Tag: Diet

Daily Life, Diet, Government, Health

Are You Sure You Want To Ban That?

It’s the buzzing that I hate the most. The ridiculous LED bulbs I’m required to have makes my tinnitus worse and they flicker in a weird way. We live in a hundred year old house with older non LED compliant dimmer switches and wiring connections that I’m sure aren’t the best. Good old incandescent bulbs worked just fine. Unfortunately the Bush administration decided that in the name of energy efficiency the federal government would ban incandescent light bulbs. An incandescent bulb costs something like .60 cents a day to operate. If I can afford it, why can’t I use whatever type of lightbulb I want? Clearly the government knows better than you. Besides, we have to save all those watts for the mandated electric vehicles we’re dumping on the grid.

Plastic bags. Straws. Vehicle auto-stop. Light bulbs. The government loves to regulate things. The federal register for 2024 is over 100,000 pages. They’ve added over 3,000 new regulations just this year. Every single physical object you encounter in your daily life is impacted by some sort of regulation. Either how it’s manufactured, shipped, packaged, sold, or used is regulated by the government.

As a certified contrarian and libertarian-ish small government person, I want the least regulation possible. I don’t want big brother deciding for me what sort of light bulb I can have. Should the government impose some regulations? Of course. Preventing Walmart from selling schedule one narcotics is probably a good thing. Keeping heavy industrial chemicals out of our waterways makes me happy. The problem is that regulations are a slippery slope. You start with good intentions and the next thing you know you have ridiculous EPA mandated plastic gas can spouts that nobody can operate. (I’ve spilled way more gas filling my lawn mower with those stupid spouts than I ever did with the old school ones)

Mrs Troutdog and I had a discussion about this last night in the context of RFK Jr. and banning “poisons and toxins” from our food. She’s all for it. MAHA all the way. Fuck that yellow dye number 5. She was not pleased that I didn’t agree. My argument is that you need to be careful what you wish for. The law of unintended consequences is always a factor.

Take RFK Jr’s desire to force soda companies to remove high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and go back to “regular” sugar. Sugar sweetened coke (Mexican coke) has more calories and more sodium. Is that really what you want? Do you really think people consuming multiple sodas a day are worried about HFCS? If you think I need to be protected from HFCS, what’s next? There is no dose of alcohol that’s healthy. Alcohol has a higher health cost to the nation each year than drinking soda and HFCS. Should we ban alcohol? How about tobacco? Apples contain cyanide. Time for an apple ban? Perhaps we should mandate maximum serving sizes at restaurants? Nobody is allowed to serve more than 800 calories per plate. Why is Starbucks even allowed to sell a 600 calorie Frappuccino? So sorry Dunk’n Donuts, your time is up. Americans are fat and unhealthy, so clearly we can’t be trusted to make our own health decisions. It’s time for big daddy government to step in.

I celebrate the idea of a secretary of HHS promoting a healthy lifestyle. I’m all in. But do it via aggressive information campaigns and labeling, not bans. Especially not bans based upon sketchy pseudo science. (I’m looking out for you maligned seed oils)

You can’t be protected from everything. Sometimes humans intentionally make bad choices. We drink. We smoke. We eat too many calories and don’t exercise. We don’t wear our seatbelts. There isn’t a single person in this country who thinks any of those things are good for us, yet we do ’em anyway. So the question is how much should the government protect us from ourselves?

In a perfect world we’d go back to foods that have been completely stripped of any type of preservative, additive, coloring, and flavoring. No hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides. 100% natural everything. Cook the way our grandparents did. Combined with limiting portion sizes and exercise, we’d be a healthier nation for sure. But here’s the dirty little secret – you can already do that today. You control the products you choose to buy. You decide how much processed food you consume. If you can afford it you can source all your food from local farms and shop at Whole Foods exclusively. Cook everything from scratch. It’s entirely in your control to drink only natural spring water from recycled glass bottles. If you think HFCS sweetened beverages are unhealthy… then don’t drink them.

I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure if you’re consuming enough Fruit Loops to reach toxic levels of yellow dye number 5 you have other diet and health problems. Government bans aren’t going to save you. Arm people with information and knowledge, encourage healthy behavior, reward the health care system for promoting preventative strategies… then get out of the way.

People will make bad choices. Darwin always finds a way to thin the herd. I’m ok with that. But if Secretary Kennedy steps in and messes up the taste and color of my Cheez-It crackers, I’m going to be pissed.

Daily Life, Diet, Health, Motivation

How Old Are You?

I’m a sucker for a good quote. While on a hike yesterday I was listening to a podcast and heard this:

”The greatest predictor of age is how old you think you are”

Time to rewind a bit. It’s been an… odd summer. To be honest, probably longer than that. Weight has been slowly piling on. Motivation has dwindled. Life events, real and imagined, got in the way. There were a couple of unexpected surgeries (my first!). One of which left me with foot pain that has been pretty significant. For a while I was sure that I would not be able to ever mountain bike or ski again. The result was me sitting in a chair for most of the summer, feeling sorry for myself. And eating. And more eating.

If you had asked me in August how old I felt, I would have given you a number ten years older than my actual age. Fat. None of my clothes fit. Everything hurt. Tired all the time. Zero interest in doing anything to actually improve my situation. I played zero golf all summer. Did not ride my mountain bike or the motorcycle. A few walks in the interest of rehabbing the foot was the sum total of my activity. In short, I was in the express lane to becoming an old man.

It’s interesting, that quote above is not a new idea. I keep a running list of quotes, sayings, and thoughts that I think might be something interesting to write about. I went through my list a few days ago and found this one I wrote down a year ago:

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?”

That quote is from the 1920’s. This concept of your perceived age is not new. Why that first quote resonated with me is that several years ago if you’d asked me how old I felt I would have given a number ten years younger than my age. A twenty year swing in perceived age. That hits hard.

The good news is that a little bit ago I started the process of reclaiming my health. That process sucks. It hurts. It’s demotivating because you see no progress. You’re basically just hungry and sore all the time. And then all of a sudden, the number on the scale starts trending down. Cardio starts improving. I found a way to ride my bike without pain. Energy improves. I’m able to do long backcountry hikes again.

And the best part… when I heard that quote while listening to that podcast, I can honestly say I now feel my actual age rather than older. I have an impedance scale that calculates your metabolic age based on a bunch of factors. This morning it reported my metabolic age matched my actual age for the first time in a while.

The takeaway is that the pithy quote is true. You really are as old as you feel you are. The important part is that it’s up to you. Your age feeling can go both ways. Would you rather feel older or younger? Making a noticeable change takes less time than you think it will. You just have to start. Granted, the motivation to get started is easier said than done. If I had the secret sauce to making that happen, I’d be a very rich social media influencer.

I think it’s worth honestly asking yourself – how old do you feel? If you’re not happy with your answer, make a change.

My goal these days is no longer a weight target or to achieve some physical sport or endurance goal. It’s to get back to feeling ten years younger than my actual age. Because if I feel younger, I’ll act younger and do things like a younger man. The rest will take care of itself.

Daily Life, Health

How Old Are You?

Age is one of those things you can’t escape. Like the slow drift of the continental plates, it’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. It was one of the things that fascinated me as an RN. To see a consistent population of people, usually in their 60’s-70’s, who manifested their apparent age wildly different. A 70 year old who still rides bikes would be in the room next to a 60 year old who looked 90. Why such a difference? Why do people age at such different rates? I got to thinking about this because I’m currently reading a book on evolutionary anthropology (don’t ask) and was very intrigued when I ran across this quote:

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?”

Leroy Satchel Paige

Unless you were born into the Hadza tribe in Africa or maybe grew up in some weird religious cult that didn’t celebrate birthdays – you know how old you are. But what if you didn’t? What if all you could go on was how you “felt”. I don’t think I look like my actual age. Sure, I’m starting to sport a little bit of gray here and there but not much. I have friends who are younger than me who are almost entirely gray. I probably don’t dress appropriately for my actual age. Plenty of shorts and flip flops. I had to break down and go buy a sport coat a few months ago for an event because I didn’t have one. Without knowing what people really think, I’d guess that on appearance alone I look maybe five years younger than I really am (maybe that’s wishful thinking).

How I feel is much different. The impedance scale I use calculates out my metabolic age based upon weight, body fat, BMI, etc… It thinks I’m four years older than I really am. Probably correct given my current conditioning. I’ve also reached an age where I have a never ending series of aches and pains. A rotating litany of things that hurt. An old shoulder injury. Legs and knees that ache from five straight days of skiing and mountain biking. A weird foot pain that won’t go away. My body certainly knows it’s not twenty any more.

Mental age… that’s hard to say. Somewhere in my late thirties maybe (again, maybe wishful thinking). I still think I can do all the physical things I used to. Perhaps most important, I still want to do all those things. I’m not quite ready to give it all up, head to back porch and just watch sunsets. Slightly contradictory, I’m also starting to feel a maturity of thought that I don’t think I had before. It’s hard to explain. While I’m not very good at expressing it, my brain seems to explore thoughts on multiple different levels unlike what it did when I was ten or more years younger (that could also be the nightly bourbon making me feel wise). I’m not as quick to jump on whatever the conventional wisdom of the day is, like when I was younger. If someone makes a claim about something, I’m much more inclined to wait and see before believing it. At the same time, I find myself having a much stronger sense of right and wrong in the things I do believe. I suspect with age comes a decreasing need to care what others think.

I don’t know. It’s an interesting thought experiment. I hope I’m one of those guys who’s still riding bikes when I’m 75. Not just for the physical component, but to still have the desire to be out there enjoying life at that age. I hope I’m still able to make a cognizant argument about some world event when I’m an old geezer and not just be a grumpy old “get off my lawn” guy.

I wonder what makes people age. Is it diet? Exercise? Mental stimulation? Are some people just born with a zest and curiosity for life that others aren’t, or is it something that you cultivate on your own? Excluding disease, is there there something I can do to hold off aging or is it just luck of the cards I was dealt?

How about you – how old do you feel if you didn’t know when you were born?

Daily Life, Diet, Health

It’s A Problem Of Volume

The numbers are just depressing. But because of those pesky laws of thermodynamics, you can’t escape them. You can’t cheat them. The numbers don’t lie. One pound is 3,500 calories. To lose one pound a week you need to create a 500 calorie deficit every day. That’s it. No more or less complicated than that. Create the deficit and you lose weight. Go over and you gain. Simple, right?

The depressing part is that we’ve lost all sense of volume. While the internet has convinced you that seed oils are the devils work, the real problem is that you and I have no real concept of how many calories we consume. Our serving sizes have become ginormous. When you see what an actual serving size is, it no longer looks like it’s enough food. I’d still be hungry if that’s all I ate!

I start every morning with the full intention of tracking exactly my caloric intake. For example, this morning I resolved to eat a much smaller breakfast than normal. I made three scrambled eggs with a little bit of cheese and some avocado. Healthy, right? When you measure out the actual amount of cheese I used and factor in the butter I put in the pan, my breakfast was 800 calories. That’s approaching almost half of my daily calorie budget to hit my calorie deficit. Like I said, depressing. Because of that breakfast volume, I can now only have a small piece of steak and some broccoli for dinner. That will give me just enough calories to include a protein shake mid-day. That sucks.

Oh sure you can buy yourself some extra calories with exercise, but not enough to make up for the volume we normally eat. A three mile walk or a strength training session in the gym burns maybe a couple hundred calories. It gets you a little room in the calorie budget, but not much.

I live in a state of perpetual food guilt. I have a constant mental running total of roughly how many calories I think I’ve eaten. I bargain with myself all day long. I’ll eat this protein bar or half cup of skinny pop popcorn now, and then I’ll eat only half the steak tonight. I’ll have a beer with dinner, and I’ll just skip breakfast tomorrow to make up for it. It’s gotten to the point that I dread the idea of going out to dinner with friends. A restaurant menu is now just a list of things I can’t eat. It’s mentally exhausting and leads to never ending cravings. I don’t know what the answer is.

That’s not true – I know what the answer is, I just can’t seem to get there. For me, it’s an issue of activity. Being busy. When I was at my thinest I worked three 12 hour shifts in a row. I chose to eat only one meal a day on workdays. It worked because as a nurse I was so busy during my shift there was no time to think about food. I left the house at 06:30 am and got home at 8:00 pm and sprinted all day. It was easy to ignore hunger. I ate a massive meal when I got home, but it was still probably only 1200 calories at most. That gave me my weekly deficit. On my off days I was crazy active and busy. Trail running and mountain biking every day. I was too busy to think about food.

Now I’m home all day and for various reasons I have not been as active. Oh sure I do an activity almost every day – skiing, a workout, or a hike with the dog. But not with the intensity I used to. And I’m left with a lot of time to think about the pantry and fridge. Wondering what I can cut out tonight so I can have a bowl of popcorn now.

So it’s clear that I have some problems to solve. The first is to get a handle on exactly how many calories I’m consuming. It’s time for at least a few weeks of weighing and measuring everything. I need to understand portion size and stop eyeballing volume. I should probably meal prep, but that just sucks. I might need to resort to a pre-made, calorie controlled meal service. Anything to keep the volume in check.

Second, and probably most important, I need to find a way to get busy again. Out of the house and away from the fridge. A day full of activities so I’m not thinking about being hungry. Truly a first world problem.

It’s crazy how powerful the food addiction is. Any addiction, I suppose. The moment you decide to tackle the problem, your brain goes into overdrive and decides to remind you all day long of the very thing you’re trying to quit. Breaking that cycle of thinking about and craving something is one of the hardest things to do mentally.

So, we’re ready to start a new week. As the old saying goes, “If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed”. Weighing and measuring everything.

Meanwhile, I’m off to a family Sunday brunch and trying to ignore all the food. Sigh. How did we get to this point?

Daily Life, Lists

A January Progress Report

A quote came out of a podcast I recently watched with Theo Von (one of my new favorites) and Tony Robbins. Tony said (paraphrasing), “It’s not about positive thinking. Whats wrong with the world will always be available. Whats right with the world is also always available. It’s about which one you choose to focus on, because your brain will automatically delete the other one.” I like that. I find that one of the main drivers of my mood is the news. I think news is fundamentally predisposed to focus on what’s wrong with the world. When I spend too much time consuming events of the day, I am a more negative person. When I go skiing or for a bike ride, I’m more positive. Go figure.

So of the things I told myself I wanted to do better at this year… I’m not doing as well with staying away from the news. I’m a junkie. It’s like watching a car wreck. I can’t tear my eyes away. I need to work on that. While we’re on the subject of yearly resolutions, here’s how I’m doing so far with the other thoughts I had about making improvements:

  • I gave myself a goal of no alcohol until I hit a certain weight. Been six weeks, so doing well. Struggling right now because part of me says that life is too short to not enjoy a beer with friends from time to time. But I do feel better and have lost some weight. Not sure if I can hold out until the weight goal.
  • Speaking of weight, it is improving. More slowly than I’d like, but at least it’s the right direction. I don’t eat horribly, but volume is my main culprit. Other than alcohol I really haven’t changed anything. What this showed me is that up until last spring, exercise was the only thing keeping my weight in check. I went into sloth mode and the weight skyrocketed. If I can kickstart the exercise again and work on the volume a little bit, I’m confident the weight will return to a happier place.
  • I’ve implemented a few things from Dr. Huberman’s “morning routine”:
    • Sunlight first thing in the morning. I’m using a UV light (it’s dark for hours when I wake up) and I actually think this makes a difference. I will continue this practice.
    • Delay caffeine for 60-90 minutes upon waking. Nope. Maybe I’ll try again at some point, but noticed zero difference.
    • Drink two large glasses of water upon waking with added sodium. I was already drinking one. Two, plus the coffee is just too much liquid first thing in the morning. I stopped the sodium because I think it was making me retain fluid.
    • Switched to tea instead of coffee. I’m not sure I notice a difference, but I’m liking tea. I’ll probably flip back and forth. I think I’ll try the pour-over coffee method and see how that goes.
  • I’ve been struggling with sleep for quite some time. I fall asleep just fine, but wake at 3-4am and that’s it. Falling back asleep isn’t an option. I tried magnesium (again at Dr. Huberman’s suggestion). Not sure I can tell any difference. If I had to guess it’s more related to activity level during the day than anything. Sloth mode all day and I sleep like crap. Go figure.
  • I’ve been religiously tracking sleep stats with my Fitbit. I’ve been especially interested in HRV, since everyone says that zero alcohol will massively improve it. I’ve noticed a tiny improvement, but nothing to write home about. Maybe I’m too old at this point to make a big change?
  • I declared I was going to make an effort to stop dressing like a homeless teenager. I now have a pair of decent everyday boots and just ordered five well fitting shirts. There was an experiment with a vest that we won’t talk about. Not fashion related, but I also bought my first pair of really good ski pants. Retiring the three year old Costco ski pants that aren’t waterproof is a good thing, given the amount of skiing I do. I declare good progress on this resolution.
  • I said I wanted more spice in my food. There’s a bottle of Sriracha sauce in my fridge I’ve used once. This needs work.
  • I wanted to make music more of a priority. Zero progress. I need to do two things. First, curate my play list so that I want to listen. Second, find more opportunity to listen to music. Right now music only happens when working out… which is not often enough.
  • I told myself I was going to ride the bike this year. A lot. I’ve done… ok. Ridden maybe a half-dozen times in January. Not bad considering it’s single digits and snow on the ground. A friend just bought a Peloton and I somewhat mocked him for it. “Real” cyclists find a way to ride outside, right?. While we’re in the midst of winter, the back of my brain is now wondering if I’d use a Peloton?
  • One of my never ending goals is to be more creative. For the first time ever, I sent out one of my photos to be printed. We’re waiting for it to come back. Good or bad, hopefully this is the spark needed to start creating again.
  • And lastly, I wanted to make travel a priority this year. Mrs Troutdog and I continue to be at an impasse as to how to travel. Fortunately the country is in an icy death grip at the moment, so travel isn’t much of an issue. I expect this issue to heat up as time goes on. Stay tuned.

So there we are. I’d give myself a B- so far. I’m actually making an effort to make some changes, which is probably the most important part. Not a lot of change so far, but hey it’s only January. By the end of February I might be a fashionable, picture taking, music lover riding a Peloton and eating spicy ramen. You never know.

Diet, Health, Motivation

I Used To Be…

We were hanging with friends the other day and one of them said she wanted to do a four-peak hiking challenge this coming year to get back in shape and improve health. She wanted to know if I’d be willing to do it with her so we could motivate each other. It only makes sense that she’d ask me because I am descended from Vikings. I am a Norseman! My ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and across the Old West. I come from hearty outdoorsman stock. I am practically Daniel Boone and Davey Crocket, reincarnate.

As a former trail runner who had no problem knocking out an 8-12 mile run in the mountains, I looked at the list of peaks and thought no big deal. Yeah, I’m not in shape at the moment but give me a few weeks and I’ll be back in form. After all, I’m a trail runner/mountain biker/backpacker/motorcyclist who’s comfortable in the mountains. Except that I’m not. I used to be… This year, more than any other, the reality of living in the past has hit me hard. I used to do all kinds of athletic things. I used to be in pretty good shape. I used to run and mountain bike and ski. The reality is that it’s been at least three years since that was true.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that this has not been my favorite year. Was it challenging because of my weight and fitness? Or did my weight and fitness being in the crapper make the year a struggle? Chicken and egg, I suppose.

It’s hard to admit Father Time has caught up with you. I haven’t bounced back from surgery like I thought I would. I went skiing a few days ago and my legs were destroyed in just a few runs. I’m super sore after workouts – I tell myself it’s because I had surgery, but deep down I know it’s because I haven’t been doing anything for a long time.

It’s clear I’ll never been Davey Crocket again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a “real” mountain biker or trail runner again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be massively better than I am now. I’m not sure my joints could take running at this point. But I bet I can be a damn good hiker again. It’s doubtful I’ll ever descend or ride the bike at race pace again, but I bet I can get back to being a good climber and endurance rider for my age.

As we get ready for the new year, I feel good about ’24. For some strange reason, the last time I lost a bunch of weight and got in shape, I decided to start during the holidays. Arguably the worst possible time to try and watch your diet and exercise. When I made it through the holidays and kept up with my diet goals, I felt proud of myself and energized to keep it going.

Oddly, I’ve done the same thing this year. I didn’t mean to, and had forgotten that this was the same timeframe I started the last go ’round. Something snapped in my head after Thanksgiving and I said to myself, we’re done with drinking calories and we’re going to pay attention to diet. I’ve managed to avoid the typical binges during holiday parties so far and feel good.

So we’re doing better with diet and we have a physical challenge with four peaks to work towards. I feel like 2024 is going to be the change I needed.

As I was talking to my friend about getting ready for hiking, I mentioned how important working on balance was. As I thought about my own advice, I decided I needed a balance goal to work towards. So I decided to learn a new skill for ’24 to challenge myself and work on balance.

It’s a move on the bike called a “manual”. If you’re a kid it’s probably no big deal. At my age, I think it would be a significant achievement. I see some tumbles in my future, but as long as I don’t break a hip it’ll be worth it.

So there we go. We’re going to move on from remembering what I used to be, and instead focus on what I can be. Damn, that’s poetic. Almost T-shirt worthy.

So Merry Christmas, Chanukah, Festivus, or whatever it is you celebrate. Let’s make 2024 a good one!

Daily Life, Health

Things Will Calm Down

Every once in a while, you stumble across something that just makes you feel seen. As in, oh crap that’s me. This morning it was this:

“Adult life is saying to yourself ‘after this week, things will calm down a little’ over and over again until you die.”

This completely sums up my diet and fitness journey.

There are contractors coming to the house this morning. I have a long drive tomorrow. We still need to find a gift for that birthday party. It’s going to rain hard on Thursday. We have that dinner thing on Friday. I need to get the yard done. I can’t put off the oil change any longer. We leave on Monday for two days.

Once I get back, things will calm down and I’ll dive back into the diet and workout.

This is me most weeks. I’ll go two-three days of being consistent, and then something always seems to come up that throws things off.

Unless you live on a deserted island, completely unplugged… life will never “calm down”. I need to stop feeding myself that lie. The problem is that diet and fitness was never a routine in my life. It’s never been a priority.

It needs to be a rule that doesn’t get broken. It needs to be just part of who you are. I wake up, have coffee, and go for a run. Period. I go to the gym on my lunch break. No matter what. It’s just what I do. I play at some sort of sport every weekend. It’s the rule.

Paying attention to what I eat doesn’t feel natural. It’s always something that’s a change. “Starting Monday, I’m eating clean”. It feels forced because it’s not part of what I normally do. Same thing with exercise. Since it’s not part of my normal routine, it’s easy to abandon it when life gets busy.

Like brushing your teeth, it just needs to be a normal part of your daily routine. I wish this had been drilled into me as a kid. Changing your daily routine after twenty years is not easy. It’s no different than if you suddenly had to switch to working the night shift. Nothing about that change would feel normal. But eventually, it would.

The interesting thing about that analogy is that you’d find a way to do it because it was your job. You’d have to. The secret sauce to diet and exercise success is finding a way to tell yourself that this is your new job. Because without it, your long-term prognosis is poor.

It’s part of my new rules. I brush my teeth. I don’t leave dishes in the sink. The dog gets a run. I pay attention to what I eat. I get eight hours of sleep. I exercise. Life will just have to work around that.

Daily Life

Weekly Wrap Up

It’s Friday people. It’s been a pretty good week. Lots of news going on, plenty of activities happening. Time for some random contrarian thoughts.

  • Wednesday was in the top 5 of my all-time best ski days. We ended up with 8-9 inches of the fluffy stuff dumping overnight in town. Up on the hill there was 16+ inches up on top. Hard to describe how much fun it was. We skied until the last lift stopped running. A great way to finish out the season. Still a few more weeks of spring skiing to come…

  • I finally stopped being lazy and built out the wall-mounted ski rack in the mud room I’d been promising to finish for at least a year (or two). I’m very pleased with how it came out. I’m not very good with that sort of thing, so it’s a great feeling of accomplishment when I do some sort of home improvement like that. (insert Tim the Tool Man grunt)

  • I had to back a large trailer up a narrow, icy driveway. A little ugly, but I got it done. Backing a trailer is an interesting skill that takes a lot of practice. Not something I ever had an opportunity to do as a young adult. Should be one of those mandatory basic dude stuff skills.

  • Ukraine surfaced again as a topic in the pending presidential race. DeSantis had the audacity to call it a territorial dispute. The warmongering class clutched their pearls in horror and called him a Putin stooge. Recall the two main questions I’ve asked for a long time. 1) How is this in our strategic interest? 2) If you actually think Russia’s plan is to continue rolling into Poland after Ukraine, why is Europe not fully funding and massively mobilizing a defense?

  • The United States (and NATO) have done everything in their power to provoke this conflict. Don’t believe me? I highly recommend reading this short book on the subject: “How the West Brought War to Ukraine“. It may open your eyes a bit. If nothing else, it will give a prospective other than what the chattering class on the nightly news gives you.

  • My weight loss has completely stalled. I’m below maintenance calories. I haven’t snacked, cheated or otherwise sabatoged my eating. High protein, low carbs. I’ve completely cut out alcohol. I Nordic or alpine ski 4 days a week. My weight has remained static for over a week (even gone up a few of the days). Extremely frustrating. It’s hard to remain motivated to deprive oneself day after day when you see zero progress. Sigh.
  • I read a great substack this week (that I can’t find now) that described the technical details of what happened to the SVB bank fail. It reminded me of the ’08 financial crisis. The root causes are extremely complicated, despite the simplistic news summaries we see. Ultimately, it’s a systemic lack of oversight that enabled the failure (similar to ’08). I see no appetite for the financial or political world to make any changes. It’s not a good long-term recipe.

  • I’ve been following a gal who has set the record (demolished it) for consecutive ultramarathon runs. She’s on day 132 of running 32 miles a day. It just shows what we’re capable of if we choose to. Meanwhile, I ski two days in a row and tell myself I better take a break so I don’t overtrain. LOL

  • We’re down to the last ten episodes of the last season of Walking Dead. (no spoilers please!) We’ve gone from why did we ever stop watching, to this is dumb, to this is great. At the moment we’re back to this is just stupid. I’m ready for this series to be put out of its misery. I hope it finishes strong.

The weekend in my part of the world is looking to be sunny and 50+ degrees. We haven’t seen that for a while. I see motorcycle rides, dog hikes, and yard work in my future. Ya’ll go enjoy the weekend and try to be good humans.

Cool, Diet, Health

Take This One Supplement

It’s funny how us humans seem to be predisposed to fall for the “one magic pill” syndrome. You know, the “eat this one food to lower your blood pressure” or “do this one exercise if you want tight abdominal muscles” sort of articles. I’m just as big a sucker as anyone else, even though I pride myself on being skeptical of… well, everything.

For example, just the other day I’d watched a podcast that talked about the importance of Zone 2 training. That’s the sweet spot for fat burning and building an aerobic base. Roughly 75% of your max heart rate. I’d forgotten I’d read an entire book on the subject at one time – “Training for the Uphill Athlete“. I immediately went out an did a fast power walk in the hills. I kept my pace to mostly just below starting to breathe heavily. I felt great when I was done and vowed to ensure I’m getting a minimum of three days a week of this type of exercise.

Me, being me, I immediately blew an hour researching heart rate monitors. Which are more accurate, chest straps or wrist/optical sensors? Should I just get a cheap Fitbit, or bite the bullet and get a dedicated running watch like the Garmin or Coros? After all, if I’m going to embrace the Zone 2 training I have to have a way to see what my actual heart rate is. Don’t I?

And then I came to my senses. At my level of conditioning, whether my heart rate is +/- 10 beats from whatever 75% of my max heart rate is will make zero difference. My conditioning is so far from what it was when I was running, anything I do is a benefit. An hour of effort at just below heavy breathing is close enough. When I’ve dropped weight and my cardio is sufficient to slow jog without breathing hard – then I’ll think about figuring out what my actual heart rate is.

I do this all the time to myself. I’ll see a YouTube video about some piece of exercise equipment and suddenly I have to have it. Meanwhile I don’t have the strength to do just basic bodyweight stuff or simple lifts with kettlebells. Some specialized piece of equipment isn’t going to magically make me stronger at this point. It’s like folks who spend gobs of money on carbon fiber this or that to shave grams off of their bicycles when you can just go lose a few pounds.

If you follow guys like Joe Rogan or Jocko, they’re always pushing various supplements for improved performance, brain function, strength gains, etc… I don’t disagree with the value of many of those things, but in most cases it’s tiny incremental improvements. That might make a big difference if you’re an athlete – but not much for the average person. You’ll make a bigger difference in how you feel by dropping the extra weight, eating real food, cutting the alcohol, getting stronger, and getting a good night sleep.

When you are at 15% body fat, running a respectable 10K time, and can crank out pullups and heavy deadlifts… then small incremental things make a difference. Until then, save your money.

P.S. In researching running watches, I stumbled upon the world of sleep trackers. The Whoop strap and Oura ring. Clearly my problem all this time has been not knowing how much time I spend in each sleep cycle. If only I knew that one simple thing, my training would improve exponentially! Researching now…

Diet

Keto, Again?

I honestly didn’t think I’d be back here. I rode the keto train for a year and a half. I was strict, lost a ton of weight, and generally felt pretty good. Probably not coincidentally, I was also more active during that period than I’d been since my twenties. I know shocking, isn’t it? Low body fat and active every day… and you feel great. But I finally burnt out on keto. I was sick of paying attention to everything food related. I constantly craved mashed potatoes, fries, and pasta. I wanted to enjoy a beer once in a while.

So, I decided to “take a short break” from keto. And here we are almost three years later. I put back all the weight I’d lost, plus some. Fatigued all the time. Lost all the cardio I’d had and struggle to mountain bike and can’t run. And I’m now dealing with some serious gut issues. So now what?

My gastroenterologist wants me on a low fodmap diet for a minimum of a month, while we do some other testing. Looking at the foods you can’t have I realized that keto with some changes to veggies I’d normally eat, covers the fodmap diet. I know keto well. I know that I can make keto stick. So the words I never thought I’d say again came out of my mouth – It’s time to go back to keto.

I do not believe all the hype about keto. You don’t burn any more fat than you would with a carb based diet. I don’t think, for most people, it addresses insulin resistance magically. Studies show that you get the same impact simply losing weight, improving blood pressure, and exercising – regardless of which diet you choose.

Keto worked for me because it is restrictive. The act of counting carbs and daily blood tests forced me to pay attention to calories. As I started losing weight I exercised more. The more I exercised, the better I felt. Before long I was burning so many calories running and cycling, I struggled to consume enough food. Eventually, I was dropping 2-3 pounds a week. This was not a miracle of ketosis. There’s only so much steak, chicken, and broccoli a guy can eat. It was a calorie deficit, made easy by the lack of food choices.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are some benefits to keto for the average person. The big one for me was becoming fat adapted. Moving easily into ketosis when glycogen stores are low, prevented the massive hunger pangs and cravings I’d have when my fuel was primarily carbs. It enabled me to exercise in a fasted state and avoid the “bonk” when glycogen ran out.

For whatever reason, I lack the willpower to maintain a calorie deficit with carbs. There are too many things to eat, and the hidden calories keep adding up. I find myself constantly hungry and snacking. Some people have the willpower to simply count calories and lose weight. That’s clearly not me.

So here we are. Back to keto. Back to my love/hate relationship with the diet. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that I have a choice at this point. It will be interesting to see what I think about it this go-round, since I’m doing it for a different reason. My strength trainer is going to hate me. He’s not a fan. But on the plus side, I’ll finally be eating the amount of protein he wants me to consume.

Today is day one. Ketones were 0.3 mmol/L this morning. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes me to get back into ketosis. Will my body remember fat adaptation? Or am I starting from scratch with a week-plus of keto flu before dropping into ketosis?

It’s only been a few hours and I’m already craving pesto sauce pasta and nachos. The struggle is real.