MTheads

Exercise Update

Still lifting weights.  I've added in a bit of running just for fun.  But instead of running straight at some reasonable pace I mix it up with walking because my knees have never loved long distances.  I switch running and walking every song so I end up only running a bit more than half of the distance. I've done this for a half-marathon (here) and I beat my earlier conventional running time.  One of the nice things about run/walk is I can run quite a bit faster than if I was trying to keep some sort of pace. After all, I'll get a break in about 2 to 3 minutes.  Makes running more entertaining.

So, back to lifting.  Not much new to report except that I'm up to ten wider armed pull-ups, at a time! For me, that's great. I'd like to work up to sets of ten, maybe three times in a row.  Right now, I do a wide-arm set, then a narrower one, then a chin-up set.  Then repeat the trio.  Of course, I quickly get down to doing 5 and 3 rep sets, for a total of maybe 30 or 40. This is on leg day when there's less competition for my arm muscles.  I do fewer on upper body day. 

I'm a big advocate for pull-ups because they are so good for the upper body and the core.  And I'm of the opinion that most women of average weight could do them.  But perhaps I'm wrong, and I'm some sort of freak because so many women have sworn to me they just can't do them.  I don't know....I think pull-ups are like bike riding; once you figure out the trick or technique, it suddenly all clicks.

I try to get my daughters to do them.  I've offered a dollar a pull-up and so far I haven't lost any money.  One of them is getting close, but dangling and pathetically pulling up half way is not going to earn you any of my money.  I don't care how much you cry.... God forbid the day they figure out the mechanics!

LCHF Still Rules My Life

God, still doing the LCHF thing.  Not that I mind a diet of filet mignon and bacon, but it's a difficult diet to keep going.  I generally have to go shopping 3.5 times a day in order to keep all the fresh food needed to feed six people in the house. There can be no boxes or cans.  

And then, my children have gotten the idea from somewhere that home-cooked, fresh food is actually a sneaky substitute for the real food that comes out of boxes.  OK, we ate a lot of mac and cheese in the old days.  It's a challenge to keep them eating high quality food.  So that's something to keep me busy.

Years ago, Denis Leary had this hilarious riff about the morphing of modern man into some kind of soft sandal wearing, tofu eating, meat shunning, full contact football abhorring, sun avoiding, Oprah watching creature. I think about that while I'm clicking through my three thousand paleo/LCHF web sites everyday. I think about it because sometimes an image of Paleo man comes unbidden to my mind, an image of a man similarly struggling to live forever.

Paleo man wears finger shoes when not earthing, wears special colored lenses to help him maintain his circadian rhythm. Only sprints. Moves often and slow. Lifts heavy things. Checks his glucose and ketone levels obsessively. Eats spoonfuls of organic unrefined coconut oil. Eats exactly five brazil nuts a day. Intermittently fasts (the thinner the faster, the more the fasting). Drinks bone broth. Eats the perfect diet which only requires supplementing with Vitamin D3, fermented cod liver oil, magnesium, iodine, CoQ10, resistant starch, probiotics, and prebiotics.  

Now this sounds more like an eating disorder. Perfect control perfect life.  And the acolytes all want the primal/paleo gurus to tell them exactly what to do to get themselves fixed -- what to eat, what to take, how to sleep, walk, breath, and think. It's kind of worrying. But they're just people looking to feel better, live forever, cure something. Like us all.

Of course, there're plenty of sciencey LCHF blogs out there too -- less orthodoxy and more studies. I like best the blogs by actual doctors and scientists. I like the blogs which are helping to disseminate the studies debunking the low fat dogma and trans fat insanity.  And I still read all the others, just in case.

So, still in this for a penny in for a pound of pork.

 

Back On-line

I gots me a new net book!  Now I can relax on the couch while writing rather than sit in the torture chair in the kitchen.  The problem with net books is that they make a warm, snuggly platform for fat cats.  Whenever I open mine up, he runs over and hops on.  He even tries to knead the key board.  Or maybe he's trying to type something.  Hard to tell.  But I finally figured out how to use the camera, so expect a lot of close-ups.

And...

And...

Ok.  That's my son but the cat managed to get off my lap before I took the picture.  Something was going to be photographed.