Blasts of Light

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Yes I’m perfectly aware that it’s Friday but I figured I’d give you a few days notice to plan for your first meatless Monday! I know going vegan seems completely insane and drastic to many of you and I understand, I was once where your standing. It can be quite a large undertaking to go cold turkey on meat and dairy but that’s why baby steps are so important! So let’s say you start off with meatless mondays, you can then step those up to vegan mondays or simply add more meatless days to your week! Regardless, it’s a great way to start your week on the right foot by doing something great for your body.

Did you know that women who eat a large amount of red meat and processed meats greatly increase their risk of breast cancer and heart disease? Plus all the fiber found in vegetables helps lower your risk of colon cancer! If your still having a tough time going veggie one day a week check out this incredible article. http://www.alternet.org/story/134650/the_startling_effects_of_going_vegetarian_for_just_one_day#.UPmjCO6PQ5Y.facebook

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

 

monosodium-glutamate-side-effects-300x225                    Now I’m sure your no stranger to the word MSG but if your anything like me, you may have just assumed it was some seasoning used in a specific type of chinese food that you wouldn’t even eat in the first place. To be completely honest, I knew it was bad for me but didn’t even think I’d come across it in my daily diet (since I eat pretty healthfully) till I watched the documentary “Hungry for Change” and was enlightened to this real enemy amongst our food supply!

              First, let’s talk about the picture above! MSG is actually used in labs to make laboratory mice OBESE!!! That’s right when they need to test out a new weight loss drug or strategy and need to start off with a plump mouse, scientists inject MSG into these poor creatures and they just about double in size! Can you believe this is in our food supply!!?!? I know, please, go ahead, get as angry as I am. This is RIDICULOUS!! There is a very basic but wonderfully enlightening website called msgtruth.org that you can check out to find in detail information about all the different studies that have been done as well as a comprehensive list of foods you should avoid. In general, it’s found primarily in places you (being a sweet and skinny peep) already know to stay away from like McDonalds (chicken, beef AND in the fries’ seasoning!), Burger King (chicken, sausage, even their new veggie burger) and KFC (pretty much everything on the menu). Some less obvious places include canned soups (progresso, you disappoint me), parmesan cheese, ranch dressing, dorito’s, cheetos and even deli meats! Once again, another great reason to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and whole grains! Anything that isn’t natural, REAL food is just that, not real food. So do your body a favor and only put the good stuff in! I promise you it will pay you back for the rest of your life. 🙂

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

MM3

This is a quote passed on to me from my grandma and with the recent flu outbreak in Boston I thought it was very appropriate this Monday! Often on the day to day we let little things bog us down and sadly sometimes it takes an even bigger catastrophe in our life to really put everything into perspective for us. That cute guy you went on a date with not calling you back is an epic disappointment till you find out you can’t pay rent this month or lost your job and all that can seem like your world is crashing down till your doctor finds a lump in your breast. I don’t want to scare you, just trying to prove a point. Our health is soo incredibly important and it’s usually the first thing we tend to take for granted. We only get one body so why not put into it only the purest, most healthful ingredients to keep it running on super? You know what’s better than a flu shot these days? A fantastic immune system! Your body is such a wonderfully magical machine that can be your greatest ally against sickness if you are conscious about fueling it well. So eat those veggies and fruits, drink up that freshly made green juice and wake up everyday and say thank you to your body for doing its thing and keeping you happy and healthy! Our health is really our greatest wealth.

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

After watching the documentary “Vegucated” last night on Netflix, I absolutely had to tell you about it! It’s a fantastic account of three New Yorkers (who totally loved their meat) and their journey of going vegan for 6 weeks.  It’s shot very guerrilla style and is by no means fancy or flashy but it tugs on your heart strings and can make everyone questions their food choices. I love that these people are so real, a single mom, a twenty something bachelor and younger girl still living with her parents. They have to face the real life challenges that happen when you go vegan! It’s the peer pressure from friends and family and the struggle to find something to eat when your out to dinner that are often the biggest struggles we forget about. Being vegan is so much more than simply not eating animal products, in our society it almost forces us in to being a health advocate, getting asked to explain ourselves every time we sit down to a meal. I think it’s great how many angles this documentary really hits on and would recommend it to EVERYONE. Even if you have no desire to go vegan, it’s a great tool to better understand the vegetarian and vegan people in your life as well. I’ve included the trailer above but you can watch the whole movie for free on Netflix or check out their website GetVegucated.com ! 🙂 Let me know what you think of it.

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

grapes

Hey, we all get hungry now and then, we’re only human. So when your tummy starts grumbling and it’s not quite time for dinner yet, reach for one of these easy, tasty 100 calorie options! They’ll help you stay on track without suffering.

100 cal snacks
one cup of grapes
1/3 cup of edamame
8 baby carrots with hummus
6 cups of air popped popcorn
A baked apple
14 almonds

There are tons more so look up your favorites and keep them on hand for when the urge arises!

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

Here’s one of my favorite motivational quotes to start your week off right! “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly” alludes to having to hit rock bottom in order to get to a whole new level of our lives. Are there areas of your life your unhappy with? Well January and the beginning of the new year is the perfect time to transform yourself, the universe is aligned to help you do so! And by that, I don’t mean in some astrological way ( although it certainly could be true), I mean everyone is alive with new years resolutions! It’s the only month out of the entire year we all share a common bond of trying to transform some area of our lives! Want to give up meat or start an exercise group? I bet you’ll find others following suit. I can’t think of a better environment to find yourself in! Make this your month, your year to become the butterfly that’s already inside of you. And keep this quote close to heart because sometimes it takes falling on our face a few times to finally be able to walk! Don’t get discouraged, the toughest times in our lives often come before our greatest victories!

Now go get em tiger! 😉

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

 

 

pear                              Ranting is not something I often allow myself to indulge in here on GoSweetandSkinny.com but I felt an overwhelming urge to share this with you guys because it’s important to me that you are getting the RIGHT information to make accurate decisions about the food you put in your mouth! If you follow me on twitter (@gosweetnskinny) you know how much I love little factoids. I revel in ripping through the pages of a new healthy living magazine at the gym and reading all the fun facts about what super powers different kinds of foods possess, so I when I caught a few of these ‘false advertising factoids’ I felt the need to say something. First, I’m not necessarily saying that these are incorrect but if you use a little common sense you can see the false advertising. Yes, of course if you replace three cookies a day with three pieces of fruit a day you’ll lose weight! I’d be hard pressed to find a cookie healthier than nature’s candy, too. Now it’s certainly not going to hurt you if this little factoid makes you want to eat more pears but let’s not look at pears as a magical weight loss diet pill either.

Anyways, these kinds of statements are everywhere. So just keep your head up and your eyes open! Trust me, half the battle to living a healthy, skinny life is paying attention! Stay sharp, stay sweet and stay skinny!

 

 

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)


My lovely friend J, totally inspired this post by instagraming the above photo! Leaving cute little notes for yourself around the house is a fantastic way to keep yourself on track and motivated to follow your resolutions and fitness goals. Anybody that has seen my desk knows that I’m a quote-a-holic, I’ve got brightly colored sticky notes with inspirational sayings everywhere! They’re there for those morning when I’m blankly staring into the abyss while I drink my coffee and need something to kick myself in to gear. Sometimes it takes just one and other times I’ll end up reading my entire wall before getting back to work but either way they serve their purpose as little traffic signs whenever I may veer off the right path.

J’s signs are strategically placed and perfectly fun and positive so that when she’s reaching for that bin of goodies she knows exactly what her bigger goals are. This is a great way to help make your new year’s resolutions stick! Leave a note by where you put your sneakers reminding you why it’s so important to work out or put a note on the cabinet of something you tend to over eat reminding you why it’s so important to you to lose weight or eat healthier. Customize these notes to yourself so that they really trigger you deep down, we all know exercising or eating healthy is good for you but what is in it for you? Maybe you exercise so that you can proudly wear your favorite bikini in the summer or maybe you do it to keep up with your two year old after a long day at work, it doesn’t matter the reason just so long as it’s yours! At the end of the day our actions are a clear reflection of our reasons and our priorities so why not put them on display to make sure you really make it happen this time!

I’d love to see some of your own little notes!

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

HAPPY NEW YEAR MY GO SWEET AND SKINNY LOVES! I hope you all had a fabulous time wishing 2012 farewell and are filled with excitement for all the possibilities of 2013. I know I certainly am! New Years is probably my favorite time of the year because I reassess my goals, review what I’ve accomplished in the past year and create a game plan to dominate in the new year! However I can be as guilty of forgetting all my resolutions as 90% of America by the time February rolls around some years but I’m committed to not letting that happen this year and helping you stay on track as well! GoSweetandSkinny will be a place you can check back to for reminders of how to stick to your goals and for new ideas to make your health and fitness goals easy to accomplish and fun to achieve! For starters, I’d like to share with you some of our goals for 2013 because I want you to be able to hold me accountable and perhaps even help contribute to making some of them a reality! Then, stay tuned this week for even more posts about keeping your resolutions in gear and yourself on track for 2013!

What 2013 looks like for GOSWEETANDSKINNY

More voices. Not that mines not amazing or anything but you can look forward to seeing more guest bloggers on the site this year. GSS is all about making a healthy lifestyle easy and obtainable and I think it will be great hearing from all sorts of REAL people on what’s working for them, what hasn’t worked for them and what you might want to give a whirl! I’ll also be reaching out and blogging on other sites so we can get that GSS word out there.

More updates. My apologies for the less than consistent posting this year, I promise you can look forward to more posts each week, more tweets and more tip clips. I know how anxious you get when you don’t get your GSS fix!

More media attention. This site is dedicated to demystifying a healthy, fit lifestyle to the masses who are terrified that being in shape simply means suffering on salads for the rest of their dieting lives. However,no matter how much amazing content I put up, it does the masses no good if the masses don’t know about it! So this year I’ll be reaching out to magazines and newspapers to get the sweet and skinny word out there and help as many people as possible!

I couldn’t be more excited and I’m happy to have you going along for the ride with me! If you have any post ideas, want to write a guest blog, have a media connection or just want to share your new years resolutions with me, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com . I love hearing from you!

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

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Happy Holidays my sweet and skinny loves!! I hope your all done with your baking and cooking and have sometime to sit back and relax with your family for the next few days! This year I made nutella xmas trees, red velvet wreaths(pictured above) and vegan snickerdoodles! Since cookies are certainly on the naughty list I made them bite size so everybody can taste each different one with out busting their cookie calorie budget. I also made some pretty incredible wicked hot chocolate cupcakes which you can look forward to being posted about next week and some vegan strawberry shortcake cupcakes who’s recipe I’ll also divulge soon!

Alright, enough taunting you about yummy baked goods– here are some sweet and skinny tips for tonight and tomorrow! Enjoy!

Staying Slim during Santa Season:

Come prepared. I know it’s hard to remember to eat breakfast with all the excitement of the holidays and all the things on your to do list but a good healthy breakfast will be your best friend later in the day! Don’t arrive at a party ravenous or you’ll eat whatever they have out, when your not too hungry you have the advantage of being picky about what goes in your mouth!

Bring your own. This is my go to. When in doubt bring a delicious appetizer and/or dessert that’s healthy or low in fat. This way everyone wins, you look like a super sweet guest and you know for sure there will be something you really like that’s also healthy for you at the party!

Think like a bird. That’s right, take tiny portions of everything and only go back for seconds on things you absolutely love. You get to sample all the goodies and not over eat. An even better ideas is to allow yourself twenty minutes before you go back for seconds. This way you’ll know of your truly hungry enough for another!

Hope this helps! Drink lots of water and focus on catching up with your loved ones, not the buffet and you’ll sail through the holidays sweet and skinny style!

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

With only a few days left before Christmas, if your anything like me your stressed beyond belief! Between last minute shopping, christmas card writing, cookie (and cupcake) baking and trying to figure out my holiday wardrobe, exercise and yoga are a MUST DO! It’s my favorite way to stay balanced, focused and keep my head in the right place to juggle it all. Yet I find myself still looking for something else to add to my usual routine during these crazy pre-holiday times.

Luckily, a new study from Stanford University has found that drinking just three cups of chamomile tea a day can have a similar or perhaps even better (cause of it’s extra painkilling benefits) effect on my stress level this season! Just three little cups can help ease tension headaches and soothe a stress-related upset stomach. As an added bonus, the calming effect of this herb also helps reduce the production of the stress hormone cortisol which causes inflammation and can lead to weight gain. It’s no wonder Starbuck’s calls this tea “Calm”, I’m getting relaxed just thinking about the cup I’m about to enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/gosweetandskinny) to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)

Sorry for the belated post – was having some technical issues with YouTube yesterday. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading! I love that Go Sweet and Skinny is your go-to website for healthy living tips, vegan and vegetarian recipes (from everything from appetizers to cupcakes!) and diet advice. I”m committed to helping you get skinny and live the sweet life! Please follow @gosweetnskinny on twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/gosweetandskinny) to keep yourself sweet and skinny 24/7. And as always, feel free to email me at gosweetandskinny@gmail.com and let me know what low fat, healthy recipes you want to see on the site, what diet books your trying and ask any diet questions your little heart desires! I’m here to help you!:)