Things I wish I could tell my younger self

I generally don't dwell on thoughts like this.  I'm a firm believer that a person's experiences, good and bad, shape who they are and get you to where you are today.  If you could warn your younger self not to make the mistakes you've made, or if you could share pieces of wisdom you've gained over the experiences of your lifetime, you'd probably keep your younger self from learning from those experiences and gaining the very wisdom you're sharing.  Of course my sci-fi geek friends and I would debate about whether or not you're creating an alternate timeline...but I'm talking philosophically here :)

That being said - there are a couple pieces of wisdom I really wish I could share with my younger self that I don't think would hurt my "timeline" and would be of positive outcome.

First, I've come to realize that with just about any skill in life, there is just no substitute for experience and repetition.  Certainly aptitude and ability differentiate someone's maximum potential or capacity for something, but in the end, NOTHING replaces years of experience and practice.  This is most evident to me with my saxophone playing.  I've been playing saxophone pretty much continuously since the 6th grade (26+ years if you're counting).  That's thousands of hours of playing and practicing a wide and vast variety of music and musical situations.  My horn is like an extension of me now.  I have many musically talented friends where I see this sort of thing too - a longtime friend and colleague plays piano and when I watch him I can just tell that he doesn't have to think about it anymore, it's just an extension of his mind and fingers.  I've made some attempts at learning other instruments in recent years.  Some I just don't have the physical aptitude for (trumpet - requires the right lips).  But others just require a lot of practice and experience, something I don't seem to have the time or attention span for at this point in my life.  And gaining 26 year of experience on something starting now is going to be awhile .

Second, I would share EVERYTHING I've learned on eating, exercise, and health.  Mainly because what I've learned contradicts all the "conventional" wisdom that was drilled into us as kids and young adults.  When I was younger I just sort of assumed I didn't have the capacity to lose weight, be in good shape, etc. etc. and I've since proven all of that wrong to myself.  I'd love to tell my younger self that you are capable of all of those things, and not only capable but they're not as hard as you think.

Healthy Living Update

I do INTEND to set aside time to blog more, and I have even had the idea of creating a separate blog to share all my health and fitness experiences and research...but alas, life happens :)

I felt compelled to give an update though, in light of some of the many recent articles I've read related to healthy eating, genetically modified foods, CrossFit, and self-image.

On Food - I'm glad to see that some of the "true" science is finally coming to light and starting to expose about how backward our food system, the FDA, laws, etc.  The fact that giant agribusiness companies like Monsanto are trying to control anything and everything about our food system, getting laws in place to protect THEM, and fighting tooth-and-nail to stop mandatory labeling of GMO foods pretty much tells you that they know what they're doing is not in the best interest of the world, but they must protect their business model.  I believe that we all have the right to KNOW what is in the food we eat; and then we can make the choice ourselves as to whether or not we want to eat something that's labeled a GMO.  And I also believe that there should be no way that "life" can be patented.

Along the same lines, we continue to perpetuate bad  and disproven "science" and allow special-interest lobbies (both food and pharma) to influence our dietary and nutritional recommendations, which spills over into the medical field.   The "low-fat" diet that has become accepted practice for healthy eating came into play around 1977, the same time the obesity problem in this country started its rise.  Studies and emperical evidence have shown over and over again that the low-fat, low-cholesterol, high-carb diet doesn't work, and is based more on speculation and observation than actual science.  This article sums up a lot of these points nicely, but I've done much reading and research on my own.  And of course I have been following the low-carb/low-sugar/paleo diet since March 2011 (see some of my earlier posts) and am as healthy as I have EVER been in my lifetime - my "numbers" are all normal to great, my blood pressure is as low as it's ever been (much of that might be due to CrossFit though) and I haven't been truly sick since March 2011.  I eat REAL food.  I don't feel starved or deprived.  I enjoy the food I eat because real food tastes good.  I drink real, fully-caffeinated coffee with real cream.  I don't count calories.  I avoid anything marked "low-fat" or with ingredients I can't pronounce like the plague.  Sugar is almost non-existent in my world.

On CrossFit - wow, I could talk for hours, and I'm sure some of my friends get sick of it :)  But this is really good stuff for me.  My ONLY goal when I started last August was to STOP DOING NOTHING.  I wasn't horribly out of shape or unhealthy, but I was pretty sedentary.  I am definitely whatever the opposite of sedentary is now.  Just to give you an example of the amazing stuff we do in these workouts - today we did what is called "Prowlers", which is basically pushing a 250-lb sled 25 yards up and back, for 6 rounds (alternating with a partner).  I was slightly woosy by the end, but by a couple of hours afterwards, I felt FANTASTIC.  And that's typical for me now.  I can tell that I have more energy, sleep better, am MUCH stronger, and am MUCH more flexible (and I still have a LOT of room to improve there).  Sure it's great to be able to lift the big weights and do more situps or pushups or burpees than you did the time before, but this stuff carries over into being able to do things in real life, which is really the goal.  When I'm 70 I want to be able to carry my bags of groceries or bags or lift my grandkids (and yeah, with the age I'll be starting to have kids, 70 for young grandkids is pretty likely).  The workouts and the community are great and fun, but seeing the results of health and fitness in real life is even more fun.

On self-image - there is a lot of discussion among our CrossFit community on combating and redefining what our society idealizes as the "perfect" body type.  My favorite slogan on a T-shirt my friend Caly has is "Strong is the new Skinny".  I wish everyone would believe that.  And I know that body image issues and wanting to be "skinny" is a much larger issue with women than with men, but the up-and-coming generations of men are getting programmed with the body self-image issues too.

Growing up, I ALWAYS wanted to be skinny.  I'd be jealous of the people that seemed to have no problem being skinny no matter what they ate or did.  And I admit that I still have a little bit of that thinking - sometimes I'd like to, for just ONE DAY see what it feels like to be skinny.  But I've also come to realize that my body is built a certain way, and that being skinny for me is not being healthy.  And I've also come to realize (wisdom?) that just like I wish I could be like some skinny person I see, they probably wish they could be "built" like I am.  I am able to bulk up and build muscle with relative ease - I've ramped up really fast on Olympic Weight Lifting at CrossFit even in the 8 months I've been going.  If I were skinny I wouldn't have that ability.

I love to see the women at my CrossFit classes.  I love seeing them working just as hard as the men do, and getting just as excited at a new lifting PR or being a previous time record.  I love to see the self-confidence that they have in being STRONG and fit, not necessarily "skinny".  A recent WOD article talks about this (it was written for women but I think men can take wisdom out of it too).  If I have a daughter someday, I hope  that her self-confidence and self-esteem is built on being smart, strong, fit, etc. and not being whatever society's image of a woman's body is at the time.

OK, maybe blogging shorter and more often would be a good idea :)

Throwdown

OK, I just now see that I haven't posted since last July.  In fairness, I've been busy - a lot has happened - I graduated with my Masters in Security Technologies degree, I got engaged, I joined Crossfit, and I got a puppy.  Oddly, a lot I could have blogged on, but too busy to do so.  Maybe that changes starting now...

I feel I have to report on one of my activities from this weekend.  Last August, I joined the "Crossfit Progression" gym here in town.  For those not aware of the Crossfit philosophy, this Huffington Post article does a good job of describing it.  At its most fundamental level, it's about whole body, highly efficient workouts, although that's a gross over-simplification.

Today marks 6 months since I joined Crossfit in August.  Consider that in August, it had been really 6 years since I had done any serious form of exercise or set foot in a gym, which is significant since prior to that I was a gym regular and had run 3 marathons.  While I was not in horrible shape thanks to my March 2011 decision to finally get control of my eating (see all my previous blog posts about how low-carb living can save your life), it was humbling to go to my one-hour "baseline" workout with coach Matt.  After about 15 minutes, it took all my willpower and several minutes sitting on the bathroom floor to not throw up!  Matt assured me this was pretty common, and encouraged me to sign up and give it a try.  I did - beginner class 3 days a week, 1 hour a day, was pretty horrible, I was so sore that first couple weeks I could barely get out of bed in the mornings.  But...after a few weeks I started to get the hang of it.  Then I got "promoted" into regular class, and to my surprise, I was hanging in there.

Somewhere around November, I remember looking at the workout of the day (WOD in Crossfit lingo) and thinking "boy, I can't wait to do this one!" and then realizing what I had just thought.  By 5 months I was back to hitting lifts that had taken me years to get to before with my "traditional" programs.  I could easily see the difference in my body too - I hadn't lost any weight, but I hadn't gained any either, and it was very obvious that muscle had replaced bunches of the fat that was left.

But yesterday...I participated in the Crossfit Progression "Superfriends Throwdown".  One of the aspects of Crossfit that is different from other gyms is that it promotes the "sport" of working out, competitive workouts if you will.  You don't have to do the competitive part; indeed, if all you want is the best workout you can get in an hour's time, you won't be disappointed.  And to be honest, I'm only ever really competing with myself.  But the 10-team competition we had yesterday within our gym community was as motivating and fun as anything I can remember involving exercise.  Each team had 4 people - two men, two women.  There were 4 workouts, which you could strategize among your team for maximum points (either total weight lifted, or time completed).  As it turned out, there were clearly 4 teams competing with each other at the top, and 6 competing with each other for the rest of the spots.  But in the end, what I loved was that everyone was encouraging everyone else, and the coaches NEVER stopped coaching from beginning to end.  I personally got a PR (personal record) lift in the first workout, and I would not have gotten it if coach Alex hadn't coached me through it, especially the mental stuff.

I tend to get really passionate about things in my life that I find value in or that work really well for me.  This is one of them.  If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be able to complete these 4 workouts, much less in one Saturday morning, I would have told you you were crazy.  If you had told me it would only take me about 5 months to get back to the level of fitness I was at back when I was power lifting and doing marathons 10 years ago, I would have told you you were crazy.  I think yesterday I decided I'm done not believing.  No more "if you would have told me" stories.