Inov-8 RocLite 288 GTX - 1,000 Mile Recap

Inov-8 are a small company based in northern England. Nevertheless, their impact upon the outdoor, fell, mountain, indoor, gym, crossfit scenes is staggering! You see their shoes everywhere and recognise their distinctive tracks when out in the hills.

About a year ago, I bought my first pair of Inov-8: the RocLite 288 GTX. I have since bought some X-Talon 240 boots for a tighter grip when cross-country running; the RocLite 288 GTX were primarily for walking.

Now sold as the RocLite 286 GTX, the 288 has a three shock heel (two shock with the new 286), comfort last (performance last with the new 286), meta flex, meta cradle, fascia band and of course, the RocLite sole with sticky rubber suitable for all manner of surfaces, grass, mud, trail, quarry, scree and rock.

My stomping ground is a mixed terrain of 1200' highs with 400' valley floor, quarries, tracks, trails, bridleway, mud, more mud, lots of mud, bog, streams, becks and woodland. Very keen on minimalist footwear, I still know my own limits and the limits of the footwear I choose. These boots have given me the right footwear for the terrain and activity.

Sizing with Inov-8 is an art in itself - you must try on the shoes!

I normally wear a Euro 45, but chose a Euro 44.5 for the RocLite 288 GTX (Euro 45 in X-Talon 240, for comparison). The half size down fitted perfectly with thin socks, so maybe the 45 fills out with walking socks.

Foot in, kick back to the heel and pull the laces sufficiently tight; set for many miles of comfortable walking with the freedom that comes from the very flexible and active sole.

These boots have not let me down - always capable in whatever conditions I walked in, from the height of summer to the depth of winter and whatever terrain that brought. More than that, they enhanced my experience - not dulled by hard, inflexible soles, my walking was a sheer pleasure; able to pick routes off trail with ease and always very confident about feel and grip on muddy hillsides or in slippery streams.

Not a review, as such, but a recap ...

Somewhere around 500 miles the rubber covering behind the toe protection started to wear away.

Waterproofing gave up after 600 miles with a small hole that breeched the GoreTex inside the crack that developed on the outside edge of my right foot and shortly after in the same place on the opposite foot.

Those cracks further developed and really opened up after 700 miles.

At 1,000 miles, these boots are still eminently useful with good grip on the toe and heel, with the ball of the sole more worn. Perhaps this suggests something about being able to maintain good walking technique in these boots and allays any fear of returning to heel striking when in such footwear?

I gather Inov-8 warrant these boots to 600 miles. I put these boots through everything and they rewarded me, not only for immediate performance, but for that long-term performance.

They performed! They lasted!

Buy again? Definitely! A fresh pair this spring ...

Any opinions on the RocLite 400 GTX in comparison to the 288? Better for heavier terrain? How does the new RocLite 286 GTX stack up against the 288? Improved? Feel free to comment.

Coming in From the Cold

Warning! Metaphors ahead!

Metaphors, not innuendo - if you like innuendo, check out Modern Paleo Warfare.

As ancestral eaters, we've been living in the ice age, some may have considered leaving the ice age and I've wondered whether we're even entering the mesolithic.

Metaphors aside, paleo is moving along with the times and being moved along by the people.

Is it time to come in from the cold?

What began as the paleo diet has inspired and sparked much debate, research and reasoning to become a paleo template - using the paleo diet as a starting point and building it up into a framework, or set of principles.

Chris Kresser calls it a paleo template in Beyond Paleo and this is very much at the forefront of Kurt Harris'  and Richard Nikoley's mind in their responses to the recent debunking paleo articles.

Paleo is not a religion!

J Stanton noticed that paleo had reached the ominous third stage but who would have thought that the fight would come from vegans? Yes, vegans of all people!

Sadly, these people are missing the point when it comes to paleo. Some would say they're missing more than a couple of points, but that aside, they're looking at the paleo diet not the paleo template; the minutia, not the big picture. The arguments and positions simply don't stand up against a template - the paleo template being made up a set of principles drawn from individual manifestos.

Taking Chris Kresser's trinity of principles:

• Don't eat toxins
• Nourish your body
• Eat real food

... veganism, vegetarianism, pescetarianism, whatever other dietary isms there are would consider that they fit into that and would all agree that is a sensible set of principles. Explaining what exactly is behind those principles is where the template is drawn up, where the die is cast.

Call it The Primal Blueprint, Functional Paleo, Archevore, the Perfect Health Diet or Paleo+ what we have is a gentler, more playful paleo but with no less teeth and no less justified. Paleo, evolved.

We are animals, not machines!

Optimal is not necessarily advantageous or desirable.

We are not machines - we are not here to engage in optimal exercise, re-feeding with optimal meals to maintain our optimal bodies. What's the point in all that?

Ancestrally, we would have fattened up in advance of months where food was scarce and enjoyed gorging when food was plenty. We do not go through the whole year as one body shape - our environments change and so should our bodies. We are adaptive creatures.

We are here to live! We are here to work, to play, to toil and to sleep ... to be alive in the freedom that the wide and varied environments that we live in as highly adaptive organisms capable of living way off trail, way off a specific diet, yet continuing to survive.

This is why a template for paleo works in the long term, once the paleo diet has been understood and used as a means to starting out on a fresh journey through life, resetting the damage and founding a healthy and fulfilling life - this is where the template starts and where The Primal Blueprint, Functional Paleo, Archevore, the Perfect Health Diet and Paleo+ become the joys of life. Chris Kresser sums it up perfectly in Is Paleo even Paleo? And Does it Matter?

As J Stanton says, "Live in freedom, live in beauty".

Kindred Spirits

The die has been cast, the template struck, and many paleo eaters are moving beyond the savannah of the paleo diet into the varied global ecosystems and local takes on the principles within the paleo template.

Further to the likes of Mark Sissons, J Stanton, Kurt Harris, Paul & Shou Ching Jaminet, Chris Kresser, a couple of manifestos which have struck me as sound come from:

• Full Fat Nutrition Ten Commandments of Nutrition
• Prague Stepchild Shealthy Manifesto

Having developed my own take on the paleo pyramid in language like "enjoy, eat, include, use, ensure, limit, avoid and supplement" I wonder if I might have been better to distil the salient points into a manifesto. I may yet do that, although it is unlikely to be much different from Full Fat Nutrition or Prague Stepchild, but here's the pyramid ...

Principles

Prior to paleo, I ate real food and held a simple set of principles: balance, fresh, local and pure.

Paleo opened my eyes and helped me refine my diet of real food; my digression from that purist stance was simply because I understood it and was happy to eat a little further away from the main hunting grounds, having found the likes of J Stanton and Kurt Harris online, and been most impressed with Mark Sissons from the initial bushel of books that I bought.

Paleo+ feels right. Go with what feels right, but know why it is right!

Principles become second nature, unlike the lengthy tomes heavy in scientific dogma that make up a diet book, and three principles which I have held most useful in determining whether food is good to eat since taking my first steps onto the savannah are:

• The Hunter/Gatherer Principle - can the food be hunted and gathered in the wild? This links into the local and organic principles I have always held. This guides us towards nutritious food.
• The Raw Principle - can the food be eaten raw? This is not to say that it should be, although something more like can it kill you even when it is dead? is perhaps a more useful a way of putting it. I think that's one from Kurt Harris. Anyway, this guards us against toxins.
• The Predator Principle - is the food for grazing prey? J Stanton's 'Eat Like a Predator' shows us how to eat food which will form meals, and to fast in between. Prey graze their way through the day while predators hunt, eat and fast. This protects us from snacking.

I have one further principle to add which has helped me when re-engaging with supermarkets and picking up food that comes in packaging:

• The Ingredient/Description Principle - does the ingredients list more than the description of the food?

The ingredients for butter should read as "butter"; for salted butter, "butter, sea salt" - there should be no stabilisers, no emulsifiers, no preservatives. That, and any ingredient that has the letter X in it cannot be good! X is not natural; X is laboratory!

Put another way, the Hunter/Gatherer Principle leads us to food. The Raw Principle tells us if it is fit to eat, while the Predator Principle shows us whether is it ideal. Those three are then fully modernised by the Ingredient/Description Principle which helps us to make a decision about food which comes in unnatural packaging.

Maybe that manifesto is burgeoning ... maybe not ... I've always said that paleo is a way of life, and just as it is not a religion, it is not political. Let's leave dogma to the religious and the manifestos to the politicians.

Paleo is not an exclusive diet ...

I will say that paleo should be an inclusive diet - what we can eat.

Exclusive diets that prohibit, eschew, ban, whatever, are negative in their outlook and ultimately doomed to failure as a long term prospect. These diets are not a way of life and must be backed up by dogma, even fanaticism.

We have a world, abundant in excellent food sources despite "big farmer" trying to ruin the food chain. We can pick and choose from all manner of excellent sources, and we can lobby for better husbandry in areas which are lacking - this is our lives and we should ensure that our longevity, ours and our race, is ensured through bringing our diets and indeed our lifestyles back to a natural state for our genus.

There is sufficient in meat, eggs, fish, shellfish, vegetables and fruit to live on. That is the beauty, the simplicity and the joy of paleo.

myprotein.com Essential Whey 60

 

Me? Paleo me, writing about protein powder? With my reputation?

I'll throw my hands straight up and surrender! Protein powder is not paleo.

Shoot me! Go on ... I dare you! I double dare you!

It is very useful for active, paleo people. Let me explain ...

myprotein.com Essential Whey 60 is a 60% protein powder made from undenatured milk. Furthermore, there are no flavourings, colourings or most importantly, no emulsifier. This is pretty much pure whey, as extracted from raw milk.

 Let's take a look at the breakdown of a 30ml scoop:

• Energy: 123 kcal
• Energy: 514 KJ
• Protein: 18.2g
• Carbohydrate: 9g
• Fat: 1.1g

... and it has a superb amino acid profile, too: http://www.myprotein.com/uk/Files/Documents/852.pdf

Ideally, the protein could be higher and the carbohydrate lower, but this is a straight down the line extraction but the most positive benefit to be had from undenatured protein extraction is that it is glutathione boosting.

Glutathione is immune boosting. Protein rebuilds the muscles and the carbohydrate forms immediate energy, saving further muscle degradation after activity and allowing the body to totally benefit from the activity you have just engaged in.

Being a paleo eater, I like more fat.

Here's my shake:

• 200ml water
• 30ml scoop of  myprotein.com Essential Whey 60
• Shake, shake, shake shake sh-shake it!
• Add two tablespoons of full fat probiotic natural yoghurt
• Shake again ...
• Pour out into a glass and enjoy!

If I am feeling particularly indulgent:

• 150ml water
• 30ml scoop of  myprotein.com Essential Whey 60
• Shake, shake, shake shake sh-shake it!
• 1 shot of fresh Espresso
• 1 shot of single malt Whisky
• Shake again ...
• Pour out into a glass and enjoy in a hot bath, soaking tired muscles ... 

You've got it ... I have a glass of this every so often after a particularly exhaustive period of activity.

I also have the occasional serving early morning for breakfast, which is usually nothing more than a couple of spoons of full fat probiotic natural yoghurt.

Interested?

http://www.myprotein.com/uk/products/essential-whey-60

Entering the Mesolithic?

Let's just take a step back and look at what exactly paleo is ... In The Paleo Identity Crisis, J Stanton perfectly distills paleo as:

• Eating foods that best support the biochemistry of human animals with a multi-million year history of hunting and foraging, primarily on the African savanna.

• Avoiding foods, such as grains, grain oils, and refined sweeteners, that actively disrupt the biochemistry of these human animals.

That second point is increasingly important to take paleo forwards, yet the first point is the lynchpin. In keeping with this functional paleo, Chris Kresser talks about a paleo template, rather than a diet and puts the following as the first three steps in his Nine Steps to Perfect Health:

1. Don't eat toxins
2. Nourish your body
3. Eat real food

... and finished with, The Biggest Obstacle to Perfect Health is Your Mind.

There is a lot of talk amongst the paleosphere as to what exactly can and cannot be included in the paleo diet. Much of that talk is about compromise, about mimicry of neolithic foods, about supplementation and a whole heap of n=1, which is about as much to do with paleo as it is to do with trainspotting!

While talk of shunning white potatoes in favour of sweet potatoes is fine, does it necessarily fit with the second statement? We well know that carbohydrate = sugar = fat. We well know that foods with a high glycemic index (GI) cause insulin spikes, which we want to avoid ... but ... what about context?

When you eat a white potato, what do you eat it with? I put in a lot of heavy cream and some butter to make mashed potato. I like a good slice of butter and some cottage cheese over a baked potato. Fried, I like nothing more than to drop some large chips of potato into dripping.

That's the beauty of fat!

In Fat and the Glycemic Index: The Myth of Carbohydrates, J Stanton blows the doors wide open and shows us that cooking, and cooking with fat significantly lowers the glycemic load (GL) of carbohydrates.

Paul & Shou-Ching Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet is one which is very much amongst the front runners of the functional paleo diet - one which is concerned with J's second point: avoiding foods which actively disrupt the biochemistry of humans.

The Jaminets speak about the inclusion of safe starches, a useful source of glucose.



This also strikes an accord with another favourite paleo writer of mine, Kurt Harris MD, father of Archevore who, in his latest revision, has dropped mention of legumes from his manifesto!

Between the Jaminets and Harris, we're now okay to eat starches and beans? Really? What next? Oats? Well, Mark Sissons, father of The Primal Blueprint is already considering just that: Are Oats Healthy?

I'm throwing this out there - paleo is about turning conventional wisdom on its head. Fat does not make you fat ... healthy grains are actually unhealthy ... fruit is not good for you ... meat does not rot in your colon!

Time to turn conventional paleo wisdom on its head?

Once a white potato is cooked, it has a lower glycemic load than sweet potato. When beans and lentils are pressure cooked, they are dramatically reduced in phytic acid and are pretty much a neutered source of energy. Likewise, safe starches may well have all manner of positive effects, not least keeping your glucose levels at a level which modern adapted humans actually require.

You'll need to do the reading for yourself. The Jaminets are not suggesting that a diet high in carbohydrate is a good thing - their book clearly shows this, and their statements online recommend keeping carbohydrate intake below requirement for glucose. Balance is the key. Likewise, Harris is not suggesting we run out and start eating beans instead of meat and vegetables, just that once properly processed beans do not pose the risk they do when raw, if any.

While meat and vegetables common to conventional paleo wisdom exist, is there any reason to look elsewhere?

Well, Peggy Emch at The Primal Parent thinks there might well be a case. In http://theprimalparent.com/2011/07/27/the-carnivores-dilemma/ Peggy talks about how food affects mood, that meat, meat and more meat puts us in a very focussed mode which is not entirely useful in social settings. We need more smile - that comes from glucose, from carbohydrates in stalky vegetables, root vegetables and so on.

Maybe carbohydrate is important after all?

Speaking of society, have you seen Richard Nikoley's manifesto over at Free the Animal?

• http://freetheanimal.com/2011/10/free-the-animal-a-manifesto-version-30-third-times-the-charm.html

Richard speaks of physical health, mental health and even societal health. Truly, fresh ground that has only been surveyed and subjected to probing raids by J Stanton, thus far. Well worthy of a concerted read.

It is clear that paleo is moving on - we might well be at the end of the ice age; the epipaleolithic, so to speak, but are we entering the mesolithic?

Agriculture defines the transition between the paleolithic and the neolithic, but the mesolithic was the handover.

Some characteristics of the mesolithic:

During the mesolithic, mankind had not begun agriculture, but had begun the domestication of animals, had begun to store surplus, had begun to develop tools which aided him in the processing of vegetables, had begun to process and eat wild seeds, like rice, and had developed cooking methods such as roasting on hearths and in clay pots.

Man still moved with the seasons between bases, but had not fully settled into neolithic ways. Man started to change his plate from hunted meat and gathered fruits and vegetables to what we might call a more balanced plate of cooked meat and prepared vegetables.

As modern humans, we have learned to change our diet with the seasons - perhaps relying more on root vegetables and safe starches through the cold months in northern climes and then return to spring animals in the warmer months. This is less so with produced food, but paleo people do like to try to eat with the seasons, eat food which is natural to the environment they live in and in turn with their geographical adaptations.

Modern humans have learned to prepare vegetables, process foods which distrupt our biochemistry through fermentation, soaking, boiling and chilling. In time, will we manage to negate the seriously disruptive effects of grain?

As we paleo folk enter the mesolithic, to avoid neolithic pathways for modern disease, is it more a case of 'Eat Like Your Grandparents' (thanks, J) than 'Eat Like a Predator'?

100 Days of Paleo

... or thereabouts.

I don't really have much to add to my 30 Days of Paleo post other than to say that paleo has become very much my normal way of life. I don't think about it any more - it's just what I do.

Yes, "do"! Paleo is life - sleeping, waking, eating, working, playing, relaxing, enjoying.

I set out to address my weight and fitness, and quite by accident found minimalist running and from there, paleo. I fast understood that longer term, sustainable fat loss was going to be the best way for me and I am well into that journey with continued fat loss, but not necessarily the same dramatic weight loss.

An unexpected benefit has been that my lifelong gastric reflux problems have gone - gone entirely. Again, I simply don't have to think about it any more.

My two favourite paleo bloggers, Stanton and Harris, have made some significant contributions to the paleosphere - Functional Paleo is now defined, Archevore has moved to version 3.0 and the role of starches in the paleo diet is now well understood, and well discussed by Harris.

Food remains a real passion of mine.

My own paleo cuisine blog at Living in the Ice Age continues to attract new visitors every day and I am pleased to be followed by one of my favourite paleo cuisine bloggers: Finn & Greg AKA Modern Paleo Warfare - be warned, some of the language is on the edge and humour definitely adult! Enjoy ...

One final thing - I have found an excellent supplier of Biltong whose recipe does not include sugar. Other suppliers extol the virtues of their product being MSG-free or containing no artificial flavours, but they still use sugar.

Interested? Check out Discover Unearthed Biltong whose product is softer than many, more chewy. Yum!

That said, I do like Coan's Original Beef Jerky - I can cope with a tiny bit of sugar.