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Advice from Experience

Cheat Meals

June 19, 2014
Advice from Experience
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Now that we’re all making smart choices, eating minimal processed foods, and loading up on healthy veggies and grains and lean protein, you might be wondering: am I ever going to eat pizza again? The answer is yes, but you STILL HAVE TO BE SMART. Let’s talk about cheat meals and what the deal is.

A “cheat meal” is a meal wherein you indulge, or “cheat” on your usual healthy diet. Sometimes it’s also called a “free meal” because you’re free from the typical constraints of your daily food choices. One thing you should NOT call it, as I have heard it referred, is a “reward meal.” You don’t reward being a fitnessing badass with eating a burger. That is not the mindset we’re going for. Your reward for that is being healthy and living longer and being able to do fun activities because you have so much energy and maybe even you get to wear shorts without looking like a sausage. Those are rewards. The Cheat Meal is a way of keeping you on track, long-term, in a realistic way. It helps most people to stick with their healthy lifestyles, because being healthy won’t mean NEVER having french fries again, or NEVER having a bowl of straight up regular pasta. Knowing you can indulge in those once in a while is what can keep most people making healthy choices the rest of the time. Read More

Your No-Excuse Workout Resource

June 5, 2014
Advice from Experience, Workouts
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Hey y’all, just a quickie post to tell you about a pretty awesome site (it’s okay, I know you look at other sites) that’s a GREAT fitnessing motivator and resource called Fitness Blender. Don’t be intimidated by their gorgeous 6% body fat photos. They’re an incredibly accessible couple of personal trainers that just want to spread some health around. Super neat!

On the site there are hundreds of free workout videos, ranging from low-impact, level-one light workouts to incredibly difficult high intensity interval training sessions. You can specify the area you want to work, the type of workout, the level of difficulty, even the amount of time you want to spend or calories you want to burn. They’ve been working on their site constantly, and now that they have these new search filters, it’s even easier to use as a quick go-to when you want a workout for home or the gym.

Here are a few reasons why I really like these guys: Read More

Push It Real Good (your werkout)

May 15, 2014
Advice from Experience, Workouts
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We’re all fitnessers here, which means we make time to work out regularly and eat things that are healthy most of the time.  Good for us. But one thing to be wary of is falling into a routine, and letting our bodies be lulled into a state of meditative workout oblivion. Our bodies are adaptable, which is awesome from a survival perspective, but mildly annoying from a fitness perspective. What happens is your body gets more efficient, and tries to use less energy (burn less calories) to complete the same amount of work. Great job, body! If bodies were employees, we would all be very happy with this increased efficiency. However, what we’re actually getting is a plateau. Our workouts become less effective as our bodies adapt.

This is why you should keep adding goals to your workouts. Pushing yourself from week to week, instead of completing the same workout every time, will keep your body working hard and burning calories. Changing up either the type of workout or the intensity of the workout are the only ways to push through a plateau, or decreased results. Here are a few ways to make sure you Push It. Read More

Good Health is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

April 22, 2014
Advice from Experience
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Oh, hey. It’s been a while. Sorry. I have about a dozen half-written posts and I PROMISE I have TOTALLY been considering writing them, and have been thinking about you guys and your fitnessing, but I also have been real busy starting a new exciting venture, which I will tell you all about in the next post. Right now, though, we got some business to take care of.

So, right around now is when magazines and commercials start pummeling you with “Shape Up For Summer,” and “Get a Hot Swimsuit Bod” and “You Need To Look Better Real Soon Cause It’s Getting Hot Out” headlines. This can make it really tempting to go into crash diet mode and Get Fit Now, but there are a few things you should consider. Read More

Okay Guys Let’s Make Some Pesto

March 5, 2014
Advice from Experience, Recipes
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Cooking healthy foods isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t always easy either. And eating healthy foods isn’t much easier if it isn’t tasty. Or, if it’s tasty, but it’s the same tasty healthy recipe you’ve been making all year, and now it’s boring. So, let’s do something that’s easy to make and easy to eat and easy to switch up when you’re over it.

PESTO! Which you already knew because TITLES. Pesto is super easy to make — you pretty much cannot screw it up — it keeps really well (in the fridge for a while, in the freezer for longer), and you can make a bunch of different kinds so you don’t get bored. It’s a great way to flavor your food without using sugary sauces or dressings you find at the store (and trust me, even if it’s a savory sauce….check the label. It’s probs sugary). Read More

Don’t Look at Your Neighbor’s Treadmill

February 20, 2014
Advice from Experience
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How your workout is going is dependent on a million factors (no more, no less): what you ate the day before, how much sleep you got, what time you’re working out, your stress level, the weather, how far into House of Cards you are, what other physical activity you’ve done in the past couple days, how much water you drank today, and so on (to one million). All of these things will affect how you’re feeling, how far you can push yourself, and how fast you can go. So why the hell are you looking at your neighbor’s treadmill to see how fast they’re going? Read More

Some Healthy Cooking Tricks

February 12, 2014
Advice from Experience, Recipes
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Cooking is tough. You have to remember numbers, make lists, buy stuff, use fire, and hold knives. Then it all has to taste good, AND be cooked enough to not kill you. With all of these challenges, it can be difficult to add the ever-important task of making sure the thing you cooked is healthy. Here are a few easy swaps you can make in your basic (or very advanced, you fancypants) cooking to make your meal lighter, leaner, and more nutrient dense. Read More

Read the Damn Nutrition Labels

January 14, 2014
Advice from Experience
3 Comments

If you’re anything like me, then you know how to read, and that’s great. But reading nutrition labels on packaged foods can come with certain challenges, and that A+ from your advanced literature class 10 years ago isn’t going to be much help.

Food manufacturers know that if you’re reading the labels, then you care about nutrition, and if you care about nutrition, then you don’t want to buy things that are bad for you. However, food manufacturers often include things that are bad for you in their products. So, they try and hide them so that you’ll be tricked into thinking their products are better for you than they actually are, so you’ll buy them. Neat!

Here are a few things to pay attention to when reading labels to make sure you aren’t tricked: Read More

Some Holiday Rules

December 18, 2013
Advice from Experience
1 Comment

Hayyyyy guys. I know we’ve talked about how to survive a party, a BBQ, and even the Thanksgiving holiday, but the Christmas / New Year’s stretch is often 10 days or more of being “on vacation, so, what the heck, I’ll have another burrito! See you in 2 weeks, Gym!” and stuff. And 10 days of that is gonna do some real damage. So, let’s set a few, easy to follow ground rules that will STILL let you have an awesome time, but also let you not destroy your body. Read More

Being Smart About “Eating Day”

November 21, 2013
Advice from Experience
2 Comments

It’s that time of year y’all. Next Thursday we’ll gather warmly with family and friends and try so hard to eat an amount of food that is so great, it becomes impossible to move. What a celebration.

So, look. I know it’s tough to be the healthy one, or even think about health and well-being on a day aimed at basically prepping you to be human foie gras (i.e. force-fed until you are a fatty and expensive menu item). Why not just let yourself have one day? One day to pour starch and butter and sugar into your body for hours? I’ll tell you why not. Because we are mature people with self-respect, and we are awesome at fitnessing, and we take no prisoners, not even on Thanksgiving. That’s why not.

So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna indulge, sure. We’re gonna try some delicious pie that your mom makes, and have some of grandma’s famous stuffing, and we’re gonna enjoy the day. But we’re also gonna be sensible human beings who understand caloric intake and how it affects our bodies. We do not need to each 3,000 – 4,000 calories just because… — I mean actually I really have no idea why we all have been programmed to do that. Thankfulness? Anyway. Let’s get to tips on doing only minor damage on Thanksgiving. We all know this isn’t going to be a HEALTHY day, but maybe we can at least keep the destruction to a minimum. Here we go. Read More