Begin in a high plank, with your feet extended out behind you, shoulder-width apart, balancing on your toes and your hands. Your hands should be directly below your shoulders, your core tight and your back flat. Lower down to your elbows, one at a time. Then, one at a time, raise back up into the high plank with your hands directly below your shoulders. Do ten of these, beginning the drop from extended arm to elbow on the right side before alternating for ten that begin on the left side.

The average person sleeps in 90 minute cycles and needs 7.5 to 9 hours of sleep a night. Set a sleep schedule for yourself – with timers set to wake you up and tell you when to go to bed. Planning your sleep around the 90 minute REM cycles, leaving 10-20 minutes to fall asleep in the beginning, will help make sure that you aren’t waking up in the middle of a cycle – which is when your body is the most tired. If you plan it right, your alarm should be going off at the same time that your body is in the lightest stage of sleep – meaning you will wake up in a much better mood and feeling more energized than if you wake up in the middle of a deep sleep.

Developing mindful eating habits is a major step towards reaching the wellness balance that we all reach for. Here are a few ways you can develop your own mindful eating habits.

You really can maintain movement even when you’re on a busy schedule. Here are just a few tips to help you out:

Packing your bag with the things you’ll need on-the-go is essential to getting your workouts in. Some things I suggest are a change of clothes, an energy bar, headphones, any essential oils and anything else that you can use to sweat when you’re in a rush or recover when you need to recover with healthy treats. Just be sure not to overstuff your bag and allow it to become a traveling cupboard full of snacks.

Surprise – fats can be good for you!

Dark chocolate is not only great for when you have that slight sweet tooth, but it’s filled with antioxidants like resveratrol that help to fight against heart disease. Not only that, but the cacao bean used to create dark chocolate helps to improve mood and it contains monounsaturated fatty acids (like oleic acid) that are good for your overall health. So if you’re reaching for chocolate… make sure it’s the dark kind and you’ll be okay. (Just don’t go overboard.)

Meditating has become one of the most important parts of my daily routine. Whenever I am stressed out or unsure of what the next step I need to take in figuring out a problem, I turn to meditation. Here are a few reasons why meditation helps me, and maybe can help you, to live the best life possible:

Knowing your fruits and vegetables this Spring is more than just knowing what is in season, although I am going to tell you that, but also about knowing the benefits of them and which ones you should choose to add to your meals so that you can be in style. Understanding fruits and vegetables can help you lead a more nutritious life – as eating them at the peak of their season means they have maximum nutrition – but can also help turn you into a more effective chef in the kitchen because they will have maximum flavor at the peak of their seasons as well.

Prioritizing self care is something that has become incredibly important to me in the last year and especially in recent months. The thing is, your own life will always be the one that you have the most control over. Also, at the end of the day, it’s your own life that you have to live with – your own decisions. This means that the decisions you make and the activities, the people and the things that you prioritize matter. Priorities matter. Therefore, to live my best life I always make sure to prioritize the things I know matter to me: meditation, spending time with family, sweating every day, setting goals, eating healthy, etc. I try to remember to take the necessary steps to keep the things that are important to maintaining my own happiness high on my list of priorities because I’ve learned that it isn’t selfish… when you live your best life, you’re at your best to be present and thoughtful and loving in the lives of the people you care for.

Proper warm-ups are essential to the success of anything you do in the gym. When you take the time to properly loosen your muscles and stretch them out, you push your risk of injury down significantly. Most people need from 5 to 20 minutes of warming up. Knowing your body and knowing what it feels like to be ready and warmed-up is something that comes with time, but is something that is essential to figuring out so that you can ensure long-term success with your body, keep your movements smooth and mobility high – all while remaining low-risk for injury.

Training for a race – whether it is a 5k, a 10k or a marathon – can be intimidating. However, it can also be incredibly easy and even fun! (I’m being mostly serious here…) I’ve compiled a few tips to help you get race-ready so that you can feel prepared to run your best race possible.

I’ve talked in the past about how important a five-minute flow in the mornings is to my overall wellness. It helps me get ready for the day by clearing my mind and allowing me space to set up my week. However, I want to talk now about how that morning flow has evolved into Nine Minutes of Nourishment as my intentions have become more clear over the last few months.

80 percent of Americans reporting health symptoms have reported stress as a major factor in the last five months according to the American Psychological Association (Source). The same study showed that of people reporting stress, specific symptoms most commonly reported were: “headaches (34%), feeling overwhelmed (33%), feeling nervous or anxious (33%) and feeling depressed or sad (32%).” The major take-away here is to remember that you are not alone in your stress. Never feel isolated.

Unless you’re like me and take vacation to find new workouts to obsess over… make sure you know what kind of workouts you can fit into your schedule before you take off – and schedule them into your vacation plans. You may have to wake up a little earlier than the rest of your crew to get a jog in, but it’ll be worth it in the long run. The link below will take you to my favorite vacation workout that you can try on the beach or in your hotel room to ensure you get your sweat in.

I wanted to take a moment to talk about herbs and how you can use them to immediately add flavor and spice to any dish that may otherwise be a little bland. The thing is, eating clean doesn’t have to mean eating food without flavor. In fact, if you play around with herbs it is quite the opposite andyou get a few extra health benefits from a lot of different herbs.

Every morning, I roll out of bed and crawl into my living room. There, under Luc’s watchful eye, I ask Alexa to set a five minute alarm and start my flow. (About 80% of the time, Alexa does something else – but that is a first world problem, and therefore for another time).

When I start my flow, I move my body in whatever direction I am feeling. I circle my joints, I go through a yoga flow, and I move my body, joint-by-joint, from my head to my toes. Before I even have to wonder when the timer is going to go off, I have loosened all of my muscles and head to the sink to drink a full glass of water. Then, BOOM: my body is thanking me for the love.

Before you even think about reaching for your phone to check your email or see what is happening on Facebook, take a few moments in the morning to check in with your own well-being. Check in with how you are feeling, yes – your muscles and your joints, but also your mind and your overall wellbeing. If it’s been a long week, take this moment to clear your mind so that you can start the day with a clean slate. Meditate, practice stillness or simply take a long shower to mull your thoughts over. Tuning in with your own body before you tune in with the rest of the world is vital to setting yourself up to achieve the goals you want to set for the day.

Tequila, vodka, wine, beer… whatever it is that you prefer, all of these drinks have one thing in common: they’re alcohol. I wanted to take a moment today to help provide some context for why I encourage people to limit their alcohol intake. The number one reason? “It is well documented that excess alcohol intake results in compromised immunity and increased risk of infectious disease (Waldschmit, Cook, Kovacs; 2009).” In short? Excessive drinking is counteracting all of the work you do in the gym every week.

Sure, you thought you would have time to meal prep this week – but when you finally finished your report for that Monday morning meeting late on Sunday night, there was no way that you were going to go start chopping up vegetables and weighing them out. When you’re racing from your house to your job to your engagements with friends and everything in between – oftentimes the last thing you want to think about is how to avoid messing up all of the work you just put in at the gym. So, I’ve compiled a list of quick-and-easy tips to help you guys keep it right and keep it tight – even when you’re in a rush.

While we all know that I could live off chips and guac for the rest of my life, my body would hate me if I actually stuck to that diet forever. Now that my go-to restaurant caught fire, RIP Pecado Bueno, I have to meal prep. It’s a rough life.

Now I want to share some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned through my meal prep successes and failures to help you all on your own journey down the road of kale, poached salmon and midnight trips to the fridge for chia pudding (I’m kidding – I don’t do that).