Mad Men Tricks

I started watching Mad Men last night. I'm a little late to the game, I know, but there was something I noticed right away that I feel the need to point out.

Ad people are trickesters.

It isn't new knowledge. We all know that commercials and ads are designed to get us to buy the products they are peddling. But the first episode of Mad Men shows exactly how much they can't be trusted. Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen it.

In this episode, smoking had been outed as causing cancer. (Common knowledge now, but in the 60s when 'everyone' smoked, it was ground breaking.) The ad guy and the cigarette company is in a panic because they are about to lose business, and suddenly they aren't allowed to promote smoking as being healthy.

Enter the tricks. How can big tabacco convince the buying public that their product is safe, even if it isn't? They decide to by pass saying it's healthy (because legally they can't) and they decide to play up how naturally it's made. They decide on the slogan, "It's toasted."

It brings to mind breakfast toast or fresh nuts, doesn't it? Both are things most consider healthy.

It makes me realize how much faith I put into advertising. I'm pretty skeptical to start with, but I still fall for the "part of a healthy breakfast" line from time to time. Or the milk and cookies routine. Milk's healthy after all, why not spice it up with a cookie (or 6)? Hmm. And I'm hard pressed to turned down cake with love baked in. Who doesn't want a little bite of love? It'd be down right rude to turn it down.

Luckily, I have DVR and can record any TV I watch and skip right past the ads. But they are starting to crop up other places now. The web is really starting to get a good method to advertising. And it's getting harder to avoid someone trying to convince you their products is the best.

When it comes to food and your health, do your research. Obviously don't trust the people trying to sell you their product, particularly if they are adamant about how healthy it is. Apple farmers don't have to convince you to buy apples. Truly healthy foods don't come in package. They are made by nature.

The only way to know if you are eating right is to learn about your food. The more you know...

I hate running!

My kids get corrected every time they use the word 'hate' when describing things. They obviously don't hate each other. They don't hate school. They might not like each other. And there are certainly times they don't like school. But hate is a word they don't really understand. So I remind them, that they don't hate. They just dislike.

So fine, I dislike running.

I really really really dislike running.

I do it anyway.

If it were up to me, the world would turn just fine without running, but apparently it's good for you.

Meh.

So when a workout comes up that has running in it, I start to negotiate with myself if I really have to go. I mean, I should clean the bathroom. That laundry isn't going to fold itself. And the baby kept me up half the night; I really am too tired.

Hold there. We'll come back to that.

There are so many Crossfit movements I'm not good at... yet. I could list them, but you don't have the time. What's important to note about these movements is there is always a scale down. Pull-ups to using bands with your pull-ups, to jumping pull-ups, to ring rows. Box jumps to smaller boxes, to step ups. Weight can get lighter. Those kinds of things.

You can't scale running. You can go slower. (That's me!) Or you can walk. Walking isn't running. They have their own Olympic event, so it must be true. So when there is a workout that has running. I know I have to run. I still end up walking some, especially if there is a lot of running, but the idea is to run as much as absolutely possible. I wont get better if I slack.

So back to the excuses. Sometimes if I can find a really good one, I'll cling to it. The baby is a sleep. (Never wake a sleeping baby!)

I'll be damned if the next workout doesn't have a longer run... every time.

How do they know?!

And I've used my good excuse, and my rest day, because I didn't own it. So I try not to cherry pick my workouts. Even if it looks horrible and has 200m sprints for time, it's important to stick with it. I can't get better if I don't stick with it.

Not all workouts are going to be my favorites. And if I only do my favorites, I'm never going to get better at the hard stuff. And it will always be the hard stuff.

I suspect there will always be hard stuff. My goal is to make it look easy. When someone tells me, I make a movement look easy, I think that'll be the coolest day ever.

In the meantime, I hate running, but I do it anyway.

Eating Clean

My family eats pretty clean. Some people don't really understand what that means. And it might be partly because it means different things to different people.

In general, it means not processed foods. The edges of the grocery store. Nothing out of a box.

You can add to that, organic. It makes it a bit more complicated. Harder to shop for. And if you aren't following sales, more expensive.

You can add to that Paleo, vegan or some other label. And once again it gets a bit more complicated.

Source

At my house, clean means Paleo or a version of.

Eating Paleo isn't like what the media wants people to think. It isn't a meat based diet. It's very much a veggie based diet but always with a good helping of fat and protein. The easiest (and in my opinion tastiest) source of healthy fat and protein is meat. Yum. But to eat Paleo you have to give up a handful of things that have been proven to be harmful, like grains, specifically gluten but all grains are cut out if you eat Paleo.

I also cut out dairy. Most Paleo types do. Some call themselves Primal instead of Paleo and they keep dairy. Really it's all a matter of semantics. And finding where you fit on the eating clean scale.

For me, it isn't about fitting into a label. It's about getting away from cheap, unhealthy food. It's hard to know these days with media shoving down everyone's throats what is healthy and what isn't. After all, all cereals are "part of a healthy breakfast", never mind their sugar content and the fact that their nutrients are added by chemicals, not nature. Kool-aid has less sugar than soda, don't mind the Red 40 or Yellow 5. Then there is the whole grains vs enriched wheat flour. High fructose corn syrup. Brominated Vegetable Oil. Aspartame. Nitrates.

And yet everyone still wants you to think you can eat their food product and still be healthy. But it's obvious that's just not true.

*sigh* So how do you know what's healthy? What makes a clean food?

My rules of thumb.

1. If it can be sold without a nutrition label. It's clean.
2. If the food will go bad before the end of the week, even if kept in the refrigerator. Then it's probably clean.

The rest should be eaten sparingly or not at all.

I very firmly believe that our country's obesity problem would start to resolve itself if people ate clean. No more boxed food. No more fast food. Learn to cook for yourself. By the time you wait in line at the drive through and get your meal home, you could have cooked a healthy clean meal for your family at home. And there is a lot less waste from all those packages.

When you eat better, you feel better. And you lose weight wether you mean to or not. Bonus.