Paleo on the Fly

OK, so I’m much more creative in the gym than in the kitchen, but I don’t exactly starve, either.  Most times I don’t plan my meals so much as I throw them together at the last minute; maintaining a strict Paleo household saves me from doing something (eating something) stupid.  I guess my point with these food post is to show that one needen’t be a master chef — or even a decent chef — to thrive in the Paleo world.  That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate finely crafted meals — I love Meesus TTP’s knocked-out creations! — but left to my own devises, I eat pretty damn basic.  It boils down to this: after a long work day, I just don’t have all that much free time, and the free time I do have, I choose to spend on the bike, in the gym, or engaged in Vibram-shod “play”.

Anyway, here we go –

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Got a couple of shots here of a brunch I made of sweet potato, bacon and grass-fed beef sausage.  The other meal you see here carries the sweet potato theme forward by roasting some chicken quarters over a bed of sliced sweet potatoes.  On the side, we have some boiled beets, the greens of which I’ll saute tonight and have along side some pork chops.  The white plate contains a “salad” of apricot, walnuts, crumbled bleu cheese and vinaigrette.

By the way, If you haven’t done so, make sure you check-out Jimmy Moore’s interview with Dr. Robert Lustig of Sugar: the Bitter Truth fame.  It’s a fantastic, informative, and fast-paced nutritional and biochemical romp.  Grab a notebook, check out Jimmy’s show, and come on back in a couple of days to check-out my take on the good doctor’s message.

6/2/10, Some TUL-Intensive Horizontal Pushing and Pulling, and a Severe Case of Carb Lust? WTF?

Went out for a little “hair of the dog” fixie huck last night.  Nothing major, though; simply an attempt at working some of the soreness out of my legs resulting from Monday’s Tour De Raleigh.  The TDR ride was only supposed to be a 24-ish mile gig; dumb-ass that I am, though, I turned that into something more along the lines of 35 to 40 miles due to my knack for getting completely and utterly lost.  What, ask directions?  Are you kidding me?  Oh well, what’s an extra and unexpected hard hour or so in the saddle, right?  Anyway, like I said, nothing major last night — just a quick trip out for coffee, then back to mi casa.  Couple of short sprints to juice the legs and stoke the metabolism; a dose of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind to rev the spirit and intellect.

Carb Lust…WTF??

So after 3 pretty damn tough hours in the saddle on Monday,  I finally wheeled into Cup-A-Joe’s for a badly needed shot of caffeine, and to introduce my lovely daughter — who’s moving to the Raleigh area — to the awesome Cup-A-Joe’s vibe.  Anyway, I rack the steed, hydrate a bit, attempt to stretch my lactic acid pumped legs, then hobble up to the counter to order-up — only to have the most delicious poundcake/brownie/whatever-the-hell platter of scrumptiousness looking me straight in the eye…wantonly, even.  Whoa!  I haven’t been hit by that kind of an intense carb lust since way back in the initial stages of my Paleo transformation.  And I’m talkin’ mouth-watering lust, here.  Funny thing, though: after about 5 minutes, and few sips of coffee, the craving passed; completely.  Now, I don’t know if the craving subsided because I was no longer face-to-face with the the instigating entity, or because of the coffee ingestion, or what.  In fact, my daughter arrived to meet me shortly after I’d settle-in with my cup o’joe and IndyWeek, and as we chit-chatted, she munched-away on a cookie the size of a cup saucer (I know, I know…and so does she) — never once, though, did I suffer a recurrence of the carb-noshing urge.  I can only guess that I was a good bit hypoglycemic (having just come off the bike) while at the counter, so it was just a perfect storm of momentary low blood sugar, and “offender appearance” timing.  Strange, though, to have felt that feeling again, and a good reminder of what new initiates the the whole Paleo gig have to suffer.  It’s all so easy for those of us who have crossed the bridge — sometimes it’s good to look back and try to recall what those dark days of transition were like.

Tuesday AM Training

Still working the TUL angle, here.  Next time in the gym I’ll hit a more explosive modality.  Gotta keep it all in rotation.

A giant set of the following:

Atlantis pec-deck (seat @ 6): 120 x 5, 4.  No forced or negs.

ballistic push-ups: bodyweight x 6, 6

Atlantis semi-pronated grip press (seat @ 6): 5, 4+ 4 forced reps/negatives (6-count for 3, lost on 4th)

Atlantis seated row (semi-pronated grip, seat all the way down, 2 holes visible on pad): 120 x 6, 5+ 3 forced rep/negs (6 count)

Tempo on all reps was maintained (except on the ballistic push-ups, of course) at 10/x/10/x, with “x” signifying no pause at the top or bottom of the movement.  Forced reps and/or negatives followed concentric failure on the 10/x/10/x tempo reps.  Again, I realize that weights used on machines is meaningless to anyone but me, but I use this blog as a workout tracker and as an extension of my gym notebook.

I followed the above up a superset of:

GHR: 30 lb vest x 10, 10, 10

kneeling jump squat: 30 lb vest x 6, 6, 6; all for max height

Then, a round of Nautilus 4-way neck: front and each side 40 lbs x 10; rear 50 lbs x 10

So why limit the TUL work to upper body only?  Well, the short answer is that all that biking I do is, in and of itself, a good amount of TUL work for the quads, and a fair amount (since I ride a fixie) for the glutes and hams.  The GHR’s were thrown in as restorative work, and the kneeling jump squats were put in in an attempt to maintain a bit of explosiveness in my legs.  I find if I don’t keep up with a bit of explosive work in the midst of a heavy riding spate, my legs tend to lose “pop”, and though they maintain strength well, explosiveness is another story.

And finally, a little good news, and a little bad, on the HFCS front.  Look out rest of the world, the US has a care package for you, and it ain’t pretty.

So Easy, Even a Kitchen Dolt Can Pull It Off

NPR covered an interesting story yesterday in relation to the Institute of Medicine‘s recommendation that the FDA seek some form of governmental regulation in regard to the salt content of processed foods.  From the NPR site:

“The Institute of Medicine issued a report Tuesday on reducing salt intake. They are recommending that Americans reduce their salt intake significantly, and that the FDA take the lead in leveling the playing field for food processors so that salt content can be systematically reduced over a period of years…”

And Ex-FDA Chief David Kessler’s take on the matter, here.  Mr. Kessler, you might recall, is also the author of “The End of Overeating“.

Both David Kessler and Dr. Robert Lustig (Sugar, the Bitter Truth) speak to the notion of food manufacturers designing of foods for the “optimal bliss point”; that is, purposely manipulating the salt and sugar (or, more commonly now, HFCS) content of a processed “food” so as to create a consumption hyper-drive effect in the unsuspecting gnosher.

Of course, the fail-safe answer here is to simply avoid any and all processed crap — a line that the Paleo tribe ascribes to.  However, as the healthcare/health concerns of our neighbors becomes more and more (due to taxation and shifts in governmental approach to healthcare; i.e., “reform”) our collective concern as well, we would be remiss to just stick our collective, Paleo heads in the sand on this issue.  I — and you, as a fellow Paleo “tribesman” — may not ever be personally affected by this issue, but you can better believe that our wallets will be.

And here’s a good bit of BBC reporting on vitamin D deficiency.  Not only is this an informative bit of reportage, but it’s done in that oh-so-cool English accent that makes a statement like…

“…unless, of course, you want a rickety child, a bended, knock-kneed, large-headed, pale and rickety article…”

…such an absolute auditory joy to behold.  Hat tip to Methuselah, at Pay Now, Live Later for the find.

As a correlative to the above mentioned BBC report, there’s this (Diet, Lifestyle, Poorly Predict Vitamin D Levels) from Futurity.org.  Good thing you can have your own vitamin D levels measured relatively cheaply from ZRT Labs.

Tonight’s Paleo Chow

Another hit-and-run meal tonight.  What could be more simple than a sweet potato, a few sunny-side up eggs and a little bit of leftover pork sausage?  The baked sweet potato, by the way, makes for a great yoke-soppin’ medium.  Easy to make, but  damn friggin’ good.

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Heh, a funny aside: The best pork sausage in the south (in the world?  Some think so!) can be found approximately 5 miles from my humble abode here in beautiful eastern North Carolina.  How better to get there than on the trusty fixie?  And then?  Well, you guessed it — 6 pounds of sausage stuffed in the ol’ backpack 🙂  That quick, intense, 10-mile round trip huck makes the most fabulous sausage around taste even that much better!

Huck on!

A Couple of Interesting Links

“Ira furor brevis est. Anger is a short madness.”

– Horace

Carl Lanore, of Super Human Radio, hosted an interesting interview recently with Dr. Antoine Roux of the University of Montreal.  The discussion centered around Dr. Roux’s involvement in a study which identified sugar consumption — or, more specifically, glucose signaling — as a factor in accelerated aging.  It’s an interesting discussion, even if Dr. Roux is difficult to understand at times.  God bless him, though — I can only imagine how an interview with moi, in French, would come off 🙂

And here’s an article from Science Daily covering the same territory.  Yet another reason to lay off the sugar, and refined, packaged foods, in general.

And if simple table sugar muck’s-up your inter-workings like no one’s business, how ’bout the evil that High Fructose Corn Syrup can lay upon you?  We all know to stay the hell away from HFCS, but just in case you need a little more prompting or “reasons why”, check out this T-Nation article by Dr. Lonnie Lowery.

Have a wonderful, safe and very Paleo weekend!

In Health,

Keith