Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

Mark and Karl at Crossfit Manchester asked me if I’d write a testimonial for them, this is what I wrote, thought you might like it:

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In Jan 2007 I called myself ‘Crossfit’s Greatest Challenge’. At 15 stone, I had a 43″ waist and a body fat percentage of 30%. Worse, due to dodgy knees I’d done exactly zero exercise since leaving school 16 years ago. I thought I was incapable of exercising, I couldn’t even manage the warm up.

In the last 12 months, Crossfit has utterly and totally changed my view of exercise. Crossfit is varied, stimulating, fun to do and gives an amazing sense of achievement. The short, intense workouts are never boring or monotonous and the camaraderie in the gym is second to none.

Crossfit simply works. When I look in the mirror today [click for before and after pics] I see a totally different person looking back at me. I’ve lost: 31 pounds (over 2 stone); a massive 8 inches off my waist, now down to 36″ at the widest point; my body fat percentage has dropped from 30% to 17%; but best of all, for the first time in 20 years, I’ve had no knee pain for 9 months now.

And what’s more, I’m measurably Stronger, Fitter and Faster than I’ve ever been in my life. At 35 I now have a better body than I had at 21, the wife loves it! If you do one thing in 2008, choose to change your life forever: give Crossfit Manchester 1 week of your time, you’ll never look back and it’s free!

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What do you think? Too gushing?  Everything I wrote is true though.

Too long have we been exposed to the internet, which has reduced our ability to insult our fellow man down to questioning loudly and repeatedly, their s3xuality, or the proclivity of their maternal parent. Back in the good old days, they had some class, as these examples show…

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor:

She said, “If you were my husband I’d put poison in your coffee,”

and he said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

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A member of Parliament to Disraeli: “Sir, you will either die on the gallows, or of some unspeakable disease.”

“That depends, Sir,” said Disraeli, “on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.”

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“He had delusions of adequacy.” – Walter Kerr

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“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” – Winston Churchill

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“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” – Winston Churchill

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“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow

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“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas

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“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln

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“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain

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“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde

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“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend…. if you have one.” – George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response.

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“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright

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“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb

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“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” – Jack E. Leonard

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“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde

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“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder

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This is a picture of Dr Chris Steele, the TV Doctor from the program This Morning on ITV.

Dr Steele has been in the news this week, as unfortunatley the poor man has advanced heart disease, it’s so bad in fact, he’s in the 98th percentile for risk of sudden death through heart attack, and as such is in the extreme high risk group. He volunteered to take part in a feature for the show and so had a 3D image of his heart taken. Only the results showed that his main artery into his heart is 50% blocked with fatty cholesterol deposits. The revelation of his arteriosclerosis has come as a complete shock to him.

But hold on, this Doctor has been advising the public for 20 years on all sorts of health issues, including giving the nation dietary advice. How is it, that a self confessed dietary expert and TV personality can accidentally find themselves in the extreme high risk group for heart attack?

What’s more concerning, is that Doctor Chris Steele has advised thousands of over weight people on their own diets and weightloss issues. In fact his own website boasts that 150,000 people have downloaded his dietary advice. The same diet that has led to his possible imminent and sudden death!

So what is this clearly dangerous and deadly diet the good Doctor has been peddling for his own financial gain for the last 20 years? You guessed it, it’s our old friend the low fat, high carb diet. Whilst I am saddened that Chris Steele is suffering from heart disease, he unfortunatley only has himself to blame. I think it’s fairly obvious these days to anyone who cares to actually look that a…

Low Fat, High Carb Diet = Early Death

If you look at the dietary weighhtloss advice on Dr Steeles “Family GP” website it’s the classic case of: eat as much fruit and veg as you like, cut back on fat where ever possible, protein is almost an accidental after thought. I hope that Dr Steele now wakes up and realises that this low fat, high carb diet is what has lead to his heart disease. If you’re reading this and are a little confused as to why I’m saying this, here’s the elevator pitch:

• Insulin converts sugar in your blood into fat, that’s it’s job and it does this to keep your blood sugar level down to safe levels for the brain and to store excess energy for later use (that’s what fat is).
• Carbohydrates (and yes that does include almost all fruit and veg) are sources of sugar.
• Eating a high carb meal spikes your blood sugar so insulin converts it to fat.
• Doing this every meal, every day, causes fat to be deposited throughout the day which is how you get fat furred arteries.
• 2 hours after your high carb induced sugar rush, you’ll be hungry again.
• And as a kicker, eventually your over worked insulin producing Pancreas will give up and here comes diabetes.

Of course all this is explained far better in Dr Sears Zone Diet, I suggest you read one (or all) of his books if you want to understand it better. Or post a comment, I’ll answer all questions.

So how is it, that the main stream dietary advice is to eat a diet that will lead to your early death, through a combination of heart disease, obesity, diabetes etc? And how is it, that this bad dietary advice has been perpetuated by Dr Chris Steele for the last 20 years? How many of the 150,000 people who have downloaded “Dr Steele’s Fat Farewell Diet Plan” will also suffer the same early death as it looks like Dr Steele will? How many of those 150,000 people has Dr Steele killed though his bad advice?

I’m being a bit harsh here aren’t I? I mean, it’s not Dr Steele’s fault is it? He’s dutifully trotting out the “fat bad, carb good” official medical line. He’s just following orders as it were isn’t he? He can’t be blamed for giving 150,000 people bad advice, can he?

Well I think he can, and so can anyone else who blindly trots out the low fat, high carb dietary advice. You see these people are either:

1. Too lazy to bother checking their facts.
2. Too stupid to be able to sift the wheat from the chaff of dietary data.
3. Too interested in lining their own pockets to care.
4. All of the above!

I’ve rambled on enough, but I intend on future posts going through some of the simple research and demonstrating exactly why a low fat, high carb diet is stacking the odds against you right from the start. In the mean time, I do sincerely hope Dr Steel makes a miraculous recovery.

Considering the debacle of putting on half a stone over Christmas, and not being able to go to Crossfit much, January has gone remarkably well on the weightloss front, thanks to the Zone Diet of course.

You may recall I was 13st 7 (189 lbs) up from 183 in December. Well it took about 2 weeks to lose what I’d gained, and now on 1st February I am officially the lightest I’ve been since leaving University some 13 odd years ago. Yep, finally the scales consistently start with that magic number: 12 ! Ok, it’s 12 st 13 and some loose change, but I’ll take it…. I’m 12 stone something again, woot !

12 st 13 is 181 lbs or 82kg, however my waist stubbornly remains at 36″ which makes my body fat calculation come out at 17%. Whilst I’m happy with a reduction in body fat percentage from 30% to 17% in a year, it’s not quite the 15% target I had set myself. Just 1 more inch off the waist and I’ll be there.

Still I can’t complain, the Zone Diet has been the most effective eating regime I’ve ever been on, I generally feel great on it, and I am rarely hungry. The only time hunger sets in is when it’s been over 5 hours since I last ate, which is what you’d expect anyway. Certainly I feel the need for neither mid morning snacks, nor mid afternoon snacks. I also feel I know far more about diet and weightloss than the vast majority of people out there today.

In fact, in a few days time I’m going to post a response to this news item:

TV Dr Chris Steele, has been shocked on his discovery that he has advanced heart disease. Dr Chris Steele is the resident expert on ITVs show “This Morning” for 20 years, and he took part in 3D heart imaging tests for a feature for the show.

Worse than that, he found out his heart condition was worse than 98% of the UK population! Which puts him in the extremely high risk group.

I don’t intend on pulling any punches!

No pics or videos this week, but 2 great links.

The first is 10 Incredible Old Computer Ads which are hillarious, including such gems like:

• “What the heck is Electronic Mail?”
• “The new 16K RAM card that turns your computer into a working giant”
• “Two Bytes Are Better Than One” – an ad for 16-bit computing

WARNING – Don’t click the Google Image Ads on that site though, there by malware in them thar ads.

Link 2 is a link to a free online multiplayer game called KDice .  It’s like Risk, but each game only lasts 10 minutes instead of 2 days.  The key twist is that the armies are actually the dice you use, so if you have 5 dice on a territory, then you attack (or defend) with 5 dice.  It’s a multiplayer version of DiceWars.  Highly recommended.

BTW it’s the 1st of Feb, so I shall be working on a roundup post covering a year of Crossfit and the Zone, coming soon…

My sore elbow continues to be a pain (pun intended, lol!). I should point out that I didn’t hurt it at Crossfit, but outside.

I’ve gone for doing no exercises at all that use my right arm, in order to speed up recovery, but it’s taking a very long time it seems. Though it appears that the pain is less, what I can’t work out though is this: is it actually getting better and there is less pain; or am I just doing a better job of managing it to minimise the issue?

It’s also occurred to me that the Anti-Inflammation properties of the Zone Diet combined with the ultra refined fish oil I’m taking, might actually be masking the symptoms. This might explain why it seemed to get worse around the Christmas period, when my eating habits were rather UN-zonish! Could it be that I’ve nor suffered nearly as much as I would have because of what I eat? It’s hard to say really.

It is putting a downer on the Crossfit side of life it has to be said. Today for example, I couldn’t do the weighted pull ups, and instead did Vertical Jumps. Actually this was fun, but only because of the look on Mark’s face when I touched the roof of the gym at the 10′ 2″ point! 😉

Sounds impressive huh? I thought so too, until I measured my maximum height standing touch at 96″ which makes my vertical jump 26 inches which somewhere along the line doesn’t sound as good as 10 foot 2 inches. Although I’ve just looked at the Athletic Skill Standards and 25″ is Level III with 30″ Level 4, haha!

See these posts for my previous discussions on the Athletic Skill Standards Level 2 and Level 1.

About 10 cars all crash at the same spot one after the other. Most amusing are the people who think that bailing out is the safest course of action!

This driver looses it in a car wash and manages to crash 3 times in 30 seconds:

Actually this one’s a major bike crash at the TT race, what’s special about this is there’s a camera on the bike and you get to see exactly what the rider saw:

Last year I hurt my right elbow at my brothers Stag Do whilst driving the off road Tomcars. It’s been playing me up ever since but was never enough to stop me doing Crossfit.

In the run up to Christmas however it got worse, basically a pain whenever lifting with it. I was finding it harder and harder to do things like Push Presses, Cleans etc so eventually went to the physio just before Christmas. She advised me to scale back what I was doing and I did for a few weeks, but it didn’t help. So I decided to take 2 weeks off as complete rest.

Well the news is good and bad. The good news is that when I do get pain, the pain is less severe. The bad news is, that I’m getting pain a lot more. Even doing normal stuff round the house like washing my face, opening a jar, etc. Even driving was giving me jip the other day. This is 4 months after banging it and after 3 weeks complete rest.

Yes it’s been 3 weeks as despite my intentions to go back after 2, I realised it was too soon. Also, it’s surprising how quick you can get out of the habit of going down the gym. I had several days last week when I really intended to, it just never seemed convenient. I guess I need to go back to the physio / quacks these week to see what can be done….?

Still, I went back to Crossfit on Saturday, it was always going to be bad but especially the heavy running component was hard. The Pose Running technique I’m trying is definitely helping reduce my calve pain when running, which is excellent news, but I found it hard to maintain the pose whilst knackered. More work to be done there.

I’m going to try to go 2-3 times a week from now on again, until my elbow sorts itself out. It’s damn frustrating constantly having to do substitutes, especially when it’s all the heavy lifting that I like, and can’t do.

I can’t tell you how good the new Batman film looks, see for yourself:

Of if you prefer a better quality version:

http://atasteforthetheatrical.com/deathtrap/default.htm