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Hi friends!

Here is your weekly Tri-Tip Tuesday, sharing our current thoughts on food, fitness, & travel. Please forward this to others if you think they may be inspired.

Food: 2024 dirty dozen & clean fifteen

It's no secret that I believe our food industry is beyond broken. It's my mission to help educate and get each one of you to take care of yourself from a nutrition standpoint, to protect your health and enhance your livelihood.

Ultra-processed foods are the number one killer, causing more chronic diseases and deaths than smoking and drinking combined. We generally know that "junk food" is bad for us, to some degree. The buzz on UPF is finally growing, which is a start. However, we don't expect healthy foods like fresh fruit, vegetables, and meats to be full of chemicals, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics, but they are.

In a perfect world, not only would we all have nearby markets void of UPFs and stocked with organic produce and regeneratively, pasture-raised/grass-finished meat, but we would also have the grocery budget to afford feeding a family with it.

According to www.EWG.org, "Nearly 75 percent of non-organic fresh produce sold in the U.S. contains residues of potentially harmful pesticides". Each year they conduct testing on conventional (non-organic) produce and put together lists sharing the 12 fruits and vegetables that were most contaminated with pesticides (Dirty Dozen), and the 15 fruits and vegetables that are the least contaminated (Clean Fifteen).

This allows you to be mindful when shopping on your budget, or when organic isn't widely available. Use the guides so you know which items to splurge on with organic and which items to save on with conventional. This year they tested 46 common items and released these lists in March:

2024 Clean Fifteen - sweet corn, avocados, pineapple, onions, papaya, sweet peas, asparagus, honeydew melon, kiwi, cabbage, watermelon, mushrooms, mango, sweet potatoes, carrots.

2024 Dirty Dozen - strawberries, spinach, kale/collard greens/mustard greens, grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, bell and hot peppers, cherries, blueberries, green beans.

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Fitness: disadvantages of bodyweight exercises for progressive overload

Doing something is always better than nothing when it comes to exercise. Using bodyweight when you are without equipment is something you can and should do! Using bodyweight to get started into an exercise program is an effective way to ease in as well. However, using bodyweight as a long-term approach for resistance training is not optimal when compared to using additional resistance equipment.

With any resistance training program, you'll want to incorporate progressive overload. Progressive overload is when you gradually increase the intensity of your strength training to increase muscle size, strength, and endurance. This is how you get results and is also how you can push through plateaus. There are various ways to increase intensity by methods such as adjusting tempo, changing exercise selection, increasing training volume, and increasing resistance load.

With bodyweight, you don't have the option to add heavier resistance loads, so you are limited in progression options. You will quickly max out on the tempo and exercise manipulations, making volume your main driver. This means the only way to get stronger and progress is to add more days of training, more reps, more sets, and therefore longer training sessions. This creates a never-ending cycle of demanding more time needed for progression (unless you're happy simply maintaining a baseline level).
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Most people that I know like to get their workout started and finished, without spending hours a day on it. With dumbbells and bands, you can continue to use the same 30-45 minute block and have an effective, and progressive, workout. Is it time for you to level up to weights?

Travel: seasonal allergies taking us down

I've been an allergy geek my entire life. I'm allergic to dust, mold, pollen, the outdoors in general, dirty indoors in general, all cats, some dogs, and who knows what else.

As a teenager, I used to get allergy shots each week...until I had an allergic reaction to the shots. That scared me from ever going back again.

Seasonal allergies are a year-round thing for me, and they have been worse since becoming an RVer in January 2019. We're constantly relocating and exposing ourselves to new pollen and irritants.

We are on the East Coast now and HOLY MOLEY is the pollen kicking our butts. We have been sneezing, lethargic, and struggling daily since mid-April. Aaron, who has never had allergies, has them now. Even poor Louie is sniffling and sneezing! If this is how it is every year out here, I feel for you East Coasters. I just don't remember it being this bad on previous visits...Can't wait for this spring season to dry out a bit and clear up the sinuses!

Make it a great week!

Christine Irene

NASM-CPT, Senior Fitness Specialist, Precision Nutrition Pn1 + Pn2 Certified, & Avid Traveler

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