The summer months are warmer no matter where you are. Heat is a relative sensation, of course; if your average temperature for 9 months of the year is 30 degrees Fahrenheit, then 60 degrees in June is going to feel pretty balmy. Me, I went out of the frying pan into the fire by moving from Kansas to the Washington, DC area. Summer is a soupy, hot mess in both the heart of the Midwest and in the nation’s capital, and commitment to spending time outside takes a willingness to abandon comfort – and cycle through a whole lot of sweaty laundry. And yet these warmer months are when the days are lon ..read more

New Year's resolutions are objectively destined to fail. In fact, I’ll go one step further and say that it’s preposterous that so many people continue to make resolutions in January and expect them to stick. It is, after all, the darkest and coldest time of the year, when hibernation is far more instinctive than voluntary physical activity. There’s a certain sense of hunkering down, battening the hatches, and comfort food and cozy sweats are what we crave; not light salads and spandex. That’s not to say that everyone is destined to fail. The occasional resolution-setter with ironclad willpower ..read more

We are all creatures of habit. Like it or not, human nature thrives on routine and is wary of change. While resistance to change does vary in degree on an individual level, we all have changes we would like to implement in our lives that, for whatever myriad of reasons, remain just beyond our reach. By the same token, we all want to be healthier, fitter, leaner, stronger. It is certainly not for a lack of desire that these goals remain elusive to so many people. After all, if getting fit and healthy was easy, there would be no obesity, no smoking-induced lung cancer, no blocked arteries or me ..read more

I met Amy back in 2019. She was one of the first neighborhood runners to sign up for a new group class I was offering. I was a novice coach testing the waters, and Amy, like many formerly serious runners (she once completed a 16-mile training run in 6-degree temps), was looking to rediscover her running mojo after injury (and three kids!). Many seasons later, she is one of the most consistent – and upbeat – members of this group, and I can pretty confidently say that she has not only rediscovered her running groove, but also forged some lasting friendships. And I’m no longer a novice but a gri ..read more

It’s easy to assume that fitness and nutrition coaches, such as yours truly, lead impeccably healthy lives. We do, after all, have a vested interest in practicing what we preach, and the mountain of information coaches like myself have amassed over the years – and spent much time, effort, AND money on obtaining – do give us an advantage in making healthier choices. That said, we are still human and thus fallible. I, too, have a sweet tooth. I, too, hear the siren call of those cool ranch Doritos, and I, too, don’t always want to pick up that kettlebell. I am of the coaching mindset that I shou ..read more

I have a very distinct memory of having my heart rate checked during a unit on the human body in elementary school – and having the doctor tell me, in no uncertain terms, that my heart rate was so low I was close to being clinically dead. Fortunately I’ve always been a “roll with it” kinda gal, so instead of freaking out, I tucked that information away and asked my parents about it later. Turns out, I come by the freaky resting heart rate naturally, as my dad is bradycardic (defined as a slower-than-expected heart rate, generally at less than 60 beats per minute). My RHR is right around 33 bp ..read more

Mid-January: the holiday festivities are nothing but a memory, the decorations have long since lost their luster, our bank accounts remain spartan, the scale stubbornly refuses to reflect your dogged efforts at the gym as part of your New Year’s resolutions, and the New Year’s champagne hangover has been replaced by a lingering sense of having missed the boat somewhere along the way. Wasn’t 2023 supposed to be better than this? Wasn’t everything wrong in our lives going to make a firm about-face when that ball dropped in New York’s Times Square? If you find yourself questioning your motivatio ..read more

The holidays are upon us, that special time of year when our schedules fill up with parties, potlucks, and gift exchanges, when cookies are being gifted faster than Ricky Bobby at the Talladega Speedway, and when our best efforts at sticking with a workout schedule and healthy diet seem…at best challenging and at worst entirely pointless. It is easy to give up, accept our fate to end the year with a few extra pounds and a little less muscle. After all, the New Year offers that glittery promise of a rebirth, a reset, a blank slate. So why not just cut loose, consequences be damned? Such thinki ..read more

The last of the FRW Five for Life is arguably the most elusive – and definitely the most challenging to define. Telling your friends “I have found my life’s purpose” can sound (unintentionally) lofty and pretentious. And yet living without a purpose can lead to putting one foot in front of another purely by habit, with no thought as to your why. When Dan Buettner studied the five original blue zones of the world – the places whose residents had the greatest longevity and lowest incidence of chronic disease – one of the commonalities of these five seemingly disparate populations was the existe ..read more

This week we are taking a brief hiatus from the Five for Life (but stay tuned for a post on the 5th principle in the next few days!) for a collaborative post that resonates with me, as the granddaughter of an avid card player. My late grandmother, who lived to a very respectable 93, was a serious card shark. She played it coy, acting like she was new to the game before systematically destroying her children and grandchildren alike. She was equal opportunity, dominating in games from 3-to-13 to Go Fish to Rummy, a shrewd opponent right up until she passed in 2017. And shrewd she was - one of th ..read more