I hope you all had a fantastic New Year!  This is a great time to reflect upon the past and make intentions for the future.  Don’t be intimidated if this seems overwhelming (as it often does to me).  Just remembering what has happened over the past year can be powerful.  I have really enjoyed working with my clients this year and been very happy with what we have done and grateful to be a part of your lives.  More good things to come in 2012!

Here is Stephanie with her new Do Win weightlifting shoes getting a PR on her stone deadlift by lifting the 115!

My mother surprised me this year with a great gift that I had never even heard of before.  This surprises me because it the home version was developed by the same couple that wrote The Protein Power Life Plan.  I have just begun playing with it and am beginning to understand what its capabilities are.

So what is it?  It is a machine that precisely controls the temperature of a water bath.  Foods are cooked in the bath but unlike your crock pot they are vac packed in food grade plastic during the cooking.  Why is this cool?  Well it is a method of cooking where the temperature is precisely controlled and the cooking medium is the same temperature as the desired final temperature of the food itself.  When you roast a big hunk of meat or pan fry a steak the medium (the oven or pan) is heated to a much greater degree than the meat itself.  This accounts for much of the finesse of cooking time where the duration in the hotter medium is controlled in order to bring the internal temp up without overcooking the outside.

If the medium is maintained at the final temperature then overcooking in the sense we think of it is not possible.  The temperature  of the food will not exceed that of the the water bath.  Cooking eggs was the first thing I tried.  The handy cookbook that came in the starter kit talks about the various proteins in an egg and the temperatures at which they denature (the egg white turning from clear to white is an example of this).   Turns out three proteins are involved in cooking egg white and the first denatures at  143F the second at 158F and the third at  184F.  The first temperature causes a loose gel and the second a firm gel.  The highest temp causes the egg white to become rubbery.  Since the egg yolk becomes denatured at 148F then 148F creates a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg.   I had never had an egg like this.  Getting this consistency with a typical boiling method is extremely challenging because the time must be precisely controlled to bring up the temperature to 148F in a medium that is around 212F.  If fact if ll the eggs aren’t the same size then then some of the eggs will be over or undercooked assuming you aren’t fishing out the small ones first.  So if you care about precise cooing the sous vide will give you precise reults with zero work.  I have never had much luck with consistency in boiled eggs so I have grown accustomed to enjoying them at all levels of doneness. I am excited about tinkering with exactly how I like them and then reproducing them exactly the way I want them EVERY TIME!.

Ok, so you aren’t a foodie why should you care about Sous Vide.  Well there are a lot os smart folks recommending being aware that foods cooked at high heats can form these harmful substances via the Maillard Reaction (which tastes oh so good!) which can create reactive oxygen species and advanced glycation end-products (ROSs and AGEs on the blogosphere ).  Cooking in water which is always below 212F prevents these from forming because they don’t start forming until a temperature of 309F. This strong suit of the method is also its weakness as far as taste is concerned so Baldwin, the author of the cook book,  recommends flash cooking the exterior of the meat at high heat after the meat has reached the desired internal temperature either in a pan or with a cooking torch.  Because this final caramelization ( the common name for the Maillard Reaction) can happen very quickly he reasons that less damaging substances will be created and the flavor will still be good.

I will be interested to see if this is validated by experimental means.  I am also going to find out whether the meat tastes good without caramelization.  The chuck roast is in the Sous Vide as we speak.

The other concern that I have is the use of plastic in the cooking.  Some plastics have documented dangers to them and there is a legitimate question as to whether cooking in plastic is going to impart undesirable chemicals.  I will be doing more research on this.  One thing I do know is that if you eat at restaurants many foods are prepared via this method so avoiding the benefits of using the Sous Vide at home will not limit your exposure if you eat out.  Also since the temperature cannot reach over 212F while submerged in water it seems to me that this method is safer then cooking TV dinners in the microwave (not that I ever advocate eating that stuff).  Anyway I am excited to play with the method more and will report my results and recipes.  I am really looking forward to oil poaching fish without using up a whole bottle of olive oil at a time.

That time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seems to go faster every year.  I completed the 6 full days of the Neera cleanse and one day of broth and I am happy with the results.  Physically your body definitely changes.  Every day I lost about 2 lbs.  Of course I am not a proponent of scale weight as a a huge measure.  One can lose weight and be moving away from one’s goals.  Until I get remeasured via Dexa scan it will be hard to see if there was loss of lean body mass which is something I definitely don’t want to lose.  After beginning eating food again weight shot up about 6 lbs but my clothes still fit more loosely.  As was true in the first stages the challenges and the changes felt much more psychological than physical.  I honestly wasn’t even that excited to start eating food when the cleanse was over. I will do another post on the physical effects of the cleans and the nuts and bolts of my experience but I want to share some reflections on my experience.

A lot of the spiritual traditions that I find insightful emphasize being present.  The partial fast of the cleanse made being present easier but this in itself was hard.  Food is a way I escape discomfort and to avoid being present to things that I want to avoid.  Taking a break from the rhythm of food meant that I didn’t have this method of escape.  Perhaps the biggest ongoing effect is that I don’t lose myself in food as much as I used to.  This is a double edged sword.  Food as a coping method may lead to an unhealthy body and a compulsive relation with food.  But the things that you must cope with are real and simply getting rid of a coping strategy doesn’t make your life better.  It can lead one to greater insight and a different way of living but this is a challenging path.  The biggest thing I have learned is that I must create new ways of caring for myself or I will continue to have a compulsive relationship with food.  The cleanse gave me a sense of what I have been doing with food for  long long time.

I am glad that I did the cleanse.  I will definitely consider the cleanse as a powerful tool for learning.  One thing the cleanse certainly won’t do for you is give you a quick fix.  If you are scale driven you will be elated while you are on the cleanse and then distressed when you gain weight back.  If it is a huge sacrifice that is only done to lose weight I think it will be a bad experience but I think for the right person at the right time it can help begin a process leading to personal growth and physical health.

So it is day 3 of the Neera cleanse for me and it is certainly not been what I was expecting. I first heard about the NEERA cleanse a couple months ago from my friend David who had done it on the recommendation of our mutual mentor James Fitzgerald.  I am suspicious of cleanses in general for some reason but after hearing that it was a useful process on a lot of levels I decided to try it.  I am always looking for new tools in the tool box for clients who are having a hard time with food cravings, have a need for detoxification and difficulty losing weight.  Cleanses can be powerful for these things but of course I had to try it for myself.

The Neera cleanse is based on the Master Cleanse which has been around for a long time. Basically you eat no solid food and drink a mixture of sugar, lemon juice with a dash of cayenne pepper for 5 to 15 days.  Sounded extreme to me and it still does as I type this.  I think I associate cleanses with crash dieters and quick fixes and this probably accounted for some of my skepticism. I have also always been skeptical of the “toxins” as they are often nebulously referred to.  The kicker is that I am not an advocate for caloric restriction as a weight loss strategy.

So why try it anyway?  Well, having been overweight for a long period in my life I have had a very hard time significantly leaning out around the umbilicus and also had pretty constant GI troubles. Stress and toxicity are associated with this kind of fat accumulation and this is the highest risk worst place to have fat.  Beyond that I have always been a person who eats large quantities of food.  This has served me well for a few times that I have been training really hard but hindered me most of the rest of the time.  I want to explore what this hunger is about and one of the things David told me was that a cleanse can change your relationship to food.  Even though it is only day 3 out of the 7 I have planned I have already learned some new things.

Going from eating a reduced carb diet heavy on the meat and fats to drinking basically sugar water (in the form of  combination of maple syrup and palm syrup) weighed heavily on me because I expected to be extremely hungry.  Day 2 and 3 are reportedly the hardest days from a hunger and physical symptoms of the partial fast and detoxification processes.  Mid way through day 3 I haven’t experienced much hunger and only an hour or two of head aches. Trips to the bathroom have been interesting but nothing crazy.   I can say that I am already tired of the taste of the Neera drink, but what surprises me is how the hunger I feel isn’t coming from my body per se.  I really don’t feel hungry and when I do I drink some of this drink that doesn’t taste great and it goes away. The hunger I feel is for gratification.  Food is gratifying and the frequency that we eat means it is on out mind a lot. IN other words the pleasure of food it was I miss not the feeling of being nourished or being able to function.

I remember David telling me that he was surprised at how much time he had while he was on the cleanse because he spent virtually no time preparing meals, eating and going to the store.  It has been much the same for me.  I want to prepare a meal because it sounds pleasurable and it provides a rhythm of activity and gratification through the day.  This is not a bad thing.  Your body needs food, but it is clear to me that my sense of what my body needs to function and what I want to feed it are very different.

Now I am not training with any intensity and really avoiding doing much of any activities and I am sleeping a lot so I am not sure how I would do under normal activities with such a low calorie carb based diet even temporarily but I am amazed that I have the same level of energy and this is during what is typically the hardest part of the cleanse.

I will keep you up to date on my experiences with the Neera cleanse.  I might also discuss some of the mechanisms that might be at play in cleansing.  I also plan on tackling my contention that calorie restriction is not a good weight loss strategy for most people.  That is a huge can of worms to open up but I would like to share some of the perspectives on the bio regulation of fat tissue that are in the science out there.

I hope you re all enjoying the holiday season.  I know I am loving my yearly tradition of listening to the Charlie Brown’s Christmas Soundtrack.  Cheers!

Well the Holiday season is upon us again.  Thanksgiving is a fantastic holiday:in theory. Being thankful and cultivating gratitude is something that is so enriching and so worth celebrating as a reminder for what we have.  Of course I know that it can turn into a stressful time of overeating and merely the opening salvo in the frantic Christmas retail season but I think that Thanksgiving can also be an opportunity to be thankful for what we have, the people in our lives, and the point we are at in our lives right now.

This is a huge challenge for me personally.  I have noticed that much of my desire to change my life is a response to wanting it to be better in some way.  Right now growing this business is a huge part of my life and I am always aware of how challenging it is and the sacrifices it has required.  It is good to see a vision of the future to work towards but I think that gratitude in the moment must be where we can most impact our quality of life.

For the vast majority of our life we are between starting and stopping something.  I for one have noticed that even accomplishing a goal sometimes fails to satisfy me.  We must learn that cultivating gratitude for what we have is not going to take us away from what is important but actually can keep us on the right track.  If we cannot have gratitude for where we are now, even if things are really hard and the present may be a stepping stone to something better and an opportunity to learn, than we are not going to be able to have much gratitude in our lives.  I am learning that having the right aspirations doesn’t really matter if there is no gratitude and we have impoverished the present moment.

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and are able to take a few moments to cultivate gratitude. I am so thankful for you as clients and friends.

Cheers!

Something that I think almost everyone can benefit from is reevaluating their focus.  This is a lesson I have never fully learned but am gaining some awareness about.  In the realm of fitness I think it is easy for people influenced by Crossfit (as I have been) to become unfocused.  Perhaps the most conventional example I saw when I was more involved in Crossfit was wanting to maintain high levels of conditioning and make gains in strength and skill.  Basically people want to preserve their fastest WOD (work out of the day for you non-crossfitters) times and feel like they are failing if they are slower or even if they avoid that type of workout all together.  I certainly experienced this because I am very greedy when it comes to results: I want it all.  Well who doesn’t?  The problem is that greediness can create a lack of focus if you are acquainted with all the cool things you can train you body to do.

One of the best things about Crossfit for me was that it opened my eyes to the wide world of what was possible in fitness.  Body comp change, lifting crazy weight, doing basic gymnastics (never planned on even trying that!) running fast, being able to endure what I never thought possible.  Those are all very cool things and it is an amazing contribution of Crossfit to have brought those different aspects together under the umbrella of fitness.  When you start training you get to have it all: for a while that is.  That is the best thing about starting out and it is a great irony that the beginner who so often derides himself or herself for not being able to perform at the level of a veteran is at the same time probably experiencing the fastest and broadest gains in fitness the they will EVER achieve.  The rate of adaptation for a beginner is staggering compared to an experienced athlete.

After the beginning period of gains is complete that is when the training really begins in that going hard after whatever you feel like doing on a given day is not going to keep giving you improvements and might not even maintain what you have achieved especially if we are talking about work capacity and you have been torching your endocrine system with too much intensity and not enough recovery.  At this point you need to step back and find your focus.

This has been a constant challenge for me personally as an athlete and as a coach.  I personally began a journey to fitness because I was overweight and sick.  It is hard for me to see any increase on the scale and around my middle as a failure, but I also want to be as strong as I was when I was 50-70lbs heavier.  For my clients who primarily want to see body comp change I want to show them that there are a lot of worthwhile milestones for them to achieve as they go through the long process of changing their body while making sure that we are maintaining focus on the top priority.

Of course this principle also applies in every facet of life.  If you are trying to get your finances in order you must stay focused on your goals.  If you are trying to change the way you spend you time or how you do your work focus will also be critical.  There are two key decisions for attaining focus and that is deciding what you are going to do and deciding what you will no longer do.  We are pretty good at deciding what we want to do and terrible at deciding what we are going to stop doing.  If you are busy and most of us are you must always stop doing something your are doing now in order to start doing something new.   It sounds so obvious but it really isn’t.  Focus is not about adding something onto the list of commitments, it is about taking other things OFF, not forever, but at least for a time.  These decisions to stop are the hardest but they are also the most powerful.  Good luck with attaining focus and let us know in the comments what you think about focus.

So it was lunchtime and I decided that I wanted something easy and quick.  I had a package of Costco plain chicken breast strips and decided to make a chicken salad.  Since I was going to make a classic mayo based chicken salad and since I cannot find any commercial varieties that don’t use canola and sunflower oils, I just make my own.  

The essence of mayo is an emulsion of water based ingredients,  oil based ingredients and seasonings by the use of a raw egg yolk as an emulsifier.  Now water and oil don’t combine without help and that is what the egg yolk does for us.  The water based ingredients and seasonings can be combined first or you can just start with the egg yolk.  Slowly add the oil or fat making sure the ingredients stay emulsified.  Add the oil very slowly at first and then you will see a change in color and consistency indicating that you have created the emulsion.  From here on out I just tinker with it to get it tasting the way I want it.

Some of the ingredients that are commonly added to make a tasty mayo are lemon juice, pepper, vinegar and mustard.  I like them all, of course you can really experiment.  Lot’s of chef’s work from this platform, though they usually call their creation Aioli since for some mayo doesn’s have a good combination.  One addition I tried this afternoon was amazingly good.  I was fixing the mayo and I noticed the multiple containers of reserved bacon grease that have accumulated this week and I decided to add some bacon grease in lieu of additional olive oil.  Wow!  I think it could be overpowering if it was only bacon fat based but the flavor is amazing!  

If you are just tuning into the blog you might be wondering how I consider a mayo made with bacon grease to be healthy.  Stay tuned and I will do a post on that macronutrient we love to hate and how it is your friend.  Happy cooking!

Note: Eating raw egg yolks involves the risk of contamination so take whatever steps seem appropriate to you.  I personally don’t worry too much for myself but I would be careful before feeding it to an elderly person and young person or someone who has a compromised immune system.  I have also heard that the outside of the shells is the primary place contamination occurs so you might increase safety by washing the outside of the egg.  I also always use the highest quality eggs I can find.

I was listening to a great podcast by Rob Wolf with special guests Mat LaLonde (incidentally he was our nutrition seminar presenter for the OPT CCP Nutrition module) and Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple and the conversation turned to the importance of play and having fun.  This has become a big theme advocated by Mark Sisson and I had heard about his new focus from friends who attended the Ancestral Health Symposium but I didn’t get his full message until I heard the podcast (you can also watch his presentation here).

Basically Sisson points out that play is important as a force of evolution for our species, an aspect of health for individuals and a huge part of having good quality of life.  Dealing with stress is perhaps the most challenging aspect of seeking greater fitness and I think that the lack of play contributes to the stress we experience.  I agree that adults in our society lack sufficient play time and I also agree that play time is not optional.  You eliminate play from your life and there are going to be serious consequences. In addition to making time for unstructured play time I think it is also important to see that playfulness itself is an aspect of ourselves that we need to bring into balance in other areas.  Many areas of our lives may benefit from bringing playfullness to them but I believe that that fitness is an area where play should be a major focus.

This really hits home with me personally. After almost 4 years of really focusing on training I have noticed that I have to find new ways of staying engaged and keeping up with my routine.  I think many times we tackle a new goal or create a new habit because there is a serious problem.  When I started training by body and experimenting with my nutrition I was in dire straights. I was sick, overweight, and on all kinds of medications.  I drank a 24 pack of coke every week and ate a loaf of bread at a time.  I had to get serious in order to make changes.  Years on, I have transformed my life in a lot of ways and solving those problems is no longer a motivational force.  This is where play comes in.  How I approach my workout and my eating has a huge effect on how I perceive it and whether or not I do it because I enjoy it or whether I am only doing it because I think I should (or because I am the coach so I have to).  I have been experimenting with doing things differently and making the majority of my workouts play.  For me, this has meant a lot of climbing around on the pullup bars like a jungle gym, doing Zercher squats and doing a ton of tire flips and stone lifting because for me right now those things are fun.

Likewise with my nutrition I have focused less on adherence and more on the foods that I am inspired to prepare and eat.  I will keep you all posted, but I can report that I am enjoying myself a lot more with a focus on playfulness and I am helping all my clients make sure that play is a part of their routine.

Delicious Gluten Free pancakes

That either got your attention or caused you to chuckle in disbelief.  I have tried a lot of alternative and paleo pancakes and have found them to be edible but far from heavenly.  These buckwheat pancakes are outstanding and Wrightfood is an amazing blog.  Now how can something with wheat in the name be gluten free?  Well despite the name, buckwheat is very different from wheat and in fact from almost every other grain and pseudograin in that it is not a grass at all.  In plant biology one major difference for taxonomy is that between monocots and dicots.  Buckwheat is a dicot unlike grasses which are monocots.  It is also gluten free. Now of course there is not such thing as free lunch.  Buckwheat is still high carb so it is probably best as an occasional meal. It appears to be high in magnesium  and manganese according to Wolfram Alpha though the Wiki cites a paper claiming good amounts of Zinc and Selenium (though an overall less trace elements than wheat flour strangely).  Anyway, it tastes great and you might have a better chance of tolerating it.

Like many others things in life it is important to be thoughtful and have awareness about what you are eating instead of simply adopting a food orthodoxy e.g. paleo, veganism etc.  Chris Kresser is a great online resource and this article on the a paleo template is a great discussion why you should consider finding what works best for you right now.  Of course this is where ProjectFit group classes and personal training can really help you:)  Cheers and enjoy those pancakes!

The past few months have brought many changes.  Crossfit Littleton moved along with FactoryX and Performance MMA into a huge new facility near Santa Fe and Union.  The facility is great and ProjectFit Clients have loved having their classes and personal training sessions in the new facility.  I love the ceiling height which has allowed us to have a nice tall climbing rope which has to be my current favorite piece of equipment.  The new atlas stones might give the ropes a run for their money though.

Personally I have had a lot of changes as well.  I moved twice before finally settling down in the South Pearl neighborhood.  I also became the second person to become certified as an Optimum Performance Training Level 1 coach.  This was an amazing experience that began for me at the infamous Blackbox summit in 2009.  I was asked to relate my story to the group by Jeremy Thiel (here is the video) and right afterwards James Fitzgerald offered free participation in his upcoming OPT CCP course, unfortunately I don’t have the video of that part:).  Thus began a year and a half process of traveling to and from Calgary Canada to learn from one of the finest coaches in the world.

After completing the Level 1 course it was more obvious than ever that there is more to learn and what better thing to do than embark on Level 2.  Thankfully the CCP was moved to the new Phoenix base of operations and though the first module was scorching in late August I expect to enjoy the change of venue come February.

Anyway all this is to say that a lot has been happening even as the blog has laid dormant.  Look forward to more frequent philosophical ruminations on fitness, recipes, and tales of the exploits of ProjectFit clients!