Did you have a good week? Sunday was Super Bowl, so I know that may have been a challenge for some of you. I know all of that yummy food was tempting for me! I think I did pretty good though. *pats self on back*

Let’s get down to business!

If you’re a Shrinker, go ahead and weigh-in and then come back. We’ll wait! After, fill out the form below then blog all about it! Alos, be sure to visit all of your fellow Sisters (and Brothers) who also have blogged all about it.

The Fitness Challenge

 The fitness challenge is simple:do either 20 minutes of vigorous exercise three times weekly OR 30 minutes of moderate exercise five times weekly. Simple right? How are you doing with that? If you’re struggling, no worries! Just jump back on the wagon today!

Don’t forget we’re also doing the 52 Small Changes Challenge over at the ‘Hood! If you haven’t joined yet, have no fear! It’s going on all year! (Haha. I rhymed and didn’t even mean to this time!)

That’s all I have! It’s time for you to fill out the form below and blog away! I hope everyone has a great day!

Today is Go Red For Women day.

Are you wearing red? More importantly, do you know what today means? Let me fill you in – the American Heart Association has designated today as a day to wear red to create awareness surrounding heart disease in women.

Though heart disease is often thought of as an ‘older man’s disease’, it is, in fact, heart disease is the LEADING killer in women, causing one out of three deaths each year.

Not only is Go Red For Women designed to raise awareness, it is also a day to take action – to understand your risk factors, to take steps toward living a heart healthy life.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to speak to Dr. Travis Stork of television’s ‘The Doctors’. Dr. Stork deals with patients in the ER with heart disease on a daily basis. He graciously took a few minutes out of his busy day to answer some questions and give some insight into our heart disease epidemic.

First of all, know your risk factors:

• Smoking
• High blood pressure
•  High cholesterol
•  High triglycerides
•  Untreated diabetes
•  Obesity
• Stress
•  Lack of regular exercise

All of these risk factors are things you can control. Yes, it can be hard to give up smoking.  Or you may think that you’re too young to have your cholesterol or triglycerides tested. But knowledge is power. Visiting your doctor for a physical may be life saving.

Other than quitting smoking, Dr. Stork said that one lifestyle change can make a huge difference – walking thirty minutes a day. It can add three years to your life. It requires no equipment and no skill set. And another ‘heart-healthy’ side effect? If you make a habit of walking with loved ones, you get to spend quality time together – and make your heart happy.

In addition to the walking, Dr. Stork suggested standing more and sitting less. For instance, if you usually make phone calls at work sitting at your desk, try standing.  Be on your feet as much as possible, the less sedentary you are, the better.

Now that we’ve gone over lifestyle changes you can make to prevent heart disease, let’s get into what you need to know about heart attacks.

Typical Symptoms Include:

• Chest discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes or that goes away and returns
• Pain and discomfort in one or both arms or back
• Shortness of breath
•  Breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea and/or lightheadedness

Overlooked Symptoms Include:

• Indigestion
• Pain and discomfort in the stomach, neck or jaw
•  Headaches
•  Fatigue

It should be noted that the warning signs can be harder to detect in women. Fifty percent of women don’t experience chest pain – the number one symptom is fatigue.

Dr. Stork stressed that we need to listen to our bodies. Really listen. Things like being tired for no obvious reason, generalized weakness, or simply that something just doesn’t feel “right.”  If you’re experiencing odd symptoms, different than anything you’ve experienced before, it can’t hurt to get it checked out.

Other than addressing the risk factors, there are further actions you can take to avoid heart disease.

Reduce risk by:

• Purchasing foods and beverages without added sugars and that are low in sodium
• Drinking alcohol in moderation (one drink/day for women; two drinks/day for men)
• Watching portion sizes of ALL foods and eating a balanced diet
• Cutting back on food high in cholesterol (goal of no more than 300 mg/day)
• Avoiding all tobacco products
• Exercising on a regular basis

Finally, realize there are NO EXCUSES. Under the Affordable Care Act, all new individual and group health plans must provide recommended preventative care and services (including blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol and body mass index screenings as well as counseling on quitting smoking, losing weight and eating well) without a copayment, coinsurance or deductible.

So, go to your doctor. Get checked out.

And, one more piece of advice from Dr. Stork:

Eat well and be active.

Words to live by, ladies.

Make sure to wear red today and spread the word!

We have some very exciting news for you! Today marks the launch of our incredible new website, Shrinking Kitchen!

What is Shrinking Kitchen, you ask? It’s a brand-spankin’ new website brought to you by the co-founders of The Sisterhood, and we’ve added Heather to the menu as our Editor-in-Chief! The site is devoted entirely to healthy foods, cooking, and tips and tricks to spice up your kitchen life. Whether you are looking for a healthy dish to serve the family for dinner or need to know what the hell flambé means, the Shrinking Kitchen will be your go-to source for everything you’re cooking up!

Delicious, shrink-your-butt recipes? Check.

Handy-dandy conversion chart? Oh, yes we did!

Common food weights? MmmmHmm.

Cooking dictionary? We’ve got you covered.

Beautiful photos that will have you drooling at first sight? Put on a bib, Sisters and Brothers. You’re going to need it.

Along with fun weekly features, the girls of Shrinking Kitchen will be bringing you fresh, healthy recipes several times a week while utilizing the ZipList format.

ZipList – Organize Your Recipes, Plan Your Menu, and Always Have Your Grocery List On Hand

Make sure you have all the bases covered…

The first time I ever did yoga was years ago and I had a cold.  Not ideal when the class I walked into was super-quiet with n’er a creature stirring.  My sneezing, coughing and general phlemgy loudness made me so nervous because I know that I was disruptive to the peacefulness of that class.

I never went back to a yoga class until I started my running journey.

I ventured back into a yoga class last year but this time I made sure that I was healthy and breathing freely : ).  I loved it!  No, I couldn’t do every move but I could almost do the modified moves- ha!  More importantly, I loved how my body felt less stiff/sore/achy after doing that class.

Since then, I go to yoga whenever I need to loosen up the body.  I have invested in a few yoga videos so that I could do yoga anytime I wanted which is usually at odd, non-gym hours.  I also searched www.youtube.com for specific yoga sequences to target certain areas of my body that were ailing me at any given time.

I have found that doing a 10 min morning yoga sequence in the morning wakes up my body achy joints for the day.  I don’t do it every day but I do try to squeeze it in on the days I run.  It. just. feels. good.  Oh so good.

I know some of you are sitting there blowing off the thought of yoga, saying *yoga isn’t for me* and maybe it isn’t, but how will you know if you never give it a try?  You don’t have to perfect at it.  The point is to make your body more flexible and stronger at the same time and that sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?

Here are my favorite yoga DVD/youtube videos for yoga:

• Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Beginners (broken down in to a 20 min morning workout and a 15 minute evening workout)
• Morning Yoga for Flexibility (www.youtube.com video, 11 minutes long; I LOVE this video and try to do it on the mornings I plan to run, it just loosens everything up so nicely for me)
• Yoga, an Evening Practice (www.youtube.com video, 16 minutes; I love this one to help me wind down and relax at the end of the day.  Again, I don’t do this video every night, just the evenings that I need to stretch out tired, sore muscles).

Do you have a favorite yoga video/sequence/class?  Or is yoga in the *never* category for you?!

Enjoy!

If there is one truth that cannot be denied, it’s this:

I absolutely, 100%, without a doubt cannot STAND Winter. At all.

The extra layers, the wind, the dry skin, the piles of melting snow left by little boots in the middle of my kitchen floor that I step in every.single.time!

It seriously makes me want to turn to my inner bear and hibernate until the temperatures warm up.

But for some people, that feeling goes way beyond annoyance into full blown depression.

Have you ever heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)?

The U.S. National Library of Medicine had this to say about things to look for if you suspect you have SAD:

Symptoms usually build up slowly in the late autumn and winter months. Symptoms are usually the same as with depression:

• Increased appetite with weight gain (weight loss is more common with other forms of depression)
• Increased sleep and daytime sleepiness (too little sleep is more common with other forms of depression)
• Less energy and ability to concentrate in the afternoon
• Loss of interest in work or other activities
• Slow, sluggish, lethargic movement
• Social withdrawal
• Unhappiness and irritability

*List pulled from “Seasonal Affective Disorder” found in the PubMed Health section at The U.S. National Library of Medicine.

If you think you might be suffering from SAD, go see your doctor! The treatment options are fairly simple to implement and include getting enough sunlight every day, eating right, and exercising.

I had the occasion this week to experience my first DXA scan.  If you aren’t familiar with what that is, don’t feel bad, I didn’t have a clue either when a doctor recently told me I needed one.  In fact, she said I was past due for one.  Uhmmm, OK, since I don’t even know what it is, how was I supposed to know I needed one?

So, not to keep you in suspense any longer, a DXA scan is a bone density test.  It’s commonly used to check for osteoporosis.  It’s recommended that all women over the age of 65 have a DXA scan.  However, it’s also recommended that women under the age of 65 who are postmenopausal with additional risk factors for osteoporosis (family history, cigarette smoker, thyroid disease, etc.) should also be tested.  That definitely includes me given I had a complete hysterectomy in my 30′s due to stage IV endometreosis, have a family history of fractures & osteoporosis, and smoked for 20+ years before finally quitting a few years ago**.  So, I’ve now had my baseline DXA scan completed and should find out the results sometime this week.

This whole experience left me realizing that I need to better educate myself about the types of health screenings I need to have and at what age I should have them.  I need to be proactive in taking control of my own health rather than just relying on/expecting my doctor to let me know what I need and when.  Are there other tests I should have already had but haven’t?  I thought it would be a good time to figure it out, especially given this month happens to be Cervical Health Awareness Month which is an extremely important health issue for women.

After doing a bit of searching on Google, I stumbled across the womenshealth.gov website.  It’s run by the Office of Women’s Health which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services.  The site contains loads of invaluable information regarding health issues affecting women and girls.

As I was going through the site, I found exactly what I was looking for!  They have a guide titled, “A Lifetime of Good Health: Your Guide to Staying Healthy” which contains a timeline for various health tests women should have and at what point in their lives they should have them.  The 70-page guide is available for download in PDF format in English, Spanish, and Chinese.  I encourage everyone to download a copy, review the recommendations, and then discuss them with your primary care physician at your next appointment.

Here’s a quick reference to some of the most common screenings and when to have them:

• Blood pressure – Check at least every two years after the age of 18.
• Cholesterol – Check at least once after the age of 20 and then discuss with your doctor how often to retest based on risk factors.
• Diabetes – Check every three years after the age of 45 unless there is a family history of diabetes.
• Mammogram – Check every 1-2 years after the age of 40 unless there is a family history of breast cancer.
• Reproductive Health – Pelvic exam yearly after becoming sexually active.  Pap smears every 2 years between the ages of 21 and 30, and every 3 years after the age of 30.
• Colorectal Health – Check beginning at age 50 unless there is a family history of colon cancer.
• Osteoporosis – Check beginning at age 65 unless there is a family history of osteoporosis or other risk factors.

Please note that I am NOT a doctor.  As with anything medically-related, please discuss these with your physician.  I just found this to be really useful information and wanted to pass along to our readers here at the Sisterhood.  For our male readers, many of these same tests such as blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, etc. also apply to you!  Please consult your physician for the proper guidelines on these screenings.

** I don’t want to get up on a soapbox and hound people, but seriously, if you smoke, please stop NOW!  I deluded myself into thinking I was suffering no ill effects from my years of smoking because I didn’t have the morning “smoker’s cough” that plagues so many smokers.  Because of that, I foolishly let myself think I wasn’t doing any “real” harm to my body.  Unfortunately, I found out otherwise about six years ago (after I’d already quit) when I was having medical tests.  I learned during a pulmonary test that I have early stage emphysema (a.k.a. COPD).   The good news is that as long as I don’t start smoking again, it shouldn’t get any worse.  The bad news?  Even by remaining a non-smoker from now until the day I die, it’ll never go away either.  Once you have it, you have it.  The bottom line is that I irrevocably damaged my lungs from my years of smoking.  So, please, learn from my mistake and stop smoking now!

But I was sad. You guys, I really LIKE Paula Deen. I’ve always watched her shows, and drooled, and wished I could eat what she’s preparing. But I know butter better.

Really. Diabetes is no joke and it made me feel bad for Paula.

Then I started getting more information.

Such as:

1) She was diagnosed three years ago, but wanted to wait to reveal it to the public. This, on it’s own, is completely fine, because truly, it is her personal business.  No one, no matter how famous, owes the general public any disclosure regarding any health issues.

2) She has a deal with pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk and is the spokesperson for their new site Diabetes in a New Light. It was also revealed she takes their drug, Victoza, to treat her diabetes. Okay. She waits three years to reveal her disease, and chooses to when it’s lucrative? Now I’m getting a little annoyed. But again, I can’t judge her for making some money. Well, I can judge her a little. Okay, I’m judging her.

3) Then I’m watching her on The Today Show and oh. my. gosh. Trainwreck. She’s avoiding any reference to the way she eats bringing on the Type 2 Diabetes. She points at race. She points at age. She points at genetics. And yes, all those things can factor in…BUUUUUUT. We all know that being overweight is a MAJOR factor. And Paula, honey, your butter eating ways have caught up with you.

4) It is also convenient that she chose to reveal within weeks of her son, Bobby, debuting his new show Not My Mama’s Meals, a show about lightening up Paula’s delicious artery nightmares recipes. I mean, she even got a plug in for him while being interviewed by Al Roker.

So while I have tremendous sympathy for Paula Deen, and I fully commend her on coming clean on her diagnosis, I wish it were under different circumstances.

With more honesty. With less skirting around the issues.

I sincerely hope that Paula’s health improves and her struggles touch others in a positive way.

And when and if she launches a show on healthy Southern cooking? Oh my gosh, girlfriend, you’ll be filling up my DVR.

What do you think of Paula Deen’s announcement and the resulting fallout? Tell us in the comments!

Photo credit: xtheowl/flickr

Recently, we’ve reviewed our 2012 letters to ourselves and written 2013 letters to ourselves and we’ve also re-visited loving ourselves. This reflection of “self” is a very important part of our life journeys.

Not so long ago (in a galaxy not so far away), I was on a dark and dangerous path. I didn’t like who I had become. I was so very sad and depressed and I was ashamed to admit that. I was too afraid to look within myself to fix what was broken. I was determined to live my life the way I thought others would want me to live, not how I wanted to live.

My happy was so deeply hidden within myself that I had become very overweight. It’s funny, isn’t it? How so closely related our physical beings can be connected with our mental beings. (I say can be because sometimes we can be very happy and yet for reasons not completely in our control, we may gain weight.) I didn’t realize this until I was well within my journey. I realized that while I was happy with how my body was changing, I was not happy. Something was missing.

It wasn’t until I was sobbing over my grilled chicken salad while watching The Biggest Loser one night that I realized what was missing. My insides needed fixing, too.

Working on your happy takes so much longer than losing weight. Losing weight is easy. Loving yourself is hard.

Why is that? Why is loving yourself so hard?

I choose to think it’s because it forces you to look at the things  you don’t like about yourself. It forces you to fix those things or sometimes let go of things.

One of the most important things that I have learned recently is that I hold onto the past too much. Our pasts can have a very big effect on us. Our pasts partly shape who we are today. But if we hold on to our pasts, it’s possible we fail to progress and grow in our presents, and that’s where we can become stuck. It’s so easy to say, “Well I am like this because of how I was raised,” or, “I’m this way because this happened.” Then using our pasts becomes our excuse. I’m guilty of that.

Here’s the thing, I don’t want to become stuck again. Forgiving and letting my past go is something I need to do for me and me alone. It’s something I need to do so that I can be the best person I can be. I am in control of what happens to me in the now. I am in control of my own actions. So, this year, I’m going to work as hard as I can to forigve my past and to let go of it, so that I can continue to be the happy person that I am today. So I can be even better in my future.

Does this sound like you? If so, know that you’re not alone. If something else has made you sad, then you’re still not alone. The thing I love most about our Sisterhood is that you can always find someone who can relate to you and most importantly, you have amazing support here. I’m determined that this year will be the Year of Happy. Find your happy. It’s there, all you have to do is set it free.

Yeah, I know 2011 is so yesterday’s news, but here at The Sisterhood we have lots of awesome posts and we want to make sure you didn’t miss anything good! We care about you THAT much! Check out our list of the most-viewed posts written in 2011:

10.  Emotional Eating – Part I. Are you an emotional eater? This series will help you overcome! Here’s Part II.

9. Saturday Review: Jillian Michaels Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism. Looking for a new workout? This might be right for you!

8. Chewy PB2 Cookies. Peanut butter cookies for only 50 calories each? Yes, please!

7. The Race Day Tutu. Tulle. Lots and lots of tulle. Give it a twirl, ladies.

6.  Taste of Home Comfort Food Diet Cookbook Review. Comfort food and DIET? Really? YES!

5.  Couch to 5K Success Story:: Erin. Erin is a total rockstar and you can be, too!

4. Run the ‘Hood 2011. Our 5K & 10K race that was opened to all ages and abilities! It was a great time! Missed out? Never fear! Another race will be coming your way soon!

3.  Shrinking Bootcamp! This quick-but-intense workout can be done at home, anytime. Check out the whole 6-week bootcamp series here.

2.  Our Summer Running Playlist! If you don’t have these songs downloaded to your iPod, what are you waiting for?

And the top post of 2011:

Our Clean Eating:: The Feingold Diet. Last year, Christy decided she needed to make some tough decisions regarding her son’s behavior. They turned to the Feingold Diet, and she is sharing their success story with you.

If you haven’t read these 2011 faves, you should definitely start clicking around!

A few all-time favorites that you might enjoy, too:

• Couch-to-5K
• 30 Day Shred
• Food Friday: Different Ways to Cook Chicken Sausage
• Review: New Polar Heart Rate Monitors- FT4 & FT7
• Crock Pot Chicken Stroganoff
• Weight Watchers new PointPlus™ Program Review
• Saturday Review: Green Salad w/Apple, Feta, Pecans, and Balsamic Dressing

This new year, it was supposed to be a fresh start. Exercise, clean eating…reclaiming my body. Well, honestly, it hasn’t been happening. At all.

I could recount all my transgressions, but truthfully, it will just make me feel bad. And I kind of want to concentrate less on what I’ve done wrong and more on what I’m GOING TO DO RIGHT. Starting immediately.

So here I am. Starting my new years resolution a week or so late. But better late than never. Right?

I feel like I am FINALLY in the right mind frame to tackle this extra weight. I am tired of actually HURTING from the surplus pounds and aching from being out of shape. It sucks. Plain and simple. I’m tired to squeezing into the largest pair of jeans I own, sucking in my stomach and still barely being able to fasten the button. I’m tired of looking at my closet full of clothes and knowing I can’t wear but about five pieces comfortably. Most of all, I’m tired of looking in the mirror and not recognizing myself.

So, my confession this week is that I’m putting my foot down and taking charge.

What’s your confession? Lay it all out in the comments. We’re here for you!