Dealing with Shin Splints while Running

Please enjoy a guest post on a topic near and dear to our heart from our friend, Dan Chabert: Writing from Copenhagen, Denmark, Dan is an entrepreneur, husband and ultramarathon distance runner. He spends most of his time on runnerclick.com, monicashealthmag.com, and gearweare.com and nicershoes.com. He has been featured on runner blogs all over the world.

Shin splints are a very common symptom amongst runners, especially beginners. This injury affects approximately 40% of beginner runners according to coach Jeff Gaudette. This injury is also known as medial tibial stress syndrome.

For a long time it was thought that shin splints were caused by small tears in the muscular tissue or inflammation of the muscles, causing intense pain. However, modern studies reveal that the shin splints are caused by flexing in the tibial bone. It’s very common for people to misdiagnose any tibial pain as shin splints– consider visiting a doctor to confirm the symptoms.

Nov292016

How to Get Over…Overeating

If you were in America last week, you probably celebrated Thanksgiving. I don’t want to get into the politics of Thanksgiving at this time, so let’s talk about what type of eating goes down during Thanksgiving. A ridiculous type of eating…eating to the point of making yourself sick. Thanksgiving meals are usually feasts with bounties of different dishes. Alcohol doesn’t help either. Also, if you’re cooking for the event, you have more of a chance to snack while you go. All in all, that Thanksgiving day is a day to go big or go home. And most of us go too big so that we can’t move in order to go home. One of the worst things that follows this meal is…guilt. Yup, an emotion that can have a powerful negative effect on you for a long time. So let’s talk about how to get over it. These tips aren’t just for Thanksgiving overeating, they apply to every time you overeat!

Nov192016

Why You Should Switch Up Your Exercises

First of all, good for you for exercising. Good for you for putting in some work (I know it ain’t easy) into staying healthy and taking care of yourself. After that pat on the back, let’s talk about what you’re doing. It’s hard enough to get in the gym, do a home workout, or whatever you’re doing, let alone planning (and doing) different workouts. But it’s important! Doing the same old routine day after day can kill your mojo!

Why is it important to switch up your exercise? The body is always trying to get to homeostasis, meaning to a point where it has to do as little as possible to keep at a steady state. Humans are also great at adapting. Put those together and your body will try to get used to workouts as soon as it can. Once it “gets used to” a workout, it won’t have to work as hard. Which means YOU won’t burn as many calories, your heart rate won’t go as high, your muscles won’t get worked as intensely as they used to. Are you feeling what I’m saying now? You have to keep your body on its toes!

Nov182016

Optimum Nutrition 30th Birthday Giveaway!

(This post was written and the computer deleted it, so good luck to our memory to write the exact… same… thing. We keep it real over here.)

30 years. I think you’d have a hard time convincing a lot of people who modern-day supplement companies have existed for over three decades, but that wasn’t the case at the 2016 Olympia when Optimum Nutrition, the gold standard in the industry, threw a huge party in Vegas. Although I grew up in gyms and around fitness, I really didn’t start taking any supplements until 2007, but for the last decade as I’ve grown both personally and professionally in the fitness industry, there have been very few standards that have remained constant. Optimum Nutrition has been one of them, and they’ve done so by taking a smarter approach than any of their competition.

Nov172016

Happy National Take a Hike Day!

Happy National Hiking Day! If you’ve been hanging around Hungry & Fit long enough, you know that we love the outdoors and we love to hike. Of course, I miss living near Runyon Canyon where Noke and I could walk 15 minutes to the closest trail and be on our way. Lately, we’ve been frequenting another trail on the weekend. On Sundays, we like to go to Will Rogers State Park.

Nov162016

Stress-Relieving Meditation

If after this election, you have bouts of panic or freak-out moments, this meditation is for you. If you feel stressed, on the verge of mental break, this meditation is for you. Even if your anxiety has nothing to do with the election, this meditation is for you. This will just take a few minutes and, trust me, it’s worth it. Deep breath.

Nov152016

ACTION Personal Training Certification

“I want to become a personal trainer, what should I do?”

Well… that’s a loaded question. How much time and money can you afford to allocate to that goal right now? How much knowledge do you currently have about anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, physics, kinesiology, etc? Why do you want to become a personal trainer and are you a motivated self-study course kind-of-person? And those are just the first three that pop into our head. We are asked all the time about ‘how to’ become a professional in the field of fitness and becoming a certified personal trainer is most enthusiasts’ first course of action, but what kind of weight do acronyms actually hold?

Nov082016

No-Bake Pumpkin Protein Balls

We haven’t made recipes in way too long here at Hungry & Fit. We pledge to post more recipes and more fitness advice! Getting back to our roots. Lately, we’ve committed ourselves to stick to a budget. We used to spend WAY too much money on food (think above $500 each) per month so we made a goal of eating in most of the time. We’ve made true of that commitment so far, eating in for almost every meal! We’ve gotten to cook more and fatten up our wallets. We also feel better since we know what we’re putting down our throats. Yay for budgets and eating well!

I’ve been wanting to get back into the kitchen for a while. I saw Carrots ‘n’ Cake’s recipe and decided to do my own spin on it. It’s no-bake pumpkin protein balls–an incredibly simple recipe with very few ingredients. This recipe also has that canvas for being creative. Try putting different wet and dry ingredients in! I went with pumpkin since…’tis the season after all!

Nov052016

Performance Shoulders Workout

Whether our injuries are actually located somewhere inside our shoulder or hip girdles, many injuries are caused by a lack of stability and mobility in those two areas. They’re two extremely complex joints that are surrounded by many different muscles, as opposed to our biceps or triceps that are far less challenging to isolate and deal with as a regular person working out at the gym. Fortunately, we don’t have to change anything in terms of “how to train” other than be aware of the various muscles that should be targeted.

This workout combines basic movements that activate all the major muscles in the shoulder girdle and eventually leads up to some lifts that are closer to what you’d see in competition. It’s not necessarily a workout for a beginner and that’s why we aren’t offering full explanations and pictures of the exercises. If you’re unsure what these (basic) exercises and muscles are, you should probably take a step back and start with the machines in the gym, rather than free weights.

Nov042016

The Answer to the Question of Life

The moment that you’ve all been waiting for, or at least it would make sense for us to think that, since we are asked all the time… “what product do you recommend for (fill in the blank)?” and proceed. In person, via text/email, on social media, through the blog… we are constantly being asked for our recommendation on products from video games and books, to dog food and people food, to jump ropes and weightlifting shoes. The list goes on and on and on so we thought that instead of answering the same questions over and over again, let’s create a page that we can send you to with all the information clearly laid out, which brings us to right now!

If you check out the blog, you’ll notice that there is a new tab on the top menu titled “Products” and, while it’s a work in progress, we want to work with you to build it because our memories aren’t always the sharpest. If you click on the tab, you’ll see a long list of hyperlinked product descriptions loosely organized in categories such as Protein, Pets, Food, and Vitamins & Minerals. We made the list that you can look at now based on products that we remembered you have all asked about in the past, so if you can think of anything else please let us know.