If You Want a Stronger Core, Don’t Skip This Important Step While Holding a Plank

Having a strong core is essential to all movement. A strong core helps stabilize your lumbar spine and pelvis, allows you to perform movements like twisting and bending, and can even improve your athletic performance. There are a plethora of ab exercises you can do to strengthen your core, and planking is one of the most popular. But while planks appear in countless workouts, it can be easy...

3 Simple Shifts to Help You Ditch the ‘All-Or-Nothing’ Mentality Over the Holidays

There’s often an “all-or-nothing” mindset that comes with establishing a health and fitness routine. Many people think that to live a healthier lifestyle they have to jump in with both feet and completely eliminate unhealthy habits. In reality, this is pretty unsustainable. Not to mention, any small positive change can improve your health...

Is Seitan Healthy?

My vegetarian family and I have been ordering the same dish from our favorite local Thai restaurant for years—it’s a tangy curry filled with “mock duck.” The chunks of braised seitan standing in for duck are so chewy, tasty, and, well, duck-like, that we have asked the waitstaff several...

How to Lose Weight Healthfully

As a nutrition professional, I have always believed that you can eat intuitively. That means you can listen to your internal hunger and fullness cues, while still aiming to lose weight. The two ideas aren't mutually exclusive in my mind, and I have often seen that successfully play out with my clients...

15 Physical Symptoms of Anxiety That Prove It’s Not All Mental

It’s no secret that anxiety can do weird things to your mind. But the physical symptoms of anxiety can be just as unpleasant and unpredictable—anyone who has suffered through the experience of a panic attack can vouch for that. To complicate things even further, you can even experience physical anxiety symptoms without feeling anxious emotionally...

8 Ways to Cope If You Can't See Family and Friends This Holiday Season

The start of this new decade has been full of anxiety, stress, frustration, confusion, fear, and disappointments. For many people, it's meant losing a job—or a loved one. For others, it's forced them to make difficult decisions about significant life events, like canceling their wedding or giving birth alone. No matter how the coronavirus pandemic...

8 Ways to Make a Smoothie for a Flat Belly

When you're anticipating a trip to the beach or preparing for a black-tie affair, you may change your diet for a day to avoid bloating or inflammation. Many might even opt for a liquid-only meal plan via smoothies and juices. Though this sounds like an excellent tactic in theory, it may backfire on you if you don't choose the right ingredients for a flat belly. Here, we chatted with nutrition experts to undercover how to make a smoothie for a flat belly that will keep you feeling...

Joyful Connection Is Part of Healthy Eating Too

As a registered dietitian who moonlights as a writer and podcast host, I constantly come across people’s ideas of what healthy eating is and is not. These “definitions” are usually rigid and don’t leave much room for exploring the complexities of food. Never have pasta. Be a kale-eating machine. Always drink the same amount of water every day (make sure it’s a ton, or else). And so on. Such strict interpretations of healthy eating don’t take into account individual...

What to Expect in a Hatha Yoga Class and Why The Practice Has Become So Popular

Hatha yoga has become one of the more popular types of yoga because it can build strength, improve flexibility, and align posture - while still being gentle enough for most bodies.

"If you've been to a yoga class, you likely practiced hatha yoga," says certified...

How Much Muscle Can You Gain In a Month?

It's a fact of life that exercise helps you get stronger. But if you're hitting the mat every day and aren't seeing results—in other words, you're hitting a plateau—it could be because you're maxing out. According to pros, it is possible to hit an upper limit on how much muscle you can build in a short period of time, and going too hard can have deleterious effects...