Today my fitness/beach/stylist partner-in-crime Jen and I stumbled upon My Fit Foods in the Boystown neck of Lakeview. I had seen it open up shop in Chicago on North Ave., just east of Wells and this was my first opp to check out a fast food concept that “strives to make fresh, healthy meals to go that are designed to increase energy levels and help you lose weight safe and naturally.”

“Ok, let’s give it a shot,” we say as we shift gears away from our go-to snack spot (Starbucks).

When you’re literally running your business from your cell phone and trying to fit in that all too important beach date with the dogs in, eating on the go is a must. That’s why a company that boasts 90% of their meals gluten free, calorie and fat reduced and has several portion size options is a road we’re willing to traverse.

Walk in and go immediately to the fridge where the meals are broken down into easy to decide categories; snacks, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Okay, easy enough.

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We head over to snacks. Not only do they have a ton of options (in this category alone, I saw 8), they also have portions–small, medium and large–with the calories and fat literally printed on the side. So even these lazy beach combers can’t plead the fifth when it comes to not being aware of what we’ve just stuck in our mouths.

I had the tuna salad snack which consists of a yummy scoop of spicy and crunchy tuna salad, some zucchini wedges, grape tomatoes and a few rice crisps for good measure. Turns out, this was the perfect serving size and I felt full and satisfied after.

I love that it’s fast, love that it’s portion controlled and that it displays the nutritional information as clear as day. You really can’t screw it up when you eat here.

Be sure to pick up the snack cookie and gluten-free energy bar too for later. They were both low cal, high protein and extremely tasty. Especially the cookie

The rain is upon us and if joint pain and inflammation has got you down, you’re not alone. There’s a very real correlation between barometric pressure and inflammation. So let’s break down the facts:

Barometric pressure is the weight of the atmosphere that surrounds us. When it’s warm out, our bodies pull fluid into the tissues and joints.

If you imagine the tissues surrounding the joints to be like a balloon, high barometric pressure that pushes against the body from the outside will keep tissues from expanding.

But barometric pressure often drops before bad weather sets in. This lower air pressure pushes less against the body, allowing tissues to expand and those expanded tissues can put pressure on the joint.

When there’s less pressure we expand. For example, on a plane, despite a pressurized cabin our feet and legs swell. Some are at risk for deep vein thrombosis. Our blood pressure goes up as our body swells and expands.

Furthermore, when people have chronic pain, sometimes nerves can become more sensitized because of injury, inflammation, scarring, or adhesions.

For whatever reason, the nerves are just hypersensitive, and they just keep firing, based on what you do — or not for any reason at all. But if there’s some expansion internally — in other words, the body can either expand or contract based on outside pressure changes — then that’s going to affect how pain is signaled.

So I’m developing a CoreFit Deck that you can take with you. Get the first of these workouts here and print out so you can just grab them and go to the gym. In fact, why not just take a few in your gym back so all you have to do is follow the pictures and do the routine. Simple. And it won’t even show up on your data usage.

There’s a new blood pressure trigger in town, folks.

Thought if you exercised and ate right you could prevent heart disease? Turns out research is piling up against more chemicals found in plastics. The latest study adds further credence to a growing concern that plastic chemicals not only throw off hormones and cause obesity but also cause oxidative stress internally on major organs within the body.

Researchers from New York University’s Langone Medical Center, the University of Washington, and the Penn State School of Medicine recently made a first-of-its kind connection between phthalates, a common chemical used to soften plastic, and higher blood pressure in children and teens. The study appeared in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Similarly, BPA has been shown to trigger abnormal heart rhythms.

9 Ways to Dodge Phthalates (DEHP):

The workout below, targets those muscles to create a stable platform for your legs to generate real power.

We know our minds change our bodies. But do our bodies change our minds?

Powerful people typically are assertive, confidant, optimistic, risk takers, tend to think more abstractly. Physiologically they have more testosterone (dominance hormone) and less cortisol (stress hormone). High power alpha males in nature have high testosterone and low cortisol and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low cortisol.

Amy Cuddy describes her 2 min experiment;

“this is what we did; we decided to bring people into a blast and ronaldo experiment and these people adopted for two minutes either high-power opposes or low-power poses.”

The results

High Power Poses produced a 20% increase in testosterone (dominance hormone) and a 25% decrease in cortisol (stress hormone).

Low Power Poses produced a 10% decrease in testosterone (dominance hormone) and a 15% decrease in cortisol (stress hormone).

Simply expanding your body for two minutes produces very significant increases in your hormonal levels. These hormones are the same hormones that drive our confidence and our success in many cases. Amy Cuddy makes a strong case for the body’s ability to influence the way we think. Simply faking a motion for two minutes can convince you that you do belong, you can be successful and that you are powerful.

This break down of the Triangle Pose illustrates the usage of the inner thigh and the full abdominal wall. It’s one of my favorite poses to do for an overall toned appearance and it also stretches out my hamstrings really well. A great pose to counter the affects of the forward motion of running.

The first ever yoga study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found yoga to be a safe, effective and relatively cheap therapy for improving the lives of heart patients.

The study conducted by The University of Kansas Hospital found that,

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]]> http://corefitchicago.com/blog/2013/02/23/the-heart-loves-yoga/feed/ 0 http://corefitchicago.com/blog/2013/02/22/snowy-exercise/ http://corefitchicago.com/blog/2013/02/22/snowy-exercise/#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2013 12:46:17 +0000 Shayna Robinson, MSPT, PhD http://corefitchicago.com/blog/?p=768 Continue reading →]]> Think the snow will slow down your exercise? You could be right–but only in the best way possible! Snowshoeing burns about 45 percent more calories than walking or running when done at the same pace and on the same type of terrain.

Don’t have snow shoes? No worries–just walking or running in your regular shoes with clips or without will produce about a 30 percent higher calorie burn. Plus the cold weather challenges your body to maintain an internal homeostasis, further burning calories.

Don’t use a snowy day as an exercise to skip your workout. Use it as a training tool and best yourself next time the street is clear

]]> http://corefitchicago.com/blog/2013/02/22/snowy-exercise/feed/ 0 http://corefitchicago.com/blog/2013/02/21/the-mystery-of-foot-pain/ http://corefitchicago.com/blog/2013/02/21/the-mystery-of-foot-pain/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:52:15 +0000 Shayna Robinson, MSPT, PhD http://corefitchicago.com/blog/?p=751 Continue reading →]]> What do the Lakers star Kobe Bryant, the quarterback Eli Manning, the Olympic marathon runner Ryan Hall and the presidential candidate Mitt Romney all have in common? Foot pain. Believe it or not, Plantar Fasciitis is one of the most common sports injuries, and it’s also one of the least understood.

While Plantar Fasciitis is a very common injury, the consensus on the cause and treatment remains clinically a mystery. Little is understood, medically, about overuse sports injuries in general and that’s why, as a result, they remain difficult to treat.

Most medical professionals agree that Plantar Fasciitis is, very basically, an irritation of the soft tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot, attaching the heel bone to the toes and forming your foot

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