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We often over-complicate things in our life. Just look at how people tend to deal with health. All sorts of weight lose plans are advertised on television, pills for this, pills for that, more ads for how to get into shape, never ends. What if we instead said “Stop!” and got back to the basics of fitness and nutrition? That is what Mark Sisson proposes in his book “The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy.”

In his book, Sisson outlines a philosophy on how to live life. He does this by looking at two fictional families, the Korgs and the Groks. The Korgs represent a typical modern day family, one you’ll probably recognize from the description Sisson outlines. The other family, the Korgs, represents a family on the other spectrum, one that lived 10,000 years ago. By comparing how these two families handled everyday life, from eating to how they received their exercise, Sisson shows how our ancient ancestors had it pretty good. The Korgs tended to be healthier then us and deal with much less stress in their lives. Sisson believes that if we lived more like the Gorks we would be much better of health wise.

Sisson outlines how to do with his “Primal Blueprint Laws”, which there are 10. These laws, based on how Gork would have lived his life, cover everything from what to eat, exercise, sleep, and having fun. In these 10 laws Sisson shoots an arrow through conventional wisdom around health and fitness. Low fat diets? Gork wouldn’t approve. 60 minutes on the thread mill? Not for Gork. Eat plenty of whole grain foods? Gork never would have touched the stuff. Sisson  gives his rational for his laws and provides evidence to support his arguments.

Is Sisson right? That is something you’ll need to decide. However I have a hard time believing that if you follow Sisson’s advice that you won’t get into better shape. I should note that this is aimed at people that fir into the description of the Korgs in the book. My advice is to read the book and try following its suggestions for 30 days and see how you feel. Even if you think you are in good shape, that you eat right, and doing pretty good, Sisson might trigger a light bulb in your head and make you think about what you are doing.

Mark Sisson over at Mark’s Daily Apple has a PrimalCon 2010 Event planned for April 23-25, 2010, in Oxnard, CA. If interested in health and fitness this could be something for you to check out. I’m a fan of Mark’s work and if I lived in the area I would be attending.

Instead of making a resolution to start off the new year, lets do it with a challenge. And what could be a better challenge than the One Hundred Day Burpee Challenge? Right, pretty much anything. Therefore it is the perfect challenge to start the new year off with. So on January 1, 2010, kick off the challenge.

If you don’t what the One Hundred Day Burpee Challenge is exactly, here is a run down. Day on (1/1/10) you do 1 burpee, Day 2 (1/2/10) is 2 burpees, Day 3 (1/3/10) is 3 burpees, and keep going till you get to day 100 (4/10/10) where you are now at 100 burpees. So on 1/1/2010, 3-2-1 Go!

FAQ

Q: What’s a burpee?
A: Wikipedia has a write-up on the burpee. You can also check out this video or this one on YouTube.

Q: I can’t do 100 of those evil things!
A: I’m willing to bet you can do one. Start with one and on day 2 do one, and then one more. Look at it as doing 1 burpee and build upon that. The proper mental approach will help you make it through this.

Q: On a given day, do I have to do all the burpees at once?
A; No, you just have to do that given number for the day. Using day 50 again, if you need to break it down into blocks of 10 with a rest in between, then that is what you do. The goal is getting all the burpees done for that day.

Q: What if I miss a day?
A: You poor fool… You still have to do the burpees. Lets say you missed doing the burpees on day 50, on day 51 you have to do those burpees (51) and the ones you missed (50). That should be a good incentive not to miss a day

Many Democrats are complaining as how the Republicans are being hypocrites on health care reform. The argument goes like this: Republicans are bucking the Democratic proposals, which I agree they should be stopped, but the Republicans had no issues when proposing unfunded Medicare reform.

Myself I was ticked off at the Republicans for pushing this 6 years ago. It was bad policy and bad economics. And I’ll agree that the Senators that backed Medicare reform 6 years ago are being hypocrites. This however is politics as usual.

My personal opinion is the Federal Government has zero business in being involved with health care. They can regulate a health care company that does business across multiple states, that is the power given to them by the Constitution, other than that stick to those limited powers you are suppose to have and leave the rest to the states or the People.

In this post I mentioned that Robb was no longer doing the Crossfit Nutritional Certifications. Latest news is that Robb has been stripped of his Crossfit affiliation. Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics received the same notice.

Best of luck to you Robb, the cream will rise to the top.

Update: Dr. Kurt Harris weighs in on the issue in his blog post Crossfit Nutrition Eats its Young.

I use iHerb often for ordering supplements. I get my fish oil from Costco but pretty much everything else from iHerb due to their prices and selection.

Now something that can benefit both of us, my iHerb referral code: QAZ657. Using this code can get you $5 off your first order iHerb and I get a small commission.

Or was at least fired from  Crossfit Nutritional Certification.

If things played out as Robb describes, Crossfit HQ should be doing some deep soul searching at the people running things for Coach Glassman. I’ve seen shades of this mentality from other Crossfitters before and owe lots of it to them having pride in their organization. Nothing wrong with that but always be open to different thoughts and new ideas, that is how you grow.

For you non-Crossfitters WOD is Workout Of the Day. Lee Stewart created a web site to help you.

The WOD Shop

Jeff Barnett over on the Crossfit Boards posted a link to something his wife wrote up explaining the Zone Diet. Go check it out.

The Democrats have released their health care bill and since I haven’t had the time to dig into the details of it, lets look at this initial statistic:

1994 Clinton Health Care Plan: 1342 pages

2009 Pelosi Health Care Plan: 1990

That is not a sign of being off to a good start. Second sign is the Democrats blocking access to the press conference announcing the bill. So much for transparency in government. The Democrats want to keep this bill under wraps as long as possible and attempt to shive it down our throats before get a good idea of what is being done to them.

Being from a state with two Republican Senators, I should have high hopes of them putting up a fight, but my Senators our Snowe and Collins…

Again, my simple solution to health care in this country starts at home:

1. Eat the right foods
2. Exercise
3. Get plenty of sleep

Sounds too much like personal responsibility, something the Democrats won’t tolerate.