Month: March 2016

According to the timeless beauty Audrey Hepburn, “Happy girls are the prettiest girls.” But what constitutes a happy girl? It turns out making smart lifestyle choices will help you look and feel younger. It’s easy to believe that it doesn’t matter how we treat our skin, that a quick trip to the dermatologist’s office can fix all of our sins. But beware: 21st century living is taking its toll, and you can’t Botox away a lifetime of abuse.

Here are some modern bad habits that are making you look old before your time.

Netflix and Chill
Too much TV and lying around can have an adverse effect on your health as well as your skin. The most recent research shows that the optimal amount of exercise for increased longevity is 150 minutes a week, with 20 to 30 of those minutes being vigorous workouts. Exercise leads to higher bone density, as well as staving off diabetes and heart disease. And that means a healthy, youthful glow for a long, long time.

Your Daily Latte
Caffeine is a diuretic, and it dries out the skin, making you look more like a prune than a young nymph. The general water guideline for adults is six to eight glasses a day. But if you’re drinking a lot of coffee, you’ll need more. Try an extra cup of water and a serving of fruit for each mug of joe.

Facebook
According to the latest research, it’s not the use of social media that causes stress, but the general awareness of the problems in other peoples’ lives that makes our frown lines grow. In other words, we are sympathetic to the pain that other people are facing, and that in turn stresses us out. And the first place stress shows up is all over our face. Be sure to take care of yourself before helping others: It’s time to close the laptop.

Donuts
If you want your skin to be smooth and bright, a lifetime of overeating sugar is one of the worst things you can do for it. Sweets can damage the collagen and elastin fibers in your skin, making it appear older than its actual age. You’ll see the effects start at age 35, and get worse over time. The good news is, it’s all reversible; use skincare products with retinol to rebuild collagen.

All-nighters
Sleep is crucial to keeping your skin looking young and radiant. Not only does a lack of shuteye induce signs of premature aging, but it also makes skin less resilient to environmental damage from UV radiation. Another side effect: poor sleepers are more likely to be obese. While good sleep can elude us in our modern world, you have to make it a priority. It’s crucial to looking and feeling good.

The post How to Break the Bad Habits That Age You Most appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

For new mothers, finding community is crucial. As beautiful and delicious as new babies may be, many women feel alienated in those early days (weeks, months) of parenthood. Longstanding ties to professional identities and friendships with non-parents are put “on hold,” and navigating the world with a little bundle of baby always in tow can be confusing.

Traditionally, women had the built-in support network of mothers, sisters, or lifelong friends who lived nearby. As more women choose to delay motherhood until later in their lives and careers, or live away from their families and hometowns, that traditional support has become less common. This is why finding, creating, or joining a mommy group is crucial.

A good mommy group will help you figure out if your baby is colicky (or just messing with you) and what that weird stain on your leggings might be. They’ll also recommend the lightest breast pump for commuting, and which stroller is best for icy sidewalks versus throwing in the back of the car. Most of all, though, a great mommy group will offer support, friendship, a cold glass of white wine at 2pm, and a comforting text back at 2am.

I found my mommy group by answering a posting on my local parenting listserv. The seven women saved me. Actually, that’s not true: We saved each other, laughing and crying all the way home.

Here is a beginner’s–even a shy beginner’s–guide to starting a group of like-minded mamas.

Start when you’re pregnant, if possible. When my group and I met for the first time, I was 20 weeks pregnant. The other women were a little further along (my daughter Clara is the youngest of the group’s babies). Getting to know each other before our lives turned upside down meant that we met as people first, before we were Official Mothers. This was especially important when we were at our most sleep-deprived and unreliable in that “fourth trimester” of our babies’ first three months. We might plan a coffee shop rendezvous for noon, but then would straggle in an hour late, stressed out. If we hadn’t already known that we were all otherwise competent, considerate, compassionate women, we might not have trusted that the group was working.

Another reason to start building community pre-Bébé: the last few months of pregnancy are not… delightful. There are all sort of weird aches and pains, fears, and anxieties. The mommies in my group were pregnant through the hottest summer on record in New York. Knowing we were not the only rashy and dehydrated pregnant ladies in the world was enormously comforting (and at that point, we were enormous). Plus nothing tastes better than an iced latte when its 96 degrees and you’re drinking with a friend who also feels like a manatee.

Don’t worry about what you may have in common other than the babies. Unless you want to.

Seriously, you don’t need to have the same professions, politics, socio-economic or marital statuses, race, or sexuality to befriend other mamas. My group started with the commonalities of babies in our bellies and about a mile radius between our apartments. My husband compared it to freshman year, when you might meet your best friend that first weekend of orientation, and still be roomies in your twenties. We were all starting new together; our lack of previous attachment to each other was freeing.

However, if the group you want to start is based on a professional, spiritual, or cultural commonality, go for it! Social media—whether Facebook, meetup.com, or a local parenting listserv—is also a great way to find or start a group. One of the strongest groups I visited in the course of writing my book was a Bodyback workout class in Northern California—all they had in common was the desire for rock-hard abs. Also remember: No matter how often you mean to meet, you are more likely to communicate via email, text, or social media. And there is truly nothing like having five people to write to at 3am when your baby just. Won’t. Go. Back. To. Sleep.

Be honest if you want the group to last. For new mothers, there is no such thing as TMI.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from women who have been unsuccessful in finding a mommy group that feels like a fit is, “People weren’t real. I felt like the only one in the room who was having a hard time.”

If you feel as if the women you’ve just met aren’t breaking the ice, do it yourself. Ask hard questions, or just tell them how you’re feeling. Worst-case scenario, you never see these women again, so no big deal. Within my group, enough of us had enough problems—postpartum anxiety or depression, financial worries, developmental delays, even divorce—that none of us felt self-conscious sharing true confessions.

But really, the day-to-day details bonded us before the big stuff even came up. And with a new baby, day-to-day is often… gross. Your engorged breasts will feel like rocks when your milk comes in, and then will squirt like geysers across the room. You’ll want to share the fascinating rainbow-colored contents of your infant’s diapers with all of your friends. And speaking of poop, how about that your own first post-birth effort might rival labor on the pain scale? Let’s not even get started on when you finally try to have sex again (two words: patience and lube). Everyone is thinking the same thing anyway.

What happens in Mommy Group stays in Mommy Group. Ugh, I guess I’m guilty of breaking this last rule, big time, because I wrote a book about my group! But: I did it with their permission, encouragement, and (most important) support. By the time I began to write our story, we were no longer in the throes of early parenthood (the babies in the book are all “big” kindergarteners now). Still, in those early days, feeling as if these were women I could trust with my fears and secrets (why does my C-section scar still hurt? Sometimes my baby looks more like my mother-in-law than I imagined possible. Am I a good mother?) was crucial.

Ultimately, any group is only as strong as its participants. Reach out, support each other, and find the love. You’ll be a better mother for it—and a better version of your post-baby self.

The post 4 Tips for Starting and Joining a Mommy Group appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.

This healthy make-ahead recipe will give you a great head start on your daily meals. From The Stash Plan.

1 cup short-grain brown rice
1/4 cup wild rice
3 tablespoons plain Greek organic yogurt
3 cups water
1/2 cup broth (chicken or beef)
1 teaspoon salt
4 different-colored bell peppers
1 carrot
1 small onion
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon olive oil

1. The night before, place rice in a glass bowl. Add yogurt and 1½ cups of water. Mix and leave on the counter overnight. (This ferments the rice so it’s easier to digest.)

2. The next day, rinse the rice in a strainer until the water runs clear. Place the rice in a 4-quart saucepan. Add broth, 2 cups water, and salt. Cook on high until the rice begins to boil, then reduce flame to low, cover, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir, then allow to cool.

3. Preheat over to 350°F. Cut off tops of peppers and core them. Wash out seeds. Mince carrot, onion, and garlic.

4. Heat olive oil in a sauté pan, then add carrot, onion, and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add brown rice, then cook for another 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

5. Stuff rice mixture evenly into peppers. Place peppers on a baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes.

6. Allow to cool, then transfer to a glass container.

The post The Stash Plan Recipe: Stuffed Peppers appeared first on Tips on Life and Love.