Starting August 28th through September 30th, the Central Lakeview Merchants Association, 3355 N. Clark, is offering consumers a $10 roll of quarters for people who shop, dine or party in the neighborhood.

Here’s how it works: Spend a total of $100 between two or more stores in the neighborhood, then bring the receipts down to CLMA’s office–which the storefront just south of Motiv–and get the roll quarters. After that how the quarters are spent is completely up to you. Feeding the meter, jumping on the EL or doing laundry are all great options!

Current Clark Street Motiv clients: Take advantage of this offer! Print out a receipt for your monthly billing in the online scheduling system by navigating to the MY ACCOUNT INFO tab > then selecting My Purchases. Print out the screen and that will serve as your receipt. Then go visit one of our fellow member businesses, make a purchase and you are all done.  You really have no excuse not to since the CLMA offices are right next door to Motiv!

So, we are pleased to tell you that in October we will be moving the studio one block north to 3813 N Lincoln! Same great Motiv experience, just in a bigger and nicer space.

We are confident you will like the new space better than our current space (except perhaps for a certain client who literally lives upstairs).  The new space will have:

More space – It is double the size of this space so you’ll have more room and we’ll be able to offer more Group Classes, and maybe even a few new things, such as Youth Sports Performance and Conditioning classes
A better floor – we’ll have a rubber sports floor just like the Clark Studio
Still plenty of free street parking nearby – yes, you may have to walk 50 feet, but think of it as helping your warm-up.  You’re here for exercise, after all.

Now, not everything  at 3726 N Lincoln will be making the move over; some equipment will be retired. I’m warning you: this change will be very stressful for some of our clients. But this change is only to help us better train you.  (And we’re not giving any hints, you’ll just have to show up an see what’s changed)

We don’t know our move-in date yet, but it will be sometime in October.  We will keep you posted.

Questions? Leave a comment below.

Now, I have not read this book, but am always on the lookout for diets that are backed by scientific research.  And this book is the update of the Atkins diet and is very timely.  From Dr. Westman:

Atkins is a way of eating that promotes good, healthy whole foods. Period. The science of it is that these are foods that don’t raise the blood sugar much. Atkins has always been about eating the good sources of carbs, protein and fat. What I want to get out there is that Atkins is healthy eating.

I think the public perception is that it’s beef and bacon. That has been perpetuated by two sources: the media, which want controversy, and the vegetarian element, who don’t want you to eat animal products. You can eat seafood and fish. You can have lots of different protein sources — chicken, eggs, cream and cheese.

The second wrong perception is that there are no vegetables on Atkins, that it’s a no-carb diet. We talk about it right up front. You have to have vegetables. The foundation of the diet is vegetables.

And btw, vegetables should be the foundation of any diet.

According to a report published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, having a large waist size doubled the risk of dying from any cause during the study period compared to those with smaller waists.

“The take-home is that it’s important to watch your waist as well as your weight,” said Eric J. Jacobs, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. “Even if your weight is normal for your height, if your waist size is increasing, if you’re moving to a bigger pant size, that’s a warning sign that it’s time to start eating better and exercising more.”

A waist size of 47 inches or larger for men and 42 inches or larger for women doubled the risk of dying during the study period, compared to those with smaller waists (35.4 inches for men and 29.5 inches for women). Among normal-weight women, the risk of dying increased about 25 percent for each additional four inches of waist size.

Read more here.

For example, Herb writes in answer to a question about “Food you won’t go near”

Crisco, pre-packaged foods containing trans fats and foods containing high fructose corn syrup.

What’s not to like?

But, Aarti ended up winning, so we’ll just have one less show about healthy cooking — even though that is the only cooking everyone should be doing.

In case you missed it, here’s a link to Herb’s final recipe. I haven’t tried it yet; please let me know if you do.

You may have heard that the White House pastry chef Bill Yosses created new fruit and oat snack bars as a healthier alternative to cookies and other snacks around the white house.  All reports are that they are very tasty.  

But are they really healthy? They have all sorts of “good” ingredients such as oats and mixed seeds.

Turns out, the bars really aren’t that healthy at 143 calories each.  More than most cookies.

This is just another example that healthy ingredients don’t necessarily make healthy food. In the snack bar recipe, you need to add 1/2 cup of honey, 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar and 1/3 cup of maple syrup. Lots of calories right there.

So watch out when you are eating. Know your calories not your food marketing. Remember that Whole Foods sells premium foods, not just healthy foods.

That’s not because it’s inherently healthier but simply because it comes with all the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients those foods contain.
But brown or raw sugar is just as nutritionally bereft—and has just as many calories—as white sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. “Organic” sugar is made from sugar cane or beets that are grown without chemical fertilizers or synthetic pesticides, which probably poses less of a threat to the environment. But it’s doubtful if that translates directly into significant health benefits. Honey and maple syrup may taste great but they contain few if any nutrients.

More here.

All the photographs were taken by one of our very our Motiv clients, Tricia Koning. And yes, all the photos are of real Motiv clients and were shot at our 3355 N Clark Studio.

If you need a photographer, I would highly recommend Tricia; she loves to photograph all things with people! You can check out her website here and her work here.

Here’s a surprise: The current research clearly says no.

[In a study] published last month in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers found almost no correlation at all between wearing the proper running shoes and avoiding injury. Injury rates were high among all the runners, but they were highest among the soldiers who had received shoes designed specifically for their foot types. If anything, wearing the “right” shoes for their particular foot shape had increased trainees’ chances of being hurt.

Scientific rumblings about whether running shoes deliver on their promises have been growing louder in recent years. In 2008, aninfluential review article in The British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that sports-medicine specialists should stop recommending running shoes based on a person’s foot posture. No scientific evidence supported the practice, the authors pointed out, concluding that “the true effects” of today’s running shoes “on the health and performance of distance runners remain unknown.”

More recently, a study published online in late June in The British Journal of Sports Medicine produced results similar to those in the military experiments, this time using experienced distance runners as subjects. For the study, 81 women were classified according to their foot postures, a more comprehensive measure of foot type than arch shape. About half of the runners received shoes designated by the shoe companies as appropriate for their particular foot stance (underpronators were given cushiony shoes, overpronators motion-control shoes and so on). The rest received shoes at random. All of the women started a 13-week, half-marathon training program. By the end, about a third had missed training days because of pain, with a majority of the hurt runners wearing shoes specifically designed for their foot postures. (It’s worth noting that across the board, motion-control shoes were the most injurious for the runners. Many overpronators, who, in theory, should have benefited from motion-control shoes, complained of pain and missed training days after wearing them, as did a number of the runners with normal feet and every single underpronating runner assigned to the motion-control shoes.)

What does this all mean?

“You can’t simply look at foot type as a basis for buying a running shoe,” says Dr. Bruce H. Jones, the manager of the Injury Prevention Program for the United States Army’s Public Health Command and senior author of the military studies. The widespread belief that flat-footed, overpronating runners need motion-control shoes and that high-arched, underpronating runners will benefit from well-cushioned pairs is quite simply, he adds, “a myth.”

The full article is well worth reading here.  And the article’s best advice:

For now, if you’re heading out to buy new running shoes, plan to be your own best advocate. “If a salesperson says you need robust motion-control shoes, ask to try on a few pairs of neutral or stability shoes, too,” says Michael Ryan, Ph.D., the lead author of the study of female half-marathoners and currently a postdoctoral fellow in the department of orthopedics and rehabilitation at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Go outside and run around the block” in each pair. “If you feel any pain or discomfort, that’s your first veto.” Hand back those shoes. Try several more pairs. “There really are only a few pairs that will fit and feel right” for any individual runner, he says. “My best advice is, turn on your sensors and listen to your body, not to what the salespeople might tell you.”