Thank you for joining me!

Welcome to the Happy Grappler. The key to a consistent practice is joy. As an aging athlete, I continue to seek out methods that help to keep a smile on my face, relatively fit and pain free. This is my mental graffiti. Enjoy!

Thursday, January 17, 2013

99 posts on the grappler's wall... 99 posts hmmmm hmmmm...

It's stuck in your head now isn't it? ;-P

Greetings tribe and hello once again to my grabbag of grappling and mental mishmosh. This will be very random, but this also serves as an update into my various January challenges.

Intermittent Fasting/Diet/Food Journal/Supps: I did a ton of reading on the subject everywhere from "The 8 hour Diet", Martin Berkhan, John Berardi, Ori Hofmekler, to Mark Sisson. I eventually arrived at doing a 8 hour feasting window from 12p to 8p. Although I am still paleo/primal in my approach to food, if I want a cookie in the middle of the week or a glass of wine or a cheat meal on the weekend, I will have it. I have also included keeping a food journal and write down everything that goes into my mouth, either good or bad. Even though I initially shy away from it, I have also included weekly weigh ins on Wednesday morning to track progress. I have had some blood work done for my yearly physical and my labs show that all of my numbers are great except for my vitamin D level which is critically low. So I have started a supplementation regimen of once weekly high potency vitamin D, fish oil, and Green Coffee Bean extract (it was on Dr. Oz, what can I say, I'm a sucker!?!?) In order to hit my protein requirement, I have also utilized whey protein in bars and shake form to get my needs in. So far this experiment has been very interesting. In the past when I did the primal blueprint, I shed 11 pounds in one month. So far in 2 weeks of these changes and adjustments, I have lost 9 pounds. WOW! And I believe in order of importance the food journal trumps it all with IF coming in a close second. Writing everything keeps me accountable to myself and knowing that I have to write things down keeps me very honest in my selection of foods. Even though we are just halfway in this monthly experiment, results so far are very promising. I did talk to my primary care doctor about my "one month challenges" and she thought it was a great idea.

Vipassana before bed: This has been very challenging. Initially I was using an mp3 download of a guided meditation lead by Tara Brach. I found that different thoughts were flooding my head at that time, with lots of distractions and it became difficult to relax, however, once I did relax, my sleep was very, very sound. In fact, more sound than when I was using taiji and qigong. I then started using a breath counting method used by some friends on IgX and that was a step in the right direction. As a late xmas present, I received a Kindle Fire HD and loaded it with free apps which included an Insight meditation timer with interval bells and an ending chime. I am not counting my breath, I am just naturally focusing on in and out breaths. So far, this has been the most powerful method and I find myself much more focused and relaxed throughout the day and not so "intense and wired."

Speaking of the kindle, I am reading works by Dan John, Mike Boyle, Christian Graugart, Jenny Phillips and John MacArthur right now, plus a lil' bit of angry birds and fruit ninja. Next post I will outline some of the effects that training the Dan John/Mike Boyle has had on myself after some time to evaluate it.

Training is going very well, I am rolling with the lightest touch possible and earning top position by focusing on my sweep and guard game. My DLR game is coming along nicely and I am hitting several deep half sweeps rather well.

I will end with some Ryan Hall for your viewing pleasure. Have a great week and stay happy!


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