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Babies can’t live off milk forever. Eventually they must join the rest of us in eating solid food. But how should it happen?

The baby food industry has everyone fooled. You don’t need them. There’s actually more research that goes into commercial pet food than commercial baby food. For all its faults, dog and cat kibble at least has to adhere to certain nutrient standards. Commercial baby food is just random stuff blended up with enough pear or banana to taste sweet. And I’m not saying there’s something wrong with pears or bananas or green beans or whatever else they blend up and throw in those pouches. I’m just saying it’s not enough. You can do so much better with a little thought and innovation.

It’s not as hard as people think. I mean, these are people we’re feeding. Small people, but people. If you can feed yourself, you can feed a kid. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably feeding yourself nutrient-dense whole foods. Well, do the same thing for your baby only in smaller portions and using different textures. Because there are limitations:

Babies starting solids generally don’t have teeth.

Babies starting solids are only used to drinking fluids. They have to get used to an entirely different state of matter.

Babies starting solids have yet to fulfill their genetic intelligence potential. In other words, they are completely useless.

So you can’t just throw a steak down in front of your seven month old and be done with it. You need a little more care. Here’s when and how to do it:

When to Start Solids

A good rule of thumb is to start a baby on solids when he or she begins showing interest in solid food. Don’t force it on them. Let it develop organically. However, don’t offer any solids before six months regardless of interest. Exclusive breast milk (or formula, if that’s what you’re doing) is that vital.

Some people will recommend that you supplement a “slow-growing” breastfed infant with solid food at four months or so, but I think that’s a mistake. According to the WHO’s birth charts, breastfed babies grow more “slowly” but this is normal. They grow as they’re supposed to grow, not as the solid foods are dictating. In its own FAQ, the CDC recommends against using the CDC growth chart for breastfed babies and admits that the WHO chart shows how “infants should grow rather than simply do grow.”

6 Developmental Signs of Readiness for Solids

Your baby may be ready for solids if she:

1. Is at least six months of age
2. Can sit up in a high chair unassisted
3. Has doubled her birth weight
4. Has lost the tongue-thrust reflex (if she doesn’t automatically spit out food placed on her tongue)
5. Shows interest in what you’re eating
6. Opens her mouth when food comes near her face

Tip: don’t start solids if your baby has a cold. Stuffy noses can make it hard to coordinate breathing and moving food around the mouth, and it may alter the taste of foods, turning your baby off to something she might otherwise like.

She’ll Have What You’re Having

You can drop a few hundred bucks on the infant food machine and refillable pouches and spend hours each week manufacturing your own goops and purees, or you could let your kid nibble on what you’re having for dinner. After all, you’re eating good, nutrient-dense food yourself, right? It’s probably perfect for your baby.

Don’t let me dissuade you from making your own goop. That works for many parents and it’s a great way to fine-tune exactly what your baby is getting. But it’s not the only way.

Start Small

Early solids are complementary, they cannot replace breast milk. Always nurse or feed milk before offering solids; that way your baby doesn’t fill up on food and reject the milk he needs. This also auto-regulates how much food the baby will eat.

Keep Nursing

Breastmilk isn’t just food. It’s also rich in immunoregulatory components that shape and guide the infant’s immune system. Feeding breastmilk as you introduce solid foods (in the same meal) will help your baby learn to tolerate the foods and reduce the risk of allergies.

The Perfect First Food

Here’s the official line:

Give rice cereal as the first complementary food. Make sure it’s fortified with iron, because iron-fortified rice cereal is the only way for an infant human to obtain the iron he desperately needs to grow and thrive.

Does that sound ridiculous to anyone else?

You know what else has iron? Meat. Sardines. Egg yolks. Liver. There are hundreds of foods with more and better iron than rice cereal. If a food has to be fortified with certain nutrients to become suitable in an infant’s early complementary diet, it’s not the perfect first food. Turns out that if you had to choose just one, meat is probably the most important early complementary food in an infant’s diet. In one landmark study, meat-eating breastfed infants had larger heads, better zinc statuses, and better behavior at 12 months than cereal-eating breastfed infants.¹ It doesn’t get any clearer than that, folks.

Start Smooth, Progress to Lumpy

At six months, a baby can only eat smooth or semi-solid. Gradually increase the solidity of the offered foods as things progress. By 10 months, the baby should be eating “lumpy” foods, if only because that represents a critical window of acclimation to the texture. If you miss the window and continue only with smooth purees, the child may develop issues with pickiness later on down the road.

Baby-led Weaning

Baby-led weaning is a method of introducing solids that doesn’t involve spoons, until baby can use the spoon herself. At 6 months of age, bits of soft, chopped foods like banana, ripe avocado, cooked sweet potato, etc. are offered to the child and she experiments with what she wants – under the parent’s careful supervision, of course. The whole process is directed by the baby’s curiosity.

The idea behind it is that she will better regulate her self-feeding and eventually recognize satiety cues because there isn’t a parent sneaking in extra bites after she’s full. With baby-led weaning, little ones also have a chance to practice their fine motor skills by grasping food and bringing it to their own mouths themselves.

If you’re worried about chewing at first, there are infant self-feeders with handles that can help. (Get the silicone ones – the kind with netting are a pain to clean.)

What does this have to do with weaning? The idea is that over a period of months, as your baby becomes comfortable with eating more and more food, she will depend on breast milk or formula less and less, and eventually rely fully on solid food for nutrition.

Introduce Peanuts… Carefully

The latest research indicates that exposing infants to peanut products as an early complementary food reduces rather than increases the risk of peanut allergy. There’s an entire protocol for determining which infants are candidates for early exposure, so make sure you do this with your pediatrician’s understanding.

With all that out of the way, now’s the fun part. I’m going to post some dishes and recipes that little babies can eat.

The really cool thing about infants coming off breast milk is that they like almost everything. They’re up for it. You offer them some chicken liver paté and they will eat that up. If they don’t like it, they’ll at least try it (but they’ll probably like it).

An infant has no preconceived ideas about food. They’re too young to be influenced by peers or advertising. They’ve only been nursing, so they don’t have the chemically-altered sweet tooth of your average American child. They are relatively pure beings, motivated almost entirely by nutrients and calories. And lest you worry about “calories” or carbs for your young baby, calories are nutrients for growing babies and kids. They need the sheer caloric bulk to grow and construct their bodies.

Meat

What seems to work best as a first solid food is soft, shredded red meat. Maybe a chuck roast or shank cooked until fragile, then chopped, shredded, and doused in a little broth or even breast milk to soften it up.

How to introduce eggs to baby

Mash a banana.

Soft boil an egg and pierce the still-runny yolk; drain the yolk into the banana.

Mix well.

Serve it up. Tastes great, very nutrient-dense. Tons of choline, decent protein, and if you get a high-quality egg it will provide most of the B-vitamins, selenium, iodine, and even omega-3s an infant needs.

Mashed sardines

Mash sardines up (bone in and skin on, preferably) with the oil (if real olive oil). Good iron, calcium, protein, selenium, and omega-3s.

Smoked oysters

The Crown Prince smoked oysters in olive oil are fantastic, BPA-free, and an excellent source of zinc, iron, protein, B-12, and omega-3s. Probably iodine too. Great texture for beginners; just make sure to cut off the hard part that normally attaches to the shell. Since shellfish allergies are relatively common, ask your pediatrician about starting slow to watch for a reaction, and skip oysters for now if you have shellfish allergies in your family.

Mashed potatoes (or sweet potatoes)

I never hear about mashed potatoes given to babies as a weaning food, and I’m not sure why. Potatoes are actually quite nutritious as far as starches go. They have complete protein and a nice spread of minerals. Plus, you can sneak all sorts of stuff, like egg yolks, meat, seafood, and pureed veggies. Mash it with some breast milk or broth to make it smooth and creamy.

There isn’t much research on white potatoes as a complementary food, but sweet potato-based complementary foods have distinct advantages over grain-based infant foods, including lower phytate (which binds to and prevents the absorption of minerals) and higher vitamin A, especially if you’re also feeding meat.²³

Canned cod livers

Canned cod livers are the smoothest, creamiest thing I’ve ever tried. Highly recommended and a fantastic source of vitamin A (pre-formed, animal version), DHA (important for baby brains), and vitamin D (you can expose your baby to sunlight within reason, but dietary vitamin D is also helpful). A little goes a long way—a tablespoon at a time is plenty to start.

Frozen and fresh fruit

Fresh fruit is ideal, of course, but it helps to keep frozen fruit on hand. You can take it out and chop it up and let it thaw a bit so it’s the right texture. You can feed it whole when your baby is older and able to handle larger chunks. You can mash it up and mix with soft boiled egg yolks.

Wild blueberries, cherries, mangos, oranges, big frozen strawberries (great for teething), peaches, melon, and even figs are fantastic choices and provide important vitamin C. Just keep a watchful eye on them when they’re eating smaller fruits that can get stuck in the trachea.

Yogurt

Full-fat, of course. Start with plain unsweetened. Some yogurt brands, especially the ones marketed to children, contain more sugar than a can of soda.

Salmon and salmon roe

Baby needs those omega-3s, that selenium, that protein, those B-vitamins, that astaxanthin, everything. Salmon is incredible for the developing brain. Poach the salmon until soft.

Liver and liver paté

Chicken liver from pastured chickens is the mildest of all the livers. It’s also the highest in iron and lowest in retinol, so it can be given a bit more often to babies than beef liver.

I’ve known many parents whose kids love liver paté. Perfect texture; you can even mix it up with rice cereal to “fortify” it.

Scrambled eggs

If there’s no reason to suspect an egg allergy, scrambled eggs are an easy snack. Do them Gordon Ramsay style for a creamy, smooth texture.

Grilled onions

Onions are a great source of inulin, a type of prebiotic fiber that can in some ways emulate the prebiotics found in breastmilk. Also, if a baby learns to love onions, she’ll probably love other types of pungent foods.

Meaty bones

I’m not saying you hand your kid a smoked turkey drumstick. But if you cook some beef shanks or an oxtail until the meat’s falling off the bone, the leftover bone with some gristle and soft meat is the perfect thing for your teething baby to gnaw on. The meat is soft enough that they can chew it up to an acceptable size and there’s not enough of it to risk any real choking. Besides, you’re there to watch them.

Better rice cereal

Average parents start their kids on rice cereal: dry rice cereal you mix with milk or formula until soft enough to suck down. They’ll put this stuff in the baby’s bottles. They’ll spoon it up into their gaping maws. It’s bland and basically pure starch and fills them up. Now, I have nothing against starch for kids. As I’ve said time and time before, babies need calories and they can use the glucose. I’d never recommend that babies go strict keto or anything (although there are people who do it and seem to report good things). But there’s so much more you can cram in that bland gruel to make it taste better and deliver important nutrients.

• Egg yolks.
• Chicken or beef liver.
• Potatoes, sweet potatoes, or winter squash (offset some of the rice with these other starch sources).
• Stewed chuck roast.
• Ground meat.
• Cooked carrots.
• Avocado.
• Salmon roe.
• Salmon.
• Green beans.

Rice gruel is a great vehicle. If you’re worried about the consistency with these additions, simply blend it up until it’s the right texture.

More Tips

Fish sauce: Add a touch of fish sauce to your foods to provide glutamate that helps the baby learn to love the food.

Get a stick blender: Easiest way in the world to puree foods or roughly chop them into the right texture. This is a good one.

Get 4 ounce mason jars: Very handy for storing and serving food.

Make a habit of making bone broth and keeping it frozen on hand: Broth is the tie that binds everything together. Wanna make rice cereal? Broth makes it more nutritious. Want to puree some veggies? Broth makes it more nutritious and taste better than water. Want to stew some meat until it’s soft enough for a baby to eat? Broth beats water again.

These are just a handful of the things you can feed your baby who’s starting solids. And you know what? It wouldn’t be such a bad list of foods to choose from when feeding yourself.

Now let’s hear from you. What did you feed your babies when introducing solids? What would you do differently?

Tell us down below!

Thanks for reading, everyone.

The post Starting Solids: When Can Babies Eat Table Food? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor, strength and conditioning coach, powerlifter and educator. He’s the cofounder of Pre-Script, which operates on the three pillars of mobility, stability and strength.

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Unless you’re regularly including organ meat in your diet already, you probably have a nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you really should be eating more.

That voice is correct. Organ meats are economical and dollar for dollar, pound for pound, the most nutrient-packed food you can get. Okay, yes, organs aren’t always the most pleasant to eat. Allow me to apologize on behalf of moms everywhere if you were forced to eat overcooked liver and onions as a kid. However, organ dishes can range from totally innocuous to downright delicious when prepared correctly. If you’ve been reluctant to venture into the world of organ meat till now, it’s time to suck it up, buttercup. We’re doing it.

Why You Should Eat More Organ Meat

Besides the fact that they are incredibly nutritious, there are good reasons to be putting more organs on your plate. For one, they are usually cheaper than meat, often by a lot. (I’m going to use “meat” to refer to muscle meat throughout the post.) I used to be able to get a three-pound beef heart for five dollars from the rancher at my local farmer’s market. A similarly sized roast would have cost over thirty dollars if I picked the cheapest cut. Unfortunately, I talked up heart so much that I created demand among my friends in town. Now he charges $3 a pound—still a great price.

If you’re buying a whole cow, pig, goat, or sheep directly from a farmer, they may be willing to sell you the organs for a steal since most customers don’t want them. While you’re at it, ask for the head, though they’ll probably say no.

There’s also the principle of nose-to-tail eating. If you aren’t eating the organs, you are missing much of the edible portion of the animal. Sometimes organs go to make pet food, but other times they are simply discarded by meat processors. It’s wasteful. Ranchers and farmers have to raise more animals to feed the same number of people, making it hard to do sustainably.

There’s also something to be said for expanding your palate and trying new foods. Gutsy eaters (no pun intended) have a world of options open to them. And let’s be honest, when you eat organs in front of your kids and friends, they will either think you’re cool or totally disgusting. Either way, you win.

Is Organ Meat the Same as Offal?

Organs are offal, and often the two terms are used interchangeably. Offal can also refer more generally to any edible parts of the animal that are neither muscle meat nor internal organs, such as skin, feet, and cheeks. Still other times, offal refers to any part of the animal that gets discarded during standard animal processing. For the most part, though, when you hear people talking about eating offal, they mean organ meat.

Which Organs Can You Eat?

Historically, humans around the world created dishes out of any and every available part of the animal. Today, you are limited by what you can find at your local butcher shop or by bargaining with a local farmer.

Adventurous travelers know that every culture has traditional dishes featuring all manner of offal. Sausages and stews made with blood and organs are widespread. Scottish haggis—assorted organs and oats mashed together and stuffed in a sheep’s stomach—gets a bad rap, but you’d be surprised how many regional versions there are: Swedish lungmos (literally “lung mash”), Russian nyanya, or Romanian drob, to name a few. Look for Mexican menudo made with tripe (stomach lining), Indonesian limpa (spleen), or Rocky Mountain oysters (bull testicles) in the U.S. and Canada.

The availability of specific organs varies widely based on where you live. In the U.S., you’d be lucky to find spleen or brain in your local market, and it’s illegal to sell lungs for human consumption here. It’s easiest to find beef, pork, and chicken organs in my experience, but don’t limit yourself to those options. Bison, deer, sheep, goat, duck, and goose organs are also fantastic. If you’re a hunter, I hope you’re taking advantage of your access to a variety of organ meats!

For now, I’m going to focus on organs that are easiest to source, but if you’re lucky enough to find a farmer who will sell you a pancreas, by all means, grab it!

Organs

Heart

I always suggest that people who are squeamish about organ meat start with heart. It’s comparable to muscle meat in flavor and texture, and it’s easy to prepare.

Nutritional highlights:

Heart is rich in CoQ10, a vitamin-like compound that acts as an antioxidant and helps cells produce energy. It also provides B vitamins (especially B2 and B12), selenium, copper, zinc, iron, and phosphorous.

Preparation tips:

Heart takes a bit of prep, which is easiest to do when partially frozen. If you’re working with a thawed heart, throw it in the freezer for an hour before getting to work. Remove the valves if present, then trim off all the hard fat and stringy bits. You can now thinly slice and sear the meat, cube and skewer it on kabobs, or stuff and roast the heart whole.

Slow-Cooked “Heart on Fire” with Creamed Kale (MDA)
Grilled Beef Heart with Roasted Chili Peppers (MDA)
Grilled Chicken Hearts (Brazilian Kitchen Abroad)

Tongue

Tongue is delicious and tender. Since it’s a muscle, its taste and texture are closer to meat than, say, liver. However, I fully admit that preparing it at home is not for the most squeamish among us. There’s no doubt you’re handling a tongue, and a huge one at that if it belonged to a cow. You might want to let someone else prepare it the first time you venture into eating tongue.

Nutritional highlights:

Tongue is particularly rich in vitamin B12 and zinc, while providing respectable amounts of the other vitamins and minerals associated with organ meats.

Preparation tips:

Tongue isn’t a dish you are going to whip up on a weeknight. It takes time. First, you need to simmer it—one or two hours for tongues from smaller animals like sheep, or three hours for cow tongue. Then, cool the tongue until you can handle it safely and peel off the outer skin (this is where the ick factor can set it). Now it’s ready to turn into something delicious. Many recipes call for the tongue to be sliced or cubed, then sauteed in hot oil until browned and crispy. You can also cook it on the grill.

Pro tip: Slow cookers and pressure cookers both make the initial cooking step a breeze.

Tender Beef Tongue with Onions and Garlic (MDA)
Crispy Grilled Beef Tongue Recipe (Serious Eats)

Liver

A lot of people have a visceral reaction to the idea of liver. I get it. Liver has a strong taste and distinct texture that can be a hurdle, especially if you were forced to eat it as a child. Maybe start with chicken liver, which is milder than beef or pork.

Nutritional highlights:

If there is one food to rule them all when it comes to nutrient density, liver is king. It provides tons of pre-formed vitamin A—about a whole week’s worth—and a hefty dose of copper and B12, along with other B vitamins, phosphorus, selenium, zinc, and folate.

In fact, it provides so much vitamin A that it raises concerns about eating too much liver. It’s unclear how much of a danger this actually poses, but in the spirit of better safe than sorry, don’t eat liver every day. Once or twice a week suffices. Pregnant women should check with their doctors regarding safe upper limits.

Preparation tips:

If you purchase liver from a butcher, it will probably be ready to cook, though you may need to peel away the outer membrane. Some recipes call for soaking in water or milk to create a milder flavor, but I never bother. Properly cooked liver should be slightly pink on the inside and smooth, almost velvety. Do not overcook liver! It becomes dry and crumbly—not appealing.

Bangin’ Liver (MDA)
Grilled Chicken Livers with Herb Butter (MDA)
Cajun Blackened Chicken Livers with Lemon and Garlic (MDA)

Kidney

Kidney is wonderfully nutritious, but frankly, I wouldn’t recommend starting here if you’re brand new to offal. By itself, the flavor can be quite strong and offputting. Legendary French chef Jacques Pepin euphemistically called it “assertive.” Using fresh beef or lamb kidneys, and cooking for a long time with other tasty ingredients, helps a lot.

Nutritional highlights:

Kidney is loaded with B2 and B12, plus other B vitamins, iron, zinc, copper, and phosphorus. If you’re popping Brazil nuts for selenium, consider adding kidney to the mix. A four-ounce serving of lamb kidney covers more than four times your daily requirement.

Preparation tips:

Intact kidneys look like lobes connected by a strip of hard white fat. Trim the meat away from the fat and remove the outer membrane. Before cooking, rinse the kidneys and optionally soak them in milk or cold salted water for an hour or so. Some sources recommend parboiling for one minute before cooking, but it’s not strictly necessary. Once prepped, kidneys can be quickly pan-fried, braised, or stewed.

Deviled Kidneys (Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook)
Paleo Steak and Kidney Pie (The Paleo Mom)

Sweetbreads

The award for most incongruous food name goes to sweetbreads, which are actually the thymus gland of an animal. Some people call the pancreas sweetbreads, too. In any case, they are neither sweet nor bread. Sweetbreads aren’t as common as the other offerings included here, but they get a spot of honor for their mild flavor and unique nutritional profile compared to other organs. Plus, any time I talk about organ meats, foodies chime in and ask for sweetbreads to get more love, so here we are.

Nutritional highlights:

Like other organs, sweetbreads deliver provide B vitamins, phosphorus, and selenium. A four-ounce serving also contains more than 60 percent of your daily requirement of vitamin C.

Preparation tips:

Preparing sweetbreads is a multistep process. First, soak them in water with a squeeze of lemon juice for two to four hours or overnight, changing the water a few times. Drain and rinse the sweetbreads, then optionally blanch them by boiling for five minutes before plunging into cold water. Remove any connective tissue and the membrane. Now they are ready to be poached, grilled, roasted, or pan-fried.

Paleo Breaded Veal Sweetbreads (The Bordeaux Kitchen)
Sweetbread Fritters with Pesto (Offaly Good Cooking)

How to Start

Wade in Slowly

As I said, heart is a good option because it tastes like meat. I’m not saying you should, but you could trick your kids or your partner into thinking they are eating steak kabobs made with cubes of marinated beef heart. Chicken liver pate is another good option for dipping your toe in the water. It’s not the prettiest dish, but I’ve had good luck introducing skeptical friends to the world of liver with a nice crudité spread and homemade pate.

If you’re not sure about preparing organ meat yourself, order it in a good restaurant or, in the case of tongue, your local street taco truck. Seriously, tacos de lengua (tongue) are fabulous.

Disguise It

No rule that says you have to eat a big plateful of kidneys to build your organ cred. Start by mixing small amounts of organ into other meat dishes. Any dish that uses ground beef can handily disguise organs. Grind heart, liver, or kidneys in a food processor and mix it into meatloaf, chili, or taco meat. For hamburgers, which stay raw in the middle, I prefer to saute the organs before grinding, then combine it with raw ground beef. Your butcher may be willing to grind and blend it to save you the trouble.

Steak and kidney pie is a traditional Scottish fare that is particularly sentimental to me because my Scottish grandmother always had a freezer full of handheld pies. The steak helps balance the kidney and keeps it from being overwhelming.

Often, even people who claim not to like organs enjoy sausages like liverwurst or braunschweiger made with organs. Perhaps that’s in part because they are well seasoned, which helps mask the strong flavor of liver in particular. Along the same lines, you can use spices like curry to camouflage the taste.

Embrace it

Just go for it. Mind over matter. If necessary, give yourself a pep talk. Tell yourself you’re going to enjoy it, eating organs is good for you, and that you are a grown-up who can do hard things.

Honestly, I enjoyed organs more after going Primal. My tastes shifted to appreciate more savory flavors in foods. I feel more connected to my body and can appreciate in the moment when I am eating something truly nourishing. Even if it’s not objectively delicious—if there were such a thing—it’s almost like I can taste that it’s good for me. I know that sounds a little woo-woo, but I’ve heard other people say the same.

Worst case scenario, you can always supplement with desiccated organ pills. Ancestral Supplements has an impressive line-up of organ supplements. Try food first, though. Maybe you’ll love it.

The post How to Eat More Organ Meat appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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There’s no question that the full squat exercise is an essential, Primal movement, and yet many folks in modern, industrialized society are unable to properly perform one. Kids have good squat form (just watch them at play), but their parents are stiff at the hips with rounded backs and tight knee joints.

Many more have been taught – by health experts and personal trainers – that the full squat is dangerous, that it will destroy your knees with wear and tear and render you incapable of normal activity. They say a half-squat is perfectly adequate, or, better yet, get rid of the squat altogether and use the leg extension machine! (Actually, don’t.)

Disregard these “experts.” Squatting is a natural movement that humans are built to do. You don’t need to use a ton of weight (or any!), but you do need to be mobile and flexible enough to reach a full squat below parallel.

What Do Squats Do?

Squats serve a variety of practical purposes: they can help you arrive into a resting position, they’re a proper starting form for lifting, and they work the muscles of the lower body. A proper squat engages and works a host of muscles, like quadriceps, abdominals, glutes, calves, hamstrings, and hip flexors. When done correctly, squatting can build bone density, a key element in aging well.

How to Do a Squat

Stand with a comfortable stance. Most will prefer their feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart with toes turned out at a slight angle. Lower yourself by reaching back with your butt while maintaining a strong lower back. Keep your knees aligned with your toes and your toes on the ground.

Chest up, upper back tight, eyes looking forward and slightly down, head in a neutral position. Maintain a nice cohesive line along your spine. Go just below parallel, so that your butt drops below your knees.Come back up by pushing through the heel.

Proper Air Squat Form

Air squats, also known as body weight squats, can take pressure off of knees and still provide a ton of benefits. Learn, modify, and perfect your air squat over time using three squat progressions. If you’re already familiar with the motion but finding your squats result in knees caving, lower back or hip joints pain, your form might need a further tune up. Follow along with the video or these three progressions to get your squat into shape.

Squat Progression 1: Use an Assist

Find a supportive assist, such as a wall, bar, pole, or the back of a chair – anything that is sturdy and comes to about navel height. Come to a neutral position with feet shoulder width apart, bend your knees and explore your range of motion. Aim to achieve 20-30 of these assisted squats before moving on to Progression 2.

Squat Progression 2: No Assist, with a Spot

Use a box or a bench to act as a ‘spotter’ while working on your full squat form. When in the ‘sitting’ position, pull arms up and out ahead of you. Keep knees in line with toes, and keep feet just over shoulder width apart. At the lowest point in your squat, thighs should go parallel to the floor or the ground.

Squat Progression 3: You’re On Your Own

Take the bench away to move into a full air squat. Go as low as you can, and press upward through heels and not toes. You’ve now achieved air squat form!

Squat Variations & How to Do Squats at Home with No Bar

If you’re at home without a bar, looking to target specific muscles or modifying your squat for injuries or different abilities, consider adopting a few of these squat variations. For more detailed instructions on perfecting these variations, check out this article:

• Goblet squats
• Front squats
• Band Zercher squats
• Bulgarian split squats
• Resistance band split squats
• Step ups
• Walking lunges and Reverse Lunges
• Tempo squat jumps

How Many Squats Should I Do?

If you’re an absolute beginner, first be able to nail the form just squatting your bodyweight. Focus on your mechanics for 10-15 reps, with 3 to 4 sets of these at a time. If this starts to feel too easy, rather than just crank out countless, mindless reps bouncing up and down, slow down the tempo and add a pause at the bottom of the squat. Once you get proficient, you can start adding weight.

A good general starting point for any workout is three to four “hard” sets – warmup sets don’t count. A hard set is one or two reps away from not being able to complete another rep with the same consistently good form. Plan for three hard sets, and attempt the fourth.

For rep counts, eight to ten reps is a good range for those looking to build muscle. Three to four reps can be helpful for getting stronger but not necessarily bigger. Split the difference with four to seven for a little bit of both. Find the rep count that works best for you. Expect to be somewhat sore in your legs a few days after the workout. If you’re not sore at all, you probably didn’t do enough to elicit a training response, but if you can’t walk correctly for a week, you probably did too much.

How Much Should I Be Able to Squat?

As a starting goal, everyone should be able to squat their own bodyweight, no matter their age. If you’re not there yet, it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. It just means that you haven’t trained that muscle group yet. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you will achieve a bodyweight squat.

Once you start adding weight to the bar, use your own bodyweight to set benchmarks. First, aim to load your own bodyweight on the bar, as a beginner goal. Then go for 1.5 x bodyweight, with 2x bodyweight as a good long term benchmark to strive for.

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A distributor of crackers packed a bunch of product boxes with peanut butter cookies that were not supposed to be in the box. This has promoted yet another recall. Peanut allergy is a serious matter for affected individuals and their families, as allergic reactions can be very severe in some individuals, potentially leading to death […]

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There’s nothing like sitting around the fire in the fall, sipping on something warm in your mug. And where there’s a fire, there are s’mores.

If you’re eating closer to the way your ancestors did, you probably politely pass when the s’mores come out. Now, you can join in the fun. You’ll never be left wanting for campfire s’mores again thanks to these Paleo graham crackers and homemade gooey marshmallows.

Making your own crackers may be intimidating, but it’s easy. The dough comes together quickly and is fun to roll and cut out. They would be a great activity to do with kids or friends, and the dough is egg-free so you can taste it before baking.

If you have time, we highly recommend making your own marshmallows. We’ve linked a few great recipes below. If you’re in a bind, there are also some decent pre-made options for marshmallows, like Smashmallow® brand.

Here’s how to do it.

Keto, Gluten Free, Primal S’mores Recipe

Serves: 6

Time in the kitchen: 20 minutes

Ingredients

Graham Crackers

• 1/4 c melted salted butter
• 1 Tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 c fine almond flour
• 2 Tbsp. tapioca starch
• 2 Tbsp. coconut sugar
• 2 tsp. ground flaxseed
• 2 tsp. coconut flour
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

For the S’mores

• 1 batch of marshmallows
• 1 bar of your favorite dark chocolate (choose a brand with low sugar)

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Directions

In a bowl, combine the butter and maple syrup.

Pour in the almond flour, tapioca starch, coconut sugar, flaxseed, coconut flour and cinnamon.

Mix together and allow the mixture to rest for a few minutes.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Form the dough into a ball and place it between two pieces of parchment paper. Use your hands or a rolling pin to flatten the dough out into a thin rectangle. The dough should be very thin, no more than 1/8” thick.

Use a sharp knife to outline a rectangle in the dough, then cut rectangular crackers within the larger rectangle. Don’t worry about cutting all of the way through the dough or separating the crackers you’re cutting. As long as the crackers are scored, they will break into crackers easily after baking. Use a fork to prick 3-4 sets of dots across each of the rectangular crackers.

Take the remaining leftover dough that you cut away from the rectangle and repeat to form more crackers if there is enough dough.

Bake the crackers at 325 degrees for 16-18 minutes, or until the edges of the crackers are golden. The crackers can go from golden to burnt quickly, so keep an eye on them. Allow them to cool prior to cutting them into pieces.

Press your marshmallows onto metal skewers and roast them to your liking. Bonus points if you have a fire pit or somewhere outside to get them nice and toasty, but toasting them carefully on a gas stovetop will also do the trick.

If your marshmallow isn’t hot enough to melt your piece of chocolate, you can place a piece of chocolate on top of one of your graham crackers and place them in the oven for a minute or so to soften.

Place the marshmallow on top of the cracker and chocolate stack and then place the second graham cracker on top of the marshmallow. Press down gently to encourage the marshmallow and chocolate to melt together.

These are messy, but in a good way.

The smores are best warm, so enjoy immediately.

Nutrition Facts (per 2 crackers):

Calories: 220
Fat: 18g
Total Carbs: 13g
Net Carbs: 10g
Protein: 4g

The post Better S’Mores [Primal, Gluten Free, Paleo, and Keto] appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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What did you have for lunch? Perhaps an apple, a nice salad with veggies and raw eggs, a little lead, and a little hydrous magnesium silicate? Wait…what? If you have on makeup or any other conventional skincare products, you essentially eat the dangerous chemicals that they contain. In fact, anything you put on your skin […]

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Research of the Week

Some people can’t smell stinky fish.

If you think you’re about to drink some sugar but drink fake sugar instead, your body reacts as if you drank the real stuff.

Wearing lip balm reduces droplets produced through talking.

Having had the common cold may reduce the chance of severe COVID-19 infections.

Ketones seem to make white adipose tissue act more like brown fat.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 450: Zach Bush MD: Host Elle Russ welcomes Zach Bush MD to the podcast.

Primal Health Coach Radio Episode 79: Laura and Erin chat with Lisa McDonald.

Media, Schmedia

Didn’t we already know this decades ago?

Interesting Blog Posts

What happened to all the Bronze Age cities?

What might a “new morality” look like?

Social Notes

It’s true.

Green Old Deal.

Everything Else

Someone check if Hell froze over.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

This isn’t good news: People’s balance is worse than ever.

Great content: A compendium of 19th century Italian case studies on using the carnivore diet to treat diabetes.

Insane paper: In which the author proposes we “painlessly” kill off predators in the wild to prevent herbivores from suffering.

Interesting question: Why are North and South India so different on gender?

One of the more relevant pieces I’ve read: Acceptance parenting.

Question I’m Asking

Are you going to celebrate Halloween? If so, how?

Recipe Corner

• Keto tacos. Clever idea with the cheese shell.
• This pumpkin mug cake looks like a nice little treat.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Oct 2 – Oct 8)

• HIIT vs HIRT: Reducing Workout Stress to Increase Fitness – Go easier to go faster.
• Mark’s Favorite Exercise: Trap-Bar Deadlift – I just love it.

Comment of the Week

“LOL you’re on the wrong website Sheida.”

-Actually, TGJ, this might be the website she needs most of all.

The post Weekly Link Love — Edition 102 appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Since the human body is made up of roughly 75 percent water, it’s commonly recommended that you stay well-hydrated throughout the day. Let’s face it; without this elixir of life, humans couldn’t survive more than three to four days. But when does too much of a good thing turn into a bad thing? Here are […]

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Chris Barakat, MS, ATC, CISSN, is the founder of School of Gainz and Competitive Breed. He is also a competitive natural bodybuilder, researcher, and educator who truly walks the talk.
 

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