Death by Jump Rope

First, a confession: ever since my first try in elementary school, I was never able to jump rope. I remember getting a "U" on my report card for "Unsatisfactory" in the P.E. skills sections where it documented my inability to perform this simple feat of coordination. Fast forward 30 years.

I joined Hoosier CrossFit in late September, and have loved being presented new challenges every week since I joined. When I find myself thoroughly embarrassed on a new workout, I resolve to "work it to death" until I have it right. One such challenge for me is jumping rope.

Last week, one of our workouts included "Death by Pull-ups", where you perform one pull-up during the first minute (and then let the clock run out for the minute), then two pull-ups during the second minute, three in the third minute, et cetera, and repeat until you can't make it through the minute with the required number of reps. On that workout, I made it to round 9, for a total of 8 rounds + 4 reps, or 40 total pull-ups.

Today, I decided to try to apply this workout to my nemesis, the jump rope, partly just to work on my form and partly to get my heart really pumping today. The first twenty minutes or so were pretty uneventful, but a great warm-up for the second half. The result: 46 rounds + 46 reps, for a total of 1127 jumps! My heart rate sat between 180 and 190 for the last 10 minutes or so. It definitely made me feel like I'd been through a workout by the end. And best of all, I no longer have to dread jump rope days. Now to get to work on double unders!

Health/Fitness update: I'm weighing in at 152 now, down 41 pounds from a bit over a year ago when I started. I ordered new blood work to check cholesterol, CRP, triglycerides, et cetera, but it seems to be slow going due to the holidays. I'll post an update with the full year before/after report once that info arrives.

If you resolved to start a new eating or fitness program in the new year (my I suggest Paleo/Crossfit?), here's hoping you make great progress!

Happy New Year! Janssen

Checking in on the paleo/cross-fit solution

Since a little over a month has passed since I last updated this site, and since I've had a dozen or so people recently ask me how things are going, I thought I'd make a quick post with the latest stats:

Weight: 158 (down from 191 in December, and 172 in June, and 163 in October)

Waist Size: 32" (down from 41" in December, and 36" in June, and 34" in October)

Body fat: 13% (down from 26% in December and 17% in June, and 15% in October)

Pull-ups: 8 (up from 0 in December and 2-3 in June, and 6 in October)

Blood Pressure: 117/71 (down from 130/85 in December, and 122/74 in June, 115/70 in October)

I also just ran 5K without stopping for the first time that I can remember. My previous milestone was running a mile without stopping in September.

So, in summary...I'm not totally where I want to be yet (10% body fat), but I'm nearing the end of the journey I started almost a year ago.  I plan to continue the paleo/cross-fit approach indefinitely, and am confident it will take me the rest of the way to my goal and beyond.  Feel free to contact me if you ever have questions about how things are going, as I'll probably start posting less about fitness and diet at this point, and get back to technology posts, since we have a lot of exciting tech stuff on the horizon!

CrossFit!!!

In late September, I started a membership at Hoosier CrossFit, and am now halfway through the 12-session on-ramp program, and I feel like a million bucks!

If you're not familiar with CrossFit, the best way I could describe it would be a highly varied total body workout performed at high intensity in a group setting three to five days a week (or more if you're totally crazy). Each day consists of a "Workout of the Day", or "WOD", and can include a wide variety of exercises, like pullups, jump rope, rope climbing, box jumps, running, dead lifts, cleans, snatches, squats, pushups, ring dips, rowing, et cetera. Generally, around three exercises are picked from a list, and you rotate through them as a set for a predefined time or number of reps. Some example crossfit workouts can be found here.

People participate in CrossFit at a wide variety of levels, from those wanting to achieve and general level of fitness for longevity to those who want to compete professionally. I'm on the former side of the that spectrum, but enjoy watching those that live on the other side as well. As an added bonus, Shaun and Jenna are running a 30 day Paleo Challenge as well, and since I'm now eating 100% Paleo, it worked out great for me to solidify my transition. If you're looking for something new to jump start the fitness side of your general health and wellness plan, I'd strongly recommend CrossFit. If you're in Bloomington, you can go by Hoosier Crossfit for a free intro workout to see if it's right for you. As for my latest numbers, I've now finally hit 160, which was my goal when setting out on this journey, but I still have a bit to go from a body fat percentage perspective. I'm now at 13.6% (down from 26% in December), and am pushing hard to make it the rest of the way to 10%.

Transitioning from 4HB to Paleo/Crossfit

I'm now 8 months and 30 pounds into my journey of fitness, kicked off last Christmas after having read Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Body and Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat. Through 2011, I've been continuously studying fitness and nutrition, and have recently been ingesting many books, blogs, podcasts, movies, and websites, several of which lean toward the Paleo flavor of the low-carb diet. The first thing I noticed when reading The Paleo Diet is that I'd actually been eating this way for awhile, since I'd started with 4HB and had pretty much dropped all of the beans out of the diet other than Chipotle salads, and I'd added in a lot of fruit (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, in addition to juicing an apple or two into my "green lemonade".

There's a bit of controversy around Paleo or other low-carb diets (or any diet in existence for that matter), and I still regularly discuss the pros and cons of the diets with friends and family, but all I can say is what I'm personally experiencing, especially after having transitioned into a Paleo Diet more fully:

• I'm still continuing to lose weight at the rate of 1-2 pounds per week
• My energy is still sky high
• My allergies, hives, and asthma have gone away
• I sleep soundly through every night, and wake up ready to jump out of bed on most days
• My blood pressure has continued to drop into more optimal numbers
• My strength numbers have continued to increase (from two pull-ups to six, and now jogging an 11:00 minute-mile when I previously couldn't jog a full mile without stopping mid-way to catch my breath)

I'll be going back in for another round of blood work soon to ensure that all the numbers still look great, and in the mean time, I'm actively seeking out local grass-fed beef and dairy, omega-3 eggs, wild-caught fish, et cetera.

As for my latest stats, since I haven't been in for blood work again yet, I just have the following to report:

• Weight: 163 (down from 191 in December, and 172 in June)
• Waist Size: 34" (down from 41" in December, and 36" in June)
• Body fat: 15% (down from 26% in December and 17% in June)
• Pull-ups: 6 (up from 0 in December and 2-3 in June)
• Blood Pressure: 115/70 (down from 130/85 in December, and 122/74 in June)

My main focus over the next few months will be bringing down body fat from 15% to 10%, and increasing strength. It's been a very interesting year, and I feel like I've learned a lot. I still don't have scientific proof that this diet/lifestyle is the best over the long haul, but it has definitely worked wonders for me over the past year.

I thought this might be a good time to summarize the things I've implemented over the past year, ranging from what I believe had the most impact and I'd most strongly recommend, to those things which may have had less impact or are more controversial.

Diet

Other than on rare special occasions, I generally stick to the following rules:

1. Cut out all soft drinks, both naturally and artificially sweetened.
2. Cut out general sugar and artificial sweeteners from everywhere in the diet.
3. Cut out all sugary or processed snacks (this does not include berries or other low GL fruit).
4. Cut out all potato chips, french fries, and potatoes.
5. Cut out white bread and anything made with white flour.
6. Seek out grass-fed beef, pastured pork/poultry, and wild-caught fish.
7. Eat whole foods whenever possible.
8. Eat something green with every meal (salad, kale, broccoli, spinach, et cetera). 9.Cut out all bread and wheat products.
9. Cut out or limit dairy products (unless you have access to grass-fed/raw dairy, which is rare).
10. Supplement "green intake" by drinking "green juice"

Exercise

1. BFL Interval Training
2. Kettlebell swings
3. P90X
4. Cross-fit (starting this week)

As for what I've recently been reading/watching/listening to:

Books:

• The Paleo Diet
• Nourishing Traditions
• Why We Get Fat
• Body for Life (coming back to the book that originally got me started after about 10 years)

Podcasts:

• The Paleo Solution Podcast

Blogs:

• Non Nom Paleo
• The Paleo Solution
• Whole Health Source

Videos:

• Fat Head
• Farmageddon
• Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead
• Food, Inc.

Mixing (Juicing) It Up with the Breville Juice Fountain Elite

Lately I've been watching lots of health/nutrition documentaries on Netflix, and recently came across an interesting documentary called Sick, Fat, and Nearly Dead, which is basically about a guy that's significantly over-weight with lots of health problems who decides to go on a juice fast to cure his maladies and lose lots of weight. I won't spoil the movie, but I'll just say it got me wondering how adding some "green juice" (kale, chard, collard greens, et cetera) into my diet would affect my overall goals of health.

Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite

After pondering and researching for a couple weeks, I finally decided to pull the trigger on a Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite. I went with Breville primarily because that's the model of juicer they use in the movie, and I went with the Juice Fountain Elite because it has 500+ customer reviews on Amazon, of which almost all are 4 and 5 star. I looked at "lesser" models, but was concerned that cheaper juicers have a hard time with leafy vegetables, and that was going to be one of my primary use cases. So far, I've not been disappointed. I've been able to juice a wide variety of greens and have had great sucess with most everything. I will say that the curly leaved kale variety seems to return much less juice than something like a lacinato kale variety, so I try to avoid that when juicing. Other than that, I've had little to no issues, and am actually very pleasantly surprised with how easy this thing is to clean. I pretty much just rinse out everything but the filter basket, and then do a 30-second scrub of that basket with the provided brush, and then set it on a towel to dry. All in all, the juicing takes under 5 minutes, and the cleaning takes under 5 minutes, so it doesn't wear me out or make me dread going through the process.

Green Lemonade

So now that I've got this fancy contraption, what am I making with it? Primarily, I started with a "green lemonade" recipe, which I think I found on YouTube (there are hundreds of green lemonade recipes out there), and then started tweaking it slightly each day to make it taste ideal.

Most recipes include something like:

• Kale or chard or other leafy greens


• Celery


• Apple


• Lemon and/or Lime


• Ginger

Currently, I've been finding the freshest looking green stuff each week at my Co-op and using that. This week, my recipe was:

• 5 Leaves of Kale


• 3 Leaves of Chard


• 2 Leaves of Collard Greens (these are huge)


• 4 Stalks of Celery


• 3 Granny Smith Apples


• 1/3 of a Lemon


• 1/3 of a Lime


• a 1-inch Chunk of Ginger

That recipe makes somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-800 ml of juice, and I divide it into 3 servings, of which I have one with breakfast (of bacon and eggs), and one in the late morning, and then give the third serving to my wife (who drinks it very slowly over the course of an hour or two).

So how does it taste? Well, it depends on who you ask. I personally love the taste, and could drink it all day, but my wife seems to not be as big of a fan, though she has readily admitted to me that it's really primarly a mental hurdle of drinking something that is bright green and pulpy.

Conclusion

I've been juicing for about two and a half weeks now, and have no regrets. At the moment, I definitely wouldn't go on a juice-only fast like the guy in the documentary, but at least I can now officially tell all the naysayers of my low-carb diet that in combination with the blueberries and raspberries I've started eating (which have low glycemic load) and the large salads and other greens I have with lunch and dinner, I'm getting more than enough of my fruits and vegetable servings per day, while still maintaining a pretty low-carb diet otherwise after having pretty much cut out all starches.

In addition, according to my WiThings Scale, I'm now weighing in at 168 with 16.0% body fat, down from 193 at 26% body fat, so I can't argue with the results. My weight loss has slowed fairly significantly, but then again, I don't expect to keep the pace I started with now that I'm back in normal ranges, and I haven't gained any weight since adding this to the diet. My goal is still to settle in at 160/10% by November, which I feel is still definitely reachable, but at this point, I guess time will tell.

If you have any questions about the juicer, juicing, recipes, or anything else, feel free to post in the comments.

Happy Juicing!

Janssen