Before I reach my maximum number of shares on the facebooks in a day, I decided to instead share some things on here. This is mostly related…diet stuff, and this is the third post in a row where I recognize my assholeness tendencies.
I don’t like to think of myself as a militant paleo dickhead, but I know it can come across like that. My clients in san diego are encouraged to adopt a paleo-ish diet. However, if someone doesn’t eat meat I don’t “try to force it down their gullets” (though, a couple have started eating meat because their bodies wanted it). On the interwebz, especially facebook, I tend to post/share stuff espousing the benefits of a paleoish diet, and similarly will post things talking about how vegan stuff is probably not real good for you, (key word alert) in the long term. I think many things can be good for us short term, and in fact my belief is starting to be that basically everything should be cycled:
- fasting should be cycled. Do it for a month then don’t do it for a month. After a certain amount of time that additional stress might not be the good type of stress anymore.
- carbohydrate intake should be cycled. There is a reason this comes up in things like bodybuilding cuts, refeeds, carb nite, etc etc etc. Carboydrate manipulation is a really effective way to drive some body comp changes and take advantage of hormonal ‘stuff’.
- protein cycling. What? Yep, I don’t think we should eat a shit load of protein every day of each week of each month. I read a little something from Brad Pilon about how when you eat less protein your body becomes better at utilizing it. Makes sense to me, even if there aren’t 400 scientificals out there “proving” it. I instead tested it on myself, and ate a little less than 100g of protein every day for almost 2 months. And I didn’t waste away! Weird. But then the cool part happened, I upped my protein to about 220g/day, and in a month put on 10lbs of sweet sweet anabolic mass.
- workout cycling. don’t lift heavy all year long. don’t do zumba all year long. don’t do HIIT all year long. but stick to a program for 6-12 weeks at a time to actually see results. Then switch it up, unless you are competing or have a long term goal-then you need to keep the goal the goal.
So…here are the facebook recaps of stuff today:
1. real food messages need to continue to be told in different mediums. awesome.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mu8QthlZ6hY#!
2. Two vegan “vs” paleo posts. Both saying the same thing ultimately: you don’t have to eat Yuppie Atkins (my new favorite term for paleo) in order to be healthy. In fact you could do it in many ways, you just have to be educated and put in the effort.
- from the oh so sexy Dewey Nielson “There are a lot of anti plant based eating/vegan posts this last month on Facebook. All the way from “You can’t be lean, healthy and strong as a vegan” to “Plant based eaters are idiots and need to go Paleo or they will die”. To a degree, I agree with some of the things they are saying. I do think most plant based eaters do it wrong. They ditch the meat and dairy, and fill their gut full of processed foods, fake meats and become deficient in so many vital nutrients.What I find ignorant is that none of these anti-vegan folks ever ask the question, “why don’t you eat meat?”
If the answer is “Because eating meat is unhealthy”, I would side with the meat eaters and say eating meat (wild/grassfed/organic) is not unhealthy.
Yes. A vegan just said eating meat is not unhealthy. This will piss off many of my vegan friends but come on. Humans have thrived on meat for a LONG time and I have seen blood profiles and amazing body fat %’s from meat eaters.
I do believe eating factory farmed meat is unhealthy because the animal is fed hormones, GMO corn (poison) and antibiotics. I also think that eating factory farmed meat has causes far more destructive than just ones body health. When you consume factory farmed meat, you are giving the thumbs up to the government (monsanto, big pharma, oil) to continue to destroy our health and you are participating in the torture and death of billions of lives.
But if the answer to “why don’t you eat meat?” is “because ethically and morally it doesn’t make me feel good”, how in the world can you tell them they HAVE TO EAT MEAT? You can’t make an ethical and moral decision for someone. You can’t force someone to change their feelings at that level. Most plant based eaters (including myself) that I have talked to have made the decision to ditch the meat because of this.
Now how about instead of trying to force meat down someone’s throat that refuses to eat it, we educate them on how to eat a plant based diet the best way possible? This is what the best in the business do. You won’t catch the great ones like John Berardi trying to tell someone what their personal ethics should be. The great ones would help that person eat plant based in the healthiest way possible, which is through whole foods. REAL FOOD! Not the processed fake foods.
Last year I actually had some digestive issues with eating plant based. I sought out help from a good naturopath, Tim Hyatt who never judged me or told me what my ethics and morals should be. What he did was guided me through what foods I tended to be a bit intolerant of. He did this because he is a professional (this is very important when seeking advice on anything…. Does the person you are seeking advice from, actually make a living on the advice they are giving?) and great at his job.
If your reason for eating plant based is because of your morals/ethics and a person says negative things about why you shouldn’t eat that way, ignore them. They most likely don’t make a living giving their advice. Go find a real professional to help you through your journey because I will be honest, eating a plant based diet the RIGHT way is difficult. It takes a ton of work, time and dedication. Really, it takes much more work eating a healthy plant based diet than someone who consumes meat. I know this, I have walked in both pairs of shoes. Maybe this should be respected rather than hated on?
I dislike posting pictures like this because it makes me feel like one of “those” guys 😉 The reason for the picture is for everyone here to judge me. Judge my body. I’m putting it out there for you to appreciate or hate on. If I don’t look healthy, lean and strong, say so. Tell me I’m going to die from my vegetables and that I don’t get enough protein. But if you do, you must walk the walk. Show us what you look like without a shirt on if you choose to judge. Show us some feats of strength. Show us your breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Humans can thrive on all sorts of diets, so let’s find out why someone chooses to eat the way they eat. If it has to do with personal, moral decisions, lets not hate them for that. Let’s educate them, empower them and help them become the healthiest damn person they can be.
Be good to each other. Help each other. Peace folks.”
- The Vegan girlfriend from Supersize me gave up veganism and wrote about it. The ever awesome Krista Scott Dixon said:
Stumptuous.com shared a link.
Forget about the specifics of the diet — substitute any other diet name for “vegan” if you like. Focus on three provocative points in this piece: Eating according to BODY rules; the ebb and flow of those bodily needs; and the role of shame/social pressure in shaping our eating choices. This article really resonated with me even though it’s been nearly 20 years since I’ve been vegetarian.“The “ebb and flow” to me speaks to the idea that things will need to be cycled. I think that tons of people would see health benefits from short term veganism…partly because of the caloric restriction but mostly because of the taking out of bad shit. Ultimately I don’t believe it’s healthful unless you are very diligent-however most of us aren’t going to be able to keep up that diligence. So as much as I don’t like the attitude that Yoni Freedhoff preaches that “we should shoot for a “B” instead of an A+ because the amount of effort to reach the A+ is too much”, I also basically agree with it for most people. It feels like giving up and mostly I wanna tell people to suck it up and stop being a wuss…maybe we can find that middle ground and follow my diet advice, of “don’t be an asshole“.3. Just wanted to point out again that we should rename Paleo to “yuppie atkins” (adrienne harvey came up with that one). Here’s why:-
Adrienne Harvey LOL don’t forget all that it entails… I EAT CHEEESE and stuff….
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Clifton Harski Eating expensive cheese, grassfed meat, organic produce: yuppie^3 AND we get to brag about it to make ourselves seem cooler/more sophisticated! We win so much in feeling arrogant and awesome! Yes! That’s why I like this mockery new title so much!
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Adrienne Harvey Don’t forget all the hipster-filtered instagram photos, i will admit to liking to take those too
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Adrienne Harvey scuse me while I go wrap some bacon around the last of the goat camembert…
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Krista Scott-Dixon Some days I wonder if we invented nutrition in order to have something else for bourgeious neurotics to narcissistically whine about.
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Clifton Harski I’m not kidding, how cool does it feel when someone says “want a muffin?” and then I scoff, snort, and proclaim I don’t eat gluten while I bounce my chesticles at their poor nondefined features. Muah hahahah…..then I cry myself to sleep for being a jerk face.Lastly-if you are in or know someone in San Diego, and you aren’t training with me and haven’t recommended me to train your people you know in san diego…then we can’t be friends anymore. I’m pumped because I’m gonna be training out of two awesome facilities: Pacific Coast Kettlebells in Pacific Beach and Revolution Fitness in La Jolla. So Holla at me on the training page!Also….crossfit plus paleo = serious fitness gain and fat loss. But also alarmingly high rate of injury. “Basically, this study shows that in 10-weeks of Crossfit training and Paleo dieting, the average man will lose 7.6 lbs, gain 2.2 lbs of muscle, shed 4.2% bodyfat, and improve VO2max by 13.6%, while the average woman will lose 3.9 lbs, gain 2.3 lbs of muscle, shed 3.4% bodyfat, and improve VO2max by 11.8%. So it is highly effective for improving body composition and aerobic fitness, but it appears that all good things come at a price, as 16% of the subjects (9 out of 54) dropped out due to overuse injuries.” – Bret ContrerasNow, here is the key paragraph from the write up (IMO)- “”Also, the study was limited as all of the subjects also adhered to the Paleo Diet. It is therefore impossible to know how much of the results could be attributed to the training and how much could be attributable to the diet.“” Sssooooo….since we all like to repeat the whole “you can’t out exercise a bad diet/diet is 90% of fat loss” thing, maybe the CF wasn’t all that helpful? I “know” it was helpful of course, but what I’m getting at is perhaps we could produce very similar fitness gains and body comp changes through implementation of the diet, and inclusion of a HIIT style workout protocol that was based around more self limiting exercises and ‘safer’ drills than the typical CF workouts. READ: good swings, crawls, ropes, airdynes, rowers, hill sprints, and intelligent HIITing instead of max effort/reps of technical movements!That’s all folks. Sign up for online coaching here if you wanna increase badassery via the netz.
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