CrossFitBurbank.com HERE
(626) 863-0008                                (818) 939-1188

824 HollywoodWay, Burbank 91505
Map HERE

WodWorks HERE
fw@FitWorksTraining.com
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A Brief Bio of FW

Across countless millennia, mere men have admired, nay, revered FW to the fullest extent that the human heart is capable. And rightly so. Why?  Well, for example, FW has never broken an egg. He constructed a language by which ants may communicate with bees, and he speaks sign-language with Big Foot.

During the span of a red light stop FW can teach anyone to hold his or her breath for at least 45 minutes. He holds the world record for backward closed-eye one-legged tightrope hopping, both speed and endurance. He is irresistible to all women, but has remained chaste (with one exception) for compassionate reasons.

FW knows how to unicycle, and where Osama bin Laden is drifting. He invented ice-sculpting. He built the world's tallest sand castle. He is a master electrician. He was the model for each title character in The Magnificent Seven.

More radio song requests have been dedicated to FW than to any to any other person, living or otherwise. He once deliberately forgot how to generate economically viable cold-fusion energy. He knows how to play baseball, basketball and American football.

FW spot-composes countless operas, libretto in haiku form, using only percussive instruments, for which he wins Nobel Prizes in Musicology, a category established for him. He floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee, knows that winning is the only thing and that nice guys finish last. He never loses. He knows a Fifth Noble Truth, a Ninth Path-fold, a Sixth Pillar of Islam, and the nine-billion-and-first Name of God.

Nobody has ever not repaid a debt they owed FW. He has an extra appendix. He tutors at-risk inner city youth in the art of topiary. The outline of his shadow hangs in the foyer of the Louvre. He found Saddam Hussain's spider hole.

FW has earned hundreds of dollars lecturing on superconductors, and donates all proceeds to the worthy poor. Not content simply to dispose of garbage and automatically wash dishes, FW can climb any wall he sees, and applies the arcane principles of feng shui masterfully to the redesign of inartful public monuments. He still uses the Dewey Decimal System. He created an object so heavy that even he can't move it. To amuse a sick child, he once memorized the complete works of Bulwer-Lytton. Variations in his spelling become standard.

FW just averted al-Qaeda's next attack. He has successfully amended the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He never wears polka dots -- he does wear polka stripes. He alphabetizes street addresses as he passes them. He has never believed a lie. He has never received junk email. He never blinks.

If you would like to be just as wonderful and fantastic as FW, call or email FW.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com


FW
CrossFit Burbank

Mess Call

"Glycemic load has no long term impact on weight loss, study"

So goes the headline. No, let's not hasten to call it an outright lie. Mere inaccuracy or imprecision is not a lie. Lies are deliberate. Bush lied, people died. Hope and Change.  Yes We Can.  That sort of thing -- you know, evil lies. Here, GL, it's just sloppiness. The study did not look at the long-term impact of glycemic load on weight loss. It studied the effect of calorie restriction on weight loss, comparing higher and lower glycemic load diets. There was a minor advantage at six months, for low GL diets. At 12 months, there was no difference -- both yielded about an 8% weight loss.

It was a good study. Well designed. Here's another report on it, with an equally sloppy headline. Too bad then that the study is not reported carefully. Headlines matter.  One can find them in a google search, and the first thing to appear will be these disturbing headlines, and if one does not apply the incisive edge of one's diamond-faceted intellect to the question,  one might never know about the misreporting.

Calorie restriction, you see, is a confounding factor. It requires that one get fewer calories than one needs. The theory is that you will release stored body fat to make up the deficit. Under restrictive stress, however, could it not be that insulin levels are raised at the influx of even a smaller number of calories, thus washing out the low-glycemic benefit? You cannot metabolize stored body fat in the presence of excess insulin.  It stands guard and keeps fat locked up. This study shows, then, that calorie restriction -- supposedly 30% less, but actually, with measured cheating, about 16% or 17% less -- allows for only an 8% weight loss in one full year. That's weight, not fat. Muscle and bone? Could be a problem, on a calorie restricted -- read nutrient restricted -- diet. For overweight people, 8% may be 20 pounds or more. But overweight people are more than 8% overweight. See? Calorie restriction is the wrong modality.

Eat enough. Change your insulin. Low glycemic load seems to do that. Test it, since you Americans are 67% likely to be overweight. Of course you are.  So weigh yourself now, and write it down, and from now on write down approximately everything you eat. By "approximately" is meant: write down what you eat, and approximate the serving size. Drinks too. Don't count calories. But write down the glycemic load of the carbs.

Give FW the data.  Let's build a data base.  Keep the total load below 100 every day, the lower the better. Just google "glycemic load" and you'll find sites that give you GL rankings.

Some before and after pictures would be good too. It will be very embarrassing for you, but shirtless. Don't worry, it will get better.  Why, you'll be an Adonis -- or at least a Narcissus.  That must be a good thing, if you deserve it.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com


FW
CrossFit Burbank

The Rules

It's obvious, but the obvious bears repeating. Fitness is really easy, because it's just a limited set of specific behaviors enacted in a brief period. Ten or twenty minutes of intensity, a few times a week, and you get fit. Easy. Oh, sure, it's tough. But tough things can be easy. If you get the meaning.

Then there's diet. It should be so easy. It's just what we eat, and we pretty much have complete control over what we eat. We may not be able to lift 500 pounds -- it's just impossible -- but anything we can eat, we can lift. It's just that we shouldn't eat everything we can lift. Temptation. Hardly anyone is tempted to get fit. It's a discipline. We sacrifice, as a sort of agape, that we may have more abundant life. Food on the other hand is one of the things Satan tempted Jesus with.

So both, diet and exercise, are easy, and hard. It's obvious that one is more important. Diet is about health. Exercise is about fitness. Health is about proper functioning. Fitness is about what we can do. Both are important. But you can't depend on a malfunctioning machine. You are made out of what you eat. Imagine trying to build health out of cheetos and dingdongs and coca cola and pig colons. Coca colons. It's like a Great Wall, made out of paper mache.

Any talk about health or fitness is going to be repetitious. These things are not unknown. Details may be wrong, and whole philosophies, but being sensible is the message. Sure, religions have cults, that pervert universal truths, but that's why criminals counterfeit real money. It is the nature of evil to mock truth. Point is, eat good food, and use your body vigorously, that it might be vital. Everyone knows this. Why then is there illness and indolence?

It's easy and it's hard. The relatively few minutes it takes to be fit require sometimes an almost heartbreaking intensity. We might approach it with dread. But it's easy, once it's done. The not-unreasonable self-control of diet -- the very same that we expect from children, about not filling up on candy -- well, parents can, really they can, control the diets of their children. Controlling other people is much easier, and apparently more pleasant, than controlling ourselves. It's diet. Diet is what's hard. All it would take is the application of rationality. Eat this, because it is healthful. Don't eat that -- it is sweet but deadly, like a bad woman. What's sweet is bitter.

The rules? Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That's one rule, or set of rules in a catagory. Work hard, don't get injured, rest. So those are the rules of diet and of exercise. Real food is nourishing -- not transfats, not dried molded slurries in boxes, not factory meat. Real work is practical -- not sitting on a bench doing dumbbell curls. What that achieves is impractical -- big guns, no grip and no shoulders. It's work the way compulsive handwashing is work.

It's hard because intensity is hard, and so is appetite. We're tempted to sloth, and to indulgence. Just saying no, or yes, gets us through some larger fraction of a second, in the process of self-discipline. After we've said no to the bad thing, or yes to the good, there still remains the need for action. And we do, as everyone knows, live in bodies of death.

Hope? There is no hope. Just do it? Sure, somehow. How? That's the magic. There must be hope, as the desert seed awaits the brief showers of spring. Encouragement helps. We are after all very small children, learning to walk. Attaboy! Other people, and their opinions, seem to matter -- even people we don't respect. It must be a sort of temptation. But that's the alchemy of it. Even as we can transform vitiated food into almost 60 or 70 years worth of lifespan, we can draw motivation out of human contact.

That must be another rule. Be human, not impatient, with integrity. Humans strive to transcend weakness. They aspire beyond their capacity. Humans are foolish, like small children. They should make us smile. The meaning of their lives is embodied in the word, hope.

So is it complex, or simple? Both. Tell you what. You handle the complicated part. FitWorks will work to keep it simple. It's what we do.

Be excellent. 

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com


FW
CrossFit Burbank

The Best Diet

If you don't eat right, well, you do it to yourself:  snotty, sore throat, etc.  Too too often you do it to yourself.    Didn't eat right, didn't get enough sleep, trained too much or too little.   Even if it's just a bug, you've been brought low like a grotesque tentacled Martian by a mere microbe.   Not perhaps very low,  not much of a sickness, but even so.  So sad.

The focus should always been on health, with a minor in fitness. You can always get fit, if you're healthy. Being fit won't cure cancer.  The biggest and most controllable element of health is diet. The most healthful diets will include the most plant nutrients. If that's a bias, a non-Paleo-fad bias, well, bias can also be correct. That being said, this:


Isn't he a mild-mannered fella? A vegetarian nutritionist who's concluded that Atkins is most effective at fat loss and weight-maintenance. He will of course be right. We mean of course, "Atkins."

First, note that it's about fat loss, not health. Note also that fat-loss leads to health benefits -- the numbers get better: triglycerides, LDL to HDL, etc. This happens with any fat loss, but if Atkins does it most reliably, then Atkins has a solid claim to be the best fat-loss diet. So if you want fat loss, think about it.

Of course something like Dr Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" diet -- nutrient rich and calorie poor, fibrous and leafy vegetables, no refined carbs -- has a similar fat-loss record, with the bonus of health benefits accruing from more than just those that come via fat loss.  Just saying.

Gardner, in the video, around min. 42 says that with insulin resistance -- which means with obesity, virtually all obesity -- low carb diets are significantly more effective than low fat diets (which here would mean high carb). Then he says that with better insulin sensitivity, high carb diets do better. Paraphrase.

So here's the point. It's not Atkins, it's not protein or fat, it's controlling insulin by eliminating the industrial carbs, and to a lesser degree the calorie carbs. It's that idea behind glycemic load. Atkins has the lowest glycemic load of any of the tested diets. With severely insulin-resistant people, the single greatest factor is glycemic load. Therefore of the tested diets, Atkins is most effective in remediating high body fat.

It's a whole different thing than health. Obesity is a pathological condition. It requires a heroic intervention. What about when health is regained, though, or when it's never been lost? What then? The power lifters, strength athletes, will affirm from experience and with good cause that high-protein works best for their goals. Who can  argue with success?  Meat works best. For them. For their very specific practices. Meat, or high protein. Power lifters however are not about health. They're not even about fitness. They are about achieving a specific competitive result. Indeed, there are diets that will give you prize-winning bulls. Not healthy bulls, but really big and strong. Sort of the way there's such a thing as mad-cow disease. Manipulate diet for specific reasons, and you get peculiar results. In any case, if you want your fires to burn hotter, eat hard-to-digest foods.

Ah well.  There are no guarantees. Even if someone's diet were better than it is,  sickness may loom.   There is no perfection, and the best is the enemy of the better. We do what we can, and take what comes. Some youngster may think that no bad thing can happen. Would that it were so.  Best practice yields best outcome, no matter what that outcome is.

Be excellent.


FW
CrossFit Burbank
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