Weigh and measure yourself  before and after, but not during–that means do it today and not again until November 24.

How is the Whole30 different than the whole foods we always advocate? How is it different from the Paleo Diet? For one thing, the Paleo Diet has various levels of commitment (read the book). The Whole30 is all or nothing for 30 days. The Paleo Diet is a lifelong sustainable way of eating; the Whole30 is an elimination diet where you eliminate certain things completely and then add some of them back in, one at a time, to see how they affect you. The Whole30 allows butter only in the form of clarified butter or ghee. The Whole30 excludes (as does the Paleo Diet) foods that some ancestral-diet proponents consider to be safe starches, such as white rice and white potatoes. Those, like dairy, are good examples of foods some people can tolerate and others can’t.

What does it mean to say you can’t tolerate a food? How do you know if you can or can’t? It depends on the food and the person. If you can’t tolerate rice and white potatoes, this usually means you gain weight on them due to insulin resistance or for other reasons. If you can’t tolerate dairy, it usually means you get an upset stomach, a stuffy nose, or acne from it. But you might not be aware of any of this until you give a food up for 30 days and then add it back.

One concept all of these ancestral-based diets have in common is that no one should eat wheat. Wheat has been so heavily hybridized for added gluten content, disease resistance, and for other reasons that even if it was tolerable 100 years ago, it’s now a different plant now that isn’t good for anyone, affecting everything from digestion to skin to the central nervous system. We don’t recommend adding it back into your diet if you think those broad aspects of health are important.

For me, the biggest change I’ll make this 30 days is that I’ll skip my nightly glass of wine and will go caffeine-free (which is not required). Stephanie is giving up dairy. I’ve been happy with my diet recently and don’t expect any big changes to occur in the next month, but I’m open to being surprised. No matter how firmly set in the paleo groove a person is, there’s often still something that we could change to see what happens.

What are you going to give up? Are you looking forward to pushing the re-set button on your diet before the holidays?

MindBody Online experienced distributed denial of service attacks — unwanted malicious traffic that slowed all of the site’s servers to a crawl, one after the other, for at least three or four days. Thanks for your patience in attempting to use it to book your classes.

• Run faster & more comfortably
• Prevent impact injuries: shin splints, plantar fasciitis, runner’s knee
• Improve at all distances from the 40-yard dash to a full marathon (increase efficiency, utilization of gravity & lean)
• Increase muscular endurance and sense of pacing

Some things Marc will cover in the two hours:

• Video analysis of your stride
• Pose method drills and run theory
• Uphill and downhill instruction
• Footwear consultation
• Workout programming advice

Sign up here. $30 for everyone.

If you would like to bring any of the above things, please say so today (Thursday) or by tomorrow morning, because I’ll get them if not. THANKS! Looking forward to our party! The weather forecast keeps changing, but we’ll grill no matter what and can hang out and eat inside if we need to.

Come in and find out what’s your heaviest possible squat, press, and deadlift. We normally do sets of five; this is our occasional time to test how much we can lift ONCE. You get three tries at each lift. Your heaviest one of each (three total lifts) are totalled, and that’s your score for your CrossFit Total, as this “test” is called.

We will do a good warm-up and you will refer to your notebooks to pick a heavy starting squat. If you’ve squatted 165 pounds for five reps, you might try 175 for your first attempt at the squat. Others will take their first turn too. When your turn comes around again, for your second squat, pick something you think is realistically heavier. And the same thing a third time. Then we move on to the press, and finish with everyone taking three deadlift attempts. No dropping the deadlifts today! If you drop it it’s a failed lift.

For most of you this will be your first CrossFit Total. It’s just one more way of setting benchmarks to measure your progress. We’ll do it again in another three months or so, and it will be that much easier to choose what weights to attempt.

First-timers are welcome at 8:30 as usual and will have their own workout as always.