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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

How to Make Yourself Lean and Healthy!

OK!  You don't want to follow standard medical advice, and common wisdom- you definitely do not want to make yourself Fat and Sick!  Why you wouldn't want to would have most of our M.D.'s and the entire FDA scratching their collective heads in bewilderment, but hey- it's your life!

Eat a Nutrient Dense, High Fat Diet!  

I know, it sounds crazy!  The opposite of what you have been told by authority figures for your entire life! But it is true... each bite you take, each drink you ingest; even what you rub onto your skin- all of these should be as full of nutrients, as healthy with vitamins and minerals as they can possibly be.

You have spent most of your life eating "styrofoam"- food-like substances that kind of fill you up, that taste really good, but, unfortunately, provide very little in the form of substantive nutrition.  Both micro-nutrients, and macro nutrients- the building blocks of your entire body and it's overall health.

YOUR BODY IS LITERALLY STARVING!

It has tons of calories, from fast food and processed foods and breads and pastas etc...  

But it is starving for nutrition that it can actually use to build and restore your body.  

Your body continually says to you "I am hungry"; and you oblige by getting some more crappy food to eat, as listed above.  But that doesn't cut it- your body wants NUTRITION, not empty styrofoam calories!

YOU might care about taste, and good "mouth feel"; your body could care less- it wants useable fuel.

It's as if you have a new Ferrari, and you put cotton candy in the gas tank, so it "tastes wonderful"- 
How would your Ferrari respond to that?

Exercise LESS, but intensely and briefly!

I know, you've been doing tons of cardio, and aerobics, and you just need to do that to burn calories!
Strangely, again, you've been misled.  To lose weight (and I really mean FAT here, not weight per se), you need to build muscle.  More muscle will burn more calories, continually; even at rest.

This is what you want!  Slow, long duration exercise literally teaches your body to store fat, and become better at being weak and slow.  

Try intense, "visualized resistance exercise", sprinting, intervals on a bike at high intensity, body-weight exercises in series of intense effort instead.  (See Charles Atlas above!)  or Perfectly Paleo Exercise

This will have the opposite effect; it will teach your body to build muscle, shed fat, and become stronger and faster.  


Eat NO Whole grains- or any OTHER grains!

This is the most controversial, perhaps, of all of my recommendations... well, they are all controversial in that regard; but- no grains!  

Grains- WHEAT, barley, corn, etc. are loaded with anti- nutrients (poisons), especially since they've become genetically altered in the past 40 years.  WHEAT, in particular, has become a demon weed, nothing like the biblical wheat of the past, or even the wheat of the 1960's!  It has become an irradiated nightmare, that will irritate your intestines, and allow invaders entry to your bloodstream, and thus to YOU!  

I'm talking autoimmune disease, I'm talking arthritis, heart disease, breast and prostate cancer, plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel... the list is endless- the inflammation from the grains,  how they migrate through the "leaky gut/intestine" into the body have free reign to cause all of these diseases, and more.  

PLUS, wheat and other grains immediately turn to sugar- not in the digestive tract, BUT RIGHT IN YOUR (CAVITY PRONE) MOUTH!   

And sugar is the fertilizer of Cancer.

So, I would not recommend bread, or pizza, or donuts, or pasta, or crack cocaine, or methadrine, or heroin or....


Stay Away from Hospitals and Clinics!

Another controversial topic- will I never learn?  

Did you know that the 3rd leading cause of death in the US is....

Death by Doctor?


The proper term for this is Iatrogenesis, so know that, if you go to the hospital or clinic, you certainly may die.  The drugs they prescribe may kill you, the environment you are in, where superbugs are rampant, since overuse of antibiotics have caused a race of superbugs to proliferate....

You are much better off at home!  

Unless you have a gunshot wound, or are in a car wreck- they are great at that one-shot, fix-it-up stuff!  After that- 

Get back home!  Besides, hospital nutrition, i.e. food SUCKS!

That says a lot, in and of itself.

So, there you have it.  Kind of a huge paradigm shift, I know.  I hate to throw so much on you at once, I really do!  It's tough to absorb- so,

My bottom line, if you've been with me this far?

Cut out grains from your diet!

This means wheat, corn, soy, all of them.  Bread, pasta, pizza, cereal- anything made from WHEAT!  

This also includes bad vegetable oils, like margarine and Crisco and soy and peanut and canola oils- eliminate these non-foods!

Eliminate processed foods- Fast foods, soft drinks of all types- diet or sugared, and all fruit juice and "low fat" types of milk, which are after all just "sugar in a glass"!

And, for now, believe it or not- That's it!!


It's enough!  Just doing that, and that alone, will make you healthy beyond your wildest dreams.  

Even if you smoke cigarettes; that's small potatoes compared to what we are talking here!

You drop the sugar- you drop the grains-

YOU ARE 90% 

THERE!!


Save the "small stuff" for a later time- believe it or not, the cigarettes and the exercise are, in comparison to the food you eat:

SMALL STUFF!

J





Sunday, August 26, 2012

Is the Paleo Diet just our Grandparent's Diet?

More or less, I think it largely is!  Back in the 1800's, say: what did most people eat?  Besides what they could grow and prepare themselves, very little.

The average sugar consumption in the time of George Washington was 3 pounds per year, per person... Today it is 162 pounds, per person!

If you don't think this kind of change is unprecedented, and has everything to do with our current obesity and diabetes epidemic, you are delusional... or else just listening to your doctor and the Government and "common wisdom" via the mass media.  Check this out, if you haven't already, and really listen and pay attention- it may save your life.
Sugar the Bitter Truth!




We all need to try to get back to the way things were before!

We can keep our iPhones, our internet- no problem!  That is how I am spreading the word today!  A new Gutenberg type of press, available to all, with a built in free mail system!!

But, we have to remember that many other things were much better, more human scale, and reasonable in the old days...

And by old I mean the 1960's and before- when we had

MUCH less big Government!  Government subsidies have done more to destroy single family farms than anything else, ever!

A Tiny Pharmaceutical industry!  They mainly sold medicines that you went and got from the local Dr. when you were sick, not before.    You took them until your affliction went away, and then you stopped.  Now, somehow, through the miracles of modern marketing, all of us are supposed to be on multiple meds throughout our entire lives!


THIS AIN'T NATURAL!!

And, along with the immediate above: we had MUCH LESS OF BIG MEDICINE.

Short of getting shot, or stabbed, or something else traumatic, if all else was right (proper diet, some exercise, good sleep, good family connections and spiritual life), there should be little to no reason to even go to the doctor's office!

Did you know that there is a blood test that can replicate the results of a colonoscopy?  Has your Dr. told you of it??  It's quite inexpensive, compared to the about $8000 of a colonoscopy...

Did you know that diabetes is reversible?  It's actually a condition, not a disease...
(See Dr. Lustig's video, above)   Has your Dr., if you are diabetic, told you about that??

So, maybe the idea of the "Paleo Diet" just seems too "Crazy" for you.  You are basic.  Down to earth!  Meat and Potatoes- All American!!  

OK then- just go back to "real American values"!

We have strayed oh so far, and we are paying the price....with our health!


J

Thursday, August 23, 2012

How to Make Yourself Fat and Sick!

It's really no trick to make yourself fat and sick- just follow standard medical advice and common wisdom:

Eat a low calorie, low fat diet!

This will ensure that you are constantly hungry, which will cause your body to be scared that it is starving.  Your metabolism will slow, and your body will put a high priority on storing body fat!


Cut WAY back on eating fats, since everyone knows that eating fat is what makes you fat!

Now you will be really hungry, all the time, since good fats are what satiate our appetite.  You will constantly be "grazing" for food, probably in the form of grains and sugars...

Exercise more and eat less!

Now, you're really upping the ante- your exercise, if your follow the standard advice, will be cardio in nature- brisk walking, jogging, aerobics, spin classes... Your body will respond by losing muscle, since  this low level of working out tells your body that you need to be lighter, and muscle tissue is heavy- so, your body answers your demands and uses up muscle to prioritize fat storage for those long sessions of low exertion.

Eat plenty of "healthy whole grains"!

This is where our government gets involved.  Ever check out the USDA's "My Food Plate", which replaces their old "Food Pyramid"?  They recommend you eat 6-12 servings of grains per day!  Bread, pasta, cereal, skim milk(aka sugar-in-a-glass).  Your body will respond by spiking insulin, since whole wheat grains raise insulin faster and higher than a Snickers bar! Insulin is, among other things, a fat storage signal, and an aging hormone as well.  But heck, the US Dept. of Agriculture has lots of grains to sell, since they subsidize big Ag farmers to grow them...

Go to the Doctor frequently, and take all the medicines he suggests!

Statin drugs, which have side effects like muscle wasting, cancer, joint pain, and weight gain might be a good place to start.  It's a multi-billion dollar industry selling these drugs, and even though it probably won't reduce your risk of a heart attack at all, at least you're doing your patriotic duty- spending lots of money, staying sick (and getting sicker), and supporting big Agriculture, big Pharmaceuticals, and the payoffs they make to big Government and the Medical Schools.


So, there you have it in a nutshell: how to get fat and sick!  

What?  You want to achieve the opposite?!  

Well, I'm surprised and shocked, but if you insist I'll tell you how to do that next post...

J



Wednesday, August 22, 2012

A Brief Guide to Grains- the Good, the Bad, the Ugly!

WHEAT:  This grain is truly "the devil's excrement" in the words of Robb Wolf.  I can think of no reason to consume it at all!  After cooking and processing, which is the only way we can even consume it, it's nutrient density is quite poor...

In addition, all of our modern wheat since the 1970's is altered to make it produce vastly more.  This sounds good, but what they did, pre-the Genetically Modified era, was to expose the wheat to radiation to force it to modify quickly.  This resulted in a "Frankenstein" type of wheat- hugely productive, but vastly altered from what was originally created from Nature - it really has very little in common with the original, Biblical wheat plant.

If you need more convincing, go to Wheat Belly.  Cardiologist Dr. William Davis has written a book of the same name, and his blog goes into depth on what has happened to our modern wheat.

You'll never look the same at bread, or pasta, or- well, nowadays just about every processed food!  They are all loaded with this devil wheat, because hey- our Government subsidizes it!


CORN:  This grain is also problematic...  it seems far less likely to cause problems, as long as it is a very occasional indulgence.  It does have anti-nutrients, and now almost all of the corn available is GMO (genetically modified organism) which is not good- but better than what was done to wheat!  There's really very little good about corn, but the occasional ear of sweet corn, or bi-monthly bowl of non GMO popcorn, which is readily available from the Amish hereabouts, is kind of like a vehicle to bring nutrient-rich pastured Kerrygold butter and sea salt into your mouth!

Corn chips with salsa, on occasion, are also vastly superior to the other "Chips" on the market!

SOY: This BAD grain gets a halo- it has been promoted as a healthy, low fat, high protein choice- BULL!  After devil WHEAT, this is the second most noxious "food-like substance" around...

It was (and is) consumed in Asia, but only in a fermented, very small amount kind of way.  Here in America we just grind it up, unfermented, and use it as is!  It's not really a grain at all- it's a legume, which like other beans is very problematic for our digestive/gut health.  Here is a list of it's "benefits" from the Weston A Price foundation- Soy is bad!

Soy promotes the production of estrogen in males, which is really bad, and even in women, this is bad!
More of the plant's protective "poisoning" of the mammals that consume it; making them unable to reproduce...  Just say NO to soy!

So there you have it!  In a word, grains are BAD, despite the USDA wanting to get you to eat them to get rid of the surplus that they have been subsidizing since the 1970's at the expense of real foods, like vegetables, and fruits, and grass fed cattle.

BOTTOM LINE?- JUST EAT REAL FOOD!


J

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

What's so bad about GRAINS?

"Jay, I hear you talk about avoiding wheat and other grains all the time- what's so bad about them??"


I hear this constantly.  "Amber waves of grain" has such a halo of goodness about it...

But, let's look at it from the WHEAT'S perspective:

The wheat itself, (and other grains as well- corn, barley, etc.- but wheat is the biggie here) does not want to be eaten! Would you willingly give your babies to a creature that wanted to eat them??

No, probably not...

You would fight, rend and claw to protect your progeny; as a mammal, that is your defense mechanism.

Plants, however, can't run or fight; they have developed different defense strategies to protect themselves and their young:  Anti- nutrients, aka POISONS!

Lectins:  These little anti-nutrients within grains are there to subtly poison any mammal that might eat them- they make the intestine permeable, leading to a "leaky gut" where bad things have free access into the bloodstream, making invasion of your body really easy!

Phytates: These are also built into the grains, and they make it impossible for your body to extract the nutrients you think you are getting from your "healthy whole grains".  So, you are basically consuming  empty calories along with your poisons...

Gluten:  Gluten causes many problems, like lectins, gluten will cause your gut to be "leaky", letting in all sorts of bad.  Can you say "itis"?  Well, any disease that ends in that is traceable to a leaky, grain compromised GUT!

In addition, gluten has been strongly associated with Cancer...

I think that wheat has figured out how defend itself rather well!

We just need to pay attention!!

Truly, there is no reason to eat wheat, or other grains, EVER.  The USDA "My Plate" agenda be damned!  They are only in the business of selling Government subsidized wheat, soy and corn.


Health to them is not even on their agenda!


So, be a "Paleo Pirate" yet again: sink those "wonderful grains" to the bottom of the Wine Dark Sea!


Arghhh!


J

Monday, August 20, 2012

Be a Paleo Pirate!

In the words of Steve Jobs:

"Wouldn't you rather be a pirate than join the navy?"

I know I would!  

Who wants to march in lockstep, doing what everyone else is doing, the the 1950's man in the grey flannel suit?  Virtually no one wants to think of themselves in that way.

We all want to be out there, carving out our destiny!  

Well, if you adopt the paleo diet and lifestyle, you are doing just that!

Almost no one understands that eating real food, especially good, natural, God-made FATS is incredibly healthy!  The fat soluble vitamins contained in pastured butter and coconut oil; i.e. fat is key to preserving your health, and ironically your leanness as well!

You probably already know this, if you are a Paleo person...

But why not go all the way, and become-

A PALEO PIRATE!!

Don't hide your light under a bushel- put lots of real whipped cream in your coffee!    Put pastured butter in your paleo smoothie- flaunt it!  I do, I put in butter (Kerrygold Irish butter is available widely), coconut oil, palm oil- you can even add butter or coconut oil to your morning coffee, along with your whipped cream! BE A PIRATE!  Don't be afraid of the S.A.D. Standard American Diet low fat NAVY PEOPLE!!  They are LOSERS!!

YOU are a PIRATE!!  

Carve out your voyage:  Be defiant- do what you know to be right, nutritionally and physically.  

1. Eat lots of good FATS!  Remember that fat does not become fat on your body- BAD, PROCESSED CARBS become FAT on you body!

2. Do NOT eat "healthy whole grains"!  These do become actual body fat in the worst sense of the word.

3. Do NOT engage in "chronic cardio", or endless sessions of "aerobic style, low intensity, long slow distance types of exercise".  They do nothing except wear down your joints- calorie burning, or, more importantly fat burning is almost nonexistent.  

4.  DO strength training!  Briefly and intensely is perfect!  

5. Do NOT use weights!!  Here is the ultimate piratical notion personified!!!  Almost NO ONE agrees with this, but I am here to tell you- 

You Don't Need Weights!!

Really...  you don't need free weights, you don't need machines, you don't need a gym membership...  I believe that weight lifting is in the same camp as chronic cardio, a recipe to destroy joints, and destroy health long term!  Yikes!  Did I really say that??

To maximize your body's potential, all you need is... drum roll....

YOUR OWN BODY!

Perfectly Paleo Exercise indeed!  Bodyweight exercise, self-resisted exercise, and, the ultimate lynchpin to all of these:

Visualized resistance exercise

Actually, that alone is all that you really require for optimum fitness and body composition, along with proper, paleo diet...

I know, it all sounds crazy- eat fat to lose fat... exercise less, without equipment to optimize your lean body potential...


But it is all true!  

Be a Pirate, Matey!
Ignore the Navy and the mainstream-

DO WHAT YOU KNOW IS RIGHT
AND BE A 

PALEO PIRATE!!

Arrggghhh!

J




Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Healthy eating, Paleo style, on the road!

Here are the hands of your own PaleoJay, cradling the sumptuous supper of lamb, sweet potatoes, zucchini and sausage at the Trempealeau Hotel in the small Mississippi river town of Trempealeau, Wisconsin!  The menu was replete with shrimp, steaks, salads etc., all ready for a traveling Paleo person to have a tasty meal packed with nutrition!

It seems that there are still many places to go where good, ancestral types of food are readily available.  Just as in buying our food, the very best quality food is available from small, independent restaurants; places where great pride is still taken in excellence of ingredients, and in careful preparation- quite the opposite of the big "Chains" that are all about cutting corners, using the cheapest ingredients to maximize profits, and spending most of their extra money on advertising to seduce you into patronizing them.  

The Trempealeau Hotel is one of these small eating places of excellence.  If you are passing by La Crosse on I90, it is well worth your while to get off at hwy 157 in Onalaska and head north to the Trempealeau sign, and then west to the Hotel!  You will even pass within a mile of the fabled home of yours truly...  be sure to wave!

My point, besides being a brief travelogue, is that of bypassing what has become the degraded nature of  the Mass American diet and culture of today, and seeking out those places that are more like what our culture embraced 50 and more years ago.  Small independent restaurants, small and independent farmers- this is where we need to be spending our dollars!  Not on fast/crappy food, or big/crappy chains, but to those who have traditional or ancestral values of quality.

I believe one of the most important figures today in a sustainable farming model of excellence is Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.  A working farmer, Joel is also an excellent speaker, and a convincing role model for traditional agriculture.  Joel's most recent book, Confessions of a Lunatic Farmer, is must reading for any modern person seeking health and sanity in our crazy modern world!
He shows a real, viable alternative to the failing Big Agribusiness model prevalent today...

Bottom line:  Caring about your health, and the health of the land beneath your feet, and the animals and plants under your care, is the essence of Good Stewardship, and is really what we were created to accomplish.  To quote John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement:


Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.” 

I think Polyface farms is following that tradition.

J
J, Phil and Holly at our last nursing home "gig"

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Perfectly Paleo Things you DON'T DO!

You don't make a daily, highly nutritious Paleo Smoothie each morning!

This is the number one top thing you can do for your health, and your fitness... Diet is about 85% of health and fitness; the hardest thing to do is to just get started each day.  

1. Start your day by making a Paleo Smoothie, and you have already "won the day".

A lot about life is simply momentum...If you start right, you have won a victory!  You will want to keep it going...

While you are at it, boil water for tea, and make some coffee while the Vitamix is blending!


2. Exercise first thing in the morning!  (After making your smoothie, that is).

Prioritize: nutrition is #1.  No doubt about it.  
But, talk about a 1 2 punch- provide yourself (and your family)top notch nutrition first thing- 


And then do your PERFECTLY PALEO EXERCISE!

Ideally, you have gotten to bed early, and the rest of your family is still asleep.  

All you need is about 45 minutes of a "head start"- 

You make your smoothie (5 minutes or so, providing maximum nutrition that will fuel your entire family's whole day), and then you toddle on into the living room or den, and do your visualized resistance exercises, and/of body weight and self resisted exercises while you watch TV and just methodically tense and stretch and energize every part of your body- 

Trust me, at the end of the 45 minutes or so- you will wish you had more time!  

The show might be exciting, you are really getting "in tune" with your body; you just feel really really good!

But, alas, you need to go to work....

So, you jump in the shower, and when you get out:

Breakfast is all ready!  Just pour out your coffee, and top it off with lots of whipped cream that you have already whipped in a tupperware container, and sweetened with cinammon and perhaps a bit of raw honey or stevia...  you can even mix in some pastured butter for added fat soluble vitamins and great, desirable nutrition! (Gasp!)

Top your whipped cream with ample cinnamon and cloves, because spices are another wonderful, perfectly Paleo thing that you are probably not doing enough of!


3.  Meditate!

I know, this sounds crazy!  You have a family to get ready for school, and work, and you just fed them really well, and exercised yourself and feel great, but- 

Let's say you woke up one hour early, and all of the nutrition is taken care of-

Your exercise is taken care of-

And you still have 15 minutes of free time!!

I know, it sounds crazy, but... wouldn't it feel great to just relax in your favorite easy chair for a bit?

DON'T waste your time watching worthless morning TV:

Meditate:  just close your eyes, and thing to yourself "1"... with each breath...
Over and over.  Don't let anything distract you: just "1"...

If something distracts you, just return to thinking "1" with each breath- concentrate mainly on your breath.  The in and out, deep breathing...

After everyone comes on downstairs, you will wish you had more time to meditate, trust me!

So, there you go- three Perfectly Paleo things that you just have to start doing!

Your life will be greatly enhanced by so doing.

J