BENEFITS OF DARK CHOCOLATE

Hi again fitfam! Hope you had an amazing morning full of energy and positivism! Are you ready to discover something new today?

A few days ago my dearest friends and blog colleague Ema, dedicated a post on the benefits of drinking green tea. (If you haven´t read it yet I strongly recommend you to do so! I guarantee that within 5 minutes you will be going to the nearest store to buy some.) Today, I am coming back to you to talk about the benefits of the best product that Mother Nature gifts us with, used in cakes, sweets and desserts…what is this mysterious food? DARK CHOCOLATE!

Chocolate is our top 1 comfort food, a sure–fire stand-by in times of stress, a reliable source of consolation when life has let us down, and a mood-enhancer and romance-inducer in more positive circumstances. But it is really healthy? It really depends on the kind of chocolate you choose and the quantity you eat; forget about white chocolate and the ones filled with cookies, nuts or any other caloric substances, and eat only one or two ounces per serving. The pure, dark chocolate, with a cocoa percentage of around seventy per cent or more is the one which is really good for us, being beneficial for the heart, circulation and brain and an extra help to fight against autism, obesity and diabetes.

Dark chocolate is packed with beneficial minerals such as potassium, zinc and selenium, and a 100g bar of dark chocolate provides 67% of the RDA of iron. It has also been shown that consuming cocoa reduces levels of “bad” cholesterol and raises the levels of the “good” one lowering the risk of a cardiovascular disease. Moreover, and even though hard to believe, it has been proofed that chocolate can help you loose weight. A recent studio showed that a small square of good chocolate melted on the tongue 20 minutes before a meal triggers the hormones in the brain that say “I´m full”, decreasing the amount of food you will subsequently consume. The same happens when you eat a small piece after your meal, it will make you feel satiated and even reduce subsequent snacking.

Here comes the final and best benefit of all! Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, (PEA), which is the same chemical substance that your body releases when you´re falling in love, so PEA encourages your brain to release feel-good endorphins. In other words, you will feel happier and more cheerful!

So now you know my dear readers, never feel guilty when eating dark chocolate, as long as you do it with moderation, as it will benefit your body and soul in many ways. I hope you enjoyed reading the post as much as I did writing it, have an amazing day and never forget to visit our site and see what news your 2 beloved fit brunettes have to tell you.

Photo by: Clean Indulgence

Juliet

WEARING MAKE-UP IN THE GYM?

Hi again my dearest readers and welcome again to a new week of posts in 2fitbrunettes! Are you those kind of girls who cover themselves in make-up to train? Or you prefer a natural, “I woke up like this” image? Today in the blog we will discuss if it´s good to wear make-up whilst exercising.

It is true that we girls always, and with this I mean ALWAYS, want to look pretty and attractive whichever place we go to. However, I personally don´t believe the gym or wherever you go to train should be one of them. I personally never apply make-up when I am going to train; I prefer a fresh face, as I know it will soon be covered in sweat.

It has been said many times that wearing make-up meanwhile practicing sport is not good for our skin, but why do I still se dozens of women wearing full faces of carefully – applied cosmetics?

Mascaras and eyeliners? – Beware with those! You will probably find your eyeliner smudged all over the side and lower part of your eye and the mascara running down your cheeks by the end of the session.

What about foundation and Powder? – These are for sure the worst allies you can choose. Not because they will make you look like a panda bear past half an hour, but because they will not allow your pores to transpire properly while exercising.

When we are working out and therefore our body is starting to feel hot, several things happen to our skin. We first start sweating, and because of this our pores relax and enlarge there is an act of relaxing and enlarging the pores. So, what happens if your pores are opening and you have a thick layer of foundation over it? Easy answer, maybe not that same day, but over the time your skin will thank you with a face full of spots, blackheads and uneven skin texture.

Now comes the typical question….What if I HAVE to wear on make-up because I know I will see someone special? (We all know the stories about the gym crushes…) If this is the case, I recommend you to use a light, oil-free, tinted moisturizer so that it´s not as heavy. The most important thing is to remove the products from your skin, preferably with make-up remover, before your body cools down and your pores tighten up again, trapping the make-up and impurities in the opening of the pore and leading to breakouts.

Hope you enjoyed the post and most importantly that you learn something new with it! Never forget to keep tuned and leave your comments if you wish so!

Photos by : WAPA & Paper Blog

Juliet.

3 ELECTRONIC DEVICES YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT DURING YOUR WORKOUT

Good morning my dear readers! Hope you are all enjoying your Saturday morning with a warm cup of coffee and an amazingly tasty and nutritious breakfast!

Today I will continue with the topic we discussed on my last post; technology and fitness. On Thursday´s post I talked to you about the apps you could use to optimize your diet and workouts, today on the contrary, I will advise you and talk about the technology items I use whilst training or practising sports.

If you are curious to know what devices cannot miss in my gym bag keep on reading!

Number 1 and most important electronic device without which I simply cannot workout is my phone. Now you will ask yourself, is Juliet one of those girls that goes to the gym to sit on the bicycle and text for 1 hour? The answer is clearly NO! The only reason why I need my phone during my sport sessions is for music, under no circumstance I can train without music. The truth is that until 1 year ago I was still using my Ipod as a music device when I was practising sport, it was small and easy to carry. Unfortunately it got broken so I had to move on and use my smartphone instead. I use an app called Souncloud where I have different playlists of gym music that help me to keep motivated and never loose the rhythm while exercising. The down part about using this app is that as long as it is reproducing music it will require internet connection, so it will consume a lot of the phone´s power and capacity. Another way of getting music in your phone is downloading it, there are apps which allow you to do it, some examples are Mp3 Download, BitTorrent, Download Music 4Shared…

The second device I always take with me to my workouts is the heart rate monitor. For those of you who have never heard of this item, it is an electronic device that allows us to measure our heart rate in real time, in other words, how many beats per minute our heart is producing. The device consists of two parts: a watch that you will wear on your wrist where you will be able to read all the information about your body when this one is in movement: your heart rate, consume of calories per hour and minute, the amount of grams of fat you have burnt, the duration of your activity…and a kind of elastic belt that you place under your chest. This elastic belt is what, in contact with your heartbeat, sends all the information about the body activity to the screen of the watch. The only thing you need to do before starting to use it is place each thing on its corresponding place and introduce your age, weight, height and gender on the watch, it is the only way of guaranteeing an accurate result as everybody is different and so there performance while practising sport. The heart rate monitor I use is a very simple and cheap model bought in Decathlon from the brand Domyos. It only costs 20eur and works perfectly fine, I strongly recommend you to try it!

The last item that always comes with me is my wireless headphones. This year for Christmas my parents gave me a pair of Monster iSport Freedom, and now I can´t live without them! Trust me, practising sport with wireless headphones is the best thing ever! You don´t have to worry about always having the phone near you to keep the headphones connected and most importantly you will not have to waist time untying the annoying knots. You will also be able to move freely and the headphones won´t move from their place. The price of my headphones is around 120 to 200eur, but their comfort and sound in value for what they cost could not be better.

Hope you enjoyed today´s post and above all found it useful! Have a lovely Saturday and weekend.

Photo by: The Technews

Juliet.

 

Zoë Kravitz, YSL newest “it-girl”

“Introducing the new muse of YSL Beauty US: Zoë Kravitz. The coolest icon on instagram who you should follow and emulate from right now. We are very excited to share these news with our fans, but we do not want to reveal all the surprises of this new collaboration. Spoiler: A video, some music and many make-up looks”. -YSL

YSL announced on the 3rd May 2016 that the triple threat talent ,Zoë Kravitz, who acts, sings, and models – would be her newest muse.

Rock runs through her veins and her transgressive and daring image and attitude has become one of the most desirable of social networks. Daughter of the american singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and actor Lenny Kravitz and actress Lis Bonet, Zoe Kravitz arrives to the fashion world through the front door and surely will become an icon of the rocker style.

She has corresponded to the announcement praising the brand: “YSL Beauty has always been one of my favourite brands. Their ability to combine the chicest of style with a raw edge has always been to me one of the best ways to express yourself through fashion and beauty. Nothing is forced, nothing is fake, but everything is bold, strong and unafraid. I´m very excited to work with this legendary and timeless company”.

Zoë is 27 years old and was completely unknown to us until YSL chose her as their muse. Analyzing her style, we could define it as a perfect blend of the 90s grunge, 70s glam and the most contemporary rock style. People have seen her around with long dreadlocks as her father did in times of “American Woman”, also with Dominican-style braids which combine perfectly with her arm and finger tattoos and piercings.

She knows how to mix casual style garments with others of very expensive firms. She declared her favourite brands are Chanel, Dior and Balmain, but also loves and even looks amazingly good in a scruffy tracksuit, sneakers and an XL denim jacket. Her “must – have” are boyfriend jeans and crop tops, but also the lady-like tight dresses and flared skirts.

Her role will include sharing her favourite make-up tips and appearing in a new video Project that will showcase how musicians around the world use makeup as an art form, “Before the Light”.

Eclectic, fresh and 100% natural: so is the daughter of rock star and actress who is courting the most glamorous brands in the planet like Yves Saint Laurent.

Photo by: FASHION BOMB daily

Juliet

BALENCIAGA; THE BRAND OF TIMELESS DESIGNS

Cristobal Balenciaga was known as a perfectionist, especially when it came to sleeves. Blume says, “It was perhaps a sign of real personal attention if you were one of the rare clients that he had lunch with, and at the end of the lunch he ripped out [your] sleeve and reset it.”

Cristóbal Balenciaga was born in 1985 in Getaria, Spain, in 1895 and died in 1972 at the age of 77. In 1917, when he was only 22, he established his first fashion house in San Sebastián, Spain, where he gave start to a lifetime of creative, innovative and radical designs. With the purpose of celebrating the centenary anniversary of the brand, the MOMU, (Mode Museum), which is one of the best fashion museums in the world set in Belgium, is holding an exposition named Game Changers. For the first time, Balenciaga´s most iconic creations face contemporary fashion proposals such as the ones of Miyakes, Kawakubos, Yamamoto and Margiela; an incredibly unusual duel from which Balenciaga succeeds triumphantly and provides his ideas with a new dimension. The exhibition started on the 18^th March 2016 and will remain until the 14^th August 2016.

The exhibition proposes a path through the history of fashion of the 20^th Century through the pioneer designers that reformulated the feminine silhouette breaking with the prevailing constrictive hourglass shape and experimenting with abstract patterns that lift off the body. Among the innovative contributions of Madame Vionnet and Coco Chane during the decades of the 10s, 20s and 30s, and the radical proposals of the Japanese and Belgian designers in the 80s and 90s, Balenciaga emerged as the link between this chain of ideas that broke with the established fashion standards.

Already at the beginning of the 20^th century, influences from Japan such as the Kimono, and genius minds such as Paul Poiret´s, liberated women from their tight corsets. Later on in the 1920s and 30s, Vionnet and Chanel shaped this freedom with technical innovations and contemporary ideas about femininity and how women should dress. At the end of the 20^th Century (1980s & 90s), Belgian and Japanese designers such as Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons, Ann Demeulemeester and Martin Margiela explored further on the boundaries of the classic feminine silhouette opening the way for new body shapes and abstract silhouettes, proposing a new perception of what could be fashion.

Balenciaga has left his name in the history of fashion; he outstands for his innovations in the middle of the 20^th century, when he created a radically new silhouette in which the body got freedom of movement and incredible architectonic structures created a space around the body. Balenciaga´s work was a continuous exploration and experimentation with the body shape. Surely it must have not been easy to propose designs that were not prevailing in the fashion system. One of the key to his success was consistency and a certain distance with the dynamic that characterizes the fashion industry; he was not interested in surprising the public season after season, he always played around the same silhouette, renewing and perfecting it.

Along with the proposal of Game Changers, which will travel beyond Antwerp once finished, Musée Bourdelle in Paris is preparing L´oevre au noir, which will be held next spring. Balenciaga is here to stay, but it could not be less. Turning one hundred years old deserves a resounding celebration.

Photos by : Crochet Concupiscence

Juliet.

HEALTH & FITNESS APPS

Hi again my dear readers!

Today I am bringing you a new article on a theme we have never discussed before on the blog, today´s theme is: Technology and Fitness! Keep reading if you are curious on what I have to tell you!

Nowadays our smartphone has become a basic and fundamental object in our lives; we don´t use it only as a communication tool, but for entertainment, to organize our daily tasks, to know what´s going on around the world…Also mobile apps play an important role in our day – to day life, we use them to catch the bus in time, to check-in at the airport, to look at the weather…there are even women who use an app to control their menstrual cycle! So, the question here is, why don´t we also take advantage of apps to control and beneficiate our health and wellness?

It is no longer than 2 years that I have been seeing people using apps to control their daily nutrition and/or workouts, so the truth is that this is a fairly new concept. However, I believe that we can be grateful to whoever had the amazing idea of creating an app that could control your health; they are really helpful for you to keep track of your daily progress and results.

The first app I ever used to control my diet and exercise is called My Fitness Pal. This is an app initially released in 2005 which you can also find and use in your computer. MyFitnessPal is a great ally for those who follow a diet and want to control their caloric and nutrients intake of every meal. Not only it allows you to control nutrition, but also workouts, as you can type the kind of sport and duration of the activity you practised and it will tell you how many calories your burnt depending on your height, weight and age.

If I had to remark something good about the app, it is that it gives you the possibility of choosing how many Kg per week you want to loose. Day after day the app is calculating all the calories you ate and substracting the ones you burnt exercising, and depending on your values it will tell you if you have achieved your goals and lost or gained weight that day.

However, we cannot rely 100% on the app as this one has no acknowledgement of what is going on in our body, for example when we have the period, that for no reason we gain from 1 to 3 kilos of weight.

Another amazing app I sometimes use when I cannot go to the gym is 7 Minute Workout. So…yes! Just as you are guessing this is an app that provides you with a million different workouts of only 7 minutes of duration! No excuses count here…who doesn´t have 7 minutes to train? All of the workouts are guided by professionals in fitness and health who will get your heart pumping in no more than two minutes using only your body weight and a chair. The workouts are divided depending on the body part you want to work on; arms, chest, booty, legs… and you can choose between cardio, toning, or cardio + toning workouts.

I truly recommend this app to all of you; it is extremely useful for those days in which you cannot go to the gym or simply feel lazy to move from home. My advice is to do 2-3 workouts of 7 minutes. However, if you feel lazy or tired don´t torture yourself during the 1^st workout thinking that you have two more workouts to get over with, start with one and then keep on going! 7 minutes pass really fast!

This is all for today my dear friends. Hope you enjoyed the post and download these apps to try them out!

Keep tuned, on Saturday a new post coming on Technology and Fitness!

Photo by : OurTuts

Juliet.

ROBERTO CAPUCCI; ARTISTIC AND HIGH FASHION DESIGNS INSPIRED BY NATURE

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Roberto Capucci, a man known for his uniquely colourful and sculptural designs to which some have referred to as “hight art”, was born in 1930s, Rome, where he attended the Academia of Bella Arti. A few years later he became the apprentice of Emilio Schuberth, the “tailor of the stars”, a man who designed for many international stars during the 1940s and 50s.

The fashion world realised Capucci´s talent and designing innovations in 1956, when he launched Nove Gonne, called like this because of its nine-layered skirt that lifted in front and flowed in a cascade structure to the floor in the back. This dress meant a turning point in the fashion system; it was the first garment inspired by nature that received such a huge success and fame. The inspiration and enthusiasm Capucci found in nature and how he after applied it in his designs, was and still is unique. He was influenced by the calla lilies, by fire, butterflies, leafs, fruits, rain…anything that nature could produce. The Nove Gonne was in fact inspired by the coordinated and side-to-side circles created when a stone is thrown into the water.

In the decade of 60s Capucci decided to leave Italy and landed in Paris, where he started to experiment and renew his designs with new, avant-garde textures. He challenged himself creating full dresses made entirely out of woven silk ribbons with black feather cuffs and a hood, a dress covered in jade-coloured beads that glowed in the dark creating disembodied forms…he was even the first designer to use plastic in his garments, the very first piece being a clear plastic mini-dress.

In the decade of the 70s his designs followed the same aesthetic line. However, there was a bit of a twist towards traditional and handicraft patterns in his fashion after a trip to India; he started to include more rough, rigid and structural elements in a mix of rich and poor materials; precious fabrics embellished with bamboo, straw and even pebbles.

The 80s and 90s meant a clear tendence of Capucci´s designs towards avant-garde and sculptural shapes. Another remarkable fact is that he liberated himself from the constraints of the fashion world´s calendar by choosing to show his creations only once a year, when and where he wanted.

Moreover than the incredible shapes Capucci crafted, it was also about his cleverness with forms and colours. He was mixing in the same piece vivid and explosive colours such as red, pink, orange and yellow, and green and red. Other dresses presented a fascinating work of tiny pleats added one by one and molded into surprisingly flagrant ways.

His last exhibition was in 2011, Art into Fashion, where many of his designs were exposed as in the original catwalks and the influence of every piece and garment were explained.

Photo by: Kulturalmente Moda

 

Benefits of Green Tea

Green tea is considered one of the healthiest beverages on the planet,Composed by antioxidant and elements that give powerful energies to your body.Green tea improves brain function and fat loss, lowers risk of cancer and many other benefits.Many bioactive elements in the tealeaves contains large amounts of important nutrients as Polyphenols and Catechise with its function as a powerful antioxidants.Another element is the increase of fat burning and the improvement of physical performance.

If you have a look of any list for fat burning, supplement green tea will be always present, because green tea has shown the increases of fat burning boosting the metabolic rate in human controlled rates.The tea contains a small quantity of caffeine itself, which has also been shown to improve physical performance by mobilizing fatty acids from the fat issue and making them available for us as energy.Several studies shoed that this beverage leads to decreases body fat especially in the abdominal area.

A study showed in a randomized controlled trial of 240 men and women that went on for 12 weeks that they had a decrease in body fat percentage, body weight, waist circumference and abdominal fat.We also have to consider the natural antibacterial property of green tea, capable to fights bacterium of the mouth, Streptococcus mutant, helping to avoid tooth problems.Finally Green Tea takes part of one of the most frequent problem of modern life :It controls the cholesterol blood levels, preventing heart diseases.I suggest you all to insert these beverages in your daily routine, not only for all this positive aspects, but also for having a nice pit stop in your journey.

Emma.

Photo by 30 Wonderful Health and Beauty Benefits of Green Tea

 

How to accelarate your metabolism

Metabolism is the first thing which influences our body weight, the term indicates a multiple chemical processes that happen into our body, finalized to our digestion.We can talk about slow and fast metabolism.Slow metabolism involves a long digestion which come with some physical stress and the consequence of gain weight.Most of the time this situation is connected to a no balanced and a lazy style of life.How can you help your metabolism?There are few simple tricks, which can help your metabolism to go faster such as eating slowly. Eating slowly makes your stomach feel more full, so you will eat less quantity of food.In the process of eating slow you will taste food better and give a change to your body to feel satiazed faster.

The second advice I can give you is about having small quantity of food divided in snacks during the day like having breakfast, lunch then a snack in the middle of the afternoon which can be a yogurt with fruits, then having a light dinner.Extremely important is not miss meals because stimulates the metabolism of insulin and bring you to have a big dinner with the consequence of a abnormal assimilation.There are even some types of food which can helps your metabolism such as:Pepper and spices , cereals, broccoli, green tea, apples and pears.Peppers is very positive for out metabolism it can makes run our metabolism the 25 % more than the usual, it even helps to decrease sensation of hungry.Cereals like oat makes work better our organism. Broccoli are one of the elements most detoxing in the food chain because contains vitamin C , Vitamin A and even Vitamin K .Green tea is a drink which contains many fundamental elements for metabolism such as detoxing and anti-oxidant and makes our metabolism more efficient .There is a study about apples and pears made from the Rio’s university .

They tested a percentage of woman who consumed more than three pears or apples a day. Results say they loose more weight and faster than other woman’s which do not follow this healthy routine. Pears and apples are both considered two fruits, which wakes up metabolism and helps to loose weight.Therefore my suggestion is to introduce all these elements.

Emma.

Photo by Kerry Madgwick – Health and Lifestyle

Paul Poiret; the man who reinvented women´s fashion standards

The “King of Fashion” was born in 1879 in Paris with the mission of modernising women´s archaic and constricting fashion that characterized La Belle Époque. Paul Poiret started his working life as an apprentice of umbrella maker, but soon discovered his real vocation was designing; he secretly used the leftovers of fabrics to produce doll´s dresses and even managed to sell some of his sketches to a local dressmaker, he was only a teenager then.

After a few years or practicing and perfecting his skills, Poiret started to sell his designs to large couture houses in Paris. The first designer he worked for was Jacques Doucet, but his modernist approach to fashion with bright colors, fun and exotic prints and Japanese twist soon raised attention of more potential clients. Early after, he began working for the famous and prestigious House of Worth.

 1903 was the year when Poiret inaugurated his very first and own fashion house, that year was also remarkable for the immediate and huge success his kimono coat received by the public. Poiret´s unstoppable desire of change and renovation prompted an eagerness of breaking the boundaries of design and expanding his brand into fashion related areas; he launched his own furniture and perfume. With this idea, he became the forerunner of a marketing concept that today´s most important fashion brands such as Gucci, Chanel and Prada are practicing; releasing all kind of objects and goods to expand their control over the market.

Poiret not only was famous for his extravagant and dynamic designs, but also for the flamboyant and excessive themed parties he held to show off his creations. Orientalism and exoticism were key elements in Poiret´s designs, his garments presented Arabian, Persian and Japanese influences while liberating the woman´s body and inviting her to be more daring and fearless in the way she dressed. It is not necessary to point out that the change from La Belle Époque ´s restricting fashion characterized by corsets and tailoring to Poiret´s short skirts, loose tunics and kimonos, high-waisted, draped and color blocked garments wasn´t a quick and immediate change for women to accept, it took time and the promotion and support of well-established big fashion houses of the moment.

Poiret´s imagination and talent also flourished in the accessories parameter. He designed turbants, coolie-style hats, parasols and jewelled slippers to go with his oriental and exotic clothes. He was also the one who created the cloche hat, an accessory now symbolic of the Twenties, as well as the fur-trimmed coats.

Poiret´s transgressive designs remained on the hot spot until World War One. After the war new designers such as Coco Chanel entered the scene offering more high quality clothes with new approaches and innovations; his designs became officially outdated.

Poiret died in 1944 being remembered by not so many. However, he will always be in our mind for being the first modern designer who motivated a change in fashion history as well as stimulating many art movements such as Cubism and Expressionism.

Photos by: A.G Nauia Couture

Juliet.