The Albertson’s in Green Lake finally succumbed to whatever terminal illness was eating it alive. Before it did, I ducked in once or twice on urgent errands only. Its funk felt contagious, and the folks I saw shopping generally looked as if they’d already been infected. I think the entire place was built with asbestos, painted with lead paint and further enhanced by exotic molds growing under the bread isle next to wayward shopping lists on post-its. Yes, it was downright cursed and you always had the ‘I shouldn’t have ducked down this alley’ kind of feeling. Now that it’s closed, I’m not sure where you’d go to buy refreshments that wash away the taste of methadone or that feed the kind of munchies one tends to get after posting bail.
This grocery store was so desperate that you could buy cases of Top Ramen and have nearly enough money left over to treat the inevitable fatty liver at a walk in clinic. On my final errand, I stood in line worrying whether the crazy muttering man ready to check out in front of me would open fire armed with some concealed weapon and a clearly hostile relationship with the rest of humanity. If he did and I ended up being first to ‘check out’, would my friends always wonder if I had some sick bag-a-day Funyun habit that I hid from the world by getting my fix where nobody would ever recognize me. And even if they pried from my hands the emergency box of tampons that cleared my name, that Albertson’s would still be a stain on my obit.
The problem is, the overpopulated promenade that is Greenlake, will inevitably mourn the loss of a last-resort restroom in which to duck. That was likely the only other reason you might find yourself there. Back in the days when I was overhydrated, I loved stores like that where you could rush in and not have to ask for a code or walk around with a key attached to a garden gnome. Mind you, unlocked restrooms require precision hovering especially when you're peeing like a racehorse, but the hyperhydrated have given up the right to be particular.
Thank God I gave up the gallon a day habit many, many years ago. First, most of my water bottles were about as sanitary as sucking up street puddles with a bendy straw; second, my bladder was wussy and cried like a girl and third, leaving water bottles to stew in the car or under my arm so that the heated bottle would brew a carcinogenic tea seemed counterproductive to my whole ‘live long and prosper’ life plan with an ‘Into The Wild’ style retirement. Though I’m not overly religious, I also had a hard time buying the statement that when you’re thirsty it’s already too late. ‘The spiritual being of your choice’ did a fine job of orchestrated endocrine systems as well as all that other complex mush of guts, how the heck would thirst - something key to our survival - be the glaring bug in our operating systems? It was all an evil conspiracy by Evian was all I could figure.
In truth, we can link this right back to the Department of Agriculture who, if you haven’t noticed by now, is clearly trying to kill us. Big strapping corn-fed folks produce big piles of corn-fed poop (pause here until my sister stops laughing and we can move on) and we needed to do something to keep all that fiber moving. That monster bran muffin? Yeah, I’m going to need that with a large coffee – black, a liter of water and perhaps the lifestyle section of the paper.
If you read Omnivore’s Dilemma you know all the grain wreaks havoc on a cow’s digestive system and we’re not fairing much better with our Supersize McTurds. Though I live in a neighborhood where the next comment will start a hearty debate, our colons are not meant to accommodate such girth. Without all that fiber, nobody would be drinking all that water but now we’re being ravaged by both. And the reason there’s no book called ‘Pooping for Dummies’ is that after the urge hits, it all seems pretty straightforward with no powerpoint presentation necessary. Once you’ve flushed away the evidence, there's nobody around to tell you that you’ve been doing it wrong. We’re all pretty much operating under the assumption that all’s well that ends well, so to speak. Let’s all drink to that.
The water issue comes down to the chirping of the sound-byte ‘eight glasses’ without anyone really examining what that looks like. Konstantin Monastyrsky, who explains the issues with hyperhydration in the book Fiber Menace, breaks it down like this:
“A person weighing 70kg [155 lbs] requires at least ca. 1,750 ml [59 oz] per day. Of this amount ca. 650 ml is obtained by drinking, ca. 750 ml is the water contained in solid food, and ca. 350 ml is oxidation water. If more than this amount is consumed by a healthy person it is excreted by the kidneys, but in people with heart and kidney disease it may be retained.
As you can see, only 1,400 ml (47 oz), or about six glasses of water, are required every day from food and drink in almost equal proportion. The rest – the hidden oxidation water – is derived from the body’s internal chemistry.
Also, please note one crucial point: 1,750 ml is equal to about seven and a half glasses of water. This is where the initial round figures of “eight glasses” (1,890 ml) originally came from. What Human Physiology makes plain is that only 650 ml, or about two and a half glasses of water ‘is obtained by drinking’. Not eight, as we have been told to drink. Here’s another excerpt, this time from the Merck Manual of Diagnostic and Therapy, which is considered the gold-standard medical reference source and “must have” manual for any physician and researcher worth his or her salt. The Merck is even more miserly and specific:
. . . a daily intake of 700 to 800 ml is needed to match total water losses and remain in water balance . . .”
So if you’re walking around like Sponge Bob Damp Pants, what’s the impact other than your blunted IQ caused by the habitual reading of public bathroom graffiti and the potential Hantavirus you picked up off the doorknob? Here’s the laundry list provided by Monastyrsky:
Constipation: Potassium is a principal electrolyte, responsible for water retention inside human, bacterial, and plant cells. Overhydration causes the gradual loss of potassium through urine. Potassium deficiency, not shortage of water, is the principal reason behind stool dryness. The dry stool causes constipation because it is hard, abrasive and difficult to eliminate.
Kidney disease: It doesn’t take a medical degree to understand that kidneys pumping two, three, four or five times more water than normal will wear out faster. (The resources of our internal organs was determined by evolution long before Coke, Pepsi, and bud came on the scene.) Kidney stones in particular are associated with calcium deficiencies that may result from either a deficiency in one’s diet or from loss related to overhydration.
Urinary Disorders: Urinary infections are a common side effect of overhydration. With too many carbs and too much water in the system, urine alkalinity drops, acidity goes up, and the bladder and urethra become hospitable to pathogenic bacteria, which have an affinity for an acidic environment. Elevated glucose in the urine from too many dietary carbohydrates greatly stimulates these infections by providing plentiful feed for pathogens – a warm, dark bladder becomes just as hospitable to bacteria as a sweet-and-sour Petri dish.
Digestive disorders: the more you drink right before, during, or within the first few hours after a meal, the more difficult and time-consuming digestion becomes, because it requires correspondingly more hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes to bring their concentration up to the optimal level. The high volume of liquid in the stomach is prone to causing heartburn, which results from the spillage of acidified content into the unprotected esophagus. Indigestion, or delayed digestion (gastroparesis) causes gastritis – an inflammation of the stomach’s mucosa, which may eventually lead to ulcers. Chronic indigestion may also result from a chloride deficiency, especially when excess water consumption is accompanied by reduced or salt-free diet.
Digenerative Bone Disease: a loss of minerals in general, calcium in particular. Leads to bone softening – osteomalacia in adults, scoliosis in young adults, and rickets in children. (Osteoporosis is a bone tissue disease, and not a mineral deficiency condition, as mistakenly thought by most people, including most medical professionals. A loss of bone tissue – collagen that makes up the bone matrix – leads to bone brittleness, not softness, as from the loss of minerals.)
Premature aging: Facial bones determine our overall appearance and create a perception of age that no makeup or plastic surgery can hide. Because of a comparatively low physical load, facial bones experience the fastest loss of bone tissue and minerals.
Muscular disorders: Calcium and magnesium are key regulators of muscle contractions . A deficiency of these two minerals is broadly associated with fibromyalgia, fatigue, cramps, tremors, involuntary flinching, and many other conditions that affect not just body muscles, but also the eyes, blood vessels, intestines, heart, womb, and all other organs that are controlled by the muscles.
Unstable blood Pressure: Hypertension and hypotension naturally follow water binges. First, as the volume of blood plasma increases from absorbed water, blood pressure rises. As long as the kidneys remain healthy, the excess is quickly removed, along with the minerals. As the minerals become depleted, the volume of plasma goes down in order to maintain its chemical stability, and low blood pressure sets in.
Back in the 90's I had an 'incurable' disorder called IBS which this book covers in detail but that had nothing to do with why I read it. I wasn't searching for information about IBS because I completely recovered from the 'incurable' disorder over ten years ago by eliminating grains from my diet and reducing my water consumption. The doctors, on the other hand, had recommended that I eat refined carbohydrates for their 'digestability', drink plenty of water and take prescription drugs for the rest of my life. I wonder now if the drugs where made from corn and manufactured by the Department of Agriculture.
No it's not why I read the book. Frankly, aren't we all just looking just for a compelling page-turner that leaves us peering into toilet bowls for the rest of our days and dumping factoids about feces at dinner parties? Oh, that explains it.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
We'll See
Craig and I discussed the workout I was about to do as if we were deciphering a home-brew recipe for explosives we found in a last-page hit of a Google search. Details may have been lost in translation and there were skipped steps that only those who didn’t need a recipe would recognize. If you were eavesdropping, you’d peer over to count fingers and check for burn scars before you’d decide if we knew what we were doing. Pointless speculation on your part but then most speculation is pointless.
Our afternoons are all about ‘Exercise Lab’ and not ‘Exercise Theory’ and there’s a whole lot to be learned by just tossing ourselves into a workout to see what will happen. This isn’t navigating a summit bid for Everest where a corpsicle becomes a frozen monument to a miscalculation. In this case, my remains will not be a human speed bump in the path of smarter, fitter or luckier climbers on their way to the top. At worst there will be war stories that conclude with grimaces and haunting memories. “Yeah, that? Don’t do that,” I’d say emphatically, flagging folks away from the scrawled formula on the white board.
Experience is handy here, especially since Craig and I actually have some, but there’s a whole lot of unexplored territory between my quest for world domination and this nagging shoulder injury. Even at this level of training, it’s tempting to do more of the same with comfortable adjustments that accommodate my limitations, but that ends up feeling a lot like I retired from competition to skate in the Icecapades. Nothing wrong with that but I’m a little too competitive for a comfy schedule filled with the kind of barbell jazzercise that makes me feel like I’ve been fed-exed to hell only to find it’s one big circuit of ‘Fight Gone Bad’.
It’s funny how an injury was the best thing to shake me loose from a routine I didn’t know that I had established. Now that I’ve gotten passed the ‘wishing on a star’ phase of ignoring things and waiting for fairy godmothers with magic elixirs, I’ve gotten down to the business of ‘screw this.’ There’s a lot that I can do other than more of the same. After all, didn’t ‘more of the same’ sort of get me into this mess? While I continue to heal, I’m off to explore all the areas marked ‘there be dragons’ on the fringes of my limited map of movement.
It’s no big surprise that injuries that worsen over time and repetition fall into the category of ‘overuse’ which, under different circumstances with better execution, would simply be called ‘practice.’ By the time I realized I was injured, it was my areas of ‘expertise’ that were my biggest joy and yet the source of searing, startle-me-awake pain. That presented me with an overwhelming opportunity to focus on all the stuff I never do and therefore have no real clue about in regards to my proficiency. Focused, that is, after a few sessions of hearty, dug-in ‘why-me’ style belly-aching.
As a trainer, this presents some interesting challenges in terms of writing workouts and sometimes I have to mix cocky self-assuredness with random guesswork like some day trader dealing in speculation. My new mantra has become “we’ll see” followed by a shrug. Weight either leaves the floor or it doesn’t, missed lifts either crash around me or they don’t and I either tear through something or get mired in the muck of a skill that needs work. Tasting every flavor of failure has become hugely amusing and so what? When did we become so significant about the success of every exercise and every movement that each workout gets graded by a complex point system like we’re competing for some figure skating title?
And here’s where the speculation comes in. I’ve been around CrossFit long enough now that folks who reveled in cavalier chaos are now trying to sneak in formulas and failsafes. We were once a bunch of try-anything mavericks and now, in a quest to one-up one another with results, we’re building in a lot of idle speculation. Don’t get me wrong, speculation is a natural part of the process. But just ask the stock broker how much it matters when he competes against a chimp every year to choose a portfolio and with the help of his vast expertise comes in second to the random pointing and squealing of his simian counterpart. Sometimes the most reasoned speculation offers nothing more than idle wheel-spinning.
You’d think we’d learn a lesson. When it comes to nutrition, we counted speculation as actual data and stuffed it down everybody’s throat until we all got fat. Looking back - if anybody ever bothers anymore - we speculated and discounted every bit of contrary data as an anomaly. One cart lap around the extra-wide isles of Costco on a Sunday afternoon should provide pounds of data that we’ve been doing things horribly wrong and yet greater than 60% of our population gets lumped together as some kind of statistical anomaly that can’t be counted because they supposedly don’t care enough about their health to eat less. Idle speculation on my part, but something doesn’t sound right with that theory.
Some of you missed the revolution in fitness when we unplugged ourselves from all the machines designed around our speculation. The nautilus equipment, the heart rate monitors, the VO2 max machines and everything Joe Weider tried to sell us between the pages of Muscle and Fitness had us so focused on the micromanagement of minutiae that we failed to notice that folks weren’t getting any fitter. It’s understandable. We were all wearing thongs at the time and I think we can all agree that they were distracting.
Before Weider, you seemed savvy if you knew the chest pad on the seated row wasn’t a back rest. After awhile, you couldn’t survive a conversation at the smoothie bar unless you could differentiate branched chain amino acids and said ‘Pecs and Tris’-day like it was another word for Tuesday. I remember being frequently tanned while not a muscle on me flexed unless I could name it. My body looked just like my big 80s hair – all puffy and shaped up front with obvious flat spots in places I couldn’t see in the mirror. I also remember that things ached and if you saw me when I wasn’t moving, I only sort of looked like I could play a sport.
CrossFit plucked us out of the monotony of periodization and the boring death march up the dumbbell rack in 2.5 pound increments. Now that CrossFit has been around for awhile though, I get the feeling sometimes that some folks are trying to Weider the hell out of it. Didn’t we already micromanage human health thanks to Weider’s empire of flexing goons and supplement swallowing lab rats? Now I’m beginning to hear a lot of ‘always/never’ arguments in my community about what works and it just makes me suspicious of still more speculation. Luckily I got hurt and it made me question where I was going with my training.
Glassman liberated us when he chalked up crude geometry and explained the black box – chaos goes in one end, sciency stuff happens and exceptional athletes spit out the other side. He made fun of the scientists in white lab coats waxing theoretical about exercise while sucking up resources trying to explain things. In the meantime, his monsters of metal manufactured sweat and proved ideas with outcomes. But instead of being content with their new found freedom, it seems that some coaches just had to tinker. They took apart their black boxes, they tried to understand the mechanisms, they pimped the gears, and they bragged about how much better there box was than anybody else’s. I was afraid I’d have to supplement mine with branched chain amino acids just to keep up. But isn’t this a new round of micromanagement where exercises get marked with a definitive ‘good’ or ‘bad’ stamp or placed in an arbitrary hierarchy? Isn’t that how we got swept away and strapped into apparatus in the first place?
If Grapefruit diets and Pec Decks could teach us anything other than how to weather heartburn and deal with shoulder instability, they would teach us that limiting our options often limits our results. Sometimes we’re so sure we have everything figured out that we fail to consider any conflicting data or look at our results objectively. In the end, getting injured was an opportunity to look at where I was lacking and what my weaknesses were. Now, I’m living, breathing and training in that space.
Our afternoons are all about ‘Exercise Lab’ and not ‘Exercise Theory’ and there’s a whole lot to be learned by just tossing ourselves into a workout to see what will happen. This isn’t navigating a summit bid for Everest where a corpsicle becomes a frozen monument to a miscalculation. In this case, my remains will not be a human speed bump in the path of smarter, fitter or luckier climbers on their way to the top. At worst there will be war stories that conclude with grimaces and haunting memories. “Yeah, that? Don’t do that,” I’d say emphatically, flagging folks away from the scrawled formula on the white board.
Experience is handy here, especially since Craig and I actually have some, but there’s a whole lot of unexplored territory between my quest for world domination and this nagging shoulder injury. Even at this level of training, it’s tempting to do more of the same with comfortable adjustments that accommodate my limitations, but that ends up feeling a lot like I retired from competition to skate in the Icecapades. Nothing wrong with that but I’m a little too competitive for a comfy schedule filled with the kind of barbell jazzercise that makes me feel like I’ve been fed-exed to hell only to find it’s one big circuit of ‘Fight Gone Bad’.
It’s funny how an injury was the best thing to shake me loose from a routine I didn’t know that I had established. Now that I’ve gotten passed the ‘wishing on a star’ phase of ignoring things and waiting for fairy godmothers with magic elixirs, I’ve gotten down to the business of ‘screw this.’ There’s a lot that I can do other than more of the same. After all, didn’t ‘more of the same’ sort of get me into this mess? While I continue to heal, I’m off to explore all the areas marked ‘there be dragons’ on the fringes of my limited map of movement.
It’s no big surprise that injuries that worsen over time and repetition fall into the category of ‘overuse’ which, under different circumstances with better execution, would simply be called ‘practice.’ By the time I realized I was injured, it was my areas of ‘expertise’ that were my biggest joy and yet the source of searing, startle-me-awake pain. That presented me with an overwhelming opportunity to focus on all the stuff I never do and therefore have no real clue about in regards to my proficiency. Focused, that is, after a few sessions of hearty, dug-in ‘why-me’ style belly-aching.
As a trainer, this presents some interesting challenges in terms of writing workouts and sometimes I have to mix cocky self-assuredness with random guesswork like some day trader dealing in speculation. My new mantra has become “we’ll see” followed by a shrug. Weight either leaves the floor or it doesn’t, missed lifts either crash around me or they don’t and I either tear through something or get mired in the muck of a skill that needs work. Tasting every flavor of failure has become hugely amusing and so what? When did we become so significant about the success of every exercise and every movement that each workout gets graded by a complex point system like we’re competing for some figure skating title?
And here’s where the speculation comes in. I’ve been around CrossFit long enough now that folks who reveled in cavalier chaos are now trying to sneak in formulas and failsafes. We were once a bunch of try-anything mavericks and now, in a quest to one-up one another with results, we’re building in a lot of idle speculation. Don’t get me wrong, speculation is a natural part of the process. But just ask the stock broker how much it matters when he competes against a chimp every year to choose a portfolio and with the help of his vast expertise comes in second to the random pointing and squealing of his simian counterpart. Sometimes the most reasoned speculation offers nothing more than idle wheel-spinning.
You’d think we’d learn a lesson. When it comes to nutrition, we counted speculation as actual data and stuffed it down everybody’s throat until we all got fat. Looking back - if anybody ever bothers anymore - we speculated and discounted every bit of contrary data as an anomaly. One cart lap around the extra-wide isles of Costco on a Sunday afternoon should provide pounds of data that we’ve been doing things horribly wrong and yet greater than 60% of our population gets lumped together as some kind of statistical anomaly that can’t be counted because they supposedly don’t care enough about their health to eat less. Idle speculation on my part, but something doesn’t sound right with that theory.
Some of you missed the revolution in fitness when we unplugged ourselves from all the machines designed around our speculation. The nautilus equipment, the heart rate monitors, the VO2 max machines and everything Joe Weider tried to sell us between the pages of Muscle and Fitness had us so focused on the micromanagement of minutiae that we failed to notice that folks weren’t getting any fitter. It’s understandable. We were all wearing thongs at the time and I think we can all agree that they were distracting.
Before Weider, you seemed savvy if you knew the chest pad on the seated row wasn’t a back rest. After awhile, you couldn’t survive a conversation at the smoothie bar unless you could differentiate branched chain amino acids and said ‘Pecs and Tris’-day like it was another word for Tuesday. I remember being frequently tanned while not a muscle on me flexed unless I could name it. My body looked just like my big 80s hair – all puffy and shaped up front with obvious flat spots in places I couldn’t see in the mirror. I also remember that things ached and if you saw me when I wasn’t moving, I only sort of looked like I could play a sport.
CrossFit plucked us out of the monotony of periodization and the boring death march up the dumbbell rack in 2.5 pound increments. Now that CrossFit has been around for awhile though, I get the feeling sometimes that some folks are trying to Weider the hell out of it. Didn’t we already micromanage human health thanks to Weider’s empire of flexing goons and supplement swallowing lab rats? Now I’m beginning to hear a lot of ‘always/never’ arguments in my community about what works and it just makes me suspicious of still more speculation. Luckily I got hurt and it made me question where I was going with my training.
Glassman liberated us when he chalked up crude geometry and explained the black box – chaos goes in one end, sciency stuff happens and exceptional athletes spit out the other side. He made fun of the scientists in white lab coats waxing theoretical about exercise while sucking up resources trying to explain things. In the meantime, his monsters of metal manufactured sweat and proved ideas with outcomes. But instead of being content with their new found freedom, it seems that some coaches just had to tinker. They took apart their black boxes, they tried to understand the mechanisms, they pimped the gears, and they bragged about how much better there box was than anybody else’s. I was afraid I’d have to supplement mine with branched chain amino acids just to keep up. But isn’t this a new round of micromanagement where exercises get marked with a definitive ‘good’ or ‘bad’ stamp or placed in an arbitrary hierarchy? Isn’t that how we got swept away and strapped into apparatus in the first place?
If Grapefruit diets and Pec Decks could teach us anything other than how to weather heartburn and deal with shoulder instability, they would teach us that limiting our options often limits our results. Sometimes we’re so sure we have everything figured out that we fail to consider any conflicting data or look at our results objectively. In the end, getting injured was an opportunity to look at where I was lacking and what my weaknesses were. Now, I’m living, breathing and training in that space.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Goal!
There. I posted.
As you will quickly see, this article started when I returned from San Francisco before Christmas and before "life got lifey" as Aaron Hendon would say. Yes there were numerous valid reasons for the delay in posting but none mattered more than the writer's block that I feared would metastasize. I was convinced it formed a life-threatening tumor on the day that I searched desperately for a word in conversation and then just let my sentence awkwardly dribble away. It turned out to be nothing more than day three of a low, low carbohydrate experiment that temporarily turned me into a knuckle-dragging mouth breather. I did manage to finish 'Good Calories, Bad Calories,' which I plan to share with you soon. I celebrated with a text to Craig that said, "I finished the book. In truth, I'm just better than you." We aren't competitive at all.
A message to all mall waifs who possess a mighty stare-down in spite of their precarious plant on spike heels: Pause to ponder. I happen to wear full-contact footwear and I’m sturdy as heck. In my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class, I spent my first couple of years face up on the floor thanks to the very efficient single leg sweep of Seattle SWAT officers which means I’m slightly better skilled at staying upright when challenged these days. Though, under most conditions I’m a more enlightening soul, I’m willing to cash in Karma on occasion, long enough to drop a shoulder. I’ll sincerely atone for your bruised ass later by way of a donation thoughtfully dropped in a bell ringer’s bucket on the way out. In the meantime you might want to consider that, attitude aside; you’re far too flimsy to hold the whole walkway. When faced with somebody built from the ground up of raw meat, you might want to stand down. It’s a thought.
Yes, I did spend four days in a mall remembering why I’ve spent 360 days avoiding it. Exhausted, I went home and mixed up endless batches of homemade chocolate balls which are healthy by the loosest definition to give as gifts instead. So nothing useful happened in my mall excursions other than finding the personal space issue I thought I’d misplaced. I’ve neatly spackled joint compound over my neurosis so that Michael is the only person who knows about and exploits my desire for a little breathing room. While he hovers as if planning to touch down on the top of my head when the wind shifts, I’ll screech “Yes, Organic Milk is good for you!!” agreeing to anything he says if it means he’ll back the truck up. So you can understand that grappling for me is just one big epic struggle to recapture personal space.
In a mall and bound for sales racks, the galloping of clothes horses willing to jump me like a water obstacle, makes me edgy. I cycle through video game scenarios where I plow forward stiff-arming and clothes-lining faceless zombies. The carcasses pile and then neatly disintegrate while a punk rock version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ trickles from sound systems over and over again. I concentrate on finding the right button sequence that allows me to sweep one of them up, swing them in a circle by their Ugs and surround myself with at least an average 5’4” (plus the length of full arm extension) of sought-after serenity. It’s not an image meant for the front of Christmas cards but then I’m not Christian and I’m getting swept into the Christmas conga line of commerce for lack of a substitute holiday and any creativity on my part. I do, however, appreciate this time of year as an occasion to acknowledge the people around me, ponder the path I’ve taken and plot a course for next year that includes enough personal development to refrain from senseless mall outbursts.
Like a forgotten walk-on part in the Nutcracker, I hit all my marks in the role of ‘the puppet of commerce’ only to be dragged next into January’s annual accounting of revenue, progress, and personal growth that some of us call ‘resolutions’. Even if we hadn’t decided that a new year meant new resolve, a season of extravagant feasting and spending would naturally necessitate a certain recalibration. Generally our resolutions simply reflect how far we got yanked off course by shiny decorations and blinking lights. Following are some reflections of the year and goals for the months to come.
Balls to the Wall
Nowadays a workout would have to end with a disqualifying run to the nearest ER for me to fail to finish a workout but it wasn’t that long ago that I was still fishing around my brain for weasely ways out when things started to go very, very badly. Though the conversation to quit popped up a lot, my one and only ‘DNF’ came when I walked out after 17 of 25 wall ball shots in the final element of a chipper. I caved to the conversation in my head which kept daring me to quit and end my suffering. That and I just hated wall ball a lot. In spite of all the coaching cues, I kept throwing the damn ball instead of “jumping it up” which made the effort inaccurate and exhausting. After years of back pain, my upper body and lower body rode the same tour bus but kept their own solo acts. My upper body was the obvious headliner for no other reason than my body didn’t trust anything below S1 – the source of all my inflammation and pain.
Oh, JUMP the ball up. Got it. When I finally convinced my two halves to share a marquee the long ignored coaching cue finally made sense. Today, when I give the same cue to a client, I stare them in the eye like they’re autistic simply to avoid the legacy. I look for some amount of acknowledgement if not in their movements at least in their face.
With that, Wall Ball became far less miserable but I still had the stigma of #17. Don’t get me wrong, walking out taught me to never again listen to my brain which, by the way is spineless. Now whatever whiney noises it makes I just hum along to it like a workout soundtrack. I don’t think I really retired number 17 until July 6th when I finished Karen – 150 wall ball shots for time – in 6:13. ‘Caswallawn’ and ‘Mars’ got a chance to go balls to the wall on their first dance with Karen and it was memorable for them too. When asked about personal victories, Caswallawn said, “KAREN – Cause I never ever thought I could do it.” He also happens to have set goals for bettering his time next year.
Mars has memories of Karen, too. “It was a major workout with a great deal of intensity. I am not sure if it is the one that I am most proud of but it sticks out in my mind.” For me, it was Mars epic battle with Murph. It made him late for dinner but he finished it with assisted pull-ups and the will to see it through.
War Veterans
Andraste finished Murph this year too but then she’s always been one determined mother. No, I mean the mom kind of mother. When asked what she was most proud of this year she said, “FGB (CrossFit’s Fight Gone Bad Benefit for Prostate Cancer) and Lt Murph - it just felt good to finish them both! It also felt like such an accomplishment to make it through them - even if they were modified.”
On Veteran’s Day, Andraste’s husband attended the morning class and intentionally omitted any information about his workout. When she came in later, it was an ambush but she marched through it like a good soldier.
“Participating in the Fight Gone Bad prostrate fundraiser. earning my bronze medal for the Presidential Fitness Program. (I just got it and my certificate!),” Andraste said, not only meeting her goals but medaling.
Pulling Power
This is Seattle. We live in fowl weather on top of fault lines, we’re surrounded by water and there are clots of traffic at the threat of every unnecessary holiday Seattle Center is willing to hoot about. You can imagine my surprise the first time I failed to account for the ‘Opening of Boat Season’ back-ups or whatever ‘Hug a Wiccan’ holiday our overwhelming correctness compels us to observe. For those of you too busy whooping in anticipation of ‘Tree Pruning Day’ to notice that a 45 minute crawl over a bridge does not bode well for actual catastrophic forecasts. Consider that you will likely be sitting inches from where you started when the impending doom commences. Besides the bottled water and the batteries, being able to lift your own body weight might actually come in handy in cases of emergency. While in truth, being strong enough to wrestle away other people’s water and batteries then fleeing the scene faster is handiest of all, that’s a whole other conversation. Either way, let’s say that Pull-ups are a handy tool of Darwinian fitness and though they seem to be a common goal, they don’t inspire everyone in quite the same way.
Morrigan sounded least moved by the prospect. In listing her goals she responded, “Pull-ups probably sigh,” while Turris, whose main goal centers around earning a black belt in Akido, threw it in for my sake when he answered, “Pull ups? (this one is for youJ )” Andraste put it on her list, “(at least) one pull up, and real push ups and a jump to support on the rings. a lot of the upper body stuff - upper back and arms, etc. My baby (ok toddler) weighs over 40 pounds now and that's a lot to haul up a flight of stairs!”
I originally set a target of forty pull-ups but scaled it back to “some relatively impressive number that falls just one pull-up short of necessitating shoulder surgery.” Since, as far as I know, my case is still non-surgical – check! On September 5th, I secured 27 but more importantly the pull-ups helped me salvage a 19:14 Angie that my bum shoulder was threatening to destroy via the push-ups.
Jumping for Joy
Considering we couldn’t outrun a single natural predator even in our Nike Shox with a gullet of Gatorade and a sizeable head start, there were a lot of things that would have kept us up at night had we not managed to eliminate, tame or marginalize most of the things we had sound reasons to fear. You’d think then that we’d be well-rested. Now things that actually threaten our lives like white flour and sugar get joyfully added to our breakfast after a fitful night’s sleep pondering budgetary math problems and performance appraisals. When it comes to the question of fear then, I never know what boogie men are popping out of people’s closets.
Andraste pointed out her little monsters right off the bat. “Seriously, it's the pull up that scares me the most. And then of course, doing box jumps with the new boxes - the height scares me!” she said. I attest that it’s not the height that scares her but the fact that the platform is narrow. If I wasn’t the proud owner of the sturdiest ankles known to man, I’d be worried too.
You hear stories of people getting talked out of jumping but Mars, Like Andraste, needed a little coaxing up not down. We were both worried the day he tackled the box and conquered that fear. It was no surprise to me that that he answered, “Box jumps. That was an amazing morning. You helped me push through. Wow.” He’s been training for some time now but the only jumping he was doing was for cover. It’s something I understood, as well. Years ago I secreted myself in the gym with a Rebook step and had to build up to the height one riser at a time. People who have had back issues or have spent too much time running will tend to have sluggish hip flexors. Once I saw a little pep in Mars hip drive I pounced on the chance to get him jumping but I was just as nervous as he was because, frankly, you’ll either make it or you won’t and there’s nothing I can do as a trainer other than bandage bleeding shins.
As for me, if I had the cash I’d gladly pay a surrogate to shave two seconds off my 4:01 Fran time. Though I wrote ‘sub four Fran’ as a goal, it scares me whenever I think about it. The shoulder rehab is a handy excuse but I doubt it would be a factor given all the work I’ve done to get it moving again. But really, besides pristine shoulder health I’d be willing to list a sizeable retirement account, a really good hair day and a solar eclipse as requirements if it will keep me from doing that workout anytime soon. Yes, it’s wussy, and yes, I will get over it but probably not until a solar eclipse on a really good hair day.
As you will quickly see, this article started when I returned from San Francisco before Christmas and before "life got lifey" as Aaron Hendon would say. Yes there were numerous valid reasons for the delay in posting but none mattered more than the writer's block that I feared would metastasize. I was convinced it formed a life-threatening tumor on the day that I searched desperately for a word in conversation and then just let my sentence awkwardly dribble away. It turned out to be nothing more than day three of a low, low carbohydrate experiment that temporarily turned me into a knuckle-dragging mouth breather. I did manage to finish 'Good Calories, Bad Calories,' which I plan to share with you soon. I celebrated with a text to Craig that said, "I finished the book. In truth, I'm just better than you." We aren't competitive at all.
A message to all mall waifs who possess a mighty stare-down in spite of their precarious plant on spike heels: Pause to ponder. I happen to wear full-contact footwear and I’m sturdy as heck. In my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class, I spent my first couple of years face up on the floor thanks to the very efficient single leg sweep of Seattle SWAT officers which means I’m slightly better skilled at staying upright when challenged these days. Though, under most conditions I’m a more enlightening soul, I’m willing to cash in Karma on occasion, long enough to drop a shoulder. I’ll sincerely atone for your bruised ass later by way of a donation thoughtfully dropped in a bell ringer’s bucket on the way out. In the meantime you might want to consider that, attitude aside; you’re far too flimsy to hold the whole walkway. When faced with somebody built from the ground up of raw meat, you might want to stand down. It’s a thought.
Yes, I did spend four days in a mall remembering why I’ve spent 360 days avoiding it. Exhausted, I went home and mixed up endless batches of homemade chocolate balls which are healthy by the loosest definition to give as gifts instead. So nothing useful happened in my mall excursions other than finding the personal space issue I thought I’d misplaced. I’ve neatly spackled joint compound over my neurosis so that Michael is the only person who knows about and exploits my desire for a little breathing room. While he hovers as if planning to touch down on the top of my head when the wind shifts, I’ll screech “Yes, Organic Milk is good for you!!” agreeing to anything he says if it means he’ll back the truck up. So you can understand that grappling for me is just one big epic struggle to recapture personal space.
In a mall and bound for sales racks, the galloping of clothes horses willing to jump me like a water obstacle, makes me edgy. I cycle through video game scenarios where I plow forward stiff-arming and clothes-lining faceless zombies. The carcasses pile and then neatly disintegrate while a punk rock version of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ trickles from sound systems over and over again. I concentrate on finding the right button sequence that allows me to sweep one of them up, swing them in a circle by their Ugs and surround myself with at least an average 5’4” (plus the length of full arm extension) of sought-after serenity. It’s not an image meant for the front of Christmas cards but then I’m not Christian and I’m getting swept into the Christmas conga line of commerce for lack of a substitute holiday and any creativity on my part. I do, however, appreciate this time of year as an occasion to acknowledge the people around me, ponder the path I’ve taken and plot a course for next year that includes enough personal development to refrain from senseless mall outbursts.
Like a forgotten walk-on part in the Nutcracker, I hit all my marks in the role of ‘the puppet of commerce’ only to be dragged next into January’s annual accounting of revenue, progress, and personal growth that some of us call ‘resolutions’. Even if we hadn’t decided that a new year meant new resolve, a season of extravagant feasting and spending would naturally necessitate a certain recalibration. Generally our resolutions simply reflect how far we got yanked off course by shiny decorations and blinking lights. Following are some reflections of the year and goals for the months to come.
Balls to the Wall
Nowadays a workout would have to end with a disqualifying run to the nearest ER for me to fail to finish a workout but it wasn’t that long ago that I was still fishing around my brain for weasely ways out when things started to go very, very badly. Though the conversation to quit popped up a lot, my one and only ‘DNF’ came when I walked out after 17 of 25 wall ball shots in the final element of a chipper. I caved to the conversation in my head which kept daring me to quit and end my suffering. That and I just hated wall ball a lot. In spite of all the coaching cues, I kept throwing the damn ball instead of “jumping it up” which made the effort inaccurate and exhausting. After years of back pain, my upper body and lower body rode the same tour bus but kept their own solo acts. My upper body was the obvious headliner for no other reason than my body didn’t trust anything below S1 – the source of all my inflammation and pain.
Oh, JUMP the ball up. Got it. When I finally convinced my two halves to share a marquee the long ignored coaching cue finally made sense. Today, when I give the same cue to a client, I stare them in the eye like they’re autistic simply to avoid the legacy. I look for some amount of acknowledgement if not in their movements at least in their face.
With that, Wall Ball became far less miserable but I still had the stigma of #17. Don’t get me wrong, walking out taught me to never again listen to my brain which, by the way is spineless. Now whatever whiney noises it makes I just hum along to it like a workout soundtrack. I don’t think I really retired number 17 until July 6th when I finished Karen – 150 wall ball shots for time – in 6:13. ‘Caswallawn’ and ‘Mars’ got a chance to go balls to the wall on their first dance with Karen and it was memorable for them too. When asked about personal victories, Caswallawn said, “KAREN – Cause I never ever thought I could do it.” He also happens to have set goals for bettering his time next year.
Mars has memories of Karen, too. “It was a major workout with a great deal of intensity. I am not sure if it is the one that I am most proud of but it sticks out in my mind.” For me, it was Mars epic battle with Murph. It made him late for dinner but he finished it with assisted pull-ups and the will to see it through.
War Veterans
Andraste finished Murph this year too but then she’s always been one determined mother. No, I mean the mom kind of mother. When asked what she was most proud of this year she said, “FGB (CrossFit’s Fight Gone Bad Benefit for Prostate Cancer) and Lt Murph - it just felt good to finish them both! It also felt like such an accomplishment to make it through them - even if they were modified.”
On Veteran’s Day, Andraste’s husband attended the morning class and intentionally omitted any information about his workout. When she came in later, it was an ambush but she marched through it like a good soldier.
“Participating in the Fight Gone Bad prostrate fundraiser. earning my bronze medal for the Presidential Fitness Program. (I just got it and my certificate!),” Andraste said, not only meeting her goals but medaling.
Pulling Power
This is Seattle. We live in fowl weather on top of fault lines, we’re surrounded by water and there are clots of traffic at the threat of every unnecessary holiday Seattle Center is willing to hoot about. You can imagine my surprise the first time I failed to account for the ‘Opening of Boat Season’ back-ups or whatever ‘Hug a Wiccan’ holiday our overwhelming correctness compels us to observe. For those of you too busy whooping in anticipation of ‘Tree Pruning Day’ to notice that a 45 minute crawl over a bridge does not bode well for actual catastrophic forecasts. Consider that you will likely be sitting inches from where you started when the impending doom commences. Besides the bottled water and the batteries, being able to lift your own body weight might actually come in handy in cases of emergency. While in truth, being strong enough to wrestle away other people’s water and batteries then fleeing the scene faster is handiest of all, that’s a whole other conversation. Either way, let’s say that Pull-ups are a handy tool of Darwinian fitness and though they seem to be a common goal, they don’t inspire everyone in quite the same way.
Morrigan sounded least moved by the prospect. In listing her goals she responded, “Pull-ups probably sigh,” while Turris, whose main goal centers around earning a black belt in Akido, threw it in for my sake when he answered, “Pull ups? (this one is for youJ )” Andraste put it on her list, “(at least) one pull up, and real push ups and a jump to support on the rings. a lot of the upper body stuff - upper back and arms, etc. My baby (ok toddler) weighs over 40 pounds now and that's a lot to haul up a flight of stairs!”
I originally set a target of forty pull-ups but scaled it back to “some relatively impressive number that falls just one pull-up short of necessitating shoulder surgery.” Since, as far as I know, my case is still non-surgical – check! On September 5th, I secured 27 but more importantly the pull-ups helped me salvage a 19:14 Angie that my bum shoulder was threatening to destroy via the push-ups.
Jumping for Joy
Considering we couldn’t outrun a single natural predator even in our Nike Shox with a gullet of Gatorade and a sizeable head start, there were a lot of things that would have kept us up at night had we not managed to eliminate, tame or marginalize most of the things we had sound reasons to fear. You’d think then that we’d be well-rested. Now things that actually threaten our lives like white flour and sugar get joyfully added to our breakfast after a fitful night’s sleep pondering budgetary math problems and performance appraisals. When it comes to the question of fear then, I never know what boogie men are popping out of people’s closets.
Andraste pointed out her little monsters right off the bat. “Seriously, it's the pull up that scares me the most. And then of course, doing box jumps with the new boxes - the height scares me!” she said. I attest that it’s not the height that scares her but the fact that the platform is narrow. If I wasn’t the proud owner of the sturdiest ankles known to man, I’d be worried too.
You hear stories of people getting talked out of jumping but Mars, Like Andraste, needed a little coaxing up not down. We were both worried the day he tackled the box and conquered that fear. It was no surprise to me that that he answered, “Box jumps. That was an amazing morning. You helped me push through. Wow.” He’s been training for some time now but the only jumping he was doing was for cover. It’s something I understood, as well. Years ago I secreted myself in the gym with a Rebook step and had to build up to the height one riser at a time. People who have had back issues or have spent too much time running will tend to have sluggish hip flexors. Once I saw a little pep in Mars hip drive I pounced on the chance to get him jumping but I was just as nervous as he was because, frankly, you’ll either make it or you won’t and there’s nothing I can do as a trainer other than bandage bleeding shins.
As for me, if I had the cash I’d gladly pay a surrogate to shave two seconds off my 4:01 Fran time. Though I wrote ‘sub four Fran’ as a goal, it scares me whenever I think about it. The shoulder rehab is a handy excuse but I doubt it would be a factor given all the work I’ve done to get it moving again. But really, besides pristine shoulder health I’d be willing to list a sizeable retirement account, a really good hair day and a solar eclipse as requirements if it will keep me from doing that workout anytime soon. Yes, it’s wussy, and yes, I will get over it but probably not until a solar eclipse on a really good hair day.
Friday, December 21, 2007
'Bullshit' artist
The following was excerpted from an essay called 'Silly Bullshit' in 'Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training,' by Mark Rippetoe:
What is it that drives the dissemination of silly bullshit? The drive comes from the commercial interest (obviously) and ego (amazing!). Donna Smith could use the money; so can I, so I appreciate the motivation. The magazine people want you to keep buying them, and to buy from their advertisers, and if they make sure to hire writers that have ‘CSCS’ beside their names, they have covered their asses. The fine folks who bring you HipHop Abs, the Ab Roller, and Cortislim are counting on the fact that you will probably fail to do your homework. On the other hand, Dr. Mirkin probably isn’t in a jam for cash, so he just likes the idea of being a Fitness Expert in addition to a doctor (and, for all I know, maybe a very good one in his actual specialty). The orthopod who tells you that full squats are bad for the knees and they’ll stunt your growth, and that you need to just do lighter weights and use higher reps because “they do the same thing,” doesn’t expect you to pay him for this advice; he’s throwing it in for free. He knows he’s qualified because after all he is a doctor. The exercise science people have qualified themselves. And the media don’t care who’s qualified; they just need to fill 45 seconds.
The problem is simple. It is incumbent on you, yes You, to educate yourself to a sufficient extent that you are in a position to evaluate information issued from a position of authority. You are supposed to be able to recognize silly bullshit when you hear it. And I’m sorry if it’s hard to have to think all the time but the consequences of placing your responsibility to do so in the hands of others can result in a closet full of Thigh Masters, which will make it necessary to find somewhere else to hang your shirts – like on your Bowflex.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Lagging behind
When I was in college I spent bored afternoons sitting in the terminal at Logan airport with grounded feet and a soaring imagination. Really I should have been studying for my astronomy class which required extra diligence considering that spectroscopy bored me silly and Dr. Kamal’s incomprehensible Indian accent required a skill of rapid translation that I didn’t possess. In International Departures I was leaving all of that behind me and instead playing Margaret Mead solving mysteries of sociology such as why would any couple purposely wear matching track suits. At this point, if I ever marry, I’ve decided it will be the first Christmas present that I’ll buy my spouse (MY husband would think that was funny which might explain why such a man is so hard to find).
The mysteries just get more interesting as I recently sat next to a gentleman on a flight back to Seattle who managed to combine two classic haircuts – the Mullet and the Caesar – for a look uniquely his own. It’s clear that Caesar wouldn’t have sanctioned that though it had strong potential to scare an enemy. Such a puzzling choice would have dominated all my analytical processes had he not also chosen to wear flip flops with tube socks. The stimulus overload caused my cerebrum to crash into my cerebellum and I had to reboot. I was torn between building the case study and the cost of opening the Pandora’s Box of prattle. If you start chatting to your plane-mate, you have to be prepared to maintain the conversation for the full duration of the flight if he or she decides to keep keeping on. Barring the user-friendly and well-illustrated escape from the well-market exit door, there’s really no place else to go. In the long run, I’d really much rather make an interest-only payment on my ever accumulating sleep debt. This debt has only one useful side effect: when it causes what feels like jet-lag every day of the week, you really don’t feel jet lagged even after you’ve been prattled at cross-continent.
Jet lag is a particular challenge for many people this time of year when the misery of ‘lagging’ is added to the misery of awkward family gatherings that require a heightened readiness to pounce on your own internal edit switch. Thank goodness for Carl Ellison’s trip to Budapest in which he test drove the advice Dr. Singh gave during the talk in September. I’ll let Carl explain:
"Dr. Singh advised me to take 10 mg Melatonin at 4:00 a.m. destination time. I was planning to ease into Budapest time from Pacific over 5 days – maybe 1 or 2 time zones per day – leading up to taking off on Friday morning. I was delayed in that, so I took my first dose of Melatonin on Monday night at 7:00 pm Pacific (4:00 am Budapest). I puttered around and got in bed at about 8:00 pm. At midnight, my eyes were wide open. I was awake and ready to start my day. It never occurred to me that the circadian rhythm reset would happen that fast. So, for the rest of that week, I ran on Budapest time, more or less (lost some sleep in the process – partly from setting an alarm to wake me at 7:00 pm Pacific to take more Melatonin). I believe now (although I haven’t checked with Dr. Singh) that I should have taken only one dose – the day I was flying (or the night before, in this case).
"On the way back from Budapest to Seattle, I did that – took only one dose at 4:00 am Pacific time. I had just boarded the plane in Frankfurt for the leg to Washington Dulles – so I got a glass of water from the flight attendant and took the pills at about 13:00 Frankfurt time. I stayed away long enough to get the meal they served on the airplane – and then put on my eye shades and dozed some from Frankfurt to Dulles. This was max 5 hours of sleep – maybe 4. We changed at Dulles to a flight to Seattle and I didn’t sleep at all on that flight. When we landed in Seattle, it was about 9:30 pm and I felt as I usually do at 9:30 – not really tired but able to go to bed. I got into bed at about 11:00 pm – and had a normal night’s sleep.
"At both ends – Budapest and Seattle (on return) – I had no jet lag. Normally, I have terrible jet lag going East and minor jet lag going West. I’m sold. My thanks to Dr. Singh.”
Don’t try to skip the prep and opt for sleep aids. As this site cautions, ”Some people use sleeping tablets to try to alleviate jet lag. This is a dangerous approach as sleeping pills induce a comatose state with little or no natural body movement, and it is well known that prolonged immobility during flight can lead to fatal blood clots (deep vein thrombosis). This was reported as far back as 1988 in the Lancet, which said it was estimated "that over three years at Heathrow Airport, 18% of the 61 sudden deaths in long distance passengers were caused by clots in the lungs." Picture the leg veins as bags of blood. When this blood doesn't circulate there is a risk that it will clot. In addition, many so-called sleeping pills are variants on anti-histamines and they tend to dehydrate significantly, adding to the already significant problem of in-flight dehydration.”
When I told Dr. Singh about Carl’s results he offered the following, “Thanks for the feedback. I am glad he was able to benefit from the forum. Melatonin is most effective if used under dim light conditions and about 8 hours before the core body temperature minimum. Phototherapy, hypnotics and alertness facilitating agents may also be useful adjuncts. Take care.” Hmmmm, phototherapy, hypnotics – sounds like the same astromony class.
The mysteries just get more interesting as I recently sat next to a gentleman on a flight back to Seattle who managed to combine two classic haircuts – the Mullet and the Caesar – for a look uniquely his own. It’s clear that Caesar wouldn’t have sanctioned that though it had strong potential to scare an enemy. Such a puzzling choice would have dominated all my analytical processes had he not also chosen to wear flip flops with tube socks. The stimulus overload caused my cerebrum to crash into my cerebellum and I had to reboot. I was torn between building the case study and the cost of opening the Pandora’s Box of prattle. If you start chatting to your plane-mate, you have to be prepared to maintain the conversation for the full duration of the flight if he or she decides to keep keeping on. Barring the user-friendly and well-illustrated escape from the well-market exit door, there’s really no place else to go. In the long run, I’d really much rather make an interest-only payment on my ever accumulating sleep debt. This debt has only one useful side effect: when it causes what feels like jet-lag every day of the week, you really don’t feel jet lagged even after you’ve been prattled at cross-continent.
Jet lag is a particular challenge for many people this time of year when the misery of ‘lagging’ is added to the misery of awkward family gatherings that require a heightened readiness to pounce on your own internal edit switch. Thank goodness for Carl Ellison’s trip to Budapest in which he test drove the advice Dr. Singh gave during the talk in September. I’ll let Carl explain:
"Dr. Singh advised me to take 10 mg Melatonin at 4:00 a.m. destination time. I was planning to ease into Budapest time from Pacific over 5 days – maybe 1 or 2 time zones per day – leading up to taking off on Friday morning. I was delayed in that, so I took my first dose of Melatonin on Monday night at 7:00 pm Pacific (4:00 am Budapest). I puttered around and got in bed at about 8:00 pm. At midnight, my eyes were wide open. I was awake and ready to start my day. It never occurred to me that the circadian rhythm reset would happen that fast. So, for the rest of that week, I ran on Budapest time, more or less (lost some sleep in the process – partly from setting an alarm to wake me at 7:00 pm Pacific to take more Melatonin). I believe now (although I haven’t checked with Dr. Singh) that I should have taken only one dose – the day I was flying (or the night before, in this case).
"On the way back from Budapest to Seattle, I did that – took only one dose at 4:00 am Pacific time. I had just boarded the plane in Frankfurt for the leg to Washington Dulles – so I got a glass of water from the flight attendant and took the pills at about 13:00 Frankfurt time. I stayed away long enough to get the meal they served on the airplane – and then put on my eye shades and dozed some from Frankfurt to Dulles. This was max 5 hours of sleep – maybe 4. We changed at Dulles to a flight to Seattle and I didn’t sleep at all on that flight. When we landed in Seattle, it was about 9:30 pm and I felt as I usually do at 9:30 – not really tired but able to go to bed. I got into bed at about 11:00 pm – and had a normal night’s sleep.
"At both ends – Budapest and Seattle (on return) – I had no jet lag. Normally, I have terrible jet lag going East and minor jet lag going West. I’m sold. My thanks to Dr. Singh.”
Don’t try to skip the prep and opt for sleep aids. As this site cautions, ”Some people use sleeping tablets to try to alleviate jet lag. This is a dangerous approach as sleeping pills induce a comatose state with little or no natural body movement, and it is well known that prolonged immobility during flight can lead to fatal blood clots (deep vein thrombosis). This was reported as far back as 1988 in the Lancet, which said it was estimated "that over three years at Heathrow Airport, 18% of the 61 sudden deaths in long distance passengers were caused by clots in the lungs." Picture the leg veins as bags of blood. When this blood doesn't circulate there is a risk that it will clot. In addition, many so-called sleeping pills are variants on anti-histamines and they tend to dehydrate significantly, adding to the already significant problem of in-flight dehydration.”
When I told Dr. Singh about Carl’s results he offered the following, “Thanks for the feedback. I am glad he was able to benefit from the forum. Melatonin is most effective if used under dim light conditions and about 8 hours before the core body temperature minimum. Phototherapy, hypnotics and alertness facilitating agents may also be useful adjuncts. Take care.” Hmmmm, phototherapy, hypnotics – sounds like the same astromony class.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Swerving off the path
I only read Oprah books on Airplanes and then once I get over the novelty, I start to wonder why even then. I think it’s only to lament that my neurosis is not the flavor-of-the-week kind. The most recent book I bought on the way to San Francisco was about a woman who couldn’t find herself - other than on the top of the best sellers list. The tale of her journey in which she gives up her antidepressants in favor of a three month carb coma of pasta carbonara is beneficial to me only in regards to the caloric expense of flinging the book and then chasing it down to fling it again. I actually bought it after seeing the author on Oprah whom I was watching as a means to pass time while my toenail polish dried. I can now see that my initial impression may have been a result of huffing top coat.
My trip to San Francisco for a two-day stint in a communication seminar was a handy way to answer the question ‘How many days does it take to unravel a personal trainer?’ Take it easy Will Shortz, This isn’t a riddle. Given that I traveled without my emergency bomb shelter supplies – the very thing I’d tsk tsk a client for not packing – it was clear I was in trouble. It means I was dependent on my hunter gatherer skills on a very tight schedule. I landed Friday night, and had my butt planted in a chair designed by the same man responsible for refining the technique of water boarding, by Saturday morning at 9 a.m. With two thirty minute breaks until dinner, I needed to track down protein prepared with limited amounts of antibiotics, hormones and preservatives, that weren’t wrapped in, served over or in a committed relationship with wheat, excess carbs or sugar. I’d have greater success heading for the alley, cornering a sewer rat and eating it sashimi-style whole, hold the rice.
Given the health implications of all the wheaty, carby stuff and the likelihood that consuming it would make me fall asleep or leave me wandering through a food fog unable to focus on the seminar I paid for, I elected to ‘fat fast’ on creamy cups of coffee. Yes, half and half is not a great source of nutrition but a few doses in fairly small amounts won’t hit me with a lot of chemicals and the neutral impact of fat on my blood sugar will allow me to stay awake. Plus, the caffeine is an appetite suppressant.
In short, I threw my adrenals under the bus. It’s not a good plan and it’s a lot like answering the question, ‘So, where would you like that paper cut?’ Somewhere out there Dr. Carlston dropped what he was doing and exclaimed, ‘Krikey, someone’s adrenals are in trouble!’ I picture him rescuing abused adrenals and bottle feeding them back to health like baby birds. He’d be really excited about it, too and he’d reach that level of animated concern that would make injured adrenals feel safe. It’s important to note that if I could reach his natural level of enthusiasm, I wouldn’t need the coffee. I can hear Dr. Carlston replying, ‘but without the coffee, Heather, you could probably reach that level of enthusiasm naturally.’ He’d say it with an exclamation point. And damn you get out of my head. There’s my exclamation point.
At the seminar, there were eyebrows raised at my second cup of coffee and some inquiry into whether or not I was going to eat anything. These inquiries were made by fragile women smugly nibbling performance bars that they thoughtfully packed as bomb shelter supplies. In my head I played a coldhearted game of ‘which cancers will that cause,’ before answering ‘I’m fine.’ Everyone knows that’s a blatant cry for help. The answer in my head went something like, ‘no worries. Without protein, my body will happily snack on my biceps. Thanks for asking.’ I smiled a little broader mainly because, in a communication course, I feared clairvoyance. It’s no surprise to me that I was attending a class about communication considering how clear it was that my internal conversation was far richer than anything I was willing to let fly.
During the real meal break in the evening, I was consumed by a singular mission of refueling. I ordered fish stuffed with fish and wrapped in fish with a side of fish. Stuffed to the gills with protein, I salvaged my nutrition at least a little. It didn’t stop me from meandering into every convenience store on the walk to Reza’s where I was staying so that I could pretend to buy snacks. The marketing implies that food can be found in such places and that was blatantly untrue. I bought nothing though trying to remember what a Pringle tasted like was food for thought. I remained alert however as I approached Reza’s neighborhood. To say he lived at the gates of hell would be to imply that hell was the kind of gated community in which the influential feared joy riders casing the neighborhood and breaking into cars. Nope, hell has no gates and its contents leaked to Reza’s doorstep.
The next day I spent in recovery, entrenched in pjs catching up on e-mail. I abandoned the second cup of coffee and replaced it with a handful of chocolate truffles I bought at Godiva when I went out to forage the first cup. It was mildly celebratory since I was no longer trapped on a hard chair after two days of abuse and mildly reactive to two days of bad nutrition. What it became, however, is the answer to the question, ‘how do you give yourself a splitting headache in two easy steps?’ (By the way, it runs in the family. When I told my Dad about the truffles he told me that the last time he ate chocolate he fell off his porch. It’s something to look forward to in my sixties.)
With debauchery behind me, I started my day with a 5:15 wake-up call for the 6:00 a.m. CrossFit San Francisco class. I arrived, filled out my paperwork and answered that ‘yes’, I have some experience with this CrossFit stuff. Anyone with a background in Martial Arts will tell you never enter somebody else’s Dojo with a swagger. I didn’t make loud noises, stare down the locals or exaggerate my warm-ups with standing back flips or a six pack of muscle ups. Partly because I can’t do either. When the coach who was helping me determine the appropriate weight for six sets of ten back squats said, “Your one-rep-max is over 200 pounds? That’s heavy,” I replied in an ‘I suppose so’ kind of way. I was there as a student not as a stop on my victory tour.
Ah, back to all that's good and pure! After an exhilarating return to reality, I swung by Starbuck's for a cup of coffee.
My trip to San Francisco for a two-day stint in a communication seminar was a handy way to answer the question ‘How many days does it take to unravel a personal trainer?’ Take it easy Will Shortz, This isn’t a riddle. Given that I traveled without my emergency bomb shelter supplies – the very thing I’d tsk tsk a client for not packing – it was clear I was in trouble. It means I was dependent on my hunter gatherer skills on a very tight schedule. I landed Friday night, and had my butt planted in a chair designed by the same man responsible for refining the technique of water boarding, by Saturday morning at 9 a.m. With two thirty minute breaks until dinner, I needed to track down protein prepared with limited amounts of antibiotics, hormones and preservatives, that weren’t wrapped in, served over or in a committed relationship with wheat, excess carbs or sugar. I’d have greater success heading for the alley, cornering a sewer rat and eating it sashimi-style whole, hold the rice.
Given the health implications of all the wheaty, carby stuff and the likelihood that consuming it would make me fall asleep or leave me wandering through a food fog unable to focus on the seminar I paid for, I elected to ‘fat fast’ on creamy cups of coffee. Yes, half and half is not a great source of nutrition but a few doses in fairly small amounts won’t hit me with a lot of chemicals and the neutral impact of fat on my blood sugar will allow me to stay awake. Plus, the caffeine is an appetite suppressant.
In short, I threw my adrenals under the bus. It’s not a good plan and it’s a lot like answering the question, ‘So, where would you like that paper cut?’ Somewhere out there Dr. Carlston dropped what he was doing and exclaimed, ‘Krikey, someone’s adrenals are in trouble!’ I picture him rescuing abused adrenals and bottle feeding them back to health like baby birds. He’d be really excited about it, too and he’d reach that level of animated concern that would make injured adrenals feel safe. It’s important to note that if I could reach his natural level of enthusiasm, I wouldn’t need the coffee. I can hear Dr. Carlston replying, ‘but without the coffee, Heather, you could probably reach that level of enthusiasm naturally.’ He’d say it with an exclamation point. And damn you get out of my head. There’s my exclamation point.
At the seminar, there were eyebrows raised at my second cup of coffee and some inquiry into whether or not I was going to eat anything. These inquiries were made by fragile women smugly nibbling performance bars that they thoughtfully packed as bomb shelter supplies. In my head I played a coldhearted game of ‘which cancers will that cause,’ before answering ‘I’m fine.’ Everyone knows that’s a blatant cry for help. The answer in my head went something like, ‘no worries. Without protein, my body will happily snack on my biceps. Thanks for asking.’ I smiled a little broader mainly because, in a communication course, I feared clairvoyance. It’s no surprise to me that I was attending a class about communication considering how clear it was that my internal conversation was far richer than anything I was willing to let fly.
During the real meal break in the evening, I was consumed by a singular mission of refueling. I ordered fish stuffed with fish and wrapped in fish with a side of fish. Stuffed to the gills with protein, I salvaged my nutrition at least a little. It didn’t stop me from meandering into every convenience store on the walk to Reza’s where I was staying so that I could pretend to buy snacks. The marketing implies that food can be found in such places and that was blatantly untrue. I bought nothing though trying to remember what a Pringle tasted like was food for thought. I remained alert however as I approached Reza’s neighborhood. To say he lived at the gates of hell would be to imply that hell was the kind of gated community in which the influential feared joy riders casing the neighborhood and breaking into cars. Nope, hell has no gates and its contents leaked to Reza’s doorstep.
The next day I spent in recovery, entrenched in pjs catching up on e-mail. I abandoned the second cup of coffee and replaced it with a handful of chocolate truffles I bought at Godiva when I went out to forage the first cup. It was mildly celebratory since I was no longer trapped on a hard chair after two days of abuse and mildly reactive to two days of bad nutrition. What it became, however, is the answer to the question, ‘how do you give yourself a splitting headache in two easy steps?’ (By the way, it runs in the family. When I told my Dad about the truffles he told me that the last time he ate chocolate he fell off his porch. It’s something to look forward to in my sixties.)
With debauchery behind me, I started my day with a 5:15 wake-up call for the 6:00 a.m. CrossFit San Francisco class. I arrived, filled out my paperwork and answered that ‘yes’, I have some experience with this CrossFit stuff. Anyone with a background in Martial Arts will tell you never enter somebody else’s Dojo with a swagger. I didn’t make loud noises, stare down the locals or exaggerate my warm-ups with standing back flips or a six pack of muscle ups. Partly because I can’t do either. When the coach who was helping me determine the appropriate weight for six sets of ten back squats said, “Your one-rep-max is over 200 pounds? That’s heavy,” I replied in an ‘I suppose so’ kind of way. I was there as a student not as a stop on my victory tour.
Ah, back to all that's good and pure! After an exhilarating return to reality, I swung by Starbuck's for a cup of coffee.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Agriculture Supported by Customers— not by the Government
George Vojkovich
and a side order
from Skagit River Ranch
If you become complacent about the quality and the source of your food, you won't have the choices we have today. And with industrial organic, we barely have any access at all to animal products and produce cultivated under proper conditions. As the demand for organic increases, we find more and more ways to reduce the quality in order to increase the profit until the word organic becomes meaningless. The Farmer's Market isn't just a way to salvage nutrient density, it's a way to preserve the wisdom in the natural order of things that defies mass production and for very good reasons. When I was buying eggs on Saturday, I asked George if I could reprint this post from his website:
It is said by year 2020, we will have 1.2 billion more people in the world. Yet, do you know in 2005, the world produced less food for human consumption than it did in 1984? The agricultural productivity is going down, not up. Why? Two thirds of the natural resources in the world are used up. Our past ignorance and greed are destroying the plant support system; ocean, rivers, forest, atmosphere and lakes. I am convinced more than ever that if we are to have a future for our children, we all have to grow “nutrient dense” food through sustainable, non-toxic farming that would produce more yield than the conventional method. There was a sustainable system of agriculture called “Terra Preta” that supported millions of people in Brazil before the mid-16th century. “Sustainable” farming is nothing new, and will work for us today if we try. Economically, spiritually and environmentally, food must be produced sustainably if we expect to leave this earth in tact for our future generations, and the right choices must be made today.
Sadly, here is the U.S. agricultural policy in a nutshell. You hear politicians talk about the Farm Bill? The Farm Bill was supposed to protect farmers, but it actually hurts small farmers like us. Each year, something like $24 billion goes to subsidize farms in the mid-west that grow corn for a few Mega Agri corporations. 75% of the U.S. agriculture is raising feed corn (and now ethanol) in the mid-west. Now that the corn price doubled in 2006, these farmers are making the biggest profits ever. They need no subsidies, but with government’s free flowing money, secured by the powerful agri-corporations, they have no incentives to change their chemical driven farming methods to more sustainable, less harmful ways. Their subsidized feed is so cheap-- “below” cost of production, making it impossible for small farmers like us to compete on a level playing field. Now we, west coast farmers are now competing not only with foreign countries, but also with subsidized U.S. farms. So how do we survive?
The only way that I can think of is to have customers who understand the situation, share the same desire to make this earth a little better place for our children, and are willing to pay the higher price for clean, locally & sustainably grown organic food. When I was listening to Michael Pollan speak about his new book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” last fall, he said that where we spend our “food” dollars is not yet regulated by the government while everything else seems to be. And he is right. As a tax payer, I don’t have a right to prevent my tax dollars going to big Agri-corporations without going to jail. But the government won’t arrest you for supporting a farmer like me through your purchases. So, Eiko and I thank you, all of our faithful customers, for your support and making this style of farming possible.
Here is the newest article by Michael Pollan on “Farm Bill”…. Please read it and tell others… Nobody can explain it better than he can .
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