Desire can be a con­fus­ing thing. In my own jour­ney, I find I’m often mis­taken about what I really want. I think I want one thing, only to find out what I truly want is some­thing else entirely. I’ve found this hap­pens most often when I focus on surface-level desires with­out dig­ging deep down into the core of what I’m after. It’s a rookie mis­take, really. It’s just so darn easy to for­get the impor­tance of look­ing deeper. And some­times, it’s tough to know how to look deeper. Read more

It’s dif­fi­cult to fully artic­u­late the dif­fer­ence that learn­ing to love my body — and ulti­mately to love my SELF — has made in my life. When I saw this heart-warming video clip a cou­ple of weeks ago, I imme­di­ately thought, “YES! This is what the jour­ney to self love was like for me! ” Take a look:

Not only does this video per­fectly cap­ture the eupho­ria that came from fully embrac­ing who I am, it also pro­vides a win­dow into my jour­ney. Read more

I know what it means to binge eat: To close the door and hud­dle behind my desk with a large can of toffee-covered peanuts and eat until my head aches and my stom­ach burns.

To stand in my dark kitchen going from refrig­er­a­tor to pantry for lit­tle bites of this and that — two olives, five crack­ers, a slice of cheese, a hand­ful of raisins, a swig of cof­fee creamer — until my belly is so bloated it’s hard to breathe.

To sit in my car in the gro­cery store park­ing lot, eat­ing 100-calorie pouches of cook­ies in rapid suc­ces­sion, won­der­ing what in God’s name is so wrong with me that I can’t even be trusted with portion-controlled “good-girl” food. Read more

You’re in for a treat today. This post, writ­ten by my dear friend Melissa Anderson, is so beau­ti­ful and so impor­tant. I’m really hon­ored to share it with you here. Melissa is a really spe­cial gal — a true gift in my life — and if you want to get to know her bet­ter and soak up some of her awesome-ness, I have good news for you: she has a blog! She launched her blog, “…the space between…” in January. I think you’ll really enjoy what she’s got going on over there, so go check it out! Okay, enough from me. Enjoy Melissa’s lovely words.

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Best Bite First

In run­ning, a neg­a­tive split is when you run the sec­ond half of the race faster than the first. In run­ning long dis­tance races, you’re out there for long peri­ods of time, some­times many hours, so it makes per­fect sense to save up some of your energy for those later miles “just in case” and to have a reserve to pull from. In order for that to hap­pen, you make a con­scious effort in the begin­ning and mid­dle of the race to pull back, to hold off a lit­tle, to not engage to the absolute fullest. Read more

This month’s host­ess with the mostest for the Self-Discovery Word by Word Blogger Series is the incred­i­bly insight­ful Margarita Tartakovsky. If you don’t already read her blog, Weightless, get your tail over there right now. It’s an amaz­ing haven from the insan­ity of our diet-obsessed cul­ture. You’ll get major inspi­ra­tion and edu­ca­tion on how to love your body and break free from the num­ber on the scale. Her blog has become one of my absolute favorites.

Margarita has selected “cre­ativ­ity” as our word to explore this month. Read more

Just in case you didn’t know, the hol­i­day sea­son is here. Facebook  is abuzz with pump­kin pie recipe shar­ing and photo uploads of Christmas trees. The stores are dec­o­rated in red and green (and have been since before Halloween), and every other com­mer­cial on tele­vi­sion is remind­ing you that you bet­ter get your gift shop­ping done NOW. Read more

My fab­u­lous blog­ger friend Karen C.L. Anderson is host­ing this month’s Self Discovery Word by Word Blogger Series and has selected a pro­foundly chal­leng­ing word: vulnerability.

As I’ve been pon­der­ing this word, I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that vul­ner­a­bil­ity isn’t a choice. We are all vul­ner­a­ble. Every sin­gle one of us. Try as we might to shield our­selves from harm, loss, and pain, not one of us is guar­an­teed even another moment with­out fac­ing the inevitable val­leys of life. In a flash, any one of us could lose a loved one. Any one of us could be diag­nosed with can­cer. Any one of us could have our worst fears come true. Read more

About four years ago, I took my first Nia class. At the time, I was reg­u­larly run­ning, lift­ing weights, and tak­ing sev­eral pound­ing step aer­o­bics classes each week, but my rig­or­ous exer­cise wasn’t enough to keep me from gain­ing weight. My binge eat­ing was out of con­trol, and I just couldn’t burn enough calo­ries to off­set the impact. I walked into a Nia class because I heard Nia involved lots of danc­ing, which sounded like a fun way to squeeze in an extra calo­rie burn­ing ses­sion a few times each week. Read more

I used to work part-time for a weight loss com­pany, and I would often give the fol­low­ing advice to the many strug­gling, dis­cour­aged members:

I know it feels like you are hang­ing off the edge of a cliff and you are just barely grip­ping on with your fin­ger­tips. You’re using all your strength to keep from falling off. I know you’re tired and you just want to let go, but don’t do it. Keep grip­ping on with all your might. Whatever you do, don’t let go!

This, my friends, is the worst advice I’ve ever given. Read more