It´s that time of the year when it really gets dark here in the north as we experience the Polar Night.. If you are not familiar with the concept, Polar Night means a period of darkness north of the Arctic circle when the sun does not rise over the horizon. The darkness of the Finnish winter might catch you by surprise. As I have been living abroad, I think, for me Polar Night is a problem. Seems like every year I struggle more because of it. Winter time and darkness is hard for me.  I struggle a lot especially now when we turned to "winter time" and we have day light only from 8 am until 4 pm and it keeps on getting darker each day.  And I know there are other people who also suffer because of it. So I decided to tell you how I cope with Polar Night.





How to survive in Darkness:

Accept that this is the time of season when you are allowed to get cozy inside your apartment. Light some candles, wear comfortable clothes and drink some herbal tea. Enjoy the quietness around you. …

Time for my Florida post. This is not a typical "you should visit that place" post, instead I will tell you my holiday observations about Florida (what has changed over the last 10 years since I was there last time and what surprised me).

My Holiday Observations:No wonder Americans are getting fatter every year. We did many road trips along the way and the best decision we made was to make snacks for the ride. On the road there were only Dunkin Donuts,  Wendy´s, McDonald´s , JFK or other fast food chain restaurants which offer you fried chicken, fatty donuts and sugary beverages. Instead our snacks were salads (very good variety of ready to eat salads at Walmart or Publix), carrots, grapes, water and coffee. However, in a perfect world my son would also eat what we eat but as this is real-life my son wanted nuggets and fries 😀 so I let him have them. Is there a vegan trend in US like it is in Europe? I noticed that in normal or regular restaurants there weren´t that many ve…

Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash
This year I have really become interested in self-care. I have read many books about it and I've tried to incorporate some self-care in my every week. I have to admit that being a working mum that isn't always easy but I want to learn how to be better at it. Also I want to practise what I preach. As a result of this I thought  I would do a post series about self-care. So here comes the first self-care post. This time it is a guest post from Brad Krause. 
Invaluable Acts of Self-Care You Should Do Today to Boost Your Mental Well-Being
Research has found that only about 6 percent of adults practice some form of self-care every day. This is unacceptable. Self-care, or the practice of doing things of personal benefit to make yourself a better, healthier, happier person, is vital to your overall well-being—especially that of your brain. Don’t be fooled by the other part of your brain telling you it’s selfish and unnecessary. Your mind, body, and soul…

I'm back at home and boy it feels good to lie in my own bed and be back on my daily routines. 
As I was travelling home I had a lot of time to think about life and especially social media. By the way it felt great to be off line during daytime. It made me be more present and enjoy each moment without constant disruptions from my phone. This is something I intent to add in my daily life now that I'm back in business.
 Back to the topic at hand.. As I was saying about social media, it's interesting how you get a certain picture of someone based on social media. For instance I usually post healthy food pictures because I want to inspire people to eat healthy and I live as I preach. Having said this, I still indulge and I have a sweet tooth. The other day my colleague was surprised as I was having a donut with my tea at work. It made me laugh and I realized that do most people actually think I don't eat "unhealthy" food? The reason why I normally don't eat s…

It´s fall holiday and I´m in a my favourite country, in the US. It has been a long time since the last time I was here and therefore I am enjoying every moment of my trip! So as I am here I´m trying to live my life and focus on being present and forget about everything else. It has been a hectic fall so I am really enjoying my time without any schedules. Some of you might wonder why I haven't been posting as much as I did in the summer time.. Well, I am trying to find some balance in my life. I am often quite tired after work and I want to relax and spend time with my family and not be on my computer. This new posting pace has been better for me. I have a lot of ideas for blog posts but I haven´t got the time to sit down, write posts and download pictures. That being said, I still love blogging and I came here because I wanted you to have an insight on my trip. I will do a separate post on my trip later.  
Below are some pictures of my trip. Can you guess where I am?








The best thi…

This blog post´s topic is about an important hormone called Leptin.
What is it?
Leptin is a protein hormone produced in adipose tissue. Leptin is a satiety hormone and it plays a role in regulating appetite and metabolism. Leptin´s role is to give information to your brains how much fat you have in your body.  Leptin was found in 1954. Back in the days few scientists conducted a mouse experiment in which the scientists were investigating a few mice which were eating all the time and because of that they gained a lot of weight. The reason behind this overeating was the fat tissue and it´s problems of not producing enough leptin. If there is no leptin production, brains don´t have any signals about how much fat tissue the body has. 

One of leptin´s role is to increase our appetite. For example if you have over eaten during Christmas time, you will gain weight. As a result of this Leptin levels will increase in your body and inform your brains to increase your resting metabolism so you …

108 million Americans are on a diet at any given time. Americans spend 65 billion dollars each year on weight-loss products.
When it comes down to losing weight, there are millions of guidelines and diets which will tell you what and how to eat and which foods to avoid. However, in my opinion if you want to have lasting results you should never just be on certain "diet"for a certain period of a time. Instead you should choose a diet which is sustainable, healthy and based on some dietitians' recommendations. And this diet should last forever. It is called a healthy lifestyle and learning how to eat healthy for the rest of your life. If you have problems in this area, I would recommend you to see a nutrition specialist who could help you individually. My online Nutrition Packages are available here if you are interested.
There are many studies which indicate that the fact which matters the most is the calorie content and not the proportion of macro-nutrients that determi…