There are plenty of great things to do following an extended weekend of gorging on hearty foods. Spending Monday fasting wasn’t on the top of my to-do list, but that’s just what I had to do today. I had scheduled a routine physical with my physician, and they asked me to avoid eating for 8 hours prior to the appointment. I wasn’t about to wake up at 5am to eat, so I carried my water bottle around at my observations today until I had to bow out early to see the good doctor.
A routine physical doesn’t provide a whole lot of info, but helps screens for any underlying conditions that may arise. I weighed 187 at 5′ 11.5″, and my blood pressure was right on the average of 110/70, with a heart rate was 65bpm. (Doesn’t the doctor make you kind of nervous?) I should wait until the blood work comes back, but I don’t think there’s too much to worry about.
I headed over to the gym to train a client post-physical, and after giving him a solid butt-whooping, it was off to CVS to pick up some fish oil. I had run out of the good stuff on Sunday morning, and wanted to buy some more before it slipped my mind. I was pleased to find a version that included 1,000mg of Vitamin D between the 2 capsule serving. As we continue to have less sun in these shorter winter days, and I’ll be avoiding the cold as much as possible, the sun exposure won’t be as effective and helping my body produce Vitamin D. If you want to read about the benefits of Vitamin D supplementation, then click this giant link.
In addition to the fish oil, I also wanted to pick up a bar of my favorite dark chocolate, from Lindt. You can tell that I’m a fan of modifying the basics, and I’m no different with my dark chocolate; this bar has chili extract in it, and it gives a nice kick as it melts in your mouth. If you’re a fan of dark chocolate, I think you’ll love having this bar. In addition to loving it on it’s own, I’ve also used it to spice up my post workout shakes. I’ll drop a square into the bottom of my blender bottle, make some hot chocolate with our Keurig machine, add a scoop of chocolate whey protein, top off with milk, and shake it all up. Delicious. (If you don’t have this specific bar, try adding chili powder and cinnamon to your hot chocolate. It’s just as good.)
A certain combination of reading GQ over the weekend and their proximity to the fish oil led me to checking out some candles at the store, and I decided a nice jasmine and patchouli candle smelled good enough that I could ignore why I was looking at candles. Now that it’s lit and sitting on my desk next to me as I write this, it was definitely a good idea, because it smells great. I wasn’t quite sure what pactchouli was, but Wikipedia quickly informed me that is a bushy herb of the mint family which is native to tropical regions of Asia. The oils are used in aromatherapy and the scent induces relaxation, but I can’t swear to that; I just got really excited to see the Saints score their first touchdown against the Giants. (Why do I like the Saints? Beacuse Drew Brees trains with Todd Durkin and uses the TRX.)
After picking out my fish oil, chocolate, and candle, it was off to the register so I could head home for my mom’s London Broil. At the register, the young cashier commented on the apparently ‘weird’ combination of buying chocolate and fish oil. I decided to play along, so I asked her if it counted that it was dark chocolate.
“No, it still has cholesterol in it.”
Seriously? You care about the 5mg of cholesterol in my chocolate? That’s 2% of the percent daily value. There’s actually more cholesterol in each serving of fish oil (2 caps), which at 8mg is 25%. If we’re talking about the terrible effects that dietary cholesterol has on your health, then the fish oil is way worse for me. She really should have told me to avoid taking the supplement that’s good for pretty much everything. I probably should have told her about the 6 eggs I had when I got home from the doctor.
We’re still living in a world that’s pretty petrified of eating cholesterol, and it’s almost backwards that people are more likely to question dark chocolate or eating eggs than the people that think preparing dinner as a family is getting drive thru McDonalds and then sitting down at the table together. Hopefully we’ll eventually be educated enough as a society to realize that the most marketed foods tend to be the worst; that our organic pop tarts are still crap, that filling your plate with meat and vegetables is going to work a lot better than eating microwaveable diet meals and figuring out which grains are whole. I can’t expect these things to change over night, and it would be silly to go on a diatribe at the register about the cholesterol myth and the benefits of dark chocolate.
What should you do? Take your fish oil, enjoy your dark chocolate, and burn some sweet smelling candles. The EPA/DHA will keep you healthy, the flavinoids and antioxidants in the dark chocolate will you keep you healthy, and the candles will help you relax. At least until you realize you just finished a blog post and have to write 16-21 pages for various papers. Uh oh…
Harold Gibbons 