Damian Rodriguez
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Of Boxes and (Egotistical) Bruises
I’ve never met a box that I didn’t think I could jump on or over, and I am usually right. As evidenced by my heavily scarred shins, I have indeed encountered a few metal platforms and wooden boxes that I was incapable (on that day) of conquering, and last Tuesday was one of those days. […]
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Practicing Intermittent Fasting…Intermittently?
Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, intermittent fasting, where one cycles between periods of eating and fasting, has become increasingly popular as further research examines its possible benefits. Recent research has suggested that altering conventional feeding patterns may have positive influences on how the body deals with inflammation and oxidative stress, insulin response, and […]
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Not All “Carbs” Are Created Equal
Grains are one of the most controversial topics of discussion in the worlds of nutrition, health, and fitness. Carbs, gluten; grains have developed quite the bad reputation, in my opinion, primarily due to scientifically-unfounded nutrition guidelines that encouraged decades of Americans to make highly processed, energy dense, and sugar-laden grain products the foundation of their […]
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Children's HealthFood and DrinkFoods & CulinaryHealthHealth & FitnessHealth Care & MedicalMens HealthWomen's Health
You Are as Old as What You Eat?
You are what you eat. Literally. What you put in your mouth is broken down and used to provide energy and repair and grow bone, lean muscle, connective tissue, and that adipose that we are constantly trying to get rid of. A recently published study aimed at furthering our understanding of aging takes this axiom […]
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The Salty Truth
One of the foundations of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program was new guidelines for school lunches, which focused a lot on limiting sodium. The Institute of Medicine and politicians in major cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, have managed to lobby strict regulation on the amount of sodium that can be put in all […]
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The “Hanger” is (Not) Real: Lessons from a 60-Hour Fast
While we are all running alongside (and thinking of jumping on) the intermittent fasting train, who is up for a bit of a challenge? My daily feeding pattern includes up to 20 hours without food and I regularly, for a number of different personal reasons, abstain from food for periods lasting over a day. So […]
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10 Reps to Brain Health
Little did I know, but all those push-ups I did in high school did a little bit more than develop a barrel chest. While the brain isn’t technically a muscle, contemporary science is beginning to reveal what us meatheads have always suspected: that lifting heavy things isn’t just about building bigger biceps. Resistance training has […]
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Of Fat and Fruit: Cardiologists Speak Out on Nutrition Trends
While you were busy cooking your whole eggs in coconut oil, slurping down an acai smoothie, and watching your chicken bone broth simmer on the stove top, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology was hard at work reviewing the most recent literature about some of the latest nutrition fads. In the last several years, we’ve […]
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“Beeting” the Competition
Bears, beets, Battlestar Gallactica…there is more to beets than staining your hands and being the namesake of Schrute Farms: they’ve become one of the latest areas of exercise performance research. Those bright red root vegetables are one of nature’s best sources of sodium nitrate, which is the focus of much of the recent beet fanaticism […]
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5 Reasons to Do the Walk of Strength
My foray into the health and fitness world started just around the time when “functional training” and “core” strength became trendy terms. Gunnar Peterson and Mark Verstegen were the hot names in fitness, preaching that the body should be viewed as an interconnected kinetic chain (and trained as such) instead of a series of isolated […]