Water-Saver Toilet Ready for the Maiden Voyage

Ideally, we shouldn't be using expensive, energy-intensive municipal drinking water to merely dilute and lubricate our pee and poo. That is why I asked Santa for a composting toilet. Alas, Santa's elves apparently didn't know how to make one, or Santa got the follow-up letter from my sensible and hygienic wife. So, building a composting toilet will be a nice weekend project once the holi-daze is over and the wife approves my design. The fact is, while I've been eating almost 100% raw, I've got some top-choice-grade-A poo that would be perfect humanure. (You have to admit you're kind of jealous.)

In the meantime, I had to get rid of my antique water-wasting pooper, compost or no. 

The old toilet used ~5 gallon/flush. OMG!!

Old pooper used ~5 gpf.

The new one claims 1.28 gpf- HOORAY!

New Toilet--1.28 gpf.

But this is kind of talk is a bunch of poop. As my buddy John Robbins would say, "VOLUMES are what's important, not rates!"

What does that mean? It means it doesn't matter if you drive a hyrbid that gets 45 mpg while my conventional Honda Accord gets 34 mpg-- what matters is how many gallons we both use and how many less we'll use next year in order to accomplish the same amount of goals (or more). Continual progress!

In the same way, it doesn't matter how many gallons/flush my new toilets gets-- it matters how many gallons I end up flushing. Since my goal is to stay hydrated enough to pee once every hour (and twice during the night) that could mean the following volume:
OLD TOILET + WASTEFUL HABITS
14 flushes/day x 5 g/f = ~70 gallons/day!!!!!!

Since my pee is crystal clear, I don't mind following the old hippie adage, "If it's brown flush it down and if it's yellow, let it mellow." That means that, out of cleverness or guilt, I might flush just a few times per day:
OLD TOILET + HIPPIE HABITS
3 flushes per day x 5 g/f = ~15 gallons/day

But the new toilet could possibly use MORE VOLUME of water depending on my habits. If I'm a flush-a-holic...
NEW TOILET + WASTEFUL HABITS
14 flushes/day x 1.28 g/f = ~18 gallons/day

But with crystal clear, hydrated urine to be proud of...
NEW TOILET + HIPPIE HABITS
3 flushes/day x 1.28 = ~4 gallons/day

The new toilet cost me $106 plus I had to buy a new toilet supply hose, $7.50, since my old one was leaking.

The hardest part was un-attaching the old toilet and cleaning up the old caulk and wax ring. It shouldn't be called "installing a new toilet"; it should be called "scraping crud off of the floor...and then installing a new toilet."

Maximum handimanliness! Scraping caulk off the floor in preparation for the new throne.

Holiday Tragedy of '03

Merry Christmas and happy Solstice everyone! The days are getting longer, now! In the spirit of the holidays and the ghosts of Christmas past, I was hoping I could use this opportunity to raise awareness about America's number one poison-induced death--Carbon Monoxide. "Why now?" you ask, "Why bring attention to such a stupid/boring topic?"

 

Well, it's because I love you...and because the holidays usually means guests, and that means doors opening and closing, lots of showers running, loads of laundry, and lots of people cooking on stove-tops, ovens, and fireplaces-- all changing the pressure balance of the home. Simply put, it's a recipe for a ventilation disaster! If you're not fascinated by carbon monoxide, then just scroll down to the pictures of my Christmas breakfast. But if you care about indoor air quality and home performance, then read on and learn a bit about combustion safety. 

Back in 2003, the city of Chicago ran a huge campaign to get home's equipped with carbon monoxide detectors. It was a new technology and the manufacturers' standards weren't very established yet. So, when the holidays rolled around and folks spent their whole day in the kitchen cooking turkey with un-vented stoves, everybody's carbon monoxide alarms went off and everyone called 9-1-1 and EVERYBODY lived-- fortunate for the survivors... but unfortunate for us, because of our current CO-detection thresholds.

You've probably heard me say, "there is no such thing as a home that is too tight; but there is such a thing as in improperly ventilated home." Improperly ventilated homes and their appliances can cause super-serious health issues, not to mention energy performance problems. Carbon monoxide, or CO, is an odorless, tasteless bi-product of burning carbon-based fuel with insufficient oxygen. Normally, hemoglobin in the bloodstream transports oxygen to the cells of the body, but if one breathes in CO, it forms an even stronger bond with hemoglobin, and so oxygen doesn't get to the cells. Worst case scenario is you suffocate and die before you realize what's happening. It's no wonder they call it the silent killer. But few people realize that even small amounts of CO in the home can cause chronic head aches, diarrhea, nausea, fatigue, and a whole host of unpleasant health problems. Of the 200+ homes that I energy audited this year, about 3 had very dangerous CO levels when their homes were in a "worst-case-pressure" situation-- a realistic scenario during a busy day at the home.

Today, Carbon Monoxide detectors are designed to alarm at ~70 ppm (parts per million), way before death would be caused. However, they were also redesigned with the help of aggressive lobbying from over-loaded emergency responders so that they do NOT alarm below ~30 ppm. But non-zero ambient CO levels in homes are quite common and so low dose exposure over many hours can cause extensive health problems...and did I mention intergalactic diarrhea? 

The moral of the story is-- get yourself a carbon monoxide detector for 2011.  Then eat your persimmons in comfort and joy, comfort and joy.

Persimmons were on super sale this week and they are my FAVORITE food in the whole wide world. Thanks Santa. They'll be gone tomorrow for a 1400 calorie breakfast after a nice run in the snow.

Life is Too Short to Eat Green Bananas

I've noticed I'm NOT getting my ass beat by the cold weather so far, even though I we only keep our house at about 60F. I am finding that as long as I don't short-change myself on calories from fruit, I'm staying resilient to the cold and funk. However, our house has been so cold these days that my banana stockade for Y3K is NOT getting ripe. Dang!

A brown banana can either mean bruises or ripeness. These are bruised-- too green for my taste. 

While I wait for my bananas to ripen, I'm trying to 1) improve the energy performance of the home and 2) I'm having to buy a lot of expensive persimmons (which are the world's most delicious food), also mangoes, grapes, figs, or melons or I'm just having to eat green bananas. And we all know life is too short to eat green bananas.

Cincinnati's most exotic fruit for Cincinnati's most exotic dancer. My persimmon and my dance moves are my favorite.

Prepping to insulate and air seal my kneewall cavity for efficiency and ripe bananas.

Making sure to install air-tight plugs between the floor joists beneath the kneewall so I don't get ice dams on my roof or have to eat green bananas.

R38 fiberglass batts now insulate the ceiling of the room with bananas.

I've tried putting a few banana bunches on my supply registers to heat them into ripeness (by mimicking tropical conditions). This method has actually kind of worked, but supply air temperatures hit about 130F from my furnace so that's becoming a partially-cooked banana if I leave them on there too long. Plus, my cat hates the naners taking "his" spot.

After last week's snow, I can see I did NOT get ride of the icicles yet. This entire wall (back side of bathroom) still needs to be air sealed and insulated for optimum banana weatherization. If my bananas-on-the-duct are getting cooked, I can see why the uninsulated supply duct in my kneewall is literally cooking snow off my roof-- dang!

GOOD STORY-- BAD ENDING
For my two-hour commute Friday, I packed a lunch of a date/celery smoothie, a bunch of green grapes and a bunch of green-stem bananas. I ended up eating the bananas anyway-- GROSS! They left me so disappointed that I stopped at the grocery to see if i could find some discount fruit. Lucky for me they had just put out a ton of spotted (ripe) "reject" bananas for sale. They only cost about $2 for 12lbs!! That's $1 for 6lbs... $.50 for 3lbs...$.25 for 1.5lbs...~$.05 per banana!!!!

You gotta love the discount stickers

You can imagine what happened next. I overdosed. I ate 17 medium sized bananas between Yellow Springs, Ohio and Cincinnati.

Friday was my first OD on bananas.

Then something strange happened. The pendulum swung the other way. After 5 days in a row of being completely low fat raw vegan (LFRV) (minus one meal at my parents) I got VERY angry and hungry-- I think they call it "hangry".

I started craving the naughtiest foods I could imagine-- nachos, potato skins with bacon, bloomin' onions, etc, etc, etc. Cooked, greasy, slippery, deliciously-addictive fat!

Now, fat cravings should not come as a surprise to me, since, for my whole life, as a percentage of total calories consumed, my fat consumption was about 40-50% like most Americans...EVEN IF I was vegetarian or vegan-ish. Worse still, since going raw, for several months my fat intake was probably up near 70%! on some days, with all the nuts and avocados and oils I was eating.

I love nuts too much. I love the density of calories but I don't like percentage of calories from fat. Fruit has been a better source of energy for workouts and cold-tolerance.

That night, back in the 'Nati, we went out for my brother's birthday to a Mexican restaurant. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. The beans and rice burrito I ordered was exactly what I was craving. But the strange thing is, I left the restaurant feeling more hungry than when the meal started and my belly was totally distended and bloated. And immediately-- the MUCUS! It felt like my throat and sinuses clogged up like I had a sinus infection.

Why did my body react so strongly and so painfully in spite of the good taste and my obedience to the craving? Lifelong addictions? Excito-toxins? My body going into self-defense mode? Bacteria cultures in my GI and blood becoming acclimated to raw? Maybe a combination of them all?

As I'm becoming more and more aware of these sorts of responses on a meal-by-meal, food-by-food basis, I am growing more convinced that if I could eliminate these sorts of physically-taxing episodes, then my body would better use all the raw nutrients more efficiently and spend it's energy on repairing itself of past damage done as well as recover quicker from workouts. 

I can't yet explain how I to stave off the "hangery" cravings. As I was banana-drunk-driving home Friday the only other thing I was craving was romaine hearts. So, maybe I'll try that, or just eat fewer green bananas.

Improving My Vision Naturally

Before

Not so good at reading without glasses.

After (in the ever so hopeful future)

Speed reading without glasses (or contacts) at 30 words/second.

I've heard tales of several people who have been able to cure their poor eye sight naturally. My goal is to do the same. Why couldn't it happen? Why are we suddenly acting surprised at new brain research that shows how plastic our brains can be if we can really train our mind power.

My lovely aunt in Nova Scotia heard about my quest to cure my eyesight and recommended the book The Program for Better Vision by Marin Sussman. I had no idea there was an actual program.

Here's some quick theory behind the book:

5 Common Misconceptions:

1. Poor vision is inherited.
2. Vision inevitably deteriorates with age.
3. Poor vision is caused by certain visual activities.
4. Weak eye muscle cause poor vision.
5. Seeing is solely a physical/mechanical process.

We can divide our life into three periods--
BIRTH---Period A) Naturally clear vision Period----Period B----Period C) Needing glasses--- DEATH

Period B) is called The Transition Period, and I can remember mine clearly. It was a mega-traumatic time of my life, readjusting to huge life extremes during my college years. It was emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically challenging. Part of the vision-healing process is rooted in working through residual gunk from my Transition Period.

This personal project will take several weeks of daily commitment to doing my exercises (~1/2 hr/day). There are about 8 different exercises, from physical challenges, to reiki, to visualizations, to posture. to meditation. I'm stoked!

What's the worst that can happen--I work-through passed trauma and develop X-ray vision? That's got its perks, too.

A Kale Lover's Body-Image (Are you a kale-lover lover?)

There's no dentally-clean way to eat/drink a pound of kale. When you do, you learn who your friends are pretty quickly. Here's a question you should never have to ask of your friends: Do I have something in my teeth? A true friend will have already told you before you have to ask, versus that stranger at the cocktail party, who lets you carry on and on about blah-blah-blah while they are awkwardly trying to figure out if those are broccoli florets or poppy seed muffins that got trapped in your fangs.

I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I really love my body, but I am attempting a complete retrofit, at a cellular level. Maybe I can cure my shoulder injury from the bike crash of '06 using the power of the world's greatest nutrition and mind power.

So, here's a question--
Q: When is it NOT okay to speak-up with a friend about body issues?
A: It depends on if it's a dude.

I was at a birthday party last week for a friend whom I hadn't seen in a couple of months. He pulled me aside and told me bluntly, "Buddy, you look like shit." He's not the type of guy who minces words, which I usually admire about him. But "ouch", I felt like the pinata. That's what dude-friends are for, right?

If you read my last blog post, then you realize the score is now:
Self-Image 99
Self-Doubt 1

So, I've decided to use this incident as an occasion to take stock about where I've come from physically and emotionally and what my goals are. The fact is, I've been feeling sooo good lately, I'm not that concerned about how I appear to others. In fact, I have been undergoing a serious detoxification process, with some ups and downs. However, I am hopeful that over the long-term, physical appearance will be an outward manifestation of good things happening within, both nutritionally and spiritually.

You be the judge:

2006. The old Chris. Tired of feeling tired. Quasi-vegetarianish. Job is kicking my ass. Poofy face. Poor skin. (Goofy highlights in hair)

2010. The new Chris. UniverseWoman-worthy. Facial poofiness has subsided. Next stop, get rid of dependence on glasses and cure separated shoulder. 

2007. The old Chris. First Triathlon ever. Feeling soft. Scared but determined. 155 lbs.

2010. The new Chris. 5 lbs less (150lbs), svelt, but packing way more attitude and speed.

I don't know, maybe at the birthday party I had just had a rough day, a dorky outfit, or was pale from reduced hours in the sun. In any case, day-to-day appearance just won't do as the best measure of the success of this raw food venture. For me, what trumps everything is how I feel how my athletic performance evolves.

If a picture tells 1000 words, then maybe some objective performance data can tell 10,000! Unfortunately, I don't have a lot-- just some local time trial results and a few races. Certainly, the 2011 season will be about collecting more data...without letting it ruin the fun.

I'm considering these as baseline numbers, by which I will eventually measure my progress this season: 

CYCLING
Cleves 16.4k TT- 5/19/09 25:43
Alexandria 40k TT 3/14/09 1:03:17
Alexandria 40k TT 5/9/09 1:00:49- (~4% faster than my first ride)

TRI
Tri 4 Joe (Sprint) 5/20/07 1:26:34
Tri 4 Joe (Sprint) 5/18/08 1:20:38 (~6.9% improvement over first year)
Tri 4 Joe (Sprint) 5/?/09   1:18:16 (~3% improvement over second year with an asterisk*)
To have raced at the same pace as the winner, I would have to go about 14% faster than my 2009 time. That's a LOT of ground to make up. BUT, (here's the asterisk) *my best time in 2009 was run *with a staple in my foot, which I stepped on coming out of the swim transition. The pain was so intense, I stopped to take my shoe off and brush my sock, which didn't help-- I didn't find the staple until the race was over. It hurt like a mother! I know I could have run a lot faster.

Other performance data I need:
Lactate threshold and VO2 Max- where does my body/vascular system perceive its limits for endurance?
Critical Power- can I go faster with less effort and less exhaustion?
Blood work- how is my iron, B12, yada yada.
Blood pressure
Stress levels
Resting heart rate

The Superficial Data...AKA-- The Stuff That Really Matters
Texture of skin-- is it getting smoother, less oily, less dry, quicker healing time, enough sun?
Eyes- are the whites getting whiter?  Is my eye-glasses prescription getting better or worse? Is my focus time getting quicker? Are my visualizations getting clearer and more powerful?
Shoulder- will it ever fuse back together?
Libido/fertility- This data will have to be for members only--paid subscribers. Just kidding. But seriously...to be continued.

Winter Off-Season = Pre-Season

I decided to take a week off of running this week and, you might say, a week off of training (except for a couple of Spinning and Pilates classes), but this scheduled rest is actually an integral part of my training and is challenging in its own way. But there is something about the season that makes rest and recovery seem natural to my body. Cincinnati winters normally kick the living crap out of me, emotionally and physically. But this year, I feel 180 degrees different. I feel good...like, really good.

The key to 2011 success...If it's too easy, go harder. If it's too hard, TAKE IT EASY. Well said, Johnny G

The temptation with a "periodized" training schedule is to believe that fitness gains only grow with increased volume and increased intensity. Because I feel so good, I want to keep ramping-up my training. But this, the experts say, is a recipe for burnout, chronic fatigue, and self-sabotage. Although my inner-rogue-athlete wants the "experts" to eat these words (because of my new X-factors), I'm afraid to jeopardize my progress this year, so I will acquiesce to my coach-- The point is not to peak in January but in September.

I have been consistently running about 30-40 miles per week, riding in 3-4 spinning classes (or road rides), 2 Pilates classes, plus strength sessions 1x-2x per week.  It's really surprised me, how good I feel at almost all hours of all days. I attribute these good feelings to two X-factors: #1, a new life outlook; #2, the raw fruits and veggies. 

X-Factor #2- The Raw Diet
I'm having more and more days that are 100% raw, but on average, it's about 75% raw. Always, breakfast is 100%, which I'm feeling really proud of. Alas, I'm still addicted to Chipotle burrito bowls. I just get bored with chewing. I feel like I'm grazing all damn day, getting blisters from peeling so many tangerines and bananas. How else am I supposed to get 3000-6000 calories a day?

The smoothies help. Susie bought me a new blender called the Ninja, which prides itself on being the $90 version of the $600 Vitamix. It felt like a safe investment. I've tried both, and can tell you the the Vitamix is superior, but the Ninja is light years better than the food processor I was using to make my smoothies. Basically, the food processor made tossed salads in cup--weak!

The Ninja doesn't distort the space-time continuum like the Vitamix, but it's effective and easy to clean.

Without my monster-green smoothies, I don't know how else I could have kicked the caffeine addiction. Here's my usual recipe:
1/2 lb of frozen kale
1 handful of strawberries
4 bananas
20 oz water

X-Factor #1- New Life Outlook
This will have to be addressed at more length in another blog.