Cheribundi Review & Giveaway + Sandy Fundraiser

I am SO excited to announce my first giveaway and fundraiser! Read on for a review of cheribundi's delicious tart cherry juices and a chance to win a 12-pack -- and to help victims of Hurricane Sandy!

Cheribundi
After my half-marathon, my quads were very sore. Two loops of the Central Park road and its many, many hills left them destroyed. I tweeted at cheribundi, asking where I could find their cherry juice, and they were very helpful, telling me exactly where in my local Whole Foods I could find their products. I snagged one, loved it, and thanked them for their help.

The reason I was looking for tart cherry juice was that, according to health studies, tart cherry juice is "an excellent and natural way to help minimize muscle soreness." (source) For particularly strenuous exercise, it should be taken both before and after the event that is likely to cause soreness.

A few days later, cheribundi reached out and asked if I'd like a case of all their flavors to review. Um, free delicious cherry juice? Yes, please! About a week later, it arrived at my apartment. Unfortunately, I was still stuck in Washington State due to Hurricane Sandy, so I couldn't get my hands on the juice until I got back on November 1.

I immediately started trying out the different kinds of juices. I've mentioned before that I don't like to review things that I don't like. If I am offended by a shop's service or find a workout to be dangerous in some way, I would likely mention it, but I'm not going to dedicate a post to putting down a product, gym, or store simply because I didn't like it.

With that said, I was so happy that I honestly liked all of the juices and could happily write a review of cheribundi's products.

Here's what cheribundi has to say about its products:
Our proprietary juicing process, which was developed with Cornell University, bottles all of the good nutrients of tart cherries rather than boil them away. The phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals in cheribundi will keep you feeling great and living life to the fullest. After our cherries are harvested, they're processed gently so that when you drink cheribundi it's like eating the cherries straight off the tree. Our juice is never from concentrate, cheribundi is all-natural and orchard-fresh tasting.

Our Tru Cherry juice packs fifty cherries into a short 8oz bottle. (We know because we counted them.) From there we add just enough water and apple juice to make it palate-perfect. Of course, to create the benefits of Skinny Cherry we decrease the cherries slightly and sweeten with natural Stevia. To get the benefits of Whey Cherry into a bottle, we add whey protein.

Our tart cherries are harvested at the peak of ripeness to capture as much of the bright cherry color as possible. They taste better and have more powerful phytonutrients than other superfruits. That includes the trendy pomegranate, the acai berry, grapes or blueberries. Rich with nutrients, tart cherries can help you recover from exercise, sleep better, and in general, live life to the fullest because you feel better. The Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity rating for cheribundi is higher than other juices - that means our juice has a better ability to absorb and neutralize free radicals.

The Review

This is my favorite of the cheribundi flavors. It's 130 calories of deliciously sweet and sour tart cherry juice. There's a bit of apple juice to cut the sourness of the cherries, but it's purely cherry and apple juice.

I also really liked the Skinny Cherry, although its taste is not quite as intense; it's 65% juice because it uses stevia to naturally sweeten and water to cut the calories to 90.

 

I love a good ginger kick in my juice, so I also am a big fan of the ginger cherry juice. Again, it's 100% juice -- cherry, apple, and ginger juice. I love the spicy edge that the ginger adds to the normal tang of the cherry juice.

This protein-enhanced juice is a great post-workout drink since it adds protein for muscle building to the muscle recovery benefits of tart cherry juice. The drink is slightly grainy tasting because of the whey protein, but the tastiness of the cherry juice compensates for it.

Confession: I don't love chocolate. Don't get me wrong, I can get down with a great flourless chocolate cake, and I'm never going to turn down a fudgy brownie (I will, in fact, inhale it), but chocolate isn't my favorite flavor ever. So I just didn't love this drink. The cacao adds a nice depth to the juice, but it still has that slightly grainy taste that the whey cherry has without the benefit of 8 grams of protein. If you're a chocolate lover I'd try this one out, but for me it just wasn't my favorite.

I have definitely noticed less muscle soreness since I started drinking these. Call it the placebo effect, but it seems to be working! Plus, they're a great natural dessert because I love the sweet and sour taste as a close to my meal.

The Fundraiser
The recovery from Hurricane Sandy is ongoing. The destruction was horrific and very, very real. I know we tend to think the news media overplays things in order to gain viewership, but having seen candid photos from friends and fellow bloggers, the devastation in many areas was absolutely terrible. If you've read posts from bloggers like Megan or Ashley, natives of Staten Island and New Jersey, respectively, then you know how bad it is. Our fellow citizens need our help.

I've donated to a local organization and the Red Cross, but I would like to give more to support Hurricane Sandy victims. I feel so incredibly lucky that my little New York family escaped Sandy unscathed.

After speaking with Megan and Ashley, I settled on two local organizations to which I'll donate the proceeds of this giveaway. I am going to donate half of the total amount raised to the Stephen Siller Foundation, a local Staten Island organization, and half to the New Jersey Relief Fund.

The Giveaway
Cheribundi has generously offered to give another pack full of their delicious juices to the winner of my giveaway, so you can taste the different types and decide on your favorite as well. Here's how the giveaway will work:

• (1) You get one entry simply by commenting on this post and answering the question, "do you have a favorite pre- or post-workout snack or drink?"
• (2) You can get one additional entry if you tweet about this giveaway and comment with your tweet and Twitter handle here.
• Please tweet: "I just entered a #giveaway to win a 12-pack of @cheribundi from @jensbestlife and helped donate to #SandyRelief http://bit.ly/YL8M4m"
• (3) You can help, too!! You'll get extra entries for donating to my fundraising page!
• 1 additional entry for donating $5
• 2 entries for donating $10
• 3 entries for donating $15
• 4 entries for donating $20
• 5 entries for donating $25

Here's how you're helping just by leaving a comment and entering the giveaway!

• I'll match each entry dollar for dollar, up to $50 for the first 50 individual entries. 
• My parents have been kind enough to agree to match this amount, for a maximum donation of $100 from us. 
• REMEMBER: you can still enter if there are more than 50 individual entries. I simply won't match your entry with $1.

Please note -- the beneficiary is "me" because I cannot split the funds between two organizations otherwise. Rest assured that I will donate half the funds to both organizations and will post a screen cap of the donation receipt once I make the donations so you know nothing shady is happening.

The winner will be randomly chosen after the giveaway closes on November 14, 2012, giving you a week to enter!

Question: do you have a favorite pre- or post-workout drink or snack?

I was not compensated for this post by Cheribundi. I received only a free pack of their juices to review. All opinions are my own.

Cal Naturale Svelte Yoga Class w/ Kristin McGee

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of taking a yoga class with Kristin McGee at Reflections Yoga near Times Square. The event was sponsored and hosted by Cal Naturale Svelte, a USDA Certified Organic protein shake, and also promoted Kristin's new DVD, S3: Strong, Sexy + Svelte (which I just bought for my mom's birthday, so I'll post later on with her review of it!).

(source)

The Class
Kristin was SO sweet, but that didn't stop her from putting together a totally kick-ass yoga class. A lot of strength training work was melded into the yoga flow, so we did things like "yoga burpees" where you went through the following flow: (1) chair pose, (2) jump out to plank, (3) lower to chaturanga but then rise up again, in a sort of yoga push-up, (4) hop back to the front of the mat, (5) lower to chair, then (6) stand up -- before doing it several times over again! We also completed lunges while in Warrior 1 and flowed through a long series of balancing poses on one leg.

yes, I was a dork and asked for a picture with her

I loved the class and Kristin's energy. She was so positive and down to earth, and she had a great sense of humor, telling us that we had 10 more yoga burpees to do, then laughing, "I'm totally kidding" (thank goodness). Of course, I can't lie -- I'm totally biased about this because it turns out, Kristin is from Idaho originally. As a born-and-raised Washington State girl, I have a big soft spot for people from the Pacific Northwest. Dare I say Kristin gets some of her sunshine-y personality from growing up under clouds? Trust me, you have to manufacture your own sun when you grow up in Washington, Oregon, or Idaho...

Kristin is a yoga and Pilates instructor who has produced many different DVDs and worked with celebrities like Tina Fey (squee!), Steve Martin, and Bethenny Frankel (she leads Bethenny's DVD, Body By Bethenny, alongside Bethenny). She's also a HEALTH Magazine Fitness Editor.

the class set-up -- we got to keep the mats, which say "hello beautiful."

Cal Naturale Svelte

gotta love these names!
(source)

Cal Naturale Svelte is a protein shake that is USDA Certified Organic, vegan, and really, really tasty! I don't like most pre-made protein shakes, but I really like this one. I hadn't bought it at Whole Foods because the only size there was the 15.9oz shake, which is 260 calories. It just seemed like it would be a meal replacement, so I wasn't sure where I'd fit it into a meal.

However, now the shake comes in an 11oz size, and it's perfect! The 11oz container is 180 calories and has 5g of fiber, 11g of protein, and 6g of sugar (which, considering how tasty it is, is pretty low). It's a soy-based, stevia-sweetened product.

samples and information were laid out when we arrived

The chocolate flavor is decent, but the stand-outs are the french vanilla and the cappuccino (the chai flavor wasn't available to sample and we didn't get any to take home with us, sadly, but it's probably a good thing since I'm currently obsessed with chai and would have chugged them all in an afternoon). I think there's a bit of an aftertaste to the chocolate, which is why I don't love it like the french vanilla and cappuccino.

This afternoon, I mixed the french vanilla with 1/2 cup pumpkin pie mix and 4 ice cubes for a delicious fall-themed pre-run protein boost. It was delicious!

I think these shakes would be great as quick snacks on the go (grab a cup of ice because they're best chilled) or as bases for making your own shakes.


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I was not compensated for this post. I received an invitation to the event (where I received some samples, a Cal Naturale Svelte t-shirt and yoga mat, and a free class) after being one of the first seven people to comment on Kristin's facebook post announcing the event.

Kick the (soda) can to the curb!

Soda is everywhere. It's at every work meeting, in every cafeteria, in the vending machine before class, it's the most bang-for-your-buck option at the movie theater (where the buck doesn't go very far to begin with). And when you need caffeine, I feel like diet coke is the most frequently turned-to option.

I think most people know that regular soda is a diet-killer. I'm not on a "diet" so much as I just try to eat healthy as a general rule, but that means that regular soda has no place in my day. But diet soda has 0 calories so it has to be fine, right?

Actually, no. Diet soda is absolutely terrible for you. Here are some reasons why...

Diet soda confuses your body, which can lead to more weight gain.
It doesn't make much sense at first, so you have to understand what happens when your body gets fake sugar like aspartame. It thinks it's received the molecular parts of sugar, but it hasn't -- this leads your body to crave that sugar and feel hungrier. By drinking soda, you make yourself more likely to crave food, and especially the sugary things that you probably don't want to be craving if you're drinking diet soda!

Bloat, anyone?
Not everyone is affected by fake sugar in the same way, but the combination of fake sugar and carbonation in sugar can wreak havoc on your formerly svelte waistline. Fake sugar--the kind that's in sugar-free gum and soda--can have very negative effects on your digestion and can lead to major bloating. That combined with the carbonation (the bubbles) in soda can cause major bloating. What's the point of not eating the sugar if you can't show off the waistline?


Aspartame might not even be safe for human consumption.
Sure, this one is a bit alarmist, but plenty of studies have found problems with aspartame that suggest it's not something people should be consuming on a regular basis. For example, "of the 166 studies felt to have relevance for questions of human safety, 74 had Nutrasweet industry (those who make aspartame) related funding and 92 were independently funded. One hundred percent of the research performed by the company who makes aspartame confirmed aspartame's safety, whereas 92% of the independently funded research found problems with consuming aspartame" (source).


There is such a thing as too much caffeine...
I'm sure most of us have powered through days and weeks (and months and years...) where we weren't getting enough sleep using caffeine. But there is such a thing as too much caffeine, and you're way more likely to "overdose" on it when you're drinking it in a sweet diet soda can instead of in a coffee cup. Plus, caffeine is a diuretic, meaning it does not hydrate you like liquids such as water do, and instead dehydrates you. And guess what's terrible for your skin? Being dehydrated.


What to drink instead?
Once you kick the diet soda habit, you'll probably wonder why you were ever addicted in the first place because there are so many great alternatives. I'm a huge iced tea drinker now, especially in the summer!

• Sugar-free iced tea
• Flavored water (throw some lemons and chopped up strawberries into a pitcher of ice water)
• Green tea
• Seltzer water
• Vegetable juice (very low in calories if you aren't throwing in tons of fruit)

What's one of your favorite soda replacements? Have you kicked the habit or are you holding on to that soda bottle?