A Fork in the Road

I have reached a fork in the road.

Following the PCP regimen is important in my mind, but hasn't been as present in my actions. Every time after I eat something I know is bad for me, and each day of the week that I don't work out, I tell myself that from that point on, I am going to do better. But lately, I haven't been. My diet isn't all bad, but it's not completely balanced and I have been eating out more often. Where I feel that I am really lacking is daily exercise. I have not given myself the time to take a 20 minute break from my work to go outside and do my jump ropes. It's in the back of my mind, but somehow day-to-day it has not been on my top priorities.

So here's my dilemma. I really want to get back into shape, and, even more so, feel more healthy and energetic. There are two directions I could go from this point.

The first path is to admit to myself that, right now, running my home businesses is important and time-consuming, and a PCP regimen is just not going to happen at this point. That doesn't by any means mean that I would give up on good health, just simply stepping back from the PCC and relieving myself of the pressure to get into peak condition at this point in my life.

The second would be to step up to the plate and give the PCP and this community all the effort I can.

I have made the decision to take the first path, to back off from the PCC for now. This will be my last post for now. I have to be honest about where my priorities lie. I will of course keep reading the blog, and cheering everyone on. I think that a few other members of this community are at this same crossroads. I hope we can all support each other, whichever path we have chosen.

Good luck to everyone! I can't wait to read your future posts.

Emiko

Are You Trapped Behind These Bars?

Today I'm taking on a trend that I once enthusiastically took part in.  I used to have a book delivery job at my University, and on my delivery shifts I'd always take along an "energy bar."

Everyone is familiar with these things.  Back then pretty much the only choice was Powerbar, which came in Chocolate or Peanut Butter (both which shared the flavor profile of "nasty").  But I'd look on the back of the foil package and see I was getting 300% of my daily thiamin, 130% of my folic acid, and so on, and I'd feel pretty good about myself.  Plus, delivering all those heavy books with the school van was hard work, I needed the energy boost, right?

Well, 10 years later, and about 20 pounds lighter, I can see the folly of my youth.  The energy bar is just another misappropriated health product that was never intended for a mass market. 

Here's the history of two famous energy bar brands, the aforementioned PowerBar and its competitor Clif Bar, lifted from Wikipedia:

"Maxwell started the PowerBar company with his girlfriend, Jennifer Biddulph, a nutritionist who later became his wife. He came up with the idea of an energy bar after dropping out of a marathon at the 21-mile mark, at about the segment of the 26.2 mile event known among runners as "The Wall", where experts say the body ceases burning carbohydrates and begins burningmuscle tissue instead."

"While on a 175 mile bike ride founder and CEO Gary Erickson was eating energy bars and decided he could no longer take another bite due to the taste. He developed Clif Bar as an alternative to the many poor tasting energy bars on the market."

Did you notice something there?  The PowerBar guy was running marathons.  In fact he was on the Canadian Olympic Marathon team.  And the Clif Bar dude was on a 175 mile bike ride when his little lightbulb went off.  These guys were serious athletes performing near the extremes of human endurance.  And they invented super compressed calorie dense foods that were portable and packed a serious punch for systems depleted and starting to fail.

And yet today these products have proven so lucrative that they are being pitched as a healthy "pick you up" as you whiz through your busy day of dropping off the kids, going to meetings, cranking out that report, and hitting up yoga on the way home from work.  Clif Bar's female version, the ubiquitous Luna Bar, has little splash graphics on their homepage that change each time you go there.  Try for yourself! I've seen so far graphics of stylized women lying on the couch, grocery shopping, hula hooping, doing yoga in the park, and hanging out with friends.  I must have missed the Olympic marathoner and the 175 mile bike rider.

I don't care how mischievous your kids or or how hard your yoga session, you are not burning enough calories to warrant a 200-400 calorie midday "snack" to get you through to dinner.  The recipe for these bars hasn't changed much over the years.  A a blast of sugar followed by a bricks worth of carbs to get you over that 150 mile mark. Except now as they try to gain more market appeal with Chocolate Covered Raspberry Drizzle topping or what not there is even more saturated fats and processed junk going in than ever before.

The same thing happened with Gatorade and its ilk in the early 90s, a drink meant for athletes seriously pushing their bodies was moved over to a market or people who wanted to be like those athletes without all the hassle of actually exercising.  Now these energy drinks are consumed in vast quantities as a "healthy" alternative to sugary colas. (Guess what suckers, a bottle of Powerade has as many calories as a can of Coca Cola).   Hey, the number one tennis player in the world drinks it, why wouldn't it be appropriate for an active young guy like myself? Well, sorry dude, playing video games and surfing porn doesn't exactly warrant replenishing your electrolytes. 

The funny thing is, the designers of these products know very well that the vast majority of people have no need for this kind of supplement, but they won't be caught dead breathing a word about that.  So it's up to me.

If you are a regular person doing moderate and even strenuous exercise, you never need to eat an energy bar.  It will just add on excess calories, making the gains you made during your training a wash.  And if you are a desk worker or homemaker who eats these things as healthy snacks, you need to get off the crack.  The only way these could be worked into a diet is if you had one instead of a meal, and that would be a terrible trade off.  To give up the natural nutrition of fresh food for one of these sugary factory made carbo-bombs would be insane.  They look healthy and natural but you might as well be eating a candy bar.  In fact, why not a Snickers Marathon Bar!  I wish I was making this up.

Stick with your vegetables and fruit and don't let companies, however hippie and granola they present themselves to be, do the work of providing nutrition and energy for your body.  They don't really want you to be healthy and energized.  They just want your money.

Perform Your Own Gastric Bypass!

In the last few years, Gastric Bypass surgery has become all the rage.  Magazines love to put stars who have lost weight on their covers, and this applies even to those who arrived there via stomach surgery.  To see some stars who've undergone this operation check out this link.  The surgery is actually pretty simple.  The doctors open you up, snip your small intestine, and attach the intestine just BEFORE the tube that enters your main stomach organ.  The stomach is bypassed completely, and your new stomach is just the little pouch where food normally gathers just before entering the digestive tract.  This graphic illustrates it well.  That little empty tube on the bottom left?  Yeah, that's where your intestine USED to attach.  Cool/gross factor here.

The average person loses 100-150 pounds after gastric bypass.  This is not done through willpower or a special diet, it simply happens because, with a stomach the size of an egg, patients can't physically eat enough to keep putting on the pounds.

There is something to be learned here for the rest of us who are simply trying to maintain healthy weights:  

When your stomach is full, food loses its power over you.

We all know this process.  Go to an all you can eat Chinese buffet.  The first trip up, the food looks and smells so wonderful.  So you load up your plate and chow down.  The second trip up, the exact same food starts to look a bit heavy, a bit sickly under the lights. But you go for it anyway.  The third trip, what just 30 mins earlier looked delicious is starting to seem repulsive.  I've been to a few Thanksgivings where I've been so full that I literally couldn't look at food anymore.  Indeed, one of the universal signs of "I'm stuffed" is holding up the hand, closing the eyes, and looking away.  That's how gastric bypass patients feel after a small serving.  Cravings and willpower just aren't an issue anymore.

I got onto this line of thinking last week when I had a busy day where I didn't have a chance to eat lunch.  That afternoon I had to go to the department store.  In Japan the basements of department stores are where fine foods are sold and served.  So I was passing all these counters filled with pastries, cakes, delicately fried dishes, and glistening juicy morsels at every turn.  It was hard to ignore it all, and I soon broke down and bought my favorite sweet red bean pancake sandwich, Obanyaki.  Yum!  But a bunch of empty calories that won't make me any healthier.  It wasn't the particular quality of the food that tempted me, it was the state of my stomach as I passed the food.  A little lightbulb went off above my head.

1. Leverage the power of a full stomach.  If you physically fill up your stomach, even a chocolate swirl cheesecake with whipped cream and blueberries won't have the slightest pull over you.  You will be invincible.  The trick is, of course, to fill up your stomach with good stuff.  Fruit is your go to food here.  Eating a whole apple will add negligible calories to your diet, but will leave you feeling full for a few hours.  Also, as we've discussed at length, switching to a 6 small meals a day approach to eating will keep you topped up and craving free.  You can also use water or tea to fill out your stomach if there's nothing else available.

2. Shrink your stomach organ.  No surgeons required.  Just as we can stretch out our stomach organ if we consistently overeat, we can allow it to shrink back to a more natural size.  Most people eat far more than their caloric needs.  If you can just start to cut the amount of food you eat, the stomach will protest a bit (i.e, will tell you it's hungry), but will eventually become smaller in response.  Suddenly what a few weeks ago would have left you feeling unsatisfied now fills you up.  Portion control!

Why spend energy fighting cravings, when we can largely bypass them entirely just by thinking a bit ahead and always keeping our smaller sized stomachs full of good stuff?  Who's in?

PCP Cavities

I went to the dentist this week for a cleaning and to get my wisdom teeth checked up, and I found out that I had two cavities! TWO! I couldn't believe it. I haven't had very many cavities since I was a little kid, so I was surprised that two popped up after improving my diet so drastically.

My dentist asked me if I had been eating a lot of sticky foods or candy, but I have mostly given up sugar since last fall. She then asked if I had been snacking a lot. At first I was going to say no, just because I think of "snacking" as a negative thing... like stuffing your face with junky food all day long. But in reality, I do snack a lot. The PCP regimen has us eating small meals and snacks throughout the day. I asked her, even if it's healthy food, if snacking is bad for your teeth. The answer was Yes.

It turns out that eating many small meals throughout the day provides a lot of opportunities for food to get stuck in your teeth, for long periods, before we brush our teeth at night. And the longer the food sits between your teeth, the more likely you are to get cavities. YIKES! So I asked my dentist what the best solution was, and she said to drink water while you eat, and to brush your teeth some time in the middle of the day if possible. I guess I coulda anticipated that one, but it really makes sense. Too bad I had to figure that out after I already needed fillings.

Hope there won't be any next time... I hate novicane shots!

So drink that water all day long! It's good for you anyway.

Until next week!
Emiko

Cold Spring

Why do I still have my floor heating on?  The cherry blossoms are out....doesn't it mean spring is here?  It's past March 21st....doesn't it mean it's supposed to warm up now?  

I've been completely baffled by the weather this year, and am thinking of only one thing.....I'm not going to be able to wear my "spring clothes" and all of a sudden it's going to be a blistering hot summer in Japan.  I really do like the seasons, but being from nothern California, I'm still not really used to them.  For example, I don't put my sweaters away in the summer and I don't put my sandals away in the winter!  

The good news about cold weather and cold rain is that I spend more time indoors which gives me more time to do "PCP type" exercises.  The bad news is that I spend more time indoors which draws me to the pantry and all of it's evils.

SO....I'd be much happier out and about, wearing my spring clothes.....right now I'm wish this winter would actually turn into spring before it really becomes summer!

Stay warm!

Munisha

Parkour and the Wounds to Prove It

So I finally went to my first official Parkour Workshop! I would say 3/28/09 marks the beginning of my official Parkour practice. I was super excited and Zach and Charles did a great job organizing the event. I had an awesome time and can;t wait to start going every saturday. 

I have to say, if it is possible for you to go to some kind of Parkour workshop please do! Everyone was there from late 40's (maybe early 50's) to 4 years old. And everyone had a blast! Not to mention my quads never hurt so bad the day after a work-out. NOt even during the most intense PCP regimen! That could have something to do with not working out well for a couple months though! haha. I also got scraped up and bruised. Which was awesome because I needed a wake-up, I needed a little pain, I have become too comfortable and that was the most alive I have felt in months.

I learned a lot of great stuff about landings, rolling, jumps and precisions, and wall-runs and top-outs. I also learned a lot about my city, and the great places it has to offer for PK.

So please go out there and move! The fact that our relatively small city and the relatively small Rochester Parkour group had over 100 people show up proves that it's in all of us to want to MOVE! And to be efficient and confront our easy lives and feel a little challenge and even pain. 

A lot of those 100+ people vaulted a bench or climbed over a wall or did a diving roll for the first times since they were kids or in their lives! It's not right. Everyone should do Parkour. Everyone should study how their body moves. We should all not be ashamed to walk around on all-fours and do handstands!

Go move! Here's to a summer of growth and progress. And here is to 5 weeks of training to get into some semblance of good shape before back-packing Europe!

So check out Zach's write up at ROCPK and the photos that go along with it!

My Theory of the Male Cycle : First Public Airing

If you ask any male of the human species who happens to be in a long term relationship with a female of the species, he will be able to tell you that his mate goes through a regular and predictable series of body changes and mood swings depending on the time of month.  For some women these swings are mild, for others, wild.  

I have know women who, like clockwork, have an easy month followed by a manic one.  I have known some who get a zit in the same place every single cycle.  I've seen it all, elation, depression, swollen parts, dry patches, hot flashes, and cold stares.  I've even helped a few ladies through menopause.

We have come to expect, and respect, the fact that a woman's body is an extremely fine tuned organic wave pattern.  There's a consensus that a female is simply more physically and emotionally complicated than a man, which I mostly agree with.

But I wanted to write about how men actually operate in their own mysterious cycle.  This is a fact that most couples overlook and which causes a lot of unnecessary strife in relationships.  

Most of this is based on my own experience keeping track of subtle changes in my mind/body condition during the years of yoga and meditation.  But once I lay out my theory to other guys they seem to recognize similar patterns in their own lives, once they know what to look for.

So, here's what I've figured out so far:

• The male cycle lasts about 3 months.  Whether this has anything to do with the seasons has yet to be determined but that would make sense.
  

• It is characterized not so much by changes in mood, but by fluctuations in motivation and energy levels.
  

• The cycle is defined by two polarities:
  

1. The high point, in which a guy is eager to work, has a creative boost, and feels more positive and in control about the direction of his life.  A lot of things will finally get done in this 1-2 week period.
   
2. And the low point, the male becomes more introverted.  It can be hard to muster excitement for even fun activities.  At this time the male will question his choices and motivations.  He will tend to stick to his dwelling or usual hangouts.  There will also be a strong need for solitude or solo activities.

• There is a similar arc in the sexuality of the male, although libido runs along a smaller series of cycles that are harmonious with this 3 month cycle.  (I.e, the guy will feel keen sexual desire at both the highest and lowest points of this cycle.  During the inbetween times the desire for sex will diminish.)
  

• When the cycle is at odds with life events, the shadow-side of the high and low points will arise. In practice this means that motivation can become aggression, and quiet solitude depression.
  

So, how can we use this information to make our lives run more smoothly?

First, guys need to start paying attention and identify where they are in their own cycle.  This can be established pretty easily once you're on the look out for it.  Once you've got a handle on this, start doing what I call "surfing the wave".

If you've ever tried real surfing, you'll know that you can't catch every wave.  Sometimes you're in the wrong spot, and no amount of paddling is going to get your board where it needs to be. So you just let the wave wash under you, and keep your eyes open for one that will be in the right place at the right time.

So, for example, you have a new project that you want to take on.  Think about your timing and try to align the time that the project will require a big push with the 1-2 week high point of your cycle.  Similarly, if there is a lot of grunt work to be done at some point, that is an ideal kind of activity for the trough of the wave, when it's hard to be creative and visionary.

And moms, friends, spouses, and sisters, you too need to tune in to the male wave pattern.  Knowing that a guy is entering his low weeks, beware that it will be tough to get him to do much, but that it's not forever.  In a few weeks he'll be back to his old self and in a few more weeks he'll be your ideal man again.  Of course, that's only for a brief time too!

I've labeled this cycle with "high and low points", which isn't the best phrasing because it makes one sound desirable over the other.  In fact, like any wave pattern, the peak wouldn't exist without the trough.  The low point of the cycle is in fact when the seeds of creativity and problem solving are sown.

Naturally I've got a lot to say about this but I'll stop here for now.  Try to investigate these things for yourselves and get back to me with correlating or contrary evidence!

And guys, don't sell yourselves short.  In your own way, you have just as many deep unexplored aspects of yourselves as your female counterparts.  Learn to work with these subtle forces rather than fight against them.