The War Continues

Deputy Mayor of Paris, Klugman :

 "Parisians will not be afraid," he said. "We will fight terrorism with our common values, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press. ... We are at war, but we still want to behave as a leading democracy."

What is this "common values" and "freedom of speech" he speaks of?

Waiting for the #illridewithyou folks to raise their ugly heads.

Taking Active Survival to the Next Level

Taken moments after the first shots were fired in the Martin Place Sydney hostage incident. Tori Johnson had just tried to over-power the gunman and failed losing his life. Katrina Dawson was fatally shot soon after.
Tori Johnson was an openly gay and probably quite gentle guy. Women and ethnic minorities flee as fast as they can. That dude on the right looks fit and a fast runner. He is winning the race.

So here we have a situation where an effeminate guy tries to save the day (good on him) while everyone else run for their lives.
I can’t help feeling something is wrong here.
We are not well equipped to cope with this situation. Modern “morality” and multi-culturalism has not served us well. The world has become flakey.
What would have happened if the cafe was filled with, say, heterosexual white supremacists who had mentally and physically prepared for this day?
I was once, and still am to some extent, interested in parkour. Parkour was invented by a French guy after he observed how hopeless most people were physically coping in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Not only could they not help others they couldn’t even help themselves. Parkour would provide the necessary skills and fitness to enable the practitioner to conduct himself heroically and ably in demanding situations. It is not just a matter of physical ability.
Athletic skill must be combined with courage and altruism. Georges Hébert
I’m thinking we need to do much better. We need to be prepared for more than just natural disasters.

* We have been tested and found wanting. Of course this situation could have been stopped dead in its tracks by one easy sniper shot. All those Zombie movies and we have learned nothing? Head shots, its the only way.
Question is, will we learn from this exercise?
I’m not confident. Indeed the greatest fear in the aftermath of the debacle is that people would take steps to protect themselves. Group hug instead:

The Big Push

Well, Winter is well and truly over and now it is time for the big push to get fit for Christmas. Today is November 1st , fifty odd days until Christmas and time to seriously get into the training and healthy eating.

I’ll admit I have been a bit slack lately with my eating habits. The one lesson I repeatedly fail to learn is that I really have no self control when it comes to chocolate. I see it on special in the supermarket and think I can limit myself to a 100 calorie portion a day but noooo….. So no more chocolate will be purchased until after Christmas. The same goes for wine. I have four bottles in the larder - it will have to last until Christmas.

Exercise will be intense with an emphasis on the upper body and gaining muscle definition. A two pronged attack – reduce fat, gain definition.

I upped my weights the other day by 2KG and I felt it. It is amazing how the body adapts to certain exercises that you do regularly. Change a feature of those exercises, like a very modest addition of two one kg weights and your body complains. Complaints are good though as long as no injury is experienced.

I’m fighting a battle against muscle loss as a result of aging so I’m not expecting things to be easy.

The Hollywood Look

The other day I was paid a very good compliment and that was that I looked like a 1960’s movie star. I was wearing tight Levis, a slim fitting black T shirt and hauling around some desktop computers earning some extra money in the evening. Only moments before, while I was waiting for my work mates to come down the lift, I was admiring myself in the reflection of the lift doors. I looked good I thought to myself. The upper body work is really starting to pay off with a thin waist, defined arm muscles, flat tummy and visible pecs. Nothing super fantastic but reminiscent of that early Paul Newman or Patrick Swayze look.

I was probably doing myself a favour and standing in a body enhancing way after posing in the reflection of the doors. Also lugging the workstations around probably pumped me up a bit. Wearing a black T shirt helps as well.

But still…hoorah success! This is exactly the look I want to achieve. All that pain, all that denial at the dinner table – well worth it.

Analysing My Own Blood Test Results

The Internet is a wonderful thing because, now, anyone can be a doctor. Finally, after being constantly nagged by my wife to get a blood test done to confirm that my high fat diet isn’t ruining my health, I have fronted up and had my blood tested.

Here are the Blood Lipid or Cholesterol test scores:

Fasting Status Fasting
Cholesterol 5.6
Triglyceride 0.6
HDL 1.81
LDL 3.5
Chol/HDL Ratio 3.1


Now at first glance my detractors are all jumping up in the air with glee at seeing a high total cholesterol score of 5.6 and I must admit I was dismayed thinking about all the hassle I would be getting from my wife when I next tuck into a fatty steak. But delving deeper into the figures resulted in vindication – well at least in my own mind.

The three most important numbers are the Triglyceride, HDL and the ratio ones. All three are great results. The Triglyceride, which is basically fat, serum level is very, very low. I beat my wife (0.7) and my sister (0.8). The HDL, otherwise known as ‘good’ cholesterol is well above 1.0 giving me a good/bad ratio that is deemed by the medical orthodoxy as putting me in the very low risk group for cardio problems. The total score of 5.6 is great, if all else is working well, as that means that excess in the blood is being cleared up and that my body is getting ample essential cholesterol for brain and cell function. These are figures you would expect from a healthy individual eating a lot of meat, eggs and cream and working out regularly.


Now Renal Function tests.

Sodium 140
Potassium 4.3
Creatinine 103
eGFR 66

At first this looks slightly alarming for kidney function. The eGFR is a bit low as it should be greater than 90. But then I find out that it is really determined by calculating the level of Creatinine which is getting close to being too high. Now creatinine is a waste product from muscle breakdown and high levels can indicate that the kidneys are not processing it out of the blood properly…unless you are working out fairly intensely doing sprints and lifting weights combined with a high protein diet. Phew, nothing to worry about there. I see this level as indicating that I am training hard enough. The level is highish but below a figure that would cause alarm. Real body builders would have a level much higher than this. Also an older person has naturally higher levels. Probably due to natural muscle wastage as the body ages – something I am actively trying to reverse.


The other high figure I had was with the blood liver test that showed ALT at 46 IU/L. New Zealand tests reckon this should be below 45 although Wikipedia say it should be between 7 and 56. This can be elevated due to muscle damage from exercise as well or drinking a little too much wine. I think I will cut back a bit on alcohol as I think it might be sabotaging my attempt to get a body fat percentage of less than 10% anyway just to be on the safe side.

Everything else shows as normal. No sign of inflammation or prostate problems. Rather strangely, they didn’t do blood glucose level although my own tests show that as normal.

So, full steam ahead with the high fat, high protein diet with a reduction in alcohol consumption and an increase in hydration just to be a bit careful with kidney and liver health. Oh, and probably a blood test yearly from now on as this was kind of fun.

O.M.G.

I had this theory that obese people underneath are in good muscular shape. After all every moving moment was a weight lifting exercise wasn't it? How terribly wrong I was. Below are excerpts from an article by Doug McGuff, MD who is the co-author of the book Body by Science (12 minute per week workout).

These elevated insulin levels cause a 30-fold increased rate of transport of glucose into the fat cells where it is converted to triacylglycerol (fat). Also, in the presence of high insulin the liver also coverts glucose to fat but attaches it to a protein-coated package for transport to the fat cells (VLDL or very low density lipoprotein). In the chronically overfed state, the body protects itself by decreasing the sensitivity of insulin receptors on the muscle cells and preserving (actually increasing) insulin sensitivity on the fat cells.....

I began to notice things about my obese ER patients that I had failed to notice in my 19 years of practice. I began to pay attention to CT scans of patients. The images of CT scans represent transverse slices through the body, much like the slices of a spiral-cut ham. On abdominal CT scans I could really notice the consequences of the metabolic processes described above. The most readily obvious finding is the bizarre appearance of a normal size person entrapped in a fatty prison. In many cases, the cumulative width of the pannus of fat on either side, exceeded the width of the normal person trapped inside. The fat was not just on the surface, though. There was fat in the intra-abdominal cavity, layered on the mesentery between the intestines, and it was marbled throughout the liver, and it was packed around the kidneys. This layering of intra-abdominal fat made CT interpretation easier, as it spread out the organs of interest, and inflammation in the surrounding fat was easy to visualize. Even more astounding than the abundance of fat, was the lack of muscle. The atrophy was truly profound. The rectus abdominus, the internal and external obliques, and transversus abdominus muscles, which are normally 1-2 cm thick were only millimeters in thickness. The lumbar extensor muscles, were so atrophied that open spaces were evident between the cord-like bundles and the muscle did not extend above the spinous processes, or beyond the transverse processes of the vertebra. What, in the well-developed state was as thick as the barrel of a baseball bat, was now smaller than a paper towel tube.....

These hernias were occurring because the very thin abdominal muscles were being stretched beyond their capacity by the accumulation of intra-abdominal fat....



Makes me want to fast all day and go out and do some high intensity interval training right now! The fat is not just stuck to the outside people, its on the inside pushing out and squashing all the organs.

This Guy is Good at Chin-Ups

21st Century Lacto-Paleo

There has been a bit of discussion on the web lately about paleolithic diet purism and such. I subscribe to the school of thought that says its is best to to pick the best features from the Paleolithic and Neolithic worlds to create an optimal diet and exercise regime. This means that certain Neolithic foods can be consumed like the fats extracted from milk products such as butter and cream. These represent cheap sources of fat that can be used to make other foods more palatable and of course are excellent foods in their own right.

I consider myself to be thoroughly modern even though my body is mostly an old design. Optimal fuel and training are obviously desirable but it doesn't necessarily follow that only paleolithic agents should be used. I believe there has been considerable evolutionary development in humans over the last 40,000 years. We have seen it in insects and rodents over the last 100 years. Rats have become resistant to warfarin for example. The human body has changed over this time producing the distinct racial differences we see today.

You can't go too far wrong if you follow all the principles found at the following blog:

PaNu

Reading through the latest comments there I realized something about vegetables a s a food source that is quite interesting. No vegetable is a pure food like butter or eggs or meat for that matter in that all vegetables have a degree of secondary compounds that the plant uses as a defense mechanism. Some are so high in these compounds that they are totally inedible - indeed most plants are totally inedible yet we have become resistant to some of the poisonous plant compounds, much like those warfarin resistant rats, and can eat a variety of plants. They give us some sustenance but it is of a poor quality compared to the 'pure' foods. What distinguishes an edible plant from a poisonous one is the level of these secondary compounds. No studies and experiments have been done that prove that eating vegetables is good for you - it's just assumed for some reason. Possibly because of sailors experience with scurvy or the poor health of people who have lived on limited diets in the past. Yet those people tended to live on high starch diets such as corn or potatoes or ships biscuits. No one has suffered greatly living on a fresh high fat/protein diet.

A Lonely Figure

Yesterday I noticed a significant improvement in my six foot bar muscle-ups. I did a fairly major workout involving cycling, running, wall climbing, rock lifting, hill climbing, push ups, crawling, jumping, sprinting and bar work over about an hour and a quarter. The faux-muscle-ups seemed easier. I’m wary of over-doing it as I really want to avoid any over-use or traumatic injury that will impede my progress. One thing I did notice, that was different to last time, was that I didn’t feel so broken afterwards. Last time the main bone in my left arm felt damaged. Not the joint but the main straight bit which was a bit odd yet after yesterdays workout I felt a little sore but in a good way and now this morning I’m feeling really good with no significant aches and pains. I’m having a rest day even though I really want to do some working out – maybe I’ll do some planks, something different and not intense. I also made sure I drank a lot of water and ate well yesterday consuming rice bread, sardines, almost half a chicken, fatty pork, a pear, cream in coffee, a corn cob drenched in butter, green vegetables, egg and some cream cheese – oh and some whiskey after two days rest from alcohol (did you know that alcohol has zero GI?). This was my muscle building diet day but writing it down it doesn’t sound like a huge amount. Some may question the corn cob but I have found that a corn cob a day makes you nice and regular and keeps things moving a long fast and smoothly. I don’t eat more than one and I think it is better than any processed corn product. I wonder though whether its laxative effect is due to the body wanting to expel it at soon as possible - hmm.

I’m also taking a 1500mg fish oil tablet whenever I eat some meat. This converts your land-based meat into fish or at least balances the omega 3/6 ratio. Consciously cutting fruit consumption down to the barest minimum of one or two pieces a day. And using all my will power to avoid the chocolate temptation which along with red wine is a bit of a weakness. It is red wine and chocolate that is stopping me from achieving my six- pack-ab goal I believe.

My wife was telling me that one of her friend’s husbands was joining the gym. I had noticed that for a man in his early forties he had a lot of fat accumulating around the middle. Skinny-ish arms and legs, no muscle definition, but a fat middle – it’s a terrible look imho. It’s just a result of no physical discipline and poor food choices leading to metabolic syndrome. He needs to do something. Her friend said that I was skinny and little – can you believe that? I have very little fat because my body is a fat burning furnace. My muscles have definition, if I was bigger it would just be layers of fat stuck to my body – why would I want that? People must think I am naturally this way yet it is the result of eight years of diet control and exercising focused on building the perfect body for my age.

Anyway, it occurs to me that no one close to me follows a regime of high fat, high protein eating and parkour-like physical training. Yet my success is obvious to behold. They think I am mad having cream in my coffee and four boiled eggs for lunch while they eat bread and fried rice dishes or pastries washed down with coke, fruit juice or Red Bull. The resistance to saturated fat eating and the core belief that grains are good for you is entrenched into the main stream belief system and I strike a lonely figure. I’m an eccentric, prone to obsessive-compulsive behaviour, I will admit but it would be nice to win over a convert or two and see if my success can be replicated. Thank goodness for the Internet from which I have gleaned most of my information and advice.

The Paleolithic Mind at Work

I spotted this Paleolithic intrusion into the 21st Century the other day. I wonder what sort of people do this sort of thing? - students I suppose. Nevertheless I'm glad I managed to capture it digitally for posterity.

Yet look closely at the top picture. Why there are two phalluses in the picture!

Some New Gear

First new gloves. These are Ironclad WorkCrew high dexterity work gloves which make perfect Parkour gloves. My old gloves had my fingers poking through and I must say these gloves are very nice for wall climbing and crawling. At $38 they are quite expensive for work gloves but they are worth every cent. Very strong, light and good looking gloves.

I bought some new shows today, Nike Free 5.0 free running shoes. These shoes are supposed to simulate running in bare feet while continuing to provide protection. I am getting more and more interested in Parkour training and I want a lightweight shoe that I can use for cat leaping, precision jumping, crawling and wall climbing. These shoes will also be better for bar work like chin-ups, toes to the bar and muscle-ups. Can't wait to try them out. I'm a bit worried that they might get a bit damaged with my wall climbing. They cost $179 whch is not cheap and I rather like the idea of wearing them as a casual shoe as well. You never know when you might just want to do a sprint or leap off some wall while walking around the city so it would be nice to keep them from getting to damaged. My Asics running shoes have had the rubber bits on the toes torn off them already.

You can see I am getting quite serious about things now. I plan on spending more on gear this year than ever before. I don't have a gym membership so the money that might have been spent on that can go towards gear like this.

Everything is Trying to Kill You

A common objection people have to eating loads of meat is that it sits around in your gut festering away. Personally I haven’t experienced this and have noted that meat completely passes through my system often in less than 24 hours. Unless vegetable matter somehow manages to pass the meat in the digestive tract – maybe there are road rules in there, fast lane for vegetables, slow lane for meat. I have noticed that sustained meat consumption can lead to more solid stools unlike the runs that can result from a high fruit/vegetable diet. It is possible that fruit likes to pass quickly through your system in an attempt to stop its seeds from being digested. No plant wants its seeds to be digested so a strategy that causes convulsions in an animal’s gut and explosive stools will be good news for a plant but not necessarily good news for you.

Remember that your body is always trying to keep you alive and everything else is trying to kill you. This should be a guiding principle. The body can put up with a lot of insult although not necessarily optimally. When you eat something it would be wise to ensure that its defences have been neutralized. This is easy with animal products but not quite so clear cut with vegetable products, they’re much sneakier and meaner.

Update on muscle ups: Today my body is sore and damaged. It’s amazing how changing your exercises can so easily result in sore muscles and joints. You think you are exercising everything but it is actually very hard to do. I’m thinking about a routine of exercises that can exercise every muscle in the body to be done at least once a week - basically a ton of different exercise but not done to excess, maybe just five times of each movement to keep the body accustomed.
Anyway I have sore shoulders and legs. Shoulders from concentrating on dips and slow descents from the bar, legs, I think from doing cat leaps because I want to improve my explosive leaping ability. Anyway it’s all good, very good as no major harm done and today I can take a rest.

Progress Report on Muscle-Up Plan

It looks like I need to concentrate on several things:

Explosive chin-ups – to get more of my body above the bar. Cheating a bit but hey.

Better dip ability – For the final stage of the muscle-up

Slower descent – not just falling down but using muscles to descend from the dip as slowly as possible – done to increase strength

Stronger hands/wrists – transitioning from chin up to dip, although technique plays a large role here.

More exercise equipment required as I don’t have any parallel bars at home. There are some a few minutes away by bike but it is getting dark in the mornings now that summer is ending. I could buy a portable camping type lamp that I could hang near the bars. I could build something for spontaneous use at home.

Chin-up bars at the park are at 6, 7 and 8 feet. I can easily do a muscle-up on the 6 foot bar but not the 7 foot one and certainly not the 8 foot one where I have to jump up to the bar and can hang fully stretched out. This is the bar that I want to be able to muscle-up on in three months time. What I really could do with is a 6.5 foot bar or slightly less. I could achieve this by building my own adjustable height bars at home or by making a small platform that I could stand on to bring me a bit closer to the bar for use in the park.

I need to practise getting more of my hand over the bar in a sort of false grip to make it easier to transition from chin-up to dip.

Muscle recovery. As I type this I really want to go out and do some exercise yet I feel I should take a rest day and let my joints and muscles recuperate. The last thing I need is an injury. Hopefully it will be a case of less is more. Yet I wonder if they have rest days in the French Foreign Legion?

Nutrition. Need to eat well for strength although large arm muscles are apparently detrimental to good muscle-up form. Not much danger of that occurring with me though sadly. My arms are bigger than they ever have been but still pretty weedy I reckon. The photo above is of me taken today - not too bad for a 50 year old on a high fat diet.

A New Direction

Video made by Dawali

The three year plan is now well over and it is time to reassess the situation. My first idea was to create a new plan, the ten year plan. This would have as its main objective maintaining health and strength as it is now with a focus on avoiding injury and illness. To get from 50 to 60 without any major medical intervention and to not lose any strength over this period. Yet at fifty I find myself in quite good condition without any health problems and a fitness level that must be significantly higher than most of my contemporaries. Why should I just maintain this level of fitness? Why not progress? One thing that occurs to me is that it is a bit dangerous to merely maintain a level of fitness. I suspect that if you are not moving forward you are moving backwards. The struggle has to be maintained in the forward direction and at some point there may well be a moving backwards even though you are making every effort to progress. Yet that time is, hopefully, some way off. With the new ideas about diet and the casting away of the carbohydrate is essential myth it looks quite possible, if you truly focus on it, that you can remain fit and vibrant up to ninety or more. A diet that comprises mostly animal protein and fat and that eschews the processed and even natural carbohydrates combined with intermittent fasting will preserve the body into old age. Well that’s the gamble anyway. We know that the standard diet and frequency of eating have a bad track record so there is not much to lose and a lot to gain. Well, I guess you might lose out on a lot of enjoyable eating moments yet eating bad stuff has long since ceased to be enjoyable for me and I rather enjoy a mostly carnivorous diet and the way my body looks because of it.

So the new direction? I must get stronger or fail trying. The new plan is a three month plan. Over three months I will concentrate on upper body strength. At the end of three months I want to have noticeably stronger abilities and be able to get a medical done that shows outstanding blood quality. How to measure strength? This is quite easy as I want to be able to do something that I cannot do now and that is a genuine muscle up. I can do a muscle up by jumping at a bar that is not too high but I can’t do one from a hanging position and this I would dearly love to do. It has practical applications for parkour as well as quite high walls can be scaled in what looks to be one graceful movement if you can easily do a muscle up.

To begin to train to do a genuine muscle up you need to be able to do 15 genuine chin ups and 15 dips in one set. The video above says 20/20. Presently I can only do 14 chin ups and I haven’t really done much dip training. This morning I was able to do 10. So now I need to concentrate on getting these numbers up. At the end of three months I expect to be able to do 20 chin ups and 20 dips as well as several muscle ups from a hanging, legs dangling position. This is not too ambitious but I will need to work at it, at times to the detriment of other things maybe although I suspect not. Overall fitness will still be required and a light frame will only help matters.

I will plot progress on this blog as I make my attempt. I thought I might spend less time commenting about theory and stuff and actually focus on this practical attempt at something that should be quite achievable. I want to concentrate on developing practical and functional strength.

All Food is Fat

I reckon you "get it" when you believe you have over eaten after consuming a banana. I remember someone telling me a story about how their friend was living off a diet almost entirely of fruit like pineapple, watermelon, grapes and so forth and yet they were getting fat. I didn’t believe it at the time, so ingrained into my consciousness that fruit was ‘good’ for you and that you could practically eat unlimited amounts of fruit. This is a common misconception. Fruit has become more and more common in households. Just take a look at the picture above which is my very own fruit bowl. Here we can see banana, apple, pear, grapes, peach, apricot, avocado, tomato, kiwifruit and orange all piled up and ready to eat. Twenty or thirty years ago only the very rich could afford such a fruit banquet yet nowadays it is pretty common and all year round too. Yet if sugar is bad for you, in that induces massive insulin responses, then products that contain sugar must also be bad for you. It is now being recognised that it is fructose that is especially bad for you – well in massive quantities anyway. The other thing to think about is that modern fruit is not like the fruit our Palaeolithic ancestors consumed. Modern fruit has been engineered to be very high in fructose with individual fruits being very large as well.

In a sense all food is fat in that all food can be converted into fat by your body. Protein and carbohydrate (complex and simple) can be readily transmogrified into fat for your body to store – fat doesn’t need to be converted as it is already fat. Why does this happen? Essentially it is a hormone response. Bodies use hormones to signal the system to start the fat storage process. Fructose is especially good at doing this. White sugar is half fructose and the modern corn syrup used in industrial food production is pure fructose. All food can be used by the body, it is an amazing machine, and as long as you don’t over eat things will work well, however as soon as you eat too much the body will send the signal to start storing food as fat. Eating too much is difficult to do if you stick to protein and fat as you soon become full. But sugary starchy things are very easy to over-consume and soon the body is pumping insulin into the bloodstream to start the fat storage process.

I recommend avoiding all fruit juices and consciously limiting fruit intake to one or two pieces a day if you are concerned with losing weight and controlling appetite. The human is a carnivorous ape – this is what makes us different from chimps and gorillas.

This is going to be quite challenging.

One of the reasons why there are so many diets and so many different opinions about what to eat for optimal health is that we are not all built quite the same. What works for one person may not work for another. Genetic predispositions, gender, age, diet history, medical conditions, geographical location, blood type and so on will have varying degrees of influence.

We do, however, all share a common ancestry at some point far in the distant past. Many foods today have not been around in such large or even any quantities for most of mankind’s history. Refined sugar, grains, vegetable oils, modern fruit and dairy products are relatively recent developments that humans haven’t quite adapted to. This has led to near epidemic levels of obesity, diabetes, dementia, arthritis, dental caries, depression, cancer and heart disease - diseases that are relatively rare in pre-agricultural societies. The remains of hunter-gatherers, contrary to popular belief, reveal physiques that are almost disease free. If you read the accounts of the early European explorers they always marvelled at the robust health of ‘primitive’ people. This, then, is the starting point of planning an optimal diet – a return to more primitive foods.

The following, in italics, is a comment from my friend RT detailing his particular issues with diet and general well-being with my own analysis.
Disclaimer: I am a computer engineer and not a health professional so my advice may be for amusement only or taken with a pinch of salt. Keep in mind, though, that so called “health professionals” have endorsed the food pyramid which recommends eating 6 to 11 servings of bread a day. This has resulted in the diet holocaust we are experiencing now.

My biggest problem is that I am a very picky eater to begin with.

I can see this is going to be quite challenging. It occurs to me that a love of all food actually works in favour of those determined to change their diet as they can more easily adapt. However I am a big believer in the “you are what you eat" philosophy so diet changes are in order. Diet is often just a habit and habits can be changed. For example if you cut out sweet foods, sweet foods soon become too sweet to enjoy. Nothing is going to change if you don't change your eating habits permanently - it's time to get tough on yourself and bite the bullet.

My pallet is very narrow. I live on enchiladas / rice / beans 5 days a week. I don’t even have to order when I walk into my restaurant..... they know exactly what I'll be having.

Immediately I can see that this is a diet high in carbohydrates. Enchiladas are corn based. When the Conquistadors conquered the Neolithic people of Central America they faced a people who ate a lot of corn. Cortes with about 1000 soldiers conquered a nation of millions, cutting swathes through the feeble masses of corn eating Aztecs. It was a different story when they came up against the hunters living in the north. It took centuries to crush the bison eating North American Indians. Small groups of Apaches, Sioux and others were a real threat even to the relatively modern US cavalry, running rings around them at times. The Europeans were forced into a war of brutal savagery in order to prevail.Man for man the Bison eating Plains Indian was more than a match for most Europeans. The final solution to the Indian problem was the elimination of the great buffalo herds and introducing them to the Western diet.

Rice and beans are also Neolithic foods and there is a lot of evidence that beans (legumes) are generally poisonous. Raw soy beans can be used as a rat poison! The Greeks advised against eating beans. Some claim that they are high in protein but it is nothing like the protein you would find in an egg or steak. All beans should be avoided. Rice is not as bad as wheat but should only be eaten in limited quantities. I sometimes mix white rice with a can of sardines.

Restaurants should be avoided as they put in a lot of sugar, salt and god knows what else to make it tasty. There is no mention of what drinks are had with the meal but these are often a source of extra calories, especially sodas, beer and fruit juices. Avoid artificially sweetened drinks as they confuse the metabolism - just stick to water and a little wine.

I like very little in the way of fruits / vegetables.

This is actually a good thing, contrary to all orthodox diet thinking. Modern fruits are just candy bars on trees. Even the establishment now say to limit the drinking of fruit juices. So fruit is just fruit juice with some inedible (roughage) bits as well – how can that be better? The same as wholemeal bread – its just white bread with inedible, possibly poisonous bits, thrown in – how can that make it better? Vegetables can add a bit of variety and probably do no harm although I find it hard to imagine that hunter-gatherers ate much leafy green vegetable matter being generally unable to cook it well. A few berries would be beneficial. Avoid nuts as they are high in carbohydrate calories and tend to promote hyperphagia. All fruit promotes weight gain as the body has adapted to gorging on fruit for the very limited time it is in season to gain fat for the leaner, winter months. Modern methods of agriculture, cold storage and refining have made this metabolism shattering food available in vast quantities all year round.

In fact I dont eat large volumes of food as it is. Very small portions can fill me up.

This may be a relative thing. You want to be able to go for a long time without eating anything at all. Three or four times a week it would be good to miss breakfast and lunch and end the day with a normal sized meal. This will promote weight loss and give the digestion a rest. To do this comfortably you need to eat foods that don’t make you hungry. Meats and saturated fats are able to give a feeling of satiety that lasts.

What I was really wanting was an exhaustive list of what I can choose from...... so I can make momma a shopping list.

Here is a bit of a run down:

Avoid – Vegetable oil, sugar, corn, wheat (grains in general). Anything processed that comes in a box.
Limit – fruit, nuts, starchy vegetables, corn fed meat
Eat moderately – leafy vegetables, berries, cheese
Eat– eggs, red meat (grass fed), wild game, bacon, fish, butter, cream.

This is a diet high in saturated fat and you will find opposition to it everywhere. Even though our bodies burn saturated fat when we are losing weight people think it is bad for you. It is a real hurdle to overcome as it is ingrained into our consciousness that fat is bad. The Western world is as authoritarian in its thinking as any fascist/communist state when it comes to a healthy diet. Join the resistance and eschew carbohydrates – the only macro-nutrient you don’t need. Stop eating protein or fat and you will soon be dead but if you stop eating carbohydrates you may well get healthier. It’s almost impossible to stop eating all carbohydrate so just do your best to limit it.

I have discovered a blog that really is the only one you need to read. It is not about weight loss but follow the principles you find there and weight loss will surely result. It's written by a doctor too. Visit this blog and read every article:

PaNu

Especially read first:

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..... and I'm really in pretty bad physical shape stamina wise. I live way too sedentary a lifestyle now that I dont physically labor at work....... but I grew the belly when I was most active..... my weight has remained fairly constant over the last 10 years.

It is a good sign that your weight is not increasing. A large belly is a bad sign metabolically however. Reducing the size of the belly is my primary objective when it comes to diet and fitness – get that looking right and everything else will fall into place. Again the authoritarian state has convinced everyone that they need to exercise to lose weight. This is totally wrong – the only way to lose weight is through diet. If exercise made you lose weight then fat people would be thin on account of the weight lifting they have to do constantly. The trouble with exercise is that it doesn’t burn nearly as many calories as people think, the body compensates later in the day by slowing down the metabolism resulting in a calorie burn that’s not much different to a day without exercise. People tend to eat more after exercise because they feel they deserved it, erroneously thinking they have a calorie deficit. Eventually the body adapts to exertion and burns fuel much more efficiently. So many good reasons not to think that exercise assists with weight control. Use diet to lose fat and exercise to gain muscle.

I've never had much endurance. I was a sprinter. It was like, in my prime, my muscles could not get enough oxygen fast enough to sustain continued use ...... but if I rested for a few minutes I could sprint full speed again ....... and I recently found out my biological father had the same experiences.
...... so you know, walking even a half-mile on the treadmill my legs just stop responding to my requests for another step...... but 5 minutes later I can walk another 1/4 mile. I think I could probably build that up to a mile over a month or so of incremental increases...... I dont know that I could ever do 2 miles.

The world does seem to be divided into those that are good at endurance and those that are strong in bursts. I think I’m an endurance sort of person. The good news is that high intensity interval training is a very efficient way of exercising so this should suit your style. Just get the heart rate up for a few seconds and then rest and do it again for as long as you feel comfortable. Eventually the cardio-vascular system will improve and more endurance should be possible but take it in easy stages and don’t exercise everyday. Endurance and strength is best for practical reasons. You never know when a disaster will strike and you will have to put in a Herculean effort at saving your self and family during an earthquake or Islamic fundamentalist attack.

.... but any advice you care to offer would be appreciated..... I dont really care to get skinny as much as I want to feel better and have more energy.

Feeling better and having more energy is a good goal to have but very difficult to achieve constantly. Everyone, myself included, has off days - possibly due to poor sleep, viral infection or stress or just bio-rhythms. Yet being slimmer and fitter undoubtedly help with energy and good health. Ninety percent of the equation is diet and having a body that is not constantly awash with high energy carbohydrates will go a long way to developing a feeling of vitality. Learn to view hunger as a friend. (another authoritarian principle is that you must never feel hungry). Realise that everything you have been taught about nutrition is not only wrong but possibly a deliberate lie in the service of giant food corporations and governments – they probably don’t even realise that they are doing it. They do know that they want to make money. Just one example is that they will add salt to a soft drink and then add extra sugar to hide the taste resulting in you getting thirstier after drinking it and wanting even more. But hey, it’s the consumer’s choice, right?

Eschewing the enchiladas and beans and abandoning the 'exercise to lose weight' myth is not going to be easy RT. Ridding yourself of the authoratarian Western diet indoctrination may be even harder. And facing the opposition from friends and loved ones will be a mighty big ask. Yet why not try it for six months and see what happens?

Live Life the Martial Way

My blog is starting to look a bit gay with these images of muscular male bodies. So I have put up the image above as an antidote.
This would be the most famous photo of a German soldier in existence. Yet there is a link between this photo and the two below and that is you need to live life like a warrior. On our journey we have to face many perils and eventually we will fall. It’s practically a suicide mission but we have to go on against all the odds. The longer we live the better, especially if you subscribe to the theory of Eternal Recurrence, yet nothing is more certain than our eventual demise. The thing is to be the best you can be and to fight like a warrior. But to fight like a warrior you need to be ready which means you need to train. The best you can do is fulfil the potential of the stage that you are at in your life. This means concentrating on physical fitness, mental fitness and diet. At all costs you don’t want to be a burden to others. You need to be ready to rise to the challenge, to help others on the way. If a disaster should occur, and there are a million and one potentially fatal occurrences just waiting to pounce, you need to be equipped to survive. This is the way of the warrior.

Here are a few quotes from the book "On Living the Martial Way"
by Forrest E. Morgan

From a review by Robert S. Griffin


The reality of life is war.

Living the martial way means thinking of yourself first and
foremost as a warrior.

Train against serious attack.

The warrior is always in training.

Analyze the threat you’re most likely to face.

Sun and Steel

If my self was my dwelling, then my body resembled an
orchard that surrounded it. I could either cultivate that
orchard to its capacity or leave it to the weeds to run riot in.
. . . One day, it occurred to me to set about cultivating my
orchard for all I was worth. For my purpose, I used sun and
steel. Unceasing sunlight and implements fashioned of steel
became the chief elements in my husbandry. Little by little,
the orchard began to bear fruit, and thoughts of the body
came to occupy a large part of my consciousness.

Yukio Mishima

Viva le Parkour!

I have discovered Parkour. In a way I was starting to develop the concept independently. I had seen videos of Free-Running and was quite impressed but felt that it would be too much of a risk for my older bones to do it myself yet I wanted to incorporate some elements of it into my exercise routines. Simply going out and running for 40 to 60 minutes seemed to me to be a bit of a poor exercise that was possibly a bit counter-productive. I want to develop practical, functional strength and fitness. There was Cross-Fit but this too seemed to be a bit harsh on the body and has a lot of potential for injury, more of the muscle and joint strain kind than the bone breaking, head splitting kind that free-running promised.

Fortunately I live close to a 300 acre park that is filled with stone walls, fences, trees and even an extinct volcano. There is also a barely used training area with parallel bars, pull up bars and other things that are free to use. This is the perfect environment for the older Parkour aficionado. Here I can walk, run, balance, climb, jump and scramble on all fours to my hearts content. Now working out is much more fun and much more intensive. Leaping over a fence and then running to a rock wall and scaling it in as graceful a manner as possible five times in a row sure works up a sweat. There is still the potential for injury but things can be taken at your own pace.

The idea is to perfect a graceful form of movement. Think Ninja warrior style and you are on the way to grasping the idea. Indeed Parkour is a form of martial art being developed by a military man, Georges Herbert (shown posing above), and adopted by the military in their training courses.

Georges Herbert's definition of Parkour:

Methodical, progressive and continuous action, from childhood to adulthood, that has as its objective: assuring integrated physical development; increasing organic resistances; emphasizing aptitudes across all genres of natural exercise and indispensable utilities (walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrium (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming); developing one's energy and all other facets of action or virility such that all assets, both physical and virile, are mastered; one dominant moral idea: altruism.

Someone elses:

When you begin doing Parkour you begin to see things from a different point of view. Parkour is da search for freedom. Parkour is a feeling trapped in each of us. Parkour wants to jump high and higher. Parkour means wishing to be better everyday, day by day, little by little. Parkour means taking control of your mind, your body and your soul. Parkour is about washing off fear from our Soul. Parkour means nurturing the mind. Finding balance. Parkour means finding joy. Parkour is fun. Parkour is great. Parkour is cool. Parkour is a life style.

Paleolithic versus Neolithic

I’ve been thinking about the Paleo diet and how it makes a lot of sense. Hunter gatherers appear to have been a very healthy bunch of people. All that fresh meat and lots of exercise has got to be good for you. On the other side were the Neolithics building their little hamlets and farms, relying on staple products like grains for their main source of food. But their health deteriorated , their teeth fell out and their bones ached.

In the forest were the noble savages still living the same life they had for a million years. They were close to nature, part of nature, noble, glorious savages. They started with their primitive stone tools to be the dominant predator and a million years later they had progressed to slightly sharper stone tools. A million years and that was all they came up with! Yes, they were thick as two short planks.

Then emerged the neoliths, unhealthy maybe, a little crazy maybe, but smart, very smart. In a few thousand years they progressed from stone tools to nuclear power stations. They became the supreme predator. They transcended the animal condition. Is it possible that diet had something to do with it?

Studies have indicated that gluten may have a part to play in schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. Great leaders and innovators have often been diagnosed with these conditions. Could this be a happy coincidence? Agriculture produced gluten which produced schizophrenia which produced innovation and development.