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Walgreens

Setting Health Goals and Getting Healthy Just Got Infinitely Easier

by Deborah Cruz 2014/08/21

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #BalanceRewards #CollectiveBias

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am a sucker for health and fitness apps. I set health goals and try to make healthy choices, but don’t always follow through. That’s why I need accountability. After my past struggles with weight, I know accountability is the key to my wellness success. Honestly, I either need a tiny drill Sargent or a giant cheerleading team. I just need to know that someone somewhere is in my corner, understands the struggle of weight loss and weight management and wants me to succeed. I need peers.

I swear by my Fitbit, MapMyFitness & Dottie’s Food Score apps, I will also recommend you the light therapy lamps for your body health improvement. I love the friendly competition sparked between friends. I call it motivation. Just no taunting; fragile ego, I’d fall apart. Why so many apps you ask? Because FitBit and MapMyFitness sync with my FitBit and I prefer the food library on MapMyFitness and Dottie’s keeps me in the know for any possible dining out option which is very convenient.

Well, hold on to your Saucony’s ladies and gents because now Walgreens have developed their own Balance Rewards Program which gives you weekly savings as well as reward points for purchasing all kinds of items in the store but now it has a healthy choices feature that literally rewards you for your wellness efforts. It keeps you accountable and makes living a healthy life easy by allowing you to set health goals, tracking progress and connecting your devices. Not only does it keep me aware of the healthy choices make but it also rewards me for my healthy activity. We use positive reinforcement with our children, why not a little for ourselves?

You can earn points by living healthy and making healthy choices. Walking, running, doing Pilates, Zumba, or spinning and tracking your weight all allow you to earn points. You can track progress towards your fitness goals, sync devices to log activity on the go and connect via the community forum. I love the accountability.

I’m always on the look out for a way to make my weight loss journey more effective and less of a struggle, I feel like the Walgreens Balance Rewards Program might just streamline my whole process.

I am also very fond of the community. It reminds me of the Weight Watchers system. There is a forum for every person and let me tell you a little encouragement from a person trying to do the same thing, for me anyways, is a lot more helpful than an 18-year-old, 110-pound trainer screaming at me.

If you track your weight, and who doesn’t? This is for you. Do you get regular tests to check your blood pressure or glucose? Do you crave physical activity and is it a priority for you? Why not let Walgreens keep you accountable for your healthy choices?

I’ve partnered with Walgreens to try it out and I think you should too!

What is your favorite healthy living app?

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2014/08/21 0 comment

The Effects of Blogging on Women’s Health

by Deborah Cruz 2014/06/09

written by Deborah Cruz

I am a member of the Collective Bias ® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for #CollectiveBias and its advertiser.

Women’s Health has suddenly become top priority in my life. Recently, I’ve been focusing more on creating my own healthy habits. Maybe it’s my age or just the fact that the older my daughters get, the more time I have to actually focus on my own health and mortality; you know, now that I have a free moment to pee alone now and again.

Did you ever consider that what you do for a profession could affect your health? I mean, we know that if you are a stunt man or a cop, your life is generally at higher risk than the general population. Of course, I never considered that being a blogger/writer/ sitting at my desk all day could be detrimental to my health. We all laugh at “blogger butt” and joke about sitting around in our pajamas all day but did you ever really consider that blogging could be bad for your health? Me, neither. But when it comes down to it, bloggers can suffer from issues with our vision from staring at a screen all day. One option is to look into great glasses from https://www.eyeglasses.com/. It can also result in issues such as repetitive strain injury.

Blogging has made me happy. I love what I do. I love freelancing. I love social media. I love letting my girls see me pursue my dreams and get to do something that I am passionate about. It’s important to me to be a good example for my girls. In fact, as a mom of girls, being a good example is probably the most important thing to me that and just being around to see them grow from my babies into women.

So imagine my frustration when I went to the doctor and aside from gaining weight, which I can obviously see, my sugar and cholesterol levels were both elevated but normal. All that I heard was blahblahblah HIGH blahblahblah AT RISK blahblahblah.

My brain went directly to all the things I would miss if I were to suddenly die (yes, I am one of those people); first dates, driving, graduation, college, falling in love, growing up, getting married, getting pregnant, becoming a mom, repeat. Then I thought of all the smaller things like taking care of them when they are sick, holding them when they experience the first crushing blows of falling in and then out of love, the fear and excitement in the big moments, giving the gentle nudges forward when they need to be pushed in the right direction or even just being there to listen when they needed undivided attention and a mother’s unconditional love. I need to be an advocate for not only my health but for #herhealth, as well; both of them. In that moment, I knew exactly what I needed to do. My path had never been so clear. I made all of the doctors’ appointments and I made a plan. I need a plan. I can accomplish almost anything with a plan in hand.

My first stop was the corner Walgreens to buy myself a bottle of Vitafusion Women’s Daily Multivitamin, Gummies. These have been my favorite vitamins as an adult. They are small and easy to swallow because you chew them and they don’t have that bitter mineral after taste that many adult multivitamins have. I like them so much that I started buying Vitafusion multivitamins for the entire family.

Next, I started paying attention to what my FitBit was telling me. The first thing that I noticed is that without consciously making an effort to move, a blogger can exist on only taking 337 steps in a day; my goal is 10,000. No wonder why “blogger butt” is a thing. Now, I am getting between 6500 and 12,000 steps a day just by spending an hour every morning taking a walk or bike ride with my daughters. I can feel the difference. I can do better but at least I am off in the right direction.

I’ve eliminated pop from the menu and replaced it with iced water and switched out my daily coffee for unsweetened green tea. I love coffee but I was using so much creamer that it made each coffee have about 250 calories and the caffeine itself was contributing to my terrible insomnia. Now, coffee is a treat that I look forward to once a week (early on Saturday morning) and sleeping without the help of some kind of pill is a wonderful new bonus in my life.

I linked my FitBit to My Fitness Pal app and started logging everything I eat. You have no idea what you consume until you log it. You might think, “I don’t eat that much or that badly!” Believe me, you probably do. Some days, I found that I didn’t get enough calories and other days, I was going over by about 1000. My Fitness Pal also lets me stay aware of the sugar and cholesterol in everything I eat. In the past month, I have lost 12 pounds. I’ve also committed myself to seeing my doctor once a month to check in on my progress and keep me accountable. These are all baby steps to make sure that I am around for the big and little moments of my life to come.

What do you do to maintain or improve your Women’s health so that you are around for the big and little moments?

2014/06/09 4 comments

Beauty

Fall Beauty tricks to get your Outside matching your Inside

by Deborah Cruz 2011/10/11

written by Deborah Cruz

#cleverbeauty

Beauty~ Thanks to Walgreens for underwriting this post. I was paid as a member of the Clever Girls Collective, but the content is all mine. Visit https://moms.dailybuzz.com/channel/style.

Today, I am going to share some of my beauty secrets. Now, I don’t share these with just anybody so you should feel pretty special. But seriously, who doesn’t want to live in a world full of beautiful truthful mommies running around all over the place? I know I would love it. You are all gorgeous on the inside, I know this for a fact from all the lovely comments you leave, and I am sure that he outside matches the inside so let’s help keep it that way.

Here are my fall beauty tips for keeping your outside beauty in sync with your inside beauty.

Start the day with a hot bath and an invigorating, exfoliating body wash. I promise it wakes up your senses and get’s you going on those cold, dark mornings of late fall. And if you rinse off in cool water, it helps close up all those pores and hair follicles. BONUS!
The exfoliating wash will help get rid of some of that dry skin and eliminate some of that awful itching that comes to us in the fall and winter months. If you really want to revitalize the way you look, you can actually opt for cosmetic treatments such as juvederm.
Moisturize*Moisturize*Moisturize* I can not stress this enough. Honestly, you should be moisturizing every single day of the year , every season, from the age of puberty on but you most definitely need to moisturize during the colder, drier months. Moisturize your face at night with a night time wrinkle reducer, in the morning use a tinted moisturizer with some SPF protection. It will keep your skin hydrated and not pasty, plus help hold off crows feet. (*Also, wear your sunglasses year round.) When you get out of the shower, moisturize immediately. Lock in the moisture. And for those crazy dry feet,(* Shhhh, top secret beauty secret) slather those suckers in Vaseline ( I like the coco butter scented one) and put on some cozy socks to let them marinate for a bit. I swear it works.
Shave your legs and paint your toenails! I know you think no one will see your legs or toes until spring but just remember this…if you feel pretty , you will look pretty. I always feel prettier when I’m presentable, besides I’ve seen a lot of wool shorts for this fall!

Beauty, you are worth it!

Drink your water!I mean it , drink 64 ounces of water a day. It makes you look good. Your skin will glow. Your skin will be hydrated and not itch.It also helps flush your body of all that water weight we ladies tend to collect around shark week. Eat better. You need to get all of your daily recommended amount of vitamins,so eating fresh food and taking an actual vitamin can help replenish some of those nutrients that you will be lacking by being shut indoors and hibernating over the colder months. Bonus: Vitamins make your hair, nails and skin look better and grow. Hello, what’s sexier than a woman with long flowing hair, glowing, blemish free skin and nails that can beckon you to come hither?
Whiten your teeth. I love the professional crest white strips professional effects. This best invisalign dentist nyc told me that they work as good as anything he would do in his office with the exception of the Zoom treatments, especially if your teeth are not that discolored. You know your skin will be paler so whitening will help your teeth look whiter versus the yellow tinged color they can look against pale skin after a autumn filled with hot coco, hot coffee, hot tea, hot toddies, Diet Coke and red wine! A girls gotta warm up.
Wash your hair less. I know it sounds gross but again, the world is a drier place in the fall. In the summer, we are running all over town ~~sweating~~ glistening and our hair is full of oils and sunshine.In fall, our hair starts to dry out like the leaves on the trees. My suggestion, wash your hair every other day. I know it may sound disgusting to some of you but , in the long run, it will be better for you. OK, if you just can’t do it, wash every other day and on off days use a dry Shampoo. Also, hot oil treatments are your friend. Just pretend you are at a spa and spoil yourself. Or if you want to go the crunchy route, I hear mayonnaise brings out a wicked shine to your hair.
Last, but certainly not least, I change my make up to all of my warm fall colors. No, your bright pink grapefruit kiss does not look good on your pasty skin in November. Think the colors of the fall foliage; warm colors. And don’t put away that bronzer, you still need some color. It’ll give you a little kiss of summer, smack dab in the middle of fall. You will glow.

These are my tips for looking like a hot Mommy in the fall. A few changes to accommodate for the weather and a few minutes of “me” time is all it takes. I promise you can sneak it in. They say beauty is pain, but really with these simple tips beauty is no pain at all! What are some of your go to fall beauty tips and tricks?

Thank you to Walgreens for sponsoring this blog post. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions and beauty tricks are my own.

Beauty is as beauty does

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2011/10/11 6 comments