Unleash the Beast!

A week and a half ago on Wednesday morning, Boston and I went to the airport and flew from relatively warm and sunny San Francisco to really cold and snowy Salt Lake City.

Our mission: to film a live action "Rise of the Tomb Raider" trailer for our YouTube channel Freakin Rad. Once we landed, we basically hit the ground running, I took off to go get my hair dyed from blonde to brown and Boston took off to go build a 360 camera rig. 

Feeling all chipper at the beginning of my 23 hour day.

The next day I was up from 5 am until 4 am, yes, literally 23 hours. My day started with  of Judie (@judiemonster) from Red River Adventures who was my stunt and climbing coordinator, instructing me to "Unleash the Beast!" as I used an ice tool to haul myself up the side of a cliff.  I then, pretended to throw myself off said cliff (with a 50 foot drop below me), tumbled down the mountain, climbed back up the mountain to tumble some more, and then, tackled some bad guys . . . all in the freezing cold, snow and/or rain.

What you can't see in this pictures is the freezing rain that was coming down. Anything is better than freezing rain. . . . anything is better than freezing rain.

The next two days were pretty much the same with just a little bit more sleep. Basically, my body went through an amazing amount of physical stress . . . And, as I was working out today (back in sunny California), I watched a 79 year old trainer work out an 81 year old -- and my thought was, "YES. Fit for LIFE!" I was completely inspired by this really old guy simply trying to get some basic movements down so he could increase his quality of life.  Who knows!? Maybe he's got another 20 years left, he might as well make 'em better!

There have only been a couple periods of time in my life where I haven't worked out consistently, and I'm so grateful that for whatever reason, I make it a priority in my life. I don't always like it, sometimes I hate it, sometimes I'm bored with it, I'm not even that amazing at it (like I've never even run a half marathon for crying out loud), but I learned fairly young that I feel better when I do workout versus when I don't.

I'll confess, my diet was atrocious that weekend. I basically lived off of protein bars (and who knows what else, I was half asleep). But, I could not have coped physically with living my dream and my passion if I hadn't been consistent in eating well and working out especially in the last couple years. So, like my girl Judie says, "Unleash the Beast!" and get to it! And hopefully, we'll all be one of those 80 year olds, at the gym, because you know, that's just awesome.

My girl Judie with Red River Adventures, helping me live my dreams!

Our Rise of the Tomb Raider live action trailer will be posted on our YouTube channel at the end of this month. Follow me @rennygrames or @freakinrad for updates! 

Reframe Your Game

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.

Eat FAT, Stay SKINNY

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 . . . 

Fat Burning Mode

There's an interesting concept out there that I've been trying out due to Unicity's Transformation program that I've been doing called 4-4-12.

You only eat 3 times per day.  

Now, as someone who for the past decade has eaten 4-6 small meals and snacks in a day this has been a particular challenge.

For example:

9 am: breakfast

1 pm: lunch

5 or 6 pm: dinner 

No snacks.

The idea is, your body is burning the food you ate for about the first 2 hours and then transitions into 'fat burning mode' for the next 2+ hours before your next meal.

This concept is similar to, although not quite as extreme as the ever popular intermittent fasting concept that has hit the health scene.

Transitioning to this new regimen has been a bit of a challenge because my body is like a clock.  I get hungry about every 2-3 hours.

Which is exactly the point-- according to Abel James, in his book The Wild Diet and on his blog, Fat Burning Man, we have literally trained our bodies to be hungry every 2-3 hours by eating so often.  Which I have found to be true in my own case.  

I'm not convinced this practice is for everyone.  Especially since I have really struggled with it - not just being hungry, but actually experiencing dizziness or a shakiness due to not eating.  So I did some reading and found that while intermittent fasting is extremely popular and effective for men, it might not be the best for women.  Stefani Ruper on her blog www.paleoforwomen.com says that 'women's metabolisms suffer from Intermittent Fasting'. You can read up on her study here.  

Often in a time crunch, I will do a cardio HIIT - where I run at a normal pace for about a minute and then sprint as fast as I can for a minute for 12 minutes. Killer! 

While 4-4-12 is not technically IF - I've found that when I eat every 4 hours, I often eat dinner around 5 pm and then do not have breakfast until 9 or 10 am the next morning - which,  can be up to 17 hours of without food.  Interestingly, I don't struggle much with not eating after dinner - it's not snacking before dinner.  Some days are definitely easier than others due to exercise and my cycle, etc.  Again, my approach after stressing about it, is to not stress about it . . . If I'm feeling shaky one day due to not eating, I will definitely eat.

More Tips to put your body in Fat Burning Mode:

1. Exercise before you eat

2. Weight lift 

3. Do a cardio HIIT (high intensity interval training)

Let me know what you think of Intermittent Fasting or the concept of 4-4-12 and if you've ever tried it. 

Happy Sunday everyone!

Why I'm Not Cleansing For the New Year . . .

I love to cleanse.  Weird, I know. I’ve done many different kinds of cleanses and I’ve done them often.  Of course, during the wedding, holidays, honeymoon, traveling and more holidays, I let loose. And I just thought, “It’s all good, I’m going to cleanse in January”.

But, as January approached, I felt this resistance … and then my thought was, “Well, I’ll just do a really short cleanse” … and then more resistance.

Then I realized, my body didn’t want to.

Granted, cleansing is hard! So, there is always a part of me that doesn’t really want to cleanse. Especially, because when I cleanse, I go all out, which usually results in feeling this power within me that I can only describe as a vibration.  Almost a high.  I feel a mental clarity that I don’t experience usually unless I’m cleansing.  And I love it.

But, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just downright hard. Especially, socially.  When I cleanse, I need a lot more sleep, I’m cold all the time— we’re talking teeth chattering, unbearably cold to the core — and I can’t exercise. At least not with the intensity that I like to exercise. I can’t ski and lift and run or do Bikram - which is what I’m doing.

I’m sure I’ll cleanse at some point.  But, for this New Year, I want to be STRONG. I want to be strong and cut and vibrant and full of, not just energy, but unstoppable, exuberant energy. So, I will ski and lift and run and do Bikram.

Oh yeah, I’m taking Karate too.