Love summer nights… there is something so magical about them. Anyways, my favorite pre-dinner snack is hummus and veggies… and not only us ”crazy vegans” like it. We shared this appetizer on Saturday night.

Take one… and start making a difference in your life today.

Needed beach, sun, sand, and simple foods this weekend, so we headed out to….Montauk baby. Wondered why my bag was so heavy on the train station, but it was packed with organic avocados, bananas, corn, berries, liquid vitamins, etc. Perfect midsummer dinner by the way – sans alcohol – but I had a great time. Got a few meditations in there, caught up on sleep, swam in the ocean, went for morning runs – couldn’t have asked for more…

Everyday for breakfast we ate a berry and banana fruit salad topped with chia seeds. So good!

Chia seeds are great for stabilizing blood sugar.  But how does the chia seed help with this? Both the gelling action of the seed, and it’s unique combination of soluble and insoluble fiber combine to slow down your body’s conversion of starches into sugars. If you eat chia with a meal, it will help you turn your food into constant, steady energy rather than a series of ups and downs that wear you out. Pretty nice, right?

Boy was it hot!! Pheww…. Almost 100 Farenheit. We were dripping, but has fun as we launched the new Carrera 6000 shades in the heart of Meatpacking… Drip drip. New York in the summer I tell ya.

Attended the most amazing lecture yesterday! It’s so important to do this once in a while to keep ourselves motivated and on the right track. Who was the speaker? Phil McCluskey (in the pic above) who completely changed his life with this diet, going from 400 to 180 pounds. Insane right?

His three tips for weight loss and permanent change are:

1. Affitmations: Creating sentences in your life that you say on a daily basis. They should be written in the present tense. Ex. I am the perfect weight and love my body. I’ve even had clients write these on their bathroom mirror. Live my life by these and they always happen. Trust…
2. Writing: Every morning write down what you want this day to look like? What you want to eat? How you want to feel?
3. Visualization: Visualize yourself happy. Living a beautiful healthy life in your ideal body. Let the Universe know what you want… It’s listening…

What does ”cooking” do to your food?

30% to 50% of vitamins & minerals are destroyed

100% of enzymes are damaged

Valuable oxygen is lost

Free radicals are produced, which can lead to cancer

50% of proteins are destroyed

Heading down to Miami next week and my friend Gianina has already booked Bikram Yoga (in a heated room) at 8pm on Saturday for the two of us. Ok here we go… wish me luck in there. Breath in, breath out.

Benefits of this practice include:

• Increased Vitality: ”It has the potential to reverse the elements of aging, giving you the ability to take much deeper breaths to navigate your way through a hectic modern world or simply run up a flight of stairs! Keep up with a consistent practice and you’re guaranteed to look and feel younger.”
• Weight Loss: ”Practicing Bikram in a heated room creates a much safer approach to your yoga practice as it allows you to stretch quicker and deeper. This is turn leads to stronger flexibility in the muscles which burns fat. As every fitness trainer knows, building muscle burns fat — doing the Bikram sequence in a hot room jump-starts this process.”
• Detoxification: ”The massive elimination of toxins from the body occurs during hot yoga, primarily thru sweat. It’s possible to drop up to 10 pounds of sweat (which includes oil, salts and water) during a class. As water rushes out during the course of a 90 minute class, this creates immense benefits such as super clean skin and the detoxification of pores in the body’s largest organ — the skin.”
• Increased Mental Clarity (love this word duh): ”As the body is cleansed, the mind is sharpened. Regular Bikram practice leads to  improved mental clarity, clearing out the “fuzz in brain” caused by the modern world’s list of negative stimuli — traffic, stress, bad food, pollution, etc.”
• Reduced Stress: ”Perhaps one of the most significant Bikram yoga benefits is the increased connectivity with the body, gained from regular practice. The intense focus in the sequence causes the chatter of the mind to decrease, leaving one less mentally preoccupied, both in and out of the class. Also, with consistent practice, the muscle memory of taking deeper breaths carries over into daily life, automatically providing instant relief to the temporary stressors that plague our modern world.”

Source: http://www.muuyu.com/online-yoga-classes/top-5-bikram-yoga-benefits/

…And don’t be afraid to let go of the past in order to become this woman. Surrender negative thoughts that do not serve you. Picture the best version of you. Now how does this version make you feel? Powerful? Beautiful? F-in magnificient? 🙂 So what are you waiting for?

Spending a few days in Upstate New York with friends (uummm beautiful). Been living on lots of avocados though, cause there is not much to eat around here. And of course tons of fruit. Despite my menu selection my body loves it here – get so much Vitamin D from the sun and sleep (zzzz…). Negative part – a little sore from water tubing… 🙂