Fatties Eating Paleo?

Thanks for the Tweet, Robb!

Robb Wolf tweeted this article yesterday from PaleoParents.com. It’s about this couple proving that you don’t need to be an “elite athlete” to see the benefits of a Paleo lifestyle. And no, I’m not trolling here. I just like messing with readers through my titles 😛

I’m actually really proud of Matthew, Stacy, and their family on PaleoParents.com. Check out their story for info on where they came from. Losing 200 pounds together as a couple is no easy feat!

As someone who was fat for so many years and has regressed a bit, I know what it’s like, especially when people know you’re on a diet like Paleo. You’ll get a lot of criticism. Whenever you regress, people will notice and talk about it. They just simply assume you’re supposed to get shredded after eating it. If that’s your goal, then sure, you gotta really work for it. However, for Matthew and Stacy, they’re doing it for the health benefits. Not long ago, Stacy was severely overweight, so taking upon the Paleo habits really did save her life.

How awesome is that?

The problem is the general public doesn’t “get it”. Matthew and Stacy are doing it the right way with gradual, long-term results. Sure, they might have regressed at times here and there, but they’re staying healthy for good. In the future, they’ll be lightyears ahead of the people who went for the quick fitness results and stopped living healthy after a short amount of time.

They went for a lifestyle change, not simply a diet. That’s when you know, as long as this couple sticks with it, they’ll be fine.

Most people want instant transformation. We’re all about instant gratification, right? Well, what you’re seeing with the Paleo Parents is something that’s REAL – everyday people who really are trying to stay healthy. While their health isn’t where they want it to be, they’ve made lots of progress and are continuing to take action.

I’m guilty at times of spending too much of my time reading than taking action. Learning and expanding your knowledge is great and all, but what’s the use when you’re not applying what you’ve learned. That’s another reason I give huge props to Matthew and Stacy. They’ve acknowledged their health issues and are continuing to DO SOMETHING about it.

I’m Also All About Health

Of course, my primary goal is my health as well, as Paleo and CrossFit helped get rid of my asthma once and is helping me do it again. Sure, in addition to that, I want to be shredded.

Then again, just because someone would look perfect on a magazine cover does’t mean he or she really is healthy. They might just have good genetics, ya know? For all we know, that person could be starving themselves or eating cookies for breakfast. Shit.

Everyone has a different story, so you can’t come up with some cookie-cutter solution or assumption about someone’s health. Only you can really unlock the secrets of your body.

Haters Gonna Hate

I think it’s ridiculous that people would take the time out of their day to constantly harass this family through email and on their site. C’mon! Your life must suck if you drop everything else you have to do and write something nasty like:

“Stacy looks a mess to me, despite her weight loss, and eating meat x3 meals a day is NEVER going to make you healthy. full stop. Even the idea of it makes me feel ill.
when I found your website I thought it was good to start with then I realised it was all about selling some book and making money. Shame really. I really don’t want to hear one more word about ELaD, especially when it’s followed by a post written by Stacy saying how shit her health is. How is Paleo so great if your health is still bad???????????”

I participate in a forum (not CrossFit-related) where trolling can get pretty crazy, although not to the point where feelings and families are seriously messed with. This really draws the line.

All I gotta say for Matthew, Stacy, and their family is to keep up the awesome work. While I’m not having kids anytime soon, I’m sure it’s hard enough raising a family as it is. And to instill Paleo values while doing so? Huge props.

Everyone has their own goals. Ours may not exactly be the same, but that’s the beauty of life. We all come from different backgrounds and have different ways of going about things. We all have our own story to tell. If we didn’t, life would be boring as fuck. Who would want to follow the same exact path as everyone else? I don’t know how that’d work out. Do what you want to do. Believe in what you want to believe in.

Matthew and Stacy, keep on pushing forward in your nutritional journeys. You’re an inspiration to me and have shown the world that Paleo is for EVERYONE.

Haters gonna hate.

I’ve Got Asthma And I Know It

A Musical Parody?

I should find an instrumental of “I’m Sexy And I Know It” then throw in my own lyrics about being an asthmatic. Anyway, enough of that. For about a year, I haven’t had any breathing problems. No need to take my inhalers or any sort of medication all thanks to CrossFit building up my lung capacity. It’s just such an awesome feeling knowing that you conquered something that messed with your childhood.

When I was younger, I loved playing basketball. Sure, I wasn’t the best, but at least I had more playing time than a bunch of clowns on my teams over the years. Oh you’re perfectly fine health-wise, but a fuckin asthmatic plays longer than you? Suck it.

Still, it was terrible having to call for a time out every time my breathing got heavy and I started wheezing. Back then, I had no idea what my limits really were, so I simply followed what my doctor told me to do and left it at that. I was first diagnosed with asthma when I was 8 years old. Of course, it could’ve been worse since it’s fairly mild and is mainly physically induced. CrossFit let me realize that I had more in my system during those really demanding workouts. While it seemed like it would be inhaler time during the middle of a WOD, I simply had to power over the mental barriers. Eventually, I figured out where to draw the line.

After graduating from college in 2010, I was finally able to kick things into high gear. The Paleo challenge I joined really changed things for me. Following the challenge, I was drinking less (got the party mentality out of my system…a few months after graduation…), eating cleaner overall, and just felt so good. My performance improved because of all those factors. In addition, my asthma felt non-existent. In around February 2011, I stopped using my inhalers.

Unfortunately, in February/March of this year, when I was away for 3 weeks visiting family in the Philippines (yes, I’m starting to gradually reveal more things about myself :P), the heat and air conditions caused my asthma to flair up again. Mix in the combination of terrible nutrition and lack of physical activity, and you obviously have a recipe for disaster. For those of you with families in which quality time revolves around food, you probably know the feeling haha. You can’t avoid these things when you visit cause well…we’re talking about family here. You can’t say no.

By the time we’d finish breakfast, it’d be time for lunch.

Can’t complain though.

So that’s why I’m just trying my best to get back into things. We had sprints today, so of course I had to take puffs from my inhaler before my last round. This one guy in my class always tears up any of the running WOD’s. I’ve made it one of my goals to beat him out in one of the shorter sprints. Anything more than 800m, forget it. He can have those haha.

Yeah, my asthma holds me back, which is why I’m not much of a runner. Screw it. I’m just gonna work as hard as fuck for it, like with everything else I do.

I just want to thank the WODFather for his Tweet/blog post on running. It gave me inspiration for this.

Running Sucks…. jfwodfather.blogspot.com/2012/04/runnin…

— JFWodfather (@wodfather) April 14, 2012

Also, thanks to Elisa for her reply (one of my first legit readers by the way). Glad to hear there are other asthmatic CrossFitters out there!

@_KippingItReal @wodfather i have asthma too! i do nebulizer treatments before i hit the box!#crossfitstrong

— elisa romaniello (@elisaromaniello) April 14, 2012

Whether you have asthma or some kind of health condition, there’s most likely some way you can scale and switch things around in a CrossFit WOD so you can still get after it.

Starting Strength Taught Me To Be A Creep

Thanks Mark Rippetoe…

So the other day we had deadlifts in the strength portion of our workout. Being away from heavy lifting for a while made these sets of deads a bit uncomfortable. After these past few years, I’ve pretty much built up the muscle memory to just get in that zone and rip the bar off the floor. So the other day, I was off with my form and overall vibe. I actually had to think of some details regarding form to lift that bar.

According to Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength:

If the floor is your gaze point, look about 10 feet in front of you.

I’ve been following that since I read the book 3 years ago, so of course, I was going to do that. However, it doesn’t help when something else is in that same vicinity of your gaze.

Sure, she can’t see me staring at her ass, but I’m sure the people next to me would notice. And you know those random things that girls can just sense? I feel she’d know I was looking at her ass.

What was I supposed to do? I thought I was pretty far in front of the class, but since it was pretty packed, she set her bar up around 10 feet ahead of me. For realz? I had no choice but to just go along with things and focus. Ha! Focus…for my first warmup sets, my mind was thinking of lots of different things, so luckily I wasn’t pulling anything heavy.

I’m not complaining. Oh not at all…it’s just that…I wanted to get some decent lifts in without hurting myself, especially since these were my first deadlifts in over a month.

But all I could think of was ass.

Fortunately, we were alternating between deads and another lift, so everyone ended up lifting at different times. Phew. I was able to view that area of the floor 10 feet away from me in peace.

But all I could think of was ass.

By my last set, I was in the zone, ripping that bar off the floor in good form with my back safe. I was really happy hitting 325# for a set of 2. Next time I’ll definitely beat my 2 rep PR of 335# as long as my back is healthy. I have a tendency to really strain my back with really heavy or high rep deads. That’s why I’m always cautious with this lift.

Finally, I got all those dirty thoughts out of my head. Then I realized…shit. We have an AMRAP with SDHP’s…and she’s still in front of me. The first 9 seconds of this song came to mind:

I just couldn’t resist a few times during that AMRAP…

Pinterest: It’s Like Accidentally Walking Into A Showing Of The Vow

This is Pinteresting…

Seriously…

…at first, Pinterest to me was a big WTF. By the way, FOLLOW ME on there by the way if you haven’t already.

So yeah, as a huge techie, I was all pumped up about this new social network that was getting all this hype. Of course I had to check it out. Hearing it was all exclusive and had somewhat of a what to get an invite, I sought out friends who already had invites to get into this “exclusive” circle. It was obviously for marketing purposes.

Once I finally got an account and the damn system automatically added Facebook friends who were on there (this was awkward cause it added a bunch of people I haven’t talked to in years), I realized something. Shit…I might as well have walked into a showing of The Vow. It’s like if you dumped the contents of a college girl’s bag on the floor.

After a little bit of browsing around, I came to the conclusion that I had no intention of planning my wedding or finding a buttload of pics that have “Live. Laugh. Love.” plastered on them.

That was the end of my personal Pinterest account.

Then I Made An Account For KippingItReal

And I can say I actually have a reason to check things out. No…not to FAP FAP FAP to pics of CrossFit girls lol. Although I’ll admit the collection of CrossFit girls you can find on Pinterest is quite distracting…

Simply do a quick search on CrossFit, and you’ll come across related pins (postings), boards (collections of pins), and people to follow. The pins, for the most part, are HILARIOUS. I hope you like internet memes and actually “get” them, cause here are some of my favorites:

Be Your Own Experiment

What?

When it comes to nutrition, everyone’s body reacts differently to certain foods. That’s why you can’t just assume a nutrition plan that worked for one person will work the same way for you. For those who want some good nutritional advice from some experts in the CrossFit world, check out this video by Brian Mackenzie and Doug Katona of CrossFit Endurance:

It’s been a while since I’m really sat down and thought seriously about my nutrition. Watching this vid helped remind me of some simple things I’ve been missing out on since getting off that Paleo challenge over a year ago.

Dark Green Veggies

I’ll admit that I tend to eat fruits more than veggies, especially dark green veggies. Switching to veggies for my carbs should help drop a bunch of that bad stuff I take in every day and should make me more efficient. Which in turn leads to a need for…

Healthy Fat

“You can’t lose fat unless you eat fat.” Wtf…I used to be all about having olive oil with my meals, so it makes sense why simply dropping carb intake hasn’t been doing much for me. I need that fat for my energy in my workouts and just for getting through my day. It really is the simple things that I forget about, just like…

Drinking Water

Hydration is so important. I used to have my glass of water on my desk that was constantly refilled throughout the day. That has to be another reason why my performance has gone down.

Enough With The Assumptions

As said in the video, you need to test your own stuff out. Be your own experiment. From my own experience with testing, it’s best to keep things simple. Just do an A/B split test with something, making only 1 change in the variable group. For example, you want to see if sugar in your coffee affects your performance/weight? Try one week or any specific time span with the sugar, then try the same amount of time without the sugar. Observe how you feel, look, and perform. After, tweak things to see improvements.

Keep testing for yourself if you really want to see what works and what does’t work for your body. Only YOU can find the answers to certain nutritional questions.