Fresh

Fresh is in my mind the best of all the recent food movies. If we could make this film required viewing in our schools it would change the world, and along the way take the biggest single bite out of our obesity epidemic of any movement so far. The reason is that instead of dwelling on the problems that mass food production is causing, it focuses on the solution. And the cool thing is that it’s a lot easier than most of us think.

The problem with all the Fright Club style films is that they make us think the problem of the world are too vast to do anything about. Sure, they get you mad. Maybe they even inspire you to activism. But that’s a tough road to hoe for most of us. Fresh addresses the problems but its focus is on the solution, using examples of the individuals that are doing something about it and how effective they are.

Here are some hopefully statistics:

- One farmer makes a living on 3 intercity acres in Milwaukee.

- Another, on a small spread in Virginia, practices holistic ranching by moving his animals around the farm to complete a natural cycle so he doesn’t need to use any fertilizers or pesticides or even plant crops. He gets the highest yield possible out of his acreage, which stays exceedingly healthy, and brings in $3,000 per acre, compared to the $150 per acre that our subsidized industrial farms yield.

- Another quit using the “recommended” pesticides and antibiotics and now saves $14,000 dollars per year and has healthier animals.

- Food from mass production farms and ranches yields 40% less nutrients, which has been reflected on the labels and, for some reason, isn’t causing a national outcry (this is the obesity epidemic by itself, as well as adding to other aspects of our health care load. It’s not tricky math. If you need to consume 40% more calories to get 100% of your needed nutrients there is no other possibility than becoming obese.)

The film brings to light the fact that food production isn’t the complicated quagmire we're led to believe. We can all produce food in our own homes. Local co-op farms can feed entire communities. In exactly the same manner that we can turn our homes into generating plants that can meet our energy needs, we can grow food locally that meets our nutritional needs. And the result will not only mean a healthier world but a more economically sound one. The stats are unequivocally one sided. We can feed ourselves better than any big corporation.

There’s a line in the film where someone says “the only thing Americans fear is inconvenience.” To change this we don’t need revolution. We don’t need any great leaders. And we certainly don’t need a bunch of corporations telling us what to do. All we need is some very simple grass roots education and we’ll do it ourselves.

To start, bookmark the Fresh site and sign up for their newsletter.

The film is only available for screenings. Though you can purchase a private screening it would be more fun to attend a public one. If it's not playing in your community you can organize a screening yourself, which they will help you organize. Go here for details.

Analyzing Dairy Claims

It's high time to again pimp The Real Fitness Nerd, one of the publications where I occasionally scribe. The credit goes to Denis Faye in this instance for his straight dope attack on dairy claims.

Having a cow over cheesy dairy claims

Instead of summarizing I'm going to suggest you go and read it. If you like, subscribe to the Nerd as your critical eye to what's happening in the fitness and nutrition world.

I've cast doubt on the dairy industry's integrity myself (search my articles and mailbag). This inevitably motivates an attack from the uninformed masses that are led to believe that humans can't exist without dairy. No exception here, where one reader tries to defend the industry's claim that milk is an important source of vitamin D. Nice to see Denis ferret out the bullshit.

Some Fun P90X & Insanity News

Certainly the Barrancas del Cobre will offer some good blogging opportunities but, while you wait, Ben Kallen over at the Beachbody office found some fun news on Insanity and the X. Enjoy!

According to Atlanta Journal-Constitution sportswriter David O’Brien, the Braves’ Matt Diaz did P90X again during the offseason this winter:

Diaz doesn’t call around to ask reporters or club personnel: “What about me? Will there be a roster spot or any playing time left for me?” No, he hangs out with his family in Central Florida while all this is going on during the offseason, does his P90X diet/fitness regime for the second winter in a row, and prepares for spring training and the 2010 season.

http://blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-braves-blog/2010/02/25/diaz-mr-amiable-ready-for-whatever-role/

The Washington Redskins’ blog links to a year-old YouTube video in which quarterback Colt Brennan filmed the team’s training staff doing P90X:

http://blog.redskins.com/2010/02/16/redskins-name-larry-hess-head-athletic-trainer/

This weight-loss blogger is doing Insanity while wearing a GoWearFit electronic activity tracker, and posting the results. On Day 2, you can see that she was burning up to 14 calories per minute.

http://www.myallnaturalweightloss.com/insanity-workout-review-day-two/1091/

Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon

Right now I'm packing to head south and join Caballo Blanco and the Raramuri in the Barrancas de Cobre. This video explains the event pretty well. Enjoy.

Customizing P90X

Anyone who follows my blog has read a lot about how to customize P90X for sports, specifically the ones I do. Now I’ve writing a series about how to customize the X for all sports (including mass, weight loss, and combing X with other programs--like Insanity--which aren’t sports but could be objectives for sports) and, finally, we’ve got the archive up. Here it is:

The P90X Newsletter

I think that in order to get both the Beachbody Newsletter and the P90X newsletter you need to enter different email addresses. The may have fixed this but if you aren’t getting both try that. Beachbody coaches feel free to share this info so I can quit answering email about it!

The normal Beachbody Newsletter (why not get both, they’re free?)

To read the customizing series, begin with newsletter 4 on defining muscle confusion, then skip to customizing X and read forward in order as each article in the series references the older ones. Each article is short but there’s a lot of physiological info to understand (keep in mind it’s written very much for the layman) if you want to create your own training programs, which you should. The series is far from finished. Next up are running and triathlon training.

* There is no place on the X archive page to sign up, but you can sign up for both on the main BB archive page.
pic: back in the day: one of our first brainstorming sessions about 90x.

Is Cleansing Real Weight Loss?

I just did a three day cleanse and lost 10 pounds. By the new American standard I’m hardly fat, so how can this happen? And since it did, is it real weight loss?

I’m currently working on substantiating the science behind P90X so it can air in the UK. Not only is their science criteria more stringent than in the US, they also won’t accept our testimonials who have lost more than two pounds per week because they’ve deemed this unsafe. As the guy who always champions stricter controls about what can be claimed on food and supplement packaging, it’s funny to stand up cry at a regulatory agency that we’re the ones getting hosed.

Two pounds per week is a perfectly acceptable outside limit for body composition change. I would even argue that it’s unlikely you could sustain this for very long. But over the course of a short-term exercise program, especially one that’s combined with diet, you can lose far in excess of this. It happens in our test groups all the time. The reason is the cleansing effect you get, which is real. It’s a one-time effect but we should not discount its importance.

Since I’m the de facto Raton Blanco (white mouse) around here let’s use my week on the Shakeology cleanse as an example:
As noted in the other post, I began my cleanse after a weekend of debauchery. Sure, I ran a ton but I also ate a lot of bad food and drank a lot of beer. Since I’m not used to eating and drinking that much my body was hanging onto a lot of excess food and my cells retaining too much water (also because of the long runs in a drier climate causing an emergency storage response). The flushing effects of the cleanse got rid of this and brought my body back into homeostasis. But now I’m lighter than I was prior to the weekend, and that is true weight loss.

It’s worth noting that my cleanse would be considered high calorie compared to most. I was probably eating 1500 calories a day. I was just eating nutrient dense foods with a lot of fiber (low density food with high density nutrients). Essentially, it was just good clean eating with a lot of water and no junk—the same thing our test groups do. I feel great and everything is again running properly.

Many people rarely feel this state of being. If fact, they walk around most of the time in my pre-cleanse state. It’s sad when you think about it, but if you rarely exercise, eat bad food, poison yourself daily with drugs (legal or otherwise—soda, a drug when you consider what it’s made of, makes up more calories world wide than any food) you won’t even know what feeling good means. Unfortunately, the average US citizen likely never functions properly.

When we begin a good diet and exercise regimen we will always flush undigested gunk out of our system and bring our hydration levels into homeostasis (most people retain way too much water due to excessive sodium in our diets). Then we lose weight. And if it’s weight that you’re always carrying around with you, it has to be considered real weight. No matter what those Limeys say.

pic: earning my cleanse at milt's, one of the west's best diners.

Never Say Never

When Romney got wind of my 07 birthday challenge she had absolutely no desire to participate. A year later, as my wife, she felt an obligation to support what I called an off year challenge. During the latter stretch of my 17 hour affair she said, “I wasn’t sure about these. I kind of thought I might want to do one. But I’m exhausted and all I’ve done is belay. Now I know, for sure, that I’m never doing a birthday challenge.”

Last Saturday she proved herself a liar. Not only had she done a birthday challenge but she’d done an absurd one; an “ultra” marathon. Until a few months ago, not only had she no interest in punishing herself on her birthday, she “didn’t run.” So I was probably as surprised as anyone when out of the blue she targeted the Red Hot Ultra as her objective.

In the five weeks she trained for the event I kept hearing complaints. I tried to tell her she didn’t have to do it (I think challenges are/should be fun) but she wouldn’t hear of it.

"... they don’t call it “The Birthday Pretty-Hard," she’d mutter each time.

Her blog examined her trepidation:

There are days when I’m sitting around and think I’ll just get in the zone and run for however long it takes. Then there are days when I’m running and I think, “this is going to be impossible.”

This lasted up until the morning of the race. At check-in she said, “what am I doing here with these people?” But not only did she finish an hour and a half under her expected time, she finished with a smile. And even when she was suffering she copped to having a good time. This certainly must have been the case. As the weekend progressed her enthusiasm increased until she started saying things like, “I wonder what a hundred would be like?”

As usual, my talented wife explains things better than I do. Congrats, baby!

Birthday Challenged



pics: bounding through the snow during the race; under castleton tower thinking about what's next