4 Steps To Controlling Your Period Cravings!

When that lovely time of the month comes, and mother nature lands the 5-7 days of death on me... my daily healthy eating habits fly out the window, and I say HELLO TO ALL THE CHOCOLATE I CAN GET MY HANDS ON!

As you know, I eat really healthy on a daily basis packing in the protein and getting a balanced diet of fruit and veggies.

BUT when the 5-7 days of deadly pain come, my cravings go out of control. 

I kid you not, a few months ago I remember eating:

A chocolate brownie with raw doughboy chocolate chip cookie dough on top, crumbled Oreos sprinkled on top of that, a side of chocolate fudge Ben and Jerry's ice cream topped with caramel sauce... for lunch. I won't even mention what I had for dinner!

Needless to say, during that time of the month our hormones go out of control we kick the words "fruit, veggies and salad" out of our dictionaries for a few days.

SO, I've decided to do a bit of research to see if there are any ways to CONTROL OUR CRAVINGS!

Here's what I found :)

1.) Drink Water First

If you CAN'T live with out chocolate everything like me, drink an ENTIRE glass of water before you eat it. Drinking water will not only hydrate you, it will also fill you up a bit so that you won't consume as many sweets as you would have otherwise.

2.) Exercise! 

Girls Girls Girls... you don't have to tell me about your cramps. I am the QUEEN of cramps, my grandma had really bad cramps, my mom had really bad cramps, and now I have REALLY BAD CRAMPS. It's hereditary, but I'll live. So trust me when I say I know what it feels like to not want to exercise on your period. 

BUT, I also know that if you pull yourself together and do even a mini-workout it will cause your body to not crave the sweets as much! Even a brisk jog around your neighbor hood will do the trick :)

Staying active during your period will undoubtably curve the cravings!

3.) Fill yourself up with other foods!

Obviously you won't JUST be eating chocolate for 5-7 days straight, so for your other meals eat a bit more (especially since you're more hungry than usual) to fill you up. This will leave less space for the unhealthy foods that you would normally be craving!

4.) Substitute out the sweets!

Yes, I know you naturally crave chocolate as your "go-to" sweets, but try substituting out a healthier sweet!

Try eating:

• Chocolate covered strawberries
• Nutella and bananas on whole wheat toast
• Apples dipped in a bit of caramel
• Sorbet or Frozen yogurt instead of Ice Cream

Don't give up, don't give in!!! 

If you even try just ONE of these 4 steps, that will be better than before! Baby steps :)

Remember, if you're eating healthy the other 24 days of the month, those 5-7 days won't kill you :)

Xox Brittany,

8 Ways to get your health back on track!

Hey you! Yes YOU:

• Have you slipped out of your healthy ways?
• Forgotten how to eat healthy and let your body get used to eating sugary processed foods?
• Even if you're NEW to the health lifestyle, ever wondered how and where to begin?

IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO GET BACK ON TRACK, OR START YOUR FITSPIRATIONAL JOURNEY!!



Here's some really great ways that I've PERSONALLY found to get back on track :)

1. START NOW- I don't care what time it is, I don't care what day it is, make the decision to start now.
2. PLAN YOUR MEALS OUT- Eating is step one of getting your healthy self on track. If you PLAN out your meals for the rest of the week, you won't be tempted to eat something unhealthy just because it's there. You'll have a plan. 
3. FITNESS JOURNAL- Make your very own fitness journal! This is the single BEST place to plan out your weeks meals. See my "Fitness Journal" for my fabulous method on food planning!
4. GO INTO THE KITCHEN WITH A MISSION- After you've made your week's food plan, go into the kitchen and ONLY prepare what you PLANNED to eat for that meal. Use "healthy tunnel vision" and pretend everything else in your fridge isn't there. 
5. GET YOUR BUTT UP- Having trouble getting motivated to exercise? Take a class! All you have to do is put on your fitness clothes and get yourself there. Once you've completed a class, your motivation to continue exercising will increase immensely!
6. DON'T LET ONE BAD DAY TURN INTO A BAD MONTH- Just because you've had one bad day, whether it be eating donuts and ice cream for breakfast and watching sex and the city all day, or just not having time to exercise that day. Don't let that un-motivate you. Realize you've come so far, and USE that bad day as motivation to do better tomorrow!
7. WATER- Drink it. I'm not kidding. If you've been eating unhealthy lately, a GREAT way to naturally detox your body is to flush it out and drink a LOT of water.
8. WRITE- Take time out of every day to write down how you're feeling? Are you feeling motivated and happy about your progress? Write about it. Are you feeling lazy and bloated? Write about it! Every day will be different, but it will really help you later on to go back and look at all the good days you've had, and all the bad days you've over come!

Everything I've written on my list is from personal experience. I'm a real girl with real challenges. I've had bad days, weeks, and even months too! This list has literally kept me going, and helped me come as far as I have to be the Real Fitspirational Brittany that I am today.

*Bookmark this list.* -Come back to it when you're feeling like you've gotten off track and need that extra push to keep going.

Need a little more motivation? Just ask :) I don't bite I promise!

Xox Brittany,

The Fitspirational Blonde

Grocery Shopping Tip- Full vs Hungry

Healthy Grocery Shopping Tip-

SHOP AFTER YOU'VE EATEN!

If you shop when you're hungry, your body will want to eat EVERYTHING in sight and you will end up buying twice the foods that you would have bought if you were full.

Save money, save time, save space in your shopping cart :)

Shop Full.

Xox Brittany,

The Fitspirational Blonde.

15 tricks to make a habit stick!

Did you know it takes 21 days to form a habit? Creating a new habit in your life is REALLY hard, but not impossible! Forming new healthy habits (even if they are small) can accumulate and turn into BIG life changes!

I know you can do this, I believe in you!





1. Commit to Thirty Days – Three to four weeks is all the time you need to make a habit automatic. If you can make it through the initial conditioning phase, it becomes much easier to sustain. A month is a good block of time to commit to a change since it easily fits in your calendar.

2. Make it Daily – Consistency is critical if you want to make a habit stick. If you want to start exercising, go to the gym every day for your first thirty days. Going a couple times a week will make it harder to form the habit. Activities you do once every few days are trickier to lock in as habits.

3. Start Simple – Don’t try to completely change your life in one day. It is easy to get over-motivated and take on too much. If you wanted to study two hours a day, first make the habit to go for thirty minutes and build on that.

4. Remind Yourself – Around two weeks into your commitment it can be easy to forget. Place reminders to execute your habit each day or you might miss a few days. If you miss time it defeats the purpose of setting a habit to begin with.

5. Stay Consistent – The more consistent your habit the easier it will be to stick. If you want to start exercising, try going at the same time, to the same place for your thirty days. When cues like time of day, place and circumstances are the same in each case it is easier to stick.

6. Get a Buddy – Find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated if you feel like quitting.

7. Form a Trigger – A trigger is a ritual you use right before executing your habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier, this could mean waking up in exactly the same way each morning. If you wanted to quit smoking you could practice snapping your fingers each time you felt the urge to pick up a cigarette.

8. Replace Lost Needs - If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing any needs you’ve lost. If watching television gave you a way to relax, you could take up meditation or reading as a way to replace that same need.

9. Be Imperfect – Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately. It took me four independent tries before I started exercising regularly. Now I love it. Try your best, but expect a few bumps along the way.

10. Use “But” – A prominent habit changing therapist once told me this great technique for changing bad thought patterns. When you start to think negative thoughts, use the word “but” to interrupt it. “I’m no good at this, but, if I work at it I might get better later.”

11. Remove Temptation - Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you in the first thirty days. Remove junk food from your house, cancel your cable subscription, throw out the cigarettes so you won’t need to struggle with willpower later.

12. Associate With Role Models - Spend more time with people who model the habits you want to mirror. A recent study found that having an obese friend indicated you were more likely to become fat. You become what you spend time around.

13. Run it as an Experiment - Withhold judgment until after a month has past and use it as an experiment in behavior. Experiments can’t fail, they just have different results so it will give you a different perspective on changing your habit.

14. Swish - A technique from NLP. Visualize yourself performing the bad habit. Next visualize yourself pushing aside the bad habit and performing an alternative. Finally, end that sequence with an image of yourself in a highly positive state. See yourself picking up the cigarette, see yourself putting it down and snapping your fingers, finally visualize yourself running and breathing free. Do it a few times until you automatically go through the pattern before executing the old habit.

15. Write it Down – A piece of paper with a resolution on it isn’t that important. Writing that resolution is. Writing makes your ideas more clear and focuses you on your end result.

Make a list. That makes it real. Put it somewhere you’ll see it. That makes you remember Tell someone about it. That makes you motivated.

You got this :)

Xox Brittany

The Fitspirational Blonde

Cupcake Attack!

I don’t want you to have a heart attack every time you pass a Sprinkles Cupcake… But I also don’t want you to get a heart attack from eating at Sprinkles Cupcakes like 5X’s a week!

We all have our guilty pleasures (Chocolate, Cupcakes and Starbucks are mine) and just because we’re living healthy lifestyles DOESN'T mean that we have to cut them all out!

Just eat in moderation.

Split a cupcake with a friend, grab some tea at Starbucks (I am an Earl Grey Tea lover) instead of a sugar packed Frap.

Balance out the non-healthy foods with healthy foods. For every cupcake you eat, try eating 2 pieces of fruit :)

Xox Brittany,

The Fitspirational Blonde