These 8 women celebrities have molded their artistic talent into a hybrid of sorts, assuming roles as lifestyle aficionados with a taste for healthy living, environmental sustainability and spirituality.

It’s hard not to idolize celebrities, who troll our televisions, movie theaters, fashion magazines and gossip columns with their seemingly perfect bodies and lives. While many celebrities bask in their fame and stick to what they do best – modeling or acting – others take their huge influence on the masses to an entirely new, more inspired level.

1. Gwyneth Paltrow

Detox-savvy, exercise-obsessed Gwyneth Paltrow has led the bandwagon when it comes to celebrity-branded lifestyles. Her weekly lifestyle newsletter Goop has gained a steady following since 2008. The Goop website is a straightforward portal for all things current and quality. In 2011, she wrote a book called “My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness” and in 2013, “It’s All Good: Delicious Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great.”

2. Jessica Alba

Coveted for her good looks and sweet personality, Jessica Alba took her celebrity status and transformed it into a $1-billion international company, which is eying an IPO by August 2015. Frustrated by the lack of safe cleaning and body-care products on the market for her and her family, Alba co-founded The Honest Company, which is a brand that offers parents information and products that are safe for themselves, their children and the environment. Since 2011, The Honest Company has been growing steadily and in 2012, Alba released a book called, “The Honest Life”, which details her experiences in healthy living and creating a natural, non-toxic life.

3. Meghan Markle

Best known as Rachel Zane on “Suits”, Meghan Markle is also a rising celebrity-lifestyle star. The TIG is “a hub for the discerning palate – those with a hunger for food, travel, fashion and beauty” and is aptly named after a bottle of Tignanello wine. Don’t expect a portal for fitness and diet tips; instead, Markle has manicured TIG to be readers’ opportunity to explore the world’s finest, capturing quality and indulgence in new food, cultures, places and ideas.

4. Blake Lively

Blake Lively takes us back to our roots with PRESERVE, an online platform for all things hand-crafted, local and unique. The purpose of the site is to inspire us to preserve enduring traditions and the foundations that carry our past, present and future. Food, wellness, intimacy, style and home tips are filtered based on these strong ethics and make for a site that brings you closer to the source – the artisans, storytellers and chefs. Lively showcases artisans and offers a useful shopping tool so you can have access to the products she promotes.

5. Stacy Keibler

She was once a professional wrestler and still maintains a stunning figure, so it only makes sense that we take healthy living, fitness and wellness tips from Stacy Keibler herself. Her self-titled blog Stacy Keibler is an oasis of healthy living recipes, workout plans and the occasional playlist.

6. Giselle Bündchen

Gisele Bündchen is a beacon of healthy, fitness, environmental-sustainability and spirituality. She has long shown support for the environment and a lifestyle that is light, enlivening and pure. In 2010, Bündchen introduced a skin care product line called Sejaa Pure Skincare, which uses all-natural ingredients, calming fragrances, thoughtful packaging and recycled paper. Meanwhile, Bündchen launched a “green” blog, co-hosted the Rainforest Alliance’s annual gala, has been vocal and charitable in preserving South American rainforests, teamed with eBay Giving Works to garner proceeds to the World Wildlife Fund and in 2011, was named the Global Environmental Citizen. In November 2011, she was awarded Greenest Celebrity at the International Green awards hosted in London.

7. Cameron Diaz

In 2013, Cameron Diaz published “The Body Book: Feed, Move, Understand and Love Your Amazing Body.” Through it, Diaz shares her formula for becoming happier, healthier and stronger. Tips in the book are practical and backed with scientific evidence. That way, you know you are getting more than a celebrity’s half-hearted opinion and instead sound, concrete advice.

8. Alicia Silverstone

Following the publication of “The Kind Diet”, a guide to eating and living vegan, Alicia Silverstone launched The Kind Life, an online portal for an eco-friendly lifestyle – from diet to fashion to beauty.

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If the whole “66 days” rule to break bad habits is starting to feel daunting, here are some tips to keep you on track.

Confession: I’ve been trying to break the same bad habits for over two years now. While we all work hard to make our healthy habits stick, there are always a few straggling bad habits that become our… kryptonite. Sure, I could feel totally pathetic about my epic failure in this department, or I could feel proud about the fact that I’m still sticking it out after all this time – so natch, I’m choosing the latter. And you should too.

Here are 4 tricks to hide up your sleeve the next time your bad habits are about to break you instead:

1. Shrink it

If your goal isn’t being met in its current form, then make it smaller. Let’s say your caffeine habit is getting out of hand, and your current goal is to cut your intake in half… but you ultimately end up caving in the end to meet your work deadlines. Make your goal smaller, such as cutting back by one cup. Once your body’s adjusted, remove another cup, and another until you’re back to enjoying coffee because it’s awesome, not because you “need” it.

2. Bait and switch

Anytime you feel the urge to follow through with your bad habits – for example, if you suddenly feel compelled to bite your nails – choose a habit you’re going to replace it with to throw yourself a bone. More than that, make it a habit that turns you off your current one. For example, put on lip gloss (the goopier the better!). I mean, who wants lip gloss all over their hands, amiright?

The one habit I have managed to break is my sugar addiction – junk food and I go way back. Now, every time I have a craving that’s about to send me to the corner store, I brush my teeth. Since everything tastes disgusting after you’ve brushed your teeth, by the time the minty taste wears off, so has my craving. Bonus: My teeth are so clean they practically glow in the dark.

3. Build on your good habits

Can the bad habits you want to break be “linked” to healthy habits you’ve already established? Your established healthy habit will then become a trigger to remind you of the next healthy habit you want to put in place. Let’s say you cheat in the flossing department: Use brushing your teeth before bed, an established healthy habit, as your trigger to floss.

4. Visualize, don’t fantasize

When you visualize your goal, you picture the steps involved in accomplishing it. For example, if you want to learn how to play the guitar, you’d visualize learning notes with a teacher or following along to a DVD (wait, do they still make those?). When you fantasize, you skip thinking about the pesky learning process and head straight to picturing yourself nailing the “Crazy On You” solo. While fantasizing is fun, it can also be counterproductive, making you easily frustrated during the learning curve. Visualizing, on the other hand, keeps you aware of the hard work involved, and also decreases your anxiety about it. (Cha-ching!)

What process do you go through to break bad habits?

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How to be yourself without labels getting in the way.

Labels help us to define ourselves, make sense of our emotions, and connect with others – but on the flipside, they can hold us back from accomplishing some pretty amazing things. Some of us end up revolving our entire life around a specific label, when in fact we’re a cluster of smaller ones all rolled into one fabulous person.

Here are 4 reasons why letting go of labels will (ironically) help you to be yourself:

1. You’ll start living mindfully

Whether we realize it or not, we constantly try to define ourselves as a checklist of attributes. Meanwhile, our personalities evolve every second of every day – who we are one minute won’t be who we are the next. Letting go of who you think you are is the best way to be yourself: All of yourself, not just the parts you’ve labelled.

For example, I have social anxiety, but it’s only one aspect of who I am. If I were to constantly revolve my day around the label of being socially anxious I’d start holding myself back:

Friend: “Want to go for a drink?”
Me: “Can’t. I have to hyperventilate into a paper bag tonight.”

Okay, so the hyperventilating part’s true, but it doesn’t mean I can’t hyperventilate and grab a drink. Being socially anxious doesn’t mean never socializing, but doing so in my own way. Labels hold you back from spontaneity and the freedom to be whoever you feel like being in the moment.

2. You’ll start thinking for yourself

When you label yourself as part of a certain group, it’s gives you a warm-and-fuzzy sense of belonging. It’s hard not to thrive when you have amazing people in your life who really “get” you. But be careful you’re not using your clique as a shortcut for how to think and behave.

Do you dress the way you dress because it truly reflects who you are, or did you buy those boots because your friends love them? Do you listen to the music you do because you actually enjoy it, or are you really a closeted Engelbert Humperdinck aficionado? If there are aspects of yourself you find you’re hiding from your friends, then you’re not only letting labels run your life, but the wrong labels.

3. You’ll start accepting labels for what they are

I’m not saying in order to be yourself you have to ignore the fact that labels exist – they do, and they always will. It’s our brain’s way of categorizing the people we know, the experiences we have, and the emotions we feel. They’re also our way of connecting with each other on a deeper level: If you’ve deemed yourself a “shoe addict,” you can bet you’re the first one your friends are going to call on Black Friday.

And that’s okay. You don’t want to be limited by labels, but you also don’t want to be so anti-label that people can’t figure you out. It’s your job to guide them as to how you want them to “file” you in their lives. I’d rather have a label I created to help others better understand me than be mislabeled. They’ll always be there, so use them wisely – but don’t let them run your life.

4. You’ll stop limiting yourself

You or someone else may have given you a label you don’t want anything to do with – maybe because it reminds you of past mistakes you’ve made, or “flaws” you’re trying to coexist with. By not labeling yourself, you can flow freely from experience to experience, emotion to emotion, without being chained down to any one way of thinking. It’s so much easier to move on from a mistake when you don’t embed it into your DNA.

Stephen Fry said it best:

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

Don’t be. Do.

How do you deal with labels and their impact on your sense of self?

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Bring out your inner child to add more joy for a happier and healthier life.

As we get older, and the responsibilities of life take up so much of our time, it can be a challenge to rekindle the joy we felt about life as children. It’s difficult to be joyful in the middle of doing taxes, cleaning toilets or spending time stuck in traffic, but research is showing just how important being happy can be for our health.

Fostering positive emotions can be just as important as keeping negative ones at bay. Research conducted by a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health shows that having a “a sense of enthusiasm, of hopefulness, of engagement in life, and the ability to face life’s stresses with emotional balance” can be just as important to our health as regular exercise not smoking. That’s pretty huge and that means there are very real benefits to bringing more happiness into your life and trying to tap into your inner child.

But how do you connect with your inner child when the real world is always ready to intervene?

Here are 7 ways you can channel your inner child for better health:

1. Add spontaneity to your life. Do something “just because” not because there’s necessarily a reason to do it–good health is reason enough.
2. Play. Whether it’s digging in the dirt (grownups call this gardening), skiing, starting a board game night amongst your friends, add more playtime to your life.
3. Take dance breaks. Not only will taking a 5 minute dance break reduce your stress, it will also get your circulation going–that’s a double win.
4. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Kids jump into things head first and it’s only as we age that we start to over analyze every decision. Happiness and joy can come from overcoming a challenge that comes from making mistakes.
5. Don’t get too caught up in what others think of you. There is powerful joy in being yourself and not spending too much time on how others perceive you.
6. Treat yourself. Don’t regularly overindulge but do allow yourself to occasionally enjoy a sweet treat. Better still, make it something you haven’t enjoyed since you were a kid.
7. Spend time around younger people. Having friends who are younger than you can help you tap into your younger more carefree self.

Resources:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/happiness-stress-heart-disease/

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1015863,00.html

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Slouching in front of your computer or desk, or while we are watching TV or reading can get the worst of us. It’s a bad habit. But luckily, like all bad habits, it can be improved with a little self-discipline. It’s been proven–and you don’t mess with science.

Try it, right now as you read this article. Sit up straight. Am I sounding like your mother or ballet teacher? Pretend there is a string through the top of your head extending to the ceiling. Don’t over extend yourself—that’s almost as bad as a slouching spine. Allow the natural curves of your spine to take form in the top and bottom respectively. Feel better? Brighter? More alert? Science says you will. 

Posture awareness is directly connected with our moods.  When we sit or stand up straight a range of benefits come pouring in. Think it’s minor? It’s really not. Here are some of the immediate wonderful, and scientifically proven, benefits of a straight, healthy, good posture.

1. Increases breathing capacity

Intentional awareness of our posture and sitting up straight will allow more oxygen to your brain (about 20% more), and thus increase your creativity. A simple switch for a flow of great benefits.

2. Opens your heart

There is a reason why yoga and mediation starts with a straight spine. By being aware of our posture, we open our hearts and can more easily receive benefits like gratitude, awareness and increased compassion. We can all use more of that throughout our day, right?

3. Eliminates back pains

Most back pain problems are the result of unequal distribution of your weight—more pinch and strain in one area than the other. Sitting up straight and maintaing that balanced position throughout the day will correct and prevent most back pain issues.

4. Heightens awareness

Heightening awareness of your posture will heighten your awareness overall. Good posture leads to greater sensory focus and extends to the world around us. Maybe you’ll find you don’t need that second cup of coffee after all.

5. Increases blood circulation

Do you have poor circulation? Being aware of your posture is the best and most immediate thing you can do to increase blood circulation throughout your entire body. Not slouching opens up your body and allows your blood vessels the space they need to circulate your vital liquids properly.

6. Improves outlook

When we stand or sit up straight the world seems brighter. Really. A shocking study connected the importance of strong, intentional body language to increased self-esteem. Amy Cuddy explains good posture—and so much more—very compellingly in this TED talk.

image: Joe Logon

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The way you start your day has a drastic effect on how the rest of it will unfold. Getting into routine of taking quality time for yourself–a power hour–could be a key to not only a successful day, but a successful life.

Inspired by Fast Company’s “What Successful People Do With the First Hour of Their Day” here are tips for a successful day and thus, successful life.

1. Your email isn’t going anywhere, don’t check it first thing.

This might seem like career suicide to some, or waking up without your left arm attached, but get in the habit of avoiding reading your email first thing.  Looking at emails first thing will make your head spin with things you have to do, people who didn’t yet get back to you or that what’s happening in the middle-east. Yes, these are all important things, but with the busy lives we live, taking that time to ourself to clear our head is vital. Plus, don’t worry all those emails, they’ll still be there when power hour is over.

2. Are you doing what you want to be doing?

Yes, I know–this could sound a little overwhelming and perhaps broad, but really, are you? Ask yourself if what you are going to do is exactly what you want to do today. Will it make you happy? Fulfilled? Life is short and the time is now. Power hour is a great time to evaluate progress toward the goals that matter.

3. Get your blood pumping.

Take a walk, run, stretch, kickbox–even if it’s only for seven minutes, get your body moving!

4. Do the big stuff first.

The first hour of the day can be the best for power hour. Use it to take time for yourself to reflect and prepare for the day ahead or use the time to tackle your daily demons. Do that one thing you don’t want to do. Or that one thing that scares you. By doing this first you’ll clear it out of the way, make room for everything else and feel extremely accomplished throughout the entire day.

5. Gratitude and gratefulness.

What are you grateful for? Say a little Grace for all the wonderful things in your life that are so often over looked. Take time during power hour to visualize what you are grateful.  This gratitude will fill you with a sense of abundance, but will also allow you to see clearly what else you want to manifest into your life.

See Also:

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Americans are eating 50 percent more salt than they were in the 1970s, and eating too much salt is related to heart disease. The culprit? Yet again, processed food.

First it was trans-fats and now it’s salt. I mentioned the need to retrain your palette to keep from craving junk food in the Junk Food Jones. Turns out we all need to retrain our palettes to enjoy food with less salt.

The amount of salt contained in processed food has gradually increased over time and our palettes have adjusted accordingly. Apparently, three quarters of the salt we eat comes from processed food as people have become accustomed to eating such “food” as the bulk of their diet. What’s the result? We’re all eating too much salt.

The focus on salt is yet another indication that we need to start cooking again. Changing our habits isn’t easy. But it can be done. The trick is to continue educating ourselves (reading books like Food Matters) and learning how to cook and appreciate home cooked food. Instead of watching Top Chef while eating take-out, spend that hour cooking a meal with your friends and create your own drama.

Image: Daniel Y. Go

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Did you know that global livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than transportation? According to Mark Bittman, eating less meat could have a greater affect on the environment than reducing the mileage we put on our cars!

As the Food Revolution’s grumblings grow louder, more practical guides to eating are becoming available to help us make sense of all the food and health information we’re bombarded with. Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating is one such book, written by Mark Bittman – a food journalist, culinary aficionado, and cookbook writer, who is perhaps best known for his cookbook, How to Cook Everything, first published in 1998.

Focused on making sustainable, lifestyle change, Food Matters includes a practical guide to eating with specific meal plans and simple, daily recipes to follow. Additionally, the book discusses agriculture, food and American eating habits, the environmental impact of our eating culture and a brief history of how we got where we are today.

Written as a personal account and journey about changing his own eating habits, Bittman makes a compelling argument as to why the rest of us should follow his lead. After all, who wouldn’t want to lose weight, be healthier, save money and reduce global warming? Count me in!

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