Author: Teresa Jusino

I love to write, and I love anything that empowers women and girls. So, imagine my happy surprise when I discovered WriteGirl, a Los Angeles organization that pairs professional female writers with teenage girls in underserved high schools as mentors. Mentors then have weekly one-on-one meetings with their mentees, as well as participate in monthly group events, all geared toward helping girls find power through the written word. What I love about WriteGirl is that it’s not just about helping girls through school (though there’s plenty of that – in its 13-year history, 100% of WriteGirl participants have gone on…

So, I’ve talked about mentors and discipline – now, I’ll get down to the nitty-gritty as far as the stuff you need to be writing. The first order of business? The “spec script.” A spec is a script that no one’s waiting for or paying you for that you write as a sample of your work with which you hope to catch the attention of a writing fellowship judge or an agent (or anyone else with the power to connect you to a writing opportunity). Most commonly, you hear about specs for episodes of existing shows, and that’s what I’m…

Burn more calories than you consume. Sounds like a simple enough formula for losing weight. Yet, simple doesn’t always mean easy, and when it comes to weight loss it can sometimes take years to wrap our heads around very simple ideas. The good news is that there are some tools out there to help us lose weight that don’t just deal with the food we eat or the exercise we do. They deal with the whys. They’re there to help us wrap our heads around those simple ideas. Here are three I’ve tried, along with some pros and cons, and…

So, when I first started on Pinterest, I started a board where I was putting fitness-related stuff. Mini-workouts, ideas for exercises to try, etc. I found one 100-Calorie Workout via feettogetherthighsapart on Tumblr that has since become known as “Teresa’s Mini-Workout,” because I try to do it every morning (or…every other morning…or, you know, whenever), and it’s caught on with some of my readers. But then, I came across what is literally the most magical workout I’ve ever seen: The Harry Potter Workout! It’s set up like a drinking game! Every time X happens, you do Y (Y being some…

I’ve learned a very difficult lesson in my Pound By Pound journey over the past couple of weeks. There will always be something. I’ve realized that I’m very good at starting life changes. I’ll set a perfect routine, and follow it perfectly for a few days, or weeks. And everything goes, well, perfectly. Until something comes along to put a wrench in the works. That something could be huge, or it could be something that simply knocks my perfectly-timed schedule off by a couple of minutes. Either way, it’s often enough to send me skidding off track. I get all…

I’ve been focusing a lot on the fitness aspects of the Pound By Pound Pledge Drive, but I wanted to take the time to talk a little about the thing I’m trying to raise awareness of, the organization I’m trying to support, and what I’m hoping they achieve. In a world faced with all sorts of problems, it makes sense that we might feel overwhelmed by them all clamoring for our attention. There’s a war here! This disease has become an epidemic over here! This group of people is suffering injustice!  In the case of diseases needing to fundraise for…

I’ve always daydreamed a lot. My brain is always bouncing around. Hell, I’m daydreaming right now as I type this. It’s part of being creative, right? I have a healthy imagination! When it comes to writing, I’m always inspired! That is…I get inspired frequently. Maintaining my discipline enough to finish things once the initial euphoria of that inspiration wears off? That’s a whole other jar of Nutella. But if I expect to be staffed on a television show, I have to be able to suck it the eff up and just write. There are days when I can’t type or…

For much of my life, I’ve had one motto:  I don’t run unless I’m being chased. Running on purpose just to do it was a strange concept to me. I didn’t see how people could run and enjoy it, mostly because it was always so difficult for me and was, therefore, intimidating. To be honest, I still don’t know why people run for fun. It’s about as interesting to me as watching paint dry. BUT, I have found a method that makes running less intimidating, and for my purposes, that is more than good enough! Couch to 5K is an…

When I took on the Pound By Pound Pledge Drive, my goal was not only to raise money for the American Diabetes Association and lose weight, but to make healthy living a part of my regular lifestyle. I didn’t just want to do all this stuff to lose 100 pounds only to go back to whatever I was doing before. I wanted to change my habits for good! So, when I seek out exercise, I seek out things that 1) offer me variety (I won’t stick with stuff if I’m bored) and 2) that I genuinely enjoy doing. When I…

I never thought that my fitness journey would lead me to being naked in a sauna with four other women talking about mail-order grooms. Let me back up. First, you should know that I hate gyms. Like, hate them. Or, rather, I hate the routine of Going To The Gym. I’m supposed to sign away a year of my life to one organization for a butt-load of money and just…go to that one place? Like, several times a week? Indefinitely? Eff that. When I decided to get serious about weight loss for the Pound By Pound Pledge Drive, I knew…

The path to TV writing doesn’t always run smooth. I’ve been writing for sites other than my own blog since 2002. I’ve been getting paid for it since 2010. I’ve had both fiction and non-fiction published in print publications. I’ve had enough people enjoy my work to know that I’m good at what I do. But when I decided in 2011 that I loved the experience of writing a web series so much that I wanted to leave everything and everyone I knew in New York to make the move to L.A. to try my hand at writing for television,…

Being a writer isn’t exactly conducive to engaging in any kind of fitness.  Your job pretty much consists of sitting on your ass and thinking. At most, you might type so much you develop carpal tunnel syndrome. Thing is, I can’t blame my weight on my job. While I’ve been writing stories from the time I was three, I’ve only been a professional writer for three years. I’ve been fat forever. Blame it on the enormous servings of rice and beans with which I grew up. Blame it on using food to escape family troubles when I was a kid.…