It is time to level up your workout game. But you have to start somewhere. And that’s what you will learn here whether you are at ground zero or reaching for that next rung of the ladder.
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It is the debate that has rocked the fitness world. When you want to level up, combining cardio and weights is ideal. But when you do go for that combo, what do you do first? The answer can make a difference in how quickly you level up your fitness game.
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It’s a workout that has attracted the biggest celebrities and gained a reputation as THE place to be if you want to push yourself to the limits. As most global brands do, it started with a crazy dream. Barry Jay founded this fitness craze together with his partners in West Hollywood in 1998 and has since opened dozens of studios in 15 states and 15 countries (including Norway, the UAE and Qatar). It has attracted celebrities like Jessica Alba and Jake Gyllenhaal, David Beckham, Adriana Lima, and Harry Styles (who was rumored to have been recently in the DC Studio – unconfirmed)
Barry’s can be summed up as this: a red room, blasting music, a motivating instructor, and everyone going so hard you would think it’s the Hunger Games.
The DAOFitLIfe Guide to Barry’s follows (note: all views are my own opinion and not supported by any outside organization).
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Drink more water! That’s what we are told for maximum health and hydration but it turns out we may be drinking water the wrong way. Here’s 5 reasons we are drinking water the wrong way and how to fix it.
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It was the fall of 1992. Kieran and Olivia* had just been married. Kieran went to the bank to make a deposit in their joint savings account (note the date – none of this was avaiable via online transaction).
The teller asked him “which account?”
He snapped his head up and asked her back. “What do you mean which account? There’s another account?”
There was another account.
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Fitness is definitely far more than just what you do for food and exercise. The whole way you take care of yourself inside and out is essential to defining your health and well-being.
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“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African proverb
The Whiteboarding. The coffee machine hissing. The Bright lights. The Big monitors. The hum of the printer and the sound of people chatter mixing with the clacks of the keyboard for an ambient tone (in fact, you can actually download it if you want.)
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Traveling is almost unbearably stressful – even if it is for vacation. Especially if it is for work and you have to be places on time. Ironically not traveling during the pandemic was taking a serious toll on our mental health. But now, traveling again is affecting our mental health in new and different ways.
Sleep deprivation, time pressure, lack of a regular food and exercise routines, and unavoidable delays are hallmarks of travel, even pre-pandemic. But now, there is definitely a more palpable pressure and it seems to boil over when you get to the airport. Even if you have your boarding pass prior, you have to figure out what to do with your checked luggage, where to go to verify your documentation, and then deal with security, having your bags taken aside for screening, and long, crazy lines. That is, if random storms and airline strikes do not cause your flight to cancel altogether. Airlines are making things a little bit easier by allowing you to upload test results and attestation forms beforehand, but it still is a big to-do to even get through airport security. And, if your last journey was like mine, you will sit on the tarmac for 3 hours because of some “missing paperwork.” Why is paperwork always such an issue – is that code for something else? Seems like an almost anachronistic reference, like isn’t everything in the cloud? Regardless, these delays can cause you stress especially if you have a connecting flight.
This current situation has turned up the travel stress to about 1000. But we need to keep on going – especially for business travel. So how do we deal with the stomach-gnawing anxiety and uphold our mental health? My tips follow – and they are the best ones, because I just tried them out on myself in real time.
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If you read my blog, you know I love to romanticize about the past. Throwback songs, styles, popular sayings and sitcoms are my jam. And a lot of people feel this way – especially after living through a pandemic, where reminiscing about a maskless, unfettered freedom in life may have kept some of us going. Lately I have been wondering – nostaligia good or bad? The research on this is surprising, so read on to find out where you should leave the past.
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The 50th anniversary issue throwback theme continues! I was at the gym recently and was listening to “Footloose” – a song that gets me flying on the treadmill. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to see the music video while I listen to the song? And it was. So I set out to find the best dance music videos, or at least my top 5.
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Are you jetsetting again for work? Have an upcoming trip for a graduation, wedding, or getaway. These are the top 10 do’s and don’ts you need to know from packing to arriving to departing.
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May is mental health awareness month – whichhich is why I am excited to blog about what I learned from one of my favorite books, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, by Amy Morin. Amy Morin is an acclaimed psychotherapist who lost her mother and husband in her twenties. Amy’s emotional challenges motivated her to engage in a deep study of mental resilience and culminated in four widely successful self-improvement books.
What I learned from this book is the importance of grit and perseverance. Of not running away and facing the hard things. It’s a case for mental toughness.
Mental toughness is our ability to perform consistently under stress and pressure and increasing our resilience to bounce back when things don’t go our way. That work is no different than work done in a physical gym – all of the practices in the book are like physical exercises that you can do to get stronger mentally.
Here is my summary of the 13 Things and how they can help you whenever you confront challenges and disappointments, on a smaller or grander scale. I would like to extend a warm thanks to my very good friend Ryan Trombley for his assistance in writing this article.
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“This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”- Bertrand Russell, prelude to autobiography
In my post about leaving a toxic relationship, I talked about a jumping-off point. There is a basic crossroads here – you either accept where you are at, or don’t. If you do accept where you are at, then you can keep things exactly the way they are.
If you don’t accept where you are at, then decide to do something about it. A decision to commit to change, to transformation, and to a new way of life.
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This is for no one to read. Or everyone to read, years from now.
In the Wall Street Journal was an article called, “The Way You Tell Your Life Story Matters. Start Now.”
The part of the article, which was written by a well-known obituary writer captured my attention was this: “Many of us, however, want to cheat death by leaving a mark, however faint. We tend to believe the proverb that people die twice: the first time when their heart stops beating, the second when someone speaks their name, or thinks of them, for the last time.”
So this personal memoir blog is my faint mark. It’s not linear – it’s something I write down when a memory strikes. For example, the first memory is from 10 end of year holidays ago. And someday, I may make it a chronological life story. But for today, this is me, leaving my faint mark.
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Hust how do you manage your day in the age of the “always available” culture? Read on to find out how to avoid burning unnecessary energy and taking more control of your fitness inside the workday.
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This article is an interview with Artin Mahboubi, DiplAc, who is a is a board certified acupuncturist with a research background in immunology. You can read more about Summit Healing Arts and Artin's background, here. Dr. Artin in his office in Dupont Circle. I started going to acupuncture right before…
The recent events surrounding the tragic death of Gabby Petito, and the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, have been all over the news and social media. Much of the focus has been around the scandal and the drama surrounding these two attractive blonde women, who have captivated the public and the media for very different reasons. What conversations have missed is one glaring fact brought to light by these events – that over 70 percent of women experience abuse from their domestic partner, and one in three women in a DAY die.
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When we’re around 7 or 8 years old, people start asking us what we want to be when we grow up. Most kids I knew responded with things like astronaut, ballerina, firefighter. There were a few doctors and engineers. My answer was, “I want to be an international businesswoman.” I…
I have to admit I am kind of a self-help junkie. I know it has a negative connotation, but even as far back as when I was 8 years old I remember going to the bookstore and flipping pages through books that focused on confidence, positive self-image, and using the…
Lately I have come across a number of weight loss programs and food/meal/exercise plans based on calculating a baseline “BMI” and achieving a certain target. We all of course get our BMI read out to us at our annual physical – and as a result, we are defined as overweight or underweight based on a predetermined ideal ratio of height and weight. But why is this outdated, plausibly biased metric still a baseline? There are some things about BMI that you need to know.
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