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(Infographic) How to read nutrition labels: The easy and practical way
Posted on Jan 16, 2019
Health can be confusing. Overwhelming.
It’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s not. Plus, it seems like nobody really agrees on anything.
One day fats are bad for you and you should never eat them ever again. The next day they’re good for you and you should eat them all the time. Sigh...
The science is admittedly complicated because the science of anything is complicated.
Plus, by nature, science constantly evolves as we learn more and more. That said, new findings are never anywhere near as dramatic as most news outlets would have you believe. So take any dramatic new findings with lots o...
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How to keep fit when you're emotionally exhausted
Posted on Jan 10, 2019
This post is about taking care of your health and fitness when you feel like you have nothing left in you.
When you feel like your tank is empty and it doesn’t seem like much point, like there are more important things, or when it seems easier to destroy a pint of ice cream and distract yourself with some Netflix.
We've all been there. It's just a fact of life. These things happen.
Here's how to deal with it. Here's how to continue to stay healthy and fit when you feel emotionally exhausted.
Energy
The whole theme of this post is “when you’re emotionally exhausted”. So energy is a key theme....
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The 3 biggest new year's resolution mistakes and how to avoid them
Posted on Dec 27, 2018
Every year it’s about the same.
You put on a few pounds during the eating and drinking bonanza that is the holidays.
You want to use the New Year as a fresh start of sorts. A clean slate to shrug off the copious amounts of holiday parties and all the resulting food guilt.
And fair enough. Resolutions are as much tradition as they are habit. At the end of the year we’re meant to reflect on the past year or something.
Personally when I look back on 2018 this happens:
Now, in the past I would have poo pooed the whole notion of resolutions as inherently flawed. That setting resolutions was a re...
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How to breathe when you lift things
Posted on Oct 25, 2018
Your breath is slightly important to say the least. I mean, if you stop breathing you die. So it’s a pretty big deal.
That said, breathing is something you can do correctly or incorrectly. Especially when it comes to strength training.
Simply put, and I’m quoting someone here I just can’t remember who, “Breathing is an exercise you do 30,000 times a day -- you definitely want to make sure you’re doing it right.”
Breathing mechanics can be a pretty complicated topic so we’re not going to go into a ton of detail. Today, I’m just going to cover the basics here how to breathe during different e...
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The best meal plan of all time
Posted on Oct 04, 2018
Meal plans don't really work when somebody else writes them for you.
The truth is, following a meal plan isn’t as simple as, “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it”.
Following a meal plan requires an advanced skill set that takes lots of experience to build. So unless you're already pretty advanced when it comes to eating healthy, you're not ready for a meal plan yet.
Giving people yet another set of rules to inevitably break doesn’t do them any favors.
That said, I think I’ve discovered the best meal plan of all time.
- Breakfast: Protein and/or fruit/veg you enjoy eating with a little bit o...
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Do you need to give up chocolate? Hint: no
Posted on Sep 06, 2018
“I want to lose weight, but I don’t think I could give up chocolate”
I hear this a lot. For you, maybe it’s not chocolate. Maybe it’s carbs or cheese or bacon or some other food you know conflicts with your fitness goals.
There’s a problem here though.
You don’t actually need to entirely give up any single food, or food group for that matter, for the majority of fitness goals.
This is one area, of many, where the fitness industry has served people poorly. By perpetuating this myth that you need to take drastic, all or nothing, measures to improve your fitness and quality of life. That if yo...
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How to make your own meals when all you know is takeout
Posted on Aug 22, 2018
Cooking is an important skill. A skill lots of people don’t really have anymore.
I’m not talking making Turducken or anything complicated like that. Just making food, any food, for yourself at home. It’s much more common to go out to eat or order something from Grubhub or Seamless.
It’s quite convenient to say the least.
When you don’t even have to enter in your credit card information to get a shitton of Indian food sent right to your door, there’s nothing to stop you other than your own brain.
Especially after a long day of work, the siren song of takeout is quite alluring. So what’s the ...
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Fear of missing out and fat loss: What you need to know
Posted on Aug 14, 2018
Instant coffee isn’t great. This isn’t a controversial statement.
For the past year and a half I’ve been living in a fairly isolated part of China. It’s isolated mainly from an international standpoint, although it even seems to also be quite disconnected other parts of China . It’s still a big city of over 5 MILLION people (a small town by Chinese standards), yet it’s still quite disconnected from the outside world.
All this is to say you don’t always have access to the same luxuries you’re accustomed to in the US. Or if you do, they’re expensive to the point of not really being worth the ext...
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How to be healthier when you hate your job
Posted on Aug 06, 2018
Building a healthy lifestyle is fairly straightforward if you don’t have any other responsibilities.
- Eat lots of protein and veggies
- Get 8 hours of sleep a night
- Move a decent amount everyday -- about an hour or so
- Strength train 2 or 3 times a week.
- Have fun.
Alas, the unpredictable shitstorm of life is ultimately the road we’re all trying to navigate. This makes implementing the behaviors above a bit messy. Especially if you hate your job.
If you hate your job, you probably have zero energy at work and outside of work. You feel drained constantly. No matter how much sleep you get, you s...
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Injuries suck: How to workout when you have one
Posted on Jun 27, 2018
As someone who’s been injured in pursuit of a goal more times than I can count (to be fair, I can’t count that high) I know how frustrating and demoralizing to finally start making good progress, only for the proverbial wrench to get thrown in the works.
While obviously you want to prevent injuries in the first place, to quote Forrest Gump :
“It happens.”
“What? Shit?!”
“Sometiiimes.”
I’m going to give you a game plan to keep building strength and losing fat even if you have an injury. That way, you don’t squander all of hard earned results playing Banjo-Kazooie on the couch for 3 months whi...