'The Talk'

After working several hours Saturday I meandered to the grocery store where I ran into one of my favorite clients in the produce aisle. The fact that I always enjoy talking to him had nothing at all to do with why I dove behind the avocados making the one in my hand look like a live grenade from which I heroically shielding shoppers. But peering into each other’s grocery basket was a level of intimacy we weren’t ready for. (Don’t act like you wouldn’t look. I’m a trainer – EVERYBODY looks into my grocery basket.) I was not prepared to explain why I had eight cans of coconut milk and I don’t think he was ready to account for everything in his basket either.

Yep, I took the spineless path and that made all the difference.

Coconut Milk has a lot of health benefits, in fact, but I wasn’t prepared to teach ‘Saturated Fat: 101’ before my breakfast on a Saturday in an isle of the grocery store. It was to his benefit, I’m sure, because I doubt it was a welcome conversation for him either. I can be the queen of weenie when it comes to dodging conversations about the complexities of health when I have other things to do.

I get mad at myself for dodging those conversations because we’re a world of 80%ers –‘ almost there’ with our nutrition, ‘sorta’ got the exercise thing, ‘ mostly’ getting a full night of sleep - and that monstrous thing that robs us of our vitality might be lurking in the 20%. So if I’m going to help people, I need to poke around in my clients 20% like it’s the junk drawer to find that random key that unlocks something important. Often it unlocks what we’re all trying to grab a hold of: Energy, exuberance, performance. Mine can be just as hard to find so you can imagine what it’s like for me to keep hold of my own stuff while I sort through everybody else’s. It’s certainly not an easy task in the produce isle with an armload of coconut milk and one bruised avocado.

So I've had to wonder in all these years of dodging and weaving, what it would be like to have a bunch of professionals available to answer some of the most common but complex questions, especially the ones I have no earthly clue about. I’ve sometimes sent clients on a quest for information but our health care system can be a bit hard to navigate, confusing and time consuming. And, go figure, it’s the fatigued and irritable clients who need answers most that get tired of the process fastest. If, however, I could pick one afternoon to sort through common issues in a CSI kinda way, I could then courageously shop in public and bruise fewer avocados.

So that’s my mission. I’ve assembled a bunch of amazing people to talk at CrossFit Eastside on Sunday, September 30th from 2:30p to 4:30p about fatigue, pain/inflammation and mood disorders. Why these topics? Oh, I don’t know, have you talked to you lately? We’ll also touch on things like sleep, caffeine, weight management, food sourcing, etc. Jennifer Adler, Dr. Ladd Carlston, Dr. Randip Singh, and Dr. Christina Demopulos want your questions answered as badly as I do because they’re just as passionate about what they do and they don’t like hiding in the produce aisle either. The way we’re planning on having this conversation will help you see that there's more than one way to address a common problem. In some ways, that will be liberating and in others, a little vexing. Either way, a huge eye-opener. I promise.

Did I mention that we’re doing this for free? It’s mostly because we really want to help and only partly because, once you’re all better, we'll have a chance to talk about something else.