 Missey and EC are badass babes - no foolin'! Origins of April Fools' DayAccording to History.com:
"Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. In the Julian Calendar, as in the Hindu calendar, the new year began with the spring equinox around April 1. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes and were called 'April fools.' These pranks included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person." Whatever! I wish we had stayed with the Julian calendar, It makes way more sense to me to have the new year start on the Spring Equinox rather than the dead of winter. But hey, what do I know? We have something fun planned for you today and you would be a fool to miss it!
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 Kelsi uses the hex bar to deadlift during the Intramural Open. What's For Dinner?There is one question that every single human on earth asks themself every single day. What's for Dinner? We all must eat. Some of us cook for ourselves and others have their food cooked for them (lucky you!) But, we all must eat. What should we eat? Eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. Yep, we need plants. We need fruits and vegetables, in their whole form, not processed into some unrecognizable concoction and sold to you in a plastic container. Eat plants as they were when they came out of the ground, off the stalk, stem or vine. No matter your eating strategy, it's vital that we avoid high and ultra processed foods. Michael Easter explores this important nutrition recommendation in his book, Scarcity Brain. He talked to many subject matter experts and travelled to the Amazon to discover what healthy people eat. He spent a week eating with the a tribe of people who have ZERO heart disease. This is remarkable since heart disease is the NUMBER ONE killer of Americans. Heart disease kills more people than all other diseases COMBINED! Your diet, what you eat, is by far the biggest contributor of increased risk of heart disease, and one type of food in particular is the biggest contributor: high and ultra high-processed foods. What is a high or ultra high processed food? It's something that has more than one other processed ingredient. Here's a nice visual from Stephanie Kay Nutrition:  Nearly all food gets processed, e.g. it gets cooked, before we eat it. But the foods that are the real problem are the ones that have multiple other processed ingredients and go through many processing methods before we eat them. Delicious foods like candy, potato chips. hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, tacos, breakfast cereal, yogurt with added fruits, meat nuggets, meat sticks, soft drinks, etc. You get the picture. In Scarcity Brain, Michael Easter found that people who eat mostly single ingredient foods, meat, fish, fowl, vegetables, fruit, and rice lived the longest and had the lowest risk for heart disease. Michael Pollan, another well-researched food journalist and professor, agrees. We should eat food that looks like food. If it has a face, comes from the ground, grows on a stem, or IS the stem, eat more of that. To help get cooking with all the delicious single ingredient foods we bought last week at Costco, let's cook something delectable from my favorite source for recipes straight from the farm, Dishing up the Dirt. Click on the image below for a fabulous pork and Autumn harvest vegetable stew. It's just the type of delicious cooking we can do to make our hearts happy.  This pork and vegetable stew is filled with many fabulous non-processed foods. You can choose a leaner ground of meat, turkey would be just fine:)  How to do CrossFit for 14 Years: Know ThyselfTwenty twenty-four is an auspicious year. True Spirit CrossFit will celebrate its 10th anniversary in July and this month I celebrate 14 years of doing CrossFit. How have I stuck with it for so long? How do I continue to train despite arthritis in both knees? How do I keep pursing elite level fitness in my 50s? How have I done this for 14 years and not been seriously injured? Know thyself. Recently, I wrote about how I have learned to adapt and modify my training to accommodate my arthritis and NOT GET INJURED. I do that by understanding my physical and physiological tolerances. This understanding is one of the very first lessons that is taught in the CrossFit Level 1 Training Course. Aspiring coaches are taught that an athlete's performance will vary based on
My performance for any given workout is dependent upon how much sleep I got, what I've been eating and drinking, the training load of the week, if I'm depressed or struggling with my mental health. It's based on the choices I make for the 23 hours I'm not in the gym training. These outside-the-gym decisions will either set me up for success or increase the risk for injury. Far too often I hear someone say, I hurt myself doing X, Y, or Z. so therefore I'm not going to do X, Y, or Z anymore. The problem is not X, Y or Z, it's that you didn't know thyself and your tolerances. I recently read an excellent article on this very subject written by Dr. Maysa Hannawi. She writes: People are quick to demonize movements. “I hurt my back deadlifting, deadlifts are bad for me.” “I hurt my shoulder pressing overhead, I should stop pressing overhead.” To have longevity in any physical training program, be it barre or CrossFit, we must meet ourselves where we are at on THIS day. Take a close looks at what's going on in our life. Perhaps it's just the impetus we need to make the changes we've been talking about all year. If you need help. please book a check-in with me. Together we can figure out ways to increase your capacity.
Today's a heavy day:) Be sure to eat all your protein today!
How to do "Your Own Research" on Supplements
I've been writing a series of blogs on critical thinking and science literacy as it relates to silly bullshit you see in the heath and fitness universe. As athletes I want us all to train hard, eat to support our training and not fall prey to fitness influencers trying to sell us magic pills, powders, elixirs and tonics promising to cleanse, detoxify and do all manner of magical things.
One of the reasons I'm critical of supplements is that they are COMPLETELY UNREGULATED. They do not have to be rigorously tested for efficacy by anyone, not the FDA, not the USDA, NO ONE SINGLE entity of oversight or testing is legally required for supplements. Within the industry there is no requirement of testing for purity, no requirement for testing of what's actually included in the bottle. No testing for if the supplement actually does what it claims to do. A recent study of 57 "sport enhancing" supplements found that 40% DID NOT contain the active ingredient listed on the label. This lack of regulation is the result of a giant multi-billion dollar lobbying force that successfully manipulated congress to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. This act reclassified supplements as FOOD and removed all regulatory oversight the FDA had in ensuring that what you put in your mouth actually contains what the big-supplement company says it does and that it actually does what the big-supplement company says it will do. I think we deserve better. I think we should be fully confident that what we take to improve our health should actually be tested. Call me crazy, but I want science to show me the money. There are three supplements that have a rigorous tome of scientific research and I have explored them in previous blogs. These are, Creatine, Caffeine, and Protein. I encourage everyone to "do their own research." In the very basic sense of this idea it means reading scientific literature and the actual words of laws, bills, etc. In the case of supplements I think everyone should have a solid understanding of the DSHEA and how the giant supplement industry successfully lobbied for removing regulatory oversight of their industry. That's a cool trick, indeed. Other resources for doing your own research include: Examine.com - Independent group of researchers who do exhaustive literature surveys of supplement efficacy and safety. Operation Supplement Safety - Department of Defense dietary supplement efficacy and safety program Consumer Reports - Third party reporting on the efficacy and safety of supplements. If you're not interested in reading, you can always listen to this podcast from OptimizeMe Nutrition, called The Consistency Project. Specifically, I recommend listening to the episode on the Supplements and the Worried Well. You can listen to it via the link below or by going here:
Do you have a health and wellness topic you want me to explore? Let me know in the comments.
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