Transcending Limitations

I keep discovering US produced products that are banned in Europe and it really makes me worry about all of us here. I can’t tell if they’re over protective of their citizen (but could that ever be a bad thing?) or if our leaders are more than happy to flush our healths down the toilet so that they can line their wallets.

It’s not just beef and chlorinated chicken either; our GM corn, wheat and soy are also banned or require labels. They even went so far as to burn crops when GM plants were found growing in them. Now that says a lot when you consider it’s in just about every food in this country.

nicoleinstages:

Find your body type

I think if I didn’t have PCOS I would be a mesomorph, since that’s more or less my build and that of my brothers. Unfortunately I have an endomorph metabolism that likes to store any remotely semi-unhealthy thing as fat and mainly on my stomach.

dirtylittlecarnivore:

Boxes containing eight four-pound bags of ginger-citrus sauce, each with a refrigerated shelf life of about four months, are shipped to Chili’s restaurants to accompany the chicken. The ingredients in the sauce sound relatively benign: sugar, hoisin sauce, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, chili paste, modified food starch, and orange juice concentrate. But sugar is the dominant nutrient, and salt is listed three times.

About the Boneless Shanghai Wings, he said, “Taking it off the bone is like taking the husk off the nut.” That processing step reduces the need for chewing, making the food faster to consume. Those wings contain a solution of up to 25 percent water, hydrolyzed soy protein, salt, and sodium phosphate. The water is in there for several reasons. First, it bulks up the chicken-the industry calls this “reducing shrinkage.” Second, water is cheaper than chicken breast, so it’s less costly to produce. And finally, water makes the food softer and chewing easier. Before the chicken is shipped from the manufacturing plant, it’s battered, breaded, predusted, and frozen. This creates a salty coating that becomes crispy when fried in fat. “All this stuff absorbs fat, dries out this batter and breading, and replaces water with oil. So now you’ve got batter and breading that is probably 40 percent fat,” according to the food consultant. The crispy coating, which also contains corn-syrup solids, dried yeast, and soybean oil, may represent up to half the volume of the nuggets on the plate.

livingsuperhuman:

Earlier today, I went for a walk.

It wasn’t a very long walk.

I didn’t set any records or break any personal bests.

I can’t brag to others about how far I walked or how many calories I “burned”.

I didn’t finish out of breath and barely even broke a sweat.

All I did was go outside, listen to some music, and walk.

And it was amazing!

My whole life I thought walking was for dogs, babies, and old people. I overlooked walking as a form of exercise and thought that I was above it. Walking was for people who were too physically or mentally weak to run fast or lift heavy.

At least that’s what I thought.

Then, at the end of last year, I spent three months in Europe without a car. I was forced to walk everywhere, and walking became a way of life for me. At that point, I still didn’t consider walking a very effective form of exercise, but I started to notice how much I enjoyed the basic activity of just walking.

I noticed that no matter how short or long I walked, I almost always returned home feeling better than when I had left. Walking seemed to improve my mood and my thinking. It helped me come up with ideas for articles I wanted to write, and it helped me put problems or issues I was having into perspective. It seemed to improve my digestion and made me feel better after big meals. It gave me quality time with my girlfriend, and quality time with myself. I even felt like I could get away with an extra dessert or cheat meal without feeling the weight gain and sluggishness the next day.

I was amazed to feel all these positive benefits from something as simple as walking, something I had disregarded for most of my life.

But maybe all this walking business was just in my head. Could I really be experiencing all of these positive outcomes or was it just a placebo effect?

Well, it turns out that there might actually be some science behind this walking phenomenon. Study after study has shown the incredible benefits of walking. Here are just a few examples:

A small increase in walking was associated with meaningful overall health benefits.

Periodic walking improved glucose and insulin responses.

Walking may improve your memory.

Walking could help you live longer.

Walking can improve thinking and cognitive function.

Walking was shown to improve arthritis symptoms.

Walking improves well-being even more than high-intensity exercise.

Post-meal walking improves blood glucose after a carbohydrate rich meal.  

These all sound like good things to me!

Based on my personal experience and the studies I found, it seems pretty clear to me that walking is a Superhuman activity. How many things in life are so easy (and free) to do, have so many positive benefits, and almost no negative side effects?

I think walking stands alone in this regard.

Which makes me wonder….if walking is so great, why did I spend most of my life avoiding it?

I think the biggest reason that I overlooked walking for so long is because common sense and conventional wisdom convinced me that the goal of exercise is to burn calories. If I could burn 100 calories from walking for 30 minutes, then I could double or triple that by jogging or lifting weights for that same amount of time. If some is good, then more must be better.

But as I have researched and experimented with different diets and exercise programs in my own life, it has become clear that there is more to this simplified model then just calories-in versus calories-out. Activities like walking, sleeping, and spending time outside don’t work because they burn more calories, they work because they improve the function and hormonal output of your entire body. Weight loss just happens to be a pretty nice side effect of a properly functioning body.

Sometimes the greatest benefits can be had from the simplest activities. Don’t make the same mistakes and assumptions that I did. Make walking an important part of your life and I guarantee you will feel better.

nopityfitness:

There is a commonly repeated, regurgitated yet FALSE idea being passed around mainstream fitness. That myth is:

“If you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose fat” 

This. Is. Wrong. 

Our bodies are not calculators. Hormones, genetics, what you eat and how you workout affect fat loss WAY more than how many calories you consume. Not only is there no accurate way to test how many calories you burn but eating at a “caloric deficit” will often cause your body to burn muscle as opposed to fat.

Your body is a lot smarter than you give it credit for. Muscle provides much more energy and nutrients than fat, which is why when taxed, your body will often consume your muscle. 

How do you stop your body from eating muscle? Style of training. 

Look at long distance runners, very little fat, but also very little muscle. Their bodies consume the muscle for energy because you can’t run off fat for a marathon. Now look at sprinters. Ripped right? They cary a pretty decent amount of muscle, and they are just as lean if not leaner than most distance runners.

To lose fat you have to give your body a reason to get rid of it, without going overboard. If you sprint, and sprint often, your body can recognize the fat is weighing you down, thus making the spring harder, and it will burn the fat over muscle. But if you throw you body into catabolic mode by taxing it beyond a healthy level, adios muscle.

Also, according to this “rule”, I could eat 2,500 calories worth of pizza and as long as I burn 2,600 a day, I will be lean. So false. You have to put the proper nutrients in your body to keep it running efficiently. 3,000 calories of nutrient dense food will make you leaner than 2,000 calories of crap. 

Sprint, lift, eat, become lean and muscular.

Finally, someone else on the same wave length. If simply having a calorie deficit caused you to lose weight I’d be underweight by now, yet I’m not. In fact my body fights to keep the fat on if I dip more than a few hundred under my maintenance level. This results in frustratingly slow weight loss but I’ve decided to put a positive spin on it. If I have to eat this way long enough it will eventually become my permanent eating habits and that greatly raises my odds of being able to keep it up long after the fat is gone.