Ok, let's play a game. Can you spot the food?
Monday, March 24, 2008
Roasted cauliflower
This was incredibly delicious. I poured olive oil in the pan then rubbed the cauliflower in it so the spices would stick to it better. The spices were thyme, rosemary, pepper, and garlic. I placed it in the oven for 30min. on 375. I think I might turn the temp down next time or leave it in for 5 less minutes because some of the garlic got burnt but not all of it. I'm not sure if that was supposed to happen. Regardless, it tasted wonderful.
Interval Training for fat loss
The benefits of interval training over low-intensity (e.g. walking) and moderate-intensity (e.g. jogging) exercise are many. Not only do individuals who perform interval training get more fat loss, but they also see greater improvements in endurance and heart function. But since this discussion is about the effect of interval training on fat loss, I'll leave the discussion of the latter two for a later date.
In this first study three groups of women were assigned to do either interval training, steady-state training, or nothing for 15 weeks. After the 15 weeks, only the interval training group seen reductions in total body mass, fat mass, truck fat, and fasting insulin levels. The latter result, an improvement in fasting insulin levels, is why I believe interval training and carbohydrate reduction work for the same reason, both improve insulin sensitivity. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, and the less sensitive you are, the more insulin your body secretes.
From the conclusion:HIIE (high intensity intermittent exercise) three times per week for 15 weeks compared to the same frequency of SSE (steady-state exercise) exercise was associated with significant reductions in total body fat, subcutaneous leg and trunk fat, and insulin resistance in young women.
If you delve further into the PhD thesis this study is based on you get some startling results. For example, the SSE group actually had an smallincrease in fat mass from 31.69% to 32.28%. One individual actually gained 7% body while participating in the SSE. This is a pretty typical result with SSE. Compare this to the HIIE group who lost about a little over 3% body fat. If you look at the differences in regional fat distribution, for example in the trunk, the HIIE lost 10% of their trunk (midsection) fat mass but the SSE gained 11%! The author theorized that this was the result of the HIIE protocol releasing catecholamines which stimulate fat burning, particularly in the abdomen in which the fat is especially sensitive to the effects of the catecholamines.
Another interesting factor to note is that the researchers found the individuals that didn't respond well to the HIIE protocol were insulin resistant, and since insulin inhibits the mobilization of fat this could account for their lack of results. This suggests that if your exercise is competing against your diet for improving insulin sensitivity that your diet will win out and you'll be unable to reap the benefits of interval training.
So, this is but one example of the studies that show interval training to be superior to traditional cardio routines. It's a very good one because of it long duration and the fact that the researchers gathered much data. Next time I talk about intervals, I'll get into some of the other health benefits that have greater improvement from them.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Get your eat on
Unsure of how to cook for yourself when paleo dieting? No problem, the following recipes should keep you busy for a while...
Art De Vany and his wife probably make the simplest meals. Just hit "previous entries" to keep looking at examples.
Mark's Daily Apple has a million good ones.
My Paleo Kitchen keeps the recipe difficulty down as well.
On the blog roll, I have a link to Dr. Michael Eades, but his wife, Dr. Mary Eades also keeps a blog where she has many good recipes.
Feed the Fitness's Nikki Young has some interesting recipes.
The aptly titled Paleo Recipes has a few more to try.
Lorain Cordain has a ton of recipes from his book, The Paleo Diet.
This last link has a pretty huge archive. Paleo Food.
I personally like to visit Mark's Daily Apple because it has a good number of recipes along with appetizing pictures. The above recipes should provide enough variety to appease just about anyone. Remember to tinker with the recipes and see what works for you.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Swedish study finds Paleo diet better than Mediterranean
Last year the first controlled trial of a paleolithic diet was performed, comparing it to the highly regarded and doctor approved Mediterranean diet.
Take a look at this Science Daily article.
According to the study, the paleolithic group lost 2in. around the waist over 12 weeks, compared to 1in. for the Mediterranean group. The paleolithic group also had a much more drastic decrease in blood sugar. I can't glean from the abstract how much weight or body fat each group lost, but a different study from a few months earlier found a paleolithic diet resulted in a 5lbs. weight loss over 3 weeks. No exercise intervention is mentioned in the abstracts of either study.
So, what we see in this study is that both weight loss and a marker of heart disease show greater results from a paleolithic diet than the traditionally doctor/nutritionist approved Mediterranean diet.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Supplementing Your Diet
Mark Sisson has some good advice today on selecting a vitamin supplement.
I would suggest that everyone who isn't eating a paleo diet supplement with a good multi-vitamin that has the qualities Mark describes. Even if you are a eating a standard AHA, government approved, low fat, food pyramid diet you need to supplement with a multi-vitamin because these diets are deficient in nutrients. The paleo diet comes closest to offering the full compliment of nutrients that your body needs.
I would add to Mark's advice to make sure your supplement has 100 micrograms of selenium. Also, pre-menopausal women may need a supplement with iron, but men and menopausal women probably do not. In fact, those latter two groups should have their blood iron levels checked with a serrum ferritin test. If you don't feel like taking the test then you should donate blood to lower your levels just in case (you most likely have too much iron anyway). I would suggest that menopausal women have the test first though. Pre-menopausal women are already "donating" blood every month, so this isn't for them.
Lastly, if you find a supplement with 400mg of magnesium citrate, malate, or aspartate, consider yourself lucky. Otherwise, most people need extra supplementation of magnesium. You're probably magnesium deficient if you don't regularly eat foods like spinach, pumpkin seeds, brazil nuts, cashews, almonds, artichokes, and halibut.
One supplement that you need for sure is omega-3 fish oil. The reason being that much of the meat we eat today is fed a grain based diet which leaves the fat of the animals with a high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Even salmon can have a high 6:3 ratio if it's farmed raised instead of wild caught.
Try the Carlson brand.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
POSE Method
Events like marathons, triathlons, 5K's, 10K's, ect. are very popular today, but few people that compete in these events actually have proper running technique.
The problem is most people strike the ground with their heels and then roll to the ball of foot and push off. This seems natural, but in fact it is not! The human foot evolved to strike the ground on the ball of the foot because this acts like a spring or shock absorber. Try this out: jump up and down on your heels. All you get is a thud. Now, jump up and down on the balls of your feet like your jumping rope. You've got some bounce there, right? Like I just said, landing on the balls of your feet acts as a shock absorber and a spring. The springiness comes from the stretch reflex, that is, when your muscles and tendons undergo a quick stretch and rebound requiring you to do less work. So, wouldn't it make sense to use this to your advantage while running? Landing on the heel, after all, does nothing but send a bigger shock up through your ankles, knees, hip, and back, making it more likely that you'll become injured.
So, who's fault is this poor running form? Well, some comes from an unlikely source: shoe manufacturers. Because many running shoes are made with a substantially cushioned heel, the heel does the job of absorbing impact instead of your body in the way that it's designed. This allows people to run on the heels when they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Ok, let's go back to the little experiment from before. Start bouncing up and down on the balls of your feet like you were before. Now, while keeping up your bouncing lean your body slightly forward. What happened? You should of started to move forward. This is another element of the POSE method. Allowing gravity to do the work of forward propulsion. Why do the work when you don't have to?
These two concepts are what makes POSE running the safest and most efficient method of running. But what does POSE running actually look like? From here on out, I'll let the man behind the POSE method, Dr. Romanov, do the talking. In these next three videos, he's going to explain the three phases: Pose, Fall, and Pull.
This short video puts everything together.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Is Paleo dieting boring?
Many people claim that eating healthy is boring, but if you were look at the types of food they eat you would probably see they eat the same junk food over and over. The problem, perhaps, is that their taste buds have gotten so used to eating nothing but sugary foods that anything less becomes unpalatable. Regardless, Modern Forager has a good write up on ways to make healthy eating more flavorful.
The low-down: Don't use similar colored foods. For example, if you're cooking a meal with spinach and peppers, use yellow, red, or orange peppers instead of green. The more colors you use in the ingredients the more presentable the appearance, which in turn can actually make your food taste better to you.
Keep in mind textures. Mix and match textures like mushy, crisp, creamy, slimy, crunchy, ect. just like you do colors.
Spices are the spice of life. I've said many times that if you want to make healthy food taste good, you must learn to use spices.
Finally, if you actually calculate the number of possible combinations of foods using only meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, the result is quite a large number. For example, let's say your diet consisted of beef, turkey, chicken, pork, salmon, shrimp, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, spaghetti squash, cucumbers, carrots, romaine lettuce, asparagus, avocado, bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, celery, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, summer squash, apples, oranges, pears, plums, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, blueberries, grapes, watermelon, almonds, cashews, and walnuts. If this were your grocery list, you could technically create 1,190 unique meals, and that's not even accounting for different cooking methods and spices!
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Essential Reading
The following pages are essential reading for getting to understand the EF perspective.
First, we'll start with the venerable Art De Vany:
The First Evolutionary Fitness Essay.
The first chapter of Art's long forthcoming book...
Next, Mark Sisson is a man that gets it. He has a very good blog. Here are a few good ones...
The Case Against Cardio.
What Mark eats in a day.
Mark talks about escaping from veganism.
Loren Cordain is the most prolific writer when it comes to peer-reviewed research. You can see a ton of his articles here.
Of course on the side of this page are a bunch of links to sites with great content. For example, Robb Wolf is a former research assistant of Loren Cordain's, and friend of Dr. De Vany.
If you read over the above materials, you'll have a pretty good idea what this stuff is all about.
Monday, March 10, 2008
EvoFitness
What is evolutionary fitness?
Evolutionary fitness is the insight that humans, like any animal, function best when exposed to the conditions for which they are best adapted. Those conditions are the diet, activity patterns, and other environmental stimuli that humans became genetically adapted to over the course of human evolution. Genetically speaking, humans have remained virtually unchanged for the last 40,000 years, but with the onset of the agricultural revolution (circa. 10,000 B.C.), and especially the industrial revolution, we have become exposed to a milieu far removed from our original circumstances. This includes a diet that consists heavily on consumption of grains, dairy, and the myriad of processed foods like donuts, cakes, and soft drinks. Furthermore, our ancestors had to hunt and gather their food, meaning they were very active. It's no coincidence then that as society becomes more mechanized and reliant on processed food stuffs, people are becoming more overweight, obese, and suffering from the so-called "diseases of civilization" (e.g. heart disease and cancer).
The prescription for what ails us then is to return to the diet and activity patterns for which we are adapted. Note that I say "patterns", not the actual lifestyle of our ancestors. These patterns consist of lots of low-intensity activity like walking, interspersed with bouts of high-intensity activity like sprinting and jumping. Very few advocates of evolutionary fitness are recommending that we actually return to the jungle! On the diet side of things, the food consumed during the paleolithic period by our ancestors basically included meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, little starch, and no sugar. The paleolithic diet is lower in carbohydrates, and higher in fat and protein than contemporary recommendations. Many studies have shown the efficacy of such diets in terms of weight loss and the markers for chronic disease.
In closing this introduction, this blog will serve to bring news and information about evolutionary fitness from around the web, and offer analysis of these concepts from my own research and personal experiences.
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