Dreams and Musings

So I'm on my third day completely paleo. I'm doing okay. The first day was a little rough, but it got better from there. I even had lunch out yesterday, without compromising anything. Thank goodness for Chipotle and their ethically-sourced meat. While I do want to try to cut out most New World foods while I'm paleo, I'm not sticking to that when I go out. It's virtually impossible to get enough fat in a restaurant meal without avocado. They simply don't seem to serve very fatty meat.

Yesterday, I thought a lot about exercise, specifically paleo exercise. I looked a lot at these two articles from Mark Sisson, and I had some discussions with the lovely ladies of the Long Hair Community's "Paleolithic diet" thread (you can't see the thread unless you're registered). Basically, I was trying to negotiate my own feelings about the physiological differences between men and women.

For example, women have the tendons in our hips and legs arranged differently, making women more susceptible to injuries like ACL tears. Although most people know this as the injury of football players, a friend of mine relayed her doctor's explanation to me after her own tear. Because women's hips are opened up more, the tendons have more torque on them, making it easier to stress them with the typical causes of ACL and tendon injuries: lateral motion and tight turns. I've personally experienced a long bout with iliotibial band inflammation, partially due to overtraining, but mostly exacerbated by tight turns and running on a track.

So are women really suited to things like the suicide drill? I'm not so sure. I know I certainly wouldn't do that particular exercise. And yet, women are built for more endurance than men -- this is evidenced by the rapid closing of the gaps between men's and women's times as races get longer. In fact, women have won the Badwater Ultramarathon multiple times. Not to mention the whole childbirth thing, which lasts longer than a marathon, even at my crawling pace. And research supports the idea that women get more benefit from prolonged cardio than men, as Sisson's post reports.

The one thing we all agree upon is that women often do share the work of men in hunter-gatherer societies. So there's no reason women shouldn't lift heavy things or engage in intense bursts of cardio. But perhaps I'd rather do a fartlek run than suicide drills. I suppose this falls under "play" for me, since I find running to be fun and stress relieving. When I can't run, I don't feel guilty about missing a run -- I'm literally antsy to get back out there because I enjoy it.

On a last, unrelated note, I've been having weird dreams since going paleo. Monday night, I dreamed about cereal. Puffed, boxed, served with cold milk cereal. I haven't even eaten boxed cereal in months. I guess that's carb withdrawl for you. Then, in a complete change of pace, I dreamed last night that my husband was going to make me a fancy dinner (tuna steak wrapped in puff pastry with vegetables), and I had to remind him that he had to keep it paleo (so it was just tuna with vegetables). Weird.