Monthly Archives: January 2016

An Absolutely Free Way to De-Stress and Unwind

Sometimes after work, your brain is cramping and the world seems especially bleak. You just want to collapse on your bed and sink into it forever. You find it difficult to relax and unwind. I’ve been there! Many of us have! It’s very important to have a reservoir of tools that can help you de-stress and chill out. Things like yoga, meditation, a hot bath, workouts, and so forth. But what if you want to do next to nothing to get there? I have a solution that I discovered by accident!

Have you ever heard of your Third Eye? I’m no mystic or anything of the sort, but I do believe in certain places of our bodies being able to manipulate our mind and other areas of the body. Such as Reflexology, where putting pressure on certain parts of your feet can help de-stress or alleviate pain in other body parts. It’s a little above the brow, in the middle of your forehead. During a yoga session, I was doing a child’s pose with my forehead to the mat. The instructor told us to move about gently, doing what felt right. So I did. And I discovered a wonderful sensation that instantly calmed me down and lowered my stress. Follow these steps to find a little slice of bliss:

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Healthy Apple Muffins

Yay, a recipe post! We haven’t had enough of these lately, but we are coming back at ya! I recently started a project where I want to start doing at least one cookbook recipe a week and tailor it to fit my needs. Lucky enough and exciting enough, I started with A Feast of Ice and Fire (for the non-book lovers, this is a Game of Thrones cookbook!!). Hungry got this cookbook for me for Christmas and I seriously love it. The recipes are so amazing with a slice of text from the book that the recipe’d food came from! Most recipes also provide the medieval version (how they would’ve made it in the Song of Ice and Fire series) and also a modern version.

I chose to start with Applecakes. As you can see in the pictures below, Applecakes were something that the men on the Wall ate (like Jon Snow). The way they tie it back to the books absolutely makes it for me! Applecakes were basically like a medieval donut back in the day. I chose to do the Modern Applecakes recipe which resembles more closely to a muffin. I also healthified it! Less butter and less sugar. But let me tell you, these are absolutely delicious. The moistness that comes from the chunks of apple is wonderful. And you can just picture the characters eating them too, which makes it all the merrier. 

Viserion paid a visit

Viserion paid a visit

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The Ultimate Home Workout (No Equipment Necessary)

A month or so ago, we lost power to the house. There was absolutely no electricity and at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, it was one of the coldest days you’ll find in LA. The fur-babies are used to adapting from the Boulder sub-zero climate but our cold-blooded python would have had a hard time surviving without his heat lamp. As a result, I got to enjoy a challenging but rewarding family experience. Without access to really anything except water and our library of books, I stayed in and let our snake hang out on my head all day. So what did I end up doing?

While I love supporting local businesses, I think that there is a growing divide between those who are handy and those who are not. DIYers are always willing to take risks and break something in the process while the vast majority of the population will call the maintenance man to change a lightbulb. I’m stuck somewhere between the two but on this day, I decided to go all out repairman. While it was nice to get a ton of chores done and leave the house in the best shape it has ever been in, I remembered something important

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Job Openings in the Swimming Industry

The American Swimming Coaches Association sent all of their coaches an email recently in an effort to try to fill some vacancies for Swim Outlet’s Fitter and Fast Tour. This project is top-notch and travels across the country to provide the highest quality clinics of swim instruction to anyone interested. It’s a huge benefit for experienced swimmers and beginners, and while it focuses on youth, coaches and whole community benefit from its presence.

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Learn to Coach the Best Form of Exercise

Back in August, I saw that the American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) was launching a new course to become a Certified Summer Swim Coach. For those of you who are unaware, summer swim teams can be so much different from your standard club or high school teams. The competitors can often be those who face one another in other more competitive seasons. They use this format to bridge the summer gap and stay in shape while working on and developing new skills.

For many, the level of commitment and attendance is insignificant in comparison to their other teams and as a result, the coach is faced with endless new challenges. Since swimming is such a competitive sport, you’re faced with going into meets with a fraction of your team. Often, that small group are your least experienced and skilled swimmers, but you have to make due because swim meet scoring can be tremendously one-sided, and that looks bad to say the least.

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Why Holm vs Rousey is Not MMA vs Boxing

With the growing popularity of MMA and its personalities like Ronda Rousey, there have been more and more comparisons between it and other martial arts. Wrestling has been compared to boxing and someone always has to come out on top. Like in a contest, there has to be a winner in the eyes of the public. When Holly Holm defeated Ronda, it wasn’t really Holly vs Ronda in the eyes of many. They saw it as boxing vs MMA, but that couldn’t be any further from the truth. In fact, it was Holly vs Ronda

If you wanted to really break it down, it would be judo vs boxing, but Holly would be the first person to tell you that she’s a mixed martial artist now. While Ronda competed in the Olympics in judo, she also knows that one discipline is not enough to be champion nowadays so she also is a mixed martial artist. While the two have a strong background in one discipline, using that last fight as support in an argument between which is superior just isn’t enough. 

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Why Customer Service is ALWAYS Key

With the amount of competition in the world, especially our capitalist society, a single bad or good experience can make or break your opinion about something. When there are a hundred dog food brands, a thousand protein powders, and dozens of car brands, the tiniest things can impact your decisions. However, it’s easy to avoid developing negative feelings for many of those brands since their employees often aren’t selling you the products. You won’t be upset with Purina if the cashier at Petco has an attitude, although it could still give you a negative association with the brand. 

A brand we haven't had bad customer service with

A brand we haven’t had bad customer service with

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LA Fit Expo 2016: What to Expect

As the LA Fit Expo is in just a few days and the Evolution Fitness Conference comes with it, tens of thousands of fitness enthusiasts and hundreds of fitness professionals will be walking through the doors of the convention center. The energy as high as everyone aims to meet their favorite social media celebrities, grab a picture to post online, and pick up some free shirt and supplement samples. It’s like a feeding frenzy but the positivity in the room is outstanding

Organizations including POUND and many others take the stage to demo their newest and most challenging group training formats while vendors show off their most advanced products to date. It isn’t quite the same as IDEA, IHRSA, SCW Mania, or Perform Better, but the EFC still gives professionals the opportunity to learn from their peers and even gain some continuing education units in the process. All of this comes at reasonable rates if you can find parking. 

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Cooking Shows Can Actually Make Your Life Easier

Food Network was and still is the most-viewed network in our household. Over the course of 20 years, that hasn’t changed but the personalities and themes certainly have. While it’s not fair to say whether it’s for better or for worse because that would be so subjective, we can definitely say what we enjoy more or less. Everyone has strong feelings for Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, and all the baking contests, but there are just some shows that give you a little bit of everything. Cutthroat Kitchen is one of them.

For the longest time, we watched a lot of Chopped and we still do. It has its practical application. While the focus of most competition cooking shows isn’t being healthy, there are two major components that will make the life easier of the everyday chef, or the home chef. Those two factors are time and convenience. In most of these competitions, the chefs are only given 20-30 minutes to prepare a meal. That’s right, on Chopped they’re not making a single dish. They have to prepare four portions, which could be exactly how many you need to make for your family! Most of us don’t have hours every day to make fresh meals, so we often resort to opting for some not-so-fresh meals but that often sacrifices the health factor. Frozen food and fast food are time-friendly and have large portions, but typically are filled with unnatural ingredients, excess calories, tons of sodium, and a lack of nutrients. On these shows, top chefs show you how to save time. 

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