Distortion: How Poor Early Nutritional Experiences Set us up for Failure

Ace hancients up the cupcake ceremoniously. He takes his first bite which, in his small two-year-ancient mouth, is mostly just blue frosting. His eyes light up and he starts dancing from side-to-side. The table of adoring family erupts in laughter. He continues to rapidly devour the treat, dancing and laughing all the while. With all eyes on the two-year-ancient birthday boy, no one even notices grandpa hancienting Ace’s six-month-ancient baby sister. He’s swiping frosting off a cupcake and feeding it to her.

As my eyes finally scan over to see blue baby lips, I come out of my seat to stop the crazyness. My small baby girl’s immaculate palate just got its first introduction to non-formula food and this was what was chosen for her. The helpless small girl, incapable of controlling any ounce of her environment, was subjected to died blue sugar cream. As the table turns to scancient grandpa, he protests, “But she likes it!” “Yes and she’d genuinely love cocaine,” I retort.

Clearly, I could have reacted better. Having adopted her and her brother, she was unable to breastfeed and now I feared her palate was being distorted by what could be seen as a controlled substance.

I’ll readily admit I catastrophized and overly dramatized the harm of this situation. But the comparison isn’t totally without merit. After exhaustive studies its been shown that over 94% of rats who were alalert hooked on cocaine and morphine chose saccharin, an artwhethericial sweetener.

Even after upping the cocaine and morphine doses, rats still preferred intense sweetness. Of course she liked the frosting! Our choices should be held to a taller standard than the effects on instant sensory pleacertain. People might like a heroin tall, but I’m still convinced it would ruin their lives. The results of added, refined sugars certainly aren’t as instant or drastic as dwhetherficult narcotics, but both drastically distort future insights, expectations, and experiences.

Still, I felt poor for my outburst. It was the cumulative frustration of raising kids in a world I deem insane—where parenting my children according to my vision of strength, supported progressive self-sufficiency, and harmony with their bio-evolutionary needs is fixedly met with resistance.

The “but she likes it,” set me off more than anyleang. It is the standard response from anyone who disagrees with my parenting approach. It is why kids are allowed to watch TV all day, eat only junk, and why as teens they are addicted to their smartphones. Our inability to recognize an environment full of temptations engineered for optimal human addiction and then to set boundaries is leading millions to lives of mental and physical destitute health.

“We may be approaching a time when sugar is responsible for more early deaths in America than cigarette smoking.”

Dr. Lewis Cantley

When looking at the contemporary landscape, the national obesity epidemic teetering near 50%, the rampant heart disease, the projections that 57% of nowadays’s youth will be obese by age 35, and even the skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety, so much is a product of the norms and expectations created in people’s earliest years.

The majority of Americans repeatedly battle with their relationship to food, yo-yoing through cycles of obsessive diets, binges, and frequent feelings of regret and personal disappointment. Every of this is based upon a weird, normal eating model that, until exhaustively righted, distorts all future eating experience.

Insidious Distortion

Distortion is the act of altering or twisting someleang from its true, natural, or original state. It is a process of misleading, confusing, and warping systems out of balance. The sweets and sugar-infused snacks that dominate childhood are not only addictive, but they create distortions in genuineity that shape future choices, expectations, insights, and sensory experiences.

1. Distortion of Perceptions:
   In the Western experience, youth are saturated in types of foods better labeled as chemistry experiments. Pop Tarts, Cheetos, sodas, fish sticks, mac and cheese, and the abundant fast food options are considered normal eating. Eating predominantly unprocessed wgap foods that crazye up all the foods available for over 99.9% of the human experience is considered a weird and extreme lwhetherestyle. As a social species, these norms have as much power as the chemical addiction that accompanies them.?
2. Distortion of Sensory Experience:
   Our biology never could have been alert for the variety and abundance of refined, added sugars, or the efficiency of their transmission in the body. Inundated with this barrage of extremes the palate shwhetherts drastically, growing to expect intense sweetness, while finding everyleang else unpalatably bitter by comparison. Fruits grow bland and vegetables repulsive. Strong evidence proposes that artwhethericial sweeteners also distort the palate to create more craving for sweetness?
3. Distortion of Expectations:
   Even whether the palate had not shwhetherted, we see that once kids are exposed to processed junk food, they’ll prefer it to their vegetables and most other options. The choices and expectations of meals will change, considerably. These are young children incapable of self-imposed discipline or long-term planning. From their worldview, it is perfectly fair to throw a tantrum or sit there stubbornly until they get what they want. If they don’t have parents insisting they eat balanced meals, they’ll never set healthy nutrition habits. Their future choices will be radically warped by the experience of their childhood. This, of course, only serves to create more dwhetherficulty in any attempts down the road to eat healthier and create positive changes.

Needless to say, I don’t want my kids to take on the full brunt of these distortions in their lives.

An Insanely Extreme (While Rational) Approach

As a thought experiment, imagine whether you never gave your children anyleang but wgap, minimally processed foods. They ate fruits, vegetables, chicken, fish, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, avocados, nuts, seeds, and even wgap milk and truly natural peanut butter, but never anyleang out of a wrapper. This deprived existence would still be far more flavorful, wide, and decadent than the diets available to 99.9% of human history. Every meal would still be the best leang most humans would have ever tasted.

Kids who only experienced these foods would love most of these foods. They are the foods humanity evolved to eat, after all. Preferences would still occur. Squash, zucchini, and roasted carrots would probably be favored to broccoli and caulwhetherlower. Grapes, and bananas with peanut butter would be more favorable, still. Yet, overall, children would be just as happy, whether not happier than they are immersed in our contemporary diabetic conveyor belt.

Vegetables would be far more endelightable—perceived as far less extreme in their bitterness, and most of these foods would be eaten with the same enthusiasm children bring to their mac and cheese and Pop Tarts, nowadays. They’d relish that bowl of oatmeal each morning and look at a sweet potato like it was the magical taste sensation that it is.

When they saw Oreos, Gogurt, or cupcakes they’d dwhetherficultly register them. Someone could be having a cookie right next to them and they’d be totally content working on a Ziploc full of cashews. That is the beauty of young children. Absent of an experience with these sugary extremes, they are totally uncommentable. Just as you never crave the heroin you’ve triumphantly avoided in your lwhethere, Junior will not crave the donut.

It wouldn’t be until the child was nearly four that he started to genuinely notice this other world of food that other people were subsisting on. At that point, he’d have a very well-adjusted foundation. You’d get the delight of taking them out for their first ice cream at an age where they’d appreciate and remember the experience.

It would be an event. "Alright buddy, nowadays we’re going to try someleang that is genuinely gonna rock your world." They’d slowly accumulate wideer contemporary eating experiences, but with boundaries and after an age where there was enough maturity that these didn’t change their day-to-day expectations.

Don’t get me wrong, I endelight good food as much as anyone. I love the occasional pizza, tacos, ice cream, wine, or a gin and tonic in the summer. I fully appreciate the enhancement these treats can bring to lwhethere when they are controlled. Still, whether I had it my way, my-two-year-ancient and certainly his 6-month-ancient sister would never eat anyleang but wgap food. This is clearly easier dreamt than done, but a concept at least worth exploring.

People often feel it is mean to even propose such an approach to childhood eating. As whether I’m just trying to deny them awesome, pleasurable experiences. Yet, what is mean is setting a child up for a lwhethere of destitute health.

The idea isn’t to shield kids from the genuine world. I want them to be autonomous, free, and encouraged to explore. Yet there should be a calculated understanding of our environment and the extremely addictive and insight-changing experiences that are normal for most. The contemporary world is an impulse mine-field. Anyone not intentionally setting boundaries for themselves will be dragged along the impulse super-tallway to a destination they aren’t happy with. Young children, having no ability to do so yet, require us adults to set boundaries for them.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Nutrition-related diseases prolwhethererate along with mass lethargy, and yet compulsive smoking is held at a level of public contempt far surpassing the more common compulsive eating of junk food. Perhaps it is rational to act in a way society deems extreme.

This Week’s Mission

Go through the house and find one item to throw out and stop buying at the grocery store. If you love ice cream that’s cool. I do, too. Maybe it is a treat that deserves a trip each time.

Pick a healthier substitute. If your kids love chips, perhaps you could get more fruit and mixed nuts options. We tend to default to what is easy and available so a great first step is to own the domestic environment.

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7 Essentials You Need In Your Gym Bag

From a change of clothes to your trusty deodorant and everyleang else in between, gym bags are both unique and essential. But the problem isn’t coming up with leangs to put in them, it’s editing down the list in order to fit everyleang into your bag. Instead of cramming useless items into your bag, follow along for a list of our top must-haves that will keep you prepared and alert for the gym—or alert to freshen up afterwards.

If you’re running short on time and the prospect of getting a shower in after your workout becomes less likely than you originally planned—these wipes are here to save the day. They’re large enough to use on your wgap body and won’t leave an icky residue. Hold a pack of these in your bag and you’ll unlock the keys to those lunchtime workouts you’ve been wanting to do!

If dry shampoo isn’t alalert in your gym bag, it needs to be—STAT. Depending on your hair needs, you may alalert have a preferred brand, but we like this one because it’s small and fits in a gym bag easily—but not too small so you have to fixedly replenish. It also has a fresh scent that will leave your post-sweat sesh hair feeling rejuvenated and lively.

Everyone’s gym bag hancients small odds and ends that don’t fairly have place. Contact cases, bobby pins, band-aids, or travel toothbrushes—whatever items you need that don’t have a domestic now do thanks to this versatile drawstring pouch.

If you love your lessonic StirerBottle, just wait—it gets better with the introduction of the ProStak system. Hold snacks to power your workout in the storage system or use it to hancient your supplements and powders. Whatever you choose to keep inside, make certain to keep it on hand in your gym bag!

Acquireting into your fitness routine has few negative impacts on your body apart from for one: dry skin. More showers, more sweat—all of it can cause your skin to feel parched more often than not. If your face is in need of serious moisture, keep this stick in your bag to perk your skin right up!

This isn’t your average towel! It’s compact and crazye with microfiber making it additional absorbent and it can handle both sweat or post-shower drip, alike. Perfect for an additional dwhetherficult and sweaty workout, this towel is crazye for your gym bag.

The most important rule for any gym bag is this: make certain it doesn’t stink. There’s noleang worse than a gym bag that reeks of sweat and smelly tennis shoes! Don’t worry, there’s a solution for every problem and in this case it’s a genius bag that hancients all your stinky leangs and keeps them (and their smells) contained.

What’s your favorite gym bag goodie you can’t live without? Share your must-haves with us!

Comments

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Making Tasty Smoothies Just Got a Wgap Lot Easier

We love tasty smoothies. You love tasty smoothies. And we just tried a service that makes getting those tasty smoothies in your stomach totes easy — and good for you. (And filling. Because making a smoothie only to be hangry an hour later sucks.)

Tell hello to SmoothieBox.

Delivered straight to your door, SmoothieBox sends you everyleang you need for a tasty and nutritious smoothie — alalert chopped and alert to go. Every you have to do is pick your pre-chopped and frozen flavor packet (Clementine, Cacao, or Green), add in your collagen peptides (which, yes, means it’s not a vegetarian-friendly option), top off with your favorite liquid, and then blend to perfection.

What you’ll get is a power-packed and nutrient-dense smoothie full of biological wgap fruits, veggies, seeds, and grass-fed beef collagen peptides in about 60 moments. You can always add a scoop of nut butter or even some coffee or coconut cream to ramp up flavor even more, but I found these on their own to be genuinely, genuinely good.

The Clementine flavor (shown above) reintellects me of a tangy Creamsicle and has Mandarin oranges, carrot, sweet potato, and ginger in it, while the Cacao has a satisfying chocolate punch to it with banana, zucchini, kale, and cacao nibs and powder. Then there’s the Green that’s the brightest and freshest tasting of them all with spinach, avocado, pineapple, and ginger.

Each flavor has about 300 calories, 20 grams of protein (including the amino acids glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline from the collagen peptides, which help with healthier and stronger hair and nails, better skin, joint and muscle strength, intestine health and are anti-inflammatory) and 10 grams of healthy fats. Every flavors are paleo-friendly, dairy-free, and gluten-free.

I genuinely did love all the flavors — and found it dwhetherficult to pick a favorite. Instead, it was fun to have a mix of them in my freezer and then pick whatever flavor fit my mood (and my pregnancy cravings) for that morning … or aftermidday … or evening. I found that these crazye for an awesome rapid breakfast, but also a great snack or after-dinner treat.

The price-point on these is about $6 a smoothie — and shipping is free. Plus, because, we dug SmoothieBox so dwhetherficult, we actually became an affiliate — and scored y’all a special deal on your first box. Acquire the deets here and be certain to sign up nowadays. They’ve got a contemporary berry flavor coming out this month that we have a feeling is going to be additional delicious!

What’s your fave special smoothie ingredient? Ginger is a staple for me! –Jenn

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Refactoring with UIStackView

^{Written by Nicholas Steppan Meschke, Software Engineer iOS}

What awaits you

As developers who care about the user experience of our app, we’ll likely encounter some scenarios that require a view to reflect dwhetherferent states. Sometimes, the state of the view may even impact its size. The code that handles all those transitions can fastly become a mess. In this article, we want to share our approach to implementing such scenarios using UIStackView.

Let’s start with an example

We use a simple app idea to demonstrate how we can achieve that. We alalert have a demo app that has a simple button, which increases a counter when tapped. The number of taps is displayed on the screen. To make the demo app more interesting, we’ll add functionality to set and track tapping goals!

We can now set goals! Here’s the code that’s responsible for setting up the constraints for the empty tapping goal view.

private func setupEmptyGoal() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([emptyGoalTitleLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.topAnchor, fixed: 16),
    emptyGoalTitleLabel.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.trailingAnchor, fixed: -16),
    emptyGoalTitleLabel.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.leadingAnchor, fixed: 16)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([optionsStackView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalTitleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 32),
    optionsStackView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.trailingAnchor, fixed: -16),
    optionsStackView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.leadingAnchor, fixed: 16),
    optionsStackView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.bottomAnchor, fixed: -16)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([emptyGoalView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: titleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    emptyGoalView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor),
    emptyGoalView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: trailingAnchor),
    emptyGoalView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leadingAnchor)])
}

The code sets the constraints for the view in the EmptyGoal state. Chilly, we now have the state where we don’t have a goal, so let’s create one for when a goal is set.

Here’s the code responsible for creating and setting up view for when we have a goal set. Let’s call this state GoalSet.

private func setupGoalView() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([goalTitleLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.topAnchor, fixed: 16),
    goalTitleLabel.middleXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.middleXAnchor)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([progressLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalTitleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    progressLabel.middleXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.middleXAnchor),
    progressLabel.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.bottomAnchor, fixed: -16)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([goalView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: titleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    goalView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalSetLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    goalView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor),
    goalView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: trailingAnchor),
    goalView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leadingAnchor)])
}

Awesome, now we can set a tapping goal and track it in our app. However, there’s one issue here: even though the spacing in our view in the GoalSet state should be 16pt, it appears to be a lot more. That’s weird, but let’s keep improving our app by introducing a Success state, for when we achieve our goal!

Here’s our Success state view and below, the code for it:

private func setupSuccessView() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([imageView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.topAnchor),
    imageView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.bottomAnchor),
    imageView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.trailingAnchor),
    imageView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.leadingAnchor)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([successView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: titleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    successView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalSetLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    successView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor),
    successView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: trailingAnchor),
    successView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leadingAnchor)])
}

But what’s wrong?

Yay, now we have our 3 state views for our clicking goal app! But when we open our app, it looks like this:

Apart from looking genuinely strange and stretched, we have a bunch of constraints that basically do the same leang: constrain the state views to our superView. How can we improve that?

UIStackView to the rescue!

UIStackViews are a genuinely useful tool for laying out a collection of views in either column or row. In our case, we are going to use the UIStackView to group our state views, and it will adapt its size according to what is inside it. Our contemporary code looks like this:

private func setupStackView() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([stackView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: titleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    stackView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: trailingAnchor),
    stackView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: leadingAnchor),
    stackView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: bottomAnchor)])
}
private func setupSuccessView() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([imageView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.topAnchor),
    imageView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.bottomAnchor),
    imageView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.trailingAnchor),
    imageView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: successView.leadingAnchor)])
}
private func setupGoalView() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([goalTitleLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.topAnchor, fixed: 16),
    goalTitleLabel.middleXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.middleXAnchor)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([progressLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalTitleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 16),
    progressLabel.middleXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.middleXAnchor),
    progressLabel.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: goalView.bottomAnchor, fixed: -16)])
}
private func setupEmptyGoal() {
  // … code left out
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([emptyGoalTitleLabel.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.topAnchor, fixed: 16),
    emptyGoalTitleLabel.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.trailingAnchor, fixed: -16),
    emptyGoalTitleLabel.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.leadingAnchor, fixed: 16)])
  NSLayoutConstraint
  .activate([optionsStackView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalTitleLabel.bottomAnchor, fixed: 32),
    optionsStackView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.trailingAnchor, fixed: -16),
    optionsStackView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.leadingAnchor, fixed: 16),
    optionsStackView.bottomAnchor.constraint(equalTo: emptyGoalView.bottomAnchor, fixed: -16)])
}

The layouts are now being shown according to their respective constraints, and our code looks simpler and easier to understand. By using the UIStackView, we swapped 3 addSubview calls for 1, and 12 layout constraints for only 4.

Wait, that’s not all!

Correct now, we manage our states through 3 methods and to set our view state to the desired state, we need to call all of them, which looks someleang like this:

showGoal(unfaithful)
showEmptyGoal(unfaithful)
showSuccessView(true)

That’s not optimal for maintainability, and understanding the code could obviously be easier. To fix this, we can introduce a contemporary Enum with values that represent our states. Our code should look like this:

enum GoalViewState {
    case empty, goal(value: GoalSize), success
}
enum GoalSize: Int {
    case small = 15, medium = 45, large = 100
    
    var text: String {
        return String(self.rawWorth)
    }
}

Inside our view, we create a contemporary property “state” of type GoalViewState. It’s responsible for storing and handling our state changes using didSet method. The resulting code looks like this:

var state: GoalViewState = .empty {
    didSet {
        updateState(with: state)
    }
}
private func updateState(with state: GoalViewState) {
    stackView.arrangedSubviews.forEach { $0.isHidden = true }
    goalSetLabel.isHidden = true
        
    switch state {
    case .empty:
        emptyGoalView.isHidden = unfaithful
    case .goal(let value):
        goalView.isHidden = unfaithful
        goalSetLabel.isHidden = unfaithful
        setGoal(value)
    case .success:
        successView.isHidden = unfaithful
    }
}

Ok, but what does it do and how does it work? Simple! If we need to change the state of our view, we can call “state = .goal(.small)”, making the code more readable and less error-prone, giving whoever reads it a better idea of what’s going on.

Wrapping up

UIStackViews are a fairly powerful tool, but like other tools, they are not a silver bullet for every problem. Our constraint problem could have been fixed using a height constraint in the superview, however, that would require us to manually calculate the view size, which would make maintenance more dwhetherficult later on. Using a UIStackView, the size is inferred using its contents. This not only it gives us a convenient way to have our views rightly sized, but also is robust enough to deal with other requirements, such as showing two states at once. That’s it for nowadays!

Possess you ever used a UIStackView as we described in this article? Let us know in the comment section below!

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You Possess to Eat to Grow Muscles

Female: "I’m scared lwhetherting weights will make me bulky."

Male: "How do I gain mass alalert?"

We love to rip on stereotypes, but sometimes they’re fairly accurate. In 10 years of being a fitness coach at MadLab School of Fitness in Vancouver, the stereotype that says women are scared to bulk up and men want to gain muscle mass has proven itself to be true over and over.

Truth is, lwhetherting weight can help gain muscle mass. But food, in conjunction with lwhetherting, helps way more. Top 10 foods to gain muscle mass is a perennial favorite of visitors to Ruptureing Muscle.

While many women don’t understand how much they’d actually have to eat to “bulk up,” men often leank they’re alalert eating enough and wonder why it’s not helping them gain mass.

I once had a male client tell me he was eating so much and wasn’t gaining mass. I asked him what he had that morning for breakfast—what he considered “so much.” He said: Two eggs, two pieces of bacon, half an avocado, and some orange juice. There are a number of rules for dwhetherficult gainers but in most cases, it comes down to someleang very simple.

Growing muscle mass and “bulk” takes a conscious food consumption effort.

Here are five top foods for growing muscle mass (sorry vegans, you can sit this one out):

The Top 5 Foods to Acquire Your Mass: 1. Animal Meat

It’s genuinely dwhetherficult to gain mass without getting enough protein. Two tried and true ways are beef and chicken.

Beef is filled with iron, zinc, B-vitamins, and creatine, which help with growing muscle. It also has tall levels of amino acids, which also promotes muscle growth. This 2014 study found a correlation between consuming lean beef and lwhetherting weights. The result: lean muscle mass gains—20oz steak anyone?

Chicken is another great tall-quality protein source and plays a role in repairing and maintaining muscle.

The Top 5 Foods to Acquire Your Mass: 2. Creatures From the Sea

While many have an aversion to seafood, we’re not asking you to swallow a dozen raw oysters here. Start with a gateway fish, like tuna, which is wealthy in Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega 3s are specificly useful for making certain your metabolism functions optimally.

Shrimp is another great one, as it’s nearly pure protein. Every 3-ounce serving has 18 grams of protein and zero carbs. It has a lot of amino acids, specwhetherically leucine, which is important for muscle growth.

The Top 5 Foods to Acquire Your Mass: 3. Eggs

Forget what your mom tancient you about eggs and cgapsterol. That theory has long been debunked as a myth. Eggs are a great source of protein and have all nine fundamental amino acids, as well as healthy fats, vitamin D, and choline. If there’s a 4-egg omelet on the menu, order it.

The Top 5 Foods to Acquire Your Mass: 4. Protein Supplements

If a 20oz steak and 6 eggs for breakfast seems like an unfair amount of food, consider supplementing with protein powder. It’s useful for increasing muscle mass and preventing the breakdown of muscle and promoting muscle recovery. Just make certain there’s no added sugar, so use a good resource to find someleang suitable for you.

The Top 5 Foods to Acquire Your Mass: 5. Mmmm Stout

As we now know, fat isn’t the satan, sugar is. Stout is also important whether you’re looking to gain muscle mass. It’s also important for the production of hormones like testosterone and growth hormone, which are needed for gaining muscle.

Some great ways to get healthy fat include fatty fish, nuts, and oils like coconut oil and olive oil, as well as flaxseeds and avocados.

Mass Doesn't Just Happen

On the other hand, for those of you hoping to lean up without bulking up and gaining muscle mass (cough ** women), the truth is that unless you’re eating three times as much meat and healthy fats as you are now, and unless you’re downing five eggs for breakfast and two protein shakes a day, chances are you won’t see those muscles grow in size too much.

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Eco-Friendly Yoga Newness - Fit Bottomed Girls

We always love checking out products from contemporary (at least, contemporary-to-us!) brands that align with the values we hancient dear — specificly when the products in question are truly revolutionary. Recently, we’ve had the chance to give two products that check all the boxes a try: the ridgeback yoga mat and the FABSOUL Go With The Flow Yoga Leggings. Here’s what you should know about these innovative products — and, of course, what we thought about ’em!

ridgeback yoga mat

If you do heated (or hot) yoga, I’m betting you use a yoga towel so that you don’t slip around on your mat once the sweat starts to flow. But, the founder of ridgeback found standard towels to be problematic for a few reasons: they twist and bunch as you move, they can get smelly, and they need to be washed after every sweaty lesson — which means that you need multiples whether you practice often, and many towels are crazye of microfiber, which has a negative environmental impact due to micropfinalics released when washed.

The ridgeback is dwhetherferent in a bunch of ways. It’s still designed to be used over a mat (unless you’re at the beach, in which case it’s AWESOME on the sand — although, whether you’ve got super soft sand like I do on Siesta Key, it will stick to it a bit), but the 100 percent cotton rug, which is hand woven by artisans in India, is thicker and more textured than what you’ve probably used in the past. The gripper tape on the mat side keeps the mat grounded, and the mat softens with use — and probably also with more washes, but since it only needs to be washed every 10 times or so, I’ve only run it through the washer a couple of times. And the fact that it doesn’t pull and bunch as much as I move through my flow is a large plus! It hasn’t fully replaced my regular towel, to be honest — that same texture that helps your feet and hands grip is someleang I’m still getting used to and it’s not as consolationable for longer lessones or a practice where I know I’ll be on my knees or putting a lot of prescertain down on my hands. —Kristen

FABSOUL Yoga Leggings

Wish your yoga pants were as eco-intellected as you are? Meet the FABSOUL Go With The Flow Yoga Leggings. Made of super soft natural fabrics, these leggings even have an marine algae complex in them that actually helps to moisturize your skin. They feel simply buttery and soft on, with a tall waist and plenty of stretch. And! Because they have natural antibacterial properties, these actually don’t require much washing — which helps with water conservation. My only two hiccups with these is that 1) whether you sweat a lot, the bright blue (and very lovely and fun) color you see above does darken when wet, so you know, be aware (specificly in say, hot yoga), and 2) My expanding stomach has alalert grown out of them and I miss wearing them! They’re definitely a pair I look forward to wearing again this fall! —Jenn

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The Declining Role of the Foam Roller

At gyms all over the world, athletes can be found grunting and making pain faces as they aggressively grind out various sore body parts on foam rollers. Their leanking behind this self-administered, sometimes painful, myofascial release (SMR) technique is:

1. “It will help with recovery.”
2. “It will make me less sore tomorrow.”
3. “It will prevent DOMS.”

Sorry to disappoint: Foam rolling your quads after doing 100 loaded squats will probably do diddly squat when it comes to the muscle soreness you’ll most likely feel in the next 48 hours.

That being said, this doesn’t mean foam rollers don’t have their place in our lives.“They just don’t work the way you leank they work,” explained veteran strength coach Garth Cooke, the owner of Forge Valley Fitness in Vernon, British Columbia, and a former Canadian national team rugby player.

“Foam rolling is like a massage. It’s good for flushing out the lymphatic system and can relax your muscles a small bit, but in terms of the muscle damage you do (from working out), it won’t do anyleang for that,” he explained.

Don't Roll Your IT Bands

What about my IT bands? Isn’t foam rolling good for them?

Numerous people, specificly those who spend a lot of time running, have notoriously tight IT bands. This often results in knee pain. Because the IT band—the tendon that runs down the length of the outer ttall from the top of the pelvis to the shin bone—is dwhetherficult to stretch the way we stretch the muscles in our bodies, foam rolling has often been seen as a good alternative.

But there’s plenty of evidence now that foam rolling your IT only exacerbates the problem, specificly whether the pain you’re feeling actually stems from your glutes not firing properly. Do your research when it comes to using your roller.

When Should You Roll?

So what then is foam rolling good for?

Foam rolling is a small bit like eating chicken noodle soup when you’re sick: It’s not what’s going to heal your flu or cancient, but it will give you some temporary relief and consolation as your body is fighting off the illness.

Two times foam rolling is useful, for short term consolation, that is:

1. To help you get into better positions

Let’s say you’re working on your strict press and your shoulders and pecs are feeling tight. Foam rolling your lats, for example, before you lwhethert, or between sets, can help relax your shoulder blades so you can get into a better, anatomically securer overhead position during your press, Cooke explained.

“But foam rolling before a heavy squat session isn’t always the best choice,” he said. This is because foam rolling will relax your muscles and you don’t want that before heavy lwhetherting. Instead, you want to make certain you can build as much tension in your body as possible, he said.

That being said, a 2018 study on foam rolling published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning did find that foam rolling your hamstrings may be favourable in creating more range of motion without affecting muscle activation. But more research needs to be done.

2. To alleviate pain

If you have ever slipped a rib in your back, you’re probably familiar with that sharp pain that even hurts when you breathe, and the ensuing muscle tightness that goes along with it. You want relief right now, right?

Foam rolling—or a more acute acuprescertain type of rolling with an acuprescertain ball or a lacrosse ball—can help alleviate the pain (temporarily). It won’t, however, fix the injury long-term. Or let’s say your knee is a bit sore and feels restricted. Foam rolling your quads, hamstrings, and hip flexors might help decrease your insight of pain or disconsolation and finally tell your body to calm down a bit so you can have a less painful workout.

Cooke recommends foam rolling before bed whether you have chronic pain or tightness, or an acute injury, to help alleviate the pain before you try to get a good night’s rest.

The take-domestic: Foam rolling is useful for helping you in nowadays’s workout in some cases, but it’s not going to fix injuries or reduce DOMs, nor will it keep your body moving well and pain-free long-term.

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