My kid becoming a Supple Leopard

I bought the Kelly Starrett book “Becoming a Supple Leopard” last week and LOVE IT!

After the sprint WOD we did on Tuesday my wife’s adductors have been hurting and really sore…so…I turned to my new treasure to find a good stretch to help! I got out a band, put her on the ground, had her kick her knee out, put the band under the top of her leg and as I pushed down on her knee with my foot I pulled up pretty hard on the band. She had the awesome face that Starrett looks for when doing mobility work and when we were done with two 15-20 second stretches with each leg she stood up and felt better. Not 100%, but much better. All I can ask for, right? It is a process, not magic.

My 4 year old son was watching and he told me he was sore, too. He had just got done giving mom some gymnastic lessons (I really should have gotten a video of him trying to get my wife into a bridge, it was so precious….yes….I just said precious) and now he wanted to do what mom was doing. Here is the result:

Servings size vs what everyone really eats

Funny…all my food doesn’t even come with a label. What is the serving size of a pepper? Or a banana? Or kale? How about ground beef? Eggs? I just eat as much as I want and stay clear of anything with a label (for the most part…damnit bacon).

Feeling so good

Great OHS form – chest up, good midline stabilization, arms/shoulders are locked out, knees out. Nice.

Earlier this week I wrote about how crappy I felt during the workout on Monday due to what I ate over the weekend. After that feeling I knew I had to take a step back and re-evaluate my diet. Not so much because I am gaining weight (I put on five pounds about two weeks ago that just isn’t coming off), but because I hate feeling awful while working out. The first thing I had to rid myself of was soda.

During my first Whole 30 I realized how addicted I had become to soda. The first few days of the Whole 30, even after a good meal, I still felt like I needed something. I felt like something was missing and even though I knew I was full my brain was telling me I needed something more. The more I focused on these feelings the more I realized I wanted a soda really bad. After my first Whole 30 I had rid myself of my addiction to soda and didn’t have but maybe a total of four or five cans of soda between the end of my first Whole 30 and the first of the year (about 6 weeks). This was a big drop in soda consumption from before I started the Whole 30. Then I started my second Whole 30 and in the next few months only had maybe one or two cans.

Horrible workout, the cost of poor food choices

Normally, yes, but not this weekend!

I like to think I eat pretty clean. I have to admit I have become addicted to diet soda again and plan on stopping cold turkey today. I got to get off of it. Otherwise, in terms of eating Paleo, I eat pretty clean.

I have my cheat days/meals usually on Friday or Saturday nights. And my cheat meals aren’t like eating a whole pizza and stuffing my face with ice cream and brownies, but more like I have a few beers. I rarely eat any grains or dairy anymore. … I guess I do DRINK grains, though.

But then there are days like yesterday: Mother’s Day.

The weekend started off good as I ate clean all day Friday. On Saturday I was planning on meeting my sister on Loveland to try a few breweries so I knew I was going to have beer. That’s OK, it is Saturday and that is what I do. We ate lunch at a Cajun place and I kept Paleo except for some dirty rice. Rice is one of the least offensive grains you can eat so I felt OK eating the rice. I had a po-boy but didn’t eat the bread, just the sausage. For dinner I went to Old Chicago’s as my wife and kids were still out with a friend of hers and I had a salad that was 100% Paleo – no dressing, cheese or bread. But I did have a beer with dinner, too. They had Ghost Face Killa in bottles so I had to have one.

Marathon or any long distance running = bad for you?

Just another reason for me NOT to run a marathon…

Coke exec has a Q&A with USA Today. Slap me.

If you don’t watch Breaking Bad you might not get this joke.

Too easy. All quotes taken from this article.

I’ll preface by saying that I wouldn’t expect anything different from an executive at Coca-Cola: she should defend her brand and their profit margin. But, c’mon…

Q: Is there any merit to limits being placed on the size of sugary drinks folks can buy?

A: Sugary drinks can be a part of any diet as long as your calories in balance with the calories out. Our responsibility is to provide drink in all the sizes that consumers might need.

This I wholeheartedly agree with. If we are going to limit consumers from purchasing anything, why wouldn’t it be cigarettes?? Is the next step putting a scale at every McDonald’s restaurant and if you exceed a certain number the doors lock and you can’t get in. Let people buy what they want to buy and how much they want to buy. If I feel like binging on cheese doodles, let me. It isn’t the governments rights to make me healthy, if it was they would do a hell of a lot better job governing what we eat and make food manufacturer’s label their food if it contains GMOs. And they shot that bill down.

Strengthen your spine? What? How?

Many great exercises to strengthen your back

According to this article on CNN there is a way to strengthen your spine. Your spine is all bone and nerves, right? No muscles, right? How do you strengthen something that is not a muscle? You can’t. You can, however, strengthen the muscles that support your spine to alleviate or reduce back pain.

The first of seven ways to strengthen your spine is a good one: good posture. I have to constantly remind myself to have good posture, especially while at work at my desk. Slouching just comes too naturally and easily and I always need to suck in my gut and sit up straight.

Deep breathing is #2 and along with solid breathing you should work in some ab work to strengthen your core. The stronger your core the better your body will support your weight and your back will feel better because of it.