If you thought Barney or Blue’s Clues was enough to put you over the proverbial edge, you haven’t met JJ from the cartoon, CoComelon. 

At first blush, it’s a harmless show with cute little nursery rhymes and topics that are typical for the preschool set. Don’t be fooled though, the more you listen, the worse the voices get and the repetition leaves you ready to pull your TV off the wall. 

Nevertheless, the littles are hooked.

It’s no wonder why they’re entranced because there’s apparently a dopamine hit that occurs in kid’s brains as the scenes change every few seconds. You and I both know that highly overstimulating kids isn’t a good idea. 

Ringing in for mom of the year, I let my daughter watch said train wreck during emergencies. Read: airplane travel. As we watched JJ and his siblings start singing about exercise, my ears perked up. With a degree in exercise physiology and career in fitness, I was intrigued...

I'm a terrible flyer. I've mentioned that nerves plus motion sickness make me a real peach to sit near on an airplane. 

I was surprisingly good on my last flight, especially compared to the guy a couple rows back. 

He was traveling with his two daughters with no other adult in sight which could explain his loud-talking-borderline-yelling. The minute he took his seat he was pleading/informing his daughters they better behave themselves for the next two hours. 

Right before the flight attendants did their safety speech, our buddy yells out, "how did you get that chocolate in here? You have to eat some almonds before you can have any chocolate, ok?"

It was a you-better-listen-to-me-kind-of-ok. 

During the flight there was more loud talking about who knows what since I was rewinding Sing 2 for the fiftieth time while helping my daughter unwrap her seventh lollipop. 

I felt for this dad. He's doing what diet culture tells him to do which is...

My son stopped dead in his tracks in my bathroom doorway. 

I did that slow head turn wondering what absurdity might be hitting his little eye balls. 

“Um, mom, what are you doing?” 

I had to stop for a minute because I was now used to the little buzzing coming from my hand held face mister device. 

“Oh, this?!” I questioned as I pointed to my handy micro-infuser (If I’m being exact with my terminology).

”Yeah, what the heck is that thing?”

”It’s supposed to get the stuff I put on my face into the deepest layers of my skin so it feels and looks extra soft like yours.”

”Oh, okay. Well it looks and sounds really weird. Can I go play outside?”

Sometimes all it takes is your ten year old pointing out the obvious. Was this little NASA funded and backed device really going to make me look that much different? Probably not. Is the beauty industry a kissing cousin of the diet industry? Absolutely,...

Last week I purposely stayed out of your inbox. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday were all poised to rob your holiday spirit before December 1st. 

As soon as I had cleared the overwhelm and what felt like a thousand emails, I saw an email with the subject, “We won’t stop Wednesday”. 

This one stopped me, because these three words are basically the mantra of every diet/cleanse/lifestyle/wellness program pummeling your inbox, your brain and your social feeds from now until January. 

We won’t stop convincing you that you aren’t thin enough. 

We won’t stop making you feel less than. 

We won’t stop playing to your insecurities. 

We won’t stop tugging at your fears. 

We won’t stop triggering your anxiety. 

We won’t stop making you think that your body is a problem to be solved. 

We won’t stop making audacious claims that aren’t backed by...

My son sat at the top of the stairs with a small pool of crocodile tears collecting at this knees. I was sure something catastrophic had occurred as he sobbed over and over,

“I ruined it! It’s all my fault! I wreaked it again!”

It took me a minute to realize that we were talking about a Halloween slap bracelet. I was relieved that any tragedy had, indeed, been averted. My son, however, was deep in his guilt over breaking the second bracelet like this in the last two days. 

“Ok, buddy, it’s actually not your fault that the bracelet broke. These are not high quality items and the people who make them even know they won’t last very long. These aren’t intended to last forever.” 

He was not amused with my explanation and just dug in his heels repeating that it was ALL HIS FAULT. 

As we were talking, I couldn’t help but relate this situation to any diet. Like the slap bracelet, diets aren’t made well, only meant to...

Kids lined up twenty deep in anticipation of the annual spaghetti dinner the night before their all-city swim meet. Large pans held spaghetti, red sauce with fresh basil, alfredo sauce, and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. At the end of the line, more platters from parents held delicious desserts, fruits and bread to mop up any leftover sauce. 

Sure, the annual spaghetti dinner is billed as the perfect “fuel” or carbo load pre-event meal, but it’s much more than that. 

It’s about the kids celebrating their hard work all season. 
It’s about parents celebrating that they don’t have to convince their kids to get out of bed early in the morning and into a (sometimes very cold) pool. 
It’s about the joy of being together as a team and community. 
It’s about the pleasure that a good meal brings. 
It’s about tradition because every kid and parent I know looks forward to this event.

Food isn’t just about...

My late Father-in-Law loved a good joke. 

One of his favorite one liners was asking my Mother-in-Law if we were having honeymoon salad for dinner. What’s that you ask? Lettuce alone!

Cue the knee slap. Ba Dum Bum.

I couldn’t help thinking about his salad joke when a mom at our neighborhood pool gathered her three children to see that neighbor Molly was eating a salad BY HER OWN WILL. 

“Do you see what a great job she’s doing eating vegetables all by herself without her mom forcing her to eat them? She’s being such a good role model and setting such a good example for all the other kids!” 

Her kids stared at her blankly and jumped back in the pool while Molly sat uncomfortably in her poolside chair munching away.

I’m sure they were all thinking, lettuce alone. 

Putting certain foods on pedestals and demonizing other foods is exactly what diet culture teaches and perpetuates through countless diet rules and...

My daughter was poised to jump with water dripping off her swimsuit while she hollered,

“Don’t catch me, mommy! Do it by self!”

A seasoned swim instructor and fellow mom-tot chorus singer of wheels on the bus said, 

“Good for her, she’s loving that body autonomy.”

I thought about how much body autonomy feels good whether you’re two years old, twenty-two years old or seventy-two years old. Despite the government trying to take away female’s basic body autonomy rights, they can’t take away that you know how good it feels to have control over your own body. 

Body autonomy is a fundamental human right. 

Body autonomy is also the foundation of finding peace with food. 

My two year old daughter knows it feels good to do things she can by herself, even if her clothes are on inside out and backwards and her shoes are on the wrong feet. That’s what feels good to her right now. 

As a kid, you had the same...

Who knew that an artist would have the advice I needed to hear this week. 

My girls and their friends went to a Cape Cod stripes art workshop with an incredibly talented local artist, Carolyn Mackin. During the workshop the girls picked any colors of their choosing to make some fancy horizontal stripes. Anything goes for stripe thickness, amount of stripes, the way to apply the stripes onto the paper and number of colors. 

Basically, there are no rules. 

I came back towards the end of the workshop and one of my girls was looking particularly upset about her stripes. Carolyn and I asked her what she was thinking and she said she didn't like the bold, thick stripes she had put on her papers. Carolyn gave her some suggestions, but my daughter was still looking unsure, upset and a little frozen. 

Then, Carolyn gave the mic drop speech. 

She said, art isn't about being fearless. There's no such thing as being fearless. We all have our...

The last three times I've run into a school mom, my two year old is doing something with a lollipop. 

The first time, this mom saw us at the paper store in town and kindly peeled the white sticky stick off of my daughter's bottom and brought it to me letting me know what she had found. She promised no judgement and said with a giggle that she could totally relate. 
Thank you, new friend. Classy. 

The second time, we were at CVS buying some (a very large bag) of lollipops to survive an upcoming airplane flight. My friend helped me find the econo size bag because apparently she makes pre-flight CVS stops, too. We had just enough to last the final leg of our trip.
Thank you, friend, sugar and CVS. 

Just last week, we bumped into each other at CVS (AGAIN) and my daughter was working two lollipops in her mouth even before we got to the checkout line. My friend and I laughed about our repeated lollipop adventures. This time I needed the lollipops...