Sunday Story...A Double Dog Dare

I have to admit I have no idea what a “double dog dare” really is. It is something I remember my children saying and doing. But it is a really big dare and one you just can’t walk away from without a huge bit of shaming and ridicule. At least if what I have seen people do after being double dog dared to do something is any indication.

So here is your double dog dare: Starting on January 2nd 2013 go 30 days with no grain, no sugar, no dairy, no legumes, no alcohol, and no processed food (yes this includes all forms of soda and other beverages with processed ingredients). None, nada, zip, zero. There. It is that simple. Its only 30 days. Start on the 2nd and finish on the 31st. No excuses, no reasons why it won’t work for you, no cheat days, and no whining.

Here is what will happen:
Depending on your level of addiction the first 3 to 14 days will be hard, very hard. You may feel tired, cranky, out of sorts, hungry, craving sugar and your body might hurt. You might have low energy, feel like something the cat drug in, and you digestive tract may be off in some way.

You may not know what to eat (especially for breakfast).

You will start rationalizing your way out of the activity…just one won’t hurt, this is stupid, no-one really eats this way, blah, blah, blah.

Remember you took a double dog dare…it is as serious as the pinky shake and we all know how sacred that is!
After about 2 weeks your energy level will increase into an area you didn’t know existed.

Your digestion will become more and more regular.

Your blood sugar (if you are tracking that one) will become more constant.

Your sleep will become more consistent and deeper and more restful.

Some of your auto-immune system symptoms may decrease or disappear.


Here is what you do:
Spend the next 2 weeks getting ready. Go here: http://www.thepaleosecret.com/resources/getting-started/ and learn more, then follow the directions.

Here is the basis of this dare:
http://www.thepaleosecret.com/2012/08/20/the-paleo-secret-30-day-challenge-2/
This is not some fad thing (unless 2 million years of evolution is a fad).

Over the next 2 weeks get to the right stores:
The Great Basin Food Co-Op (Flint and court streets off Arlington south of the river… http://www.greatbasinfood.coop/)
Trader Joes
Whole Foods Market
168 Asian Market (on So. Virginia north of Moana a few blocks). There are some other Asian markets (one off Prater and Rock)
Farmer’s Market near the House of Bread on select Saturdays during the winter

Go to:
www.theFoodee.com (the Foodee Project) for recipe ideas you can find lots of links to other recipe sites that utilize the same real food ingredients

Read:
The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain… http://thepaleodiet.com/
The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf… http://robbwolf.com/ (a personal friend of mine by the way.)

On January 2nd, hit the ground running.

This is not complicated so don’t over analyze and try to figure it all out. Eat real food. Stop eating processed edible non-food products. Eat more fat…by the way fat does not make you fat. If you don’t believe me just look around you at all the people eating low fat diets and ask yourself why they are all over weight. It also turns out that cholesterol and saturated fats don’t give you heart disease…check with Dr. Oz if you want and his interview with Dr. Davis the author of “Wheat Belly “ (another book I recommend) here: http://www.doctoroz.com/episode/are-you-addicted-wheat?video=15896 and watch all 3 of the episodes.


We are going to do this 30 day challenge here at the studio. We will provide support, recipes and menu plans. We will have a little contest involving daily workouts, eating clean and there may even be a prize for all our finishers.

I have been eating this way for more than 2 years and can tell you I have never been healthier or felt better. I never feel under nourished or deprived. I am a huge believer in the lifestyle that eats this way. I want you to join me…go ahead I double dog dare you!

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...You Got to Move It

Sunday Story…You Got to Move It

You got out of bed and sat down at the breakfast table, maybe slumping over a bit as you read the paper, watching the news or read the back of the cereal box (the same one you read yesterday by the way). Then into your car for the commute to work…which might be 30, 40, 50, minutes or more. Entering your office you proceed to spend the next few hours sitting in a chair, bent over looking at reports, staring at a computer screen or making notes from the boring and meaningless meeting you are required to attend. Then it’s back in your car for the commute home, sitting at the table for dinner, then over to the couch for some T.V. time or maybe your home office chair for some home-work or recreational computer time. Do you notice a pattern here?

Maybe somewhere in there you went to the gym for some “cardio” on the bike or the stair stepper or the treadmill where you also slumped over reading this week’s People or Time magazine. 30 or 40 minutes 3 times a week is what all the “experts” say you need to do to be healthy and fit. And yet…
You hurt. All the time you hurt and you hurt all over. Maybe you had a trauma, an accident some injury that was unpreventable but more likely you are victim of your own ennui. There you are…a new syndrome…”ennui-itis” or injury caused by lack of movement and more specifically lack of proper movement. There are thousands (if not millions) of people suffering the devastating effects from this horrible condition. And you don’t have to take my word for it, all you have to do is go down to your local senior center or nursing home and you will see people unable to walk with a straight spine or unable to look up. This is not the normal state of the human condition.

You were made to move. Look at your body…from your feet to your head all your joints articulate and move in several directions. They are made to bear weight. They are made to extend and contract, your muscles are there under whatever you have covered them in; your nervous system is conditioned from birth to handle the stress of movement. Yet we have spent the last few hundred years devising ways that will allow us to move less. True, we can move longer distances faster and more efficiently but our bodies no longer participate in the getting us from point A to point B and beyond. Instead we hop on a plane and go thousands of miles to arrive and just sit around more.
Maybe you are one of the lucky ones…the ones aware enough to know you need to move more and better but you just aren’t sure what that is going to look like. So we do crunches and sit ups and bench presses…all exercises designed to improve your “front”…the parts you can see in the mirror. But what you really should be concerned with is the part you can’t see...your posterior chain from your mid back down to your knees. Remember back when you were a kid and someone was always saying “sit up straight” or “stand up straight”, “fix your posture” and things like that?

The fix for your pain is simple. Start moving and start moving properly. Lift heavy things once in a while. Run really fast (or swim or bike or row) occasionally. Walk more, a lot more. Stretch and work on your flexibility and your mobility regularly (like every day or so.) Make it fun and enjoyable...this should not be tedious and it certainly shouldn’t show as work. Hire someone to help you (I am available!) The penalty for not moving is also very simple…more pain which will have you move less, which will give you more pain which will give you more pain and on and on and on until you need a handful of drugs every day just to get out of bed and another handful to go to sleep at night. All of which will contribute to not wanting to move, stand up straight, or walk to the mailbox.

The only real question you should want to answer at this point is this: Why aren’t you taking steps to live in less pain and more health?

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story…the Only 3 Reasons You Really Need to Improve Your Diet

Sometime this whole food thing can appear really complicated. It isn’t unless you choose to make it that way. You can go down the road that says only eat this or that or the one that espouses some weird ”franken-food” processed thing that you shake up twice a day, or count all your calories or count all your carb grams or your fat grams or fiber grams. But it does not need to be that onerous.

Food is simple. Eating food is simple. We seem to be filling some strange need to make it more than that. That science can make food better than nature. I think not.

You can rationalize any food choice you make by the way. Recently I heard this one…”well wine is from grapes and grapes are paleo so wine is OK, right?” Sorry, no dice. But if that reasoning works for you go right ahead and use it. Just understand you are not being completely compliant. I made a raw chocolate banana pie for dessert on Thanksgiving and it was delicious and I enjoyed every bite but because it had honey in it, it was not 100% compliant with the no sugar part of my eating plan. But I did enjoy it. And that is O.K., as long as I don’t make a habit of it.

Just to iterate this simple and easy and cheap way of eating:
Eat meat
Eat vegetables
Eat seeds and nuts
Eat healthy fats
Eat fruit occasionally
Don’t eat sugar
Don’t eat grains
Don’t eat legumes
Don’t eat dairy
Don’t eat processed edible food-like substances

Simple, easy and cheap if you do it right. But if all you do is substitute processed crap for processed gluten-free crap then no it isn’t cheap.

Here are the 3 reasons to do this:

You will feel better
You have no idea how much your body is struggling to process the junk you are putting in it. Grains create an inflammatory response in your digestive system…this, in turn, creates inflammation in your body which is considered the source of most illness and all chronic diseases. The same problem exists for dairy…your body is trying so hard to extract the poor nutritive quality of dairy that it begins to fail miserably at doing the things it should be doing. Sugar acts on the same receptors in your body as the opiate class drugs do. When you do this diet you will have a week or two of withdrawals…just like any other addiction. But this will pass.

You will perform better
When you fuel your body with the nutrients it was made to receive your performance will improve. Whether that performance is on the playing field or just chasing kids around the house you body will start operating the way it was meant to operate instead of spending all of its time trying to get rid of toxins or process crap food into something salvageable for energy. You don’t have to be an elite level athlete to appreciate this. It is not normal for all your joints to hurt when you get out of bed or out of the chair. It is not normal to be tired all the time, it is not normal to sleep poorly and it is not normal to get sick all the time.

You will think better
Your brain function is closely related to how well your digestive system is working. Your brain needs fat to survive…if you could stop all fat ingestion your brain would begin to fail. As it is your brain (if you are burning sugar for fuel) is burning the wrong fuel for proper performance. It is not normal to go through life in a fog of unclear thinking. It is not normal to need caffeine to stay awake. It is not normal to forget simple things. All of these things are symptoms of poor eating choices. Today I was going through Costco and sampled some dark chocolate almond cherry clusters…I had a gut ache in moment and almost immediately felt like my brain was in mud. It passed after about 30 minutes but it was not worth the few seconds of fleeting taste sensation I enjoyed…the chocolate pie on the other hand…

Here is the bottom line:
Eat real food.
Stop making excuses for not eating real food.


Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...10 Great Excuses to Eat Bad Food (part 2)

Food plays a central part in everyone’s life. Although we don’t have to forage and hunt for our daily meal we do have very tough choices and a huge amount of conflicting information about what we should and shouldn’t eat. Here are some of my favorite excuses for poor (processed, sugary, bad fat) food choices. With a slightly incredulous tone of course!

I can’t eat (fill in the blank ---vegetables, broccoli, fish), I don’t like the way it tastes
Two choices…1. You are a grown up, get over it. 2. You are a grown up, figure out a way to get the same thing without opening a box or a can of crap. I do not like split pea soup, never have. Won’t cook it for myself but if I go to your house I will eat it without a word (but I will decline a second bowl, thank you!)

Diets never work for me and I have tried them all
I agree with this one. Stop dieting. Stop counting calories, measuring portions, drinking a shake in the morning and one at night, buying pre-packaged diet food designed to separate more of your money from your wallet than fat from your body. Don’t diet…EAT REAL FOOD. Food that came out of the ground somehow. Food that did not come from a box or a can or a vacuum packed envelope.

That’s the way my parents ate and look at them!
The food your parents ate and the food you are eating are not the same and it is even more obvious when we look at our grandparents. The current generation of children (the ones born after the year 2000) are projected to be the first generation that does not outlive their parents. 16% of children today are already obese and 35% of adults…that is obese, not just overweight. And it is getting worse. By the year 2030 it is predicted that, at the current rate of increase, 42% of adults will be obese and in some states it will be 60%. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/health-obesity-us-idUSL1E8KHGGJ20120918 ) Maybe eating at Mom’s isn’t such a great idea (not my Mom’s of course!)

Michael Phelps eats a ton of fast food and he is an Olympic champion
And the last time you swam 20,000 yards was when? I mean do you really want to compare yourself to an 18 year old multiple Olympic Gold medal winner? The question is this…how good could he have been if his training table was filled with nutritious healthy food? You and I do not need to eat 12,000 calories a day to maintain our training regimen. We need to eat food designed to promote health and fitness.

I don’t like boring food
Here are the 5 recent recipes on www.thefoodee.com:
Bacon butternut squash soup
Bacon-chanterelle Lamb Roast
Roast Beef with mushroom-brandy sauce
Grilled chicken with Greek sweet potatoes
Paleo Cranberry sauce
Boring? I think not. The soup takes 15 min to prepare and an hour to cook. Anyone could do it. But then you would have to start tasting what real food taste like again.

The Bottom Line
It doesn’t have to be expensive (stop replacing cheap crap food with expensive crap food…just because it says gluten free or lactose free doesn’t mean it is any better for you). It doesn’t have to be time consuming or hard unless you want to make that way. It won’t be boring if you open your mind to something besides boiled chicken and steamed broccoli. “They” make more money form you being sick and tired than “They” will ever make from you being fit and healthy. Don’t diet, eat real food prepared in a real kitchen by a real person (Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines are long gone and beside they never really put that crap in the box anyway) with real care and love. You will eat less, you will feel better, you will perform better, and you will be healthier.

Call me…I can help.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...10 Great Excuses to eat Bad Food (part 1)

Food plays a central part in everyone’s life. Although we don’t have to forage and hunt for our daily meal we do have very tough choices and a huge amount of conflicting information about what we should and shouldn’t eat. Here are some of my favorite excuses for poor (processed, sugary, bad fat) food choices. With a slightly incredulous tone of course!

It’s too expensive to eat real food
Have you ever bothered to do the math? What does a bag of carrots cost? Or a whole pot full of broccoli? Have you compared that box of Hamburger Helper with the cost required to make it yourself? And all I am asking about is the real monetary cost not the secondary costs of poor health and diseases caused by poor nutrition.

It’s too much work
Well it isn’t as brainless as add water and microwave that is true. But then you are a grown-up, not 6 year old trying to feed yourself. How hard is it to put some chicken on a baking dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper and turn the oven on for 30 or 40 minutes? Or break 2 or 3 eggs in a pan of hot butter and stir until they are cooked? This is not rocket science; it is a really simple and easy skill to develop with just a little bit of effort and a decent cookbook.

“They” (the government/scientists/experts) said I should eat this way
“They” rarely have your best interests at heart. A very good example is the food pyramid…when it was first developed by a solid scientist it was just about upside down from what it is today. But after the government and the business interests got through with it we are told to eat tons of grains (the cereal companies), dairy (the milk lobby), and breads and pastas (industrial food companies). The vegetables didn’t have a lobby; neither did the seeds or nuts. The question we should be asking ourselves is this: If this was such a great way to eat, why, after 40 years of a low fat, high carb diet, are we fatter and sicker than ever before? We are the most well fed and worst nourished people in the history of the world.

I could never give up my (fill in the blank again --- Ice Cream/Soda/Pie/Cake)
What if the choices were stop eating it or die? Then what would you do? Because in many ways that stuff is killing you…slowly but it is killing you in ways you won’t even know about for years to come.

I’m too busy to plan/cook/shop
How busy will you be when you are making all those trips to the Doctor’s office, the labs for teats and the pharmacies for all the pills your Dr. is going to need you to take? You get the same 168 hours in the week I get. At the Foodee site (www.thefoodee.com ) they will even make a shopping list for you for crying out loud. It really isn’t difficult but you do have to want to do it. You have to want to make the shift.

The Bottom Line
It doesn’t have to be expensive (stop replacing cheap crap food with expensive crap food…just because it says gluten free or lactose free doesn’t mean it is any better for you). It doesn’t have to be time consuming or hard unless you want to make that way. It won’t be boring if you open your mind to something besides boiled chicken and steamed broccoli. “They” make more money form you being sick and tired than “They” will ever make from you being fit and healthy. Don’t diet, eat real food prepared in a real kitchen by a real person (Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines are long gone and beside they never really put that crap in the box anyway) with real care and love. You will eat less, you will feel better, you will perform better, and you will be healthier.

Call me…I can help.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...10 Reasons NOT to CrossFit

It's hard, really hard

Well not really but that is what you will tell yourself in order to not do it or to stop doing it or to discourage your friends from doing it. Anyone can do it if they want to…after all it is only movement you already doing…or would be doing if you got off the couch long enough.

You will get injured.

As if sitting on your big ole behind isn’t injuring your heart, lungs, and joints already. It isn’t safe to drive your car 200mph down a crowded street either…and that is why you don’t do it. Use your brain, get your ego out of the way and learn to do something right before you go hard and heavy.

You don’t want to bulk up.

Which is different than bulking up that spare tire you’ve been working on, right? If anything you will lean out, your muscles will lengthen and you will look more like Tarzan than Conan (the barbarian not the late night guy)

It’s a cult.

And Fox news isn’t? And blindly following diet advice that hasn’t worked for the last 40 years isn’t? And Richard Simmons, and Jane Fonda, and Jim Fixx, and Zumba, and Spinning, and P90x, and Insanity are all what? Are we CrossFitters a rabid bunch? Only because we see the transformation but really if you don’t join us it’s OK, there are only so many barbells to go around anyway.

There aren’t any cool machines or slick salesmen or valet parking.

And those contribute to your fitness how? Enough said.


CrossFitters eat weird food.

Yep…all those real vegetables and meat are nowhere near as normal and natural as that big bag of white protein powder and pre-digested Franken food from some laboratory in China. We all make fun of MREs (meals ready to eat) and then join some group that makes us buy their packaged laboratory produced processed food that in no way resembles real food. Learn where your kitchen is and start figuring out how to use those strange appliances that live in there.

The clothes are strange looking.

What? Really? Clothes? If they keep you warm or cool and cover the bits you don’t want the world to ogle what difference does it make?

There isn’t any scientific basis for the workouts

You are kidding right? Since when did you do any real scientific research? Last time I checked there wasn’t much research that said eating French fries, drinking beer, and watching T.V. was going to make you healthier or happier. Unless you count Homer Simpson. Besides a P.H.D. in Physical Therapy, or a Doctorate in exercise physiology, or a Masters in Sports Conditioning probably don’t really count as real education (just to name a few of the qualifications from the leaders in CrossFit).

I don’t need a coach to help me with such simple movements like pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and squats.

Michael Jordan had a coach his whole career. Barbra Streisand has a voice coach; Marlon Brando had an acting coach. But you know it all…that’s why you are in such great shape. A coach gets you where you want to go in the safest, fastest, most efficient way possible. Unless the only place you are going is to the bathroom during commercial breaks.

And finally…

If CrossFit was really all that there would be a celebrity endorsement and ads on T.V.

Like Mariah Carey or Jay-Z or the Kardashians know anything about real fitness. And we all know that if it isn’t on T.V. is just isn’t real. Not. We just don’t care about that stuff…we care about how well you move, when you move and what you move…little things like moving large loads over long distances quickly.

What CrossFit is:

Constantly Varied
Functional Movement
Highly Intense
Designed to create Fit Humans who are ready to perform whenever and however they choose to.

Simple.

Not Easy.

Do It.

Now.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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Sunday Story...Who's Going to be a Black Belt?

This past Saturday I spent the day in the incubator we call “Test Day.” In this case I was testing one of my younger students for his first degree black belt. This young man has been with me for over 80 months and has, over the years, been a great student, a horrible student, a great example and a bad one, someone to be proud of and someone to be ashamed of. But through it all I believed this day would come if we just worked, believed and had faith in the basic goodness of humans. He rose to the occasion in a way that surprised almost everyone. Everyone was surprised but me that is. I knew it was there…the it is that thing that spark that light that unseen energy that can arise when one is place in the crucible, when the game is on the line, when the choice is rise or fail.


At the same time it was also my test day. After 20 years I still test. And it was a milestone…the sixth (6th) degree. This achievement has always been so far off in the future that is still seems unreal to have arrived here. I have been working with the same partner for over 12 years and on this day the hours (and the pain) paid off.


Today’s story is an excerpt from the 8 page essay I wrote for my test. Enjoy.


Who’s Going to be a Black Belt?

Twenty four students are standing at ready position at the end of class. The work out is over. We have practiced punching and kicking, techniques and forms, flying and falling, victory and defeat. Sweat and smiles permeate the atmosphere. Various degrees of success have been achieved. As the head instructor I look out at eager faces waiting for that single nugget of wisdom that is going to make them into the super hero they all want to be. I have none. I have no word that is going to propel each of them into greatness. Instead all I have is a question:

Who is going to be a black belt?


This is a question I ask after every martial arts class I teach. The expected answer is, “I am Sir.” There are two reasons to ask this question. The first reason is to condition the student into the thinking that he or she is going to achieve their black belt; that they are going to stick around long enough, practice hard enough, and transform themselves from a white belt into a black belt. The second reason (and the more esoteric and important, in my opinion) is to begin the transformation from normal, mediocre thinking and attitude into a higher level of thinking and attitude…one of excellence and belief in the ability to get things done in the face of no agreement, in the face of adversity, in the face of pain and suffering, in the face of mediocrity.


For over seventeen years I have donned my Uniform and stood in front of expectant students waiting to be amazed, educated and inspired. Over those years I have succeeded in doing that. And I have failed many times, fallen short in so many ways. And after each day, the good and the bad, I got up and did it again. When I began this journey I began it as a father wanting to spend time with his just teen age step son who wanted to “give it a shot.” Then it morphed into a way to feel confident with self defense based on the environment I was working in. After a number of years I became a teacher. Then the vehicle became a way of life and personal growth and achievement. Today it has become who I am.

Who is going to be a black belt?
I am, Sir.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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