PaleoFX
After years of wanting to attend, we were finally able to make the trek to Austin this weekend to witness PaleoFx in person! It was originally food-based, and still is, but has also expanded into covering a variety of ancestral health related topics, like hormonal balance, sleep, the effect of the digital environment, stress management, etc. In short, precisely my cup of tea!
Over the next few days I plan to summarize my favorite learnings, but in the meantime I wanted to summarize:
It’s important to do what you love, to know who you are, and to live in accordance with your values.
It’s important to eat things that are good for your body. Yes, there is some debate, even among Paleo aficionados, about what that means precisely, but making an effort to eat the most nutritious things you can, and to learn about what’s best for you specifically, certainly beats the alternative in terms of health, longevity, and often even aesthetics.
Managing stress is necessary to optimal health. We are wired to be able to handle a high degree of stress for a long time, but not indefinitely, and not without breaks. Take deep breaths, go outside, be present in moments that have potential to make you happy. And try to recognize and get off the roof.
We are in an unprecedented digital age - people and kids are in front of screens SO MUCH, and in part because the designers responsible for the apps and games we use are well studied in the function of human brains, and are accordingly doing their best to make their app the most addictive possible. To paraphrase something Chris Kresser said, “never before in history have so few people, mostly white males age 25-35 living in San Francisco, controlled so much of the media the world consumes”. Whoa.
Also, the sunscreen and skincare products from Third Rock Essentials are really cool (and as an expert in getting sunburned, I would know). It’s all made entirely of food-grade, reef safe, non-hormone-disrupting ingredients, and designed by a really interesting PhD Chemical Engineer who’s also a surfer. He invented the sunscreen as a passion project on the side of his normal career because two of his young surfer friends got melanoma, and he wanted to help. I’m not a scientist, but he explained that most conventional sunscreen is formulated such that the zinc oxide turns into zinc hydroxide on the skin, and doesn’t protect against UVA. His patented formula stays zinc oxide, plus it rubs in much less white than most zinc oxide sunscreens. Anyway, if you use our code TRIUMPH or click the link above you can get 20% off (and we get a commission too), but more importantly you get better sunscreen. If you buy it please let me know what you think!
The end for today. Looking forward to telling you in more detail what I learned about gut bacteria and digital detoxing!
WOD For 04-30-19:
Overhead Squat:
4-3-2-1
Front Squat:
4-3-2-1
Back Squat:
4-3-2-1
If performing this workout as Rx (Black Level) the goal is to increase the weight every set, for a total of twelve consecutive climbing work sets (i.e. the bar only goes up in weight). If that is unreasonable (be honest with yourself!) decrease the weight when starting the next movement, then climb back up again to a heavy single in four sets.
An example of performing this workout as Rx is as follows:
Overhead Squat 4x95, 3x115, 2x135, 1x155 directly into...
Front Squat 4x165, 3x185, 2x205, 1x225 directly into...
Back Squat 4x235, 3x255, 2x275, 1x295
(Compare to 08-21-18, 02-23-16, and 04-21-15)