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The Seder plate is the most important part of any Passover Seder. It’s rich with symbolism, meaning, and history. And it’s what the holiday ritual is centered around.

While there are plenty of new, modern twists or additions, there are traditionally six main items that go on the Seder plate. (Fun fact: Many Seder plate designs configure the six items into the six points of the Jewish star.) How the Seder plate is arranged differs by families and their interpretations; this setup is one common option.

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Ice cream is one of the most magical treats on the planet, but no one is ever going to tell you it’s the “healthiest” option at the grocery store. If you have a hard time not finishing a pint when it’s in your home and want to avoid temptation, the easy option is to skip the freezer aisle. But it turns out it doesn’t have to be that way.

A quick stroll on Instagram — especially in the wellness and weight-loss community — and you’ll notice brightly colored pints of ice cream with the label “Halo Top” on the lid. Halo Top is a low-calorie, low-sugar, high-protein ice cream. A single pint of ice cream from Halo Top has anywhere between 240 to 360 calories and up to 24 grams of protein. And the best part? It actually tastes pretty decent, too.

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

“Just beat Level 8!”

“UGH, NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

A few months back, a group of my friends and I engaged in a digital arms race. You see, I made the horribly amazing mistake of downloading the brutally difficult and perfectly balanced mobile game, “Geometry Dash.”

Your goal is to get your automatically moving square to hop over increasingly challenging triangles and boxes by touching the screen. I know, squares hopping over triangles sounds like thrilling game mechanics.

No joke, I’m warning you to NOT download this game:

You’ll swear words you’ve never said before, you’ll pull your hair out, and then you’ll say “one more try.” And you will do this thousands of times When you finally beat a level, the sheer joy you’ll experience is unparalleled, only to repeat the process on the next level.

Although the game took over my life for a few weeks, it taught me a valuable lesson about the positive benefits of peer pressure. Today, you’re going to learn how to enter your own arms race with your friends and use peer pressure to positively level up your life.

With us opening the doors for a few days to our monthly team-based, story-driven, habit creating fitness adventure Rising Heroes today, I want to talk about the power of teamwork and peer pressure!

Geometry Dash Teaches me a Life Lesson

So, about that aforementioned Geometry Dash…

Within 5 minutes of playing for the first time, I was hooked. I quickly fired off a text to my text chain with my close friends from high school and college (Joe, Cash, Saint, Eric, and Helder), told them to drop what they were doing, and download this game.

Reluctantly they did, and then I ruined all of their lives:

“This game is stupid….but I can’t stop playing.”

“I’m almost done with level 1, but that damn last jump!”

“Just made it to level 2, BOOM. Ugh that was tough.”

“Wait I’m still stuck on Level 1, give me an hour.”

“Just cleared level 3! If you’re stuck on level 2 you’re a loser!”

Day after day, for weeks, the above scenario would play itself out. Some nights I’d go to bed relieved that I finally beat a level and I could move on with my life, only to wake up to a text from Cash who had beat the next level. You could hear my groan from outer space as my competitive brain said: “Steve! You can’t get left behind! If he beat that level, so can you. Go go go!”

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the game at least two dozen times, each time believing I’m free of its grasp…only to get sucked back in with a single text or screenshot from Cash or Joe or Saint who advanced farther than I did.

And thus I would re-download the game, spend hours trying to beat a stupid level, get past everybody else, and then share with the group that I’ve succeeded and thus no longer deserving of torment or good natured ridicule.

I was in the gym the other day, in between deadlift sets, trying to beat the 11th level in Geometry Dash, an idea popped in my head: Why don’t I take the Geometry Dash mechanic and apply positive peer pressure to my life in a HEALTHY way?

Positive Peer Pressure Proves Powerful

“You are the average of the five people you associate most with.” -somebody way smarter and more successful and probably with better hair than me.

We all have people in our lives that we want to see succeed (at least I hope!), and they want us to succeed too: be it with weight loss goals or building gym habits or advancing in our careers.

If you don’t have that at home IRL, maybe you have made friends with members of the Nerd Fitness community through the free message board community or one of our courses.

I’ve come to learn something pretty powerful about the differences between people who struggle for years and years to get in shape, and those that find a way to crack the code and find permanent success!

With few exceptions for either group:

Those who struggle are often alone in their journey. They have nobody cheering them on, nobody keeping them accountable, nobody to support them. They do something AMAZING (getting their first pull-up, doing a handstand for the first time, or running a mile non-stop), and they don’t have anybody to share this with! This is a lonely road that is littered with optimistic people who started off strong but ran out of steam when the going got tough. It happens to the best of us

Those who succeed are part of a group. And not just any group – but a ground that inadvertently challenges them to be better. It’s the videogame equivalent of grouping up with people a few levels above you: they make the game more enjoyable and you get better! The people who succeed have squadmates that keep them accountable: regular check-ins, support, and somebody to call them on their bullshit when they make up an excuse why they missed their workouts!

Now, I would imagine that many in the first category actually have plenty of important folks in their lives, who care about them and want to hang out – but because this group isn’t interested in getting in shape, the ‘peer pressure’ is of the “hey let’s go out drinking! Skip your workout!” or “skip your run tomorrow am, we’re firing up another game of Overwatch!” variety.

Peer pressure can be negative, especially when you’re not getting support as you try to better yourself! My friends and I used peer pressure in a harmless way to encourage each other to beat levels in a video game – though it ended up taking up hours of our lives.

Not ideal!

However, what if we turned the tables? What if the peer pressure was used in a good natured and positive way to get your group of friends to do fun challenges throughout the day to better their lives?

You probably see where I’m going with this…

Create Your Squad, Start Daily Challenges Today

You’re going to create a squad, and you’re going to challenge each other in an arms race to see who can live healthier or happier.

Here’s what you need to do to use peer pressure:

1) FORM YOUR SQUAD: You need a few good men/women (or self-aware robots) that are interested in taking up this cause with you. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, have them read this article: Start a Facebook group, text chain, Slack group, whatever you like with 4-5 of your friends or coworkers that you know are interested in living healthier lives. Your group should be at least 3 people, but I find that 5-6 is the sweet spot for participation.

2) Determine the ground rules. Your goal here will be to come up with a series of challenges that can be done anywhere, at any point in the day, in less than 5 minutes. This might depend on the healthiness and level of fitness of your group members.

Here are 5 examples:

• “Went for a mile walk this morning before work.” with a picture of your feet on the pavement. Everybody else in the group then needs to share a photo of themselves completing their mile walk before noon.
• “Just did 20 air squats in my cubicle, last one to do 20 has to do a lap around the office. “Oh yea? Just did 25, cute that you could only get 20 done though!”
• “Took the stairs up to the 16th floor, you can’t use the elevator for the rest of the day or you owe everybody 5 bucks.”
• “Did 10 push ups waiting for the bus to show up, second person to report in has to do 11, third has to do 12, fourth has to do 13, last has to do 20!”

Think of things that are challenging for your group, but done in a fun way. I would recommend something like: you can only declare one rule per person per day, 3 rules per day for the group at the most, and you can’t have more than one rule in an hour.

The point isn’t necessarily to exhaust each other or make the challenge brutally difficult, but rather to get you to increase your “Actions Per Day,” (aka increase the number of healthy choices you make in a day) as we’ve seen the higher the number of APD people take, the more likely they are to be fit!

4) One-up, make fun, repeat. If you can’t make fun of your friends, what’s the point? Feel free to groan loudly at the person who did the task, and make fun of them as well – whoever makes the declaration gets to pick it. If they do it, you can one-up them by completing an extra rep or climbing a floor higher…someway to outdo them.

Feel free to use the following terms in your insults as you text back and forth throughout the day when you outgun your friends:

• Scruffy-looking nerfherder
• Scalawag
• Cotton-headed ninny muggins
• Ragamuffin
• Amoeba
• Hooligan
• Asshat

After all, what other name is there when you you wake up at 6:30, only to have text already in the group:

• “Already walked a mile today. Walk a mile before work or you owe $5 to [stupid cause].
• “Walked a mile, did 5 push-ups. Ain’t no thang. Hey Mike you’re up next.”
• “I hate you asshats. Just did the mile, and 10 push-ups. Ugh.”

Squad Up, Tips and Tricks

Here’s another list of tasks and ideas you can use in your squad:

1) Add points, keep track of them month to month. Keep it simple. Everybody gets a column on a spreadsheet, complete your mission, you get a point. Most points at the end of the month wins the pot.

2) Add accountability. The quality of your squad race here will be largely dependant on the participation of the group. You need to have people that are invested, and the best way I’ve found to do that is to make people pony up cold-hard cash. Have everybody in the group contribute $50. Any time somebody misses a challenge, $5 of that money gets split amongst the others.

Diabolical? Donate that $5 to the charity that person hates the most!

3) Pick fun, healthy missions that your friends will loathe (but still do!), and then return the favor on the next day. Quick fitness challenges are fun, but you can expand it to include nutrition or even fear-based challenges too if you want to double down on the healthiness.

• “Eating an apple you can’t use the vending machine at work or you owe 5 bucks! (nobody will like you for this one, muahahahaha) Just asked my boss for a raise, you have to do something that scares you within the next 48 hours! Report back with your results.”
• “Push-up challenge: as many in a row, right now, wherever you are. Get whoever to record you. You have 30 minutes.”
• “Climb all the stairs in the building you’re currently in, no matter how many floors. Take a photo next to sign in stairwell. Better hope you’re not in the Empire State Building!”
• “Actually made my own damn dinner tonight. You have 48 hours to actually make yourself a meal – microwave pizza doesn’t count…needs to have at least one vegetable!”

Create your squad today

My friends and I have done this with a simple text chain and some good natured ribbing. You do NOT need to overcomplicate this! To recap:

• Recruit a group of 5 of your friends, either in real life or from the Nerd Fitness Community
• Come up with a list of some fun basic missions you can complete that make you live better, but can be done anytime, anywhere.
• Add accountability, and come up with the first challenge you’ll complete
• Whenever anybody proposes and completes a task, find a way to one-up them and yell at them.
• Repeat
• Profit. I mean, get in shape 🙂

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we actually have a whole squad system built out in our monthly, story-driven, team-based fitness adventure, Rising Heroes. You can simply click a button and be assigned to a squad of five where you can start supporting each other today! Here’s one such group looking for one more…

I’ve seen some pretty epic friendships come out of this experience, so if you don’t have a group in your life that is pushing you to be better and keep you accountable, this could be the thing you’re looking for!

I’d love to expand upon the examples I share above, leave a comment below with a fun, quick challenging mission you can challenge your friends to complete no matter where they are in their day.

Anytime you can get people climbing stairs or doing push-ups in their cubicle or air squats in their bathroom stall is a good day, in my book!

Leave a comment below, we’ll pick a winner at random and hook em up with a free month of Rising Heroes!

-Steve

PS: Because everybody goes through the story together so they can work together, Rising Heroes enrollment is open until Thursday at 11:59pm EST.

photo credit: Reiterlied Master Yoda’s New Gang, mag3737 Week 32 – N36 – Study of geometric shapes, Mary Anne Morgan MAM_0600, 1upLego Belle Reve Breakout, Lego Suicide Squad Teaser, clement127 I’m back!

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Open Slideshow

Can a pasta dinner be fast, cheap, and healthy all at the same time? Absolutely. The key is to make wholesome swaps that won’t break the bank, like using ground turkey instead of ground beef or pork, loading up the dish with leafy greens, or finally giving whole-wheat pasta a chance. These easy changes can make your weeknight pasta dinner healthier for the whole family, but no less tasty. Here are 10 recipes that prove it.

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(Image credit: Lauren Volo)

Open Baking Lesson

Just one look at this cake leaves me grinning. Everything from the Wonka-esque candy topping to the rainbow of colorful cake layers makes me giddy. And to really gild the lily, the center of the cake is filled with sprinkles and even more candy, releasing an avalanche of joy when you cut into it.

Maybe you’ve seen cakes like this on Pinterest, your favorite baker’s Instagram feed, or even IRL at your best friend’s house and thought to yourself, “That cake looks so fun and complicated; I could never make that.” I’m here to encourage you otherwise! You can totally make this knock-out, show-stopping surprise-inside rainbow layer cake from scratch.

Yes, it will take some time and some planning, but we’ve got the step-by-step instructions to make this great-looking (and great-tasting) cake at home.

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For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering three questions. First, are raw mushrooms safe to eat? Are there toxins? Are there any other issues to consider? Second, what’s the deal with Tom Brady’s diet and lifestyle? It seems healthy enough, but there are some unanswered questions, too. And finally, are there any other ways to get beta-glucans without eating mushrooms, yeast, or oats?

Let’s go:

I love raw mushrooms, but I have also read that they should only be consumed cooked or they’re too harsh on the insides. Any truth to that?

Basic white mushrooms (agaricus bisporus) do contain a toxin called agaritine. In one study, researchers fed mice diets high in different types of mushrooms or synthetic agaritine to see how each option affected bladder cancer rates. Bladder cancer rates were as follows: mice eating fresh white mushroom, 30.8%; fresh shiitake, 23.5%; dried shiitake, 9.8%; pure agaritine, 50%; paraffin wax as control, 5.4%.

Yet storage, including in the fridge or freezer, and cooking all reduce agaritine to a considerable degree.

Recall that a couple years ago, I wrote about the extensive benefits of eating mushrooms. That stands. They are incredibly healthy and helpful when people actually eat them the way people actually eat them. Maybe don’t eat them raw in large amounts. I find them uninteresting raw, anyway, unless it’s on a salad. Nothing like a pan full of sautéd mushrooms in a reduced Worscestershire sauce/soy sauce/gelatin/butter sauce.

The second biggest knock against raw mushrooms—after controlling for the poisonous varieties—is that they contain chitin, a type of fiber that makes up the cellular walls of funguses (plus many insects). As the story goes, “lots of people” don’t produce enough chitinase, the enzyme that digests chitin, to handle large numbers of raw mushrooms.

Is it true? I doubt it. In 2007, stomach assays of 25 Italian adults found that 20 of them produced chitinase. And the widespread consumption of chitin-rich insects throughout human history never would have occurred if they gave you crippling stomach pain each time you ate one. Crickets aren’t that good.

In fact, chitin supplements have shown to provide major benefits.

• Chitosan supplementation may reduce cartilage destruction in autoimmune arthritis.
• In healthy men, pre-breakfast supplementation with 3 grams of chitosan increased fecal excretion of dioxins and PCBs, two prominent types of xenoestrogenic compounds found in most modern diets.
• A chitin-glucan supplement (extracted from fungi) lowered oxidized LDL in humans. Oxidized LDL is likely causally related to atherosclerosis (as opposed to just plain ol’ LDL), so this could be a helpful supplement for people at risk.

A little off-topic, I would be interested in Mark’s take on Tom Brady’s diet, which I was reading about just yesterday. He is very much a health nut, but his diet, although okay for what it is, seems far too limited to me.

I mentioned this diet in Weekend Link Love a couple months ago. It is an interesting one:

“80% of what they eat is…the freshest vegetables. If it’s not organic, I don’t use it.” Not much to complain about here. 80% is a little high, of course. And is 80% a precise number, or is it shorthand for “a lot”? Does it refer to % of caloric energy or % of volume on the plate?

“And whole grains: brown rice, quinoa, millet, beans.” This is the mystery line. So much to unpack. Beans, for one, aren’t grains. And is this category included in the vegetable category? Whole grains aren’t vegetables, clearly. Yet the next line confirms that “the other 20 percent” is meat and fish, so there’s nothing left over for the grains. Unless… has Brady cracked 100 percent? Do his go up to eleven? Although it wasn’t specified, I’m guessing he’s gluten-free. No one eats millet if they don’t have to.

“The other 20 percent is lean meats: grass-fed steak, duck every now and then, and chicken. As for fish, I mostly cook wild salmon.” Good stuff here. All delicious and nutritious. Duck is a strange one to just toss in there every once in awhile. I love duck. But rarely do I think to myself, “I could really go for some duck breast.” Plus, it’s far from lean.

No nightshades. That means no peppers, tomatoes, potatoes. Some people report sensitivity to the alkaloids in nightshades, though I’ve never seen definitive evidence. The most common complain seems to be joint pain (PubMed search autofills “nightshade arthritis” but doesn’t produce any good results).

“No white sugar. No white flour. No MSG.” No arguments. I’m not too worried about MSG, but then again, I don’t eat foods that contain it.

“I’ll use raw olive oil, but I only cook with coconut oil.” Standard advice that I’m not sure is right. Olive oil—even, or especially EVOO—is quite stable in the presence of heat. The antioxidants protect it (which is why EVOO is so stable) and even prevent the formation of trans fats.

“Fats like canola oil turn into trans fats.” Yes and no. While making baked goods with canola oil has negligible effects on trans-fat formation, high-heat cooking and frying with vegetable oils significantly increases the trans-fat content of the oils.

Brady goes way beyond diet. He’s made an entire lifestyle shift, including going to bed by 9 PM and avoiding parties and alcohol. He shies away from heavy lifting for fear of excessive “shortening” of the muscle, opting instead for flexibility, which he says “softens” and “lengthens” the muscles.

Whatever he’s doing works. Not every individual piece of his diet and lifestyle approach is optimal. But the stuff that works is enough to push him over the edge.

Unfortunately, I’m allergic to mushrooms. Any options for getting beta-glucans other than via oats or yeasts?

Kelp has a fair bit of beta-glucans. You could gnaw on dried kombu or use it in your cooking. Other, tougher seaweeds likely have it as well.

You could try a supplement, though most are sourced from baker’s yeast. If that’s an issue.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and be sure to chime in down below if you have anything to add.

The post Dear Mark: Raw Mushrooms, Tom Brady’s Diet, and Beta-Glucan Alternatives appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Expect to take one bite of this salsa and then want to dig into it the rest of the day and the days following. It’s that good and it also happens to be that versatile. Between the briny kalamata olives, tangy feta, and juicy tomatoes, this is one serious bowl of flavor. Oh, and there’s also the revelation that when fresh dill and basil join forces, like they do here, everything sings.

Pile this salsa on toast for lunch, toss it with cooked grains or pasta for a simple supper, and scoop it up with pita chips for those in-between (read: hangry) moments. You won’t be able to get enough of it.

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(Image credit: SMEG)

From Apartment Therapy → SMEG’s Small Appliances Get a Bold Makeover, Courtesy of Dolce & Gabbana

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

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We hate telling you that you have to run out to buy specific items in order to clean your kitchen, because the truth is that you don’t. You can certainly clean your kitchen with whatever you happen to have on hand. Paper towels? Fine. That random bottle of spray stuff your mom got you because it was on sale? Also fine. It’s just that these 10 tools will help make any cleaning task easier. And don’t we all want things to be easier?

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