Live Joy

  I was talking to my friend the other day, and she was saying how she can’t stick to diet if it’s too strict and short term. And I said “it has to be a lifestyle.” There are so many diets that eliminate complete food groups, or ingrediencies and it puts so many limitations on what you tell yourself you can and can’t eat. Think about the no-carb diet. And then you want pizza because you are going to some great pizza restaurant or traveling to a city (Boston) that has great pizza. So you eat it, then you feel bloated, but now you have the taste so now you go off your diet for weeks and it’s so hard to get back on. That’s because you body doesn’t need you to eliminate carbs it needs you to choose good carbs 80-90% of the time. If this sounds like you, no diet or meal plan seems to work. Try this till the end of the year. Find a breakfast that is healthy has at least 30g of protein that you love enough to eat every day. I have eaten the same breakfast for almost a year and a half ...

  Think about the trees. The leaves begin to change, turning beautiful shades of red, orange, and yellow before eventually falling to the ground. Then the trees stand bare for months. And just when it feels like they have nothing left, spring comes and slowly, they become full again. There is something about fall that has always felt like transformation to me. When things start changing in my life, I tend to look back at all the other seasons of change I’ve already lived through. And believe it or not, fall seems to bring more change into my life than any other season. I have bought four houses, and every single time I moved between September and November. I got married for the first time in October. I have started four different jobs in October. I got engaged to and later filed for divorced my second husband in October. Even my hormones seem to get the memo, because every time I retest them around October or November, my body seems to be thrown into some weird loop. And pr...

  1. The number on the scale tells you how healthy you are. We have used our weight as the measuring stick for “healthy” for far too long. But the number on the scale doesn’t tell you how much muscle you have versus body fat. It doesn’t tell you how strong you are, how much energy you have, how healthy your heart is, or what your bloodwork looks like. Your weight is simply one number, and it doesn’t define your health. 2. Carbs are bad for you. Oh, I cannot wait for this one to go away. Carbs are not bad for you. Your body needs carbohydrates for energy, and they’re especially important when you’re active and strength training. Carbs help fuel your workouts and replenish the glycogen your muscles use during exercise. The goal isn’t to eliminate carbs, it’s to choose quality sources most of the time and eat an amount that supports your activity and goals. 3. Lifting weights will make you bulky. This one makes me laugh because building muscle is not easy. It takes a lot of tim...

  Parenting is hard. I am incredibly blessed to have two great kids. Even as teenagers, they are respectful, kind, and rule followers. Their dad and I actually laugh sometimes that maybe we did too good of a job teaching them to follow the rules, because now we are trying to teach them something that feels almost opposite: You are allowed to speak up. You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to disagree. You can question something and still be respectful. At 14 and 15—almost 16—my boys rarely want to question an adult or speak up when they disagree with something. Unless, of course, that adult is me or their dad. They have no problem finding their voices at home. But we want them to understand that their voices matter outside of our house, too. As adults, we know that if you don't ask for what you want, you'll never know if you could have gotten it. If you don't ask the question, you may never get the explanation. And if you disagree but never say anyth...

  Tomorrow is October 1st, which means we are officially entering the last quarter of 2026. The last 90 days. Okay, technically 92 days, but you get the point. And I want you to think about something for a minute. Think back to July 1st. Where were you? What was going on in your life? What were you worried about? What were you working toward? What have you accomplished since then? What has changed that you didn't expect? Three months can feel like such a short amount of time when we're looking ahead, but when we look backward, we realize just how much life can happen in 90 days. So instead of waiting for January to start thinking about what you want next, what if you used these last three months of 2026 intentionally? Because we all know what's coming. Halloween turns into Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving turns into Christmas, and suddenly our calendars are packed with parties, school events, shopping, family obligations, travel, traditions, and everything else that comes with ...

  This week, fall didn't exactly ease its way in. We went from a heat index of 105 degrees to 60s in a matter of days. Suddenly I'm reaching for a sweatshirt, and it actually feels like fall. And with the Fall Equinox this week, we're also entering the part of the year when the nights become longer than the days. The sun starts setting earlier, darkness comes sooner, and if you're anything like me, 7:30 PM can suddenly feel like 10:00. I've already noticed the difference in my energy. When it's light outside until late in the evening, I feel like there is still so much day left. There are things to do, places to go, walks to take, projects to finish. But when the sun disappears earlier, something in me naturally wants to slow down. And my first instinct is sometimes to fight it. I should be doing something. I should be more productive. I shouldn't be sitting here already. But maybe we're not supposed to move through every season of the year...