What a difference a choice, a moment, a day, a year and five years makes! This week was my 5-year anniversary since I stood on the scale at the season 5 finale of The Biggest Loser as the confetti fell and I became the first female winner.

When I look back at my journey, the moment that made the biggest difference in my life was when I said “fine.” For so long I waited for something “big” to happen, to know my life was going to change dramatically. I didn’t realize waiting left me missing all the moments that could have gotten me to the life I wanted.

I finally said “fine” in a conversation with my mom on August 11, 2007. She was so excited that the Biggest Loser casting was going to be in my hometown, despite only finding out the night before. Back then I was a fully booked hairstylist and couldn’t afford to take the time off of work. However my mom said, “I couldn’t afford NOT to go.” My life changed forever as I replied: “Fine, go find out where I need to stand in line.” Just like that. FINE. I was so many emotions: nervous, shaky, excited, scared, and even on the verge of tears. But I surrendered with just one word.
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About a year ago, I wanted to drop a few pounds. I began eating healthier and working out daily. My workouts included short strength training series and daily three-mile runs. There was no interval training. I didn’t know what it was.

Then, I decided to get crazy once I learned about workouts like Insanity, which use interval training to completely transform your body. After one month of interval training, I dropped about 10 pounds. I felt healthy and toned.

Now, I continue to incorporate some intervals into my everyday workout routine. I’ll tell you more and see if it’s a fit for you, too!

What is interval training?

Interval training is the process in which you do short bursts of intense exercise followed by a slightly longer recovery time. A great example of this is sprinting for 30 seconds and then jogging for 60 seconds.
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By Team Best Life

Is your office job making you fat? If you’re like most Americans, you spend the majority of your waking hours at work–and that means a healthy workplace mindset is crucial to your best life. Use some of these tips to get started:

Get a head start.

Ensure a good night’s sleep by visiting the gym, preparing a healthy meal and relaxing before you hit the sack. Try to leave work where it belongs—at work. If you absolutely must get in some screen time, keep it as far away from bedtime as possible. The display light on your computer or smartphone can interfere with your body’s internal clock, and elevating your heart rate even a little can increase cortisol, the body’s stress hormone. (Learn more about the connection between sleep and weight loss.)

Dress for success.

Opt for flats over heels, and shoot for comfortable rather than couture. Studies show that folks who work in comfort move more, burning more calories in the process.
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Have you ever heard someone say “put it it out to the universe” and wondered what they meant by it? Well, I have and for a long time I wasn’t exactly sure how or what I was supposed to be putting “out” to the universe. It wasn’t until I first went onto The Biggest Loser did I really try to figure it out either. I knew that I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime and I wanted to take full advantage of it, so I tried to recall any and every thing I had ever heard anyone attribute success to. One thing that kept coming to mind was the idea that if I put my goal of becoming the first female Biggest Loser out to the universe it would in fact come true. But what did that mean exactly?

I remember years ago hearing that if you wanted to create a million dollars you should write yourself a check for $1,000,000.00 and paste it somewhere that you saw everyday, several times a day. I also knew that this didn’t work because I, like everyone else who had ever heard that had done, wrote the check and taped it to my mirror. Yet I never created a million dollars. So there had to be more to it.
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Picture this: the doors have slid open, the gust of cold air hits us, and now we’re faced with the 45,000 products the average supermarket carries. Aside from feeling purely overwhelmed at deciding what and how to choose what goes into our carts, along with our rushed, over-scheduled lives, we seem to spend more time thinking about what goes ON our bodies (like clothes and shoes) than what goes IN them.

So many food labels are difficult to decode – perhaps the reason why 60-70 percent of what we purchase is unplanned. We often fall prey to items that wear descriptive names, like “natural” and “wholesome” and “organic”…these words are like magnets attracting us to their otherwise less attractive products. Studies have shown that when a food is deemed superior through a name, it is more likely that people would expect the food to be beneficial to their health. Trans-fat free fries, baked chips, and organic candies are all surrounded by health halos, yet some halos are far from angelic.

But you shouldn’t have to be a mathematician, a librarian, or a dietitian to buy the right foods. The food label should be like the table of contents of a book – it should tell us what’s inside. Unfortunately, misleading labels lurk throughout the store and I’m here today to give you the inside scoop on what’s really going on between the lines. Here are a few examples of some personal favorite ‘wall of shame’ claims where food companies are selling sound bites instead of sound advice.
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