Chocolate Decadence

A cake, Ice cream, raspberry sauce and whipped cream dessert that is shared...and is like the size of a shoebox. Does that sound primal to you? Holy crap. That wasn't a really great idea in the least! Hey. At least I didn't eat any bread or pasta, right?

Gone Primal

I've gone primal...with the horrific exception of the July 4th weekend...but I won't talk about that debacle. What I will say is that I feel very good, and I've shaved almost five pounds of fat in a couple of weeks effortlessly...even with the unspoken debacle stuck in the middle of it.

I've been trying to eat like this:

Eat lots of animals, insects and plants.


This is the basic description of everything our ancestors ate to get the protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phenols, fiber, water and other nutrients necessary to sustain life. But it was a huge list of individual foods – some anthropologists say it may have been 200 or 300 food choices at a time depending upon the geographic area. The net result was a dietary “breakdown” of fat, protein and carbohydrate that was far different from what Conventional Wisdom considers optimum today. This diet provided all the necessary fuel and building blocks that, along with specific exercise, prompted their genes to create strong muscles, enabled them to expend lots of energy each day moving about, to maintain healthy immune systems, to evolve larger brains and to raise healthy children. They ate sporadically, too. When food was plentiful, they ate more than they needed (and stored the excess as fat). When times were scarce, they survived on fat stores. This random or “non-linear” eating pattern kept their bodies in a constant state of preparedness. Source-Marks Daily Apple. Check it out!

My workouts are essentially the same, although I have added walking/low level aerobic activity, which is the solid base of the primal blueprint. In fact, I took a day off and hiked up a mountain by myself the other day. Just me and a bottle of water. I need more hill work. I liked it a lot, and it was good to be alone by myself for a while.

Two cool things

Yesterday at the gym, I was working my strength program. When I hit the third group of sets, the guy at the rack next to me looks over and says "Ripptoe, huh"?

"Yup".

I knew he knew what he was doing, because he was doing textbook full squats. Sad to say, I don't see many people doing those in the gym I go to. It turns out he works out at the the Crossfit Black Box here in the city, and is taking the summer off from CF to work on a strength program.

Other cool thing...

I've been tracking my workouts on Evernote these days. I mentioned it to my 22 year old son, and he asked if I could share with him. I was happy to. Now he's created a notebook too, and he's sharing with me. Yesterday he wrote:

Metco
Timed 4 Rounds of

400m Run
500m Row Machine

My time was 19:42 I'm pretty sure I beat Dads time, I'm happy about that.


I just looked back at dads time i did beat him, but the machine he was working on gave him so trouble so i did not really beat his time. I also realized that this was dads workout for one day and i mixed strength training into this. no surprise to me my endurance will be higher than his i am 30 years younger

So...it seems as if we have the challenge of the old guy vs. the young guy. I think we'll both be better off for it!

We're also looking to see if we can coordinate working out together some time. It makes me happy that he's actually looking to do some stuff with me! :)