Primal update: For ME, it’s a miracle cure

So I’m nearing the end of 3 full weeks living “primal.” Of the emerging benefits I’m finding, the most jaw-dropping to me is that it seems to have given me a brand new set of digestive organs. I feel like I went from an old jalopy to a finely-tuned sports car — gutwise.

I mentioned a couple weeks back I was adjusting my eating and lifestyle to fit in with a book I read called “The Primal Blueprint,” by Mark Sisson. The goal is to try as closely as rationally possible to mimic in modern life what day-to-day life would’ve been like for man in the paleolithic era. Taking into account the fact that we live in civilized society, we have jobs, and we most likely won’t be hunting down much if any of the meat we eat. Read a few entries back for more detail, or visit Sisson’s blog to get a better rundown.

I attribute most of the positive results here so far almost entirely to completely removing all types of grain from my diet — a food to which I think I am far more allergic than I ever realized. I am also keeping open a part of my mind that is ready to accept all of these positive results as somehow placebo effect or coincidence, seeing as how it’s only been a short time. It’s just too exciting not to document right now.

So here’s the rundown of what I’ve noticed so far:

My stomach is not upset on a daily basis. This is something I thought I just had to live with — the intermittent gurgles, pain, essentially feeling like I had a little active volcano in my stomach. Gone. Like, GONE gone.

I can eat eggs. For the past 5 or so years until about 3 days ago, I had been avoiding egg yolk like the plague. I realized over a plate of eggs benedict one fateful morning that the yolks would send me running. I tested it a couple times after to make sure it wasn’t just hollandaise or anything like that, and came to the conclusion it was yolk. I could eat egg whites, but not yolks. Almost as soon as I went primal, I started eating hard boiled eggs, and was able to easily digest them. It wasn’t until 3 days ago that I was talked into trying eggs over easy, with runny yolks — one of my all-time favorite breakfasts — that I realized I was cured. I had them again today just to check. Not a peep from my belly.

I may be better with pet allergies. My cousin’s girlfriend’s dog, Brie, caused me to have such an allergic reaction one day that I had to call in sick to work. And that’s just from being in the same room with it. Tuesday night, that dog was sitting in my lap as I incredulously breathed in and out repeatedly through my free, clear, open nostrils.

I’ve lost 10 pounds. High fat, high protein, lowER carb diet. Not crazy like Atkins, but omitting grain and getting all of your carbs from fruits and vegetables all while being satiated by lots of fat and protein has a naturally carb-lowering effect on your diet. If you want to get into the how and why, I’ll refer back to the link above, and let the author do the theory justice where I surely wouldn’t.

I have consistent energy to burn. Again, Sisson says it better, but most noteably after a meal, I am not tired or fatigued in any way. I feel energized and that lasts and lasts. I wake up with a spring and rarely flop down exhausted at the end of the day.

So that’s it… only 5 bold points, but to me, those 5 bold points carry a lot of weight when it comes to my overall enjoyment of life. Another biggie for me is being mildly lactose intolerant, but milk in the past has been like swallowing a lit stick of dynamite, and I just don’t like it that much anyway. So maybe someday, but it ain’t a priority to find out now.

Juuuuuuust keepin ya in the loop!

TRAU

Quick thought: serving sizes @ work

I went to lunch with a couple friends today and one of them mentioned how she often brings her lunch or dinner to work in the same plastic container. But then, “I poured my chili into a bowl I would eat out of at home, then poured it into my plastic container and couldn’t believe how it was only half full!”

That’s a good thing to keep in mind for those of us packing what we think are healthy lunches in the nice, sealable plastic containers that don’t LOOK huge. Compare them to what you eat out of at home — a tapered, rounded dish — and you could easily sneak double or triple the volume you might otherwise eat into your belly. Especially if you eat with one eye on your computer monitor or a lot of other distractions.

So anyway, my thought for the day: Try arranging your meal on a plate or bowl at home first, THEN put it into the container. You might be surprised!

TRAU

Me Trau. Me live like cave man.

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted … holidays, distractions, yada yada yada.

I’m now on my 4th day of this “primal” lifestyle that I’ve been hearing about for a while. It’s all about living/eating like paleolithic man would have, only adapted to a modern environment.

So no, I’m not hunting/gathering, but you translate what early man’s life would’ve been like on his body regarding exercise and and diet. So rather than doing “chronic cardio” which Mark Sisson, the author of “The Primal Blueprint” that I read, says leads to more injury and energy depletion, you do a few things:

Move frequently at a slow pace
… which means work out by walking, hiking, light jogging, biking, swimming — low heart rate stuff, for like 4-5 hours per week. This simulates for your body the long treks early man would’ve taken on foot.

Sprint once in a while
… like once a week or less, but never at regular intervals, to simulate the occasional and spontaneous need primal man would’ve had to chase something or run for his life. And then…

Lift heavy things
Again, not in regular intervals, and not too repetitive or time-consuming. But 30-minute max of heavy lifting sessions.

The big thing about diet: No grains. There wasn’t agriculture in the paleolithic era, so nothing that comes from grain. He sees it as a poison, and a big part of the diet is regulating your insulin, and lowering your body’s production of it through a low-carb, high protein and nutrient-rich diet. Your main foods are whole fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds in abundance — preferably organic, and meat of all kinds.

People I have talked to about it compare it to Atkins, but you still want to hit between 50-150 grams carbs per day to lose weight. Atkins ruled out fruit but this guy loves it. He also poo-poos chemicals or any processed foods. So you eat all whole, clean food with lots of nutrients. Atkins would allow for that weird no-carb chemical bread substitute crap, but not Sisson. It’s all natural.

Anyway, that’s like a sliver of what this book “The Primal Blueprint” covers, and I read it in 2 days and I’m hooked. I’ve heard all the tales of eczema that went away almost entirely after starting this diet, and some digestive issues too. Me, I can eat eggs again all of a sudden, and my stomach is feeling amazing and not gassy or IBS-like (which sorry to admit publicly, it has been almost constantly for a few years now). Just after 4 days! Sisson says by following his eating/exercise routine, you can lose 2 pounds a week. Then by staying in the 100-150 carb range, you can maintain and feel healthy for life. In 4 days I’m down 4 pounds. He said it can be rapid at first for some people.

It’s addictive … I’m giving it 30 days to see if it’s long-term sustainable for me. So far I love it. If you’re interested, check out marksdailyapple.com for the author’s blog. It’s pretty much where he wrote the book (and you can order it there), then he just collected a lot of it on to paper.

aaand here’s an article from the nytimes on similar lifestyle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/fashion/10caveman.html

TRAU

I am hunting jungle cat

A panther has been terrorizing my tribe and overnight mauled my son within an inch of his life. My fellow tribesmen and I have taken to the jungle, hot on the path of the jungle cat, and we won’t return without it hoisted on our spears! This is how I will push through my next run.

I’ve taken to creating characters in my head at the beginning of my run — I spend that first agonizing mile creating a back story and a reason to run, and once I’m set, I dive deep into that character. So no longer am I running to get fit, or to hit 4 or 6 or 8 miles.

No, I am running from an angry village of cannibals after stealing the jewel they have guarded for as long as they’ve lived on this godforsaken uncharted island in the Pacific. What the — ?! Poison darts?! Better pick up the pace.

I’m stuck on these jungle themes because today I bought an album called “Drum Beats of the Pacific” that is a collection of all those intense jungle-escape rhythms from that scene in every movie ever.

How do I reconcile with the cold weather? Hmm… they’ve chased me from the rain forest into the mountains! That could help explain why I’m so inappropriately dressed…

Whatever the wacky scenario, it’s a good way to get your mind out of that “step-step-step-step, puff-puff-puff-puff” mentality. Get lost in your own little chase scene and before you know it, you’re back where you started, one workout in the bank.

Go slay a wooly mammoth or something. You’ve got to feed your family somehow.

TRAU

The body is a vehicle

Yeah, you can call it a temple all you want, but I like to picture this big mass of cells that gets me from point A to point B as my vehicle. And the awesome thing about my vehicle is tune-ups are free and I can soup it up to my heart’s content without doling out a red cent to a mechanic.

I was thinking about this today on my 7-mile run with Jeremy. We were talking about our ideas of an ideal level of physical fitness and I said something like “I just want my body to be like a swiss-army knife — ready for any situation at any time. If somebody says to me, ‘hey Tyler, let’s go do some blank!’ I don’t ever want my answer to be, ‘I don’t know if I’m in shape for blank.’ I want to say, ‘hell yeah! When? How about now? Let me look up how to do blank and I’ll be right there!’”

Right now, my mind is up for any challenge, at any time. But the thing that has to take it there — my body, my vehicle — isn’t.

So I’m in the garage, man. I’ve got all the tools spread out and I’m gettin’ under the hood of this clunker and gonna make me a Sport Utility Trau.

Anything, anywhere, anytime.

THAT’S what this puppy needs to be capable of.

TRAU

Today’s shuffle playlist: Amazing

I’m just returning from a 4-mile run, which I am happy to have run in 35:48 (which you can see in my twitter feed to the right), which isn’t lightning speed but a little faster than 9-minute miles on average, which is an improvement for me.

I credit that time to being totally inspired and encouraged as I ran by the awesome selection of songs my ipod decided to play at me. Granted, I was playing within about a 150-song playlist entitled “workout,” but this selection was prime.

This time of year is a crucial time to rejuvenate your workout — with the air getting colder and lots of commitments like holiday parties and vacation and work coming at you in full force, it’s high time to put a new element into things to keep you motivated. I find getting new music is even more refreshing than a change of venue or a new exercise. So I offer to you today’s playlist, as I heard it.

Now, there are some titles and artists in here you may not recognize, and some genres you may not like. Let me suggest this though: even if you don’t listen to metal, it’s important to note that during exercise, for me a metal changeup can become a mystical incantation — a crunching “abra cadabra” that magically replenishes my muscles and gives me strength to go harder than I thought possible.

Not all of it is metal, there’s some rock, punk and hip hop in there too. Stuff that keeps you goin. When The Weeks are howling “Comeback Cadillaaaac!” tell me you’re not working at your peak performance.

Anyway, it’s out there for some people, but I promise if used correctly, this playlist will push you as hard as you need to be pushed to plow through the holiday slowdown.

Protest The Hero – “Divinity Within”
Thrice – “At The Last”
Atmosphere – “The Arrival”
He Is Legend – “Everyone I Know Has Fangs”
Bad Religion – “Parallel”
The Gaslight Anthem – “1930″
The Weeks – “Comeback Cadillac”
Social Distortion – “Reach For The Sky”

Happy listening

Trau

2010: Best Year Ever is nigh

Despite my loooong hiatus from this blog, I’m back to assure you I’ve kept on with the whole keepin’ on thing!

I suffered a bout of writer’s block, and to be honest, I still am battling it. For me, the block is just a lack of desire to write, not an inability to find a topic. I get bored of hearing my own voice read back to me in my head, so I quit for a while. Not a good way to build readership, but to be honest, 90 percent of my readers through the first push of this blog are coming from Facebook as I post links. That’s according to the super-secret view tracking technology wordpress supplies me with to tinker with behind the curtain here. Anyway, that said…

I’m running! I actually think last night I may have found the challenge I’ve been looking for: Runner’s World magazine has laid out what they entitled “Your Best Year Ever,” which is a schedule of races to run all year, and a gradually intensifying running program over the course of a year, beginning in January.

It starts with an Off-Road Adventure and ends in a marathon. Over 2 pages, they guide you through preparing for each race — the off-road, then a 5-k, 10-k by April, then back to a mile race, then a road relay in July/August (which will be perfect to be in shape for around the time of Isle Royale), trail race in Sept., half-marathon Oct. and the full marathon in November.

So that’s it! I’ve had a pretty amazing year of 2009, but my best year ever PHYSICALLY so far was probably July 08-July 09. My goal now is to make 2010 start to finish the best year I’ve ever had, fitness-wise. And what better challenge to top in 2011 and every subsequent year?

So can we all do that? Anybody still reading? What excuse do you have to not make 2010 your Best Year Ever? I’m not saying we all have to run 8 races, but unless you’re seriously injured or growing a human in your belly, you have to answer to yourself why you can’t promise yourself now to do something that will make 2010 better than 2009.

I’ll be happy to help you figure it out. Shoot me an email.

TRAU

30 minutes of cardio in less than 10

The December issue of Men’s Health has a section on quick, more efficient cardio workouts — better than 30 minutes on a treadmill and done in a fraction of the time. I just finished the squat-jump/pushup teardown routine and I’m a believer.

=

I recommend picking up the issue or even subscribing, but til then, here’s how it went: 10 reps squat-jumps (squat down, arms behind head, til legs are parallel to ground, leap straight up and back down = 1 rep) followed immediately, without rest, by 10 pushups. Then without resting, again, go to 9/9 reps, followed by 8/8 and so on down to 0.

I’m shaking all over and can hardly type this. Try it, it’s a great time-saver for all the “but I don’t have time” people!

TRAU

Quickie: The Aunt’s crack at my knee

It’s nice to have a medical professional in the family … in my case I actually have a lot — one being my Aunt Marie, my mom’s sister. She is a pretty regular reader so a lot of times we end up discussing different aspects of my blog.

I asked her to weigh in on my knee, which is a pretty tall order since she only had my novice explanation of a few moments from last night to go on. Here’s some of her note back to me regarding the knee issue I described in the previous entry:

… was the tightness on the outside part of your knee?  Because me and the Sports Med gurus think it likely is a tight Ileotibial band.  With a guy like you increasing his running, that is a likely cause.  There are special stretches for this.  You can also get a little hip pain on that side (that is where mine kills me if I don’t stretch before running).  Not a serious problem, but look it up , see the stretches for it and do them religiously.  The one that works the best for me is the following.  It is my left leg so I stand about two feet out from the wall with the wall to my left.  I plant and lock my left foot/knee and then cross my right foot over in front of it.  I then stand mostly on my left leg and lean into the wall with my left hip, thus stretching my ITB. …

Here’s what I could find on the googlesphere to get a visual representation of the ITB (it’s the long white strip going from the hip to the knee, if you can’t read the fine print):

Sounds right to me, although I wrote her back saying I didn’t specifically try to pinpoint the location of the stress, aside from mentally cataloging it as “in the knee area.” But thinking back to last night, it does seem that the feeling was more to the outside…

So if I ever feel a similar tension, I’ll be sure to consider what Aunt Marie said and see if it fits the description. In the meantime, I’m going to give that stretch a go before my next run for sure.

TRAU

Run last night: good, bad, ugly

TMI warning: This post could have more than you want to know about my run last night and the resulting … issues. So, if you can imagine yourself grossed out by any negative physical effects of running, stop reading now.

I could just gloss over the ugly, but this is blog is meant to deal with all aspects of my attempts to get and stay fit, and if I pretend it’s all pretty and rosy, I think I’m doing a disservice to anyone still reading.

So on to the run…

I headed out last night for my “long run” for the week, which at this point in time means a 6-mile trot around the neighborhood. It started with a big ol’ glass of water with a couple scoops of N.O. Xplode –  a blend of creatine, caffeine, nitric oxide and other goodies that I take before workouts to increase my muscle growth and endurance. Sounds like ‘roids, I assure you it’s not!

But with the N.O. going and with the previous days’ schedule of short and medium runs leading up to last night, I started the run feeling like a million bucks. I passed the 2-mile marker and was feeling twice as energized as when I started the run, so I mentally committed to 8 miles rather than 6. I knew I had it in me, I felt like I could run all night if my body would hold up!

Somewhere between miles 2 and 3 is where the TMI comes into play… my thighs started chafing. And chafing is pretty much exactly like a blister, where once that heat starts, it’s gotta be fixed or it’s just going to get worse and worse exponentially.

So I hiked up my shorts as high as I could to try to get fabric between my thighs as much as possible, but the shorts were sweaty already and I couldn’t decide what was worse — having a bunch of wet fabric up there or just red-hot skin-on-skin action…

I decided to pretend it wasn’t happening. To not correct. To press on as if my thighs were still feeling silky smooth and dry.

The reality was it felt like I was carrying a glowing charcoal briquette about 2 inches below a very important neighorhood. And it was getting worse. My options were to stop and try to take care of it at my house and continue running, but I knew I didn’t have anything (except now I remember my hiking moleskin, d’oh!) to fix it, or I could just quit running.

But screw BOTH of those options! Aside from the napalm fire between my legs, this run was feeling like the best one I’d had yet. I’d rather walk like I rode an elephant to work for the next few days than give up on the burst of energy I was feeling.

So on I ran. I began a bit of meditation and turned on some metal (Protest The Hero) to take my mind off my crotch. And ladies, you’re right, a man taking his mind of his crotch is a miracle that could be likened to Moses parting the Red Sea.

It worked! Even as the fire grew hotter, I stripped it of it’s mental priority and began to think of other things.

This is all going on as I’m having a parallel thought of amazement that I’m still running, and running hard. I was truckin’!

I got to mile 6, where I had originally planned on stopping, and rounded the corner with what felt like another 6 miles in me. But then a weird feeling hit my right knee.

Not pain. It was more like a slight lack of mobility, like muscles I didn’t know were there were trying to gently slow it down. Like something was trying to tighten up.

So I stopped 2 blocks into the 7th mile and did some stretching. Again, the knee didn’t hurt, but I don’t know enough about running — or my joints — to know how an onset of a major problem unfolds.

I decided to press on having stretched, but the looseness from the stretch only lasted about a half block, then the swelling feeling came back.

DAMN.

I was really feeling this run, too! But there is no way I’m going to jeopardize any future runs or exercise just to try to set a new personal best. I didn’t know what was happening, and again I stress it was not painful, but I decided to walk home.

Got into the house, figuring my knee must be swelling like a grapefruit by now, sat down and compared my knees — no difference. No redness. No puffiness. No pain.

C0uld it have been mental? Or maybe just a reaction to a possible subconscious correction to my step due to my hunka-hunka burnin’ crotch?

I don’t know, and I’ve got emails out to a couple good minds to see.

That’s one thing I’ll stress again, too… I am learning here, and when it comes to physical ailments and things of that nature, I can’t pretend to know what the hell I’m talking about. I can motivate myself and others, I can share my workouts, but my knowledge is totally nonexistent regarding exercise physiology and injury.

So anyway… waiting to hear from the experts, but until then, I’m taking tonight off, and then getting back on a short-to-medium running program til next Monday. Then maybe I’ll try for 8 again and see if my knee is up to it!

Oh, and I’ll grab some Gold Bond powder too…

TRAU