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.

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.

Nov012016

Our Weekend in Pics

Got to hang with some friends

Oct242016

You DO Have Time to Meditate

When it comes to anything health-wise, people (including myself) find many excuses to avoid doing said activity. It could be a physical workout or, what I’m focusing on today, a mental workout. Yes, I’m talking about meditation: slowing down your life for a couple of minutes to find center and balance (though I’m sure that’s not the exact definition). Meditation has astounding effects on one’s day-to-day life; it can cheer you up, help you find perspective, give you new revelations, fine-tune your focus and so forth. Wow, sounds like great benefits, why isn’t everyone doing it? Well, one big reason is that people don’t think they have time to meditate.

Not enough time to meditate?! Claiming that for a full-hour workout, but for a meditation that can be as short as two minutes long… try searching for another excuse. But, hey, I do it too. It’s funny, the thing that can help us most in life (exercising, meditating), we try to avoid with any excuse possible: it’s too cold out, it’s too hot out, that cloud looks ominous, I’m too tired, I don’t have time, yadda yadda yadda. Nobody is innocent to this. We all do it, though perhaps on different levels of severity.

Oct192016

New PowerBar Protein Bar

Who hasn’t heard of PowerBar before? Decades ago, when you were a young athlete or a parent raising a child who played soccer every Saturday morning, when you went into 7-11 last minute to get them something with nutritional value there were two things you could rely on… Gatorade and PowerBar. PowerBar (who we’ll refer to as PB moving forward) was one of the first companies, along with Tiger’s Milk to create a candy-bar sized and shape product that had some nutritional value to it. Which leads us to the next question, who hasn’t had a PB before?

Sep222016

I Didn’t Hit Snooze for a Week and Here’s What Happened

I found myself hitting the snooze button more and more often. Maybe it was a hard workout the night before, stress, or just not hitting the hay early enough. Usually, I wake up pretty early and get stuff done in the morning whether that’s a workout or whatever. But for a time, I just kept snoozing and snoozing until it was last alarm time, gotta-get-up-or-you’ll-be-late type of deal.

So, I made a vow to myself for a week that I would NOT press the snooze button for a week and see how it felt. See what more I could or couldn’t get done and so on and so forth. So, each morning even if I really really wanted to hit that snooze button and get a few more minutes of sleep, I got my butt up outta bed. Even if Hungry stayed in bed and Noke was slow to wake up, we got up (yep, if I’m up, Noke’s up–she’s my precious little shadow).

About what you would expect happened….

Aug182016

ON BCAAs: The Gold Standard Continues

Gold Standard Whey. Men’s Multi. Casein. Serious Mass. Amino Energy. Platinum Preworkout.

Optimum Nutrition is one of those supplement companies you actually get a little frustrated with because it always seems like they don’t want your money. That’s almost never the case with other companies that create ten different pre-workout supplements with different levels of effectiveness for different people. That shouldn’t be the case since it’s the same substances that will provide every human the boost that they need. For years and years, people have been waiting for BCAAs (brain chain amino acids) from ON and now they don’t have to wait any longer.

Aug102016

Curried Egg Salad Sandwiches

The final piece of our Downton Abbey party is here…the curried egg salad sandwiches! This one is the one I got most creative (aka deviated from the recipe found here: The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, Revised Edition: From Lady Mary’s Crab Canapes to Daisy’s Mousse au Chocolat–More Than 150 Recipes from Upstairs and Downstairs (Unofficial Cookbook) ) with. These were also Hungry’s favorite! The eggs and the curry make a wonderful pair. The mayo gives it that creaminess that you just sink your teeth into. All together, it’s an unbeatable sandwich. This one, if not the others, will be a repeat I make very often. Let’s get to it.

Aug022016

5 Hard and Fast Rules for Morning Workouts

Please enjoy a guest post from James McDuffy of Muscle Growth Expert.

Experts seem to be adamant that working out in the morning is probably the best part of the day to do so. Not only do morning workouts incinerate body fat much quicker, they also get the blood flowing, so you’re ready for what the day has in store for you. In reality, all this is a bit of a Utopian dream because many people and I include myself in this bracket…HATE MORNING WORKOUTS! The moment my alarm clock starts going berserk, the torment begins…that noise seems louder than it actually is, ringing through my ears like there’s no tomorrow. Quite often this leaves me in a bad mood if I’m honest. Quite often, it’s the girlfriend who tells me I’m in a grumpy mood, because I don’t realize it myself.

In actual fact, things don’t necessarily have to start out this way. The long and short of it is…how you start the day pretty much sets the precedent for the rest of the day, and this can include what you eat and how effectively you work out. If you get out on the wrong side of the bed, you’re increasing the chances of raiding the fridge and reaching for all the comfort foods you can, followed by a rushed half- assed gym session because you’re running late! Just to reiterate, a bad morning usually means a terrible day! To avoid being an ogre in the mornings, there are steps you can take to get your mojo back so your: