Don't let your hands get to this point

Do you ever wonder what to do about the callouses that build up on your hands from doing pull-ups?  Many feel that callouses are a badge of honor, to show others the hard work they put out during their workouts.  Some even refer to them as their “war wounds.”  Unfortunately, if they are not properly taken care of and attended to regularly, they will rip and cause unnecessary pain and discomfort, and can even become infected.  Unkept callouses can also keep you from your next PR on “Cindy.”

Here are some tips on taking care of your callouses:

• Keep your callouses to a minimum by regularly shaving (yes shaving) them down with a callous shaver or even a razor blade that you use for your face.  You can also use a pumice stone to “sand” the callous down.  Make sure that you shave them or sand them down to the same thickness ans the skin around the callous, and not too deep.
• The best time to do this is during or after you take a shower or bath, when your hands will be softer.  Some have also found that applying hand lotion to the hands beforehand will soften the hands as well.
• Make sure the tools you are using are kept clean and sterile, to keep from introducing bacteria in the skin that might cause an infection.  Clean them before and after each time you use them to keep them clean and bacteria free.
• Use your tool to scrape or file down the dead skin until it is smooth and uniform to the skin around it, don’t go too deep.
• If you keep good care of your hands, and keep the dead skin from building up, the less likely you are to rip your hands during your workouts.

Callous Shaver

Pumice Stone

From: http://paleochix.com/?p=1957

“Anybody who’s ever mattered, anybody who’s ever been happy, anybody who’s ever given any gift to the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest, no exceptions.” – Richard Bach

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been called selfish in the last year. I’ve heard it from my husband, my sister, and friends. God knows how many people have said it behind my back. So, when I read this quote – amusingly in an article in Sports Illustrated about Barry Zito – I laughed out loud. “That,” I thought, “is the story of the last year of my life.”

Rewind to March of 2009. I was miserable. Absolutely and completely miserable. It’s a hard feeling to describe to anyone who has never been truly depressed. Anxiety attacks. Crying spells. Hours of contemplating how awful my life was and how I didn’t think it was going to get any better. I think this is the part of the story that most people miss when I talk about how much things have changed since then. They see pictures of my abs. They hear about my WODs. They know that I’m eating bison and asparagus for dinner and not pizza and ice cream. If you knew me a year ago, then it’s impossible to ignore how much I’ve changed physically. But, the real change…the important change…has been mental.

Last spring, I was fortunate to reconnect with a close friend of 20 years, and he was the one who gave me the initial kick in the ass. “Just get back to the gym,” he said. “You’ve always been an athlete, and that is going to make you feel better.” I hemmed and hawed. Here he was, a single male without children, telling me to get back to the gym. “You don’t understand,” I told him. “I have a two year old and a four year old. I am a mother. I don’t have time!” I think I initially told him I could make it to the gym three times a week for 30 minutes. I suppose I was going to ride the elliptical rider or something productive like that. He also told me to take a picture of myself in a bra and underwear and assured me that I never had to show it to anyone. I can really laugh about that now knowing that thousands of people have seen that picture on the internet! However, that picture helped more than anything. I looked at it and thought, “No one would ever see this picture and think that I was an athlete. Nope. Never.”

April 1, 2009

And, I wasn’t an athlete last spring. After playing soccer for most of my life and always being the uber-competitive personality type who would challenge anyone in any sport any time, I was the queen of excuses. I’m not saying that exercising with young children is easy. I just had different priorities. I had a husband who often worked 80 hours a week as a urology resident, and I juggled working part time with play dates and holistic parenting meetings and nap times. I nursed two kids for a total of 4 years and 9 months. I never left my children for more than an hour with anyone other than my mother. That’s what moms do, isn’t it? We are selfless.

Well, let me tell you where selfless got me. It got me 20 lbs heavier than before I had kids. It got me so out of shape that I couldn’t even do one full pushup. It got me crying every day and hating life and not knowing how to fix things. Screw selfless.

My journey back to the gym led me to running, which led to patella femoral syndrome, which led to personal training, which led to CrossFit, which led to Paleo. It sounds simple when I write it like that. In a lot of ways, it has been. I loved CrossFit from day one. “Here is a barbell. Pick it up.” And, wow, I don’t think I had ever watched anyone deadlift before, and I was certain that I would never, ever be able to do it correctly. That is what got me to come back again because I sure as hell was not going to be bad at something. And, it worked! I was losing weight, and I felt great, and I loved it.

“So, why on earth would I go Paleo?” I clearly remember asking my coach that last August. His response was, “I don’t know. Why would you? You look great, and your lifts keep improving.” Fabulous! I didn’t need to go Paleo. I was awesome enough just the way I was.

And, then I tore my hamstring, which led to me sitting out of workouts for two months, which led to a lot of crying, which I was definitely trying to avoid. In desperation, I decided to do 30 days of Paleo because I had read that it was helpful for strength gains. My hamstring definitely needed more strength! To this day, I’m not sure how I flipped the switch in my head so completely and decided to go Paleo. I loved cheese, I drank alcohol almost daily, and I absolutely did not care what Paleolithic man ate. In that 30 day period, I was going to hit my daughter’s birthday, Halloween, and my birthday. No cake? No candy? No beer or wine? Impossible! My husband did not back me at all. There really isn’t any other way to put it. I didn’t cook. I mean, I really didn’t cook. In 2009, I had perhaps cooked dinner three or four times. He did all of the cooking. He said, “I think this is stupid. I am not going to change one thing that I cook because of you. You will have to learn to cook for yourself. I will absolutely not support you in this.” And, he didn’t.

But, I did it anyway. 30 days strict Paleo. No sugar, no grains, no dairy, no alcohol, no caffeine. I started cooking breakfast and lunch for myself every day. I made my own dinner if my husband was cooking something I wouldn’t eat. For the most part, things went smoothly. I think I set a paper towel on fire once. On day 31, I started drinking beer at 10:30 in the morning and ate pizza for dinner. But, it was too late. I planned to drink alcohol again, but food wise I was never going back.

Selfish. Fast forward to today. I spend hours at the gym doing CrossFit and taking private gymnastics lessons. I’m about to travel for a long weekend without my children for my fourth CrossFit competition. I now have a backyard gym with an 8’ pullup bar, a 10’ bar for my rings, and a platform for lifting and other exercises. The basement has a C2 rower, squat stands, a bar, bumper plates, and parallettes. In various spots there is an AbMat, kettlebells, a slam ball, dumbbells, and half a dozen jump ropes. Our refrigerator is stocked with coconut milk, fresh fruit, veggies from the farmers’ market, and literally pounds and pounds of meat. Our cabinets have coconut oil and coconut butter, an assortment of nuts, and bags of dried fruit. And, let’s not even talk about my collection of bikinis, board shorts, knee socks, and Chucks (I’m up to 10 pairs of Chucks, FYI). “Please eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” says my husband. “It is so much cheaper than your organic, grass fed buffalo meat.” If it’s not that, it is, “Please get off the computer. You do not need to update your Facebook page with what happened in the WOD or write in your workout log or watch another CrossFit video or argue with someone on the CrossFit forums about saturated fat. And, no one needs to see another picture of your abs.”

April 1, 2010

Have I been selfish? Hell yes. Do I regret it? Not for one second. My brother came to visit after I’d been doing CrossFit for several months. He said, “For the last few years, you weren’t doing anything for yourself. I finally feel like you’re back to your old badass self.” Indeed. And, guess what? I am happy. Happy. “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” right? Being selfish has made everyone in my family happier. What fun is it to be around someone who hates life? And, surprise, surprise…my husband now does CrossFit. My daughter takes gymnastics lessons. My kids do pull-ups and fight over the gymnastics rings and eat kale. My son took a bite of cupcake at a birthday party recently and then announced, “Mama, this has too much sugar in it. Can I please have a plate of hummus?” And, as much as my husband hates to admit it, even my pictures of my abs serve a good purpose. People like abs. They want to know how you got your abs. They claim that they will do anything to have abs just like yours. “Okay,” I say. “Get off your ass. Stop eating crap. CrossFit and strict Paleo for 30 days.” And, guess what? A lot of them do. And, that makes me happy.

So, if being selfish leads to happiness, then so be it. Because I certainly don’t want to go back to how I felt a year ago, and I know my family doesn’t want me to do that either.

Your kids are screaming, the phone is ringing, someone is tailgating you and you’re 10 minutes late for where you have to be, and worst of all you have a headache that is right behind your eyes. Stressed? Thinking that this whole paleo thing is too hard and seriously right now all I want is a piece of chocolate (ice cream, peanut butter, insert evil food here)…Well, let’s think this thought through until the end.

If you grab that cookie, chocolate, whatever, is it going to make you feel better? Sure, at first you will possibly experience a euphoric buzz from the sugar because our brain secretes dopamine in response to extremely sweet things. It does this because it wants to reward you for finding some very calorically dense food and go after that again. However, our brain and body doesn’t know that this food, TODAY, is not rare…it’s everywhere these days. We are genetically built to put up with starvation to some degree so when we get a food that is PACKED with calories our body wants more and therefore rewards us with dopamine to make us feel good to keep going after that same food.

Ok so we grabbed the cookie put it in our mouth, consumed a hundred calories in less than 3 seconds…did any of your stresses go away? Is that dude still tailgating, phone ringing, kids screaming? Your headache didn’t go away either! The point is food does NOT make stress go away, it just numbs the stress temporarily. In the end this food will pack on weight and worst of all increases your cholesterol and sets you up for metabolic disaster that ends in medical bills the size of the national debt.

What you have to learn to do is to deal with the stress in a different way. The first step is realizing that, “Ok, I’m stressed out, what can I do about it?” This is all about being MINDFUL, know what’s going on inside and around you at all times. Don’t be REACTIVE; letting things affect you all day and then react to them by pounding cookies and cake. Anticipate the problem and identify the things that stress you out throughout the day. That way you can take steps to prevent them the next time. For example you have to pick up your kids at 3pm, sit in traffic, and deal with all the stresses that sometimes come with the territory that is children. Have a bite to eat at 2 or 2:30…Just eat something HEALTHY (nuts, seeds, fruit).

So when you get stressed identify the problem, eliminate if possible or try to deal with it before it arises in the first place. However, we can’t completely avoid stress, it’s a part of life so the next thing to do is learn to relax yourself. One of the best ways to relax is to practice BREATHING. Believe it or not most people do NOT know how to breath. Most people breath with their chest, a breath goes in their chest elevates and that’s it. That is not enough oxygen for your body, period. You have to take in a whole breath to where you are using your diaphragm. You can practice this by laying down on a flat surface and making your stomach rise and fall with each breath. This takes practice, try remembering to do this every time you walk over a threshold of some kind, even getting in and out of your car. Attend a yoga class, this is the same type of breathing they do for an hour or so; GREAT practice!

Don’t just use this when you are stressed though, breath like this all of the time! That is kind of preventive medicine for your brain so you’re not stressed and therefore will not eat evil foods. Remember food doesn’t make your problems throughout the day magically disappear. It only makes matters worse and one step further away from your goals of weight loss/good health and most importantly…from winning this challenge and a couple hundred bucks!

This will make enough for 2 people. We also added a side of scrambled eggs with sweet bell pepper sausage and pepper.

2 whole eggs
1/2 cup almond meal (I’ve found 3/4-1c actually makes better consistency)
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 apple, cored and chunked (alternatively use 1/2 cup natural applesauce, no sugar added!! OR crush up your own…)
2 tsp cinnamon (true ceylon is the best!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 pint fresh blueberries (optional – can also be used as topping)
coconut oil for cooking

Combine all ingredients, except blueberries, into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Pour into a bowl and add blueberries. Heat a large pan on medium heat; add coconut oil and cook small pancakes 2-3 minutes on each side (these are hard to flip, so when they are ready, jab the spatula underneath fast)

2 lbs grass fed ground beef
1lb mild Italian sausage (I used Sicilian chicken sausage from Trader Joe’s)
1 red onion diced
4 cloves crushed garlic
2 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp dried basil
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes drained
1 small can of tomato paste
1cup organic black olives sliced
6 zucchinis thinly sliced

In a large soup pot saute onions and garlic in the olive oil for about 3 minutes.  Add ground beef and sausage and brown.  Season meat mixture with all dry ingredients and add drained diced tomatoes and tomato paste and mix well.  In a big lasagna baking dish place a layer of sliced zucchini and then ladle on a thick layer of the meat mixture and top with the sliced black olives.  Top meat and olive layer with another layer of sliced zucchini and top with a final layer of the remaining meat mixture.  Cover tightly with aluminum foil and back at 350 for 30 min.  Let sit for 10 min before serving.

Alright so doing this whole paleo thing may not be the easiest thing for everyone at first. It takes a little bit of planning and practice on your part to get into this way of eating. Let’s think for a minute if you were living back then what your typical day might be like.

First of all, you probably wouldn’t have an alarm clock…you would’ve been awakened by that big ball of fire in the sky. You probably wouldn’t be thinking about coffee first thing but what you probably would be fairly hungry and thinking where your next meal is coming from. So you’d venture out, especially if you weren’t successful the night before, and either hunt something down or start gathering some plants to eat. This is your exercise for the day…so how can we apply this?

Go to bed in some workout clothes, have your sneakers/vibrams right next to your bed. Go out, take your trusty hunting partner (dog/cat/turtle) for a walk – after all how do you think the domesticated dog came about? Go for a quick 10 minute walk, get some sun – this turns off your body’s melatonin production (plus your daily dose of vitamin D) & wakes you up. Come back and THEN eat your breakfast.

Like I said, all of this stuff takes practice and a little bit of planning and work on your part but with time you can enjoy all of the modern conveniences and technological advances of today but have the health and body of paleolithic man.

Water is the most essential ingredient to a healthy life. Water has many important functions in the body including:

• Transportation of nutrients / elimination of waste products.
• Lubricating joints and tissues.
• Temperature regulation through sweating.
• Facilitating digestion.

Importance of Water During Exercise

Proper hydration is especially important during exercise. Adequate fluid intake for athletes is essential to comfort, performance and safety. The longer and more intensely you exercise, the more important it is to drink the right kind of fluids.

Dehydration

Athletes need to stay hydrated for optimal performance. Studies have found that a loss of two or more percent of one’s body weight due to sweating is linked to a drop in blood volume. When this occurs, the heart works harder to move blood through the bloodstream. Impaired heat dissipation, which can elevate body’s core temperature and increase strain on the cardiovascular system is a potential threat to all athletes, especially those who are not acclimatized for strenuous activity in hot environments.  This can also cause muscle cramps, dizziness and fatigue and even heat illness including:

• Heat Exhaustion
• Heat Stroke

Causes of Dehydration

• Inadequate fluid intake
• Excessive sweating
• Failure to replace fluid losses during and after exercise
• Exercising in dry, hot weather
• Drinking only when thirsty

Hyponatremia -Water Intoxication

Although rare, recreational exercisers are also at risk of drinking too much water and suffering from hyponatremia or water intoxication. Clearly, drinking the right amount of the right fluids is critical for performance and safety while exercising.

Adequate Fluid Intake for Athletes

Because there is wide variability in sweat rates, losses and hydration levels of individuals, it is nearly impossible to provide specific recommendations or guidelines about the type or amount of fluids athletes should consume.
Finding the right amount of fluid to drink depends upon a variety of individual factors including the length and intensity of exercise and other individual differences. There are, however, two simple methods of estimating adequate hydration:

Monitoring urine volume output and color

A large amount of light colored (Lemonade), diluted urine probably means you are hydrated; dark colored, concentrated urine probably means you are dehydrated.
Weighing yourself before and after exercise. Any weight lost is likely from fluid, so try to drink enough to replenish those losses. Any weight gain could mean you are drinking more than you need.

Things that Affect Fluid Loss in Athletes

• High altitude. Exercising at altitude increases your fluid losses and therefore increases you fluid needs.
• Temperature. Exercising in the heat increases your fluid losses through sweating and exercise in the cold can impair you ability to recognize fluid losses and increase fluid lost through respiration. In both cases it is important to hydrate.
• Sweating. Some athletes sweat more than others. If you sweat a lot you are at greater risk for dehydration. Again, weigh yourself before and after exercise to judge sweat loss.
• Exercise Duration and Intensity. Exercising for hours (endurance sports) means you need to drink more and more frequently to avoid dehydration.

To find the correct balance of fluids for exercise, the American College Of Sports Medicine suggests that “individuals should develop customized fluid replacement programs that prevent excessive (greater than 2 percent body weight reductions from baseline body weight) dehydration. The routine measurement of pre- and post-exercise body weights is useful for determining sweat rates and customized fluid replacement programs. Consumption of beverages containing electrolytes and carbohydrates can help sustain fluid-electrolyte balance and exercise performance.”

According to the Institute of Medicine the need for carbohydrate and electrolytes replacement during exercise depends on exercise intensity, duration, weather and individual differences in sweat rates. [They write, "fluid replacement beverages might contain ~20–30 meqILj1 sodium (chloride as the anion), ~2–5 meqILj1 potassium and ~5–10% carbohydrate."] Sodium and potassium are to help replace sweat electrolyte losses, and sodium also helps to stimulate thirst. Carbohydrate provides energy for exercise over 60-90 minutes. This can also be provided through energy gels, bars, and other foods.

What about Sports Drinks?

Sports drinks can be helpful to athletes who are exercising at a high intensity for 60 minutes or more. Fluids supplying 60 to 100 calories per 8 ounces helps to supply the needed calories required for continuous performance. It’s really not necessary to replace losses of sodium, potassium and other electrolytes during exercise since you’re unlikely to deplete your body’s stores of these minerals during normal training. If, however, you find yourself exercising in extreme conditions over 3 or 5 hours (a marathon, Ironman or ultramarathon, for example) you may likely want to add a complex sports drink with electrolytes.

General Guidelines for Fluid Needs During Exercise

While specific fluid recommendations aren’t possible due to individual variability, most athletes can use the following guidelines as a starting point, and modify their fluid needs accordingly.

Hydration Before Exercise

• Drink about 15-20 fl oz, 2-3 hours before exercise
• If not acclimated to warm or hot environments or if you have been training over several days in this type of environment, we encourage you to put a little extra salt on your food at meal times to increase the sodium in the tissues to support muscle function.
• Drink 8-10 fl oz 10-15 min before exercise

Hydration During Exercise

• Drink 8-10 fl oz every 10-15 min during exercise
• If exercising longer than 90 minutes, drink 8-10 fl oz of a sports drink (with no more than 8 percent carbohydrate) every 15 – 30 minutes.

Hydration After Exercise

• Weigh yourself before and after exercise and replace fluid losses.
• Drink 20-24 fl oz water for every 1 lb lost.
• Consume a 4:1 ratio of carbohydrate to protein within the 2 hours after exercise to replenish glycogen stores.

Keep in mind that at any time during your workout in warm environments you feel dizzy, nauseated or “unsteady” or “not normal”, stop what you are doing, find a cool place, remove sweaty clothes, and begin to replace fluids.  Cooler fluids are more palatable and seem to stimulate the desire to drink.  DO NOT return to activity until all symptoms have dissipated and you are fully hydrated.  Dehydration can occur in a short period of time or it can be incremental.  Staying hydrated in warm weather should be a constant effort.

Source:
Consensus Statement of the 1st International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference, Cape Town, South Africa 2005. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. 15(4):208-213, July 2005.
Exercise and Fluid Replacement, ACSM Position Stand, American College Of Sports Medicine, Medicine and Science In Sports & Exercise, 2007.
Institute of Medicine. Water. In: Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Sodium, Cholride, Potassium and Sulfate, Washington, D.C: National Academy Press, pp. 73–185, 2005.

Congratulations! You’ve started going “Paleo”….now what? How do you actually accomplish this when you’ve been eating so far away from how you’ve evolved to eat? Here are 10 tips to help you get there:

1. Enjoy eating paleo. Enjoy what you eat. If you are unhappy with what you are eating you are unlikely to continue to keep eating that way, and once the nutrition is gone, staying fit and healthy becomes much harder.

2. Pre-cook food. Spend a few hours at the beginning of the week and cook big batches of food. This will allow you to minimise the amount of time that you have to spend cooking during the week.

3. Cook more that you need. This is similar to the previous tip, the idea being that if you cook more than you need for one meal then you can eat it later, or the next day.

4. (THIS APPLIES FOR AFTER THIS CHALLENGE! :-0) Rather than cutting yourself off from all of those foods which you enjoy that aren’t 100% paleo friendly, simply eat smaller amounts and be moderate.

5. Do not keep junk/unhealthy food that you know you shouldn’t eat, in the house. For most people, if it is in the house they will eventually eat it.

6. Do not run out of food. This is horrible. Do not let it happen to you.

7. Try planning out your meals for a week. This comes easily to type one personalities, for the rest of us it can be a nuisance. Though this has the benefit of ensuring you know what you need in the house for the week, and eliminates that time wasting period during which you try and figure out what you should cook for dinner.

8. Keep a handy meal (apple, orange, nuts, can of tuna) in your car/office/desk/bag for a paleo friendly snack in case plans change.

9. Learn to use spices; this will do wonders for you and will offer variety and different flavors to your meals.

10. Eat lots of vegetables; try and eat a good variety with many different colors.

There you go, 10 tips that will probably help you stick to this, not just for the next 4 weeks but hopefully for the duration.