Archive for September, 2011
Exercise or Pharmaceuticals?
Posted by: | CommentsIn a report by Science Daily, the bottom line is that exercise stimulates the creation of blood rather than fat.
“McMaster researchers have found one more reason to exercise: working out triggers influential stem cells to become bone instead of fat, improving overall health by boosting the body’s capacity to make blood.”
“The body’s mesenchymal stem cells are most likely to become fat or bone, depending on which path they follow.”
“In ideal conditions, blood stem cells create healthy blood that boosts the immune system, permits the efficient uptake of oxygen, and improves the ability to clot wounds.
Bone cells improve the climate for blood stem cells to make blood.”
So if you live a sedentary life style, you are building fat and reducing the ability of your immune system. On a daily basis, your body produces inflammation from cytokenes. The body depends on strenuous exercise to get the white blood cells to clean up destroyed muscle cells, rid the body of inflammation, and stimulate cytokene 10 to rebuild the muscle.
Building fat, accumulating inflammation, and weakening the immune system is the process for developing heart disease and cancer.
You do have free will. You can determine which way you want to go. You will go one way or the other.
Some choose exercise and healthy eating and some choose pharmaceuticals. Our tremendous national health care issues result because too many people have chosen the pharmaceutical route.
“Some of the impact of exercise is comparable to what we see with pharmaceutical intervention,” he says. “Exercise has the ability to impact stem cell biology. It has the ability to influence how they differentiate.”
How to Include 5 Healthy Foods in Your Diet
Posted by: | CommentsNatural News in an article touts 5 super foods that are anti inflammatory and strong anti-oxidant. These are two characteristics you want to stress in your daily diet.
Your body produces inflammation naturally on a daily basis. It also gathers free radicals from the environment. If you don’t eliminate them, they lead to debilitating functionality. They lead to dementia, poor eye sight, heart disease, and cancer. Do you need more?
Eating natural foods and getting exercise eliminate both. Animals rarely suffer from dementia or heart disease. There are many cultures in existence that also don’t suffer these maladies and members live to be active to 100 years old.
If you want to create a diet with anti-oxidants and inflammation fighting super foods, you should read Johnny Bowden’s book “150 Healthiest Foods on Earth”. I started my health drive with this book by picking eight foods to include in my diet. I also started eliminating bad foods.
In the Natural News article they list 5 foods that are helpful:
Mustard, Raisins, Nuts, Seasonings, Cole slaw (Cabbage)
Mustard helps fight migraines for which a surprising number of people suffer. Raisins and nuts have anti oxidants as do cabbage and many spices.
In the mornings I have a fruit bowl of apples, bananas, peanuts, raisins, with flax seeds and a half bowl of oat meal. I eat my oat meal dry because I don’t eat dairy. If you put fruit on it or a little syrup (pardon the sugar) it becomes delicious. I add cinnamon and raisins to my oat meal.
I mix mustard in my tuna mix for my wraps. I include tuna, lemon pepper, brown mustard, zucchini, onions, and tomatoes. (notice no mayonnaise). Then I wrap it in wheat tortilla for a great wrap. This is also portable if you want to take it to work.
I put cabbage in my soups. Cabbage and kale are on top of Johnny Bowden’s list of 150 powerful foods as cancer fighters. My soups are meals in themselves. I use three types of beans, brown rice, yams, potatoes, celery, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, zucchini, kale (when I have it), red peppers, turmeric, and chicken bouillon cubes.
These three meals are great for energy, weight loss, and immune system development. Because of my exercise and recovery needs, I include meat. I eat it in small 3 to 4 ounce portions and have a small steak in the morning with and egg and put a broiled hamburger at night on top of spaghetti with vegetables or on top of brown rice with vegetables.
This is also a very inexpensive diet. Notice there are no canned and few processed foods, no dairy, no sodas, no french fries, no sweet rolls, no bread, and little sugar. Being a dessert freak, I have to admit I make brownies or banana walnut muffins to keep me alive.
It’s Hard to Find Our Essence in All the Noise
Posted by: | CommentsI had the wonderful experience of attending a close friend’s wedding last night. It was a great microcosm of the world we live in. It was fun, there were lots of conversations, plenty of food, alcohol, and emotions. It was very busy. The pace was like a river that takes us and the people around us through a cacophany of experiences and sensations.
It reminded me of my life previous to being retired and living on the beach where writing, surfing, and reading are my primary activities. I have lots of time to reflect. I have a lot of peaceful times. I have as much time as I want to express myself.
How do I express myself? I write, I exercise, I surf, I cook, I read what I like, I surf the news, I look for enlightening information as well as negative news on our state of existence.
What don’t I do? I don’t watch TV. I don’t carry a smart phone that keeps me connected to texting and messages every minute. I don’t spend much time on social network sites. I don’t have to worry about office politics.
What are my experiences? I am up at 5 a.m. or 6 when all the world is quiet. I am in the ocean most mornings regardless of the weather. (I wear a wetsuit). I can walk along the beach in the afternoons and watch great sunsets in the evenings. I know a lot of people enjoying the same things that are mellowed out by the experiences.
It is often difficult when flowing down the rapids to get to the shore and reflect on what is passing by. Our lives are passing by and we are often trying to find the most meaningful experiences. We too often look to the outside to find what we want inside. There is so much noise.
I find that each of us has so much value. It is harder to connect with the value in others if we don’t first connect with the value within ourselves. Experiencing who we are by shutting out some of the noise creates the opportunity to listen.
I find that being healthy, fit, self sufficient, kind, generous, compassionate, and tolerant helps me create a world I enjoy living in. I, of course, fall short of the mark on these objectives every day. But then I examine what happened and try to do better the next time.
I try to be one of those people that contribute to other’s experience. Separating my self from the noise is a start. Healthy eating and fitness are great connections to nature. Gratitude is a connection. Connection is the essence. Noise can be a great distraction. Sometimes we want the noise so we don’t have to connect.
Why Doesn’t the Govt. Subsidize Skinny Instead of Obesity?
Posted by: | Comments“A new report released this week has found that, among the billions of dollars spent each year in federal subsidies for commodity crops, a steady flow of these taxpayer dollars are going to support high fructose corn syrup and three other common food additives used in junk food.
The report, “Apples to Twinkies: Comparing Federal Subsidies of Fresh Produce and Junk Food” by CALPIRG and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, studies the interesting question of whether the nation’s problem with obesity is fueled by farm subsidies.
In another article is a quote from a citizen: “I think that the number one problem that is causing childhood obesity is that it costs so much more to eat healthy,” she wrote. ”It is cheaper to buy a huge bag of frozen French fries to feed your family than it is to buy them each a nice apple. Us lower and middle class people are stuck between a rock and a hard spot.”
At the same time Congress is torn by reducing the entitlement safety nets, it continues to sponsor producers of food that eventually creates the need for safety nets. Is Congress stuck on obesity because it is cheaper to make people fat than make them skinny?
If people are getting all the calories they need rather than starving, does that make the population more stable and therefore more likely to reelect their representatives? The ensuing medical costs can be blamed on the public and their inability to pay for cures can become their problem.
If the government were really here to help, it would confess that most other countries of the world are healthier than we are because their diets have less calories. Rather than spending more money on defense, infrastructure, and entitlements, why don’t we spend more money on subsidizing healthy food and education?
If we are laizzes faire and capitalistic, make the population healthy and smart and they will take us out of our economic doldrums and entitlement heavy budgets. If the government was more like it was at the inception of the constitution, it would give the states and the people more freedom to create their own prosperity.
The heavy hand of government has led us astray and wastes our resources. We, the people, have to see the light and find our own way. This begins with taking back our health and fitness.
Modern Diseases Could Disrupt Global Economy
Posted by: | CommentsIn an article from Natural News it is reported that “Between now and 2030, the aggregate global cost of treating the five most common, non-infectious diseases — cancer, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and mental health disorders — will top $47 trillion, according to a new report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF). And experts warn that if nothing is done to curb this escalating healthcare crisis, the global economy will most certainly collapse due to insurmountable financial insolvency.”
The World Economic Forum says these five diseases are responsible for 63% of all global deaths.
“In other words, no economy will be able to survive this approaching doomsday scenario, which is why the world’s current course must change as soon as possible. WEF spokesmen and others commenting on the report highlight increasing taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, and encouraging less consumption of “salt and trans fats,” as a helpful solution for reducing such costs. But such approaches are largely simplistic and do not fully address the root causes of non-communicable disease.
Truth be told, modern society in many industrialized nations is riddled with toxic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, and pollutants that are wreaking havoc on both environmental and human health. The nature of genetically-modified organisms (GMO) in the food supply, reliance on processed foods as part of the Standard American Diet (SAD), and an overall complacency among many towards exercise, are also some of the primary factors contributing to this modern health crisis.”
These dire warnings support my less catastrophic posts on how to feel better through nutrition and fitness. I might add that my daily intake of digestible clay in liquid form is supposed to cleanse the intestinal tracts of metals, pesticides, and radiation. In other words, digestible clay is one solution to fight the environmental affects you can’t see.
These warnings also reinforce the fact that our modern diet and complacency about exercise have taken us too far away from our connection to nature. Man is an animal and for millions of years, his system through evolution had grown accustomed to natural food and daily labor.
The last few years in geologic time have taken us far afield. Just as we try to raise animals on unnatural foods and in unnatural conditions, we ingest the unhealthy product of these efforts at efficiency and cost reduction.
We don’t consider the cost of getting a new IPhone or big screen TV because we know we can save money on a corn based diet and factory raised meat. The FDA and monopolized food industry are quickly taking us down the same path as the security industry did in 2008.
Just because you are not paranoid, does not mean that someone is not out to get you.
Can Fitness Create Happiness?
Posted by: | CommentsHappiness is often a result of achieving your priorities.
When I was younger, money seemed to be the key to happiness. It was assumed that you would have friends and family. They, of course, brought love, pride, and contentment. But they didn’t fit the generation’s definition of achieving happiness.
We were raised on education, jobs, and financial security as the key to achieving your life’s mission. Financial security meant you could take care of everyone in your circle. Even as we enjoyed our families, the stress was on accumulating more.
This left a hole in our psyches. Parents out of the depression era were food, shelter, security, and safety net oriented. These were not givens in their era. They had little time to contemplate self expression and connection to their spirit.
Now, strangely enough we have passed through safety nets, accumulation, and financial security. The world is on a tenuous edge. Everything material is threatened again. In this age, however, we have had a glimpse of abundance and accumulation.
Now that it may not be our priority, we might look to more meaningful values. It is clear we need to adopt the developing world’s view of seeking independence from government entitlements. This means we need to take better care of our health and our future financial condition.
This is an opportunity to celebrate the human spirit. We have seen that free wheeling prosperity built on the back of easy credit was just a mirage. Money was never the key to real happiness. Happiness resides in our own perspective of what life is supposed to be. It all begins with gratitude. Gratitude begets kindness, generosity, and self love.
We have to appreciate that we are worthy just because we are here. We are the evolution of 3.5 billion years of life. We are the survival of the fittest. We have been given the gift of 75,000 days, approximately, to enjoy our short participation in life.
Eating healthy and getting fit is a celebration of our gift. There is nothing more basic than the appreciation of our body, mind, and spirit. When we take care of our body and mind, the spirit soars. When we strive to make our vessel as healthy, responsive, and fit as possible, we feel our connection to nature and the never ending stream of life on earth.
From this connection, everything else has a more realistic perspective. We see our struggle for finances, but also the fact that man has struggled for security since he began on earth. We are more than struggle and accumulation. Enhancing our physical and mental capabilities opens the door to priorities that make happiness a simpler achievement.
New Study Shows Weight Loss Takes Time
Posted by: | CommentsIn a NY Times article by Jane E. Brody, a study completed by a Dr. Kevin D. Hall and his colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases debunks the calorie fighting diets.
More success is gained by changing habits and steady exercise. In my own experience I have found that the best weight loss comes over a period of years. The advantage is that by changing your eating style, you don’t have to diet and changes become permanent.
I have also realized that the average sedentary person cannot burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound until they are in strong training. If running a mile burns about 700 calories, the non athletic person is not going to burn enough calories to affect their weight until they are in condition.
However, taking bad food out of a diet is a more simple process with much better results. By instilling a diet with natural foods that the body recognizes, a whole host of processes begin that eliminate fat.
In Dr. Wall’s study, “The model shows that lasting weight loss takes a long time to achieve and suggests that more effective weight loss programs might be undertaken in two phases: a temporary, more aggressive change in behavior at first, followed by a second phase of a more relaxed but permanent behavioral change that can prevent the weight regain that afflicts so many dieters despite their best intentions.”
I found that my weight loss of twenty pounds over a few years was easy to maintain without dieting because I learned to like the new foods I was eating and learned to find substitutes for the bad foods to which I seemed addicted. At the end, I progressed to a raw diet for four months in which I lost another 20 pounds.
When I became tired of the raw diet, I slowly added cooked foods but maintained good habits and lost another five pounds to reach my high school weight of 175 pounds.
“In an interview, Dr. Hall said the longstanding assumption that cutting 3,500 calories will produce a one-pound weight loss indefinitely is inaccurate and can produce discouraging results…”
If you are calorie counting, you are on the wrong track for permanent weight loss. The body encapsulates in fat, food it does not recognize. You can ask yourself whether an animal would eat what you are eating. A second principal is that sugar accelerates calorie storage. If you drink soda or alcohol, you are hurting your chances of losing weight.
If you take food out of cans or packages, chances are you are consuming sugar and refined products the body does not recognize. If you eat everything that is raw or fresh and that has not already been cooked, you will help the body release the fat it has stored because poor nutrition tells it you are starving.
If you have unwanted fat, it is because the body thinks you are starving it with bad nutrition. It holds onto those unwanted calories.
You can lose weight eating the right foods if you don’t exercise, but being active will increase metabolism and fat burning. The hurdle to avoid is eating more because you are exercising.
I have a vigorous interval exercise program in surfing, but I also eat mostly natural products and I eat several small meals a day. Eating in smaller portions helps the body digest without robbing it of energy. Digestion requires blood and oxygen and so does thinking and working. Eat small and have more energy for daily tasks.
Slowly eliminate bad foods and add natural products like fruit, vegetables, grains, and protein. Avoid canned, packaged, fried, and in general restaurant prepared foods.
Why Self Improvement Scares Us into Status Quo
Posted by: | CommentsIf you were fat and then turned skinny, what would happen to your life? If you were a drinker and stopped what would you do with the sober time? If you were a cigarette smoker and quit, how could you drink?
If you can’t walk up stairs and then could run five miles what would your opportunities be? If you have no passions and found a few, could you handle the enthusiasm?
The reptilian brain is millions of years old. Like a pair of wary eyes, it looks out on the world for something that might eat it. Sitting under a rock feeling safe satisfies one of our most basic needs. There is safety in not changing. We fear change because the reptilian brain only has two responses to change, fight or flight.
But man has developed the limbic brain and the cortex. The limbic brain is our emotional center; the cortex our intellectual center. The prefrontal cortex can coordinate a fearful thought and turn it around into a rational thought. It can give the message that the object of fear won’t really hurt us.
It gets more supportive the more we challenge it and succeed. The more we overcome, the more the prefrontal cortex tells us we can handle. Using my surfing analogies, there is always fear in surfers in stepping to bigger waves. The more we have handled the status quo, the more courage we get to handle something bigger. But there is still fear.
You might say, well surfing is just recreational fun, nothing really important. Yes, but fear is fear. If you get trounced and almost drown, it is no longer just recreation. To go back into the water requires you rationalize the last experience or come up with a very good justification.
Most people don’t really want to lose weight, they just say they do. The proof is in the result. A diet is a false attempt by someone who says they want to lose weight, but doesn’t really. How do we know? Because 95% of the time they fail or go back to their original weight.
Why do smokers or drinkers rarely really quit? Why do abusive people really never change? Why can’t people make that first step to get fit? What is so scary about being different for the better? We are not sure it is for the better.
We have gotten accustomed to a self image. We are comfortable with the negatives. People accept us as we are, why rock the boat. We have very little interest in testing our envelopes or seeing if we could be ecstatically happy or find great gratitude for being alive.
For the most part we have lost a connection with nature. Surfers have more stoke than dry landers. Men get excited over football because it allows them to freely express a lot of emotion. Women love some extra money to shop. (hopefully that’s not too sexist, but picture the joyful emotions)
We have no faith in the fact that if we were healthy, lean, and fit, everyday could be better. It doesn’t require money or external events. It would be better because we could do almost anything we wanted. There would be a lot more opportunity to explore ourselves.
When healthy and fit, our brain works great. We could read, write, discuss, explore interests with much more interest, perception, and memory. When fit we could go for a walk, a run, a swim, paddle, hike, climb, bike, play tennis, volleyball, or skateboard.
When we are lean we could be more active, feel positive about our appearance, have more respect from our associates or customers, feel healthier, have a higher quality of life, and live longer.
Which brings us down to a real elementary question. Is our biggest fear commitment? Once we set on this path, we are locked into change for better or worse.
The clock is ticking. When you are all done, you can look back and say life as a lizard was pretty good. Or…
Learning to Perfect Emotional Intelligence
Posted by: | CommentsI have often lacked an important aspect of Emotional Intelligence needed in maintaining relationships. That part that I have lacked is where you refrain from saying half the things you are thinking. I had a hard time couching my sentiments in more political terms.
Today, I might not say twenty five percent of what I am thinking. I continuously bite my tongue as thoughts fly to my brain in response to what someone else is saying about themselves or their habits.
You probably make the same decisions several times a day. You might want to say things in an uncut version about people or family about their work, their morals, their habits, their appearance, their intelligence and so forth. These remarks often don’t have much affect other than to cut them like a knife and affect how they view you.
If you are a boss, parent, or friend you feel the responsibility to make comments. Many of the comments, however, have your own agenda written all over them, instead of the welfare of the one listening.
I have had relationships with bosses where I pointed out what I thought was the defect in their behavior, thinking, or strategies. Since I was supposed to get reviewed and not them, it didn’t always go over well. I have also made comments to mates that were hurtful and made me feel resolved, but were never forgotten by them.
I have never been the master of couching comments in candy wrappers. Now, however, I refrain from comments most of the time because I feel my friendships are about camaraderie without judgment. Most people know their shortcomings.
At the highest level of emotional intelligence is empathy. That would signify that one should recognize the emotional state of another person and support it. That is what I try to do. People rarely ask you for your opinion on something personal, but when they tell you, they want to get it off their chest and not get reprimanded. We have had enough of that since childhood.
When people trust you they will give you major insights into what they are thinking or acts they have committed in a single sentence or confession. They are not looking for comment. They have thrown you a bone for a deeper connection. I am amazed how you can get into an exchange of past experiences or hurt in a few exchanged sentences and then move on with your previous conversation. You have communicated at the empathetic level and deepened a relationship.
The ultimate plateau of Emotional Intelligence is flow or being in the zone. In this arena, we are engaging in an activity in which we have competence and are oblivious to distractions and not concerned about judgment or reward. I have found it in surfing and try to create it in my life.
People experience flow in sports, music, writing, cooking, art, work and life. Taking care of your responsibilities, constantly giving to others, pursuing your passions, having gratitude for being alive, and feeling a connection to your surroundings, all lead to a clear conscience and pure expression of who you are.
What Can The Ocean Teach About Spirituality?
Posted by: | CommentsThe ocean is a microcosm of the Universe.
The ocean provides everything we need on earth. It provides enough meat and greens to provide for a nation. It absorbs and gives off heat. It has currents that circulate the globe like the winds in the stratosphere. The plant life releases the majority of our oxygen. Its energy could power machines. You can reach every land by navigating its surface. It can rear up and swallow you and never give you back.
When we think of God or the Universe we think in terms of unlimited. When we sit at the beach and gaze at the ocean, we have this feeling of unlimited. It may be the largest vista we can ever see if we are not on a mountain top or in an airplane. Why do people feel relaxed just by sitting on the beach? In times of stress, why do we think of going on vacation to an island?
In a recent storm from New Zealand that pounded the beach with 12 foot waves, every spectator was awestruck. You could feel and hear the energy of the waves pounding the beach. If you were on our local pier, you could feel it tremble as the waves crashed into the pylons. Standing on the pier and watching the waves roll by underneath was like looking into the mouth of a viper that was separated by a double pane of glass.
I recently was held down in the impact zone of a 7 foot storm wave and when it released me I figured a 10 foot wave would probably kill me. I didn’t feel panic and I didn’t feel remorse. I felt surrendered to the outcome because I had ventured into the situation on my own volition. Afterward I was moved by the feeling that I had been swallowed and spit up by the loving Mother.
Being in the ocean is also like being in the hand of the creator. It can caress you and give you a feeling that you are one of the blessed creatures under his care on earth or it could crush you with no more thought than accidently stepping on a bug. You can query a handful of people and half are afraid to go very far into the ocean. Going in is tempting fate.
Anyone with experience in the ocean can tell you that it is always changing and it can always be dangerous. The more experienced watermen like life guards, surfers, and fisherman have more respect for the beauty and the danger. It has a yin and yang and you tempt it with your presence.
There is this sense of surrender when you enter the ocean to surf. You are looking to have the best time of your life. You are looking to be renewed by an hour in the water. You are looking to find yourself in your skill to harness the waves. You are surrendering to the experience of any outcome you might not have anticipated.
Does the ocean remind us of the womb? We lived in embryonic fluids for nine months. Three and a half billion years ago our DNA lived in the ocean. Do we remember?
Recently a baby dolphin came within ten feet and surfaced to stare at me. Dolphins are mammals that once lived on land and evolved to be sea creatures. Amphibious creatures came from the sea and evolved to be dinosaurs. Do we hear the call of the sea sirens seductively urging us to come back? When dolphins come close to surfers, push stranded sea farers to land, or come up just to look at us, do we realize how closely connected we are on so many levels?
Are Peak Success and Fitness Tied Together?
Posted by: | CommentsYou don’t see many successful politicians or high tech gurus that are fat.
Is it the public image they want to avoid, the discipline that pervades all their habits, their own concept of leanness and self worth, the acceptance of the value and necessity of health and fitness to enjoy a fruitful life?
When you see people that are fat or overweight you subconsciously figure they drink or they are emotional eaters. Any one who has a lot of sugar in their diet by consuming soda, alcohol, or processed foods will be over weight.
Hamburgers and pizza by themselves will not make you over weight. A hamburger without the bun can be a healthy meal. A pizza with vegetables is also a healthy choice and can be a good support for strenuous exercise.
However, if you add fries, cokes, or beer, you are adding the foods that make you body absorb the calories from the food and turn them into fat.
The reason goes back to the times of early man. In geologic time and evolution, we are still early man. The forager/hunter did not have any sugar in his diet. He ate 30 or 40 plant items and as much meat as he could kill.
The body uses sugar to determine how much you have eaten. Because meat and plants do not have much sugar, the body would regulate a little insulin and digestive juices and enzymes to take care of the meals. It would not store the calories as fat.
A coke or beer tells the bodies sugar measuring device that you have just eaten a moose. It pumps out enough toxic digestive juices and insulin to digest a very big meal, Then it ravenously stores all the calories. It doesn’t recognize the non natural foods, so it encapsulates them in fat.
It doesn’t take long for the fat to build around your middle and thighs. That is why after a year at college, freshman are usually twenty pounds heavier. The only thing that changed in their diet was the beer and late night pizzas. The sedentary part adds to the problem but is not the cause.
Once you are an adult, the fat shows you have emotional problems you can’t release or you are a real unhealthy food junkie. This type of tell sign makes it difficult to get the respect from business prospects you would like to impress or from constituents you would like to vote for you. We don’t need to discuss attraction to the opposite sex.
When you look in the mirror are you proud or do you repeat for the millionth time that you need to take off a few pounds? Are you the only one that notices? How much of your self esteem is tied to the fact you can’t control what you eat or drink?
A healthy natural diet could set off an avalanche of great new outcomes. Start by eliminating the worst offenders. Then find good substitutes. If you give yourself a few years to take out the bad and put in the good, you will have a whole new image in the mirror.
Why Are Surfers So Skinny?
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s the intensive intervals.
It takes intense paddling to get to the wave line. Then you might get to rest for a minute so your heart rate comes down. Then you paddle hard to catch a wave and have a nice rest while letting mother nature do the work; unless you are shredding.
Then you have to paddle back out through the waves duck diving the foam and racing to miss the impact zone. If there is current, you have to paddle against it to maintain your position where the waves are breaking.
If you get in a good hour with five to ten waves, you have really burned up some muscle. Now the body goes to work as the Cytokene 6 calls in the inflammation and white cell patrol to clean out the dead cells. They in turn call in the Cytokene 10 patrol who come into build new stronger muscle.
The body could use some nutrition at this time to help the rebuilding process. Amino acids are the favored food du jour and so protein in the form of shakes or food helps this process. Fueling up before you go in calls for carbohydrates.
I usually start the day with my 7 a.m. meal so that I am prepared by 8 a.m. for my first surf session. I have a bowl of apples, bananas, raisins, peanuts, peanut butter, some 10 grain cereal on the bottom and then sprinkle it with flax seed. My body really enjoys this fuel and uses it when I am in the water.
A short while after my morning session I will have some protein and more fuel for hopefully an afternoon session. I like a small portion steak, an egg, tomatoes, a slice of orange, and a slice of whole grain toast. This helps my body rebuild and prepare for more exercise.
I then fit in a small lunch about 1 or 2 p.m. of a tuna salad wrap. Ideally, my second session will be around 4 p.m. and then I have pasta for dinner.
You can create these aerobic sessions at a gym or on your own. Boxing for an hour is an excellent example. Aerobic classes will do it. Hill riding on your mountain bike or hiking up hills are real calorie burners. Intervals on a tread mill or stair climbers are good.
The beauty of surfing is that you go to exhaustion without thinking about it. You are thinking about catching waves and paddling back out and not about trying to burn muscle. You just have to stop when you are spent. When exercising in a gym, you are often thinking about how tired you are, so there is a mental disadvantage.
Depending on your determination, discipline, or mental toughness, you can take your body to exhaustion or maybe you stop way short. An hour of extreme exercise a day and a diet without sugar, flour, processed foods, fried food, nor too much alcohol, will really start stripping the fat.
Do We Ask Too Much of Food, Alcohol, and Drugs?
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s hard to be in the right mood.
We have a tough project to face in the morning and we really don’t feel like it. We have a problem to deal with and it troubles us. After a strenuous day at the office we have a date to meet friends. We have bills to pay and don’t know how long we can keep up the struggle to make ends meet.
We have painful memories from the past that crop up in our sleep or when we have spare time that could be used for self improvement. We have thoughts how things could have been better or how we missed our opportunity to have more money or a different mate.
Our mind is a battle ground. Even adolescents and young teen agers are riddled with worry and anxiety about their lives and their future. After adults reach 50, they are clear they have less time to turn around past events and their future is pretty well sown.
How are we solving all these crisis? We turn to food, caffeine, cigarettes, pills, alcohol, pot, and more. We try to load our senses in order to change our emotions. We look for gratifications to fill the emptiness or the deep holes in our psyches we don’t want to visit.
Recently I was with a friend and his slightly autistic room mate for whom he provides a role of partial care taker. She is 48 and on seven medications for depression and other symptoms. She works but is often anxious over the permanency of the job.
I suggested that if she wanted to combat the depression and get more positives into her life, we ought to list some things she would rather do than worry and complete some every day. We went through a list of seven things including exercise, reading, and cooking that would be fun and improve her abilities.
Did she complete any of them? No. She prefers her role as victim and leans on her medications. She does have the capability of making positive decisions to improve her moods and self esteem. Is she alone?
Are people trapped in their perceptions and victims to their circumstances? Are there alternatives to the future they perceive? In football, the military, and business, leaders assess their strengths and weaknesses. They evaluate the opposition and determine how they can best utilize their assets to beat the opponent.
In our personal lives our main objective is happiness. We often allow the opponents to hijack our thoughts to the exclusion of positive behavior. It is not easy, but it is not impossible. Creating enough positive activities in our lives reminds us that life is not all responsibility and worry.
When it is time to die or we are too infirm to finally enjoy our peace are we going to think that all our worry was the best use of our short experience of life on earth? And you can believe that even though you think you have forever, you reach a point where you realize you are on the short side of the see saw.
It often takes a calamity or a near death experience for people to realize that the worry is robbing them of the full life experience. Sometimes the fillers they used to eliminate the emotions they didn’t want to face are the exact causes of their near death experiences.
Food, cigarettes, alcohol, pills, and other drugs can create the life crisis that make you realize you wasted a lot of good time and opportunity to experience the reason we are here.
Create a vision of what you can do for your life that doesn’t cost money. You can build relationships, you can eat healthier, exercise more, enjoy culture, contribute to others, spend more time out doors, and create new interests.
Maybe some of the paths that would open the doors is stop watching TV, put down your smart phones, spend less time on social media, spend two hours out doors in the evenings, start hiking on the week ends, read more books, eliminate the three worst foods you eat, start drinking water half way through the evenings instead of more alcohol or drugs, stop smoking, meet more people, learn one new skill, sport, or game.
We are not victims unless we are willing to be.
Can Voters Save Us in 2012?
Posted by: | CommentsThe parents or grand parent’s generation who lived through the depression, WW2, and the cold war were committed to saving and investing. Their children became spenders and borrowers.
The 2000’s mentality set us back 200 years. The U.S. used to lead the world in manufacturing and innovation. Starting in the 1980’s, we became a financial nation where we built an economy on spending. We became unraveled. We bought consumer electronics, cars, and houses that we often couldn’t afford.
While developing nations have been saving 30% of their income because they have no safety nets, we were going into debt and now cannot afford our safety nets. The developing nations have the manufacturing and don’t spend while we have lost the manufacturing and have no savings.
We could get back to saving and investing, but we are plagued with unemployment and under employment. In the next few years leading to the 2012 elections, we are going to hear debates on whether government can and should try to solve our problems.
The voters have little influence on decisions other than to vote in the person or party that seems to voice the direction we want to travel. But have we decided for ourselves what that direction should be?
Thomas L Friedman wrote “The World is Flat” has also authored “That Used to Be Us”. He says we had five pillars of strength since the days of Hamilton which included education, innovation, infrastructure, production incentives, and fiscal responsibility. He says in the 2000’s we lost ground on all five.
Democrats are pushing for the short term solution of jobs which means more government spending and Republicans are pushing for long term stability of reducing government spending.
We are charting the path we will follow for the next ten to twenty years. We not only need to escape our short term crisis, but not dig a bigger hole for the long term. We need intelligent debate among the populace. We can’t just look at job creation, but need to analyze our fundamental values of responsibility for our own health, savings, investments, and contribution.
We should put everything on the table and have some bold solutions on how everyone contributes, compromises, and creates a new beginning. We need to end the Republicans for the rich and Democrats for the rest mentality and grid lock that produces destructive compromises.
How We Can Cut Healthcare Costs by 80%
Posted by: | CommentsThe U.S. spends over a trillion a year in health costs and we are getting less healthy every year. We spend four times the defense budget on health care. We are ruining our federal budget with health care costs and threatening everyone’s entitlements.
The U.S. spends more than almost any country and we have higher incidences of heart disease and cancer. Healthy people who come from Asia and other countries fall victim to our diseases once they adopt our diet. China is falling victim to our diseases by importing our fast food restaurants.
There are doctors who treating heart and cancer patients by putting them on whole food diets and exercise. Their patients reverse their symptoms, lose weight, and gain energy. In a documentary called “Forks over Knives” you could see on Netflix.com, a list of patients are chronicled who defied their death sentence.
When we closet cattle, pigs, and chickens into a building and nourish them on feed, we have to give them anti biotics to keep them healthy. When we feed humans meat, dairy, sugar, bad oils, and fried foods, we have to give them medicine to keep them alive.
The body produces inflammation on a regular basis. Exercise allows the body to call on cytokines to clear up the inflammation and build new muscle cells in the process. Bad foods increase cholesterol and plaque which shut down arteries.
The U.S. spends $50 billion a year on by pass surgery. Children are getting the diseases of adults and are being prescribed the same medicines. It’s too bad since there is such a simple solution.
Whole foods are what the body wants. We started down the wrong trail when we discovered fast food was convenient, cheap, and satisfying. In our busy lives we saved time by rushing the family in for a quick burger, fries, and coke. Everybody was happy.
We have become addicted to the tastes of sugar, oil, meat, and dairy. “Milk does the body good.” The short term solution has turned into a long term problem. We are sick and it costs money to keep us alive.
Even though I eat meat, I eat it in small portions and I eat meat that has not been treated with hormones and anti-biotics. I don’t eat it in between two buns. I don’t eat dairy. I eat very little sugar. I eat all I want and I eat often. I lost 45 pounds in four years without being on a diet.
At the end, I lost the last 20 pounds in four months with a raw diet. I have since started cooking again and have never put on weight. It is pretty easy to get grains, legumes, fruits, vegetables, and protein in a healthy diet.
I am a medium exerciser that starts with a warm up of stretching, push ups, stairs and then surfing. In the afternoons I do a mile beach run. I have a fruit bowl with 10 grain cereal and peanuts in the morning, a small 4 ounce steak with a piece of whole grain bread, tomatoes, and sometimes an egg at 11. Around 2, I have a tuna salad pita wrap. For dinner I have salad, soup, and/or spaghetti with brown rice and vegetables.
If everyone ate whole foods we wouldn’t need to spend a trillion on health care. We wouldn’t be having the congressional deadlocks on run away entitlements which consume 50% of our budget. The grain that goes to feed cattle could feed all the poor in the world.
A tremendous amount of oil is consumed bringing meat to the markets from pumping water, raising grain, and delivery. Eating healthy could improve land sustainability and reduce global warming. Eating healthy is a contribution in living green.