June 16, 2014

I wrote my first book in 3^rd grade.

I distinctly remember taking colorful paper from my father’s printer, cutting it in half, folding then stapling it together. I wrote and illustrated twelve pages and sold them for .75 to my classmates. While I sold a few I didn’t get officially published until I reached 6^th grade for a poem I wrote about an injured dove and again in 8^th grade for another poem about social change. I spent several summers writing juvenile unpublished short stories that included a preface, foreward and even a back cover.

During these early years I also became fascinated by fitness. My mother was sickly and I knew that preventative health – and not her overuse of prescriptions – was the answer to her ailments. I began a small morning workout routine that included 100 jumping jacks and 30 lying leg lifts the summer of my fifth grade year. In high school I volunteered as an aerobics instructor and in college I became a personal trainer. I became immersed in various parts of the fitness industry as a competitor, health writer and project/marketing coordinator for a large gym corporation. However, despite my efforts to be healthy, I battled and overcame personal demons when I dealt with disordered eating, binge episodes ...

May 19, 2014 My once-flawless skin is now covered with scars, traces of an acne breakout I’ve undergone for the past two months. In the age of social media, we don’t often share the downsides of our daily lives. We see hard bodies, beautiful vacations, happy children and perfect marriages wondering what’s wrong with our […]

April 6, 2014 *** This is an open-letter to Sara. The mother I met in Kansas City, Missouri *** Dear Sara, Thank you for inviting me into your home and allowing me to follow your tasks throughout the day. I hadn’t read any of your criticisms about me prior to Nightline requesting that I meet […]

March 29, 2014 I just interviewed with ABC Nightline. They followed me for nearly two days while I prepared a potluck dish for my father’s birthday party, cooked my boy’s breakfast (in my sponge rollers!) before dropping my eldest to pre-k. They filmed as I checked in on my elderly care home, taped a live […]

February 27, 2014 Patience is a virtue but it isn’t my best virtue. When my husband and I first became pregnant I wanted to purchase a home. After all, creating a residential nest egg was an instinctual desire as a mother. While we were financially capable of purchasing a humble property, we decided instead, to […]

January 28, 2014 Exactly ten years ago I was featured in Oxygen magazine’s “Future of Fitness” section. I had just won Miss Bikini California and placed top five in two national fitness competitions. At my very last contest in 2003, I was slated to do 3 photo shoots with published photographers in Los Angeles. As […]

December 31, 2013 I received a painful email tonight from a couple moms featured in my 2014 No Excuse Fit Mom Swimsuit Calendar.  I felt their words as they described hurtful comments people made on their courageous swimsuit pictures. I wanted to tell them to not take it personally, to focus on the positive and […]