Tahini Dressing:

• 1/3 cup tahini
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• dash of sea salt and pepper

Or – to make a quick single serving on the fly:

• 1 Tbl tahini
• 1 Tbl water
• 1 tsp lemon (if you have it)
• dash of sea salt and pepper

Mix the ingredients into a consistency slightly thinner than olive oil.  Use the water to perfect the consistency.  Stores well for use later.

Joyva tahini comes in a cool metal container.

Thanks to the Boulder Book Store for putting on this event.

On Thursday evening Eric and I went to hear author Michael Pollan speak at the Unity Church of Boulder.  Pollan is changing the way we think about food in America by exposing the “edible food-like substances” that plague most every grocery store and restaurant in America and which are advertised in every media imaginable.  I consider his book, “In Defense of Food” a must read for anyone interested in health or performance.

Pollan focused on three topics: the American diet and our health, facts about food, and how our nation might recover from its unhealthy relationship with food.

The U.S. Government preached the correctness of a low-fat diet beginning in 1977 with the McGovern Report.  Just three years later the obesity epidemic began.  As Pollan points out, “we got very fat off of this low fat campaign.”  The average American is now 11 pounds (age-adjusted) heavier than her 1980 counter-part!

Here in the CrossFit world we know that fat is a good thing; we eat it because it keeps us well-oiled, satiated, constantly PR’ing machines.  Oh, and because it freakin’ tastes good!  Can you imagine the Zone without fat blocks?  Probably not.  But the food industry took the low-fat recommendation to an extreme and cut fat from every processed food imaginable.  But fat provides taste and when it’s cut out, products like low-fat peanut butter with added sugar pop up on the shelves.  Does that seem like an oxymoron to anyone else?  Peanut butter IS fat.  To overcome the lack of taste, the food industry replaced fat with sugar, and lots of it.  Sugar appeared in things that weren’t traditionally sweet.  I remember reading food labels in college and wondering why sugar, and later high fructose corn syrup, was used in traditionally non-sweet foods such as bread and crackers.  It was also added to foods that were already sweet such as cookies and fruit juice.

Eric often points out that even the health food holy grail Whole Foods sells drinks that contain sugar.  What’s more is the food companies market them by saying, “we use real organic cane sugar.”  Thursday night Pollan pointed out that the use of real sugar is now being positioned as a health claim.  Good bye high fructose corn syrup, hello cane sugar.  Any form of extracted sugar is still processed sugar.  It’s bad for you and will give you diabetes.  Sorry Mix1.

With all the science and politics behind food these days its hard to think straight.  Pollan left us with two facts about diet.

The first is that people who eat a modern western diet – characterized by lots of processed food, refined carbohydrate, refined oils, sugar, lots of calories, and little fresh fruits or vegetables – have high rates of heart disease, type two diabetes, cancer, and obesity; higher than any other population around the world.  This is not a new development.  Medical workers in Africa at the turn of the century noticed that the moment traditional diets gave way to store food – white flour, free sugars, refined oils – that western diseases developed in the population.  Like, whoa.

His second point is that if you look at traditional diets from around the world – from African warriors that subsist off of cattle blood, milk, and meat to native americans who eat corn and beans and little meat, to cultures in Greenland that live off of seal blubber (with no heart disease epidemic) – they all produce healthy people.  They are ALL healthier than us.  Pollan pokes fun that in the U.S. we, “have created the one diet in the world that reliably makes us sick.”

So how do we get over this?  As Nicole Carroll would say, “how do we get off the crack?”  Advertising, health claims, flashy colors, nutrient load promises, and portion sizes ballooning out of control make this a large task, but by no means insurmountable.  And you’re all CrossFitters so you’re already ahead of the game!

Pollan’s mantra is simple, “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”  But what is real food?  In an earlier post we quizzed you on what exactly is real food.  Pollan has a nice set of rules for eating, and he points out with a chuckle that, “yes, we have come to a point where we need a book to tell us what food is.”

So here they are:

• Don’t buy anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.  If it comes in a hot pink wrapper and makes a claim about improving your health it’s probably something Nana wouldn’t have ever allowed in her kitchen.
• Don’t buy anything with more than 5 ingredients.  I’ll add to that and say don’t buy anything with an ingredient you can’t pronounce – especially if portions of the words include combinations of PHs, Xs, Ys, and Zs you probably don’t want to eat it – for example:
• Don’t buy anything with an ingredient you wouldn’t have in your own house.
• Don’t shop in the middle of the store because that’s where the processed stuff lurks.  The fresh (real food) stuff is on the periphery.
• Don’t eat any foods that won’t eventually rot.  Pollan told this great story about a Twinkie kept on his shelf that retained its soft spongey feel for over two years.  Ew.

So there you have it.  A recap of some insight from a guy who’s got his food straight.

The next time you’re hauling your paleo-filled tupperware in to work and a co-worker comments on your weird food habits – be proud of your weirdness – and take comfort in the fact that type II diabetes is not in your future.

2 bottles of Mix1
3 bananas
4 yogurts, fruit flavored, fat free
grapes
3 bars
bread
potato chips
a boxed slice of Whole Foods pizza

If I had to choose one word to summarize her purchases it would be “diabetes,” but I suppose a more accurate representation would be “carbohydrates.”  Everything in her basket was carbs.  

Mix1 is crap, the third ingredient is sugar!  What’s more is that it costs $2-something a bottle and all of Boulder runs around drinking it thinking that because the company sponsors a cycling team it must be a healthy drink.  Wrong.  The fat free yogurt is practially diabetes in a small plastic container and the bars are fortified with so many vitamins and minerals that I refuse to classify them as food.  

I could go on but my points are three:

1. Just because you shop at Whole Foods doesn’t mean you are healthy OR eating well.  It doesn’t grant you free reign to eat anything in the store.  You still have to select healthy, nutritious, performance-enhancing, healthy food.
2. There is a TON of junk food at Whole Foods.  Unfortunately, junk food made with organic ingredients does not make it healthy. 
3. If you don’t want diabetes or a host of other diseases later in life, stick to the CrossFit dietary prescription: eat garden vegetables, especially greens, lean meats, nuts and seeds, little starch, and no sugar.

As Emily would say, “Do it.”

Paleo Rocks.

Peanut butter glazed donut topped with bacon and bananas.

Justin’s Nut Butter makes individual squeeze packs of pure, natural, paleo-friendly, almond butter goodness.  Think GUs but with almond butter inside. Amazing!

The company was also more than generous and donated multiple cases of almond butter packs to me to send to my brother and his Marines during two deployments.  Thanks guys!

1. This way of eating requires FAR less mental energy compared to Zone eating.  No weighing, measuring, or eyeballing Zone blocks when I go out to eat.  No math.  Eating is fun again.  I see food as food and not as macronutrients, grams, or blocks.

2. I can use the additional mental energy (toughness) other places – such as in a WOD.  Think about it, if you’re always freaking out about how many blocks, what kind of carbs, what ratio, how much fat, how many grams, and when to have your snack – how much mental energy do you have to commit to kicking ass in the daily WOD?  My goal is better performance, improved health, and PRs so why would I want to eat in a way that takes away from one vital aspect of getting through a WOD – mental energy.

3. Prior to the Challenge I was strict zone (3x fat).  For some ridiculous reason, I thought the non Paleo foods that I ate were the ones that weren’t that bad – such as legumes and buckwheat.  Legumes grow from the ground, they are a product of the earth, how could they be bad?  I thought that by avoiding the really bad non Paleo foods such as milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream (most of the time) that was good enough and that I was getting most (if not all) of the benefits the Paleo diet claimed to deliver.  Apparently, this was my way of justifying that what I was eating was OK. 

Going strict Paleo made a huge difference.  I gained mental sharpness.  I sleep better.  My performance is improving.  I am less irritated.  I don’t crave foods.  I’m not hungry for hours after I eat.  I eat a meal and then move on with my day, rather than obsessing about the next time I will eat.  Instead of focusing on what I can’t eat, I am excited about the healthy meals I can create.

This past weekend I had some ice cream – Boulder Ice Cream Sweet Cream.  I was a little sad to break my Paleo streak but decided I would see what affect it might have.  I was mostly curious to see what kind of cravings it might stir up.  While I still liked the taste of ice cream I didn’t have the desire or craving for more.  I’m back at Paleo as of today.

I want to thank Rochelle Hagnas of CrossFit Portland for her help and tips in getting me started on the right track for my Paleo Challenge.  Rochelle passed on some great tips to get me started.

Her recommendations were:

1. Keep it simple.  Eat Paleo.  Don’t try and combine it with the Zone.
2. Eat a pound of vegetables a day, make sure you get your required amount of protein each day, and then add some fat.
3. When you get a craving eat some nuts, or nut butter, or a salad with some olive oil. 

My recommendations after my month are:
1. Keep a food log. At least for the first week. Track the food you eat (what kind of food, not how much), cravings, moods, and length of time until you are again hungry. Look at your log after one week and see what information you can pull from the data collected.  Are you satisfied for longer periods of time?  Are your cravings diminishing? 
2. Eat. Sounds silly, but EAT. Eat whatever quantities you heart desires for now – just make sure it is ALL paleo foods. It’s too difficult to dial in a complete overhaul of your diet, overcome cravings, make good choices, AND be worried about quantity. Once you’re dialed in on what to eat after a month, then go back and think about eating a little less, if you think you need to. Many people follow Paleo without any weighing or measuring and perform at a level with which they are content.
3. Try to drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces (150lb person should drink 75 ounces) of water per day.  Altitude dries us our up here in Boulder.  Stay hydrated.
4. Great reference on what to eat/not eat: Paleo Diet Foods.  If people have others, please let me know!

I had the pleasure of being invited to Flatirons CrossFit to teach my running clinic. As I said to Tim, owner of Flatirons CrossFit, each of his athletes made a tremendous transition to the basic concepts of efficient running. I credit this to the fact that the crew at Flatirons CrossFit has great body awareness. Nice job guys!

Sunday, March 29th

HA! Yea right.

Here are some highlights and tips for starting a garage facility:

Put metal cages around any exposed light bulbs – The ceiling of our garage is high enough to jump rope inside (sweet!) but apparently not underneath the light bulb. Smashing the bulb into a million slivery pieces onto a floor where people place their hands and lay down is a tedious exercise in thorough clean-up.

Weather – have a back up plan. 16″ of snow, no problem. Get creative. Shovel for warm-up. Snow angel burpees. Practice POSE running technique on the sheets of ice covering the road!

Temperature inside the garage - Our garage is nothing more than a one-car framed wood box with a cement floor. If it’s 32 degrees outside, it’s probably 34 degrees inside. Tell me this, are you inspired to do a WOD while glancing up at a frost covered pull-up bar?? Seriously, frost and ice particles! Ever seen A Christmas Story?

Sure, ok, I understand that Flick sticks his tongue to the frozen flag pole and not his sweat covered hands; HOWEVER, I had visions of my sweat covered hands freezing to the pull-up bar, then me being stuck in a never ending lat stretch, and having no way down but for Eric to rip me and my hands from the bar while my hard earned and well-kept calluses remained frozen in place.

So, Eric got out the blowtorch. Yup, we blowtorched our pull-up bar. It worked quite well and the warm bar actually helped to prevent my hands from going numb while doing the other exercises.

Stall mats are heavy – The rear suspension of Eric’s 4Runner may never be the same. Apparently the (very old) truck was not designed to transport 800 pounds of rubber. Sadly, the 4Runner still looks like it’s carrying 8 mats that are weighting down the back end even though we removed them over two weeks ago.

Stall mats do not provide enough cushion for sit-ups.
After completing somewhere around 150 sit-ups while lying on our stall mat floor I felt a painful throbbing on my tailbone. Reaching down the back of my pants to feel what was going on I found a tender to the touch area. I basically gave myself a tailbone rug burn. Awesome. The scab is healing nicely although I have carefully chosen my underwear the past few days. Buy some yoga mats or foam squares for sit-ups or else you’ll end up like this…

Ok a little graphic but hopefully this will deter EVERYONE from attempting to do large quantities of sit-ups on stall mats. OUCH!

We utilized the CrossFit Journal and the message board to piece together our facility. Those two resources provide all the information we needed to build-out a fantastic garage facility. I’ll track down and post the specific articles and posts if people are interested.

We’re almost done, pictures soon, need to paint.

A blowtorch will quickly melt any frost or ice on a galvanized pipe.

Wednesday night a huge spring storm moved across the Front Range dumping 16″ of snow on Boulder. Scratch the planned WOD and get creative!

Snow storm WOD:
Warm-up: 10 minute sidewalk shovel (also good for neighbor relations!)
Skill work: OHSs, can easily be done while wearing down parkas, hats, and snow boots
WOD: Back squat, 3-3-3-3-3
Warm-down: 5 minute sidewalk shovel (more neighborhood praise)

Eric warming up in the garage.

Materials:
6′, 1″ diameter galvanized pipe, threaded (1)
Floor flanges (2)
2×6″ piece of wood (1)
1/4″ hex bolts, grade 8 (12)

I’ll have Eric add step by step instructions.

The finished product is VERY sturdy.  Two people can use the bar at the same time with plenty of space although a user must check the alignment of their head with the floor joists or a kipping pull-up could become a pathway to a concussion.  We made the decision to set the pull-up bar close to the ceiling with the idea that our head would kip in between two floor joists to keep our oly platform air space free for overhead barbell work.  Plus, this way we can work on accuracy, one of the CrossFit ten general skills, in every WOD that involves pull-ups!

Floor flanges and 4 hex bolts attach the galvanized pipe to the 2x6" piece of wood.

The ceiling joists are spaced two feet apart but the galvanized pipe with flanges didn't quite reach from 2x6" to 2x6". A thin sheet of wood (shown above), about 1/2" in diameter, was secured to the inside of one of the 2x6"s to make up the distance.

Here's the finished product.