The morning started off great, I woke up feeling refreshed and energized.  I didn’t quite get 8 hours of sleep yet I felt as if my batteries had been recharged.  Most of my morning was spent with what has become my recent routine of opening one of the car washes, and then driving to my parent’s house to run my mom through her physical therapy exercises.   Her therapy normal takes an hour, and then I force her to spend at least 20 minutes icing her knee. 

When I have her perform an exercise I force her to do them for both legs, and today I happened to place my hand on the left knee which was operated on last year to help relieve some tension.  The vibrations from the metal ball which replaced a segment of bone rubbing against the plastic bearing can be felt from outside of her body. 

It’s remarkable how doctors can take a mechanical system such as a metal bearing and plastic bushing, which can be found in the vast majority of moving machinery, can be inserted in a human leg.  As amazing as this feat is, I’m still creeped out with the friction and the sound of the metal rubbing against the plastic. 

The temperature today reached the mid 90’s, so I spent quite a bit of time today making sure my staff was hydrated and that the crew members were rotating their positions between ones which had direct sunlight, and those that do not.  We were fortunate that no one became ill from the heat, and they were able to handle the work load as we were busier than the last two Memorial Days.

I made a concerted effort today to make sure I stayed on my meal plan.  For breakfast I had a Cliff Builders bar which has 20g of proteins, and a banana.  My snacks today consisted of an orange, and a Luna Bar.  My lunch was a green salad, and a chicken breast that I broiled the night before.  The dry rub I used tasted great, add the 3 cups of whole foods Hot & Sour soup, and I had one filling lunch which ended up being less than 500 calories.  For dinner I had my favorite which is seared tuna with a black sesame rub from whole foods.  I ate another green salad, and used two wedges of laughing cow cheese in the salad to give it some density.  All together I consumed 1,717 calories for the day. 

The eating today was a huge victory, during my week of rest last week I felt several times that I was falling into an overeating abyss.  Being able to get a day of controlled consumption of after a week which had several days where I overate was reassuring.  It has given me quite a bit of confidence, that over the long term I will be able to maintain the weight that I lose.  More than the workouts what I put into my mouth will have the lasting impact on physical well being.

Gaining weight is such a slippery slope which starts with eating one more piece of something when you are full, and then allowing that pattern to turn into a habit, which eventually becomes your new fat lifestyle.  I firmly believe that losing weight works in the same way, every time you can put yourself in a position to say no, and succeed puts you on a path towards not overeating.  It’s in each of those moments of weakness that we learn to build strength.  With each new strength building moment, we create the bricks which will be the foundation of our new lifestyle.  For me the ability to stay on track with my planned food consumption today was as if I had just mortared another brick.

I didn’t get home from work, and my personal duties until 5:30 PM, after a walk with Benny I rushed to the gym, as it was Memorial Day they closed early at 7 pm.  I was able to get 50 minutes in on the Arc Trainer.  I did a 5 minute warm up, and was able to do 15 levels of Mountain.  By the end of the 50 minutes they had turned most of the lights off in the gym; in fact they were half off after 45 minutes.  I was determined today to get an hour of cardio, so at the 45 minute mark I made it up in my mind I would get to 50 minutes, then go home and finish the last ten minutes on a treadmill.  

I walked home from the gym, and got right onto a treadmill.  I started walking at 4 mph for 1 minute.  Then I jogged 1 minute at 5 mph.  I followed this pattern of walking for 1 minute and then running for 1 minute, for 5 cycles.  I increased the speed on each sprint incrementally, by the last sprint I was up to 8 mph for 1 minute. 

After two weeks of staying the same weight I have to lose weight this week.  I will not stand for 3 weeks of the same weight, 300 lbs is around the corner, and I’m stuck at the neighbor’s fence.  I have a personal training session with Ali 4 days this week, and I still have my Cross-Fit Session on Wednesday, along with the Core Class.  I will also get in 3 more session of cardio before the end of the week.    

I wanted to add another note from the book that I’m reading Omnivores Dilemma.  I’ve just gotten into the second part of the book, which examines the nature of “organic foods”, and what has become the industrial organic foods movement.  We as consumers get an image in our minds of what defines Organic.  I think we all get the same image in our heads of family owned farms, pastoral animals, and sustainable farming.  The reality of it is that the term Organic has been bastardized by the USDA, most of the bastardization at the behest of the large industrial food conglomerates.  The standards which the USDA has established in reference to the word “organic” are mostly vague, and have been compromised to the point they have lost their meaning. 

You would think that the word Organic would mean no synthetics like dextrose, or xanthan gum, or any artificial preservatives. When we think of Organic animals we think of free range animals, sorry to burst your bubble, but no, many of the products which we buy at groceries including Whole Foods are mass produced, processed, and are Organic only by USDA definition.  The chicken we eat which is supposedly organic spends much of their time in over populated chicken coops like the mass produced chickens of the Purdue. 

To give you a deeper example of this almost oxymoronic situation, lets look at organic milks.  When we think of Organic Milk, we think of cows roaming open green fields grazing on grass all day and getting milked by farmers by hand.  In fact this image is sold to us by the Organic Dairies.  The largest producer of Organic Milk the one with the cute cow jumping over the earth with a flag, is about as Organic as I am Haitian. 

Are they better than most other mass produced milks, only by a hair because they don’t use hormones, or feed their cows antibiotics.  Yet their production facilities are almost identical to those of other industrialized milk production.  Cows spend the bulk of their time in tight pens, and get fed all grain diets including corn, soybeans, and barley.  This feed is all organic, so technically the milk is organic this doesn’t hide the fact that grains aren’t in balance with a cow’s natural biological function.   Further the cows at Horizon milk are given “access” to open fields, which means that the facility which houses them has a door leading to an open field.  This field pales into comparison to what is actually needed, approximately 1-2 acres of land is needed per cow to graze.  To give you an idea of what industrialized farms tend to do is they place 1 million cows in a single square mile which is about 640 acres. 

Michael Pollan on Bill Marr

Cows have developed a rumen which contains bacteria and protozoa used to break down the grass fibers, and extract nourishment from the grass for the cow.  We can’t digest grass because we don’t have a rumen.  So similar to the corn fed cows in a feed lot, the milk cows of Horizon are fed grains including corn which causes health issues, but what do they care after 6 years the dairy cows will be sold to a butcher, which is about half the productive life of a pastoral cow. 

Horizon actually helped lobby the USDA when it was defining the term Organic so that they could justifiably pen the cows in closed corridors, because it made it easier for their employees to monitor the health of the cow, right I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that it makes it easier for them to mass produce milk.

In deeper examination of Horizon’s practices, a cow fed a diet high in grains can typical be milked 3 times a day,  whereas most grass fed cows can only be milked twice a day.  Greater yield obviously means greater profit who cares how it ultimately effect the end consumer or the cow.  Further in order to deliver the product to further locations they ultra pasteurize their milk, which removes almost all the health benefits of milk, not to mention eliminates the milk flavor.  Another reason that ultra pasteurization is such a pervasive tool in industrialized farming is that because the milk is heated hotter and longer it removes most of the bacteria, thus allowing companies like Horizon to spend more time focusing on yield, and less time on the health of both the cow and consumer. 

Horizon while fitting the letter of the USDA definition of “organic” has clearly decided as a company to ignore the intent of the word “organic”. 

I’m thoroughly starting to get pissed off about where our food comes from, and how the government which is supposed to protect us from profiteering, has not only been complacent in our protection, but complicit in creating the avenues which make our lives more hazardous.