I have seen my share of heart wrenching train wrecks in my time:

• The girl who thinks she’s going to lose 30 pounds and look like Heidi Klum when she’s done, only to lose 35 pounds and realize she still looks like herself but smaller.
• The girl who trains really hard for 4 months for a marathon, only to break her foot one week out from the race.
• Tons of girls who sign up to compete because they think they are “going to the next level” only to crash and burn after their first show and walk away from diet and exercise for good.  Not a little while.  For good.

When I watch these things my heart aches.  First, I see it happening in slow motion.  No matter how much I want to spare her the hurt, I can’t.  I am powerless to her emotions and her preconceptions of how this is all going to go down so I am left to take a seat on the sidelines while she barrels head first into mayhem and chaos.  Secondly, there’s usually very little that I can do to get her motivated to do something that intensive again.  Normally, that’s not a problem but since we’re type A’ers, anything less than “all out” is not very satisfying.  So if you were training for a marathon and lost your mojo in the middle of it, me talking you into a 10k isn’t going to do much for you.  You’re over it by this time.  And lastly, the girl inevitably feels like it was something that she did wrong to cause this calamity.  That somehow she failed the ‘sisterhood of iron will’ or didn’t make it through initiation like all the rest of us did.  To be on the front lines of the death of a goal is tough and I have been doing it for years now.  Enough is enough.

I am wondering if we can have an honest talk about goals next week.  Is that possible?  We’ve talked about setting realistic ones before, how about we talk about what it takes to set them—again.  What happens when that goal dies?  How do we get back on track?  How do we pick another sport or do we pick another sport?  How do we do {fill in any daily activity} because for at least 6 months to a year we are useless to ourselves.   It may or may not be specifically about goals, I won’t know til I “go there”, but just know that we’re getting messy next week.  It’s time…

This is a big deal, ladies, and it means we have to go below the water line to figure it out.  I can’t wait; I hope you feel the same.  If there is anything in particular that you want me to cover, let me know below.   We’re diving in on Monday.  Tomorrow I explain Monday’s post on my weekly audio post.  See you then.  Woop woop!!:o)

Did you ever have a girlfriend who stuck up for you all the time when you were younger?  She would gladly talk for you whether you asked her to or not:  Someone talk trash?  She was on them.  Someone lie on you?  She’d shut ‘em down.   Someone get in your face?  She’d come between you and them, be all over them and then shut ‘em down.  She was awesome—at first.   And then, as you got older, you found she was buttin’ in even when it wasn’t necessary.  Some of the things she would say would not always be right or even nice.  You started to feel like it was more of a hindrance than a help and at times, she was bordering on being offensive.

But now, you have a dilemma.  This is your bestie.  Your other half who you have been super tight with since Kindergarten.  You share everything.  Telling her that you want your independence is not only going to hurt her feelings, it may even turn her against you.  The girl who spent half of her own childhood defending you could now become your worst enemy if not handled well.  You need an exit plan and it better be well thought out.

And so it is with The Pill…

Nowadays, more thought is put into the foundation we choose to put on our face than the choice of whether to go on the pill or not.  Medicine has done an excellent job of making the decision seem as basic as ‘paper or plastic’ and that we should not be concerned about any health risks or side effects because they’ve been around for years.  When you go into their office for a consult or annual appointment and try to discuss it with them, they give you a list of options like you were picking out a different flavor of ice cream for the first time.  They barely go over the options, they smooth over all the side effects and they never tell you what can happen if you choose to stop one kind and head over to another.  Essentially, you are at the mercy of their bedside manner which is not always great for doctors.

If you understand the pill’s role in your body, you understand why it is so important for you to be on top of the choice you make.  The above story is a good representation what the pill does in your system.  It’s your advocate.  It snuffs out all the other “voices” (hormones) that your body has such as estrogen and progesterone and does not allow them a chance to speak.  The problem is, just like in the story, that’s not your voice.  So it doesn’t get it exactly right.  There are some things misinterpreted and as time goes on, less and less of what it “says” corresponds to what you need or want.  After a while, it’s doing its own thing and you’re just a bystander in your own story.

Once you know this, think about who you are and how your system is different from every other dieter on the planet.  You have chosen to be on the leaner side.  This means that the balance in your hormones is in a much more delicate state than someone who is of average body fat.  You walk the thin line between respecting your body and thumbing your nose at your body.  Depending on where you are in the diet, you could be doing either one.  Therefore, you cannot afford to have an advocate who is shouting the wrong message at the wrong time.  This is the difference between gaining a pound or two when your cycle comes around and ballooning up like a floatation device every time you think of eating a starch.  I don’t know about you, but I prefer the former for sure.

If you are using the pill as contraception, knock yourself out—that’s out, not up.  Just sayin.   I am not here to poo poo the pill entirely and I want to make sure I say this so no one misinterprets this post.  As contraception, that’s your personal preference.  But as a fix for your hormonal nightmare going on, it’s not a very wise choice.  It does not “fix” your hormones, it masks them.  It will not “regulate” you like they say it will, it just causes other issues to crop up while you search aimlessly for the formulation that won’t break you out, make you fat or give you migraines.  And any change in your pill formulation will halt your dieting for at least 3 months while you wait for your body to stabilize.

I know firsthand this lifestyle can be challenging.  It’s a lot of work to pack meals, plan your workouts around an already packed week and still live life so having another thing to keep track of is annoying.  But of all the things that can truly affect the beautiful vessel you are living in, it’s this.  Pay attention to your hormones, particularly your cycle.  They are the Town Criers that you need in your life to keep you on track and to keep you healthy for real.  Listen to them.  As always, let me know what you’re thinking below.  I truly love to hear.  Woop woop!:o)

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I need to interrupt the current series on The Pill.  Normally, when I get on a topic I am like a dog with a bone and I want to finish it but this has cropped up so much in the last week, it is worthy of a post.

We need to chat about…food.  Not just the edibleness of food, but what food represents and how personal it is in our lives.  If you really want to know the power of food, take a mixed crowd of women of all ages and bring out two trays.  On one tray is a healthy appetizer that is very good for you but maybe a 7 on the scale of 1 to 10 in flavor.  On the other tray is a not-so-good-for-you appetizer but is an 11 on the scale of 1 to 10 in flavor.  The event is a high visibility event, there are at least 50 women in the room and everybody there knows at least 2 people.

Some background for you:

The room is full of different sizes of women but not inclusive of all sizes.

Also, all types of women (athletic, moms, single, married, childless—you name it) are represented.

There is no music or anything that serves as a distraction.

The average age in the room is 36 with the age span going from 28 to 46.

There’s at least a few races represented in the room.

It’s an event for an organization-type-thing which means that there’s politics and there’s a pecking order.

The appetizers are the only food served at this event.

The trays were being brought around but everyone knew what the choices were without having to see the trays.

This is fully fictitious but I want to make it as real to you as possible.

Here are some observations for you:

• There was a ton of chatter in the room before the trays came out.
• About 30% of the women were not talking with anyone, though.
• There was noticeably less chatter in the room once the trays came out.  It wasn’t silence, but it was a loud hush.
• Three women hopped on the yummy appetizer right away and were very loud and funny about it.  Jokes were flying as they were eating.  They made at least 2 self conscious remarks but kept on eating.  They looked around the whole time without looking like they were looking around and 1 of them went back for a second one.
• An even bigger group of women, say about 8 or so, attacked the healthy appetizer.  They said nothing about it. They kept talking about whatever had their attention in the first place but never mentioned the food once.
• The majority of the women abstained from either choice…until…the “captivating women” chose what they wanted.  Then the other women in the room slowly made choices to eat.
• As soon as the trays came out, at least 70% of the room began to fidget with their clothing.  Pulling down skirts, flattening out their shirts on the bellies, buttoning jackets—if you could adjust it, then it was adjusted.
• At least half of the room suddenly learned how to scope a whole room out without moving their heads.  Their eyes developed some kind of Xray/360 degree vision where they could see through the back of their head to see who was eating what and how much.  It was eerie.  Felt like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie.
• Those that ate more than one appetizer all had a remark.  Either about what they were wearing, how they were on a diet, how they hadn’t eaten all day.  Basically, qualifiers.
• Some stared at some women in pure, noticeable disdain for either their choice of appetizer or for the quantity they ate.
• A few women went around offering their friends an appetizer—the yummy one—while they themselves chose the healthy one afterwards.
• Those that were alone chose the yummy appetizer 2 to 1 to those who were engaged in conversation.
• By the end of the serving of the food, 80% of the room had one of each appetizer although it was varied as to who had which one first.  Thirteen percent had only the healthy appetizer with the other 7% having just the yummy appetizer.  No one could abstain from eating all night long.
• Over the course of the evening, at least 2 separate groups broke off and headed to the bathroom to talk about who chose what and why!!

On Friday I will finish this in my audio post.  I will tell you where I am going with this and why.  But just know:  food IS…  Do you recognize yourself in there anywhere or someone close to you?  I’d love to know below.  Back to the series tomorrow.  Woop woop!

Every Friday I will be posting an audio message for your enjoyment. I am working on getting video going, too, so look forward to that coming soon.

Feel free to comment below and let me know if you have experienced anything close to what I am talking about in this week’s post.  There may be 2 more posts in this series so hang tight while we get to The Silencer…the Pill.  Cool?  Woop woop!

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 Why Our Cycles Are Important [8:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Remember in the last post that I said there is a lot of info out there–some good, some bad?  We need to put this whole issue into perspective by at least reviewing the information that is out there and then discuss how it does or does not apply to us:

Your cycle is a barometer by telling you:

Whether your hormones are balanced or not.

Find yourself crying because they made your coffee wrong that morning?  You may be a bit unbalanced.  Also, ladies, if you find yourself with a 5 o’clock shadow and it’s only noon time, you may have a problem there.  Shaving your beard on the way to work in the car is not cute, no matter how discreet you are.  If your chest hurts for weeks at a time (and you are not menopausal), you have extreme exhaustion from 2 to 5 pm, up all night long staring at the ceiling, some days you are Hercules—other days you are Pee Wee Herman or lastly, you have night sweats.   Any of these scream hormonal imbalance.

Whether your metabolism is fully functioning.

Gaining weight just watching fast food commercials?  Time to see if the thyroid is up to snuff.  Ate a piece of bread and it was as if someone opened an umbrella in your tummy five minutes later?  Could be issues with your gut which in turn mess with your metabolism.  Have a gall bladder issue and you aren’t your typical candidate for it?  Sounds like a possible thyroid problem there.  All of these things say, off kilter.

Whether your moods are in alignment.

Punched your husband in the face because he ate the last of something and then said, “so what?” about it?  Your free testosterone might be a bit too free, eh?  Feel like you need to have a baby yesterday and you are happily single and under 35 years old?  Get a hold of yourself, girl!  What’s wrong with you?  Sorry…that was my own personal interjection.  What I meant to say was, “You may be a bit estrogen heavy there.”  Gave somebody the finger in traffic and then realized it was your boss?  That progesterone may be getting the best of you.

If your cycle was off before you began clean eating it may be because of:

• Menopause/perimenopause
• Stress/Exercise
• Significant change in weight—up or down
• Medications
• PCOS/estrogen dominance/hormonal imbalance
• Nutrition
• And at least 5 other things that aren’t worth mentioning in this post

Most doctors help their patients manage these issues by:

• Focus on nutrition
• Limit stress
• Vitamin supplementation
• Prescribe the pill

This gives you an idea of what every woman faces whether they have chosen to lean out or not.  All of these are real issues and well documented in the medical community.  The question then becomes, “How is this different for you?”

Hormonal Imbalance

This is a given for us the first time we diet down to anything.  It doesn’t matter if we went from 200 pounds down to 180 pounds; dieting throws your body into a tail spin.  Some of us make it through unscathed, the rest of us are still picking up the pieces years later.  It’s different for everyone.  How it shows up, though, after dieting is anxiety, bingeing, mood swings (very high highs or very low lows), metabolic disturbances and our cycles.

If your cycle was off after you began clean eating it may be because of:

• Too little fat in your diet
• Too much exercise for way too long
• Too low of cals for way too long
• Too much exercise with too few cals for way too long
• Anxiety/depression medication
• Adrenal fatigue
• Insulin resistance
• Metabolic syndrome

What your doctor will suggest you do to help:

Eat right and exercise.

I know.  Don’t hit them.  Seriously.  But they will tell you that you need to eat healthy foods and make sure you do some cardio.  This is after you bring them 6 months worth of food journals and a plate loaded iso-lateral chest press machine for their waiting room.  You’ll be amazed at how many of them think that you are not doing enough even though you did the whole appointment with them on your own personal treadmill that you carried into the office all by yourself. Crazy.

Limit the stress.

This is about as effective as using chapstick as a gluestick.  Do they know who you are?  You’re Mrs. Type A.  You’ve already worked out, did 8 hours worth of work and made all your meals for the week and it’s only 9 am.  Getting you to relax is as laborious as 10^th grade summer reading list.  Totally no fun and getting it done takes forever!

Supplementation.

Not a bad thing to add in here but most likely, you’re already taking what they will suggest.  But it’s a good start.

Take the Pill.

WHOA NELLY!  This is the next post!  Sit tight!

There’s more to come and on Friday, I will have an audio post for you to listen to.  If you have never heard my voice or my crazy antics, now you will have your chance.  Can’t wait!  Woop woop!

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I have truly mellowed out in my old age.  Back in the day, I assure you, I was a much feistier gal.  I would like to say that that was a good thing, but alas…it wasn’t.  I have many a dead body behind me of those who entered into an argument with me and I wouldn’t say they “lost” but they lost something (i.e. limb, voice, money, life—who knows.  It wasn’t pretty.).  And those losses didn’t come because I knew something and was smarter than them—because that’s definitely not the case.  They came because I was ferocious at defending my end of the argument at all cost.  Whatever I knew to be true was true as far as I was concerned…and then I got older.

Getting older meant that I had to concede that I may know the truth or I may be “right”, but there could be a whole segment of information that I have never been exposed to that could stomp on whatever I am presenting as fact at that moment.  This doesn’t mean that I didn’t know what I was talking about; it means that I had limited knowledge in the topic being discussed.  This happens to all of us in some way, shape or form.  Think about how dumb we used to think our parents were when really, we were the dummies.  Or, say you are a trainer and a client tells you something that sounds odd to you and in your mind you call “bullcrap” because you think she just doesn’t want to diet or workout hard.  Then like a year later you find out that not only was she telling the truth, but now you have what she was talking about and you’re upset because now no one believes you.  Things like this happen all the time and I expect some of this to crop up during this series.  I need to debunk a lot of junk (wow, can I use that somewhere else?) that is floating around out there in the land of Greek Mythology, aka girl talk, surrounding our cycles and I expect some raised eyebrows.  There’s a ton of misinformation and we need to slog through the details to get to the truth.  Here are a few to start with:

1. Getting to the truth.

There’s no such thing.  There isn’t a central location of hormonal information that you will find that all of the medical community is going to agree upon.  There are two types of medicine that I am familiar with and I refer to them all the time:  Western medicine and naturopaths.  Western medicine is your traditional doctor who tells you what the insurance companies let them tell you.  They are not bad people, just limited by the system.   I will qualify this later so don’t get your underwear in knots if you don’t agree.  Hang tight.  Naturopaths are not exactly MD’s but they have a much more open view of tackling medical issues which is what you need when it comes to hormones.  The problem is, when you need a drug—you ain’t getting’ one there.

These two professions tend to be at odds with each other.  This is tough on us, the little guy, because we look to them for the answers and then find ourselves having to make a choice between the two without any real information to back up our decisions.  YUCK.

2. My cycle has always been messed up.  It’s just the way it is.

Umm…no it’s not.  And don’t accept that either.  Here is where I qualify my above statement.  Unfortunately for doctors, they do not have the resources to make you well.   They only have the capability to make you better.  That is not the same as being well.  Doctors look at the symptoms you present and make them go away.  They do not necessarily cure you.  And when it comes to a syndrome or chronic condition, they can only ask for so many things to be done that insurance will cover because after a while, they start getting vetoed.  Again, not their fault—it’s the system’s.  Hormonal issues require patience, lots of lab work and a good eye for detail.

3. My doctor diagnosed me with “fill in the blank” so that’s what I have.

Maybe so.  I have no right to argue that in any way.  I am not a doctor and do not profess to be.  But I am an advocate and I challenge you to get a second opinion.  Especially if what they told you that you had was a syndrome.  Things like PCOS, fibromyalgia and so on that do not have definitive tests (although PCOS does but few get the ultrasound done) but more like a list of things that you seem to have in common with them.  Syndromes are a great way to say, “I-have-no-idea-what’s-wrong-with-you-but-I-know-you-need-a-diagnosis-or-you-won’t-be-happy-so-I’m-going-to-tell-you-this-so-you’ll-leave-my-office.”  They have no true way to “fix” them but they give you something tangible to hang on to because it makes you feel better.  Not become well.  Just feel better.  And even then, you may not feel better, you may just be symptom free.

Why do I bring this entire subject up?  Why do I care so much?  I know some of you are thinking, “I was just fine before you started kicking up all this dirt.  Now you have my head spinning.”  (Or maybe that’s just Kas thinking that  I bring it up because if you are not optimal at normal body fat levels, you are REALLY not optimal when you get lean.  And for some of you, it’s what’s keeping you from getting the body that you desire.  Your cycle screams “I am not well” and to lose weight, change body composition or be the best you can be:  you need to be well.

Much more to come.  This is a big topic when it comes to changing your body for the better.  If you have any horror stories, you know I love them.  Hit me up below.  Woop woop!

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Is it me or does my littlest one look like he just saw something gross right before the shot was snapped?  These CIA agents have zero loyalty to their mother.

My kids are awesome.  Yes, I am biased in saying that, but truly, they really are awesome kids.  However, they tend to throw their mother under the bus on more than one occasion.  They say they don’t mean to, but the two older ones are worse than the town crier.  The main thing they tattle on me to their father about is the high flying antics stuff that happens when I drive them to school.  Now I am one of the most aggressive and psychotic cautious drivers there are out there so I’m not sure why they find it necessary to tell their dad that we were driving on two wheels to school but they do at times and it is very inconvenient.  Clearly they got to school by the hair of their chinny chin chins because they weren’t in my car when I got back home nor under the tires and the school didn’t call to say they were psychologically damaged absent so obviously they were fine.  So there are days I just want to hush the two town criers in my back seat by forcing them to listen to their father go on and on about it bopping them upside their heads—but I can’t.  But there is a town crier that we are silencing that we should not be and it is usually warning us of impending peril.  This would be our cycle.

Cycles are very funny because we loathe having them but we hate missing one even more.  They possess an uncanny ability to show up the week you go on vacation no matter when you book it and they make every day activities uncomfortable and cumbersome.  They’re about as welcome as a tummy virus is after a Sunday dinner with the family.   But missing one, for some of us, is more traumatic than being robbed at gun point so let’s just be honest that it’s not like we’re rejoicing because we skipped a month.  And even if missing one doesn’t send you into cardiac arrest, it still makes you think in the back of your head, “What’s wrong here?”

If you hop on the web and start googling, you will find a ton of information regarding missed periods, or as the medical community refers to them:  irregular periods.  Some of it is inaccurate, not all because there is some good info out there on the more prominent websites, but almost all of it is inapplicable to the lean community.  We are a special breed that is incredibly underrepresented in medical studies and on the medical websites.  We are lumped in with the general public and when it comes to issues regarding our hormones or how our bodies react to dieting, we aren’t even close.  But contrary to popular belief of us clean eaters, we do not lose our periods because we are low body fat.  Very few of us ever get that low of body fat to say we lost our cycle for that reason.  I know I have mentioned this before, but we have a warped sense of what our true body fat is.  I have heard girls say they are 8/9% body fat at their leanest and that is a far from the truth.  They are most likely 11/12ish but highly unlikely they as low as 8 or 9%.  The thing that most of seem to miss is that the accuracy of the measurement tends to decrease as you move out to either extreme.  Super lean BF levels and super high BF levels are normally not accurate because they are out of the range of accuracy for that measuring tool.  This is another post for another time but just know that unless you have some ribs showing and your femur perfectly outlined, you are not 8% BF.

We lose our periods due to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol.  It is the grand interrupter.  Cutting your cals and beating your body into submission is a great way to raise your cortisol levels which in turn messes with your sex hormones.  (Of course, this beats the old fashioned way of fight or flight which just shows that we have become bored with more traditional ways of jacking ourselves up and moved on to more sophisticated methods.)  Once that balance is off kilter, so is your period and it can take an act of Nature to get it regular again.  But why the fuss and who really cares?  If I’m missing my period, why don’t I just take the pill and make it come back, right?  That’s up to you but your period is the best loud mouth you will ever have in your body.  It’s forever telling you how you are doing medically.  Silencing may not be the most prudent thing to do.

Hang on tight while we jump into what your period really tells you on a monthly basis and why the pill may not be the answer you expected it to be.  Can’t wait, ladies!  Woop woop!

Since I laid some ground rules down for nutrition in terms of an obstacle race, I feel it only prudent to do the same for active recovery and injuries.  The only thing that tops being injured is being sick.  I have had a sick 6 year old at home now for 3 days and he is reminding how miserable it is to be sick.  But injuries are annoying because you really want to work out at full capacity but you can’t and the whole time you can hear the pounds collecting on the scale.  So let’s put this in perspective, shall we?

Active Recovery

Active recovery is a fancy schmancy word for “knock it off and rest, will ya?”  In support of us psychos who feel like we’re being lazy because we only worked out 7 days this week (as opposed to the 8 days available to us overachievers), this is a vital tool to be added to our tool box.  Unlike a regular athlete who has full calories available to them at all times, we have to recover in two ways:  fake “high” caloric days and consolidating exercise.

Since our lives are guided by the motto “less is more”, our prep for the race should be a bit less than the average athlete.  For one, a ton of running will kill a physique.  Therefore, that should cut the schedule back a bit.  Secondly, we will need to consolidate lifts with functional training because lifting more would be hard to due to the lack of food in the diet.  And lastly, we do not have enough starch in the diet to go hog wild in terms of energy output without wondering if we’re burning through some major muscle so we need to get smart about adding fat.  Here are some ways to manipulate your schedule:

• Go to full body lifts for now.
• Add functional movements in between the lifts.
• Wear a weighted vest in your workout instead of heavy DB’s or BB’s.
• Leave at least 2 days completely free from all exercise and instead, make them stretch days.
• Eat the most on those days, but not so much that you break the caloric bank.
• Add sprints to your schedule (like 200’s and 400’s) but do not put them after a killer leg workout.  Even if you are doing full body workouts, you may have more of a “leg day” than another day.  Avoid sprinting after that.
• You can make the high cal days high by adding more Omega 3 fats instead of adding more starch.  This will definitely aid in active recovery.
• Drop a day of cardio and make your lifts more dynamic so you suck wind during them.

Injuries

Injuries are a pain in the butt.  And I mean that literally!  I would rather (yes! I got my “I’d rather” in) remove a deep splinter with a butter knife than sit through my summer (again!) with a major injury like a broken limb.  I broke my foot last June and it was miserable.  I refused to be sidelined so I hobbled all over Boston with a huge boot, but it still wasn’t the same.  Because we are on a compromised diet in the first place, our joints and tendons are ripe for the picking in terms of injury.  Fat is scarce in our diet and it is what lubricates our joint capsules  so we have little give and take when we misstep or land funny.  Rolling ankles are almost a given as well as rotator cuff issues.  Be smart!  Make sure you recover and get plenty of sleep.  Should an injury occur, here is what you need to know:

• Your first reaction is to cut all the starch out of your diet.  Don’t do it.  Go to 1/day at least 4 days/week.
• Eat exactly what you need each day.  This means do not go to bed hungry or full.  Either one is bad for different reasons.
• Do not work out on the injured body part until you are completely well.  Trust me when I say this.  We heal jacked up if we do not fully recover.  For the rest of your life, your knee will ache every time you turn on the garbage disposal.  Seriously.
• You will not gain weight if you keep the junk out.  This is not the time to “munchy” yourself into next week.   With that being said, do not try to starve yourself, either.  See above.
• You will feel smooshy.  Itiswhatitis.  You are not losing muscle.  You are losing your “pump”.  Accept it and just know when you lift the right way again, all will be well.
• Don’t be a cardio hero.  If you can’t lift right but somehow can still do cardio, don’t try to make up for lifting with cardio.  Baaaaaaad decision right there.  Just say no.

I feel better now that I put this on paper.  If you go out and act crazy on the course, I have nothing to do with it.   You have been warned.  Hahaha!  Let me know if you are doing one any time soon.  I’d love to know.  Woop woop. )

It’s 3 pounds per starch serving!

No, honestly.  Some of y’alls think you gain 3 pounds per starch serving.  Sound familiar?

• “My body is just sensitive to carbohydrates.”
• “Every time I eat a carb I gain weight.”
• “I think I’m gluten intolerant because I become puffy and bloated when I eat bread.”

This scary thing about these statements is that I think some of you are actually standing on the scale while eating and give me an up-to-the-minute report as to what that number is doing.  It’s frightening.  And very few of us are truly “sensitive” to carbohydrates.  First, let’s be honest and say when we turn the carb fountain on, we don’t shut it off.  The only sensitivity we have is that we can detect one in the room if we were blindfolded and devoid of smell.  Law enforcement should use us for our carb tracking abilities with the TSA or something.  There has to be a use for that kind of sensitivity to starch.  I pray that you know by now that we do not instantaneously gain weight from starch, we gain water.  One of the best tools that you have for making your body look great at an event is the manipulation of starch in your diet.  If you take that away permanently, that’s a huge loss for the dress up world.  Lastly, you are not gluten intolerant because you had bread; you are puffy because you had the LOAF of bread.  Just sayin’.  Flour absolutely can wreak havoc on you more than sweet potatoes or oatmeal, but that’s only when you initially bring it back into your diet (I will explain this one day—I promise).  I am not advocating eating bread every day, I am just not going to let you poo poo it for the wrong reasons.

You know I had to go there because for us to be able to do an obstacle course race, we need to eat some starch.  However, this is easier said than done if you are in the middle of a diet or if you are carb-phobic.  Signing up for an endurance event while dieting is like a guy trying to maintain bachelor status as he’s planning his wedding.  Sounds good in theory but…

There is a huge difference between the leanness of an elite endurance athlete who got that way in spite of eating a high carb diet to an amateur physique athlete who wants to maintain the leanness while entering in to a high carb diet.  They are not the same and you will be very disappointed about your results if you do not know that before training starts.  More than I want to yap your ears off for hours about starches and such, I want to give you some ground rules:

Bring starches into your diet at least 4 weeks before the event. You do this because your body must get used to processing them again.  You will find that you will be tired the first week you bring them in.  You do not need a lot so easy, killah.  Whoa, Nelly.  Steady as she goes…  An extra 50g of carbohydrates can seriously go a long way in our training.  We have trained our bodies to do more on less so it is not necessary to go crazy here.

Eat the heartier starches on the days you train hard. Limit heavy starches like bread, rice or oatmeal to the days you train.  Have them first thing in the morning and post workout.  I would fool around with pre-workout starches first before relying on them because we tend to not draw our energy directly from starches.  We are low carb on a natural basis, so having them pre can sometimes bog you down.  I find fruit works best here but see what works for you.

Up until 75 minutes, it’s still just cardio. Don’t get drawn into the hype that you need to eat extra and do all kinds of gu’s and gels just because you are doing an endurance event.  For us, it’s just cardio until the 75 min mark and then we need to think about supplementation.

Sodium is a necessity in your diet. Eating clean means we do not get enough sodium in our diets.  If I had my way, you would keep a salt lick by your bed and run your tongue down it every morning.  Now there’s a nasty visual for you. (Speaking of that, I’m short on an “I’d rather”.  I’ll work one in this series somehow, hang on.)  But this is where we get into trouble.  We mistake the negative effects of not enough sodium (dizziness and lethargy) with not enough sugar so when the symptoms hit, we’re eating the wrong thing.  Make sure you have enough electrolytes in your body before you train.

Have a separate menu for the different training days. You should eat the most on days you lift and the day after your long run or hardest training.  You eat moderately on the long run or hardest training day and you eat the least on every other day.  This keeps your physique sharp and your hunger dull.  It also stabilizes your energy levels so that you’re not all hyped up at the wrong time.   Nothing is more annoying than an overly hyped athlete on a non-training day.  We drive our family nuts.   Honestly.

So there you have it.  Tomorrow we talk about active recovery and injuries.  Remember who you are and you will head into this the right way.  Cool?  Woop woop!!

Ahhh…there’s nothing like a fresh batch of peer pressure to make us do something completely uninformed and irrational.  Gotta love it.

Everybody loves a challenge—especially us.  We love them more than the average person does, to be honest with you.  We can seriously get a little sick with it by setting crazy goals like 5 marathons in 5 weeks and of course, at the time it sounds completely rational.  It even sounds doable.  However, about halfway through the goal we know we are in trouble but we keep on going for pride sake. How about we avoid this calamity by giving you some things to take into account as we head into another year of the obstacle course races?

Let me remind you of who you are.   If you are reading this blog, then you are someone who may or may not realize that you are an athlete but you definitely realize that your physique is part of your overall health and fitness goal.  So it’s not ‘by any means necessary’ to reach the finish line because none of us here would be willing to go up 10 pounds to make the goal happen.  Instead, we will rethink it when we realize that it could take weeks to get the 10 pounds off again and we’ll most likely move on to another goal.  It is what it is.  This gives you an idea of what this series is about because it is not about getting you ready for the Tough Mudder or any other killer race.  No, it is about getting you ready for them safely while taking into account that you will need to be smart about how you fuel for the training, actively recover from the training and psychologically deal with the training. This is not the same as just plain old running or bodybuilding type lifting and if you are not aware of that you may either blow your diet, go crazy or the worst of them all: get injured.

Over the next three days I want to tackle 4 things:

• Tough Guy syndrome
• Nutritional challenges (how to work the STarch thing)
• Active recovery
• Injuries and their ramifications

In less than a month I turn 42 years old.  WOW.  I don’t feel a day over 41 30 yo when I do things, but the next day I feel like I am 75.  I honestly remember the time when I could wake up, decide to run a 10K that day (even though I was not training for one and never ran more than the 10 feet it takes me to get into the shower) and then get up the next morning and do it all over again.  Crazy.  If I did that today someone would be peeling me off the asphalt—and that would be at registration!  Shame.  I need to warm up for my warm up and I know that’s from years of abuse brought on by Tough Guy syndrome.  This malady affects almost all trainers, some group fitness instructors, avid runners and nearly every single physique athlete out there.

Tough Guy syndrome (TGS) is a peculiar syndrome because it crosses the blood brain barrier and renders us dumb as dirt as to the workings of the body and metabolism even though we could school a client on it in a heartbeat.  Somehow, we’re impervious to this information.  We can dispense it, but we can’t use it and because of this, we tend to do some of the dumbest things known to mankind.  It’s unbelievable.

TGS’s power is exacted by finding the weak spot in our immune systems: our egos.  Once it finds that chink in the armor, it quickly spreads throughout the Central Nervous System causing awful symptoms like signing up for and completing the Tough Mudder without any training for it and then systematically bragging about it like you’re a hero or something.  Frightening.  Fevers and chills can result if it goes undetected as people are hot with jealously or cold with disdain around you because you decided to just “pop into” the race.  And because TGS is a syndrome, there is no “one-size-fits-all” cure and normally diagnosis comes only with the egregious symptoms coming to light such as injury or accidents.

But there is hope.  You can take preventative measures to keep from developing this syndrome by realizing a few things:

1)      If you are under 18% bodyfat, you are of the lean community.  You cannot, and should not, put your body to the ultimate test without properly preparing it and fueling it.  Do not eat the same diet you are used to now and then just “jump into” an obstacle course type race.

2)      If you are allergic to starchy carbohydrates because you think they make you gain weight and want to just eat starch the week of the event, you’re in for a big surprise.  We’ll talk about this tomorrow.  Just know that you need to eat them long before the week of the event if you want to use them to fuel your race.

3)      You do not recover the same when you are lean.  You have fewer reserves in the tank and you must keep that in mind.  If you deplete them now, they will not be available to you when go back to working on your physique or just even maintaining it.

4)      You run the risk of injury—major injury—when you are leaner.  This truth comes in handy when you feel the urge to bounce out of bed and conquer the world.  One day of heroism could cost you 10 weeks of working out.  There’s a sobering thought.

This will be a short series.  I am only going to yell at you a little bit (I’m really yelling at myself but I’m using you as the punching bag.  Sorry.) so meet me here for the next 2 days as we get ready for an obstacle race.  Cool?  Woop woop!