Review of the Warrior Diet's "science" claims Three Cylinder Satisfaction Experience

This entry is really just a pointer to a review of the warrior diet's science claims i did at Begin to Dig, a place where i talk about training. Some folks have asked me why i bothered with this critique, so i thought i'd touch on that here as a "before the blog post" post about a blog.

Because many folks whose training i respect say they practice the warrior diet, i wanted to check it out. It's thumbs down on processed foods and more up on whole foods. It is not unique in this approach. Many folks refer to the emphasis on getting rid of junk food, reducing processed foods of all kinds, and upping whole foods from veggies to legumes "eating clean." Clarence Bass has an entire series of books dedicated to this approach to eating.

So what is unique in this diet since eating clean is taken care of? and why did that end up being so annoying i had to write a big fat review?

The packaging is pretty special.

Technorati Tags: clarence bass, culture, diet, science

No, that's *my* Winnipeg

"I don't think i've ever met anyone from Manitoba"

This is the response by a professor at a a school of information when i was asked recently where i was from (after identifying the accent as "not british"). "That's not surprising" i replied "as a rule we don't get out much"

I've just learned that famous winnipeger and film maker Guy Maddin has a film out called My Winnipeg that is being celebrated as seriously weird and wonderful, full of his usual cabinet of dr. caligary meets woody allen.

Somehow, i think it would be ironic or just wrong to see this film in a theater outside of the beating heart of the center of canada - the place where, because of its urban culture but magnificent isolation, MacDonald's love to test its new ideas (anyone remember "macribs"? thought not).

So i must go home, now, and seek out a room projecting this film, a room filmed with others who grew up on weather identical to siberia (Maddin created a film called Archangel, afterall, situated in just as weird, no doubt, version of this Russian port town). I must go to a place where that room of people will swell with pride and recognition at a filmmaker finally putting the name of our starting point on the cultural landscape. People will ask "is that what winnipeg is really like?" and i'll say "oh yes" without seeing the film and with seeing the film. Oh yes.

No more to live in the shadow of Grand Forks as posted on the Nuclear Weapons map of War Games - most of the people in the US would not have known or visited Grand Forks - but winnipegers do. It's not only a missile silo: it's home of great cross border shopping. Before Free Trade.

No more to live in the shadow of Fargo - where that opening shot of that pontiac across the blizzarding highway, or the scraping of windows in the lonely parking lot is so well known it's in the bones. Oh no, now, we step out into the Main Attraction. A very weird main attraction, i bet. But there it is. There is no Paris/France, Paris/Texas. No multiple Springfields. No many Yorks. There can be only one Winnipeg. So there Fargo!

You go, guy maddin! Let's hear them say "winnipeg" at the oscars, eh?

Laurie Anderson on the Star Spangled Banner

Thank heavens for youtube.

The work of the artist is to make us see the familiar afresh - to defamiliarize and thus cause us to look anew at the thing conceptualized.

In the late 80's or early 90's (they blur), Laurie Anderson did a series of "public service announcements" from Women and Money to Jerry Rigging. One of these was about the Star Spangled Banner - the US of A's National Anthem. I had certainly never thought of the song this way - as she puts it - just a series of questions: heh, is that a fire? couldn't really say, it's early in the morning...

And that's it really: a nation's anthem is about someone noticing a place going to hell during a fire and a flag waving away. So important - no matter what. The brand label survives. X marks the spot. Let X, knock knock, equal X.

anyway, here it is:

Utilikilts Review: Un-bifrucated Quality & Service

I've said it before: the things that make a product great are not just the excellence of the product but also the information and engagement around the product while considering a purchase and then the support of the product after a sale is complete - especially if/when something goes pear shaped. Utilikilts, an American company that makes "American Made Utility Kilts for Everyday Wear" definitely stands in the company of Great Company because of its entire kilt culture experience.

The following post is a review of Utilikilts: it tells the story of why from the in-store experience (and ya gotta get the in-store experience especially for the utilikilt-as-changing room effect), support and post sales problem resolution is rock solid.

So if you're a guy and haven't considered a kilt before, why the heck not? Are you a sissy? If you're a gal, these put the fun into funky - far more fun/funk than jeans, worn low as hipsters.

Utilikilts makes the kilt experience a cultural phenomenon that is explorable, affordable and perhaps best of all usable. The following illustrates how and why that is so.

Technorati Tags: customer experience, customer support, kilts, utilikilt

Delight: what if we were to design for it deliberately?

The following is a meditation on design, and what might happen if enticing delight were a deliberate goal rather than a rare accident of our software and systems designs.

I recently had the pleasure of setting a man's watch for him.

The man was delighted by this act, expressing a joy that might have seemed out of proportion with the result. He told his friends throughout that day that his watch was now fixed and running with the correct time. Each time he retold the story, it was accompanied with this same animated delight.

The watch was only off by four minutes, so not hugely wrong. Apparently, however, it had been wrong for three years. And for three years this man had shared the story of his chronographic offset with colleagues and friends alike. Many, the story went, had tried to fix this watch and reclaim the lost four minutes. The record of hopes raised only once again to be dashed had grown long. But amazingly, this man had not abandoned hope: he kept *wearing* this watch despite the fact that each time he glanced it he had to be mentally adjusted by four. It was not as if he could not afford a replacement. It was almost as if it had become more important to continue to believe in the possibility that one day someone would fix this watch than to find its replacement. Until that day he would continue to offer the watch to anyone who would have a go, just so that *if* that person did succeed, he would be there to savour the delight in having it work again.

Now, since it has been reset, each time he looks at this watch he can re-animate that delight for himself by remembering how long he had carried it with this offset and how happiness could now be felt in such a simple thing as accurate time-keeping. He can also tell his friends his problem has been solved, and they too will share the joy of their good friend's relief. After all, some of them had been there to experience this regular tiny desolation in their colleague's life.

So the delight has not simply been in a watch running with the correct time - that is common - but that *this* watch now runs on time. The surprise and delight tied within the satisfaction that the man's hope or belief in the possibility of restoration of that which was lost was not misplaced all contribute to the delight in the re-set time piece. Such is perhaps the nature of delight: an internal state that is ready to be surprised by the unexpected becoming possible.

The trouble is, that with digital systems it seems that the unexpected is usually to do what should be normal.

Why is being able to set a watch to run on time (what one would hope to be normal) experienced here as extraordinary? What would happen, therefore, if we designed with delight as deliberate goal rather than if we experienced it as a side effect?

Technorati Tags: culture

There is No Kettlebell

Have you ever had an experience that ended up meaning a lot to you? perhaps even seemingly out of proportion with the thing itself? You know, like getting a particularly complicated peice on the piano right, or completely reciting a poem without mistakes, or getting a dance step right, or just saying the perfect thing at the perfect time, or getting a wee prize or note of recognition, and having it mean the world. Those kind of experiences where response does not *seem* proportionate to the thing inspiring the response.

That kind of thing happened to me recently after completing the RKC, the Russian Kettlebell Challenge instructor certification course. i'd been training for this for the better part of a year. So ok, you say, naturally, that kind of effort, one's going to feel pleased with its successful completion. Ah ha, i say, granted. But there seems to be something else going on - and i hadn't gotten my head round what it is. But i knew for sure, Something Happened.

In the following post i walk through some of what i think that Something may be - and that it has a whole lot less to do with the thing itself - the specifics of what the course was teaching (though that was grand) - than the principles that seemed to be embodied in the way the course was delivered.

Technorati Tags: kettlebell, Pavel Tsatsouline

This time it's Personal: Follow up Review of Precision Nutrition - Habits and Individualization

This entry is the second part of a review of Precision Nutrition v2 by John Berardi. I did the first review after having followed the approach for several months; its five months on from that initial review, so i can say with increasing confidence: Precision Nutrition works for the long haul - and it gets easier and simpler to practice as you go. And critically that means not just achieving the results you want; it means maintaining them. So this review is more about what makes PNv2 work for the long haul.

An overview of what Precision Nutrition is, and links to great associated resources, are in part 1 of the review, called "enter the super shake"

First off, Precision Nutrition is not a Diet, it's an approach to nutrition. What's the difference between a diet and nutrition? One works. for the long haul. That would be the latter one: focusing on nutrition rather than a diet.

Diets are traditionally reputed to be fast fixes for weight gain, but they also have pretty lousy longevity effects: as soon as people go "off" the diet, the weight comes back. It's understandable: for a limited period of time, we may be willing to live in a state of denial (and it usually seems like denial of something on a diet), but that's it, and as soon as the denied substance, or sloth or both come back into the equation, so does the loss of any gains. Diets are about diets, not about sustained practice.

So if diets suck at sustained results, what works?
According to John Berardi, it's all down to habits. Habits work.

Steven R. Covey of the famous 7 Habits of Highly Effective People calls habits an internalized principle, bringing together knowledge, skill and attitide: what to do, how to do it and why to do it.

While not explicit (that i could find) in Berardi's writing, his version of habits seems to agree with Covey's. To achieve our goals related to health, fitness, body composition, Berardi argues, we have to adapt our habits, our way of thinking about food, our food practice. We have to learn first about what to do eating wise, then how to do it and why to do it. If we bring together this knowledge, skill set and attitudes around truly eating right, then we're not dieting - not doing a short term restrictive eating regimen for short term gains. Instead, we've developed a healthy and enduring food practice that works rain or shine, and, in particular, can be tuned to support a variety of goals - whether those goals are weight loss or muscle mass gain or maintenance.

In the last review i looked at the features of the Precision Nutrition program - all the stuff one gets from recipes to access to the best nutrition forum of experts in cyberspace. In this review, i'm going to focus mainly on how the individualuzation guide - that tuning of PN - helps to ensure that Precision Nutrition works over the long haul for one's own particular make up and goals.

Technorati Tags: diet, fitness, health, nutrition