Door #1, 2, or 3...

I've previously mentioned that the media is very good at generating buzz words and that food companies do a great job of incorporating them into their adverts. Unfortunately we can't be experts in all subject areas and often find ourselves following the mainstream in order to simplify our life and let someone else do the thinking on certain matters. This tends to happen with nutrition and this bbc news article published today addresses the "quick pick" choices that are based on food labels.

The simplest way to avoid all the advertising confusion (and to avoid ages spent reading nutritional labels), is to not buy packaged foods. If you stick to fruits, vegetables, fish, poultry/other meat, nuts, and seeds as the core of your daily nutrition you can avoid a lot of the headaches....and potential stomach aches :)

xoxo,
F

Comfort Food

This time of year always encourages hibernation, overconsumption, and lazyness. The chances are 95% (just ball-parking of course) greater in all three areas if you live in a cold country :) It can be challenging simply to get up when it's dark out, nevermind summon the energy to workout, and it can be all too easy to just sit at home in the warmth and snack after a day of work. Despite what the cold does to us and regardless of how you try to fight it, one easy solution is to make WHAT you're snacking on healthier. Simplest way: reduce sugar and eliminate gluten content. It won't really entitle you to have ten cookies in one sitting but having one low(er) sugar, healthy fat, and gluten-free treat is far better than the alternative and just as enjoyable!

Having said that, here are a couple links I've discovered recently that have some great and easy to follow recipes on them:

Elena's Pantry

Catalyst Athletics

Stay well!
F

Something fishy

Hallo,

This weekend I ran the 10Km Oasis Zoo run again after being on a two year hiatus from such events due to injury (an accident, not burnout this time) and then travel. It was great to be back at it and if you enjoy running and haven't done so in a registered race, I highly recommend it. As massochistic as it seems to get up at 6am or earlier on a Saturday, that's quickly forgotten in light of the abundance of positive energy at these runs.

When you do these runs you get a race kit with something from the sponsors. I believe this is known as a "swag bag" in non-athletic events. Race kits are weird for me...they're exciting in the sense that it's interesting to see what samples are included this time, but on the other hand the t-shirt is all I care about because the samples always prove to be disappointing. This year it included information about future runs, a bag of pasta sauce (gave it away), rice chips (coworker took those), and juice. It was when I saw the juice that my attention was piqued(because I'm sure at this point you're wondering why I'm talking about a race kit to begin with).

See if you spot it too:



If you didn't that's fine, there's no judgement :) The sample we got was the same as the middle bottle in that picture. As mentioned in an earlier post, the media and food companies are great at generating buzz words. In this case Omega-3's are in the spotlight.
Putting aside all debates about whether producing fish oil is sustainable, they are well recognized as having significant health benefits (that's a story for another day). Those who have done any research on supplementing with fish oil may have found they should be ingesting anywhere from 0.5g to 1.0g for every 10lbs of body weight based on how healthy they are. Most fish oil products advise roughly 12-14grams/day for the average adult. Given that, I was really surprised that juice might contain Omega-3s and curious to know how the taste was affected: it only takes one day of burping up fish oil taken in the morning to know it's best taken at night when you first introduce your system to it.

You're probably wondering where my point is in all this. So far we know that the juice is advertising containing fatty acids, you need a minimum of 12grams/day, and fish oil doesn't taste good. It all sounds like good news until you realize that we're still talking about juice.

Juice: synonym for a LOT of sugar.

True, that definition didn't come from a dictionary but from a nutritional perspective that's all you really need to know. Runners love carbohydrates (sorry but it's true), and understandably we do need them but not in juice form. Around the time that pop was getting targeted, juice was under the microscope for it's high GI rating and the negative implications associated with that. My cousin used to ask us when we were little "would you eat six apples? no? then no, you can't have apple juice"...she had a valid point. However, just as anything else that's been hit economically, a re-invention happens. This is juice's re-invention and I have a problem with it.

The label looks fantastic: antioxidants, omega-3s, energy, sold! The nutritional information, however, looks terrible. Each 300ml serving contains the following:



For every 30 grams of sugar you can get...wait for it....0.1grams of omega-3s!!!! Out of your daily dose of (for example) 14grams! Woo, you're well on your way :) You're also well on your way to putting yourself in a diabetic coma if you do try to achieve your EPA/DHA requirements:

14 grams of Omega-3s through Oasis Omega-3 juice would put you at 4200 grams of sugar. That's a lot of juice!

I do realize that no one in their right mind would really try to do this but my point is simply that juice still isn't good for you. Eating some salmon or a can of sardines is a far better option. I don't believe Oasis juice proves itself to be a significant source of Omega fatty acids and don't understand how it is allowed to be advertised as such. Consumers put a lot of trust in the front label and maybe there ought to be tighter restrictions on what is allowed to be printed.

To quote Robb Wolf: "I have serious issues with entities that prey on peoples fears and ignorance to make a buck."

Don't drink the juice!
xoxo,
F

P.S I should note that juice does serve a purpose in a few circumstances: low blood sugar that did or is about to result in fainting and for long continuous exercise (eg:a marathon, full length triathlon, etc) where eating solid food is not an option.

The Front Lines of Health

Hallo!

I apologize that it's been ages since I've had time to update this but with my schedule being a little more manageable these days I'm going to do so on a regular basis. Promise.

This post is more of a confession than anything about my last few months of relative unhealthyness (wait for it)...along with the subsequent eye opening realization that being invincible was getting even farther from reality than before (because I'm well aware of my mortality but always fancy being as invincible as possible)!

So here it begins and I will try to keep it as short and sweet as possible.
Generally speaking, we're a society of excess. If we have something, we usually want more of it; and I do mean that in the broadest sense possible. Along with the heaps of things we want, there is much that we DO to excess as a byproduct of habit, our environment, etc. Here is my confession: I tend to work too much. Not big news to people who know me; my record was five jobs at once and my record of hours/week at my current (and only) job is shamefully high.



It may not seem like a big deal because we all know a lot of workaholics so it's certainly not unusual, but I don't feel that it makes it right. Thankfully, I'm one of the ones that also happens to LIKE their job and as a result it takes a while to register that I'm potentially overworking. Having said that, whether you like your job or not, everyone needs a balance. Our body is always working hard to maintain an equilibrium of hormones, hydration, heat, minerals, and so on and as such it makes sense that we should find that in life too. Easier said than done.

To make a long story short, I haven't taken a proper holiday in exactly a year. A flashback to May had me laughing about how I never get sick and setting PR's in workouts...fast forward a month, two months, three months, and I'm catching nearly every bug out there to varying degrees. I started to notice that I didn't have the usual energy in my workouts anymore, had a harder time waking up at 5am, and more alarmingly was that I had new and re-occuring injuries (which used to happen even less than the rate at which I would get sick). There's something ironic about a sick and injured personal trainer.

Stubborness can sometimes make us blind and I blame my viking and british background for that (does "buck up" ring a bell?). Once I got over that blind stubborn phase I started noticing and taking stock of the sickness and injury rate. It was a little alarming. I looked at five main factors of life because I knew it wasn't just about work, that was simply the first domino in the stack:

1. Work: hours and stress (not stress due to hours)
2. Nutrition: intake and quality
3. Sleep: hours vs sleep debt
4. Social life: was it existent?
5. Down time: solo non-work/non-social/conscious hours

Well, I knew my hours were too high (consistently over 50 every week is not good in my books). I knew I wouldn't pass that part but the stress at work wasn't too bad.

The nutrition component was interesting. I kept a four day food diary and although I was eating healthy (read:paleo) foods, the timing and frequency was off as a result of #1 taking priority.

Sleep...well that was laughable. Sleep is as important as nutrition!! Everyone has slightly different sleep requirements. I happen to function very well on 7. If you don't get your required sleep, you accumulate sleep debt that you need to make up. For example: If you get four hours of sleep monday night and you personally require 8 then you have started your week off with four hours of sleep debt that you need to get back throughout the rest of the week. About a third of my needed sleep hours were in debt every week...that makes for a lot of sleep debt over the course of a few months. I'm thinking a short coma is in order to make up for it all.

The reason I list social life as a major factor is because it is important and something a lot of workaholics sacrifice a bit. We're social creatures and need human interaction- humans whose company we enjoy of course :)

#5 is important too. Everyone needs some time to themselves that has nothing to do with work, friends, or family. It's time to be selfish. Given that I was putting in too much #1, failing a bit at #2, sacrificing #3, and trying to squeeze in #4, there was no such thing as down time.

All in all I'd not done a fantastic job at keeping all the major factors of healthy living in balance. What does it all mean now? Well I believe in living and learning, as I'm sure most of us do, so I'm now making a conscious effort to find that balance again and notice a bit sooner next time if it gets out of line :)

I hope this finds everyone taking care of themselves!!
Cheers,
F

Crossfit and Cops

Hallo!

As most know, Crossfit is the type of training I practice and preach, and by definition it is "constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity". Not terribly clear though, right?

"Constantly Varied" is pretty easy to figure out: the programming changes every day, which in effect prepares you for anything, thereby mimicking life. Life doesn't really care if you did your isolated bicep curls on monday and your next "arm day" isn't until wednesday. You might have to pick up your kid, groceries, a chair, etc, on Tuesday.

Now, what is a functional movement? It is a natural compound movement. Functional movements reflect life: pushing, pulling, lifting objects including our own body weight. A squat, for example, is a functional movement and one of the 9 foundational movements used in crossfit. A deadlift is another one and is the way anyone and everyone should be picking things off the floor; it's efficient, natural, and effective (you can lift heavier weights safely if you are deadlifting them up off the ground).

There is a LOT I can say about Crossfit and a quick brief won't give it justice...particularly the intensity component. Intensity is the #1 reason that people will say crossfit isn't safe. When you start crossfitting you can only apply intensity within the realm of your abilities. If you can't push jerk properly yet, you shouldn't be performing them at high speed or heavy weights. That said, you can still follow the programming (sets and reps) and work on perfecting your lift.

Technique always dictates intensity and this is where the Gym Cops, otherwise known as Safety Police, come into play.
I'll replay a moment that happened yesterday when I was doing a modified pull up with one leg up on a ledge of the pullup station (it takes some of the body weight away and allows me to do more), when a guy (we'll call him SP) came up to ask the following:
SP: That's a *pause* interesting exercise, what is it?
F: It's a modified pull up.
SP: Couldn't you do body weight rows?
F: No....that would be a different exercise
SP: Well is there a way to make it safer? It just looks really unsafe. Could you make it closer to the ground?

This is where I'm laughing in my head because it was a very typical safety police move. For the record, anyone doing this form of pull up should know how to get on and off the bar and should have the cognitive ability to realize when their grip is weakening so they can step down off the bar. Safety police typically come out when they see something unfamiliar- it doesn't mean it's wrong though.

Could I have done a bunch of isolation exercises to work the same muscle groups? Yes. Would I be able to build up strength in those areas and THEN be able to do more pullups? Maybe. People don't always appreciate the "practice" involved in some things. There is no other way to get to a proper squat than to practice the range of movement. You cannot do back extentions and hamstring curls to get a good deadlift. People who have that view when it comes to crossfit and functional movements are missing the whole point of performing a functional movement. We're looking for universal motor recruitment patterns in order to teach our bodies safe ways to move in both workouts and in life. Our body doesn't work in single joint movements very often in "real" life and that's why we (crossfitters) don't train that way in the gym.

Hopefully this has given a bit of a clearer idea of what Crossfit is even though the best way to "get" it is to try it out. And for all the safety cops and doubters out there, take a minute to understand why something is being done and the technique behind it.
Ttfn,
F

Broken People

I'll be the first to admit that I'm unclear on a few things in life, though I do know I'm not the only one. No one sets out knowing exactly what questions we'll be asking over the years and knowing the answers before that moment arrives. As humans we seem to learn through mistakes, when placed in a situation that forces us to learn quickly, and through stumbling onto new and interesting things that piques our curiosity. Given that, WHY is it that when injuries happen we fail to treat them properly?!! Injuries fit all three (albeit broad) categories of learning....they arose from a mistake; they should be taken seriously enough to be solved relatively quickly; and we should all be curious enough to look into why something happened and more importantly how to prevent it from happening again. Just because something isn't gushing blood or falling off doesn't mean that it isn't serious.

Take the case of broken ribs for example. They don't look like much from the outside though unfortunately they are placed in such a way that when broken, they are no longer protecting your vital organs and are instead putting them at risk.
Now, I do realize I'm using a slightly more extreme example but it is one that I've seen happen to a couple friends. Thankfully it only took them a few days to seek treatment when the pain and bruising progressed instead of subsiding.

When you start to feel pain in a joint/muscle do you:

a) Ignore it for a few days
b) Take anti-inflammatories and a couple days off your regular workout
c) Wrap it up, ice it consistently and don't do anything with it for a few days
d) Assess exactly what is injured and seek medical advice as to how to treat it.
e) Take an extra rest day then get back out there
f) Google your symptoms and try to follow the most commonly "prescribed" advice.

Now here's what I see as wrong and right about the above options:

A: Everyone does this at some point. Being stubborn is ok in some situations but not in this one unless you wish to prolong the injury.

B: Anti-inflammatories are not wrong to use in principle but a lot of people use them as a cover...and that's exactly what they are; A.Is don't treat what's injured, they just make it feel a little better.

C: When in doubt, RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) is the best thing to do for sprains and the like. It is less beneficial when the injury should have heat applied to it or when it's a break. One of my friends went two days with a broken (melon-sized)ankle before figuring out he should probably get an x-ray.

D: I'm not suggesting that you should rush to the hospital whenever you get injured but if RICE is having no effect then you should certainly speak to your doctor.

E: This one is obviously not great and it happens more often than not (guilty as charged). If you don't take steps in figuring out what's wrong and fixing it then taking an extra rest day or two may not do the trick and the chances of the injury re-occuring are high.

F: There is a lot of good and bad advice out there. I'm not going to touch on this one.

Over the years I've worked with a lot of runners, "joggers", and generally active people who complain of various aches and pains. Although they may ice, rest, and stretch out the muscle or joint in question, most won't do much beyond that unless they took the steps to go to their doctor or physio. I know we are all busy and scheduling an appointment is not always the easiest thing to do, but it SHOULD be at the top of your priority list. As with anything else in life, when something is left unattended it can develop into something much worse or quite simply never get better. Too many people I've encountered let this happen with their own bodies. If you have chronic pain then it needs to be treated; it's that simple. I've heard all the excuses in the book on why clients and friends of mine haven't taken care of chronic injuries and I don't care. At the end of the day they're excuses and they only hurt your body further.

Here are my rules on the matter:

If an injury becomes chronic and doesn't produce acute and marked swelling or bruising, you need to vary the way you respond to it. In other words, if it keeps happening, change something! Rocket science, right? 97.84% of the time chronic joint-related injuries are a result of repetitive excessive negative stress (or loading) on the joint, otherwise known as a repeptitive stress injury (RSI). 99% of joint-related injuries could be treated with the right strength training exercises (NB: as much as I love stretching, it is NOT the same thing as strength training. It is, in fact, the exact opposite). 99.99% of those who continue to experience pain are doing nothing about it.

Yes, I ballparked those statistics but I'm simply trying to make a point. Listen to your body; pay attention to your symptoms; do whatever you can to recover quickly and safely; and try your best to learn from your "mistakes". In short, go back to being curious and open to new things. If you're injured it's your body's way of saying it needs something new anyway :)

TTFN,
F

Feeding Time

Kids will try to eat anything.


I repeat, anything. I've seen kids choke down mulch, paint, playdough, bugs, random things found on stairs (flashback to me when I was four), you name it. We want to experience everything around us with all our senses. It kind of makes sense from that perspective. Eventually though, what we put in our mouths is limited to what we know will give us energy which brings me to my question...

How do we chose what to eat? The hope is that our parents will teach us what to eat in order to survive on our own. What happens when food availability expands and alters so drastically over the years from generation to generation? How do we distinguish what is and isn't good for us? Do we listen to the media or what the packaging says? Where is our role model then? There must have been a way we first started chosing what to eat and not to eat years ago before food analysis was available. Much of it was likely trial and error with a mix of instinct. Hypothetically, in a desperate situation, most of us wouldn't chose to eat the following:



Having said that, if we were desperate we miiight just give this a shot:



Why though? My personal reason would be the higher potential for death with the spider even though some flowers/plants can be poisonous too (in this hypothetical situation I know nothing about either species but instinctively I know that the plant will present less of a threat). If you answered "red means danger" then why eat the following:




Alright, so how do we decide what is good to eat even when we're provided with all the nutritional breakdown? How do we know that it's providing us with the proper balance of nutrients? Labels will tout "transfat free" and "no cholesterol" and we'll think "great, I've heard those are good things to avoid". True, they are...but the packaging won't tell you what the food inside contains that perhaps isn't good for you. Next time you see transfat-free advertised, check the saturated fat content: That's not good for you either. When you see "cholesterol free", look again at the product. Is it a vegetable or fruit? Priceless. They can't contain cholesterol. Period. But the company did a great job of using buzz words to promote their product.

Whether or not you've spent time looking into nutrition and what your body needs, I know the following few tips are good guidelines to follow in order to tap into more energy with the right balance of foods. Most of us eat more refined foods than we realize and they don't do much for us on a cellular basis.

1. Eat whole foods: try not to eat packaged or frozen foods for a week, I dare you.
2. Cut down on starch carbohydrates (you CAN get sufficient carbs and fiber from vegetable and fruit sources and they provide more nutrients than breads, rices, and pastas).
3. Include protein in every meal- including snacks- especially breakfast.
4. Don't shy away from healthy fats: avocados, nuts, oils. In moderation they're great for you and should be in every meal along with protein.
5. Drink clear fluids: teas and water. Juice doesn't count...neither does clear pop :)
6. Eat (something healthy) every 3 hours.
7. Keep a bottle of water around you all the time and preferably somewhere you can see it; this will help you increase your hydration. If you don't like plain water, try putting a bit of lemon in it.

None of these points are ground-breaking or hard to follow and while I find a lot of people know how often to eat and how much water to drink, they never do. They are seemingly small changes but can make a huge difference in your energy and focus. From my own experience I've found that these are really simple guidelines that most people can work into their lives regardless of how crazy their schedule is. A lot of it comes down to being prepared for the work week ahead of time but it's well worth it in the long run!

xoxo,
F