Fit Your Feet

The correct shoe can mean the greatest training and competitive season you’ve ever had and a poorly fit shoe can derail your progress and sideline you. As we age, without the correct anatomical support, the bones in your foot can collapse under the weight of gravity from all the added high impact exercise we sustain to stay healthy. Fortunately for all us runners, there’s a simple way to analyze your gait and you don’t even have to rely on the “experts” at Fleet Feet. Personally, every time I purchase a pair of shoes at Fleet Feet, I get a different diagnosis. One of my all time favorite running shoe companies, Mizuno, provides a precision online fit assessment and then recommends a specific model to try out. You can opt to buy their brand or search elsewhere with the info you attain from the fit assessment. I personally love Mizuno. The lightweight feel of their shoes coupled with the quality and ability to keep up with my training is why I go back to them again and again.

Here are the different elements of the test:

 

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The Power Poses

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.

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60 Second Healthy MicroWork

Sometimes getting healthy means making a major time investment at the gym or eating really healthy for a month straight. But sometimes you can make bigger broader strides by making small changes. I call this MicroWork. Check out my own personal set of MicroWork; 18 little opportunities a day to make a change.

MicroWork

Studies have shown changing small habits can help you achieve your goals faster. You should have a long term goal and small short term goals, with sets of habits you can change and check off. These ground rules have a lasting impact on your overall success in any future goals too.

When The Change The Benefit
When you get out of bed Stand up and stretch your hamstrings for 30 sec 27% increase in flexibility in 6 weeks
Before you brush your teeth Take a baby aspirin 20% reduced risk of breast cancer in women who take one a day
At breakfast Take a daily vitamin 19% reduced risk of getting sick. When you take daily vitamins, you support your immune system
At the office Walk to talk to your co-workers, instead of emailing More than 1lb of weight lost per year by taking an extra 4-5k steps per day
With every meal Drink ice water 1lb lost every 8 weeks

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In A Pinch…Dunkin Donuts

We can’t always perfectly plan our day. Yes, there will be times that you are running around the city, literally, jam packed with errands. Yesterday was clearly that day for me. So instead of not eating and running on fumes, I stopped at Dunkin Donuts to grab a bite.

Normally, I hate using fast food as a meal choice, but in this case I didn’t have time to stop and eat and I forgot my protein bar at home. “Don’t use this as an excuse to skip a meal,” I repeated to myself. It is my mantra these days….

Luckily, D&D had my back. A fact friendly tear-off perfect for my pocket. And you can download the pic I posted or check out the details below.

Best Food Choices At Dunkin Donuts:

  1. egg white veggie wrap (150cals)
  2. egg white turkey sausage wrap (150cals)
  3. egg and cheese wrap (180cals)
  4. ham, egg, cheese wrap (200cals)
  5. egg white flat bread (280cals)

Best Drink Choices At Dunkin Donuts:

  1. Hot Tea (0 cals)
  2. Hot Coffee/Ice Coffee (5-25 cals, depending on additives like sugar, cream, etc.)
  3. Latte Lite/Iced Latte Lite (80 cals)

 

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The Link Between Antiobiotics and Tendon Rupture

Antibiotic prescriptions carry serious side effects for tendons and neuromuscular activity:

Antibiotics are important drugs, often restoring health and even saving lives. In 2010, the most popular antibiotic drug in America was Levaquin.

Levaquin is part of a class of drugs called

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Bone Mineral Density and The Athlete

Start thinking about Bone Mineral Density. It’s an important factor in injury prevention, now and in your future health–and it’s cumulative. That means if you’re an athlete and aren’t getting the proper nutrition, rest and relaxation your body needs now, you’re setting your body up for failure later.

Bone Mineral Density is a cumulative history of energy availability, hormonal fluctuations, genetics, good nutrition, behaviors and environmental factors. As you get older, bone mineral density falls as our muscular infrastructure changes. When you do damage to your body, by starving/binging yourself, exercising too hard, not getting enough sleep and allowing stress to become a regular component in your life, you seriously alter your future body.

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The Kick Ass Diet

Your fat cells won’t ever go away (without lipo anyways), but cellulite (the matrix that holds your fat cells together) can be reduced by how much you diet and exercise. Fat cells shrink and expand depending on how much fat you are taking in, so if you reduce the fat in your diet, they will shrink and will not be held taut against the cellulite matrix.

Siggi’s is one of my favorite diet secrets. I use it in the afternoon for a boost at lunch. With only 100 cals and 14 grams of protein, this is one of the highest non-synthetic forms of pure protein out there.

  • 100 cals, 0 g fat, 11 carbs, 14g protein
  • all natural milk from grass fed cows
  • no aspartame, sucralose, gelatin, artificial color, preservatives, or high fructose corn syrup
  • Milk produced without the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone

Stay tuned for a CoreFit book of health & wellness which includes meditation, workouts, nutrition plans and mental health awareness. Basically my secrets to staying young and fresh and most important healthy–leading a Kick Ass Life.

 

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Low Carb Clementine Almond Cake

This whole clementine cake is a classic Sicilian recipe, which I adapted from a book by Nigella Lawson. This cake is made using whole clementines that have been boiled until tender, then pureed into a smooth, intoxicatingly flavored paste.

Since it is flourless it’s easy to make this low carb by baking with natural sweetners. The low carb recipe is by Alejandra Ramos of Always Order Dessert.

Flourless Clementine Almond Cake Recipe
Adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson

Ingredients
4 clementines (about 13 oz)
6 large eggs
1/2 cup erythritol + 1/2 cup granulated Splenda (OR) 1 cup granulated white sugar
2 1/4 cups of ground almond meal (or 9oz of almonds finely ground)
2 teaspoons pure almond extract
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder

Directions
Place the clementines in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and let simmer 1 1/2 hours, until very tender. Remove from water, then chop and remove seeds. Add the remaining boiled clementine (everything but the pits) to a food processor or blender and puree until smooth.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and line a springform baking pan (this is a sticky cake; you NEED a springform pan).

In a mixer with a whisk attachment, beat the eggs for 5 minutes until very light and frothy. Add the sweetener or sugar, ground almonds, almond extract, salt, and baking powder and beat again for 5 more minutes until very light. Pour into the prepared baking pan and bake 50 minutes to 1 hour or until set. Let cool in the pan, then unmold and serve.
Low Carb Note: Using the mix of sweeteners that I used, the cake works out to about 9g of net carbs per serving, which is fantastic. (The cake has 10 servings.)

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You are Beautiful

It doesn’t look like a chiseled Ryan Gosling or a Victoria Secret runway model. Still it’s beautiful, no?

This is the velella (Velella Velella), a small free floating hydrozoan. It’s currently the only known species in the genus.
They’re also known as sea-rafts or by-the-wind-sailors, for the obvious reason that it uses the the “sail” you can see in this image for locomotion. Because of this, they are often found washed up on beaches.

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Beefspace: Fast Food Density in America

Expert data nerd Stephen Von Worley has created Beefspace, a great visualization that depicts the density of major fast food chains across the country. Using information from AggData, Von Worley assigned each fast food chain a different color and then plotted the locations.

Here’s how he explains his method:

The colors now represent the three most influential chains at each point, weighted by cumulative force at a 4:2:1 ratio, where black is McDonald

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