ON “BOOKENDING”

  

I want to share a strategy I’ve accidentally stumbled across purely out of the result of reaching an inevitable conclusion in my own lifestyle that, in turn, I’ve actually adopted as an intentional strategy.  Holy crap that opening sentence is awful, but we’re rolling with it.  Basically, I never set out to use “bookending”, it happened on accident, I didn’t realize I was doing it until I stopped and looked, but now that I’ve done that I realize it’s a pretty solid approach for success.

Some of you folks that grew up with a different background may not be able to appreciate this book centric post

 

Ok, what the hell is “bookending”.  I realize, in this digital world, many of you may have never seen an actual bookcase before, but back in the day, when one had a physical library of many books, to hold them all in place on a shelf, one would employ “bookends”.  These were solid structured objects that would stand on either side of the books to keep them in place, and were typically ornate and cool looking.  If I’m still confusing you, think of the books as the meat and the bookends of the bread on a sandwich.  And if you’re keto: think of books as the cheese and bookends as the fried chicken tenders on a KFC doubledown. 

 

What does bookending have to do with getting bigger and stronger?  Aside from the fact that a lot of folks out there need to read more, what I’m getting at is the notion of things occurring at the start and the end, specifically of a day.  And getting more specific, I apply this principle to training AND nutrition.

No, not like that

 

As soon as my day starts, I do SOMETHING physical.  Now, being fully transparent, I’ll get downstairs, feed my dog if it didn’t sleep in with the Mrs, take some apple cider vinegar per Jon Andersen’s recommendation and, depending on the next part, either have a very light meal (typically some keto pancakes with sunbutter) or go fasted.  At this point, a whopping 10 minutes has passed since I woke up, and now I head into the garage and do SOMETHING.  Sometimes, it's a full on lifting workout.  Sometimes it’s prowler work (requires me to drive out 3 minutes to a parking lot).  Sometimes it’s a conditioning workout like Tower of Babel, Kalsu, Faust, etc.  Sometimes, it’s only 2-4 minutes of conditioning.  But either way: I do SOMETHING physical to start my day.  In doing so, no matter WHAT happens for the rest of the day, I can say “At least I got in A workout today”.  And aside from the mental assurance that I didn’t spend the full day as a slug, I get blood flowing through aching muscles and connective tissues, my heart rate elevates, I get more awake, I’m limbered up (way better than mobility work), and my metabolism is fired up and ready for some nutrients, and, quite frankly, I don’t care if that statement upsets someone with a scientific background that feels otherwise.

 

After that physical part, the nutrition book ending begins.  I have a VERY substantive breakfast.  As I’m currently in a phase of training where volume is high, this is what I eat as “breakfast 1” (not counting the quick meal eaten before lifting, nor the post workout shake I’ll drink of 10oz of drinkable egg whites mixed with a scoop of whey isolate)

* An omelet of 2 whole eggs (organic, pasture raised, because I’m special), 1 egg white (eyeballed), dice tomatoes, 2oz of red meat (either grassfed beef or bison) and grassfed butter.  I take this omelet and put it on top of an egg white wrap that is slathered in sunbutter, and then top it with some sort of fat free cheese (I like feta these days), half an avocado and some sort of sauce (tatziki sauce with the feta) to make a morning breakfast burrito.

* 4-6 celery sticks, all slathered in Nuts n More (half in a peanut based one, half in an almond based one)

* 2 keto pancakes or a slice of keto toast slathered in sunbutter (assuming not eaten before training)

* 3/4 cup of fat free greek yogurt mixed with a serving of naked PB powered peanut butter, an equal serving of some sort of protein powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar free/fat free jello or gelatin (for texture and extra calories)

* 1 cup of cashew milk

This one was a bit more festive with a slice of low carb pumpkin bread instead of pancakes

 

This is an undertaking, and I’ve had to really develop my multi-tasking ability to turn it out in a reasonable timeframe.  I have almost the exact same meal even when I’m traveling: in which case I’ll make it the night before with my 4” skillet and just eat it cold.  But there’s a method to the madness.  This meal has a TON of protein, and ALSO a great amount and variety of fats, to include saturated fats from the eggs and red meat and poly and monos from the avocados, sunbutter, and Nuts n More.  Once again, this is setting me up for success, because if, for some reason, my day turns to complete and utter chaos and I end up going from breakfast to the evening without a chance to eat, I KNOW I got in a ton of protein and a lot of beneficial fats at the start of my day.  I’m not leaving anything up to chance.

 

Onto the bookending aspect of this: at the end of the day, I eat almost the exact same meal.  There’s a slight variance: I swap out the butter with 1/4 cup of grassfed cottage cheese, I get rid of the egg wrap, I cut out the fat free cheese, I don’t do the yogurt mixture, and I’ll include 2 slices of keto toast with 1 slice with natural peanut butter and 1 slice with natural almond butter.  I, truthfully, “developed” this meal to help combat some insomnia I was dealing with while I was at my leanest: basically giving my body a lot of slow digesting nutrients to keep it fed at rest.  Lots of fats and slow digesting protein in the cottage cheese.  HOWEVER, what this meal REALLY does for me is, once again, work as “nutritional insurance”.  I can make all SORTS of mistakes during the day and it won’t matter because I know I’ll have this meal to fall back on when I get home.  If I under-ate, I can just add more food.  If I decided to have some sort of big cheaty meal that day, I can trim this down.  It also means that, when I DO go out to eat, I don’t need to rely on that particular meal to meet any sort of nutritional demands.  I don’t need to look up the menu ahead of time, throw crap into a macro calculator, determine which particular item best fits my diet, etc etc: I just eat what I want to eat and know that, when I get home, I have a meal waiting for me that will take care of anything I may have missed.  Again: we bookended so that we could let the middle be what it may.

However, when this bell sounds, all bets are off

 

When it comes to bookending the physical training, this is more of an “as needed” basis.  Anyone that follows my training log knows that I tend to have 1 big workout in a day followed by several smaller “extra workouts” ala Westside Barbell.  The large workout will be like an hour of lifting or conditioning, and then throughout the day I’ll accomplish my daily work (previously written about, but 50 chins, 50 dips, 50 pull aparts, 40 reverse hypers, 30 GHRs, 25 push downs, 20 standing ab wheels and neck work), and then some short-ish conditioning work or a longer walk (with or without a weight vest).  Quite often, that daily work will get pushed to the end of the day, or I unwind with a walk, or I end up getting in a 2 minute workout of Keg Grace or 4 minutes of Tabata burpees, but once again I have it in my head that, no matter what, SOMETHING will get done at the end of the day.  In turn, I waste no brain power wondering about managing my schedule, working around obligations, etc etc: I know that I started off my day with some activity and, if I need more, I will get it there at the end.

 

This was honestly incredibly self-indulgent, but I wanted to write about it and hope it provides some help.  Much like my “start with a win” post: succeed as soon as you possibly can upon waking, and end the day with a victory as well.  Whatever happens in between will become immaterial.