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Snow and Charming know what’s up…
Love this.
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The final Stefon sketch from Saturday Night Live.
The Stefon bit was one of my favorites. I’m gonna miss him
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Me for the past three days!
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Paleo Banana Bread
After starting the paleo diet, I started craving the exact foods I wasn’t allowed to eat. This is my first...
Do you have a problem with food?
Disordered eating has to do with an unhealthy relationship with food: it preoccupies the mind and influences behavior. It’s important to know there’s a spectrum: unhealthy relationships with food can be mild (someone who’s always dieting, or feels as though they should or feels guilt/shame for eating certain foods) to extreme (someone with anorexic or bulimic tendencies).
Disordered eating is complicated.
People who diet constantly may qualify. People who are overly restrictive (keeping to exactly 1200 calories, or having to know the calorie content of every food) may qualify. This is about more than simply watching your diet: those who suffer from disordered eating can’t think of anything else. This may mean they miss out on social occasions, stress about weight gain, spend too much time finding ways to lower their calories, over exercise, or have body image issues related to weight gain. On the other end of the spectrum, disordered eating can be related to those who try to gain weight unhealthily as well (like this lady).
EDNOS is a term used to describe eating disorders within the spectrum that don’t necessarily fall into binge eating, anorexia or bulimia. They can include orthorexia (obsession with healthy eating) to drunkorexia (restricting calories to get drunker and/or feel more intoxicated). You do not have to starve yourself completely or purge to qualify as having an eating disorder or a tendency towards disordered eating.
1. You have all the muscle fiber you will ever have by the time you’re in your early teens! You can make the fibers bigger (more toned) or they can shrink, but once damaged they cannot be replaced.
2. You have as many muscle fibers as the biggest body builder guy you can think of. His are just bigger. :)
3. The term ‘ripped’ is derived from the process that makes your muscles grow. When you hurt yourself, your body sends cells to repair the damage (like a scab). When you work your muscles, you cause tiny little tears (ripping them). Your body sends cells to help heal these tears, causing the formation of proteins which increase the size of your muscle. (This is why protein is so important for your muscles!) No pain, no gain. Literally.
4. Fast & slow twitch fibers do different things for your body. Fast twitch muscles are the ones you use for quick, short bursts of exercise or power (sprints, plyometrics etc.). Slow twitch fibers don’t produce much power, but are perfect for longer, endurance based activities (think long distance running). If you’re looking to train for endurance, think lighter weights & more reps. For power? Heavier weights & fewer reps.
5. Your muscles don’t have memory… they have efficiency. Every movement you make, your brain sends signals to the muscles involved to contract. As you repeat movements over and over, the communication between your brain & muscles becomes more efficient: you become more coordinated. That’s why riding a bike feels so natural after years, or why you get better at dance moves the more you practice them. This applies to your workouts too. Moves that require coordination will get easier with practice.
6. For once and for all, lifting weights will NOT make you bulky. Men gain muscle more easily because of their hormones; hormones women don’t have. Female body builders spend hours in the gym every day, training intensly & heavily (think using 100+lbs), often take supplements for size & eat very specifically for YEARS to get that look. Picking up a 10lb dumbbell will NOT make you bulky. Or a 25lb dumbbell. Or a 45lb barbell. Relax.
7. Where you’re likely to tone up first? Your shoulders. Women don’t have a lot of fat in that area, so you’ll see definition there first. Having wider shoulders will also make your waist appear smaller: a little trick from the supermodels.
8. There are NO muscles in your fingers! The muscles that move them are in your palm and mid-forearm: they are attached by tendons that run up to your fingers, making them move when the muscles contract (like a puppet).
In case you were wondering! (And as hilarious as it is, MANY of you seem to think we poop it out. Not so!)
Click on the title for deets on how calories are burned & stored!
Exercise Bulimia: warning signs, information, diagnosis & treatment.
The Symptoms
Compulsive exercisers will often schedule their lives around exercise just as those with eating disorders schedule their lives around eating (or not eating). Other indications of compulsive exercise are:
- Missing work, parties or other appointments in order to workout
- Working out with an injury or while sick
- Becoming seriously depressed if you can’t get a workout in
- Working out for hours at a time each day
- Not taking any rest or recovery days
The Danger
Exercising too much can cause all kinds of problems including:
- Injuries such as stress fractures, strains and sprains
- Low body fat - this may sound good but, for women, it can cause some serious problems. Exercising too much can cause a woman’s period to stop which can cause bone loss
- Fatigue
- Dehydration
- Osteoporosis
- Arthritis
- Reproductive problems
- Heart problems
Some of these symptoms also apply to overtraining but if you’re obsessed with exercise and use it as a way to undo bad eating on a regular basis, it isn’t something you can tackle alone. Many compulsive exercisers find they need therapy to help them deal with exercise bulimia. To get started, call you doctor or check out these online support groups to talk with other people experiencing the same problems.
Source: About.com
Every week I get hundreds of questions from you guys, trying to sort through various myths, fitness ‘facts’, the ‘BEST’ way to do things, newest fads etc. etc. It’s always amazing to me how confused people are and I’m always concerned about how stressed they seem about it. Then I start digging into the claims & questions and it’s clear why it’s all so confusing: the amount of information out there is CRAZY (and contradictory info at that). Absolutely NUTS!
It’s a lot to navigate through and while I can do my best to help you sort through the good from the bad, here are some tips that can help you figure some of this out on your own.
Alex Hutchinson’s book Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?: Fitness Myths, Training Truths, and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise
The biggest takeaways from the book are about promotional claims and fitness fads, and what you can do to spot the good from the gunk. Here’s some quick tips that can help you spot a good claim from a bad one.
1. Follow the money: Take a look at who gains if you follow the advice. Pharma companies? The gym? The ‘guru’? The person who should gain the most from the advice is YOU. Any plan that has you continually pouring money into it isn’t a good plan: they should be helping you set yourself up to do it on your own as much as possible.
2. Consider the source: where’s the information coming from? Who performed the study and who FUNDED it? Where did you read about it? A science journal or a random magazine? Where you get the information and who’s giving it to you is incredibly important.
3. Understand the shades of GRAY. There is VERY little that’s conclusive when it comes to weight loss and health research. Humans are too complicated, and all too different. Two studies that contradict each other often means that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. (i.e. soy vs. no soy - probably means a little is okay, a lot not so much).
4. Use common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, too easy, too simple? It probably is. 99% of weight loss fads & claims are based on restriction & exercise. It’s not hard to lose weight when you’re eating sooooo little! And once dieters stop eating that way (because it’s not realistic or sustainable), they gain the weight back. In fact, 95% of people gain the weight back after a restrictive ‘diet’ and spend years yo-yoing instead of settling in on a good, comfortable healthy lifestyle. There’s a reason why these fads make so much money - repeat customers. If a plan or diet doesn’t last long term, it DOESN’T work. Quick fixes are like bandaids for deep wounds. Fine for a little while, but to heal the wound you need stitches. Believe it or not, at some point you’ll have to suck it up. Healthy eating and exercise: it’s the only long term fix.
5. Anyone can get studies funded for any purpose whatsoever. Don’t just read the claims, dig deeper. Who’s talking about the claims and more importantly, who’s dispelling them? What do they each have to gain?
Read more from Alex’s interview with Blisstree.com. And check out his book on Amazon, I highly recommend it! Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights?: Fitness Myths, Training Truths, and Other Surprising Discoveries from the Science of Exercise
Your food can legally contain maggots, rodent hair, and insect eggs?!!!!
The FDA allows the following…
• Canned pineapple can pack in up to 20 percent moldy fruit.
• Berries can harbor up to 4 larvae per 100 grams.
• Oregano can legally contain up to 1,250 insect fragments per 10 grams.
• Cinnamon can carry up to 1 milligram of animal excrement per pound.
• Ocean perch can harbor small numbers of copepods, parasites that create pus pockets
GROSS.
Read More: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/17Qaeg/health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/10-scariest-food-facts
Been seeing loads of questions about supplements & vitamins… thought y’all might find this interesting!
P.S - See post 7 Things You Should Know About Vitamins
