Right, so I know everybody was just all out teetering on the edges of their seats waiting for me to put a new link on my blog here. So I did! Hahahahaaaa!
This is it, just in case some amongst you are not inclined to moving your cursor slightly north-east of this spot: http://rapidptprogram.blogspot.com/
Check it out, Bryan (the guy I mentioned quite a bit in previous posts, who is the guy who keeps me on track when I get lazy) has finally built his own website with nutrition/fitness information on it galore.
Also check this out: When Bryan first came to me with the knowledge he'd been researching, I listened and immediately lost thirty pounds. No kidding. That was a year ago, still haven't gained it back. Not planning to.
Also I can now do over a hundred pushups now in one tabata set and get MAD air when I jump (thanks to the jumping squats), which my jiggly, largely sedentary former self would have never been able to do.
Now whenever a burning bus needs to be lifted off of some unfortunate school children and I happen to pop by, I'll be able to handle that situation.
...whereas before I wouldn't have been able to. You probably got that without me having to explain it...
TSN
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Experiments With Nudity
Actually this is just a social experiment to see how many people click on a title including the word "nudity"
Me: "hehehe... and you thought this was a blog about food and stuff."
I must be bored. Maybe I should do some pushups or something.
TSN
Me: "hehehe... and you thought this was a blog about food and stuff."
I must be bored. Maybe I should do some pushups or something.
TSN
Is Our Timeline Too Microcosmic?
Thanksgiving is tomorrow. I think every culture that deals with a winter every year has some kind of fall festival/feast (we come up with various reasons to do it), which I imagine is because winters are tough and packing away a few pounds before it snows is a solid survival tactic.
It got me to thinking.
I always read about how people need so much of this and so much of that every day in order to maintain a certain level of healthiness.
The numbers are always conflicting and the general consensus is always "Get more exercise and eat better food and you should be alright"
It really makes me wonder... wouldn't it be better to NOT eat the same amount of everything every day? Does the body actually need a massive dose of (for example) vitamin E every single day?
As long as it gets enough every so often it should be okay, right? Aside from cutting out the obviously unhealthy stuff, why regulate the stuff you do need, like protein, carbs, iron, etc etc etc... to such specific amounts every day?
The body is a pretty amazing thing in its ability to survive and to adapt to challenges and changes. Knowing that really makes me doubt that I need to regulate the amount that I get of each and every dietary supplement every single day.
It seems to me that we should think about nutrition on a much longer timeline than "daily".
Naturally there's no science in what I'm saying, just a general feeling that the way we think about nutrition is still a little bit broken.
Any thoughts?
TSN
It got me to thinking.
I always read about how people need so much of this and so much of that every day in order to maintain a certain level of healthiness.
The numbers are always conflicting and the general consensus is always "Get more exercise and eat better food and you should be alright"
It really makes me wonder... wouldn't it be better to NOT eat the same amount of everything every day? Does the body actually need a massive dose of (for example) vitamin E every single day?
As long as it gets enough every so often it should be okay, right? Aside from cutting out the obviously unhealthy stuff, why regulate the stuff you do need, like protein, carbs, iron, etc etc etc... to such specific amounts every day?
The body is a pretty amazing thing in its ability to survive and to adapt to challenges and changes. Knowing that really makes me doubt that I need to regulate the amount that I get of each and every dietary supplement every single day.
It seems to me that we should think about nutrition on a much longer timeline than "daily".
Naturally there's no science in what I'm saying, just a general feeling that the way we think about nutrition is still a little bit broken.
Any thoughts?
TSN
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Plans vs Life
The plan: Eat a respectably Paleo breakfast, lunch and dinner, then dutifully power through a solid Tabata workout, run a quick mile on the treadmill, take a nice refreshing shower and then get to work on some other projects.
Life: Made it through breakfast and lunch, then got sidetracked into shopping for a laptop for hours, then came down with a serious case of the "Screw it, I'm hungries" and ate a gigantic bacon cheeseburger with onion rings. Finally I made it home, put on comfy pants and commenced loafing.
Damn! Got me again.
TSN
Life: Made it through breakfast and lunch, then got sidetracked into shopping for a laptop for hours, then came down with a serious case of the "Screw it, I'm hungries" and ate a gigantic bacon cheeseburger with onion rings. Finally I made it home, put on comfy pants and commenced loafing.
Damn! Got me again.
TSN
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
I Invented a New Tabata Exercise... Maybe!
I found a great way to really get at my abs (I should say "ab"). It's the first time I've really felt the exercise get in there and start working all the parts of my belly.
Anyway I thought I'd mention it in here and see if anybody already knew about it or if it was a bad idea for some mechanical reason that would eventually cause my spine to telescope or my toes to suddenly become inside-out or something.
Here's what I do: I lay flat on the floor on my back with legs straight out and my hands down at my sides. Wait, that's not it... there's more: I crunch up and to the side, reaching with my left hand for my left knee-cap without lifting my legs until I can tap it, then back down. Then I repeat for the right side and so on for the duration of the set. To reach each knee-cap I have to lift my shoulders up and squeeze down to the side.
It's the all-new, all-improved, all-untested-by-any-authority knee-cap-tap crunch!
*crowd roars*
Man it really got in there and let me know I was getting a workout. Tomorrow will be interesting since this is the first time I've really felt that deep burn on the ab workout.
Thoughts?
TSN
Anyway I thought I'd mention it in here and see if anybody already knew about it or if it was a bad idea for some mechanical reason that would eventually cause my spine to telescope or my toes to suddenly become inside-out or something.
Here's what I do: I lay flat on the floor on my back with legs straight out and my hands down at my sides. Wait, that's not it... there's more: I crunch up and to the side, reaching with my left hand for my left knee-cap without lifting my legs until I can tap it, then back down. Then I repeat for the right side and so on for the duration of the set. To reach each knee-cap I have to lift my shoulders up and squeeze down to the side.
It's the all-new, all-improved, all-untested-by-any-authority knee-cap-tap crunch!
*crowd roars*
Man it really got in there and let me know I was getting a workout. Tomorrow will be interesting since this is the first time I've really felt that deep burn on the ab workout.
Thoughts?
TSN
Monday, October 31, 2011
I Fished For My Dinner, and Caught a Cold
Leftovers from last night make an excellent lunch today: Pan-fried halibut and lemon rice. I know rice isn't really Paleo, it's one of the exceptions that I make... halibut is totally Paleo though, especially since I hauled it up myself from the bottom of the ocean a few miles from Homer AK.
It's always an adventure, which is a good thing because if I was just doing it for the fish by the time I got through paying for the air-fare, RV rental, gas, charter fees, camping fees and hospital fees from when I whittled the tip of my finger off while sitting around the campfire during all this, the halibut cost me about 40 bucks a pound.
Totally worth it.
Halibut are UGLY! Look:
It's always an adventure, which is a good thing because if I was just doing it for the fish by the time I got through paying for the air-fare, RV rental, gas, charter fees, camping fees and hospital fees from when I whittled the tip of my finger off while sitting around the campfire during all this, the halibut cost me about 40 bucks a pound.
Totally worth it.
Halibut are UGLY! Look:
Imagine if he was like "Good morning dear, how about a kiss?"
Who caught that and said "Hey that looks tasty!" Probably a very hungry dude indeed. He was right though, they are super tasty.
-TSN
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The New Standard is 100
When I started the Tabata workout several weeks back I would go on and on about how eventually I'd hit 100 push ups. Now I hit at least 100 every time, which seems insane to me!
I've been slacking on the sprints lately. I need to get back on track with those. Pretty soon it'll be too cold outside to run up and down the street, so I might replace them with treadmill grinding and work on my stamina.
For me, hands down the hardest part of any workout is getting around to doing it.
I have to keep it as part of my daily routine or it'll fizzle like so many new year resolutions. Can't have that!
A couple of weeks ago I started doing Tabata curls with my 35s that I always stub my toe on and I'm noticing marked improvement in how many reps I can do each set. The first time I did them my arms were sore for two days, now it's not even noticeable.
Gotta pump up the glamour muscles...
TSN
I've been slacking on the sprints lately. I need to get back on track with those. Pretty soon it'll be too cold outside to run up and down the street, so I might replace them with treadmill grinding and work on my stamina.
For me, hands down the hardest part of any workout is getting around to doing it.
I have to keep it as part of my daily routine or it'll fizzle like so many new year resolutions. Can't have that!
A couple of weeks ago I started doing Tabata curls with my 35s that I always stub my toe on and I'm noticing marked improvement in how many reps I can do each set. The first time I did them my arms were sore for two days, now it's not even noticeable.
Gotta pump up the glamour muscles...
TSN
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Bread and Ssambap
I'd be lying if I said I never eat bread, but I have cut back by some huge margin. I don't miss it, or crave it or anything like that, but the loss that the convenience of bread provides was devastating.
Sandwiches are so easy to make, they travel well and they're delicious. It's hard to eat sandwiches without eating bread, so that alone cut out a giant percentage of my meal options.
I mean, bread is just so dang easy to eat! And it's everywhere! Every meal comes with bread in some form or another. Sometimes the bread is the meal, sometimes it's just alongside the meal, sometimes it's in a basket in the middle of the table before and during the meal.
Restaurants love giving people bread. Maybe because it's a comfort food.
I've found that in lieu of bread, a big leaf of lettuce works pretty good as a wrap for lunch meat and cheese or whatever. I actually like that a lot, lettuce is awesome when it's all crunchy.
Check it out: I got that "lettuce burrito" method from a Korean dish called "ssambap" (I had to look it up, and it's really spelled with the two s's like that) which is absolutely delicious. If you get a chance, find a good Korean restaurant and give it a shot. You get like thirty little dishes with different ingredients and you just mix and match what you want.
When the lettuce fails me, I just use a plate and a fork. Ol' standby. Pretty hard to mess that up...
TSN
Sandwiches are so easy to make, they travel well and they're delicious. It's hard to eat sandwiches without eating bread, so that alone cut out a giant percentage of my meal options.
I mean, bread is just so dang easy to eat! And it's everywhere! Every meal comes with bread in some form or another. Sometimes the bread is the meal, sometimes it's just alongside the meal, sometimes it's in a basket in the middle of the table before and during the meal.
Restaurants love giving people bread. Maybe because it's a comfort food.
I've found that in lieu of bread, a big leaf of lettuce works pretty good as a wrap for lunch meat and cheese or whatever. I actually like that a lot, lettuce is awesome when it's all crunchy.
Check it out: I got that "lettuce burrito" method from a Korean dish called "ssambap" (I had to look it up, and it's really spelled with the two s's like that) which is absolutely delicious. If you get a chance, find a good Korean restaurant and give it a shot. You get like thirty little dishes with different ingredients and you just mix and match what you want.
When the lettuce fails me, I just use a plate and a fork. Ol' standby. Pretty hard to mess that up...
TSN
Friday, October 28, 2011
Additional things related to steaming... sort of
Here's a terrible artist's depiction of what I'd look like while steaming vegetables for me and my family to eat.
Yeah that about sums it up. I get THAT excited about steamed vegetables, you know? How can you not?
TSN
Yeah that about sums it up. I get THAT excited about steamed vegetables, you know? How can you not?
TSN
Thursday, October 27, 2011
I Steam Because I'm Lazy
As a clueless bachelor, I wasted years of my life eating 7-11 speedy burritos until I could literally smell it coming out of my pores in the shower. My goal when I went into a grocery store was to get out as quickly as possible with as much cheap, fast and easy to make food as I could ram into a hand carried grocery basket. At no point would I enter the vegetable isle.
What an idiot I was! There's so much tasty food out there! Here's one thing I learned that has proven valuable time and time again: Almost all vegetables are good steamed, and steaming is super easy and even faster than an oven pizza. Can you believe it? I can.
We have a sweet steamer pan, it looks something like this.
Thanks Google image search. You saved me from walking all the way into my own kitchen to take a picture of my steamer pan.
Here's how it works: Wash the veggies, chop em up and throw em in the top part of the pan (I throw in some butter too). Put an inch or so of water in the bottom part of the pan, put the lid on and heat the whole mess on the stove until steam comes out of it for a few minutes.
The veggies get bright in color, it doesn't take very long. I never time it, I just wait a few minutes and poke em with a fork, and if they're not still crunchy that's good enough for me.
I won't be appearing on iron chef, copper chef... or even Play-Doh chef anytime soon. Whatever.
We steam all sorts of stuff... zucchini, peas, green beans, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus... whatever sounds good. The baby is all about some steamed veggies. She'll happily munch until she's got a broccoli stem poking out of each nostril and milk in her ear.
The moral: Steamed vegetables are easy, fast, tasty and a hell of a lot better for you than a box of preservatives. It's win/win/win/win.
TSN
What an idiot I was! There's so much tasty food out there! Here's one thing I learned that has proven valuable time and time again: Almost all vegetables are good steamed, and steaming is super easy and even faster than an oven pizza. Can you believe it? I can.
We have a sweet steamer pan, it looks something like this.
Here's how it works: Wash the veggies, chop em up and throw em in the top part of the pan (I throw in some butter too). Put an inch or so of water in the bottom part of the pan, put the lid on and heat the whole mess on the stove until steam comes out of it for a few minutes.
The veggies get bright in color, it doesn't take very long. I never time it, I just wait a few minutes and poke em with a fork, and if they're not still crunchy that's good enough for me.
I won't be appearing on iron chef, copper chef... or even Play-Doh chef anytime soon. Whatever.
We steam all sorts of stuff... zucchini, peas, green beans, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus... whatever sounds good. The baby is all about some steamed veggies. She'll happily munch until she's got a broccoli stem poking out of each nostril and milk in her ear.
The moral: Steamed vegetables are easy, fast, tasty and a hell of a lot better for you than a box of preservatives. It's win/win/win/win.
TSN
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Maple Syrup Fo Yo A$$
Grilled pineapple is wicked good. We got a grill pan so we can almost simulate the grill when it's crappy out, or when I don't feel like doing the coal dance. It works great for veggies.
Since I bought that natural hog we eat pork chops fairly regularly, those are great with a sweet glaze like pineapple, regular apple, or my personal favorite: Maple syrup. Trust me.
I'm from Vermont, you can't take maple syrup out of my diet or I'll die. I don't mean that garbage corn syrup that's served all over the country, I mean real maple syrup. It has no equal! If you look carefully at syrup containers in restaurants like Waffle House, Ihop, Bob Evans, Dennys... any number of places that serve breakfast, you'll find that the word "maple" never actually appears. It's all corn.
It doesn't even taste like maple, it's just a sweetener! For me, calling it maple syrup is along the same lines as blasphemy. I shudder at the thought.
I found myself in a breakfast joint in Virginia a few years back. I had bacon and an omelet with some toast (wheat toast, which I'd ordered thinking it was healthier...) and I asked for syrup. The lady looked at me like I'd just fallen off the wall.
Her: "Why?"
Me: "Whaddya mean why?"
Her: "You didn't get pancakes."
Me: "I know."
Her: "So what's the syrup for?"
Me: "Everything."
Her: "I've been working here for fifteen years and I ain't never seen nothin' like that."
I think I blew her fragile mind. I put it on everything. Toast, eggs, bacon, french fries, ice cream, peanut butter sandwiches... and of course it's an excellent glaze for pork ribs/chops/steaks/tenderloin/etc.
TSN
Since I bought that natural hog we eat pork chops fairly regularly, those are great with a sweet glaze like pineapple, regular apple, or my personal favorite: Maple syrup. Trust me.
I'm from Vermont, you can't take maple syrup out of my diet or I'll die. I don't mean that garbage corn syrup that's served all over the country, I mean real maple syrup. It has no equal! If you look carefully at syrup containers in restaurants like Waffle House, Ihop, Bob Evans, Dennys... any number of places that serve breakfast, you'll find that the word "maple" never actually appears. It's all corn.
It doesn't even taste like maple, it's just a sweetener! For me, calling it maple syrup is along the same lines as blasphemy. I shudder at the thought.
I found myself in a breakfast joint in Virginia a few years back. I had bacon and an omelet with some toast (wheat toast, which I'd ordered thinking it was healthier...) and I asked for syrup. The lady looked at me like I'd just fallen off the wall.
Her: "Why?"
Me: "Whaddya mean why?"
Her: "You didn't get pancakes."
Me: "I know."
Her: "So what's the syrup for?"
Me: "Everything."
Her: "I've been working here for fifteen years and I ain't never seen nothin' like that."
I think I blew her fragile mind. I put it on everything. Toast, eggs, bacon, french fries, ice cream, peanut butter sandwiches... and of course it's an excellent glaze for pork ribs/chops/steaks/tenderloin/etc.
TSN
Monday, October 24, 2011
I Should Get an Award For This One.
So I bought a hog that was raised organically and with healthy slop and all that. Since the Mrs. and I went in on a deep freezer big enough to train sled dogs in I went ahead and bought the whole hog. I had it butchered, processed and wrapped up ready for me to pick up without ever actually meeting the hog in person.
Part of me regrets not meeting the hog, and part of me is glad I didn't. The part that regrets is the part that understands and appreciates the ultimate sacrifice the hog has to make in order to feed me and my family. The part that's glad I didn't is the part that's perfectly happy being ignorant of that sacrifice.
Here I'm doing my very best not to make any references to the way our culture at large has perfected the art of turning an ignorant eye towards the real "how" of what's going on, be it our food supply or our government, our soldiers or our scholars, our farmers or our CEOs.
Well I failed to not mention it but there it is. We're so blind, so willing to take what we get and not think twice about where it came from or what it took to get it there. We put blind faith in a system we don't understand to protect us while we worry about the other little details of our lives.
Along with a lot of documentaries and notes from Bryan on various books and studies, TPT helped open my eyes to the darkness which looms over our food industry. It helped me recognize that we're all systematically poisoning ourselves and each other, all the while paying directly into the hands of people who are conscious of the issues and who manipulate the system to continue it on its course. We pour our dollars into the hands that manipulate entire societies with expert marionette finesse, marching us one step at a time toward our own doom.
Quit buying garbage food! Support local businesses that don't contribute to turning every town in America into identical interstate exits! Recognize the value of a family owned diner! Stop shopping at Walmart! It may save you a few bucks, but it costs you your soul and it's killing this country. Look around. I'm right. We are the problem, and it's because we've been conditioned to be mindless consumers.
Thank you, local farmer who sold me a naturally raised hog; I support you! Thank you small business owner who struggles to stay afloat next door to massive corporate chain stores. Thank you for providing me with the choice to be free.
TSN
Part of me regrets not meeting the hog, and part of me is glad I didn't. The part that regrets is the part that understands and appreciates the ultimate sacrifice the hog has to make in order to feed me and my family. The part that's glad I didn't is the part that's perfectly happy being ignorant of that sacrifice.
Here I'm doing my very best not to make any references to the way our culture at large has perfected the art of turning an ignorant eye towards the real "how" of what's going on, be it our food supply or our government, our soldiers or our scholars, our farmers or our CEOs.
Well I failed to not mention it but there it is. We're so blind, so willing to take what we get and not think twice about where it came from or what it took to get it there. We put blind faith in a system we don't understand to protect us while we worry about the other little details of our lives.
Along with a lot of documentaries and notes from Bryan on various books and studies, TPT helped open my eyes to the darkness which looms over our food industry. It helped me recognize that we're all systematically poisoning ourselves and each other, all the while paying directly into the hands of people who are conscious of the issues and who manipulate the system to continue it on its course. We pour our dollars into the hands that manipulate entire societies with expert marionette finesse, marching us one step at a time toward our own doom.
Quit buying garbage food! Support local businesses that don't contribute to turning every town in America into identical interstate exits! Recognize the value of a family owned diner! Stop shopping at Walmart! It may save you a few bucks, but it costs you your soul and it's killing this country. Look around. I'm right. We are the problem, and it's because we've been conditioned to be mindless consumers.
Thank you, local farmer who sold me a naturally raised hog; I support you! Thank you small business owner who struggles to stay afloat next door to massive corporate chain stores. Thank you for providing me with the choice to be free.
TSN
Friday, October 21, 2011
Despite all This...
Well Peanut came down with a good quality case of hand, foot and mouth disease, despite every advantage we've tried to give her with her nutrition. It happens, her peer group is seven or eight other kids her age in a daycare environment and if I were a betting man (which I am) I'd wager she'll get worse before it's all said and done. Poor little nugget. She's handling it like a champ though.
Being sick blows. I remember getting chicken pox. That was a huge drag and I remember all my friends having it here and there as well. I got it twice, which is not supposed to happen. I was also in the .3% of people who suffer nerve damage when they have their wisdom teeth out... I should have known!
A girl I had a crush on in fifth grade had a bad case of chicken pox, and asked me out while she still had it all over her face. I told her I didn't think it was a good idea. Why? I imagine it was some built-in defense mechanism to not attempt to mate with people with a visible pox, even from the perspective of a 5th grader.
"It's a pox! A POX! No I will not go out with you! Are you gonna eat that fruit roll-up?"
TSN
Being sick blows. I remember getting chicken pox. That was a huge drag and I remember all my friends having it here and there as well. I got it twice, which is not supposed to happen. I was also in the .3% of people who suffer nerve damage when they have their wisdom teeth out... I should have known!
A girl I had a crush on in fifth grade had a bad case of chicken pox, and asked me out while she still had it all over her face. I told her I didn't think it was a good idea. Why? I imagine it was some built-in defense mechanism to not attempt to mate with people with a visible pox, even from the perspective of a 5th grader.
"It's a pox! A POX! No I will not go out with you! Are you gonna eat that fruit roll-up?"
TSN
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Something Weird Happened
Further evidence that my exercise paradigm has finally shifted: I had an excellent excuse for skipping the Tabata workout today, and didn't take it. What?!
I have a man-cold. It's the worst thing ever naturally, and I'm as pathetic looking as the next man with a cold when I want to be, and boy do I want to be.
"You should just take it easy tonight." said my wife, who generally makes smarter decisions than I do.
"But I gotta do something " I reply, in my infinite wisdom. "What are you gonna do?"
"Take it easy tonight."
Old me would run a mile just to get out of running half a mile. So what did new me do? Two sets of Tabata curls, and then could barely lift the shampoo when I took a shower. Smart? We'll see.
Not too much jumping around, nice little compromise there I thought... but it occurs to me that I'm the one with the head cold and she's the one who took it easy tonight. That doesn't make any sense! Ah, whatever.
Alaskan halibut (I pulled it up from the ocean floor myself! Damn they're ugly!) and buttery brussel sprouts with lemon rice for dinner last night and lunch today, pretty hard to beat that.
TSN
I have a man-cold. It's the worst thing ever naturally, and I'm as pathetic looking as the next man with a cold when I want to be, and boy do I want to be.
"You should just take it easy tonight." said my wife, who generally makes smarter decisions than I do.
"But I gotta do something " I reply, in my infinite wisdom. "What are you gonna do?"
"Take it easy tonight."
Old me would run a mile just to get out of running half a mile. So what did new me do? Two sets of Tabata curls, and then could barely lift the shampoo when I took a shower. Smart? We'll see.
Not too much jumping around, nice little compromise there I thought... but it occurs to me that I'm the one with the head cold and she's the one who took it easy tonight. That doesn't make any sense! Ah, whatever.
Alaskan halibut (I pulled it up from the ocean floor myself! Damn they're ugly!) and buttery brussel sprouts with lemon rice for dinner last night and lunch today, pretty hard to beat that.
TSN
Monday, October 17, 2011
New Personal Best... Again!
I keep slaying my old personal push-up best. Tonight I did my best to celebrate passing 100 by saying "Yeah! 100! Sweet!" but all that came out was "Pant! Wheeze! Gasp!" because I was still in the middle of the last set. I then managed to crank out four more.
104, holy crap-filled gumball machine Batman!
People who work out a lot always say the same thing "Once you get into it, you start to look forward to it!" and I always said "Yeah whatever!" because I couldn't imagine ever actually looking forward to putting myself into painful situations.
It's true, sometimes I need a little nudge to motivate me after a particularly weary day but it's far less of a nudge I needed at the onset of this endeavor. It's part of the routine now so it doesn't even seem like a chore. Now that I'm really beginning to see results I look forward to it more and more.
I coudn't even believe it, I reached my goal and still had six or seven seconds on the clock!
So I busted out a few more. I think it helped that today is Monday and I had all weekend to rest and watch episodes of "Red Dwarf" on Netflix instant que in full loaf-mode.
Between TPT and Tabatas, the Viking approacheth ever faster and he is more determined than ever!
TSN
-- Alias Bjorn The Viking
- Roaster of the Mighty Cornish Hen
- Grinder of a thousand battle-hardened peppercorns
104, holy crap-filled gumball machine Batman!
People who work out a lot always say the same thing "Once you get into it, you start to look forward to it!" and I always said "Yeah whatever!" because I couldn't imagine ever actually looking forward to putting myself into painful situations.
It's true, sometimes I need a little nudge to motivate me after a particularly weary day but it's far less of a nudge I needed at the onset of this endeavor. It's part of the routine now so it doesn't even seem like a chore. Now that I'm really beginning to see results I look forward to it more and more.
I coudn't even believe it, I reached my goal and still had six or seven seconds on the clock!
So I busted out a few more. I think it helped that today is Monday and I had all weekend to rest and watch episodes of "Red Dwarf" on Netflix instant que in full loaf-mode.
Between TPT and Tabatas, the Viking approacheth ever faster and he is more determined than ever!
TSN
-- Alias Bjorn The Viking
- Roaster of the Mighty Cornish Hen
- Grinder of a thousand battle-hardened peppercorns
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Things Parents Have to Figure Out For Themselves
I have just one quick tip tonight: Peas.
Whenever peas are on the menu, I keep a bowl of them covered up in the fridge for leftovers. Inevitably sometime in the next few days a time comes when the Mrs. and I have to scramble for something to make for dinner, and the baby will commence to wailing.
Feeding her good food means we can't throw her some pre-packaged, sugary, processed junk.
The food has to be real... and as much as she'd love it we can't just feed her bananas all the time. Heres the magic: It takes her quite a while to manipulate a plateful of individual peas into her little mouth one at a time. On days when she's particularly grumpy, this is a handy thing to know!
High-chair, handful of peas. Bam. She even likes them cold. This buys us ample time to prepare actual dinner, and she gets to hang out with us in the kitchen and not be underfoot.
Brilliant!
TSN
Whenever peas are on the menu, I keep a bowl of them covered up in the fridge for leftovers. Inevitably sometime in the next few days a time comes when the Mrs. and I have to scramble for something to make for dinner, and the baby will commence to wailing.
Feeding her good food means we can't throw her some pre-packaged, sugary, processed junk.
The food has to be real... and as much as she'd love it we can't just feed her bananas all the time. Heres the magic: It takes her quite a while to manipulate a plateful of individual peas into her little mouth one at a time. On days when she's particularly grumpy, this is a handy thing to know!
High-chair, handful of peas. Bam. She even likes them cold. This buys us ample time to prepare actual dinner, and she gets to hang out with us in the kitchen and not be underfoot.
Brilliant!
TSN
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Busted Posing in the Mirror
93 Push ups... the number creepeth ever upward! I can tell these are working when I secretly flex in the mirror while nobody is looking.
One time in the not too distant past (probably eight months ago now, actually... wow it went fast!) the door to the bathroom was cracked open and my wife was peeking in at me. She'd been there for a little while, watching me pinch various areas and looking disappointed, but she couldn't stop herself from laughing when I shook my head and said (out loud) "You're $!#^%@ fat dude."
Laughs were had. Lessons were learned. Namely: Don't leave the bathroom door cracked.
Since I spent the better part of my life (all of it) with a good layer of pudge to keep me warm through those chilly New England winters, actually seeing some muscle definition is kind of a big deal but I'm still a long way from being a guy at the gym who stares at himself in the mirror for an hour after every workout.
Honestly I'm still a long way from even being a guy at the gym.
I like the home workout. It's cozy and I can use my own shower without having to wear flip flops.
I never liked flip flops, the thing between my toes bugs the crap out of me. Somehow the individual toes on the Vibram shoes don't, which is odd. Speaking of those: I discovered while doing Tabata sprints on blacktop that it's hard to stop, and I think it's wearing out the soles of my shoes more rapidly than normal.
It's no small task; halting my considerable momentum once I'm careening forward at full tilt. My poor shoes have to deal with that. To be honest, I cheat and start slowing down a couple of seconds before I should. I'm completely worn out when I'm done so I don't feel at all guilty.
Like I used to tell my rugby coach: "It's easy to go around me, but it's hard to get in my way!"
TSN
One time in the not too distant past (probably eight months ago now, actually... wow it went fast!) the door to the bathroom was cracked open and my wife was peeking in at me. She'd been there for a little while, watching me pinch various areas and looking disappointed, but she couldn't stop herself from laughing when I shook my head and said (out loud) "You're $!#^%@ fat dude."
Laughs were had. Lessons were learned. Namely: Don't leave the bathroom door cracked.
Since I spent the better part of my life (all of it) with a good layer of pudge to keep me warm through those chilly New England winters, actually seeing some muscle definition is kind of a big deal but I'm still a long way from being a guy at the gym who stares at himself in the mirror for an hour after every workout.
Honestly I'm still a long way from even being a guy at the gym.
I like the home workout. It's cozy and I can use my own shower without having to wear flip flops.
I never liked flip flops, the thing between my toes bugs the crap out of me. Somehow the individual toes on the Vibram shoes don't, which is odd. Speaking of those: I discovered while doing Tabata sprints on blacktop that it's hard to stop, and I think it's wearing out the soles of my shoes more rapidly than normal.
It's no small task; halting my considerable momentum once I'm careening forward at full tilt. My poor shoes have to deal with that. To be honest, I cheat and start slowing down a couple of seconds before I should. I'm completely worn out when I'm done so I don't feel at all guilty.
Like I used to tell my rugby coach: "It's easy to go around me, but it's hard to get in my way!"
TSN
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Baby is Smarter Than Me.
After all that complaining I did about 15/15 Tabatas, I wasn't even sore. Amazing how rapidly I can bounce back now after a good workout!
Tonight was supposed to be sprints, but things being what they are I ordered a pizza instead. I think it pretty well evens out...
No it doesn't, I'll have heartburn all night and it cost me twenty bucks. Life is tricky. Sometimes the justification powers of my brain deserve more credit than I give it. Here's how that went:
Me: Tabata sprints tonight! Oh yeah!
Me: Yeah but what's for dinner?
Me: I don't know, whatever.
Me: Crap, lots of other stuff is going on. I don't really feel like cooking.
Me: Me either.
Me: Well we gotta eat something. Gotta feed the baby or she'll get right grumpy on us.
Me: Peanut, are you hungry?
Peanut: Manamanah?
Me: Good idea!
I give her a banana, and some grapes as garnish.
Mrs. Me: Order a pizza.
Me: Done.
The delivery guy smells like weed. We all eat pizza, except the delivery guy who is probably sick of it by now. Peanut throws hers on the floor one tiny handful at a time because she's not hungry anymore because she already ate a banana and a bunch of grapes.
I'm surprisingly comfortable with that. I'd rather poison me than her, at least I'm aware of what I'm doing.
Moral? Nah... just life, man. Just life.
TSN
Tonight was supposed to be sprints, but things being what they are I ordered a pizza instead. I think it pretty well evens out...
No it doesn't, I'll have heartburn all night and it cost me twenty bucks. Life is tricky. Sometimes the justification powers of my brain deserve more credit than I give it. Here's how that went:
Me: Tabata sprints tonight! Oh yeah!
Me: Yeah but what's for dinner?
Me: I don't know, whatever.
Me: Crap, lots of other stuff is going on. I don't really feel like cooking.
Me: Me either.
Me: Well we gotta eat something. Gotta feed the baby or she'll get right grumpy on us.
Me: Peanut, are you hungry?
Peanut: Manamanah?
Me: Good idea!
I give her a banana, and some grapes as garnish.
Mrs. Me: Order a pizza.
Me: Done.
The delivery guy smells like weed. We all eat pizza, except the delivery guy who is probably sick of it by now. Peanut throws hers on the floor one tiny handful at a time because she's not hungry anymore because she already ate a banana and a bunch of grapes.
I'm surprisingly comfortable with that. I'd rather poison me than her, at least I'm aware of what I'm doing.
Moral? Nah... just life, man. Just life.
TSN
Monday, October 10, 2011
Phase II Tabatas
I completed my first round of 15/15 Tabatas tonight, and let me be the first to admit that I can barely move right now. The wife and I both powered through them, and the difference between these and the 10/20s is immediately noticeable! Tomorrow should be interesting; hopefully I bounce back quickly.
As soon as we finished, I immediately sent Bryan a text message saying this: "Holy @#$% dude."
That extra five seconds is a heck of a long time come rounds three through eight. And then it's double whammy on the flip-side when you lose the five seconds of rest in between sets.
The bicycles/Russian twists got in deep and I really felt them this time. I think I should have started with 15s on those, I wasn't feeling the burn as much as I'd have liked before. I felt it tonight though! Holy crap!
92 push ups, new personal best! I'll hit 100 before too long, and on that day I'll be... wicked stoked.
I'm getting stronger every day. Weight is still steady, it hovers between 265 and 270, but there is absolutely some fat being exchanged for muscle. I'm really pleased with my results so far, and it occurs to me that I've already been doing these for over a month and a half... that's probably longer than any phase of working out I've ever gone through in my life.
Usually I get all excited, work out all serious like, give myself pep talks and whatnot... then ultimately it peters out and I'm back to looking like a lava lamp when I jump up and down. Nothing fun about that!
This is a good thing. TPT has definitely helped me develop healthier eating habits too. Power combination, TPT and Tabatas. I'm leaning towards buying a home gym type thing, that seems like the next logical step. Get some heavy weights going.
Soon I will become a huge ripped Viking! Yes!
TSN
As soon as we finished, I immediately sent Bryan a text message saying this: "Holy @#$% dude."
That extra five seconds is a heck of a long time come rounds three through eight. And then it's double whammy on the flip-side when you lose the five seconds of rest in between sets.
The bicycles/Russian twists got in deep and I really felt them this time. I think I should have started with 15s on those, I wasn't feeling the burn as much as I'd have liked before. I felt it tonight though! Holy crap!
92 push ups, new personal best! I'll hit 100 before too long, and on that day I'll be... wicked stoked.
I'm getting stronger every day. Weight is still steady, it hovers between 265 and 270, but there is absolutely some fat being exchanged for muscle. I'm really pleased with my results so far, and it occurs to me that I've already been doing these for over a month and a half... that's probably longer than any phase of working out I've ever gone through in my life.
Usually I get all excited, work out all serious like, give myself pep talks and whatnot... then ultimately it peters out and I'm back to looking like a lava lamp when I jump up and down. Nothing fun about that!
This is a good thing. TPT has definitely helped me develop healthier eating habits too. Power combination, TPT and Tabatas. I'm leaning towards buying a home gym type thing, that seems like the next logical step. Get some heavy weights going.
Soon I will become a huge ripped Viking! Yes!
TSN
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Gas Station Oasis of Death
Road trips can be a real pain in the butt. Literally and figuratively. I crunched some numbers the other day and determined that on the average I spend 2 hours and 50 minutes in a vehicle every single work day. That's a rough average, but if the number is off it's off on the low side. Some days it's less and some days significantly more.
Whatever. That's 14 hours and 10 minutes or so a week. 736 and 1/2 hours a year. That's 30.7 24-hour days (an entire month), sitting on my butt in a vehicle. It becomes fairly impossible for me to always have a healthy snack on my person during all this windshield-time.
The scope of my life encompasses a heck of a lot of stops at gas stations. Go figure.
Have you ever stalked the isles of a gas station desperately searching for something to eat that wasn't poisonous? I have. I do. Several times a week.
I usually wind up with beef jerky, and even that is highly questionable. Sound familiar?
It's got all the salt content and whatnot. Who knows where the meat came from.
I did find something encouraging the other day, a fruit/nut bar called a "Kind" bar. It seemed like the lesser of a thousand evils, so I snagged one. Okay, two. They were pretty good! I did a bit of research on them when I got home and wasn't disappointed by what I found... as far as gas station food goes I have to admit I'm leaning toward buying them again.
Maybe I'll order a case of them and stick em in the work truck, save myself a bundle of money while I'm at it. It just makes good economic sense, see... myeah see... myeah.
Good hunting.
TSN
Whatever. That's 14 hours and 10 minutes or so a week. 736 and 1/2 hours a year. That's 30.7 24-hour days (an entire month), sitting on my butt in a vehicle. It becomes fairly impossible for me to always have a healthy snack on my person during all this windshield-time.
The scope of my life encompasses a heck of a lot of stops at gas stations. Go figure.
Have you ever stalked the isles of a gas station desperately searching for something to eat that wasn't poisonous? I have. I do. Several times a week.
I usually wind up with beef jerky, and even that is highly questionable. Sound familiar?
It's got all the salt content and whatnot. Who knows where the meat came from.
I did find something encouraging the other day, a fruit/nut bar called a "Kind" bar. It seemed like the lesser of a thousand evils, so I snagged one. Okay, two. They were pretty good! I did a bit of research on them when I got home and wasn't disappointed by what I found... as far as gas station food goes I have to admit I'm leaning toward buying them again.
Maybe I'll order a case of them and stick em in the work truck, save myself a bundle of money while I'm at it. It just makes good economic sense, see... myeah see... myeah.
Good hunting.
TSN
Friday, October 7, 2011
More on Tabatas
There's been some good feedback about Tabatas! Thanks Don it sounds like you're liking them as an after-workout way to get in more reps, and your numbers are pretty impressive!
I've found that in order for me to "feel the burn" during the ab exercises (particularly Russian twists), I need to use a weight. As little as 10 pounds made a big difference but I think more wouldn't hurt. The only thing stopping me from trying is the fact that I don't have any 15's.
My home gym equipment is sadly lacking. I have a set of 35 pound dumbbells that I bought from a friend back in 1997 (There's a set of 10's and 5's as well but those technically belong to my wife) and a treadmill. We also have a few stretchy bands kicking around that have come in handy.
Oh and a sit-up foot holder that goes under the door and makes me think I'm about to rip the door off every time I use it.
Tabata results have made me realize I don't need a lot of equipment to healthy-up! I like that.
If I wasn't 6'8" and 265 lbs it would be easier for me to find a place to do pull-ups/chin-ups. Those door frame pull-up bars, I'm terrified to even try one for fear of the entire house crashing down around me. Nothing fun about that!
There's a storage space in my basement with a high ceiling and the rafters exposed, I'm considering mounting some handles up there so I can get my Tabata pull-ups going.
I'm using Tabatas as a way to keep demand on my muscles so they don't shrink on me during my metabolic reboot process. My body is toughening up, I can really tell. I'm less and less having to strain in order to appear as though I didn't spend the second 15 years of my life eating garbage and sitting around.
Progress is good, I like it!
I've found that in order for me to "feel the burn" during the ab exercises (particularly Russian twists), I need to use a weight. As little as 10 pounds made a big difference but I think more wouldn't hurt. The only thing stopping me from trying is the fact that I don't have any 15's.
My home gym equipment is sadly lacking. I have a set of 35 pound dumbbells that I bought from a friend back in 1997 (There's a set of 10's and 5's as well but those technically belong to my wife) and a treadmill. We also have a few stretchy bands kicking around that have come in handy.
Oh and a sit-up foot holder that goes under the door and makes me think I'm about to rip the door off every time I use it.
Tabata results have made me realize I don't need a lot of equipment to healthy-up! I like that.
If I wasn't 6'8" and 265 lbs it would be easier for me to find a place to do pull-ups/chin-ups. Those door frame pull-up bars, I'm terrified to even try one for fear of the entire house crashing down around me. Nothing fun about that!
There's a storage space in my basement with a high ceiling and the rafters exposed, I'm considering mounting some handles up there so I can get my Tabata pull-ups going.
I'm using Tabatas as a way to keep demand on my muscles so they don't shrink on me during my metabolic reboot process. My body is toughening up, I can really tell. I'm less and less having to strain in order to appear as though I didn't spend the second 15 years of my life eating garbage and sitting around.
Progress is good, I like it!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
What? No Pasta?
What's your first thought when you read the title? Be honest. Mine is "*@&*!, you've got to be @$%*&#$ me!"
Check this out: Tonight me and the Mrs. cranked out an excellent alternative. Spaghetti squash! What? Trust me.
If you are intimidated by the very mention of it, rest assured. It's easy and it's really good.
<---Here's what they look like (thanks yahoo image search)
2: While that's happening, make some sauce (skip this step if you already know how). Brown up a pound of your favorite ground meat (unless you opt out of the meat department) and saute (in butter of course) a bunch of peppers, onion, and garlic. Feel free to add whatever you would normally use in spaghetti sauce, you're the one eating it!
3: When the meat and veggies are ready, pour on the marinara (doesn't have to be expensive or flavored or have a brand name on it, the flavor will come from all the ingredients you're adding anyway) and spice to your liking. I like oregano, so I use a lot of that.
4: Let it simmer and become more and more delicious. When the squash is done, scrape the good stuff out of the middle with a fork. It'll come out looking something like spaghetti, hence the name. Mix all that in with the sauce and let it simmer for as long as you like.
5: Eat. As an alternative, you can pour it all back into the baking dish, cover it with a layer of cheese and bake it until the cheese melts. That's what we did tonight. Fantastic.
Bonus: This makes a lot of food (we filled a lasagna pan to the brim and beyond) so there are several to-go lunches for me already packed in the fridge, which means I'll spend 6-8 bucks less at lunch for those days and won't be tempted by stupid chain restaurant garbage food. Also, it's flippin delicious. It's win/win/win.
TSN
Check this out: Tonight me and the Mrs. cranked out an excellent alternative. Spaghetti squash! What? Trust me.
If you are intimidated by the very mention of it, rest assured. It's easy and it's really good.
Here's what we did:
1: Cut a spaghetti squash in half the long way. Scoop out the seedy stuff (it looks like the inside of a pumpkin). Put the halves face down in a baking pan with about 1/4" if water and toss it in the oven for 45 minutes at 375F.
3: When the meat and veggies are ready, pour on the marinara (doesn't have to be expensive or flavored or have a brand name on it, the flavor will come from all the ingredients you're adding anyway) and spice to your liking. I like oregano, so I use a lot of that.
4: Let it simmer and become more and more delicious. When the squash is done, scrape the good stuff out of the middle with a fork. It'll come out looking something like spaghetti, hence the name. Mix all that in with the sauce and let it simmer for as long as you like.
5: Eat. As an alternative, you can pour it all back into the baking dish, cover it with a layer of cheese and bake it until the cheese melts. That's what we did tonight. Fantastic.
Bonus: This makes a lot of food (we filled a lasagna pan to the brim and beyond) so there are several to-go lunches for me already packed in the fridge, which means I'll spend 6-8 bucks less at lunch for those days and won't be tempted by stupid chain restaurant garbage food. Also, it's flippin delicious. It's win/win/win.
TSN
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
There's a Pill For That
Documentaries on Netflix instant-que (I guess now it's called something else, or will be soon) can be really eye opening. Ever since Bryan got me to watch one, now I'm all over it. Each one is like a piece of a giant puzzle.
Every documentary, every study, every book, journal, blog, archive... all the stuff I find about trying to get healthy in this country... they all fall into place in the big picture.
There's no way for me to accurately summarize fifty documentaries in here, but I will say that the picture is BIG and once I started seeing it the implications blew my fragile little mind. It continues to amaze me, every time I see another piece fall into place.
The money behind the medicine is the same as the money behind the food.
People are falling apart thanks to lack of nutrients in our diets. Medicine has made enormous advances to help keep us alive by treating the symptoms of our illnesses, and is a colossally big industry thanks to the number of people eating garbage and getting sick.
None of this is revolutionary information, the industries know that the food is empty and that people are nutrient starved, and that being nutrient starved causes all sorts of health problems. There's only so much poison a body can handle before it begins to fail. They know.
Call me jaded, but this rabbit hole is dark and sometimes it scares me. Trying to get healthy is a battle, and it seems more and more like it's a few people chucking pennies at a castle made of gold bricks.
Fight the good fight!
TSN
Every documentary, every study, every book, journal, blog, archive... all the stuff I find about trying to get healthy in this country... they all fall into place in the big picture.
There's no way for me to accurately summarize fifty documentaries in here, but I will say that the picture is BIG and once I started seeing it the implications blew my fragile little mind. It continues to amaze me, every time I see another piece fall into place.
The money behind the medicine is the same as the money behind the food.
People are falling apart thanks to lack of nutrients in our diets. Medicine has made enormous advances to help keep us alive by treating the symptoms of our illnesses, and is a colossally big industry thanks to the number of people eating garbage and getting sick.
None of this is revolutionary information, the industries know that the food is empty and that people are nutrient starved, and that being nutrient starved causes all sorts of health problems. There's only so much poison a body can handle before it begins to fail. They know.
Call me jaded, but this rabbit hole is dark and sometimes it scares me. Trying to get healthy is a battle, and it seems more and more like it's a few people chucking pennies at a castle made of gold bricks.
Fight the good fight!
TSN
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Struggle Continues
I was happy to read that butter plays such a starring role in TPT. Some things are just heart-warming, and I admit that pretty much any time I hear news that I actually don't need to change something about my life, that's good news. I get tired of the gloom and doom sometimes, you know?
It's sort of like this:
The World: "By the way there fella... everything you know is wrong, everything you're eating is killing you, and everything you do is making you lame, fat, uninteresting, toxic and generally a burden to yourself and the entire society that has had to carry your sorry butt through your entire miserable life!"
Me: "Bummer!"
The World: "Oh wait, butter is okay."
Me: (Jumping excitedly around the room until I fall to the ground panting, wheezing and unable to function at all after ten seconds because my life up until now has been one episode after another of slow poisoning and sedentary brain-rotting) "Yeah! Score one for me!"
So I saute stuff in butter. I go with the unsalted stuff, and try to get the organic stuff while I'm at it. Why not? I also put a little butter in with the vegetables while they're steaming. I don't know if it does anything other than psyche me into thinking they taste better, but I keep doing it.
Eating healthy used to be something I let other people worry about. Not so much anymore.
It used to be when I saw someone in bicycle shorts in the grocery store buying organic this and natural that, I'd think "What a chump!" Then I'd drive the two blocks back to my apartment, eat an oven pizza or maybe a couple microwave burritos, sit down with a liter of orange soda and watch cartoons in my boxers until I fell asleep rubbing my belly on the couch.
Now I'm tempted to approach people in grocery stores and beg them not to feed their kids the crap they're scooping into the carts.
Should I do it? I know I wouldn't have wanted to hear an impromptu schpeal from a random crazy guy in a grocery store. Maybe some of those people will stumble across this blog and it will make a difference in their lives.
Tell your friends!
TSN
It's sort of like this:
The World: "By the way there fella... everything you know is wrong, everything you're eating is killing you, and everything you do is making you lame, fat, uninteresting, toxic and generally a burden to yourself and the entire society that has had to carry your sorry butt through your entire miserable life!"
Me: "Bummer!"
The World: "Oh wait, butter is okay."
Me: (Jumping excitedly around the room until I fall to the ground panting, wheezing and unable to function at all after ten seconds because my life up until now has been one episode after another of slow poisoning and sedentary brain-rotting) "Yeah! Score one for me!"
So I saute stuff in butter. I go with the unsalted stuff, and try to get the organic stuff while I'm at it. Why not? I also put a little butter in with the vegetables while they're steaming. I don't know if it does anything other than psyche me into thinking they taste better, but I keep doing it.
Eating healthy used to be something I let other people worry about. Not so much anymore.
It used to be when I saw someone in bicycle shorts in the grocery store buying organic this and natural that, I'd think "What a chump!" Then I'd drive the two blocks back to my apartment, eat an oven pizza or maybe a couple microwave burritos, sit down with a liter of orange soda and watch cartoons in my boxers until I fell asleep rubbing my belly on the couch.
Now I'm tempted to approach people in grocery stores and beg them not to feed their kids the crap they're scooping into the carts.
Should I do it? I know I wouldn't have wanted to hear an impromptu schpeal from a random crazy guy in a grocery store. Maybe some of those people will stumble across this blog and it will make a difference in their lives.
Tell your friends!
TSN
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Liquid Water
I'm beginning to see some results in the muscle department. My weight is about the same, it's been hovering for a few weeks, but I'm pretty sure I've got some exchange happening with fat and muscle. Especially in my legs... those jumping tabatas are killer!
I got off track this weekend and scarfed down way too much pizza and drank too many beers. What can I say? It happens.
Here's something worth mentioning: Water. It's quite possibly the most amazing thing that exists, and we tend to write it off. It's hugely important to drink a lot of water! There doesn't have to be anything at all in it, just water by itself is where it's at.
First thing in the morning I drink down a huge glass of water. It's good!
Get a good filter. City water especially needs to be filtered... it would be excellent to have the luxury of some good clean spring water, but that's not the case. We have terrible tap water here, but it's reasonably good after the filter.
I've heard all sorts of stats and numbers on exactly how much water a person is supposed to drink every day, but I couldn't tell you what any of those stats and numbers are because frankly I don't care and didn't bother to remember... instead I took away this lesson: Drink a lot of water. That's pretty easy, I can do that.
I ask myself, "Self," I say; "Have you drank a lot of water yet today?" If the answer is no, I go and get some water. If it's yes, I get some water anyway. Water's good. That horse dead yet?
Water.
TSN
I got off track this weekend and scarfed down way too much pizza and drank too many beers. What can I say? It happens.
Here's something worth mentioning: Water. It's quite possibly the most amazing thing that exists, and we tend to write it off. It's hugely important to drink a lot of water! There doesn't have to be anything at all in it, just water by itself is where it's at.
First thing in the morning I drink down a huge glass of water. It's good!
Get a good filter. City water especially needs to be filtered... it would be excellent to have the luxury of some good clean spring water, but that's not the case. We have terrible tap water here, but it's reasonably good after the filter.
I've heard all sorts of stats and numbers on exactly how much water a person is supposed to drink every day, but I couldn't tell you what any of those stats and numbers are because frankly I don't care and didn't bother to remember... instead I took away this lesson: Drink a lot of water. That's pretty easy, I can do that.
I ask myself, "Self," I say; "Have you drank a lot of water yet today?" If the answer is no, I go and get some water. If it's yes, I get some water anyway. Water's good. That horse dead yet?
Water.
TSN
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Heartburn
The thing about TPT is that once you've made the fundamental changes in your eating habits, it's really easy to just keep doing it without really paying that much attention. Once I got out of the habit of buying all that unhealthy crap at the grocery store, stopped seeing it every time I opened up the fridge or the cupboards, stopped hitting drive-through windows and started reaching for vegetables and natural stuff... now it's not a big deal.
Still, once in a while I want pizza. So last night we got this gigantic Sicilian pizza from a most excellent restaurant in town, picked it up, brought it home and tucked in like ravenous hyenas. It was delicious; we knew it would be... but it gave me heartburn so bad I had to make a run to the store just to buy Tums.
Ordinarily that wouldn't even be noteworthy, but it occurs to me that I used to get heartburn all the time and kept buckets of Tums around just for that reason. So why didn't I have any handy?
Since I've been sticking to TPT at least fairly closely, I stopped getting heartburn.
I can't explain it, but I can't argue with the evidence. It's like so many other things; our medicine treats a multitude of symptoms, but no causes. My diet was to blame for my heartburn, not some strange disease or genetic physiological deformity or whatever esle.
There are a lot of drug companies that would go out of business if people really started treating the causes of their problems rather than the symptoms. We are a nation that coats problems over with little feel-betters while the root of the problems thrive below the surface.
Are we really such a depressed nation that we need fifty different anti-depression medications? Or are we just eating so much useless crap food that our brains don't have the nutrients they need? I'm really leaning toward the latter.
It's worth putting some thought into, at any rate.
TSN
Still, once in a while I want pizza. So last night we got this gigantic Sicilian pizza from a most excellent restaurant in town, picked it up, brought it home and tucked in like ravenous hyenas. It was delicious; we knew it would be... but it gave me heartburn so bad I had to make a run to the store just to buy Tums.
Ordinarily that wouldn't even be noteworthy, but it occurs to me that I used to get heartburn all the time and kept buckets of Tums around just for that reason. So why didn't I have any handy?
Since I've been sticking to TPT at least fairly closely, I stopped getting heartburn.
I can't explain it, but I can't argue with the evidence. It's like so many other things; our medicine treats a multitude of symptoms, but no causes. My diet was to blame for my heartburn, not some strange disease or genetic physiological deformity or whatever esle.
There are a lot of drug companies that would go out of business if people really started treating the causes of their problems rather than the symptoms. We are a nation that coats problems over with little feel-betters while the root of the problems thrive below the surface.
Are we really such a depressed nation that we need fifty different anti-depression medications? Or are we just eating so much useless crap food that our brains don't have the nutrients they need? I'm really leaning toward the latter.
It's worth putting some thought into, at any rate.
TSN
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Tabata Madness
It's difficult for me and the Mrs. to get to the gym. During work hours I'm usually on the road to and from this place or that and when I get home it's all about the family; dinner (which takes 5 times longer with a baby slinging food around and trying to climb out of the high-chair), cleanup, bath, diaper, story, bed... it's eight thirty before either of us could even think about getting to a gym.
Bryan has been trying to get me into a gym for years and to this day I can barely find it on a map; so he pointed me toward the Tabata method (It's an HIIT method, or High Intensity Interval Training - Check the link in the top right corner of the page).
I'm still on the first level of intensity and I'm already seeing results - and the best part is I can do them at home without any equipment. Yes!
The first level is to do whatever exercise you're doing as hard as you can for 10 seconds, then rest for 20. Repeat 7 more times. It's 4 minutes per exercise. Later it'll be 15 seconds on 15 off, and at this point I can certainly appreciate how much more of a workout that will be. Ten seconds is a long time when you're going all out. Ask a bull-rider if you don't believe me.
Example: Last night the wife and I did push ups, Russian twists/bicycle crunches and jumping squats. Three tabata exercises, twelve minutes (plus a minute or so of rest between each exercise). I hit my personal best for push ups last night, with 87 total in the four minute period.
I can usually do about 45 or 50 push ups. With tabatas, I almost doubled that number.
I know those numbers aren't amazing for a lot of people. I know folks who can hammer out a hundred push ups and not even be proud of themselves, but I'm not that guy. For me, 87 is a huge number and I am proud of myself!
You can use the Tabata method with any exercise. I still need to incorporate pull-ups, jumping lunges and a few others into my routine. Tabata sprints are fun! I did those tonight. I'm getting faster and faster every time. It's cheetah speed, short bursts at top speed; the neighbors must think I'm a whack job, sprinting up and down the street in my five-toed shoes for ten seconds at a time.
Let em think whatever they want.
TSN
Bryan has been trying to get me into a gym for years and to this day I can barely find it on a map; so he pointed me toward the Tabata method (It's an HIIT method, or High Intensity Interval Training - Check the link in the top right corner of the page).
I'm still on the first level of intensity and I'm already seeing results - and the best part is I can do them at home without any equipment. Yes!
The first level is to do whatever exercise you're doing as hard as you can for 10 seconds, then rest for 20. Repeat 7 more times. It's 4 minutes per exercise. Later it'll be 15 seconds on 15 off, and at this point I can certainly appreciate how much more of a workout that will be. Ten seconds is a long time when you're going all out. Ask a bull-rider if you don't believe me.
Example: Last night the wife and I did push ups, Russian twists/bicycle crunches and jumping squats. Three tabata exercises, twelve minutes (plus a minute or so of rest between each exercise). I hit my personal best for push ups last night, with 87 total in the four minute period.
I can usually do about 45 or 50 push ups. With tabatas, I almost doubled that number.
I know those numbers aren't amazing for a lot of people. I know folks who can hammer out a hundred push ups and not even be proud of themselves, but I'm not that guy. For me, 87 is a huge number and I am proud of myself!
You can use the Tabata method with any exercise. I still need to incorporate pull-ups, jumping lunges and a few others into my routine. Tabata sprints are fun! I did those tonight. I'm getting faster and faster every time. It's cheetah speed, short bursts at top speed; the neighbors must think I'm a whack job, sprinting up and down the street in my five-toed shoes for ten seconds at a time.
Let em think whatever they want.
TSN
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Exercise: The Other Thing You Gotta Do
I've never been a great runner; I'm big and slow. It does seem to have obvious value though so I try to work it into my schedule. Even went so far as to buy a treadmill, which makes me feel like a hamster. I don't mind.
I'm one of those ridiculously tall people you see out in public once in a while, and I'm also accident prone (really accident prone)... so I'm especially worried about my joints being beaten up by the time I'm old. It's a real concern! TPT inadvertently to the rescue!
Along with TPT comes a whole sort of "back to roots" mentality, which I really dig. Part of that community is into minimalist running, so (once again tipped off by Bryan) I scored myself a pair of those five toed shoes. The idea is to simulate running barefoot without having to toughen up your tender little toes.
I went with Vibrams and it's the only pair I've owned so I can't compare and contrast between brands, but I will say this: I frikkin love them! Completely changed my opinion of running.
Running used to be awful; I'd hurt in random places during and afterward. Not anymore!
When I run now, my heels barely touch the ground. I take much longer to tire and my calves have really benefited from the workout. No shin splints either, which was a big problem for me. Just that small change, letting my feet conform to the ground they way they were meant to do, has let my body re-learn how to run properly and the results are fantastic!
I've been working the Vibrams for a good while now (several months) and I have yet to plateau. I go faster and farther every time and it takes less and less time to recover. I don't dread it like I used to, and I'm not completely worthless and sore afterwards, which makes a tremendous difference.
Look into it, there is a lot of literature online about it (http://barefoot-running.com/, for example) The only real gripe that people seem to have is that they tried to do too much too fast and got blisters. Gotta take your time!
TSN
I'm one of those ridiculously tall people you see out in public once in a while, and I'm also accident prone (really accident prone)... so I'm especially worried about my joints being beaten up by the time I'm old. It's a real concern! TPT inadvertently to the rescue!
Along with TPT comes a whole sort of "back to roots" mentality, which I really dig. Part of that community is into minimalist running, so (once again tipped off by Bryan) I scored myself a pair of those five toed shoes. The idea is to simulate running barefoot without having to toughen up your tender little toes.
I went with Vibrams and it's the only pair I've owned so I can't compare and contrast between brands, but I will say this: I frikkin love them! Completely changed my opinion of running.
Running used to be awful; I'd hurt in random places during and afterward. Not anymore!
When I run now, my heels barely touch the ground. I take much longer to tire and my calves have really benefited from the workout. No shin splints either, which was a big problem for me. Just that small change, letting my feet conform to the ground they way they were meant to do, has let my body re-learn how to run properly and the results are fantastic!
I've been working the Vibrams for a good while now (several months) and I have yet to plateau. I go faster and farther every time and it takes less and less time to recover. I don't dread it like I used to, and I'm not completely worthless and sore afterwards, which makes a tremendous difference.
Look into it, there is a lot of literature online about it (http://barefoot-running.com/, for example) The only real gripe that people seem to have is that they tried to do too much too fast and got blisters. Gotta take your time!
TSN
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A Useless Part of a Balanced Breakfast!
It used to be at the end of every cereal commercial it'd say "Part of a complete breakfast!" or "Part of a balanced breakfast!" and eventually "A delicious part of a balanced breakfast", but never did any of them ever say "A stand-alone nutritious breakfast!"
Why not? Easy. They couldn't legally say that because they know and everyone else knows that there's no nutrition involved. That's not what it's for. Cereal with pictures of cartoons on it that's loaded with sugar and made almost entirely out of processed corn is not meant to nourish you, it's meant to attract the short attention spans and grabby hands of kids, and to then extract money from your wallet. Once it's in the pantry it's up to you to figure out how to make it nutritious.
In the morning, when the little fella pours himself a big bowl of that cereal and goes to school, he's not really getting anything that he needs. He'll be hungry again well before lunch because his brain will tell him that he's not getting enough nutrition, so he'll reach for a snack. What'll that be? Some form of pre-wrapped mass-produced food? I hope not, because that's not going to do anything for him either.
So what can I feed my kid for breakfast that has some actual nutritional value?
I love eggs, and I'm usually the one wielding the spatula in the morning so we have them pretty often. I get them from a local farm whenever they're available. I usually scramble them (sometimes with bell peppers, sometimes not) in either butter or coconut oil. I also mix in some whole milk that I buy from the same farm, which makes the eggs more creamy and delicious. There is some great information on the farms web page, it's definitely worth checking out: http://breezy-hill-farm.com/
Yogurt is also a good option (we've purchased a yogurt maker so we can make our own but haven't broken it out yet. I'll have more on that once we get it going), as are cottage cheese and fruit. All manner of berries are good and good for you.
I've never liked grapefruit myself, but don't let that stop you from eating it for breakfast.
It's easy to grab a couple of plums (they're everywhere in the grocery stores right now, I've been eating them like crazy) to munch on on the way out the door, or any fruit really. My daughter loves bananas (she calls them manamanah).
When I first started on TPT I would hard-boil a dozen eggs at a time and eat a couple for breakfast and snag a couple more for lunch (among other things). That's easy and quick. Diversify!
Breakfast is important for me, because if I don't eat it I get really hungry before lunchtime and I'll eat just about anything, and just about anything is almost never good for me.
TSN
Why not? Easy. They couldn't legally say that because they know and everyone else knows that there's no nutrition involved. That's not what it's for. Cereal with pictures of cartoons on it that's loaded with sugar and made almost entirely out of processed corn is not meant to nourish you, it's meant to attract the short attention spans and grabby hands of kids, and to then extract money from your wallet. Once it's in the pantry it's up to you to figure out how to make it nutritious.
In the morning, when the little fella pours himself a big bowl of that cereal and goes to school, he's not really getting anything that he needs. He'll be hungry again well before lunch because his brain will tell him that he's not getting enough nutrition, so he'll reach for a snack. What'll that be? Some form of pre-wrapped mass-produced food? I hope not, because that's not going to do anything for him either.
So what can I feed my kid for breakfast that has some actual nutritional value?
I love eggs, and I'm usually the one wielding the spatula in the morning so we have them pretty often. I get them from a local farm whenever they're available. I usually scramble them (sometimes with bell peppers, sometimes not) in either butter or coconut oil. I also mix in some whole milk that I buy from the same farm, which makes the eggs more creamy and delicious. There is some great information on the farms web page, it's definitely worth checking out: http://breezy-hill-farm.com/
Yogurt is also a good option (we've purchased a yogurt maker so we can make our own but haven't broken it out yet. I'll have more on that once we get it going), as are cottage cheese and fruit. All manner of berries are good and good for you.
I've never liked grapefruit myself, but don't let that stop you from eating it for breakfast.
It's easy to grab a couple of plums (they're everywhere in the grocery stores right now, I've been eating them like crazy) to munch on on the way out the door, or any fruit really. My daughter loves bananas (she calls them manamanah).
When I first started on TPT I would hard-boil a dozen eggs at a time and eat a couple for breakfast and snag a couple more for lunch (among other things). That's easy and quick. Diversify!
Breakfast is important for me, because if I don't eat it I get really hungry before lunchtime and I'll eat just about anything, and just about anything is almost never good for me.
TSN
Monday, September 26, 2011
Omelets, and the Imaginary Freshness of Vegetables
Omelets are among my favorite secret weapons when I'm on the road. The trickiest part of that is finding a place that serves them and, once having found such a place, hoping their ingredients are at least marginally fresh.
They probably aren't, unless you're in some cozy bed and breakfast where the family that runs the place raises their own chickens and grows their own veggies. That not usually being the case, I usually settle for a garden omelet anyway, with hash browns and coffee. Eating only those things would surely kill me after a while, but under the circumstances I look at that combination as the lesser of many evils.
In the grocery store: There is often a small section for locally grown produce. The stuff you'll find there is usually smaller, less vibrant looking and possibly more expensive than the mass-market stuff, but consider this:
Industry seeks to profit, not to nourish.
The vegetables are engineered to be exactly the colors that they are because it has been determined that people prefer a certain shade of green (for example) over another.
The color, shape and size of the vegetable are basically irrelevant as a nutrition gauge by the time the industry is done tampering with them.
If local, fresh-grown peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they're supposed to be; they're healthy and ripe. On the other hand, if mass-produced peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they've been treated with chemicals, coated with preservatives, wax, pesticides and whatever else in order to make them look that way.
Consider that next time you have a chance to buy a pepper for its beauty, or in order to save a nickle, rather than for the yummy goodness a real pepper has to offer.
I eat green peppers like apples. They're delicious!
TSN
They probably aren't, unless you're in some cozy bed and breakfast where the family that runs the place raises their own chickens and grows their own veggies. That not usually being the case, I usually settle for a garden omelet anyway, with hash browns and coffee. Eating only those things would surely kill me after a while, but under the circumstances I look at that combination as the lesser of many evils.
In the grocery store: There is often a small section for locally grown produce. The stuff you'll find there is usually smaller, less vibrant looking and possibly more expensive than the mass-market stuff, but consider this:
Industry seeks to profit, not to nourish.
The vegetables are engineered to be exactly the colors that they are because it has been determined that people prefer a certain shade of green (for example) over another.
The color, shape and size of the vegetable are basically irrelevant as a nutrition gauge by the time the industry is done tampering with them.
If local, fresh-grown peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they're supposed to be; they're healthy and ripe. On the other hand, if mass-produced peppers are a perfect shade of shiny green, it's because they've been treated with chemicals, coated with preservatives, wax, pesticides and whatever else in order to make them look that way.
Consider that next time you have a chance to buy a pepper for its beauty, or in order to save a nickle, rather than for the yummy goodness a real pepper has to offer.
I eat green peppers like apples. They're delicious!
TSN
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Some Tips
I really thought I'd have more time tonight, but it didn't pan out that way. Instead of a long dissertation, Here's a quick list of things:
1: Don't be afraid of vegetables in the grocery isle that you've never seen before. Buy them! Look up how to cook them! I haven't had one yet that made me say "Man that's nasty!" Instead I'm more like "Wow I've been missing out on this for years!"
2: If you haven't done so already, discover sweet potatoes. They're delicious! It's starting to look like they're quite a bit better for me than regular potatoes too, which is a plus.
3: Squash (butternut, acorn, etc..): It's wicked easy to cook and it's damn tasty. Pretty much just cut it in half, dig out the seeds with a spoon, fill the spots you just dug out with butter and cinnamon, then bake it in the oven until you can poke a fork into it without much trouble.
4: Bring lunch to work as often as you can. This one kills me, every time I don't bring lunch to work and I have to try to scavenge nutrition from restaurants and such, I usually come out behind on the whole deal. TPT can be tricky on the go. Lots more to follow on this topic.
5: Water. Drink it!
6: Sleep: Get more of it! Not getting enough sleep has huge physical and mental health repercussions.
That's it for me for now, I need to get a little sleep of my own.
TSN
1: Don't be afraid of vegetables in the grocery isle that you've never seen before. Buy them! Look up how to cook them! I haven't had one yet that made me say "Man that's nasty!" Instead I'm more like "Wow I've been missing out on this for years!"
2: If you haven't done so already, discover sweet potatoes. They're delicious! It's starting to look like they're quite a bit better for me than regular potatoes too, which is a plus.
3: Squash (butternut, acorn, etc..): It's wicked easy to cook and it's damn tasty. Pretty much just cut it in half, dig out the seeds with a spoon, fill the spots you just dug out with butter and cinnamon, then bake it in the oven until you can poke a fork into it without much trouble.
4: Bring lunch to work as often as you can. This one kills me, every time I don't bring lunch to work and I have to try to scavenge nutrition from restaurants and such, I usually come out behind on the whole deal. TPT can be tricky on the go. Lots more to follow on this topic.
5: Water. Drink it!
6: Sleep: Get more of it! Not getting enough sleep has huge physical and mental health repercussions.
That's it for me for now, I need to get a little sleep of my own.
TSN
Friday, September 23, 2011
Results of the Early Stages
Well, it's only been four days and already there's a pretty intense discussion about the pros and cons of eating meat. Both sides have weighed in with excellent points, and the conversation immediately skewed off into realms of nutritional science that far supersede my understanding even at my most lucid.
To meat, or not to meat: That is not a question that I'm here to answer.
Trying to convince people to give up meat (or to start eating it for that matter) is a job for someone else. For me, the point is to try to help people understand that there is a reason to be concerned about the food we're eating. I'm no expert, I'm just here to document my journey. The first and most important thing that I want people to discover is that the isles of the grocery store are filled with food that causes our bodies to malfunction and get sick.
Since I got off to such a late start with the blog (I should have started it eight months ago when I learned about Paleo for the first time), I have quite a bit of catching up to do. In light of all the discussions and science and strong opinions that folks obviously have on the merits of carn/herb/omni-voreism, instead I'll just tell you what my results were.
After being influenced by what Rob Wolf said in "The Paleo Solution" and by what I'd learned from Bryan, who was also in the early stages of the learning process, I gave it a shot. I cut out all the carbs and sugars. I did a good job of it too, for weeks I ate a very restricted diet comprised almost entirely of meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables and butter. I ate a lot of avocados, a lot of chicken... for breakfast I'd just eat a hard-boiled egg an a handful of roast beef.
I stopped drinking soda, beer and basically all sugary drinks and just drank water instead. As a milk replacement I made a coconut milk concoction that is actually very good... if I remember later I'll include that recipe. Actually I'll put it at the end of this post. I didn't give up coffee, but I did stop putting sugar in it. I switched to heavy cream. I noticed very quickly that my level of hunger had dropped substantially.
So what happened? I lost almost thirty pounds in a couple of months.
I'm a big dude. At the end of the 2010 holiday season I weighed in at 295 pounds. That's on a 6'8" frame, so I could almost get away with it, but I knew I wasn't healthy. I watched the pounds melt off, and I admit that I wasn't doing much exercising, just a little bit here and there.
It was glorious. I know that a lot of it was water weight, which as I understand it has something to do with carbohydrates causing the body to retain water. I peed a lot.
That was before I got more information on what sort of quality I was getting from even that restricted food.
Now I know more about the condition of stockyard meat, the low quality eggs, even the nutrient depleted soil the vegetables are grown in. Still, just doing what I did, I can't argue with the results.
I've since become less afraid of carbs, and have reintroduced them into my diet in moderation, but not so far as to calculate them out to the exact number. I've really tried to resist obsessing over the numbers and all the counting grams of various vitamins and minerals. Too much information stuffed in my face at once that I don't understand usually just makes me tune it out. I've got other stuff to think about, I really don't want to spend my life worrying about how many parts per million of my urine is made up of vitamins A-Z.
I'm maintaining a weight now of 265, still with a lot of room for improvement. I'd let myself get soft, so I'm working now on converting fat stores into muscle. Bryan turned me on to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit. More on that to follow in the posts to come, but if you want to check it out now, here's the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
I'll put it up in the links section at the top of the page.
Conclusions: I am not a hard-core Paleo guy. The Paleo diet was a launching point for me, and I got great results from it, but I'm not prepared to take it as gospel. At this point I'm also not prepared to subscribe entirely to vegetarianism, though I do appreciate its merits.
Tomorrow (time permitting... there's a Renaissance fair in town) I'll hone in on some of the difficulties I've come across in the hunt for nutrition while on the go, and what I do to overcome those obstacles.
The Coconut Milk Recipe:
Take a can of coconut milk (some are better than others, play around with it) and dump it into a small sauce pan. Use the can to measure out the same amount of water and pour that in there. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a couple dollops of agave sweetener. Heat and stir until it's all smooth. Pour it into a container and toss it in the fridge. Shake before serving. It's pretty good! Also it seemed to keep me feeling full for a lot longer that usual, which helped a lot.
TSN
To meat, or not to meat: That is not a question that I'm here to answer.
Trying to convince people to give up meat (or to start eating it for that matter) is a job for someone else. For me, the point is to try to help people understand that there is a reason to be concerned about the food we're eating. I'm no expert, I'm just here to document my journey. The first and most important thing that I want people to discover is that the isles of the grocery store are filled with food that causes our bodies to malfunction and get sick.
Since I got off to such a late start with the blog (I should have started it eight months ago when I learned about Paleo for the first time), I have quite a bit of catching up to do. In light of all the discussions and science and strong opinions that folks obviously have on the merits of carn/herb/omni-voreism, instead I'll just tell you what my results were.
After being influenced by what Rob Wolf said in "The Paleo Solution" and by what I'd learned from Bryan, who was also in the early stages of the learning process, I gave it a shot. I cut out all the carbs and sugars. I did a good job of it too, for weeks I ate a very restricted diet comprised almost entirely of meat, eggs, cheese, vegetables and butter. I ate a lot of avocados, a lot of chicken... for breakfast I'd just eat a hard-boiled egg an a handful of roast beef.
I stopped drinking soda, beer and basically all sugary drinks and just drank water instead. As a milk replacement I made a coconut milk concoction that is actually very good... if I remember later I'll include that recipe. Actually I'll put it at the end of this post. I didn't give up coffee, but I did stop putting sugar in it. I switched to heavy cream. I noticed very quickly that my level of hunger had dropped substantially.
So what happened? I lost almost thirty pounds in a couple of months.
I'm a big dude. At the end of the 2010 holiday season I weighed in at 295 pounds. That's on a 6'8" frame, so I could almost get away with it, but I knew I wasn't healthy. I watched the pounds melt off, and I admit that I wasn't doing much exercising, just a little bit here and there.
It was glorious. I know that a lot of it was water weight, which as I understand it has something to do with carbohydrates causing the body to retain water. I peed a lot.
That was before I got more information on what sort of quality I was getting from even that restricted food.
Now I know more about the condition of stockyard meat, the low quality eggs, even the nutrient depleted soil the vegetables are grown in. Still, just doing what I did, I can't argue with the results.
I've since become less afraid of carbs, and have reintroduced them into my diet in moderation, but not so far as to calculate them out to the exact number. I've really tried to resist obsessing over the numbers and all the counting grams of various vitamins and minerals. Too much information stuffed in my face at once that I don't understand usually just makes me tune it out. I've got other stuff to think about, I really don't want to spend my life worrying about how many parts per million of my urine is made up of vitamins A-Z.
I'm maintaining a weight now of 265, still with a lot of room for improvement. I'd let myself get soft, so I'm working now on converting fat stores into muscle. Bryan turned me on to High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) which I'm actually enjoying quite a bit. More on that to follow in the posts to come, but if you want to check it out now, here's the Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
I'll put it up in the links section at the top of the page.
Conclusions: I am not a hard-core Paleo guy. The Paleo diet was a launching point for me, and I got great results from it, but I'm not prepared to take it as gospel. At this point I'm also not prepared to subscribe entirely to vegetarianism, though I do appreciate its merits.
Tomorrow (time permitting... there's a Renaissance fair in town) I'll hone in on some of the difficulties I've come across in the hunt for nutrition while on the go, and what I do to overcome those obstacles.
The Coconut Milk Recipe:
Take a can of coconut milk (some are better than others, play around with it) and dump it into a small sauce pan. Use the can to measure out the same amount of water and pour that in there. Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a couple dollops of agave sweetener. Heat and stir until it's all smooth. Pour it into a container and toss it in the fridge. Shake before serving. It's pretty good! Also it seemed to keep me feeling full for a lot longer that usual, which helped a lot.
TSN
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Making a Meaningful Change
All the research began to rapidly unravel the veil of misdirection and blatant lies that I had chosen to ignore. One question lead to another, and another... until I began to see countless additional layers of problems with what I had so long considered to be "regular food".
The "Standard American Diet" is absolutely terrible. Once I started really looking, paying attention and letting the truth hit me, it became so obvious and so terrifying that it actually made me angry!
Our food is killing us! It's causing a huge number of the medical problems that plague us, and it's doing it every day. We're forcing our bodies to survive on very little nutrition and then we wonder why we get sick. We pack garbage, chemicals and toxins into our mouths and wonder why we have so much trouble losing weight.
We're sabotaging ourselves for our entire lives, then relying on advancements in medicine to "cure" us, when the root cause is that we've handicapped our own ability to be healthy. Nutrition isn't a cure, it's prevention. The body wants to be healthy, and it will be if it has the right tools for the job.
The meat, milk, eggs and veggies that I had left after I threw out all the processed crap was a step up, but I quickly realized that there wasn't much nutritional value even there.
The meat came from animals that were fed the cheapest possible diets, designed to get the most meat out of each animal, not the most nutrition. The milk was pasteurized (heated) which killed any good bacteria along with the bad. The eggs were laid by unhealthy chickens fed nutritionally empty diets, and the vegetables were grown in nutrient-depleted soil and covered with pesticides and who knows what other chemicals.
How the heck can I find healthy food?! Here's what I did to get started:
I got into grass-fed beef. It's out there you just have to find it. Bryan got me in touch with a guy who raises grass-fed cattle in our area and we got a lot of meat from him.
I buy locally-grown vegetables when I can, and I try to diversify the veggies I eat in order to get more out of them. Diversifying made me realized that I was living with a very narrow focus on what was available in the vegetable isle.
I wash the veggies well, and eat as many of them raw as possible to maximize on their nutritional value further.
I buy my milk and eggs from a local farmer who raises certified organic cows and chickens.
There are some great cookbooks out there that are all based on this line of thought. I'm familiar with a couple of them, "Everyday Paleo" by Sarah Fragoso (linked on this page for her blog, it's really good), also "The Primal Blueprint Cookbook" by Mark Sisson and Jennifer Meier is very good.
It's a start! It feels good having more information, especially with a baby to worry about. I don't want her eating garbage, I want her to be healthy and to have every advantage I can offer her. Good food is key!
That's all for now, but we've barely scratched the surface here. Stay tuned! Lots more to follow.
TSN
The "Standard American Diet" is absolutely terrible. Once I started really looking, paying attention and letting the truth hit me, it became so obvious and so terrifying that it actually made me angry!
Our food is killing us! It's causing a huge number of the medical problems that plague us, and it's doing it every day. We're forcing our bodies to survive on very little nutrition and then we wonder why we get sick. We pack garbage, chemicals and toxins into our mouths and wonder why we have so much trouble losing weight.
We're sabotaging ourselves for our entire lives, then relying on advancements in medicine to "cure" us, when the root cause is that we've handicapped our own ability to be healthy. Nutrition isn't a cure, it's prevention. The body wants to be healthy, and it will be if it has the right tools for the job.
The meat, milk, eggs and veggies that I had left after I threw out all the processed crap was a step up, but I quickly realized that there wasn't much nutritional value even there.
The meat came from animals that were fed the cheapest possible diets, designed to get the most meat out of each animal, not the most nutrition. The milk was pasteurized (heated) which killed any good bacteria along with the bad. The eggs were laid by unhealthy chickens fed nutritionally empty diets, and the vegetables were grown in nutrient-depleted soil and covered with pesticides and who knows what other chemicals.
How the heck can I find healthy food?! Here's what I did to get started:
I got into grass-fed beef. It's out there you just have to find it. Bryan got me in touch with a guy who raises grass-fed cattle in our area and we got a lot of meat from him.
I buy locally-grown vegetables when I can, and I try to diversify the veggies I eat in order to get more out of them. Diversifying made me realized that I was living with a very narrow focus on what was available in the vegetable isle.
I wash the veggies well, and eat as many of them raw as possible to maximize on their nutritional value further.
I buy my milk and eggs from a local farmer who raises certified organic cows and chickens.
There are some great cookbooks out there that are all based on this line of thought. I'm familiar with a couple of them, "Everyday Paleo" by Sarah Fragoso (linked on this page for her blog, it's really good), also "The Primal Blueprint Cookbook" by Mark Sisson and Jennifer Meier is very good.
It's a start! It feels good having more information, especially with a baby to worry about. I don't want her eating garbage, I want her to be healthy and to have every advantage I can offer her. Good food is key!
That's all for now, but we've barely scratched the surface here. Stay tuned! Lots more to follow.
TSN
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Purge
Without getting too heavily into the science behind it all (More of a "just tell me what to do already" kind of mentality), I took Bryan's advice and Rob Wolf's book "Paleo Solution" to heart. My fiancee (now wife) Jen did the same. We agreed to purge the house of all the processed foods, sugars and carbs. She had to persuade me a little. Okay a lot.
That was really painful for me... I was hungry all the time and having to watch all that food being dug out of the cupboards, fridge, freezer and pantry hurt me in my soul and my wallet at the same time... but I believed! So out it came and into a pretty good sized box, which we donated to a houseful of dudes.
I didn't feel too guilty about giving them all the food I was now convinced was poisonous, since they were pretty much living on beer and pizza anyway. I've been there...
It was a little scary when we realized how utterly bereft of food the house had become.
Almost every single bit of food we'd stashed away was made up almost entirely of corn, soy and sugar. I guess when we ate vegetables and felt healthy it must have been like a drop in the bucket of all the other crap we were eating!
There was almost nothing left in the fridge besides eggs, lunch meat, el-cheapo sandwich cheese and the obligatory bag of carrot sticks. Maybe some lettuce. Not promising, but good for a good smack in the face by reality. Obviously we needed to eat more vegetables.
That was a good start, but we had much to learn. I got into the habit of watching documentaries on Netflix and the information started piling up quick. A good place to start is "Food Inc." If you haven't seen it, it's worth your time.
There is so much to cover, there's no way I'll run out of subject material here for a really long time. Stay tuned, join/follow/comment/criticize etc! The world needs this information.
TSN
That was really painful for me... I was hungry all the time and having to watch all that food being dug out of the cupboards, fridge, freezer and pantry hurt me in my soul and my wallet at the same time... but I believed! So out it came and into a pretty good sized box, which we donated to a houseful of dudes.
I didn't feel too guilty about giving them all the food I was now convinced was poisonous, since they were pretty much living on beer and pizza anyway. I've been there...
It was a little scary when we realized how utterly bereft of food the house had become.
Almost every single bit of food we'd stashed away was made up almost entirely of corn, soy and sugar. I guess when we ate vegetables and felt healthy it must have been like a drop in the bucket of all the other crap we were eating!
There was almost nothing left in the fridge besides eggs, lunch meat, el-cheapo sandwich cheese and the obligatory bag of carrot sticks. Maybe some lettuce. Not promising, but good for a good smack in the face by reality. Obviously we needed to eat more vegetables.
That was a good start, but we had much to learn. I got into the habit of watching documentaries on Netflix and the information started piling up quick. A good place to start is "Food Inc." If you haven't seen it, it's worth your time.
There is so much to cover, there's no way I'll run out of subject material here for a really long time. Stay tuned, join/follow/comment/criticize etc! The world needs this information.
TSN
Monday, September 19, 2011
Because it's more than just a diet
I'm calling this "TPT" for "This Paleo Thing" because it's not a diet. It's something else. Lifestyle, paradigm shift, new leaf... all that. Whatever. Hear me out.
About eight months ago I had my eyes opened. It started with a few run-ins with my friend Bryan, whose eyes have been open for much longer. He pointed out some really obvious things that somehow a lot of us ignore.
Most importantly: We are feeding ourselves garbage and poison on a daily basis.
Once I started really paying attention, holy crap! It's true. Bryan recommended a book by Rob Wolf called "The Paleo Solution" as a sort of ice-breaker, so I snagged a copy and dug in. That book did a great job of convincing me to eliminate the poisonous chemicals from my food and to get some actual nutrition. That was just the beginning. There's so much more!
There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle which (largely thanks to Bryans relentless research) I am beginning to assemble.
I'll be adding to this blog regularly, weighing in with my take on the hunting and gathering that goes on in my world in my ongoing struggle to find nutrition and achieve better health. How I got through the day, so to speak. I'll have a lot to say, from a real-world regular-guy perspective. I encourage you to follow along on this journey.
It's a process and I'm still figuring it out, so if you have some ideas that you'd like to share as this progresses, please don't hesitate to post them! I'll shut up for now, I can feel myself wanting to go on and on.
TSN
About eight months ago I had my eyes opened. It started with a few run-ins with my friend Bryan, whose eyes have been open for much longer. He pointed out some really obvious things that somehow a lot of us ignore.
Most importantly: We are feeding ourselves garbage and poison on a daily basis.
Once I started really paying attention, holy crap! It's true. Bryan recommended a book by Rob Wolf called "The Paleo Solution" as a sort of ice-breaker, so I snagged a copy and dug in. That book did a great job of convincing me to eliminate the poisonous chemicals from my food and to get some actual nutrition. That was just the beginning. There's so much more!
There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle which (largely thanks to Bryans relentless research) I am beginning to assemble.
I'll be adding to this blog regularly, weighing in with my take on the hunting and gathering that goes on in my world in my ongoing struggle to find nutrition and achieve better health. How I got through the day, so to speak. I'll have a lot to say, from a real-world regular-guy perspective. I encourage you to follow along on this journey.
It's a process and I'm still figuring it out, so if you have some ideas that you'd like to share as this progresses, please don't hesitate to post them! I'll shut up for now, I can feel myself wanting to go on and on.
TSN
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