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

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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

Healthy Comfort Food: Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

January 30, 2014
Recipes
2 Comments

Comfort food does not equal butter. I know it’s cold, like VERY cold, and all you want is buttery mashed potatoes or mac n cheese or beef stew or whatever it is people eat when they just CANNOT anymore with this cold. But there are better options. I’m about to give you one.

I don’t have photos, cause when I was making it I thought it would be no big deal, but it turns out it IS A BIG DEAL, and I want to eat this everyday until I can walk outside and can actually feel my face.

Stuffed Sweet Potatoes Ingredients (serves 4ish):

  • 2 sweet potatoes (or 4. you’ll see)
  • 1 pound organic ground lean turkey
  • 1 16oz can black beans
  • 1 bunch organic Lacinato (Tuscan, aka not curly) kale
  • Some spices. Oregano, garlic powder, salt, pepper. And cinnamon.
  • 1/2 teaspoon honey (or thereabouts) 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

Makin some Black Bean SOUP.

December 3, 2013
Recipes
2 Comments

It’s winter, so you know what that means. SOUP TIME. There are two rules for making soup:

  1. Make a double batch so you can throw somma that shit in the freezer for when you’re sick
  2. Toss as many veggies in there as you can, cause it usually barely changes the flavor and you NEED THEM FOR LIFE

Today we’re making black bean soup and following both of those rules. Here’s what you need: Read More

Thanksgiving Parade Werkout

November 27, 2013
Workouts
2 Comments

You guys, the day is almost here. Tomorrow is Eating Day, and we all know from my widely read (by both of you) post last week that part of minimizing the damage on this Day of Eat is to work out in the morning. HOWEVER. Choosing between working out and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade before you have to go to your family’s house is a VERY DIFFICULT CHOICE TO MAKE, so let’s combine the two and get our werkout in at home while we watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade, because SANTA IS COMING!!!!

So make some coffee, eat some toast with almond butter, and get ready for some fitness commercial breaks. 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

Ease Up on that Animal Protein Y’all

November 15, 2013
Advice from Experience, Hey, Friend
8 Comments

Alright I know I’ve been all about Greek Yogurt and grilled chicken breast, but I’ve had a lot of time to watch a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books, and you guys, there are better ways to get protein.

Before you get hives and go buying up all the 2% cottage cheese, just relax. I’m not saying cut all your animal protein. I’m just saying tone it down a bit. Not every meal has to be a lean white meat with veggies. There are other (effing delicious) ways to get protein and eat healthy. And you should get in on some of that.

So, to be clear, animal protein means any product coming from an animal. The meat itself, the dairy produced, the eggs — the whole deal.

Here we go with reasons to cut back on animal proteins: Read More

Working Out When It’s Hard

November 6, 2013
Advice from Experience, Hey, Friend
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Oh, hey y’all. I know it’s been a while (again). I promise to pick back up now (really) on our regularly scheduled programming (like, one or two posts a week? nothin crazy). I was SUPER THROWN OFF by some stuff, including that pretty intensive ankle surgery I’m still recovering from, but I vow to continue to give you sweet fitnessing tips on the regular.

SO ANYWAY, let’s lead in with a quick chat about working out when it’s hard. I’ve had some struggles lately that have less to do with the surgery itself, and more to do with being significantly out of shape after being fitnessless for a month or two. This happens to a lot of us, for a lot of reasons, including, but not limited to:

  • work gets real busy and knocks you out of your workout schedule
  • you get a puppy and can’t get to the gym without panicking that he/she is practicing his/her house-training, indoors
  • you get injured and can’t physically complete a workout for a while
  • you’re sick and your recovery period just extends into the rest of your life and then you’re embarrassed for not having shown up at the gym and just end up never going back, ever
  • you straight up give up for a while

So, all of these things are very possible, and can lead to weeks or months going by when you’re not working out. Which means that even if you love love LOVED working out, it’s probably gonna be harder when you start again (ps, you HAVE to start again). Which means you won’t be as good at the stuff you were before, and you won’t like it as much because of that, and you’ll be way more likely to want to quit than you were before your Dark Fitnessless Era. Read More