Salad

I was reminded today when looking at old comments that I used to love Sadie Nardini’s yoga routines. I just went through this one. I had to modify a decent amount due to being 7+ months pregnant (30 weeks on Tuesday) but it was great. I haven’t been making it to the gym for yoga (or anything really – I am quitting the gym but that is another story) so it was great to be back on the mat.

Little guy, which is what I call him in lieu of his proper name, which is in fact decided, but not publicly announced, goes quiet when I exercise but then wakes up and gets excited afterwards. He’s punching around right now. Probably telling me I should be putting that T-bone steak on the stove instead of blogging.

I’ve spent the last few weekends doing housework – final touches on the downstairs renovations and fixing up things I have meant to fix for months but never got around to it. I think this is what they call “nesting”.

Work has been good. I revisited this post from nearly 4 years ago where I talked about my thoughts on ranking the following: family, friendship, love, health, and career. Back then I ranked them: love, family, health, friends, and then career.

Today I think I rank this differently. I’m torn. All of them are important but my priorities have certainly shifted. I would do: family, health, career, love, and friends. My career has become so much more important to me over the last year or so. Love is obviously important, but how can you differentiate between love and family? My loveis my family. And we are expanding it. Health may not seem so important now, because I am young and healthy, but I don’t want to think I took this time for granted. How do you rank them?

I should leave you with a bump picture but I don’t have one since last time. Instead I will leave you with this photo of dinner the other night. Souen will be hard to get to with a newborn in tow so we are trying to get in all our favorites before April 1.

And this is avocado toast, a new obsession for both me and Bobby. We have it for breakfast constantly. Simply mash avocado with salt, pepper, and lime juice. Spread it on freshly toasted bread and top with an egg (fried or scrambled – scrambled is actually our fave!). If you’re extra hungry or pregnant, multiply by 2. Devour.

What have you been thinking lately? Or eating lately?

Coffee

Over the past 10 years, research has shown that coffee doesn’t necessarily cause dehydration, but a new study has found that a cup of Joe may actually keep us hydrated just as well as water does.

In the study, participants drank about 27 ounces of coffee per day for three days in a row. (For reference, a Starbucks Venti is 20 ounces, a Grande is 16, and a Tall is 12.) Then they drank the same amount of water for three consecutive days. Controlling for physical activity and food and fluid intake, the researchers compared a wide range of hydration markers (body weight, total amount of water in the body, kidney function, urine volume, and blood values) and found no significant difference in subjects’ hydration status when they were drinking coffee versus water. Although the study population is small and specific — 50 adult men who were habitual coffee-drinkers and were told not to exercise during the study — its findings echo similar previously-collected data regarding the relationship between caffeine consumption and hydration.

A 2002 review of 10 different studies concluded that even when consumed in larger amounts caffeine caused no detrimental effects on hydration status or even athletic performance. A few years later, in 2005, researchers found that consuming small amounts of caffeine did not impact hydration status.

Considering coffee’s hydrating qualities, not to mention its ability to increase metabolism, enhance memory, and lower risk of death, I think I’ll make my next cup bottomless.

Will this news impact your daily coffee consuming habits?

Save Money Using Slow Cooker!

We all want to eat healthier, but planning, shopping, and prepping wholesome meals gets old really fast. Who has the time and money to buy pricey (but oh-so-healthy) ingredients and cook a full meal every night? That’s where our old friend theCrock-Pot comes in. These magic machines can whip up a healthy meal while you’re out and about and turn nearly any combination of ingredients into a delicious, comforting dish. Plus, making slow cooker meals a few times a week can help you save money in a myriad of ways. Keep reading to learn our favorite tips, tricks, strategies, and recipes that will turn the Crock-Pot into your best-kept budgeting tool.

1. Purchase cheaper cuts of meat.
There’s no need to splurge on extra-tender (and extra-pricey) filet mignon when using a slow cooker. The slightly tougher, rougher, and “less desirable” (and therefore cheaper) cuts of meat are perfect for slow cookers since the hours-long, low-temperature cooking technique softens them right up. Want to give it a shot? Try this Rancher’s Roast Beef, Honey Barbeque Brisket, or Salsa Chicken Thighs.

2. Cook meals in bulk.Bulk is best when it comes to saving money at the grocery store. Keep an eye out for sales and get ready to go all “Supermarket Sweep” when there’s a deal on your favorite ingredients. When you arrive home with 10 pounds of chicken thighs (or a few pounds of potatoes, rice, chickpeas, etc.) don’t freak out! Turn on the Crock-Pot and whip up a few batches of your favorite meals. When they’re fully cooked, store in Tupperware containers (or storage bags) in the freezer or fridge, and you’ll have loads of lunches and dozens of dinners at your fingertips.

3. Fill up on legumes and beans.
Since they often require fewer resources to produce, vegetarian proteins tend to be cheaper (and more environmentally-friendly) than meat or fish. Crockpots are ideal for whipping up a big batch of bean stew, lentils, or quinoa. Plus, the long cooking time makes it easy to achieve tons of great flavor without adding pricey meat. Pro tip: If you can’t shake the craving for meat at dinner, add a few chunks of bacon or even aham hock to deepen the dish’s flavor. A few of our favorites? Vegan Curried Lentils,Chipotle Black Bean Soup, and Lentil Sweet Potato Soup.

4. Master meal planning.
Prepping dinner in the morning means that you have to plan ahead. But it also means that there will be fewer pricey last-minute purchases, wasted ingredients rotting in the fridge before they’re used up, and unnecessary dollars spent at the grocery store overall. On the weekend, make a list of ingredients you need for a week’s worth of make-ahead meals — that way, when you go to the store, you’ll have an action plan at the ready. 

5. Think outside the box.
Yes, slow cookers are amazing for stews, chilis, and other hearty wintery meals. But they’re good for so much more than soup. You can even use them to make oatmeal: Prep everything at night, plug in the machine, and wake up to a healthy, filling, and super-cheap breakfast for the whole family. It’s also possible to make inexpensiveeveryday staples like rice, tomato sauce, yogurt, and baked potatoes (among many, many other foods) in the slow cooker. Here are a few of our favorite slow cooker staples: Vanilla Cinnamon Spice Quinoa, Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes, Slow Cooker Roasted Veggies.                         

6. Buy larger pieces of meat.
While at the butcher counter picking up meat, consider buying larger cuts of meat. For example, opt for a whole chicken rather than chicken breasts, a rib roast over strip steak, or a pork shoulder instead of chops. Buying a big chunk of meat is smart for a number of reasons: it’s typically cheaper pound-for-pound than buying smaller cuts, you’ll have enough to use for multiple recipes (or at least a super-big batch of one recipe), and if the cut of meat comes bone-in, the bone itself can be used to flavor homemade stock, stretching that one purchase over even more meals (and making each recipe cheaper overall). Ready to buy big? Try this simple Roast Chicken,Balsamic-Honey Pulled Pork, or Sweet and Spicy Ribs.

7. Manage your time.
Nobody wants to work long hours and then come home to a cold kitchen. Prep the slow cooker in the morning, turn it on, and get psyched for a hot dinner waiting for you at the end of the day. Saving time at night means you can go to bed earlier, which means you’ll be more alert and productive for work in the morning. It’s a win-win solution! De-stress your days even more by investing in a smartphone-controlled Crock-Pot (which will be available spring 2014) so you can monitor your meal from miles away.

8. Use dry beans rather than canned. 
Slow cookers are ideal for dried beans — just soak them overnight in water, drain in the morning, add other ingredients, and flip the on switch. In general, dried beanstend to be less expensive than the canned variety, too. (Plus they definitely incorporate fewer preservatives and added ingredients, especially sodium.) Get started with Lighter Red Beans and Rice, Cuban Black Beans, or Slow Cooker White Beans.

9. Make pantry soup.
Ever read the classic folk tale Stone Soup? We won’t go into details, but the moral of the story is that it’s possible to make a tasty meal from just a few ingredients. A slow cooker is ideal for combining flavors and making just about anything into stew (plenty of low, slow heat can basically turn even an old, rock-hard leather shoe into a delicious, tender meal). Save precious dollars by foregoing the grocery store. Instead, peruse your cabinets, freezer, fridge, and pantry collecting ingredients for a mish-mash soup. Got grains? Toss ‘em in! An old Parmesan rind? Add it! Frozen ground beef? Put it in the pot. Here are a few easy recipes that could probably come together with ingredients in your pantry right now: Spicy Chicken Soup, Pantry Vegetable and Pasta Soup, Stone Soup.

10. Save on the energy bill.
Slow cookers actually use less energy than the stovetop or oven. Saving at the grocery store is fine and dandy, but shaving dollars off the energy bill is a truly impressive feat.

11. Make your own stock.
This “Little House on the Prairie” kitchen hack is so much easier than you think, especially when there’s a slow cooker involved. For veggie stock, collect the week’s veggie scraps (nothing rotten or slimy, please) in a plastic bag stored in the fridge. When the bag is full, dump them in the slow cooker, add enough water to cover the scraps, turn the machine on the “low” setting, and go about your business for about 10 hours. Strain the liquid through a mesh sieve and put it into containers in the refrigerator. For chicken stock, save the carcass and bones from a roast chicken, put them in the slow cooker with some vegetables, top with water, and cook on low for 10 hours. You can season both varieties with salt and pepper, spices, and herbs to add extra flavor. (This also works with fish or beef bones, too!). Get stocky with these easy recipes: Vegetable Stock, Chicken Stock, Beef Stock.

12. Resist the take-out menu.
Regardless of your favorite Crock-Pot strategy, using a slow cooker can help you resist the siren song of ordering take-out. If you love to prep meals in bulk, knowing that there’s always something tasty in the fridge or freezer makes that overpriced lo mein look much less appealing. If you’re more happy-go-lucky, just load up the slow cooker and turn it on before heading out for a super-busy day. Knowing dinner’s already taken care of will make that last-minute Chinese takeout unnecessary.

13. Cut down on dishwashing expenses.
The slow cooker is ideal for those who lack a dishwasher or the energy to wash a sink load of pots and pans right after dinner. Since most Crock-Pot recipes are one-pot meals, there are significantly fewer dishes to clean at the end of a meal. With just one large pot to wash, you’ll use less water, less soap, and less electricity (if you’re lucky enough to own a dishwasher).   

Nutrition - The right way!

What is IIFYM?

"Macro" is short for Macro Nutrient, of which there are four plus one consideration*:

Protein
Carbohydrates
Fat
Alcohol (not much nutrition from this one, just calories)
*Fiber


*Fiber is the consideration that we mentioned above. It is one of the components of the carbohydrate macro nutrient, though many in the nutrition community consider it a micro nutrient. For our purposes, fiber intake should be a major consideration when dieting, therefore we include it in with the other macros.

IIFYM speaks specifically to fat loss from a macro nutrition and thus a caloric stand point and is purely a means to improve body composition. IIFYM does not address health concerns of the heart, brain or other organs and does not put an emphasis on so called " healthy eating".

Regardless if you like to eat pizza, or boiled chicken breasts, IIFYM teaches us that if you eat less calories than your body requires (while getting adequate protein, carbs, fat and fiber based on your goals and the energy needs of your body) you will lose weight at a steady and predictable rate.

IIFYM makes fat loss that easy.All you have to do is stay within your daily macros and the fat will start melting off!

About IIFYM

IIFYM was started by a few competitive bodybuilders that grew tired of eating bland and boring food when dieting for a bodybuilding contest. The so called "clean foods".
The traditional bodybuilders diet is very plain, very tasteless and usually reduced to a handful of simple options:

Chicken & turkey breast
White fish (grilled)
Steamed vegetables
Brown rice
Rice cakes
Oats or plain oatmeal
Protein Shakes
Egg whites

These are commonly referred to as "clean foods", and there are tons of them out there, all, equally flavorless and mundane. I am sure you can see how eating these things day after day, week after week for months on end would get extremely boring (part of the reason many people quit their diet or give up on their weight loss goals entirely). Sure, the traditional bodybuilders diet has been getting athletes shredded for years, but it has also been making bodybuilders miserable for just as long.

Thanks God for IIFYM!!The athletes that came up with the IIFYM method of dieting did so for that exact reason. They were tired of eating the same tasteless things when dieting for a show.
They were sick of cutting out the food they enjoyed; the so called "dirty foods".
An example of dirty foods, would be exactly what you are thinking right now.
All the foods we love to eat and are told to avoid:

Fast food
Fried chicken
Pizza
French fries
Cheesecake
Icecream
Candy
Cookies
Buffalo Wings
Pop Tarts
Donuts

All the good stuff that would surely wreck your diet if you even so much as thought about eating them. (or would they?!?!)
The IIFYM Connection
When most people start dieting the first thing they think is that they have to clean uptheir diet. Perhaps they think that they need to start eating healthy or start eating healthy food toï lose weight. After all, we as a society have been brain washed for years about what is healthy, unhealthy, fattening, toning, good, bad and everything in between.
Not so says IIFYM!

Eating clean, healthy food can certainly help you lose weight and burn fat, but there is no magical connection between "health food" and weight loss.
The fat loss details are in the calories. Yup, calories. Something we all know about, but avoid like the plague.What I am about to say is bound to upset a lot of people. Most of the so called nutritionist out there are more misguided than the clients they lead in to ignorant metabolism damage. Here goes:

Eating clean accidentally causes fat loss. Kind of like how dropping a nuclear bomb on an island to kill an infestation of rats accidentally kills everything it touches.
Here is why eating clean burns fat, by accident
When we clean up our diets and pay no attention to calories, we automatically reduce our calorie intake. Removing sauces, and sweets and fried food, reduces calories due to simple math. There is not way around it. How many calories? Who knows. But less calories, certainly. The problem is that too big of a drop can cause metabolism suppression or at a minimum reduce metabolic capacity, which makes steady and long term fat loss much more difficult, and in some severe cases, nearly impossible.Since our daily calorie intake accounts for the majority of what our bodies look like, it only makes sense that when we eat clean, we lose weight. Eating clean however is not the answer to fat loss, but is simply a trick or technique that helps those who don't count calories or macros, to lower them. The biggest problem when we eat clean and have no idea how many calories we are actually ingesting (let alone how many our body requires) we end up starving ourselves, and line up our metabolism for a bounce back that is sure to have us putting on extra lbs. soon as we start eating "normal" again. And let's face it, eating normal usually comes a lot sooner than we expect when eating nothing but boring diet foods.

Part of the problem is that people, for whatever reason, think that in order to lose weight we have to starve our selves. You hear the diet scam people saying it all the time to discredit calorie counting, and sell you an item or a diet plan. After all, if they can tell you that counting calories automatically equates to starvation, they have almost nearly convinced you to buy whatever scam they are selling.

Most people, whether they are athletes or couch potatoes know that the more you eat, the fatter you get. How can anyone deny this simple logic?
And in that same line of thinking, the more "crap" you eat, the faster you get fat as well.

The truth of IIFYM lies right in the middle of those two statements. MORE!!!
Moving away from rabbit food
IIFYM teaches us that these so called "dirty" foods are ok to eat as long as we stay within our own required calorie intake for the day.
What bodybuilders have known for years is that everyone is different. We all have different bodies, different metabolisms, different muscle mass and a hundred other things that set us apart from everyone else on this planet. This is where IIFYM shines. Rather than telling your how many calories you need based on your gender or even based on your weight loss goals, it looks at every person individually and tells them, with a made up stat of 95% certainty how many calories to eat.
IIFYM doesn't care if you eat pizza, or chicken breast.
IIFYM doesn't shame you if you chose ice cream over oatmeal.
Nor does IIFYM care how often you eat, or how many meals you eat in a day.

Eat the foods you love, stay within your own personal macro nutrient range and burn fat without the pain that most people associate with dieting!

Notice I did not say starve your self, and enjoy one slice of pizza per day. This is because IIFYM is based on Science. Not on voodoo. a 15% reduction in calories is all that is needed to make your body a fat burning furnace.

All of the guidelines I put up here are tested and used by me.
They work, simple as that!

The basic idea behind IIFYM

There is more to it but it really is quite simple:
1. Know how many calories your body burns in an average day (your TDEE)
2. Eat 10-20% less calories every day than that number
3. Split those calories up between fat, protein and carbohydrates (with adequate fiber and water intake) in an specific way that preserves muscle and encourages fat loss, without a drop in daily energy.

Some useful apps for your iOS/Android device:

The listed applications will help you track your macros and calories.

-Myfitnesspal http://www.myfitnesspal.com/

-Nutrition menu http://www.shroomies.com/nutrition_menu/

-My plate http://www.livestrong.com/myplate/

-MyNetDiary http://www.mynetdiary.com/

-Dailyburn http://dailyburn.com/?s1