fit440's posterous

Maintaining the rage

It's been sometime since I posted last, the main reason being that I've got myself into a nice routine of exercise and eating. And I'm seeing results. I'm doing three exercise sessions a week that are typically very short, but very intense, focusing on bodyweight movements including push ups, square, pull ups and the like, with some sprints thrown in. Through the week, I'm intermittent fasting (I.e. skipping breakfast), eating a protein and fat heavy lunch, then protein and fat for dinner, with carb intake depending on whether I've exercised that day or not. In coaching parlance I'm in a maintenance phase- new behaviors have been started and are continuing. Now the challenge will be to maintain this level of compliance when a new situation or stressor comes along

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And one of those is just around the corner: our second child is due in 3 weeks. Sleepless nights here I come. Not sure how I'm going to keep the momentum up, however, the week after will be my birthday, which is the milestone event that this blog is all about. By then, I anticipate needing to change my exercise regime to stave off boredom anyway. I just hope i don't use it as an excuse.

High protein, low protein, eat fruit, don't. Make up your mind 'cos the experts won't.

A little rhyme to kick off the new Australian school year. This is in response to a few articles I've read in a short period of time that led me to throw up my hands in frustration. Firstly, Zoe Harcombe wrote a piece criticising the prevailing, and probably wrong, advice to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day - especially as new advice suggests this should actually be eight. Richard Nikoley launched an unusually vitriolic (even for him, and that's saying something) diatribe in support of her comments (as he says, when you get tossed a bone...).

But, unfortunately for Zoe, Carb-Sane has already pulled apart her story, credibility and advice, and then Don at Primal Wisdom took apart her article. Shortly afterwards, I read this article at the Perfect Health Diet blog, which advocates a low protein, highfat, high carb approach.

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Sigh. At the time, I was also reading Art De Vany's book, The New Evolution Diet. De Vany's been a bit tardy in getting this out, as, for someone who has been living this way for a couple of decades, a couple of others, most namely Loren Cordain, Robb Wolff and Mark Sisson have beaten him to the post. Now, as I was reading his book, I was getting pretty disappointed as he didn't seem to be adding much to the story that the others didn't cover in more detail, with better cited research. However, he makes a couple of points that I think go to the heart of my frustration with the articles I mention at the start of this post.

Using the logic of natural selection, De Vany asserts that the best choices of food should be thought about from the level of gene expression. According to De Vany, the human race is programmed by it's genetic make up to be 'lazy overeaters'. That is, we move as little as possible in order to get the food we need to survive and reproduce. But, more than this, it is the extreme events of our experience that shape us. Paleolithic man's life was pretty random, he didn't know where his next meal was coming from, or when. So, our gene's have adapted to the be able to deal with the extreme ranges of this in terms of what we eat and how we move. Survival doesn't mean coping with the mundanity of day to day events, but the extremes of those things that we don't expect, or can't predict. Thug the caveman never knew when he'd get close to a deer or similar to chase it down, so while he waited, he'd eat from the local vegetation if he could, or...he'd not eat for a while, tracking the animal, probably at a walking pace. But, when he got close, he'd take off at top speed, then have to wrestle it to the ground. THEN, he'd have to carry the thing to a place less likely to attract other predators and scavengers. So, some low level activity, then bursts of speed, heavy lifting and finally, processing of the kill before cooking and eating.

The other point De Vany makes is that we shouldn't necessarily confuse the pursuit if longevity with health. At a gene level, our bodies will use signs of abundance as a signal that now would be a good time to reproduce. Reproduction ensures the genes survive to the next generation, so there may be a pay-off of short term health to reproduce over longevity. However, a time of scarcity would signal to the genes that maybe now isn't such a good time to reproduce as the likelihood of infant survival may be low. So, the body starts to conserve itself for long-term survival.

So, whilst the guys at Perfect Health Diet may be thinking in terms of longevity, the others are primarily focused on health.

Is this making sense to anyone else? Anyway, my take is that there is a balance between the two we need to tread. Overall, calorific restriction is associated with longevity, but it makes for pretty miserable living. Protein restriction may work, but it also means we end up having to eat more carbs and fat, neither of which are as satiating: so we end up eating more, getting fatter possibly.

The answer seems to be the intermittent fasting approach. Leangains is the first place I came across it, but all the other writers now seem to be talking about it too. Going hungry on a random, but not infrequent basis would fit into De Vany's 'randomness' approach, whilst allowing for the clearing out of protein recommended to reduce the possibility of damage to cells.

So, what have I learnt? Robb Wolff makes the point that most health advice out there doesn't have a framework, or ideal, that tells us what good health actually should be. In looking at the opinions in the articles I mentioned at the start, it's clear that understanding where the authors focus is (health or longevity, or both) makes a difference to how you should interpret them in relation to your own goals.

Use what leverage you can to improve your health

I wasn't planning to post anything else this weekend, until I came across this lifehacker article. The author talks about some of the techniques he used to keep himself on the straight and narrow. Of all the ones he talks about, I particularly like the focus on a timespan rather than a weight amount lost. Locke (1996) gathered all the goal setting research for over 30 years, and one of the key components he found (one of fourteen I might add) was that successful, motivational goals ALWAYS have a time/deadline. I think this is something we seem to ignore, or at best pay lip-service to, when we think of making changes to our health. It's alway "lose xkg's", "get fitter", "put on more muscle". All things that aren't directly in our control.

But the really interesting thing from the lifehacker article is that the author also keeps the goal dimensions to something within his control: I'll stay on this diet for 365 days. If he'd said, I'll lose 30 kilos in 365 days, he'd be introducing a variable he has less control over: he doesn't know how his body will lose weight, or whether that's even realistic. However, by simply putting a timeline to nothing more than sticking to the diet, the weight loss variable loses it's importance, and it's psychological edge. Short of chopping of a limb, we can't directly control our weight loss rate any more than our heart rate. Locke (1996) calls this agency: making the goals we set dependent on variables we actually have direct control over improves our likelihood of success. So the lifehacker author sets a great example of how to use goal-setting effectively when attempting to improve his health.

The Takeaway
When setting health and fitness goals for yourself, set goals that are specific and measurable, but also that you have direct control over. Setting a timeline of adherence to a health plan sets you up for far greater success than any vague hope of losing kilos or putting on kilos of muscle.

Reference
Locke, E., S.(1996) Motivation through conscious goal setting. Applied and Preventative Psychology. Vol 5(2), p117-124.

Obesity linked to economic insecurity

A group at Oxford University have done some research to suggest that obesity is linked to the financial insecurity felt by people specifically in countries that have a more liberal, free market economy. In other words, those of us living in the US, UK, Canada and Australia have a risk of becoming obese more so than our cousins in Scandinavia, France, Germany and a few others. The suggestion is that those other countries have more active and comprehensive social welfare policies, thus preventing their citizens from becoming unduly stressed about where the next dollar (Kroner/Euro) is coming from. This then is somehow linked to their pattern of eating.

The implications are quite profound, if we are to take it at face value. The suggestion in the study is that those with less of a government safety net may be more concerned about where their next meal is coming from...so they tend to overeat when they do have food. Whether this truly is the mechanism is open for debate: the researchers quote studies that looked at animal behaviour when food was scarce - they tended to overeat too (the animals, that is, not the researchers). It's not too much of a leap to assume humans would do the same thing. The problem, though, is that I think this link oversimplifies things, and tempts us to confuse correlation with causation all over again. For instance, apart from a liberal market economy, the US, UK, Canada and Australia share a few other traits that the others do not. What's the most obvious?

English. That's right, apart from a region of Canada, not only do we share a free market economy, we all speak the same language. What other cultural similarities do we have that may influence our relationship to food? 

Other confounds aside, it does appear something environmental is going on, be-it social policy, cultural, or something else. However, I warrant that when you go to look at any one individual, the pattern of factors would be such that it would be difficult to tease out any one single causal factor, especially at a macro/national level. It's also worth noting that the English speaking nations have fully embraced the 'low-fat' is good diet dogma, and whilst I'm guessing many of the other countries studied have access to fast food, it's not given the same cultural significance as something like the golden arches.


Philosophy, Psychology and how to change your beliefs in spite of yourself

This is likely to be a long and rambling piece, so I apologise up front. It's going to go from the blogiverse to philosophy through diet, back to philosophy, and via psychology ending up in coaching theory. Maybe.

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I've recently picked up Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy. A great read, with some fantastic insights into how the philosophers have helped us to make sense and cope more effectively with the world around us. Anyway, I've just been reading the Consolations for Inadequacy, in which Michel de Montaigne is a key player. Basically, he refuted the previously held ideal of philosophers that the cold lens of reason could be used to adequately assist one in meeting the challenges and dilemma's presented by life. De Montaigne contends that men are not necessarily reasonable beings, and that far from being able to conduct their lives according to the application of reasoned thought, we are more likely to stumble through at the mercy of bodily and emotional drives that defy all reason!

Why is this ringing true for me? Well, I'm constantly on the lookout for new writers in the field of health, diet and fitness. Recently, I found modern paleo, and, although just about everything they write regarding a healthy diet and lifestyle rings true, something really jangled about the philosophical theme. Diana and Paul are clearly extremely well-educated, well read and highly articulate people. This is not about to be a criticism of their work, blog or health approach. The part that I was uncomfortable with was the large focus on Objectivism as developed by Ayn Rand. Now, I haven't read much Ayn Rand, nor am I overly familiar with this approach in general. It does seem to hark back to that socratic principle that suggests everything may be knowable through the application of reason, but I could be wrong and I'm happy to be corrected - I just worry that I don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp it fully. But maybe I'm trying to over complicate it, I don't know. It just seemed very rational, reasonable and, well, objective. It seems to reject relativism in favour of an assertion that there is an absolute reality that, whilst we can never know it fully, we can bring our knowledge ever closer to it. Subjectivity, Synchronicity, interconnectedness and the spiritual have little or no place here.

So, I was struck on a number of levels when I found a reference to Michel de Montaigne on another blog I have recently found: Theory to practice. Firstly, my immediate shock was the apparent coincidence of reading about the philosopher in one place, only to find a reference to him in the very next, unrelated, article I picked up. This was a reference to de Montaigne's assertion that we should question everything, and question ourselves and our own knowledge first. So, here I am with Objectivism front of mind, holding that there is nothing supernatural in the world that cannot be explained by reason, and I am confronted by a remarkable coincidence in that two unrelated works reference the same person.

Reflecting on my inner experience through this, I realised that I have fluctuated in my belief systems wildly over the course of this process. How? Well, if I'm honest, I was coming around to the the Objectivist school of thought. All is objective, the lens of reason makes knowledge more accessible, everything has an explanation. But now I find my thoughts to be racing back to the "we create our experience", subjectivity, all things are interconnected in mysterious ways, train of thought.

In the psychological literature this is known as cognitive dissonance: when we act contrary to our beliefs about ourselves, there is an internal tension. This tension must be resolved, and typically, we do it by altering our beliefs to match our behaviour, not the other way around. This is an extremely useful concept to be aware of when thinking and focusing on behaviour change. The reason de Montaigne's work resonates with me so strongly is that it encourages us to pursue dissonance: question your beliefs, look for exceptions, hold nothing as absolute. Easily said, it is extremely difficult to do. However, it also explains my discomfort with the Objectivist approach: it seems so sure of itself. At it's very core, de Montaigne's approach would have us question the very basis of reason itself, and I think it is that which makes me uncomfortable with Objectivism: there is a paradox. To be objectivist means to hold certain assumptions of knowledge and reason as absolute...but what if those assumptions are wrong.

Getting back to the utility of cognitive dissonance though, we can use this to push people to change their attitudes and beliefs. Robb Wolf provides a great example of how to do it: in his book, The Paleo Solution, he repeatedly exhorts his skeptics to "try it for 30 days" then decide whether it is a valid approach. This subtly sets the ground for some great cognitive dissonance: whether they get great results or not, at the end of thirty days, the individual will know they have dedicated time and energy to something they originally didn't believe in...but they will also have other beliefs about themselves too (e.g. 'my time is valuable', 'I'm not a quitter', 'I'm a reasonable person', 'I try hard'). By completing the challenge, they are faced with a paradox: I don't believe in a paleo approach...but I've just done it for 30 days. The resulting tension will need to be resolved - if they hold other views about themselves such as 'I give things a go', 'I'm true to my word' etc, then they will be left with little choice but to alter their beliefs about a paleo approach.

So from a coaching perspective, getting yourself to change a behaviour may sometimes require you to do it in spite of yourself. When coaching a client to a behaviour they are uncomfortable with, or don't believe the efficacy of, I sometimes ask them to trust me...do it anyway, or else, prove me wrong. Either way, when they engage in the behaviour, their mental processes are faced with conflicting concepts which need to be resolved.

There, I said this would be a ramble.

So, now I eat a Primal diet, why don't I get hangovers?

I've been pretty quiet for a few weeks simply because Christmas, New Year, Family and life in general have been the priority. I really haven't had the time or energy to sit down and write. Seeing as I'm doing this as a creative outlet, I'm not going to force myself when I don't feel like it. In addition, my exercise program has sat on hold, and my diet has been, well, patchy from a paleo/primal perspective. Since Father-in-Law (FiW) has been here for the last 5 weeks, my beer consumption has increased dramatically: 3 or 4 beers a night if I'm honest. Originally, I was concerned what all that gluten, not to speak of the calories, was doing to my system. What's really interesting though is that my tolerance for alcohol, be it wine, beer or spirits have changed since I've reduced the amount of wheat in my diet.

T'was the season, so I found myself eating much more wheat/grain related products than I have for most of the year, but much LESS than during Christmas's of yore. I'm talking about mince pies, christmas pudding and cake, that sort of thing. Still very little bread, but maybe the odd croissant for breakfast. Now, when I talk of tolerance to alcohol, I'm not saying I could drink much more without falling over, that hasn't changed. What I have found though is that my hangovers have changed considerably.

Previously, on my wheat/grain based diet (and it was very wheat/grain based: this is the guy that could eat his way through a loaf of bread in a day), I was very sensitive to alcohol from a hangover perspective. It's a standing joke that whilst my friends would be tucking into the morning after fried breakfast, I would be throwing up in the toilet. But then, I'd still be doing that for a few hours later AND I would have a killer headache to match. It was misery. So much so, that once I was through my teens, I limited my excesses to special occasions. Now, I know what you're thinking: surely it's not such a bad thing that you were tempted to binge drink less than the average male, and you're right. What was frustrating though was those times when I would go out for dinner with friends, enjoy a couple of beers before, a couple wines with dinner, and then maybe a port or something to finish. It would be over the course of several hours, enjoyed with food, without the thought or intention of 'getting wasted'. Then I'd wake up and wish I was dead.

Now what's happening is that there is no headache in the morning, and very little gut irritation to induce vomiting. It's almost like that hangover wuss has been replaced by a normal guy. So what's going on here? Beer is supposedly full of gluten. I'm not sure, Mark's Daily Apple has one post where a reader basically asks why it is they are able to better manage hangovers now, but the bulk of the response is given over to how to avoid hangovers, not why a primal approach may mean you're better equiped. There is a section that suggests hangovers have something to do with inflammation, and the primal/paleo diet is designed to reduce inflammation, but not much else is offered.

My opinion? Clearly, a diet of natural, whole foods is what our bodies work best with. This may mean they are then better equiped to deal with short term 'stressors' which in this case are alcohol etc. Recovery is faster and more efficient because the body is working more like it should be and less like a machine that is constantly fire-fighting. Whatever it is, I am really grateful. I never imagined that a side effect of cleaning up my diet would be improved recovery from alcohol consumption.

Blood lipids, cholesterol and why it's not always bad when they're up

A few weeks back I got my blood results showing that my HDL and triglycerides were level, but my LDL was elevated. My doctor put this down to all the saturated animal fat I was eating and told me to lay of it. In particular, he thought my egg consumption was way too high. However, Chris Masterjohn provides an argument for why the raised LDL may not be such a bad thing, and may only be temporary. An increase in choline reduces fatty liver, in so doing pushing more LDL into the blood stream. Could this be what I'm experiencing?

I've also just picked up this book on the fat and cholesterol myth. All good reading material that helps keep me motivated and on course. Maybe. If I can hold my nerve and not let my ingrained fat paranoia get the better of me...

The Universe is trying to tell me something

I've been a bit quiet for the last 10 days or so. Finding motivation has really been an issue. I mentioned in a previous post that the planning and action phases of change presented small windows of opportunity, and this is certainly proving to be the case. I've been relying on somehow getting myself out of bed early in the morning to get the exercise I needed to hit my Fit440 goal. Of course, this is also the time when I least feel like pulling on my gym gear and running to the park for some fabulously taxing bodyweight workouts.

Then, I opened my RSS reader and there was a post from Mark Sissons on motivation, god love him. I'm not going to get all misty eyed and start spouting about the universe sending you what you need when you need it, but it did seem a bit uncanny. Still, Mark talks about the power of having a training partner, or someone else that is relying on you to 'do your bit'. It's effectively an emotional contract you make with someone.

Now, interestingly, this didn't make me rush out and find myself someone to exercise and train with. It just seemed to give me the kick up the backside I needed to reconsider my approach. Expecting myself to get out of bed at 5.30am in the morning is unrealistic, clearly. Especially as I find it difficult to get into bed before 10pm. So, something in Mark's post that day nudged me out of contemplation and into true planning, because yesterday, I packed my gym gear in my work bag, jogged down to a spot near the Harbour Bridge where there is a newly refurbished workout station and spend half an hour putting myself through pull ups, push ups, squats, overhead push ups and planks. Progress!

It also helped that in the morning, I also came across this video. I can't remember which blogger put it up, and I can't find the post again now, so if by some unlikely chance you're reading this, I apologise for not referencing you. I was dumbfounded by what this guy was doing and the progress he made.

So now, the muscles are pleasantly sore, I'm feeling like I'm on the way to my goal and I've found a way to get the exercise in. Hurrah!

The Mainstream is catching on to the ubiquity and danger of sugar in our food

Whilst I can't claim to be an expert in all things related to diet and nutrition, especially when it comes to Paleo/Primal ways of living, I like to think I do a reasonable job of looking critically at the advice we're given. I strongly believe that the diet-physical fitness-sleep-cognition-behaviour-habit combination is heavily interdependent, so whilst I've spent a lot of time studying, working and training in coaching and psychology, I've kept a close eye on health and fitness as everything we do is effected by everything we've done and thought...which is effected by everything we do. And the more I learn, the clearer it becomes that we can't focus purely in one area of personal development and hope that we'll get results in isolation.
 
And now it seems like the mainstream is starting to get the message. This article in the Sydney Morning Herald is probably one of the first I've seen that comes right out with it and says sugar is bad for you. The research piece it's based on does leave some questions unanswered, especially as it uses mice as it's subjects, but it's implications are clear: sugar, especially in the form of fructose corn syrup, is particularly damaging. Unfortunately, the article still manages to get a line of conventional wisdom in there by saying that we've got to keep fat intake down too, which someone in the comments section jumps on: if I need to keep sugar AND fat down, what the hell am I supposed to eat.
 
So, as with all new ideas and ways of being, we appear to be right in the middle of a change process. Or maybe we're still at the start. It's hard to tell. I'm reminded of the quote by Schopenhaur: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
 
The lack of science suppporting the saturated fat/cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease hasn't stopped it being accepted as self-evident. Any other paradigm will be ridiculed to start with - much as Atkins has been ridiculed by the scientific community in the past. However, Gary Taubes makes a case that this ridicule was less to do with Atkin's views as much as how he promoted them. Now, with articles in the SMH suggesting things may not be as we first thought, the battle lines for violent debate are being drawn up. Why will it be a violent debate? Because there are many with large stakes in the status quo: agriculture, food manufacturers, diet experts etc etc.
 
For me it's just more vindication that I'm on the right track with my diet. I'm still battling with how to build exercise into my daily routine, but with more experimentation, I'll get there. I just hope more people get on the band wagon before it's too late.


Sore limbs and the psychology underlying health, fitness and diet

After running down to the local play area and using the apparatus to squeeze out some pull-ups (assisted by the fact that my feet were still on the ground), two days later and my biceps and lats are, well, SORE. Of course, this should come as no surprise. Don't use a muscle for a long time and it atrophies. Then, suddenly challenge it to failure and the micro-tears make themselves felt.

What's interesting for me now though is that, whereas in years gone by, I would have gone back and trained again before the soreness has gone, this time I won't. Art Devany's site is where I first came across the concept of evolutionary fitness, but it's this combined with the attitude of the crossfit camp that will keep me away from exercising muscle groups until they are completely recovered. They come at it from slightly different angles, but the core of it is that you stay away from routine: mix it up, challenge yourself in a variety of ways, and get plenty of rest. This is completely the opposite of what I would have done in my early twenties. Then, I thought it was all about routine, doing the same groups of exercise on a regular schedule...no wonder I couldn't follow through a program...I was almost instantly bored with it.

Another area that's interesting to me that has a role in all this, is the bloggers on diet, stress and their role in cardiovascular heart disease. Ever since my blood results came back, I've been grappling with what to do about my higher-than-last-time LDL result. Reading this over at Chris Masterjohn's site tells me that the relationship between cholesterol, diet, inflammation and exercise is much more complex than "get your LDL down". It also tells me that the psychology involved has a larger role than many are giving it credit for. If inflammation is caused by a pattern of agents that involve cortisol, insulin and other hormones, then how we think, feel and perceive what's happening to us has a direct impact on the health of our heart. The macronutrients of our diet end up exasperating the underlying cause of disease.

More food for thought.