My previous push press 10RM was 85lbs. Doesn't sound like a lot, right, but remember, it's a 10RM, not a 2RM or even a 5RM. Today I did 5x5 115lb push presses. At the end of the fifth set, I was beat, and my form was suffering, so I knew I'd hit my max for a 5RM.
I'm also cautiously stepping into deadlifts. Before this week, I'd been using 2 pood kettlebell. That was the biggest we had at the time, and I could easily bang out 10x10 on it. This week I've been using the bar, albeit super duper careful, and after consulting my doctor and personal trainer. When you have a broken back, form is everything on a deadlift. So, my deadlift is presently 85lbs (which is slightly more than 2 pood). This was 5x5 this morning (I love the 0630 workout; I get a shit ton done before the sun even comes up). I know I could go higher, and I'm pretty sure my 2RM is quite a bit over 100lbs, but I need to exercise those muscles, get them conditioned, and then start increasing the weight.
One side effect of the accident is I have reduced mobility (I'm not sure if this is because my spinal column is tighter because of the ligature/musculature or whether it's a physical immobility) and can't get into the proper lowest position for a DL. So we get a couple of 25-lb plates (a bit more than an inch tall) and stack them on either side of the barbell. Thus, my lift starts about 2-3" above the ground and finishes there, but my form is better. Oh, and I have to take my shoes off. Sneakers (I have trail running shoes that unfortunately have a pretty significant heel raise) just don't cut it for lifts. I'm looking in to getting some Inov-8's or NB Minimus soonish (problem is I have ogre feet and they don't always come in my size).
Today's WOD was Cindy. Cindy and I are not friends. My time was 16:48 (we did 10 sets for time rather than AMRAP 20, so in theory my first Cindy might have been 12), the last person in the class to finish. Individually, the exercises weren't hard -- pullups, pushups, and air squats -- but for ten rounds, you get a serious burn on. Today I did something I haven't done at CrossFit before, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. When doing the squats, my muscles were screaming at me (remember, this is just an air squat) to rest, just a second, and I ignored them. I winced and closed my eyes and just kept banging out the next rep. Six, then nine, then twelve, and I-know-I'm-almost-there, then fifteen was up. Of course, that's small consolation, because then I was back to pullups.
It almost felt like I had hit a peak (the first set of squats I actually had to rest at 5, and then did the remaining 10) and pushed past it and was working on different energy. This is kind of in line with what Glassman says about the various "pathways" to energy. Cribbing shamelessly here, the immediate burst of energy is the phosphagenic pathway, followed by the glycolytic pathway, and finally the oxidative pathway. Is it possible I noticed a switch in the way my body was powering the squats?
Lastly, I had my first treatment of prolotherapy last Thursday. I took Thursday and Friday off but hit the gym hard on Saturday. In fact, because of the way the prolo acted on my muscles, I really wanted to work out on Friday. I kept asking my wife, "and I can't go back to the gym until Saturday??" Basically, prolo feels like you've gotten a real serious workout in, only without the workout. I can see how this would actually work, especially for patients who are convalescing and can't exercise the traumatized area.
In my case, I am looking back and really irritated that I was given so many anti-inflammatories. Inflammation is crucial to the healing process. The first thing the doctors did was give me IM toradol and gobs of NSAIDs. No wonder those muscles atrophied and became mostly useless! I think we need to seriously reconsider the utility of the inflammation cycle in traumatic injuries. I know I rant about it a lot, but I think the best treatment for pain in cases of traumatic injury is probably low doses of morphine po, rather than a hydrocodone/APAP formula. But we as a nation are so afraid of opiate addiction that we instead allow people to become permanently injured because they never heal – because of the anti-inflammatories we give them!! (and thus they want more pain killers, and so on).
When I injure myself again – let's not kid ourselves, it's going to happen – I am going to be insistent that I not be given anti-inflammatories. I realize for people who haven't gone through this process that this must sound like quackery, but I have seen inflammation improve my condition, and the proof, folks, is in the putting.
As for the nutrition challenge/paleo thing, I am mostly finding it annoying. I can't say I have noticed any quantitative effects; certainly not on my workouts. I said this morning that I'm anxious to have it over, not to simply have it over, but to be able to look back and see what effects it had, and weigh those effects on my future diet choices. We've still got a little less than four weeks to go, so maybe things will change. Maybe I'll be able to burn on that glycolytic pathway more easily in the coming weeks. For now, though, it's just a hassle and expensive.
24 January, 2012
18 January, 2012
The shopping list for week two is below. We spent about $350. So that makes $375/wk so far, for two people. And we're using almost everything.
item unit (SAE)
eggs organic 36ct
arugula 7oz
spinach 12oz
lettuce mix 5oz
peppers bell 6ct
blackberries organic 16oz
tomato roma 18oz
pineapple spears 32oz
cantaloup spears 16oz
macadamia nuts 10oz
cauliflower 1ct
carrots shredded 10oz
trail mix 30oz
eggplant curry punjab 20oz
zico coconut water
tomato juice 64floz
cranberry juice unfiltered 64floz
turkey breast roast applegate 14oz
carrots baby 16oz
nuts mixed roasted 12oz
squash butternut 20oz
peas english 10oz
parsley 1ct
celery hearts 3ct
tomatoes hothouse 3ct
pears 3ct
cucumbers pickling 3ct
green beans 12oz
lemons 3ct
spring onions 2ct
mint fresh organic 2oz
apples gala 3ct
sausage pork andouille smoked organic 12oz
pork loin roast 61.28oz
salmon fillet 24oz
sausage pork italian mild organic 8oz
sausage pork habanero green chile organic 8oz
bacon organic dry 32oz
steak strip 77.28oz
oranges, clementine 22.08oz
fruit mixed, diced 24oz
kiwi, sliced peeled 11.2oz
olives fresh jalapeno
guacamole 1.8lbs
raspberries organic 12oz
dates 1.33lbs
onions white 32oz
leaves lime keffir 1ct
jicama 1ct
oranges navel 5ct
chimichurri sauce 8floz
hot sauce carribbean 5floz
item unit (SAE)
eggs organic 36ct
arugula 7oz
spinach 12oz
lettuce mix 5oz
peppers bell 6ct
blackberries organic 16oz
tomato roma 18oz
pineapple spears 32oz
cantaloup spears 16oz
macadamia nuts 10oz
cauliflower 1ct
carrots shredded 10oz
trail mix 30oz
eggplant curry punjab 20oz
zico coconut water
tomato juice 64floz
cranberry juice unfiltered 64floz
turkey breast roast applegate 14oz
carrots baby 16oz
nuts mixed roasted 12oz
squash butternut 20oz
peas english 10oz
parsley 1ct
celery hearts 3ct
tomatoes hothouse 3ct
pears 3ct
cucumbers pickling 3ct
green beans 12oz
lemons 3ct
spring onions 2ct
mint fresh organic 2oz
apples gala 3ct
sausage pork andouille smoked organic 12oz
pork loin roast 61.28oz
salmon fillet 24oz
sausage pork italian mild organic 8oz
sausage pork habanero green chile organic 8oz
bacon organic dry 32oz
steak strip 77.28oz
oranges, clementine 22.08oz
fruit mixed, diced 24oz
kiwi, sliced peeled 11.2oz
olives fresh jalapeno
guacamole 1.8lbs
raspberries organic 12oz
dates 1.33lbs
onions white 32oz
leaves lime keffir 1ct
jicama 1ct
oranges navel 5ct
chimichurri sauce 8floz
hot sauce carribbean 5floz
16 January, 2012
What an abrupt change in diet actually revealed
"What are your cravings?" "What do you reach for when you crave X?" "What will you do instead of reaching for that?"
These are all questions that come up as part of this paleo-cleanse thing that we're doing with the Crossfit thing. I (honestly) said, you know, I don't crave sweet things. I occasionally find myself craving protein (I go veg for a year or two at a time periodically), but mostly I've figured out ways to deal with that. It never really occurred to me that this quick drop off would exacerbate the one life-long addiction I've had.
I have been injured so many times in so many accidents it would be easy to say that my addiction was opiates. Nope, not even close. My addiction is caffeine. I sure do kick it from time to time, but I always come back to it. I have a supply of provigil (with corresponding prescription of course), and that's never gotten me off of it. In fact, I think it's fair to say that the times my life has been most out-of-control, I've had more caffeine about me than at any other time in my life.
If you see me with a 24oz can of red bull, chances are, it's not a happy day for me. And not because I didn't get enough sleep. I reach for caffeine when things are going tango uniform, and it tends to calm things down. You could make a lot of judgments as to whether there's some neurochem going on (kids with ADD doing better with caffeine and other stims for example), but I think it's beyond the scope, and frankly not quite relevant.
But this diet forbade us from having artificial sweeteners, too. I've never been in a position where I couldn't just go grab caffeine. Imagine if one day somebody made caffeine illegal. Imagine if you couldn't get it at the store, you didn't have any at home, you didn't have any No-Doz in the seats of your couch, Excedrin in your cupboard, and so on. Some people would seriously panic.
But I've kicked caffeine before. What's different this time? Well, I'm not just kicking caffeine. In fact, to be fair, I'm not kicking caffeine at all – I can still take Excedrin and No-Doz and anything else I want. But I can't take caffeine with sugar. There's no ritual with it. When I was a kid, I smoked cigarettes. Briefly, but long enough to know what it's about. Cigarettes are partially as addicting as they are because there's a ritual associated with their usage. This is why "the patch" is not effective: you're not stepping away from your desk, taking an elevator to the lobby, stepping outside, tamping your cigarettes, picking one and lighting it, and taking controlled breaths for a few minutes before returning to work (or after sex, or after dinner, or whatever).
No, this time, I'm losing a coping mechanism as well as the drug. Sure, it doesn't sound like much to say that the whole process of sipping on 24floz of Red Bull is a ritual, but think about it: I will stop everything on a Saturday when I've got errands to run to pointedly stop in at a drug store and buy a dozen energy drinks, throw eleven of them in the trunk, and drink one of them. Nobody really thinks twice about this. Were that a bong, were I sticking a needle in my arm, or, I dare say, were I smoking a cigarette, people would say I have a problem.
When I'm working, I will stop what I am doing, walk to the refrigerator, grab whichever drink I am inclined towards, walk back to my desk, langor over it a moment, and then slowly sip at it while I am regaining my composure (yes, I do lose composure if I haven't had the appropriate level of caffeine – or, I guess, sugar, insulin, whatever it is), and when I feel "up to it" (it really gets that bad, now that I think about it), I get back to the task I was working on. Whether I am more productive after that amount of caffeine etc is another discussion, but again kind of out of scope.
The fact is, I have a problem.
Caffeine? A problem? Well, consider that my life is pretty tame (read: boring). And consider that I have been on and off the entire spectrum of opiates from your average darvocet, nalbuphine, and vicodin all the way up through dilaudid, fentanyl, and morphine since 1997, having broken over a dozen ribs, both feet, both arms, two fingers, and.. well, I'm not going to finish. Lots of injuries. I've "kicked" opiates many, many times. But it's never been "kicking" it as such. I've never said to myself, "this is a problem, I should probably cut out this fentanyl habit." I have said that about caffeine numerous times.
Combine the loss of ritualized caffeine and the harsh change in diet (the loss of simple carbs, the loss of refined sugars) and the change in the ritual of diet (many foods wifey and I relied upon to sort of ease us through a harsh day are now verboten; in my case including the occasional few-drinks-with-dinner), and I'm dealing with some pretty unpleasant circumstances. My sleep is a wreck, I've got daily headaches that are absolutely brutal, I've been having muscle spasms and cramps like I haven't had in six-plus months, and I'm in general feeling like shit.
Is this a good thing, recognizing it? Well, probably, but the consequence is that I won't be able to just amble through life henceforth thinking it's harmless. As Siddharth told us, "nobody just falls into a box of donuts." We're adults, and these are choices. In the future, if I head back to the sugared or otherwise sweetened caffeine drinks, I am not going to be naïve about what I'm actually drinking. It's nothing less than a ritualized addiction. An addiction that, for me, has caused more damage than fentanyl ever did. What the hell kind of statement is that?
These are all questions that come up as part of this paleo-cleanse thing that we're doing with the Crossfit thing. I (honestly) said, you know, I don't crave sweet things. I occasionally find myself craving protein (I go veg for a year or two at a time periodically), but mostly I've figured out ways to deal with that. It never really occurred to me that this quick drop off would exacerbate the one life-long addiction I've had.
I have been injured so many times in so many accidents it would be easy to say that my addiction was opiates. Nope, not even close. My addiction is caffeine. I sure do kick it from time to time, but I always come back to it. I have a supply of provigil (with corresponding prescription of course), and that's never gotten me off of it. In fact, I think it's fair to say that the times my life has been most out-of-control, I've had more caffeine about me than at any other time in my life.
If you see me with a 24oz can of red bull, chances are, it's not a happy day for me. And not because I didn't get enough sleep. I reach for caffeine when things are going tango uniform, and it tends to calm things down. You could make a lot of judgments as to whether there's some neurochem going on (kids with ADD doing better with caffeine and other stims for example), but I think it's beyond the scope, and frankly not quite relevant.
But this diet forbade us from having artificial sweeteners, too. I've never been in a position where I couldn't just go grab caffeine. Imagine if one day somebody made caffeine illegal. Imagine if you couldn't get it at the store, you didn't have any at home, you didn't have any No-Doz in the seats of your couch, Excedrin in your cupboard, and so on. Some people would seriously panic.
But I've kicked caffeine before. What's different this time? Well, I'm not just kicking caffeine. In fact, to be fair, I'm not kicking caffeine at all – I can still take Excedrin and No-Doz and anything else I want. But I can't take caffeine with sugar. There's no ritual with it. When I was a kid, I smoked cigarettes. Briefly, but long enough to know what it's about. Cigarettes are partially as addicting as they are because there's a ritual associated with their usage. This is why "the patch" is not effective: you're not stepping away from your desk, taking an elevator to the lobby, stepping outside, tamping your cigarettes, picking one and lighting it, and taking controlled breaths for a few minutes before returning to work (or after sex, or after dinner, or whatever).
No, this time, I'm losing a coping mechanism as well as the drug. Sure, it doesn't sound like much to say that the whole process of sipping on 24floz of Red Bull is a ritual, but think about it: I will stop everything on a Saturday when I've got errands to run to pointedly stop in at a drug store and buy a dozen energy drinks, throw eleven of them in the trunk, and drink one of them. Nobody really thinks twice about this. Were that a bong, were I sticking a needle in my arm, or, I dare say, were I smoking a cigarette, people would say I have a problem.
When I'm working, I will stop what I am doing, walk to the refrigerator, grab whichever drink I am inclined towards, walk back to my desk, langor over it a moment, and then slowly sip at it while I am regaining my composure (yes, I do lose composure if I haven't had the appropriate level of caffeine – or, I guess, sugar, insulin, whatever it is), and when I feel "up to it" (it really gets that bad, now that I think about it), I get back to the task I was working on. Whether I am more productive after that amount of caffeine etc is another discussion, but again kind of out of scope.
The fact is, I have a problem.
Caffeine? A problem? Well, consider that my life is pretty tame (read: boring). And consider that I have been on and off the entire spectrum of opiates from your average darvocet, nalbuphine, and vicodin all the way up through dilaudid, fentanyl, and morphine since 1997, having broken over a dozen ribs, both feet, both arms, two fingers, and.. well, I'm not going to finish. Lots of injuries. I've "kicked" opiates many, many times. But it's never been "kicking" it as such. I've never said to myself, "this is a problem, I should probably cut out this fentanyl habit." I have said that about caffeine numerous times.
Combine the loss of ritualized caffeine and the harsh change in diet (the loss of simple carbs, the loss of refined sugars) and the change in the ritual of diet (many foods wifey and I relied upon to sort of ease us through a harsh day are now verboten; in my case including the occasional few-drinks-with-dinner), and I'm dealing with some pretty unpleasant circumstances. My sleep is a wreck, I've got daily headaches that are absolutely brutal, I've been having muscle spasms and cramps like I haven't had in six-plus months, and I'm in general feeling like shit.
Is this a good thing, recognizing it? Well, probably, but the consequence is that I won't be able to just amble through life henceforth thinking it's harmless. As Siddharth told us, "nobody just falls into a box of donuts." We're adults, and these are choices. In the future, if I head back to the sugared or otherwise sweetened caffeine drinks, I am not going to be naïve about what I'm actually drinking. It's nothing less than a ritualized addiction. An addiction that, for me, has caused more damage than fentanyl ever did. What the hell kind of statement is that?
09 January, 2012
shopping and nutrition
So we went shopping today for food that wouldn't fuck with our diet. Mostly we don't eat too terribly, but a lot of what we eat involves soy or noodles or added sugar, and all that is out.
I'll post the list of stuff at the end of it (it's long), but the short story is we went to two markets (trader joe's and whole foods) and we spent about $400 in two hours. I would estimate that we have a week's worth of food. That makes $1600 per month, or $200 per person per week.
The thing that struck me the most is this is a horribly inefficient way to shop/eat/consume. We bought local and organic. "In-season" is impossible; it's snowing. So everything we bought came in smaller quantities because it's more expensive and I assume people buy less of it. It came from smaller farms, and had no preservatives (none of it). This means that there is a lot more vehicular traffic associated with it. There's more refrigeration associated with it. There's more overhead in farming with it (again, all of it). So it would seem to me that the people who think this is a more responsible way to eat, environmentally, are just plain wrong. Or they live in the sticks where they can buy this shit from the farm itself. Not so when you live in the city.
It may be healthier – I will tell you my thoughts in six weeks – but it's also something that not everyone can do due to the hideous cost of eating this way. Even eating out, you're deeply fucked. All kinds of things that are nominally healthy (edamame, oat bran cereal, curried chickpeas, the list just goes on and on) are off-limits. I can't go out for Mexican or Indian or Sushi (sashimi, I suppose, is okay). Chinese and Korean are big struggles too. That's the other thing that hit me – this diet is almost explicitly American Cuisine. Many of the basic staples of non-American cuisine are verboten.
So, you've got an environmentally unsound, expensive, ethnocentric diet that may be healthier for you. I am not sure I see an up side here.
Oh, and liquor is out. Which isn't such a bad thing, I guess. All liquor, not just beer (gluten) or spirits (insulin spikes).
Caffeine, interestingly (or perhaps not so interestingly, given nobody'd do it if it was off-limits) is "open."
The list (remember, we are shopping for both of us):
We shall see how long this actually lasts. For a visualization of how much food this is, it entirely filled the trunk of a 2011 Chevy Malibu.
I'll post the list of stuff at the end of it (it's long), but the short story is we went to two markets (trader joe's and whole foods) and we spent about $400 in two hours. I would estimate that we have a week's worth of food. That makes $1600 per month, or $200 per person per week.
The thing that struck me the most is this is a horribly inefficient way to shop/eat/consume. We bought local and organic. "In-season" is impossible; it's snowing. So everything we bought came in smaller quantities because it's more expensive and I assume people buy less of it. It came from smaller farms, and had no preservatives (none of it). This means that there is a lot more vehicular traffic associated with it. There's more refrigeration associated with it. There's more overhead in farming with it (again, all of it). So it would seem to me that the people who think this is a more responsible way to eat, environmentally, are just plain wrong. Or they live in the sticks where they can buy this shit from the farm itself. Not so when you live in the city.
It may be healthier – I will tell you my thoughts in six weeks – but it's also something that not everyone can do due to the hideous cost of eating this way. Even eating out, you're deeply fucked. All kinds of things that are nominally healthy (edamame, oat bran cereal, curried chickpeas, the list just goes on and on) are off-limits. I can't go out for Mexican or Indian or Sushi (sashimi, I suppose, is okay). Chinese and Korean are big struggles too. That's the other thing that hit me – this diet is almost explicitly American Cuisine. Many of the basic staples of non-American cuisine are verboten.
So, you've got an environmentally unsound, expensive, ethnocentric diet that may be healthier for you. I am not sure I see an up side here.
Oh, and liquor is out. Which isn't such a bad thing, I guess. All liquor, not just beer (gluten) or spirits (insulin spikes).
Caffeine, interestingly (or perhaps not so interestingly, given nobody'd do it if it was off-limits) is "open."
The list (remember, we are shopping for both of us):
| salsa fresh | 12floz |
| pineapple spears fresh | 16oz |
| blackberries fresh | 12oz |
| jalapenos fresh | 8oz |
| blueberries fresh | 24oz |
| cantaloupe fresh spears | 32oz |
| raspberries fresh | 12oz |
| tomatoes pearl fresh | 14oz |
| baby bok choi fresh | 6ct |
| brussels sprouts fresh | 20oz |
| chicken stock organic | 2qt |
| canola oil | 1L |
| tuna in penang curry | 28oz |
| chicken whole organic | 62.4oz |
| eggs jumbo organic | 48ct |
| cranberries fresh | 1 dry qt |
| unsweetened assam tea | 64floz |
| mixed fruit fresh | 27.36oz |
| guacamole | 13.76oz |
| ghee | 7.5oz |
| oranges clementine sectioned peeled | 25.6oz |
| sugar snap peas | 19.52oz |
| organic cilantro | 1ct |
| organic spring onions | 1ct |
| broccoli crowns | 3ct |
| apples fresh | 3ct |
| grapefruit large | 2ct |
| mustard dry | 1ct |
| hearts of romaine organic | 3ct |
| mushrooms button white | 10oz |
| arugula/spinach/lettuce salad blend | 5oz |
| trail mix | 12oz |
| bell pepper colored | 3ct |
| onion yellow | 1ct |
| onion red | 1ct |
| roma tomatoes | 18oz |
| lara bars | 2ct |
| chicken breasts | 58oz |
| bacon uncured | 12.48oz |
| salmon fillets | 24oz |
| shrimp peeled deveined uncooked | 16oz |
| steak strip organic local | 32oz |
| pork loin chops | 54.4oz |
| lemons meyer | 4ct |
| limes, 5ct | 5ct |
| macadamia nuts | 10oz |
| oranges navel | 6ct |
| celery hearts | 2ct |
| ginger fresh | 4oz |
| turkey breast applegate sliced | 14oz |
| cashews raw | 8oz |
| almond butter | 16oz |
| vinegar white balsamic | 17floz |
| olive oil extra virgin | 500ml |
| olive oil | 1L |
| garlic crushed | 9oz |
| mustard deli brown | 12oz |
| peaches halved in grape juice | 14oz |
| mustard dijon | 14oz |
| vinegar red wine | 8floz |
| chai rooibos | 1.5oz |
We shall see how long this actually lasts. For a visualization of how much food this is, it entirely filled the trunk of a 2011 Chevy Malibu.