concretecavewoman

This is great. In other news, thanks for the reminder! I rigged up a little system for mob'ing my hips while working last night from home: 1) Move dining chair about 3' from the couch. 2) Set laptop on seat of dining chair 3) brace dining chair with a second dining chair 4) Get into couch stretch/any other favorite hip mob position 5) Suffer while you work (or play minecraft. whatever. I don't judge) I also did the hip biasing stretch with my laptop on the floor as well as squats. After an hour or so my hips felt magical. Magically painful.

The nice thing about eating paleo is that it doesn't prescribe how often to eat but it does lend itself (due to higher fat/protein content) to eating less often with bigger portions. Unless you're doing Intermittent Fasting it doesn't matter when you're getting your food intake all that much. Just don't eat when you're not hungry. Like oystergirl, I do IF so I eat during an 8-hour feeding window. It usually ends up being two larger meals and a snack. For pork fat, I render a bunch every few months and keep it in a jar in the fridge.

Hey! I'm going to be going to Dubai soon (on the way to the Maldives) and was wondering if anyone had some hott tipz on fun things to do while there. And no, I won't be staying in the 7 star hotel I've got 3 full days to muddle around the city.

I've done some island hopping around French Polynesia and it was ah-may-zing. I also know someone who swears by island camping as you've suggested, as well as another person who canoed from place to place in Palau and sent back some incredible photos.

Hey! Your post mentioned tropical destinations. While I know that most people don't consider island hopping "real" travel, I think there's something to just getting away from it all and indulging in nature/beaches. And there are lots of interesting experiences to be had once you get away from the main islands of whatever chain you happen to be visiting (though it tends to be a fairly expensive way to travel since you have few hotelling options and all the food is imported, generally). Fjolan: I'm always seeing billboards here in Seattle advertising cheap flights between here and Reykjavik - I'm actually thinking of visiting next December.

I think the VFF pain might be related to foot swelling over the course of the run. They may not feel tight when you slip them on, but three miles later when your feet are up half a size... In addition to what everyone else has said about shin splints (which is legit) you might consider visiting a PT to have PT massage done on your shin muscles such that they really work the attachment sites below the knee (for anterior) and at the ankle (for posterior). Be prepared to cry like a hungry, angry baby. Once the pain goes away, then you can start doing strengthening exercises like heel walking.

Actually a home gym is probably the one option not available. Like CoreyD, we are small apartment dwellers, and I'm not sure how much the downstairs neighbors would like to hear me dropping the weights haha. bprime: Thanks for the links! One of the powerlifting gyms is reasonably close to where I'm going to move, awesome.

Dear Fellow Strength Guilders, I may soon be suffering from a case of Barbell Withdrawal Syndrome, otherwise known as BWS. The signs and symptoms of BWS are clear: tiny, shriveled arms, futile attempts to squat large bags of rice, delirium tremens when driving by local gyms, deadlifting fallen tree limbs... The causes are myriad, but my causes are thus: moving in a few months to an area of Seattle that is utterly bereft (BEREFT I say!) of gyms that have barbells. I called the nearest respectable-looking gym to ask if they had a squat or power rack, and their response was "Oh yeah! We have a Smith Rack" <facepalm/>. I want to continue to preserve and build the tiny reservoir of strength that I've developed over the last few months and I hope it is not inextricably tied to the barbell I love oh so much. My options, as I see, it are the following: - Stick with my old gym membership. The nearest branch is, well, not very near. Looking at a 45 min drive. - Join the neighborhood crossfit gym (5 blocks away). Their offerings appear to be pretty stock. Guess I'd retool for a capacity bias? - Join a crossfit gym about 3 mi away that has strength focused classes in addition to regular xfit classes. It's also $$$$. - Boxing gym within 3 blocks (holy cow!) of the neighborhood I'm looking at. I've wanted to try boxing but I'm not sure if I'll lose strength with that flavor of conditioning. - Body weight/convict conditioning? - Join the gym that only has a smith rack and do all the normal Strong Lifts stuff with dumbbells Any other ideas that I might be missing? Feedback/ideas would be most appreciated on this very First World Problem. I've been admittedly spoiled the last couple years by living within a 10-minute walk to a very affordable big-box gym that has lots of underutilized squat racks.

My last job was backend programming of real-time flight data ingestion services, but I'm sure the hardware folks 'round here (like bigm) easily out-nerd this. My current job requires talking to people on a regular basis, so not quite as nerdy.

Check out local meetups for women lifters. Or try a crossfit gym.

Oh golly.... non-nerdly things? Child actor; made regular appearances on Telemundo I auditioned for jeopardy I play bluegrass guitar, and am generally into old-timey Americana like soap-making and lard-rendering I'm into food preservation and meat-curing. I've made cheeses, bacon, rillettes, sausages... I don't watch TV and haven't had cable in 4 years. And I'm a little smug about it. My mother designs and fabricates hyper-modern furniture (you know, that stuff that looks like two sticks of furniture in a concrete room), so as a result I guess I'm pretty knowledgeable about modern interior design Everything else I'm into is pretty freakin' nerdy.

Some people are good at phasing things out slowly and some people are better at cold turkey. That said: 1) if your goal is to kick these items, get them out of the house. 2) eat more fat with your usual meals to suppress hunger. 3) If you ever feel like seriously caving, remind yourself that this isn't hard. Beating cancer is hard (to steal a line from Whole30).

8 miles this morning. Dawsy - really interesting about your VFF experience! I've been going through the same thing with VFFs lately even though I've been running in them consistently for about two years. Starting to get weird aches and pains and blisters. Thinking of going to huaraches instead.

THIS A few weeks ago I was heavy squatting and some god awful autotune song kicked in. I lost it and nearly dropped the bar. Autotune should be banned from gyms!

Concur, if the hundreds of thousands of bankrupt college graduates with social justice and dance majors are any indicator, doing what you love does NOT mean that the money will come. Student debt now exceeds credit debt in the US. The advice should instead read: Do what you love and hopefully the love of your work will outweigh any compensation you may or may not get. I started as an English major with dreams of a professorial job (at the time I had not yet been enlightened to the fact that tenured professorships are all but dead to the thousands of new PhDs minted every year). My funding dried up after my first year and suddenly I realized that 11 years of schooling might not be the most financially sustainable route. I'd always been a nerd and was pretty fluent with computers, but I'd never programmed and had taken almost no math. But I still thought it'd be a good idea to switch to Computer Science. Best decision I ever made. 6 years after graduation I've worked at a startup and two major companies. Now, it's not roses and cupcakes every day, but it's challenging, stable, in-demand, I get to work with uber smart people every day, and it allows me to do lots of other cool things in my free time. Remember, if work didn't suck at least some of the time, we wouldn't get paid for it Anyhow, a couple of links worth considering: 1) College majors, employment rates, and earnings. Sort employment rate in ascending order for a real eye-opener. 2) Reasons not to go to college, especially if you have an entrepreneurial/investors spirit. 3) Current trends in student debt. Key line: "if you borrow more than your expected starting salary after you graduate, you're going to struggle to pay your loans" I finished school in 2005 and fees at my UC have tripled since then. You really have to weigh if the $100k+ investment you're looking to make is going to have sufficient returns to make it worthwhile. For some career paths, you're better of just going to your local public library and reading like a madman for a year or two. Cost: Free. Good luck with your journey. Deciding the next branch in your life is always an exciting step.

If psychology's your bag, then check out the You Are Not So Smart blog. Such an addictive read.

To hypnotize a rabbit, flip it on it's back and cover its eyes. The handle of a scythe is called a 'snath'. On a tour of the US during the prohibition era, Winston Churchill lauded his son for a chief talent: procuring alcohol in every state which they visited. Dunning-Kruger Effect. Explains most of what is wrong in the world.

7.16 miles this afternoon, logged.

I've done both the NRoLFW and NRoL, MUCH preferred the men's version, but ultimately found the free material at Starting Strength to be the best out there, coupled with the Strong Lifts 5x5 plan (as many here have noted). NRoLFW doesnt set you up for progression well enough, IMO.

This may not be finger food to most people, but it sure is to most paleo people that I know: Bone-in, skin-on roasted pork shoulder, shredded into big chunks. My Recipe: Spice rub: 3 tbs 100% cocoa powder, 3 tbs ancho chile powder, 1 tbs dried thyme, 2 tbs salt, 1 tsp ground pepper (non-paleo ingredient alert) 2 tbs brown sugar. Mix and apply to a 6-8 lb pork shoulder. Roast in a 275F oven for 7-8 hours. Shred and eat. Use the rendered fat as a dipping sauce

A few things: 1) Using the highest bandwidth form of communication possible. If I can't talk face to face, then I call; if I can't call, then I email. Texting/IM are options of the last resort. I mostly use this tactic at work. I figure our paleolithic ancestors wouldn't have made a cave painting to talk to the guy next to him in at the fire pit; why should I? 2) Staying out of debt. Why purchase a sword of Damoclese? 3) Spending on experiences over things. 4) I also do the cold showers thing. It's terrible. Every time I do it I wonder why. 5) Avoiding reading the news. I used to be a news junkie but I found it too stress-inducing. 6) Hobbies that involve creation. I like to make stuff with my hands since my work (software) doesn't produce anything tangible and tactile.

That's boss.

Both, my VFFs are a little over 2 years old and I've been running in them for the same amount of time. If anything, after a couple years of minimizing my shoes, my feet are a wee bit smaller (dropped half a shoe size). Typically I run on the TM twice a week and outdoors once a week, but since October (read, since it's been cold) I've been eschewing the VFFs for NB minimal shoes. Maybe that's the difference? I have injinjis so maybe I could try that, or going completely barefoot on the TM.

So after over two years of running in VFFs, I experienced something this week that I have not experienced before in my history of minimalist running: blisters. I went for a run on Monday evening (dreadmill), my normal 10k. By the end of the run, my "run" had become more of a "comic hobble" and it felt like tiny pissed off alligators were biting the spaces between my toes. How is this possible after logging many many miles in VFFs? Even a brief walk this evening in said VFFs exacerbated the blisters. Any ideas? Will I be forced to throw on the minimuses tomorrow morning just so I don't get more inter-toe blistering?