What’s In A Name, And Differences Between Allergy, Intolerance, And Sensitivity Some people use the words “allergy”, “intolerance” and “sensitivity” interchangeably. Often, these people are the people who do not experience any of those things, so there is no reason for them to have deeper understanding of the terms apart from “thing or substance that one avoids”. Other people have very strict and specific definitions about which word means what. Usually, these people are the people experiencing one or more of these conditions. Because ALL people tend to feel strongly about all things health, and all things nutrition, internet wars often break out. Keep in mind these are not strict medical diagnoses, but umbrella terms, so there is no “official right answer”. Thus, even when explaining/exploring what’s what, we have to include a lot of caveats around “most”, “usually” and “some”. Also, if your conversation partner does not differentiate between these terms, and you do, and you are in the mood to educate, you’d better be prepared to be nice about it. Otherwise, all they will hear is angry sounds. Allergy The term “allergy” implies an immune system reaction. The symptoms vary in severity from mild to moderate to severe (and can include death). Those allergic to a particular food avoid ALL exposure to that food. Because “allergy” implies a more severe reaction, and can be life threatening, it is often “taken more seriously”. As a result, some folks use that term when eating out or talking to others, whether or not they have an allergy, as that term just elicits less questioning. Intolerance The term “intolerance” implies a digestive system reaction, but can be used for nonspecific symptoms like headaches, or any unpleasant physical sensation. The symptoms are less severe than those of an allergy (think “peanut allergy” vs. “dairy intolerance”), and are often delayed. So, while those with an intolerance aim to minimize exposure to that food, they may choose to consume certain offending foods as an exception and “pay the price”. Sensitivity The term “sensitivity” can refer to any bodily system, and any substance (e.g. fragrance sensitivity, caffeine sensitivity). The symptoms are usually mild, but still unpleasant. [Note that some save the term “sensitivity” for something that can be detected in blood (e.g. IgE test).] Personally, I prefer the term “sensitivity” to the term “intolerance”, as it strikes me as more accurate. Most folks with an “intolerance” CAN actually tolerate the food in question in small amounts. For example, the vast majority of human adults have a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy. That means ingesting large amounts of dairy on an empty stomach would not “sit well” with most of us. Yet, most also do not have an issue with SOME milk in their coffee, or SOME cheese on their salad. Now, onto the “SO WHAT” part of this discussion. If you are at a family picnic, and your brother says he is allergic to eggs, when you KNOW that “OMG, he is SO not allergic to eggs, he just doesn’t like eggs!”, AND you feel like getting into it, then… grab a beer, and off you go. Enjoy. If you are working with someone in a coaching capacity, the “let-me-set-you-straight” conversation is almost never worth it. Whether your client is allergic to eggs, or just hates eggs does not matter. It just means this client won’t be slamming egg whites as their main protein source. But, you, the coach, have many other ideas for protein sources, don’t you? Hugs, SOLO

Ok, can we talk for a second about the children’s classic “Love You Forever”? This is one of those moments, when you read the book to the child, and then pause, and say to yourself… “what the hell did I just read?”. It starts very sweetly, indeed. A mother, an infant, a lullaby. The infant becomes a toddler, and then an older child, as children tend to do. And then it gets weird. Allow me to quote directly: “At night time, when that teenager was asleep, the mother opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep she picked up that great big boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. ” Yes, yes, the book is probably a metaphor for the eternity of parental love, and how incredibly sad it is when our children grow up, and leave us, and the circle of life, as our children go on to have children of their own, blah blah blah. As a teenager, I would have a heart attack, if I saw my mother crawling across the floor in my bedroom. Oh, but it’s an old book, you might say! Yeah. Not that old. I am pretty sure climbing into someone’s window in the middle of the night was still frowned upon in 1986. But wait, there’s more. “That teenager grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a grown-up man. He left home and got a house across town. But sometimes on dark nights the mother got into her car and drove across town. If all the lights in her son’s house were out, she opened his bedroom window, crawled across the floor, and looked up over the side of his bed. If that great big man was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.” Dear friends and family, if in twenty years or so, you’ll find me driving across town in the middle of the night in order to break and enter into my adult child’s house, feel free to get me committed. I was relieved to find out that I was not alone, as Erica June referred to “Love You Forever” as “the book for the sociopath in all of us, aka The Scariest Mother-In-Law In History” in her HuffPost article. Some will point out that there’s more to the story. Munsch wrote the book after him and his wife suffered two stillbirths. The lullaby in the book was the song that Munsch sang to himself as a way to express his grief. It’s incredibly tragic. But most readers do not have a backstory. A book has to stand on its own. If a book reads creepy without the backstory, then… it doesn’t really stand on its own, does it? Many love this book, as it seems to capture parental nostalgia. Maria Shriver talked about this book on Oprah, and how she could never get through this book without crying. In other words, this book is more for parents, than for children. Kind of like “Go The Fuck To Sleep”. Be as it may… if I hate reading the book, then I don’t want to keep reading the book. The goal is not to get stuck with children’s books I hate by the time my kid is old enough to show preferences for certain titles. This one is getting donated to the library. Hugs, SOLO #loveyouforeverbutwontbreakandenter #operationmommy

A friend recently tagged me in a video where a toddler at a public picnic proceeded to give every stranger a hug, after his parents told him it was time to “go bye-bye”. You can watch it here. “This might be a soul mate” was the accompanying caption. In other words, “look at this kid hugging every random person for no reason… I can totally see you doing the same thing”. She’s right. You see, hugging is a bit of MY thing. Remember that time I went to Dundas Square in Toronto on my birthday, and spent two hours hugging strangers? Watch the video below. It will make your day. [A year later I did that same very thing in Kansas City, just because that’s where I happened to be at the time.] And, when people see almost anything hug-related, and think of you… well… that, my friends, is a brand. A friend of mine, who is also a coach, is a self-identified “asshole”. He won’t put up with your shit, and give it to you straight Gillian Michaels style. That is part of HIS brand. Another friend puts images of elephants on all of her branding – all coaching tips, all blog posts, all merchandise. Clients send her little figurines of elephants. And recognize her images in their feed right away. Yet another great example of a “thing” becoming part of a brand is Nerd Fitness – an entire website and fitness program centred around helping “nerds and misfits”. Notice that this unique twist – whether you are one to hug strangers, or to “give it to them straight” – will attract some, and repel others. Seth Godin talks about this quite a bit – most specifically, in his book “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable”. The book points out how important it is to draw attention to your product by being different from the rest. Stand out like a purple cow, and clients will come. Whether you make yourself the cheapest, the most expensive, the biggest, the smallest, the fastest, the slowest — the point is to explore the limits of what’s possible, to experiment and see what breaks. What I find fascinating is that it’s almost impossible to “think this up” in an artificial let-me-invent-MY-thing way. Chances are… you already have a thing. You might be obsessed with otters, or use your dog as a mascot for your business. [If you look into marketing for GORUCK, Monster, the black lab, is featured pretty prominently there]. Want to figure out what your “thing” is? Consider what kind of material your friends and clients “tag” you in. Ask them if you are not sure. Are you tagged every time there is a Star Wars joke? Or, perhaps, whenever, FIFA is on? Speaking of books you enjoyed – has there been a book that blew your mind recently? Hit Reply, and let me know. I am thinking of my next project, and it might involve… book recommendations. I can’t wait to tell you more. Hugs, SOLO

Bring baby into the bathroom, place on the floor. Close the door, take your clothes off. Place toilet paper holder, toilet brush and garbage can into the bathtub. Place a yellow duckie, a race medal and few more random objects in front of baby. Take at least one or two random objects with you into the shower, so you can hand them to baby on demand. Step into the shower, turn the water on. Do not turn back to baby. When you squeeze the last of the shampoo on your head, immediately rinse the bottle and prepare to hand it to baby. This may buy you enough time to wash the left side of your body. While washing your hair, don’t close your eyes for too long. Three or four seconds at a time is about right. Watch another clump of your hair go down the drain. Contemplate shaving the little hair that is left on your head off. Squat on the floor, open the shower door, pull on the bathroom rug with baby on it towards you, so you can remove the dust bunny from baby’s mouth, and hand baby an empty shampoo bottle instead. Wash the left side of your body. Leave the right side of your body unwashed, because the baby is now eating the bathroom rug. Step out of the shower, trying not to step on baby, who is now licking the glass door. Try to remember to wash the right side of your body tomorrow. #achievementunlocked #newskills #50percentclean #thisis7months #operationmommy Hugs, SOLO

Here’s a moment captured. The weather is perfect, the background is perfect, and my life here is perfect. Not pictured: – Fussy monster that she was that entire day – A full load of laundry stained with I-don’t-know-what – anything white now has both grey AND pink stains – A clogged duct that made breastfeeding painful – Baby’s first fever few nights prior that had me Googling 24-hour clinics in Tamarindo – MY fever a day after that, when I spent the night in bed, shivering AND burning up – A sore throat that felt like swallowing jagged pieces of glass every time I tried to eat (or breathe) Why are those things not pictured? Because it is natural to want to share our positives, not our negatives. People whip out their phone to take a picture of a beautiful sunset, not of their crying feverish child. But if you take the lack of pictures of her crying, fussing, and doing other normal baby things, as me somehow trying to construct false reality, you would be naive. Social media is essentially a photo album with running commentary. No one ever accused a wedding album for being fake, because it did not include a shot of the bride peeing a little bit on her dress, because the damn thing took too long to take off in the bathroom. It’s meant to be pretty. Take it for what it is. If you want REAL, you might have to get away from your screen. Oh, and here’s proof that my kid does not just smile and coo. Hugs, SOLO

As I write this blog post, I Google “losing your sparkle” and squint at the results. It is like the unicorn frappuccino all over again. Rainbows and unicorns. Or, more accurately, glitter tank tops and saccharine quotes. Pink, pink, PINK. “Never let anyone dull your sparkle”. “Unleash your inner sparkle”. “Life won’t sparkle unless you do”. “Keep calm and sparkle”. And, of course: “Don’t ever lose your sparkle!”. Except the latter expression – “losing your sparkle” – came to mean something really specific in the (female) obstacle racing circles. It’s “pop your cherry” meets Spartan Race. In other words, you lose your sparkle when you run your first Spartan Race. So, if all goes well, it IS actually a good thing. Just because it’s your first time, doesn’t mean it has to hurt. Ok, it may hurt a little… Some things you can expect: See that hill? Once you are at the race venue, look around. If there is a hill nearby, chances are, you will be headed up the hill first. Spartan races are often held at local ski resorts, ensuring there is at least one hill to send racers up and down. Uphill serves as a great way to spread out the field, so most race organizers will take advantage in order to minimize the bottlenecks at the first few obstacles. In other words… find the hill, look at the hill, make peace with the hill. You WILL make love to that hill. Pick yer distance. If there are multiple distances taking place over the course of a weekend, Spartan Super is often a longer loop of the same race course with only few additional obstacles thrown in. If you are the runner type, go for Super. You will cover more distance, climb up and down the same hill at least once or twice more. If you are the Crossfit/eat barbell for breakfast type, go for Sprint – less distance, more obstacle per kilometre. It will take longer than you think it will. Spartan Sprints are advertised as 5k races. You may have an idea of how long it takes you to cover a 5k, especially if you have done a couple of road races before, like Color Run, Foam Fest, Warrior Dash or similar. Depending on how comfy you are with slogging up the hill, possibly with weight, a Spartan Sprint will probably take you anywhere from one and a half to two and a half hours. Settle in. And for goodness sake, do not sprint out of the gate. The obstacles will knock the wind out of you. Running is one thing. Completing obstacles is another thing. Running, then completing obstacles, then running is a different thing entirely. The burpees will knock even more wind out of you than obstacles. Running after completing thirty burpees sucks. Read that sentence again. If you still have few weeks before your event, I suggest throwing few sets of thirty burpees into a training run or two, just to assess the potential damage. Otherwise, you will be unpleasantly surprised during the race. Do the (penalty) burpees. If you fail an obstacle, there are only two options: 1 – You feel pissed/disappointed that you have failed an obstacle, and doing penalty burpees just seems to add insult to the injury. You decide you are too tired, too hungry, too sore, too beat up, too dehydrated, too [insert anything else that comes to mind here], and move on to the next obstacle. Characteristic signs include sloped shoulders, defeated posture, and averted gaze (or just-try-and-dare-me-i-will-cut-you gaze). 2 – You do the burpees. Every single debate on burpee form, burpee ethics, and human worth has already taken place. Fuck that noise. Do the burpees. Don’t do them for me. Do them for you. At the end of the day… your food will taste better. You’ll crawl. You will be on your knees at some point, and on your stomach at some point. Possibly, crawling across sharp rocks. Therefore, if you choose to wear booty shorts, you are either my hero, or an idiot. Nah. I am just jealous. Because the one and only time I wore booty shorts to a Spartan Race, I ended up looking for the bushes about forty minutes in, so I could unpeel sticky wet layers and slather every inch of my inner thighs with BodyGlide. Chafing is real, yo. But, if that’s NOT your struggle, strut away. Thigh-gapped queens out there – you do you. You’ll hang, you’ll carry. You will have to support your body weight – whether that’s swinging across monkey bars, the Platinum rig, or climbing a rope. If you cannot support your own bodyweight, wearing gloves will not make it magically possible. Just being straight with you, sister. You’ll carry and drag various objects across various terrain. Some menu items may include bucket with gravel, cinder block on a chain, sand bag. Yes, it reads a little bit like a tool selection from a torture chamber. Some questions you may have: Is that real fire at the finish line? Yes. Did I really pay money for this? Yes. Should you bring water? Yes. Should you bring food? Probably. Recommended – energy gels (if you know you can stomach them), Twizzlers, jelly beans, dried mango, dates. Not recommended – nuts, chocolate, salad, steak. Should you wear the oldest shoes you have, so you can throw them out after? No. Just wear the shoes you’d go running in. The oldest pair is worn out, and not supportive. It’s just mud. It will come off. #powerwasher Should you bring anything else? Yes. Sunscreen and a sense of humour. That’s it. Your first Spartan Race, your first obstacle race, your first race. There is a certain big dealness to it, isn’t there? “It’s just a race”, people will say. “It’s just a 5k“, they will say. Don’t listen to those people. In fact, don’t listen whenever anyone uses the word “just” to describe anything you do. Yourself included. “Oh, I’m JUST doing it for fun”. “I am just participating – I am not going to race it or anything”. No. This is a big fucking deal. YOU are a big fucking deal. No, go, lose that sparkle, you, beautiful bitch, you. Show’em. Hugs, SOLO

On a Friday night, when some (clearly more intelligent) people are lining up to enter a nightclub, or ordering their second Negroni, I find myself laying in a small tent on top of two yoga mats, wrapped into two blankets with a couch cushion under my head, intensely staring at a mosquito stuck between the mesh roof and the plastic covering of the tent. A moment later I squash him against the tent wall, my own blood smearing the plastic. Another time I might have ignored him, let him out, gave him a name. Today, I am in no mood. I am in the forest, somewhere in Ontario, and it is raining. Again. Impartially evaluating the spring and summer we have received in Ontario so far… I want my money back. Limberlost Challenge is the trail race I have been trying to get to for the last few years, timing never working out because of another race or travel. Distances are 14k, 28k, and 56k – you get the idea. It’s a 12k loop. I am finally here. Although I could really do without the wet socks, achy back, too-small tent and mosquito bites. I could have driven to race site in the morning, but I do not trust myself not to get lost on the way, so instead, I arrive Friday evening, and tuck in for the night. The wicked rain storm starts two minutes after I zip up the door. I text Italian. “Why am I doing this shit again?”. He texts back: “You are working from home all day. Some outdoors would do you good. I’m already outside all day, so I am perfectly happy inside right now. In my dry bed”. I roll my eyes. Of course, he is not here to see it, so the gesture is in vain. I spend the next eight hours trying to sleep through thunder, lightening, more thunder, and a torrential downpour of water, made even louder by the tightly stretched tent roof. I feel around myself every few minutes to make sure water did not get in. Ahhhh, nothing like a good night’s sleep. Up at 5.30am, I drive to the neighbouring town in search of coffee. It stopped raining, and is now cool, and overcast. Perfect racing weather. The trails will be muddy, and technical in places, but not hilly. I am hoping to be back under two hours. The race loops around and through multiple bodies of water – the trail right on the edge of water. So. Very. Pretty. My estimate turns out to be quite accurate, as I finish in 1:42:48 – definitely under two hours. Seventh in my age group, and twenty seventh female. Meh. I’ll take it. [Full race results can be found here.] It was hard. Hard for few reasons – hard to keep your HR that high for that long. Hard to continuously pay attention to technical single track. It was super wet, and muddy – the consistency varying from cookie dough to oatmeal. I am fucking unbeatable on technical downhill. Yet what I wondered as I flew across the most questionable sections of mud and roots is whether downhill speed is an actual measure of skill, or rather one’s general “I-bungee-jump-for-fun, have-nothing-to-lose I-know-I-can-break-my-neck-here-and-I-don’t-care” tendency? Which one is it? Going downhill fast requires at least some degree of recklessness. Jumping into mud puddles of unknown depth requires some risk taking. What makes roller coasters thrilling? Seth Godin suggests that the element that makes them thrilling is not the coaster itself, but rather from “encountering two things at once: the knowledge that this thing is tested, safe, and proven, combined with the innate feeling that at any moment, we’re going to die”. I think I went out too fast again. The last time I did that, I spent an extra hour wondering around in the forest, after blowing up about 15k into a 28k race, close to hallucinating. Wheeeeee. Not nearly as bad this time around, but runners I blew past in the beginning started catching up with me about twenty minutes in, as I was sucking wind – a pretty sure sign of “took off way too fast”. Ahhh, so many opportunities to learn, and make the same mistakes again and again. I love this human life thing. Next up, 6.5km loop for three hours. Yay? Hugs, SOLO

I have not come to appreciate the beauty of sunrise, and the beauty of being awake to witness the sunrise until I hit my mid-twenties. Before that, I was too busy staying up way too late, and waking up too late. In fact, I was way more likely to witness the sunrise from the other direction – the evening before, after pulling an all nighter, and even then, my nose would be firmly buried in a book – not present enough to appreciate something that happens every day, no matter how magical. Every sunrise is magical, but these three stand out… VARANASI, INDIA 2011 I wish I could stay longer, yet… I feel like I have to keep moving. I’m sitting in a little concave window-like opening in the wall at one of the ghats on the Ganges river. Hundreds of pigeons are huddling together, picking at bird feed thrown down by tourists. “You want boat, madam?”, yet another Indian entrepreneur approaches me as soon as I settle down. “No. I just want some peace”, I respond truthfully. He quickly disappears. It’s before six in the morning, the sky is turning pink, and I have not slept. Now the river is alive – boats passing, Indians bathing, pigeons eating, bells ringing. Dead animals, yellow cloth, the smell of burned flesh. Mother Ganges. Colorful chaos and cacophony of sounds are two things that make India India. How peculiar that the dirtiest waters in the world managed to arouse to many emotions in me. As we take a boat tour to watch the sunrise few days ago, the first glimpse of the sun coming up at the horizon turns me into a teary and slobbery pile of goo. I cannot stop crying. Here in Varanasi, I recovered from my first (not last) food poisoning of this trip, saw the Ganges, watched the aarti ceremony, put five candle floats in the river, and now cried at sunrise. Getting yet another cold sore, and getting bitten by a million bed bugs was not on the agenda. Oh well. When it comes to variety, intensity, and flavour of life, this city tends to overdeliver. Well played, Varanasi. I will see you again. OMETEPE, NICARAGUA 2015 5.23am. I grab my headlamp and a sweater, and head out to the beach. The sun will come up any minute now. The beach is windy, and, as I find a rock to sit on, this is the closest I have been to “chilly” in weeks. It’s still dark, but the roosters already gave away the surprise, and the lighter shade of blue is hinting at daylight. Coral – ten minutes later. Oh-so-coral. Hushed. Muted. Embarrassed. In love. I am trying to pinpoint the exact location on the line of horizon where the fiery circle will make her presence known. Splash of tender orange. Naranjo. I get up and walk to the line of the water, anxious to miss the appearance of life itself. I pace along the beach. Chickens, conscious of the wide shouldered silhouette of a predator bird above, decide to keep me company. Yellow. So gentle. Yet yellow is the last precursor to the magic. My long-winged friend soars above the beach, riding a pocket of air, not a single muscle moving. There is an expression in Russian – “waiting for the weather by the sea”. It refers to idle inactivity – time when you should really be doing something. That expression does not belong here, right now. I am not idle. I am waiting. A panicked thought arrives… What if… she is not coming? I am desperate. Sun. Tight and round as a marble. And just as perfect. Once she emerges, she does not stop. I have been waiting for her. COLORADO, USA 2017 Life is so short, and I’m running out of time to live everywhere. The more I travel, the more I recognize the bigness of the world, and the more overwhelmed I feel. The only solution is to pause wherever you are, and to look around. Look around hard, stare even. Pull yourself into the present moment. So I stare. I wake up, go upstairs, tiptoe towards the kitchen, so as not to wake up my hosts, and put some water on the gas stove. Ground coffee, French press, and a thick mug add up to happiness. Time to stare. Stare at the mountains through the wrap around windows, and gush, and wait. It’s getting lighter as I write – perfect lighting for weepy, sentimental writing. It’s a good sign. I finally get up from my chair when the sun edge appears – my favorite moment in watching a sunrise. I stand by the door, leading onto a deck, lean on the glass, stare at my favorite fireball and cry. “Hi, beautiful! How was your night? I missed you!”. When I cast my gaze down, the page is ablaze with red and yellow glare. Surely, meditation was invented by someone who did not watch sunrise while drinking coffee. If you ever tried it, you’d never need meditation again. COFFEE GIVEAWAY! I may not be able to take you along on my next sunrise excursion (I wonder where my next sunrise meditation will take place!), but I CAN share a bit of my morning with you. I was first introduced to Morning Roast coffee at a recent Coffee & Tea Expo in Toronto, and have reached out to them directly. Morning Roast is a specialty coffee company that was started by two childhood friends. It is located in Toronto and is dedicated to roasting coffee in small batches. If you want to try their coffee, they are shipping Canada wide! If you asked me ahead of time, I’d predict that my favorite would be the Ethiopian Yirgacheff (and it did not disappoint – I loved the hints of orange and peach with the chocolate aftertaste!). But it was the Colombian La Palmera that blew me away. While I am usually not a big fan of Colombians, this coffee was perfectly nutty, with notes of toffee (another favorite), with a light touch of flowers. Waghi Valley from Papua New Guinea was another pleasant surprise – I have not tried coffee from that region previously, and loved the clean crispness with just a bit of lemon. (And, if you want to impress a coffee-drinking triathlete in your life, there is also a Hawaii blend – 100% Kona!). Folks at Morning Roast Coffee were kind enough to provide some coffee beans for me to give away, which means you MAY be getting coffee in mail! Enter the giveaway below. [Limited to Canadian readers]. Have a friend who loves coffee? Send them this link, so they can enter too: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/349b4ec925/? Hugs, SOLO

9 Conclusions From The Current Literature On Diets And Body Composition Four days ago, International Society Of Sports Nutrition published an article, outlining their position on various diets and body composition, based on a critical analysis of current literature. Fun reading? You bet! Intrigues, mysteries and plot twists? Not really. When it comes to specific dietary approaches, macronutrient composition, eating styles and their influence on body composition, few things seem fairly certain. 9 Conclusions From The Current Literature On Various Diets And Body Composition Here are NINE conclusions that Alan Aragon and fifteen (!) co-authors made based on the current literature and research available to date (and my translation of those from scientifical to English): 1) There is a multitude of diet types and eating styles, whereby numerous subtypes fall under each major dietary archetype. There are many diets out there. Most of those diets fall into one of the few categories (the diets assessed by the review were: low calorie, low carb, ketogenic, high protein, and intermittent fasting). In other words, there aren’t really that many ways of losing weight or gaining weight, regardless of how many shiny packages you put the information into. 2) All body composition assessment methods have strengths and limitations. Measuring someone’s body composition via weight, girth measurements, bicep circumference or any other measurement has some advantages and some disadvantages. For example, JUST using the weight as a measurement is very easy and accessible to most, and may be an appropriate choice for a client/individual who is seeking to lose large amounts of weight, however, for individuals with lower initial weight, and lower body fat percentages, including other measurements, may be more useful. In extra lean individuals, the weight may not be helpful at all, and switching to a more precise tool like DEXA is recommended. 3) Diets primarily focused on fat loss are driven by a sustained caloric deficit. The higher the baseline body fat level, the more aggressively the caloric deficit may be imposed. Slower rates of weight loss can better preserve lean mass (LM) in leaner subjects. To lose fat, create caloric deficit. For higher levels of body fat that caloric deficit must be more significant, compared to those starting out at lower levels of body fat. Drastically cutting calories in already lean clients may lead to losing muscle mass, and is usually not desired. 4) Diets focused primarily on accruing LM are driven by a sustained caloric surplus to facilitate anabolic processes and support increasing resistance-training demands. The composition and magnitude of the surplus, as well as training status of the subjects can influence the nature of the gains. To increase lean mass, you have to eat more than you expend, AND train with weights. The nature of the weight gain will depend on the make-up of those extra calories you consume. No, you won’t get that six pack, eating mostly Lucky Charms. 5) A wide range of dietary approaches (low-fat to low-carbohydrate/ketogenic, and all points between) can be similarly effective for improving body composition. The specific diet does not matter – they can all help improve body composition (in most cases, lose fat and gain muscle). 6) Increasing dietary protein to levels significantly beyond current recommendations for athletic populations may result in improved body composition. Higher protein intakes (2.3–3.1 g/kg FFM) may be required to maximize muscle retention in lean, resistance-trained subjects under hypocaloric conditions. Emerging research on very high protein intakes (>3 g/kg) has demonstrated that the known thermic, satiating, and LM-preserving effects of dietary protein might be amplified in resistance-training subjects. Eat protein. More protein. This is especially important to preserve muscle if you are also restricting calories, and if you are weight training. 7) The collective body of intermittent caloric restriction research demonstrates no significant advantage over daily caloric restriction for improving body composition. Intermittent fasting is no better or worse for improving body composition than reducing calories across the span of the entire day. 8) The long-term success of a diet depends upon compliance and suppression or circumvention of mitigating factors such as adaptive thermogenesis. Consistency will determine the diet’s success. The body’s energy expenditure WILL change with changing weight – this factor must be taken into account, if the diet is to continue being successful. 9) There is a paucity of research on women and older populations, as well as a wide range of untapped permutations of feeding frequency and macronutrient distribution at various energetic balances combined with training. Behavioral and lifestyle modification strategies are still poorly researched areas of weight management. Most research is based on young male research participants, so more research, including female participants and older participants, is needed. There are still many diet variations that have been untested, especially when combined with training variations. Like I said… no plot twists. African mango, coconut butter, bulletproof coffee and ketone supplements have not been mentioned. Boooooring. Kind of like all knowledge out there. Hugs, SOLO *You can read the original article here. Here are the 9 conclusions in my own words (aka in plain English): 1: There are many diets out there. Most of those diets fall into one of the few categories. In other words, there aren’t really that many ways of losing weight or gaining weight, regardless of how many shiny packages you put the information into. 2: Measuring someone’s body composition via weight, girth measurements, bicep circumference or any other measurement has some advantages and some disadvantages. For example, JUST using the weight as a measurement is very easy and accessible to most, and may be an appropriate choice for a client/individual who is seeking to lose large amounts of weight, however, for individuals with lower initial weight, and lower body fat percentages, including other measurements, may be more useful. In extra lean individuals, the weight may not be helpful at all, and switching to a more precise tool like DEXA is recommended. 3: To lose fat, create caloric deficit. For higher levels of body fat that caloric deficit must be more significant, compared to those starting out at lower levels of body fat. Drastically cutting calories in already lean clients may lead to losing muscle mass, and is usually not desired. 4: To increase lean mass, you have to eat more than you expend, AND train with weights. The nature of the weight gain will depend on the make-up of those extra calories you consume. No, you won’t get that six pack, eating mostly Lucky Charms. 5: The specific diet does not matter – they can all help improve body composition (in most cases, lose fat and gain muscle). 6: Eat protein. More protein. This is especially important to preserve muscle if you are also restricting calories, and if you are weight training. 7: Intermittent fasting is no better or worse for improving body composition than reducing calories across the span of the entire day. 8: Consistency will determine the diet’s success. The body’s energy expenditure WILL change with changing weight – this factor must be taken into account, if the diet is to continue being successful. 9: Most research is based on young male research participants, so more research, including female participants and older participants, is needed. There are still many diet variations that have been untested, especially when combined with training variations.

(aka Does Your Training Actually Warrant Increased Food Intake?) I often see friends and clients, adjust their food intake due to all the “intense training” that they are doing. Often, it’s training like CrossFit, strength training, weight lifting or something similar. Yet… just because something SOUNDS intense does not actually make it intense. How do you measure “intense”? Do you use objective indicators of intensity, or do you simply judge how hard something was by the soundtrack in the background? If that’s the case, check out this gem recently recommended by a friend: I use some sort of heart-rate / GPS device for my training on and off – just like I do everything else, really. In the past couple of days, I have had the pleasure of EXTRA detailed workout and movement information – compliments of Garmin VivoActive with the chest strap. Looking at daily summaries reminded me once again how misleading our perception of our own training is. *For reference, my resting heart rate is in mid-50s, and my max heart rate (aka I’m gonna drop dead any second and pass out) is somewhere in the 190s. Here are just FEW activities from the past 48 hours: AN HOUR of barbell work during an Olympic lifting class. – average heart rate: 98 – calories burned: 215 AN HOUR of walking through the woods, WHILE talking on the phone (the last part is important, because it implies that I had to walk slowly enough to maintain a comfortable conversation – this is one of the most common ways to measure perceived effort of any physical activity). – average heart rate: 104 – calories burned: 267 THIRTY MINUTES of pretty leisurely moderate effort trail running: – average heart rate: 142 – calories burned: 258 So, given that an HOUR OF BARBELL WORK took me less energy than an hour of leisurely walking, it hardly warrants a big pasta dinner to “replenish all those carbs” BEAST MODE STYLE. In a similar fashion, I have burned more calories in a YOGA class than I have in many CrossFit classes. Yet, many of us continue to view “I do CrossFit four to five times a week” as INTENSE training schedule. In a typical CrossFit class, you’d listen to your coach explain the WOD for the first five minutes or so, then walk around the box for the next ten minutes, assembling the equipment you need for the strength component. Then you would spend the next twenty minutes (if you are lucky) working on a strength complex of some kind – 5 sets of 5 reps on back squats, or perhaps, working your way up to a heavy snatch. Then, more listening and walking around the gym, preparing for a conditioning workout, and finally, an all-out five to twelve minute workout at the end of the class – a multi-movement chipper, a couplet or whatever else is on the board that day. One of the reasons I stopped doing CrossFit as my MAIN training modality was just that – it was not a lot of bang for my buck. I could accomplish way more in an hour on my own. When it comes to body composition, and weight, caloric balance is still the king. And, no matter how intensely you exercise, exercising for seven minutes (hello, AMRAP WOD) is simply not going to compare to sustaining a moderate effort for 30-45 minutes doing pretty much anything else. [I am intentionally leaving out EPOC out of discussion, and, yes, higher intensity WILL result in higher excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.] When I start doing ONLY short really intense workouts as my primary training, my overall caloric expenditure goes down, and if I do not adjust my food intake DOWN, I gain weight. So… using a device with a chest strap or another objective measure for a week or two to assess energy expenditure across various activities can be a great awareness exercise. IF your goal is fat loss / weight loss, assess how intense your training ACTUALLY is, before adjusting your food intake to account for “all that energy burned”. And, IF your goal is muscle gain / weight gain, then… stop with the running. Hugs, SOLO

I got my period few days ago. Hardly newsworthy for a 30-something year old female, yet up until few weeks ago, I was not expecting my cycle to be back for many months. I am sad, but no longer the acute body-shattering sobbing-in-the-shower sad. More of a tears-rolling-down, while writing this blog post sad. The feeling gets duller, duller, dull. This body handled the whole thing like a champ – from losing (and then making up) a bunch of blood (so much blood), to allowing me to be upright and somewhat coherent mere hours after coming from the emergency room, and then running almost 30km only days later. Four weeks later, the mindfuck of remaining food aversions is finally gone, and I am back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I miss the bigger boobs – those were nice. Pants and jeans are tight, and things look a bit different, which tells me that the body comp has shifted somewhat. Nothing unusual, given the hormone cocktail of the last few weeks, although it would be nice to have a human infant in addition to increased body fat. But, body did what body needed to do, and it will settle back on the body comp also, now that I no longer eat mashed potatoes with hotdogs, and Kraft dinner for all meals, unable to stomach anything else. The closure of miscarriage does not come with pregnancy. It comes with the next cycle. This is as close as you ever get to “the end”. The body says “You! Hey, you! We are back on schedule. I did all the work”. Thanks, buddy. P.S. I decided to turn the comments back on for now. I’d love to hear from you. The outpouring of support in response to my post about miscarriage has been amazing, and I would hate if all the little “hellos” got forever lost in Facebook land. If you are reading, let me know. Hugs, SOLO

I’ve been trying to mix and match pleasure reading with more dense reading material. It’s mind blowing how quickly I can turn pages in some beach read after staring at one textbook paragraph for ten minutes. “Juliet’s Answer” has been a recent break from more dense material – it is touted as a man’s version of “Eat, Pray, Love”. Guy loves girl, girl does not love guy back. He takes off to Italy in search of meaning and love. He magically finds both. If you are rolling your eyes, trust me – I beat you to it. Here’s what I learned from this book that is super duper awesome cool. “Il Club di Giulietta” described in the book is real. There is a club of volunteers in Verona, Italy, who painstakingly respond to every single letter addressed to Juliet (the one from Romeo and Juliet). The tragedy took place in Verona, if you recall. Glenn, the author of the book (it’s a memoire, so technically there are no characters), writes his own letter to Juliet, but never sends it – instead, he meets Desiree and falls in love. The plot connection here with the original play is that of unsent/undelivered letter. Juliet wrote Romeo a letter, letting him in on her plan of only pretending to be dead, however, the letter does not find him, and so, he kills himself, as Juliet wakes up mere moments later. Now, apart from the obvious “I desperately need to communicate my plan to pretend-kill myself, so my lover does not do the same” purpose, I do wonder whether the role of most letters is completed as soon as the letter itself is written. I have written many letters – most as exercises, and some, more dubious than others – letter to my parents, to my young self, a break-up letter with old self, angry letters to lovers, and on, and on, and on. None of these were ever sent. Yet writing itself was probably the best part. Did you know that writing was therapeutic? Not in the obvious “dear diary” sense, but in actual “research-backs-this-up” sense? Some of the studies I have done in my undergraduate and graduate degrees was based on expressive writing research. It seems that writing about our experiences helps us to put our experiences in words, into coherent narratives, which are then easier to process. It is not then surprising that hundreds of heartbroken lovers express their woes on paper, and send off those notes to Verona. “Dear Juliet, I love him, but he does not love me. What should I do?”. “Dear Juliet, my husband of fifty years has passed away. I miss him terribly. How do I go on?”. “Dear Juliet, my wife told me that she was no longer in love with me. Now what?”. Volunteers at the club sort letters into languages, and then respond to each one. Of course, as Glenn himself points out in the book, getting an answer is almost besides the point. It is the writing of the letter that helps the writer. Or, perhaps, writing the letter, AND knowing that someone is listening. Want to write a letter to Juliet? You can. Meanwhile, I am considering adding “respond to Juliet’s letters at Il Club di Giulietta in Verona, Italy” to my bucket list. This is just random enough and weird enough to quality. Italian is already in. Hugs, SOLO