#1: LOOK BETTER — Make your own exfoliant: The exfoliant I make myself makes my skin ridiculously soft and positively glowing. Without measuring a thing; I mix up used coffee grounds, chopped cucumber, lemon juice, plain yogurt, and raw honey in my food processor until it forms a thick paste. According to Natural Living for Women: coffee grounds are antibacterial, exfoliating and stimulating to the skin. lemon juice provides an astringent quality plus the vitamin C provides a boost. honey is healing and soothing along with an ability to help skin retain moisture. yogurt contains lactic acid...

The April issue of Sunset magazine describes five “Powerful weapons in the war against aging and disease.” Cheryl Sterman Rule from Sunset is talking antioxidants here. “When you eat them, they neutralize free-radical molecules that otherwise would oxidize and damage your DNA and cells.” She says that, “If you grow your own produce, you’ll reap the biggest nutritional benefit possible, since plants tend to start losing nutrients the moment they’re picked.” I’m a big fan of antioxidants (and of the movie Star Wars, as you will soon see) and discuss...

Photo courtesy of blog.goodguide.com I can’t help you with family dynamics — trust me, our family has plenty of issues, but making sure we don’t compromise our healthy eating efforts isn’t one of them. Most members of my family don’t wake up on black Friday full of regret for anything we consumed — there a few things that probably shouldn’t have been said, usually by me or my Dad (he never had a filter and I lost mine when I turned 40), but we set ourselves up for success when it comes to the meal. Here’s how we do it: Step 1: Time the meal right. I...

Photo Courtesy of Tony Cenicola/The NYTimes Next week is Thanksgiving and I don’t know about your family, but mine will probably catch a movie together. I will likely have to suffer through vampires, another pretend-like-I’m-laughing Vince Vaughn movie, or the King of Pop’s behind the scenes footage just prior to his untimely death. If it means getting a few moments with my kids, I can do it. What I won’t be doing is eating any movie popcorn. How could popcorn be that harmless you may ask? At 1,200 calories, 980 milligrams of sodium and 60 grams of saturated fat for a large tub...

Avoid them if you can, but there are times when a chain restaurant is all you’ve got to choose from. This happened to me recently. Relax, you don’t have to compromise your healthy eating habits just because you’re stuck with a seemingly unhealthy menu. You simply need to ask a few critical questions (politely and courteously) and make a few modifications (also politely and courteously). If you find yourself at say, Outback Steakhouse, here’s how it can be done. First of all, don’t expect that anything on the menu will be organic or come from a local source. You’ll...

Who knew that some of the soundest nutrition and diet advice I’ve heard in a long time would come from a monthly newsletter from the American Culinary Foundation. I don’t often think of those in the culinary arts as a go-to source for nutrition or weight-loss advice. Tips on how to make the perfect bearnaise sauce definitely, but encouraging restaurants to serve less meat-based dishes and cut down on calorie-dense portion sizes they serve their customers? That I found as a welcome surprise. This month’s four-page newsletter (complete with illustrative photographs) is a quick, but...

Photo of Anne Gross, Owner, Convenient Food Mart in Cleveland, Ohio, Courtesy of the NY Times I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of convenience stores and corner stores as the go-to place for healthy snacks like bananas and other fruit. Convenience stores pushing produce by the register instead of chips, candy, and soda pop and providing parking lot cooking demonstrations for home-made banana bread and offering free cookbooks? Huh? That’s what’s happening at Convenient Food Mart in Cleveland, Ohio and other mom and pop convenience stores around the country....

Licorice plant photo courtesy of www.ncfarmsinc.com I’ll admit to being a beauty product junkie, but I always feel better when the products I use are derived from plants — if they’re cheap, I’m extra happy! Did you know that licorice extracts can fade age spots? Or that feverfew can help prevent redness and inflammation on your face? What about green tea (when used topically) helping to prevent sun damage, skin damage, and even treating blemishes? Me neither! This month, Real Simple Magazine highlights fourteen plants as well as fourteen plant-based beauty products that can...