bon soir

Last night, as I opened up my computer to blog, I checked the time... 10:45 pm. Now, I don’t know about fellow bloggers, but in my case, it usually takes me more than 15 minutes to put together a post, not to mention that I wasn’t at all ready for bed and still hadn’t called my boyfriend to say goodnight (yeah, it’s a ritual) so in line with the goals I made for myself this week I decided to put off blogging until today. Sorry to neglect you ;).

Why did the winding down part of my night start so much later than usual? Well, I went out to dinner with a new friend of mine. Karla is a fellow intern at Fitness magazine and an absolute doll. It’s funny, she actually thought I looked familiar when we had first met because she had stumbled across my blog in the past since she's a friend of Jenn.

Both of our plates were simple but in the tastiest way. I had the broiled salmon with fresh roasted garlic, steamed vegetables and seaweed instead of the usual brown rice (it’s been too long since my last sea vegetable!) and she enjoyed one of their famous veggie burgers. We talked about health, nutrition, fitness, and how we both hoped to incorporate it all into our future careers and obviously had a great time together :) I really hope to keep in touch.

You know, before this week I never focused on how important sleep habits are in a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately sleep usually takes the back-burner to getting everything done in my day including eating well and working out, but not making it a priority is dangerous, to say the least:

First, not sleeping the recommended 8 hours has been linked to increasing your heart disease risk. Researchers at the University of Chicago studied 495 people and found that those who slept less were more likely to develop calcium buildup in their arteries, a contributing factor to heart attacks and strokes. Twenty-seven percent of people getting less than five hours of shut-eye each night had calcium buildup, while 11 percent of those sleeping the recommended five to seven hours did. Only six percent of subjects sleeping more than seven hours each night had signs of calcium in their arteries. And then of course there’s the fact that not getting enough shut-eye can increase your risk of becoming obese.

I don’t exercise too late, watch television at night, nor drink a lot of caffeine but I have adopted an even better nighttime routine: drinking herbal tea (chamomile and mint are my favorites) while reading or jotting down a few thoughts from the day. It helps me de-stress, relax, and fall asleep easier than ever. What’s your good (or “bad”) sleepytime ritual?

For accountabilities sake I also thought I’d include the fact that I got a chocolate sorbet at Grand Central. I would have gotten a small cup of gelato to take care of my decadent and creamy chocolate craving but I chose with my tummy’s best interest in mind. My frozen (most likely vegan) dessert was only made up of sweetened water flavored with chocolate and was absolutely delicious. Ciao bellas, I hope you have a very good (sleep/) night!