Shawsu Workout Studio

Our 1st Guest Speaker Event!

Shawn here.....Yesterday evening was the launch of our complimentary Guest Speaker Series. Michal Rinkedich of Camelot Center (www.camelotcenter.net) gave an enlightening talk that helped us to better understand where the science and practice of Chakras originated and the effects of our Chakras.  Michal limited her discussion to the seven main Chakras, explaining and demonstrating the impact of those Chakras on our body (physically), mind (emotional), and spirit (spirituality).  As an audience, our range of experience with Chakra information ranged from hearing the word Chakra, to those who have received treatments in Chakra balancing from Michal and other practitioners. 

Because this is a relatively new science to me, I can't begin to recreate the inspiring information that Michal shared with us so I look forward to her next speaking engagement with us as well as attending some of her Monday night open houses and receiving at least one treatment from her!

We are honored that Michal will again share her knowledge and spirit with us on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 7pm here at Shawsu,

Looking forward to seeing you at our next Guest Speaker event!

Day 28 of the Paleo 30 day Challenge!

Shawn here.....I feel great!  Got up this morning, drank about 16 oz of purified water and ate an apple on the way to the Studio.  Had a fabulous workout with one of my 30 day Challenge partners and then went to Tom's Restaurant next door and got a Turkey burger (minus the bun) with grilled onions, fresh salsa, and half an avocado.  Yummy!  Worked with 3 clients and ate a fist sized amount of Trader Joe's "Just Chicken" (with olive oil and a feww dashes of Tobasco) during my half hour break and worked with three more clients!  Now I'm eating a Trader Joe's beet salad @ about 5 pm.  I also ate maybe 10 red grapes in the afternoon between clients. 

I've lost 7 pounds and 2 inches off my waist.  I really like Dr. Oz's idea to focus on "Waist Management" (our waist girth) rather than the scale!

10 Days of Paleo Diet!

I'm feeling wonderful eating Pre-Agriculture.  I wake up in the morning awake and ready to go, rather than groggy.  Last night I watched a Tivo'd Dr. Oz and he stated that one of his "7 Deadly Sins" is not stretching in the morning when you first get up, so I stretched this morning and it was glorious.  Unfortunately I violated Dr Oz's 2nd Deadly Sin by not having breakfast, just water, a carrot and one cup of black decaf.

Went for a jog and then walked to my local Farmer's Market to shop. I had a lovely lunch of salmon, roasted assortment of roasted vegi's and fresh fruit.  

Had a tasty dinner of organic-sustainably-grown chicken (less than the size of my fist or hand), vegi soup, 5-pecans, 5-raw almonds, half an orange from my tree, and one date.  It sounds crazy but I felt full.

Speaking of felling full, I follow Michael Pollan's advice to rather than asking myself if I feel full when I'm eating, I ask myself if I "feel hungry."  Michael Pollan is the author of Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Food Rules, all of which are great books that I highly recommend.

Tonight when I made my vegetable soup, as I generally do, I use  a method that my partner got from Weight Watchers which is pureeing the vegetables and broth before eating it.  There's a couple of things that I really like about this method.  One is that I can load all kinds of different vegetables in the soup that I might not otherwise put in a soup because they wouldn't look so swell.  For instance, hearty greens like chard or dandelion or whatever vegetable I have laying around the house.  Tonight I put in beets, two potatoes (I'm still eating fresh foods that I have at the house rather than toss it because potatoes aren't recommended on Paleo), arrugula, mustard greens, cauliflower, leek, garlic and, spices in an organic chicken broth from Trader Jo's and purified water.

Looking forward to tomorrow today,

Shawn

Day 5 - The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, PhD

I felt and feel great today!  Yesterday was very rocky.  I was quite irritable when I got home last night.  Today I worked a lot more hours and later into the evening but I managed to eat regularly and ate meat with 3 meals!

For breakfast I had salad and a less-than-hand-sized piece of steak left over from last night's dinner and an apple.

Trainer & co-Paleo Dieter Sergio Maldonado stopped by and brought me a Paleo Snack of a pear, a cuttie orange, raw cashews and raw almonds.  I finished it for my afternoon snack.

For lunch I went to Tom's, next door, and Maria grilled a piece of chicken and put it on a bed of salad with an avocado and extra virgin olive oil.  It was real swell!

My massage client this evening has been on the Paleo Diet for about 3 weeks and feels fabulous.  She's so happy with the way she feels and how her body is changing that she foresees to problem staying on the Paleo Diet the rest of her life. She mentioned that she didn't thing that cashews were on the diet.  So we checked the book and found that cashews are ok not great due to their ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6.  The list of preferred nuts in best-to-good order are:

        Walnut, Macadamia, pecan, pine, cashew, pistachio. All others not recommended.

Oils in best-to-good order:

        Flaxseed, Canola, Mustard, Walnut, Olive Oil.  All other oils are not acceptable.

I dawned on me today that I hadn't provided information on the Paleo Diet book so I included it in today's heading.

Cheers!

Shawn

Paleo at a Vegetarian Restaurant & Info on Grains

Now this was tough.  Just got home from a cruise to Santa Cruz and dinner at the vegetarian restaurantDharma's.  It was wonderful that all the vegetables were beautifully fresh and organic but where's the beef!  Basically the vegan restaurant, like every other restaurant I've been to since the 1st, had at best one maybe two items on the menu close to my Paleo needs.  Tofu is a no-no so the soups were out, but I ended up having a lovely and filling "Mediterranean Salad" with greens, red onions, Klamata olives, artichokes, and feta cheese with extra virgin olive oil, fresh lemon and lime dressing.  I also had half an egg roll in a rice wrapper and gluten free beer by Anheuser & Bush.

OK ..... I don't really know yet where artichoke stand in the Paleo diet.  Cheese is not in the plan, nor are any grains.  I shouldn't have had the feta and it's really hard to avoid grains, like rice and the the sorghum (sp?) used to make the beer.  But here's the thing, we know that one of the ways that our body develops allergies to food and rejects the food causing an inflammatory response is by over eating the particular food.  Our body's hate repetition and love variety. 

While researching the Neolithic (post Paleolithic, Agricultural Revolution) time period  and foods are grains, wikipedia provided a breakdown of grains and cereals by the amount produced.  If we realize that the more of a food or food byproduct that gets produced, the more of that food stuff we are likely to consume, so the more likely we might be to become allergic to or become sick or feel dis-ease as a result of eating it.  After all, quinoa is a grain, and it's currently tauted as healthy compared to wheat's gluten.  And quinoa is the least produced grain according to wkipedia, so have we just not over consumed it yet? 

Basically, at the moment, if I have to make a choice between a a grain/cereal high on the production list (maize/corn, rice, wheat, or barley) or lower on the production scale (sorghum, millet, oats, rye, buckwheat, fonio, or quinoa) I'll be going for the lowest and least processed on the list.

Here's an excerpt from wikipedia on what the heck grains are:

"Cereals, grains or cereal grains, are grasses (members of the monocot families Poaceae or Gramineae)^[1] cultivated for the edible components of their fruit seeds (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis) - the endocarp, germ and bran. Cereal grains are grown in greater quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop; they are therefore staple crops. In their natural form (as in whole grain), they are a rich source of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fats and oils, and protein. However, when refined by the removal of the bran and germ, the remaining endocarp is mostly carbohydrate and lacks the majority of the other nutrients. In some developing nations, grain in the form of rice, wheat, or maize (in American terminology, corn) constitutes a majority of daily sustenance. In developed nations, cereal consumption is more moderate and varied but still substantial."

And here's the link to the wikipedia site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal

Why Paleo?

You get to eat all the lean meats, fish, and seafood you can eat!

Eat all the fruits and non-starchy vegetables you can eat!

(No cereals, legumes, dairy products, or processed foods~and I use the term food here loosely)

A few people have asked me now why I'm doing the Paleo Diet and not some other diet and today on a motorcycle ride with friends we were discussing the topic.  The reason I'm going with the Paleo diet is that it is the most basic and seems to address the other concerns of importance; namely, inflammation and pH balancing which are important to combating all the Western diet ailments including heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, some cancers and autoimmune disorders. 

We rode to Buck's restaurant in Woodside, which I highly recommend.  Though, as has been true at every venue I've been to since January 1st, it's a bit challenging (not impossible) to get something Paleo.  I had one of Buck's specials. One large artichoke baken with olive oil and herbs cut in half with shrimp stuffed on one half and fresh crab in the other half, on a bed of fresh spinach.  It was absolutely delicious!

My afternoon snack was organic (from the SF farmer's market) beef jerky, walnuts, and dried fruit.  

Cheers!

Shawn

Going Paleo for 30 days

Shawn's Day 2 - No Grains, No Legumes, No Dairy, Nothing Processed .......

I realized while talking with a friend and client today that I forgot to include "No Dairy" in the heading of my first Paleo Diet posting yesterday.  I think it was because for me, dropping dairy products will be not as traumatic as grains and legumes.  Though while I was at Peet's getting latte's for my family it was challenging to order plain drip coffee (half hot water, half caff).  I packed snacks of celery, carrots, kiwi, an apple, and cheese (I know it's processed non-Paleo....but you know....just in case of emergency) for the trip to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco.  If you've never been, it was quite fun!  Similar to the Campbell farmer's market but I liked that the SF market had more protein vendors, there was a grass fed sustainably grown red meet vendor, chicken and fish vendors.

At the farmer's market, only a couple of the food vendors had anything even close to fitting the Paleo plan.  One served hamburgers including buffalo burgers which would have been grand except that the only Paleo carbohydrates were pieces of lettuce to put on the processed-non-food hamburger buns.  I ended up having two organic eggs lightly scrambled with arugula and onion.  Not supposed to eat potatoes, but I had probably the equivalent of two red potatoes and did not eat any of the large piece of foccacia that was doused with butter and herbs and looking wonderfully deadly.

Went out to dinner and had clam chowder and a chopped salad with chicken and a dressing of olive oil and lemon. No bread, one glass of Pinot Noir and water.  I wouldn't make a habit of the clam chowder since it more than likely had dairy product but I don't think I could have pulled off not eating the bread and all the cheese in an onion soup.  The fam got dessert to share so, just to be polite, I had one fork of cheese cake and one of chocolate cake.

I did not add salt to anything.  This is a big deal for me.  I was a salt-aholic until last February.  I always thought that because I have always had normal blood pressure that I didn't have to worry about using too much salt.  Then in February 2009 I experienced a kidney stone and learned from our nutritionist, Diane, and since then in other readings, that salt is generally a culprit.  I didn't quit salt cold turkey (as I had quite the addiction), passed one more stone a few months later and have now stopped adding it to my food.  This is handy since salt was never used pre-Agricultural Revolution.

 

Going Paleo! Pre-Agricultural Revolution Fueling

Day One ….. No Grains ….. No Legumes ….. No Refined Sugar.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about food over the years about diet and nutrition, and particularly the last several months as a result of researching information on cancer.  It’s been quite a labyrinth sifting through the massively complicated information on nutrients and how to compound the healthy, not-so healthy and sickening components of food into a diet.  I found that I was getting lots of confusing information on what to eat when, and then was barraged by sporadic information about the foods we are eating being unhealthy in general.  What’s a person to do?  Well I guess just keep getting fatter and unhealthier, since that’s what American’s have been doing since at least the 1950’s. 

Then along came Michael Pollan.  His book, In Defense of Food, caught my eye a couple of months ago.  When I picked in up I actually thought it was going to be about justifying the foods that businesses, the FDA, and government have approved.  I think really that I was kind of secretly hoping that everything else that I’ve been reading would be proven wrong.  Hoping that I didn’t have to suspect and wonder about the quality of what I’ve been eating.  But Pollan in a very entertaining, simple yet deep way defends food, real food.  Between Pollan and several other books that I’ll talk about later, fueling a human is simply a matter of eating real versus processed industrialized food.  So let’s go Paleo.

I read The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain, in around 2003.  The book caught my eye only because I was taking and enjoying the heck out of anthropology classes at the time.  So, rather than a “diet” book, I thought it was going to be, well, more anthropological.  Flash forward to the present and almost a year ago a couple of young trainers were talking with me about the Paleo Diet.  I’d mention that I’d read the book years ago, which I did, and remembered it as being interesting, but it didn’t stick.  I glanced at my book, complete with highlighting, and checked out a couple of web sites.

So Trainer Sergio Maldonado and I agreed to do the Paleo Diet for 30 days.  No grains (maize/corn, rice, wheat, barley, sorghum, millet, oats, rye, triticale, buckwheat, fonio, quinoa,), no legumes, nothing processed.

Day 1 – Paleo Diet (This is going to be a challenge.)

Before 5-mile run:  8-10 oz. Purified Water, few sips of Green Tea, 5-Baby Carrots.

After 5-mile event:  16 oz. bottled water, 1-medium sized orange

About 10 or so Baby Carrots walking to coffee.

8 oz Black caffeinated Coffee with about 8 oz. hot water added.

About an hour after the event we had Breakfast:  2-eggs scrambled with Machaca (shredded beef, more than likely not grass fed), and cactus, topped with raw onions, fresh parsley, salsa, and juice from a half a lime.

Got home, read a little, worked on the blog a little and took a long nap.

Ate a few raw almonds soaked in purified water, and drank water, and had herbal tea.

For dinner I had 2-eggs scrambled with red onions and Hickory Farms beef stick (I know it’s not Paleo, but I just cannot waste money), soaked raw almonds, an orange and an apple.

Ever Run a 5 mile Event? Thinking it was a 5K ?!

Happy New Year!

A few weeks ago I found the Los Gatos Resolution Run on Active.com.  I was real excited because the venue is much prettier than the Bay Lands run that I was originally planning to do.  I figured that if we went to a friend’s New Year’s Eve invitation, we wouldn’t stay very long, like maybe midnight at the latest.  Well, I got to sleep at about 3 am, and not so gloriously got up at 8am for the 9am start time. 

I was glad that I only drank a couple of glasses of wine and that the New Years celebration meal was gluten free and mostly vegetables.  I grabbed purified water, warm green tea, and about 20 of those crazy whittled down things called “Baby Carrots” (with the more nutritious part now missing) and headed out the door.  I was actually feeling pretty darn good on 5 hours sleep once I consumed some water, tea and a few carrots!

As the race starts promptly at 9am, I’m thinking this 5K (3.2 mile run) is going to be wonderful!  And …. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll come in dead last as there was a 20-30 something year old fellow on crutches with one leg in a cast participating in the event – hard core!  I saw him again coming up at about half way up the hill as I was descending.  What determination.

At the gun shot I stick with my plan.  Run at about 95 beat per minute pace (though I didn’t bring my metronome), with no joint discomfort.  I’m not wearing a watch, heart rate monitor or music.  I’m wearing my light no-support New Balance 100 shoes.  My goal is to be in the moment, enjoying life in the scenery, and the fact that I’m in life while running and listening to my body.  My word for 2010 is “grounded.”

Everything is wonderful, rolling mounds of earth (in what turns out to be the first mile or so), beautiful weather – overcast and a slight drizzle.  My kind of running weather, of course my mantra now is that all weather is my kind of running weather ;-)  By the 1-mile marker (and there were no more markers by the way) we running on a packed dirt/gravel war-width path on a fairly gradual up hill that just keeps going.  The incline grows into a bit of a roar and then an OMG at the halfway point turn around. 

On the way back down I over hear a woman who’s wearing a GPS watch say that she and her friends have just traveled 3.7 miles on the run.  What?  I must have misunderstood as I went by them.  This is a 5K, 3.2 mile run.  I am pretty tired but I’m sure it’s just because the hill beat me up.  I have not run any hills yet since taking up running again.  Yes, I did some walking to either get the pain in my knee or foot to calm down (especially on the downhill), and because I’m not in shape yet for running hills.

I finished the event and happy that I did the event, though a bit curious that I was so tired.  But I just attributed my fatigue and mild soreness to only having 5 hours of sleep and only a few carrots to eat.  I took it easy on the down hill as running down hill was how I originally injured my right knee a hundred or so years ago. I noticed discomfort in the right knee and left foot a few times during the run which I was able to ease every time by talking my body into various aspects of Chi or Pose Running. 

I grabbed some sliced orange and a bottle of water while my partner chatted with some folks, one of whom told her that we ran 5 miles!  No wonder!  A 5K is the most I’ve run since learning Chi and Pose Running.  I crack myself up! 

 I entered my event in www.MapMyRun.com  and also confirmed the 240ft. 2-mile assent and 2-mile descent.  Yahoo! Our plan is to run this course again in 2-3 weeks.  Next stop a 10K in February! Unless I accidentally sign up for a 10 miler!