At 7:01am, I picked up our telephone and dialed my best friend, Rachel. I couldn't call before 7am, because I might wake someone up and get in trouble with her step-mom. She wasn't a lady I wanted to mess with, so I waited an extra minute just to be safe. 

I could picture Rachel racing to pick up the hallway telephone before her brothers grabbed it. Luckily, the phone was just outside her bedroom so she had an advantage. I could picture her dragging the incredibly long cord all the way to the front of her closet to assess the situation. 

"What are you wearing today?" I'd ask. 

"Ummmm, I think my skirt and long sleeve shirt. Do you have something that matches?" she'd reply.

Once we had our outfits dialed in, we'd walk to meet at the corner and make our way to school. 

Wall phones, dialing, waiting for the clock to turn.....it all seems rather antiquated compared to today's scenario. 

My daughter wakes up and can check her "Snaps"...

Since when did my trips to the mailbox start requiring a wagon? The number of catalogs rolling in during the holiday season is insane. Most of these go straight in the trash, but this year I’ve been on the hunt for some good family holiday pajamas (I know, cheesy, dork mom over here) so I was skimming through a few catalogs in hopes of finding some holiday treasures. 

Because we know a girl who models for a lot of the catalogs we get, anytime we open a catalog, it’s sort of a treasure hunt to find her on those glossy pages. A Where’s Waldo activity, but only better because her gorgeous face is easy to spot and it’s fun watching for her and feeling like we know a celebrity. 

What’s not fun is that I spotted her on a website that we wanted to cross reference from our catalog hunt and saw that she was modeling an adult sweater. Bless this eleven year old’s heart that she, of course, didn’t likely sign up for an adult gig, but the...

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,...

Two weeks ago Friday at 5pm had my teen daughters debating the best songs on Taylor Swift's new album, Midnights. They both agreed that anti-hero was their favorite. Little did they know that the video of this song would have a not-so-hero moment (insert face-palm emoji here).

At one point of the video, Taylor stands on a scale while her devil self looks on at her side. They both look down at the scale and the word "fat" pops up on the scale instead of a number. Both Taylor and her devil self shake their heads disapprovingly at the scale read out. 

34 million have viewed her video, and thankfully, some of those millions spoke up enough to have her delete the "fat" read out moment. She's still shown on the scale giving a disapproving response which I actually think is very relevant and real in today's fat phobic world. Who really steps on the scale and has that feeling of enough or worth or value? Usually the feeling for a majority of women is that you'll never be thin...

I've always been slightly obsessed with flowers. 

For as long as I can remember, my dad could recognize a flower on any walk, hike or trip we took. I was amazed and intrigued by his ability to identify just about anything and was enthralled with every flower shape and color we came across. 

All the tables at our wedding were named after flowers. 

I love fresh flowers (PPL*) in the house thanks to Trader Joe's. 

I even took a few flower arranging classes and secretly fantasized about owning my own flower business. 

So when my mentor and teacher, Isabel Foxen Duke, mentioned a flower analogy, I leaned in. 

She said that her friend and fellow anti-diet activist, Virgie Tovar, likened (I'm paraphrasing here) various body sizes to all the different flowers in a field. There doesn't have to be only one, most beautiful flower. A field has many different types of flowers all requiring different amounts of sunlight, water and...

Standing on tip toes to make sure Alexa could hear him, my son shouted, "Alexa! Please play "Stretchy Pants"! 

The girls, my mom and I laughed as we tossed together the final ingredients for our pumpkin bake. We all laughed and sang along with Carrie Underwood. 

Listen here, but you'll get the idea with this verse:

A friend of mine just sent me this text:

"I was thinking about you this week. Do you still work as a nutritionist? I would like to lose xx pounds, but more importantly learn how to eat and how to maintain my weight!"  

After getting over my cringe-worthy reaction to my past work as a nutritionist who solely focused on weight loss, I shot back this reply:

"Hi! Actually, I work as a diet recovery and weight neutral coach helping women who DON'T want to diet anymore. Diets really only work for a tiny fraction of people and they can often make health worse in both the short and long term. LMK if you want more info!"

My friend, like so many other women I've talked with replied with this: 
"Yes! I want to change my way of eating and not diet anymore!" 

Here's where things are starting to sound familiar, aren't they?

I pipe back in with:
"I really don't work with women who have an underlying goal of weight loss. Health and weight are very often falsely tied...

My son looked at me with his striking hazel eyes after I offered him the option of a cookie or ice cream and he replied, “how about I have the cookie and the ice cream”. 

An hour earlier I gave the kids the option to leave the pool in ten minutes or twenty minutes and my older kids said “how about we stay here and walk home when we’re ready?”

Leave it to kids to remind you of the important life lessons that maybe there’s a third, viable option you haven’t considered. 

Like every parent out there, I’ve considered and used bribery, yelling, technology, threats and coercion, but lately I’ve been going back to good ol’ Love and Logic. One of the Love and Logic teachings is that the parent gives the child two options to choose from and the child gets to make the decision. The trick strategy is that the parent gives two options knowing that they’re ok with either option the child chooses. The child feels good...

Heart pounding with sweat dripping down my face, I grabbed for my water bottle as my legs slowed down. I love my twenty minute Peloton rides the mornings I can squeak them in before the daily chaos ensues. 

As class ends, Peloton shows you where you are on their “leaderboard”. I hate looking at this board along with the virtual high fives board (sorry, not sorry) during my class. Even though I close these boards while I ride, the leaderboard automatically pops back up at the end. It’s hard not to glance at the rankings as I close out the window on the touchscreen. I’m usually middle of the pack, but recently I noticed I was close to last. 

Hmmmm, I thought, as I wiped sweat from my body after an all out effort ride....that’s humbling. I don’t like feeling like I’m not good enough. My guess is that you, too, also don’t like this feeling yet tend to look for places where you don’t measure up. 

This got me thinking...

Will Smith recently posted a full body selfie with the caption, “I’m gonna be real wit y’all. I’m in the worst shape of my life”. Let me first say that a) his “worst shape” picture looks like he’s a regular guy and b) you can NEVER assume a person’s health based on their physical appearance. 

Will Smith’s not the only one emerging from the pandemic cocoon with a different appearance. Not only have many our bodies changed, our attitudes have, too. In particular, our anxieties are up. What about my unvaccinated kids? Are the vaccines really safe? What about summer camp? What’s school going to look like next year? Can I really hang out unmasked with friends? Weren’t we just double masking a few weeks ago?

One industry in particular is thrilled with this combination of body dissatisfaction and peaked anxiety. You guessed it…the diet industry (aka the weight cycling industry). 

Even though many...