Blog Posts by Lucy Danziger, True to my SELF, SELF Magazine

The week that just ended was a whirlwind of presentations and travel, all of it fun and all of it exhilarating. I truly love being busy, and the finish line (literally) for me was a triathlon on Sunday morning, before the whirlwind began again, this time in L.A.

First, the tri. It is called the Gold Coast Triathlon and it took place in Port Washington, New York, and was the first real race of my season. (I don't count Miami since I hadn't trained for that one.) This race was the first one on my new bike (a Felt carbon fiber black-and-yellow sleek machine I nicknamed the Hornet) and after a couple of months of being coached in better swimming and running technique, I wanted to do a personal best. And guess what? I actually won my age group, by a nice margin of eight minutes. Before this day I had never done better than fifth. In fact, I got fifth almost every time, no matter how much I trained or how little. I could never punch through to a higher finish. Now maybe the four

Read More »from True to my SELF: Triathlon triumph!

OK, now that I was emboldened to try the keratin hair relaxing treatment in front of all of you (if you want to know how that went, look here, here, here and here-P.S., I am still loving the results!), I am ready to branch out.

It occurs to me that I could probably share with you all a whole slew of "beauty challenges" and the frizzy out-of-control hair one is now pretty well tucked away. So it's on to...skin.

The honest and sad truth is that my skin is combination, but not in the way everyone says, oily here, dry there (though it's that also). No, sad confession: It's combination in the sense of having pimples and wrinkles at the same time. Used to be the pimples were the biggest problem, but now the wrinkles are. Still, I am not one to slather on creams willy-nilly, for fear of clogging pores and causing a breakout (I just started to type freakout...the two are not so far apart in my head). I do think I am prone to drying everything out in fear of a pimple, so instead

Read More »from True to my SELF: My favorite skin care finds!

Yesterday I did something I've never done before, or at least not since high school: I acted! As an extra, on All My Children. Okay, technically it shouldn't have been acting since I was playing myself, but I had lines, blocking and scenes with the principal actresses, at the beauty company they run, Fusion. It was a total blast, and different from morning TV or the live appearances I usually do.

All the fabulous Fusion girls! From Left to Right: Melissa Claire Egan plays Annie Lavery, Amanda Baker plays Babe Carey, Rebecca Budig plays Greenlee Smythe, Alicia Minshew plays Kendall Slater, and Chrishell Stause plays Amanda Dillon.

One difference is no matter how often I have appeared on the Today Show or the View or GMA, I have never gotten so much EXCITEMENT from colleagues and others about a TV appearance. Everyone, from the production layout person who is a devotee of the show to the health editor who TiVos it every day, could NOT believe I was getting to go on their Read More »from True to my SELF: I'm going to be on All My Children!

Went to a wonderful, joyous and celebratory dinner last night with the senior SELF team to congratulate everyone on a great first half of the year. We reached a new milestone in the history of the magazine, which is to say we broke 6 million readers and the average age of our reader is a healthy 35. On top of that we were nominated for a National Magazine Award, had healthy ad-sales growth and generally are producing a magazine we can all be proud of. The team is amazing, and I make a point to thank them for their incredible hard work and dedication on a regular basis.

Of course along with that comes wine, delicious food and dessert. Today I had to get up early for an 8 A.M. meeting with my corporate bosses and even after a 6 A.M. run with Jenny in Central Park and my usual cup of joe, I was feeling a little puffy and gross.

My new way to deal with this: Eat breakfast, have a banana and keep pumping the coffee. Turns out the potassium of the banana counteracts some of the sodium

Read More »from True to my SELF: Feeling puffy! Banana and coffee time

Call me superficial, call me acquisitive. I don't care. The truth iscute workout clothes have always gotten me excited to get out of bed and get out there. The same is true of music, but after awhile even my favorite tunes aren't enough to renew my vigor and get me going. But as the spring weather arrives, the cherry blossoms are blowing in the wind and I want...new, bright, colorful and well-cut workout clothes to run in, Spin in and swim in. For this, I turn to our amazing fitness market editors at SELF, and also my favorite neighborhood running store, Urban Athletics. We all have (or hopefully have) a favorite kind of workout gear. For me it's simple: tops that are colorful and have a detail or two that set them apart, like a front zip...

or a great pattern...

or a lightweight, breathable fabric.

The best have all three. Me? I don't love showing the midriff (unless it's over 90 degrees), so I choose a top that covers the abs. I also require flattering

Read More »from Workout gear that gets me out of bed

Over the weekend a couple of people said, "I saw you on TV!" Now, that usually would be a simple exchange, but this past Friday I happened to be on two different networks, on two very different topics. I had taped The View the day before and we did a very upbeat and high-energy segment about the Healthy Beauty Awards, the best beauty products introduced in the previous 12 months as chosen by our 855 reader testers. (They volunteered to do this work and were chosen from a bigger group of 16,000 who wanted the job!) But earlier that day, on the Today show, I appeared next to the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Cynthia Bulik, on the topic of disordered eating-in other words serious, self-destructive and unhealthy behavior. We found out, in a study of more than 4,000 women that SELF conducted in partnership with UNC, that 75 percent of American women have some kind of unhealthy behavior when it comes to food and body image. A

Read More »from True to my SELF: The Healthy Beauty Awards and The Disorder Next Door

Now that a judge has ruled that, in New York City, calorie counts must be posted alongside prices in restaurants, a few reactions have bubbled up: One is that people will be confused. Another is that they just won't want to know. A third, which is mine, is this: My thighs are going to feel the true effects, so what I don't know will hurt me. Bring on the calorie counts. If I still choose to eat the Pizzeria Uno Chicago Classic Deep Dish Personal Pizza for 2,310 calories, then that's my big indulgence for the day. In fact, it's more than my entire calorie allotment for the day!

I don't really obsess about how many calories I eat. When I was younger and books came out showing calorie counts for everything, I remember carrying one around for a while. But they never told the whole story, since I would only look up foods like green peppers and try to not think about the true calorie killers like chocolate ice cream in a sugar cone.

In fact, there only a few things anyone needs to

Read More »from Calories on menus? Bring 'em on!

Flew to Miami on a lark to do the South Beach Triathlon, the first time the event has ever been held, and had the best time at any race I have ever entered. Not because I was ready for it (I was only half trained and hadn't been a pool three times since 2007!), but because it was just a great celebration of living an active, fit, healthy lifestyle, and the chance to see a little sunshine after a long, gray-sky spring. Just to get into shorts and a bathing suit top for the event was treat enough after wearing three layers every time I went out to run all winter!

Now, here were nearly 1,200 fit, happy, healthy people gathered for what felt like an unofficial kickoff for the season of outdoor activities to come. Hello, hot weather! I thought. Plus: I want a body to match!

The players:
The event promised to be fun: Olympic gold medal swimmer Dara Torres, who is going for her fifth Olympic gold medal this year, was swimming the half mile as part of a relay, but for her this

Read More »from True to my SELF: Triathlon fun