CrossFit Games 2010!!

This is awesome! If you don't CrossFit or something like it, why not? Part of moving your body the way it was intended to move!

Blood pressure

Crazy to think I used to have much higher blood pressure. This was taken about an hour after working out and a half hour after a cup of coffee. Typical morning BP is about 110/70 and pulse is 46-52.

Years ago I saw things like 170/110 and pulse 90.

I guess bacon and eggs are good blood pressure medicine. Ask any cardiologist. Right?

Vitamin D and tanning

I just got back from a trip to Mexico visiting beautful Playa del Carmen and had some observations about Vitamin D and tanning.

First a little background:  I started supplementing with Vitamin D3 several months ago, and undoubtedly had raised my D levels substantially before I began getting sun exposure in April of this year.  When I got out in the sun I noticed that I did not burn.  I've always tanned quickly, but had never tanned THIS quickly.

I didn't think much of it, but I did do some searching and found that other individuals on Paleo diets were reporting the same thing.  I didn't associate it with Vitamin D at the time.

Then during our trip to Mexico my older son, Charles, was relating how he couldn't seem to get a tan.  He said he had been spending almost an hour a day in the afternoon sun and just wasn't tanning.  But if he stayed out long enough, he did begin to burn.  I thought that was weird, but didn't have any idea why it would be.

My younger son, Mitch, was about as tanned (or not\ tanned!) as Charles, but by the end of the trip Mitch was much, much darker than Charles.  In the past, they've always seemed to both tan about the same.  This really got me to thinking, and then I recalled that Mitch had been supplementing with Vitamin D for several months along with me.

That experience combined with my experience earlier this year has me wondering if slow tanning rates are associated with low Vitamin D levels.  Here's my thinking:

I think that the skin darkening response is the body's attempt to not only protect itself from the sun, but also to reduce production of Vitamin D once levels are sufficient.  This paper discusses skin pigmentation of the more permanent type and how it varies with latitude.  It also explains that the production of Vitamin D decreases with increase of melanin in the skin.

I'm confident that Mitch's vitamin D levels were much higher after months of 3000-4000 IU/day of D3.  Charlie, on the other hand, had no supplementation.  And because we all participated in the same outdoor activities, I can say with certainty that our sun exposure was nearly identical.

Charlie got a slight burn but but also tanned very little.  Mitch burned less but tanned much more.  I did not burn at all but I am only slightly darker since I started very dark to begin with.  In fact, I had Mexicans ask me where I got my skin color, and jokingly asked if I was really a Mexican.  :)

So that's my theory.  I've been searching online to see if I can find support for it, but have not been successful so far.

I'll keep digging, I'm curious about this.

Sayings I hate, Part 1

"Everything in balance"

Sounds so enlightened, so easy to just let it roll off your tongue.  But what does it MEAN?

I usually hear it when I discuss my diet with people.  I get responses like "No grains!  That seems extreme, I believe in everything in balance."

Okay, I'll just say it:  That's what you say when you have NO F***ING CLUE about the subject matter at hand.  You want everything in balance? 

So, what is this magical balance of food?  If I told you that there were three food groups and they were particle board, rat poison, and steak, how would you choose to balance those?  I just made up those food groups, you say?

The generally accepted food groups themselves are made up!  The only reason we have a food group called grains is because we discovered thousands of years ago that we could cultivate and grow crops and get a lot of food per unit of land.

If instead we had found a certain type of tree that would regrow its bark overnight, and the bark was somewhat edible if we crushed it and soaked it and cooked it, then we'd have found a way to get a lot of food from bark.  And undoubtedly we'd be hearing how we have to "eat our healthy whole barks!"

It's a made up food group that only exists due to mechanized farming.  That's it!

If you want to balance things (whatever that means!) then at least apply some thought to what things you're lumping together to balance. 

And if I'm singing to the choir, next time you hear someone say they believe in all things in balance, ask them if they really intend to balance everything good in their diet with something bad.  Chances are they'll contradict themselves almost immediately. 

Then drop it.  You can't educate the unwilling.

But you can poke fun at them.

When everyone wants Italian food...

Don't complain. Just order the fish.

Sugar water cheaper than water!

I wonder what metabolic derangement awaits my friends in Mexico!

Sugar water with fruit flavoring for 1.7 pesos/liter or water for 4.9 pesos/liter. You're low on cash and the kids are thirsty...what to do?

Real Food

It's right there in the title, so I thought I'd share what I consider real food.  Here are a few examples of my little, tiny meals.

Yumm.  A few strips of bacon cooked in a skillet, then squash and zucchini cooked in the bacon grease, and finally 8 eggs cooked in what was left of the bacon grease.

Bacon grease is your friend.  Well, at least it's my friend!

Bacon and zucchini/squash and eggs again, except this time the eggs were hatched.  :)  I can't show it here, because it borders on food pornography, but I used the chicken skin like a tortilla and made a wrap with all that stuff.  Truly satisfying.

Zucchini, celery, shredded chicken in coconut milk.  Cook it until the water evaporates from the milk and it's just coconut oil and awesomeness!

Last but not least, grass-fed beef meatballs and a whole avocado.  What more do you need?

Notice there are no grains, legumes, or heavily processed foods.  In fact the only concession to processed food is the coconut milk!

More when I get back from my trip to Mexico next week!

First blog post. What is this all about?

I've been threatening to do it for a while. This will be my blog for all things nutrition and exercise related. I'll talk about real food a lot, and will share my results with you.

I will be reaching the lowest bodyfat % of my life this year, and will periodically update with progress info and pictures.  I'll be doing it with "Paleo" food choices I've learned primarily from Robb Wolf and the excellent coaching of John Marshall at Crossfit Richardson.

As of today, I weigh 195.0 pounds and am somewhere slightly under 20% bodyfat by my calculations.

More to follow soon.