Survival of the Fittest

[Whole artichokes: more trouble than they’re worth, but look how pretty! Photo by sheeshoo.]

I am no chef. That, my friends, is an understatement. I do bake on occasion, but my specialties are artery-thickening and insulin-spiking cheesy potatoes and spaghetti pie, recipes handed down to me through generations of hearty Midwestern folk. I improve the former by substituting real cheese when the recipe calls for Velveeta, but any way you slice it, I wouldn’t get hired at Clean Eating magazine.

That’s not so say I don’t own healthy cookbooks. In fact, I buy myself ridiculously good cookbooks like The Healthy Hedonist, Super Natural Cooking and Simply in Season. I just don’t open them.

But I do care about eating in a way that supports my health and fitness goals. Especially since I started keeping a combination food-and-fitness journal seven weeks ago. (My journal is embarrassingly titled — not by me — I Will Get Fit This Time! It’s even written on the spine, I suspect so you can’t hide the evidence under stickers, though I plan to try.)

While I’ve kept a fitness journal before, this is the first time I’ve ever tracked my food intake. I’m not bothering with quantities or calories — I’m just looking for patterns and pitfalls. And my, my, my do they jump off the page.

The first day, I had leftover pad thai chicken for breakfast. After writing it down, I was like, “I really don’t want to do that again.” Because now, forever and ever, chicken pad thai is written in my food journal as what I had for breakfast that day. Perfectionists hate that mess.

To eat healthy but avoid cooking, I have placed my focus on food combining. There’s no other way to put it, as my efforts extend only as far as mashing different foods together. Today’s lunch was a prime example — see the “recipe” below.

Lazy, Healthy, Delicious, Easy Tuna Salad

Slap together the following ingredients while simultaneously explaining to your puppy that paper is not a good snack choice for her. (Or you, for that matter.) Combine with mixed greens or spinach. Eat.

Pumpkin seeds: Also known as pepitas (which I will obviously be calling them from now on), punkin seeds are an anti-inflammatory food and a good source of zinc and magnesium (which in turn is good for muscle building if you’re a dude because it keeps your testosterone levels up — not sure if women experience the same anabolic benefit, but can’t hurt to try). On a related note, did you ever see the Flavor of Love episode where Pumpkin spits in New York’s face? Me, neither. But that was disgusting, wasn’t it?

Canned artichoke hearts: Another anti-inflammatory food, artichokes are also high in fiber (which slows the rush of sugar into the bloodstream).

Cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil: An excellent source of good fats (the kind that actually help you lose fat), olive oil is yet another fabulous anti-inflammatory food. Do you detect a theme? And by “detect” I mean “Are you conscious?” Subtlety isn’t my strong suit.

Canned tuna fish in water: Because of its good fats, tuna is also anti-inflammatory food. And, it’s high in complete protein, so it’s great for building muscle. But since tuna is also high in mercury, it’s best to limit it to occasional consumption. Not to mention a friend told me recently that bluefin tuna is now extinct due to overfishing (if that’s the case, what exactly did I just eat?). While that seems to be an overstatement, things do seem to be heading that direction. Anyone have ideas for easy substitutes? Is there such a thing as canned antibiotic-free chicken?

Disclaimer: The foods listed above have a much more extensive nutrient profile than I’ve outlined here. If you want to find out more, consult sites such as www.whfoods.com or www.nutritiondata.com.

REGARDING MY EMPHASIS ON ANTI-INFLAMMATORY FOODS, I’m currently (finally) reading UltraMetabolism by functional medicine doc Mark Hyman, MD, and I’m finding it so, so interesting. And, as the smartest things tend to be, full of common sense. I’m going to devote an entire post to inflammation, so for now I’ll just say that eating with an eye toward eradicating inflammation has done wonders for my recovery time between workouts.

If you want more on the topic now now now, see “Fighting Inflammation” from the July/August 2004 issue of Experience Life, or check out the second in the six-part article series Hyman is writing for us, available in this month’s issue.

SHARING IS CARING:

• What is your favorite food-combining “recipe”?
• Any advice on making food prep insanely simple?
• Have you ever kept a food journal? If so, what was your experience?
• Whaddaya know about inflammation?

[photo credit: Howie Berlin]

What if, rather than (or at the very least in addition to) strengthening our abs through crunching and twisting, we instead attempted to hold our midsections perfectly still, even under the stress and strain of forces working to — quite literally — turn us against ourselves?

The premise behind this school of thought is the rather mind-blowing idea that our abs are meant to be stabilizers, not movers and shakers, so we should train them to be strong and steady if we want to, say, prevent back pain.

How can you work on stabilizing your core? Pallof presses, landmines and BOSU pushups with your feet elevated are good examples. Side planks win big, too.

If you want to see videos of these exercises and others, hit up Michael Boyle’s article “The Real ‘Core’ Exercise” over at T-Nation.

Off to Chi-town this weekend to play a little rugby. What are you up to?

I just found out my friend and former Minnesota Valkyries teammate, Sara Wiley (pictured at left with a “bring it” expression on her face), won the NSCA collegiate strength and conditioning professional of the year — congrats, Y! She’s the associate director of strength and conditioning for athletics at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, and absolutely amazing at what she does (hence the award, obvy).

If you want to check out my March interview with her on developing optimal quadriceps-to-hamstrings strength ratios for knee health, click here.

[Pictured: The U-19 New York Rugby Club during a pre-game cheer. Photo credit: Sabrina Asch]

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about the importance of not specializing in one sport too early in life. And it’s an absolutely legitimate point — specialization, early or otherwise, can lead to overuse injuries, muscle imbalances, and burnout if you train too often or skip the cross-training. Not to mention that funneling your kids’ energy strictly into structured activities means they miss out on some of the cognitive benefits of spontaneous play.

But too often, I think articles on kids and sports — especially girls and sports — stray into fear mongering territory (though Mistress Krista plucked two nice paragraphs from that article in her blog entry “Hurt Girls” — once you click the link, scroll to see the post).

So it was really nice to see that the following Good Morning America segment about a group of rugby-playing girls from inner-city New York focused mainly on the confidence-building impacts sports can have. (Of course, because it involves rugby there are still the obligatory mentions of blood, bruises and beer. Sigh. The injury rates in girls’ rugby are about on par with soccer and basketball, so can we be done using the word “violent” now?)

YouTube link tohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUdRrcdfAnE

Because I don’t have kids, I can only speak to the role sports have played in my own life. The payoffs in terms of friendships, teamwork, work ethic and confidence have been immeasurable, so I have to believe it’s possible to both play sports and just plain play.

Agree? Disagree? Parents, what’s your perspective?

Last night at rugby practice, my teammate Ida Bernstein mentioned she planned to run a 150-yard dash this morning. In three-inch heels. On Live With Regis and Kelly.

Over 500 women and a number of men competed in the event, setting a new world record for participation in a high-heeled event. (Who knew there were others?) One of the reasons so many people tap-tap-tapped over to Central Park bright and early for Live’s High Heel-a-thon? The lucrative prizes. Another was, I’m sure, the fact that the race benefited the March of Dimes. But Ida was in it for the cold, hard cash: First place took home $25,000; second place received $5,000; and third got $2,500. (The men’s grand prize was $1,000.)

That kind of dough could fund a lot of rugby travel. And Ida is fast, so I decided to DVR the show to see how she fared. I’m glad I did — SHE GOT SECOND PLACE. (First place went to an ex-track athlete from Penn State, and third was an ex-track athlete from Iowa State.) And in their post-race interview, Kelly Ripa accused Ida of throwing an elbow to get by. Entirely possible. And highly entertaining.

BUT … WEARING HIGH HEELS? Let alone running in them? Not a great idea. Among the risks involved with wearing high heels are osteoarthritis of the knees, back problems, hammertoes and sprained ankles. (Interestingly, a wide heel base can be even worse for your knees.)

All that is old news, yet some gyms offer group fitness classes during which participants wear stilettos, and part of Ripa’s training regimen for the race included leg presses and squats on a balance board. Exercises that are bad enough on their own, but she did them in heels. Watch the video here. Gah!

All that said, would I run 150 yards through Central Park in high heels for $5,000? In a New York minute. Would you?

UPDATE: Below is a video of the event, as well as the interviews afterward. Best part by far is the sound of that many heels hitting the pavement.

YouTube link tohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44mgB2bd-1k&e

[image courtesy of Pσrcelαΐηgΐrl°]

[image courtesy of www.spineuniverse.com]

Last week, the Q & A section of Eric Cressey’s newsletter addressed thoracic spine mobility. (For background on why thoracic spine mobility is a good thing — nay, a great thing — see my Feb. post on the topic, “The Sugar Bowl: Thoracic Spine Mobility.”)

In his letter, Cressey reminded us not to limit ourselves strictly to forward-and-backward movements (such as crunches on two taped-together tennis balls), but to add a rotation component, as well.

The challenge is that adding rotation in the right place can be tough to do. Oftentimes, it’s not the exercise that’s the problem, but the way we do it — we rotate from our lumbar spine (low back) instead of our thoracic spine (mid-back). Simply put, mobility in the thoracic spine is desirable, while mobility in the lumbar and cervical spine are not — stability, not mobility, are the goals of the latter two.

So many of us do certain rotational exercises wrong (scorpions and iron cross, anyone?) that some fitness experts have banned us from doing them at all. (Check out “How Not to Warm Up” and “Is ‘Rotation Training’ Hurting Your Performance?)

I asked Cressey, author of Maximum Strength, a few questions about how to effectively incorporate rotation of the thoracic spine and minimize rotation of the lumbar spine. See his answers below.

Jen Sinkler (JS): How do you incorporate thoracic spine rotation safely? That is, if I’m already hypermobile in my lumbar spine and immobile in my thoracic spine, how do I ensure that rotation during an exercise isn’t occurring lower than intended?

Eric Cressey (EC): I will actually get in and put my hand at the lower thoracic spine on athletes when they do this the first few times. Basically, I cue them to “hinge” around my hand. [JS addendum: Physical therapist and author Shirley Sahrmann instructs athletes to “think about the motion occurring in the area of the chest.”]

JS: What kind of exercises incorporate thoracic spine rotation?

EC: There are a bunch on Mike Robertson’s and Bill Hartman’s Inside-Out DVD, but quadruped extension-rotation and side-lying extension-rotation are two we use a lot. We also use a seated broomstick t-spine extension-rotation.

JS: What are a few of the best exercises for shoring up the lumbar spine so it becomes immovable?

EC: Basically, anything that imposes a destabilizing torque on a stationary lumbar spine. So, side/prone bridges (gravity does the job), Pallof Presses, tall/half-kneeling cable chop variations, landmines, etc.

Google ‘em. Or, if you’re not in the mood, check out this thoracic rotation exercise demonstrated by Michael Boyle, founder of
www.strengthcoach.com.

YouTube link tohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06G7VVgjg_Q

Loved the Sunday NYT article on 41-year-old swimming phenom Dara Torres, “A Swimmer of a Certain Age.” The results of the Olympic Trials this Saturday will determine if Torres will compete in her fifth Olympics (good lord, and she even skipped two). Got opinions on the is-she-or-isn’t-she-doping debate?

(Torres was also on the April cover of Experience Life; for editor Laine Bergeson’s interview with her, click here.)