Silly Reindeer Games

"What these results seem to be telling us is that wheat flour consumption contributes to early death for several people, perhaps those who are most sensitive or intolerant to wheat. These people are represented in the variable measuring mortality in the 35 to 69 age range, and not in the 70 to 79 age range, since they died before reaching the age of 70.

"Those in the 70 to 79 age range may be the least sensitive ones, and for whom animal food intake seems to be protective. But only if animal food intake is above a certain level. This is not a ringing endorsement of wheat, but certainly helps explain wheat consumption in long-living groups around the world, including the French.

"How much animal food does it take for the protective effect to be observed? In the China Study II sample, it is about 221 g/day or more. That is approximately the intake level above which the relationship between wheat flour intake and mortality in the 70 to 79 age range becomes statistically indistinguishable from zero. That is a little less than ½ lb, or 7.9 oz, of animal food intake per day."

http://healthcorrelator.blogspot.com/search?q=moderating

The "Health Correlator" blog is a mathmatician's answer to epidemiological studies, which are often used to confuse humans into eating food that will kill them.  I like to think of epidemiological studies in general as the "silly reindeer games" of science, but as the HC pointed out above, you can often find correlations that study authors never intended to IF you can use mathematics with insight (Denise Minger at www.rawfoodsos.com is the bomb at this skill).

What does this bit mean to you?  We still don't know whether "science" shows this or that food is good or bad for you, and apparently all the variables are so complex we may never know.  The best you can do right now is try an approach until you find one that works and leaves you looking, feeling and performing your best.  Big bellies, high blood sugar and feeling tired, grumpy and hungry all the time are clues you have some work to do.

Intensity Is the Key

"But methods bucking this conventional take are gaining serious mainstream traction - with the scientific evidence to support some counter-intuitive conclusions. Long, slow runs are pretty good at building endurance for long, slow runs. It's becoming increasingly clear, though, that shorter, more intense bouts boost both short term and long-term exercise capacity, resulting in more efficient workouts that take a fraction of the time.

"The protocol can be used running, swimming, biking, or while performing weighted or bodyweight resistance movements (push-ups are a personal favorite).

"Dr. Tabata's method is just one of many high-intensity interval programs that have gained popularity over the past decade, and the business of fitness is adapting in kind. Some of today's most popular workout methodologies - most notably CrossFit, which occasionally includes Tabata intervals - are based on the scientific superiority of very high-intensity work over long, slow slogs.

"Back in the day we realized that proportionally, we burn more calories from fat at lower intensities. We aptly named this the "fat burning zone." Get on an old-school piece of cardio equipment and you'll see that the lower heart rate zone is labeled "fat burning." But we made a colossal mistake. It's not that we were wrong, necessarily. It's that we were looking at the science through a straw. Yes, we burn more calories proportionately from fat at lower intensity, but we burn far more calories, period, at higher intensity. In other words, if you want to burn fat.the most effective "fat burning zone" is higher intensity training. "

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidtao/2013/04/05/how-short-and-intense-workouts-changed-fitness-for-everyone/

I like that analogy - "looking at the science through a straw".  However, that is still the case for almost every instance of exercise science, including the idea that if the reason we gain fat is something as simple and linear as "calories in, calories out."  While it is undoubtedly true that a person losing fat and gaining or maintaining muscle is in a state of caloric deficit, trying to induce caloric deficit by eating less and moving more has proved a complete failure. 
Which is why CrossFit generally, and yours truly specifically, recommends that you exercise for the physical capacities that are important to you, and that you control body fat accumulation by avoiding foods which signal the body to partition calories ingested towards storage as fat.
In other words, you cannot out train a bad diet.  Or put another way, exercising to help you support a life style of eating nasty neolithic foods is a bad bargain.  Eat for health.  Eat in a way that makes you feel good most of the time, so you don't have such a strong need to reward yourself with food treats.  Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, and no sugar/wheat.
In so doing you can lose the long, boring workouts on a treadmill and exercise with intensity to create greater and more useful improvements in muscle mass and power, anaerobic and aerobic capacity, and positive hormonal and emotional changes as well.

Sardines - They Are Not Just for Breakfast

primaldocs.com/opinion/how-and-why-to-eat-sardines

This is a good summary of how many ways and why you would want to eat sardines, and how to pick them.

My take - skip the ones in soy oil, or any oil except olive oil.  Then eat them any way you like them!

Classic Quote, Roosevelt

"It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things."
Theodore Roosevelt

TR was as lousy as a president as any of them were, but he was an interesting man.  This quote is just plain old truth.  Changing behavior is nothing more than never giving up, finding some kernel of success in every failure, and getting back up on the horse.

"Bars"

The processed food bars seen above can be used to keep carbs low, but still get something to knock the edge off of appetite.  They are portable, better than arsenic and not unreasonably expensive.  I used these kinds of bars extensively in early efforts to master food, diet and health.

What I've found is that even thought they can be low in carbs, and they can be crutch which is better than carb indulgence, they are not a thing to rely upon for daily use if you want to maximize your health.  For that - you need food.

However, much like diet soda, if you can use these bars in place of nasty high carb foods - that's a win. Go from worst to better, and then eventually from better to best as you chase the lifestyle change that will help you feel like you are thriving day in and day out.

But whatever you  do - if it says "soy joy" just say no!

Lunch

This was a lunch from last week:

• Pellegrino water, because to do a workout after work, I have to force drink water all day, and Pellegrino is interesting enough that I'll drink it long after I'm way bored with plain water
• Sliced turkey for cheap, portable, storable protein
• Salami for the fat and salt and because I like it
• Hershey's dark chocolate, enough to give me 25g of carbs
• Coconut oil for the medium chain triglycerides and to make the dark chocolate more palatable
• I probably ate some macadamia nuts with this
• Many days, I eat an apple with this

Most of these things I can keep in my desk, the others are gathered during a once weekly run to the grocery store and kept in the office fridge.  This makes it easy to have a lunch that provides basic nutrition, it's enough food that I can barely eat it all, it is not too expensive, and it does no metabolic damage (no wheat, very little sugar).  Oh yes, I like most of these also!

Many of these items would not qualify as "paleo", but they work fine.  Which is to say, I'll never say I do "strict" paleo because I drink 3 or 4 glasses of milk weekly, I eat cheese, I eat processed meats, and I don't eat all that many veggies or fruit.  What I take from the paleo model is that dairy, wheat, sugar, and many fruits/veggies which exist as a result of man made efforts to breed sweeter varieties of foods, are suspect (as are industrial seed oils).  I tolerate butter, cheese, some raw milk, processed meats and other marginal "paleo" foods just fine, so I eat them if I like them.  In the summer in particular, I eat some rice and sweet potatoes since I seem to feel better when I get more carbs in the summer.  I eat sweet potatoes year round, because they are awesome and make a great excuse to eat more butter (ditto of course all veggies, potatoes, rice and mashed cauliflower).

It can be easy and relatively inexpensive to avoid sugaring, wheating, seed oiling, or high carbing yourself to death.

Chasing the Goats

CrossFitters talk about goats as a way of referring to those movements that are a relative weakness for them.  CrossFit goats are on a scale for me and I assume for many of us.  Toes to bar is an example of a goat I can do, but slowly relative to the best in my age/gender range.   Ditto box jumps, hand stand pushups, chest to bar pullups, muscle ups, and a few more.  There are other movements I just don't have - non-false grip kipping MU, rebounding box jumps, multiple butterfly kipping chest to bar pullups.

I'm chipping away at all of these, but yesterday make the breakthrough - rebounding box jumps to 20 inches. My left knee doesn't love this, but I did two sets of five reps yesterday with no fallout felt.   I doubt I'll ever be able to do this in high volume, but love being able to do it at all. Strangely, I thought of this as an athletic deficiency, but like so many perceived hurdles, it wasn't; it had more to do with understanding body positioning and midline stability. I have learned about those elements of force generation practicing and teaching POSE method and double unders.  As lower force movement improved (lower force meaning from double unders and running, with are rebounding from a lower fall) I gained the skill needed to hit those box jump rebounds with the right position and was therefore able to generate the force needed to bounce back up.

I realized a year or two ago that I needed to keep my glutes and belly tight to improve my DU - a floppy middle doesn't work any better for jumping that it does for squats, deadlifts, cleans or pull-ups - because otherwise, correct position was distorted by impact with the ground.

As Kelly and Carl have pointed out (www.mobilitywod.com, and www.gymnasticswod.com), this is the path to progress in all elements of human performance - it starts with body position. I gained the insight I needed to get over the hump with this movement watching Annie Thorisdottir during the Open WOD of deadlifts and box jumps. I don't know that she's the best at this but as a taller, heavier athlete, she adapts nicely to the demands of the movement.

I made a similar insight watching Jason Khalipa performing butterfly chest to bar pullups - but I have not made the leap to multiples yet.

Thanks Annie and Jason!

By the way, if you have not seen the face off between Khalipa and Fronning, it's a classic, an absolute stunner of work capacity by both men.  Inspired when I re-watched it!  I did OK in this WOD compared to my master's athlete peers, top 27%, with 56 reps in 4 minutes.  Fronning did 90+ in the first 4 minutes, then hit 180 by the 8 minute mark, and his reward was the chance to keep working for another four minutes.  Incredible.

Of note - Khalipa's movement is good, Fronning's movement is so close to perfect it's not worth talking about the defects.  He's putting on a clinic in this WOD, even at near exhaustion.