The Road to CrossFit

A person asked me last week how I came to be a CrossFit trainer and then gym owner, and I enjoyed remembering the road I travelled.

My story is all over my blog, in our pamphlet, on our Facebook page, on our web site (www.fireofthegodsfitness.com), and still it doesn't really tell the tale.  So here's a bit of self indulgence.  I found CrossFit in 2006 just after my martial arts instructor and dear friend died.  A soldier I worked with suggested that I look at cross fit.com after he heard about some of the body weight workouts I was doing.  I tracked the WODs over time and marveled at how crazy they were - deadlifts and running, in the same workout, with no rest?  That's crazy.  But after a while I began to see what they were going for - so I decided to try it.

After my first workout of the day (WOD), I was hooked.  I was training hard at that time, lifting heavy weights, running sprints and longer runs, and doing body weight work (squats and handstand pushups).  Still, CrossFit humbled me, wrecked me.  It was clear I huge holes in work capacity.

So I trained as hard as I could and I went to a Level I certificate course.  Then I was invited to come to the Level II course.  Somewhere in there, I was doing PT with the Navy, and hated it.  It hurt my knee, it was not of high enough intensity to make anyone much more fit, and it was boring stuff.  I made a comment to the instructor about how to make it better and he gave me the gift of suggesting that I take the lead role for a class (he thought he was daring me, and I was in fact being a bit rude).  He never coached again while I was there.  I had the double bonus of not having to go through his class and instead being able to practice being a coach, learning every day.

With that group, I had no barbells, no pullup bars and only the gear I could pack in my truck and bring with me.  Still, we made CrossFit style WODs with what we had and they all noted the positive impacts from the workouts.  They approached the Navy fitness test with confidence, some noted huge improvements with just a couple of months of "low tech" CrossFit.  It was satisfying.  That period of time earned me the moniker "The Punisher" from some, but I alway laughed at that.  No CrossFit workout is hard - unless you work hard enough to make it hard.  It is all "self punishment".

About that time I had my first paying clients.  That was huge fun, and the clients made rapid progress.  I had a small framed former runner, who was an incredible athlete, who went from no deadlift experience to a 315 pound deadlift (double his body weight) in just a couple of months.  I was lucky to find Chad because he was so easy to coach - anything I asked him to do, he did.  No muss, no fuss, no real work on my part.  I wish I could work with Chad now, he'd become a monster.

Along the way I began to attend more training seminars - CrossFit Kids, CrossFit Olympic Lifting, CrossFit Coach's Prep Course - and then was able to apply what I learned with clients.  I started a CrossFit group on base that ran for about 18 months.  Again, the chance to work with real folks regularly was incredibly fun and satisfying - the successes were huge - fat loss, performance gains, friends made.  That group wound down in 2009 or 2010, but I am still in contact with several of them - and to Star, Angela and the gang, thank you!

In 2010 we bought a CrossFit Affiliate and started CrossFit Fire of the Gods in our garage.  We made enough money to get more CrossFit gear for our clients and pay for more training.  Janet was able to go to (and easily passed) a Level I Certificate course, and she trained friends (and their friends) in our garage.  To Laura and Paul and Jo Anne - thank you!  We miss you but are grateful for your trust and the lessons you taught us about how to work with athletes.

All this happened as I was winding down a career as a naval officer.  I put hours and hours, week after week, into reading and blogging about nutrition and fitness, watching training videos, and of course practicing what I learned on myself and then our clients.  I spent a lot of time exploring various avenues for how to switch from employee to business owner - all seemed prohibitively expensive.  Then a few things happened in our favor and here we are - owners of a CrossFit affiliate as our full time life.

Why?  We love to learn and teach.  Teaching about health and fitness lets us create:  Impact.  Results.  Change.  Transformation.  Athletes exceeding perceived limits.  Chasing performance.

We see the impact of improved physical capacity when applied to the rest of life.  That's what we do every day, every workout, every client interaction, every SM post, most things we read, and a large part of what we talk about.  How can we help?  How can we make more impact faster?  How can we reach every client?  How can we make these painful workouts seem desirable to the uninitiated?

So, come see us and help us make our dreams come true by chasing a better you through CrossFit.  Call 207-449-8996 or email us (cffotg at gmail dot com) and let's get started today making 2014 the year you made the big change in your health and physical capacity!

Milestone: 200000 Page Views

Thank you dear readers for coming to see us and read along as we learn about health, fitness and nutrition!  If you are in the Brunswick area, come join us for CrossFit, we look forward to seeing you.

I feel funny celebrating page views when some gyms get that many hits a month (in the DC area for example).  Writing an obscure blog from a small town to varied readers with an interest in paleo and CrossFit makes 200,000 a big number to me.

Industry Influence? Of Course

One panel on sweeteners in schools was sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association, whose members produce high fructose corn syrup.

Inside the exhibition hall, Hershey's was handing out chocolate and strawberry milk, and Butter Buds gave out fake butter crystals.

"These nutritionists and dietitians were here getting continuing education credits," says Butler. "So going to this conference and attending these sessions is something that they need to do to keep up their accreditation. These people work in all kinds of places. They work in school cafeterias, hospital cafeterias; they work in corporate settings — these are really the gatekeepers of our nutritional information."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/05/14/312460302/how-food-companies-court-nutrition-educators-with-junk-food

Let the buyer - in this case of information - beware.  The soft influence is inevitable. 

Happy Birthday

To me!  It's my fiftieth birthday today.  At the moment I'm in range of a top ten percent finish in the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games Open competition (Masters age 50-54).  It's easily the greatest athletic accomplishment of my unheralded athletic career.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that you will be able to enjoy the holiday with people that you love, with a minimum of travel hassle, and some fun activities.

My advice for how to enjoy Thanksgiving eating is - chow down, chow hard, go big or go home.  Notice all the ways this impacts you.  How will you feel tonight?  How will you sleep?  How will you feel tomorrow?  How will your clothes fit?  How does the gastric napalm of Thanksgiving affect your GI business for the next couple days, and your appetite?

Hopefully, the impact will be minimal.  If not, take note!  It will help you teach the UCM what you do and don't want.

If the idea of bathing your brain, nervous system and blood vessels in a hyper-sugar fest isn't appealing, after you feast take a long, enjoyable walk to help your system burn off that extra sugar it will be struggling to manage.  If you can train hard, that's fine too, but I never want to work all that hard I fill my gut with sweet, tasty crap ... which I will!

Anthony Colpo and others like to say the equivalent of "a calorie is a calorie, so fat gain/loss is just a matter of not eating too much, and/or moving more."  They also like to say "I'm smart and you are dumb because you can't see the very clear science I see that proves this is true."

Well, I think days like today reveal how they have no clothes.  Why?  Because you can test for yourself the impact on blood sugar of eating the high sugar treats that characterize the Thanksgiving feast, and it won't be pretty.  If you test, you are likely to see hours of elevated blood sugar.  I don't think there are too many folks who would say that's not an issue for health if it becomes a long term pattern.  If you chose to, you could also test the alternative:  eat an equivalent amount of calories as moderate protein and high quality fat to see the impact on blood sugar.  I'm betting it'll be far better than in the sugar case.

In other words, the "calorie is a calorie" argument is not important for most of the folks that need to change how they eat.  What they must do is stabilize blood sugars - regain the body's natural glycemic control.  You can most easily do that via carb restriction.

There are too many blessings in my life to dig into here, but one is the chance to explore learning, teaching and helping my readers - thanks!

"Daft to Build a Castle on a Swamp"

From the King of the Swamp, Monte Python and the Holy Grail:

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp.

"So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.

"So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.

"But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."

Well, my daft reader, keep on building.  It took me from 1996 until 2007 to get the right combination of habits, information, support, and old habits (finally) kicked to eat in the way that makes me feel my best.

First, take a 30 day challenge of nothing but meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch.  Eat all you want of the meat and veggies, eggs and bacon, sour cream, hard cheeses, coconut oil, butter, MCT oil, avocado (with salt and either champagne vinegar, red wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar, as you prefer), sunflower seeds and macadamia nuts.  Take magnesium, salt, and potassium liberally, sip water continuously.  What you'll notice is that even though there's no conscious restriction of intake, and that you have a green light to eat whenever hungry, you'll eat less than your prior approach.  After you get through the pain of putting a foundation in the swamp (teaching your body to use fat for fuel most of the time), you will feel incredible!  You'll think that building castles in the swamp is the best idea ever. 

After the 30 days, make your best effort to sustain your wheat and sugar free life; zero is good, but many people do well by limiting these foods to one day per week.  So can slam down all you want of the nasty food on Sunday, but no other day, for example.  If this keeps you off of the junk Mon-Sat, it's a good trade.

Booze - try the same approach as above.  Use vodka, gin, or tequila at first.  The famed NORCAL margarita:  shot of vodka, gin or tequila, an entire lemon or lime, and carbonated water to taste.

After you get this up and running, your castle will sink into the swamp.  It will happen slowly, but surely, and you'll notice one day that your "I'm doing great, I can eat this bite of cake" has turned into "I'm doing great, I'll eat another whole cake for lunch.  That breakfast cake was great."  Or the "Yay, beer and shitty carb foods on Saturday!" becomes "Hey, I only drink a half case of Sam Adams six days a week, why am I bloated and dehydrated all the time? Why can't I fit into my new clothes I had to buy?"  Well, the reason is your paleo lifestyle castle sank into the swamp, my friend.

And when you feel bad enough, mentally and physically, and you can no longer see your toes, or tie your shoes without groaning about how damned hard it is to reach the laces with that huge belly in the way, you'll start to rebuild your swamp castle, even though everyone will say you're daft, there's no use trying.  But you'll do it anyway, just to show 'em.  And that one will sink into the swamp too.

When I was in Iraq in 2006, and hit 225 pounds (PR!) with a girth of 39 inches around my belly, I knew my castle had burned down, fell over and was sinking into the swamp.  So I built the fourth one, and after 11 years, that 2007 swamp has lasted.  You can have one too. 

PS: you don't have to make it this hard. If you build just one castle on dry land and it's good from the start and your castle never falls over, that's fine too.

Doughnuts Got A Holed On Me

Once upon a time I wouldn't walk past the doughnut box at work without grabbing a couple.  I didn't think that I could resist, so I wouldn't try that hard.  Since the free doughnuts and trips to DQ for the soft serve and the other sugar feasts were not every day, I survived them relatively unscathed.  But at some point I began to be "de-sugared."  I started to shake the bonds of a lifetime of being a "sugar dog."  As I ate less sugar, when I did eat it, it tasted far less compelling.  The physiological rewards of making my body a sugar dump had decreased so much that I felt less and less drawn to sugar junk.  

In other words, it began to seem like that life long "sweet tooth" had more to do with behavior patterns and physiological responses to habitual sugar intake than to some innate desire for sweet junk.  

These things make even more sense when viewed through the lens of a the Paleo model, which can help us see how chronic carb/sugar intake can set up an addiction cycle which would be as rewarding as smoking, drinking or some other addictive substance.  

I miss the certainty that I could eat a dessert of some kind - almost any kind - and deeply enjoy it.  But, I like how satisfied I feel every day eating regular food, without having to feel stuffed to feel satisfied.  I like the fact that I take one pain pill about every month, compared to 800mg 3x per day as I did in 1999 (and eating far more sugar, and had far more inflammation).  I like it when the doc says "You don't take any prescription medication?"  Or, "I don't know what you are doing, but keep doing it."

Takeaway?  You can interrupt this cycle with persistent effort over time.  In the mean time, every day, every week, every month in which you reduce your carb/sugar intake makes your body less damaged.  The only failure is the failure to get back on the horse in order to learn how to eat for the pleasure of feeling well, and for the natural pleasure real food provides when one is de-sugared - rather than the sugar pleasures of the moment which have to be balanced against the pain of being unwell, weak, and at risk for decrepitude and premature disability.

Keep trying until you find the version that works for you for the duration.

I'm Just Sayin'

One of these things is not like the others ... and I don't think I'll be buying one of the previously opened but left on the shelf versions ...

Bloggy Thoughts, Faction S&C, Paleo Pursuits

I took my first deer hunt of 2012 yesterday, mostly a scouting venture with a bow in my hand.  At first, it was tedious and frustrating, but eventually - the woods broke through and I didn't want to leave.  Felt ecstatic all day.  There was sign everywhere, and I was within spitting distance of deer twice - one big one by the sound when it vamoosed - without ever seeing a hair of either.  It was that thick - which is also why it's good deer cover.

Every piece of land tells a story, and I enjoyed learning the story I could see on this one - old houses, long abandoned, little left but foundations.  A long abandoned orchard - beautiful old pecans.  Fields not plowed for years with no trees older than 20 years, sitting next to bottom lands with large, old trees, the fences gone but easy to note nonetheless due to the shift in tree ages.

After that, I made my way to visit with Mike Bledsoe and Doug Larson of Faction Strength and Conditioning, where we talked performance nutrition for their podcast, The Barbell Shrugged, at their site, http://fitr.tv.

Doug is offering a free online nutrition course - to check it out, go here.  While I like to dive into the long boring details of why, Doug is strong on what the heck to do to get healthy and fit - right now.

I highly recommend you join for his free offering!  Starts October 15 at the link above ...

The Red Pill

Lot's of folks don't want to take the red pill.  They want to do what their doctor says, and leave it at that - never mind whether that's working.  And for that matter, would they even know if it was working?

"I'm on statins, but otherwise I'm healthy.  My doctor says everyone should be taking a statin."  This person, a lovable and good person, who carries a gun everyday, everywhere because he won't take the blue pill that implies the State will protect you, is still all up into the health blue pill.  

There are several implications of the Matrix's "red pill/blue pill" analogy - health wise, will you take a red pill?

Eat meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, and no sugar/wheat.

No Post Today

Today, I retire from the US Navy after 23 years. Taking the day off from blogging!

See you in my next career.

Testimonial: Moi

I received my final free health check up this month (not really free, you the taxpayer paid for it) in prep for my retirement from a 23 year military career.  In this post, I lamented the fact that so many folks my age are taking drugs for some malady or another - usually hyper tension, lipids or gout.

My BP this year was 120/80, better than when I was a college student 26 years ago.  My fasting lipid profile:
Triglycerides were 37, LDL 108, HDL 77.   Total cholesterol, 192.
Fasting glucose was 88.

Interestingly, when triglycerides are below 75, the formula they use to estimate LDL overestimates LDL - thus it is likely less than 100.  Not that I care.

What's the point?  Am I just crowing about myself, chest thumping?  No, no, no.

A bit.

Yes.  Still ....

How many times have you heard that you should eat less cholesterol to "lower your cholesterol"?  How many times have you heard you should eat less saturated fat to lower your cholesterol?  How many times have you been advised to eat "heart healthy whole grains" to lower your cholesterol?

How many times after those commercials, by the way, have you seen a commercial for either glucose monitors or viagra/cialis?  Man, those marketing folks know how to get you coming and going.  Pardon the pun.

What if I told you I eat over 60% of calories as fat, and that's what gives numbers like the ones above, (drugs not required).  What if I told you there's no reason to limit cholesterol intake?  What if I said I eat more fat than ever but my numbers are "better" than they've been in five years (and they've always been "good")?

The point is the entire field of medicine has run off on a lark with cholesterol, fat and health.  They kicked science to the curb, bit off on bizarre government recommendations and started to peddle meds like candy.  They may not even tell you, since they seem not to know, that if you don't want to use meds you can cure what ails you, for 80 plus percent of the population, via carbohydrate restriction.  If you ask to see the intervention study that shows low fat diets are good for longevity - or even cholesterol management - you'll get a blank stare.  The best studies I have seen show that what you have been told is opposite of the truth - when you eat saturated fat, your cholesterol numbers improve.  When you eat "heart healthy" whole grains, your glucose numbers will be crap.  And if you think trading nasty fasting glucose numbers for a ten point reduction in total cholesterol is a good deal - you should be reading this blog more often.

Of course, I don't expect that you take the numbers from my case and then become a believer - I obviously have good genes as far as fasting lipids go because my numbers didn't look too bad even when I ate nothing but low fat, "heart healthy" junk.  My numbers didn't look bad even when I reached weights over 215 pounds for the first time in my life.  My numbers, except for blood pressure, have never looked bad, no matter how much crap I slammed down my pie hole.  But they look better now that I eat fat first and foremost, with adequate protein, and veggies as convenient.

Whole fat dairy? Yes.  Real butter?  Yes, every day.  Red meat?  Not often enough.  Coconut oil, a nearly 100% saturated fat?  Yup, usually with macadamia nuts or sunflower seeds (or dark chocolate!). Do I eat 5000 servings every 15 minutes of spinach and broccoli?  Only once.  A long time ago.  Not recommended.

The point is - forget the diet wars. Forget the USDA.  Forget the pamphlets that advocate whole grains, fruits until you are broke and veggies until your back yard is completely overrun with tomato plants.  Try carbohydrate restriction.  Shoot for 100g/day or less.  See if it works for you.  Get some help to do it right.  Read a few genius books like the Protein Power Life Plan or The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living.  If desperate and broke, just read this blog, each of the thousand posts for the last three years - desperate and broke after all deserves boredom (which I provide for free).  Find some friends - preferably at a CrossFit gym - who also pursue Paleo or Primal or just plain old "not eating too many friggin carbs."

In the process, I bet you will lose weight, lose the drugs, and feel a heck ova lot better.  The side effect of eating too few carbs?  You might get low carb flu for a few days or a couple weeks even - after that, the side effects are low appetite, smaller waist, more muscle, better sleep and better mood.  I think you can buck up for that.  If you can't, there are always statins, beta blockers, Uloric, and the last resort for those that wreck themselves - viagra and cialis.  And don't kid yourself folks, if you don't get a handle on your metabolic problems, that's the road you will walk.

Eat meat, vegetables, eggs, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

"Adidas Reebok Revival Depends on CrossFit"

This is a fascinating story to me.  A giant, international corporation, has hitched it's wagon to CrossFit.  It has been an interesting story to see from inside of CrossFit, with many fearing that CrossFit has "sold out."  But if you watch the Reebok videos, they have "bought in."  They love CrossFit and see it like CFers do - elite fitness.  I will be fun to see where it all goes next.  

I trained at Reebok CrossFit 1 in Camden when I attended the POSE Seminar with Dr. Romanov; they have dedicated 12,000 square feet so those folks can CrossFit.  Amazing.

I admit to not understanding how Reebok expects to profit from the partnership, except it says it wants to be the "fitness" brand.  I'm impressed they realize the connection to CrossFit and fitness.

Excerpt and link follow:

The brand that helped make step aerobics a staple in gyms around the world two decades ago has posted sales declines for three of the five full years since Adidas purchased it for $3.7 billion. Adidas, which won’t say how much it’s paying for the arrangement, has splashed the Reebok name across CrossFit equipment, gyms and trainers’ clothing.

After a brief bounce in sales due to the popularity of its ``toning’’ shoes-- which the company claimed help strengthen leg and butt muscles-- Reebok has forecast another decline in revenue this year.

Lost NFL Contract

Adidas is wrestling with a fraud investigation at its Reebok unit in India and in the U.S. in April it lost a contract to outfit the National Football League, which may cost the world’s second-biggest maker of sporting goods more than 200 million euros in lost revenue a year. Reebok is facing a slowdown in the market for toning shoes and last September agreed to pay $25 million in a settlement that will be used for consumer refunds after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission accused the company of deceptive health claims about its EasyTone and RunTone footwear.

http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-18/adidas-reebok-revival-depends-on-crossfit-for-new-sales-retail

WOD: Linda (Three Bars of Death)

Did battle with Linda tonight - my 9th effort.  Met Linda in 2007.  Tonight was the heaviest attempt that I have completed in reasonable time - under 35 minutes.

Linda is prescribed as 1.5 bodyweight deadlifts, bodyweight bench press, and .75 body weight cleans (which can be done as squat cleans or power cleans - the latter is considerably easier).  The rep scheme is to do 10 of each movement, then 9, etc, until 55 reps are complete for each movement.  The goal is to complete all 165 reps as fast as possible.  The workout has been nicknamed "3 bars of death".  Pulling those heavy deads after the first round is a bear.

I did not "RX" the WOD tonight - 295 deadlift, 195 bench, and 145 squat cleans (-9.5#, 8# and 8#  from the RXed weight respectively).  I used to think I could never complete this WOD as RXed in a reasonable amount of time, but I'm close now, five years older and five years more experienced in CrossFit.  An RX'ed Linda in 30 minutes would be very satisfying.  Just to keep this in perspective - I bet that CrossFit's best could use these weights and half my time.

NOTE:  Reasonable amount of time means - I'd have time to do this on a typical day when I'm time sharing with family, work and working out.

One of the curious things about CrossFit is that you can measure your workouts by time, by load, or by power (mathematically, power is force times distance divided by time:  f * d/t).  The question then is - which matters most?

CrossFit states its methodology is to apply constantly varied functional movement at high intensity.  Intensity is defined as power.  The desired outcome is to increase work capacity across broad time and modal domains - in other words, you should be competent for short or long efforts, with weights or body weight, and whether the demand is to run, jump, climb, lift, carry or throw.  Even better if you can do all of the above with a skill component - accuracy, agility, skill, and/or coordination.  And especially better if the skill elements allow you to increase the power output - for example, the kipping pull-up (same load, same distance, faster).

So how'd I do on power output?  Tonight, the Linda Load (LL) was 635#, and power output was ~57 foot pounds/second.  You could convert that to a horsepower number if desired (I'm betting - less than 1HP).  My highest power output for Linda was 64 FP/s, but that was with a LL of only 551#, completed in 27 minutes.  Deadlifts at 254 aren't easy but I can move that much faster with less rest, thus the higher power.  

Back to the "which is better" question - the answer is, "it depends."  These are not really the same workout due to the significantly lighter load.  The fast, light Linda was more a test of metabolic conditioning, with little emphasis on strength.  The Linda from tonight required pulling a near 300 pound bar off the ground 55 times - that is a strength test for me, but a particular kind.  Specifically, could the athlete lift with requisite technique while gasping for breath, under significant metabolic duress?  Belly tight, back in position, weigh in the heels, bar close to body, and maintaining all the above while putting the bar back down.  In other words, not just strength, but strength applied under duress and with a significant skill component - like you might be demanded to do in sport, combat or life.

I can't think of no better example of Coach Glassman's premise, which is more or less, "If you segment your training into running, then lifting, then doing body weight work, you develop segmented capacity."  You can deadlift 700#?  And your friend can snatch 400#?  Great.  Try applying all that strength/power when you just had to sprint 400m in gear to catch the bad guy and subdue him/her.  Will the bad guy let you catch your breath before the engagement?  In that case, better hope he's doing segmented training too, or none.

Fair warning - if you never train at high metabolic outputs for significant time duration (starting at ~30s very high output, say 200m run speed), be ready to feel nauseated when you first try.  This, by the way, is not a desirable outcome when one is in extremis.

That said, tonight was a good compromise - significant weight, but reasonable time, and better power output than my last three attempts with slightly heavier weights.

Interesting fitness geek experiment: get together with Linda once a month for a year, using the "Light Linda" and "Beefy Linda" weights in alternating months, and see how much time you could take off of either, and/or if you could upgrade the power outputs on heavy Linda to better match the Light Linda time.  It also would be interesting to measure the relationship of power to weight as one lighted the LL even further - at what weight would the power peak and then tail off?  Likewise, at what weight would the power drop a "quantum" below tonight's 57 ft pounds/second?

Last point is - this is one of the grand things about CrossFit for me.  I can completely punish my metabolic system, train for skills while under metabolic duress, and finish with no knee pain - back when my only "cardio" tool was running I was much, much less fit simply because of the limits on mileage, never mind the lack of relative intensity.  And, you don't need barbells and plates to replicate this workout - dead lifting a heavy sand bag or odd object, push-ups (add weight too your back if it's too easy), and box jumps would do nicely.

Amazing Disaster

http://www.schnittshow.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=104668&article=10165095

NYC wants to ban sugary drinks.  While I agree that may make a dramatically positive impact on health, or it may make for a profitable black market for sugary drinks, and most likely some of both - if they can take away your sugary drinks, what can't they take away? 

Destructive government over-reach is at hand, but at least the poor SOBs in NYC can get away from it, for now.

Pendlay

Off color, but on point.  It's difficult not to be "pissed" when you can see the cost of what the "authorities" have been telling us to eat.

https://glennpendlay.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/im-pissed/

Derby City CrossFit - WOW!

http://dccrossfit.com
This is a great CrossFit blog, I can only imagine how awesome it must be the for the clients.  If you like poking around a knowledge dense, content dense CF site, this one get's my nod, go have a look!

I had many link in from their site to my post "What Is Seen" and am glad I took a "look see".

There Is A Secret - Gratitude

The time came, and we all strolled over to Book Passages, where Jacobs proceeded to talk up his books and his experiences enduring their challenges. The stories were enchanting, but it was during the Q&A that one particular question stood out: Which of his books/experiments had the most profound and lasting effect on his life? Which one stuck with him the most? A particular health craze? The Paleo Diet? Chewing your food 100 times? Loving thy neighbor? Knowing the capital of Bolivia?


The answer, he said, was none of those. It was actually a lesson from the Bible, a basic and seemingly obvious rule that was also irrefutable, timeless and unquestionable across all time and space and dimension. And it wasn't even about gay sex.

The rule was about giving thanks. Which is to say, saying thank you (often literally), offering gratitude, endlessly and always, for all that surrounds you. Tremendously simple idea, he said, but it changes everything.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/02/notes050212.DTL#ixzz1tvU6pkGr
 
Tony Robbins attributes this insight to an interview he did with Sir John Templeton - and since I heard Tony's comment on it, I have been practicing my gratitude "muscles" in the hope that they would work with greater efficiency and effect.  I highly recommend the practice.  Most of the ways I feel deprived are contrived deprivations, vice real ones.  Or as Tony puts it, "We believe ourselves to be short of resources when we are short on resourcefulness."  Imagine the odds of problem solving depending upon which mind set you are in - it would be the difference between life and death.

Big Nutritional Brother

Hopefully, they won't be coming for me next.  This one is unreal.  The government, which has ineptly recommended ridiculous dietary advice - from the department of agriculture no less - is now taking authority to punish a blogger who cured his own disease.  I hope it is just an internet rumor, it is beyond belief.

http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/23/blogging-about-the-paleo-diet-can-get-yo

It's That Bad?

I was at my son's scout troop tonight to get a physical so that I can play chaperone if available for camping or some such event.  The doc asked me what medications I was taking, or something like "You are not on any medications?"  "No".  He said, "I don't know anyone your age that's not taking any medications."

It's that bad?