The grocery store shelves were empty. Plastic bags covered the handles of the gas pumps that had run dry. We were trapped in our home. Afraid and anxious, wondering if we would ever feel “normal” again.

If one of your goals to improve your health is to shed some body fat, you might be surprised at how your sleep (or lack thereof) could cause you to lose just as much muscle as you do fat! Let’s not let that happen!

Every once in a while it’s good to go deep into a topic to really understand what’s going on. Today is one of those days.

It will be a practical discussion and hopefully by the end you have a great understanding of what calories really are, why you need them, how to know how many you need, and why it’s important to take losing or gaining weight seriously (and how to do it right).

As it stands, after housing, most Americans spend more money on food than anything else in their budget.  

According to the Bureau of Labor, the average household spends about $8,000 on food in 2018.  (about $3,500 of that was spent at restaurants and the rest was spent at the grocery store).  

Any way you slice it, it’s a lot of money.  

The cost of food increases slightly year after year and as a culture we are eating out at restaurants more and more.

It’s no secret that making your own food at home is substantially cheaper than buying it already prepared from a restaurant.   But even within the walls of the supermarket there are a lot of choices that an affect your grocery budget bottom line.

Are you a chef?

Can you whip up amazing meals without giving it a second thought?

Yeah, us neither.

Over the years we have learned that you can accomplish 2 main things by learning to cook most of your own food.

#1 - Save a bunch of money.

Restaurants are crazy expensive. I mean, a “value” meal at a place like Subway is going to set you back at least $10. How much are you going to spend at a mediocre chain restaurant for dinner? $15-20 per person? It adds up fast!

#2 - Save a bunch of calories.

If you’re going to start cooking at home there are some basic kitchen essentials that you need to have on hand to set yourself up for success.

Food packaging is ridiculous. Companies know that we have short attention spans and that we’re on a mission to look for healthy options.

Often they use these facts to confuse and mislead us by plastering the front of the package with buzzwords and bolt font highlighting things that we believe to be “healthy” all while hiding the ugly truth.

You drank the kool-aid or someone twisted your arm and convinced you to log your daily food intake. It’s a worthwhile effort because guessing and estimating will only get you so far.

And there is really no better way to accurately know how much you are eating.

If you’re getting serious about losing fat or building muscle, how much you eat makes all the difference.

The downside of using apps like MyFitnessPal is that there’s a bit of a learning curve and it can be a little overwhelming in the beginning.

We’ll, you’re in luck because we are here to:

1. Walk you through the steps that will get you going in the right direction.

2. Show you the common problems when you set your goals up.

3. Show you how to log food/meals the right way.

4. Show you how to get more accurate with your food quantities when logging.

The snack bar aisle in the grocery store is approximately a quarter mile long these days. It’s loaded from head to toe with open boxes of dozens and dozens of choices all in well designed slick packaging. The names sound sexy and intriguing and the packaging usually boasts of the ingredients and usually some number of grams that the snack contains. Just about all of them (at least the ones we’ve tried) taste pretty darned good and there is a flavor for everyone from nut flavors to birthday cake.

We have our favorite “bars” and as we head down the aisle to grab them there’s typically at least a few people standing there with glazed over eyes trying to figure out which one they should be eating to be healthy.

We looked at 10 snack bars for this article.

"Oh my achin’ back!”

Since about 80% of adults experience low back pain, this phrase is uttered constantly.

Low back pain is everywhere and is one of the top reasons that people miss days from work.

Let’s look at some of the details of the structures of the low back, the different injuries/conditions that people can develop in regards to low back pain, and what you can start doing about it today.