Evolve: Omelet Bar

Delicious! 

This morning my roommate and I decided to make an omelet bar to celebrate Sunday. Omelet's are a cheap and tasty way to use your left over veggies and protein. Our omelet bar consisted of the following:

• Eggs
• Onion
• Mushrooms
• Red bell pepper
• Tomatoes
• Mozzarella Cheese
• Avocado
• Fresh Basil

To make these delicious creations, you will need a non-stick skillet, spatula, and olive oil:

1. Turn your stove onto medium heat. Coat your skillet with oil. Once hot, add onions, peppers, and mushrooms. Sauté lightly for about 2-3 minutes. 

2. Add egg. Let the egg cook until the top is no longer liquid.

3. Use the spatula to loosen the egg from the pan and flip the egg over. 

4. Add cheese and avocado and cook for about 1 more minute. 

5. To close the omelet, tilt the pan over the serving plate. Let half of the omelet slid out onto the plate and then fold the other half of the omelet on top. 

6. Top with tomatoes and fresh basil.

Other great toppers include: Salsas, pesto sauce, hot sauce, cheese sauce and.or tomato sauce.

Evolve: Preventing Booty Lock in the Gridlock

Lisa and I just returned from the bay area. In the course of three days, we had driven a total of 15 hours round trip. As we are driving, I am telling Lisa, " Booty Lock!" This translates to we need to stop and stretch.  Needless to say our lower extremities were talking to us and feeling tight and fatigued. This story is similar to those that our clients tell us after returning from their long trips, "my back flared up", "my hip is sore", "my knees are stiff" ... One method that Lisa and I take very seriously when on long road trips is called "Take 10". Every two hours of sitting, spend 10 minutes doing dynamic stretching. Below we have put together a series of major movements to keep you not only energized on your trip, but pain free during and after your journey. Enjoy!

Take 10

Twisting Pin Wheels

This dynamic movement is perfect for loosening up your back, hamstrings, and shoulders. Lisa starts with her body vertical, arms bent, and legs apart. She performs a small torso twist and then reaches with her left arm to her right foot. Next, she returns to the vertical position, repeats the slight torso twist and then with the right arm reaches down to her left foot. Repeat 10 times. 

World's Greatest and Reach

This movement stretches the hamstrings, calves, glutes, and quads. Erin starts with her torso vertical and takes a big lunge step forward with her right leg. The back foot comes up on the toes, but she keeps the back leg extended straight, so that her glutes are still activated. With Erin's variation, pulling her arms up by her ears, she is able to add a stretch to her upper back and shoulders. Hold for 10-20 seconds. Then drop the right arm down to the side and slightly lean toward the right with the body to get a nice side stretch. Hold for 10 seconds. Stand up straight and repeat the movements starting with a big lunge step with the other leg (left leg). 

           Hamstring             Shoulder Bridge                  Squat

Next, it's time to move to isolate the hamstrings. Lisa places her heel up onto a surface with her leg straight out in front, no higher than her hip, and proceeds to reach forward toward her foot. Keeping your back straighter will allow you to feel the stretch even more in the hamstring. Repeat three times each side for 20 seconds.

Moving up to isolating the shoulders and upper back, we find a sturdy pole or sign to perform this stretch with. Stand with toes pointed forward, legs shoulder to hip distance apart, and about an arms-width distance away from the pole. Erin holds onto the pole as she hinges forward at the hips and looks down at the ground. Keep your back in a straight line and hold this position for 10-20 seconds.

Last up in this sequence, is the body squat. For this movement, you want to stand up nice and tall and place your feet firmly on the ground in the "squat stance". This means feet are placed slightly outside your hips and toes are toed out 45 degrees. Next with a big chest and a flat back, Lisa is going to hinge at her waist and sit back as she bends her legs. Simultaneously, your arms can go up above your head or reach out in front of you.  You know you have gone down low enough in the squat when you can no longer keep a straight back. Once you are as low as you can go, you can hold that position and rock side to side to feel an even deeper stretch before standing up. Your hips, quads, and back will thank you with this one. 

Happy Travels! 

Evolve: Use Nature to Craft a Workout

Instep Lunge outside my apartment

Over the past few months, I have run and jumped around every inch of my Culver City neighborhood and found some easy ways to put together workouts using my surroundings. Cost for this is FREE and best yet, it takes less than an hour.

Everyday movements involve pushing, pulling and squatting. Each movement in the list is chosen to model one of these types of movement. Our human anatomy loves to move for short, fast bursts and then rest. The idea with these 10 minute AMRAPs (As Many Rounds as Possible) is to provide the body with a full body workout, while adequately giving each muscle group rest and time to recover in between the exercises. In addition, these workouts are metabolic, which means your whole body will be engaged and heart rate elevated. This is good for your heart and for keeping you lean and spry.

Choose 4, GO for 10 minutes:

Sporting goods stores sell tubes

Pick one movement from each category in the following way:

Chest Press w/ tube around a No Parking Sign

Day 1, 3: Push, Leg, Core, Cardio
Day 2, 4: Pull, Core, Cardio
Day 5: Leg, Core, Cardio

Rapid Step-Ups on a curb on my street

Box Jump up to the curb

Perform these workouts 5x/week with 2 days off of your choice. 

Example

The Hill- right down the street

"Lunge O'Mighty"
10 minute AMRAP:
Leg: Lunges uphill (10 each leg)
Cardio: Sprints up hill (50 m)
Core: Sit-ups (15)

Evolve: Tough Muddered- Snow Valley- Big Bear

This past weekend marks one of the most fun weekends of all time!  A friend of mine and myself completed our first Tough Mudder in Snow Valley, California, by Big Bear. Prepping for the feat consisted of lots of morning runs, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and YouTube previewing of the event. However, out of all the training nothing could mentally prepare me for the electroshock therapy challenge nor the ice bath. The challenge started promptly at 9AM- although there were hundreds of people and a lot of room for chaos, I have to say things were quite organized. We had a motivator speaker pump our group up before we were given the GO. As soon as the event started, I could already tell this was going to be a long day. However, we took it one mile at a time. We climbed over five huge dried up ski slopes at 6500-7000 ft. elevation. It was incredible! However, no matter how tired we got, my friend and I kept pushing each other and laughing the whole way. I am proud to say after 12.5 dirty miles, some beautiful scenery, one scrape, some sore knees and many bananas later,  I completed the course and made it successfully through each obstacle on the first try. At the finish, I was greeted with a cold beer and the infamous orange headband.

I recommend this challenge to anyone who wants to have a fun time, face some fears, and make some lasting memories. Next year, I'd love to bring a group of us out and form a team to make it even more exciting. I will warn those who want to do the challenge to be sure to train some prior. Strong legs, coordination and endurance are a must. The Tough Mudder website provides some resources that will help you prepare.

Enjoy the video! E-mail me if you have any questions!

Evolve: Fresh Week- Fresh advice

I found an awesome article titled, "Want to be more successful? Revamp you Mornings"by Jessica Stillman, which gave some great advice that can be applied to all your goals and to your lifestyle: 

"Seizing your mornings is the equivalent of that sound financial advice to pay yourself before you pay your bills. If you wait until the end of the month to save what you have left, there will be nothing left over. Likewise, if you wait until the end of the day to do meaningful but not urgent things like exercise, pray, read, ponder how to advance your career or grow your organization, or truly give your family your best, it probably won’t happen," Vanderkam writes." 

On other notes, I was recently at a party and my friend referred me to a site called pinterest.com, which is full of really interesting recipes, shopping, etc. One recipe that my friend made this weekend was chocolate chip cookie dough dip! It was so good. I asked her what was in it? and she answered, "Uhh, I don't want to tell you, just eat it." I was like. "I don't care if it is made out of a pound of butter..." she answers, "it is made with garbonzo beans!" Ha! It was fantastic! 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip- goes great with TJ Animal cookies or for a healthier alternative try putting it on fruit! 

Ingredients
1 can organic garbanzo beans, drained
heaping 1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup almond butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Directions
Add all ingredients except chocolate chips to a food processor and process until smooth. Chocolate Covered Katie says not to use a blender. Mix in the chocolate chips.
Eat by the spoonful and let me know what you think!

Source for recipe

Evolve: Getting the "Mindset" for Summer 2012

It has been too long of not writing to you all. Life has definitely gotten busy, but not without growing in so many ways and furthering my knowledge base in the field of health and wellness. The early 20's is definitely a time, compared to other ages I have been so far, of highs and lows and many changes constantly. However, one tactic of mine in order to maintain motivation and optimism in all these changes has been to develop a positive mindset and attitude of success no matter what adversity presents its self. True, this epiphany has not come without reading some great books, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck and Be Quick But Don't Hurry by Andrew Hill. What I have taken home from these reads and my experience is to view each day as an opportunity to further myself even if mistakes are had. Although small failures along the way cause setbacks they also inspire growth. Dweck discusses a fixed mindset versus an growth oriented one. The fixed see their life as "I must avoid failing, failures are bad and nothing good comes from them" and a growth oriented individuals views a failure as a learning opportunity and and inevitable consequence of taking risk sometimes. Similarly, Wooden's definition of success: "Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable,” illustrates how success is relative. The key is taking the results from your actions and learning and applying the new skills to the next goal and to keep moving forwards. Turning my mind to a more growth oriented one and understanding how to interpret success, in this way, has helped to create a more positive and motivating environment to keep achieving versus viewing some outcomes as failures, which leads to dead ends.

For Summer 2012, it is essential to adopt a growth oriented mindset to get out of your comfort zone and push yourself to reach new heights. We all can do it. For instance,  when it comes to your health, it is time to put the excuses to rest and enter these goals with the attitude that "I will be successful" and although, failure is possible, it is the challenge that will be exciting and the potential great outcome that supersedes the risk of failure. Instead of avoiding all situations with a smidgen of failure- embrace them.

Evolve: Fall 2010

Making your Minutes Count in the Gym via the "Super-Set"

The key to starting and not stopping a workout regimen is to part-take in one that is realistic and not ridiculous. This means that, although excited and fired up to begin working out and seeing results, the worst thing you can do to your psyche is to spend 5 hours in the gym working out only to wake up the next day sore as sore can be and feel like, "I need a week off". This not only ruins any motivation you once had, but can cause injury and burnout as well. Don't get me wrong, a moderate amount of soreness is to be expected when starting any workout plan. Recovery is required, but progression and a rational approach is necessary to prevent injury and allow working out to become an integrated benefit of each week.

Each workout I design for myself is handled like a small masterpiece. As Wooden would say, "Make each day your masterpiece", well we can apply this to our workouts too. Each workout has a beginning, middle, and end and most of all each movement has a purpose and benefit. In other words, time is valuable; it would be pointless to waste it when yielding no results.

When embarking on a workout routine it's important to develop consistency. Instead of shoving a 4-hour workout into one day of the week, the best results can be attained by spreading them out over 3-5 days for 1 hour sessions. The rule of thumb is work out 3-6 days per week, never seven and to leave no more than 48 hours of rest between sessions. This ensures you do not over train, but train frequently enough to enable adaptations - a.k.a. results.

Once those days and times are determined, it is important that upon arriving at the gym it is all business for the 1-hour block. 1-hour sessions are fantastic because you will be moving the entire time from one exercise to the next. Now, when attempting to complete a quick and intense workout, a great idea is to use "super-sets". This is a style of "ordering" your workout that entails alternating, with no rest between, two different exercises that each recruit a different muscle. This type of workout will ensure high-intensity and a quick pace. An example of a super-set is combining row and push-ups. The lats recover while performing the push-ups which focus on the triceps.

Next, lets start with the outline of a one-hour session. To start a workout, a warm-up is necessary. Contrary to what most people believe, a warm-up does not include a long-winded stretch. "Warm-up" means to break a sweat. I like to jump on a treadmill and build from a walk to a run for about 5 minutes. Then I will perform 5 minutes of active stretching (what is this?) and light plyometrics (high knees, lunge walks, butt-kickers, side shuffles, etc). 10-15 minutes into my workout... I am ready to go.

The middle part of the workout contains the meat of the activity. Depending on your goals, this can include cardiovascular and/or resistance training. For the next 30 minutes, choose 4-5 exercises to perform, which can be cardiovascular, body weight, freeweight, barbell, etc. The idea is to decide what body parts are going to be the focus for the workout. Then choose those exercise that fits. An example of this may be for a leg/core day, do back-squats/sit-ups and back extensions/sit-ups with rotation. Remember, if you have different goals, then the ratio of cardiovascular to resistance training will be modified. If you are able to come to the gym more frequently, resistance and cardio workouts can be split into two separate days.

Workout like the ones above care called metabolic conditioning because they keep the heart rate elevated for the duration of the workout, making them very intense and a great way to yield results. Remember, workouts like these are not meant to waste your time; choose exercises that translate to the most function in your everyday life, such as squats, deadlifts, and pull and push exercises. A friend of mine, Cheryl Licon says, "Fitness doesn't need to be a chore. What's most important is that you are challenging yourself on a daily basis and doing functional movements. I like to think of working out as playtime; it's an activity that you should have fun with and allows self-improvement mentally and physically. It keeps you from plateauing and sheer boredom. Just have fun, get sweaty, and grunt with some heavy loads."

Lastly, the end of my hour will wrap up with a cool-down stretch. I really attempt to focus on stretching the muscles I worked or that I struggle with during my workout because, again, I do not need to waste time or do anything unnecessary. For example, with the "super-set" we performed, above, I would stretch the chest, triceps, wrists and core.

Then, your home free! Developing this type of mentality towards your workouts will make them reasonable to incorporate into your busy schedule. A really helpful tip is to learn exercises that workout the major muscle groups so that you can pick and choose appropriate exercises to combine to design a whole body effective workout.

Recipe Box"Paleo- Fruit Fondu"Ingredients:
12 oz dark chocolate chips
0.5 T. butter
0.5 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup dried, unsweetened coconut
1 cup chopped nuts (your choice)
2 pints strawberries or other fruit (apples, peaches, pears, oranges, raspberries)
Skewers
Directions:1. Place the chocolate chips and butter in a bowl and microwave until melted or melt over flame in a fondu pot.
2. After the chips have melted, add vanilla extract
3. Place nuts and coconut in different bowls.
4. Dip strawberries in chocolate and then dip in the coconut or in the nuts and enjoy!

Super-saving Market Finds

Poultry Seasoning
So I moved into my new apartment and I decided to get some spices for making some delicious food. Well, the problem with this venture was I needed to purchase 6 different spices costing 35 dollars just for chicken! So I dug through the spice-shelf some more and found something PERFECT. I came across this delicious spice mix that incorporates thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, black pepper, and nutmeg called Poultry Seasoning by Mccormick. It makes it a cheap (~4 bucks/.65 oz) way to buy 6 spices in one small package. Even better, it does not contain added salt or sugar. It is very delicious on chicken, pork, and fish! SAVINGS $30!