Tag Archives: Exercise and VSI

Paleo diet – 30 day review

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So it is now November, which means my 30 days of the paleo diet have passed and I am pleased to be able to share my findings with you.  As I did with the 14 day progress report, here is a chart showing my daily weights(blue line) and 7-day average weights(red line) going back to this summer before I started crossfit and then when I started paleo (October 1).

 

 

Paleo diet 30 day progress

Paleo diet 30 day progress

  • The Good

As you can see, my weight continues to decline, and because of all of the exercise that I am getting from crossfit and some other things I’m doing, my strength and conditioning are at arguably the best of my life.  While I still weigh about 6 pounds more than I did last May when I got married, I would say that I am in better condition and health now than I was then.

I still continue to feel much better in the mornings when it comes to my knees and joints.  I am hungry much less often during the day, and enjoy being able to eat lunch when I want to or when I need to based on my work schedule, and not based on when my stomach pains begin at around 11 a.m.

This all led me to do things like I did this past weekend.

  • The Bad

It was definitely difficult to eat paleo when traveling.  Airports are not designed for cavemen to eat, so it’s best to be prepared and bring food.  Unfortunately, the paleo kits that I ordered hasn’t arrived before I went to L.A., so I had to make due with what I could forage for myself.  To make matters worse, I was traveling on business, and a lot of the meals were pre-arranged for a group of a few hundred people.  Luckily this means there was lots of food, but most of it I had to pick thru and fight off temptations to the best of my ability.  My saving grace was breakfast.  You can always count on a large portion of eggs, sausage and bacon on group breakfasts.

Then there was going out to a restaurant that your friend recommends.  When you go to a place like Animal and see what their menu offers, it’s hard not to cheat at least a little bit.  Overall I think I did alright at that meal.

  • The Ugly

The best part is there is no ugly.  I won’t lie, this past weekend my wife Stacy and I went out to a Mexican restaurant and got nachos and burritos.  And I treated myself to an ice cream sandwich.  But on Monday it was back to business. Eggs for breakfast, oops another burrito for lunch, and steak for dinner.  So it looks like I need to make sure to rope in those burritos.

  • What’s next

I’ve focused a lot on weight loss and conditioning since I started crossfit this summer, and since starting paleo things have really kicked into high gear.  I think that I want to shift gears a little bit and concentrate on strength for a while.  With winter coming, it’s probably a good idea anyway.  So I am going to continue with a modified paleo diet including dairy.    Over the past month I have been replacing milk with either almond milk or coconut milk.  I enjoy both of these, so they may remain in my diet to an extent, but I will be re-introducing milk to my diet, and probably a casein shake before bed as well.  I haven’t decided yet if I am going to jump back into the world of post-workout whey protein shakes or not.  I may evaluate that on a day by day basis.

I am however going to continue to keep corn and other grains out of my diet as much as I can.

The key for Stacy and I has been RECIPES! I tend to cook by just throwing ingredients together and seeing what works.  Stacy is the opposite, she wants a recipe to follow.  The more variety we can get from finding new paleo recipes the better.  That’s why we ordered this paleo recipe book.  There are also lots of great sites on the web like primal-palate.com, and others.  Please post links to comments for us to share!

 

Paleo Progress report – Day 14!

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So as of tonight I am two full weeks into my strict paleo diet. So far so good on both how I’m feeling, and some other things too. First I’ll get to the results of the scale. I’ve been weighing myself daily for a few months now, long before I started the paleo diet, and long before I started exercising regularly again.

Paleo 14 day progress by weight

My daily weight and 7 day moving average

In the graph above, the blue wavy line is my daily weight. I weigh myself every single morning as soon as I roll out of bed. The scale is right next to the toilet, so after I empty my bladder, I step on the scale. Even with this consistent method of measuring, you can see that my weight fluctuates greatly. To help reduce the variability of the daily weight, I have added my 7 day average weight, which smooths things out a bit, but you can see that there are fluctuations as much as 7 pounds up and down within 2 days of each other.

The half green background that starts in July is when I started Crossfit. When I first began, I was going twice a week and trying to figure out how to balance Crossfit, work and grad school. Over time I started regularly making 3-4 times a week, and now I go between 4 and 6 times per week. The full green background is when I started Paleo 14 days ago. As you can see, the results so far have been great. I’ve lost about 10-11 pounds so far.

Now, if I had started it on a low point, instead of a high point, maybe I would have been down 4-5 pounds. We’ll never know, because I didn’t think about it, I just went for it. Along with the weight, I’ve also lost 3/4″ in my waist.

Next up I want to cover the challenges, cheats and mistakes I have made so far. I’ve only made one mistake really that I should have caught. One Monday night I had class after work, but I thought it would be a short one, and planned on eating dinner after it. When the class ran until 8 p.m. and the professor wasn’t done, I went to the vending machine on our break. Obviously vending machines aren’t a bastion of paleo food, but they did have beef jerky. I figured that would be my best bet to hold me over until dinner. After eating half of the bag(it was pretty small bag) I realized that the beef jerky had high fructose corn syrup. BUMMER.

dr. pepper and almond milk in the fridge

This soda has been in the fridge since before I started paleo.

As for cheats, the only thing I have cheated on is my sneaking protein powders post-workout. I ordered a new mix from true protein just before starting this(I modeled it after the Progenex formula), and a few times I have snuck a little powder in when I get home if I think it’s going to be a while until I can make breakfast or dinner is ready. For context, I have probably done this 2 or 3 times over the past 2 weeks. In general, I am letting go from my “addiction” to post-workout shakes, and trusting in the paleo meals for my protein. As you can see in the photo above, I’ve had a soda sitting in the fridge for the entire two weeks so there is plenty of opportunity to give in and cheat, but I am holding strong.

Speaking of supplements, I have really reduced what I had been taking. I rarely take my multivitamin anymore, I definitely never take pre-workout white flood anymore, and I stopped taking the creatine supplement I had because it has maltodextrin in it. I ordered some cheap creatine monohydrate to take in it’s place, but it hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve thought about resuming my casein powder shakes before bed, but so far I haven’t. I’ll probably wait until the 30 days is over so I can evaluate that independently, before deciding if I want to mix that into the program or not.

Then there are the challenges. Before I started paleo I knew the importance of a good breakfast. Even still, one of the hardest things for me was to figure out when to eat it, and what to eat, given that I worked out at 7 a.m., and still needed to get ready for work afterwards. On many days I just didn’t eat breakfast, instead having the post-workout shake, and holding off until lunch. I came to the realization that, barring an important meeting, I can always take a little extra time in the morning to make and eat breakfast, and get to work at a reasonable time. It might be 15 minutes later than before, but I can make up for that 15 minutes, where as I couldn’t make up for the missed meal.

The next challenge is lunch options. I am starting to run thin. My first week I hit the Whole Foods buffet almost every day. The next week I hit Chipotle for a steak bowl with guacamole, but no rice or beans. Luckily Apple has a great cafeteria with tons of options that I can make some great paleo meals out of. But I feel like I have reached the limit on choices, and I think thats due to a lack of creativity on my end. I know there have to be more options out there for paleo lunches.

Now for the things I think I am doing right. Documentation! I am taking a photo of every meal. If you don’t believe me look at my Tumblr. I usually post every meal there with some commentary on the ingredients and other nonsense. Another thing that has helped is finding recipes ahead of time. Since Stacy is home most days, she can prepare everything for dinner with the needed ingredients from the recipes we find online. Speaking of Stacy, that is another big help. When your spouse is also eating paleo, it makes things a lot easier around the house.

I think the last thing to cover is how I feel. Overall I feel really, REALLY good. One of the first things I noticed was I wasn’t waking up with sore knees. Before I would notice my soreness as soon as I walked down the stairs in the morning. That feeling is very much reduced since starting paleo. I guess you can call me a believer on the anti-inflammatory benefits of the diet. Secondly, and this took me a while to realize, was the amount of time I spent hungry was much less. Over the past few years I have been the epitome of the guy who is ready to eat lunch at 11:30 a.m. every day. Starting the day with a solid breakfast, really does keep me full until lunch time, which gives me the flexibility to eat it whenever I want to. The same goes for the afternoons. I’m no longer dying of hunger around 4 p.m. and thinking only about dinner. It’s amazing how much removing sugars from your diet, and replacing them with slower digesting foods can improve your hunger situation.

So I think that’s it. Full speed ahead. Any questions? Let me know in the comments.

Starting day 5, the weekend was a challenge

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I just finished breakfast for day 5, some eggs, bacon and broccoli. Yesterday was probably the biggest challenge so far, but it wasn’t that difficult. My Sunday’s usually consist for running a 5K in the morning, and then watching football all day with beer and snacks. I ran the 5K, but then limited my intake to paleo foods. No beer, just water and almond milk. No snacks, just spaced out paleo meals. It was hardest because we didn’t have any concrete plans of what and when to eat. That’s something I have really come to learn to value of. Have a plan and execute it.

So far I feel really good. No loss of energy from not eating the carbs and sugars. This morning’s workout went really well. I made a new PR on front squats by 30 pounds more than my previous best. And then I put in a really strong effort on the WOD: 100 thrusters at 65# for time. But with 3 pullups every minute on the minute. My time was 12:43.

I’ll give another update later in the week on what I’ve been eating and how I’m feeling.

New Tim Ferriss book – The Four Hour Body

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Tim Ferris has just announced the details of his new book on his blog. For those not familiar with Tim, he wrote The Four Hour Workweek, a guide for taking your full-time job, convincing your employer to let you work part, and using that time to travel, see the world, and create a business with auto-generating revenue that will allow you to quit your original job all together, all while continuing to travel.

Sound to good to be true? I don’t blame you, but the plays are straight from Tim’s experience. The newest version is expanded with more examples of people doing just what Tim says.

Here is the back cover description of the book. I’ve already pre-ordered it.

THINNER, BIGGER, FASTER, STRONGER… which 150 pages will you read?

Is it possible to:
Reach your genetic potential in 6 months?
Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours?
Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing?

Indeed, and much more. This is not just another diet and fitness book.

The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. From Olympic training centers to black-market laboratories, from Silicon Valley to South Africa, Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, fixated on one life-changing question:

For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results?

Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women.

From the gym to the bedroom, it’s all here, and it all works.

YOU WILL LEARN (in less than 30 minutes each):

- How to lose those last 5-10 pounds (or 100+ pounds) with odd combinations of food and safe chemical cocktails.
- How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends)
- How to increase fat-loss 300% using temperature manipulation
- How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time
- How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
- How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
- How to triple testosterone, double sperm count, and (literally) have sex like a porn star
- How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks
- How to reverse permanent injuries
- How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months
- How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 50 topics covered, all with real-world experiments, many including more than 200 test subjects.

You don’t need better genetics or more discipline. You need immediate results that compel you to continue.

That’s exactly what The 4-Hour Body delivers.

Barbells for Boobs – Fundraiser

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On October 30th I will be participating in a fundraiser called “Barbells for Boobs” to raise money for Mammograms in Action at my CrossFit gym.

Mammograms In Action‘s mission is to provide funding for qualified women who need screening and/or diagnostic procedures in the prevention of breast cancer. By supporting MIA you help low-income and uninsured women.

The fundraiser event itself is named Amazing Grace because the main workout is known as “Grace.” The workout is 30 clean and jerks for time. I’ve embedded a youtube video of one of the best performances I’ve seen of Grace performed.

If you are interested in sponsoring me in the fundraiser, get in touch. I don’t know what the easiest method of collecting donations would be, but I’m sure we can work something out.

Product Review: Vibram Five Fingers Trek Sport

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So a few months ago I wrote an update about how I wanted to run more. Or at least I think I did. Anyways, I’ve been running more. Around the same time I remembered how I had read on Tim Ferriss’ blog about Vibram five fingers and thought what better time to try a new style of running shoe then when I was going to start running. So a few weekends ago, Stacy and I went over to Zombie Runner to try some on. Before I get into the review of these new model of five fingers, let me just say it’s definitely a good idea to get yourself sized before you purchase a pair of Vibrams. The fit is very important, and one foot is likely bigger than the other, so it’s important to make sure you get the proper size to ensure the best experience.

So at the store I tried on a whole bunch of different models of five fingers. I started with the classics, then moved on to Bikilas and KSOs. The staff was very helpful, and I was close to narrowing down my decision when the guy next to me almost exploded with excitement that a new model was available. He had talked to me about the different pairs he had, and the faults some of them had, and then showed me the Trek Sport model. He pointed out the toe reinforcement (more on that later) and the treads on the bottom. They looked like the perfect model for me, who planned to do mostly running, as opposed to walking, and some off-road/trail as well as road running.

Overview
The Trek Sports are not bulky, but are somewhat more rigid than a classic five finger. They are definitely much more sturdy than a classic model as well, but like I said, they accomplish this without adding “bulk.” Here is a picture of them from the top down:

Trek Sport black

 

One of the really nice design decisions that Vibram made on these was to make the top material mesh aka breathable. This is an improvement over the Bikila model which has a solid material across the top of the foot. Another design improvement over the Bikila is the strap, which is a wrap around model that not only goes across the top of the foot but also behind the heel forming a really snug fit between the foot and the shoe.

 

The Toes

When I was talking to the guy next to me in Zombie Runner one of the flaws he was quick to point out to me with Vibrams was the wear in the area on top of the toe. The classics he was currently wearing showed a hole forming on his big toe, and he told me they were 6 months old with some moderate running. Given that he had multiple pairs of Vibrams, I took that as a warning. He did show me that they realized this problem and improved on it with the Bikila design adding reinforcement to this area. But the Classic and the Trek didn’t have this improvement. I just so happened to be in luck that the newly released Trek Sport model was in stock, had just been released that week and wouldn’t you know it, had the toe reinforcements.

Trek Sport toe close up

 

The Sole

Trek Sport sole

 

Here is what really was impressed with. I ran around the store in most of the models that Zombie Runner had, and I was concerned that going from standard running shoes, so something with such a light sole would really be too drastic of a change for me. Luckily, the Trek Sport has a (somewhat) sturdy sole. It’s definitely not a running shoe like experience, but it also provides some grip and protection when running on trails. While it is sturdy by comparison to other Vibrams, it still allows for much more toe flexibility than a typical running shoe, and completely enables the barefoot running style that I was hoping to learn.

 

Conclusion
I feel really lucky that I happened to walk into Zombie Runner on the exact day that I did. Considering all of the different models of five fingers that exist now, and how long I’ve been thinking about getting them, it took a fair amount of luck to wait until all of the design improvements and feature sets that I was looking for was available in one model. I’ve probably logged 20-25 miles already in my new Trek Sports and I’m totally satisfied with them. If you are looking for a durable (toe reinforcements!), sturdy (thicker sole than other models), grippy (is that a word?) model of Vibram five fingers, than the Trek Sport definitely wins out over the previous Trek, the Bikila and the Classic.

If you have any questions about the Trek Sport or running with five fingers, feel free to drop me an email or send me an @ message on twitter.