Having trouble heaving your extra baggage through your miniscule dorm room doorway? Suitcases packed to the rim with spring wardrobe essentials may not be the only thing weighing you down. If, like me, you were throwing back one too many at the tropical tiki bar or shoveling bite after bite of home-cooked meals into your mouth, chances are that your priorities this past week did not lay with keeping up with the regimen you dutifully committed to leading up to spring break. As we turn our attention back to books as spring at F&M unfolds, we might need a few reminders to keep us on track for summer bathing suit season.
Seeking out fitness tips from various magazines and online blogs can get to be repetitive. It seems like every issue of Cosmo claims to have the best way to “Get a Flat Tummy in 4 Weeks” and ironic with your favorite fitness blog one Stumbleupon-click away from a tasty treats website. Condensing the information into diet and exercise books is promising, but so many rules seem to be squeezed between the bindings with no real justification for why we aren’t allowed to satisfy our cravings for an entire jar of peanut butter. Rules encourage binging, leading to quick results, but a difficulty in maintaining said results.
Enter Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin with their no-nonsense guide to leading a hotter, sexier, and healthier lifestyle: Skinny Bitch. Between the cover the two authors provide you with the friend everyone needs but does not want: the one who will tell you how it is, all feelings aside. The women advocate a vegan diet rid of artificial chemicals and processed products. They write a crusade against things many of us hold dear—caffeine, cheese, and meat, to name a few—but with good reason and justification. The tone throughout the book is tough-love but one cannot help but laugh at their comedic commentary on what so many of us put into our bodies on a daily basis.
While the vegan diet is certainly not for everyone, Barnouin and Freedman present the facts in a convincing manner. In college it is difficult to find healthy options at the campus dining locations, but knowledge can help young women make better decisions. A healthy lifestyle is empowering. By sticking to a few guidelines we can all become the skinny, sexy, smart b*tches we’re meant to be.
Photo from www.dietchoices.com