This is why you’re fat. Is it wrong to drool?

The evolutionary fitness crowd has always made pretty good sense to me, but Martin Berkhan has an interesting and provocative post up at his Leangains blog, Low Carb Talibans. The comments are also good reading, if not always civil.

Outrageous. Maybe the trans fat companies will be next.

• A little pick-me-up to watch before your next workout: Nike Courage. I can't link to the high-quality version directly, so don't forget to click the "watch in high quality" link by the lower-right corner of the video.
• Interesting summary of the health benefits of eating coconut. Caught my eye because it was only a couple days ago I saw this post lauding coconut water as "nature's perfect sports drink".

• First, I have to express my awe at the 100 meter dash. If you didn't see it live, you must watch Usain Bolt's world record run. Sweet Mother of God. His semifinal heat looked like that too; so relaxed, coasting to victory. Imagine how much he would have beaten the record by if he hadn't started celebrating 15 meters (!) out. Also, definitely watch the super-slow-mo version. I love watching the timer count off the tenths in the background as he runs by, celebrating. Related, here's Tyson Gay's hamstring injury footage. It's like a NASCAR crash. I knew those guys generated tremendous power, but I didn't truly appreciate how much until watching it go very wrong. Looks nothing like one of my hamstring pulls. You'll be prompted to install Microsoft's Silverlight plugin to watch these. It's basically Microsoft Flash (like we needed another rich media format).
• Admit it, Phelps has you thinking about getting into the pool. Tim Ferriss has a good post up on the Total Immersion program: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too. My big obstacle is the inability to keep the water from going up my nose.
• Discover magazine: 20 Things You Didn't Know About Sports Technology.
• Science stuff. Modern Forager on what happens when you fast: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
• More science stuff. Lyle McDonald on leptin: Part 1 and Part 2. Much more complicated than some of the recent popular press stories imply.

This is something I've touched on in a few other posts, but I thought it was worth calling out on it's own.

It feels like I've often heard sentiments like "do it for 3 weeks and it will get easier" or "six weeks is the magic number, and after that it's a habit."

Hogwash.

I have an exercise habit now, but looking back I think it took me roughly TWO YEARS to cultivate. Two years of forcing myself to do it. Sure, it got gradually easier over time, but there were many days, weeks, even months where it took just as much effort to force myself into the gym as it did in the first few weeks. As for diet, I'm over three months into this "no sugar" thing, and I'm certain the bulk of the journey is still ahead of me. Again, the Leptin stuff is interesting). Plus, if you plotted me on The Big Bell Curve of American Fitness when I started all this a few years ago, I was already in pretty good shape! I was an athlete turned weekend warrior striving to reclaim my dormant (but not lost) athleticism. And it was still damn hard to form the habits. Imagine if I spent my first 30 years on the couch instead?

Anyway, I'm sure the intentions behind the whole "it'll get easier in a few weeks" claims are good; you want to encourage people by giving them a light at the end of the tunnel. But what happens in a few weeks, when it's still bloody hard? Discouragement, backsliding, plan abandonment. I say, tell 'em it's going to take years of hard work, and then maybe, if you're lucky, it'll be a habit. If nothing else, it's the truth.

In regard to six weeks of doing everything right, a friend asked me how it was going in the comments, and I thought I'd reply here rather than there. Anyway, here's how it's going:

It's going okay-ish. I just finished my second six weeks, and am now in the midst of a four day break before signing on for a third six-weeker (happily, the break coincided with a long vacation weekend visiting friends and playing in a tournament). Friday was quite a few Ella-safe blondies (my daughter has allergies, so these had no dairy, but sugar galore). Saturday was pretty good, just chocolate mousse for dessert. Sunday was a bunch of Oreos on the ride home and a Blizzard from DQ. Not sure what poison I'll pick today, and then it's back on the wagon tomorrow.

I can definitely feel a change though. The desire for sugar, while still there quite powerfully, feels like it's more in my head than in my gut. It's the memory of how great it tastes rather than the deep-down craving (most of the time, sometimes the tough one is still there). And I have found myself slightly ambivalent about my current little sin siesta, with more feelings of "do I really want to do this?" than I had last time. I even find myself toying with the idea of jumping back on the wagon today rather than tomorrow, but man, I haven't made Ella-unsafe brownies yet, and there's that "Endangered Species" brand dark chocolate with toffee chips with my name on it lurking out there.

So, three months in and I can feel changes, although the beast is far from licked. I really feel like any health or fitness plan that tells people "stick with it for 3 weeks and you'll stop wanting it", or "exercise for 6 weeks and it will becoming a habit" are doing their adherents a disservice. For me, the exercise habit took probably TWO YEARS of fighting for it before it became a habit. And my sugar battle is in its infancy at three months. To tell anyone they just have to make it a few weeks before it gets easier is setting them up for failure when that inevitably turns out to be untrue. Of course, the truth might be too discouraging, so I don't really have an answer.

Coincidentally, the friends we were visiting called this very interesting article on leptin to my attention: Can't Keep the Weight Off? Maybe Leptin is the Culprit. (and here's a brief postscript). In a nutshell, there may be a powerful hormonal response to weight loss that suggests to you (in much the same way Tony Soprano might suggest something to you) that maybe you should think about putting that weight back on. And this hormonal response can last for YEARS. Sucks. But you gotta love that last paragraph:

How do some people manage to overcome the leptin effect and keep weight off? Generally by watching their food intake very carefully and continuing to increase their physical activity. "Anybody who has lost weight and kept it off will tell you that they have to keep battling," says Dr. Rosenbaum. "They have essentially reinvented themselves, and they are worthy of the utmost admiration and respect."

Yeah baby.

Healthbolt on pumpkin seeds (and what your body does with all the tryptophan they pack):

...tryptophan works by morphing into seratonin, (which is known for fighting depression, reducing anxiety, and minimizing anger), making tryptophan pretty much the Wonder Amino Acid. In fact, in a recent study, folks who were asked to give a speech after eating a pumpkin seed bar had much lower heart rates and anxiety an hour later than those who didn't have the seeds.

Quick Googling turned up Dagoba's Seeds chocolate bar (68% cocoa, plus hemp, pumpkin and sunflower seeds). Mmm, something to indulge in come mid-July, after my second sentence is up.

I wasn't going to write anything up about this, as I didn't really think it was significant, but I read this series of blog entries from Ross Enamait:

• Bad Habits and Weight Loss
• Learning How To Eat
• Learning How To Eat - Part II
• Inspirational Display

... and taken together, along with this bit from the last one:

...transitioning to a healthy lifestyle may not be easy at first. If you've lived the last 20 years with poor nutritional habits and limited (or no) physical activity, you can't expect to suddenly transform yourself into the next Jack Lalanne. Self discipline will be needed to kick start the transition. Any change in habit requires a conscious (active) effort on your behalf.

Once you see the light, you'll realize that it's easy to keep, and certainly worth your time and effort. You won't see the light on your first day however. The transition from inactive and unhealthy to active and healthy is one that will take time and patience.

... got me thinking it might be worth posting a little something on my dietary struggles after all.

So, I eat too much sugar and white flour, both poisons. While I've made great strides over the past four years in both exercise and nutrition, I've never managed to kick the habit. HIGHLY addictive, those things. I've read all about alcoholism, and the behaviors I exhibit are the same (without the drunkenness and the social stigma). I've read all kinds of posts from evolutionary fitness folks that once you get yourself off the stuff, you'll stop wanting it, so I thought I'd put that theory to the test.

First, I tried a Thin Red Line approach. On a calendar, I'd draw a line through days I was good (no sugar, no deep fried stuff, no starch/minimal grains, and only whole grains at that), an X through days I was bad, and I'd try to make the line as long as I could. I thought just by tracking it that would be enough reinforcement. No way. The red Xs just piled up. I think I made it 11 days once, and when I'd fall of the wagon I'd stay off for days before climbing back on.

So I figured drastic measures were needed. Time to really give the whole "you'll stop wanting it" idea the best chance for success. I needed an interval where I'd be nothing but good. I thought six weeks would be enough. Short enough I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, long enough that my body would have time to adjust, and the cravings would lessen. I hoped.

So I did it, and it sucked, and through the whole thing I never stopped craving brownies, donuts, french fries, chips, ice cream etc. I thought I wanted it just as bad on on day 42 as I did on day 1 (it didn't help that I pulled my hamstring pretty good 12 days in and really wanted to say "screw it" and eat my way out of the resulting funk).

So I thought my experiment was a failure. I took three days, ate whatever I wanted, and then had a decision to make. Would I basically throw away six weeks of work by reverting to my old habits, or would I go once more into the breach? Well, I'm now two days into another six weeks. Sigh. I must confess I'm not dreading it quite as much as the first round. Here's what I've taken away so far:

1. Holy crap, kicking sugar is HARD. Even at my worst, I was fit, and ate pretty well otherwise. Even after six weeks of abstinence, I still crave it.
2. Jury is still out on whether it's possible to stop wanting it. Since my second six weeks fills me with a bit less dread than the first six, I'm going to take that as a sign.
3. Another sign: after the six weeks were up and I ate whatever I wanted for three days, I did not binge nearly as badly as I have in the past. It wasn't three days to be proud of, but it also wasn't embarrassing.
4. Man, I hope it's possible to stop wanting it altogether, because as Ross points out in one of his articles, any diet based on a feeling of deprivation is doomed to fail over the long term.
5. I suspect that your body chemistry has to change in a pretty deep and significant way before your desires change, and I don't know how long that takes. I wish I did! Pretty long time, it seems, so hang in there and give your body a chance if you embark on a similar effort. However long you think it will take, that's not long enough.

P.S. Some people have it easy, some have it extra hard. I'm betting I'm in the middle. The difficulty of the battle varies with the individual. UPDATE: I posted a bit of follow-up in the comments below.

P.P.S. A reader comment below. EIGHTEEN MONTHS?! Yikes.

• YouTube: excellent rings and pistols work.
• Straight to the Bar embeds a great air flair video.
• Crossfit Oakland really loves coconut oil (I have not checked the research behind those claims).
• Mark Sisson weighs in on soy.

Mmmm.. donuts:

In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous dose of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rats consistently chose saccharin instead of cocaine.

Sure, it's rats. Hard to know how much this correlates with human experience. But for me at least (and I know I'm not unique) sugar is a powerful addiction. I haven't had any first-hand experience with other addictions, but I know I've been unable (so far) to kick this one. I've gone for stretches, but never more than a few weeks, and usually never more than a couple days. Binges are rare, but also happen. I'm very well-informed as to how harmful it is, and yet I rationalize, cave, etc. It's an addiction, just like any other. Alcohol, tobacco, sugar, coke, what have you. They all hook you hard, they're all bad for you, and, insidiously, they all (generally) kill you very, very slowly, so you can build a (shortened) lifetime out of saying "just this once...", "I've been good", "I'm depressed", "it's not that bad", etc.

Ketogenic diets and physical performance. Let's cut right to the chase (conclusion) on this one (emphasis added):

Both observational and prospectively designed studies support the conclusion that submaximal endurance performance can be sustained despite the virtual exclusion of carbohydrate from the human diet. Clearly this result does not automatically follow the casual implementation of dietary carbohydrate restriction, however, as careful attention to time for keto-adaptation, mineral nutriture, and constraint of the daily protein dose is required. Contradictory results in the scientific literature can be explained by the lack of attention to these lessons learned (and for the most part now forgotten) by the cultures that traditionally lived by hunting. Therapeutic use of ketogenic diets should not require constraint of most forms of physical labor or recreational activity, with the one caveat that anaerobic (ie, weight lifting or sprint) performance is limited by the low muscle glycogen levels induced by a ketogenic diet, and this would strongly discourage its use under most conditions of competitive athletics.

I found this link via Art De Vany, who says:

The Innuit diet it discusses is not for me, but the controlled studies do show that the modern high carb diet for endurance athletes is over rated (and other evidence shows that it is harmful) and the low carb diet works just fine for real world endurance.

"Real world endurance." Several authors I like (e.g. De Vany, Sisson) keep hitting the point, either directly or tangentially, that elite athletic performance practices run counter to good long-term health practices (in general, not to say the Inuit diet is a particularly healthful one).

Interesting, but ultimately irritating article, on how there's little evidence exercise results in fat loss. Sure, exercise ALONE won't do the trick, and yes, obviously exercise will make you hungrier, so if you keep blindly obeying your body's every dietary impulse, you're hosed (although you'll have more muscle underneath all your fat). But it is certainly possible to change your body composition through a multi-pronged attack:

• Exercise hard. Intervals and strength training. If it's not hard, it's not working.
• Stop eating crap. You can eat a lot, but it has to be good food, no simple carbs.
• Keep at it until it becomes a habit. In my experience, this can take many months, and the impulse to backslide never fully goes away (I've been into this four years now, and donuts don't look any less appealing to me now than ever).

In short, you gotta work for it. And not only is the work hard, but it's grossly unfair. It is not a level playing field. The work is harder for some (many) than others. For a lucky few, exercise produces a high. It hurts and requires willpower to see it through, but it also feels GOOD. It's even ADDICTIVE! For the rest of us, it's just torture, no corresponding rush or high, and this NEVER changes (although it does get easier). This is why it's important to find a sport you enjoy, as the fun of participating distracts you from the torture of exercising, and training for your sport gives you a purpose beyond fitness in the abstract.

Then there's the metabolic lottery. Insulin responses vary, how and where bodies store fat varies, the amount we crave crap varies. If you're one of the many who crave simple carbs and are prone to fat storage, then you're in for a lifetime of constant vigilance if you don't want to be fat. Believe me, I wish it were otherwise! I've read with some hope anecdotal reports that if you follow an evolutionary fitness-style diet your body will stop craving garbage, but in my experience that is not the case.

You have to want to be athletic more than you want to watch TV. You have to want to be athletic more than you want donuts. And for many, that's a very tough sell. In short, the good news is that it's possible. The bad news is that it's hard, and while it gets less hard over time, it never gets easy.

Generally I find exercise research fairly straightforward, and nutrition research a quagmire. My recent readings on soy are no exception. First, I read this T-Nation article, The Soy Conspiracy, which certainly sounds damning. It's an interview with Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story. But then Syd Baumel's critique of the book gave me pause. Especially since he's not one-sided, as evidenced by his piece, Should We be Scared of Soy?. I don't eat too much of it anyway, so you're on your own deciding this one. :-)

This is devolving into a link blog. That's okay though, as I feel like I've covered most of what I want to cover (check the guide and the archives). As I try new stuff I'll post it, but until then...

• Gregg's favorite exercise is one of my favorites too. The difference between us is that he uses kettlebells instead of DBs, and he includes pictures.
• There are some great ideas (and workout names) in this Crossfit thread, Hardest Metcon Workouts ("metabolic conditioning").
• With the outdoor season right around the corner here in the NE, it might be worth having a look at this article on preventing quad soreness.
• Patrick Beith: Summer Training for Speed (and Part II).
• Finally, Dispelling The Top 10 Nutrition Myths (update: this guy slams this piece; update 2: see discussion below).

I'm behind on this, but it's a long article and I wanted to read it first before posting. If you haven't checked it out already, Michael Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, is a must-read. Fascinating and engaging. I may have to check out The Omnivore's Dilemma.

... well, they call them "facts", but I take what I read in the so-called "men's magazines" with a grain of salt. Still, 7 Things You Didn't Know About Fat is an interesting piece.

First, a few links on chocolate:

• Chocolate Milk as a Post-Exercise Recovery Aid (study, PDF, paid for in part by the dairy industry)
• Dark Chocolate Is Healthy Chocolate (and other Google Scholar references)

That leads me to Tom Furman's chocolate concoction for those evening hunger pangs. I tried it this evening, and it's pretty good. Not delicious like something full of sugar and fat in addition to the cocoa, but it does indeed seem to satiate my sweet tooth. If you're wondering about the Splenda, I've posted a bit on it before.

I've heard great things about Dr. John Berardi's Precision Nutrition. He recently put up a Gourmet Nutrition Desserts booklet, available free through the holidays!

Introducing the Gourmet Nutrition Desserts, a 44 page dessert cookbook complete with delicious "Precision Nutrition approved" dessert recipes, beautiful photography, and hints on how to eat the foods you love without the gaining the fat you hate.

I'm going to have to try a couple of those this Christmas.

To satisfy my sweet tooth, I've come to increasingly rely on Splenda (sucralose) sweetener. Usually just a packet in my oatmeal in the morning, or a packet in some plain yogurt. Not a big deal, but as sucralose is increasingly finding its way into a variety of products, I wondered as to its safety. After googling "splenda", you don't have to scroll down very far to get to pages from one of its more vociferous critics, Dr. Joseph Mercola. Not really sure how to take his stuff though, given how many hits a search for "mercola" and "quack" returns. So you've got Mercola on one side and Michael Fumento on the other side. Who to believe? Ultimately I found The Truth About Sucralose by Cy Willson at T-Nation to be the most persuasive. The best course of action is certainly to avoid all sugar and artificial sweeteners, but I'm not ready to pull my sweet tooth just yet. So for me, Splenda it is. For now.

• Physical Strategies links up a bunch of Jumpstretch Band Training PDFs. You have to do a bit of work to separate the wheat from the chaff, but I took away several new ideas. Use Firefox and DownThemAll! to grab them all at once.
• Physical Strategies again, making an interesting case for eating buffalo instead of beef.
• dirttime.org posts an excellent interview with Jim "Beast Skills" Bathurst.

Sorry, bit of a link backlog:

• I'm kinda late with this one, but another big holiday is right around the corner. De Vany on holiday binging:

  And, in case you say "I will binge just this one day," note that the high insulin spike from a meal full of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and other starches and simple carbs will amount to a massive assault on your insulin sensitivity. The footprint of that meal will be there for a long time. You will be curiously vulnerable to carb temptations for some time after because your sensitivity is diminished and your circulating insulin will remain elevated.

• Two via Straight to the Bar (who I'm poaching from with regularity these days): Joachim Bartoll's weblog (I read the fish oil post first, and immediately decided it was worth adding to my aggregator) and this BBC story on desk jockey posture. Maybe my programming slouch isn't such a bad thing!

Somehow a bunch of links piled up on me:

• The Beast Skills tutorials don't come around very often these days, but they are always worth the wait. The latest covers standing rollouts with the evil wheel.
• Crossfit has a vertical leap thread going. Two Joe DeFranco pieces are referenced therein: Fabulous 15 (which I believe I've linked up before) and Dirty Tricks For Higher Jumps.
• I don't have any medical chops for evaluating this critically, but every time Art De Vany posts something by Mark Sisson it makes a lot of sense. This time: Fat Cells as Disposal Sites for Toxins.
• Speaking of fat, you (and I) really should completely eliminate trans fat from our diets:

  Furthermore, two independent methods of estimation indicate that the adverse effect of trans fat is stronger than that of saturated fat. By our most conservative estimate, replacement of partially hydrogenated fat in the U.S. diet with natural unhydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent approximately 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year, and epidemiologic evidence suggests this number is closer to 100,0000 premature deaths annually. These reductions are higher than what could be achieved with realistic reductions in saturated fat intake.

• Hopefully the offseason is still a month away, but I'm thinking I'd like to work the Grasso Lunge into my winter routine.
• Finally, a bit of fun: "Unbelievably Long Rollerblade Grind" @ Google Video.

Couple things:

• Poking around in this Crossfit thread, I clicked through on one of Greg Everett's links and noticed how nice the Evolution Athletics and Performance Menu sites are. At Evolution Athletics, check out the resources, particularly the videos (oops, quick sample suggests quite a few have "video coming soon" notes, but there are some good ones there). Also, don't miss this, The Performance Menu has a free issue offer, and you get to choose which one you want. Tough choice!
• One of the nutrition sections of Ross Enamait's Never Gymless is all about milk. In particular, pasturized and homogenized vs. raw. His latest blog post, Milk, addresses the topic again, and includes lots of good resources for making your own decisions.

• I had no idea watermelon was so good for you! I just assumed it was mostly sugar and water. Hip-hip-hooray for good sources of Vitamin A.
• A RossTraining thread: when the going gets tough... "I just cut off my mind." He makes it sound so easy!
• A 2001 Malcolm Gladwell piece: Drugstore Athlete.

Never one to mince words, a bit from De Vany's Eating the Evolutionary Fitness Way post:

Seventh, you are compromising your long-run health and accelerating the rate at which you age. You are also turning your body into a sugar burner and in the long-run this will lead to a decline in your lean muscle mass. Your career will suffer. You will not have the energy to sustain a long and productive career. You will be sick more often. You will be tired and bored with life. And you will eventually become obese, ill and earn less income.

His follow-up, It's Not Paleo is also interesting.

Often the catch-all "men's magazines" fitness stuff is hit or miss, but I took away a couple useful things from the Seven Numbers piece from Men's Health.

Apparently 24 is the magic number when it comes to L&HF-favorite almonds. The notion of pinning it to a specific number is silly, but if you're like me and you tend to overeat at dinner the concept of "front loading" with something densely nutritious seems reasonable.

Also, as a big fan of preventative icing, this caught my eye:

10 Minutes: Spend this amount of time icing after a run to save your knees from osteoarthritis. Weight-bearing exercises, such as running or playing rugby, draw blood and a lubricant called synovial fluid to your joints. And that's good ­ while you're exercising. But if extra synovial fluid and blood stick around for too long, the cartilage can crack and osteoarthritis will eventually develop. That's why post-exercise icing is so critical: "The ice makes the extra fluid run away from your joints, and then your lymphatic system filters it out," says physiotherapist Kevin Olds.

HealthHacks on the recent "discrediting" of the Glycemic Index. That's the post I would have written. The distinction between the Glycemic Index and the Glycemic Load in particular. Nice. I'm not a GI zealot, but I do keep in in the back of my mind when I'm picking what to eat.

The Really Useful Fitness Blog just posted a Really Useful Piece on Almonds. That's some serious validation for one of my favorite mid-morning snacks: a spoonful of raw almond butter. I knew they were good, but I didn't know they were good. I feel a little bit better about paying through the nose for the stuff. Life would be even better if the tastier, cheaper cashew had the same nutritional profile, but I'll take what I can get.

My diet philosophy really couldn't be simpler, so I tend to focus more on exercise here. But if you're looking for a laundry list of good foods, there are certainly worse resources than this list of 14 so-called "Superfoods". Actually, coincidentally, the list (if you include the alternates) comes pretty close to describing my diet. A few specific notes:

• Broccoli is one of the few vegetables my kids will choke down, so we eat it a lot (relatively).
• I finally found a recipe that makes spinach edible. As bonuses, it includes pistachios, craisins (of all things), olive oil, and blue cheese (sadly not on the list).
• Psyched to see blueberries on the list. Berries of all kinds are one of the best things about summer.
• Clementines, currently in season and irresistable, help get me through the berry-less winter.
• For oatmeal, I keep hearing the less processed, the better (surprise). Take an extra 60 seconds to cook the non-quick-cook variety.
• Mmmm, nuts make the cut. Fantastic that this is not an entirely low-fat, low-calorie list. I love a swab of cashew butter as a mid-morning snack.
• I've lately been making salmon sandwiches instead of tuna. Tuna has that mercury thing working against it, and I vaguely recall Alaskan salmon being relatively pure. Happily, that's the kind they can, it's cheap, and the cans are huge so it makes a ton. Caveat: once it's mixed with mayo and celery (or however you do it) it's quite similiar to tuna, but it's pretty unappealing right out of the can. Smells kinda gross, and it often looks like they just threw the whole fish in the hopper. There's always skin (which I don't mind) and often bones, including big ol' sections of spine. I have yet to find any eyeballs, at least.
• Soy for the boys? Maybe not so much. Much talk about it lowering testosterone, and I know women going through menopause that swear by its estrogen-boosting effects. A 30-second search didn't turn up anything authoritative though, and as usual I expect "moderation in all things" to be a fine policy.

If you're actively trying to lose weight, you might not want to put too much stock in your bathroom scale. Aside from consumer scales being generally inaccurate, there are a host of physiological reasons for normal weight fluctuations. Why The Scale Lies is an excellent piece on the subject. If you're in training, this is of particular note:

Generally, it's only possible to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. When you follow a very low calorie diet that causes your weight to drop 10 pounds in 7 days, it's physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you're really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Must everything be so complicated? Even milk? I don't really care so much for myself; at 35 my lifetime diet has probably so loaded with plastics, teflon, hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides that I'm doomed. Or maybe I'm waterproof, bulletproof, disease-proof, and feared by mosquitoes everywhere (or at least boll weevils). Regardless, I try to protect my daughters from that stuff, as I have a crackpot theory that girls are hitting puberty earlier because of all the hormones in the food.

146 Reasons Why Sugar Is Ruining Your Health. If only I couldn't think of 146 desserts that just wouldn't be the same without sugar.

Having dug myself into a hefty forty-pound hole, I had to find a way to climb out. I had long loathed running and other forms of standalone conditioning, so I had to find a way to make exercising a little more fun (I would later come to embrace exercise for its own sake, but that took a long friggin' time). Enter what I call "The Netflix Workout". It's simple:

1. Get an account at Netflix.
2. Pick a TV series you've been meaning to catch, and load it into your queue.
3. Hop on your favorite aerobic exercise machine of choice, and watch an episode. Your workout ends when the episode ends.

I'd workout at a moderate-to-hard pace (for reference, shoot for breaking a sweat about five minutes in and finished pretty soaked). I started with The Simpsons (~22 minutes per episode), then jumped to 24 (~42 minutes per episode). I'd probably do this around four days a week, and I also stopped having seconds at lunch and dinner (effectively eliminating 1.5 bonus meals from my day; I'm such a hobbit).

Less food and more exercise bought me a 20-pound drop over about four months. I started playing better, and was able to keep my shin splints in check (I'll save those details for another post). I kept at this for two seasons, but in hindsight I plateaued after the first few months. Even making the jump to The Sopranos (~55 minutes/episode) didn't bring much of an improvement. All it did was make my workouts longer (and the onscreen language more colorful). Then I went and pulled a hamstring on day two of Regionals, so decided the relatively mild aerobic stuff wasn't enough. It was time to ramp things up, and throw some strength and flexibility into the mix...

Even though I'd been playing competitive and recreational sports for most of my life, I'd never been as fit as I could be. I'd mostly get my exercise in the context of playing whatever sport I was enjoying at the time and I'd do very little in the way of dedicated training. Youth and an active lifestyle allowed me to get away with this lax attitude, but I always struggled with shin splints, and my performance on the field was never quite what I would have hoped. Then age and inactivity began to catch up with me. A short timeline (and weightline) casts this in stark relief:

• Late eighties. High school. 6'4", 170 lbs. Incapable of gaining weight, much to the disappointment of my basketball coach.
• Early nineties. College. Prompt acquisition of "freshman 15". Active lifestyle, including the beginning of a long Ultimate Frisbee career.
• The rest of the nineties, through 2002. Adult life. Day job. Parenthood. Gradually accrete 40 pounds, topping out at 235! Unfortunately there are no corresponding gains in height. Occasional shin splints are now chronic.

The shin splints were particularly troublesome. In previous Ultimate seasons they'd follow the same arc: I'd take the winter off and they'd feel great. I'd start playing outdoors in April or May and by July they'd hurt enough that I'd take Ibuprofin before every session. The pain/performance curve would start working against me in August, I'd hobble through Regionals in October, and then take the winter off, rebooting the cycle.

But in early 2002 I tried playing a couple indoor games, and my shins flared to July-levels of inflammation almost immediately. Clearly if I was going to keep playing, even recreationally, I was going to have to get myself into better shape.

Also, I was tired of sucking.