Diet Advice - just a quickie

This

versus this

Diet Advice: Is your food choice good for you?  Just check the label... and if your food has a label, then no - it's not good for you.  ((Safer to stick to the outer walls of a grocery store.)) 

Feet That Have Never Worn Shoes

SURVEY IN CHINA AND INDIA OF FEET THAT HAVE NEVER WORN SHOES

This paper takes a large sample of shodless people and compares the occurrences of foot ailments that affect most of us.


I found this very interesting as I have grown a space between my forst two toes as my feet get stronger. "Almost everyone surveyed showed a marked spacing between the first and second toes such as that found on young babies. The great toe was either pointing straight ahead or slightly abducted to provide a greater weight-bearing base or, possibly, to compensate for a shortened first metatarsal segment."

For Children: But it is strongly urged that all children go barefoot from birth until they walk outside of their own homes. Baby shoes cause great harm to growing, formative feet. The so-called "sentimental" value of baby's shoes might well be dispensed with. When necessary, large loose socks will provide all the warmth needed during winter months in the home, even on cold linoleum floors. Strong, sturdy feet need to be developed naturally through the uninhibited normal exercises of crawling, playing and the first months of walking. Neither should the child be encouraged or aided to begin walking by supporting him by his arms or by wheeled baby-walkers. The child will walk when it is physically able, there being no standard age at which it should begin. Overzealous parents should be cautioned in this respect. Remember, a kitten learning to walk is unaided and very clumsy but soon develops into a sure-footed, graceful animal. Remember, too, that a child who had developed a strong, well-formed pair of feet by going barefoot the first few years of its life will not thereafter tolerate shoes that fit badly. When shoes are finally necessary they should be pliable and have ample toe room. Only feet that are weak need supportive rigid shanks.

Article Here

I love easy-to-follow rules for diet

Rule of thumb any source of protein - get it from moist sources...  most all moist sources are 2/3:1/3 fat to carb/protein.  ((like steak(68/32), eggs(66/33), butter(66/33) all have that ratio.  Any sources of protein that taste good are a better balance of macro-nutrients.  example lean chicken breast can taste dry - and is therefore a worse choice.

That excpert taken from here.

Top Ten Paleo Recipes of 2011

Now that we’ve officially entered 2012, it’s time to reflect upon 2011. Last year there were some recipes that really stood out at Paleo Plan. We thought we’d share the top 10 recipes starting with the most popular.

And the winners are…

1. Carrot Banana Muffins (I’m not really surprised – are you?)

2. Paleo Pumpkin Muffins (really guys?)

3. Almond Flour Pancakes (I’m seeing a trend here…)

4. Bison Chili

5. Paleo Candy Bars

6. Crock Pot Pork Loin

7. Almond Muffins

8. Paleo Pizza

9. Sweet Potato, Bacon, and Egg Salad

10. PB&J Paleo Style

I think what we can take from this assemblage of favorites is that people are really looking for ways to make comfort foods into Paleo foods. We’ll do our best to add more recipes in 2012 that keep you Paleo AND keep you happy.

Why Humans Choose Running Over Walking

ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2012) — Other than Olympic race walkers, people generally find it more comfortable to run than walk when they start moving at around 2 meters per second -- about 4.5 miles per hour.

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North Carolina State University biomedical engineers Dr. Gregory Sawicki and Dr. Dominic Farris have discovered why: At 2 meters per second, running makes better use of an important calf muscle than walking, and therefore is a much more efficient use of the muscle's -- and the body's -- energy.

Published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the results stem from a first-of-its-kind study combining ultrasound imaging, high-speed motion-capture techniques and a force-measuring treadmill to examine a key calf muscle and how it behaves when people walk and run.

The study used ultrasound imaging in a unique way: A small ultrasound probe fastened to the back of the leg showed in real time the adjustments made by the muscle as study subjects walked and ran at various speeds.

The high-speed images revealed that the medial gastrocnemius muscle, a major calf muscle that attaches to the Achilles tendon, can be likened to a "clutch" that engages early in the stride, holding one end of the tendon while the body's energy is transferred to stretch it. Later, the Achilles -- the long, elastic tendon that runs down the back of the lower leg -- springs into action by releasing the stored energy in a rapid recoil to help move you.

The study showed that the muscle "speeds up," or changes its length more and more rapidly as people walk faster and faster, but in doing so provides less and less power. Working harder and providing less power means less overall muscle efficiency.

When people break into a run at about 2 meters per second, however, the study showed that the muscle "slows down," or changes its length more slowly, providing more power while working less rigorously, thereby increasing its efficiency.

"The ultrasound imaging technique allows you to separate out the movement of the muscles in the lower leg and has not been used before in this context," Farris says.

The finding sheds light on why speed walking is generally confined to the Olympics: muscles must work too inefficiently to speed walk, so the body turns to running in order to increase efficiency and comfort, and to conserve energy.

"The muscle can't catch up to the speed of the gait as you walk faster and faster," Sawicki says. "But when you shift the gait and transition from a walk to a run, that same muscle becomes almost static and doesn't seem to change its behavior very much as you run faster and faster, although we didn't test the muscle at sprinting rates."

The research could help inform the best ways of building assistive or prosthetic devices for humans, or help strength and conditioning professionals assist people who have had spinal-cord injury or a stroke, Sawicki and Farris say.

The researchers are part of NC State's Human PoWeR (Physiology of Wearable Robotics) Lab, directed by Sawicki. The joint Department of Biomedical Engineering is part of NC State's College of Engineering and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's School of Medicine.

Paleo Flowchart

From TriMax:

Stop Doing Sit-Ups: Why Crunches Don't Work

Recent study at University of Waterloo reports situps do more harm than good.

From here 

As it turns out, the exercises synonymous with strong, attractive abs may not be the best way to train your core—and may be doing damage to your back.

“We stopped teaching people to do crunches a long, long time ago,” says Dr. Richard Guyer, president of the Texas Back Institute.  That’s because the “full flex” movement—the actual “crunch” part of crunches – puts an unhealthy strain on your back at its weakest point. The section with the most nerves (and most potential for nerve damage) is in the back of the spine, which is the very part that bends and strains during a sit-up.

“There are only so many bends or a ‘fatigue life’,” in your spinal disks,” says Stuart M. McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo. Inside each disk is a mucus-like nucleus, he says, and “if you keep flexing your spine and bending the disk over and over again, that nucleus slowly breaches the layers and causes a disk bulge, or a disk herniation.”  A herniated disk won’t show through your swimsuit, but it’s no fun, and can cause persistent back and leg pain, weakness, and tingling.

Think of the oft-repeated advice for movers: bend at the hips and lift with your legs, not your back. And what is a sit-up but a back bend done in a lying position? “When people are doing curl up over gym balls and sit-ups, and this kind of thing, they are replicating a very potent injury mechanism on their back,” says McGill. “Every time they bend it they are one repetition closer to damaging the disk.”

And of course, when people do crunches, they rarely stop at one or two: in the quest for flat abs, they’ll churn out dozens at a time, bringing them ever closer to  “flex intolerance”—so much pain and stiffness that it’s difficult to tie one’s shoes or bend down to pick a penny off the ground.

But who cares about back health as bathing suit season approaches? Turns out, crunches might not be the best solution for a flat stomach, either. That’s because doing too many sit-ups at the expense of other, more comprehensive movements can lead to the dreaded “aerobic abs.”  That’s the term celebrity trainer Steve Maresca coined to describe the distended stomachs of those who focus only on the rectus abdominus muscles targeted by sit-ups and crunches. “They look great from the front, but when they turn to the side, their stomachs are extended,” he says. To get the long, lean look, one needs to work transverse abdominius, a large muscle that holds in those rectus abs, and is mainly unchallenged by traditional ab work (aka, the sit-up and crunches).

Doing a sit-up doesn’t train your ab muscles to do the job for which they were designed – keeping your spine straight and secure and providing power for your movements. In everyday life, “the abdominals are braces,” says McGill, author of "Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance" (Stuart McGill, 2004). When doing any athletic movement—even opening a door—“the spine is in a neutral posture, not flexed, and the abdominal muscles are contracted to brace the spine.”

The best way—for both your back and your beach body—to work your midsection is to do movements that challenge the muscles to perform the way they're designed and expected to work in real life, and not to train muscles in isolation. “It’s important to have strong abs, but strong abdominals are not the only thing,” says Dr. Guyer. “You have your back extenders, your flexors, which are belly muscles, you have your oblique muscles.” Working all of these muscle groups—the anatomical association known as “the core”—is essential to both back health and general athleticism.

As a result, only training for good-looking abs won’t add to your athleticism or overall strength. On the other hand, moves not traditionally designed for good-looking abs can in fact help strengthen and tone those muscles.

Consider the pushup. Not usually thought of as a great ab move, the pushup forces you to work several muscles at once: it forces your core muscles to stabilize your trunk as your arms and back work to move the body up and down. “Do you see how a pushup is a full body challenge?” says McGill. “It challenges abdominals, front of your legs, your arms and your back. That is how you use those muscles in real life.”

Like the pushup, the best exercises for back health and a firmer stomach are ones that work your abs while holding your spine straight, like planks or leg drops (done when you lie flat on your back, with your hands at the base of your spine for added support. Raise your legs up at a 90 degree angle, then slowly lower until they’re only inches from the ground. Repeat until your stomach burns and you want to throw up). And because your core is the center of power for most other exercises, a long workout full of dynamic movements targeting legs, arms and back also translates to a good core workout. (For more examples of effective ab exercises, visit McGill’s site, backfitpro.com.)

Of course, it won’t matter how muscular your torso is if your body fat is too high. The best way to build strong, visible abs isn’t through repeated sit-ups, but by engaging in circuit training that has you working your entire core while you’re burning calories – and to keep yourself disciplined during meals. “If you want to burn your fat mass, make sure you have a combination of weight training and cardiovascular, but 90 percent of good abs is your nutrition,” says Maresca. However, he does offer a quick tip for those of us with a weakness for caloric food: standing up straight and pulling back your shoulders will instantly tighten your transverse abdominal muscle, making you look a little leaner. It’s not quite as impressive as showcasing a well-developed core via 10 percent body fat, but it does leave a lot more time and flexibility for hitting up happy hour. 

Importance of Interval Training

"Not Having Time" is no-longer a valid excuse!  

LAST WINTER, half a year before the Leadville Trail 100 mountain-bike race, Dave Wiens knew he had his work cut out for him. After winning the event six times in a row, from 2003 to 2008, the 46-year-old Gunnison, Colorado, rider finished second behind Lance Armstrong in 2009. To recapture the title, he would have to best the race's strongest field ever, including three-time Tour of California winner Levi Leipheimer and Olympic cross-country riders Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski and Todd Wells. Worse, Wiens barely had time to train. "Between a new job selling medical supplies, my work promoting a local mountain-bike race, my responsibilities for trail advocacy, three active sons, and my wife's schedule as a nurse, I just didn't see how I could be competitive," he recalls.
Rarely do amateur athletes have the luxury of making fitness a top priority. Even genetically gifted regular Joes like Wiens (and Outside's fittest real athletes) have long lists of commitments and little free time. Training is often the first thing on the chopping block. "Time has to rate as one of the biggest constraints for anyone trying to gain or maintain fitness," says Chris Carmichael, founder of Carmichael Training Systems and author of The Time-Crunched Triathlete. "But it takes less time to get fit than most athletes think."

A lot less. Research shows that short, well-targeted, high-intensity workouts can get you as fit as much longer sessions. According to a 2008 study in the American Journal of Physiology, one and a half hours a week of high-intensity interval training will improve arterial structure and function just as much as five hours a week of lower-intensity workouts. And researchers in Denmark showed that runners who added speed training to their regimens while decreasing the overall volume of running by 25 percent logged faster times in a 10K field test after just six to nine weeks. "Most people can spend 50 percent less time working out and still get 80 percent of the benefits," says Lynda Wallenfels, an elite endurance mountain- bike racer and cycling coach.
It's the same with strength training. Numerous studies have shown that you can achieve equivalent gains in strength even if you reduce the frequency of lifting—down to as little as once a week—as long as you fine-tune the workout volume and intensity. "The question is whether you are working hard enough to force the body to adapt," says Bill Pierce, professor of health sciences at Furman University and author of Run Less, Run Faster. "Intensity is the variable that has the greatest impact on improved fitness."
Wiens is proof. In his run-up to Leadville, he rode less mileage than in previous seasons, using interval routines to maximize the impact of his shorter sessions. And while he didn't win (he came in fourth behind Leipheimer and the Olympians), he slashed 12 minutes off his previous best time. "I was really surprised," he says.
The takeaway for the rest of us: "I don't have time" is no longer an acceptable excuse. What follows is your guide to boosting performance on almost any schedule.