Learn to Cook...Lose Weight and Gain Much More!

It is a common theory among biologists and anthropologists that the catalyst that propelled our species from nature to culture was our having learned to cook our food.  Cooking our food, when we were living in foraging societies, became a way to detoxify our food and thus made many more nutritional options available to us.  Cooking also makes the things we eat more digestible and the nutrients more readily available.  To paint a comparison, consider other primates; who tend to spend up to 6 hours a day chewing their food.  This rigorous chomping is meant to help our evolutionary cousins to compensate for the toughness of their food and to extract as much nutritional value out of their limited options as possible. 

Why is this important?

It’s meant to illustrate the importance of cooking to our collective human culture.  It was with the advent of cooking that we were freed from hours of intensive chewing.  This made eating and digestion a much more energy efficient process.  Cooking also gave us a social focal point and gathering place to consume our meals, providing us the foundation to establish common ideas and practices with our larger group, thus establishing the first forms of culture.  Gathering around meals continued to hold a high level of importance in social interactions even through the 20^th century. 

We are, according to some, at the cliffs edge of losing this opportunity to foster intellectual and emotional growth through cooking.  Many believe we are beyond the point of retribution when it comes to cooking our meals, and the result could be the end of humanity.  Not in the zombie apocalypse sort of way, but the end of what we consider to be the crucial aspects of ourselves that make us more human than animal.  The more we outsource our cooking to large food companies, the less our cultural values are nurtured; we spend less time at the table with our families and lose out on crucial opportunities to teach our culture through cooking to the next generation. 

In the H.G Wells classic The Time Machine, the Time Traveler theorizes that the race of beings he encounters in the distant future, being dullards and physically feeble, is the result of mankind’s nearly constant push to improve the comfort and quality of our lives through engineering the world around us.  Basically, we became so effective at improving our situation that we left nothing to improve and therefore we lost the ability to rationalize and perform the most basic physical tasks as there was no need for these skills. 

This is, in fact, what we are accomplishing by outsourcing our cooking, we are ridding ourselves of a skill we no longer deem necessary as a result of the convenient world that surrounds us.

This social shift is also having a tremendous impact on our health and waistlines.  By leaving cooking to companies that specialize in high fat, high sugar foods we have turned foods that were once-in-a-while foods to items that we consume daily.  Journalist Michael Pollan gives french fries as an example.  To make french fries at home, first, you need to cut the potatoes.  Then, they need to be dropped in a vat of hot oil (often times using a whole bottle of oil, which for many seems a waste).  Next you remove the fries and allow them to drain.  Once they have drained you need to re-submerge the fries in the hot oil to give them their final crisp.  Once all that is done, you season the fries and attempt to clean oil splatters off of your stove-top, your counters, your backsplash, your vaulted ceilings, refrigerator, cabinets, toaster, kids and just about anything else within a 100 feet radius of the popping oil. 

The idea here is that if we force ourselves to cook everything we eat, we make different/better food choices as a result of how difficult it is to prepare fried foods and other fast food staples. 

When we outsource our cooking, we are losing precious time with our family and an opportunity to teach our kids how to cook and eat well.  Furthermore, with every bucket of chicken or bag of burgers we order through the drive-thru we lose a piece of our collective cultural knowledge.  This trend has also turned foods that we consumed now and again to daily staples, effecting our health in a way that could result in the next generations suffering a decreased life expectancy and that is a step backwards we haven’t taken, in western culture, in as many as ten generations.

“The best diet plan in the world, eat anything you want, just cook it yourself”-Michael Pollan

Happy Running!!!

Absolution at Mile 9

In this day and age it is very easy to be too hard on ourselves.  Each day, there are issues and concerns that exist in our periphery awaiting their opportunity to consume us.  The familiar cast of characters include concerns about our jobs, our future, the future of our children, our finances, relationship issues and a whole host of very specific concerns that feel uniquely yours.  When they close in on you it is very easy to feel alone, isolated and desperate.  Being that there tends to be this near constant battle between ourselves and these demons we have become very skilled at masking the feelings these things illicit.  We walk down the street and try very hard to look happy and productive…like everyone else.  And we fool everyone, including ourselves.

One of the reasons that running has filled me with such passion is that when you are in the midst of the physical pain it becomes impossible to maintain the façade that masks our fears worries and inhibitions.  I know that to many who might read this, this concept sounds strange.  Why would we want to confront our demons?  What purpose does it serve to let these tormentors see the light of day and engage them in battle? 

During my long run this last Sunday, as I waged war with my body, the elements and my mind, I came to the realization that despite the laundry list of failures I can attribute to my poor choices which include failures as a father, a husband, a son, a brother and a citizen of this lucid and wondrous nightmare that we desperately cling to each day; that my past transgressions did not matter in that moment.  I found myself drifting into a place of sheer euphoria, all around me the world seemed to moving very deliberately.  The sun was setting bringing me relief from the 90 degree heat.  The horizon opened up before me and beckoned me toward it promising absolution in the form of an embrace of a dear friend.  I felt for many moments relief from the despair that is resulted from consummating ourselves with our worries.  My whole body tingled as the realization hit me that I have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes and be a better father, be a better husband, a better son, a better brother…and a better example. 

Then I thought about my daughters, and felt confident that someday I would be worthy enough to be called their hero!!!

Hitting "The Wall"...Explained!!!

If you have ever engaged in any sort of intensive cardio work or have had conversations with friends or family that engage in the sort of madness Jess and I have become addicted to, you are probably familiar with the concept of “THE WALL”.  As most people describe it the wall is a point in your workout where you feel utterly spent, exhausted, desperate and forlorn.  It is the point during your workout where you think “I need to call Jess and have her come pick me up in the air-conditioned car after stopping for delicious, cold, sugary beverages or I’M GONNA DIE!!”  It is also during this time that the voices protesting your efforts become the most shrill and persuasive.  And, it is something we all encounter regardless of fitness level.

So what is this “WALL”? 

The human body produces energy from a variety of sources.  These include blood sugars, glycogen (this is a form of sugar/carbs stored in your muscles) and fat stores.  These sources are used to produce energy at different points during an intensive workout. 

When you decide to go for a run or hop on the bike or jump feet first into whatever cranks your gears, your body fires the starter’s gun for all of these sources to begin to convert to usable energy.   The first few minutes are fueled largely by sugar that is most easily accessible to your cells, meaning it is the sugar that is already present in your blood.  Now, this is a very “short burst” sort of resource because sugars burn very quickly and are meant for high intensity, short interval activity.  This resource can be exhausted in as little as a few minutes.  At the same time your cells begin taking in glucose from your blood stream, it begins to extract glycogen (those handy carbohydrate reserves) to convert to usable energy.  Now glycogen conversion usually takes a few minutes to begin to kick in, so in some instances people describe hitting a mini version of the wall very early on their workout, this wall represents the difference in time from the point your blood glucose levels are depleted to the point in time that you begin receiving energy as a result of burning your glycogen stores. 

For most folks glycogen stores are ample enough to carry you through at least 15-20 minutes worth of work, and for endurance athletes who are well trained in the disgustingly gluttonous practice of carbo-loading these stores can last up to around 90 minutes. 

The whole time your body is converting and burning all these sugars, the engines are warming up to begin burning fat.  To make this whole thing less complex, we won’t go into detail regarding why it takes so long for fat conversion to get rolling (maybe we’ll save that for another day when I am feeling like not getting any clicks or page views), but it is no coincidence that it can take anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes (again depending on fitness level) for your body to begin using available fats for fuel.

Hopefully at this point the pieces are coming together just a little bit.  If the first mini-wall experienced by many folks is the few minutes between the exhaustion of blood sugar and the beginning of conversion of glycogen, then “THE WALL” (the real wall, the one that makes us question all that we hold dear) is our physiological response during the agonizing minutes between the exhaustion of our glycogen stores and the beginning of the conversion of fat to energy. 

Now here is the good news, as agonizing as these walls are, if you can manage to silence the voices telling you that there is no point in continuing, and to stop torturing yourself…your eventual absolution is the elusive “high” that many athletes describe as being experienced during the later stages of their work.  This is the point at which you feel invincible, you feel empowered and when you finish…Rainbows are brighter, trees are greener, the air smells sweeter and…your high is complete with a case of well-deserved munchies!!!

Happy Running!!!

#hittingthewall #cardio #endurancesports