I have had several requests recently from readers to comment on the Paleo diet that seems to be all the rage in many internet nutrition communities these days.
First lets try to define what the Paleo diet is, as there seems to be several variations of it.
According to Wikipedia:
“The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet), also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various human species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic era—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. In common usage, such terms as the “Paleolithic diet” also refer to the actual ancestral human diet. Centered on commonly available modern foods, the “contemporary” Paleolithic diet consists mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils”
It has been a while since I posted one of these, and I also wanted to share an example of a day when I don’t train. Most of my other examples have been on training days.
In addition I am currently playing around with eating only 4 meals per day, rather than 5. It is working out very nicely so far, and allows me to spend a little less time on food prep, which is also nice.
Wake @ 5:15
Breakfast @ 5:30
½ tbsp grass-fed butter from a local farm
5 whole pastured eggs from a local farm
2 slices Ezekiel sesame sprouted grain toast
2 tsp Betsy’s of Maine Organic Apple Butter (organic – apples, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves)
I like to post these Digging Through the Archives blogs from time to time, as I know it can be easy to forget stuff you have read before, or maybe you missed some of these posts. Unless you read my stuff religiously, it can be tough to keep up!
Plus, it is often a good refresher for me, as sometimes even I forget some of the things I have written about in the past!
Snacks from the Past – this is a simple but often forgotten snack that I think more people would love to put back in their diet – Ants on a Log! I not only provide a recipe, I give you all of the health benefits associated with each food.
Why Eggs Prevent Heart Disease – this is one of my best blog posts ever in my opinion. While not a comprehensive review of the health benefits of eggs, that would go beyond the scope of this blog, it delves into several components of eggs and why the prevent heart disease.
More Good News for Grass-fed Meat – I discuss some sweet research showing that consuming grass-fed meat compared to grain-fed meat was able to raise levels of omega-3′s in the participants. Many people try to claim that difference in omega-3 content between the two meats is negligible, this study proved them wrong.
Everybody knows that the first rule of a post-training shake is that it has to be fast. You must drink it as soon as you are done or you won’t get jacked. You must drink the fastest protein on earth with only the fastest carbs, no fiber or fat allowed! This usually entails people drinking whey protein, either in the form of isolates or hydrolysates, because concentrates are just too darn slow. The carbs are usually from maltodextrin or dextrose, and maybe even that fancy new waxy maize starch. Anything with fiber , fat or fructose is terrible and will decrease absorption time. Right? We know all of this because that is what we have always been told. No one denies that this is effective, as it has worked for millions of people, but does effective equal optimal? What are we actually trying to accomplish with this shake?
I want to start this post with a bit of a disclaimer. The health benefits from alcohol consumption are hotly debated, as most of the data comes from epidemiological research and other relationship style studies, not cause-and-effect controlled trials. In addition there is no doubt that binge drinking or excessive consumption can cause massive problems, affecting nearly every organ and system in the body.
However, based on the data that is available, and the fact that historically many cultures have engaged in moderate consumption, I think a reasonable case can be made for the benefit of alcohol.
While wine, red wine in particular, gets most of the hype for the health benefits from alcoholic beverages, beer is no slouch in this department either.
Cressey Performance has recently gotten some love on NESN for the way it trains baseball players of all levels. I personally worked with 4 of the 5 guys interviewed in both of these videos, so it is pretty cool to see.
The first video is a look at Kevin Youkilis’ training at CP, which is pretty sweet.
The second video is a look at CP and the training of some of its minor league players. Makes me miss it a little bit.
Training for power is imperative as we age. In fact it is the first thing we lose as we get older. However there is a bright side. This is a quality that can be retained from proper training, and being to maintain it or at least drastically slow down its loss our quality of life would improve drastically.
(this is a 68 year old CP client whom I had the privilege of training many times)
Lets back up for a second though and actually define power. Power is Force x Velocity.
In terms of exercise the force is your strength, so strength training will most definitely help you to maintain your power output. However people not only lose their strength, or ability to produce force, they lose their ability to produce this force with any type of explosiveness, or velocity.
John Forestell is one of my best friends and is an absolute movie fanatic, even more so than I am. He compiled a list of his Oscar predictions that I thought were rather interesting, so I thought I would share them with you guys. Unfortunately I haven’t seen many of the movies or performances nominated, so it is hard to give an accurate assessment myself.
John is one of three people who’s movie opinions I trust whole-heartedly, along with my cousin Nicholas and Tony Gentilcore, so he does have excellent taste. On to the predictions.
Best Picture
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone
Who the Academy will choose: “The King’s Speech”. The Academy absolutely adores films such as “The King’s Speech”, an endearing British political drama based on the relationship between the stuttering King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Lague, who helped the King overcome his public speech impediment.
Who I think deserves to win: While the Academy, for whatever mind boggling reason, decided to leave “Blue Valentine” off it’s nominations list, the only other film that could contest with the “The King’s Speech” this year was “The Social Network.” “The Social Network” was an exceptionally well done film, but, “The King’s Speech” is the Academy’s bread and butter and I don’t believe they will be buttering a different type of loaf this year. With “Blue Valentine” (my favorite film of the year) not being on this list, my oscar goes to: “The King’s Speech.”
I apologize for the minimal content this week, it has just been a mad-house around here. Tons of grad school work all culminating at once since we are coming up on spring break. Plus taxes. Fun stuff.
The good news is that I will have a new article going up on t-nation.com relatively soon (once I finally finish it and send it to them) as well as my first article on wannabebig.com.
I also recently had a few articles go up on getprograde.com that I never even told you guys about! I thought today would be an appropriate time to let you guys know all about them, plus there are a few more in the pipeline that should be going up shortly!
As I am sure most of you have heard, diabetes is rapidly becoming an epidemic not only in the US, but worldwide. Diabetes can affect people of all ages, and it can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, vascular complications and amputations, blindness, immune suppression, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease and more.
In December of 2010 the Environmental Working Group published the first national investigation into our water supply and its contamination with chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium), a potential carcinogen. They looked at the water supply of 35 cities nation-wide, with 31 of them containing chromium-6.
I blogged about this report back in December if you want a quick refresher.
Due to this report, Washington is taking action. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California) introduced Senate Bill 79, which is the Protecting Pregnant Women and Children From Hexavalent Chromium Act of 2011.
Posted on March 8th, 2011 by Brian St. Pierre
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