Category Archives: Product Review

Life Changing Discoveries

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I’m really sorry we’ve been slacking all week. I hate making excuses, but work has been really hectic, and there’s been stuff happening every night. We’ll be resuming our normal blogging schedules next week! We’re also going to get to hang out in person, which is a rare occurrence. I legit don’t think we’ve seen each other in a month! Anyways.. sort of toying with the idea of doing a vlog… I’ve always been against them, because I think I would feel super awkward in front of a camera, but it seems to be the “it” thing to do these days. What do you guys think? Tons of FitFluential peeps vlog (what a weird word)… do you feel odd when you do it? Would you actually want to see Erica and I live in action or will you gauge your eyeballs out in boredom? Let us know..

So, I discovered some life changing things this week. Products that I want to share with you (disclaimer: I am not being endorsed by ANY of these brands!) I am just genuinely psyched about these and want to share with y’all. Apologies if you follow me on Instagram and have seen these before. And if you don’t follow me on Instagram.. get on it! @Emboslice.

The Back Bay Micro Chopped Salad from Met Bar: Holy crap. I can’t even tell you how epic this salad is. It has SO much goodness in it- broccoli, beets, tomatoes, bacon, corn (I know, not Paleo.. sue me) an ENTIRE avocado, and your choice of protein (I got salmon). Obviously, a salad like this would be easy to replicate at home, but we’ve been going here after spin for our Social Sweat. If you live in Boston, I highly highly recommend it!

Stronger Faster Healthier Protein: I’m in the market for a new protein, and my friend Lisa highly recommended this. Since she’s a badass CrossFitter, I took her word for it. It is AMAZING. I preferred the chocolate flavor over vanilla (duh) and I mixed it with my normal shake.. coconut milk, bananas, strawberries, etc. I don’t know the science behind protein, and won’t pretend like I do, but I felt really incredible after I drank it, and I wasn’t as sore as I normally am the morning after a workout. SFH is a family owned company from Maine. Check out more of their products here!

Terra Sweet Potato Chips: Sorry for the crumpled picture- I had to retrieve it out of the trash after I inhaled the whole bag. These chips are SOO good. And all natural. Give me a bag of these and some guacamole and I am a happy girl.

The Way I Push It: Timbaland AND Salt N’ Pepa remixed? I let out a little yelp of joy when I heard this at my desk, and immediately started booty tapping.

Tide Febreze Sport Laundry Detergent: I am a total sucker for advertising (good thing I work in the industry.. if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em) so if I see something that tells me it’s going to make my clothes not smell like the inside of a septic tank, I am down. I did my first load last night, and this lives up to the label. Just to give you a little perspective on my laundry situation- my hamper is full of plastic bags with my spin clothes. If you’ve ever been to Recycle, you know that you sweat. A LOT. Literally my clothes are soaking wet after I finish a class (whether I taught it or took one) so I throw them in a plastic bag after class so it doesn’t contaminate everything else in my gym bag. I do laundry a couple times a week, but let’s just say that sweaty, wet clothes don’t smell any better after 3 days. I am SO thankful and appreciative of this new discovery. My workout gear smelt so fresh and so clean clean this morning. This is an ESSENTIAL for sweaty beasts!

Any other must-have products that I’m missing from the list? Sidenote- we talked about poop on Wednesday and now my horrible laundry situation today. I really feel like we’ve grown a lot closer. For better or for worse…

Have a great weekend!

-Emily

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Healthy Living Summit 2012

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Sorry about being debbie downer the other day! My 2 weeks of spinsanity are over, so I’m going to take a few days off from working out. Still eating clean, but I think focusing on resting my body is important.

ANYHOO- you may have noticed a super cool shiny badge on the right side of the site! It’s for the Healthy Living Summit, a blogging event that takes place in Boston. I’m SO excited to go, as I’ll get to meet lots of my FitFluential crushes and meet some wicked awesome people (sidenote: if you’re attending from out of town, start incorporating “wicked” into your vocab, ASAP).

There’s nothing better than getting packages in the mail. Unless they’re anthrax. That would probably suck. Last night, after teaching 2 back to back classes and walking home in the suffocating heat (literally was sweating non stop 3 hours) I was beat and was going tunnel vision towards my fridge to attack whatever food was in there. But I stumbled over a big box when I walked into my apartment. I usually get packages shipped to my office to avoid someone stealing something from my porch (I lived in Brooklyn for 4 years, I got my back up!) and I was confused. I saw my name, along with my blog name under it, and my first thought was “wow I feel so legit” but then I obviously wanted to know what was inside. This is becoming a ramble. The POINT IS- I was even MORE excited when I finally opened the package and found a bunch of goodies from Wild Harvest!

They’re going to be sponsoring HLS and are sending out goodie bags to all bloggers that are attending. The Shaw’s by my office has a ton of Wild Harvest products, so I’m familiar with the brand- local, organic, awesome. The package included some spices, applesauce, mango peach salsa, black beans, granola, animal crackers, and peanut butter. While I can’t eat some of the products (RIP animal crackers.. I used to love you so much) I’m looking forward to testing out the others! Mango peach salsa on some salmon? To my face, please.

Are you going to HLS? This is my first blogging event! What should I expect, besides meeting some kick ass people?

-Emily

Paleo Diet for Athletes

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Hi! How was everyone’s weekend? Yes, I know it’s Tuesday, but Monday was such a blur, I’m counting today as the beginning of the week. 4 day week! Woo! (Not really).

We finally had some gorgeous weather here in Boston. I spent most of my day on Saturday rotating between laying out on my deck and the beach. It was the perfect opportunity to finally dive into The Paleo Diet for Athletes, which has been sitting on my nightstand for the past 4 months. Life has been so busy lately! I hate when I don’t have time to read. I try to read at night before going to bed, but the combination of Kava tea and physical exhaustion make keeping my eyes open a struggle.

So far, I’m pretty fascinated by everything I’m reading. I feel like I’ve been semi-slacking on eating clean lately, and reading stuff like this is always a good motivation to get back on track. What I like most about this book is that it is specifically geared towards athletes, and explains exactly why your body performs at its peak when eating a primal diet.

I won’t get into the super science-y stuff here (mostly because I have to read it over and over again before I actually understand it) but wanted to share the most interesting points I’ve come across so far. Dr. Cordain has a great breakdown of what you should eat before, during, and after your workouts to achieve prime performance. Thought this would be good incentive for everyone heading into the week! I’m going to go ahead and copy and paste directly from a more knowledgeable source, because if I tried to paraphrase, it would end up in doodles.

Stage I: Eating Before Exercise

In brief, we recommend that athletes eat low to moderate glycemic index carbohydrates at least two hours prior to a hard or long workout or race. There may also be some fat and protein in this meal. All foods should be low in fiber. Take in 200 to 300 calories for every hour remaining until exercise begins. If eating two hours prior is not possible, then take in 200 or so calories 10 minutes before the workout or race begins.

Stage II: Eating During Exercise

During long or hard workouts and races you will need to take in high glycemic index carbohydrates mostly in the form of fluids. Sports drinks are fine for this. Find one that you like the taste of and will drink willingly. Realize that events lasting less than about an hour (including warmup) don’t require any carbohydrate. Water will suffice for these. A starting point for deciding how much to take in is 200 to 400 calories per hour modified according to body size, experience and the nature of the exercise (longer events require more calories than short).

Stage III: Eating Immediately After

In the first 30 minutes postworkout (but only after long and/or highly intense exercise) and postrace use a recovery drink that contains both carbohydrate and protein in a 4-5:1 ratio. You can buy a commercial product such as Ultrafit Recovery™ (www.ultrafit.com) for this. Or you can make your own by blending 16 ounces of fruit juice with a banana, 3 to 5 tablespoons of glucose (such as CarboPro) depending on body size, about 3 tablespoons of protein powder, especially from egg or whey sources and two pinches of salt. This 30minute window is critical for recovery. It should be your highest priority after a hard workout or race.

Stage IV: Eating for Extended Recovery

For the next few hours (as long as the preceding challenging exercise lasted) continue to focus your diet on carbohydrates, especially moderate to high glycemic load carbohydrates along with protein at a 4-5:1 carbprotein ratio. Now is the time to eat nonoptimal foods such as pasta, bread, bagels, rice, corn and other foods rich in glucose as they contribute to the necessary carbohydrate recovery process. Perhaps the perfect Stage IV foods are raisins, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams.

Stage V: Eating for LongTerm

Recovery For the remainder of your day, or until your next Stage I, return to eating a Paleo Diet by focusing on optimal foods. For more information on the Paleo Diet go to www.thepaleodiet.com or read The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D.

via Training Peaks

What I found most interesting is that he recommends eating non-Paleo foods such as pasta, bread, or bagels immediately after working out. But only during that specific time period. Say whaaat?!

I’m going to continue to avoid doing that just because of my gluten sensitivity, but found it interesting nonetheless. Also- he recommends having sports drinks during extra long workouts. I also disagree with that, just because I find drinks like Gatorade and Powerade make my stomach cramp up, and I prefer sticking to just H2O when exercising.

How do you guys feel about that? Does anyone else stick to a primal diet but carb load after an intense workout? Any Gatorade fiends? Is this information as shocking to you as it is to me?! Spill the beans!

-Emily

App of the Week

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I have a horrible memory for a girl. I can’t remember what I did last week, never mind remember a 3 rep max front squat from 6 weeks ago. I tried keeping a CrossFit journal like everyone recommended, but it quickly became gross and unorganized. So, I’m SURE you can understand my excitement when someone told me there was an app that kept track of all your CrossFit information for you! (I really shouldn’t have been that surprised since there seems to be an app for everything these days). Speaking of apps, I heard there is an app that can control what you dream about at night. How cool is that/WTF?

Anyways, this fabulous app is called myWOD. I’m pretty sure it’s 99 cents, but I could be wrong since, like I said, my memory sucks. Even if it is, I think it’s worth every penny. MyWOD keeps track of your WODs, records, max weights and common WODs (the girls, heros and other benchmarks). One of the best things about the app is you can enter different max weights for each lift. So, you can record your 1 RM, 3RM, 5 RM etc for each movement without overriding another max. This makes it super easy to monitor your progress and improvement over time.

This app is great for the CrossFit newbie as it lists out what each common WOD entails. Do you get Cindy confused with Chelsea like I do? (I sound like I’m having multiple affairs) Not to worry! Both WODs are explained under the “Common WOD” section.

This app also includes 15 “Road WODs” that can be completed outside of the gym without equipment. So, if you’re heading out on a two week vacation (lucky bitch), you have no excuse not to get your WOD on.

How do you keep track of your workouts and monitor your progress? Do you know of any CrossFit/Workout apps that help? Let us know!

-Erica

ActivewearUSA: Product Review

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The lovely ladies from ActivewearUSA were kind enough to ask me to test out and review one of their workout tanks from the Margarita Activewear line. I was really excited because a) I’ve never been asked to write a review before and b) I have a hard time finding workout tops that fit well, so I was looking forward to trying a new style.

I chose Margarita Activewear Top #928 because I liked the shape of it and the simplicity of the lines. Naturally, I chose black. Shocking!

I rocked this top last Friday, when I did back to back spin and CrossFit (bad decision) but I wanted to test out how the top felt during cardio and during cross training. This baby definitely held up to both tests. It’s made of a Supplex and Lycra material, and did a great job of wicking away my massive amounts of sweat. It also had a tight fit (in a good way) with a longer length, so it wasn’t riding up at all on the bike or during my 7 minutes of Burpee hell. I absolutely LOVED the fit of this top too. I have really broad shoulders, but am smaller everywhere else in my torso and chest, so usually when I find a top that fits my beastly shoulders, it’s huge everywhere else. And vice versa. So I was thrilled that this one actually fit well everywhere.

My only complaint about the top? It’s such a tiny thing.. but coming from a designer..

The logo. I had major beef with the logo. Albeit it was super tiny and at the bottom of the tank, I felt non-badass with a little daisy on my hip. I know a lot of women are into girly looking things and want to be as feminine as possible when working out (maybe I should get into that mindset…), but I prefer to not have flowers on my workout attire. Like I said, this is such a dumb complaint because everything about the top that’s important (fit, sweat-a-bility, movement, etc) was A+, but the logo just goes against my personal design taste.

I will definitely be scooping up a few of these babies, and perhaps just folding the bottom of the tank underneath to disguise the flower :)

What are your favorite workout tanks? Any thoughts on the daisy?

-ES

 

Up Close and Personal // Bondi Band Review

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We here at SEGR had a recent epiphany after reading this awesome post on Chef Katelyn about maintaining a blog. Sometimes, it’s really hard to find the time to research a particular subject we want to post about, or set up glamorous food shots of recipes we’ve cooked. In my perfect world, I’d be able to literally sleep, eat, cook, go to the gym, and blog. All. Day. Long. Buutttttt that doesn’t appear to be in the cards anytime soon. So, guess what. This blog is getting up close and personal. Rather than go days without posting because we can’t compose the perfect article, or find food photographers to set up lighting on our spaghetti squash, we’re going to be posting a lot more from the heart. Prepare yourselves for a whole lot of random rants, ramblings, and our day to day experiences. We’ll still be spitting knowledge on Paleo goodness and kick ass workouts, but there’s going to be a lot more personality happening. You can send all complaints to Chef Katelyn for inspiring us. Ready? Ok, GO!

What better way to get a little more personal than sharing a MySpace-style creeper shot of myself at the gym this morning. I know you all wanted to see what I look like after 45 minutes of cardio and an ab sesh at 7am. You’re welcome.

The point of this photo is to not only talk about my love for all things 80s and neon colors, but my (our) newest obsession with Bondi Bands. These things are AMAZING! I’d been searching for awhile to find something thick enough to keep my bangs out of my face so I didn’t look like Zack from Saved By The Bell (you know, when his hair spiked through the front of his hat, so hot) and wasn’t having any luck. I like the Lululemon headbands as they don’t slip or move around at all, but I was getting some serious Zack action. I love how thick these are because they hold my bangs back AND make me feel like some kind of badass warrior. FTW.

Bondi Bands come in a gazillion different colors (naturally I have only black, hot pink, neon green, and bright blue ones… 80′s for life) and you can also get patterned ones, ones with sayings, or make your own! Even though they’re thick in width, they’re really lightweight and do a good job of keeping sweat from dripping into your eyeballs. However, this means that they absorb all the sweat, so they’re pretty soaked at the end of a workout. If you’re a sweaty beast like me, just have an extra one on hand to put on after your workout if you’re trekking out into colder temperatures. They legit do not move from your head, which is awesome if you’re planning on bouncing around and moving a lot.. which you should be… because you’re working out.. remember?

These things are lifesavers. I have about 20 now and stash extras in my gym bag and purse. They’re on sale right now, 5 for $5 (normally $8 each, still a great price!) Just enter the code FIVE in the coupon code before checkout. Hope you guys enjoy!

-ES

Product Review: Lululemon Crops & Tops

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I’ve been spinning my butt off lately (well, no actually, I think it’s making it bigger but thats okay) and realized I was in desperate need of new workout gear. I have some crops from Victoria’s Secret that I love, but they slide around too much when I spin, and the last thing my neighbor behind me wants to see is some plumber action happening. Solution: Making my first trek into Lululemon.
Not going to lie, I’ve always been turned off by Lulu (evidence: here). I had never shopped there, but knew it was really expensive and knew that I almost had a conniption every time I saw a woman carrying one of those bags, so I just never bothered going in. But recently, I’ve met some pretty kick ass people who are all about Lulu, so I decided to put aside my judgements and take the plunge into the Lululemon world.

First impression upon walking into Lulu was how amazing the staff was. Within 1 minute of being in the store, someone was helping me. Even as I was trying stuff on, they wanted to see everything, help me with the fit, get my opinion, and genuinely wanted to see me with something I loved and felt comfortable in. They even had me do jumping jacks in the dressing room and touch my toes to ensure that I was getting the best fit. I mean, I wasn’t planning on getting an aerobic workout and doing face down, ass up for strangers while trying on clothes, but it’s coo.
I got 2 pairs of the Inspire Crop II’s. It says they’re for running, but bitch please, I’m wearing these for spinning! And they are AMAZING. I’ve never spun without pants on, but if I did, I imagine this is what it would feel like (with way less chafing). They’re SO comfortable, and don’t move or slide at all while I’m jumping around on the bike. They also have an adjustable strap to make them tighter or looser. I wasn’t used to wearing something this tight, but I quickly got used to it once I realized how much better I felt riding. They also have mesh going up the side, which provided great ventilation. At $86/pair, they’re a little pricey, but I figured- I work out 5-6 days a week, and if I’m willing to spend $200 on jeans that I wear 3-4 times a week and not think twice about it, then spending $86 on pants that I’ll wear more than jeans is justified. Right? Am I right? (go with me on this one..)

Next up: the No Limit Tank. I instantly fell in love when I tried this top on. I usually don’t wear loose tops when working out, but loved how this one was a combo of loose and tight. The bra definitely provides enough support (not like I have a whole lot to support anyways..) and the outer flowy top feels like you don’t have anything on at all (yet spares fellow rides from seeing your muffin top). Overall, it provides awesome ventilation and doesn’t cling to your body when you’re riding. This was also kind of pricey at $64, but again, going off the justification that I’m going to be wearing them a lot (I bought 2). I will definitely be transitioning into trying to buy as many of my workout clothes here as possible. I finally caught onto the Lululemon obsession, and think the price is definitely worth it for the quality product you’re getting.
Another perk- I didn’t get an ugly shopping bag! I was bummed I missed out on the limited edition John Galt one, but they did have some new sleek white ones that’s only design was a red happy smile on the inside. Definitely a plus. Maybe they saw my rant and decided to stop plastering cheesy quotes all over everything…?

I’ll be back, Lulu, I’ll be back
-ES