Search Results for Ca (366)

Whole 30: Nuthin' But Real Food

Jonathan Longnecker / July 31, 2014

Guys and girls, I remember the first time it hit me that things were different.

I had my first desk job designing internal flyers for the local community college. Fresh out of school, working the 9-5, livin' the dream! And suddenly started gaining weight like a madman. Whatever little metabolism I had disappeared at the ripe old age of 21. Pretty sad, right?

Naturally, I got a gym membership and was able to get back in shape quickly, but the last 10 years have seen me ballon from 150 (yes, I was skinny) to nearly 230 the beginning of this year. Why? Well, lack of exercise for one. Starting a business and a family (4 kids in 6 years!) puts things like "going to the gym and eating healthy" on the back burner.

The crazy thing is I know how to exercise. I went through P90X at one point, had some great lifting routines at the gym and have lately been digging Diamond Dallas Page's Yoga program (seriously, it's a blast).

I've heard all the trendy food things, too. Eat 6 times a day! Buy these protein shakes and bars! Paleo! Organic! Dogfood! Wait-what? Here's the problem. I really like food. Like sometime between age 25 and now I turned into a total food snob. I don't know how it happened, but I get pissed if I have to pay 12 bucks for some completely average entree at Chili's. Also, many of these food diet fads are too extreme. Most of them are so hardcore it's nearly impossible to keep up with them for more than a week if you have kids or want to have any kind of life at all. Have you tried to eat 6 meals a day and not have your whole life revolve around it? It's exhausting.

Maybe we're making it too difficult. Maybe we should just get back to basics. Common sense, you know? People didn't used to be obese and overweight. Maybe our huge advances in scientific food manufacturing are actually making us overweight. Maybe God made all the food we ever needed back in Genesis and we're just screwing with it too much.

Around April of this year Ashley and I made a simple choice. We would stop eating refined sugar, wheat and dairy. We would only eat real foods like fruits, vegetables and meat. It sounds like some sort of culinary nightmare, I know.

But it's been incredible. And eye-opening. Personally, I've lost nearly 40 pounds in 4 months. I dropped 4 pants sizes. Most of my clothes are too big now.  And I didn't even exercise very often! That's just part of the story, though. I had no idea how much the sugars and chemicals coming from my food were affecting my energy, mental clarity and general gastrointestinal happiness. Flavors are multiplied 10x when you're not constantly bombarding your tastebuds with enough salt and sugar to  fill a gallon sized ziplock bag.

We also found out through the process that Ashley has some sort of gluten problem. All of her stomach pains magically disappeared when we started this, and a few quick tests confirmed that bread or wheat of any kind makes her miserable the rest of the day. Crazy, right?

So we've been on this track for nearly 4 months - with a little break in early July because we were in Portland for 4 days and, well, you have to break the rules a little when your in Portland - but we're going to be joining a ton of other people and re-committing to this idea of eating more naturally in the month of August. It's called Whole30 and it sounds like exactly what it is. Eat only whole foods for 30 days.

We've been planning and prepping here in the Longnecker household and can't wait to share some great new recipes - and let you know which ones sucked. If you feel like joining in, be sure to let us know in the comments!

Love First, Fix Later

Jonathan Longnecker / July 29, 2014

I was listening to a great new podcast by my good friend Leslie Camacho and his wife called The Marriage Startup, and something they said struck me. He was talking about how he needed to remember that not only his wife deserved unconditional love, but his daughter did as well. The phrase "Love first, fix later," summed up the whole segment very nicely and inspired me to do some hand-lettering. You can listen to the whole episode here (and you should subscribe, because it's a really great podcast about business and marriage).

Code:Rad - Wondermade Marshmallows - 100% Sweet, Magic Air

Jonathan Longnecker / July 03, 2014

Can we just talk for a second about Wondermade - the makers of impeccably hand crafted delicious goodness in the form of marshmallows? Let me tell you - if you think you've ever had a "good marshmallow" then think again, my friend. You haven't. That store-bought jiffy puff high fructose chemical crap ain't got nothing on these babies.

Nathan Clark - or as I like to call him, "the Candy Man" - gave his wife the gift of making homemade marshmallows as an anniversary present one year. They liked it so much that they would make them often and give the extras to their friends. When one friend asked if he could order some, the lightbulb went off. A year later they had mastered the craft, setup shop and were ready to share their sweet, magic air with the world. Boy, I'm glad they did. Wondermade uses cane sugar and natural ingredients to make their unique and amazing flavors. Oh did I not mention the crazy flavors? My bad. Here's a few to pique your interest:

Making of: Surfboard Kids Shirts

Jonathan Longnecker / June 12, 2014

Working on brand new products is always exciting and terrifying at the same time. You have a great idea, but you're not really sure if anyone will want to actually buy it or not. Up until now all of our products have been based around shirts for grown ups. But today that changes. We're super excited to be launching our first set of kids shirts, and we wanted to show you how we made it happen. Ready? Ok, go!

1. Suppliers

Finding the right kids shirt is really hard. Well, finding the right shirt in general is really hard. Lots of people use a company called American Apparel, and while they have a great selection, good quality and make everything here in the US, we just can't use them in good conscience. They're advertising is super provocative, and they flirt the line with inappropriate poses of really young kids too often. Our mission at Last Night Ago is to help those in need, especially children. American Apparel just doesn't fit with what we believe in. So thankfully after scouring the interwebs and buying way too many shirts, we found a few other places that make good quality kids clothes that are still super comfortable. For this round Bella + Canvas was the winner, but we're still investigating some other wholesalers.

2. Design

Honestly, we had a lot of ideas for summer kids shirts. Can I just say it's really hard to narrow things down when it's your ideas? Ashely and I have gone back and forth so many times it's crazy! Anyway. We finally settled on the surfboards for the first run. But how did you end up with the design? Fantastic question!

Code:Rad - Ursa Major Super Natural Skincare Products

Jonathan Longnecker / June 11, 2014

I'll be honest - I probably shave about once a week. My poor razor blades don't last very long with the beating I give them. When I shave, I shaaaaave. You know it. But you know what I never even thought about? The shaving cream I use. Pretty sure I've ben using the same orange-lidded aerosol brand that I used the first time I shaved.

We've become pretty wholistic/eco-friendly/natural/hippie-dippie-whatever-you-want-to-call-it over the years, but it never occurred to me that my shaving cream was dangerous. Maybe it's cause I only shave once a week. But most guys shave pretty regularly. All that chemical stuff can't be good, right? Kind of makes sense when you think about it.

Thank goodness I ran across the radness of Ursa Major a month ago. First of all, nice name. Well played. Second of all there's a great story behind it - how the owner was having skin problems and started doing research on all the chemicals in modern-day men's skincare products. He was pretty horrified at what he found. And so he embarked on a quest to do something about it. Thus, Ursa Major was born. Super Natural Skincare products specifically for dudes.

Rawk. I'm all in. Let's see what they've got. First up, the essentials - Shaving Cream, Face Wash, Face Tonic and Face Balm: