Buy Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us here.

“Sip of Soda” Via Adam Chaim

Mercola article “When Great Superstars Endorse Bad Lifestyle Choices.”

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Bea Arthur naked.  You’re welcome.

Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

Early in this podcast, Vinnie and Anna talk about the genesis of The Simpsons, which debuted as an interstitial on The Tracey Ullman Show. They then get into the infamous Bea Arthur portrait, as visible above.

Angelina Jolie

Later, they talk about Angelina Jolie’s preventative procedure and BRCA1. That leads to the interview with superfan and oncologist Dr. Jennifer Cultrera.

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Carla and Family (aren’t they GORGEOUS people????)

Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

Early in this episode Vinnie talks vegans. Vinnie and Anna then chat with Carla Hunt. They talk about her heart surgery and the issues she faces. Later, they talk about television and its sponsors.

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70 Pound Dachsund

Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

Vinnie and Anna go back to the music with a rendition of “She Talks To Angels” by The Black Crowes. Andrea Anders is back in the studio for another episode. Early on, they talk about triathletes who are able to finish triathlons despite having weight issues. Later, Jessica Gottlieb joins the show to talk about McDonald’s and the practice of Ronald McDonald visiting schools. After chatting with Jessica, they get into the Coca-Cola calorie count campaign. They also talk about the drop of running shoes. Toward the end of the episode, they discuss the development of children. Oh, and Anna serenades us once again with her Aaron Neville impression.

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Nigella Lawson

How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking

Think and Grow Rich

Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

Vinnie and Anna chat about the band Blind Melon as this episode kicks off. That leads to Vinnie talking about his favorite authors from way back when he was a kid. Later in the podcast, Andrea Anders joins for another appearance. The conversation includes mention of British foodie Nigella Lawson (picture above).

Chris Christie

Later, Vinnie weighs in (pun intended) on Christ Christie’s lap band surgery.

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Something amazing happened yesterday while I was riding my bike. One of my fellow cyclists/kick-ass chick AKA- Kristie Concepcion said to me: Hey, follow behind my wheel, come on! I said- Who me? Yeah right! I thought me? She’s an Ironman and she kicks ass. But anyhow, I did and was able to hang on for a good 5 miles with her!

3 months ago, I could of never done this! The point to this message is:

2 hrs before my cycling, I ate 2 hard boiled eggs and half a slice of a small avocado. Right before the ride I had my own homemade coconut oil/peanut butter ball thingies that I make for the week.

When I followed behind her, it was like something in my legs turned on, like turbo? And I was fine, no pain and I didn’t feel like I was going to bonk! I had this burst of energy!!! It was amazing Granted, this is not how I’ve been riding. I’ve been following your advice and I alternate between zones and I think that all this hard work was put to the test yesterday. So, It’s good to know that If I needed to go that fast my body could do it. WOW!!

I know you’re a pro! But this to me is a big deal and I see so much more potential in me with my biking and I LOVE IT!!!! Thank you, thank you! It’s like finally that light bulb turned on!!! I get criticize by family and friends who do not agree with my NSNG lifestyle…They tell me that I’m killing myself, but I’ve never as great as I do now!!! I must be doing something right! I just tend to be a little impatient and just want to shed all this weight off NOW! But I know how it works now all thanks to you.

Cindy

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Support Superfan Mike Tate raising money for Beyond Blue!!! (More info about Beyond Blue here and the North Face 100 here)

Traffic performing “Low Spark on High Heeled Boys”:

Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

Once again, Vinnie and Anna take a trip down memory lane…musically, that is. They then bring up the well-known Neville family. Vinnie reminisces about his days in New Orleans. Later, they talk about the Ironman swim changes. Strap in for a rant. Vinnie and Anna then move on to a few questions. Later, they talk about optimal weight.

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Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

A classic Bob Seger song leads off this episode. As you can probably tell, music has been a popular theme on the podcast lately. Later, Vinnie and Serena talk about their restaurant experiences. They then examine the Al Roker article (link above). That goes into an interview with Chris Rawlins.

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Topsy and Izzy.

Vinnie and Anna welcome special guest Serena Scott Thomas into the studio to discuss running, snacking, and Dr. Timothy Noakes’ changing opinions on fueling for endurance.  Superfan Tom Barbieri is interviewed about kids snacks for sporting events.

Listen to Runner Academy Podcast with Timothy Noakes here.

Kmart “Ship Your Pants!”

Michael Tortorich sums up the podcast in the My Uncle Vinnie Blog Wrap Up:

It’s probably safe to say the show has gone to the dogs. As you can see from the cute picture above, the dogs are special guests on this podcast. Serena Scott Thomas returns to sit in for this episode. Early on, they talk about a funny new K-mart ad. Later, they discuss schizophrenegenic snacking. After that, superfan Tom Barbieri chats about the difficulties of introducing healthy foods at his kids’ sporting events.

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Why is this in my race bag?

It’s 7am. I’m checking in at packet pickup to take on the hardest uphill climb I’ve done in my short life as an endurance athlete. I’ve done half ironman races, I’ve done a 5k open water swim, I’ve gone places that the person I was 110 pounds heavier could not have imagined a few years ago.

Yet the uphill battle I am expecting this day (a 25k trail run that has climbs so steep, everyone ends up on their hands and knees, some of us in prayer not to fall off the mountain to our deaths) is met with another uphill battle: another freebie in the race bag that makes me wonder “why did I join up with the endiurance community if this is the crap people still eat?”

There is a technical term for this: cognitive dissonance. That’s when your mind holds two different thoughts at the same time, which cannot be reconciled. We don’t usually think about this consciously, but when we believe one thing but act as if we believe the opposite, we’re living in cognitive dissonance. When Ted Haggard was leading the charge against homosexual people having rights, meanwhile paying a male prostitute with meth, right there is a solid hardcore example of cognitive dissonance.

The food around endurance sports is a less dramatic, but just as accurate, textbook case of cognitive dissonance, and precisely the source of my own frustration that made me wonder why I was the same weight after two years of endurance sports. Looking for off-the-beaten-path answers is what led me to find first Vinnie, then low carb, then paleo. And all of these voices need to be much louder within the endurance community. We’re made up of a lot of people who may look fit, but are carb addicts. If you find this stuff in a bag at a trail run, where I expect a less modern, more natural vibe, it’s clearly everywhere.

If you look around the world of triathlon, as well as the three individual sports that go into them, you will find a vast array of people, many shapes and sizes. This is a good thing. Without that, many of us would never even bother. I am glad to have found a community that invites me to be a part of it, as one of the slowest, and still largest out there. It has inspired me to blog, and to encourage others who don’t see themselves in the category of “athlete.” There is nothing like the encouragement that the back of the pack receives at a triathlon, marathon, or even your local 5k.

But even with my weight loss so far, I am still a very large guy, and I don’t want to stay this way. I took a hard look at things after my first year in endurance, going from couch to half-marathon and an Olympic distance triathlon in my first year. The progress in distance was great. But the weight loss was not happening. I had to take a serious look at my relationship with food. That landed me in the 12-step world, for which I am truly grateful. But even in those first months, I had convinced myself that all this talk of eliminating sugar entirely, well, that didn’t apply to me since I am now an endurance athlete. We fuel on carbs, right? So I was off Snickers bars (ate two on the bike in my first tri in 2011) for the “much healthier” box of clif bars. I was seeing weight loss under my new self-defined abstinence, so I was sure it was working. My first OA sponsor really tried to warn me that I was playing with fire, that there was little difference. I said “oh yeah, yeah… I know.” But I didn’t. After a disappointing DNF at my first half-iron attempt, I fell off the wagon, and was again overeating as an addict, and of course I regained a lot of weight.

The endurance world is made up of high achievers and tough-it-out types. But we spend a lot of time making it harder on ourselves than we need to. At the middle and back of the pack are many of us who still struggle with weight, but use the long training hours and races as an excuse to indulge in too much food. Check out the food tent at any big race. Even after the race, it’s quick carb city. The red herring of “carb loading” has gone so far from what it ACTUALLY meant for elite runners who would deplete reserves to then jam them back quickly, to now being an everyman’s parade of pasta for days before and after an event. It’s human nature to take the excessive part of a method and forget the other side. (How many Mardi Gras partiers actually observe a disciplined Lent?) Check out the conventional wisdom from this article on active.com, a major player in the mainstream endurance world. Carbs=good, fat=bad.

The current grab-anything-that sounds-good trend that is keeping many endurance people on the sugar wagon is good old chocolate milk. One magazine prints an article comparing chocolate milk to other drinks for recovery, and instantly establishes a paradigm we’re all dying to hear: it’s good for you! Recover right! The chocolate milk people wasted no time in jumping the popular wave, and have pro triathletes on board for marketing. Two months before I found the NSNG way, I was considering producing a “Become One” video contest entry to win a trip to Ironman Kona and train with Hines Ward along the way. I hope Hines finishes Kona strong. I hope the people who won the contest get to compete and finish. But I know that as long as I stayed on the chocolate-milk-as-recovery train, I was still living in my sugar addiction, undoing all the progress I made with training.

Somewhere toward the end of the second year of my new life, I decided to start looking for an answer to a question that I was not hearing anyone ask in the endurance world: why do we rely on sugar so much? Is there a low-carb option? I was already sympathetic to the paleo mindset before I knew that label. I have been a small-farm, vegetable CSA, pastured chicken, grass-fed beef, raw dairy advocate for a long time. But there was a disconnect. I had been drinking the kool-aid (actually gatorade) of the conventional wisdom that constant streams of highly refined carbs were the way to fuel any long distance activity. But these were the substances that caused me lifelong trouble. Was there a way out of this vicious cycle? Or would I just continue being the fattest guy at the race?

IF you’re reading this post, then you know the rest of the story. First through the Angriest Trainer podcast, then with an expanding web of resources, the names Jimmy Moore, Mark Sisson, Bob Seebohar, Gary Taubes, William Davis, Nora Gedgaudas, Phinney and Volek, all became part of my library.

I am in season three of becoming a runner and triathlete. I am still between Doughboy and Ironman. And I still have what an addict needs to properly call a relapse from time to time. But now when I open a swag bag and it’s full of cookies, nutrigrain bars, gels, or even a huge jar of spread that’s nothing but sugar and industrial seed oils, I just pass it along. And as I’ve joined a facebook group with one of those very telling names “Run Disney So I Can Eat Disney” I enjoy the camraderie and fun of groups like this, but I’m sure to say “hey, the bacon challenge is fun, but it is what we should be fueling on anyway!”

The NSNG voices are growing, the paleo movement is making inroads into endurance (when they’re not slamming “chronic cardio”) and when more people have their ah-ha! moment as Vinnie nails the reality of all the porta-potties, gels, and fat people at triathlon (I resemble that remark), you’re going to see a movement take hold. There’s no reason we have to keep blending the sport that we love with the “food” that gives us the weight we’re trying to lose through that sport.

There is another way. Getting off the couch is a great first step, and I applaud anyone willing to do it. Food is usually a tougher enemy. But if I can make a change and willingly put on lycra in front of other people, there’s no reason I should let oreos bring me down.

I’m not perfect at this, and my current stretch of weight loss is slow. But when I dropped grains and sugars, I reversed type 2 diabetes and significantly lowered my triglycerides. This stuff works. And it can work for all the distance activities I want to do. I just have to look the other way when the big sponsors push all their carbage in my face.

Andrew “The Doughboy” Weaver

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