Posted in QOTD on February 27, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
From Ned Kock re resistance training … less is more?
One puzzling aspect of strength training, from an evolutionary perspective, is that people tend to be able to do a lot more of it than is optimal for them. And, when they do even a bit more than they should, muscle gain stalls or even regresses. The minimalists frequently have the best results.
Interesting … last week it was about less may be more with HIIT. Good news perhaps?
Posted in Me, me, me on February 24, 2012 | 9 Comments »
Not to worry, I will not be blogging about my Mat Lalonde-inspired approach for Lent every day, but a little accountability is going to help me get thru this tough part … day 3 without Diet Coke!
This would have been less hard if I could have used my fall-back drink (an Arnold Palmer with stevia) but I really do want to give this “no sweet tastes” thing a good college try.
I think I can, I think I can ;).
Posted in Exercise on February 22, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
An interesting post by Matt Metzgar on variations of Sprint 8, the high-intensity interval training program.
It’s a short post, so go read the whole thing. But here’s Matt’s takeaway:
[The researchers] are saying that traditional sprinting programs may be overkill in a way, and that you could deplete glycogen just as well by doing 1-2 sprints of 15 to 20 seconds.
This I think leads to a real insight: if you cut the number and duration of sprints (but keep the intensity), then I could see how you could be able to do this workout more frequently. So while 3 days per week of 6 to 8 30-second sprints may be too much for many people, 3 days per week of 1 to 2 15-second sprints may produce similar benefits and be more appealing to people.
I have been doing 6x30s in the pool twice a week, but since the back is doing better am thinking about switching and doing my HIIT workouts on the recumbent bike or elliptical. I may give this protocol a try!
Posted in Administrivia on February 20, 2012 | 1 Comment »
I’ve done my regularly quarterly update to my extended blogroll to reflect the new blogs in my feed reader. But this quarter, there are also new categories as some of the originals (e.g.”paleo & low-carb” or “policy & real food”) were less than ideal.
I’m always looking for good reads, so please feel free to email me (weightmaven at gmail.com) or leave a comment. Thanks!!
Posted in Ancestral health, Diet, Me, me, me on February 19, 2012 | 2 Comments »
I’ve been following a paleo-esque diet for a while now. Regular readers know that my diet is the love child of the Jaminets’ PHD and Tim Ferriss’ SCD: I eat PHD most of the week, and once a week, I eat whatever I like.
This has been working very well for me, but I have been itching for a while to go basic and do an elimination diet to see if I notice any difference. Doing a Whole 30 or a 21-day sugar detox or a junk-free January might have been easy, but no, I have to complicate things. Instead, I’m going to do a Mat Lalonde-inspired approach for Lent.
Posted in Meditation, QOTD on February 18, 2012 | 3 Comments »
Another multimedia QOTD, this time from Shawn Achor at TEDxBloomington (~9:50):
What we’ve done is we’ve pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon, as a society. And that’s because we think that we have to be successful, then we’ll be happier.
But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage: which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed.
I’m intrigued at how much this sounds like something I’ve said over the years — “systems under stress perform poorly” — referring to people who seem to be effing up at work. But I spent far less time considering the corollary (which is kinda a duh … my bad!).
But I had an experience in January that changed this for me. I had been feeling fairly depressed, much of which I attributed to some post-holiday let-down and a lot of off-track holiday eating. Just four days back on track with my PHD eating and I had a major league ‘a ha’ about my situation that improved my outlook tremendously. And it struck me that I would not have had that insight had I still been slogging around on SAD foods and drink.
As a psychologist, Achor focuses less on diet and more on fairly simple strategies for raising positivity in the present, a couple of which (meditation and exercise) fit nicely in an ancestral health frame. Check out the video or his book, The Happiness Advantage, for more.
Posted in Friday cat blogging on February 17, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! More »
