When most of us look to change our lifestyle to lose weight we often turn towards a healthy diet and exercise. Up at 4 am for our first workout, lots of fruits and veggies, and maybe an evening weightlifting session. By the end of the week we are exhausted, hungry, and wishing for an extra hour of sleep. Is it worth it to press the snooze button and get that extra hour of sleep? Will that really help you reach your goals? You better believe it….

Sleep. People aren’t getting enough. And that’s not an exaggeration. People are not sleeping nearly as long or as well as their bodies need. Our bodies NEED it to function, to recover, to fulfill our potential each day.

Deep sleep is a period of sleep when your brain waves are at their lowest frequency. This is when it is hardest to wake you up. Usually, people get spurts of it within the first couple of hours of the night. Some with genetic mutations are able to get more deep sleep, but studies are showing that around 20% of deep sleep for adults is optimal. This equates to around 1.5 hours a night or more. You can track deep sleep through tracking devices such as an Oura ring, Fitbit, Whoop, and other brands. You may be able to tell if you’re not getting enough deep sleep if you’re waking up a lot early on in the night, not feeling rested in the mornings, even with 8+ hours of consistent sleep every night.

There is a myriad of chemicals, amino acids, enzymes, nutrients, and hormones that work together to help regulate our sleep cycle and improve the quality of our sleep. These include, but aren’t limited to…

Pomegranates. I'm sure some of you have seen me tout the benefits of utilizing pomegranate, and a lot of my clients have heard me recommend it as well. I want to dive into WHY I'm being such a pomegranate pusher (insert mean girls quote: I'm a PUSHER, Cady).

Food prep is for most people a very daunting task that also feels like it’s the only way to success. Some of that might be true, but it’s not always what you think it is.

Meal prep gets a bad name because of the plain redundancy that it used to be when it was first popular. Food prep has really evolved to the actual meaning of those words: a way to prep your food for your week.

There’s not a “right” way to prep your food, it’s all about what works for you. It might take some trial and error (more on the importance of that here), but finding what works best in your life is going to be key.

the scale and it’s really not the best method for tracking progress. Yes, it’s one tool, but it doesn’t tell us how our body composition is changing (if we’re losing fat and building muscle the scale might not change at all, or it might even go up). And then there are factors that affect the scale day today. Lack of sleep, stress, overtraining, or an excessive amount of sodium in your diet (which is what I want to discuss in this post) are all things that can cause the scale to jump.

This challenge is meant for anyone who is interested in having a healthier understanding of themselves and their eating habits. Whether you are brand new to healthy eating practices or have years of practice, this is meant to be fun and experimental. By the end, you will have learned new things about yourself, and as a result, be closer to feeling like the best version of yourself.

Usually, my blog posts are like "self-love, be kind to yourself, you're amazing..." I'm a positive person and I feel like people are WAY too hard on themselves a lot of the time. But today, I'm doling out some tough love.

It’s beach season! For some people that means bikini’s, white sand, and those fruity drinks with the umbrellas! But what if you have fat loss goals? Can you still drink? How does it impact your body and what are the “best” ways we can fit drinking into our macros?! We’re not here to tell you what to do, we just want you to understand the physiology of what happens when you drink and let you make the best decision for you!

Okay, it’s warm out there. At least, for some people. (again, being in the Northeast is great and all but yesterday was cold and rainy and today it’s 65 and sunny… you just never know).

When I first started writing this post it had a different tone and feel. I initially started writing it for me because I wanted to share my story. The more I asked around and spoke with fellow strength-sport athletes, the more I realized that this isn’t about me, and my experience is about all of us. I discovered I was not alone and that 90% of the women I spoke with shared a similar story. I was shocked.

One of the most frequent topics I discuss as a nutrition counselor is how to successfully stay on track with goals while traveling. This is understandably a confusing and anxiety-filled topic. Yet, the answer to success is simple. You must care. In this piece, I will offer some helpful tips for different travel situations. It is important to understand that ANYTHING can be successfully executed in any situation if you care enough.

There are some mixed feelings on aesthetic-based goals; it is healthier to focus on self-love and not agonize over every little thing on our body that we can’t always control. Don’t get me wrong; I think for our mental health, we should focus most on internal health, such as what we put into our bodies and how we treat ourselves, as well as how we deal with stress. But sometimes we want to look good too, and that’s OK! It’s natural to want to look good. As long as we don’t give it too much focus on our health and have positive intentions behind it.

The warm months are coming (and if you are in the Northeast like me, THANK GOODNESS), but you know what that means for a LOT of people - that panic to *lose the winter layer of fat* and to lose it quickly.

Just because you hired a nutrition coach and put “fat loss” as your goal, it doesn’t mean you’re going to start a caloric deficit right away. I try to put my clients on maintenance calories most of the time when we first start together (excluding special scenarios like yo-yo dieters and chronic dieters/under-eaters).

There are two types of people in the world – those that LOVE to grocery shop (me!) and those that DREAD it (most people). If you are part of the latter group, I have put together some strategies to make your life a bit easier. When embarking out on your grocery journey, it is important to find a store that is a “one-stop-shop”. If you are going to multiple stores to do your grocery shopping, it is very likely you are going to get distracted, pick up one too many “snacks” that don’t need to be in your pantry, and likely overspend as well.

Do you ever go out to happy hour with co-workers, and then you feel upset afterward because you feel like your choices pulled you away from your goals? Or, have you come home stressed from work, and immediately dove into your pantry? And then suddenly you're surrounded by empty food wrappers?

Do you hear the words “Meal Prep” and instantly cringe at the thought of all the time and effort that needs to be put into that task? Let’s be honest, those Instagram pictures of Tupperware perfectly lined up on the counter with every meal for the week specifically weighed out are beautiful, but a bit hard to execute without wasting a whole day! Well, I am here to offer some assistance and help you prep for the week ahead in a very efficient and realistic way.

Dietary fat is one of the three macronutrients that make up our diet. It is an essential part of our nutrition but can be pretty complex to understand. There are so many subgroups of “fat”, that we, as a society, have formed these stigmas or preconceived notions on what is “good” and what is “bad”.