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?

Tuesday's Workout

I'm crazy busy trying to juggle a bunch of projects -- some work related, some not -- but I managed to squeeze in a half-hour of lifting this evening. (It helps that the kids are spending the night with grandma and grandpa -- no hour-long bedtime ritual tonight!)

After a quick warm-up on the erg, I dove into Day Two of the Whole9's version of the Power to the People protocol, following this formula for both deadlifts and strict presses:

• Set 1: +5lbs from Day One, 3-5 reps
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 3-5 reps

In particular, the deadlifts -- albeit light -- feel great. I'm doing my best to nail my form, making sure that my butt doesn't rise ahead of the rest of my body, and keeping my head and neck in line with my spine. Also, I'm trying to be slow and deliberate in my movements, both to increase time under tension as well as to train my brain and grease the groove.

Afterwards, I practiced some power cleans and squat cleans, and cooled down with two short sets of ring dips.

And that's all, folks!

Monday's Workout: Fat Gripz & PTP

CrossFit Palo Alto's closed for Turkey Week, so for the first time in a long while, I got to play around in my garage with some of my toys. Some of them -- like my Fat Gripz -- have been sitting in a box for a month, waiting for me to get off my ass and try 'em out.

Now that my back's feeling better, I want to work on getting it stronger -- and so my plan is to start doing some low-rep sets of deadlifts and strict presses, mixed with some super-short metcons. Sound familiar?

Yep -- I'm revisiting the Power to the People protocol.

Dallas and Melissa of the Whole9 have a PTP template from their CrossFit 603 days, so I decided to jump right in with their programming for Day One. First up: the "Buy-In":

3 rounds:

• 20-second handstand hold
• 15 Russian kettlebell swings (24kg / 16kg)
• 10 box jumps (20″)

This was a fun way to kick off the morning and get the blood pumping rushing to my head. Once I was nice and toasty, I was ready for PTP.

Deadlift:

• Warm up: A few reps at a light weight
• Set 1: 60% of 1-rep max, 3-5 reps
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1 weight, 3-5 reps

Just to keep things interesting, I decided to wrap the Fat Gripz around my barbell -- I figured I might as well work on my grip strength, too. (Yes, I know that some folks say that increasing open-hand grip strength isn't necessarily going to help with support-grip moves like deadlifts or pull-ups, but I'm happy to settle for just generally increasing the strength of my hands.

I had trouble wrapping my thumbs around the width of the Fat Gripz -- my grip felt much more awkward than I expected -- but the starting weight was light, so I managed just fine. We'll see what happens as the weight on the bar starts creeping up.

Press:

• Warm up: A few reps at a light weight
• Set 1: 60% of 1-rep max, 3-5 reps
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1 weight, 3-5 reps

I used the Fat Gripz on the strict presses, too, though I don't think it made much of a difference. Presses don't rely much on finger strength, so I'll probably skip the Gripz for this movement next time.

Cash Out:

3 rounds for time:

• 30 double-unders
• 15 knees-to-elbows

This sounded easy, but the KTEs rocked my world. I cranked out the double-unders without much trouble, but they wiped me out enough to make the knees-to-elbows a royal pain in the butt. Also, to be consistent, I'd stuck the Fat Gripz on the pull-up bar, too -- and it didn't take me long to start regretting it. Getting a handle on the bar was much more challenging than I anticipated, and my hands kept slipping off. Ugh.

Result: 4:27 as RXed.

I need bigger hands. My teeny little baby hands aren't cutting it.

Better Get Paleo

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the first rap video in the history of mankind that name-checks Robb Wolf, Everyday Paleo, Mat Lalonde, Whole9, John Welbourn and Balanced Bites AND features a chinstrap-bearded gentleman advising corn to perform fellatio.



[Source: The Dedicated Servers]

Offal-y Good

Gotta hit the sack. I'm back in L.A. tonight (this time, with M) for the Ancestral Health Symposium, and we had an enormous meat orgy of a dinner at Animal tonight with Melissa and Dallas of Whole9 and Melissa Joulwan of The Clothes Make the Girl. We ate nose-to-tail tonight (including brains, face, ears, pancreas, liver, heart, marrow and tails), and all that tasty organ meat in my belly is making me drowsy.

Read all about our feast o' flesh over at Nom Nom Paleo.

Check-In

I'm a Paleo stickler, and my food choices are fairly clean. My "cheats" are increasingly rare. But there'a always room for improvement.

After attending a Whole9 seminar in early March, I outlined 9 things I was going to do to modify my food choices. Two-and-a-half months later, how am I doing with these dietary tweaks? Let's run it down.

TWEAK NO. 1: 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.)

STATUS: Miserable failure. I'm still staying up too late. Plus, I've violated the no-exercise-without-six-hours-of-sleep rule several times. (But I'm working on it. Really.)

TWEAK NO. 2: Stop pounding caffeine after noon. And if all goes well, I'll try to eliminate caffeine altogether from my diet.

STATUS: I cheated on this one for a while. Every day, I'd buy coffee right before the clock struck noon and then nurse my precious cup for another hour to prolong the caffeine intake. But over the past month or so, I've done a better job of keeping my caffeine intake restricted to the morning hours. I'm nowhere near ready to rid myself of coffee altogether, though.

TWEAK NO. 3: 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.

STATUS: I'm still struggling with this one. I love nuts, and Costco sells Mauna Loa mac nuts in bulk. Also: Oren's Kitchen sells some insanely good spiced nuts (and a couple of varieties contain only Paleo ingredients!), and I'm addicted to 'em. I have, however, cut back significantly on my nut intake -- and have even managed to go a few days without eating nuts at all. (I know: Shocking!)

TWEAK NO. 4: Cut the cheese. (HAR HAR! I meant cutting it from my diet.)

STATUS: Done. This one was surprisingly easy to do. I realize now that despite my love for the taste of certain cheeses, none of 'em are worth the gut irritation and other associated problems.

TWEAK NO. 5: Eat something starchy/carby (but no fruit or fat) immediately post-workout.

STATUS: I'm all over this one. Since the Whole9 seminar, I've made it a point to bring a baked sweet potato and/or a bag of peeled roasted chestnuts with me to class so that I can chow down s soon as the WOD's done. It's done wonders for my recovery time and energy levels. Plus, sweet potatoes and chestnuts are tasty as hell.

TWEAK NO. 6: 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).

STATUS: I still don't like olives. Sorry.

TWEAK NO. 7: Seriously cut back on fruit, and stop drinking juice altogether.

STATUS: Done. Sure, I'll still chomp on a couple of strawberries when M buys a flat at the Farmer's Market, and I'll occasionally have a nibble of whatever fruit I'm cutting up for the kids. But I've never had a sweet tooth, and now, even small bites of fruit taste overly sweet and cloying to me. I pretty much steer clear of the stuff.

TWEAK NO. 8: Never cook with olive oil again.

STATUS: Not a problem. To me, food tastes better when it's cooked in ghee or coconut oil anyway.

TWEAK NO. 9: Break open the vat of duck fat we have sitting in the freezer.

STATUS: Done. And it was good.

Good Morning

My breakfast was incredibly easy (even for me!) to throw together: savory coconut pancakes (just three ingredients: egg, coconut flour and salt) topped with bacon (cooked in the microwave) and avocado. It took less than five minutes to throw together.

I'm downing all the bacon I can before the Whole9 crew tells me I have to stop.

And if you haven't guessed yet, I'm not fasting through the morning every day anymore. More on that later...

Because.

Okay: I've got some explaining to do. Below, I listed (again) the dietary tweaks I intend to implement, along with my reasons. I may mangle some of this stuff up, as I'm just regurgitating what we heard yesterday at the Whole9 Foundations of Nutrition workshop.

THE TWEAK:

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.)

THE REASON:

This goes without saying, right? We all know by now that we ought to be getting at least nine -- yes, nine -- hours of sleep per night, or else risk all sorts of health issues, including obesity and diabetes. These and other disorders are all linked to chronic, systemic inflammation; your body's immune system is constantly pushed to work harder than it should to repair and maintain your body in response to the added stress you're placing on it.

Another point that hit home with me at yesterday's presentation: Sleep should take priority over training. Your body doesn't get fitter while you're training. Your body gets fitter when it's recovering and re-building itself. (Some -- including Robb Wolf -- say it's even more important than food.)

Plus, lack of sleep makes you look like crap. No need to crow about functioning on just four hours of sleep; after all, sleeplessness not a sign of virility. 

THE TWEAK:

Stop pounding caffeine after noon.

THE REASON:

I've wavered on this point before, and I sure love me a good cuppa coffee (the cold-brewed stuff is like crack to me). But in the end, I'm kinda-sorta coming around to the Whole9's way of thinking. Caffeine's a potent stressor, and promotes a stress response that I don't need. Plus, if I keep chugging it in the P.M., it's going to keep wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns. Not good.

So starting now: No more coffee after noon. (Read the Whole9's Coffee Manifesto here.)

THE TWEAK:

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.

THE REASON:

Nuts and seeds are incredibly nutrient-dense foods, which makes 'em a great addition to any diet.

But the concern is that the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content in all nuts and seeds have a pro-inflammatory profile, with higher ratios of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids. By now, we all know why it's important to reduce the markers of systemic inflammation by maintaining a ratio closer to 2:1 or 1:1 than the standard American diet's ratio of upwards of 30:1, right? Besides, there's the whole Chris Masterjohn line of thought about the connection between PUFA degeneration and atherosclerosis.

Of course, some nuts have very low PUFA content (only 2% of the fats in mac nuts are PUFAs, for example), and in the end, they're a net nutritional plus. Others, though, are pretty damned high in PUFAs. (For instance, 72% of the fats in walnuts are pro-inflammatory PUFAs.) So going forward, I'm going to be a more discriminating nut eater -- and favor mac nuts in particular, which studies suggest offer a host of other health benefits as well.

Yes, there's some debate over this stuff (isn't there always?), but even beyond the whole systemic inflammation argument, I've found that it's just way too easy for me to mindlessly binge on nuts. Nuts are super dense in calories. (Just one cup of macadamia nuts, for example, contain almost 1,000 calories.) I'm not a calorie counter at all, but I'm addicted to nuts. If left unchecked, my nut consumption would grow to the point that weight maintenance would surely become an issue. And while nuts are certainly "Paleo" (excepting those "nuts" that aren't actually nuts at all, like peanuts) 'cause cavepeople could eat 'em, that doesn't mean they're the optimal source of dietary fat for modern humans. I think I'm going to try to mindlessly binge on eggs and avocados instead.

THE TWEAK:

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

THE REASON:

I've already cut most dairy out of my diet, save pastured butter/ghee, the cheese on my burgers/in my salads, and a little Greek yogurt when it's cooked in a few of the dishes that M makes. But after listening to the Whole9 folks lay out their case against dairy, I'm considering eliminating cheese from my diet entirely. In particular, cheeses have an acidifying effect on the body, and an "acid-producing diet promotes bone de-mineralization (i.e. osteopenia and osteoporosis), and also contributes to the following maladies and illnesses: kidney stones, age-related muscle wasting, hypertension, stroke and asthma." Yeesh.

Plus, the beta-casomorphins that are created in the cheese-making process are literally addictive. That's right: When milk is turned into cheese, it becomes dairy crack. And crack is wack.

THE TWEAK:

Eat something starchy/carby immediately post-workout.

THE REASON: 

I'm still doing the intermittent fasting gig (and am enjoying its benefits), so this will require some re-jiggering of my early-morning fasted training routine.

It won't hurt me if I fail to refuel my muscles with some carbs and protein after a long, intense metcon. But the body's uptake of nutrients is most efficient in the half-hour after intense exercise. During this short window, our muscles are particularly insulin-sensitive, so we take advantage of a mechanism called “non-insulin mediated glucose transport” to shove some nutritious carbs into our systems. Protein can also help with refilling our glycogen stores and decreasing the inflammation caused by intense exercise. In other words, we recover faster.

So I'm now considering downing some sweet potato, beets, parsnips, chestnuts or winter squash after hard WODs. (But I'm also considering staying the course and not eating anything, per my current practice and Mat Lalonde's words of wisdom.) [UPDATE: See notes by The Lazy Caveman and The Nutty Kitchen below -- I am now officially off the fence!]

By the way, the Whole9 warns against eating fat or fruit as part of the post-workout meal -- fat'll slow down the body's ability to replenish your muscle glycogen, and the fructose in fruit will prioritize the replenishment of your liver glycogen -- not your muscle glycogen.

THE TWEAK:

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).

THE REASON:

The best monounsaturated fats recommended by the Whole9 are avocados, avocado oil, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, olives and olive oil. I already eat copious amounts of everything on the list except olives. And I am nothing if not a completist.

THE TWEAK:

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

THE REASON: 

Honestly, I stopped drinking juice eons ago, and I don't go crazy with fruit. I just stuck this one in here just for those of you who still haven't gotten the memo that eating fruit is fine -- but in moderation. (We're talking one to two servings a day.) I get the feeling there are those of you out there who think that going Paleo is a license to go to town on smoothies, juice, and berries in everything. If you're out there, here's why you should watch your fruit intake:

Fruit is not as nutritionally dense as most vegetables. The top ten vegetables on the ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) scale range from kale (score: 1000 -- perfect!) to arugula (559). But the most nutrient-dense fruit -- strawberries -- gets a score of just 212.

Fruit is too often used as a crutch by perfectly well-meaning Paleo adherents who rely on fruit to satisfy their lingering sugar cravings. Do you find yourself piling your plate high with fruit for breakfast? Snacking on bananas and grapes all day? Constantly adding fruit to meals just to add some (totally unnecessary) sweetness? Juicing fruit -- thereby removing all the good stuff in order to concentrate the liquid sugar into drinkable form? STOP IT. 

THE TWEAK: 

Never cook with olive oil again.

THE REASON:

"Never" is probably too strong a word. And I should have qualified that statement further by saying "high-heat cooking." Still:

From what we learned yesterday, olive oil -- while mostly comprised of good monounsaturated fat -- still contains proportionally greater amounts of unstable PUFAs than other cooking fats that are available to us (like coconut oil, ghee, etc.)

PUFAs happen to have a low smoke point (the temperature at which the fat begins to smoke and break down chemically). And they're also the most susceptible to oxidation. And oxidation is bad news.

As Inhuman Experiment put it:

What about olive oil then? Even though everyone seems to love olive oil in general, there's something of a debate going on over whether it should be used for cooking purposes. My opinion is that ... it's not the worst choice but it's not the best either. The smoking point of extra virgin olive oil seems to vary from 160 to 190 °C, depending on the free fatty acid content. Virgin olive oil, however, has some properties that make it more heat-tolerant than most other oils...

So which oils should you use for cooking? For sautéing and cooking at light to medium temperatures, my choice would be the ones on the left of the graph: coconut oil, ghee, butter, palm oil, and lard. If you stay below 170 °C, you're in pretty safe waters in terms of oxidation regardless of which one of them you choose. Virgin olive oil seems like a viable choice, too; just make sure the particular olive oil you're using it doesn't start smoking.

But why even bother cooking with olive oil when I can just use the humongous vats of coconut oil and ghee in my pantry for all my cooking needs? I'll just save the EVOO for non-heated applications (e.g., in dressings, etc.)

THE TWEAK:

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

THE REASON:

Note that I didn't say I was going to cook exclusively with duck fat, or that duck fat is superior to all other forms of cooking fats. I just said I was going to break it out.

Still, duck fat (along with beef tallow and goat fat) is -- according to Whole9 -- preferable to cooking with lard. Why? Because lard (and all pork products) generally come from pigs that eat at least some shitty stuff. There's no such thing as a "grass-fed" pig, because pigs aren't ruminants like cows. They're natural omnivores like you and me. So even pastured pigs who are given freedom to root around and eat whatever they can find in the wild nonetheless are provided with supplemental food -- often in the form of cheap grains and corn. (One exception: The pastured pigs at Full of Life Farm, from which we just bought half a pig.)

Besides, duck fat tastes good.

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.

Boning Up on Paleo

As my wife put it, the Whole9 folks "clearly know their shit," and today, we "intend to sponge it up" at their Foundations of Nutrition seminar. We fully expect this to be off-the-charts awesome, so if you read this and are within driving distance of Mad Dawg Fitness in Redwood City, California, get your butt down here and join us for a full day of mind-blowing Paleo geekery.