Eat with your tongue, not your eyes

Lobster bean bisque.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching Jimmy Kimmel Live, and he had as his guest, chef Gordon Ramsay (host of Hell's Kitchen). During the show he said,

"I think children become fussy because they eat with their eyes only."

He served his kids lamb brains on toast, but didn't tell them before they ate it. He told them after the meal, and they were pretty mad with him.

But, those are pretty good words to keep in mind.

Our eyes are used to see.

Remember that.

Eat with your tongue, not your eyes.

And this isn't just for kids.

Grocery store tips, plus tricks of a clever mom

Those better be frozen vegetables she's grabbing.

The majority of us have gone to the grocery store, no question about it. We need food, and other necessities. But, are you getting the most bang for your buck?

I remember my barber once jokingly say, "Times are rough." We were only talking about how even if an electronic is powered off, it still uses some electricity if it's plugged in (you can call PSEG if you don't believe me).

But still, anything helps when all is said and done.

So, I'll share some advice, tips, and tricks I've learned online and by tagging along to the grocery store with my mom.

1. Buy the Sunday paper and clip coupons for the love of god. It isn't difficult, and I was thoroughly thrilled to see a 55 cent coupon for almond milk this past weekend.

2. If you don't already, apply for your store's discount card. There are all types of savings by using it at every purchase, in addition to coupons with your receipt.

3. I've heard this one a lot. For food, shop around the perimeter of your store. There are occasions you need to go down an aisle or two for household items, which is fine and dandy, but don't travel through junk food land.

4. Nearly expired bread is cheaper bread. Just freeze it and defrost in the microwave.

5. Wait for it. Yes, I'm talking about sales. Got a big ol' tin of olive oil over the weekend, which cost less than the smaller container. Weird, right?

Here are a few of my mom's tactics.

6. Move quick. Get what you need and that's it. If you don't know what you need, then you may be more inclined to purchase "extras." Usually, I don't need a list, but it helps if you're going to buy a lot.

7. Look for the young teenage cashiers. Apparently, my mom tells me they're more inclined to scan any coupon or give you sales that may not be registering when an item is scanned. (more on this in the following points)

8. Use any coupon. The above said young teenage cashier will possibly accept an expired coupon or one that may be for a product, but doesn't meet the conditions, such as must buy 2 or buy so so to get half off. Hey, a coupon's a coupon.

9. Argue/debate. I've seen plenty of cashiers screw up way too many times. It's your money, don't get suckered.

10. Check the receipt immediately after your purchase. I don't know how my mom does it all in her head, but she does. See if the total is correct, if all deductions were taken off for the proper amount, and they didn't double scan anything accidentally.

Got your own tricks? Comment and share them with everyone else you sneaky person.

So, what are you waiting for? Get to shopping!

Results aren't always clear

About a month ago, I was trimming the back of my hair in the bathroom. So to accomplish such a feat, I stood away from the mirror in the bathroom and used a smaller mirror to watch the back side of my head as I carefully attempted not to mess up.

Now, seeing as how I didn't want to get hair all over my shirt, I took it off. As I was going about my business, I thought, "hm, impressive, I didn't know that's what my back looked like."

I didn't realize the the muscle I put on my lats and traps after doing pull-ups, rows, Olympic lifts, and deadlifts. Sure, I knew what was being worked when exercising, but it never occurred to me the effects of all that work I was doing.

Why mention this?

Because people get bummed out easily. I know it happens to me. I bet it's happened to you too at least once.

Cheer up though.

If you get too caught up in the results or going nuts trying to achieve some goal, you might overlook the finer points in the process.

They're not as easy to spot out, since you're not looking for them, but when you do find them, you'll be happy you found them.

Coincidentally, I recently came across one post last week and another post a few days ago which echo the sentiments of this post. Go give them a quick read.

Sometimes the results aren't always clear. Maybe you're concentrating too hard on a single aspect, who knows.

It's not the end of the world. Be grateful for what you can do, and enjoy what you have accomplished.

You deserve it.

Food pyramid for life, without the food

Click to enlarge

In the food pyramid, old or new, we can see the larger areas are more important than the smaller ones.

Easy enough, right? The above image (courtesy of good old paint) is a general pyramid anyone can use.

"But how Niel?!?? Damn you! Give us answers!"

We see Roman numerals under each section, which are:

I. - Primary importance
II. - Secondary
III. - Third
IV. - Fourth
V. - Rest & relaxation
VI. - Mistakes/Unproductive

To break it down, one to six are things most important in your life to the things that aren't helping you.

I'll use myself as an example.

I. - Doing well in school
II. - Reading books, articles, and anything that makes me smarter
III. - Exercising and taking care of my health
IV. - Keeping my stuff neat and tidy, laptop running well cause I didn't renew warranty, etc.
V. - Listen to music, nap, write blog posts
VI. - Oversleeping in the morning, being late to class, browsing random sites online

The first thing is most important in my life.

Two is a big hobby of mine because I enjoy educating myself through those items.

Three is also important, but if exams are coming up, I need to buckle down and can only exercise 1-2 times a week. Sometimes I may go longer between meals than normal, it varies.

Fourth is not essential, but it does help to keep me organized and having the previous things run smoothly.

Five, burning out is a big problem when becoming overzealous. Taking a moment to gather my energy through various activities I enjoy keeps me refreshed for working hard.

Lastly, six, those trivial matters that aren't helping me the least bit in #'s 1 through 4.

It's essential to minimize that small sliver that is #6. When it becomes too large, we have no time for 5 because we're too busy trying to get everything else done.

Likewise, the same can be said for all the points, except #1. If one step grows too large, it endangers the preceding commitments.

Spend too much time on one, you overlook the other things and don't have enough time to give them your attention. If I spend too much time reading books that aren't for class, then I won't have time to read my course textbooks.

I used myself as an example, but this changes person-to-person.

A recovering cancer patient would have rest as #1 as opposed to me or a parent at risk losing their job would be trying to find another job, take care of bills, and try balancing their life at home.

I could blab on forever, but I don't want to bore everyone. So, I'll end this with something for you to take and print out.

The following is a download of a Word file. In it, you'll find the diagram and the Roman numerals with a line between each. There's a dash for you to write in one or two sentences on how you're going to stick to your goals.

Download me!

With that said, print it out, fill it out, and stick it somewhere you frequent often, like your desk.

Food Adventures: Eggcellent marketing

Oh the deceit!

Real quick, some of you may notice the change from "shopping adventures" to "food adventures," mostly cause I thought it would be better to include other areas of interest besides the grocery store.

Now, for those of you who go grocery shopping, go take a look at the eggs. Most of them are probably marked "vegetarian fed eggs" or "100% vegetarian diet."

That's cool, right? That's what I thought a while back.

After I read the nutrition chapter in Never Gymless, it occurred to me I was quite ignorant, or maybe gullible (both I suppose).

Commercial chickens are fed soy, corn, and grains, which you would assume to be normal, but that's far from the truth.

The normal diet of a chicken is insects, plants, and seeds.

So, we see the egg industry is advertising unfriendly animal practices as a good thing that is somehow beneficial to your health.

This is similar to if we made a lion follow a vegetarian diet.

He doesn't seem too happy.

Tsk tsk, shame on you people. Such trickery is not appreciated.

Even organic-labeled eggs are marked as vegetarian. The grains are organic, but quite pointless when the chickens aren't suppose to be eating them in the first place.

From the 6-10 different types of eggs available for purchase, only 2 had no vegetarian diet label on them.

Next time you're about to buy eggs, take a quick look at what's on the packaging.

Instructions to have a good day

In 10^th grade, my motorcycle shop teacher said,

"I don't have to come in and act friendly, but if I act nice to you guys, then you guys act nice to me, and that makes the day go by easier."

Good words to live by.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Quick Fixes: Your Butt

Flat pancake booty or a huge badonkadonk, chances are, your glutes are inactive. This includes men.

Don't use something and it becomes less efficient, right? You end up a bit "rusty" when you don't do something for a while, like running. If you stopped for a few weeks, that first run after a long break isn't going to be as easy as it was before.

Driving, working, reading, on the computer, or anything else in the majority of our lives typically results with us sitting. A lot.

The work your glutes can be doing is transferred elsewhere on the body. That means, other muscles need to compensate for the lack of work being done by your ass. Literally.

Think about it like this. If you're working in a group on a new project and one person slacks off, everyone else has to pick up the slack. If you're like me, you probably don't want the extra work.

"What you gon' do with all that junk?"

So we need to counter that, y'know, get that junk in the trunk working again. Hm, what do we do?

Drumroll please.

*cricket chirps*

Yes folks, exercise! But, there are also some stretches and warm-ups in our bag o' tricks.

To keep this post short as possible, I'm going to list & hyperlink a few things.

• Standing hip flexor stretch, hold for 1 second, alternate between each leg & do 10 total.
  
• Bird dog
• Glute/supine bridge
  
• Jane Fondas (listed as lateral leg raise)
• Fire hydrants (listed as knee circle forward), aim to get your knee higher than the girl in the video.
  
• Pretty much any of the movements demonstrated in this video.
  

Do the first bullet point plus one of the others, not all of them. For amount of reps and sets, check out the chart in the bottom of this article.

For actual exercises, the list is endless. You should aim to make a strong lower body using a variety of squats, deadlifts, lunges, split squats, glute-ham raises, good mornings, step ups, sprints, and kettlebell/dumbbell swings.

Notice how slow long distance running isn't mentioned? Just make sure to get complete hip extension. That means at the end of each rep, be sure to lock and pop your hips out, you should be able to squeeze your glutes hard. (see here & here to get an idea)

To get that rump in shape, you need to work it.

For any of you interested, here are the articles I used.

• Mike Robertson & Eric Cressey's Get Your Butt Into Gear, parts 1 & 2
• Brijesh Patel's Hamstring Dominance article
• Chad Waterbury's Fast Track to a Hard Ass
• Rachel Cosgrove's Lift Heavy for Lean Legs
• Mehdi's How to Optimize Posterior Chain Power: Glute Activation

Hope you all enjoyed this post, feel free to leave questions and/or comments.