Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March 19, 2023

Are nutrition apps helpful or harmful?

In a world where there is so much technology to assist people in living a healthy lifestyle, you may consider a nutrition app like MyFitnesspal or a fitness tracker like Fitbit to help with eating and exercise habits. While your initial intention may not start out harmful, if you struggle with your relationship with food or body, an app may turn into an obsessive habit that encourages you to undereat and/or overexercise. According to a recent study, nutrition and fitness apps can cause unintended negative consequences such as fixation on numbers, rigid dieting, obsession, app dependency, high sense of achievement, extreme negative emotions, motivation from negative messages and excess competition. When a person has a healthy relationship with food and the body, using technology to track food or exercise should not harm mental or physical health. But in our weight-loss obsessed society, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with food and the body. How can you tell if a...

A quick trip to Charleston, SC

  We only had two full days in Charleston, SC so we brought our gravel bikes to ride in Francis Marion National Forest. I used routes from the Swamp Fox Gravel Fondo Race .  I was looking forward to this trip for a few reasons. The first was to explore a different style of gravel riding - flat roads. The second was to enjoy different scenery for a mental boost. The third reason - which was the main reason for our trip, was to take advantage of a promotion that I purchased last year from Blue Green Vacations. For $229 I received a 3-night/4 day stay at a Blue Green Vacation Location of my choice. And for an additional 40,000 Choice Hotel Points, $25 Amex Gift card and $100 Visa Gift card, Karel and I would need to sit through a 2-hour presentation. Karel was not thrilled about having to sit through a sales pitch for Blue Green Vacations but since I'm getting into travel hacking, I felt like I could "sell" Karel on this trip by throwing in some gravel riding. Originally we ...