The "everything" post

I was about to do another post on supplementation -- not to tell *you* what to take. Everyone's different, and your mileage may vary. Rather, it was just going to be to give you an idea where I am at with that ever-changing topic.

Instead, I decided to broaden the subject matter a little, to, um, everything.

No, not really *everything*, but everything I am currently doing for (to?) myself in the world of fitness and nutrition.

So buckle your seatbelt, and hang on. The ride could be a little random and bumpy.

But let's start with supplementation, just for kicks:

-- Green Pastures fermented-cod-liver oil/butter-oil capsules, one in the a.m, one in the p.m., always with fat. They are loaded with K2, D3 and A, which are all fat-soluble. You can't absorb fat-soluble vitamins without eating fat.
-- 800 mg. magnesium, always before 3 p.m.
-- a One-a-Day men's multivitamin. I am not sure why, except it seems like some sort of insurance policy. Everything in it is low-dose.
-- 5 mg L-glutamine powder, for gut healing/integrity and pre- and post-workout recovery. If it is a workout day, I do 5 mg about 30 minutes before a workout and I combine another 5 mg. with one or two scoops of SFH pure concentrated whey powder (25 or 50 mg. protein) post-workout. On a rest day, I just do the 5 mg of L-glutamine.
-- serrapeptase, two 40,000 i.u. tablets (one a.m., one p.m.) on an empty stomach 30 minutes before any food. It's an enzyme that silkworms use to dissolve their cocoons. Really. The story is that it is a great anti-inflammatory, cleans out arterial plaque (hopefully not a problem for me) and dissolves scar tissue and adhesions (a big problem, especially post-elbow-surgery). I just started it and I am quite sure it will be the subject of a blog post sometime soon, once I decide whether it is a miracle, a hoax or somewhere in between.

Food:

Of course, there are the ten things. But I also do a little cheese from grassfed cows and the aforementioned whey powder. And within the ten things, here's how those things usually play out:
-- almost all of our meat is from grassfed ruminants. Yup, beef or lamb. All different cuts. Organs. Roasts. Steaks. Ground. Burgers. Whatever.
-- we almost never eat poultry.
-- a little pork. Sausages, from those nice pigs at Whole Foods once a week or so, usually with kale. Bacon, the good stuff from Whole Foods, but honestly, I am trying to dial that down a bit and only have it once or twice a week.
--almost every day I eat either canned salmon or canned sardines, usually with lunch. Both wild-caught. Always wild-caught.
-- eggs, three or four most days
-- bulletproof coffee in the morning, bulletproof tea some other times. Generally trying to keep things to two cups of coffee a day, plus a little tea. Saves the stomach from abuse.
-- lots of organic veggies from a local CSA.
-- a little fruit, almost always frozen with coconut milk over top of it, you know... "paleo ice cream."
-- almonds here and there, or maybe a Larabar, but hardly any snacks at all because meals are big and keep me full.
-- when we need to cook with a fat, which is, well, always, it is with grassfed ghee, grassfed butter or coconut oil. We never cook with olive oil, because it oxidizes too easily. But I liberally spread Kassandrinos Imports olive oil on salads that I haven't already garnished with a wallop of avocado.
-- a little dark chocolate here and there, almost always 86% cacao.
-- a little jerky sometimes too, but not very often.
--If I need "fast food," Chipotle is the go-to place, and there I tend to stick to carnitas, guacamole, salsa and lettuce. Just about everything else has soybean oil in it. Blech. Inflammatory blech.

Sleep:

-- at least seven hours sleep every night, and all clocks, etc. covered with something to block the light. Zzzzzzz

Exercise:

--CrossFit three times a week. Our gym has a "strength bias," so that means that in addition to three metabolic-conditioning workouts (metcons), we also get three pure strength workouts in those sessions. That is enough metcon work for me. Any more than that is a source of stress -- physical, not mental, but stress equals cortisol and inflammation (and lions and tigers and bears, oh my), and that's bad news. I also add one or two strength sessions a week in my garage, usually squats, usually front squats at that, because Greg Everett says that the way to make your back-squat position more upright (as opposed to pitching forward) is to do more front squats. That strategy is paying off already with better back squats.

Meditation/mindfulness:

--meditation: every day for twenty minutes, sometimes twice a day. It stops the shitstorm of life from being so shitty. Really. My life would not be the same without it. More here on all that.
-- I am contemplating getting an em-Wave to dial up my meditation practice to awesome levels, but I am pretty in-the-zone with meditation, having done it for a number of years now, so I am not sure whether to dump $200 on an em-Wave. But the lure of better heart-rate variability, now that I am hip to the ways of the Bulletproof Executive, is pretty strong. We will see....
--general mindfulness, particularly when eating. Thanks to Liz Wolfe, I have gotten attuned to how much better my digestion is if I don't eat like a gun is at my head and a stopwatch timing my meals. Enjoy the food. Every bite. This part is a work in progress; trust me.

Alcohol:

-- I hardly drink at all at this point -- about once a month these days -- but I am still more than happy to have one here and there, usually whisky (single-malt), whiskey (bourbon or rye), or tequila. I just don't want it to affect my mood/performance/etc. And I don't want to drink reflexively: y'know, pouring one after a long day. Or a short day. Or any day. I am saving drinking for just sometimes, and only at gatherings of friends, and when I do it, I am following the Bulletproof Executive's protocol for feeling good the next day. (I am using the Vitamin C, NAC, Alpha lipoid acid and charcoal from that list. That lipoceutical glutathione looks too potent and too expensive).

And that is pretty much that. Food, sleep, exercise, meditation, and a strategy for infrequent booze consumption.

It's working for me.


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