc are not driving factors when it comes to me deciding whether you are authoritative or worthy of my respect or not. I'm more about meritocracy and what people stand for.

However...

Like those who'd like to see more diversity in body type images, me as a consumer would also like to see more diversity in ethnicity as the US is supposed to be the biggest melting pot in the world. I would enjoy seeing an Asian woman flexing, kicking, and giving out health tips. Since Kiana Tom of ESPN in the 90's, I haven't really seen any other Asian women in the fitness/diet/wellness forefront in the US, or have I been hiding under a rock? Can you turn me on to any? I'd love that!

So, out of curiosity, I got to searching for the celebs of color in the areas of fitness, health and wellness, and this is who I found:

• Billy Banks, Tae Bo series
• Rodney Yee , Yoga
• Hemalayaa ,  Bollywood Workouts
• MaDonna Grimes , Dance Fitness
• Patrick Goudeau , Nike Elite Fitness Trainer
• Kelsie Daniels , Instructor with The Firm
• Jorge Cruise , Diet, Fitness, TV personality
• Ian K. Smith , Dietitian, VH1 Celebrity Fit Club Host
• Deepak Chopra, Holistic Wellness
• Dr. Manny Alvarez, Fox News Senior Medical Correspondent
• Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Chief  Medical Correspondent CNN

No doubt there are many I missed. Who else do you enjoy or has been most helpful?

Quote on beauty from Sophia Loren

Joynormous tips from fit bloggers around the skinnysphere

• Laura is re-introducing animal proteins into her diet again after some guidance from her doctors. She's been reading up on the health benefits of eating local, organic, grass fed beef where she "can honor my value of health while, at the same time, honoring my values of sustainability, responsibility, interdependence and kindness." Sounds fantastic, but with the "death spiral" going on in Wall Street, financial fears have been making her revisit the meat decision or has it? Find out how Laura is dealing with fear. [More in You]

• You gotta love jeans humor. Ever have those days when your butt cleavage in jeans looks more like plumber crack than hottie girl crack? Shana has some giggly cartoon visuals. [So Not Zen]

• Emily has an easy exercise to help you find some of your motivation triggers to help propel you in your efforts to reach your health goals. Motivation is so important to fuel your success. I would add too that you reach for more health beneficial motivation like "Cleaning up my eating will make my heart healthier" versus societal type motivation like "I need to wear a size 2 so I can look like a model." The first will give you far better long term benefits. [Fabulously Fit You]

• Curious what the Pepperidge Farms Natural Honey Flax Bread tastes like? Tanya shares her two cents. I for one am thrilled that more bread makers are coming out with Flax options because it helps this one {moi} with the bowel movements as Flax is high in both soluble and insoluble fiber. Ok, I know it's a bit TMI but healthy bowel movements are very important people. Let's hear it for good poops! [I Ate a Pie]

• Here's the best Halloween sweetness I've seen all week. Tips to start viewing exercise as a treat instead of a chore. Amen to fit me time! [The Office Diet]

• Charlotte is affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder which I am too and is the primary reason I live in the sunny weathertopia state of California. When I worked for Microsoft, just spending almost 2 weeks at the mothership in Redmond in dreary weather February nearly drove me back to the happy pills. And speaking of the happy pills, Charlotte was on Wellbutrin before but is now looking at Cymbalta and Vitamin D options, yes veetamuns. Any experience with the latter choices? [The Great Fitness Experiment]

Better Than Nothin': When tempted to stress eat, create a decadence list first

Tuesdays are the day when we applaud all of you for making even micro itty bitty steps in the direction of your health goals because doing anything even if it's just 1 minute of abs or one less can of soda is better than nothin!

Yesterday, I dished out some tips to help you alleviate stress eating because if you're like me hearing the news lately starts pulling the stress strings. The lovely MizFit reminded me of this excellent video where she doles out some of her words of wisdom on the topic of emotional eating. One tip on the video I thought would be awesome for today's micro change idea is the "Decadence List." I went and did mine already and at the top is "Hugs from cute boys." {of any age :-}

Best yet, there are 70 comments in MizFit's post with some gems of good ideas of how other people avoid or "tame" their emotional eating. Valuable stuff their folks! So today, take 30 seconds and create a decadence list, and take one tiny action in the direction of your health goals.