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Dealing with Disappointment

“Well, THAT was unexpected.”

This is something I’ve found myself saying over and over again since mid-march of last year. The highs and lows of the last 10 months have been a bit, shall we say, extreme.

The last few weeks have been particularly trying. Navigating what is supposed to be the ‘hap-happiest time of the year’ under pandemic rules and regulations has caused many folks a lot of personal strife. Missed holiday celebrations, missing seeing family, and just generally a missed sense of human purpose has tempers running high, and it’s not just from Coronavirus.

Like many people I know, when the clock flipped over to 2021, I had to seriously resist the urge to assume everything would be different just because it was the New Year.

To be fair I was excited; we were scheduled to start the year off with a bang by giving a virtual lecture on January 16th, Covid vaccinations were on their way, and a whole new world was coming. We laid solid plans to halt our holiday debauchery and ‘resolved’ to turn this:

into something more like this:

…and then this happened.

Our seminar was canceled, the vaccination distribution was not what it seemed, and the whole world felt as if it were quickly going to hell in a hand basket… again.

Our knee jerk reaction was to give in to a new, aggressive case of the fuck-its and jump right back onto the ‘who gives a shit’ train to quarantine boozetown.

BUT because we made a somewhat arbitrary New Year’s resolution to be kinder to our livers and had already set the plan in motion, the decision to stay the course won and the train to boozetown left the station without us.

In times like these I like to remind myself, and all of you, it is especially difficult to practice positive coping skills while stressing-the-fuck-out or when life becomes unexpectedly challenging. So before you make a whole bunch of promises you might not be able to keep when stress levels rise and shit hits the fan, take a moment to check-in and see if you are exhibiting any of these maladaptive coping strategies that often create or maintain a dysfunctional pattern, preventing healthy psychological growth, personal well-being, and #newyearnewyou hash tagging.

As we gently lean into a 2021 brimming with possible relief from the shit-show that was 2020 let’s not drag our old antics into 2021 and immediately sully that beautiful clean slate. Read on to find out how to stave off 3 subconscious faux pas that could hold you back from becoming the best version of you in 2021.

MOPING

Common symptoms:
Avoidance
Anxiety
Isolation
Depression
Worsening of Chronic Health Conditions

During the last 10 months (holy hell has it really been that long?) you may have found yourself mourning the loss of life as we all knew it. This is natural. It is okay to grieve the loss of what you thought the last few months (or next few months) would be like.

While reactions to negative situations are typically emotional ones, the most common coping strategy adopted is to avoid of further discomfort by simply avoiding people, places, or situations that may prove to be ‘uncomfortable’. Taken to its extreme this strategy can result in the simplest daily activity causing distress and anxiety.

In the short term, avoiding challenging and difficult situations might make you feel safe.
In the long term it reinforces underlying doubts, fears, and negative perceptions about yourself and the world around you regardless of whether or not those perceptions are true.

If you constantly subject your self worth (or someone else’s) to some other standard (maybe a standard that no longer exists, or one you manufactured) you are essentially ignoring reality and therefore will have a hard time finding a comfortable space to operate no matter where you are, what you are doing, or who you are with.

As you can see, this perpetuates the discomfort that causes anxiety – that causes more discomfort cycle. And unfortunately, this type of syndrome often manifests itself physically before it is realized psychologically.

Some of the physical warning signs include:

Shortness of breath
Random onset sweating
Chronic fatigue
Chronic upper respiratory issues
Racing heart rate
Confusion
Irritability

If you are dealing with an overwhelming amount of anxiety or depression, as always, it’s a really good idea to consult a professional.

What to do? Create a plan of action.

Research shows that proactive coping strategies such as creating a plan and/or rehearsing scenarios can be an effective way to manage future obstacles you’re likely to face. Planning ahead and troubleshooting circumstances that might derail your progress can aid in reintroducing yourself to the things that may initially seem problematic.

Additionally, not everything needs to be dealt with immediately. However, you need to ensure you are weighing the negative impact of not taking an action. Not doing something is as much of a choice as making a plan or taking an action and therefore you are responsible for the consequences.

NOPING

Common symptoms:
Denial
Defiance
Rationalization

Denial is one of the most common maladaptive coping mechanisms. It occurs when you refuse to accept reality or facts, blocking external events or circumstances from your mind so that you don’t have to deal with their emotional impact.

Research on confirmation bias shows that we tend to look for and interpret information in ways that conform to our current beliefs and strategies for interfacing with other people and the world at large. There is an emotional investment in continuing to believe what you want to believe or have believed in the past.

Furthermore, studies on a phenomenon called ‘the backfire effect’ show when people are presented with facts that cause them to feel bad about their self-worth or worldview, they sometimes develop a stronger attachment to the initial incorrect belief or strategy.

Even folks who are seemingly at the top of their game have a hard time disassociating belief and reality. LeadershipIQ found that in a given year approximately 23% of the CEOs they tracked were fired for denying reality, meaning refusing to recognize negative facts about his or her organization’s performance under their watch.

Some people also attempt to explain undesirable behaviors with their own set of ‘facts.’ This allows them to feel comfortable with the choice they made, even if, on another level, they know it is incorrect.

(If you don’t know her already please check out Hyperbole and a Half: by Allie Brosh).

What to do? Practice awareness to aid in regulating emotional responses, question the results, and make behavioral adjustments accordingly.

First you will have to identify the stressor in your life. When interfacing with the stressor record your initial response. Ask yourself questions such as: ‘was that a proportional response to the stressor?’, ‘was my response useful/helpful/necessary?’, ‘should/could my approach have been different?’, and ‘would a different response garner a different result’?.

Consciously asking these questions and making choices on a mindful level as opposed to giving into knee jerk reactions will help curb undesirable behaviors that yield even more undesirable results. This is not an easy endeavor, but practice makes perfect, and the payoff for even small improvements is usually significant.

HOPING

Common symptoms:
Deferral
Distractions
Excessive Daydreaming

“Action is hope. There is no hope without action.” – Ray Bradbury

Hoping without action is a futile process. Without action, hope is merely wishing something or someone could be different, and wishing is ubiquitous – an escape from reality, a diversion from what is actually happening.

Don’t get me wrong; dealing with the unknown is TOUGH. But when it comes to uncertainty having a PLAN (or several plans) is a much better strategy than ‘hoping’ things will turn out ok.

What precisely is hope? The late Charles R. Snyder, PhD, a psychologist at the University of Kansas and self proclaimed pioneer of hope research, believed hope to be comprised of three critical components: goals, agency, and pathways.

I see Dr. Snyder’s definition and raise him that optimism, pragmatism, and planning actually CREATE the sensation of hope and that hope is the fuel necessary to stay the course en route to a specific goal.

“Change requires neither saintliness nor genius. What it does require is the conviction of the incomparable value of life. Nothing should matter more to us than the attempt to grasp our life while we have it, and to awaken from the slumber of routine, of compromise and prostration, so that we may die only once. Hope is not the condition or cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action. And those who fail in hope should act, practically or conceptually, so that they may hope.” – Cornel West & Roberto Unger; The Future of American Progressivism

Coincidentally, making a New Year’s resolution without implementing a plan, and sticking to it, is JUST like wishing on a star for it to happen.

What to do? Use hope as a fuel to stay the course on achieving your goals.

Put simply, hope, agency, and optimism enlivens our ability and belief that we can change our lives. Without this we would most likely fall short of achieving most of our goals. The goal is the hope and the hope is the goal. Losing sight of either component may mean you miss the target entirely.

Understandably, it can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel and even harder when that pin prick beam of sunshine flickers and fades because the tunnel is curvy and LONG (10 months long??? Can it really be true?).

Pragmatism is the motivation to reach a desired goal, and the pathways/planning is how we get there. Have a plan (or several), stay the course by keeping vigilant about curbing negative behaviors, and get to work making that ‘hope’ of yours a full-blown reality. It may already be 2021 but it is never to late to ‘resolve’ to be better.

Food Friday: Rock Lobster

Patrick Stewart Lobster Costume

“We were going to a Halloween party and I had explained to her that I’m an actor. We don’t put on costumes. We leave that to civilians because we spend our days wearing costumes… Well, she found this thing online, she took it out of the box and showed it to me. I had to put it on. And a musician friend of hers said, you gotta put him in the bath.”
-Sir Patrick Stewart
FUCKING HERO

Now that we are allowed to see other humans a good friend of ours wanted to get together and cook lobsters. Having never cooked such a large and venerable crustacean, Eric and I immediately accepted his challenge, errr invitation.

Knowing nearly nothing about lobsters Eric and I did a little research and found ourselves, as we often do, pages deep on Serious Eats reading Kenji Lopez-Alt’s article(s) all about lobsters.

Here’s what we learned. The first and foremost thing you need to know about lobsters is that they are zombies. Here’s why:

 
#1 Lobsters are immortal.

“Most species of animals and plants have a pre-determined lifetime; As their cells repeatedly divide, eventually they suffer DNA damage and shortened telomeres (the buffer zone at the end of a chromosome that prevents damage to the important bits). Eventually cells can’t reproduce, and the animal or plant dies. This doesn’t happen to lobsters; Their cells are able to divide and reproduce indefinitely, meaning that were it not for outside influences like disease, predators, or their innate tastiness, a lobster could conceivably live and grow forever.” -Kenji Lopez-Alt

American lobsters—or Maine lobsters, as they are commonly known—can weigh more than 40 pounds and grow up to 3 feet long. The largest lobster on record was caught off Novia Scotia in 1988. It weighed in at 44 pounds and was 42 inches long. Scientists believe it was at least 100 YEARS OLD.

Giant Lobster Vintage Photo

To add to all of this, a lobster’s central nervous system is located in its throat, its nervous system in its abdomen, its teeth in its stomach and its kidneys in its head. Lobsters also hear using their legs and taste with their feet… I can’t really think of anything more supernatural than that.

 
#2 Lobsters are cannibals.

“A lobster needs to be alive, or at the very least just-killed when you cook it, full stop… but lobster and other similar shellfish face a different problem: enzymatic breakdown. See, lobsters and shrimp digest their prey via enzymes in their upper digestive tract located in their heads. Once killed, the lobsters turn into crustacean zombies, their digestive enzymes eating at their own bodies.” -Kenji Lopez-Alt

So a dead, or nearly dead lobster will begin to eat itself, and if you cook that lobster, will result in gross, mushy meat. WTF?!?

And while you’ll often see lobsters in the store with rubber bands on their claws those rubber bands are not just there for our human handler safety.

funny-pictures-combat-lobster

 
The rubber bands are also there to protect the lobsters from each other. See, if left unrestrained, the lobsters will devour their tank mates. No one is safe.

Lobster Crab Stab

 
#3 Once dispatched, lobsters continue to lobster.

I know I know… when it comes to lobsters there’s much contention around which dispatch method is most humane. Some folks put the lobsters in the freezer for about an hour before they hit the pot.

Other braver souls just bite the bullet and split the head of the live lobster in two with a very sharp knife a la Walking Dead. But that doesn’t mean the lobster stops lobstering…

“That a lobster will continue to crawl around and, well, act like a lobster even after its head has been removed is a good indication of the primitiveness of its nervous system. Like a cockroach’s, its body can still move even without a central brain to control it.” -Kenji Lopez-Alt

If it makes you feel any better, because lobsters have neither a brain (in the technical sense) nor vocal cords that whole thing about them screaming in the pot is a myth. (The sound is actually air escaping from inside the exoskeleton as the temperature changes.)

Lobster Cartoon Scream

 
Turns out, once you get passed the whole murder part, cooking a lobster is surprisingly easy. All you need is a large stock pot. Fill that pot with about an inch to an inch and a half of water, boil, and toss in your lobsters (head first if using the freezer method). Small lobsters will take about 15-20 minutes and then voila! They are ready.

If you want to get fancy Kenji recommends steaming the lobsters in segments (claws, tail, body) for about two minutes then transferring to a 350 degree oven until the meat reaches 135 degrees (approximately 7 minutes for claws, 15 minutes for tails).

 
Lobster is an impossibly lean source of protein and is chock full of vitamins and minerals such as B-12, Zinc, Magnesium, and Phosphorus.

The sides that are commonly suggested for lobster can get a little heavy and calorie dense: dredged butter, corn, potato, corn bread, etc. You get the idea.

In the Bergmann house we try and pair our crustaceans with lower calorie sides that also pack a flavorful punch. You can try out a cherry tomato salad with basil and red onions dressed in olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper:

 

or a bounty of grilled asparagus

 

or a spicy sriracha cabbage coleslaw?

We hope you have enjoyed this foray into zombie lobster territory. Remember, don’t be a selfish shellfish…

Lobster on a roll

if you’ve got a great lobster recipe send it our way and it might get featured in one of our upcoming Food Fridays!

Think. Rinse. Repeat.

With so many things happening in the world right now it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.

In case you don’t already know, being overwhelmed feels like you are being crushed, overrun, or overcome by something, in mind, body, or spirit.

onlyonebaby

The sensation of being overwhelmed can also feel very much akin to other high stress reactions such as anxiety, depression, or a bad case of the fuck-its.

In the Bergmann household we like to refer to the overwhelmed state of mind as ‘the swirling vortex of doom.’

vortex of evil sign

 
It’s typically suggested that you can excise this particular demon by checking things off your to-do list (if you don’t know why writing shit down is important CLICK HERE), delegating/outsourcing tasks, or just plain fucking off and letting things fester, if that’s your thing.

lavender stress

 
But what if you’ve gone to great lengths to utilize some of these common tactics and still just can’t shake that lingering sensation of impending catastrophe? What if you keep finding yourself enraged over nonsensical and trivial things? What if you keep finding everything around you face meltingly irritating and impossible to manage?

workoverwhelming

 
Here’s the good news, quelling the swirling vortex of doom is relatively simple, everyone can do it, and doing it doesn’t require any additional equipment outside of using your big, beautiful brain.

Turns out, just like physical activity, effectively utilizing your brain’s superpowers requires practice, endurance, and headroom. And while some of us have been doing our best to condition our (summer) bodies during our respective quarantines let’s not forget about the ol’ noggin!

I know, I know. Thinking can be so cumbersome! And in today’s attention economy staying clear headed, avoiding distractions, and focusing on building more resilient and flexible thought processes can be an uphill battle, but let me try and make it a little easier for you.

Here are four quick things you can try out to exercise your mental fortitude and regain control of your runaway stress addled brain.

#1 Slow the fuck down.

Speed is the enemy of many things, and clear thinking is certainly one of them. Patience is seriously key during times of high stress and anxiety.

Remember, life is not a mathematical Olympiad. There are no medals for who makes life changing decisions the fastest. Rash and reactionary decisions are often the ones we regret the most, and having to correct a mistake or misunderstanding only eats up additional time that could be used for more productive pleasures or activities.

stressedtext

Give each thought the time it deserves by pausing everything else and honing in on it. Seriously, stop everything. Take a moment, breathe deeply and keep rolling that single thought around in your head. Repeat that thought like a mantra and notice how your constitution changes in relationship to that repetition.

#2 Stop multitasking.

One thing to consider is that you might be feeling tense and overwhelmed because of the sheer number of things you are trying to think about and/or trying to do at one time.

Turns out humans are pretty bad at multitasking. A decade long Standford University study showed that multitasking was a major driver for reduced information retention, a diminished ability to process memories, and inability to sustain a single point of focus. An article reporting on the the Stanford study notes:

The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time…

…frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another.

Multitasking basically results in more confusion and disorientation, especially when we lose track of the most important tasks at hand. And unfortunately the more you multitask the harder it is to break the habit. Donald Hebb, an early neuroscientist said it best: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Not all is lost! You can break the multitasking cycle by simply trying to focus on one thought or task at a time without any other distractions.

Turn off the TV in the background, get off of social media, close any unused browser windows, pick up either the baby or frying pan, and get to work on ONE thing at a time.

Folks who get really good at single-tasking not only report better overall outcomes regarding the quality of their work but also an increase in the enjoyment of the process.

#3 Practice active listening.

Get out of your own head and actively listen to something, whether it’s a song, a podcast, or (heaven forbid) another human being. Active listening will help you build better relationships, solve problems more efficiently, ensure understanding, and improve accuracy.

Watch out for a few things: if you find yourself inserting your own opinions/likes/dislikes into an internal dialog, if you are trying to finish someone’s thoughts or sentences, or indulging your own fantasies you are no longer actively listening.

Again, active listening requires you to screen out ancillary distractions (like background noise and even your own drifting thoughts). After your active listening session is complete try and briefly summarize what just happened/what you heard/saw etc, or provide some type of nuanced observational feedback.

#4 Get in touch with your emotional barometer.

We often spend a lot of time and energy avoiding discomfort as opposed to dealing with it head on. Unsurprisingly this often leads to compulsive behaviors and distractions such as frequent internet browsing/shopping, rewatching the same TV show over and over again, or chronic rescheduling of appointments or social engagements.

This is a really good opportunity to investigate why you might be avoiding a particular person, place, thing, or scenario. Or why a particular Facebook post / conversation with a loved one / guy talking too loud on his cell phone at the grocery store made you have an outsized emotional reaction.

First of all, it’s ok to have these moments.

The problem arises when we do not ask ourselves why it happened and putter on as if doing nothing is going to prevent that from happening again in the future.

Don’t get stuck on the ferris wheel of “that’s just who I am”. Keep asking yourself “why” until you can’t ask the question any longer. What you find at the end of that road will probably be much simpler and easy to manage than you thought initially.

In closing…

These types of thinking exercises are especially important right now when tensions are high and there are many unknowns at play. In a time where new information and changes to our daily lives will present us with particularly challenging moments, we’ve been given a rare opportunity to exercise our capacity to “keep an open mind” and prove we are more than just our opinions and emotional reactions.

Oftentimes it will be the information that reaches you first that you will fight tooth and nail to uphold. However, we cannot only look to the past to help us shape the future. When we hold onto old ideas/ideals too tightly we weaponize our nostalgia and forget to think openly in a forward fashion.

But I promise, if you practice these four simple thought experiments, especially when you begin to feel overwhelmed with the world around you, you may notice that anxiety begin to fade away.

And finally, scientific evidence suggests physical exercise not only helps build cognitive power but also helps the brain resist shrinkage by promoting neurogenesis: the ability to adapt and grow new brain cells. So if and when you get tired of thinking, just pick up something heavy and throw it across the room for extra credit.

With Lockdowns Easing…

What Year Is It?

It’s been a pretty crazy few months, hasn’t it?

With lockdowns easing and many of us preparing for a slow normalizing (or semi-normalizing) of routines it’s an ideal moment for reflection. We have a rare and fleeting opportunity to consider how we have been spending our time — a moment where we still have more control over our time than ever, but we are likely to see that change in the coming weeks and months.

So, what did you do with your time?

If you’re like me, you had lots of thoughts and beliefs about what you would do during quarantine. And if you’re like me, you may have been surprised by some of the things you actually did (I radically expanded my cooking repertoire and even made veal sweetbreads) as well as the things you did not do (I did not read any fiction or play any music — things I was confident would make the cut).

There were other surprises as well… not all of them were great: I read the news a lot and started going onto social media daily — very disappointing. There were unexpected realizations: I like waking up early, but I’m more effective mentally, physically, and emotionally with a later sleep/wake schedule.

I’d like to encourage you to take advantage of this unusual moment in history — we probably won’t get another one quite like it…

-What things did you think you would do, but never actually felt like doing?

-What things did you spend your time doing and which of those brought you joy?

-What things do you wish you’d spent less time doing?

-If it were day one and you could start all over what would you have done differently and what would you keep the same?

It’s okay if you didn’t do all (or any) of the things you thought you would; maybe you’re just not that into those things or hadn’t adequately prepared your environment to facilitate those actions. But also take stock of the things you spent a lot of time doing that didn’t feel worth it.

For many of us, this will be a re-centering of values. And even if you feel like you didn’t make the most of it you can begin to shape your future environment and behaviors with what you’ve learned about yourself. When this is all over we can look back at this as time we lost or we can see it as a pivotal moment in our self-improvement. Let’s all make it the latter.

The Fine Art of Fuck it — A Hack to Take Back Control of Your Life

There’s a psychological phenomenon aptly named the WTF Effect (The “What The Hell Effect”… I’m not sure why they used an “F” for “Hell”. Weird.)

The What The Hell Effect tends to occur when we’re moving towards a goal, but we hit a speed bump. For instance, maybe I decided that I’m going to go on an uber-strict diet. Things are going well. Then, in a fit of hunger I lose my $#!T and eat a piece of pizza. What the hell, I think. I’ve ruined EVERYTHING… might as well eat ALL the pizza. This is the What The Hell Effect.

Pizza I have eaten

In addiction counseling this phenomenon has a correlate with an even better name: “The Fuck-its”.

Fuck it

What I like about the Fuck-its is that, while the What The Hell Effect sort of surprises us and turns a whoops into a holy-shit-what-have-I-done, the Fuck-its is often something we feel coming on. It’s a sensation of not wanting to stay on the current path.

For instance, maybe I want to stop drinking so much, but I like being drunk. There’s a conflict there. And the battle between wants and likes, between who I want to become and the things I currently like to do, is writ large in the Fuck-its.

I’m pretty sure we’ve all experienced the Fuck-its. We’re doing pretty well on a goal, moving effectively towards what we want; but that sense of going back to an old path, a thing we like, starts itching the underside of our brain. We try to ignore it, but when we don’t do so successfully, we find ourselves going, “Fuck it!” Moving towards our goals gets kicked aside and we return to old habits.

On the One Hand...

As with addictions, old paths are sneaky. We tend to think we really enjoy that old path, but it’s often not the path we’re enjoying, per se — it’s familiarity. We know the old path. It’s comfy. Change is new. New is less comfy. Fuck it.

So, why in the world do I like the Fuck-its and what does it have to do with taking back control?

There is a secret power in the Fuck-its: it gives a name to the act of switching paths. In life there are a limited number of things over which we have any measure of control. The act of switching paths implies that we are dealing with one of those things. For instance, I can’t switch paths on the weather outside my house, but I can switch paths on how much ice cream I eat.

Zeus

sure, but can he control ice cream?

So, we can use the Fuck-its in the traditional falling-off-the-wagon way (probably not ideal), or we can invert the Fuck-its and use it against falling-off-the-wagon (maybe a better idea). Let’s weaponize the Fuck-its…

Fuck-it Buckets:

We can separate our desires into two buckets:

Bucket 1: what we “like” but deem inappropriate to our longer term goals (i.e, our current set of behaviors and habits we need to change in order to make improvements).

Bucket 2: what we “want” but is in conflict with our current behaviors and habits (i.e., the set of behaviors and habits that we feel will help with our longer term goals and thus improve our lives).

A typical scenario is that as we try to move from what we “like” to what we “want” we hit the Fuck-its and cast our plans aside. There are many reasons this happens, but they all revolve around excess stress hitting the system (e.g., lack of rest, overwork, screaming boss, screaming kids, screaming news, screaming social media, lack of human contact, uncertainty about the future, etc). We’re doing fine, then stressors are increased and we default back to a lower stress output: the set of behaviors and actions we’re most familiar with. Fuck my goals (Bucket 2), I’m going to do that thing I do when I’m stressed (Bucket 1).

If we invert the Fuck-its, we get something like: Fuck doing that thing I do when I’m stressed (Bucket 1). I’m doing something goal-related (Bucket 2).

So here’s the actionable part (and the rub, because most people won’t take the tiny step that follows… but then, the majority Of people fail to improve their habits and behaviors and blame the stressors of life. A minority perform a few minutes of advanced planning to improve their likelihood of success and thus their futures. Be the minority!):

You have to write down your Bucket 1 behaviors and their Bucket 2 counterparts (e.g., Bucket 1: eating a bucket of ice cream. Bucket 2: staying on my nutrition plan.)

Then you need to make your Fuck-it Phrase: “Fuck ice cream, I’m waiting 30 minutes to see if I really want it”, or whatever action you think will help you stay out of Bucket 1. (And remember, if your Fuck-it Phrase isn’t working, it’s not that you suck, it’s that your phrase sucks. Make a fresh one.)

You also have to say your Fuck-it Phrase. Out loud helps a ton, but even just repeating it in your head starts the rewiring process and gives your brain an immediate touchstone it can return to during times of higher stress when the Fuck-its are most likely to appear.

Too easy? That’s the point. The path of least resistance will tend to win, especially when we’re under duress. Don’t try harder — fuck-it — try easier.

*I should probably point out that this isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s especially useful in scenarios where external environments can’t be controlled (maybe you’ve decided to stop eating dairy but live on a dairy farm), or controlling the environment is harder than struggling to reach your goals (maybe you want to eat less chocolate, but getting the chocolate out of the house or putting the bowl out of sight causes more family discontent than you’re willing to deal with right now). First control the external environment as much as possible, then attend to your internal environment.

Kitchen Hacks: Margarita

Many things in life are best kept simple and the classic margarita is certainly one of them. We enjoy our margaritas on the rocks but you can certainly toss all the ingredients into a blender with ice and enjoy frozen-style. It’s your Cinco de Mayo party so do whatever feels right! Enjoy.

Or if you just want the recipe:

  • Cut lime wheel
  • Use wheel to wet rim of glass
  • Salt the rim
  • Add ice to shaker
  • Add 2 oz tequila, 1 oz Cointreau, 1 oz lime juice
  • Add ice to salted glass and pour
  • Garnish with lime wheel

And remember, it’s just 5 ingredients…

Kitchen Hacks: Carnitas

In our Smashed Garlic Broccoli Food Friday post we mentioned that:

    Getting and staying lean is largely about increasing food volume while decreasing calories.

    Improving and maintaining healthy eating habits is largely about making your food delicious.

    Together, these mean eating a boatload of veggies and making those veggies preposterously tasty.

To expand on that, getting and staying lean is also about satiety (how long a meal keeps you satisfied). The veggies are a part of that equation. Getting a healthy dose of protein is arguably more important. And, if you’re going to get a healthy dose of protein, let’s make it delicious and easy to prepare. And, because Cinco de Mayo is coming, let’s make it something that goes great with margaritas.

A Minute to Meditate on Mobility

Spending more time at home has made me realize that my couch has some sort of gravitational pull. I’ve been sitting more than I’m accustomed to. A LOT more.

In response to the callus I’m developing on my butt (and because after Rolling With Your Homies we got a bunch of requests for more ways to quickly move and feel better) we put together a quick, generic mobilization series.

This is a gentle, low-key series of mobility and stability drills to help us get off our couches. Feel free to move along with the video, add drills, subtract drills, or just treat it as a meditation.

Take stock of how you feel before and after each drill. You may find some aches and kinks magically disappear.

Kitchen Hacks: SMASHED Garlic Broccoli

Getting and staying lean is largely about increasing food volume while decreasing calories.

Improving and maintaining healthy eating habits is largely about making your food delicious.

Together, these mean eating a boatload of veggies and making those veggies preposterously tasty.

…and if you’re anything like us you’re typically pressed for time and don’t want to spend forever making that boatload of tasty veg.

We’re here to help, with assistance from our friends Broccoli and The Incredible Hulk:

Kitchen Hacks: Cuomo-tini

It’s Friday and Governor Cuomo told us yesterday we will be locked in until May 15th (at least) and all we can do is eat more martinis.

Learn to make the Cuomo-tini in under 2 minutes:

Or if you just want the recipe:

  • Fill mixing tin or glass with ice
  • 1 dash dry vermouth (we like Dolin’s)
  • 2.5 oz. vodka (we like Grey Goose)
  • Stir until frost forms on the outside of mixing tin (~30 sec)
  • Strain into martini glass or coupe
  • Garnish with olive