I want to say thank you so much to Bill and Jennie for motivating and introducing me to CrossFit! As you both know, I basically never worked out in my life. I was never motivated enough to do it and I didn't like it. Now, I LOVE it, thanks to you two. I can't wait to be fit! I truly appreciate the opportunity you have given me to be a part of the Fort.

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Bill- my back has held up, except for those days that I was traveling with the backpack for extended periods of time, on those days, I had some pretty bad episodes. I'm so happy I joined CrossFit before I left, I needed the strength, endurance, and agility To get me through. My other two girlfriends couldn't keep up at times and they both workout regularly.

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I just want to thank the both of you for providing Crossfit as a tool. I've been seeing results but not to the magnitude as I did yesterday.

I got home and later on that evening I decided to recalculate the distance I had run because it seemed longer for some reason. Driving the route I thought at most I ran 5.3 miles. It turned out to actually to be 6.9 miles. I couldn't believe it!!!! The year 2000 was the last time I ran that distance!

To think that before I started CrossFit I had problems breathing during any type of strenuous activity (Sometimes even walking up stairs) and now I am as far as I have gotten is mind boggling to me! This has made me more motivated to keep improving myself than ever before!

Thank you both so much for helping people learn how to improve themselves and providing an environment that allows for it to happen! Yesterday was a huge turning point for me and it wouldn't have happened without your help!

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I just love how you guys encourage and motivate me and everyone.......I told Bill that y'all inspire the uninspired.... I have made Crossfit Fire one of my top priorities. Thank you for everything and especially believing in me......believing in all of us!!!!!!

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There are two indoor rowing events taking place in January and February. Both are rather inexpensive and within driving distance. Let's go show the rowing community what a bunch of CrossFitters can do! Similar to the Weightlifting Meet we attended in early December, these two events should be a blast (outside of rowing 2000m!). If you are interested in participating in 1 or both, please sign-up on the whiteboard at the Fort. As an added incentive, any row time that sets a new record at the Fort will be honored.

What: Midwinter Meltdown
When: January 30, 2010 @ 8:00am
Cost: $20 if registering before January 25th and $25 after said date (spectators are free)
Location: Princeton Club - West, 8080 Watts Road, Madison, WI
More Information:
The Mendota Rowing Club will host the 27th Annual Midwinter Meltdown Indoor Rowing Competition on Saturday, January 30, 2010. Events include 1000m, 2000m, 6000m and relays. Up to four competitors who qualify will receive air transportation to Boston to compete in the 2010 World Indoor Rowing Championships (CRASH-B Sprints)in Boston. All events will be rowed on Concept2 Model D ergometers.

What: Chicago Indoor Rowing Championships
When: February 27, 2010 @ 9:00am
Cost: $35
Location: TBA, Chicago, IL
More Information:
Events include 500m and 2000m as well as 2500m team relay.

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The one thing I question. It lists fatty meats as foods to avoid. Such as T-bone, ground beef, bacon etc. Convince me these are ok in the paleo diet, especially the grass fed variety? Love me some good t-bone so I really want to be convinced.

Heath, as well as many others, asked the above question after picking up a copy of The Paleo Diet for Athletes. This is one of the reasons why I no longer recommend that anyone read The Paleo Diet or any of Dr. Cordain's other books. Instead, I now point people to The Primal Blueprint, Trick And Treat, or Good Calories, Bad Calories when beginning this way of eating.

Getting back to the original question, the reason you are continuously told to avoid red meat and its fat is because of the Diet-Heart Hypothesis which gained popularity in the 1950s thanks to Dr. Ancel Keys. It was hypothesized that eating saturated fats (i.e. red meat) would increase one's total and LDL cholesterols and in turn increase one's chances of heart disease. This is simply untrue.

The problem is that over the course of a few decades the Diet-Heart hypothesis became accepted as fact without the proper science to back it up. The scientific method was completely ignored and fraudulent practices reigned supreme. If you are wondering 'why' or 'how' this would happen, hang around and we'll hit on that again in the near future. For now, just know that it probably had something to do with money.

What I'm trying to say is that you should stop fearing red meat and high cholesterol. If you want to be healthy and disease free, ditch the grains and sugars while embracing red meat and it's high levels of saturated fat. Let the uninformed masses continue to pay a premium for the low-fat meats and be thankful that we don't have to pay as much for the life promoting cuts

Here are Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's 8 facts on cholesterol:

1. Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent.
2. A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3. Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.
4. There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.
5. The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.
6. The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide.
7. Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8. The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.

Here are several other sources that address this very topic:

Whole Health Source
Manninen Nutraceuticals: Finland's Authority on Human Performance
The Cholesterol Myths
New cholesterol guidelines for converting healthy people into patients
THINCS: The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c[/youtube]

The New York City health department has released a nauseating video in an effort to prevent people from drinking sugary beverages. The video was posted Monday on YouTube.

A man opens a soda can and pours the liquid into a glass. It's actually a mess of goopy fat.

When he tries to drink it, he ends up with fat globs on his face.

The message: Drinking just one can of soda a day can add up to 10 pounds of weight in a year.

Health Commissioner Thomas Farley says sugary drinks are a large part of the obesity epidemic.

A 2007 health department survey found that more than 2 million New Yorkers drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day.

Avoiding sugary beverages is definitely something we encourage at the Fort. Remember though that the zero calorie alternatives aren't any better for you. Stick to eating your calories and drinking your water for the best health. Oh, and did anyone else notice the sneaky dairy industry and their low-fat milk in the final frame?

What do the rest of you think of ads like this? Love them? Hate them? Post your thoughts to comments.

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