Irreverent Fitness

Adieu Typepad. We're moving to a new bloghouse.

Beautiful Readers,

 

http://beautifulfitness.com/blog/

 

Yes, it's true. After many years Irreverent Fitness is moving into new digs on our website. Same stuff. More regular blogging. More focus on you. New, more intuitive address, integrated blog and everyone's invited! Come on over! See you there!

 

Please feel free to contact us if you have any trouble finding the place!

212-380-1277

 

And there's a special prize for the first 3 people who leave comments in the new location!

 

All the best,

Alix Florio President Beautiful Fitness  

alix@beautifulfitness.com

  

 

 

 

 

 

Be Like Me

Beautiful Readers,

There are a lot of things I don't know much about. And even more things I'm not that good at. But one thing I do know a lot about, and am good at, is taking pretty darn good care of myself while still leading a normal, fast paced life, with limited time, and not a lot of head space for considering my overall state of wellness. I could be a model of sorts for how I recommend you start (or continue) to take care of yourself.

After all, my blood pressure is below average, my skin is good, I sleep well, I eat right overall without any obsession, I work out often enough (though I did just take a month off--which I don't typically recommend unless you really need it to keep going in the long term), I take time to relax, my fat percentage delights me (slightly lower end of average), I am mostly properly hydrated and know what to do when I'm not. You should emulate me or better me. And no, I'm not a total egomaniac. I just have this thing a bit figured out and want to share it with you.

Here are some quick bits of advice to get you on the path to being more like me:

Count:Learn how many calories are in foods you eat. How are you supposed to keep track of your daily calorie intake unless you know how many (or at least approximately) are in the stuff you are eating? This may be my biggest secret. I can give you a pretty accurate count of anything you are eating--even in restaurants. Yes, it requires a certain amount of memorization (ok-a lot of memorization ((just buy a huge book that lists calories counts))--but it's well worth it. It gives you absolute control of weight gain and loss.

Cheat:Find ways to consume quick vegetables, fruits, and other kinds of antioxidants and vitamins, so that you can eat them regularly. Use green tea shots (little cans in delis), cans of V8, frozen spinach pie, Amy's Frozen Indian Food, drink a glass of red wine everyday, take calcium supplements, vitamin C, fish oil or other Omega 3 and 6 supplements (take the fish oil unless you are a vegetarian-may have advantages over flax), take a multiple vitamin, and I personally, like to take natural estrogen supplements (mostly Soy), I'm 40 and hoping to smooth out my impending menopause, but that's just me, and my research is limited. Drink coconut water when you've been sweating a lot or can't drink enough water.

Check:  Check the color of your pee all the time. Really. I know of no more accurate way to assess whether or not you need to get more fluids. Pee should be nearly clear. Bright yellow is really no good. Funny smell after asparagus is totally normal. ;-) If you're quite dehydrated and drink a lot of water just before you urinate-your pee may be clear right after wards but will return to bright yellow later. A LOT of our clients seem to be almost chronically dehydrated. Do not let this happen. Your body can not thrive in a parched environment.

Charge it:  I once heard a quote that was something like "If you want to know a man's priorities--show me his budget.". True dat about wellness. If you are spending more money on purses and shoes, or on eating out, than you are on making taking care of yourself easier, something is wrong. Spend the damn money. Buy the overpriced gourmet prune spread imported from France if that's the only way you are going to eat any fruit. Buy the good looking tomatoes from Holland that cost twice as much, buy the grass fed beef, or the green tea that comes in fancy packages if that stuff floats your boat. Buy good lox if that's the only fish in your diet. Taking really good care of yourself in the long term is hard enough without feeling guilty about making it feel like an indulgence.

Buy cute workout clothes. Buy comfortable apres-workout clothes that you only wear after you work out. BUY new sneakers every four months or so so that they will continue to work as sneakers--otherwise you may as well wear patent leather flats when you workout. Do not be cheap with these things. Buy fancy sports bras. Buy them in the right size. Buy weights for your home. Buy exercise equipment for your home if you can find the space. Buy a nice mat. Buy a fitness ball. Invest in your health as you invest in things that are less important.

P.S. We're just about done editing the copy on the new site! Look for it in October!

Fondly,

Alix Florio President; Beautiful Fitness

www.beautifulfitness.com

What I Ate (and did not eat) on my Summer Vacation

Beautiful Readers,

Now, I see you out there looking all glum-- "Oh Alix, just as we were getting into the swing of reading your sage and kindly blog you pulled the rug out from under us and took off for several weeks." And lovely readers,  I am oh so sorry for that. I missed you too. Naughty ole August must have simply taken all the sense out of my head when I boldly decided to travel to London, Paris, Cairo, and Alexandria, all without bringing a laptop. Silly silly Alix.

At first I thought it was some kind of act of heroism to leave the 50 states without a computer. A stand for people everywhere who are trying to get away from their pounding work ethic. I was counting on the fact that internet access might be challenging once I was there anyway, and that the laptop might stay in the bag. But guess what I found (perhaps a decade plus after everyone else already knew) wireless is ubiquitous--from The Elgin Marbles (British Museum), to the Pyramids (you know where those are) and no one but people who have all their money tied up in camels doesn't have a laptop with them at all times. Next time I'll know.

In the meanwhile--let me tell you some things I learned on my trip!

One. London is as dour during the recession as New York is. Simply gloomy--if somewhat more fashionable--though I bet the English are better at saving money than we are during an economic downturn. I can already see all those English mums using the decline as an excuse to dutifully sew their children all kinds of itchy sweaters instead of buying them at Harrod's. 

England has also really got our butt kicked in terms of family access to gyms. The last time I was in London I met with some folks over at Virgin Active and at the Merrill Lynch affiliated sports club. I was incredibly impressed by the level of seriousness and self-respect among the staff at those places, and also, frankly, by how smart they were about exercise and health. The other thing that was striking was how well Virgin Active had managed to incorporate activities for the whole family. Unlike the total diallowance of children in nearly all fitness facilities in New York--Virgin had classes for kids and swimming pool access for children that seemed to work pretty seamlessly with their truly suburb facilities for adults.

I honestly feel guilty sometimes about flitting off to the gym as my adrenaline filled children run around in circles or hit each other with sticks. On our trip my kids begged me again and again to come to the hotel gym with me so they could use the treadmill--and whatever kind of mayhem you might imagine would ensue if kids were allowed to go to gyms--for the most part (with heavy supervision) when I have snuck my children into a hotel gym they tend to work out pretty much the same way I do. Albeit with a little more excitement about what's on the TV. In any case--even our small hotel gym in London had great kids fitness facilities.

One final interesting concept I ran into in England was on the back of a package of mixed seeds meant as a snack. the package recommended that the contained seeds would be a good thing to eat (exclusively?) on 'dietingdays' as if everyone in England knew what that was. I'm guessing that the term refers to the thing every reasonable skinny person I know in New York does--eat very very little from time to time either when the mood strikes or you feel that you might have gained a little weight. Kind of incorporating a permanent diet into your life. 'Dieting days' sums it up nicely I think.

Then we went to Paris. Paris is beautiful--as always. Though I must say that I sometimes I wonder if I am suffering from a kind of middle aged patriotism that keeps me from totally enjoying a city that reminds me a great deal of New York but is harder for me to navigate. The Louvre rocks and baffles me every time with the quantity of art fabulosity that it has there. No wonder the French are smug. The kids liked the pastry, but I'm afraid I might be a little over Paris--or at least the things that were doing it for me when I was an impressionable teeny-bopper, don't impress me any more. Fine food, fine wine, great fashion sense all treated with the seriousness of a monk--seem to me now, well, kind of shallow, more than impressive. Though I am sure there is an adult world of Paris that is far deeper and more subtle and that I could not possibly understand on a quick family trip.

Paris exercise tip...the usual. Smoke a little. Walk a lot. Drink coffee regularly. Eat moderately. Skip some meals. Keep your cortisol level low by taking long lunches, frequent coffee breaks, and refuse to work in August like it is a sacred birthright.

Then there's Cairo. God. Where do I begin. I could write an enormous post about the place. I spent some time there in college--and I have to confess I have no objectivity about it whatsoever. I love Cairo. In a way  that seems almost eerie to me. And I don't know why.

It's noisy, dirty, crowded, and now much more conservative and serious than it was in the looser days of economic prosperity back when I was there so many years ago. It was also Ramadan during our trip--which made the atmosphere all the more sober. But as with people I love--all the things someone else might abhor-delight me. I like the way it's dirty. I like the kind of ceaseless noise they have there. I love the humanness and imperfection of the oft divisive Muslim religion.

It's hard to write about Egypt from a fitness point of view. There appear to be more gyms now, and our fancy hotel had separate facilities for men and women (you'd really almost have to these days--most women are really making their best effort to be veiled and covered up pretty much all the time which can really put a crimp in unbridled fitness.)

The one thing I did learn about though--was fasting. Now, my travelling party was divided into two camps. My son and I were both really interested in trying to do at least a modified fast (and also very interested in not tormenting everyone else by eating and drinking publicly ((most people don't even drink water from sunup to sundown)). Whereas my boyfriend was much more of the "We're not muslim so why should we fast" point of view and also felt that as caregivers to two sometimes difficult children, hunger-related crankiness on anyone's part could lead to a rather explosive situation. I saw that too.  My daughter, frankly, just seemed to think it was stupid to be hungry if you didn't have to be (she's the pragmatic one in the family) though I am sure she could have done it if she thought it was warranted.

So for a couple of days I fasted. In the morning we would order room service breakfast and I would watch the kids and bf eating all kind of yummy Egyptian food, Fuul (really good beans with Coriander common in Egypt), Taamiya (Falafel), good bread, cheese, ce rial, and Egyptian versions of European pastries. You'd think it would have been torturous..but it was actually kind of fun an made me feel additionally virtuous abstaining while everyone else stuffed themselves.  Also, being in  Egypt there were all kinds of fun distractions while they were eating. (Planning the day, figuring out what to wear...)

In fact all in all I would say that fasting (especially in an environment where things are slower paced and I was not asked to do anything requiring quick reflexes or powerful intellect) was a whole lot easier than I thought it would be. By around 4pm (about 2 hours before sunset) I'd start to get a little preoccupied with food--but I found that if I would relax and allow myself to space out in a kind of a smooth low blood sugar coma I could ride the last two hours before sunset pretty easily.

And then at Iftar (the breakfast meal around 6pm) we would feast on all kinds of delicious food..and of course, as anyone who has ever gone without eating for awhile..I felt remarkably grateful for it (sort of the purpose of fasting during Ramadan) in a way that I normally would not, and it all tasted really good. I also discovered though, that I really could not gorge myself after a full day of abstinence the way I thought I would. I may have eaten slightly more than I might normally have at dinner...but not much. Suggesting that the days I fasted would also represent a large decrease in calories. I ended up losing a fair bit of weight.

Frankly, for folks that are interested in losing weight and who can take a day or two off from work with distracting and mostly passive activities-daytime fasting might be a viable option. Obviously--there are health issues that would make this un advisable for some people--but for your average person who'd like to lose a few--I honestly think this might be worth trying.

My tips for anyone who might want to try a daytime fast.

1) Obviously do not do this unless you are in what you consider pretty pique physical health.

2) Be sure you are in places where you are able to sit down quickly and for a long time in case you find that you are dizzy

3) Eat a large protein filled meal just before sun up (called Sohour in Ramadan), have food at the ready to eat immediately at sundown.

4) Perhaps fasting days are not times to make big life decisions--though great for thinking philosophically-your perception will be slightly altered.

5) Screw tradition. Unless you are a practicing muslim, drink water, please.

6) It might be fun to try it with a buddy. Hunger is very bonding. Try not to fight with that buddy while you are fasting.

7) If you get only halfway through the day and are starving and miserable. Have a protein filled snack, or just call it quits. Half day fasting could be fun too.

So now we're back in the country and right back to work focused on helping you to fit more wellness into your life. My kids are back at school and if you have kids--presumably yours are too. Hooray! Hopefully you have all enjoyed your summer to the utmost and are ready to get back at it--whatever that 'it' may be. We look forward to hearing from you! 212-380-1277

The new site will be up by the beginning of October or sooner! Come have a look at it!

Fondly, Alix Florio; President, Beautiful Fitness

www.beautifulfitness.com

Bliss Bliss

Beautiful Readers,

Well after much ado, I have finally had a visit to Bliss Spa. At this point in history Bliss is probably so over in terms of newsworthiness that the only readers with any interest in my visit have been working overseas for years in a country that has not been graced with its own Bliss Spa, or they have been painting their nails at home.

Bliss is a bit of a spa legend and I have been tracking it since it's inception in 1996 when they opened their first spa in Soho. I guess my real fascination with the place began with a conversation with a friend of the owner-Marcia Kilgore. My friend and I were in a coffee shop talking about something or other for Beautiful Fitness and she just couldn't stop gushing about how great Marcia was, how much she admired her, and what a cool idea Bliss was (turns out--according to wikipedia that Marcia Kilgore was also a personal trainer-so now I admire her too).

Bliss was this new cool thing. A spa without much attitude. And, if my memory serves me properly, 1996 was kind of the middle of thewhole minimalist, lots of white space, lower case lettering, anti-snobbery, snobbery, smart is better than beautiful, kind of world. Sort of the Steve Jobs world as I see it.

It was also the middle of an era where, due to the thriving economy, every single woman in America was expected to have a nearly permanent manicure and pedicure, shoes and a purse made by some recognizable designer, and some caliber of blond highlights. Think Sex in the City. Think 90210.

Ms.Kilgore capitalized on this like mad. By creating a spa with a chicly utilitarian ambiance, busy clients feltthat they would receive "essential personal maintenance" in an atmosphere that was unfussy and efficient. Gone were the days of ladies' beauty salons where bouffanted stylists whirled around with pink hairdryers as they cooed over how beautiful you would look when you were done. Bliss staff was cordial, quick, and quiet.

So now skip ahead to 2009. I have booked an appointment to try the 'Triple Oxygen Facial', something called the 'Upper Hand' (oh yeah-did I mention that Bliss also has very clever and cute names for their services too-and the copy in their catalog is very distinctive in its charmingness. The 'Upper Hand' is a manicure.) and a 'Head Over 'Peels' Pedicure'.

The environment in the 57th street Bliss (there are three in NYC) was just as I had imagined. Clean and spare butwith nice marble and iridescent tiling, Kind of like a gym. Actually it looks in someways like a cross between Equinox and white walled walk in nail salons.

The Oxygen facial was great. Well, more,the facialist was great. Apolonia who had been a midwife in Poland and thus had had all kinds of medical training (I believe that, in Poland, the dog catcher may need to pass exams that I can't, and have several years of medical training) explained everything about skin I ever wanted to know. Here are three I remember:

1) Yes the caffeinene in coffee grounds is the same caffeinene that is the only useful ingredient in fancy anti-cellulite creams that cost big bucks-you can massage the stuff into your butt and look at least temporarily firmer.

2) The pimples on either side of my chin are probably from my unwashed telephone. Genius!

3) The 'special skin under your eyes' that eye creams refer to is the same damn skin that you have everywhere else, just a little thinner.

As for the facial. Aw shucks, I don't know. I'd love to say my skin is much better now in some way...maybe it is a little softer? My pores do look smaller I guess. More radiant due to oxygen sprayed on my face and vitamins put upon it? I guess so. But honestly, I do so much of this cream and vitamin applying stuff at home and my diet consists mostly of lean protein, assorted vegetables and whole grains, red wine, green tea, and very dark chocolate, that for my age I look pretty darn good all the time. If that's not the case for you, the Triple Oxygen Facial at Bliss57 might well be worth a try. Ask for Apolonia. She gave a really good foot massage during one of the masks, having oxygen sprayed at your face is fun, and Bliss is a nice place to hang out for awhile. 

Hope you're well and enjoying the summer,

Alix Florio

President/CEO

Beautiful Fitness

www.beautifulfitness.com

You Can't Get No Satisfaction

Beautiful Readers,

Feeling unsatisfied, restless, or discontent with your life as it is?

If so, congrats, because you're totally normal--if you're a human being. If you're a skunk or chimp, however, then you're in a lot of trouble.

One of my favorite books Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers written by Robert Sapolsky, professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery, at Stanford University, explains the tragic connection between our incredible human advantage--the ability to imagine a future different than our present, and our incredible human disadvantage--a preponderance of stress.

According to this book, the main reason that we are feeding our pets, and that they are not feeding us (or eating us, for that matter) is because we can think creatively, and other species don't. Like, not at all. 

This is where friends of mine have said things like "but, my cat's very creative--she flushes the toilet before she drinks out of it." or "but my dog always gets the green leash out when they want to go to the park and the red one when they want to go to the store." I gotcha'. And while those dogs and cats are very clever and may have particularly great memories and abilities to use the information they remember to achieve a certain result--they still aren't creative. Creative would be bringing you your bathrobe-tie instead of a leash when Fido wants to go for a walk, because it looks like it might be more comfortable around the neck than the nylon pull chain you currently use. 

Creativity is great and all and it breeds all kinds of ambition. It is the thing that allows us to get out of sticky situations where other animals would languish. Your parakeet has a hard time getting free of it's cage when you stick your hand in to feed it, much less being able to escape from Alcatraz with lifelike dummies, fake grates, and a fork. Dogs only wish they could plan out a TV career for themselves because they want to buy a bigger dog house when they've outgrown their current abode.

The enviable thing about animals, though, is that they rarely feel like they've outgrown anything. What was at first a perfectly serviceable chew toy is forever a perfectly serviceable chew toy. Our innate yearning to construct our own improved future allows us to do all kinds of cool things like build bridges, paint paintings, move to the suburbs, and go into business or space, but it has a dark side. Creative drive also allows us to imagine bad things that might be--abject failure, making our lot worse by our own actions, loss of people and things we care about, and the most insidious possibility, a generalized feeling that we should always be doing and having more than we've got now--which, unbridled, can lead to a nearly permanent feeling of inadequacy, and malcontent. Enter chronic stress. The bad kind.

Now, I'd love to say that my company offers a special service that can fix this whole ambition/stress conundrum. Trouble is, creativity, ambition, and it's associated stress is like that old joke "Doctor, my brother thinks he's a chicken!", "Then, why don't you take him to a psychiatrist?", "Because we need the eggs." And we do need the ambition eggs. People who have been lobotomized report being very content, trouble is, they don't accomplish much.

So what can we do? We can learn to control it. Make our ambitious nature work for us instead of the other way round. We can enjoy the fruits of our desire to build and change without so many of the pitfalls if we learn to compartmentalize our ambition. 

Some of the happiest (and most successful) people I know are master's (and mistresses) at turning their focus completely away from the thing that they are so busy working on when they need to. Meditation, Tai Chi, and Yoga are great for practicing the art of momentarily turning away from things which cause inconvenient amounts of stress, in fact they were invented for this purpose. Conventional exercise works to take you away from your stressors too, and most exercisers I know find that once their fitness routine is challenging enough, and requires total focus to get through it, that that mere moment of forced distraction, helps them to remember that whatever they were so anxious/excited about before, can be put aside temporarily, without negative results.

The other thing that can really help manage our naughtily ambitious natures is the ability to detach emotionally from aspects of life that are causing us pain or distress. The notion of detachment is complicated, in part because the word detached has been given a bad rap--suggesting that a person might  be a disaffected and cool observer of their own life--not engaged--obviously, that's not what we want. In fact, positive detachment can sometimes allow you to be more present in a given situation, because that emotional step back, when appropriate, can allow for braver and more honest facing of the facts which might otherwise be clouded by panic.

Controlled detachment, like compartmentalization, can also be practiced through yoga and meditation. It offers you the ability to disconnect emotionally from things that don't benefit from emotions and the involvement of one's own ego. Allowing your emotions to return, with less bite than before, at the pace that accomplishes your goals best.

Love for one's friends, children, and spouse, however don't require detachment--though it can be useful as a solution if problems arise. Again, the beauty of detachment, like with compartmentalization is that, unlike that surge of adrenaline and cortisol, you can control them.Choose when you want them and when you don't. And if you are skilled with them, you can activate them when you need a break from the potentially destructive aspects of our creative and ambitious nature, leaving only the best of what makes us human.

Here's an interview with Robert Sapolsky about getting perspective on stress in the corporate world. Don't miss it!

All the best,

Alix Florio    Beautiful Fitness www.beautifulfitness.com

The Thinking Person's Bathing Suit Bible

Beautiful Readers,

So I just returned from this summer's first real visit to the beach...no kids...no older relatives...just me, the boyfriend, and no reason to wear a more demure bathing suit. I'll be honest, I try to keep most of my blogs sassy enough to be a little interesting, but adequately P.C. on the whole to keep me out of trouble. And I am quite careful not to write anything that makes Beautiful Fitness sound like a lot of other naughty fitness operations, as in the kind that make people feel critical about their bodies (hell, they are just bodies after all-it's not like a flabby stomach affects the quality of your soul or anything), but sometimes I think our readers might like a tiny dose of that good old fashioned, "What do I do about wearing a bathing suit so that all of me is not coming out of it?" advice from an expert. So here goes.

Issue? Stomach, butt, and thighs, right? Ever since they invented the elasticized bathing costume, these body parts have concerned men and women wherever there is sand.

Let's start with abs. There have been tomes written (mostly a waste of pixels and paper) about abs and ab exercises. Abdominal muscles come in two types that matter to people who are trying to make theirs look firmer. Don't worry about all the other kind of abdominal muscles unless you are a medical student, or a personal trainer.

There are the Rectus Abdominus, and the Obliques (yeah yeah there are internal andexternal obliques but don't worry about 'em, you do the same stuff to make them behave). Rectus abdominus-make your stomach look flatter, Obliques-make your waist look smaller. Rectus abdominus are in the front of your stomach, and Obliques are on the sides. Nuff said.

Two exercises:

Crunches: I like mine best on a big fitness ball which I find is more fun, more comfortable, and ultimately, once you figure out what's going on in there, can give you better control of the resistance you are using to work your abs. Don't have a ball? or just don't like them? No problem. Do them on the floor.

Lie on your back (or with your back pressed into a fitness ball balancing yourself with your feet on the floor) with your hands behind your head and your elbows out to either side. Looking at the ceiling, raise your head, neck, and shoulders slightly off the floor (or ball) continuing to look at the ceiling. Focus on engaging your stomach muscles to help press your torso up instead of using your neck and shoulders to pull you into position, also, attempt to keep your engaged abs pressed down towards your back instead of allowing them to stick out into the air (as they will want to do). Lower to floor or ball. Repeat a whole lot of times. Seriously. More reps equals more firm ab muscles. Feel free to quit at 80. If you are new at this, don't worry about doing 80 or even leaving the floor, raise your neck and head up to the ceiling slightly and just focus on engaging your abs very tightly on each raise. Try not to lift your shoulders while you do this exercise, it doesn't help, and it could give you very stiff shoulders or potentially a pinched nerve. 

Now for Obliques, then we're done with abs.

Bicycles: Remember these guys from gym class?!? They'll work your obliques in a very direct way, and really, they're kind of fun once you get the hang of them. Lie on your back with your hands placed behind your head, this time you'll be using your elbows, so don't worry about where they are positioned for now. Then bring your right knee in towards your chest while keeping your left leg extended and bringing it off the ground about a foot (or two, if you prefer), with your legs in the position I just described, rotate your torso to the right and bring your left elbow towards the bent knee (or touch it with your elbow if you can), then switch to perform the exercise the same way (right elbow to bent left knee with right leg extended about a foot of the ground). As with crunches, really focus on making sure you are doing this exercise with the right body part, namely your Obliques, instead of using your neck and shoulders. I also recommend actively engaging your obliques on each side as you use them (presuming you know where your's are--don't worry in time you will if you do this exercise)

Now for hips, thighs, and your butt. Let's cut to the chase. These muscle groups all cohabit in basically the same part of your body, and therefore, they find it best to work together too. That's good news for anyone who need to wear a bathing suit soon. The best exercise ever that puts all of these fine fellows to work, is squats. Two kinds.

Squats:  With or without holding a weight in your hands (call Beautiful Fitness if you want to talk about where to put a weight 212-380-1277), separate your feel approximately three feet apart and bend your knees while keeping your abs engaged. Keep your position like that of a skier by making sure that your weight is far back (so much so that you could lift your toes up) and your knees are always behind your toes. Raise to standing and squeeze your butt. Do endless reps without hurting yourself.

Plies: Ballet term. Comes from the french word Plier meaning to bend. It's a squat. With your knees out to the side. And your toes pointed away from each other. Same as Squats. Stay upright on both the up and down motion, and consciously engage your inner thighs to come up and your outer thighs to go down. Again, do tons.

And there you are. That's all you'll need to look pretty good in your Anne Cole black one-piece suit, your Missoni reversible triangle bikini (which, by the way, includes a warning that you can not, in fact, swim in it- tee hee!) or your favorite Speedo racing tank. And whatever your body may be doing these days--have fun on the beach!

Fondly,

Alix Florio   President   Beautiful Fitness

 www.beautifulfitness.com

Neurotic but with Nicer Nails

Beautiful Readers,

Sometimes you just gotta have a nervous habit. Over the years some of mine have included, too much shopping, nervous eating, nervous eating of something in particular like chocolate or a hundred little teeny slices of cake, nail biting, undue fascination with being thin, obsessive split-end trimming, and recently, a mild obsession with fake nails, filing them down, prying them up a little, gluing them back down again, and sometimes replacing them. 

It all started out innocently enough. On a recent trip out to my mom's place in NJ, I visited a nail salon there, and was convinced by the 23 year old hipster Vietnamese male owner that my normally thin and short nails would look great with the application of UV gel. They'd be longer, stronger, and gee whiz, they'd look perfect for weeks, unlike the three day disappointment of most salon visits. 

He did a very good job applying coat upon coat of powder and gel over the polish I had selected. In between layers of goo, he placed my plastic coated fake talons inside the little UV light box next to me. An hour or so later, Voila, better nails than I have ever had in my life, a little thicker than my own, they didn't look entirely natural, but they were stuck to my fingers with a tenacity that felt like it would last. Buh-bye for two weeks nail salon!

So four days later I chipped one. Which might be explained by my wiggling the corner of it back and forth between my teeth all day. Hm mm....I couldn't get back to the place in NJ to ask them to fix it, so I tried my luck with a non-descript place in my Brooklyn neighborhood called Polish Nails. I love this name. For the longest time I believed it was a Polish owned nail salon. It seemed so exotic. But after going inside I discovered that it was Korean owned, and realized the Poh-lish, Pah-lish pronunciation thing had tripped me up, and that they were probably referring to the stuff that goes on nails.

In any case, after half an hour of being fast-talked by the desperate seeming owner (nearly empty salon)who quickly whisked away my raincoat so I couldn't escape so easily, I finally made out that UV gel was something that they didn't really do at Polish Nails, but that the eager owner was trying to sell me on some other kind of wrap or something that she was sure would be just as good. Better even, she explained animatedly, because it wouldn't make my nails all--I guess the word she used was messy, but not any ordinary kind of messy, the face she made conjured images of some combination of acid and sandpaper reeking havoc underneath my UV coated nails. 

But I was true to UV coating. Now that I had been initiated into the Cadillac of nail services (and had 9 perfect digits to prove it) I really couldn't go back to a more pedestrian kind of nail covering. So I left. I also left my Blackberry there because I was in such a hurry to get out.

After returning to get the Blackberry, I hung my head low and went to Dashing Diva. Dashing Diva for those of you who don't know is the Pretty Pretty Princess of nail salons. Everything is nicely designed and glassy pink inside-part Magic Kingdom, part 1950s fantasy salon (the staff wear white lab coats). Dashing Diva also charges twice as much for everything they do as other nail salons, and I have discovered very little difference in quality.

But they have UV gel. So I spent an hour with Angela, who after impressing me thoroughly with how realistic her own French Tipped UV gel nails looked, got me to have all my red ones removed and try UV french tips. Angela was a perfectionist. Really. It was great. If you have the time,  that's exactly what you want in a nail technician. I was amazed by her delicacy as she painted the gel so carefully again and again over the crescent moons of the french tips. All I could think was that after a long day of doing such precising work she must want to run around a lot once she gets home.

Then those nails began to come up on the edges. I returned to Angela three days later to have two replaced (which she did for free and with the same care with which she had put them on the first time) . The next day a fourth one fell off, so I decided to keep the detatched nail in my purse, and take matters into my own hands (so to speak). I would buy some nail glue and reapply it. If I was going to be a UV gel lifer, I should have all the necessary equipment at home.

CVS only carried nail glue in packages with fake nails. Aha! I thought, I could buy fake nails with french tips that looked just like the UV gel nails so that if one got broken or fell off I could temporarily replace it. The nail kit only cost $8 as opposed to the $60 I would be spending to get the UV nails done every two weeks--It would be great if I could extend that time a little just by applying the occasional fake nail at home!

And then it came to me... UV gel nails look exactly the same as fake nails. But it couldn't be so! There had to be something super special about having a coating that was set under a purple light, cost $60 and took an hour to apply! As much as I wanted to believe that the artistry involved in applying the UV gels and powders made for a more natural or elegant looking product--it just didn't. The fake nails looked exactly the same as the one hour to apply $60 UV nails.

So now I have fake nails. They look great. If one gets chipped I peel it off and in two minutes I have replaced it. They come in packs of, like,100. They protect my nails which seem to be growing remarkably well underneath. Not only do I feel virtuous in a recession-era kind of way by gluing my nails on at home instead of going to a salon, but I have got myself a fine new nervous habit that I am all in all quite satisfied with. I play around with the fake nails when I'm bored, I take them off it they are looking dull, I file them, and I replace them often.

Thanks for reading,

Alix Florio     President    

Beautiful Fitness

Springtime is for Lovers

Beautiful Readers,

The minute the temperatures start rising there's a certain nervousness and excitement in the air which can make that first cup of coffee almost unneeded, but like anything that feels like newness, there can be a sort of springtime emotional unevenness that needs some balancing . In the past month I have received several little notes and calls from exes--more than I have for a very long time, and normally the flurry would seem strange, but then -- it is spring, so nothing seems very strange, and certainly not a little rush of sexual interest and daring. (The boyfriend didn't like it very much though.)

Ayurvedic medicine has an answer to all this flightiness. For those of you who don't know, Ayurveda is an ancient Indian system of wellness that divides the human condition (and beyond) into three essential states Vata, Kapha, and Pitta. In brief (and this is very brief-there are many years of thought describing how these three qualities make up most of existance) Vata is the state of thinness, dryness and airiness, think thin clouds drifting through the sky, Pitta is the state of transformation usually involving heat, or combining of things to create a third product. Pitta also encompasses the passion that comes with creation or drive, think chemicals being combined. Last, Kapha is the state of heaviness, slowness, accumulation and holding on, think, the way you may feel at the end of the winter at the beginning of spring.

Now, according to Ayurveda, the trick to getting peaceably through the spring, enjoying a sense of renewal without getting depressed or being too manic is to gradually shed any excess Kapha (fatness, slowness) that we have accumulated in the wintertime and to get up to speed with the season of transformation, movement, and growth through increasing our level of activity, losing a bit of winter weight, getting to a lighter, faster, place mentally-- gradually enough so that it happens without feeling like a failure for not being in fighting shape already, or overdoing it, thus causing a sudden overabundance of Vata, and making us feel all top heavy and nervous. I tend to be quite Vata. I know nervous.

So here are some classic Ayurvedic suggestions for moving sweetly into the Spring without agita, plus a suggestion or two of my own

1. Begin to eat lighter foods and eat less frequently. For those of you who snack a great deal, try to decrease the number of snacks to once every three hours or so.

2. Do some twisting exercises, they will get you body moving in a gradual way and will offer a kind of internal massage to organs and muscles that may have been sluggish throughout the winter.

3. Try to enjoy some foods that are bitter or sour. Lemonade. Grapefruit. Orange peel.

now my advice:

4. Exercise more frequently, though possibly for a shorter duration. Little sprints. Not to total fatigue. (to ensure you'll want to exercise again soon)

5. Stay hydrated by sipping water throughout the day--you may find at this time of year that you can not down the same volume of liquid all at once that you can in other seasons.

6. Feel free to give into that crazed spring feeling, but be sure to balance it with even breathing and rest. Resist the temptation to thoroughly exhaust yourself with the feeling of spring rush.  Moderate your energy. Exciting spring mania can be followed by a not-so-good-feeling crash afterward.

7. Have more sex. We're kind of designed to do that at this time of year (but then-- isn't that always my advice?)

Thanks for reading and enjoy the warmer weather!,

Alix Florio        President        

Beautiful Fitness

Clarisonic Skin Brush works great.

Beautiful Readers,

As you may have gathered from the title of today's post-- I think that the year old Clarisonic Skin Brush, an electric razor-sized device that uses a vibrating brush-head that resembles a toothbrush, is the bees knees. I have no idea why it works so well to smooth out my ordinarily pretty good but occasionally pimple-marred complexion--but it does.

 I spend a fair bit of time thinking about my skin, and while I consider myself kind of an expert at all the different laser/filler/injectible things you can do to your face (tried a few, read about others),  I resent spending the big bucks that are required to stay on a steady diet of that stuff, and I love to try things out at home. I think there's something so charming about the long history of women at home in hot rollers with cold cream on their faces, doing things that terrify their husbands and make themselves look so un-beautiful, just so they can have fewer visible pores the next day. It seems sweetly nonsensical and human to me and I love that kind of thing.

Now about the brush. About six months ago I got acne, like real acne. It was a nightmare. It was a classic case of acne in adults. It appears mostly on my chin and the sides of my face, it gets better and worse relative to my menstrual cycle, it can be brought on by stress (oh, gee, what stress?), and it sometimes leaves red marks that can last for months, while the outbreaks themselves tend to last for 2 to 3 weeks. Great. Radiant skin meets 40-something zits.

I would love to say that this brush is the cure for acne, but I'm not sure that's true (though it might be--I just started using it) but I must admit that after a week of cleaning my skin with it twice a day (and this has been quite a week too) my skin is looking better. In fact,  just now, my boyfriend walked in to ask if I was wearing makeup, because he said, my skin is looking great (how's that for a convenient testimonial!)

I know this reads like an infomercial, and at first I found the clams about this thing too good to be true too. I always presume that someone is paying someone to write good things about a product, but then after the acne debacle, I was desperate and started buying up everything that Blisssells in their Acne category. And this was one of the things they sell. It kind of made sense--brushes tend to clean things pretty well, vibration can give a decent massage, massage plus cleaning could theoretically release more dirt from pores, and Voila! Clarisonic skin brush.

And so far so good. The acne's not totally gone, but I'm not getting it at the same rate (believe me, after you have had acne for awhile, you quickly become familiar with the whole, which one was there yesterday, which one was not, thing), and overall (including fine lines ((part of Clairisonic's claim is that they can "improve the appearance of fine lines", and frankly the fact that my wrinkles are improved by this big shaky toothbrush, is really spooking me))), my skin is looking damn good, with not a cent spent at the dermatologists office. Bravo!

Thanks for reading!

Alix Florio    President    Beautiful Fitness    www.beautifulfitness.com

Four Fast Tips and Tricks For Getting Fit

Beautiful Readers,

How's that title for alliteration! (now try to say it five times fast). That's what happens to folks when they start to Twitter. Suddenly the world becomes a place of instant cleverness forced through 140 characters or less. If you want to hear me Tweet (that is, presuming you know what Twitter is, or care) you can "follow" me by going to Twitter, joining up, and finding my handle alixatbeautiful and electing to "follow" me. You will then begin to experience the rapturous joy of knowing what I'm thinking about things like, the bus, my nails, the gym, my kids, and all kinds of other navel-gazing sorts of stuff. Hooray!

So here are my quick fit tips:

1) If you go to a gym and use the inner thigh machine (the one where you squeeze two platforms together with your legs)--I bet that half of you are doing the exercise with your calves instead of your inner thighs. Try this test: attempt to do the exercise using only your thighs (well, inside of your knees, really), just take your feet completely off the machine and put them in front of you (like you're riding on the back of a bike, trying to avoid touching the pedals with your feet) and see if suddenly you have to drop the weight down a lot. I recently discovered that, like, half of the 90 lbs. I believed I was pressing with my thighs was actually being pushed by my calves. I now set the machine at 50 lbs.

2) I am convinced that green tea, drunk throughout the day, contributes enormously to weight loss. Every time I have tried to shed some pounds and have drunk green tea I find it comes off faster. For awhile I thought it might be the caffeine in it speeding up my metabolism, but coffee does not seem to work as well. There's some scientific research that seems to support this idea, but nothing conclusive. Here's what Mayo Clinic has to say about Green Tea. I love Mayo Clinic. They do a ton of original research and as much as they want to believe in alternative medicine--they always give you the straight dope. They give Green Tea a 'C' (in an A through F scale) for quality of research on weight loss benefits.

3) Use music for motivation for exercise. Lean on it heavily. Every trainer I know will tell you that music plays a huge role in their ongoing workouts. I have walked home from the gym (10 minutes from my house) to pick up my Ipod and walked back again. I have bought extra earphones when I have forgotten mine. I now own three Ipods and, like, five sets of headphones and keep them in every bag I might conceivably use at the gym.

4) Meditation works. Like, really, no joke. There is no single thing which seems to improve people's lives quite as substantially (I'd say exercise, for non-exercisers, is a close runner up). It lowers blood pressure and cortisol levels, even in small doses, which corresponds with greater feelings of wellness in general, greater weight loss (high levels of cortisol trigger a stress reaction that tells your body to retain fat), and over time, a greater ability to manage stress in one's life coolly.

Thanks for reading! Happy spring!

Alix Florio, President, Beautiful Fitness

www.beautifulfitness.com

Fight the good catfight.

Beautiful Readers,

Women are catty and jealous, right? They begrudge each other's achievements, and feel insecure when confronted with other women's successes. They are threatened by other women's ambitions, and generally prefer not to help each other out. They don't like to get too chummy with women they perceive as "better" than them in any one of a number of categories of life because it makes them feel badly about themselves.

Even if you don't recognize yourself in this description, if you are a woman, don't some of these tendencies sound familiar to you? Have you never seen another woman you felt was more beautiful, happier, and more successful than you, and you really had to work hard to get past an initial "Eeew." response?

What if I told you that you can embrace this natural discomfort around women you perceive as "better" and that to feel this way is totally normal and fine, evolutionarily advantageous even, and can be very positive--if you know what to do with it. 

First, let's presume that people have a natural comfort with folks they feel are "like them", similarly rich, smart, happy, and good-looking. Ok, that's easy. So just hang around with the people who seem no better or worse than you are. Super-comfy.

Yet in modern life one encounters people of a diverse range of abilities, looks, social standing, wealth, and confidence. Then the whole "I like them because they are just like me" thing goes haywire. First you are forced to confront a natural human tendency to feel afraid of people and things that are "different" in general. Then, if that perceived "difference" takes the form of someone who might get the job you want, buy the house you can't afford, attract the member of the opposite sex you want noticing only you, you've got a double dose of discomfort. And don't be fooled, that perceived threat that they might unfairly reap advantages that you might like to have, is true.

Now this is the critical moment where you get to make a choice. As I see it there are 3 distinct options about how to react to your immediate (and natural) feelings of jealousy:

1) Try to ignore any feelings of inadequacy, set them aside, force them out of your mind, stop yourself from making any comparisons at all, and accept deeply that you are who you are, and that they are who they are. Focus on being at peace with yourself. The Dalai Lama is probably great at this.

2) Hate them, avoid them, try not to think about them. Whisper to your friends about them later.

3) Acknowledge that they really do have an edge in some way that makes you feel annoyed and competitive, take this as a sign that you may want to improve some aspects of yourself, or your life. Work hard and make changes accordingly. Dare I say---try to be more like them.

Now, choice one, is super and all but mighty hard to achieve, at least consistently, and also frankly whether or not that is the best choice depends on what you are looking for in life. If your goal is ease and comfort, work on choice one, but as someone who has never been a big fan of stasis, I am always more interested in what I see as improvement, as opposed to rest. Through fitness and other things, I am also increasingly convinced that there is no real stasis, that things overall are either improving or deteriorating all the time. And that's where jealousy can be your friend.

I think that jealousy and competition may be that little Darwinian gift that just keeps on giving. If you accept that encounters with people who "seem better than you" make you tense, there's a certain energy in that. Now, you can always just sublimate that energy, but there's a good chance you'll end up feeling bad. However, you can also take that opportunity to capitalize on that threat-rush to fuel your own drive. This environment can make you work harder on improving your own shtick so that next time you encounter the threatening individual (or someone you percieve as like them) you can say to yourself "Well, they may have a big house in the Hampton's and way nicer hair than I do, but I just wrote an awesome poem on the back of my newspaper, I'm a much better poet than I used to be." and you'll be right.

I love this approach, especially because of the effect it has socially. Instead of hating the Sag Harbor redhead, you may actually feel slightly grateful to her because in a certain way she helped you write a better poem. Does it guarantee that you will be comfortable being close friends with the woman you are jealous of? Not necessarily, there are certain jealousies and perceptions of difference that can be very hard to overlook, but at least you have leveled the playing field a little, and if given the chance, perhaps someday you can look past your differences to focus more on the people you both are inside.

Thanks for reading!

Alix Florio\ President     Beautiful Fitness