Guess Who's Coming to Town?

Yup -- these two.



You might know Melissa and Dallas Hartwig as Whole9 -- the dynamic duo behind the Whole30 month-long dietary re-set that's helped thousands of people kickstart their journey back to health.

As longtime readers may recall, M (a.k.a. Nom Nom Paleo) and I -- along with a number of others from CrossFit Palo Alto, including XFitMama and Trish -- attended a Whole9 Foundations of Nutrition seminar at Mad Dawg Fitness a little over a year ago, where we absorbed an incredible amount of information about how to eat for optimal health. (If you need a refresher, check out M's post from Nom Nom Paleo here.)

Before attending the seminar, we'd already been eating Paleo for a while, and I figured I wouldn't learn anything new. WRONG. The day-long seminar is a fantastic introduction to good nutrition for absolute beginners, but even those of us who've implemented a clean, anti-inflammatory diet can stand to learn a lot. I sure did.

Since we first met Melissa and Dallas, we've become friends, sharing laughs and meals in different cities (and ingesting all sorts of non-Paleo foods, from breaded brains to ice cream -- blasphemy!). In the process, we've had the pleasure of chatting with them about topics ranging from nutrition and fitness to how to make Blue Steel faces and deadlift 800 pounds. The Hartwigs aren't just Good Food Superheroes -- they know how to have a good time, too.

It goes without saying, then, that we're excited that they're coming to CrossFit Palo Alto on Saturday, April 21, for their first San Francisco Bay Area seminar in quite a while. You can learn more about the Foundations of Nutrition seminar over on the CrossFit Palo Alto website.  M and I will be there, along with the oft-mentioned Tim Dymmel, the man behind CFPA. If you're lucky, you might even spot the elusive Lazy Caveman. It'll be a mini-Paleo-palooza. 

As Darth Vader said in The Empire Strikes Back, we would be honored if you would join us. You'll have a great time, and learn a ton, too. (Okay -- Darth Vader didn't say that last part.)

Tickets to the Whole9 Foundations of Nutrition Seminar at CrossFit Palo Alto are available here, and if you register by Sunday, you get fifteen bucks knocked off the price. Plus, you'll get to hang out in the box where M and I have decorated the floors with copious amounts of sweat.

Well? What are you waiting for?

Tweaking

M and I already eat pretty clean (she even completed the Whole30 recently), but we're still learning new things about optimizing our nutrition for health, longevity and performance. Today, we picked up all sorts of useful stuff at the Whole9 Foundations of Nutrition seminar.

Just a few of the dietary/lifestyle tweaks I'm going to try to implement after spending the day absorbing what Melissa and Dallas had to say:

• Get more sleep -- especially the night before a 5 a.m. class at CrossFit Palo Alto. (Whole9's rule: Didn't get at least 6 hours of sleep? THEN NO EXERCISE FOR YOU. Use that time instead to get more Z's or prep some food.)

• Stop pounding caffeine after noon. And if all goes well, I'll try to eliminate caffeine altogether from my diet. 

• Reduce my intake of nuts and seeds -- and when I do indulge, I'm going to reach for macadamia nuts and hazelnuts over all others.

• Cut the cheese. (HAR HAR! I meant cutting it from my diet.)

• Eat something starchy/carby immediately post-workout.

• Try to get over my aversion to olives, because they're awesome sources of fat (assuming no preservatives or other additives are in the mix).

• Seriously cut back on fruit, and stop drinking juice altogether.

• Never cook with olive oil again.

• Break open the vat of duck fat we have sitting in the freezer.

I have more to add to this list, and you probably already have questions (I certainly did!), but I need to get to bed.

More later.

The Whole30: M's Done!

Thirty days ago, when my better half announced that she was going full-tilt strict Paleo for a month, I was a little skeptical.

This is, after all, the same girl who routinely took a two-hour round-trip drive just to buy a cup of her favorite ice cream. And flew to another state for pizza. (To say we are were big pizza fans would be a gross understatement.) And dropped a small fortune to have a big box of "the world's best chocolate" shipped to our house.

But she did it! Check out her Whole30 wrap-up -- including links to each day's food -- over at her blog, and give her a high-five while you're at it.

False Hope Syndrome

Made any New Year’s Resolutions? Sorry to burst your bubble, but they’re probably going to fail.

As many as 90 percent of attempts at change fail, yet New Year’s resolvers are undeterred. In a 2002 report in the journal American Psychologist, University of Toronto researcher Janet Polivy and a colleague came up with a name for this “cycle of failure and renewed effort: the False Hope Syndrome.

The False Hope Syndrome is “particularly common among those who resolve to lose weight” due to dieters’ “unrealistic goals and a misunderstanding of [their] own behavior.”

So what’s the secret to setting and achieving goals?

Focus on behaviors, not results. Goals should be S.M.A.R.T: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A vague and overreaching resolution like “I wanna drop 30 pounds” is none of the above. Instead, make a checklist of actions that’ll put you in the right direction.

Here, for example, are some of M’s health-related resolutions for 2011:

• Complete the Whole30 program (which is no different from the CrossFit Love Paleo Challenge) in January;
• Complete the Hundred Push-ups program (using an iPhone app to track her progress);
• Lift progressively heavier things at least three times per week; and
• Start a workout journal to log her strength development.

Like many of us, M’s looking to improve her strength, body composition, and overall health. But rather than just resolving to “lose X percent body fat” or “eat zero desserts in 2011,” her resolutions are specific, reasonable, and action-oriented -- and she can track her progress along the way with her workout log.

Then again, given that my one resolution this year is to "just keep on keepin' on," it's clear that I'm not following any of the advice above about setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. (It's 'cause I'm D.U.M.B.)