Archives for July 2010

I think I’ve finally hit a good stride with the food required to take these last steps and get to my goal of leanness while not sacrificing lean muscle. Moreover, I’m beginning to get pretty strong. At about 175 now, 5’10, I can smell that 300# deadlift (conventional, I’m now at 250# for reps, where I was a while back on sumo). The back squat is progressing nicely too, though not quite as quickly. I’m up to 230# for reps there.

Most everything else, to me, is kind of a means to the end of getting into the 300s, maybe even 400s on those two exercises and not hurting myself doing it.

Of course I’ve been writing about some of this stuff for a while and have talked quite a bit about potatoes. And this isn’t my first post on Big Meals. Click on the photos in series for the hi-resolution versions.

Big Meal

But what I do find interesting is that I’m not the only one in my neck of the paleosphere talking about this. In mid-June, Mark Sisson broached the topic, as did the uber-strong Keith Norris. The general consensus seems to be:

1. Use starchy tubers primarily.
2. Do it in conjunction with a post-workout feeding or overfeeding

And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

Bigger Meal

So, essentially, I’ll try to get in 80% or so of my carbs for the day in one meal, post-workout. That’s three big carb meals per week and the rest are pretty conventional low-carb, high-fat & high-protein paleo.

Biggest Meal

Once I reach my goal I’ll then decide whether to continue the high carb meals but I’m leaning towards doing that. I also might ratchet down the protein but I’m not entirely sure about that, either.

Potato Pancakes – Leftover mash, two eggs and green onion, in butter

I guess I’m up in the air about that because I feel like I’ve really gotten myself into a good groove that works. I’m getting strong, slowly leaner, and so what’s not to like?

It was hard to wait until they were done

Initially I was sort of repulsed by the Big Meals, having gotten used to eating smaller ones, high in fat. But now I’m finding I really like it. Yesterday we were out running about to join up with family in the woods when my post-fast meal window opened and we found a perfect restaurant: Steve Medlen’s House of Beef in Oakdale, CA. I had a bowl of vegetable beef soup, a big green salad, about 10oz of tri-tip, mixed vegetables and the bowl of chili that came with it. I can just feel the furnace kicking on when eating a meal like that after an 18-hr fast. It just feels really good.

Of course this was only the first helping for the sake of taking a photo

So I guess we’ll see how it all turns out on the dietary front.

There is one more issue and you might think me crazy (others do) but I have been having great success the last three consecutive weeks doing all three workouts back-to-back, in three days, to be followed by a full four days of rest.

My favorite of the lot – a cup of cottage cheese, 4 eggs and a pound of potato fried in bacon drippings

Here’s what I’m seeing as the advantages of this:

1. Mental boost. It’s like a 3-day work week and I get mentally up and stay up.
2. Four days of rest in a row is fantastic.
3. In terms of the diet, this gives me the post-workout overfeeds three days in a row, followed by four days of more pure low-carb paleo.

So, what do you think about all of that?

You all remember Food, Inc. and what an eye opening film that was: questioning, criticizing, exposing America’s very broken food practices and culture.

And now comes Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture, a new documentary film in screening and pre-distribution, hopefully coming soon to a theater near you. If there’s any way you can get to a screening, do yourself a favor and get to it. If you’re very ambitious, see about scheduling a screening in your area.

I saw such a screening at a community center in Morgan Hill, CA last evening. I didn’t know what to expect. My school teacher wife, Beatrice, told me I might want to go because it’s about how screwed up the education system is in America and it’s all the buzz with teachers just now. I half figured I’d get railroaded, ending up seeing the standard rot that schools need more money, teachers need higher pay (…y’know, ’cause failure is to be rewarded) and generally, a film with an underlying theme that schools exist for the primary sake of teachers, administrators and unions (because they kinda do).

And was I ever wrong because I’d have to say that in my view about 99% of this film was dead right on. Here’s the trailer and let me just say that it doesn’t even begin to signal the wide reaching importance of this film.

So essentially, what’s documented here is that everyone from the federal government to state & local governments to teachers unions to school districts to administrators to teachers and yes, parents have contrived — not conspired, because the "good intentions" thing is definitely present — to royally screw kids up, steal their very childhoods, stress them out to the max and generally do them the double disservice of both wreaking havoc in their lives, and for most of them, not really educating them. It’s all downside, or mostly so.

And it’s a damn shame. As one teacher interviewed in the film explained: kids naturally want to learn, are excited, inquisitive, motivated. Let’s just not take that away. Ring a bell? First, do no harm. And ultimately, the film documents in the words of educators, students and parents alike how great harm is being perpetuated in a systematic fashion, daily, relentlessly. It’s all about performance, productivity, testing and not teaching, all adding up to meaningless "achievement." There’s no depth. There’s ultimately no conceptual understanding. There’s no real critical thinking. There’s no ability to identify and ultimately operate through a series of internally consistent principles. There’s no love of life and of learning. It’s all toil and drudgery, but man oh man is there a lot of it. We do quantity like no other.

America’s education system is a mile wide and an inch deep.

That’s the essential message. That, and that Testing is not Teaching.

After the film we went and sat down to a nice dinner in the ville, and I began to contemplate, and we discussed how this could really impact things. It’s that powerful. The beauty of it is, unlike being addicted to awful "food" as we talk about a lot, who’s addicted to endless and meaningless homework? Who’s addicted to tests that test nothing important? Who’s addicted to athletic programs that aren’t fun anymore and don’t teach the sorts of values that sports for kids were once primarily intended to do? Who’s addicted to high achievement classes that, if failed, send the message to a young student that their life is over? Who’s addicted to an atmosphere where learning through mistakes, trial, error and failure is no longer tolerated?

For worse, America has created an "education" system that’s more suited to the attributes of a zoo than to those of a proper human animal. America is rapidly turning out Zoo Humans, not human individuals.

But the good and bright news is that, individually, it can be changed overnight and parents (and teachers and administrators too) are doing so. While all are working within the system — in many cases very effectively — to change things, there’s something that can be done instantaneously.

1. Tell your kids you don’t care about them doing their homework assignments.
2. Don’t ask to see their report cards or inquire about their grades. You  shouldn’t care.
3. Let them know it’s fine to pursue a different passion per week until they find their true one, and if it doesn’t involve going to a top university, or any university at all, that’s just fine.

You really can’t cheat human psychology and its evolution. If you can ultimately succeed in getting your children to achieve success in the human zoo in some passionless endeavor that merely rewards with lots of dollars, then you’ve achieved no real success at all. Success in life is measured in terms of personal happiness and meaningful achievement in areas an individual is passionate about.

Nothing else counts and everything else, ultimately, is true failure.

Addendum: I just found that Oprah.com has an article on the film. Can’t vouch for it as I haven’t read it yet, but here’s the link.