You are What You Eat Eats (Part 1)

We all know that to look and feel your best, you have to eat well. Nutrition truly is the most important factor when it comes to optimizing health, and without a conscious effort to fuel your body with good foods, it is easy to put on the pounds. That is why I love the saying, “You are what you eat.” I think it perfectly describes how our bodies interact with the food we provide. If you provide poor-quality food, you are going to have a poor-quality body. The food you eat affects your body fat, your recovery, your likelihood of becoming sick or injured, your mood, your sleep, your strength, and your energy. It does it all! What is not so cliché, however, is understanding that it’s NOT just about what you eat…it’s about what you eat eats.

Healthy Food = Healthy People

While there are a wide variety of plants, animals, and their derivatives, there are a few things that all life needs to flourish. While we do not need to go into a biology lesson in this article, the one thing I do want to focus on is nutrients. All life requires some form of nutrients, and when these nutrients are poor in abundance or quality, the life form suffers. For plants, sun, soil, and water are vital components for optimizing health. For animals, the key components for good health are plants, other animals, and water. Without these elements, plant and animals cannot grow to their full potential and can become sick or malnourished.

As you can probably see, what we depend on for fuel depends on its own source of fuel to stay healthy. If what you’re eating was not cared for properly and fed properly, then it doesn’t really matter that you are eating stereotypically “healthy” food items…you are eating a sick plant or animal. On the other hand, when you provide your body with food items that have been well-nourished and have lived healthy lives, you, too, can enjoy a healthy life. When your food is health, you are healthy.

COWS DO NOT EAT GRAIN

One of the most blatant examples of how malnourished food can lead to problems up the food chain is our consumption of cow. Cow and red meat in general has gotten a pretty bad rap over the last few decades and it’s time to clear things up. Cow meat is not unhealthy. Sick cow meat is. Cows and other ruminants have a unique digestive system designed to break down and utilize grass and other forage, but not corn. Add to this that corn (especially feed-lot corn) contains very few nutrients to begin with, and overfeeding of corn to cows results in fat, sick animals. This is where hormones and antibiotics come into play in the meat industry. They have to keep these cows alive long enough to get them to slaughter, while making them as fat as possible.

Unfortunately, what ends up on your plate is a sick, over-fat piece of meat. Yummy! Contrast this with the story behind a grass-fed and finished source of meat, and you can begin to see why well fed food is important. When you provide a cow with an abundance of food it would naturally eat, the meat comes out full of vitamins and minerals, lean (only 10-15% fat), and with an abundance of healthy and essential fats such as omega-3s and CLA. These are very important fats that our bodies need to thrive, yet we rarely consume the necessary quantities to reap the benefits.

The problem with the extra fat in grain-fed meat is not only its caloric load, it is the TYPE of fat. Grains have a very high omega-6 content, and as we learned in Fat is Fuel, Not Foe (Part 2), having an imbalance of omega-6 and omega-3 can lead to some serious problems. So it turns out that cow is a great source of nutrients, but grain-fed (aka sick) cows are not. And this story does not just include cows. These days, just about every mass-produced animal is fed corn and/or soy and/or other animal byproducts. Chickens, pigs, and fish are fed a host of items that they would not naturally consume. And just like in cows, and just like in our own bodies, eating an abundance of grain leads to poor health.

While meat is most commonly talked about when it comes to grass-fed vs. grain fed, the food products which are derived from these same animals are a concern as well. Cow meat is not the only thing we consume from cows; there is milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, and kefir. These are all coming from the same sick cow that provides the over-fat piece of meat, and they have many of the same issues. The fat and protein quality can be greatly affected, and your health is very much dependent on the quality of your food.

To Be Continued…

While animal products can be a major source of high-quality proteins and fats, they are not the only thing that makes for a healthful diet. In next week’s article, we will look at the importance of plants in your diet, and why their health is just as important as that of our animal friends. We will also discuss strategies for eating healthily and how to find the quality foods your body desires.

If You Push, You Must Pull (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the excess of pressing exercises in the average gym goer’s routine and how this only exacerbates the rounded shoulders and shoulder pain that many of us already experience. As we mentioned in the previous article, you must first start by considering how you spend your day and focus on posture. Second, you must work to restore tissue length and quality.

In today’s article, we will be reviewing what exercises at the gym will best help to reestablish good posture and balance, while helping you to avoid injury. As we talked about in the last post, if you have any postural concerns, it would be best to limit your pressing. A good rule of thumb is that for every pushing/pressing exercise, you should do 2-3 pulling exercises. I would also say that your pressing exercises should consist mostly of push up variations. There are a variety of push up progressions that can challenge you while not risking injury or furthering your imbalances.

When, Why, and How to Push

When you do decide to include pressing exercises in your routine, start with a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve through using these movements. Most people just throw together a bunch of exercises that they found in a magazine and call it a day. When you put together a program for yourself, you should always start by thinking about what you want to achieve, and how the movements you have included will help to achieve that goal. There can be a number of benefits to including pressing in a routine, but there are certain factors to consider.  First, are you someone that sits a lot? If so, pressing may not need to take a large role in your routine. Second, have you had a past shoulder injury? Is so, you may also want to limit your pressing. Third, what are your goals? If you have the sole purpose of increasing shoulder/chest size, then yes, pressing will help. But you have to weigh the costs and benefits. If you answered yes to the first two questions, then your first step toward increasing chest/shoulder strength and size will be to correct posture. It may seem unrelated, but if you end up injured then you won’t be doing any exercise at all!

For most people, I recommend finding the appropriate push up variation and going from there. Below you will see a variety of push ups that range in difficulty. The key in all of this is to focus on technique and posture. If you ever attempt an exercise and it causes pain or loss of posture, it is not the right exercise for you. Scale it back until you have an exercise that you can do perfectly. The videos below are in order from least challenging to most challenging, so start from first exercise and work your way up!

Pull, Pull, and Then Pull Some More

For most of us, the only reason we exercise is to look and feel better. Not that this is a small goal by any means, but it is sometimes odd when the average gym goer uses exercises that are counterproductive in regards to these goals. A hunched position is neither attractive nor comfortable, so let’s see what exercises we can do at the gym that will help us to undo this postural limitation. The first type of exercise is something I like to call a horizontal pull. This would be your rowing variations. There are a wide variety of rows, a few of which you will see in the video below. The second type of pull is what I like to call vertical pulls, and this will include exercises such as the pull up and pull down.  

When performing these exercises there are a few things that you MUST remember and focus on. First, it is critical that you keep your shoulder blades/shoulders in a back and down position. This means that you should feel as if you are pinching the lower part of your shoulder blades together, right around the mid-back. If you can keep this position, you will avoid shrugging during the movements (which would only act to reinforce poor movement and poor shoulder position). Second, don’t forget your core. Make sure that you keep your abs and hips stable while performing these movements to protect your lower back. This is a good rule for all lifting so don’t let yourself perform a single rep if you are not stable.

Fixing Posture and Imbalance

What all of these exercises work toward is strengthening and shortening those muscles that can become weak and stretched over time from frequent sitting or from an over-emphasis on pressing motions. There is very little in our daily activity that helps us to straighten up and keep our shoulders and backs in an upright position. Therefore, it is important that we take every opportunity to fight our life-long regression toward the fetal position. Include more pulling and be wise with your pressing, and your posture and overall well-being will be greatly improved.

If You Push, You Must Pull (Part 1)

Walk into a commercial gym tomorrow and you will immediately see about 20 benches of all kinds and 5-6 chest and shoulder press machines. If you walk around a bit, you might be able to find one pull down machine, one seated row machine, and one or two pull up bars. For many people out there, this has become the norm for strength training equipment. This description may not even provoke a response if you have spent a significant amount of time in the gym. The problem, however, is that this shows a flawed exercise paradigm. The reason the “pressing” equipment far outnumbers the “pulling” equipment is because of demand, and it is the average gym goer that wants to press! The bench press, shoulder press, chest fly, shoulder raise, high pull, and all other types of pressing exercises. Pressing has become overwhelmingly popular, especially in the male population. The only problem: too much pressing leads to imbalances, which can lead to pain and injury.

A Fetal Culture

It is not just the exercises that lead to imbalances, it is our daily life. As we have talked about before, we live in a culture of inactivity. In other words, we sit. And we don’t just sit—we hunch. We have a computer in front of us all day, work on a keyboard that keeps our arms tucked in, and we stay there for 6-8 hours every day. So every day we reinforce our shoulder-forward position at work, and then go to the gym where we press. This is problematic for two reasons. First, we are already pulled forward and the press motion only works to shorten our chest, shoulder, and neck muscles more. Second, when your shoulders are pulled forward, you are not able to properly stabilize your shoulder joint for pressing, especially in the overhead position. Your shoulder joint depends on having a vertical alignment so that the ball and socket of the shoulder can sit in its proper position. When your upper body becomes hunched over, it can actually be impossible for you to line up your body properly.

Who Doesn't Have Shoulder Pain?

The problems stemming from our hunched posture have become so common that over 60% of people who are 50 or older are walking around with a rotator cuff injury right now. These are not always symptomatic, but there is an injury or past injury nonetheless. The bad news is that if you are not exercising right now, you may find out that you have a weak or injured cuff the hard way: re-injury. The good news is that whether you are training right now or not, you have an opportunity to change what you are doing, and start working toward better posture and better shoulder stability. The first thing you can do is read Why Your Baby Moves Better than You and Stand Up for Your Life! which will talk more about posture. Second, you can drastically decrease pressing in your exercises. If you have ANY shoulder pain during a movement, you should not be doing it. If you know that your rotator cuff is weak or was previously injured, you should avoid almost all overhead pressing. Third, you should start working the tissue.

Tissue Quality Comes First

Before we can hope that our exercises will do anything for us, we have to make sure that our tissue quality and length will ALLOW us to perform those exercises. There are a number of areas that need to be focused on to best prepare us. First, we must work on the chest. By rolling (massaging) the chest muscles, then stretching them, we can help to prepare them for the stretch they will inevitably experience during pulling exercises. Second, we work the neck. The neck and shoulders are very much connected and along with rounded shoulders, sitting all day in front of a computer also leads to a forward head posture. To effectively straighten out the spine, we roll and stretch the neck as well. Third, we focus on the shoulder blades and back. This incorporates a lot of areas, but we can prepare them all with similar work. Once we have worked on all of these areas we are ready for exercise.

In next week’s article we will review the exercises that will best help in shoulder positioning and strength. For now, just work on the stretches and massage work above, and continue to focus on daily posture.

It's Not about Exercise, It's about Recovery

How many times have you gone to the gym, worked your butt off for 60+ minutes, soaked your t-shirt, gave it your all, and then as soon as you left, it was back to the same old routine: you sit at a desk at work, make poor food choices, have a couple of glasses of wine at night, get 6 hours of sleep if you’re lucky, and then wake up and hit the gym again to make sure you are in top condition. Now, this may not fully describe your situation, but I am guessing that your lifestyle does not line up 100% with your exercise goals. I am not here to say what your goal in exercise is…you may exercise for the sole purpose of eating that bowl of ice cream every night. If so, this article is not for you. If, however, you have larger ambitions for your exercise, it may be time to rethink your strategy.

What is Exercise?

To fully understand what exercise can and cannot do for us, we must first understand what it is: a STRESSOR. Exercise is essentially a controlled physical stressor, one which breaks down muscle tissue, decreases your immune functioning, decreases balance and strength, and increases the risk of injury. We know the immediate result of exercise—it’s called fatigue—and we all know that we are not at our best when we are fatigued. The question is: can you recover from that fatigue and how quickly?

Adaptation = Results

The bottom line is that exercise is just as likely to help you grow strong and fit as it is to make you weak and sick. Stress in any form can be good or bad, it completely depends on your body’s ability to adapt. Given the proper conditions, your body has the remarkable ability to absorb stress and become more capable of handling that stress in the future. Given the wrong conditions, however, your body will be limited in its recovery, and future exposures will only lead to further weakening of the system.

To make the most of our exercise, we must put an emphasis on recovery. I would go as far to say that what you do in the gym should be completely dependent on your expected recovery potential. If you know that you are not going to be able to recover well, go light at the gym and make sure to stay on your feet throughout the day. Activity is always a good thing, but do not think that doing extra hill intervals will help if you are only going to sleep 6 hours that night.

What is Recovery?

If you decide to exercise, and I highly recommend that you do, here are the 3 main factors that you must consider if you are to derive the most possible benefits from your time and efforts.

1. Sleep: The time you spend asleep is one of the most significant periods of recovery. From bone and tissue repair to hormone balancing, sleep is when your body goes into overdrive to help you recover. The reason 8+ hours becomes crucial for optimal results is that your body depends on a variety of hormones to fully adapt to stress, and it is not until you have been through 2-3 sleep cycles that your body turns up the production of these hormones. When you only sleep for 7, 6, or even 5 hours, your body has no chance to repair. There are a number of other negative health consequences of missing your sleep, but this is all we will focus on here.

2. Diet: The food you eat literally becomes who you are. Your body will look and feel exactly like the fuel you give it, so why not fuel it with high octane food products. Quality protein, carb, and fat sources each have an important role in recovery and should be placed at the highest priority. I know that eating well takes time, money, and effort, but I always wonder, what time will you have when your money and effort is tied up in feeling sick and exhausted. Make health your top prority and you will increase your wealth in all of these areas.

3. Movement: Keeping active makes a huge difference in how you recover. Walking, playing a sport, hiking, gardening, cooking, cleaning, building, etc. It all makes a difference. We were not built to sit for hours on end, and having consistent, light activity throughout the day will make for a much greater adaptation to exercise.

These are not the only elements to recovery, but they are the ones that I feel are commonly neglected (I talk more about these topics in my article 165 Hours). If you have a goal and you think exercise is going to help you achieve that goal, then take some time to think about if your recovery is also in line with your goal. If you are just beating yourself up at the gym but do not focus on changes related to health elsewhere in your life, then there will be very few results from your efforts. It can be very frustrating to work so hard and not see results, so start off on the right track and put your recovery first!

The Goal is to KEEP the Goal the Goal

If you are overwhelmed by the amount of health and fitness information available, you are not alone. Every day we see messages about magical fruit drinks, ground-breaking diet pills, and core burning workout videos that claim to be the one thing that will help you to reach your goals. Just do this one thing and all will be better! As I am sure many of you know, it is not that easy, but that doesn’t mean that reaching your goals is complicated. There are only a few simple concepts that you need to know to reach just about any goal you set, and today, we will talk about the most important of those ideas.

I was watching a video this week by a strength coach named Dan John and he said something that stuck with me. He said that whenever someone comes to him for help, his main job is to just keep the goal the goal. We all know the January 1^st syndrome…everyone has goals and aspirations to get back on track, start fresh, and this time, really make a change. Then what happens? Life. And that goal is quickly forgotten, only to be remembered the next year, only this time, you are even further from it. So what is the first and most important step to reaching any goal? It is to KEEP the goal the goal! You must do whatever it takes to keep that goal in front of you. This could include writing it down and posting it on your bathroom mirror, or hiring a coach to help keep you on track. Whatever it is, you need to keep the goal at the front of your mind and only then will you be ready to take action.

This is not to mean that goals cannot change (a very common part of goal setting), but without first committing to SOMETHING, there will never be forward movement. It is so easy to become comfortable in how we do things and to sacrifice what we want just to keep our lives constant. There is good in having stability, but if it forgoes those things you want most for your life, then it may be worth shaking things up a bit. One of the great benefits of setting and keeping goals is that you learn a lot about what it is you really want. You may set one goal, get halfway there, and then realize that there is actually something you want more. Great! This is the journey that will lead you on a fulfilling life path. It is a long process, but if you do not take that first step, then the opportunity to be the best you can be will never present itself.

So this week, the only thing I want you to worry about is determining what that first goal will be. What is something that you have wanted to accomplish relating to health, fitness, lifestyle, work, family, etc.? If this is something you know you want, make this goal your top priority for the rest of the year, and commit to KEEPING this the goal. Just think about how much you could accomplish by staying focused on a single goal for a month, six months, or a year? It is consistent, steady movement that makes all the difference, the hard part is making sure that you keep moving in the same direction. The goal is to keep the goal the goal. Find your goal, stay on course, and the sky will be the limit!