I Know This Much Is True

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Prehab

Theraband Routine:
External rotation
Steps ways
Shoulder circles

Warmup

2 min  Jumping Jacks
10 PVC Dislocates
20 Reverse Snow Angels
20 Scapula Pushups
20 Lat Activations
:30 Handstand or Pike Hold

Gymnastics Strength

3×3 Skin the cats
5×2 Rope climb (Legless)
4x :45 second Handstand hold (Chest facing wall)

Notes: Use spotters for the skin the cats to find your “end range” ROM!

For Quality and Minimum Rest

7 rounds:
3 Forward Rolls
5 Wall Climbs
7 Toes to bar
9 Box jumps (30 inches)

Notes: Forward rolls may be subbed with “roll to candle stick”.

Cool Down

Active Bar Hang
German Stretch
Lat Stretch
T-Spine Smash or Keg Drill

All smiles!

Today’s guest post is written by Krista Carlson, a long time member and enthusiastic advocate of the real food movement.  She is a great resource on the subject because of the constant research and self-experimentation she has done over the past 10 years to find out what is optimal for her.  For everyone, it takes a great amount of diligence, patience, and self awareness to truly discover which foods are good for us and which are not.  With the Holiday Season coming up, it’s important to develop a positive relationship between your health and food so you can enjoy yourself, without stress, and feel healthy at the same time.

 What follows is that and other great pieces of advice.

Enter Krista:

I’m reading Wally Lamb’s “I Know This Much is True” right now.  It’s a great book, and I haven’t yet figured out what the title means.  When Frank asked me to write a blog post about staying on track during the holidays, I was honored but overwhelmed.  What to write about?  What is “healthy”?  How can I be considered an expert, or even knowledgeable, on any of this?  Am I even healthy myself?!?!  Full disclosure: lately I’ve been questioning a lot of my recent health choices, revisiting some things that don’t seem to be working for me, tweaking, investigating, etc.  And I’m certainly no expert.  BUT…I know this much is true:

The holidays might not be the right time to try something totally new.

• As I started thinking back on my “health” journey, my mind raced back to Thanksgiving ten years ago.  About three days prior I was diagnosed with Celiac disease, and told I could/should never eat gluten (primarily wheat flour) again in my life.  It was confusing.  I was both angry and ecstatic at the same time; angry because my entire life was being turned upside-down, but ecstatic because there was a plan to make the illness I’d been battling most of my life go away.  But I had to face an immediate task: I had to cook Thanksgiving dinner for assorted friends who were arriving in a few days, and I was not supposed to eat gluten.  I had no skills, no guidance, no Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free baking flour.  So you know what I did?  I cooked Thanksgiving exactly the way I had cooked it my whole life, and I started my gluten-free diet the next day. 
• There’s a reason New Year’s resolutions exist.  Maybe the visit to Grandma’s isn’t the most appropriate time to announce that you denounced all grains last week; maybe that can wait, because being with the people you love and eating the meals you cherish together is worth something also.  The holidays are stressful enough, and new diet choices can cause additional stress for both you and your loved ones.
• Next year at this time, when you have a year of clean eating under your belt, you’ll know how to graciously pass your old favorite dish to your nephew sitting next to you, and you’ll never miss it.  Everyone respects a dietary choice that you made a year ago.  A week ago, not so much.

Stay black and white

• Let’s say you’ve already made some changes, you’re feeling good, and the question is how to stick to those changes during the holidays.  For me, holidays or not, I take a black-or-white, all-or-nothing, rules-based approach. 
• It’s easier to categorically reject a food group than to make a decision, each time that food is presented to you, of whether to eat it or not.  Sometimes this is easy, because a food makes you feel so bad you can’t possibly think about putting it in your body (gluten for some, dairy for others, are the two most common).  But sometimes it’s more subtle.  Maybe the food makes you feel a little sluggish, or your skin is slightly more irritated, or you don’t sleep quite as well.

    That’s where the all-or-nothing rule comes in handy.  You don’t stop to think about whether it’s worth the trade-off “this time” – you just reject and move on.

• One trick I use to help me with the above is to literally think of the subject food as poison.  Whether it be gluten (makes me feel awful), sugar (will probably eventually cause cancer), or processed food (I literally think “chemical shitstorm” when I see this), I don’t see food when I see the item in question.  In my twenties I would drink a diet Coke if I had a hangover.  One day I really, truly looked at the ingredients.  And I realized I wasn’t drinking diet Coke.  I was drinking a chemical shitstorm.  I haven’t opened one in over ten years.

Be positive

• Celebrate food.  At all times, but especially during the holidays.  Eating right should never be about punishment or about denial.  It should be about celebrating your self, your body, and your nourishment.  Find (real) foods you love.  Eat them.  Enjoy them.  Savor them.  Food is good.  And you need it.  It is not the enemy. 
• Don’t think about the foods you “can’t” have; focus on the foods you CAN have.  Instead of “I can’t have stuffing,” think, “I can have extra turkey and those incredible sweet potatoes.  And those were the best green beans I’ve had in my life.”  Instead of “I can’t have pie,” think, “I made the best paleo pumpkin bread and I can’t wait to dig into it!”

Learn, learn, learn

• If you need help, join our Everything is Everything Challengers facebook group, set up some paleo blogs on your browser favorites list, read “Nourishing Traditions,” etc.; the more you steep yourself in positive information, the more natural and easy this will all become. 
• Learn to cook.  It’s ridiculously simple and easy.  Especially if it’s clean.  My favorite dishes usually have fewer than five ingredients and can be whipped up quickly with basic tools and skills.  Contribute a dish or two to the holiday meal and you’ll know there’s something on the table you can dive into.

This year I made a Thanksgiving feast with a dear old friend who’s been gluten-free for six months.  It was (obviously) his first gluten-free Thanksgiving dinner.  We invited 23 people.  We didn’t even mention it was gluten-free, and nobody was the wiser.  This much is definitely true: it’s been a good ten years.