If only we could all wake up in the morning and magically have our personal body goals. Maybe you'd kill to have abs like Teyana Taylor or the knee balance of Megan Thee Stallion. It's time to make some health adjustments mentally and physically in order to get the body shapes we desire. This can take a lot of hard work and dedication but it'll be worth it.
As the saying goes, summer bodies are indeed made in the winter. So, in order to get those waist goals you've been hoping for, here are a few tricks to commit to ASAP. Let's get into it!
Keep a Food Diary
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A food diary can be very beneficial when it comes to tracking your eating habits. You can log the foods you eat daily in your planner, the note section of your phone, or even an app like Lifesum. The beauty of the food diary is it forces you to reflect on your food choices, whether right or wrong. The more you track your diet, the more inspired you'll be to eat healthily. Feel free to get creative with your food diary by including healthy recipes, body goal pics, and progress. Make sure that you are being completely honest with yourself. If you eat something that you feel like you shouldn't have eaten, don't beat yourself up about it. Improve and make yourself proud with your next meal.
Here is a snippet of my food diary:
Healthy Recipes to Try:
- Zucchini, hazelnuts and ricotta
- Shrimp, Mexican corn, peppers
- Cucumber, onion, pepper salad, avocado dressing
- Pita chips, tzatziki sauce, chickpeas, garlic and corn
- Cabbage, sweet mayo dressing, and carrots
- Squash, red onion, and feta cheese
- Grilled carrots, avocado, and green beans
Date: 12/2
Breakfast: Peppermint tea, Oatmeal and bananas
Lunch: Spicy steak sandwich w/ plain chips
Dinner: Shrimp, spinach and peppers
Date: 12/3
Breakfast: Banana and peppermint tea (sinus infection and no appetite)
Lunch: Shrimp/veggies/pesto pasta
Dinner: Chicken and dumplings
Date: 12/4
Breakfast: 2 bananas, carrot cake, white cheddar cheese crackers, and peppermint tea
Lunch: Seafood salad
Dinner: Shrimp w/ spinach and chickpeas
Invest in an Ab Exercise App
Establishing the proper diet is more than half the battle. In order to see drastic results to your stomach area, try to incorporate some ab work. There are a wide variety of free ab workout apps that you can download to your phone. The ab workout apps are cool because they are only 7-10 minutes long, so you can pretty much do them anywhere.
Set yourself a daily schedule or an alarm on your phone to commit 7-10 minutes of your time to ab work. It can be strenuous and annoying in the beginning, but once you start seeing results of your commitment to ab workouts, you'll make yourself proud. You never know, you might even start to push yourself to go harder. So, stop scrolling on Instagram and get to those abs, sis!
Apple Cider Vinegar
GiphyDrinking apple cider vinegar reduces belly fat, boosts weight loss, and suppresses your appetite. "Before drinking the apple cider vinegar, dilute it in 1 c (240 ml) of water. Do not drink the apple cider vinegar by itself. Apple cider vinegar is extremely acidic and could harm your teeth and throat if taken alone."
Due to its acidic nature, it is advised to dilute apple cider vinegar with 100 ml of water per 15 ml of apple cider vinegar. This is important because drinking ACV straight can cause eventual harm to your throat or teeth. Trust and believe, you don't want the thing you're doing to improve your health to unintentionally become a detriment. You can drink the apple cider vinegar before you have your meals. Try to incorporate apple cider vinegar into your diet. It may taste bitter but implementing it into your daily regimen pays off.
Running and Cycling
A good run or cycling session is a great way to start your day. Running and cycling benefits include weight loss, burning calories, and building stamina. As you continue through your stomach snatched journey, it is essential to focus not only on weight loss but also muscle toning. When it comes to running and cycling, one exercise option is not necessarily ranked higher than the other. Choose the workout option that best suits your lifestyle.
30-Day Diet
Fasting and diets can assist you with acquiring self-discipline, commitment and breaking old eating habits. Once I tried a 30-day diet that included eliminating bread, pasta, rice and sugar. Also, I only ate meat once a day and natural fruits. I drank tea every morning and stayed hydrated throughout the day. In the beginning, my body went through a slight shock and I could not stay out of the bathroom due to all of the vegetables I was eating. However, not only did my stomach get snatched but I also started to feel better internally.
As time progressed, I started to feel more energized and less tired throughout the day. My spirits were high and my body looked right. Whenever people ask how did I do it, I shared this 30-day diet. It's easy to remember and it works. You have to stay dedicated, be willing to change, and get creative with your diet.
Overall, the key to making it all work is dedication and commitment to better eating habits and finding the exercise that best suits your personality. Let's get that stomach snatched, sis!
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our newsletter here and check out the related reads below:
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Among the many individuals who battle severe asthma, Black women face a unique set of challenges. It's not uncommon for us to go years without a proper diagnosis, and finding the right treatment often requires some trial and error. Thankfully, all hope is not lost for those who may be fighting to get their severe asthma under control. We spoke with Juanita Brown Ingram, Esq. and Jania Watson, two inspiring Black women who have been living with severe asthma and have found strength, resilience, and a sense of purpose in their journeys.
Juanita Brown Ingram, Esq.
Juanita Ingram has a resume that would make anyone’s jaw drop. On top of being recently crowned Mrs. Universe, she’s also an accomplished attorney, filmmaker, and philanthropist. From the outside, it seems there’s nothing this talented woman won’t try, and likely succeed at. In her everyday life, however, Juanita exercises a lot more caution. From a young age, Juanita has struggled with severe asthma. Her symptoms were always exacerbated by common illnesses like a cold or flu. “I've heard these stories of my breathing struggles, but I remember distinctly when I was younger not being able to breathe every time I got a virus,” says Ingram. “I remember missing a lot of school and crying a lot because asthma is painful. I [was taken] to see my doctor often if I got sick with anything so I was hypervigilant as a child, and I still am.”
Today, Juanita says her symptoms are best managed when she’s working closely with her care team, avoiding getting sick and staying ahead of any symptoms. Ingram said she’s been blessed with skilled doctors who are just as vigilant of her symptoms as she is. While competing in the Mrs. Universe competition, Juanita took extra care to stay clear of other competitors to ensure she didn’t catch a cold or virus that would trigger her severe asthma. “I would stand off to the side and sometimes that could be taken as ‘oh, she thinks she's better than everybody else.’ But if I get sick during a pageant, I'm done. I had to compete with that in mind because my sickness doesn't look like everybody else's sickness.”
Even when her symptoms are under control, living with severe asthma still presents challenges. Juanita relies on her strong support system to overcome the hurdles caused by a lack of understanding from the public, “I think that there's a lot of lack of awareness about how serious severe asthma is. I would [also] tell women to advocate and to trust their intuition and not to allow someone to dismiss what you're experiencing.”
Jania Watson
Jania, a content creator from Atlanta, Georgia, has been living with severe asthma for many years. Thanks to early testing by asthma specialists, Jania was diagnosed with severe asthma as a child after experiencing frequent flare-ups and challenges in her day-to-day life. “I specifically remember, I was starting school, and we were moving into a new house. One of the triggers for me and my younger sister at the time were certain types of carpets. We had just moved into this new house and within weeks of us being there, my parents literally had to pay for all new carpet in the house.”
As Jania grew older, she was suffering from fewer flare-ups and thought her asthma was well under control. However, a trip back to her doctor during high school revealed that her severe asthma was affecting her more than she realized. “That was the first time in a long time I had to do a breathing test,” she describes. “The doctor had me take a deep breath in and blow into a machine to test my breathing. They told me to blow as hard as I could. And I was doing it. I was giving everything I got. [My dad and the doctor] were looking at me like ‘girl, stop playing.’ And at that point [it confirmed] I still have severe asthma because I've given it all I got. It doesn't really go away, but I just learned how to help manage it better.”
Jania recognizes that people who aren’t living with asthma, may not understand the disease and mistake it for something less serious. Or there could be others who think their symptoms are minor, and not worth bringing up. So, for Jania, communicating with others about her diagnosis is key. “Having severe asthma [flare-ups] in some cases looks very similar to being out of shape,” she said. “But this is a chronic illness that I was born with. This is just something that I live with that I've been dealing with. And I think it's important for people to know because that determines the next steps. [They might ask] ‘Do you need a bottle of water, or do you need an inhaler? Do you need to take a break, or do we need to take you to the hospital?’ So, I think letting the people around you know what's going on, just in case anything were to happen plays a lot into it as well.”
Like Juanita, Jania’s journey has been marked by ups and downs, but she remains an unwavering advocate for asthma awareness and support within the Black community. She hopes that her story can be an inspiration to other women with asthma who may not yet have their symptoms under control. “There's still life to be lived outside of having severe asthma. It is always going to be there, but it's not meant to stop you from living your life. That’s why learning how to manage it and also having that support system around you, is so important.”
By sharing their journeys, Juanita and Jania hope to encourage others to embrace their conditions, obtain a proper management plan from a doctor or asthma specialist like a pulmonologist or allergist, and contribute to the improvement of asthma awareness and support, not only within the Black community, but for all individuals living with severe asthma.
Read more stories from others like Juanita and Jania on Amgen.com, or visit Uncontrolled Asthma In Black Women | BREAK THE CYCLE to find support and resources.
And there’s more where that came from. The Love and Marriage: Huntsville reality star is expanding Canvas Beauty by including cosmetics and possibly products for the home. While she will still use TikTok, Stormi is also looking to create long-form content on YouTube. Stormi says Canvas Beauty is a lifestyle brand and will continue to listen to its customers to fulfill their needs. “I feel like just by listening to the consumer and becoming and building this lifestyle brand like we're just gonna slowly enter, you know, home spaces. Cosmetics,” she reveals. “Me and my colleague, we were talking about skincare just last night, so there's a lot of things that we have in the works because I really want to bring products to the market that is for a person's entire canvas, like anything that is canvas related.”
After seeing astronomical success with Body Glaze on TikTok, Stormi is paying it forward by sharing her four tips on how to market products on the popular platform.
@iamstormisteele BODY GLAZE SOLD OUT IN 8 minutes 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Storytelling
Stormi’s first tip is storytelling because, according to her, people enjoy watching your journey. “TikTok is like one of the most friendliest platform as it comes to just people and authenticity,” she says. “So I will tell an entrepreneur, especially if their hands on with their brand, like show people the heart behind it, storytell.”
Build a Community Versus Selling
While selling products is the name of the game for any product-based business, the Canvas Beauty CEO shares the best way to do it. “Behind the scenes are always great and focus on like building a community and not more so just selling a product. So for us, like, I was selling the product, but I wasn’t saying like, ‘oh, go buy this’ or ‘buy this,’” she explains.
“I'm more so taking people on a journey with the growth of our brand and I think people resonate with that more so than, you know, just saying sell, sell, sell, and TikTok platform is very conducive to very like low-fi and just organic, real content.”
Stormi SteelePhoto courtesy Authenticity is Key
Stormi implores that sharing your journey is optimal in growing your brand on TikTok, and one of the ways to do that is by being authentic. “I would tell people, you don't have to overthink it. You don't have to think ‘oh, I don't have this type of aesthetic’ or ‘I don't have this type of setup’ because it's (TikTok) very friendly to the growing and scaling entrepreneur,” Stormi says.
“So like realistic type of content, not the type of content that's like, you know, like overly glamorized people just love to see people in their journey. So I would tell any entrepreneur, especially if you're hands on, you’re the face of your brand, just show your journey, tell your story. And this is the one platform that highlights that and celebrates that.”
Don’t Count Yourself Out
Last but not least, the hairstylist turned beauty entrepreneur encourages others not to get discouraged. “Don't ever think that even if you're a small business, what you're doing is not big enough because it's big enough to someone, and on the TikTok platform, it’s like so perfect for the Gen-Z audience,” she explains. “They love to see that type of stuff.”
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