A History Primer of Food and Survival

Cause its a right good place to start. And the journey is kinda long and wonky and crazy-- it will take me a few days to get this one through.

So I left you with this weird kind of epiphany that I was the obese size 4 person. I was small but I was, for lack of a better way of saying it, soft. My body doesn't distribute fat well at all. Much like my father, I have what I like to call chicken legs. It doesn't matter how big or small I am, my legs don't change-- they are sticks. Same with my arms. And so you take out those key pieces of real estate and I have very few places to store fat-- my torso is the main one and my face and neck a little less-- but enough that when I lose weight people always comment on my face-- my jawline being more prominant, etc.

Belly fat is scary fat. It didn't used to be. Our bodies evolved to store fat in our bellies because it protected our vital organs against exposure to the cold-- so back before we had central heating and good lighting to all those long dark winter nights when freezing to death was a real concern for human survival. (think back to cave times... we'll be talking alot about cave times in this blog, rest assured.) So imagine a gorgeous summer day-- everywhere you look in the hours of abundant sunlight are plants and vegetables that are sources of carbohydrate (you know... the real carbs... not the bread carbs that came much later in human evolution). Summer is all about carbohydrates-- fruits and vegetables are abundant. And carbohydrates do two things for you-- one, they get converted into 'right now' energy and whatever else gets stored in body fat-- around your vital organs in your core. See, the body evolved to do that because when carbs are plentiful-- its summer time... which means that the cold of winter is just around the corner and you need every bit of help you can get. (Interesting side note about all this evolutionary stuff... your body also evolved to get cholesterol... that artery clogging stuff, because it fuels your heart and can keep your blood warm and flowing throughout the winter and patch your arteries any time of the year if you "spring a leak." But come spring time you are supposed to be pretty much depleted of cholesterol from the long cold winter.)

Some people distribute fat a little better than others-- storing deposits in their legs, their butt, their arms, etc. and the point is still the same-- its a reserve your body evolved to call on during the harsh conditions when food wasn't available. And now we don't have to contend with that lack of food and harsh cold. So we never have a period of utilizing that fat store for survival. In the grand scheme of things the evolution of not needing to protect ourselves against the harsh winter is infinitesimally short in comparison to how long we did need it. Homo sapiens first showed up as the new kid in town approximately 250,000 years ago, the first real evidence of a hearth fire some 125,000 years ago and the lightbulb in 1879 (130 years ago). All this is to say that the whole protection from the elements and abundance we expect now isn't in our DNA. And our DNA has not changed since homo sapiens came along. We got the same stuff going on that our cave-dwelling brethren did some 250,000 years back.

So we evolved to need fat. And cholesterol. But we only had exposure to it during one season and the storage was to fuel life for the remaining 3. We've kind of fallen off that bit.

So now let's think about today's food choices-- and what better a place to look than the trust food pyramid that the US Department of Agriculture puts out. Here... we need a fun graphic. Here's what I find really interesting about this picture. See the base of our pyramid-- the grains? Those grains really only appeared, like, yesterday in the grand scheme of evolution... and grains cannot be eaten raw, so we know that in order for our cave brethren to use them, they needed true control of one more thing-- cooking. Ever try eating a raw corn cob? Notsomuch. Grains required cooking in order to make them edible to homo sapiens... by themselves many grains are actually toxic until the bad stuff is cooked off. Actual agriculture and the cultivation of this new food source didn't really show up until some 10,000 years ago when early people caught on to this idea of cooking off the toxins so that they could really eat some of these weird grain things. All things considered, in terms of homo sapiens the species, that's like... yesterday. So while there was the convenience factor of growing our own stuff, our ability to process and consume grains is a new realization.

(Quick jarring leap forward in time-- there is the whole weirdness about conflicts of interest with that funny pyramid thing. Who here is a lawyer? Doesn't it seem weird that the US Department of Agriculture is telling you to eat more grains? Of course they want you to eat more grains-- they're marketing their wares. But let's not go there for now...)

It gets interesting when you start comparing the amount of carbs people take in as a result of that emergence of agriculture. Just for fun I pulled out some interesting comparisons-- on the order of number of carbs per 100 grams of food:

brussels sprouts: 8.95 grams
carrots: 9.58 grams
mushrooms: 3.42 grams
apples: 13.81 grams
figs: 19.18 grams

you get the point. Now let's look at the same measure for grain-based food:

whole grain wheat flour: 71.58 grams
corn: 74.26 grams
long grain brown rice 77:24 grams

so here's my point-- I'm not a big "don't eat carbs" person and often find myself quietly laughing at the irony of Dr. Atkins himself dying of the impact of his own diet, but at the same time, there's a startling differential there. When agriculture came along a fundamental balance shifted such that we are absorbing more carbs faster than ever. And if you follow the wisdom of the food guide, you are eating 6-11 servings of that stuff. Which, as I mentioned earlier, evolved to be used for short term energy and then stored for the long haul. It's dense and sciency and all, but you can get a decent overview and details on wikipedia if you want to understand it a little more.

My point here is this-- we are, metabolicly speaking, the same as we were the day some 250,000 years ago when a switch was thrown that made homo sapiens emerge. We still employ all the strategies that got her through survival and haven't really adapted to this abundance we have right now. Our bodies either need to catch up or we need to start aligning our food with what helped us evolve and survive in the first place.

Ultimately, I chose the later. The results of that decision have been powerful. And therein lies a large part of the journey.

Read more!

One More for Good Measure

I'm all about teaser introductions to the kinds of things I need to begin blogging about. So let's call some of this pre-requisite reading, shall we? It seems that some of the directions I have begun to poke my way into have started gaining a lot of traction in the media as well--

The biomechanics of running and correlations to injury is yet one more topic I need to discuss. In the meantime, again, because it's so relevant-- a news story from last week's Boston.com.

Lots and lots more on this topic forthcoming.

Read more!

You'd Think We'd Learn By Now

One of my newfound passions in the last year has been on food and food production. It's become one of the most important under-pinnings to the changes I have made in my life and in my diet. I eat healthy. And much to the surprise of those of you who have known me for a long time, that healthy eating now includes meat. But one of the things I refuse to do, as a meat eater, is take that responsibility lightly.

As omnivores and ethical people we need to be willing to challenge the current food economy that is, literally, sickening us all. The food that you put on your plate and ultimately into your body not only makes you healthy or unhealthy, it does the same for the whole planet. I have a lot to say on this topic. And truthfully, I am not going to do it justice in a quick post on a Monday morning as work is mounting, so I am putting a placeholder here that says Get Ready-- I'm going to be taking this one on shortly-- the journey from self-applauding yet ignorant vegetarian to ethical eater-- and all the nuances, the half-truths and A Ha moments along that road.

But in the meantime, let me start you here-- because it's current and it provides a good plunge into the rabbit hole of the politics and the choices of eating.

Read more!

Adult Onset Athleticism, Chapter 2

I coined the term "adult onset athlete" a couple of years ago as my way of describing the stumble I took into the world of fitness. It was literally a day when I picked myself up off the couch and put out a cigarette and decided to try my hand at running. Chapter 2 starts out with yours truly now fully what one would describe as an athlete... post marathon, day 1.

Here's me on the morning of the marathon, trying to stay warm in the athletes village. This photo was taken about an hour before the race. What do you notice. Marathoner? Fancy utility belt? Goofy anticipatory smirk? Randomly stretching her shoulders when her legs are gonna be getting the workout? Check. Contributing factor to the obesity epidemic? Um, notsomuch. And yet...

See that number I am wearing? On the back of it you are supposed to write down all your emergency information should something happen to you out on the course... you know, like keeling over from the exhaustion. One of the pieces of information they encourage you to put on there is the weight on the morning of the race-- the thought being that if you gain weight while running its likely due to excessive consumption of water and therefore related to hyponatremia-- where your blood becomes thinned and has too few electrolytes. It's a bad condition, so people are highly encouraged to track that information. Me being the generally law abiding citizen that I am, I wrote it down. And that's where things got weird.

See, as I started debating health and wellness and knowing I wasn't feeling optimally well, I started looking at how other well respected people and organizations define fitness, and I stumbled into the American Council on Exercise. There are a lot of organizations that profess to be the authority on fitness, but these guys are one of the most prevalent and well respected and many a trainer carries an ACE certification proving a certain standard depth of knowledge in the field of fitness and training. And when I stumbled into one of their articles I found a notation on what is considered a healthy body composition. Thinking not much of it, I proceeded to compute my own Body Mass Index. Imagine my surprise when it came back that I had a BMI score of ..33-- I had a 33.05% body fat composition, in the day that I ran the marathon, and anything above a 30 is considered obese. Yep, you heard me right, or I guess read me right... on the day in question I was obese.

Now before you start thinking I am slipping into some crazy body dismorphic disorder, rest assured, I find this as crazy as anyone. I wore a size 4 when I was running the marathon. Sure there had been times in my life where that label was appropriate... but clearly not at this point in my life. I mean, come on!

Imagine.

So I learned about the phenomena of being "skinny fat." Yep, its a real thing. With a name. And there are a lot of people out there who are skinny fat. It's even made it into the Urban Dictionary. We've jumped the shark before I even knew what was going on.

So my point here (and yes, I actually have one) is that skinny does not equal healthy. or fit. or well. it means skinny. And if you follow that chain of logic, it also means that size and weight isn't the right determinant at all. It's body composition. And mine put me solidly into the obesity category.

Adult Onset Athleticism, Chapter 2 for me really has been a trip down a rabbit hole. I mark a year later having radically altered that body composition. As of today, I am now well into the normal category, with a .22 BMI, or roughly 22% body fat. I can tell that that shift isn't complete and I still have some work to do, so I am thinking that healthy for me is going to be more along the 17-19% body fat ratio, but we'll see how that plays out. In the meantime, some numbers for comparison.


What A Difference A Year Makes

Month	April 2008	April 2009
Weight	133.4	123.6
Body Fat	33.05%	22.93%
Lean Mass	85.7 lbs	95.3 lbs
Fat Weight	43.7 lbs	28.3 lbs

I don't think that weight is a good measure of health, so thinking about body composition requires a few additional measures to really tease it all out. I thought these 4 really paint the best picture. So some definitions, again:

Lean Mass is basically the weight of the non-fat parts of your body. This includes muscle, bone and bone density, fluid, etc. It is one of a better series of measures of health. The higher your lean body mass, the healthier you are and the better you look.

Fat Weight. It's exactly what it sounds like-- the pounds of fat you have on your body. For women, in general, the essential fat weight is usually around 12%. This accounts for the basics... bone marrow, the fat necessary for proper organ function, female reproductive systems, etc. So keeping body fat above 12% is critical to keep the body running smoothly. Any my current weight, that's about 15 lbs of essential fat.

Given all these numbers you can see something fairly interesting-- while I have lost only about 6% of my overall weight, I've lost more than 10% body fat, gained more than 11% lean mass and lost more than 35% of my fat weight. That's big. So my 9.8 lbs lost may not seem like a very big deal until you account for the radical shift in my overall composition.

The process of creating that change has been multi-fold. It's meant radically altering my diet, radically altering my exercise methods, radically altering my thinking and learning and engaging in the world. It's still a work in progress, for sure-- I still have a long way to go, but I am sure you can see, I'm moving in the right direction.

Call this the framework for many an entry to come-- I promise to get into the details of how I've made some of these shifts. Like I said... make sure you are ready for a fall down the rabbit hole.

Read more!

The 113th Running of the Boston Marathon

The Boston Marathon took place today. It's hard to believe that its been one year, and yet only one year, since I crossed that finish line myself.


It's funny how much has changed in that year and what a place that day holds for me-- one that I never expected it to hold. On the one hand that day gives me so much pride in myself-- I ran my first marathon (to date my only marathon, but that's a temporary thing). I accomplished a goal I had written on my proverbial bucket list on one of the worst days in my life. It took me years to get there, but I toed the line of the Boston Marathon, and inspite of a fluke of an injury, I saw that to completion. I am now and will always be incredibly proud of myself for that achievement.

On a very different hand, that day changed me in ways I never predicted. I had always told myself that the day I got into the kind of shape that made running a marathon achievable, I was going to keep it up because that was the kind of shape I determined to be ideal. I'll go into more of why that mindset shifted later, but suffice it to say I got there and realized it wasn't ideal shape at all-- in fact it was quite far from it. The Boston Marathon wound up being a catalyst for all of these thoughts on health and fitness and wellness that have consumed the last year for me-- and by consumed, I mean precisely that.

The epiphany I had that began that day was that, as a runner, I was trapped in a cycle of running injury to injury and that had started to feel normal... and in keeping with all the other runners and triathletes around me. As runners we ran when we could and when we couldn't, we were in physical therapy, getting MRIs, getting enhanced shoes, orthotics, etc. to keep us going. While the foot cramp I experienced during the actual race itself was just a blip on the radar, this was my first race back from months of PT for IT Band syndrome. Almost every runner I know has been sidelined by IT Band issues. It was followed shortly by a pain in my hip flexor that was likely a strain or microtear of my psoas. In addition to those two bookmarks, I knew to expect any of a number of pains and debilitations-- tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, quad tears, hamstring tears, ACL tears, stress fractures, you name it... the list is long.

I love to run. I always want to run. I did PT and remember all too well being told I might not be able to run again and when injury set in again I knew I was going to do whatever I had to do to stop that cycle in its tracks. And so began Chapter 2 that this blog will chronicle.

So Happy Boston Marathon day.
And happy Chapter 2, finding health and wellness day.

And tomorrow, I promise to share with you how that journey unfolds.

Read more!

Am I Healthy?

That's really where it all started. A simple question. My loose thread. Am I healthy? 3 words-- and they aren't complex words... they are the kinds of words you learn when you are in elementary school.


So I started to think about trying to define the word healthy. How hard could that be? I went to the dictionary.

Healthy
ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: health·i·er, health·i·est
1. Possessing good health.
2. Conducive to good health; healthful: healthy air.
3. Indicative of sound, rational thinking or frame of mind: a healthy attitude.
4. Sizable; considerable: a healthy portion of potatoes; a healthy raise in salary.

I hate it when words define themselves using themselves. Take 2:

Health
NOUN:
1. The overall condition of an organism at a given time.
2. Soundness, especially of body or mind; freedom from disease or abnormality.
3. A condition of optimal well-being: concerned about the ecological health of the area.
4. A wish for someone's good health, often expressed as a toast.

Two basic things stood out for me here. "Optimal well-being" and "freedom from disease or abnormality." Let me start out with optimal well-being. How do we know what optimal well-being even is? So I poked around more:

Well-being
SYLLABICATION: well-be·ing
PRONUNCIATION: wlbng
NOUN: The state of being healthy, happy, or prosperous; welfare.

Again, more of that defining things in a circle. And now in my circle of well-being=health=well-being I needed to figure out how to optimize that.

So I went back to the "freedom of disease or abnormality." I wasn't too keen on the idea of defining health as the absence of disease because disease in and of itself is so elusive. Think about diseases that show no symptoms-- are we saying the person is healthy? No. If cancer is brewing but not symptomatic yet, a person isn't healthy. And sometimes you can just feel that you aren't healthy but there aren't a lot of symptoms of a disease there-- like mornings when getting out of bed just plain sucks and your body aches. Clearly not "optimal well-being" but yet by this definition, healthy until symptomatic of a disease. And god help you if you have any abnormality-- again, let's think about who is defining normal here. Surface level abnormalities are easy... but how much of health is a surface level recognition? Sometimes it just a feel. So I knew I didn't have any diseases (tho I am the consummate virgo and therefore often contemplate whether I am suffering from Parkinson's, brain aneurisms or something equally implausible), but I wasn't ready to affix the gold seal of health just yet.

So there I was back sometime in June and with this lingering feel that while I was in some of the best fitness shape of my life, I didn't feel healthy but couldn't find any real explanation of how I could determine what health was to figure out where my gaps were. As I said a number of times in blog posts "I feel off." Clearly not in the state of "optimal well-being" and I needed to figure out why.

So my question to those of you who will wind up one day reading this-- Are you healthy? Do you even know what that means?

Read more!

Starting Over

Sometimes it just makes more sense to throw out and begin anew. Let's call this that effort. A clean slate. While finding the time to blog has been difficult at best lately, a large part of the challenge has been that the things I was thinking about and changing in my world just no longer fit the "back of the pack" mentality anymore, so it was hard to fit it in. It needed an overhaul. So here we are.

I have a feeling this will take me a while and the groove will be very different than NSBotP, but so be it. Here's my best attempt at 'splaining the start of a very different chapter in my life.

When last I left off blogging (there were several draft entries that never got published) I had started on something called Crossfit. If you followed the old blog you know it a little. What you may not know is that Crossfit was a part of a much larger mental shift I was making. I realized right around the marathon last year that I had achieved a level of fitness to make running a marathon achievable, but that fitness wasn't really meshing with the wellness and real definition of health I wanted. In essence, something was missing and I had a sense that achieving that goal should have felt more epiphanous than it did. I was fit but I wasn't healthy and for the first moment in time I realized how wildly different those two things are, despite our culture thinking of them as synonymous.

Thinking about that was like pulling at a thread and next thing you knew, I was throwing out a lot of my world and reinventing it. I started challenging my reasoning, my habits, my diet, my very biomechanics. It's been very eye opening to say the least. The more I've poked, the more I've realized that our culture as a whole treats wellness in this largely reductionist and self-defeating way. It's like we've all forgotten the principles of equilibrium and live in some collective haze-- myself included. So without meaning to, I started pulling on that thread and things just started to go from there.

So I think this blog is going to be quite a hodgepog of thoughts... likely very different than my last blog (hopefully shorter), but more about the insights of the unravel and the connections I am starting to put together in my own head. I also realized I should start tagging this because it was going to cover a lot of different topics, so I'm tagging this with just some of the topics I know are going to come up... cause its sort of where my brain has been since June(ish). Call it a preview of the brain dump that is likely to ensue.

Read more!