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(Image credit: Brie Passano)

Although we don’t think about it often, we eat warm tomatoes all the time. From tomato sauce to tomato soup, tomatoes love being heated up. Heat reveals their sweetness, opening them up for new flavors. Many cuisines know the magic of warm fresh tomatoes. In Asia, tomatoes are added to stir-fries and cooked until they are blistered and burnished.

It’s that tradition we’re borrowing from for this five-minute tomato dish that showcases the unique sweetness of fresh, ripe baby, cherry, or grape tomatoes. If you love those charmers, this recipe is for you.

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

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

-Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics

You are about to enter a battle of wits with the greatest enemy you have ever faced.

Sure, you’ve slayed dragons in World of Warcraft, you’ve crushed tests in school after pulling an all-nighter, and you survived an encounter with your miserable boss that made you want to set the building on fire like Milton from Office Space.

This enemy is different. It knows you better than you know yourself. It’s been studying every move you make since the day you were born. It’s been whispering subversive messages in your ear every minute of every day. It’s like playing chess against a computer that has tracked every move you’ve ever made.

Ruh roh.

Luke Skywalker knows what I’m talking about. He couldn’t defeat Vader and the Emperor until he confronted this very same enemy in the swamps of Dagobah.

It’s hard to even SEE this enemy. Fortunately, there’s usually one place you can look…

Is Your Ego Keeping You From Starting?

Have you ever been afraid of trying something for fear of looking stupid? I DEFINITELY have.

Have you ever been in a gym, afraid to try an exercise because the person next to you is lifting 3-4x the amount you are going to attempt?

If you’re a guy, would you be comfortable lifting next to Staci as she pulls 425 lbs (193 kilos)?

If you’re overweight, do you worry everybody is looking at you the whole time as you walk on the treadmill?

This is your Ego telling you “I’m too fragile for this. Let’s get out of here and go back to our safe zone.” I know I constantly struggle with feeling inferior around people in the gym, and I’ve been doing this stuff for a decade. It’s not just the gym either. I once sat in a car for 20 minutes before taking my first Swing Dance lesson, trying to work up the courage to go inside, because my ego wouldn’t let me get started.

You’re not alone. Our egos are fragile creatures, and their feelings get hurt very easily! And damnit we don’t want to feel like crap when we’re looking to better ourselves. If we’re not careful, this can result in us throwing in the towel and giving up on something worthwhile.

Your ego says: “We’ll look foolish and this isn’t for us and look at these other people who are stronger and more fit than we are. They’ll probably make fun of us, so don’t even give them the satisfaction of trying.”

In short: “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

The reality: Everybody started at level 1. The most popular rap song in history is a rags to riches story. Even our Canadian friend Drake started from THE BOTTOM and now he is HERE.

When you play World of Warcraft you need to pay your dues and go through the crappy levels killing spiders before you can slay dragons. You’re new. Be proud to be new. Be proud to be you.

Henry Rollins loves the church of the Iron, because it never lies to you. Your ego is often times full of shit and can make you feel better or worse than you really are, but the iron never lies – it’s the great equalizer.

200 pounds is always 200 pounds.

So go pick up that bar if you can. If it’s the best you can do, then it’s the best you can do. Let everybody else around you battle themselves for a personal best while you do the same. Headphones in, hardhat on (figuratively, and do work!).

It won’t be easy. Your entitled ego will expect fast results or tell you to quit when things get tough. Your ego will expect you to be rewarded and advance quickly. You might, you might not.

But you have to step in the arena. You can acknowledge your ego, and then pick up that rusty sword and fight.

Your Ego Keeps You From Stopping Something that isn’t working

Your ego is one stubborn son of a biscuit.

I know. I have been dragged into many arguments because I let my ego get the best of me: in relationships, with family members, with coworkers, and with myself. I let my ego get in the way, stubbornly sticking to a losing battle because I was too afraid to admit something wasn’t working (or wasn’t worth it).

Whether it’s continuing even further down a career path that no longer satisfies you (because it was your college major), staying on a team you’re no longer happy with, or being in a relationship everybody else loves, your ego keeps you around longer than you should be there.

This manifests itself in a few ways. We get hooked on the accolades and achievements we’ve collected. Our egos tell us that our parents and friends are proud of what we’ve done and changing that up would be weird… and disappoint them.

We throw good money after bad, chasing dead ends because we’re too embarrassed to admit we were wrong in the first place. When a diet doesn’t work we blame it on our genetics rather than realizing maybe it wasn’t the right strategy for us. Because our egos fool us, we confuse “the strategy didn’t work” for “I’m a failure if this doesn’t work”, and we stick with it instead of searching for a better solution.

Don’t even get me started on relationships! It might be us, or we might know somebody in a relationship which stopped being healthy 6+ months ago… and yet, they stay in it! Our egos say “If we break it off, our mother will say ‘I told you so.’” Or our egos tell us, “Hey, it’s better than being alone. Only losers are alone!” Which we know isn’t true. No wonder half of all marriages end in divorce – many people don’t want to ruffle any feathers and end up waiting years too long to have the tough conversation.

It works for Nerd Stuff too! We read a whole book or play a game in its entirety that we don’t actually like because our ego tells us we need to finish everything because we already bought it. Our egos tell us “you bought it, you have to use it or you’re wasting money,” not understanding the concept of a ‘sunk cost’ fallacy: once you’ve bought it, it doesn’t matter!

In fact, you’re worse off if you spend a single minute more on something you don’t enjoy just because you bought it. That’s a minute you could have spent on something else that you’ll never get back!

If something really isn’t for you, STOP DOING IT. If you have a shitty job and there’s another path you’ve always wanted to pursue, QUIT. If you are in a bad relationship, make the hard choice and move on.

Your ego is making this wayyyy more complicated than you need it to be. Your friends will support you, your family will still love you, nobody freaking cares about your job status or financial worth other than people who are trapped by their own egos.

Your ego won’t let you ask for help

There’s a cliche that often felt true in my life: guys don’t like to ask for help. Or directions.

We’re afraid to ask for help in the gym on how to do an exercise because we want to look knowledgeable and strong. We’re afraid to ask for help on a project at work because we want to prove we can do it ourselves.

We’re afraid to ask for directions because we don’t want to admit that we made a wrong turn 20 minutes ago when we should have gone left at Albuquerque instead of right.

In probably a far more important example, we see mental challenges like anxiety or depression as a battle we must face alone, because admitting that we are having problems is to admit that we’re broken or weird. And our egos don’t allow that. If this sounds like you, PLEASE read this.

Fun fact: I’ve seen different therapists in the past seven or so years (as I’ve moved around the country), not including the hundreds of hours I’ve talked to my friend Lindsay (you’ve read her articles) who has served as my relationship/life therapist and good friend throughout. I remember first talking to Lindsay about this 8 years ago and she said something that forever changed my thoughts on it:

“Steve, people that are in shape go to the gym to work on things and get better. Talking through things with somebody is the same: you can work on mental things and improve.”

I really struggled with my ego to accept the fact that I needed help on some things that I just couldn’t wrap my brain around, and speaking with a qualified therapist and arming myself with exercises and mental models to work through those struggles was so freaking helpful.

Your ego tells you that asking for help is stupid and to keep doing what you’re doing. To hide your struggles because you need to get over them yourself.

Reality shows us that asking for help is no big deal. Sometimes it’s the fastest way to get results and get back on the right track!

Your fragile ego needs a wake up call.

Last month, I had an opportunity to go see best selling author Ryan Holiday speak at Google HQ about his newest book, Ego is the Enemy.

I made it through the book in a single day, and felt compelled to immediately write this post after. It’s also the only time I wrote a review for a book on Amazon, because I felt compelled to spread the word.

It perfectly illustrated how:e

• Our egos can keep us from starting something.
• Our egos can keep us from STOPPING something that isn’t working.
• Our egos can keep us from asking for help when we desperately need it.

If we fail to see our egos for what they are, they can consume us and force us against our will to make unhealthy or time-wasting decisions.

Whether people are talking shit about me (hey, it’s the internet), or saying nice things (hey, it’s the internet), my ego seems like it’s got a mind of its own. The worst part is, sometimes I start to believe my ego! It’s quite loud, it’s needy, and it never goes away.

So I have to acknowledge my ego in certain situations, and then act how I would if it wasn’t there. It makes me feel like Westley in The Princess Bride, tasked with defeating Vizzini in a mental battle. By understanding how my ego works, I can beat him at his own game:

I want to hear from you! Leave a comment with how you’re battling your ego and I’ll pick 3 people at random and send them a copy of Ryan’s book, Ego is the Enemy.

-Steve

PS: I have no affiliation with Ryan other than the fact that I liked his book and it inspired me to live differently!

###

Photo: Alex Eylar: Lego Mirror, Eduardo il Magnifico: Blue Lego Mirror

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(Image credit: Donna Griffith Photography for Canadian Living)

From Apartment Therapy → Inexpensive Flooring Choices That Actually Look Really Really Good

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If you’re a fan of retro desserts with a modern twist, this recipe is for you. Taking a page from the classic baked Alaska, this pie features a strawberry ice cream filling and a torched meringue topping. As for that twist, the crust is made from crushed pretzels and graham crackers instead of the traditional cake bottom. It’s salty-sweet perfection.

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(Image credit: Quentin Bacon)

You knew it was coming: trouble in avocado-ville. The craze for avocados has caused avocado exports to jump tenfold in the last decade, according to a piece in The Guardian that has the avocado-lovers of the internet in a tizzy. Higher prices mean greater incentive for growers in parts of Mexico, and they are intensifying avocado farming in ways that thin native forests and reduce habitat for the monarch butterfly.

So should we all immediately swear off avocados and pay penance to the butterflies? It’s not so simple.

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

Unless you’re an avid reader of anatomy and physiology, you probably haven’t heard of heat shock proteins. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are an often-overlooked aspect of muscle building that play an important role in the hypertrophy, or muscle building, process. HSPs not only help increase protein synthesis and stimulate new muscle cells growth, they reduce protein breakdown and help trigger a number of other muscle building pathways.

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https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/

I’m a personal trainer who used to be “morbidly obese.” In 2014, I got hundreds of emails and comments in response to a piece I wrote called 5 Things I Miss About Weighing Over 300 Pounds. (Pictured, the author, before and during Before & During—which, for Kelly, feels way more accurate than “Before & After”)

Most of the feedback was positive. The rest…. Well, it was a seething cauldron of rage:

“Who the hell are you kidding? This is bullshit.”

“Eye roll!”

“What a joke. There’s five minutes I’ll never get back.”

Thanks to the magic of Facebook, I was able to look up most of the folks who left insulting, angry, hateful comments. And what—or rather, who—do you think I found?

Well, basically, me.

A lot of the people who left the most unforgiving comments on my very personal blog post were women who looked—and were living—a helluva a lot like me.

Of them, most were about my age and about my size. Most were white and had kids. Lots of them were fitness professionals who’d lost a bunch of weight. And here they were, my sisters from another mister, bashing me against the walls of the internet like a throw rug after a dust storm.

WTF?

Like many of my most outspoken haters, the more of myself I see in someone else, the more harshly I may be prone to judge her. Of course, not all women operate this way—heck, sometimes even I go whole days without passing judgement (ha!). If you can relate, how’s about we explore this together?…

Besides ourselves, who do we spend the most time judging? Oftentimes the answer is women who’re a lot like us. Maybe our female colleagues, or gals with similar responsibilities, or women who look like us, talk like us, or act like us (Hi, Mom!).

Sorry if that last one stung.

It happens in the gym, too. We might catch ourselves judging other women for how they choose to exercise, for the weight they’re using when they lift, for the clothes they’re wearing, for their makeup or lack thereof, for being too old, too fat, too young, too cute, too fast, too slow, too friendly, too bitchy, too trendy, too… You get the picture.

Why do we fall into this judgement trap, wasting time, headspace and emotional energy in pointless judgment of other women?

Why do we cannibalize each other like a soccer team stranded in the Andes?

The answer for many of us—myself included—boils down to shame.

Shame. The idea that there’s something wrong with you. If you carry shame, odds are it has informed so much of your experience and so many of your thoughts and decisions that it can be hard to recognize it at all.

Shame can drive most—if not all—of our destructive behavior.

Sometimes (ok, most of the time) we direct our feelings of shame in on ourselves. We hate on our bodies. We sabotage the commitments we make to ourselves and our health. We roll our eyes at ourselves every time we have the audacity to hope that tomorrow might be better than today.

Sometimes, when we feel shame, we can project it out unto others—particularly other women. Some of us may perceive ourselves as broken, damaged, or fundamentally wrong in some way. If we do, it makes sense that we can end up taking it out on the folks who remind us most of ourselves (Hi again, Mom!), pouncing on those gals like ninja kitties on speed.

Stop me if you’ve lived this one, too: Have you ever caught yourself focusing on another woman’s imperfections, minimizing or disregarding her accomplishments (no matter how great), or holding her personally responsible for things beyond her control? Have you ever expected another woman to be impossibly perfect, and then, when she made a mistake, ripped her to shreds in your mind?

That sounds a helluva lot like what we sometimes do to ourselves, doesn’t it?

So what can we do – not just for other women, but for ourselves, too – if and when we feel judgmental?

We can start by refusing to eat our own.

We can refuse to let shame call the shots, dictating not only how we think of and treat ourselves, but how we think of and treat other women.

If you carry shame like I do, you know what a cunning, baffling, and powerful force it can be. Positive affirmations and glittery memes on Facebook urging us to “be authentic” and to “love ourselves” might bolster us for a minute, but they don’t—they can’t—help us overcome shame.

We developed shame in response to the actions of others: when we were made to feel stupid, broken, less-than, unimportant, ugly, weak. We can only begin to heal shame by taking action ourselves: by treating ourselves and other people—especially other women— better.

What might that look like?

We can respect the choices other women make even if we think we know better or would choose differently for ourselves.

We can assume that other women are telling the truth, and that their motives are good.

We can invest time, money, and energy in each other’s dreams and visions.

We can speak up for each other—in the home and in public, from the locker room to the board room, and everywhere in between.

We can celebrate each other’s wins, mourn each other’s losses, and forgive each other’s mistakes.

We can support every woman’s right to choose her own best path, and in so doing, nurture and empower ourselves to confidently make our own best choices.

Because when we lift other women up, we, too, are lifted up.

Imagine this: millions of us, powerful, intuitive, intelligent, creative, driven women, united in service to the common good, capable of achieving every bit of our greatness, individually and as a community.

How much more will we accomplish when we accept, are generous with, and support one another?

Sisters: We are—and we will always be—stronger together.

Curious how you can get to a place where lifting other women up is the norm? We can help.

From the time we’re little girls, we’re taught that our looks determine our worth, and simultaneously reminded that no matter how hard we try, we’re never quite good enough.

It’s no wonder we struggle to feel confident in so many areas of our lives—our bodies, our relationships, our intelligence, our contributions to the world. It’s frustrating and stifling to feel like your voice doesn’t matter, like you don’t measure up to arbitrary and ever-changing standards, or like everyone else’s preferences and needs come before yours.

What if you could feel confident in every way? What if, instead of wondering how it would feel to be good, worthy, and deserving enough… you already knew? What if you truly believed that losing a few more pounds or squeezing into a smaller size dress had nothing to do with how amazing, powerful, and valuable you are?

At Girls Gone Strong, we want to help you show up fully and authentically in your life. That’s why we’ve worked with GGS Advisory Board Member Erin Brown to create Showing All The Way Up: A Guide To Confidence with Erin Brown—and we’re so excited to share with you!

In this handbook, you’ll learn:

• Simple, actionable steps to focus on your self-talk so you can show yourself more grace and compassion and start loving the skin you’re in.
• How to move beyond the idea that your worthiness is tied to a body fat percentage or a number on the scale.
• The importance of saying “no” to things that you don’t want to do, so you gain the freedom to say “yes” to a life that you truly love.

Get Showing All The Way Up: A Guide to Confidence with Erin Brown—just $17!

The post The One Thing Women Need To Stop Eating appeared first on Girls Gone Strong.

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

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

When office work is brought up as a topic of conversation, those in the health and fitness world usually cringe. We know all too well from either our own experiences or our clients’ that office work takes a toll on the body and the mind. Words like poor body mechanics, terrible posture, mental exhaustion, and sedentary lifestyle flash before our eyes as if Armageddon is coming. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can create a healthy work-life balance not only outside of work, but also during work.

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http://www.thealternativedaily.com/

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