Me looking unimpressed at how unbelievably hungover I get 

I was going to share the designer of this dress with you…

But given the fact that my ta-tas were out the ENTIRE time, I 10/10 do not recommend

Holding up this damn dress

Uhg, getting old sucks the BIG ONE. 🍆

I literally get so hungover now, it’s not even funny.

All it takes is 4 – 5 drinks and I will be dead on the couch the next day. DED. 💀

What happened to the days of chugging the shittiest/cheapest booze I could find all night long in lethal quantities and waking up the next day and going for a light jog? Maybe a fitness class. Uhg, I was such an asshole and I didn’t even know it. 😒

My youth is gone. The days of savage hangovers are now upon us. FYI I am only 26 but when girl hits the town it makes me feel like I’m about 90.

Since I am getting more elderly by the minute, my nights on the town need to be much (MUCH) more carefully planned out.📝

Another thing is I have a pretty strict bedtime of 9 pm or so. I don’t set it but at that time I am PTFO whether I like it or not lol. 👵🏻

Over my years of experienced drinking (can I add this to my resume?) I have developed a careful blend of strategies to reduce the gravity of hangover I endure.

I cannot deal with being hungover. It’s a total waste of time, so gotta do what we can to avoid it. 

In honour of Friday 🍸 here are my top tips to avoid a hangover:

GO TO BED EARLY

Oh my god do not stay up til 4 am. You will look like a sack of balls, and you will feel like one too. You need time to rest, beauty sleep is EVERYTHING. I posted about this as one of my first ever blogs on Skinny Belle.

DONT DRINK SHITTY ALCOHOL

Get that Smirnoff AWAY from me!✋🏻The higher quality booze you are drinking, the better you will feel. So much more worth it to drink less of a higher quality alcohol. It tastes better, and ain’t nobody got time for the savage hangover that is sure to come from Polar Ice. 😷

STICK TO ONE TYPE

When I am yoloing everywhere and mixing and matching my drinks all night long I always end up with the worst stomach ache. 😩 So just decide… is tonight a tequila night? A vodka night? Pick your poison, and stick with it.

AVOID SUGAR LIKE THE PLAGUE

Okay we all love ordering festive cute drinks,🍹but you need to really consider how much sugar is in your order. Sugar is like the hangover devil. Avoid at all costs. 

EAT DINNER

Honestly, if you don’t know this one by now… stop reading my blog. We can’t be friends. Kidding, luvs u. ❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜

WATER WATER WATER

Drink this, like it’s your job. You need it. All those margaritas you are tossing back are major dehydrating you, and you will wake up looking like a raisin. Not a good scene. I do the 1 for 1 rule.

Okay sooooooo let’s say you totally failed at all of the above, and wake up with a raging hangover delivered straight from satan. 

Here is some stuff you can do to minimize your pain and suffering:

DRINK ALKA-SELTZER

Or just something fizzy. It helps reduce the nausea just a little bit. Key word: little.

EMERGEN-C PACKETS

These work too. I just like the taste, not sure about how healthy they are, but they help get my lazy bum up and going when I have over indulged.

EXERCISE

Seriously, even if you are on the verge of chundering, get up, go throw yourself in a cold pool or ocean or ideally go skiing. 🎿🏄 No matter how horrid you feel, this is basically the only way I know to make me feel better. The other morning I woke up with a raging hangover for literally no reason, I had like 4 weak drinks the night before, and I was feeling hung AF. Got myself up, went surfing, worked like magic. It probably works because you cannot just lay there wallowing in your pain anymore.

GREASY FOOD

You need juuuuuust enough grease to absorb the alcohol in  your stomach. I like to cook turkey bacon (available at Whole Foods) because it is way healthier than normal bacon AND it tastes better, in my opinion.

or….

JUST DON’T DRINK!

HAHAHHAHAHAHHA. JK. That would be so wrong.

Those are my best tips for curing the senior hangoveritis… aka the hangover that should NOT exist. If you were to ask my college-self, I would never believe this was a thing. But, alas, here we are. I am 26 and apparently 4 drinks keeps me bed-ridden the entire next day. 

Comment with your strategies to avoid a hangover! I want to know what other super secret tips and tricks are out there.

Happy Fri-Yay friends! Have a great weekend 🍻

xoxo,

Get that 🍑 LIT

YAAAASSSS! Obsessed with this workout. 💪🏻

This is one of my absolute favourite workouts to do to keep my abs and booty TIGHT AF! 💯

Designed by Braden Touche, head trainer at Four Seasons Vancouver, this workout can be done all at home with no equipment. We used some extra weight and resistance in this video, but it can be done either way. 😊

The best way to do this workout is to pause the video on the move description after watching the demo. If you hit up🎥MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL🎥you can see detailed instructions with clickable links to the right part of the video.

If you want to do the workout right from Skinny Belle (aka here 🤓), you can find the instructions written out below:

Single Leg Bridge
– Lie down with your heel close to your booty
– With one leg in the air, press into your foot on the ground and raise dat ass up into a bridge
25 reps, 2x

Bungee Kick 
– Raise one leg up and over across your midline
– Keep the rest of your body totally still
30 reps, 2x

Bicycle Crunch 
– Start in a V-sit, engage those abs
– Bring one knee and the opposite elbow together, do the other side
– Reach up and try and touch your toes
20 reps, 2x

Leg Raises
– Put your hands under your booty to keep this move slow and controlled
– Raise legs, at the top, lift your bum off the floor
15 reps, 2x

Plank Claps 
– Grab your bestie and get into two plank
– High five eachother a bunch of times
1 minute! Challenge yourself to see how long you can go for 🙂

Hope you love this workout as much as I do! 😁If you try it at home, send me a message! I want to know your thoughts and feedback. 💌

Thank you to James Manzano for the dope edit! 🎥

xoxo,

Shot taken in Malibu, by moi

Counting calories is something I have tried a few times, and in my not-so-humble opinion, it is seriously not good for you. 🙅🏼

Let me start by saying, if there is a diet, eating fad (ahem, looking at all you “gluten intolerant” people…), or cleanse… I have tried it. Strictly monitoring your calorie intake, is one of those things that I have indeed tried and tested.

For me, it was basically the worst.

Calorie counting is one of the first and most obvious things people will do to try and be healthier, or lose weight. Let me be clear, this is not a post about how to lose weight. This is a post about why loving yourself and eating healthful foods is always the best option.

Companies producing packaged foods are legally obligated to put the nutritional content on their labels (which I think is awesome!) and right at the top, is the calories. Food companies also use “low calorie content” as a marketing strategy. They will take foods that have negative nutritional value, make them taste good with a bunch of chemicals, and market them to us as being healthy and “low calorie.” This messaging is flashing in our faces all day, so it makes sense that so many people start counting calories to try and be healthier.

Here is my story of calorie counting, and why you SHOULDN’T do it.

Think of this like an episode of “What Not to Wear.”

Oh and as a warning, I was 100% honest and spared no details here. 😅 Might be a bit alarming for some, just an FYI.

Let’s start with the apps.

There are a ton of apps out there where you can set a daily calorie goal, you have to enter a bunch of information about your height, weight, goal weight, etc etc etc. Then, the idea is, you are supposed to enter every single morsel of food you eat into the app.

Are you KIDDING ME?

If this doesn’t breed unhealthy obsessive behavior, I am not sure what does. When I tried one of these apps, I literally became obsessed with it and it took over my life. I wouldn’t go out for dinner, because I couldn’t guarantee that whatever I was going to have for dinner would be on calorie counting app. THAT IS ACTUALLY INSANE. Do not recommend.

My second experience with calorie counting was…

When I was modeling in Milan, it was a seriously tough time for me. The European modeling market is very different from North America, and has a different set of standards. Clients wanted models to be rail thin, and basically be gaunt clothing hangers. This is obviously not my vibe, I’ve always been more successful at commercial modeling (for clothing stores, brands where actual humans buy the products, etc), so to enter this market I was told I needed to lose a few inches off my precious booty.

*Dear booty, I am SO SORRY I DID THIS TO YOU. It was wrong and I’ll never do it again.* 😭

Anyways,  in Milan I was regularly measured by my agency and expected to maintain a certain set of numbers. What being “measured” means, is you go in front of a room of people in your bikini and the agency takes a measuring tape and measures your hips, waist, and bust for size. This was in 2014 and even though it was only a few years ago, standards were considerably different than they are now. There was no such thing as curves, and the old school “all models must look like coat hangers” mantra was in full-force.

Okay now what I am going to tell you is something YOU SHOULD NEVER DO EVER. IT IS FUCKING CRAZY.

I was young, in a new market, and a hyper-over-achiever who wanted to be super successful. To maintain the measurements required of me in Milan, I restricted my calories to 700 a day, and only ate cans of tuna and salad I made at home. HOW. FUCKING. SAD. Honestly, I am so embarrassed to even write this out because it was SO SAD. *Cringe*

The reason I have chosen to tell you this story, even though I am aware this is an outlier kind of situation, is because when I had restricted my calories in such an extreme way, I didn’t actually lose any weight, AND, I noticed my skin stopped glowing, AND, I had no energy. 😵

If I knew then what I know now, and felt as fabulous as I do today (without any calorie counting and plenty of pizza🍕), I would have just done my own thing and only worked with clients who appreciated me for what I naturally am. 🙏🏻

In summary, my experiences with calorie counting have been both physically and mentally unhealthy. Obsessively counting calories did not get me the result I was looking for, and I definitely wasn’t happy doing it.

If you want to be healthy, what should you do?

Focus on mindful eating 😊

Mindful eating means eating when you actually feel hungry, and stopping when you feel full. This is something that takes active practice for me, because I loveeeeee to eat fast (as my boyfriend so kindly points out.😒)

Eat Real Food🍏

Eat nutritious foods that are whole, natural, and great for your body. If you were counting calories you would probably never eat a whole avocado, but then you would miss out on all the fabulous health and beauty benefits. Often times the high calorie foods are the most packed with nutrients! Go figure.

**ALSO A QUICK NOTE ON LOW CALORIE DRINKS/FOODS ETC: it is usually fucking poison. Don’t go there. All sorts of ungodly ingredients are created in labs to mimic the taste of real food with “no calories”. That shit will literally kill you, don’t do it.

Treat Yo-Self 🍦🍟🍕

If you overall are living a healthy lifestyle, you are a-okay to be eating junk food too. Honesly, life is all about balance. I love myself, so I eat pizza and drink all the martinis I want. 🍸 Like fuck it, why wouldn’t you? When you are happier, you will look better, feel better, and live a better life.

The point I am trying to make is food should never be so heavily regulated and reduced to calorie counting. Why? It’s bad for your mental health and your physical health. Take me as case study #1. Tried, tested, and it doesn’t work ya’ll.

What does work? The non-diet diet. Just live your life and be happy. ❤️ You are beautiful the way you are. 😍

Hopefully parts of this post didn’t traumatize you, but inspired you to eat more mindfully and live your best life. This is just my opinion based on personal experiences, and what works for me. I am not a doctor, and you should always do what works best for you and your personal health!

xoxo,

Watch: Daniel Wellington (code ‘ROBYNKIMB’ for 15% off) // Coat: I.AM.GIA

This morning I was out surfing in Santa Monica, and there was a group of kids who were in what I assume was a surf club. They put me to SHAME. They were so good, and looked soooo cool. 🏄🏻 I was V jealous. I also noticed that amongst the group, there was not a single girl! 😧

Got me thinking about girl power, and how many girls are not raised to be aggressive towards things, like sports, as a boy would be. There was a time in my life when I thought gender discrimination was not a thing, and ohhhh lordy was I ever wrong.

In my experience women are seen through a different lens than men, and have different societal expectations of what is “right” for a woman to be doing. Same goes for men, men are expected to be a certain way and if they are anything but, it is seen as weird or deviant. I have always been a very sporty girl, who has a diverse set of interests. I love fashion and glamming, but at the same time, I LOVE to absolutely crush it at my sports of choice. Crush. It. 💪🏻🎿

I will never forget the first time I realized that the world didn’t see me the way I saw myself. I thought it was totally normal to love doing sports sometimes, and other-times dressing up in my favourite outfits. In my mind (same stands today) there was nothing weird about this. Anyways, I used to be super into downhill mountain biking, like the kind with dual-suspension bikes at Whistler where you throw yourself off cliffs and jumps. It is SO MUCH FUN. 🚵 Now I am older and have had far too many concussions to keep doing that particular sport, but, at the time, it was my jam. 👍🏻 So I walk into a bike store with my dad one day, I’m about 13 years old, and am wearing the DOPEST little pink skirt and white top. I remember my outfit, cuz it was that fly. 😉 The guy who owned the bike shop looks at me, and goes “are you sure you are in the right store?” then proceeds to laugh like a giant piece of shit. 😒 This was the first of many times I experienced gender discrimination.

FUCK. THAT. SHIT!

I also had a past boyfriend tell me that he found my interests very confusing. He told me that he couldn’t understand that I was: motivated in business, liked to glam and dress up, AND liked athletics. That just blew his pea-sized mind.  1) How. 2) I can’t EVEN. *EYEROLLS x 1 MILLION*

Let’s make a world where boys and girls are raised the same. 💕 Daughters would be in the most competitive surf camp there was (killing it, obviously), and signed up for beauty pageants at the same damn time. How about everyone just does what they love, and society stops trying to pigeon hole people into the gender roles we created 6 million years ago. 6 million actual years. 😤

Anyways, back to my point. It made me sad to see that there were no girls in the advanced surf camp this morning. The lack of female representation also made me want to shout from the rooftops how AWESOME it is to be a woman and how we can crush it just as good (if not better) as anyone else. 💪🏻

👑 Elle Woods was, and forever will be, my queen. 👑

So to all my ladies out there, stay NASTY and never let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn’t be. If I could go back to that moment at age 13 in the bike shop, I would have kindly told the owner that he could go fuck himself. I was exactly where I was supposed to be, wearing exactly what I should have been wearing. 😊 Moral of the story, let’s keep the girl power going, and be the #nastywomen we all are.

Throwing nothing but love into the universe, let’s all go and have a fabulous weekend! 🍸

xoxo,

LOL, yup. We’re going there.

Looking for love? Here’s why I think you should give dating apps a try.

Online dating is something noooobody talks about, unless you are a bottle (or two) of wine deep with your besties.🍷 Which is why we’re gonna talk about it today.

Real talk, people.

Online dating has a super gross stigma, like e-harmony early 2000s vibes. *Shudders* 🤢😷 Not the case, in my opinion. Everything we do now is digital. Legit, EVERYTHING. When someone calls me (mom… talking about YOU), I actually get mad. Genuinely, angry. Because that is my time. Send me a text, send me an email, and I will get back to you in my own time. But yes back to my point, our entire lives are digital and that’s not going anywhere. 💻

I am of the belief that if you want something to happen, you need to MAKE it happen. I’m not one to sit around and wait for something to magically happen, in any aspect of my life. And yes, even with love. 💕 If you are under the impression that you will bump into your next boyfriend as you are entering your apartment building, spill your groceries everywhere **oh my how EMBARRASSING** and as you giggle he helps you clean them up in a very Audrey Hepburn b-fast at Tiffanys kind of way… I hate to break it to you… but it’s probably not happening.

My *dream* way to meet my future husband? 💭 On a ski lift. 🎿 So romantical, so magical. ✨ But, in reality, the likelihood of that happening is slim to none. I have sat next to the HOTTEST guys on a ski lift (when I was single,) I am skiing alone, they are skiing alone, and NEITHER OF US SAYS A DAMN WORD. 😒 True story.

So, ladies and gents, if you are looking for love, what is wrong with putting the cards back in our hands and trying our best to actively make something happen?

Truth be told, I actually used to be SUPER opposed to tinder/bumble/etc. I thought I was wayyyyy too cool for apps like that. 😎 They were SO below me. *Major eyeroll.*

It’s 2017. We sit behind our screens all day every day, netflixing, texting, scrolling instagram, snapchat, whatever.📱 Look our lifestyle as an opportunity to meet someone you would never have otherwise serendipitously bumped into.

Typical reasons people shy away from dating apps:

“There’s no good people on Tinder…”

Did you ever consider there are likely many people just like YOU on Tinder? Who genuinely want to meet someone?💑 Amongst the mess of a “hookup culture” we have built, there are actually some good ones out there. That being said, it’s basically guaranteed you will match with a TON of people who are not genuinely interested in a relationship, who you will probably hate, but… how is that any different than stumbling into someone at a bar?

“I don’t have time”

LOL. Okay…. Just no. That is a straight up lie. 😂 You can now DATE FROM YOUR PHONE. How freaking amazing is that? Like, sign me up. I can look for my future husband while sitting on the bus to work? HELL YEAH! Honestly… You have time. Maybe just scroll instagram for 10 minutes less a day and try and meet someone new. 😊

I feel like this whole dating revolution is a pretty cool opportunity. We can literally sit at home on a Friday night, eat ice cream, drink wine, be naked in bed, and go on Tinder to meet your potential future husband. 💯 No more getting glammed up after a long work week to go to a gross club, and have sweaty dudes slur at you. 😒 Also, did I mention you can be eating in bed naked and using a dating app? HOW IS THAT NOT THE BEST THING EVER?! 😂 Being the introvert I am, this is V appealing to me.

Final thoughts on Tinder: a cool way to meet new people, and likely make some great friends in the process. There is a ton of negative stigma around dating apps (definitely not without warrant), but, if you take the right mindset it just might work out for you. 💘 Personally, I like to take things into my own hands and not sit waiting hopefully for Mr. Right to stumble along.

That being said, this is just my own personal opinion. Make sure you always do what feels right for you! 🙏🏻

Thoughts?! Funny stories? Comment below!

xoxo,