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I realized something the other day: For the first time in my life, I feel completely satisfied with my physique.

At 31, I am fitter than I have ever been. Leaner. Stronger. With a BMI of roughly 18, I'm in the "low-normal" or "athlete" range for females (who, me?). I have a six-pack and obliques and (according to Ironman, who might be biased) a pretty nice butt.

But it isn't about looks, is it? It's about health. Longevity. Vitality. Ability.
I love being able to lift heavier and run faster than ever before -- not for numbers on a chart, though visual progress is satisfying, but because it's practical, here on the farm, to be able to lift ranch panels and buck hay and haul water.

I love being able to hike up a mountain, row down a river, camp in the wilderness, ride a horse 50 miles in a day.

I love feeling as though I have, for once, actually arrived.

Not that I'll stop striving. I'll still add weight, still try to make each hill sprint faster than the one before. All the same, it's high time I settled back a bit, mentally, so as to enjoy not just the doing, but the sense of having done.

Fitness is freedom, my friends. It ought to be earned -- and once earned, it ought to be enjoyed.

Seize the day.
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Related Posts
Go Figure

Primal Hamburger Casserole

Raise your hand if you've ever eaten Hamburger Helper. (Yes, I confess that my hand is up. But I haven't touched the stuff in at least 4 years, and I rarely did so before that.)

Because my family lived on a small farm and raised a beef cow every year, I grew up eating a lot of ground beef. Though I never have come around to liking meatloaf, I do have fond memories of meaty spaghetti sauce, thick burgers, and hamburger casserole.

The problem with most hamburger casseroles, however, is that they tend to include pasta and/or beans, either of which renders them high-carb and un-primal. Fortunately, a dose of big flavor (in the form of herbs, olives, and especially sundried tomatoes) can primalize this meal with ease.

I've enjoyed this quick, one-dish casserole several times lately, including once over spaghetti squash fried in butter for a large dinner, and once for breakfast with an egg over easy on top. If you eat dairy, a sprinkle of parmisan or cheddar would make an excellent garnish. I used fresh herbs because my garden is bursting with them, but dried will work too if they're all you have on hand.


Primal Hamburger Casserole

1/3 lb ground beef (not lean -- we want those saturated fats!)
1/3 cup onion, julienned
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 mushrooms, sliced
10 black olives, sliced
10 sundried tomato halves, chopped
1 Tbs each fresh basil and oregano (or 1 tsp each dried)

Pre-heat skillet over medium flame. Add beef, onion, garlic, and mushrooms. Stir to crumble beef, and occasionally until meat is cooked. Add olives, sundried tomatoes, and herbs and cook about 1 minute until heated through. Serves 1.

On the Road Again

It's vacation time! Ironman and I are spending six days in Idaho's Owyhee canyonlands -- a vast, scenic expanse of rough canyons, steep hills, sagebrush, antelope, and sky.

I'm spending much of my time horseback, participating in the Owyhee Canyonlands Pioneer multi-day endurance race. Technically, my mare and I are doing Limited Distance (30 mile races) rather than endurance (50+ mile races) because this is her first year in the sport and she's not quite fit for endurance yet. Still, we hope to rack up 85 miles throughout the week.

Ironman, meanwhile, is splitting his time between volunteering in ridecamp and exploring the glories of Idaho with a fly rod in one hand and his rifle in the other. Hmm...maybe we'll get another meal of trout and chukar out of the deal!

If not, we're still eating well and as primal as possible. Planning primal meals for a whole week in camp is a bit tougher than it was for just the weekend race we attended last month. I've packed a variety of cold, cooked meats, tinned and smoked fish, avocados, eggs (hardboiled and raw), Primal Energy Mix, nut butters, Larabars, sliced veggies, fresh fruits, primal dressings and dips, and possibly some adult beverages, just in case.

We take our vacation food seriously, Ironman and I...but not too seriously. ;)

Tuesday Tallies: Primal Menus & Movement

Welcome to Tuesday Tallies, my weekly answer to the FAQs: What do you eat? and Good gravy, woman, how much do you work out?

(For those who prefer not to slog through the details, the brief answers are, respectively, a lot and not as much as you'd think.)

Primal living is hardly a matter of dietary deprivation or physical exhaustion. To paraphrase primal guru Mark Sisson: Eat real food. Move around a lot at a slow pace. Lift heavy things. Sprint occasionally. Get enough sleep.

In other words, it's a simple matter of living well, eating the right foods, and working out smart instead of long. Below are samples of my attempt to do precisely that:

Wednesday's Food as Fuel:

Vegetable and sausage omelet. Cherry tomatoes with olive oil and lime.
Apple with almond butter.
Spinach salad with black olives and hard boiled eggs.
Sardines in mustard sauce. Sundried tomatoes.
Chukar fried in butter with fresh herbs. Pork tenderloin. Sauteed vegetables. Spinach salad with avocado, artichoke hearts, and olives.
A couple beers and some whiskey.

2,464 calories, 113g carbs, 145g fat, 122g protein

Wednesday's Workout:

Rest day from formal workout. Slept in instead!
12 mile equine endurance conditioning ride with some running beside the horse.
Farm chores and general activity.
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Thursday's Food as Fuel:

Spinach salad with avocado and hard boiled eggs. Grapes.
Coconut and White Fish Stir Fry.
Primal nut and coconut mix.
Two hard boiled eggs. Cucumber slices with feta.
Chicken breast with peach chutney. Spaghetti squash sauteed with butter and crisped sage leaves. Cherry tomatoes.
Dark chocolate and coconut milk.

2,217 calories, 107g carbs, 157g fat, 123g protein

Thursday's Workout:

5x rotation of push-ups, heavy squats, and overhead presses
3x renegade rows
2x pull-ups
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Sunday's Food as Fuel:

Coconut milk.
Primal Hamburger Casserole (recipe coming later this week). Egg over easy.
Spinach salad with tuna.
Apple with almond butter.
Turkey drumstick and thigh, with skin.
Dark chocolate and green tea with coconut milk.

2,034 calories, 71g carbs, 137g fat, 147g protein

Sunday's Workout:

6x rotation of incline push-ups, weighted walking lunges, pull-ups, and weighted hanging leg raises

Primal living: So easy, a caveman could do it! ;)

From Sky to Skillet: Ironman Takes Primal to a New Level

Ironman has been showing me up on the primal front, lately -- and he doesn't even claim to be primal! (He has been experimenting with grain elimination, however, with positive results including decreased "hunger crashes.")

Yes, while I've been sitting in my office shuffling papers, Ironman has been traversing Idaho's wild hillsides with a rifle in one hand and eyes peeled for game birds.

Last week, he managed to bag not one, not two, but four sage grouse. These large-chicken-sized birds live on sagebrush leaves and insects, and Ironman's fellow hunters warned him that they make lousy eating. Not one to waste a kill, Ironman decided to try it anyway.

After putting the grouse meat through two, long brine soaks (he changd the saltwater out halfway through), Ironman dusted the meat with seasoned flour and panfried it in butter with plenty of garlic and capers. It was incredible! Not gamey at all, the grouse featured beautifully in a meal that also included herb-sauteed vegetables, spinach salad, and an appetizer of fresh, grilled trout.

Yes, we were pretty happy with ourselves. Can you tell?

A few days later, he brought in a chukar. Native to Eurasia and first introduced to North America in the late 1800's, these wily little gamebirds yield small but tasty breasts. Here's one:

We fried him up in butter -- the chukar, not Ironman! -- along with fresh sage leaves (culinary sage, that is, not sagebrush), which turn delightfully crisp when removed from the pan. He was delicious.

Hmm. I think I can deal with being outdone once in a while. ;)

Go Figure

I once dated a guy who told me I was too fat. His reasoning? The insides of my upper thighs touched each other.

I'm sorry to say that, presumably because I was young and brainwashed by our weight-obsessed culture, his comment affected me for years. It became a measure by which I assessed my own fitness, which was never poor, but wasn't always peak, either. I recall with dismay the internal monologue: My thighs are touching! Crap! Gotta run more! (Wrong.)

This past March, while still eating flegan, I dived into a fitness regime unprecedented by anything I'd tried before, including my distance running days. A friend put me onto bodyweight training and Tabata, hill sprints and weight lifting.

In my typically obsessive manner, I devoured literature on the subject of strength training and HIIT (high intensity interval training). Plenty of science backed it up, but the best proof of all was the changes in my own physique. By June, I was leaner than I'd ever been. My biceps earned admiration from colleagues, and the shadow of a six-pack appeared in my midsection. I was getting close to doing the first pull-up of my life. And, my thighs didn't touch. Score!

Then, something changed. Along about July, my fitness efforts bogged down in a quagmire of fatigue, bloating, and poor quality sleep. I looked pretty good, but I felt worse and worse. What on earth was I doing wrong?

My research led me first to the possibility of removing grains from my diet. It took me two months of reading to accept that the "healthy whole grains" that comprised nearly half of my daily intake could actually be wreaking cumulative damage on my intestines due to glucose intolerance, or simply the toxins such foods contain.

By the time I was convinced that going grain-free was worth a try, I'd also come around to understanding the detrimental effects of excessive carbohydrate intake. Thus began my shift to primal eating, which I embraced whole-heartedly by mid-August.

Now, looking down the barrel of October with a growing set of Tuesday Tallies documenting my new eating patterns (low carb, high fat, moderate protein) and continued bodybuilding and sprint workouts, I have replaced bloating and fatigue with muscle mass and power.

There's just one problem: My thighs touch.

I confess this bothered me, when I first noticed it a few weeks back. Were the primal advocates wrong? Would all that new thigh muscle make me look fat? How about the newly-defined obliques that both strengthened and thickened my core? Was I losing the figure I'd worked months to achieve?

Yes, the questions bothered me...but not nearly as much as the thought of giving up my workouts. After all, my primary goal had always been to achieve a high level of functional strength and cardiovascular endurance -- and I'd never felt better nor been more powerful! No way was I going to sacrifice athleticism for cultural ideals.

All the same, I was most gratified to stumble across the photo below.

I'm no professional pole-vaulter, but I'm proud to say that my physique doesn't fall too far short of this chick's. I'm no guy, either, but I think she's pretty damn hot -- sculpted obliques, touching thighs, and all.

Go figure.

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Related Resources:

The Definitive Guide to Grains from Mark's Daily Apple

The Real Truth About Those "Healthy Whole Grains" from Fitness Spotlight

Unexpected Effects of a Wheat-Free Diet from Heart Scan Blog

The Definitive Guide to Fats from Mark's Daily Apple

Fats: The Real Story and Why You Need Them from Fitness Spotlight

Saturated Fat Intake vs Heart Disease & Stroke from Free the Animal

Sugar is Poison -- a link from Fathead to Dr. Lustig's excellent video presentation. Highly recommended!

Further Adventures with Coconut & Fish

I seem to have developed a new addiction. The combination of fish and coconut, particularly with a generous helping of mixed vegetables, is remarkably seductive. It wasn't long ago that I posted this Thai Fish and Vegetable Soup with Coconut Milk. Last week, I threw together this 10-minute meal of Coconut Mahi-Mahi with Tomato-Avocado Salad.

Yesterday, after an evening of riding lessons and farm chores, Ironman and I whipped up a quick meal featuring similar flavors in another form: Coconut and White Fish Stir Fry. Unfortunately, I failed to take a photo of the dish before inhaling it along with a dessert of sliced bananas and strawberries topped with a bit of dark chocolate and coconut milk, so you'll just have to imagine its bright vegetables, white flakes of fish, and flavorful, orange sauce.

Coconut and White Fish Stir Fry

12 oz cooked, firm white fish, separated into large flakes (We used red snapper last night, baked just like the Coconut Mahi-Mahi in the link above.)
6 cups julienned vegetables (We used carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, broccoli, onion, tomatoes, and spinach. Note that the spinach doesn't count toward the 6 cups!)
2 Tbs Coconut oil
1/2 Tbs fresh chili paste
Lime juice
1/3 cup coconut flakes, dried and unsweetened

Heat coconut oil in wok or large skillet. Add veggies and saute quickly, stirring frequently; season with chili paste and a generous squeeze of lime. Add fish and allow to heat briefly, stirring gently. Plate and top stir fry with a sprinkle of coconut flakes. Serves 3-4.