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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
The best part by far was the opportunity to meet in person many of the bloggers that I’ve been following or have started to develop a friendship with over the past couple of months - Erica, Jess, Michele, Jessica, Cat, Maria, Charlotte, Amy, FatBottomSlim, Jen and I know that I’m missing others! Plus, finally getting to meet Kelly Olexa, the Founder and CEO of Fitfluential, and Miz - two absolutely amazing and inspiring women! I also got to hang out with Melissa, a friend of mine who I met through my Mommy’s group 5 years ago!
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| Me and Erica. She created the beautiful necklace I’m wearing and is even sweeter in person than I imagined. |
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| Cat and Maria are even more adorable in person. |
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
The event was set up on the second floor of the Metropolitan Pavilion. As you entered, you had the chance to chat and mingle and check out the sponsor booths along the perimeter of the space.
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
Betty Wong, Editor and Chief of FITNESS Magazine, and Mia Hamm opened up the event. Mia Hamm!! She is one of the best female athletes ever and super sweet. She was there with the nonprofit organization Grain Food Foundation which is dedicated to advancing the understand of the important role of grains in a healthful diet. She took pictures with everyone and signed a mini soccer ball. Of course, unlike Michele who went before me and asked Mia to sign the ball to her son, when I was asked, I promptly answered, “No, please make it out to Christine.”
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| Photo courtesy of Michele. |
The event itself included a series of panels of experts sharing the latest news and info about nutrition, health, beauty and fashion. Here are some highlights from the event.
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Health, shared some of the lessons he’s learned along his one year journey to improve his health and mind. He was hilarious and really fun. Some of the lessons he shared were:
- Respect your older self. If you keep your older self in mind – that you wish for a good life for yourself when you are older – you will respect treat yourself better NOW.
- Embrace contextual exercise. Fit exercise and fitness into your daily life activities.
- Noise is detrimental to health as it causes stress levels to rise. People who work in noisy environments have 2-3 time higher rate of heart disease. He wears his noise canceling headphones, even at home…with his three boys. That might be a strategy I might have to take up!!
- Sitting is the new smoking. It’s horrible for your health.
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
Keri Gans, Tanya Zuckerbrot and FITNESS Nutrition Editor spoke about the real deal on carbs, cleanses and caffeine.
- Carbs don’t make you fat. Excess carbs make you fat. Think of your body as a car. if you fill your car up with too much gas, it overflows. If you fill your body with too many carbs, it turns to excess fat.
- Cardio is not the answer to weight loss. Nutrition is the major factor. Nutrition and sleep.
- There are no real health benefits to cleanses. It’s not a long term solution because they are missing so many nutrients and micro-nutrients.
- Cleanses can be expensive. Better to spend that same money on real, healthy food, vegetables and fruits.
FITNESS Fashion Director Argy Koutsothanasis shared some tips to extend the use of your gym clothes. FITNESS staff modeled some cute outfits!
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
The afternoon ended with a panel that included Fitfluential folks on How to Turn Your Blog into a Business. I must say, Kelly Olexa, Carla Birnberg, Julie Fagan and Tina Haupert rocked this session and shared some really great tips about blogging and freelancing. They took the time to answer many questions from audience members. It was a packed house!!
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
The 3 things that I took away included:
- For freelancers, start by approaching local papers, magazines, etc. and think outside of the box. Consider companies and others that might have a blog and need content. (Julie)
- Pitch something that only YOU can write. The magazine/paper/etc. will come back to you because of your voice. (Miz)
- Reputation will follow you. (Kelly)
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
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| Photo: Steven Meyer (courtesy of FITNESS Magazine) |
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| Ridiculous swag bag. My shoulders nearly fell off getting this stuff home. Dream come true – another pair of pink sneaks!! |
I love that photo of you! (image: 4587) Looks like a great event. So jealous!
would have loved to be at the speaker event. so great to see them all up on that stage.
And is Tubura the new thing? sounds fun. We’ll need to try it sometime when we meet up.
Thanks for the recap!
It was a ton of fun and it was so great to hear Kelly, Miz, Tina and Julie speak. They were so great. I hadn’t heard of Tabura before yesterday but looked really fun. We will definitely have to try it!
Super Super Super cool… thanks for all the photos and the links to people that you’ve met. Some pretty awesome and stellar folks there. You are going to come back like the bionic woman… BIGGER, FASTER, STRONGER!
Thank you! So glad that you found some cool new people to follow. At this point after 2 ACL reconstructions, my knee totally IS bionic.
What a fun event! It looks like you had a great time and learned a lot! Win/win!
Thanks Missy! I was really great. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that this was my first blogging event
UNREAL!
I am so glad that you got to go and meet all those terrific people!
Maybe next year I’ll attend? Did you buy tickets? How does that work?
Seriously unreal. Kind of felt like I had to pinch myself multiple times during the day. I was really blown away by the people that I met. How could everyone be the nicest and sweetest person?? Yes! You should attend next year. It was by invitation (free) to health and fitness bloggers, many of whom are Fitfluential Ambassadors but many who were not.
This looks like a totally unreal event — I’m so jealous!! haha. I am SO glad you got to join in the FFA fun though, how awesome of a day must it have been!
You know, you FFA peeps are pretty cool I must admit
They will have to do Boston next and I’d totally go!!
So nice to have met you, it was an awesome event. Great recap!!!
It was so great to meet you too!! I knew I was forgetting some folks in my recap. So great to finally put a face to a name. Hope to see you again soon!
Your recap is awesome, Christine =) =) I love all the photos you got – I am so mad at myself for not taking a single pic of me with anyone (well, except Mia!)…SO great to see you!!! xoxo
I’m sad I didn’t take a picture of us! Even though I toted around my big camera, I still didn’t take many pictures. So good to see you too! xoxo
I had goosebumps reading this! I could feel your energy and excitment!! This was meant for you! And how cool are all of those photos you are in?! Mia Hamm?! Are you kidding me?! My girls may want your autograph just from getting to be in a photo with her!!
And that swag bag…S.W.E.E.T!!!!
So glad you had such a great time! Can’t wait to share this same type of enthusiasm with you next week at #BBCPhilly!!!
I cannot wait to see you my friend! #BBCPhilly is going to be so much fun! The Fitness Magazine event was pretty incredible. I kind of was star stuck when meeting Mia, not going to lie. One week!!
I wish I could just round up all of you at the event and we could do this every day. It was so fabulously put on. I was amazed! The amount of stuff we received is unreal. So thankful!
That would be pretty fabulous, huh? Such an amazing group of people, so well put together, such great info and products to check out – unbelievable really. I’m sorry that we didn’t get a chance to meet but hopefully the next time
I would totally have Mia Hamm sign the soccer ball to me as well and not my son
hee hee. Glad I’m not the only one!!
Looks like it was totally fun – jealous of you guys!!
It was really fun and as a newish Fitfluential Ambassador, it was great to be able to go to this event. I get it now and what this is all about. I have no doubt that there will be more events in the future and hope to meet you in person!!
It was such a fun event!!! Where did you get all the Steven Meyer photos??
It was a great event!! And you are a rockstar for heading straight from this to #RBKFITBLOG at Reebok!!
Wow, what an awesome event!!! SO FUN and check out that swag!! And I love the takeaways from these sessions, like sitting is the new smoking and cleanses are expensive and better to spend on quality foods! SO TRUE!!! Great recap, and you look great!!
Right?? Those takeways were so great because they are so simple and really just common sense. The swag was unreal and I really and truly am so grateful for all the amazing sponsors.
I’m so late on commenting but I really loved meeting you all. I’m actually sad that we didn’t get to hang out any longer. Wish I lived in NY so we can hang more, agh!!! You guys are all amazing and I loved your recap