The Lifestyle-ista

QUEEN LATIFAH'S HOMEMADE DIY BEAUTY SKINCARE SECRET…

June 21, 2013 By TheLifestylista

Now our girl Latifah always looks good and her skin is just AMAZING. While you are out there trying to deal with the stresses of the everyday AND get your health, your weight and your life in order… let The Lifestylista help you to pamper yourself and get even better looking skin… Queen Latifah style!

Here are her top two tips:
1) DON’T WEAR YOUR MAKE UP ALL THE TIME. Make sure you carve out hours in the day, and maybe on the weekend, where you clean & exfoliate your skin and give it time to breathe.

2) A DIY BAKING SODA EXFOLIATION
WHAT IS EXFOLIATION?:
Taking the old skin cells off the top layer of your skin to expose the fresher, more healthy skin cells below.
Some people use mild acids (like AHA – Alpha Hydroxy Acid) to take the skin cells off the top layer of the skin. Not Queen Latifah!
Her baking soda method is a natural and gentle way to exfoliate… and it’s significantly cheaper than buying something from the pharmacy too 😉
This is a ‘physical exfoliant’ as opposed to the ones that use chemicals.
Over time, this baking soda exfoliation can make minced meat out of your blackheads, your large pores and your oily skin… (if you have it) 🙂

INGREDIENTS:
3 tablespoons of baking soda
approx 1 teaspoon of water

WHAT TO DO:
1) Clean your face with your usual cleanser and leave your face wet.
2) Mix the baking soda with the water – add a few drops of water to get to a consistency you like.
3) Apply the baking soda paste to your damp face in a circular motion all over your face for 1 – 3 minutes.
AVOID your eyes (very delicate skin there!).
4) Wash the paste off your face with lukewarm water.
5) Take some cotton wool and apply some alcohol free toner to close up your pores.
6) Moisturize your skin with a simple, fragrance free moisturizer.

IMPORTANT: If your skin is irritated, use less baking soda next time. And do this at night so your skin has a chance to recover overnight!
If this treatment works for you, then use it twice a week! It’s good to exfoliate.

love
The Lifestylista
xox

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DEAR LIFESTYLISTA – RUINED MY DIET SO I MIGHT AS WELL PIG OUT

June 20, 2013 By TheLifestylista

DEAR LIFESTYLISTA – RUINED MY DIET SO I MIGHT AS WELL PIG OUT:
***I fckd my diet n I hate me now. I ate a burger fries Coke n a choc sunday. Wanna pig out so bad now. I’m spiralling down. Gonna be fat anyway. Want another sunday. pls help.***

LADIES – PLEASE GIVE YOUR SUPPORT TO OUR LIFESTYLISTA FRIEND [NAME DELETED]. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? WHAT HELP CAN YOU GIVE FROM YOUR OWN LIFE EXPERIENCE?
Here’s the answer I gave:
Hey [NAME DELETED] girl help is at hand! You have got a case of an everything or nothing way of thinking. So many of us think that unless we eat ‘perfectly’ all the time then we’re bad and that we’ll never succeed and so we might as well give up…
Here’s the helpful part to free you! HEALTHY SKINNY PEOPLE DON’T THINK LIKE THAT! It’s not black or white / saint or sinner for them. Many slim people may eat some ‘play food’ BUT they eat it in moderation.
So it’s not the square or two of chocolate that’ll “ruin your diet”, it’s the idea that if you deviate even a little bit from your ‘perfect eating’ then you might as well eat a mountain of the ‘bad stuff’. It’s like breaking one plate in a set of plates and then because one plate is broken, you break them all!!! Crazy huh? Well we ladies can get cray cray when it comes to weight and eating!

Here’s an exercise for you: the next time you feel that way, like you’ve ‘ruined your diet’. Say to yourself, “Wow, I’ve eaten some ‘play food’ like a skinny person would. And just like a skinny person, I’m going to eat it in moderation. I haven’t ruined a damned thing baby!”

Actively change the way you speak to yourself.
e.g.
“If I have one bite, I’ll have to eat the whole thing.”
vs
“I am going to have 3 bites of it and I’m going to eat it slowly and mindfully. I’m really going to savor it – looks, taste, smell, texture… wonderful. I’m going to really enjoy it and put the rest away (or throw it in the garbage!).”

Go to http://www.TheLifestylista.com and search for my articles:
— “FEELING STRESSED AND WANT TO OVEREAT???” – there’s a GREAT BREATHING TECHNIQUE here that fights cravings…
— Dieting’s dirty little secret – the scientific truths behind WHY DIETS MAKE YOU FAT!

I am here rooting for you girl! You can so do this.
love,
The Lifestylista
xox
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NO MATTER HOW LOW YOU HAVE SUNK, NO MATTER HOW YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED YOURSELF… THERE'S ALWAYS A TOMORROW!

June 19, 2013 By TheLifestylista

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill
NO MATTER HOW LOW YOU HAVE SUNK, NO MATTER HOW YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED YOURSELF… THERE’S ALWAYS A TOMORROW! CONTINUE! I’m here rooting for you.

love,

The Lifestylista xox

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SCIENTIFIC STUDY: KEEPING A FOOD DIARY DOUBLES WEIGHT LOSS…

June 18, 2013 By TheLifestylista

Now ladies, I’m not saying you’ll need to do this damned boring thing forever! How flipping annoying would that be??! I’m suggesting that self awareness is key. So many of us just aren’t aware of what we really do eat… Some of us remember the main meals we have and totally blank on all the snacking, all the grazing. For the first few weeks of deciding to change your lifestyle, of deciding to lose weight… just keep a food journal, write down everything you eat (even the stuff you don’t want to write down!). This is time consuming but writing down everything you eat, even for just a few weeks, for many people, can be the key to taking the pounds off and keeping them off.

What’s my source for this?
One of the longest running and largest scale weight loss maintenance trials ever conducted: a Kaiser Permanente study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
– 1700 study participants
– 44% African American

— “Can writing down what you eat really help you to lose weight?”
According to the leader author of the study (Jack Hollis PhD), “The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost. Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories.”

— “But I am on the road a lot, I don’t have a way of keeping a formal journal”
Dr K. Bachman who was also a part of the study said, “Keeping a food diary doesn’t have to be a formal thing. Just the act of scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note, sending yourself e-mails tallying each meal, or sending yourself a text message will suffice. It’s the process of reflecting on what you eat that helps us become aware of our habits, and hopefully change our behavior.”

So there you have it. Are you willing to ‘sacrifice’ two weeks of your life to food journal to really get self aware and to work out how much food / what you’re actually putting into your body?
I used to be about 70 pounds heavier (approx 32 kilos) and when I started my weight loss journey, I did a food journal for a few weeks so I could work out exactly what I was eating. I have to say it was a darned eye opener! I had been extremely un-self aware. And as I’d been gaining weight steadily over the years, I used to blame the washing machine for shrinking my clothes! I felt blindsided by the constant weight gain, so confused about why / how I was getting fatter and fatter. The food journal helped me to see what I was actually doing. And Knowledge is power baby! 🙂

I’m here rooting for you!
love
The Lifestylista
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xox http://ow.ly/i/2olj2

10 WAYS TO VANQUISH YOUR BELLY BLOAT

June 17, 2013 By TheLifestylista

10 WAYS TO VANQUISH YOUR BELLY BLOAT: Is your pot belly out of control? Even though you are not pregnant and you haven’t really gained lots of belly fat? Are you suddenly having trouble fitting into your jeans? Let’s do something about it… NOW!
So many of you have written about exactly this problem and I can hear how confused, sad and darned upset you are about it. That’s because this is confusing, saddening and darned upsetting! This belly bloating is really taking liberties with our bodies BUT now we have the power to stop it! ROAR!

10 BELLY BLOAT BUSTERS:

1) EAT SLOWLY
Don’t wolf down your food! If you eat quickly, you eat huge bites and you don’t really chew… and, worse, what you’re really doing is swallowing loads of air which won’t be quite so pretty when it’s trapped inside you! 🙁 The best thing you can do is eat mindfully, close your mouth when you chew… Look at the food, smell it, taste it, touch it and after each bite you take, make sure you take a big, deep breath through your nose.

2) DAIRY
Lactose intolerant people bloat when they eat dairy!
If you think you might be lactose intolerant, try eliminating dairy from your diet for a week or two… and see if you are still bloated.
Some ethnic groups are much more likely to be lactose intolerant e.g. African 70% – 90% lactose intolerant, African-American 75% vs Northern European 5 – 20%. Remember: If what you are eating is difficult for you to digest then BOY WILL YOU BLOAT!

3) EXERCISE
If you get yourself moving, the gas in your intestines will pass through more quickler. Not being gross but better out than in, right! LOL.

4) CUT DOWN ON SALT
Sodium causes water retention… When you retain water, you might find it hard to fit into that cute, cute skirt you were planning to wear to that wedding on the weekend. Yikes!
If you have overdone the salt and you have an event coming up… Here’s what to do:
a) Drink lots of water to help flush out the excess sodium and also to rehydrate the body (odd but true: too much salt dehydrates us and being dehydrated can make us retain water!).
b) Eat high potassium foods (e.g. dark leafy greens, bananas, avocado, mushrooms and coconut water) to help balance the sodium / potassium ratio in your body. The potassium ‘cancels out’ the sodium. The extra potassium can also cause a reduction in the amount of water you have retained.
c) Eat foods that are natural diuretics (they help get rid of the water you’ve retained) e.g. cabbage, cucumber, watermelon and asparagus.

5) CUT DOWN ON BAD FATS
High fat foods like fries (bad fats) can cause bloating… 🙁
but good fats like raw nuts and avocados don’t produce a lot of gas in the body.

6) LOOK AT YOUR BIRTH CONTROL!
Everyone’s different and unfortunately, for some women, the estrogen in birth control pills leads to water retention and abdominal bloating. If you think this is happening to you, go to see your doctor as soon as poss.

7) AVOID SODA
Fizzy drinks / soda – because they are carbonated the bubbles of air get trapped in your stomach.

8) AVOID MAN MADE SWEETENERS
Artificial sweeteners e.g. sorbitol – cause bloating so avoid diet soft drinks.

9) AVOID GUM
Chewing gum – you end up swallowing air.

10) REDUCE YOUR STRESS
When you’re stressed, your body pumps out cortisol and adrenaline (stress hormones). These stress hormones overstimulate your digestive system and cause the production of gas – you become bloated and, if you are very stressed and producing lots of stress hormones… you may even experience diarrhea! 🙁
For a great breathing exercise to quickly and dramatically reduce your stress levels – go to: http://www.TheLifestylista.com and search for: “Feeling Stressed and Want to Overeat?”

Girl, I am on your side and I want to see you thrive. Beat the bloat!
love
The Lifestylista
xox
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FEELING STRESSED AND WANT TO OVEREAT???

June 16, 2013 By TheLifestylista

FEELING STRESSED AND WANT TO OVEREAT??? Fight emotional overeating with this quick & effective technique:
4-7-8 breathing:

1) Put your hands on your lower stomach.
Close your mouth.
BREATHE IN and hold it for a count of 4 (counting silently in your head!)
Important: Only your stomach should move when you breath in, NOT your chest or your shoulders.

2) HOLD YOUR BREATH and count silently to 7.

3) BREATHE OUT through your mouth for a count of 8. As you breathe out make a ‘wooshing’ sound! Really get the air out!

4) Do this 4 times.

WHY THIS WORKS:
– Breathing this way (deeply and slowly) tells your body that you’re safe and all is well.
– Breathing in your regular stressed way (quick, shallow breathing etc.) when you’re stressed causes your body to pump out cortisol and adrenaline – stress hormones. When you have increased levels of these hormones, guess what??? YOU OVEREAT!

This 4-7-8 breathing thang works girl! At first it’ll seem odd but when you get the hang of it, you can use it in all sorts of situations and you’ll feel calmer and more in control.

I’m here rooting for you!
love,
The Lifestylista
xox

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