Tisquantum

That's "Squanto's" real name, in Algonquian. Tisquantum. That Indian who helped out the Pilgrims. The shortening can be forgiven -- Algonquian rivals ancient Elamite for its opaqueness. Nquitpausuckowashawmen. No, not glossolalia. That's how Squanto would have said, "There are a hundred of us." Tashuckqunne cummauchenaumiz? "How long have you been sick?" Yep. Tough language.

Of course Squanto could have numbered his tribe, the Patuxets, in several languages. In English, and in Spanish. Alas, there were not a hundred Patuxets left to count: all had perished, to smallpox. He alone survived, like some servant of Job -- as indeed he was, to the hardpressed Pilgrims. As for how long Squanto was sick, sudden fever took him the year after he had settled with his new tribe of pilgrims.

He must have been used to being snatched away. He wasn’t kidnapped just once, understand. In 1605, one George Weymouth whisked him away to England -- whether kidnapped or volunteered, history does not record. He labored for untold years -- well, eight or nine -- until returning to America in 1613 as translator for none other than John Smith. Set free as reward for his service, Squanto returned to his own tribe, only to be enslaved and taken to Spain -- kidnapped in 1614 by Thomas Hunt, a lieutenant of Captain Smith. He escaped to London where he remained until 1619 (interrupted by one odd excursion to Newfoundland), then he joined an expedition to America. There he found his family and tribe all wiped out.

Providence? To find an English-speaking Indian wandering the coast at just the right time to save the Pilgrims? Well, yes. But how many other Squantos have wandered the earth, who never found their mission? -- Jonahs who made it to Tarshish?

To know one's purpose is something to be thankful about. Father, mother, friend -- and to bring light and love not only to those you care about but to the stranger -- well, this is something in which we might make our own providence. The rest of it -- being kidnapped and orphaned and dying young and such -- we count as beyond our understanding, and trust in Providence to resolve.

Much fiction will have crept into the story of Squanto and the Pilgrims. Of course. It's not that it wasn't a good enough story on its own. It's just that the reality is complex, and myths have a happy simplicity to them. The tales of childhood are for inspiring us to emulate an example of excellence ... since there are hardly any real examples of excellence. Having heroes who actually lived requires a degree of selective blindness on our part. We give importance to what is admirable, and choose not to see the flaws -- or at least to down-grade them. This is as it should be. If we saw the chamber of horrors that is the heart of every human, we might never stop screaming.

So we have myths.

Is America everything it might be or that we wish it were? The question answers itself. The same holds when we inspect any ideal. There are no “ideals.” If they were real, they’d be “examples.” But part of living in the real world is understanding that it is hopelessly flawed. Well, not hopelessly. Fatally. Even in the face of the inevitable fatality of our biology, though - in the face of ultimate metabolic failure, we need not be hopeless.

And so we have Thanksgiving. It has its own mythology, as does Christmas. But for all that there is the fiction of Santa, there is the reality of saintliness. And for all that the Hallmark and Rockwell images may be nothing but a happy conceit -- of convivial Indians supping in sumptuous abundance with the dour wayfarers from across the gray waves of the churning seas -- yet they have the reality of vivid dreams, that might be true, for all that sunlight says otherwise.

The cherished dreams of our hearts have no guarantee of coming to pass. Every prayer of thanks must, must include a prayer of abject supplication, begging God that evil, or greater evil, should not strike us. So Job, and tragedy, and the loss of every loved one, teach us. So, as a nation we take a day, a single day, collectively to call to mind the many blessing with which we have been blessed. We recall that it need not be so. We understand that who looks for perfection is a fool. We understand that who accepts the inspiration of a myth honors the daylight the visions of night have promised.

We wish to all who read this a joyful and most blessed Thanksgiving Day.


Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Faults

There's a part of us that might ask, what's the use. Haiti will be as much of a basket case after that last particular act of God, like all the others, recedes into myth. Pity the land that is made a colony of the French. The poor are always with us -- most especially if they live in a culture of utter corruption ... as distinct from just the workaday corruption inherent in the human condition.  Sheesh.  We can't even take a Carnival Cruise without being tormented by fate.

Why watch the news at all. More chaos? More of the same. Just more concentrated now, in time and location, in this era of mass communication.  Wars and rumors of war. It matters, theoretically and actually, but if you don't know, say, any Haitians, any compassion one might feel is theoretical, regardless of how genuine. And catastrophe victims aren't everyone's particular cross to bear. It must be a good thing, to not bleed for every wound that overtakes humanity. That's what callouses after all are for.

So when Pat Robertson said, say, that Haiti had made a pact with Satan 200 years ago, and that hurricane was a sort of judgment, well, do we need to have an opinion about his opinion? One of the ways the biblical God deals with humanity is through its nations. Maybe it's true. It's no dumber than Danny Glover's statement on exactly the same topic: The earthquake came from God as a judgment because Haiti didn't do enough to save The Planet at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.  Remember that?  As if the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere could have done anything at all. Could it even afford airfare to Denmark? At least Robertson had documents to support his claim. God after all has acted judgmentally, in the past. It's surprising though that Robertson imagined he had access to the archives of Hell, to know the private arrangements between slaves and Satan. As for Glover, it's surprising he believed in this sort of God. Must be Goddess, he means.

Ah well.  All that is old news.  What, five or ten years ago?  Who can remember.  And here we are, racing around, if only mentally, trying to find meaning. Why why why did this thing this or that horrible thing occur? Sin, private or public? A cursed creation? Entropy? Randomness? Job and David and every human being capable of thought have looked for an answer. Jesus gave one. Why do towers fall on innocent victims? So that non-victims will repent. We are all object lessons, one to another. This may not be an entirely satisfactory answer. It's doubtful that there is a better one.

Take addicts, drug addicts. California legislators and other ne'er-do-wells have agitated for legalized pot. So they can tax it and use it and be all groovy and socialistic. Yes, to profit from drug sales is a sound fiscal policy. Of course. But regarding addicts, there is nothing at all, ever, under any circumstance, that one can say, or do, or cause to be done, that can change an addict into not an addict. There is no formula, no thing, no performance, that is the thing to do. Wisdom is doing what is appropriate. Sometimes it's appropriate to understand helplessness. Sort of a Zen thing, where non-action is most dynamic. The still small voice, heard, where the Voice from the Whirlwind is just noise.

God is not all-powerful. He cannot be untrue to his own nature. He cannot violate our free will. Chosen, yes, and choosing. Not a contradiction. Not even a paradox. Just something we can't understand. That's probably why God wants us to be like little children. We have to accept some things, not because faith is valuable in itself -- it's just necessary if we want serenity.

What was the number of Haitian dead? Up to five hundred thousand? -- but that isn't likely to be right. Fifty thousand? Out of a population of ten million. So half a percent of the population, killed in a single blow. One and a half million, if it were the USA. Seems like a lot. But everyone dies. We just prefer that the horror be distributed more evenly across time. We prefer our grief to be decoupled from horror, for all that when we are overwhelmed we become numb. A madman or bureaucrat might propose that we get the killing and dying done all at once -- more efficient and statistically less traumatic. But something in our actual humanity argues against this sort of logic. God, taking the long view, allows both perspectives free expression, that we may chose between them as we please.

Of course God cares. It must be that he wants us to care as well. That, and that we should repent.

What does this have to do with fitness, or health? Or addiction or helplessness? This is the world we live in. We can live in it as victims, slaves to fate, or as captains of our destiny. The weather is what it is, with its droughts and hurricanes. How we sail the waters or traverse the wasteland is up to us. We eat what we chose to eat. We exercise as we will. The result of these things is health, and fitness, or its lack. We can't chose our bones. But we do choose what hangs off of them.

That's all. Understanding this, our strength and our helplessness, earns us all the serenity we will ever be entitled to.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Letting Off Some Steam

Counterintuitive ain't the half of it. We seem to have gotten our understanding of obesity and weightloss from infomercials. Can that be possible? What about Oprah? -- didn't she lose a bunch of fat? And Robert De Niro -- he got fat on purpose for Raging Bull. So eating more will make you fat, and diet and exercise can lean you down. It's obvious. But controlled studies consistently invalidate this observation. Calorie restriction for the obese results in lower basal metabolism and decreased energy expenditure. Exercise increases appetite and for the effort provides a relatively insignificant energy expenditure. That's the clear conclusion from the studies.

It's not genetic, as we know from the obesity epidemic. If Americans were generally not fat 30 years ago, and three times as many are fat now, it's environmental, some behavioral change of diet, lifestyle, etc. It's genes responding, not demanding. So why is it happening? That's not the question right now. Now, it's why isn't it changing, with diet and exercise.

It's as if somewhere in the brain there is a silhouette of what it thinks we should look like, and the brain works to maintain that shape. That's not how it is, but as if. There is a gradual increase and excess of calories, however, that allows for the slow modification, adaptation of that image, so that slow fat gain can be sustained, whereas sudden change is more easily reversed. It's really a function of insulin -- but insulin is subject to homeostasis, even if an unhealthy one.

Undoubtedly meditation, visualization, affirmations can hack in as it were and edit that image, allowing for successful weight loss where a merely thermodynamic approach will fail. We can say will fail, because that's what the mechanistic studies show -- treating fat loss as a mere equation of positive or negative energy balance results in failure. The homeostatic silhouette gauge makes adjustments -- faster heartrate, more spontaneous movement, nervous energy, body temperature fluctuation, manipulation of appetite and cravings -- anything to waste or conserve energy, calories, fat. We know the mind-body relationship is controlled but not ordained by hormones -- the way a puppet is controlled by stings ... it goes beyond the strings. Point is, thinking matters.

The diet and exercise paradigm, to which every sensible person must be attracted, seems to be wrong. You'll have to look at your own life experience to see if it has worked. It's not a simple equation, energy in, energy out. If the body were a closed system, that idea would work. But it's not a closed system. There's leakage. It's not energy in, which is either stored or burned for purposeful metabolic functions. Such functions can be quantified, as body heat or lifting or locomotion or breathing or heartbeat or shivering. These are purposeful, and because of that they are predictable, quantifiable, and variables of an equation. The silhouette gauge is a randomizer, in that insulin may be set too high -- making you too fat. Why? Who knows. Aside from too many industrial carbs that is.

Think of the body as a steam engine, in an old fashioned train. A heap of coal, a furnace, and a way to get work done. Easy. Straightforward math, whatever the details. But then there's the whistle. The safety valves, that keep the boiler from exploding. It confounds things. Some people are always blowing their whistle. A lot of wasted steam. Keeps them lean. Some people let the pressure build until it's dangerous. Not on purpose -- it's just how the thing is built. Some engine cabs just keep filling up with coal, that doesn't get burned -- or the firebox has a problem, and the coal builds up there. You get the idea. Not an elegant analogy, but you can play with it yourself.

The point is that the calculations can't be valid if the system is not closed. How can people eat less and still be fat? First, metabolism is not even a steam engine, but rather a hybrid motor, that uses different fuels in a pattern we haven't recognized yet. Then, well, the system is not closed. What goes in? Calories? How meaningful is that? Something burned in a crucible is supposed to translate one-to-one into metabolism? Isn't that actually sort of an insane assumption? And once we have digested these "calories", they can be used only according to the mechanistic expectations of thermodynamics? We're all for thermodynamics. For mechanistic systems. The fact that fat people can eat less and exercise more than lean people confounds the issue, though, wouldn't you agree?

There's an engineer at the switch, and he operates according to rules that you don't find in elementary physics textbooks. He decides wheel speed and burn rates and heat and pressure and noise. He doesn't like to be starved, and he works at his own pace. How do you make him happy? Feed him right, and have a conversation.

That's all. That's all for now. Complex, and simple. Diet and exercise. We eat right for health. We exercise for fitness. Both matter, a lot. Food makes our bodies, and we use our bodies to do the things that life is about. Energy and movement. Diet and exercise. That's it.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Diet as Alchemy

The Surgeon General's Office instructs us that "Overweight and obesity result from excess calorie consumption and/or inadequate physical activity." Oh. Well, case closed then. Never mind that most studies suggest that many who are overweight eat fewer calories than those who are lean, and may be as active. What does reality count in the face of authoritative pronouncements? There would hardly be any religions at all, if evidence mattered. And even less politics. And no atheists at all. Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time came thirty years ago and is now thoroughly entrenched. Never mind that in the past thirty years overweight and obesity have nearly tripled.

How can the new standard paradigm, of eat less and sweat more, be wrong? Never mind what kind of low fat and what kind of high carbs they tell us to eat -- is the theory behind it valid? Because if it's not, the implication is that we might, somehow, eat an unlimited amount of calories and not gain weight. Why, that way lies insanity! Calories have to go somewhere. It's physics, the conservation of matter/energy. Either exercise it away or store it as fat. Right? It makes sense.

If triglyceride fat, blubber, can only be formed in the presence of glycerol, what happens to excess calories without glycerol? Well, after general vitality is seen to, and the immune system, and recovery and repair from physical activity -- you know, the reason we eat -- the surplus, since it doesn't go to matter, must go to energy. Heat. That's science.

The simplistic thermodynamic analogy is not valid. True, calories must go either to matter or energy. But a calorie is not a calorie. The caloric value of food is identified by actually burning that food in a crucible in a laboratory. The heat generated is measured, and that's how many calories the food has. Never mind that we cannot digest fiber. That's confounding in only an incidental way. The point is that metabolism is not a crucible, for all that we make heat. It's not a simple energy in-out equation. There are various pathways that lead to multiple outcomes dependent on a number of variables. Well that didn't say a lot, and is quite obvious.

Calories are not about heat. Calorie is another of those misleading-therefore-useless words. What calories are actually about are raw materials, out of which possibilities are made. Thinking in terms of calories is like thinking in terms of carbon -- coal is the same thing as diamonds. Well, yes. And no.

Calories are not just a sort of element, that might happen to manifest as certain allotropes -- incidental forms -- like fats or carbs, as carbon has graphite or diamond, which are both pure elemental carbon. Protein, carbs and fat differ in their fundamental, their elemental nature, and that they burn as calories is as meaningful as the fact that they are made out of matter. Meaningful only because reality is what it is. Protein is as different from carbs as nitrogen is different from, well, carbon. Of course they do not behave the same in the body -- not even as calories.

Absent glycerol, then, triglycerides are not made. Fat would be present in the blood as free fatty acids. Maybe in the liver, maybe in cells, muscle or adipose, but not bundled up for storage. That's not such a good thing, having NO stored bodyfat. We may end up looking sort of skeletal, all hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked. Heroin chic. It's a look. Like the burlap-bag-full-of-yogurt look is a look, at the other end of the continuum. Somewhere between these two looks is a healthy compromise. But even given an excess of calories, absent glycerol there would be no overweight. You could eat until you just got too hot. Maybe you'd fall into a fevor coma. Maybe you'd spontaneously combust. It's science. But what studies do show is that diets of even 10,000 calories a day do not lead to excess bodyfat, when industrial carbs are limited. Industrial carbs -- those that lead to excess glycerol and chronically or acutely raised insulin.

Gracious. So much science. It's so hard. But if you are one of those nerdy geeks, or would like to be, all skinny, say, but somehow brawny too for purposes of this analogy and rather long and awkward sentence, well, then you are interested in answers both interesting and true.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Seduction

FW was listening to Satan one evening while working out.   "Oh FW, " said the Evil One in a silken and sonorous tone, "you poor thing.  This is so hard, FW, all this hard hard work.  It's so much.  Just go a little slower, FW.   It will be easier, and it doesn't really matter, a few more seconds.   You can make up for it with a strong finish.  Sure FW.  Save nothing.  At the end I really do want you to save nothing.  Full blast, FW, absolutely.   But FW, FW, don't exhaust yourself right now, for heaven's sake.   Be sensible, sensible, FW.  Exhaustion is dangerous!  You're very healthy for where you're at, FW -- you really look so good, for how you've treated yourself -- but blood vessels do burst.  And no one knows how hard it is, for you in particular, FW, and they won't even know if you take it a little slower, a little easier, not that you would ever go easy.  No one will know, FW, not that it's their stinking business ... and anyway they don't even feel sorry for you.  FW, is it hot in here or what?  Man is it hot.  They don't even notice how the sweat is just POURING off you.  And FW, isn't that noise a distraction?  But just keep plugging alone, I mean along.  Heh heh.   A little slowing each time is expected.  Oh!  FW! -- you're wobbling!   You almost STUMBLED, FW!   FW, you must REALLY be working hard.   Did they notice?  No, of course not.  So hard.  Too hard.  And FW, this is only four minutes!  Another twelve?!?  Ridiculous."

On and on he goes, Satan. Thing of it is, he's right. No lies at all. No lies this time. Even the "too hard" -- it is too hard, to do something faster than we can do it. But it's not too hard to do as fast as we can do it. Which this isn't. Satan loves the truth. He loves most of the truth. Sometimes it's all, or mostly, or at least some lies. You can't do it. You're not good enough. But he knows he has to stick with the truth, mostly. Because we can hear the lie, but we can be fooled by the truth. It is hard. There is another 12 minutes. The heat is unpleasant. If we save it now we will finish stronger. You shouldn't argue with what is true. It's just that in this particular circumstance, truth is invented by what you do. You choose your truth.

Just as you get started, remind yourself about mental attitude. That's a strategy that has to be practiced, trained. Start with a short workout. Develop a monologue, see what works, what's effective. It will be different with different people. It will be a trial-and-error thing, because not all theories are correct. There are workouts designed to identify mental techniques that work. There are p-factor workouts, there are positive attitude workouts. Because every champion understands at some level that he will succeed. No maybe about it. "Champion" is a confusing word, because we think it involves other people. Where most people are, they just have to beat themselves.

It's just psychology. Like the idea of sacredness, separateness. Every religion has it, in the solemnity of its rites. The High Priest of Israel, we read, would be struck dead if he entered the Holy of Holies with an impure mind, with his sins unatoned. That's why he entered with a rope tied around his ankle -- if he where struck dead in there, they could drag him out.

Application: attitude matters. Tai chi is not a form of exercise. It's a form of meditation. Exercise also may be most productive when it is a form of meditation. Because it's all about the brain anyway, its neurons and its hormones. And the brain is just the sponge that holds the fluid of the mind -- as it were. It's just a sort of meat. It is the servant, we are the master. Aren't untrained dogs obnoxious? Isn't it annoying when kids have bad manners and incompetent parents? And isn't it a huge mistake, when you listen to your meathead instead of your wisdom?

There are stratagems. A script, a visualization, a theatre-of-the-mind progression. "Incremental velocity". "Integral veclusion".  Heh.  Who knows -- the universe is ripe with potentialities. Music, for example, bypasses the mind and goes straight for the emotions and subconscious. That's why it's dangerous. The rhythm alone should make a difference, without even touching the subconscious. A matrix, a scaffolding, to organize unconscious energy. A cue toward a mental attitude. A way of keying into and associating with past successes -- picking up where you left off. Something to occupy the mind, other than failure talk.

It's simple and it's complex, exercise. If we didn't have any bad habits, we'd practically be perfect. In any case, the only voice we should listen to is the one that encourages us to excellence.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Unknowable Things

No one knows the difference between animal saturated fats and plant saturated fats. The palmitic acid in coconut oil and in beef is chemically identical. It’s just the ratios that are different. So, uh, well, it seems we do know the difference. There isn’t one.

No one knows the role of enzymes in digestion. We have the words, and how they’re used, but no one knows anything about how they're produced or excreted, and what happens to them afterwards. An enzyme is a catalyst, and catalysts cause a reaction without being changed by it, so theory suggests that enzymes are taken up again and reused. But no one knows how that would work. We know that various digestive processes occur at different parts of the small intestine, but no one knows what happens where.

So that’s everything that science doesn't know.

We think of diet and nutrients in terms of broad categories. Fats and proteins and carbs. It’s really not useful. Take protein. We can’t use it. We need dietary amino acids. But we only need eight or so -- the essential ones; all the others we can make ourselves. Why so vague about how many essentials? Some can be converted into others. Messes up the calculations. But current estimates are that you need only about 16 grams of the essentials, if you weigh 200 pounds, not obese. A bit more than half an ounce. Dude, that's like, totally, hardly anything.

There is a qualitative difference between plant and animal protein. No difference between the amino acids, but in the digestion process, huge. Putrefactive bacteria don’t feed on plants. Don’t you just love that word, putrefactive? Putrid. Mmm. Then, if undigested proteins leak into the bloodstream, there may be autoimmune problems. Point is, protein is not just protein.

Same with fats. Saturated fats are there just to supply energy. On the other hand, your skin can get softer, so delightfully touchable,  when you eat coconut oil. It’s a well-known beauty secrets. Yes, it seems something can be both well-known and a secret. And we’ve been through all that with omegas 3 and 6. No one knows if these are ever just metabolized for energy, or if they are used only structurally. So that will have to be added to the list of things science doesn't know. Then there are the hydrogenated and transfats. Poision.

Or carbs. Fibrous carbs -- good. Unprocessed carbs, good. Sugars and refined carbs? Slow but very real poisons. Or cholesterol. The term seems to be useless, when the distinction is not made about which particular cholesterol, HDL or LDL, or even subcatagories of LDL.

So if there’s confusion about what to eat, well, common sense has to play a pretty big role. Because you probably haven’t been told about nutrients at any level smaller than protein or fat or carbs. And these studies that are done, measuring the effect of dietary carbs, but that don’t make a distinction between fibrous and refined … useless? Or that talk about high or low cholesterol, but nothing about the ratios. Or that measure protein in the diet without any understanding about the intestinal microzoa that cohabit with you as your constant dinner guests?

It’s a sort of information that is worse than useless. It’s information that is actually ignorance. Like nutrients that don’t nourish. Empty carbs. Dead proteins. Poisonous fats. Really. Couldn’t you just sit down and give the matter some serious thought, and come up with a sensible diet on your own, without the government spending billions of dollars building its pyramids that end up ruining the economy of your health? Heavens, that was an overly complex metaphor. Honestly though, does a cake really seem like food to you? And how is bread much different than cake? Does eating meat three times a day seem like a natural thing to you? From either an Evolutionary or an Edenic perspective? Does drinking bovine milk seem like a sensible thing for an adult human to do on a regular basis?

If you sat down and just puzzled it out, what do you suppose you’d come up with, as a sensible human diet? It’s not a trick question. It's one of those things science doesn't know. Too many contractions, between real science and garbage science. There is so much bias. It's a scandal.

Competence starts, or is it ends, with results. It's a sort of wading-through-miasmal-swamps thing -- moving through poison to get to health. It's about effectiveness. So?

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

How Things Work

It just seems so interesting, how the brain works, or the mind-body connection, or the CNS-PNS. However you'd describe it. It's just fascinating. Afferent and efferent nerves. Same as sensory and motor nerves. Only two sorts of neurons, inward and outward, to the brain or away. Inward is sensory, information about everything other than the brain, whether within the body or from the great wide world. Outward is motor, to get things done, either muscles or organs, somatic or autonomic. Neuron axons bundled in the peripheral nervous system are nerves; axon bundles in the CNS are called tracts. Isn't it fascinating?

The brain communicates with the body in only two ways: through motor nerves or through hormones. Nerves are a direct line, like telegraph wires. Hormones float through the bloodstream hoping to be picked up by cell receptors -- like fish and nets, without the hope. Isn't that interesting? In order to explain things, you need facts. Why does exercise make muscles grow? An exercised fiber becomes more receptive to hormones. Hormones are released when enough fibers are exercised. So it's central nervous system, and it's endocrinal. Obvious of course, but so interesting.

It's easy to gush -- it's so interesting.

And the way the CNS develops -- the brain and spinal cord. It starts as a sort of looped tube, eventually with, well, six parts, spinal cord and the five parts of the brain. A tube. See? It's not an addition thing, this development, not one part of the brain developing, then another one, more advanced, then yet another, and so on. New parts of the tube just appearing one day, or epoch. It's all there, inherent in the beginning. See? It's not an Evolutionary development. It all happens more or less all at once, with all vertebrates, the way you'd blow up a plastic bag. There is no fish brain and lizard brain and mammal brain. There are just bigger and smaller parts of the brain, depending on class. A fish's cerebrum is smaller than its eyeball. A rat's cerebrum is the size of its ear. Humans' fill up everything behind the eyes and up. But it's all the same basic plastic bag -- just different shapes.

That's the body, and the brain. Not quite the same as mind, or as some would have it, the soul. Think of it as music. Flute music. What makes it? The breath of the player? The shape of the instrument? Neither, alone. Both, but not only both. Music is not breath and flute -- that might very well be just noise. We are made by genetics and shaped by experience -- but we are not just both of these, together. We are not breath through a flute, not experience acting through genes. We are music. There is a musician, a spirit if you will, inspiring as well as respiring.

Well. It's about being excellent. Utilizing our gifts. We can't save anyone. We can help each other, though, help a human, with a body, achieve a level of physical excellence.  You do it, if you will. We help.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Boxes

It seems intimidating, at the beginning.

But it's not so much.

All honest effort is honorable.

We start at the beginning ...

and keep striving...

  

until we earn our rest.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Mindful of Small Things

God? Who is this "God" person people keep yammering about on TV and the radio? What proof is there of this "God"? Man, those religionists are so superstitious and unscientifical. Randomness explains it all.  Didn't they go to school, and learn all about science?

A horse fly. Horse flies are for killing. Who knew that they were beautiful.

Flies. Beelzebub is the lord of flies. But they can't be all bad.

The grasshopper. Very discreet -- deadpan.

A bee. And its pollen.

A harvestman. Seems to be missing a leg. Life is hard.

Jumping spider, male.

Jumping spider, female.

Body shot. She's hot.

Ladybug. Not a good name.

There are dragons -- Chinese dragons. They're just an inch long, is all.

Even a weevil -- such crasftsmanship.

You don't have to get along with God. But surely you must believe in him. Him. There has to be an explanation, for beauty. An explanation that isn't casuistic. But maybe there's no such thing after all.  Maybe rationality itself is random.

Anyways.

What matters is results. If you'd like to be beautiful as a bug, eat right, and exercise effectively.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Marketing

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Who could resist such a compelling presentation?  It's irresistible.    But regardless of how subtle the message, it's results that matter.  Do what is effective.  We'll leave the rest for you to intuit, deduce, or stumble onto.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Unforgiven

Deserves got nothing to do with it.

Has to do with justice. An illusive thing. Hybrid of the unicorn and the snipe. Or is that just cynical. Point is, we deserve what we earn. We earn what we work at -- where we put our effort and time. If you spend a lot of time, oh, say, eating, then you most certainly do deserve those extra pounds.

An unsympathetic judgment? Reality is ever so unforgiving. Gravity doesn't call a timeout. You stumble, you fall -- or catch yourself; in neither case does gravity bend its rules.

We deserve what we earn, whether or not we get it. Wanting fitness, or an attractiveness of figure or physique -- well, that's just an emotion, the wanting. Do you deserve what you want? Only if you've earned it. We exclude of course such basic human rights as air and justice. We deserve justice, although we may not want it. Depends what our conduct has been, eh?

So when advertisers tickle our ears by suggesting we deserve every wonderful thing, yeah, there's the part of us that says, "Yep, that's right -- I deserve it! Cuz I'm so great! Yeeeah!" Then there's the rational part of the brain, that remembers cause and effect.

You rewarded yourself with that half-gallon in one sitting of rocky road ice cream because you earned it by having a hard day at work, or by having your paramour disrespect you so that you required some other comforting. That was the intent of eating all that ice cream. And you were comforted. But those 2700 calories amount to almost one sexy pound of body fat. You earned that too, by eating the ice cream -- and hoping that your body uses it to give you Angelina Jolie lips may not be a desire thoroughly grounded in reality.

We deserve what we earn. Physics is not forgiving. Entropy is the presiding law of the universe. Miracles come from outside of the universe, and, like forgiveness, have to do with grace, with unmerited favor. We hope for it, but we don't deserve it. Hardly ever.

A dark message? But no! -- a message of hope. Because when we apply intelligence to any mechanistic system, entropy is reversed. Order increases rather than declines. Beauty is generated. We grow fit. We become, in a very real way, younger. Why, it's almost miraculous! Strange, how going through some ritual can change reality. Working out, then -- that most mundane of processes -- is where magic comes from.

You deserve what you earn. You earn what you work for. They call it "working" out for a reason. Of course we all know this. But if that's the case, why do the advertisers try to tell us otherwise? You deserve a break today? Maybe. How would they know? Indeed, they know as well as we do, that people only deserve what they earn. And if they know it, why are they lying? -- and if they're not lying, how did they get so crazy? Bewildering.

How to earn what you want? In this context, effective exercise, and responsible diet. It's not about tickling your ears, unless its from beads of sweat running down the side of your head.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Some Mockery, Then Some Information

People are saying that they're feeling differently about you. Ever since they saw you naked that one time, they're saying they've lost all respect for you. They say they can't understand how anyone could let happen to them what you've let happen to you. It's astonishing. Clothes sure do make the man. Clothes, and buckets and buckets of pork rinds. It's like pudding poured into a canvass sack. There is a sort of shape. But are there any bones in there? Or is it all, uh, stuffing. That's what they're saying.

Food is about health. Exercise is about fitness. You can have fit people, elite athletes, who get by on genetics and training. Are they healthy? If health is the absence of sickness, then yes they are. But health is a reservoir of potentials. It's not just what's on the surface. The question is, are you able to fight off sickness, and not just avoid it somehow. Can you confront it, and beat it before it gets a hold. And all those diseases awaiting some person down the line -- are they dormant or incipient or festering now? If so, that's not health.

Same with healthy people, with their great diets. It's not the same as fitness. Diet makes fitness easier, but fitness is about performance, and that has to be practiced. Training. By these standards, though, it is clear that the starting point is health, and fitness follows. Diet, followed by training.

Here's the upshot, about why carbs are bad. All calories can be made into fat. Free fatty acids. That's just a form of usable energy in your blood. These fats are stored in cells as FAT -- blubber fat -- by being bound together as triglycerides. The glue that turns the good free fatty acids into the bad blubber is glycerol. Your body gets glycerol by burning carbs -- glucose. So the more carbs you burn, the more glue there is to bind fats. Glycerol is the limiting factor.

Isn't that interesting? It's exactly the same idea as with omega 3. You can't make anti-inflammatory hormones unless you have omega 3. The more you have, the more you can make, and that's a good thing. The more glycerol you have, the more blubber you can make, and that's a bad thing. The wrong lesson to draw from this is that you shouldn't eat carbs. Plants are carbs. Eat plants. Don't eat glue factories. Grains. Some bread? Sure, once in a while. All the time, at every meal? What, is there a famine? Wheat is great if you're starting a neolithic civilization. But too few calories is not the problem, in 21st century America.

The observation has been made that Canadians don't seem nearly as fat as Americans. Well, the Canadian government didn't start to sponsor a poisonous -- low fat -- diet, beginning in the 80s. Exactly the time when obesity started its meteoric rise. Although meteors don't rise. Sure, low fat generally means fewer calories. But it also means low ESSENTIAL fats. You can turns carbs into fat, but never into essential fats. So it's a malnutrition diet. Brilliant. Thanks for that. Instead of getting the essentials, we got hydrogenated- and transfats.

Where's a coup when you need one? Start with yourself. Sensible diet, sensible exercise.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank