The PATS WIN!!! We have a healthy celebration! -and we make a promise to wake up early and perform at Tom Brady level in our own lives. Or at least at Matt Ryan level... in other words we are going to be pro-artists and win the video-bowl.
@RennyGrames
@Bostology
a Freakin Rad film.
Get up and go. Saturday means hitting up the farmers market, getting paleo cookies and going rock climbing at Planet Granite rock climbing gym!
@RennyGrames
@Bostology
a Freakin Rad film.
I was in the midst of a 6 mile run last summer when I heard an impressive interview on The Fat Burning Man Podcast featuring Nicolas Cole and his story of being a 90-pound, competitive gamer in his teens to a ripped, competitive body builder in his early 20's.
About a year later, I heard Cole interviewed again on the same podcast, and then, I discovered Quora, (a new obsession of mine) where Nicolas Cole's voice was heard through his written articles of advice on all sorts of topics-- from how his discipline as a gamer influenced his discipline in body building, to how to have better habits, to how not to talk to a girl.
Courtesy of nicolascole.com
Since he kept turning up it everywhere I looked, I decided to reach out to him and interview him. I soon realized there was much more to his story than just being really skinny and then getting super buff.
First of all, Cole fractured his spine playing hockey when he was young, which is why he started gaming. And then, he started having symptoms of Ankylosing Spondylitis where if he said, "if you don't keep your muscles active, they start to cramp in on themselves and it can be extremely painful." His father, who had the same condition suggested he really needed to "spend some time in the gym" in order to offset his symptoms. Finally, he found out he had Celiac Disease at 18 years old.
What's key here is the decision Cole made in the face of all the obstacles and the action that he took.
In this so-called game of life Cole was handed some pretty hefty challenges, but instead of being down and out about it, he chose to reframe the way he looked at his situation. Instead of moping about not being able to eat the All-American-Diet (as he put it, 'flour, flour, bread, bread') like a normal 18 year old, or instead of succumbing to a really painful condition, he used them to his advantage. He noticed his new diet of brown rice, chicken and vegetables was the same diet that body builders actually chose to eat to gain their physique, so that's exactly what he did.
Talk about turning a weakness into a strength.
Courtesy of nicolascole.com
It's not like he was 90 pounds and then bam, suddenly a competitive body builder. He said, "The hardest part's the habit. Thousands of very, very small moments - I didn't even look like I trained for 5 or 6 years. I was skin and bones."
When I asked him what his deeper motivation was to keep going he said, "I do a lot of creative stuff as well, so I'm very in my head. When I train, I treat it much like a meditation. Every time I go to hit my set, for those 30 seconds it's total silence. For me, that's a practice."
Speaking of a practice, he is not only disciplined in the gym but meditates regularly, his work has been published on TIME, Forbes and the Huffington Post (among many other publications) and he has also become a one-on-one coach for those who seek him out as a mentor.
When I asked him about his successes and how he started mentoring he said, "I just starting writing and sharing what I knew, and then things started to come back to me. I've had so many people reach out to me asking, 'Can I work with you?', so I started one-on-one coaching. I have mentors myself-- either people who I work with very closely or who I see once a week. That's how I'm learning, so if I can pass that along to someone else, I see a lot of value in that."
To top it all off, he's also a musician. He's got what he calls a "Dual Project" in the pipeline, "a music album and a book. We're shooting a short film as well, so you can watch it, listen to it and read it-- it's all different dimensions to the same story."
So, there is a lesson to be learned here from this skinny gamer turned body builder turned writer/entrepreneur/musician: Reframe your game and level up.
*You can find Cole and his work such as "Skinny to Shredded" on his website.
*Follow Cole on Instagram, Twitter and my new favorite, Quora.
I'm a breakfast girl. I loooove breakfast. The picture below was taken maybe a month ago and big deal, right? A bunch of eggs and bacon -- well, these are not just any eggs and bacon-- these are grass fed, pasture raised organic eggs and bacon that literally fueled me 'til dinner while hiking and running over 10 miles in the High Sierra Nevada Mountains. Now that's a breakfast of champions.
Since then, I've actually been fairly fascinated with the concept of eating fat, because I literally had so much energy that day. Now, I'm talking about high quality fat, mind you, not the trans fats that are in packaged, processed foods or unstable cooking oils.
The fat of the matter is (eh? anyone?), I eat a fairly high fat diet. Fat does not spike your blood sugar, like at all, it's a slow burning source of fuel. It's the lowest of the low on the glycemic index scale. So, that's why when we eat cereal or even oatmeal for breakfast, we get hungry just an hour or two later, but when we eat eggs and bacon (hopefully, really cleanly sourced) we can just keep going like the energizer bunny. Literally, the less you spike your blood sugar, the less your cortisol has to manage your insulin, which means the less your body produces fat.
Making breakfast before the 10 miler up and down a mountain. I had no idea what I was in for when I started the day.
So, what about heart disease and all that good stuff, you ask. Well, recent studies are all proving that fat, even saturated fat, does not cause heart disease or clog your arteries. It's actually all the sugar and processed foods. (For more info on these studies go here and here.) This is one of the reasons why the Mediterranean diet is revered as so healthy.
Plus, eating fat is awesome for your brain. I remember a cleanse I did a year or so ago, where I juice fasted for about 10 days and man, my body and my brain just craved eggs. Eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs. That was my brain. On a juice fast. Eggs.
Eating low fat or avoiding fat for a while is actually what convinced me that it is so vitally healthy for our bodies.
Anyway, here is a list of fatty foods that I enjoy often:
-avocado, nuts and seeds, coconut, coconut oil, olives, olive oil, grass fed butter, fish, meat (yes, usually dark meat and red meats - preferably grass fed or at least organic, although I'm not always great at this.). I even make my pancakes and cakes with almond flour or coconut flour . . . and I cook with butter and coconut oil instead of vegetable oils.
Here are the list of fatty foods that I try to avoid:
-vegetable oil, canola oil, deep fried foods from restaurants, processed foods and packaged foods like crackers, pastries, cereals, chips . . . ehhh, you get the point . . .
My superhuman immune system has been compromised.
Several years ago, I got through a winter living with 4 other people who all got some form of narly flu or cold not once, but TWICE, yet, I stayed healthy the entire winter.
I’m not really sure why I didn’t get sick back then. I wasn’t pro-actively trying to prevent sickness. I’ve never been one to take echinacea or even get a flu shot. So, when I realized I made it through the winter unscathed, I actually, believed that I was kind of, sort, awesomely, invincible -- and that maybe my immune system had superpowers or something. Since then, my mentality has simply been: I don’t get sick.
Literally, I wrote this post last week at 1 am with these words:
I am declaring a goal, a decree - to NOT GET SICK this winter. In fact, I refuse…
and then woke up at 4 am vomiting my guts out. Obviously, my superhuman immune system has its kryptonite.
So, here’s my new goal: to get healthy again and remain healthy all winter long. And here is my plan to do so:
1. Take On-Guard.
Like I said, I’ve never been a big echinacea girl, or Air-Borne taker, but my hubby and I felt a little tickle in our throats a couple times last year and knocked it out with On-Guard. I’ve been a believer ever since. I've been taking it since my little episode this past week and believe the symptoms have been shortened significantly.
2.Take a healthy dose of probes.
(Haha, “probiotics” that’s an inside joke to myself.) I take capsules, usually Garden of Life brand, as well as rotate my fermented veggies like sauerkraut and kimchee. And of course, my obsession with kombucha is still alive and well.
3. Take Shark Oil.
Ok. I haven’t tried this one yet. I’m fairly loyal to fermented cod liver oil, but one of my good friends swears she didn’t get sick last year due to Shark Oil. Definitely worth a try.
4. Get enough sleep.
This one is tough for me, I’m naturally a night owl and insomnia creeps into my brain now and again. But, I know that when I don’t get enough sleep, life just sucks.
5. Drink bone broth.
I know, this sounds like a weird one, but there’s a reason why Chicken Noodle Soup is not just for the soul. The age-old remedy of boiling the Sunday roast’s bones and making a soup out of happens to be incredibly healing and full of trace minerals, calcium, phosphorus, silicon and sulphur. Also, an incredible source of collagen for those of us who care about hair, skin and nails. This remedy is making it's comeback. I've heard about it all over the blog-o-sphere (and podcast-o-sphere). There is even a new book out called The Bone Broth Miracle by Chef Ariane that is one of the next books to read on my list.
So there it is, my decree. Despite my kryptonite, I invite you to join me.
*I would LOVE to hear your strategies or what you swear by to remain healthy, all winter long.
