MORE FOOD LABELING BULLSH*T

I've touched on food labeling practices in a few prior posts (here and here), but there's a new one that is hitting supermarket shelves all over the country:

Smart Choices Program

"Helping Guide Smart Food and Beverage Choices"

The whole purpose of this label (according to the website) is to give consumers a quick way to identify whether or not a food product is healthy.  If the product has this label, well then it must be healthy (I want to emphasize my use of the phrase "food product" since fruits and vegetables do not have packaging or labels and therefore cannot display this label).  To qualify for this label, foods must meet a comprehensive set of criteria ranging from total calories and fat content to vitamin and mineral content.  To summarize, they have three categories (quoted directly from their website):

Nutrients to Limit - These are nutrients that Americans need to eat less of in their diet for better health (total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, added sugars, sodium).

Nutrients to Encourage - These are the “nutrients of concern,” that is nutrients lacking in the diet, as identified by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Calcium, Potassium, Fiber, Magnesium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E).

Food Groups to Encourage - These are groups of foods, rather than individual nutrients, that are recommended in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Fruits, Vegetables, Whole Grains, Fat-Free/Low-Fat Milk Products).

Generally speaking, those categories seem to be a step in the right direction.  They even make exceptions in the "Total Fat" category for items like nuts, seeds, avocados, and fatty fish since they contain high amounts of healthy fats.  That's good, right?

Now if you've read my other blog posts about food labels or my thoughts on the food industry in general, you're probably sitting there just waiting for me to tell you how much I hate this new labeling system...well WAIT NO LONGER!!

As I mentioned earlier, the first strike against this program is that it can't apply to whole food items like fruits and vegetables since those items do not include any packaging in the first place.

Strike Two is the following:

Froot Loops qualified for this "Smart Choices" label??  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??  Froot Loops are nothing more than sugar circles in milk.

Strike Three will involve a quote from their website:

"The Smart Choices Program encourages balanced eating by evaluating foods across every aisle and section of the supermarket."

By eating "across every aisle," that simply encourages people to buy food products and not whole food items (which are located on the store periphery, not on the aisles).  Buying food products is fantastic for the manufacturers, but pretty much terrible for the consumer.

A few more sample products that apparently meet healthy criteria:

FUDGSICLES, MAYONNAISE, AND REGULAR PEANUT BUTTER!!  It's probably best that I can't tell what the product is behind the Fudgsicles because I would probably just get really pissed off.  Also, please note that Natural Peanut Butter (made only from peanuts) is a great food choice.  Regular Peanut Butter (made with sugar and partially hydrogenated oils) is NOT a great food choice.

There's also more B.S. on the horizon...foods will soon be marketed as "Better for You" foods.  It is important to note that the industry is not calling them "Good for You," and there's a reason for that.  3 slices of double-fudge brownie cake is definitely "Better for You" than 4 slices of it.

UPDATE TO ORGANIC POST

If you read an earlier post I wrote about Organic Foods, then you may have wondered whether or not Organic is even more nutritious than Conventional.  If it is, that's great...if it's not, why should you spend the extra cash to buy Organic?

If you didn't read it...then get after it!  Click here!  I'll wait...

So my response to the question of which is more nutritious is actually "it doesn't matter."  My reasoning is pretty simple...

There have been numerous studies conducted that tested which method of farming produced the greatest nutrient content, and the results have been all over the board.  Some studies showed that Organic and Conventional were equal, while others showed that Organic beat out Conventional (in some cases by a narrow margin, while in other cases by a wide margin).  One thing that those studies never showed, though, was that Conventional was superior to Organic.  At best, Conventional is equal to Organic.

One other important thing to note, as Jonny Bowden recently wrote in an article of his:

"We don't really eat organic food simply because it has more nutrients, though that's very possible and hotly debated. We eat it because of what it doesn't have: poison." 

Jonny Bowden's articles are great, and I also love his books!  In particular, his book The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth should be a must-read for anyone that is passionate about health, nutrition, and wholesome cooking (although it is not a cookbook):

There are definitely a couple of surprises in the book...foods that I had never heard of.  I think the best part about the book is that he doesn't just tell you which foods are the best, but he tells you why and backs it up with scientific data.  By doing so, he also highlights the importance of variety!  While some foods are potent cancer fighters, others may stimulate optimal brain function or promote recovery from training and/or illnesses.  You get the idea.

RECOVERY - DAY 7

I know, I skipped a few days of the Recovery, but there wasn't really much to report.  I have been getting some training in, but you've pretty much seen it all if you looked at my last post.

Another "milestone" today, though (if you would call it a milestone).  I scheduled my first Physical Therapy session!!  Monday November 2nd at 2 pm.  I actually scheduled my first week of PT, but the first is the most important.  That same morning I go to see the doctor for my post-op appointment.  I'm pretty sure he'll just take the stitches out of my leg and ask me how I'm doing, but I gotta go anyway.

Today will technically be an "off-day" from any training, although I'm gonna try to work in some little stuff...flexibility work (upper-body only), grip work, Airdyne conditioning.

WHAT I HAD FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT

Last night Lauren and I cooked a ridiculously good dinner!  I hobbled my way out the back door into a chair next to our grill to set up shop.  Lauren brought everything out to me and I was responsible for grilling.

Grilled Salmon w/ portobella mushrooms, bell peppers, and Brussels sprouts!

I cut and steamed the Brussels sprouts while Lauren was on her way home from work.  This part isn't necessary, but B. sprouts are so thick/dense that it is difficult to cook them all the way through either on the grill or in the oven without pre-steaming.  It doesn't take long, so it's no big deal.

We had a teriyaki marinade for the salmon, some balsamic vinegar on the portobellas, and various seasonings on the B. sprouts.

Throw everything on the grill...flip the salmon, bell peppers, and portobellas every 4 minutes hitting each side twice, and just sort of stir around the B. sprouts to make sure every angle gets a little attention from the flame.  Not difficult at all, but incredibly delicious!

Tonight??  I'll give you one guess.  Here's a clue.

RECOVERY - DAY 4

A couple of milestones today...

First and most importantly, I got my first post-surgery workout in!!  It felt good to move and sweat again, although I feel like my "fitness" has digressed so much already.  I wasn't able to do much, but it looked like this:

POWER

A1  Med ball throws (lying horizontally, throwing vertically) - 4 x 4

A2  Side-lying external rotations - 3 x 10 (shoulder prehab stuff)

STRENGTH

B1  Dips (using a 20 lb. weight vest) - 4 x 15

B2  Chest-supported rows - 4 x 10

CONDITIONING

Airdyne intervals 10 x 15 sec (15 sec rest)...arms only!

That was it.  It didn't take very long, and although it felt good, I was left wanting more.  Oh well, in time I guess.

As for the chest-supported row, that's the latest addition to the SHOP (see pic below).  I obviously knew that I would be off of my feet for a while, so this provided a great option for some back work.  Plus, Craigslist is a freakin' goldmine!  One man's junk is another man's treasure.  I got a sweet deal.

The second milestone was less important, but a milestone nonetheless.  After my shower, I took my bandages off...for good.  Now there's just 3 stitches, 1 for each porthole.  Those are coming out a week from tomorrow.

I haven't figured out what I'm gonna do tomorrow for a workout, but it will most likely include some more Airdyne intervals.

RECOVERY - DAY 3

I took my first shower today!  I was definitely due for one.  I'm still not in any real pain, just general stiffness in my hip, and of course I'm not doing anything to test it either.

Here is the next picture in my beard and hair documentary.  You'll have to excuse "the do" as I was fresh out of my first shower and my hair just dried that way.  After looking at my Physical Therapy Prescription, it calls for 24 weeks of rehab, so that is how long my hair and beard will have to grow!

Beard - Day 3

I spent a good chunk of the morning and afternoon reading (The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand) out in the front yard again.  I think I've actually been getting more natural light than I otherwise would on a normal day at the office.

I also just finished another ridiculous dinner...spaghetti squash with chicken, spinach, bell peppers, onions, garlic, and baby portabella mushrooms in a tomato basil sauce.  Yes, it was as good as it sounds.  As my Italian friend Anthony would say...eatta pasta runna fasta!!

While Lauren was out and about running errands today, she stopped in at CVS to scan the images that the doctor took with the scope-cam.  Be sure to click on each one and it will bring up the full-size image.  OK, now I'm going to try to describe these to you using my own numbering system...I'll number them 1-24, moving from left to right and top to bottom.  Oh, and in case anyone cares to know, the technical name for my operation is "Hip Arthroscopy with Labral Repair and Osteochondroplasty."

If you look closely at pictures 2, 3, and 4 you'll see some frayed cartilage...that's my labrum.  It was pretty messed up, but thankfully Dr. Muller is the man!

This whole next set (pictures 9 - 16) show a bunch of different progressions where he is cleaning up and suturing the labrum.

Look at the last four pictures here (21 - 24) and you can see a hole in my bone.  That's the cyst that I mentioned here.  I actually thought that the cyst was a fluid-filled sac on the surface of the bone, but it actually was in the bone.  When Dr. Muller was shaving down the bone to reshape the femoral head/neck, the cyst was exposed and he drained it.  That's the hole I just mentioned.  It is supposed to fill in with bone over time.  I sure hope so.

I'll detail my Physical Therapy Prescription tomorrow...but it looks really good and I'm anxious to get started!

MOVIE REVIEW - TYSON

I've been wanting to watch Tyson for a long time now.  I love watching his training highlights on YouTube, and he is one of the most quotable (and hilarious) athletes of all time!

This documentary was awesome.  It starts when Tyson was bout 12 years old, before he got introduced to boxing.  He was a thug, as you'd probably expect, and was in and out of juvenile hall on about a weekly basis.  The movie talks about how he first was introduced to the sport and eventually met Cus D'Amato, who became a father figure to him in addition to being his trainer.  They showed a lot of his early training footage from when he was as young as 14 leading up to the Junior Olympics.

His rise through the amateurs and into the professional ranks all the way to heavyweight champion (at the age of 20, the youngest ever) was nothing short of INSANE.  My favorite part of the whole movie was when he talks about what's going through his mind as he enters the ring...he stares at his opponent, and he can't take his eyes off of him.  He's waiting for the moment when his opponent breaks that eye contact, because at that moment he knows he broken him down mentally.  His opponent has already lost the fight, he just doesn't know it yet.  They're actually showing footage of this pre-fight routine and you can see when the guy looks away from Tyson and down at the canvas and then Tyson just says "I got you."

The last part of the movie was actually kinda sad...it started with his rape conviction and then took you through everything that has happened to him since then all the way through his last professional fight.

This movie was awesome and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether you're a boxing fan or not.

As I mentioned before, Tyson is one of the most, if not THE MOST, quotable athletes or celebrities of all time.  Here's proof:

MOVIE REVIEW - KILLER AT LARGE

About 10 days ago, I wrote a blog about the documentary "Killer at Large."  At the time Lauren and I were only about 1/4 of the way through it, but we've finished it now.

I mentioned in my earlier post that the filmmakers followed a 12-year old girl from Texas as she was planning her liposuction procedure.  They interviewed her parents (who were actually both skinny) and they were extremely in favor of the procedure and were willing to do anything to make their daughter happy.  Obviously they would have to be...otherwise how could a 12-year old get herself to and from the appointments (all of which need parental consent) and pay for it.  That just seems ridiculous to me.  She complained about not being able to control her eating habits...so maybe her parents should stop buying the shit that made her fat in the first place.

They showed the procedure next, which was kinda gruesome (although Lauren liked that part), and the doctor ended up extracting 60 lbs of fat from her!  Afterward, she still wasn't a "skinny" girl, although she was much smaller than when she went in.  She even landed a modeling contract (for teenage plus-sized models I'm sure)!!

The saddest part of all this, though, came at the end.  The producers checked back in with her several months later and she had gained approximately 40 of the 60 lbs back.  She was actually surprised that she gained the weight back, although she admitted to not changing any of the habits that made her overweight in the first place (no dietary changes, no change in basic activity levels, etc.).  She then started getting consultations for gastric bypass surgery, but no doctor would perform the operation (good for them).  Her parents did find a surgeon in Mexico who would perform it though!

The movie definitely had more to it than following this girl around, I just wanted to illustrate that as a pathetic example of how some people are dealing with obesity.  There were quite a few pieces on the food industry as well that were very informative.  I particularly liked where they discussed the incestuous relationship between major food corporations and the FDA.  Basically, the current lineup at the FDA consists of former executives from major food corporations, and vice versa!  How could anyone expect any legislation to get passed in favor of positive, healthy changes when the ones calling the shots have financial incentives to ensure otherwise??

Overall, I would say the documentary was very informative and I would recommend it to anyone who has both an interest in either health or food and generally likes documentaries.  I definitely learned a lot from watching it.

RECOVERY - DAY 2

My first night of sleep is now under my belt, although it wasn't that great.  I was hoping the pain meds would just knock me out, but no such luck.  I did have to take a leak 4 times though, which wasn't fun.  Try standing on one leg next time you're taking a leak and let me know what you think.

pre-op

Lauren, Jan, and I just got done eating dinner and it was ridiculous!  Venison pot roast with Brussels sprouts, carrots, celery, onions, and new potatoes.  Holy cow it was so good I'm considering doing this whole hip surgery thing again (actually I'll be doing it again with or without the venison...damn).

Today was a pretty good day.  I wasn't really in any pain, it was just annoying walking around on crutches all day.  The weather was incredible this afternoon (sunny and in the 60's) so I had Lauren make me a pallet out on the grass in the front yard and I just grabbed a book and read for about 2 hours.  It had been a while since I had seen natural light, so this was fantastic.

getting ready for surgery

I think I'm gonna try taking a shower tonight.  I'm starting to smell a little bit.

RECOVERY - DAY 1

The doctor was able to salvage my labrum!  That's the good news...the bad news is that now I am on crutches for a month.  Oh well, I'll deal with it since I'm thankful to have a repaired hip and labrum.

We got some pictures during the surgery from the doctor using the scope-cam, but right now they are just a hard-copy.  I'm going to try to get some electronic versions of them so I can post them on the blog.  Very interesting stuff, and much easier to read than that damn MRI.  Dr. Muller drained the fluid out of my cyst (see MRI picture from last week's post), and now you can see that it looks like a big hole in my femur!  He says it will eventually fill back in with bone and I'll be good as new.

When I woke up in the recovery room I was famished!  Lauren told me that the nurse asked how I was feeling and how I would rate my pain level from 0 to 10, but all I could say was "Omelet."  The nurse kindly informed me that they don't have omelets, but they do have saltine crackers.  All I could say in response was "blah" while sticking my tongue out.  Apparently I was acting like a toddler.

The physical therapist came in right after that to show me the proper way to use crutches.  She helped me stand up, and then I went GHOSTLY WHITE!  I felt so terrible as a result of being so hungry.  I think I freaked her out too because she kept asking if I felt OK and I couldn't even respond.  They sat me back down and then Lauren and her mom went and got me a sandwich and some fruit.  WOW, what a difference a few calories made.  At this point it was close to noon and I had consumed ZERO calories so far.

So after eating the sandwich I was able to pass the crutches test and went home.  Lauren then did the greatest thing any wife has ever done...she made me a 4-egg mushroom broccoli venison omelet and a cup of coffee!!

I'm in good spirits and looking forward to the road to recovery.  It will be a tough challenge, but I'm up for it.  I just took two pain pills, so I'll probably be knocked out shortly.

IT'S GO TIME!

It's 9:15 pm the night before my surgery.  I'm gonna do a little more reading before I actually go to bed, but otherwise it's just about GO-TIME!

I want to thank everyone for the phone calls, e-mails, and text messages wishing me good luck (even you Jordon...you bastard!).  I'll be getting up at 5:00 am tomorrow morning, which is actually the easy part.  I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything before the surgery tomorrow, which will be the real struggle!  I have to be there at 5:45 am, and my surgery will start around 7:00 am.  I hope Dr. Muller has his morning coffee and that he brings his A-game!

Also, I'll be documenting a few things along the way.  First, I decided that I won't shave or get a haircut for my entire rehab.  Here is what I look like tonight (Day 0):

The hair is pretty much already longer than it ever has been, so this will get interesting.  I am allowed to shave my neard, though (that's neck-beard for the uneducated).

Secondly, I'll be tracking my weight as I expect to lose approximately 20 hard-earned pounds (mostly on my legs).  I'm not going to weigh tonight because I just feasted on some scallops, buffalo, and chicken.  The first official weigh-in will be tomorrow morning when I wake up.

Since I will be home for the next 10 days, be sure to check back often as I will likely get VERY bored.  Boredom = Great blog posting.

FRIDAY TRAINING RECAP

UPDATE:  The same day I posted about looking for an Airdyne bike, I found one on Craigslist and went to go check it out!  It worked great (they have a reputation for being built to last) and looked solid too, so I bought it!  I did some intervals on it right when I got home because I have been very frustrated by not being able to do my usual conditioning work.  My interval session looked like this:


1 min warm-up
10 min of 30 seconds “on” and 30 seconds “off”
1 min cool-down

During the “on” portions I am going ALL OUT!!  During the “off” portions I am just going LESS HARD.  Even my “off” portions were hard.

I’m looking forward to doing some more Airdyne work when I get home tonight.

Friday October 16, 2009

Lately my training has included a ton of soft tissue work and prehab stuff.  I’ll continue this basic setup until my surgery (6 more days) and then I’ll have to modify again to accommodate my hip.  Here is what I did today:

EXPLOSIVE
A1 – Med Ball Slams 4x8
A2 – Side-Lying External Rotations 3x10

B1 – Double-Clap Pushups 4x4
B2 – Lying Knee-to-Knee Stretch 3x30 seconds

MAX STRENGTH
C1 – One-Arm Pushups 6x3,3,3,2,2,2 (each arm)
C2 – Quadruped Hip Extensions 3x10 (each leg)

Here is some footage of my One-Arm Pushups.  I’ve worked on them for a little while, so I have managed to progress to a decline variation (feet elevated) for triples and doubles.  I’m not going to failure since this is a max-effort variation.



The Side-Lying External Rotations are for my shoulders (simply preventative in nature) and in between every set I perform foam rolling on all soft tissue (technically it’s not foam rolling because I use a PVC pipe).  The Lying Knee-to-Knee stretch is to work on hip mobility in a minimally stressful way.  The more mobility I have going into surgery, the more easily I will regain it during rehab. The Quadruped Hip Extensions are for glute activation.  One-Arm Pushups are actually a full body exercise since you must generate tension from the tips of your fingers all the way through the tips of your toes.  Any part of your body that isn’t tense will act as an energy leak and therefore the net force you produce (the amount transferred from your points of ground contact to the center of mass) will be reduced.  The hips and glutes are a common area for leakage.

I’ll cap off the day with a mini workout consisting of Airdyne intervals!

HIP IMAGES

I finally got around to extracting some of the images from my x-ray and MRI. The first one is an x-ray of my hip. The femoral head (“ball”) should be pretty round, but if you look closely on my right hip (which is the left side of the picture) you can see that it is not so round (see red circle). The same thing, although less prominent, can be seen on the other hip. I have a tear of my left labrum as well, however it is likely much less severe. Both hips were “popping,” which is why I went to the doctor in the first place, but only the right hip had discomfort associated with it.

This image is just one “slice” of my MRI. Since Lauren is a Radiologist, I definitely needed her help to decipher the MRI slices. She pointed out a bunch of things in the slices to me, but they would be very hard to describe via a blog post, so I am just going to stick to the obvious one. The red circle in this image is a cyst on my femoral head. eMedicine.com defines it as “a common, benign, fluid-containing lesion, usually occurring in the metaphysis of long bones.”  There's apparently about a million different kinds of cysts, but the sample images of a "common bone cyst" looked pretty close to what mine looks like.

There are other parts of the MRI where you can see the tear (if you have a trained Radiologist pointing them out to you) and also where the fluid that was injected into my hip was "leaking" into the neighboring tissue.

Btw, I mentioned in a previous post that this surgery is the same operation that A-rod had this past offseason.  Well his rehab must have gone pretty well because he had another solid year.  In fact, his first swing of the season was a 3-run HR and his last swing of the season was a grand slam!  Even more impressive was the fact that going into the 7th inning of the last regular season game, A-rod was 2 HR's shy of 30 and 7 RBI's shy of 100 (he had a streak going of consecutive seasons with 30+ HR and 100+ RBI).  In the 7th inning, A-rod hit 2 HR's and knocked in 7 runs (a 3-run HR and a grand slam).  Wow.

WHAT I'M WATCHING...

Lauren and I started a new documentary last night called 'Killer at Large' and so far it is very interesting.  It is about the obesity epidemic facing the American people, and here is the official trailer:



One of the more shocking moments occurs when they follow a 12 year old girl from Austin, TX into her liposuction procedure since "she has tried everything else and nothing works."  I'll post a more thorough report when we have finished watching it.

Next in line for documentaries...TYSON.

THE COUNTDOWN IS ON...

Sorry for my brief hiatus from the blog...as you can imagine I've been a bit distracted as a result of my hip situation.  Also, my sister just got married this past weekend so I was out of town Thursday through Sunday.

Anyway, starting now, I will be back on track with regular blog updates.  Today's blog:

THE COUNTDOWN TO HIP SURGERY

In 8 days I will be going under the knife to repair my deformed hip.  It has been really tough for the last several weeks trying to figure out both what I can do and what I should do.  Since I usually work out twice a day everyday, doing lower volume and frequency has been quite a challenge.  Nevertheless, I'm not doing anything stupid.  I haven't done a single thing that I'm not supposed to do since I want to improve my odds of a successful operation as much as possible.  I am extremely anxious though, and I'm ready to start rehab.

So far, my conditioning has been hit the hardest, and unfortunately that is one of the things I enjoy the most.  I've been scouring Craigslist trying to find a Schwinn Airdyne so that I can do some conditioning work (an Airdyne is the bike with the fan in front with arm action too):

Obviously the new ones are a bit pricey, but they usually pop up on Craigslist every so often for about $100.

Other than that, I've been doing extensive soft-tissue work, mobility and flexibility work, and a lot of 1-arm pushups, pullup variations, plank variations, and ab wheel.

I'm betting that I lose about 20 lbs. of lean mass in my legs.  Maybe I'll track that as well on the blog...I will weigh myself tomorrow morning and continue to do so every morning and track the changes.