Hey guys — Rachel here! For this week’s challenge, I decided to break out in CHIVES! I used chives and parsley to create this awesome herb butter which I then used to make a delicious veggie omelet. Ah-mazing. I hate chopping herbs but it’s totally worth it. You can make herb butter with any herbs, really, and the effect is fantastic.

Hey little challengers! Can you believe it?! We’re going into the last few weeks of the Outside the Box Challenge!

Thanks to everyone who entered the Note Your Nibbles Test. The winners of the books are Heems and Becomingasuperhero! Congrats — please email Rachel@sheddingit.com with your mailing info!

OK — onto the next challenge!

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to improve your cooking and health is to cook with herbs! Besides having tons of healing properties, they are a cheap and calorie-free way to improve the flavor of your dishes. So this week, we want you to get green; it is Earth Month after all. Bring a new herb into your life — one you haven’t enjoyed in the past three months at least. And let us know how it goes! What did you choose and why? How did you use it? What did you think?

Everyone who enters this week will be eligible to win one of two fabulous prizes! One winner will get a copy of The New Healing Herbs by Michael Castleman.

This book is a virtual herb encyclopedia of 125 different herbs, from alfalfa to yarrow (plus plenty of herbs you’ve used before, like garlic and witch hazel). You can read about how maca is an aphrodisiac and pomegranate is a great antioxidant. The book explains dosages, drug interactions, and is a great resource if you’ve got a malady you don’t want to treat with something from, say, Procter & Gamble. The other winner will get a fabulous prize pack from Amazing Grass! Rachel has written about this before and is a big fan of their Chocolate Superfood powder.

It contains green superfoods, fruits, herbs, maca, cacao, and acai that are a seriously great pick-me-up and don’t taste too earthy in your chocolate banana smoothie. Not only will you get a canister of the Chocolate Superfood — which, seriously, is bomb — but you’ll also get samples of the companies other goodies like nutrition bars and other powders. Amazing Grass is a brand with good food karma, so we’re excited to share their products with you!

Remember, even if you haven’t entered before, you can make this your first week and you’ll be eligible to win one of the prizes. And for those of you who’ve been with us since week one, make sure you get in on this one — we’re so close to the end! You have until Sunday, April 18 at 11:59 pm PST to report in for the challenge. Submit your entries here. Good luck!

Good morning! Welcome to Week 6 of the Outside the Box Challenge!

First, we want to announce the winners of the SPRI Fitness Fantasy: Marianne and Laura! Please email Rachel at Rachel@sheddingit.com with your mailing addresses so we can have your SPRI home fitness kit sent out to you!

Now onto this week’s challenge: the Note Your Nibbles Test!

For this week’s challenge, we want you to go outside your comfort zone and take a look at what you’re eating and why you’re eating it. Numerous studies have shown that dieters who keep a food journal are more successful than those who do not. Whether it’s because you can honestly remember what you ate or because the thought of writing down “An extra large Slurpee and a bag of Doritos” makes you not so hungry after all…it seems to work! But we want you to go a little deeper with it. It isn’t always about what you eat; it’s also about why you eat. So for this week’s challenge:

• Write down everything you eat and drink for an entire day or photograph everything you eat for an entire day.
• Also make note of how you felt at the beginning of each meal and the end of each meal. Were you stressed? Happy? Sad?

Once you’ve noted your nibbles, share your experience with everyone! We want to hear…did taking a picture of your fast food lunch make you depressed but a picture of your salad make you feel good? Did you eat more when you were stressed? How has this affected your thoughts on food and diet? 

Besides being entered to win the grand prize, anyone who submits an entry this week will be entered to win one of two books! We have the Mayo Clinic Diet Book and Mayo Clinic Diet Journal, a healthy and sane approach to eating, and a way to keep noting your nibbles. We also have a signed copy of Tom Venuto’s The Body Fat Solution which Rachel read and liked. This book has tons of great tips for ending emotional eating and has great questions to ask yourself about why you eat certain things.

You have until Sunday, April 11 at 11:59 am PST to report in for the challenge. Submit entries here. Good luck!

Hey peops! Rachel here with a photo collage of my fitness fanta-SY! (Say it like the Ludacris song!)

You can head over to my blog to read the full description of my dream class and also read my attempt at rap!

Hey, peops! Rachel from Shedding It here. So, the other day I was at Whole Foods and I was so tired I wanted to jump off a bridge. I grabbed some Honest Tea on a whim, and it was incredible.

Within about 10 minutes, I felt like a WHOLE NEW WOMAN. I am not even exaggerating. I was no longer cranky, I was jamming to my music in my car…I felt SO fresh and upbeat…it was such a ridiculous transformation, like something out of a commercial! I was so thrilled; I mean, my energy was so low this week, I was about one more sleepless night away from a coke habit.

So, of course, I was like, “I NEED TO GET MORE OF THIS MAGIC POTION, THIS ELIXIR OF THE GODS!” Unfortunately, Whole Foods is a 45 minute drive from my house, so I wasn’t going back for it. I came home and looked at Wal-Mart, but they didn’t have it. According to the Web site, Kroger does, so I am going to look for it this afternoon and then hopefully start injecting it into my veins. (FYI — it only has about half the caffeine that coffee does, and way less funky aftertaste and jitters.)

Since this week’s challenge was to research a food company and write about it, I took the opportunity to learn a little more about Honest Tea.

Honest Tea is made from pure tea leaves as opposed to powders or syrups and it’s certified percent organic. The ingredients are usually pretty simple — tea, honey, etc. The bottles were recently redesigned to use 22 percent less plastic and reduce the products’ carbon footprint. The teas come from around the world but the company is US based and it’s bottled here.

It was founded by two dudes in 1998 and they sold 40 percent of the company last year to Coke. This is actually when I first became aware of the company — I grabbed a bottle when I was hungover one day last summer, hit the Web site, and then read about the Coke deal. (Coke as in Coca-cola, not coke like I was considering on Wednesday afternoon before discovering this lovely alternative.) A lot of people saw this as selling out, but it might be why I won’t have to travel 45 minutes to get another bottle of it this afternoon, so…that might be a good thing.

From the site:

“Honest Tea creates and promotes delicious, truly healthy, organic beverages. We strive to grow with the same honesty we use to craft our products, with sustainability and great taste for all. We will never claim to be a perfect company, but we will address difficult issues and strive to be honest about our ability or inability to resolve them. We will strive to work with our suppliers to promote higher standards. We value diversity in the workplace and intend to become a visible presence in the communities where our products are sold. When presented with a purchasing decision between two financially comparable alternatives, we will attempt to choose the option that better addresses the needs of economically disadvantaged communities.

A commitment to social responsibility is central to Honest Tea’s identity and purpose. The company strives for authenticity, integrity and purity, in our products and in the way we do business. In addition to creating a healthy alternative beverage with a lot less sugar than most bottled drinks, Honest Tea seeks to create honest relationships with our employees, suppliers, customers and with the communities in which we do business.”

That’s definitely good food karma, but honestly, I’m more into it because of how great it made me feel. When I got home from errands, I put on my gym clothes, despite the fact that just a few hours earlier I said, “I feel way too foggy and shitty to work out today.” I went and ran three miles and did my push-ups and then made a bomb-ass salad for dinner and felt incredibly healthy and wonderful. And it was seriously all because of the tea!

HEY HEY! Rachel here. For my Culinista Challenge, I made beef stew. This is my go-to eat-all-week way of doing things, but I haven’t done it in three weeks. And I made it SUPER make-ahead and and did it in the crock pot! Hell yes for being so prepared.

Oh, and it’s got Guinness in it. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Welcome to Week #3 of the Outside the Box Challenge!

This week, it’s time to do a little healthy pre-planning. After all, how many times are our healthiest intentions dashed due to our busy schedules? You buy healthy food, but then you come home after a long day, hungry enough to chew through your own arm, and, well…suddenly you’re dialing for delivery while your pint of strawberries grows mold in the fridge.

So what’s a girl to do? Be prepared! This week’s challenge is sponsored by Culinista Kitchen, which is all about that very thing. It’s the once a week cooking technique! The Culinista bundle comes with instructional DVDs featuring chefs from from The Dish’s Dish, a weekly home chef service in NYC & LA. Each of the three videos covers 6-8 dishes and walks you through the process of menu planning, shopping, cooking, preparation, and instructions for reheating.

Outside the Box Challenge #3: The Culinista Test. Using a make-ahead approach saves time and money and helps you eat healthier, so this week, we want you to do just that! For this challenge you must prepare a meal ahead of time that you can get at least three meals out of (so the meal on day you make it, and then two more meals). It might be a big pot of soup, it might be veggies and tofu pre-diced and ready to roll for stir-fry, or it might be a double batch of healthy lasagna that you’ll reheat at work all week for lunch. And the very cool ladies at Culinista Kitchen are happily giving an entire Culinista Bundle to one of the entrants this week. The bundle includes three instructional DVDs, plus recipes, a grocery list, an eco-tote, food labels, and iPod-ready video files, which mean you can watch the entertaining vids on your morning commute and then hit the grocery store on your way home, armed with enough make-ahead knowledge to make the trip much more pleasant.

The Culinistas teach you how to menu plan, cook better, and not waste food (huge!), plus there are a lot of other great lessons that are fabulous for anyone with a busy life…i.e. everyone! Rachel actually has the bundle and has used it and is very excited one of you will soon have one too!

Everyone who enters this week will be eligible to win the Culinista Bundle, even if you’ve never entered before. And those of you who have entered for the past two weeks, this keeps you right on track to the fabulous Grand Prize! To enter, you must submit your post about what you did to prepare your healthy meal x 3 in advance by March 21 at 11:59 PM PST.

We’re loving all your challenge entries so far and can’t wait to see what you come up with for one!

Good morning! Thanks to all 74 people who entered last week’s challenge and did lots of impressive things to shock your bods. This morning we have two winners (chosen at random): Marlena and inthelabyrinth! Please shoot me an e-mail with your mailing addresses to Rachel[at]sheddingit[dot]com so I can get your awesome DVDs in the mail!

Check back later this morning for full details on this week’s challenge!

Just a reminder that today is the last day to submit your posts on your new workout method for the Core Fusion Shock Your Body Challenge! You have until midnight PST and everyone who enters this week will be eligible to win one of two Core Fusion DVDs. Have at it!

Hey guys! Rachel here!

For this week’s OTB challenge, I decided to shock my body with a good DVD, specifically Billy Blanks’ Boot Camp. This crazy motherf*cker is the guy behind Tae Bo and I bought this DVD last year. I did it all of one time in my tiny NYC apt. The jumping jacks rattled the shelves on the walls and I just didn’t have the square feet to do the kicks without breaking something. So despite my best intentions, it went into the pile with all the other workout DVDs we swear we’re going to do regularly but for some reason, just don’t.

But now that I’m a bona fide work-out-at-home girl, I figured it was time to give it another shot! So on Friday afternoon, I went for it.

Well, I’m not a huge fan of this DVD, I have to say. I think it’s a bit too intense. I’m not talking about the moves, although some of those are pretty intense too. (Soooo many push-ups! And some of the ab moves were just insanity!) It’s more like, Billy and his crew were way too intense. They were all dressed in camo and one chick in particular was just screaming way more than I’d like to hear in a workout DVD…more than I’d like to hear in a professional sporting arena, to be honest.

Did it shock my body? Um, yes. And I’ve noticed that when I change up my workouts and really do something that pushes me, I sleep like a rock that night. I love that feeling, and I definitely got it from this DVD. I was wiped out last night. Today my shoulders are more sore than anything today, probably from the push-ups and all the crazy upper body work we did.

I doubt I’ll do this DVD again, but the takeaway is that I was so happy with the kickboxing aspect of it, I decided to try a different kickboxing DVD. I asked around and ended up ordering 10 Minute Solutions Kickbox Boot Camp from Amazon. After watching the preview, I think it’s going to be a great fit. No camo, no feeling like I’m in basic training, but still enough kicking and punching to make me feel like a badass! Very excited about that!!