Jamie Fellrath | Practical Mindfulness

Today I started my Tough Mudder training.  The race is in late April, and I have a long way to go (especially after having been sick).  But there's no time like the present to knock the rust off and get to work.  Given the early date of it, I'm going to have to work out all through the winter to get ready, so it behooves me to start NOW! Incidentally, if you'd LIKE to join a team with me, let me know!  I'm looking for folks to join the Train 4 Autism: Columbus Chapter team!

How Todd Dosenberry pulled all this together, I don't know, but I admire the heck out of him for it. Todd, as you may know, is the high-energy blogger over at Toadally Primal  and he's got an EPIC Giveaway going on right now, with one of the greatest gift lists I've ever encountered in a Paleo contest!  Check this out: Squatty Potty ($80) US Wellness Meats Gift Card ($100) TX Bar Organics Gift Card ($50) CocoMoJoe Bars Variety Pack ($39) Kasandrinos Imports Olive Oil 1.25 mL ($42) Paleo Kits – Steve’s Club Sampler ($30) 1 original large PaleoKit  1 grass-fed small PaleoKit  1 grass-fed Just Jerky  1 original PaleoKrunch bar  1 PaleoKrunch original flavor cereal  1 coconut small PaleoKit  Tanka Bar ($10) An "I eat heart healthy saturated fat" t-shirt ($20) A Primal Blueprint "Grok on" t-shirt ($20) The book Practical Paleo – Signed by Diane Sanfilippo ($40) The book Make It Paleo – Signed by Bill Staley & Hayley Mason ($35) The NomNom Paleo ...

I'm asking myself a very interesting question today that was sparked by a Twitter trending topic today:   #WhyDoIAlways .  People are using this topic to examine their lives to find habits that they have which have affected them either negatively or positively - but mostly negatively. Here are a couple of examples: #WhyDoiAlways end up solving every1's problems except my own????? — FaTimA♥ Made in IraQ (@TiMA_87) May 17, 2012 Or another one: #WhyDoiAlways go for the guys that are NOT good for me ? Im better than this ... — Planet F a i t h(@YouwantFaith) May 17, 2012 It's interesting, isn't it? I think every one of us could come up with a couple (dozen?) of these for ourselves. For me, one might be "#WhyDoIAlways find myself doing things at the last minute?"  or "#WhyDoIAlways allow myself to make the first exception when I'm trying to make changes in my life?" But...I'm curious about this trending topic from another stan...

Hi everyone, today's post is a little more personal than I've posted in the past.  Today is World Autism Awareness Day , and I wanted to ask a bit of a favor of you:  remember autism.   From recent reports , this condition now affects 1 child in 88 born today (1 in 54 boys). And honestly, it's the little things that really help the most: If you see a mom having trouble with her child in a store, when the child is throwing a tantrum or simply not listening, it's possible that mother is dealing with an autistic child who's having a sensory meltdown.  This happens when the kid's senses are out of whack, making them hypersensitive to some stimuli (various noises, too much visual activity, even the feeling of some clothing fabrics or textures of foods can be triggers) and it actually causes them pain. If you see a parent throwing a fit because the food her child received at a restaurant contains gluten or casein, keep in mind that omitting those proteins may be ...

Now I'm a real code ninja... About a month ago, I was bemoaning the fact that I needed some new shoes for work.  I could have just gone out to the local shoe store or department store and get a pair of inexpensive brown or black shoes to throw on (my office is business casual), but you could bet that the shoes weren't going to be the most comfortable things in the world, nor particularly good for the feet.  And to buy a pair of the currently available minimalist shoes like VivoBarefoot or something similar is in the $130-range, which I wanted to avoid for the time being. However... I was watching some Akira Kurosawa movies and I noticed the footwear that some of the samurai in it were wearing ( Yojimbo and Sanjuro , if you're interested).  And that led me to recalling some of the footwear I'd seen when I was taking martial arts when I was younger, particularly the Japanese shoes known as Tabi. Tabi are traditionally Japanese workers' boots.  They're prized for t...

As you may have noticed, things look a little different around here.  I've moved this blog off of Wordpress and over here to Blogger, where I have all my other blogs ( Fellrath.com , Carless Columbus and Train 4 Autism - Columbus ).  The Wordpress thing was my experiment to try out that platform, and basically I didn't like it much, to the point of not posting over there as often as I should have.  Some of the comments were lost in the transfer, unfortunately, but mostly it all came through without a hitch.  I'm pleased.  So I hope you'll join us back over here at this incarnation of the site, and apologies to any I may have ticked off with the move.

An interesting article about a bacteria group that can be found in the intestines of autistics' with gastrointestinal issues but not in the systems of non-autistics has come out recently, bringing more credence to the connection between gut/brain issues and autism. The study came from Brent Williams and colleagues at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and will be published in an upcoming issue of mBio , the publication of the American Society for Microbiology. Bacteria from the group Sutterella was not found in the guts of non-autistic children, but was found in 12 of 23 samples of bacteria from the intestinal tracts of autistic children in the study. It's not known if the bacteria itself is a pathogen in itself or an indicator of some other condition. But it lends a lot of support to the connection between leaky gut and autism, as we discussed back in the article with Scarlett and her success with a Paleo regimen . Something different is going on w...

Over the holidays, I was bad.  Not horribly bad, like pigging out on nightly spaghetti dinners and eating bowls of cookie dough at a sitting, but I certainly wasn't good.  I stuck to most of my Primal guns, but the cheat days (or even cheat periods) came too often for my taste (pun totally intended). Cookies and donuts showed up at work, Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins and Trees appeared back in every store I entered (oh, Reese's, you are the tools of the devil, but so tasty...),  busy shopping evenings and such turned into quick bites of pizza or deep-fried meats (and I'm willing to be the cooking oils weren't of the coconut or animal-based nature)... you get the picture.  Temptation combined with convenience took over and I had the following experiences: Had to go to the bathroom and sit there a LOT.  Sorry if that's TMI, but it's a fact, and those of you reading Paleo blogs are probably used to such talk at this point. Put some poundage and softness back o...