Happyness is a warm cake

Hello one and all. Christmas has started already in America on Friday the 23rd of November! It's this day because its the day after thanksgiving (which I wish we could have back at home) the Giant trees are up the lights are on and the smell of Christmas biscuits (not 'cookies') and other delights are everywhere to be enjoyed. I can't believe it's started so early but it's making things a bit more scenic and generally smell better around here which is always nice.I've managed to finally do some bakery for the first time in ages, I decided to do my favourite blueberry-lemon drizzle cake with a twist- using 60/40 almond meal / regular flour. I would have used 100% almond meal but it doesn't hold together terribly well, but I'm working on a master-baker strategy to overcome this!

The reason I chose to do this is because I've been trying to follow a 'no grains' diet for the last couple of months, I decided to do this mainly for training purposes as by the process of elimination I have found grains to be the cause of a number of cases of the dreaded 'runners' trots' (which have caused more than a few close shaves in the trouser department mid-run). But there are also a number of general health reasons that make me think this diet is the way to go, the basic premise of it is that you eliminate most sources of carbohydrate in the form of grains, refined sugars, starchy veg etc. from your diet and instead replace them with animal fats, eggs, nuts (not peanuts) occasional fruits, and lots and lots of vegetables. The idea behind this is that because we evolved as a species as hunter-gatherers our body's are used, evolutionarily speaking, to digesting and utilising these foods for energy.
The effects of the diet make sense when you think about it, we were given the ability to store fat as fuel so it seems quite logical that we'd eat it for fuel as well, carbohydrates are found more generally in slow releasing fibrous forms like vegetables and the only naturally occurring sugars are things like fruits and honey which we wouldn't eat a lot of normally.




The facts are, according to Dr. Tim Noakes, that eating (naturally occurring) fats isn't what makes you fat, it is eating sugars and, in some people, too much carbohydrates in simple forms such as grains that makes you fat, I say some people because there are genetic dispositions towards laying down some types of food as fat more than others, for more information on the topic there is a great interview with Dr. Noakes here which is well worth 20 minutes of anyone's time.


The only drawback to this way of eating is that it is expensive! They really advocate eating a lot of grass-fed beef which runs at about $15/lb! So to get around this I eat a lot of coconut oil and almond butter for energy before and after training instead, it's way tastier than it sounds..!

Red bull Flugtag contest, most of them were crap.

Training has been going very well, I'm back running properly at last and wont make the same mistakes I have done in the past that have caused me to get injured e.g. too much too soon, no conditioning, no massage/stretching. Swimming is going okay, I am making good progress on my quest for a 60 second 100yard doing 6 x 75 yards last night as 2 in 55s 2 in 50s 2 in 45s. Cycling is going quite well apart from the fact that my bike is slowly falling apart, I've had to replace nearly everything on it but it still keeps breaking down on me, next on the to-buy list is two tiny plastic pieces for the crankset which make the whole thing useless if they are broken :( I did a 100mile ride in 6 hours though this weekend and it wasn't as terrible as I thought, maybe 112 wont be impossible after all. Oh wait there's a marathon to run after as well..

The couch fairy visited us

Thanks to all for reading I hope you enjoyed and found the nutrition stuff quite informative.