Posted on 03/27/2010 9:19:08 AM PDT by SonOfDarkSkies
Fat. Sedentary. In love with fried cheese.
That's how Blakely Graham, 36, described herself before she started an intense exercise regimen and tapped her inner cave woman.
Now, she's trim and athletic. She still bats her eyes at deep-fried dairy, but finds the strength to reject the stuff.
In September, Graham, a Boulder marketing executive, joined a gym called CrossFit Roots, one of more than 1,700 CrossFit gyms around the world. The program emphasizes intense, simple workouts in bare-bones gyms, where people perform squats, throw heavy balls against walls, perform countless pull-ups and push-ups, and nearly (or do) collapse by the end of the workouts. The workouts first were popular with police academies, military units, martial artists and firefighters but have spread to fitness enthusiasts in general.
Shortly after joining the gym, Graham, like a lot of CrossFitters, also began eating "paleo" (short for paleolithic), an approach to diet that in some regards mirrors CrossFit's minimalist, no-nonsense training ethic: the diet eliminates dairy products, legumes, all grains, refined sugar and most salt. It is a diet, in other words, similar to what people ate during the Stone Age.
The paleo-CrossFit combo- platter has transformed Blakely's life. Her husband, who followed her into CrossFit and the diet, is a changed man, too.
"I didn't even know he was good-looking," said Graham, with a wink, just before starting a session recently in CrossFit Roots' tiny Boulder gym — really, more like a big garage — just off Pearl Street. "By week three, the weight was coming off so quickly, and I was getting so many compliments, I said, 'OK. I'll stick with this.' "
The book on paleo eats
CrossFit's embrace of the paleo way, also called the "cave man" diet, also has thrilled Colorado State University professor Loren Cordain...
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Aside: Irrelevant, but how does Giada De Laurentiis eat all that Italian food and maintain a perfect figure? She is also one very pretty lady.
Great workout regimen, not for the faint of heart. Here's a link to the workouts we do:
http://crossfitbolling.wordpress.com/
I'm up to doing "as Rx" workouts most of the time, but am still usually the last one in my class to finish. Buncha young whippersnappers!
Any other crossfitting freepers out there?
Man, I’d love to be able to give up coffee. But I know about the headaches and depression....
try half caf. then de caf.
I did this for my husband, and no headaches. Of course he was not aware of what I was doing....
Toast is my secret weakness.
Eat like this, which is like this
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART02012/anti-inflammatory-diet
and walk 3-5 miles a day and we will live in spite of them and their “reform”, and will be strong and vital and THROW them out of office!!!!
HA!
series!
bp
There, fixed it.
I stopped doing it when I started taking an hour spin class mixed with a modified P90X routine at my local gym.
First of all the spinning is grueling and the P90X stuff is murder. I am a biker and thought the spin class would be a pushover.
Wrong!
I presume it is the combination of loud music and a screamin' coach, but my heart rate is significantly higher than usual (I wear a monitor).
In fact, I think the class is so hard I go into a trance until it is over.;-)
Brutal!
BTW, my diet has shifted to the "eat everything in sight" version and I am still losing body fat at a breakneck pace (I didn't think I had that much to lose but I guess I was mistaken).
Bookmark for later.
Thanks for posting!
I’m enjoying coffee at this very minute, Newhall Coffee Roasting Company - California Blend, fresh ground, filtered water, delicious. Coffee beans are seeds, I am so paleo.
ping & bump
Oh, and also the time that he and his Disciples carpooled. (It is written that they were of one accord.)
Paleolithic? Why stop there? Why not go back to the Permian when we were slugs and totally suck the pleasure out of life?
lol...must have been a station wagon!
When I had a heart scan a few years ago, the Doctor said she always refers the hunter and gatherer diet to patients. It makes sense but I have to have my milk daily!
I think that's the diet Kirstie Alley has been on...she looks like she sucked the life out of something big.
Correct...
It has been 2 1/2 years since I had any carbs whatsoever...unless they came in trace amounts from eggs, coffee or straight, distilled spirits.
Literally. I have had nothing from the dairy, grain or vegetable groups in over 2 years.
All I eat is beef (as rare as I can cook it), fish, chicken or eggs. And fat. A LOT of fat.
Very little in the way of spices...and no sauces.
I used to be HUGE bread/pasta/potato eater! But I really started to feel bad, and felt bloated after eating some of the stuff I did. Did a lot of reading and studying and went cold turkey.
I don’t miss any of it much. Sure, I still think it would be fun to dig into a great Mexican food meal or something every once in a while. But it’s not anything close to a craving.
I just adjusted my thinking about food. Now I eat to live, rather than living to eat. I don’t think of food as recreation, anymore.
I’ve lost 55 pounds. My blood sugars are amazing. My BP is way down. My skin and hair are great. I have no caries in my mouth (I take in no “sugars”).
And I’m almost never hungry. And I never have the “lulls” in energy I used to have when I was eating carbs.
Literally, I could (and have) go 3 or 4 days without any hunger pangs and no drops in energy levels.
But to your point about “grain-based diets”...
In almost every case, when diets switched from meat to grain-based, overall health deteriorated.
In Africa, the Masai (meat, blood and dairy diet) are healthier and dominate many of the agrarian tribes. They are stronger, fitter, etc.
If one really wants to analyze it on an apples-to-apples basis the meat-only, or zero carb diet, fares very well.
Comparisons of life expectancies of modern men with “cavemen” or Eskimos need to take into account the brutal, dangerous environments in which they live...which seems pretty obvious to me.
But analysis of those groups has shown much lower incidence of “modern” disease.
It is great to hear of such a success story! It reminds everyone what is possible!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.