I don't know how it is in your office, but food always seems to find a home in ours. When I'm trying to eat right, the candy and cupcakes aren't a problem (even the awesome-looking homemade donuts offered up by a parent at the last game of the soccer season this weekend). 

No, what gets me is the so-called healthy snack. "Oooo, I'd love to have some granola bars - just as an emergency snack," I think to myself as the box of Kind Bars inexplicably arrives in the mail. "This will be perfect for a day when I forget my lunch or need a little something extra."

Weight loss is not about how perfect you can be 100% of the time. It would be so stressful to think that you need to eat perfectly 100% of the time to lose weight! Most people can eat carefully 80% of the time and still have about 20% flexibility to spend consciously on some extra calories while still losing weight.

I often say that sugar substitutes, aka artificial sweeteners, can evoke a similar emotion among us as politics often does. Many of us embrace a candidate wholeheartedly, others cautiously dip in a toe or two, while there’s another group of us who are ardently against them. That’s okay. We have the right to our own opinions and choices. Given that, many of us consume sugar substitutes in beverages and in thousands of other products. Some of you may be surprised to know that sugar substitutes also can be found in some toothpastes, mouthwashes, cough drops and even some medicines.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Since Be Positive Mom® has been around for a while now, I like to look back at past holiday posts and see what I was writing about a year or two ago.

Symptoms…are not normal. They’re not something that naturally comes with age. They’re not something we need to get used to. They’re not something to ignore. They’re not something that simply “happens” to us…but is something created by us. A symptom is our body’s way of telling us that something needs our attention.

February, the month of love! The time when we’re told to dream of diamond jewelry, red roses, decadent chocolates and Victoria’s Secret. Oh, to have all these things!  Well, okay, to have any of these things.  Heck, to have a date!  Then means we should be happy and loved, right?

Or, how I survived the first week – just barely.

You know how you can always focus on your new healthy plan for a month or so before slipping? Well, you can mark my first slip at the four-day mark. I think it’s a new record for me.

Nothing gets me hotter than walking into my house after a long days work, smelling the pungent aroma of Lysol, and marveling at sparklingly clean floors. A close second would be waking up in the morning to discover all of the week's laundry has been washed, dried, and folded.

The stomach flu hit our house this week and we fell like dominoes; first my husband, then me and then my toddler daughter.  You have been there right?  Comforting each other, lots of (icky) cleaning up, crackers and water the meal of choice for days.  To add it to it all, I had bouts of anxiety about the amount of work I was missing managing this round of illness. 

Elizabeth DeRobertis, RD, director of The Nutrition Center at The Scarsdale Medical Group, has graciously offered to weigh in on my progress (or lack thereof). Here is her take on my first week of action.