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5 Loaf Cakes and Quick Breads That Make Perfect Gifts

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When a friend or family member is sick, overwhelmed, homebound, or taking care of a new baby, we say what we can — So sorry. Thinking about you! — and then, because we know that won’t make everything better, we do the next best thing: We bring them food. Food speaks for us when words fail, which is why putting together a thoughtful, personal food care package is one of the kindest things you can do for a struggling friend or loved one.

We’ve thought a lot about what makes a great care package, and we finally think we’ve cracked the code. Here are the five things that should go in every one.

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Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

Nerd Fitness Yoga is finally here!

After a year+ of planning, an intense week of filming back in February, and six months of development, we’re finally launching our first new product in almost two years!

Nerd Fitness Yoga is officially available for the next four days! This course has been designed from the beginning to help people of all ages, shapes, and sizes start improving their health and flexibility, with the same charm, corny humor, and quality you’ve come to expect.

If the initial reviews and excitement (see below!) are any indication, we’re off to a killer start!

In fact, last week we did an early launch to NF Academy members, and OVER 800 people have already joined the party!

I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve created as a team, and I’m so excited to share it with you today.

It’s been quite the ride to get here:

• Nearly seven years ago, I started Nerd Fitness with a half-broken laptop hoping to help a few folks get fit.
• Five years ago, I put out my first product, complete with videos filmed on an iPhone, in a playground with screaming children. It was ugly, but it got NF started!
• With Nerd Fitness Yoga, we’ve leveled up our quality big time. We have hours of high quality footage, filmed in a studio that looks like a Super Mario Brothers level, and we’ve optimized the experience for viewing on any device (mobile, tablet, desktop).
• All the videos can be streamed to any device, or downloaded to any device for viewing when you don’t have access to the internet!

Now, I’m not going to go through alllll of the benefits, features, and bonuses that come with Nerd Fitness Yoga, as all of that stuff is listed out in detail right here!

Yes, it will help you get more flexible. Yes, it will hold your hand through half a dozen yoga routines. Yes, it features some corny jokes by me. Yes, it is all done in a way that makes yoga approachable and fun.

Yes, I want you to check it out! 

I will tell you that it was an absolute blast to film this stuff with Staci from Team Nerd Fitness and Kate Marolt (our professional yogi and longtime NF Rebel!), and I’m glad we can finally release it to the world today.

Here are a few things our early adopters are saying about their first NF Yoga experience:

There are more reactions and first impressions we captured listed here. We’re so pumped people are loving it!

The Yoga Toga Party

Tomorrow, Wednesday August 19th, we’re hosting a Yoga Toga Party on Google Hangouts!

I will be joined by Staci and Kate to have a fun launch party and Q&A.

Yes, we will be wearing togas and having fun.

Why a Yoga Toga party? Because Toga rhymes with Yoga, and I don’t get many opportunities to wear clothing that rhymes with products that I’m launching. Also, because why the hell not! Life is short, let’s have some fun.

So, whether you’ve already picked up Nerd Fitness Yoga, have no desire to ever, or are on the fence, come hang out at the party! We’ll be answering questions about Yoga, health and fitness, or my life in general (like how my first 48 hours in NF HQ’s new location have gone). That’s right, in my quest to become Captain America I have relocated to New York City.

Make sure you add the Yoga Toga Party to your calendar!

The Yoga Toga Party will be taking place at this link at 10 pm EST on Wednesday, August 19th. If you can’t make it live, that’s okay – we’ll be recording it (but it won’t be nearly as fun as dropping in live!)

Doors close on Friday

Because this is the first time we’ve launched a course like this, Nerd Fitness Yoga is only available until Friday at 11:59 pm PST. 

We’re excited to watch our first eager batch of Rebels level up with NF Yoga. Then we’ll reopen the doors much later this year, potentially at a higher price.

If you want to be one of the first Rebels to join us, watch my nerdy, late night video walkthrough I recorded that shows you each section, parts of actual sessions, and everything that’s included.

We know Nerd Fitness Yoga isn’t for everybody, so no matter what, thanks for reading up to this point. You can expect Nerd Fitness to continue as normal, with free articles every week, a free message board community, and a few more free features up our sleeves launching soon for the whole community.

I also have one more gigantic announcement about something happening in early 2016, but I can’t talk about that until next month…

Thanks again for being a part of the Nerd Fitness Rebellion – this community has already exceeded my wildest expectations from when I first started back in 2009, and there is a lot more fun to be had.

Hope to see you in Nerd Fitness Yoga!

-Steve

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Q: What does “cover beans with two inches of water” mean? Is it two inches above the beans? Exactly two inches of water in the pot? Or what?

Sent by Joan

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Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

With the summer comes hot weather and the reminder that we need to take sufficient water and energy drinks for any long rides or extended bouts of exercise. Pre-packaged drinks and gels have many convenience features, but it is quite easy and less expensive to make your own.

All the ingredients for my favorite homemade sports drink.

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Like many colleges, mine had strict rules about what kinds of appliances we could have in our dorm rooms. You could have a mini fridge and a microwave, but toasters, hot plates, and coffee pots with hot plates were forbidden. (Not that we didn’t have a contraband toaster, but that’s a different story.)

So that’s why my sophomore year my roommate and I ended up with a travel mug coffee pot. It fit the guidelines for what was allowed, and it because it was so versatile, it turned out to be the best thing I ever purchased for college living.

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Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

With the summer comes hot weather and the reminder that we need to take sufficient water and energy drinks for any long rides or extended bouts of exercise. Pre-packaged drinks and gels have many convenience features, but it is quite easy and less expensive to make your own.

All the ingredients for my favorite homemade sports drink.

read more

http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain

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Good things come from unexpected places. Case in point: The United States armed forces are partially responsible for the invention of everyone’s favorite cheese curls.

Yes, that’s right — the military invented the essential ingredient in Cheetos.

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http://www.marksdailyapple.com/

If you follow Mark’s Daily Apple even semi-regularly, you’ve definitely heard me use the adage, “Invest in yourself.” Why do I use it so much? For starters, it applies to a massive variety of topics that we cover here at Mark’s Daily Apple. Whether it’s losing weight, gaining lean muscle mass, making more time for play, finding your path, or creating a benefit to others, it all starts with putting the work in where you have the most control: you. So I have a big announcement and opportunity to talk about. Just follow along with me for a bit.

Big accomplishments don’t come into the world through sheer luck and happenstance. There are well-trained, well-adapted and, maybe most importantly, well-learned individuals out there who put in the time and effort it takes to start something great. And those individuals don’t just pop out of the womb with all the skills and resources it takes to make greatness happen.

Sure, Einstein and Mozart had a leg up on the competition because nature endowed them with some innate advantages over the rest of us (although I have a deep appreciation for music and a knack for crunching numbers when it counts, I’m not exactly primed for composing the next great symphony or solving the mystery of dark matter.) And that’s okay. Because here’s the secret to self-determination:

It’s the resources we take advantage of during our lifetime that make all the difference in the paths we take and the kinds of lives we lead.

If Mozart never had an instrument to play or a teacher with music theory to guide him, the world would be a little less, well, beautiful to listen to. And if Einstein didn’t take advantage of the intellectual giants before him by investing his time in formal education, he’d never make the contributions that he did. And we’d still be scratching our heads over the fabric of space-time (granted many of us in the lay population still do).

The point is this: greatness comes at a price. Whether it’s time, effort, or money, getting good at something and transforming the world takes an investment in yourself. It took me decades to figure out what it was that I wanted to do. But I always set goals and took whatever measures I saw necessary to achieve them. And whenever I took a shortcut, you better believe I felt it. So the trick to leveraging your own innate skills—your own path to living for your passion—is seeking out the resources that give you that golden key to realizing them. When people ask what’s the most common characteristic of all those kinds of resources, I’d say it’s one thing: education.

An informed person is a capable person. The more you know, the better you can navigate around and over life’s obstacles to what makes you fulfilled, happy and successful (in whatever way you measure success). That’s what inspired me to start Mark’s Daily Apple in the first place: to level the playing field with Conventional Wisdom by educating as many people as possible about all the things that I learned to be true in my research and experience. I knew that knowledge was power, and by sharing my knowledge, I could empower millions of people to take control of their lives for the better.

And here’s the thing. Once a few people catch on to something novel that bares out positive results in common experience, it spreads. Generally, this seems like a good thing. And why not? More people will know more and get to reap the benefits of that knowledge. But one particular problem can crop up as a result. Sometimes, when new knowledge spreads, the conversation becomes so large that there can be a lot of miscommunication—like a giant game of telephone. We’ve all seen this, from sensationalist headlines about doom and gloom, to the junk science headlines you’re bombarded with on a daily basis.

What’s needed in these situations is an authority—an expert. Somebody who can filter fact from fiction with precision. In an age of growing information, the need for experts has never been bigger. Being a jack-of-all-trades is necessary in one sense (there’s an advantage to being proficient in a variety of things), but the value of someone with a specialty, or series of core specialties, is invaluable in another.

And that’s why I made it my mission several years ago to create a program that would provide a way for more people to become experts in all the things I’ve learned over the years. No one person can possibly field all the questions and needs that are floating around the primal health sphere. I, like everyone else, can’t be omnipresent to do it. So I wanted to create an extensive, unparalleled program that could stand as THE authority in primal living—one that gives the opportunity for others to go forth and prosper with complete confidence in their expertise on the subject. And that’s what I did: I created The Primal Blueprint Expert Certification.

I know you’ve probably heard about the program by now. But the reviews me and my team have received from students and graduates have been nothing short of amazing—and a complete affirmation of why we worked so hard over the last several years. Given the program’s growth, from a few humble participants to hundreds of enthusiasts all over the world from every walk of primal life—including doctors, nurses, health coaches, entrepreneurs, students, stay at home moms, and more—I wanted to celebrate by doing something that I’ve never done:

I’m announcing the opportunity for three passionate and deserving individuals to receive a FULL SCHOLARSHIP to the program.

Other educational programs typically offer limited, selective opportunities to honor passionate, driven, eager-to-learn individuals with a chance to join their ranks by offering a subsidy. Additionally, not everyone has the means to afford higher education. So I thought it was time to do the same.

Do you want to join the program? Write up a 250 word or less essay on how you think The Primal Blueprint Expert Certification would change your life and why you are deserving of a scholarship. Submit it by August 25th by using this form. We’ll look over all the submissions and reach out to our picks to grant them their full scholarship access to the program.

And even if you don’t get the scholarship, we’ve made it easier than ever to join, with only $1 down and $89 a month for 12 months.

So now’s the time. I know our program, both from my own experience and the feedback I’ve consistently received from graduates, offers that next level of education and expertise that has the ability to change lives. It’s been humbling to know that we’ve made such a huge impact so far—and there’s still so much farther we will continue to go. So take a leap, and invest in yourself; whether by changing habits, learning a new skill, taking up a new hobby, or, like in the case of The Primal Blueprint Expert Certification, taking your education to the next level.

That’s all for now!

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Mi Piace Gelato Print from Anek

• $30

• Etsy

Gelato, ice cream, fro-yo — have you eaten enough of it this summer? It’s dripping hot outside, but don’t take it for granted; these dog days will be gone before you know it. Here are three fun and fresh ways to add a little ice cream to your life.

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Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Powerful Facts About Peak Power Training

• Peak power outputs are correlated with increased jump height, running speed, and enhanced weightlifting outcomes
• Increased power outputs can enhance all barbell lifts (squats, deadlifts, bench press, and the Olympic lifts)
• Increasing your power production will enhance fast twitch muscle mass, fat loss, and caloric expenditure
• Peak power training principles are important not only for formal athletes, but military, first responders, and aging populations

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