Mother’s Day is just around the corner, & it's a perfect time to look at ways we can decrease stress and find opportunities to pamper ourselves. 

As moms, we're taught to juggle:

• • our career

• our family
• our relationships
• cleaning and managing the household
• providing meals for the family
• our family's health
• social functions and responsibilities

It's like the more we “do,” the better moms we are....

Step 1. Identify your stress

Social media is flooded with moms volunteering at their kid’s school, starting up home-based businesses, making creative snacks for their kids' lunches and taking care of elderly parents... Oh, and behind the scenes, they're the primary health care decision makers for the family.

It’s no wonder that women are more likely to experience emotional and physical stress than men!

And, one of the ways that we manage stress is through eating.

In my new book, Love Yourself Healthy, I talk about how eating healthy...

So many women have been taught that healthy weight loss has to involve a harsh diet loaded with restrictions, deprivation, discipline, oh and a side of guilt.

Often, when we're trying to lose weight, we're trained to ONLY focus on cutting down calories and increasing exercise. 

However, if we focus all our energy in this one area, it can actually make it MORE DIFFICULT to release the excess weight permanently.

As a Healthy Lifestyle Coach, I'm here to show you how you can lose weight naturally, Through healthy habits including clean eating, movement, and most importantly— getting to the root of our unhealthy cravings— women are able to release weight they've been holding onto for years.

The truth is, following an impossible set of restrictions for the rest of your life might produce quick results, but it's scientifically proven to be unsustainable long-term.

After all, more often than not, most women whose goal is weight loss, and who...

So many people believe that in order to achieve healthy weight loss, they have completely give up the things they love, their guilty pleasures like wine and chocolate. 

Well guess what:

I'm a transformational health coach, and I love dark chocolate, salty potato chips, and a good cabernet sauvignon.

Shocking, I know!

This "all or nothing" approach does nothing but creates impossible standards that set us up for guilt, shame, and disappointment. 

Here are my top 3 secrets to a healthy, balanced lifestyle:

1. The 80/20 Rule

A lot of people think that in order to be healthy, you have to aim to eat perfectly 100% of the time.

But in my training and experience, it's more like an 80/20 rule. 

80% of the time I try to eat seasonal, mostly plant-based whole food meals that nourish my body.

20% of the time I don't worry about what I'm eating and I just enjoy life.

80% of the time I try to eat home cooked food.

20% of the time I order whatever I want!

Limiting ourselves...

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Do you see all of your imperfections?

Your cellulite, wrinkles, acne?

Or, if you're like many women, you may avoid looking at yourself altogether.

Are there days when you wake up and think I look pretty good for my age and others where you just feel old?

How would it feel to wake up every day, walk by the mirror and say, “Damn, I look GOOD" — and mean it?

If this sounds ridiculous or incomprehensible, I get it.

I was recently asked this question in a coaching training, and I was surprised by my answer.

Several years ago, I would have answered quite differently.

I used to have a very distorted view of myself.

When I looked in the mirror, I would focus on all of the flaws and criticize every part of my body that I disliked. 

The first time I heard about "mirror work" and affirmations, I was attending the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. To be honest, I thought it was just another "woo-woo" thing,...

We all know that the quality of the food we consume greatly affects how we feel, our weight and of course, our overall health.

But have you considered that beyond the nutrients, there are other factors that influence the energy we receive from the food we consume?

4 Hidden Factors Affecting the Quality of Your Food

1. The Cook's Mood

There is a great magical realism book (adapted to a movie in 1992) from the Mexican author
Laura Esquivel called Like Water for Chocolate.

In it, the protagonist’s emotions become infused into her cooking, transmitting her feelings to everyone that eats her food. If Tita was feeling loved, everyone felt her passion. When she was sad, the tears that slipped into her stews made everyone cry.

We might not be living in a mystical Mexican village but – just like Tita – the energy a cook has
while preparing the food can affect how you receive and process it.

You can test this by consciously observing the...

We all know the story.

You go to the grocery store motivated to eat FRESH and HEALTHY meals this week.

You load up your cart with fresh fruit and vegetables, feeling proud of the healthy decisions you made. 

But then, the week gets crazy busy, and you just didn't have time to get to everything like you intended to.

Before you know it, it's Thursday, your spinach is mushy, your peaches are moldy, and your broccoli smells awful.

Sadly, you toss away all of that produce, along with your hopes and dreams of being healthier this week,  and even more upset about the amount of money you just wasted— AGAIN.

This ever happen to you?

Don't beat yourself up— it happens to most of us. 

According to the FDA, about 30 to 40 percent of our food in the United States goes uneaten.

Are you ready to break this wasteful cycle?

In the video below, I'll tell you the FIRST thing I do after I come home with fresh fruit and vegetables.

The best part?

This...

Looking for a quick and healthy chocolate cookie recipe? You've come to the right place. After decades of research, I've finally found the recipe of my dreams. These cookies take 10 minutes to make, they taste phenomenal and they contain 2 superfood ingredients that are great for releasing stress, balancing hormones, and improving mental clarity. All of that in a little cookie— magic huh?!

But first, I have a confession to make.

My life's a bit of a contradiction. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach who promotes home-cooked meals, but trust me, I'm no Martha Stewart. I'm a woman on-the-go! I rarely have much time to spend in the kitchen, so I have to strategize so I can get my cooking done in little to no time. After years and years, I've finally got it down to a Rolodex of recipes that are ACTUALLY simple, ACTUALLY delicious, TRULY healthy, and FOOLPROOF. 

If you want access to 28 days worth of healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes, CLICK HERE to learn more about...

One of the most helpful takeaways I’ve learned from some of my teachers like Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, and Brene Brown is to use gratitude as a strategy for success.

When Thrive Global asked Tony Robbins about his morning practice, he said:

"...Gratitude is the antidote to the things that mess us up. You can’t be angry and grateful simultaneously. You can’t be fearful and grateful simultaneously. So, gratitude is the solution to both anger and fear, and instead of just acting grateful, I think of specific situations that I’m grateful for, little ones and big ones. I do it every single day, and I step into those moments and I feel the gratitude and the aliveness." 

In my own life, I've found it extremely important to cultivate a daily discipline of gratitude, which helps me respond rather than react to the ups and downs that life throws my way. 

I know it seems counterintuitive to focus on being grateful when...