Property Investments, Landlording, CrossFit, Nutrition & Safety

I don’t know why I never thought about this before as it seems obvious to me now, but the distance from the earth to the moon is not constant. I’m not saying that it’s min and max distance varies or wobbles, I mean that the moon is getting further and further away every year. I don’t know why I thought that it would have settled down by now to be fixed.

The obvious implication is that one day, the moon will escape earth’s orbit! That’s kind of important. I’ve seen programs on what happens when the sun expands and goes Red Giant on us in about 5 billion years, but no programs on what happens when the moon shoots off into outer space. I guess that way before it actually “leaves”, it’s gravitational pull will have diminished to the point that we no longer have tides, which would be kind of bad. Tides have been credited with being fundamental to the evolution of life.

But another new thing I learnt yesterday was that the moons relative size and orbit, i.e. it’s gravitational pull is critical to maintaining our “polar tilt”. Apparently without the moons gravity, our polar axis would vary wildly from 0degs to 90degs (currently 23degs if memory serves). This would of course cause chaos as the north and south poles turned into deserts, and Africa (say) grew the next polar ice cap!

How far away do you think the moon needs to get to cause a change? Let’s say that the gravitation effect needs to reduce by a half for us to significantly notice it. Newton’s Universal Gravity Equation says: F = GMm/R² The important term for us here is R, the distance between the 2 objects. For 1 over R squared to result in a number half it’s original value, R must become approximately 1.4R. I.e. the distance increases by 40%.

Currently the distance from the earth to the moon is about 385,000km so the question is, when will this happen? Assuming constant drift (which of course it isn’t but makes the maths a little easier for our simple needs) the moon gets:

• 3.8cm further away each year
• 3.8m each century
• 38m each millennia
• 38km every million years

So in a million years it will have got 0.01% further away. But we need it to get 40% further away, which will take approximately 4,000 million years or 4 billion years. Ok panic over, that’s about the same timescale as the sun going Red Dwarf on us, which I think will be a far more significant event than the moon getting 40% further away and it’s gravitational pull on us halving.

Aren’t Friday mornings fun!  🙂

1. Always eat within one hour of waking.
2. Never let more than five hours go by without having a Zone meal or snack and don’t forget your bedtime snack.
3. Keep a food diary and note how you feel after a meal. Make a list of which meals keep you in the Zone.
4. When you go to the store, make sure to have a list in hand with ingredients for at least two or three Zone meals. Then you won’t be tempted to buy everything in sight while trying to create Zone meals on the spot.
5. Never leave the house hungry, or you’ll be tempted by all the food waved in your face everywhere you go.
6. In dips, replace part or all of the sour cream with cottage cheese. Place the cottage cheese in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Add seasonings and blend again.
7. Instead of skimping with a small amount of mayo and having dry tuna, try using strained yogurt instead. Spice it up if you want.
8. When making guacamole in the Zone, use cut up red, green and orange bell peppers instead of tortilla chips.
9. Take any type of fruit you like, (lemons, limes, oranges, strawberries, or any combination of fruits), slice, place in a pitcher, fill with ice and water, and place in the fridge overnight. Stir just before serving.
10. Miss mashed potatoes? Try mashed cauliflower instead.
11. Slice zucchini (length wise), brush lightly with olive oil and broil until crisp/tender (about 5 minutes). Then use the zucchini like you would lasagna noodles.

Apologies to Americans in general, but these videos are nicely stereotypical, from an English point of view:

A predictable reaction to the Hawaii Chair:

This is a Thursday Thirteen Meme post:

1. Jogging
2. Sit ups
3. Press ups
4. Squats
5. Back extensions
6. Pull ups
7. Box Jumps
8. Wall Balls
9. Lunge Walks
10. Burpees
11. Ball slams
12. Cleans
13. Snatches

Tada!

Had a bit of dilemma this morning, what do you think I should have done?

My 7 year old daughter went to a local kiddies play centre at the weekend with a friend and her Dad. This is the second time they’ve taken her so I gave her £10 and told her to insist on paying. She also took her purse which had £11 in, which constitutes the bulk of her savings.

I’m not entirely sure why she took all her money as she’s meant to be saving up to buy some books. Yes I know, I feel a bit mean making my kid pay for her own books when as a parent I am delighted that she’s choosing to read rather than watch TV, well sometimes anyway. But we’ve bought her a lot of books and are making her pay for extra one’s in the series, and it is (meant to be) a good exercise in teaching her the value of money. She had £11 and the next set cost £16 and so at £1 pocket money per week, she knew she had 5 weeks to wait, providing that she didn’t spend any.

Anyway, this morning I remembered to ask if she had in fact paid for entry out of the £10 I gave her. She said no, that she’d tried but her friends Dad hadn’t let her. “Ok,” I said, “can I have my £10 back please?” That’s when it all started to unravel.

First it appears that her friend hadn’t taken as much money as her, so my daughter gave her friend £5 out of the £10 I gave her. You know, it’s sweet that my kid is so generous, but giving away money for no good reason, that’s not a good thing. Then she spent £3 on popcorn, for her and her friend. Ok that I can understand, I gave her the money for the trip and she spent it on stuff there. So that leaves £2, which she happily gave back. But it gets worse.

In discussions about the £5 given away, we decided that she would have to pay that money back to me. The options were to pay out of her savings or lose pocket money for 5 weeks. I didn’t want it to drag out so said that I would prefer it out of her savings, what an evil Dad that made me feel! But this is one of those “cruel to be kind” moments where hopefully a little hardship now will help her learn a valuable lesson later in life. But on opening her piggie bank, there was only a pound there, of course, because she’d taken £11 in her purse to the play area.

However on opening her purse, there was only 5 pence inside! “Where’s the £11 you took?” I asked….. her face dropped…. “I took it out to count it.” she replied “I must have left it there!”. So she took £21 in total out for the afternoon, didn’t pay to get in, gave £5 away, spent £3 on popcorn, and left the rest there, all bar 5p! That’s her entire savings gone, and she still owes me £3!

So what do I do? Do I say there there, never mind, forget the money you you spent that wasn’t yours, and I’ll replace what you lost? As a loving Dad, that’s what I want to do. But if I do that, what will she learn from this? Will she learn that money is a precious resource that should be looked after and cared for? Or will she learn she can do what she wants, give money away, spend 3 weeks pocket money on junk food, loose the rest, but don’t worry, Dad will bail her out each time? What happens when she’s at Uni and does the same thing and calls me to ask for money to pay the rent and buy food, cos she’s been clubbing all week?

But when faced with a repentant 7 year old in tears, cos she’s not only lost all her money (which she was saving up to buy books!) and also obviously disappointed Mum and Dad, it’s difficult to be harsh with her. I think she should ask her friend for the £5 back, but the wife disagrees. I also think we should find chores for her to do to earn extra pocket money over the next month. I have also considered calling the play centre to see if any money was found, it’s unlikely, but I could pretend that it was and supply the money anyway. But am I undermining the lesson if I do that?

It’s tricky being a father sometimes you know!

I’m feeling very pleased with myself today.  I went for a morning run round my 1 mile route, this time deciding to take it easy rather than Pose running for time.  I already had in mind that I might try to extend the distance, as previously when I’d done an intentionally slower run, I’d felt that I could have continued.

I was in 2 minds mind about how far to actually extend it, but in the end I ran another whole lap, for a total distance of 2 miles!  At 35, this is the first time in my life I’ve ever run that far without walking.  In fact my previous “distance record” (lol) is the single mile I ran back in May 2007 which was a first for me.

I know to most people it’s doesn’t sound much, but it’s a major breakthrough I think.  For the first time I appear to really managed to reach a stead state whilst running.  By that I mean that the current 100m say, feels the same in terms of tiredness / pain etc, as the previous 100m.  These frequent mile runs have started to bring that out, the latter half doesn’t feel much worse than I do at the end of the first half.  Given that, there’s not much to stop me running further.

I do think running on roads on the hill I live on is not doing me any good though, as the frequent cambers make running tricky.  At the end of the 2 miles today, it was really the pain in my right hip that made me stop.

Next and final target is 3 miles or 5k.  That’s as far as I think I need or want to get up to.  I have no desire to be a “runner” as I don’t believe in the health implications of it, and to be honest, it’s a dull form of exercise compared to Crossfit.  It shouldn’t be too far off now though.  🙂

Got to be the best April Fool since Microsoft announced they would be launching their own free version of Linux, called Winux!

Project Virgle by Richard Branson:

And now by Google founders, Sergey and Larry:

This question is important as Dr Sear’s Zone Diet lists egg yolks as one of the few foods that are not recommended. The reason is their high concentration of Arachidonic Acid (AA) and much of the Zone Diet is geared to reducing your levels of AA whilst increasing your levels of the long chain Omega 3 fatty acid: EPA.

It turns out however that this is a hard question to answer, as much of the information available is contradictory. A few key terms here: EPA has 20-carbon chains and DHA has 22-carbon chains and are known collectively as “Long Chain Omega 3“, whereas ALA has 18-carbon chains and is known as “Short Chain Omega 3“. EPA and DHA are mostly derived from oily fish and ALA is mostly derived from plant sources, typically flaxseed oil. Whilst our body is capable of making EPA and DHA from ALA, it’s a very inefficient process, so generally the Zone Diet considers ALA as a poor substitute for EPA & DHA. On the flip side, Arachidonic Acid (AA) is a long chain Omega 6 fatty acid.

On to my search for answers:

This article shows the breakdown of Omega 3’s on many foods, and shows no EPA or DHA in egg yolks, only the poor mans Omega 3, short chain ALA: http://www.commonvoice.com/article.asp?colid=5978

This article discusses how Omega 3 is added to egg yolks via adding flax seed to the hens diet: http://www.flaxcouncil.ca/english/index.php?p=food5&mp=food again this is poor ALA Omega 3.

This article only mentions egg yolks as a source of DHA, not EPA: http://www.naturalnews.com/016353.html

This article does mention that egg yolks can contain long chain EPA and DHA, however it lists DHA first over EPA, and also points out that they are in the minority to ALA: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-169636932.html

This article on a new high omega 3 egg yolk, again lists eggs as having EPA and DHA, but again they are in the minority to ALA: http://www.foodnavigator.com/news/ng.asp?n=81244-omega-dha-frost-sullivan

Dr Sears bases most of his advice on the AA/EPA ratio of your blood. Read Chapter 9 “Your Blood Will Tell Your Future” in the OmegaRX Zone book. So he has a 2 fold approach: increase your EPA and decrease your AA to change the ratio.

This is all important because as some studies suggest that organic / free range eggs have a significantly different proportion of Omega 6 (AA) to Omega 3 (1:1 compared with battery eggs which can be 10:1), and if the Omega 3 side contains EPA in reasonable proportions, then the AA/EPA ratio could be within reasonable bounds. If you’ve read the books, you’ll recall that the target AA/EPA ratio in your blood is 1.5. So if an organic egg is rich in Omega 3 and low in Omega 6, and has a high EPA component, then the AA/EPA ratio could be in within acceptable Zone bounds.

However I don’t think my research backs up this theory. Some of the sources don’t list EPA at all as occurring in egg yolks. Some sources only list DHA as occurring in egg yolks, and those that do list EPA, show it as the minority Omega 3 component, behind DHA which is behind ALA. Worse it appears that there is a growing tend to supplement hen feed with flaxseed in order to artificially boost the levels and jump on the “High in Omega 3” band wagon.

In conclusion then, I am happy that even organic / free range egg yolks are a poor source of Omega 3, don’t support the correct EPA/AA ratios we should be aiming for, and therefore (strictly speaking) should be avoided due to their high Omega 6 / AA content.

As it happens, I don’t take the egg yolks out when I have an omelette, but that’s because my average egg intake is probably less than 1 per week. If I was having omelettes every other day say, then I would be concerned about the yolks.

Continuing with my Pose Running, I went for a run again this morning.  I’ve been trying to slow down my runs and concentrate on Pose Form and today managed a modest 10:35 but this was the easiest run yet.  Whilst “easiest” is clearly a relative term for me, for the first time… well ever really, there was this small and strange thought in the back of my mind: I wonder if I could keep going?   😮

The route I’ve got runs round the outside of 6 square blocks of houses, so I could easily start by adding an additional block at a time.  Maybe next time…. maybe.

I thought I’d give Pistols a try too (one legged squats), I learnt 2 important things trying Pistols:

1. Pistols look easy.
2. Pistols are a lot harder than they look !

The only way I could manage them was to use a dumbbell as counter balance, and that was surprisingly successful.  I managed to hold the Pistol position for 15 seconds each leg.  Will try these again when I’m not tired after a run.