Speed Workout
Like many of you, I often find myself with little time, space or gear for a real workout. I’m stuck in a hotel room or at home. It’s night and I don’t want to go out plus it may be cold or raining and I have no desire to go to the gym. Still, you want to work out, you want to feel like you moved your body. You want a good resistance workout plus something that will get your heart racing like a set of sprints. Still, No weights? No treadmill? No problem! Here’s my speed workout for those interested in maximizing their use of time and space.
The Disclaimer
Note - All of these exercises are done as fast as possible. We’re talking pushing yourself to the max here, no rest in between and no slowing down between sets. Also, most of these sets (unless a number is specified) are done to break point. That means you keep doing them until you can’t do a single more rep.
If you have any kind of medical problems, this may not be the workout for you so please consult with a doctor before you try something strenuous like this.
The Workout
- Pushups - Do as many as you can as fast as you can.
- Lunges - Again, as many as you can and fast. Be careful on this to maintain good form but keep going as fast as possible.
- Sit ups - There are a variety you can do here. My favorites are the standard ab curls but feel free to substitute your favorite here.
30 second break
- 50 jumping jacks
- 20 dead lifts
60 second break
START OVER!
You’ve just done one “circuit”. Guess what, now you do another! Keep doing circuits, each time doing the push ups, lunges and sit ups to the point of failure. Keep going and don’t let up on the speed. Each of these circuits will likely take you around 4 to 7 minutes depending on how many reps you can do. Try to do 5 circuits of the whole thing. That means 20 to 35 minutes of all out exercise which will get your heart pounding and your muscles aching. That’s it, that’s all there is to this speed workout.
Details Details
If you look at the exercises, you’ll see that they work out all the major muscle groups from legs to chest and everything in between. Since you’re doing all these to failure, you’re going to give your muscles a good workout. At the same time, you’re going to get a kickass cardio workout because you’re going fast. By the end of the second circuit (or even the first), your heart will be pounding! Again, don’t over do things and hurt yourself. I don’t want any 60 in 3 readers getting heart attacks as they workout :) Know your own limits and stay below them. However, done right, this workout is a great little combo of resistance and sprints which will leave you exhausted in a good way.
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Self Medicating With Food - AKA, Emotional Eating
It’s 8pm, I’m alone in the office. I’m frustrated by my inability to get our software product to do what it should. I’m lonely, upset over a recent breakup. I’m tired, suffering from lack of sleep due to a cold. All of this leads to anger, rage, sadness, frustration and a whole host of other negative emotions. What do I do? I reach for the candy and caffeine. The two things I am trying most to avoid are my friends when I’m in need.
They’re there when I’m sad and they’re there when I’m tired. They wake me from my stupor and cheer me up from my depression. The cold Coke Zero feels so wonderful on my tongue and the sweet sensation of the chocolate is like an escape from all that is bothering me. I chow down on the first piece of chocolate and then the second and the third, each one giving me a brief moment of joy followed by the return of the feelings of loss. I drink one can of coke and feel uplifted, energetic. I drink another and feel even happier. With the coke, the buzz lasts longer but even there it fails and on the ride back home I’m more depressed and alone than I ever was.
Worse, now I’m guilty over binge eating. I beat myself up for giving up on my goals. I question my will power and my resolve and this all feeds into my depression and feelings of anger and frustration. Of course I failed at work, of course I’m sick, of course she broke up with me. Look at me, I can’t even control my own hunger. Who would love such a man? How can such a man be successful at work? How can such a man be healthy?
And the cycle repeats. The emotions get worse. The urge to eat gets stronger. The need to feel better, if only for a second, if only for a minute more while I eat that candy or while I fly high on that caffeine. I need it now more than ever, because I know that for a brief second, a brief glorious second, it will all go away and I’ll feel good. I’ll feel cheerful and happy while the sugar and caffeine course through my veins and trigger hormonal responses. I know I’ll crash again but that’s in the future. I need my fix and I need it now.
Addiction
If that sounds like the account of an addict, that’s because it is. Emotional eating is in many ways similar to a drug addiction. It is the consumption of stimulants (usually sugar and / or caffeine) to trigger chemical changes in the body which simulate although are not quite the same as happiness. We’re sad and therefore we eat. We don’t deal with the issues that make us sad and we may in fact be making them worse, but the food allows us to feel happy for just that brief second, that wonderful moment when all else disappears.
I suppose that on a small enough scale, emotional eating isn’t a bad thing. If once a year you break down on the anniversary of a loved ones’ death and eat a favorite dish, that’s one thing and no one will ever begrudge you that. Unfortunately, many of us, myself included, use emotional eating as a crutch for every day life.
- Feel tired in the morning? Grab a muffin and a coffee.
- Falling asleep at work in the afternoon? Grab a coke or some cereal.
- Tired and frustrated by your social life? Go for that gallon tub of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food.
- Annoyed by your coworkers? Walk to the kitchen and grab some of that free cereal.
- Want to avoid work you hate? Go out for a snack.
We all do it and some of us do it quite a bit. I used to do this all the time, quite literally. Since there was a period of my life when life essentially “sucked”, or so it seemed like to me, I would eat junk food all the time. I’ve improved quite a bit since then but there are occasions when I still find myself self medicating my depression away. Except that, in terms of medication, emotional eating is a very poor one. It doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it usually makes it worse.
A Better Option
What worked for me? A few things, and keep in mind that I still have issues with emotional eating sometimes, so any suggestions would help.
- Keep temptation away - Can’t emotionally eat that bucket of ice cream if it’s not at home and, if you’re tired and depressed, you’re unlikely to go out and buy one. Make sure junk food is not conveniently located.
- Solve your problems - There are a million and one ways to solve most problems, even the big ones. Instead of eating, focus on those things that make you unhappy and come up with ways to resolve them.
- Find a new outlet - For me, this was walking. When I feel annoyed and frustrated, I try to take a walk. I usually come back feeling much better and I’m less likely to eat.
- Keep a reminder of the good things near - For me, it’s a picture of my puppy. The same one you can see in this post. Looking at her makes me smile. It makes me happier and that eliminates some of the need to emotionally eat.
- Talk to a therapist - Yah, I know, therapist?!?! What, am I crazy or something? There’s nothing wrong with me! I mean, sure, I’m depressed and so I eat which makes me even more depressed so clearly I’m doing self destructive things but there’s NOTHING wrong with me. Well, maybe there isn’t, in which case you’ll waste a few bucks. Then again, who knows, maybe it can help.
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The best solution to emotional eating is to solve the problem that’s causing the bad emotions. I’m no expert at this but I have been making progress with my own issues. Sometimes it’s as easy as writing them down and then writing down what, if anything you can do about them. Try it and see if it works. At the very least this little exercise will keep you from reaching for the chocolate 
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Weekend Roundup - Busy Week Edition
This week is amazingly busy, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t write as much. I did however find a few interesting articles last week and wanted to share those with you.
From Consumer Reports, here’s a review of “light ice cream”. If you have a subscription for CR (something I personally recommend) you’ll be able to read more but even the overview is worth it for this gem of information: “The lighter Häagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s we tried actually have more calories and sugars than the regular Edy’s and Breyers”.
@Consumer Reports
From Contemplative Fitness, read about Roy’s love affair with dead lifts. Roy seems absolutely infatuated with them and who can blame him? Luckily, he also includes a great guide for how to perform this great exercise.
@Contemplative Fitness
From the Diet Blog, are crash diets healthy? My answer, absolutely not!
@Diet Blog
And from Mark’s Daily Apple, what could be more primal than tasty internal organs! mm… yummy kidneys!!! Think I’m kidding? Read the article
@Mark’s Daily Apple
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Reader Q&A - How Often Should I Work Out?
This question came from someone who wished to remain unnamed, but it’s definitely an interesting one. How often should you work out?
The answer depends on your lifestyle. Are you an active person by nature? Do you go out to play soccer every Friday afternoon like a good friend of mine? Do you hike every Sunday morning? Do you bike to work every day? All of these things count as physical activity which you are trying to replicate when you work out.
In general, I would recommend that you get a serious resistance workout 3 to 4 times a week. A resistance workout is something that challenges your muscles. It could be rock climbing or it could be lifting weights, but it needs to really strain you to the point where your muscles ache and you feel tired, but not out of breath.
I would also recommend a good two or three sessions a week where you challenge your whole body and especially your cardiovascular system. In other words, exercise which gets you out of breath. This could be soccer, sprints, fast paced dancing, uphill hiking or anything else that gets your heart rate pumping.
Otherwise, just maintain an active lifestyle with plenty of walking and moving around.
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Primal Blueprint, Day 4
A few things I’ve noticed now that I’m paying more attention to them.
The Undying Cough!
If you’ve had a bad cough recently, you can empathize with what I’m about to say. Yesterday, I was feeling pretty darn well. My head was clearing up, I had no headache and that crummy “sick” feeling was almost completely gone. Only one problem, I was coughing. Now coughing is a natural thing. It’s your body’s way of trying to get rid of crap in your airways. So I don’t usually take anti cough medication during the day. However, what about at night? As good as I was feeling, the cough was definitely keeping me awake. It’s hard to fall asleep when every couple of minutes your body is wracked by a coughing spell. So I did what most normal people do and took a couple of cough lozenges. Basically, these are bits of candy with some numbing agent in them that makes the coughing trigger go away. It seemed to work and I fell asleep. By the way, I never used to take these lozenges before. I only started doing so a year or two ago when someone told me that needlessly suffering coughing attacks is silly and only leads to prolonging the cough.
This morning I woke up and I felt worse than before. The headache was back, the throat felt worse than ever and I felt generally crappy. So is Mark right? Is coughing something we should put up with even at the expense of sleep? Was the cough lozenge a good way of covering up the symptoms but a bad way of getting healthier? The answer is, I have no clue. This could just be a bad cold that came back or it might be that I blocked one of my body’s necessary ways of getting rid of disease. My sample size of 1 is simply not enough data, but it is something to think about.
I wonder how many other ways we have of circumventing the body’s natural function in the name of comfort. There’s a study I read a while back on how some necessary nutrients are no longer in our foods because we insist on cleaning them up. That’s right, dirt has nutrients and when you insist on making all your food perfectly clean, you lose out on a lot. Same applies to medication which reduces fevers. Fevers are a way for our body to make it tough for viruses and bacteria to live inside us. When we suppress those fevers, we often make it easier for infections to persist.
So is all medication bad? Is all treatment unnecessary? Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. However, this is giving me a lot of food for thought. I think that, as I progress along this two month experiment, I will try to avoid all unnecessary medicine, even things as simple as throat lozenges, and see how I do.
Chocolate Tasted Funny!
Yes, that’s right, I had a sweet tooth breakdown yesterday. I was in a candy store and there was maple fudge (my favorite!) and I just craved it so much that I broke down and bought a small piece. Guess what? It tasted WAY too sweet. Just four days after starting, something that would have tasted perfectly fine to me before, now tastes way too sweet. Again, this is just a sample of one, which means that in the long run, this might be meaningless, but I find it encouraging that the cravings for processed sugar are less and less frequent. Maybe I can finally kick this candy addiction once for all!
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All in all, I’m liking this new lifestyle, although I’m still having difficulty finding good things to eat.
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Primal Blueprint, Day 2
It’s been two days now since I started on this new plan and there’s good and bad news.
Bad News
- Still struggling with a cold. This has nothing to do with the Primal Blueprint though, I got this cold two days before I started living by Mark’s plan. Still, it’s a bit frustrating to wake up every day with a sore throat and a headache. I wonder if my new lifestyle is making things worse or better but I suppose there’s no way to really know that.
- Experiencing the same issues I did when I first tried out intermittent fasting. Namely, going out with people becomes very difficult since most restaurant meals are not even close to the Primal Blueprint. Still, with enough planning, I’m finding that I can go out and still stick to this plan. Mexican restaurants seem good (hold the rice), seafood places are good (again, hold the high carb sides) and sushi places are great (avoid the rice and order sashimi).
- I’m going through a lot of cravings for sugar. Good thing I started this AFTER I got rid of most of the sugars in my diet last month or else I doubt I could stick with it. There’s an important lesson there by the way, don’t try anything drastic like this without some gradual changes, you’ll greatly increase your chance of success.
- Not sleeping well, but this could be related to the cold. I’m trying to avoid taking any medication for this illness but that’s difficult when I’m staying up all night coughing. What’s worse, losing sleep or taking a cough suppressant? There’s valid reasons for coughing but my body needs sleep!
- I miss my runner’s high.
Good News
- This is forcing me to cook at home more, which is good. I’m greatly enjoying finding out how good of a cook I am. So far I’ve realized that I make a pretty kick ass omelet, stir fry and fish.
- My body feels great even though I’ve been working out while sick. I’ve been doing 25 minutes of high intensity weight lifting followed by 10 to 15 minutes of low intensity elliptical with a lot of walking and biking thrown in for good measure. My muscles and joints are experiencing no pain, probably because I haven’t been jogging in two weeks. Of course, I’m going to see if this has any negative side effects at the end of July, when I do a physical.
- I feel like I have more energy than I did before, which is promising considering the fact that I’m sick and haven’t been sleeping well. I’m not falling asleep in meetings or in front of the computer, even without caffeine. we’ll see how I feel when this cold is done.
- My weight is down by several lbs. This is essentially meaningless though since weight fluctuations over a couple of days can be attributed to the normal metabolic process rather than any changes in body composition.
Things To Try Out This Week
- Need to see if I can have a good meal at an Indian restaurant. I LOVE Indian food and I’m going to have an issue with a diet that does not allow me to eat it.
- Need to go hiking, something I promised myself I would do regardless of the Primal Blueprint.
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Overall, I’m liking this new way of living. Of course, it’s only been two days…
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Review - The Primal Blueprint
Long time readers of 60 in 3 know that I greatly enjoy Mark Sisson’s articles over at Mark’s Daily Apple. I may not always agree with him, but his posts are thought provoking, educational and informative. So I was quite happy to hear that Mark was taking his primal blueprint for health and putting it into a book form titled appropriately enough, The Primal Blueprint.
Style
As usual, Mark’s writing is great. The chapters are well laid out and include multiple examples which are easy to understand. While there are some high end biology, genetics and nutrition discussions, all of them are well explained. In other words, this isn’t just a book for fitness enthusiasts, it’s also accessible for people who are just now getting into a healthier mindset. That said, even the best written book is useless if the content is bad, so let’s examine what the primal blueprint is all about.
Overall
Mark believes, as do I, that people need to get back to their roots. Health wise, he sees our primitive ancestors as leading extremely healthy lifestyles from a variety of aspects. His model, a caveman named Grok, does everything right and treats his body well. By comparison, Mark uses chapter two of the book to show us a modern family by the name of Korg, Grok backwards, and how the modern lifestyle is extremely unhealthy. So far so good, I like this philosophy, but is there something actionable in the book? The answer is absolutely.
The primal blueprint is a set of rules for how to live a healthier lifestyle by emulating our ancestors. This blueprint is laid out in chapter one and each rule is further detailed in subsequent chapters. I’m going to list the rules out here and give a brief opinion on each. For more information on them, visit Mark’s site or buy the book.
The Primal Blueprint Rules
- Eat Lots of Plants, Animals and Insects - I like this rule, yes, even the insects part. Too many of us limit our diets to just a few specific ingredients. In the US, a majority of food seems to be beef, chicken, potatoes, wheat and corn. That’s a bad thing and health conscious individuals will attempt to change this.
- Avoid Poisonous Things - Well, that’s a no brainer, right? Seems smart to avoid drinking that drain cleaner. Except Mark isn’t just talking about obvious poisons. He’s referring to all the modern crap that people put into their systems. That means excess carbs, preservatives, processed sugars, caffeine and a variety of others. I’m not sure I agree with Mark’s policies on whole wheat foods, but otherwise I think he’s spot on.
- Move Frequently At A Slow Pace - Mark’s recommended physical activity is slow and moderate paced movement. Things like walking, biking and hiking. Can’t argue with him on this one, except that Mark argues against prolonged cardio like jogging and makes some very convincing arguments against it.
- Lift Heavy Things - Makes sense. Challenge your muscles and build a better body. This one I agree with and I like Mark’s emphasis on natural, compound exercises like squats and lunges. The primal blueprint recommends explosive, all out efforts rather than slow and gradual by the way, something I’m not sure I agree with. However, that’s a minor quibble.
- Run Really Fast Once In A While - Rather than prolonged cardio, Mark believes in the occasional all out effort. Sprints are a great example of this.
- Get Adequate Sleep - No argument here. This is one of the basic rules of healthy living.
- Play - Again, no argument. If you can combine physical activity with fun, you’re doing great.
- Get Plenty of Sunlight - Just not too much!
- Avoid Stupid Mistakes - Which basically translates to “don’t walk into traffic”. Not sure how Mark reconciles this with his snowboarding but hey, it’s definitely a good rule to follow.
- Use Your Brain - Great last rule to finish with. Fitness isn’t just about the body. We need to pay attention to the most important muscle of all, their brains. Use it or lose it folks!
Is the Primal Blueprint Worth Reading?
Absolutely. Even if you disagree with some of what Mark says you’re still going to find a lot of worthwhile information here. Plus the Korg chapter alone is worth the price of the book because it shows us just how unhealthy our modern lives have become. However, there’s a more important question here.
Is the Primal Blueprint Worth Following?
That is, is this a healthy way to live? For the most part, I think so. I agree with Mark on 80% of what he says. Still, there’s a lot that seems off to me. Whole wheat is bad? Jogging is bad? Cavemen are healthier than modern men? Mm… Still, I’m an open minded person and I feel odd rejecting this idea out of hand. After all, there’s a lot here that makes sense. So
The 60 in 3 Primal Blueprint Challenge
For the next couple of months, June and July, I’ve decided to adopt the Primal Blueprint in its entirety and see what kind of a difference it makes in my life. That means the following:
- No more jogging. Trading this in for occasional sprints and more hiking and walking.
- Eliminate those poisons. No more breads, pastas, rice, caffeine, sugar and the rest. Yes, even whole wheat.
- Add a bit more protein to my diet. Yes, that means eating more meat. I’ve already found a local farmers market vendor who has great organic beef, chicken and venison plus another vendor who sells fresh fish.
- Focus on vegetables, fruits and nuts for my other nutritional requirements.
- Change my weight lifting routine to be a bit faster in line with Mark’s recommendations.
I’ll blog about my progress here in a series called The Primal Blueprint. At the end of July, we’ll see how I feel. That’s when I can tell you if the Primal Blueprint makes for a good lifestyle and not just a great book.
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Mark’s site can be found here: Mark’s Daily Apple
Mark’s book can be found here: The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy
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