I was born with hypermobile joints, especially in my knees, ankles, elbows and shoulders.

Hypermobility is a connective tissue condition (usually inherited) in which the body’s collagen is more elastic than the ‘norm’, leading to increased flexibility. For some people, notably musicians, gymnasts, dancers and sports people, this natural flexibility gives a very useful advantage, though it leaves them more prone to injuries such as sprains and dislocations. In others, it can cause clumsiness, lack of spatial awareness and joint pain.

If I’m not making any conscious effort to stand differently, my knees will hyperextend backward and my ankles will cave inwards.

It’s very easy for me to twist my ankles outwards if I’m walking on uneven terrains or during certain sports like football, where the grass provides a cushioned and slightly unstable landing pad for the feet. I’ve been aware of this condition for many years, but during the last year or so I’ve been struggling with pain around the right ankle especially. The pain intensifies after I play padel or tennis, and can linger for months unless I stop playing for a month or two.

I’ve decided to see what I can do to deal with this condition, and in this post, I’ll be documenting my journey. The start date is November 2020.

Note that if you have just injured your ankle, the best thing to do is to follow the RICE methodology and apply heat or ice as necessary, and see a specialist. You might eventually also use EMS to treat the injury.

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Before we had children, we used to cook at home a lot and also eat out very frequently. We lived in Barcelona, where you can find lots of great options for lunch since most restaurants have a menu del dia, which means a set menu for a fixed price that is usually excellent value for money.

Given that we both worked from home, it was a nice break from work to go out and have a nice lunch somewhere before getting back to work.

However, once we had children, our free time was much more constrained and we preferred to outsource our diets to the experts and thus eat healthier and better.

In 2020, the COVID crisis accelerated the trend of healthy food meal plan deliveries in Barcelona.

Basically, many kitchens opened up, and they cook dishes and concentrate on selling them via delivery apps or by customers picking up their orders at the kitchen. This minimizes the costs of having tables and staff serving those tables, not to mention not being troubled by the COVID restrictions.

As a customer, I love the idea. It’s a trend that has been picking up steam in the United States as well. What we’re seeing is essentially the nascent era of cooking as a service. In much the same way as we have outsourced a lot of our daily chores to specialized services, cooking seems to be the next chore that is going to be outsourced in developed nations.

Cooking has traditionally been the role of the woman, and it takes up quite a lot of time to shop for the ingredients, cook and then clean up after. If you have a family with a few kids, it takes even more time. If you calculate it, it could easily take 4-5 hours a day once you factor in everything. Since more women are heading back to the workplace, it makes sense for them to outsource this chore.

In my opinion, leaving the cooking to a specialized chef will also most likely result in you eating a healthier and more varied diet. A kitchen with a good chef will be churning out many different dishes, while if you cook at home you will most likely eventually stick to a small variety of tried and tested dishes. Unfortunately, we are also living in a period in history where food has become very processed, and good raw materials are not easy to come by. A chef who buys raw material in bulk has the expertise of being able to distinguish between poor and great quality fish, poultry etc, and he can even buy it at a cheaper price due to his contacts and the amounts he is buying.

Even without calculating the monetary value of time spent on cooking, food is easily the biggest monthly expense for my family after rental payments. Since switching to purchasing most of our food from one of the kitchens, our costs have remained equal, but we have gained a lot of extra time and eat way better since we have a professional chef with years of experience cooking for us.

Here are some reasons for giving up cooking your own food:

• Gaining extra time
• Spending more time with your partner and kids
• Letting the pros do the work
• Better control your portions
• Protecting yourself from injuries (burns, cuts etc)
• Less cleaning up
• No grocery shopping

Another benefit for me specifically as I pursue athletic excellence for the various sports I practice is that I can have my dietician coordinate with my fitness coach and chef to make sure I am getting exactly the right fuel for my workouts and upcoming tournaments. If I had to do this myself I would definitely get it wrong and it would be too time-consuming.

Cooking at home on occasion is of course still a nice idea, especially when it involves all family members and serves as a relationship-building activity. It’s also great to go out for a nice meal at a restaurant every once in a while.

If you’re a desk jockey and are troubled by bad posture, here are a few things that I suggest to address this issue.

• Stay active. Any kind of sport will generally improve things and put you in a better mood and hence more likely to stand tall than slouch.
• Perform these exercises a few times per week.
• Use a foam roller and a RAD Roller.
• Do some sessions with an Alexander Technique teacher.
• Read the Overcoming Poor Posture book.

Have you tried any of the methods above? Let me know in the comments section.

Figure 1. source

For some cultures, tea is more than just a drink. For the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Russian, and English people, tea is a profoundly important part of their lives. In China, in particular, each regional group has its own philosophy of tea, and each ideological trend reinvents the implications that a cup of tea has in one’s day.

Great tea comes from remote mountains. Whether it’s white, green, or black, it conveys the essence of its natural surroundings. I’m not talking about overly processed tea that you can get at any store. I’m talking about delicate, potent, and clean tea that makes a world of a difference.

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One of the habits I’ve taken up since I moved to Spain is that of drinking mate. Mate is a very popular drink in South American countries like Argentina and Uruguay.

I’ve made some amazing Argentinian friends here who have introduced me to the drink and the ritual associated with it. It’s important to say that mate is a social ritual beyond being a drink. You can drink it on your own but it also is an important social lubricant in those countries, with a well-defined ritual and dos and don’ts.

Mate is consumed from a traditional hollow gourd (sometimes also called guampa). This is a metal container that is filled with hot water and the yerba mate herbs.  The tea is sipped through a metallic straw (called a bombilla). In a social setting, friends pass the drink from person to person refilling with hot water from a thermos when necessary!

It is made from the naturally caffeinated and nourishing leaves of the celebrated South American rainforest holly tree (Ilex paraguariensis). Mate contains caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine, well-known stimulants also found in tea, coffee and chocolate. I tend to use it mostly as a stimulant when I want to switch from coffee for a while.

Below is a very good video on how to prepare it.

My favorite brand of mate is Cruz de Malta.

Here’s the textual description for preparing a good yerba mate:

1. Pour some yerba mate tea into your mate cup (until it is ¾ full)
2. Close the cup with the palm of your hand and shake it to make the bigger pieces of the mate leaves sink down to the bottom.
3. Make sure the mate is reclined in a 45-degree angle.
4. Pour warm water onto the lower part of the yerba mate.
5. The yerba is now getting wet and the infusion is starting to take place. Wait 30 seconds.
6. Put mate straw into the wet yerba mate tea on the lower part of the contents.
7. Pour in hot water softly. Never flood the cup as you want to keep repeating this process many times, thus you don’t want to wet all the mate at once.

Hope you enjoy, let me know what you think of it!