Fasted Training

As I laced up my running shoes (first time since buying my VFF's) for a 5k on the gravel road, the lightning struck and the rain started falling. So I've been pacing around the crew trailer waiting for it to stop. There are squall lines in every direction today, so I was hoping to get my run in before it started storming again. I wanted to post a link to a guest post by Jason Fitzgerald this morning on Naturally Engineered I've been following David Csonka for a while now, and his blog is a great resource to all things Paleo and Fitness as well as a great place to start if you are just getting into all of this. Strength Running, likewise has been extremely helpful to me in improving my running ability. Both these guys know their stuff, and are talented bloggers who can really convey the information in a concise, understandable way.

Perfecting the Art of Fasting Before Running
The article deals with fasted-state running, and actively challenges the old adage that you need to carb load prior and during a run to perform well. If you are training for a race or race season Intermittent Fasting lets you work in a way to train your body to metabolize and store glucose in your muscles more efficiently. This definitely a must-read article.

In my own experience, I have switched almost entirely to fasted runs. I have not been putting in as many miles as a competitive runner, but rather supplementing my training, and maximizing the mind-clearing benefits of runs. I was starting to ratchet up my mileage before I started running in VFF's, but dialed it back down when I was breaking them in. I made up for the shorter distances with more frequent runs. It is very cathartic to just float along nearly barefoot, and I have to say it is mildly addictive when you are already into fitness. My already minimal (9mm heel drop) NB100's feel like cowboy boots compared to the KSO's. The only reason I am putting them on is I want to run on a gravel road, and gravel has been my arch nemesis lately. I really just want to run my old 5k on gravel just to get away.
I have not eaten a traditional breakfast in nearly a year, and now if I run with anything more than half a banana in my stomach I feel nauseated the entire run. Running with the fuel low light on has been nothing but a blessing to my runs. I get a nice little pulse of energy after the first mile that catapults me through the rest of the run. The only exception being on very high heat and humidity days where I'm just getting beat down by the elements. Most of the time fasting helps cool your body down as well, so the summers are a lot more bearable here in the deep south.
I have also completed many military fitness tests while fasted with my Navy PRT scores getting better, and my Search and Rescue Fitness Tests and Evals getting better. Swimming with anything in my stomach has generally been a bad idea anyway, due to the nausea and cramping associated. The Conventional Wisdom would be that an individual needs a large number of calories before during and after to fuel these workouts, but the opposite is true. I now perform better on an empty stomach than I do with even a light breakfast. Light breakfast being a powerbar or a piece of fruit. Now I fuel myself with a good cup (usually more) of French Pressed coffee, and at most a tiny piece of very dark chocolate to counteract the acid. Coffee and Chicory seems to provide the best results, as the chicory takes away the acid, and is high in magnesium.

The added benefits of increased insulin sensitivity, lower caloric load over time, and better fat metabolism, have all helped push me through plateaus in fitness and weight loss; and the "second wind" sometimes achieved gives the benefit of pushing through some grueling workouts leading to my better over-all conditioning. I am unsure as to this effect is from the release of liver glucose after gluconeogenesis from the previous night's protein, or if it is simply keto adaptation and the point at which the mitochondria switch over to burning ketone bodies (fat) as fuel. Either way, it has been intuitive to me to eat and work this way, so I will not be switching back.


If you are interested in learning more about Intermittent Fasting as a method, here are some very helpful links that I still follow on a regular basis:
Martin Berkhan at Lean Gains
Johnny at The Lean Saloon
Brad Pillon at Eat Stop Eat
Mike O'Donell at The IF Life
The Fast-5 Corporation

***I do want to state, that unless you have your diet really dialed in, and all the crap removed this will be a very difficult transition if this is something you are wanting to try out. A lifetime of poor dietary choices perpetuated by our consumerist society will not provide enough of the necessary nutrients for your body to run efficiently. Start with making REAL FOOD your primary source of fuel, so the need to snack on junk all day is eliminated. This is imperative. Fasting is intuitive once you can eat well enough to be able to skip a meal. Garbage in Garbage out. If you get light headed by dinner time after snacking all day, then it's time to reevaluate your food choices.

Not Everything in the South is Fried

Before reading this post, I recommend you click this link for some audio ambiance

There is a huge benefit to living near the water - SEAFOOD!

The biggest problem you run into in the South (capitol "S") is the heavy breading, and short cooking times in hot "trans-fat free" industrial oils ruining otherwise delicious fresh fare. I love oysters on the half shell, but for some reason, I can only find them battered, fried, and stuck on a po' boy bun around here, and shrimp tends to meet the same fate. Luckily, there is a culture of food down hyeah that isn't all about fried fried fried. Almost any seafood restaurant you go to, outside of a po' boy shop on the side of the road will have boiled seafood. Crabs, shrimp, crawfish are all still snappin' when they throw them in the pot, with a healthy portion of spices, corn, sometimes sausage, and red potatoes. it's only a few minutes, and you have a beautiful pot of spicy fish candy ready to be cracked open and shoved in your face!

If you've never had blue crab, then you are truly missing out on one of the best edible creatures on the planet. People think of crabs, and they think of crab legs imported from a cold and dangerous location somewhere near the arctic circle only to break open the shells and dip the meat in clarified butter. While all this is fine and dandy, since it gives us entertaining reality television on the discovery channel, it definitely isn't the most tasty crustacean swimming and crawling across the bottom of the Ocean. As anyone along the East and Gulf Coast knows, blue crab is fish candy! It's like swimming bacon!

Now you can buy peeled and de-veined shrimp already cooked, and you can buy jumbo lump crabmeat for $30/Lb, but why mess with all that, when you can peel or pick it yourself? The locals just grab and go start picking. It really is a lot better when you pick the meat off the shell instead of worrying about all the bread in a crab cake or devilled crab. It is such a nice change-up from the usual fried nasty, or the greasy burgers on most people's plates.
Here is a link to a video explaining how to pick your crab

Shrimping has just started again here, and word has it the boats are doing really well this season. I'm going to go look for a good deal on the side of the bayou. I love this stuff!

Daddy's Silly Shoes

I finally joined the Vibram Five Fingers shoe club Sunday. I was putting off the inevitable, I suppose, as my running around barefoot eventually resulted in torn callouses on the bottom of my feet that I was unaware that I had. Apparently, years of wearing steel toed flight boots had left a few manageable callouses on my big toes and inside of the balls of my feet. My barefoot run on the road after a rain a few weeks ago resulted in tears on said callouses similar to tearing a callous whilst kipping pull-ups at a CrossFit gym. I guess I was just so in the moment on my little run, that i didn't realize I was toeing off too much. I had been sprinting in the grass for a while, and wanted to top off the workout with an extra mile mostly to test my feet on the road. It felt amazing to get out and run without my shoes. Such a freeing experience, and my form was effortless. I felt like I was floating.

I switched to the New Balance 100 almost 2 years ago, and still have the same pair. They are just now starting to show signs of wear after 2 years! The follow-up, the NB101 will be a purchase soon, but I may look into getting the 8mm drop cobbled out to a zero drop, or start cutting and filing the rubber down, Anton Krupicka style:

Skip to :53


Well here I am now. I Finally purchased a pair of the VFF's. Call me a late adopter. I am so late on the scene of barefoot footwear. Forgive me shoe hipsters. VFF's are sooo 2009. I just couldn't justify paying so much for something so ugly. They are so stupid looking, in fact, that my 18 month old little girl laughs and giggles at "Daddy's Silly Shoes." She doesn't have the verbal agility to make her words sound like mine, yet, but she sure has the tone down. She bushes and giggles as if to say: "Dada! those aren't shoes. They make your feet look like monkey feet!" Leave it to a toddler to bring things into perspective.

However, they have a very functional purpose. I have been trying to break these in slow, but it's difficult to not just take off on a jog everywhere. The standard recommendation is to cut your running volume to 10-20% of your normal distance for the first week, with a 10% increase each consecutive week. I spend as much time as possible barefoot, including on my workouts already, and I run in a fairly minimal shoe as it is. I've been focussing on my running form for over a year now on every run. I make sure to kick my shoes off and do barefoot sprints when i can, and i run barefoot on the beach quite a bit. I didn't think this wold be a painful transition. HOWEVER, the calf pain this first week has been painful. I cut my distance and speed down a lot, since it's impossible to go to a full 10% of 20 miles a week without riding in a wheelchair. I tested it out with my normal 5K on the road with the intent being to stop as soon as I felt any fatigue, and walk. I made it to the 2 mile mark lighter and faster than any other run I have had. I didn't even feel like I needed to stop at the 1.5 mile turn around. No lung cramps, extremely relaxed, It was hot and humid, but I just kept running. I stopped at 2 miles only because I was concerned about the break-in period. It hit all at once. One minute I was running free, feeling like Prefontaine (moustache and all), and then full stop the next. I walked back the next mile, and by the time i was back at my crew trailer I was feeling the tightness. I skipped the run the next day in favor of a bodyweight workout to push my weightloss protege through, and capped it off with a short jog to work on form. I was sore, but not to the point of barely being able to walk. The next day was a lifting day, and at one point I had to remove the shoes due to the cramping from wearing the shoes. Simply being barefoot was brutal, but it was worse with the shoes on.

Here is a video from RunBlogger showing the calf muscle contraction during a run with VFF's


This leads me to a conclusion: The VFF Break-in period isn't necessarily from the muscles in your feet being atrophied from years and years of being shod, but in my case at least, from the unatural position of the toes being held in more of a splayed position. While running unshod, your toes splay out and spread looking for ground. The big toe is the driver, and the little toes are the stabilizers. The VFF's facilitate the splaying out, but when you relax and try to grip the ground, there is a resistance. This puts the pinky toe in an awkward position, and the small muscles incorporated in the movement get worn out from having to hold the toes in a splayed position. The break in period is to acclimate your legs to this new dynamic.

Now it may be the case, that as the sole breaks in, my toes will be able to relax on the upstride. I haven't got that far yet,as this pair of KSO's only have about 4-5mi on them with some weight training and some tree climbing. It has to be said that so far, I am not unhappy with the purchase, and the shoes live up to the hype. I would like to give the ZEM360's a try as well, but that will have to be in the near future. I did get out today and run a "follow-the-leader" style circuit around the camp today, and afterward worked on my MovNat skills in the liveoak tree out in front of the crew trailer. After a rest day yesterday, my legs feel fresh and ready to go. So far, so good. I can say I will be wearing the shoes a lot in the future.

ALSO: I can say 2 more things slightly related. 1. I conquered a branch in the tree that I dubbed my "MovNat" branch. I have been using this branch to try and work on my natural movement sklls. I today, for the first time, went from a dead-hang in to the tree via a muscle-up, and then down over another branch. 2. I am definitely NOT too old to climb trees.

Summer in Ohio

Summer adventures are mostly over now, and it's back to the status quo. My little family unit traveled many many miles, braved storms, traffic, puke, poop, tantrums, random crack-heads, sleep deprivation, "heat", power outages, and still managed to be where we needed to be, and see who we were supposed to see. We traveled far and wide, but we returned safely, and have some great experiences to live with for a long time to come. I have to put up some links and some recommendations for places to visit if you are ever in Columbus, OH.

1. For the best cup of coffee you will ever have, you have to visit Luck Bros' Coffee House in Grandview. These guys really know their stuff, and my wife and I make a concerted effort to stop in there whenever we pass through. They do it all in the realms of coffee. There are tons of places Columbus has to offer, but I can't speak for them all since I haven't had a chance to see much of my old stomping grounds in the last ten years. But this place is the real deal. Also, there is a cute little park across the street, so if you have youngsters, you can get your coffee, and walk over to play.
2. For the most aamzing Ice Cream I have ever had, check out Jeni's Ice Cream. We bought a pint at the second stop in at Luck Bros' and I can only describe it as out-of-this-world good. I have had some decadent desserts, but nothing compared to this ice cream. To quote the master:

"Every day I’m surrounded by an ice cream-making crew of artists, writers, photographers, bakers, big-brain mathletes, travelers with omnivorous cultural appetites, and world-class experience gatherers."

"We create ice creams we fall madly in love with, that we want to bathe in, that make us see million-year-old stars. We devour it out of Mason jars, coffee mugs—whatever we can get our hands on. Handmade American ice cream = Bliss with a big B. Every single thing we put in our ice cream is legit. Generic chemist-built ice cream bases and powdered astronaut-friendly gelato mixes? No, ma’am. We build every recipe from the ground up with luscious, Snowville milk and cream from cows that eat grass. With that exquisite base, we explore pure flavor in whatever direction moves us at any moment, every day, all year."

Local Produce from my home state, hand-made artisanal products, grass-fed cows... Yeah. I'm in. And, they deliver!

3. I try to stop in Amish country whenever I can, and if you find yourself driving though Ohio, a small detour off the beaten path may be worth your while. There is a small country store just outside of Bellefontaine near theAmish settlement of Belle Center called the Country Variety Store and Bakery. When i was just a young pup, my grandmother would take me in there on the way home from Camp Wesley in the summer. Back then the refrigerators operated off of natural gas, and there were no lights. It's a little different now, but it's still the quaint country store it always was. I picked up a cute little hand-made rocking chair for my daughter, and some egg-noodles.

4. On a recommendation from family, we stopped in at Marie's Candies(!). I know this doesn't fit in with most of my principles, but they hand make all the chocolate in the basement of a converted train station, and the story behind the place is pretty cool. The chocolate was awesome, It was a special treat, and it even came with a warning at purchase "now this doens't have any preservatives or stabilizers in it, so keep it out of the sun or it will met in your car." They follow the same recipes that Marie herself made when she opened the shop when her husband came down with polio in 1941. The business started as a way to provide a living for the family. They have been in business since 1956, and you can take tours of the little old Train Depot where they make the chocolates today. This place is definitely worth a detour.

We stopped in Asheville, NC on the way back home to our little cottage by the sea. We made a point to go to Tupelo Honey Cafe for breakfast the next morning. This place is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. I'll let them speak for themselves. If you are ever in Asheville, stop in.

I did get to get a run in while there, and i have to say I underestimated the hills. I see more bridge runs in my future to compensate for the flatness of Florida and Louisiana. I saw enough of my old spots to miss them terribly, but Not enough to remember why I moved the hell away in the first place. Ohio in the summer and fall is one of the best places to be. It's the other parts of the year that can suck. What i miss most is the open spaces. I'm definitely a country boy at heart looking for a simpler life. I feel a strong connection to my family land that will never be broken. A little bit of the Blanchard River will always run through my veins, and I will always long for the clear skies and clean air of my childhood. I guess it must be a shift from my twenties to my thirties.

I would have posted more pictures, however we were so busy chasing a lightening fast toddler around, there weren't many pics actually taken; neither were videos. I suppose this is why family albums always seem to hit a lull when the babies get bigger. Once kids get mobile, they surely don't sit still for pictures. Especially when they are little adventurers like their daddy!

Summer Break

I have a lot of Summertime Daddy things to accomplish in the next couple of weeks, so I will not be writing anything. I will instead be grilling meat, enjoying time with my family, chasing my little girl around like a bear, and getting into some regular old neighborhood adventures. I'll be back in a few weeks.

n=1; The Paleo-Libertarian Connection

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

Ralph Waldo Emerson - "Self Reliance"

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."

Henry David Thoreau

There is a deep seated vein of Libertarianism within the greater Paleo community. For a long time, I have been searching for the connection between the two. Paleo is about using an evolutionary approach to diet, health and wellness, and fitness. It has been around as a published diet in one form or another for over 40 years, but the most recent form has been more of a movement than one set of rules and guidelines that constitute a "diet" that one can start and stop at anytime. Paleo, while not being considered mainstream, is comprised of a network of bloggers, scientists, health professionals, and authors that all lend a unique voice to the greater "Paleo-sphere." The principles and guidelines are fluid, so as new information comes to light, studies published, and talking heads are refuted; the idealogy adapts to reflect the findings. This is a true grass-roots movement moving at the speed of the internet in the information age. The information is available to provide a solid framework for health and well-being as our peers and relatives are dying of the Diseases of Civilization or Syndrome X.

The Paleo Crowd is growing. It's doubling every year, as evidenced by the 2011 Paleo Community Survey. This is nearly a movement considered "radical" by some in the mainstream. When people start to do their own research into this way of living, eyes begin to open to a history of deception, bad business, legal roadblocks, and government SNAFU's all mired around the pseudoscience released shortly after WWII, and perpetuated by Large Media Outlets and US Government Bureaucracies. I liken it to falling down the rabbit hole, waking up in Oz, or taking the red pill; it's waking up to a painful reality. The Conventional Wisdom of the day, spread like manure by Big Pharma, Big Cola, Yum Foods, McDonalds, Disney, ConAgra, ADM, Monsanto, and the bureaucratic arms of the government (which are simply mercantilist policy makers that have revolving doors to the industries they govern. Conflict of interest, much?) are precisely why the US is getting fatter, less healthy, and has a lower life expectancy than previous generations. Medical care is supposedly better, but it really just keeps you in a perpetual state of sick and miserable, so you have to keep taking the drugs to treat symptoms while ignoring the cause. The same Conventional Wisdom is taught briefly in med school and flawed studies funded by the industries most benefiting are pushed as fact (pseudoscience). Our country gets sicker, and as we start to figure out how to fix it, the regulations are passed to stop it. The key is to look in ourselves.

One of the major tenets of the paleo paradigm is to "see what works" or "listen to your body" and adapt your personal plan around this. This is what is referred to as an experiment of one or n=1. n=1 is the ultimate expression of self-reliance. It makes no difference what others are doing. It makes no difference what the mandated government sponsored info-graphic of the day is, you will eat according to your biological make-up (this is exactly what the giant food producers are afraid of, and have been keen to react to because it pulls you away from the independence of subsidized grain; but that's another post). This is freedom. This is Liberty. When the shady practices of the mercantile government bureaucracies, reactionary politics, and the helplessness of the healthcare industry get your feathers all ruffled up, you start to see the logic behind Libertarianism. The government has no right to tell you what can and can't go in your mouth, what you need to do for exercise, or what you can do with your own private property. The Information Age has provided the opportunity for the little guy to actually see the bigger picture. This is a Renaissance, and all the information is at your fingertips. You can see the error of picking one of two sides. They are both wrong, and hamper the liberties of every individual in this nation. Laws are made, policies follow, and generally never go away. People complain and want to gubment to help them, but the road to the dark side of capitalism is paved with good intentions. Follow the money. The well being of the citizenry is not high on the priority list.

Maybe as time goes on, the tidal wave of sea change will influence the political landscape of this country. Right now we are seeing the result of the hippies and veterans of the Vietnam war all grown up, and in positions of power. The next generation (this one) can see the errors of the past and will strive to fix it. It is up to us to preserve the ideals laid out for us by our founding fathers. If the wake-up call for most people is through the food they eat, then so be it. I hope more people wake up. Do we need to have a brand name? To some extent, in this day and age, yes. You can only fight buzz words with more buzz words, soudbites with more soundbites, tweets with tweets and Facebook messages. Spread it around.

“First, they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”

Mahatma Ghandi

The Paleo Diet Infographic

For the Paleo crowd, I'm late on this, but I am posting this up for the people who are not associated with the Paleo community... Yet.

From Patrik, who brought the world PaleoHacks and PaleolithicDiet.com
Here is the Paleo Diet Infographic:

Learn more about the Paleo Diet.

Sunday Afternoon Music Videos

Non Diet Related Happy Sunday Music Video Funtime!

Renaissance Plate: The Artist's Table from Emiko Davies

I found this little gem on Twitter today, posted by Lonely Planet from Emiko Davies a Citizen-of-the-World type travel and food blogger in Florence, Italy. The Artists Table details a few days in the life of the Italian artist Jacapo Pontormo in the spring of 1554, late in his life.

http://www.emikodavies.com/blog/the-artists-table/

On the 11th of March 1554, on Sunday morning, I ate lunch with Bronzino—chicken and veal—and felt well (it is true that I was in bed when he came for me at home. It was quite late and upon getting up I felt swollen and full. It was a very beautiful day). In the evening I ate a bit of roasted dry meat which made me thirsty.
Monday evening I ate a cabbage and an omelet.
Tuesday evening I ate one half of the head of a kid and soup.
Wednesday evening I had the other half, fried, and a pretty big helping of zibibbo grapes, and 5 quattrini of bread, and capers in salad.
Thursday evening, a soup of good mutton and salad of goat’s beard.
Friday evening, salad of goat’s beard and two eggs in an omelet.
Saturday, fasted. Sunday evening, which was the evening of Palm Sunday, I ate a little boiled mutton and salad, and had to eat three quattrini of bread.
Monday evening after dinner I felt very lively and agreeable. I ate a salad of lettuce, a thin soup of good mutton and 4 quattrini of bread.
Tuesday evening I ate a salad of lettuce and an omelet.
Holy Wednesday: evening, 2 quattrini of almonds, and an omelet and some walnuts. And I did the figure that is above the head [of another figure]. The Duchess came to San Lorenzo; the Duke came, too.
Thursday evening, a salad of lettuce and some caviar, and one egg.
Friday evening an omelet with fava beans, and a bit of caviar and 4 quattrini of bread. Saturday I ate two eggs.
Sunday, which was Easter morning and the Feast of the Annunciation, I went to eat lunch with Bronzino. And I ate dinner there, too.
Monday evening I ate a salad that was of borage and a half-lemon, and 2 eggs in an omelet.
Tuesday evening I was all hoarse and ate a rosemary bread and an omelet and a salad and some dry figs.
Wednesday, fasted.
Thursday evening, a rosemary bread, an omelet of one egg and a salad and 4 quattrini of bread, in all.

The blog post touches on the foibles of Pontormo and his food log, interestingly enough considered neurotic and obsessive (hmmm). and some of the other interesting things of Florentine Renaissance life, but the most interesting thing I noticed, beside the minuscule amount of bread on his menu, was the fasting. He generally ate one modest meal a day with just enough to keep him going through until the next except for the occasion of a religious feast! This was a painter who spent his days painting into wet plaster, and staying active.

Karen Pendergrass: Vegetarian Chicken Rant

Karen Pendergrass is behind the Paleo Approved Label. Share this, forward it on, and maybe people will stop believing in all the Vegan propaganda.


Humans are omnivores too.