The Total ME Tox How to Ditch Your Diet, Move Your Body &
Love Your Life
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Hi, You!
PART I: DITCH YOUR DIET
1 Starting Small
2 Getting Started (a.k.a. Kitchen Secrets of the Anti-Martha)
3 Start Simple: Smoothies, Drinks & Snacks
4 The “S” Section: Spreads, Starters, Salads & Sides
5 Maximize Meals: Main Dishes
6 Invite Others: Crowd-Pleasing Meals
7 More Tips & Tricks for Good Meal-ing
8 Beauty Foodie: Using Food for Beauty and Wellness
PART II: MOVE YOUR BODY
9 Little Somethings (a.k.a. Meh Workouts)
10 Bigger Breaths (a.k.a. Cardio, Schmardio)
11 Group Moves
PART III: LOVE YOUR LIFE
12 Being Mindful
13 Meditation
Giving Back
Oh So Grateful… for Everything
Acknowledgments
Resources
Author Bio
Index
To Grammy. Who won’t drink “the green sludge.” Love
you bushels.
Once we believe in ourselves,
we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight,
or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
—E. E. Cummings
HI, YOU!
I’m so happy and honored that you’re reading this book! See, I’m a lot of
things: a performer, a singer, a passionate-if-clumsy dancer, a daughter, a
sister, a friend, a homeowner, a soon-to-be wife, an activist, a good-health
enthusiast, and an Etsy junkie. But I have never considered myself an
author.
For me, writing is similar to most other experiences in my life—
challenging, terrifying, exhilarating, and requiring a $#*!load of hard work.
I’ve had several incredible, amazing years starring on 2 Broke Girls on
CBS, collaborating with some of the most talented people in the world…
but it took years of blood, sweat, and tears (along with plenty of
unanswered letters and phone calls) to get here. Let me bust a Hollywood
(or Anywhere-wood) myth for you: Nothing happens overnight. The term
“overnight sensation” should be banished from our vocabulary because it
doesn’t exist. (So should the words “moist” and “panties”… especially
when they are used together.)
In my experience, uber-successful people have one thing in common:
They work their freakin’ asses off. Not just in their professional lives, but in
their personal lives, too. By my definition, true success is more than making
a lot of money. Or doing work you love but struggling to survive
financially. It’s having the respect of others and having respect for yourself.
That takes passion, confidence, ingenuity, and encouragement. You need to
make the most out of the time you have in your day. And you have to keep
your body and mind steel-strong.
So while I may still be an author-in-training, I can definitely tell you a
thing or two (or fourteen chapters’ worth) about that last bit—keeping your
mind, body, and spirit super strong—because I’ve put all kinds of intense
work into earning my healthy-living stripes. I can offer you some really
hard-won advice about how I went from being a motivated-yet-lazy sludge
monster to being an active, healthy, energetic human being.
My journey began when I was in the middle of a full-on physical and
mental crisis that required a complete detox to get to the other side. As I
tried other people’s plans and recommendations, I realized that in order to
meet my goals, I had to clear my system on my own terms. What I needed
was a ME-tox, not a detox.
Too many of us don’t invest in our well-being until it’s too late. We tell
ourselves that we’re not the priority, that we’ll fix the problem later, or that
our health isn’t as important as our careers or relationships. But the truth is
that you can’t have a successful career or relationship if you’re stuck in an
unsuccessful body. You have to be in good health to go out and win the
other challenges in your life. Realizing this was a revelation for me. In a
weird way, I was lucky that my body literally broke down and rebelled
against the way I was living. I had no choice but to take action. But while I
knew I needed to make changes, I didn’t want to compromise my happiness
for the sake of my health. So I created my own path. And now, luckily, you
can learn from my experience—without having to wait for your mind and
body to suffer. Take control of your life TODAY.
On the pages that follow, I’ll tell you about changes that I made to my
diet (formerly all crap), workout routine (formerly nonexistent), and mental
health (formerly a relentless state of panic and anxiety) that resulted in a
much higher quality of life—and contributed to success in my career and
relationships. I also feel connected to myself and my body in a way that I
thought only monks, yoga teachers, and Kate Hudson were entitled to. I’d
like to share that story with you because I know it’s something we all aspire
to. And it’s a very worthy, very achievable aspiration. I’m still a work in
progress (I think everyone is), but I love the idea of working together to—
well, not to get all Oprah on you, but—be our best selves.
Before we get started, I’d like to tell you where I came from. When I
was twenty-one years old, I was a semi-starving actor living in LA—yet
somehow still eating crappy food and waaaay too much of it!—making
about $400 a week nannying and doing humiliating personal-assistant jobs
here and there. Good health was my lowest priority. My rent was $800 a
month, so I shared a room with Courtney, one of my best friends from
UCLA theater school. We had met junior year doing a Tony Kushner play
together. (I’ll admit, we were also doing a shot or two of tequila backstage
to pass the time during tech rehearsals… so professional.) Courtney’s side
of the closet-size room was always immaculate, while mine looked like
something out of Grey Gardens. We didn’t live in the greatest
neighborhood, and when a break-in happened right next to us, I put pots and
pans by our door as an alarm—so if someone busted in, I could wake up
and use my phone to call 911. (And maybe bash the burglar over the head
with a frying pan?) I had no real social life… just my nanny job, the
occasional audition, and no gas in my 1991 Mercury Mystique, which I had
purchased from an old lady for $1,000. Money was tight—Spanx tight. So I
wasn’t going to spend it on useless stuff like gym memberships and fresh
kale. But I refused to give up on my dream of success.
I had always known I wanted to be an actor. According to my parents, I
was a toddler who loved acting out “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of
Music up and down our stairs every night. By the time I was in
kindergarten, I was in theater. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t
connected to it.
One of my first gigs: educational theater, playing Jeopardy! to
show kids the dangers of drug abuse. “I’ll take ‘Listen to a seven-
year-old talk about angel dust’ for $1,000, Alex.”
I landed my first play at the age of five—as a cat in Snow White—with
one line. As I busted it out—something like, “No one will know it’s the
queen!” (How do I still remember that??)—I knocked over a table on the
set. The audience thought I was hilarious. This was the beginning of my
love for performing, and my complete inability to not be a total klutz while
doing it. I’ve made an entire career in comedy based on facing my “truth”
and embracing my flaws. My complete lack of grace turned into a natural
ability to take pratfalls on a sitcom.
There were a few early signs that not just performance, but comedy
performance, was what I really wanted to do. When I was in fifth grade, we
had to do projects about explorers. I was assigned Ferdinand Magellan, the
Portuguese explorer famed for organizing the Spanish expedition that
eventually circled the globe. I came to school dressed as Magellan, doing a
