HI friends! Happy Friday to ya. What’s going on this weekend? We’ve had triple pool playdates with friends, and we have a dance event with Liv’s studio, I teach barre, and two birthday parties. Whew! Summer, I love you. The girls did a baking camp the week and baked the most gorgeous treats! Churros, French madeleines, a double-layer cake, cupcakes, and sugar cookies with royal icing.

I’m also cranking away on my Integrative Health Practitioner Level One certification. If you have any questions about the program that I can address in an upcoming post, please let me know if the comments section!

Before I head into this week’s Friday Faves, I wanted to share your top products from May. It’s always fun to go through analytics and see what products you’re enjoying from the blog, so here are the top picks!

Top products from May

My favorite bra in the entire world

The squareneck puff-sleeve top (on sale!)

This gorgeous shirtdress

This puff-sleeve mini dress

This one-strap swimsuit (on sale!)

The best pillow spray

This Rails dress that I’ve been loving

The Pilot’s go-to polo shirt (he has one in almost every color)

The classic Moonlight shorts pajamas

This mother and daughter portrait, which was part of my Mother’s Day gift guide

It’s time for the weekly Friday Faves party! This is where I share some things I’m loving from the week and around the web. Please share a fave from the week in the comments section below. 🙂

Friday Faves

Read, watch, listen:

I don’t know if I’ve shared this here before, but I’m a huge fan of Common Sense Media. I always lurk this site when we’re going to watch a movie together as a family, and ended up using it so much that I converted to a paid membership. (I think you get three free reviews each month.) It gives parents a condensed version of movie content that may be iffy (and specific details about the situation) and you can decide if your kids are ready to see it. It definitely came in handy when Liv wanted to watch Titanic – I knew exactly which spots to fast forward and when to resume. I highly recommend it for all of my parents friends out there.

We saw Top Gun before taking the crew, but it’s not always realistic to pre-screen movies beforehand.

Read more

*Throws confetti into the air*

I’m SO SO pumped for this week’s episode and so thrilled to welcome a good friend to the show: Caitlin Boyle, whom many of you may know from the very popular blog Healthy Tipping Point. 

Caitlin is one of the OG healthy living bloggers, and I’m so thankful that the blog world introduced me to her. Her blog was one of the first things I checked each day for many years, and I always loved that she shared glimpses into her life, recipes, questions of the day, and even covered controversial topics. She stopped blogging regularly back in 2015, and after a 7 year hiatus, she wrote a couple of new posts and the internet rejoiced. She’s one of the smartest people I know, and I’m thankful to have her as a blog friend and real-life friend.

I asked her if she would join me on the podcast, and was so excited when she said yes.

We spent a lot of the episode chatting about a topic that’s so prevalent today: identity and labels.

We talk about:

– the power of labels

– the pros and cons of having an “identity”

– the fact that it’s OK to change your mind with new information

– how we can better understand those who don’t agree with us

– what it felt like to close the book on her blog and drop the “blogger” identity

– what she’s been up to since she blogging days

– Operation Beautiful and what it would look like today

and so.much.more.

Here’s a little bit more about Caitlin if you’re not familiar with her:

Caitlin Boyle is the author of the Healthy Tipping Point, which covered healthy living topics from 2008-2014. She’s been on a 7 year hiatus from blogging but returns to the blog to share some life updates and musings. She’s a mom of two and the founder of Operation Beautiful.

Some of my all-time favorite posts that she’s created:

The mommy wars

That one time she was on the Today Show for Operation Beautiful

Will we or won’t we? Raising vegetarian children

Hi friends! Hope you’re having a lovely morning so far! In today’s post, I wanted to chat a bit about how to eat clean and healthy on a budget and my tips for saving money on food!

I shared a post here on what it means to eat clean, and how this phrase is common (and this post is really titled like this for search purposes) but it isn’t my favorite phrase. No food is “dirty” and I’m a huge believer that you should eat the things you enjoy that work in your budget and lifestyle. Eating clean emphasizes eating nutritious and minimally-processed foods (though many processed foods are actually healthy!), eating fresh fruits and veggies, unprocessed veggies, smart carbs, and whole grains.

Eating in this way can seem expensive, especially when you’re buying organic options, but it’s absolutely possible to eat clean and healthy foods without breaking the bank when you know how to shop smart and plan ahead.

How To Eat Clean And Healthy On A Budget

Avoid trendy health foods

Trendy healthy foods are usually = $$$. You don’t have to include trendy superfoods (like spirulina, chlorella, goji berries, hemp seeds, chia seeds, and micro greens in your diet to have a nutritious and fufilling style of eating. While ya’ll know I LOVE a trendy superfood now and again, the beauty truly is in the basics. Fruits, veggies, protein, starches from the earth, and healthy fats. When all our fails, check out the perimeter of the grocery store (this is where the fruits, veggies, meat, and eggs are typically found) and the freezer section for healthy staples.

Bring nutrient-dense snacks

If you know you’re going to be out and about, a great way to save money is to bring your own snacks instead of buying something while you’re out. Some of my favorite grab and go snacks: jerky and an apple, trail mix, yogurt (if you like dairy), a hard-boiled egg, tuna packs and veggie packs from Thrive Market. I’ll also often bring a salad, a breakfast cookie, or a wrap with me when I’m out of the house working.

Meal planning

This is my favorite way to save money on food because we minimize waste and know exactly what we’re going to eat each week. If you meal plan, it also helps you stick to your budget for the week since you’re not buying food on the fly. My exact formula for meal planning and meal prep is here! I break down how I plan each night and organize our weeks.

Prepare meals with ingredients that you have

When I make our meal plan for each week, I also try to take into account foods we already have on hand and would like to use. I get almost all of our meat from Butcher Box, so I’ll think of the meat and seafood we have here when choosing recipes for healthy meals.

Create a grocery list

Throughout the week, I have a list I’ll add to as I realize we’re out of certain items. This way I don’t spend extra money buying something that we already have on hand. (We also know to double up on certain items, like almond milk, peanut butter, and maple syrup, when we run

Sharing some pregnancy fitness tips and how to stay active during pregnancy if that’s one of your goals. Always check with a doctor before starting or changing your fitness routine, and if you’re currently pregnant, follow the advice of your doctor or midwife. These are just some general tips and not meant to be a substitute for medical advice.

Even though that portion of my life is over, I still love training pregnant mamas and sharing the excitement of my pregnant friends. Both of our pregnancies were wildly different, but something that was important to me during pregnancy was trying to stay active, because it gave me energy and made me feel like myself.

It’s important to maintain an active lifestyle while you’re pregnant, especially because it can help with circulation, possible prevention of certain complications (like gestational diabetes), energy levels, and mood. While it’s beneficial for mama, a fitness routine during pregnancy can also have plenty of benefits for the growing baby. Staying fit is also beneficial as you recover from giving birth, as it can help with recovery, sleep, maintaining good posture and alignment, and restoring core function.

Being pregnant can require certain adjustments to your fitness routine and there are some things to consider as you work out during pregnancy. Today, I thought I’d share some helpful tips for readers with their fitness routines, while staying safe throughout the pregnancy journey. Please remember that I’m a certified personal trainer with extra education regarding pre and postpartum fitness, but I’m NOT a doctor. Always talk with your doctor or midwife about changing or starting a fitness routine.

10 Pregnancy Fitness Tips

Avoid exercises with a risk of falling or any possible trauma to the belly, like horseback riding, contact sports, boxing, etc.

You’re carrying extra weight, and your center of gravity is shifted, which can affect balance. If you’re using to a routine that requires stabilization and balance, and could lead to falling, I would recommend skipping it, or greatly modifying until after pregnancy.

Avoid any activity that affects oxygen intake or pressure, such as scuba diving.

From this study: “However, pregnant females should refrain from diving, because the fetus is not protected from decompression problems and is at risk of malformation and gas embolism after decompression disease. It is prudent to advise pregnant patients of the increased risk of diving problems for the fetus during pregnancy.”

Modify yoga classes as needed and watch out for over-stretching.

Prenatal yoga is usually a great bet, but you can absolutely modify traditional flow classes, as long as the room isn’t heated. I would recommend skipping hot yoga during pregnancy and also skipping inversions, unless it’s something you do very regularly and you have the doctor’s approval. I think it’s better to wait until baby is here to resume inv

Google how to calculate your own nutrition needs and the results will yield a plethora of online nutrition calculators. But how do you know which one to choose? Are they accurate? And then what happens? How do you apply this information to your own body? This post was written in collaboration with Mia, who is a Registered Dietitian on my team. 

Nutrition calculators are EVERYWHERE online and it’s easy to receive macros and suggested caloric intake after answering a few questions. The problem is that these calculators are rarely accurate and don’t consider factors that can have a huge impact on how much and what types of fuel you should choose for your unique situation and health goals.

Online nutrition calculators fail to account for various factors, including:

Stress: mental, emotional, physical

Nutrition quality. How do you know you’re getting enough vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, potassium and zinc?

How much NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) are you getting? This is the amount of activity you get in each day just from house work, moving around, running your kids to practice, walking to dinner with your spouse, etc.

Nutrient deficiencies. Are you on birth control, pregnant, breastfeeding, are you currently injured or recovering from surgery or a medical procedure?

How long have you been in an energy deficit? Have you potentially decreased your metabolic baseline from over-exercising and under-fueling?

What is your environment like? EMF’s, mold, water quality, heavy metals, personal care products, plastics, chlorine, etc.

How to calculate nutrition needs

So, how can you customize your nutrition for your own needs?

Ideally, you want to work with a certified nutrition coach or Registered Dietitian (not a random person with a nice bod on Instagram). After a full assessment, they can objectively help you evaluate the above along with your personal biometrics and customize a perfect plan for you. Having a coach that can look at the entire picture will help you weed out the “shoulds” and noise from the general recommendations and create a plan tailored to you.

So what can you do in the meantime?

Generally speaking, if we are looking to optimize health and longevity, we want to ensure that our diets are meeting the following requirements:

Optimal protein intake, preferably from animal sources. Include a wide variety of grass fed, pasture raised meats (all cuts) like beef, turkey, pork, chicken and wild caught fish like salmon, snapper, shrimp, sardines, anchovies, oysters, etc.

Maximize protein at each meal, eating a palm to palm and a half full of protein of choice. If you aim for 3 meals and 2 snacks per day (pre/post workout) you can easily hit a minimum of 100g without tracking or weighing any food!

Include vitamin A rich foods such as grass fed beef liver, raw milk dairy, egg yolks, peppers, sweet potatoes and carrots.  

Enjoy vitamin C rich foods such as peppers, kiwi, citrus, pineapple, acerola cherries, plums, etc.