Are your #supplements certified by the #FDA to be in #compliance? Look for #NPA GMP, and #NSF GMP certified supplements. These are industry regulated and exceed the current FDA regulation of dietary supplement.
What are Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs)? What is the difference between compliance and certification? What do the alphabet of names
Monday morning can be difficult but it always presents a new opportunity to start fresh. You can change how you feel physically by taking a small step today towards a goal. Monday is a day to practice staying with yourself. Being present, being aware of yourself in your surroundings. Stop reflecting on the resistance that’s pushing in around you. Quiet the external thoughts that bombard you while you workout. Feel whatever your body wants you to feel. Allowing yourself to feel the momentary physical awareness will quiet your mind from the chatter going on around you and let you be open enough to progress forward. It’s a physical revelation. And when you start trusting your deepest feelings, whether or not you can explain them, you start trusting your body to do what it was designed to do. Before getting to this point, I wouldn’t let myself do something unless I knew I could explain it. Now the explanation can come later.
1. Relax into yourself. Trust your body not to lead you astray.
2. Stay with your experience; whatever you are feeling–tightness, pinching, opening–stay with that feeling and acknowledge it as temporary.
3. Feel the joy of your ability to experience. Many people in this world don’t have the ability to experience physically what you can.
4. Surround yourself with this joyful thing, this experience. Know that you are loved by this joyful thing, this gift of physical experience. Love it back, in the moment.
5. Relax into yourself, because you know you are this joyful thing. You are this physical gift.
If you wake up feeling tired, sore and generally puffy, you may want to try adding a Liver Support supplement to your daily routine. The liver plays a major role in metabolism and has a number of functions in the body, including glycogen storage, decomposition of red blood cells, plasma protein synthesis, hormone production, and detoxification. In a nutshell, this organ controls how you produce, store or burn fat and calories.
Beyond eating healthy and staying physically fit, supplements can aid your body in detoxification, so your organs don’t have to work so hard to get rid of the fat and toxins in your blood. My favorite supplement in this category is the NOW foods brand Liver Detoxifier and Regenerator.
Artificial sweeteners may seem like a god send, but they cause havoc within your body if you’re not careful. In fact, the evidence is adding up that consumption of noncaloric, artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs) is associated with an increased risk for a variety of chronic diseases including obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes.
In an article
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.
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.
I know, I know… Apps are the next “It” thing if you are in business. But I am proposing that you NOT carry your cell phone everywhere you go. And hey, especially when you are exercising. Because, if anything, exercise is your hour to yourself everyday. And it should be peaceful and quiet and you shouldn’t have emails buzzing and text messages being sent and you shouldn’t be looking at yet another florescent screen just to follow an exercise routine. No, I’m thinking all you need is your eyes, your ears, your heart, your arms and legs to carry out the most physical part of your day. Forget technology, get in touch with something even more intelligent and complex–your body.
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.
By Shayna Robinson, MSPT, PhD
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):
You probably already know that a strong core is key to riding better. And with the weather warming up, this is the best time to prep for your long rides. You may be surprised, but there’s more to your core than just abs and doing crunches won’t do the trick. Too many cyclists forget muscles that riding neglects–glutes, back, hips and obliques.
The workout below, targets those muscles to create a stable platform for your legs to generate real power. 
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