Obesity and McDonald’s
Yesterday for lunch, I sat at my desk at work eating a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a ten piece Chicken McNugget from Mcdonalds. Several people in the office commented with amazement that I was consuming such an atrocious meal, since I’m known for being knowledgeable and conscientious about food and exercise. I even made a rule for my Soldiers that everytime I see them drinking a soda at work, they have to do one burpee for every gram of sugar in the bottle. The burpee tax began when one Soldier had a 12 oz. bottle of Coca Cola on his desk. I picked it up and read the label: 65 grams of sugar.
As I sat munching my delicious burger, one of the officers asked me how many burpees I was incurring from the McDonalds meal. I told him, none, that sugar is the killer, especially liquid sugar. An NCO chimed in with his negative comments, too. I reminded them to look at my Physical Fitness test scores, and they conceded they couldn’t argue with my results.
I didn’t bother going in to any more detailed explanation of why it was ok for me to eat the meal, but I’ll touch on a few things here. First, calories are the big thing. Calories in, calories out matter, and they matter a lot. There’s are other important issues, but mostly it comes down to energy balance. To give you an idea of my energy expenditure energy yesterday, First, our section did an hour of physical training which entailed the following: 20 minutes of continuous exercise, 5 pullups, 10 parallel bar dips and 20 lunges, rotating through as many sets as possible in those 20 minututes. At the end, we all did a minute of situps. For me that ended up being 47 situps. I lost count of how many sets I did, but I’ll estimate around 20. So that’s 100 pullups, 200 dips, 400 lunges. Next, after lunch I went for a two mile walk. This in addition to walking quite a bit during my normal daily duties. We also spent about 2 hours moving big rolls of razor wire and moving some moderately heavy boxes around. So as you can see, I’m fairly active.
My food intake for the day, my energy intake, comprised the following:
Breakfast: 3 egg cheese omelet; two pieces whole wheat toast with butter
Lunch: Quarterpounder with cheese; 10 piece Chicken McNugget
Supper: One 6oz filet mignon wrapped in bacon; one ear of corn on the cob; 2 16oz cans of beer; and handful of mixed nuts
Some quick online research on calorie content, and using Fitness Magazine’s calorie requirement calculator (male, 41 years old, heavy exercise, 173 pounds), tells me that my calorie intake yesterday was 2859 and my daily average calorie requirement to sustain my current body weight is 2960 calories. Almost exactly on, but just a little under. My appetite yesterday tells me that this is correct: I felt very slight hunger pangs before going to bed, but nothing serious. The net result is no weight gain. Period.
Many people are familiar with Super Size Me, a documentary directed by film maker Morgan Spurlock. In the film, Spurlock ate only meals from McDonalds for 30 continuous days and “Super Sized” his meals whenever the cashier asked him if he wanted it so. The result was a measurable deterioration in Spurlock’s health and well being. He gained over 23 pounds. Many people attributed this to the evils of fast food. Ignored was the fact that Spurlock consumed over 5000 calories per day, and did no regular exercise during this period. Well, at least his nutritionist in the movie tells him he’s eating that many calories per day, though it’s been pointed out that in order to reach that many calories per day, Spurlock had to have broken his own eating rules, that is, he simply ate more than he stated. And, he has never released a food log showing what he actually ate, only stating that he Super Sized 9 times total in 30 days. The following video explains:
The following video shows Spurlock for what he really is: A Vegan zealot, out to prove to the world the evils of meat, and the healthfulness of celery:
So Spurlock did what every bad scientist does: Set out to prove what he already knew. If Spurlock ate 5000 calories of bananas he would have gained weight and felt awful. If he’d eaten 2500 calories a day of McDonalds and cut out the soda and fries, he would have been fine.
In fact, several people have lost weight on diets of “bad” food from McDonalds.
And… this man.
Tim Naughton did an experiment and showed he could lose weight over the same period that Spurlock gained weight, eating only fast food.
Eating fewer calories makes people healthier in almost all measurable ways. Haughton’s blood lipids all improved while eating only at fast food restaurants.
The nutrition professor below ate about 1800 calories a day for 10 weeks, consuming twinkies and snack cakes. He lost 27 pounds and his colesterol went down by 20 points. This is real science. And frankly it drives people nuts. Many people who say they “trust in science, not religion” are lying: They simply believe what they want to believe.
Here’s the Twinkie Diet:
So, my diet strongly focuses on these factors: calories, effects on blood sugar, intermittent fasting. My calories remain reasonable, I stay away from foods that spike blood sugar–especially chronic use of sugary drinks and sugary foods low in fiber, and finally, skipping about two meals a weak leading to a 16-18 hour fast. Pretty simple. I don’t count calories, except when I’m making a point to unbelievers.
Think about it. A Quarter Pounder with cheese has about 510 calories. If someone ate only 3 Quarter Pounders a day, they’d take in only 1530 calories a day. But many Americans are taking in 4000-5000 a day–and that’s why they’re fat and sick.
Moms, don’t let your kids grow up to be soda drinkers
Want to have and immediate positive impact on your kid’s health? Don’t let them drink soda or fruit juice. Yes, that’s right, fruit juice. Juice is pretty much just soda without caffeine. For instance, Motts 100% apple juice contains 28 grams of sugar per 8oz glass. A can of soda is about 40-50 grams. That’s about 14 teaspoons of sugar in a single can. And it doesn’t even make you feel full.
Our bodies are not meant to ingest sugar in this form. In nature, the absorbtion of sugar from fruit is blunted by the fibre. Without the fibre, insulin levels skyrocket. Over years, chronically high insulin levels lead to obesity, and eventually “Syndrome X”; a systemic failure as a result of insulin resistance.
The best breakfast for kids is a whole grain cereal with whole milk. No juice, just water. Teach them when they’re young and it’ll be easy for them when they’re adults.
Vegetarians are mean
You can look at my recent post about individual traits indicating something of the greater whole of a person.
I have my opinion of vegetarians too. I don’t think most of them are very nice people and some of them seem really, really mean. I’ve written of this in several posts in the past. Don’t know if it’s a vitamin B deficiency or an intrinsic trait of ideologues. Probably a little of both. I’m sure there are some friendly vegetarians out there. Honestly though, I’ve yet to meet one who isn’t a little quirky. It’s nothing personal–it’s an honest observation. I don’t care what people eat.
The book, The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith, made Amazon’s best seller list in the health arena. Keith is a former vegetarian who did her research and found that most of the reported supremacy was based on unchallenged assumptions. Everything from health benefits to environmental utopias took a hit in her research.
But as usual, the angriest amongst us–the ultra-leftists–rose up with a vengeance. Lierre was recently attacked by masked aggressors, who shoved cayenne-laced pies into her face while she read from her book at a convention. The mostly vegetarian crowd (it was San Francisco afterall) cheered as she tried to wipe the irritant from her eyes.
So to all the nice vegetarians out there: I’m glad you didn’t have to kill a moo-moo to eat dinner. But to all the mean vegetarians, why don’t you stick that carrot where the sun don’t shine.
Veganism
Read below a comment I posted on a friend’s blog concerning the ethics and healthfulness of veganism.
This book The Vegetarian Myth, is written by a feminist who drank all the grape kool-aid and paid the price. Her health was permanently damaged by 20 years of veganism. Eventually she came to explore the real implications of veganism, and found that it is unsustainable as a world-wide diet.
Only people who are motivated by ideology or religion can continue in veganism. They will, over a period of years, watch their health and physical capabilities rapidly decline.
I have never met a vegan who was physically strong. They may be able to run for distance (even this capability will diminish much quicker than if they were not vegans) but they simply have no physical power. If you find an Olympian who is a vegan, it will be in an endurance, aerobic dominated sport, not an anaerobic power sport like bobsledding. This is because power sports exert much more stress on the body. I remember reading something written by All-Pro tight end for the Atlanta Falcons, Tony Gonzalez. He decided to go vegan one off season. When he went to the ream’s first workout session inthe gym, he could barely lift the dumbbells that before he’d thrown around for high repetitions. He made some adjustments to his diet, and in his new book, recommends small amounts of meat.
My sister experienced the same sort of thing when she went to play rugby in college. She was a vegetarian, but quickly found that she only performed her best if she ate meat. In high school, where she was the best female athlete on the track and field team as well as cross-country, she simply didn’t experience the stressors of rugby–which is a power-sport with vast endurance requirements.
Vegan seems to me to attract those looking for The Way. Hence the nearly religious mindset.
Can one survive survive without meat? Oh yes–go to India and find vegans, who because of their religious convictions eat only vegetables and suffer from the worst mal-nutrition in the world, not to mention some of the lowest IQs because of stunted brain development. Can a vegan in the West do better? Yes, by micro-managing their diet to a point that would make me miserable, and that is only sustainable bythe very thing that many in the vegan community would stand against: Industrialisation. Without industry there is almost never the selection of food that we have here. Not in the wilds of Africa or the Rainforests of South America. In other words, the claim that veganism as practiced by the most Westerners is a natural diet, is wrong. The diet is in fact a product of Western living, not nature, in which man will eat anything once living in order to survive.
http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/debating-meat-ii-theology-of-meat/
Health Heresy
First off, I’m not a doctor. I’m not responsible for any health benefits you may gain from not following the rules your unhealthy doctor gives you. You know, like, don’t eat meat, don’t go out in the sun and don’t drink.
Want to join me in my health heresy? Do what I do:
- Eat plenty of meat, fat and all. Atkins was a genius and unafraid of the truth.
- Skip a meal every now and again. Believe me, not eating food is not the reason people’s health is suffering in America.
- Drink coffee. Remember when it was bad for you? Turns out it’s not. It has tons of anti-oxidants, and apparently significantly reduces the chances of dementia and some types of cancer.
- Drink alcohol. Lower your chances of heart disease and dementia with moderate consumption.
- Get some sun. People in higher longitudinal areas have higher rates of cancer. The magic is in the vitamin D–a hormone not a vitamin really. Makes you happy too. Don’t use sun screen unless you think you’ll burn.
Do these and the Inquisition may be knocking on your door wondering why you look and act a decade younger than you really are. But if you want to age quickly, simply eat lots of sugar like most other people do.
Commando Fitness
What is the most effective “system” I’ve used for fitness?
I’ve bought tons of books, read nearly every article on fitness and health that I can get my hands on. So if I had to give you just one book, one “system”, what would it be?
People will be surprised, because the stuff I’ve used the most for about the last nine years have been gool ’ol calisthenics. Actually, calisthenics on steroids. Back in 2001, I saw an advertisement for a book by Matt Furey, called Combat Conditioning. In the book, Furey told of meeting wrestling legend Karl Gotch, then 76 years old. Gotch did not lift weight during his career. Instead he used the ancient Indian wrestler’s exercises: Deep knee bends, Hindu pushups and the back bridge. Gotch began training Furey, who was a former Division II national wrestling champ, a personal trainer, and certainly not ignorant of fitness techniques. Furey was amazed at the effectiveness of the exercises Gotch showed him. Instead of the stiffness that sometimes came with weight training, Furey found himself flexible and strong. Furey was also surprised at how much strength Gotch retained in his old age.
I have nothing against lifting weights. But difficult calisthenics are better. Things like one-legged squats, hand stand pushups and other challenging bodyweight drills have a very interesting effect: They provide a combination of balance, strength and endurance difficult to achieve with weights.
Combat Conditioning is filled with exercises that Furey learned from Gotch, some from Chinese martial arts, as well as some Furey learned while training under Dan Gable at Iowa State University. Some of them are grueling, like Hindu jumper squats, uphill buddy carries and bridging. Others are simple. Furey also talks about the sublime effectiveness of skipping rope, hill sprints and calisthenic circuit training. He has several workouts set up at the back of his book. Many of these are very difficult, and most people will not be able to finish them when they first begin this type of training. The 500 pushup workout is very tough. Then there’s the Karl Gotch Bible. Take a deck of cards and have someone deal one card at a time ot you. Black means Hindu pushups, red means bodyweight squats. Do the number on the cards. Face cards equal ten and aces can be anywhere between 11 and 20–you set the number before you start the session.
Another man–perhaps one of the greatest scientists ever produced by Russia–Nicolai Amosov–was a proponent of calisthenics and running. Everyday, he performed his “complex” of calisthenic drills and ran about 5 miles. He began his routine after leaving the Russian army, when he found that he was losing muscle and gaining fat. His energy levels shot through the roof. He wrote a book–Thoughts on Health– in 1965 about health and fitness. It made Amosov a literal hero to the people of Russia. Through his studies on human cybernetics, he developed his theory on human longevity: The Theory of Limit Loads. The theory states that for our bodies to maintain youthful vigor, it must be used–and used a lot.
So, to wrap it up–what should you do if you find yourself in a sad physical state? Start moving! Anything! Too broad? Here’s a place to start:
- Perform calisthenics everyday or every other day. Very the intensity, reps and overall difficulty. Pushups, pullups, situps, bodyweight squats. Oh yeah–and the dreaded squat thrust. If you need help, buy the of the many products out there that give tons of calisthenic variety.
- To maximise athletic benefits, add some kettlebell training. The KB will hit two areas that are difficult to reach using calisthenics alone: Grip strength and lower back strength.
- Massively reduce sugar intake. This means dropping the most horrible “food” ever made by Man: Soda. When you eat carbs, do so in the form of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
- Skip a couple of meals a week.
- Keep a positive attitude about life. Cynics are unhappy people and have never changed the world.
- Challenge yourself. Remember: Progressive overload. Set goals and reach for them. Never give up.
- Remember the words of Nicolai Amosov:
“So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the experiment continues! We are pushing pessimism back. Limits for old men are abolished. Life is a pretty good thing after all.”
If you could just tell people not to eat so darn much.
That’s what Walter Breuning says concerning his longevity. He’s 113 years old and hasn’t eaten supper in 35 years. In other words, he does the Warrior Diet, like me, only instead of normally skipping breakfast( Remember, I’m not dogmatic about it), he skips supper. So did Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha.
Again: Fast
“A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet; I mean total abstinence from food for one or two days. I speak from experience; starvation has been my cold and fever doctor for 15 years, and has accomplished a cure in all instances.”~ Mark Twain
Yet another study showing that periodic fasting has health benefits. This one studied a group of Mormons. Mormons have lower risk of Coronary Artery Disease than the people surrounding them who are not Mormons. The Mormon faith prohibits known factors of heart disease, such as smoking, and also restricts other behaviors that have possible effects on health, such as alcohol consumption and drinking coffee and tea. This study adjusts for those tertiary factors and focuses on the effects of fasting, which is also part of the Mormon faith.
When it was all said and done, the scientists found that fasting reduced the chances of a person having Coronary Artery Disease.
Don’t listen to those who tell you that fat people just aren’t eating enough meals and that skipping chow will only make you fat. Eating too much makes people fat, plain and simple.
Easy, effective pre-competition meal
Recent science shows that apples may increase endurance capacity, due to an anti-oxidant known as Quercetin. The study showed that people fed Quercetin twice a day for seven days showed a 13.2 percent increase in endurance with no additional training. That’s a huge boost. Actually, apples have a number of health benefits.
In addition, very cold water increases work capacity, especially in warm wheather. When I say cold water, I mean 4 degrees C.
So, a good pre-competion meal would have me eating two apples the day prior to a race or game. Spread some peanut butter on a sliced apple to add some fat and salt. Drink a tall glass of water before going to bed the night before, to help with general hydration. Loss of as little as 2% of bodyweight can negatively effect performance and a 5% loss can reduce performance by 30%.
An hour before competition, eat half an apple with peanut butter and drink a glass or two of ice water.
Want to live longer, look younger, have increased athletic ability and stay disease free? Eat less.
The study results are mounting: Less calories=better and longer life. I practice fasting, which by-proxy reduces calorie intake; you can’t catch up when you quit the fast, even short fasts.
Here are two monkeys, side by side, the one on the left given about half the calories of the one on the right. The monkeys are within one year in age. According to the study, the monkey on the left is more energetic, his blood tests are perfect, while the monkey on the right looks older, acts older and his blood shows high glucose and triglycerides–and arthritis and wrinkles.
Plain and simple, we’ve got to stop eating so much.
Crossfit: Is it really the Holy Grail of fitness?
Crossfit is all the rage amongst many in the police and military community. For those of you who are not familiar with Crossfit, let me explain what all the hype’s about.
On the Crossfit website is posted the following definition of “World-Class fitness”:
Five rounds for time of:
400 meter run
95 pound Overhead squat, 15 reps
“Helen”
Three rounds for time:
Run 400 meters
1 1/2 pood KettlebellX 21 swings (or 55 pound dumbbell swing)
12 Pull-ups
So in the case of Nancy, a person would do a 400 meter sprint, then 15 reps of overhead squats, competing this circuit five times. He would keep tabs on how long it took him to complete this WOD and try to improve on it the next time the same WOD came up.
On some days, the WOD may be deadlift singles, training a person for raw power.
There are tons of different exercises in Crossfit and the website has videos that demonstrate most of the more esoteric movements. All of the workouts, due to their intense nature and ability to generate monumentalloads of lactic acid, will stimulate Growth Hormone release. This is a great thing.
But I’ve got some problems with it. My first problem is the intensity, day in, day out perscribed by Crossfitt. I believe this level of intensity will lead to over training and in the end, result in sub-par performances. Though changing the exercises daily does have the effect of acting as a “rest”, it is not enough to make up for the fact that virtually every Crossfit workout–five times a week–are pushing your body to the max. Can humans withstand this type of work load? Sure, as can be witnessed by ultra-marathoners. But it is not really the road to heath and happiness–or ultimate performance in sport. This amount of trianing will lead to muscle breakdown, and all the other things that come with overtraining, like sleep problems and mood disorders.
My second probelm with Crossfit is the compromise of strength that will occur should someone adopt this form of training as an everyday practice.
As noted in the article written by Andrew Burne at Curtin University’s School of Physiotherapy:
Sale et al (1990) suggested that resistance training performed on the same day as endurance training may impede strength development when compared to training for either on separate days.
And… Dudley and Fleck (1987) suggested that individuals performing concurrent strength and endurance training may become over-trained relative to subjects who perform strength or endurance training alone. I have found this to be the case for myself. Every so often, I’ll have a day when i do both cardio and stregth trianing, but it’s infrequent–and I always pay the price.
Most imprortantly: Residual fatigue has been suggested to occur following the endurance component of a concurrent program, which may compromise the ability of muscles to develop tension during the strength element of concurrent training (Hennessyand Watson 1994). If sufficient tension cannot be generated during the strength component of a concurrent program, optimal strength development and adaptations may not occur. It has been suggested by Craig et al(1991), that if the endurance trainingis performed prior to the strength training, residual fatigue may impair muscular force out-put and thus impair strength development. Sale et al(1990) also found that concurrent strength and endurance trainingperformed on alternate days produced larger strength gains than concurrent training performed on the same day, which indicates that residual fatigue from endurance training is a possible mechanism responsible for the observed inhibition in strength development.
Even Greg Glassman admits that too much mixing of endurance and strength training results in poorer results in both areas. He believes though, that the Crossfitway of training better simulates actual sport activities and real-life events such as grappling or fighting, because those events incorporate stregnth and endurance at the same time. Glassman says that while Crossfit athletes may not be able to lift as much as power-lifters or run a 15K as fast as a dedictated runner, they perform better in a wider variety of events and are healthier. He uses rather extreme examples, such as a power-lifter who can deadlift 900 lbs. I agree that someone who can deadlift 900 lbs is probably not that healthy, as they are over-specialized. I would also remind Glassman though, that someone who can lift 900 lbs is probably using illegal anabolic steroids.
The primary problem is the volumn of the Crossfit workouts. While a couple of two or three mile runs a week are unlikely to have much of a negative affect on strength training, smoking yourself everyday certainly will. Also know that while strength is compromised by excessive endurance training, endurance athletes actually gain an advantage from strength trianing, (Paavolainen L, Hakkinen K, Hamalainen I, Nummela A, Rusko H. Explosive-strength training improves 5-km running time by improving running economy and muscle power. J Appl Physiol. 1999 May;86).
But I would not do the strength and endurance training on the same day–every day. Your results can be far better if you separate your training.
Next–a cult-like mentality. Cults are poison and cause people to lose their ability to think for themselves. Many people will ruthlessly follow the appointed WOD, regardless of how they feel or how they are performing. Crossfit has T-Shirts, and the people on the airbase here in Weisbaden Germany who do Crossfit walk around sporting the clothing as if they were declaring tribal affiliation. Many of the Crossfitters around here and online will hear nothing of other training methodologies. Anything else is pure heresy.
There’s health concerns too. Reports of exercise induced death. There’s something called rhabdomyolysis. It’s as bad as it sounds. When a person overdoes exercise, that is a person’s body is not adequately adapted to intense work, his or her muscle tissue can break down and leak into the bloodstream, causing death or permanent disability. Crossfit is intense, to say the least.
Besides mixed-martial artists, there are no professional athletes that I know of who use Crossfit as their primary conditioning program. And, I question in an anecdotal sense, Crossfit’s effectiveness. Anything is better than nothing, but the system I use, which relies heavily on intuitive training, is more effective it seems. There’s no Crossfitter around here outdoing me. Do I randomize my training? Yes. But I also allow time for recovery and don’t blast myself day in, day out. My section sergeant does Crossfit and on many days he’s limpingaround here, sore and tired. I think a training regimen should leave me more prepared, not less. Excessive fatigue, soreness and other symptoms of over training compromise soldier readiness.
In the end, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to throw a Crossfit WOD into your training once in a while. But there are better ways. Healthier ways. Crossfit asks too much and returns too little. It over-randomizes training, resulting is athletes who are not nearly strong enough. And it’ll burn you out, too.
You’re a mutant–Part 1
So I have people asking me all the time: How old are you? They seem to sense that I’m older than they think I am.
“I thought you were something like 25.” That’s what they tell me. One guy said: “You’re a mutant.”
To tell the truth, I keep expecting to wake up one day and appear my age–37. Of course I’m happy that I look younger than I am, but at times it’s annoying, particularly in the Army, where respect comes with age. There’s a huge difference in the way that I’m treated when people find out how old I am.
Then there’s my physical fitness test results. I out-do the 18 year olds pretty easily. None of them can stay with me in grappling. Of course in some areas it’s natural for older men to perform better than younger men. Older men are stronger than younger men. But in distance running, there is usually a decline as men reach their mid-30s. At AIT, I was reaching the 100 percentile for the 18 year old bracket. I was like 300 percentile for my age group. My body fat is about 8 percent.
Throughout my time as a physically active person (all my life), I’ve down-played the role of genetics in people’s physical capabilities. But now, I give genetics their due. Virtually everyone here at my unit does the same physical training in a group format at as everyone else. My results are different then other people’s.
There is one factor though, that is tough to measure, and that’s mental toughness and will. I think I have a lot of both. Physical challenges give me a lot of pleasure, were as to many people physical stress is only pain. Is this genetic? I don’t know.
I’ve tried to think back to the times when I was young, very young, to get an idea as to if genetics are playing a role in my physical abilities at my age. I have come to the conclusion that I’m lucky. I was always very strong for my age and size. I was never big, but I was very wiry. The funny thing is, I hated school sports. Had no desire to play until late high school, and even then I couldn’t stand the meat heads and skipped almost all practices until the coaches were pissed off enough to tell me I wasn’t on the team.
This is not to say that I could lay around and do nothing and beat people who train everyday. It just seems that I respond very quickly to training. I can do no distance running for a long time, and then pick it up and within two weeks I’m running at a very high level.
But.
There are a lot of thgings that I’ve done right over the years that had nothing to do with genetics. Here’s a run-down of things I believe contributed to my good health and energy levels.
1) Incorporate Interval training into your exercise regimen.
I’ve done this from my younger days in one form or another, not really realizing until recent years that it’s the best way to exercise. It allows athletes to reap the benefits of weight training and also maintain cariovasular fitness. There are many types of Interval Training, such asCircuit Training, where you pick several bodyweight or weighted exercises and move from one to another. For instance, you could have pushups, pullups, jump-rope and body-weight squats in a circuit, continuing to rotate through them at a pace dependant on your fitness level.
With interval training, you do the same thing but stick with one exercise. Intervals can give your workout an intensity boost and massively increase your performance, particularly in endurance or strength-endurance activities. You can do interval sprints, such as the Tabata Intervals, Rowing Intervals, Fartlek Running, or my favorite: Hill Sprints. Kettlebells also provide a great, portable tool for incorporation into circuits.
2) Emphasize weight training over cardio work. But don’t ignore your heart.
Weight training keeps you young. Too much cardio is associated with fast aging. As this ezine article states, even in the world’s elite distance runners between the ages of 40 and 50, muscle wasting sets in at the same rate as sedentary people. Not good. While I’m not as anti-cardio as I used to be, I still believe that anaerobic exercise in the form of weight training or body weight exercises are a better use of your time. As we age, we lose muscle. Lean body mass is one measure of health, and the more of it you have, you more you’ll have to spare as you age. Weight training works the heart, too. But we can’t ignore cardiovascular health, both for performance reasons and health reasons. Incorporating one or two intense cardio workouts a week should be more than enough, provided you follow the rest of my tips.
3) Play
Playing is proven to keep you young–and it doesn’t have to be a sport. Act like you’re young and your body is likely to respond. Sometimes when I’m hiking, as my buddies can attest, I’ll break into play mode. I may see a tree that look like it would be fun to climb, so I climb it. Not only does this stimulate your mind, but it can be a great workout. I may see a hill and suddenly decide to sprint up it. Get into a sport. Softball was my favorite. Rock climbing too. Don’t let age deter you. I’m also in Army Combatives, which is like Jiu-Jitsu. It’s a tremendous workout that breaks the monotony of just going to the gym and moving a weight around. Plus I’m learning a valuable skill. Learn a challenging but fun skill, like walking on your hands. It’s one of my favorite and i like to shame the younger guys around here by challenging them to hand-walking contests. 
4) Eat nuts and legumes
My dad always had a can of mixed nuts around. So I picked up the habit of eating them a long time ago. And guess what? Seems like it was one more thing I’ve been doing right for a long time in regards to my health. So says this study, one of many that show the benefits of eating nuts and legumes.
5) Get some sun
I’m really tires of the warnings about the sun. No kidding, getting a sunburn is bad for you. But stop lying by omission, doctors. Truth is, the sun is good for you and will improve your health and life tremendously. There’s plenty of studies that show that moderate sun exposure decreases cancer risk and improves mood. I almost never wear sun screen. I’m careful not to burn of course, and if I think that I’ll have too much sun exposure, I’ll consume foods that give a natural protection from sun damage, such as green tea, or the lycopene containing watermelon and tomato.
5) Take a break–from everything
That includes food. I don’t care how often they tell me I should be eating 6 fricken meals a day. Seems I’m always battling against urban mythology and this 6 meal crap has to die. It doesn’t speed your metabolism! We need a break. Stopping our routine is like hitting the reset button. In neuroscience it’s known as the reminiscence effect. When I’m struggling with a skill, or perhaps I’ve hit a bump in a video game and just can’t get past the newest boss, I’ll take a break for a few days. When I come back–Ouila!,my skills have miraculously improved and what seemed like an impossible part of the game is now easy. That’s why I’m playing Rock Band on Expert now. Well, the same goes for food and exercise. I see it over and over with myself, how much better I feel when I for a couple of days eat much less food. I may skip breakfast, or on days when my activity levels are really low, breakfast and lunch with just a piece of fruit, some nuts and coffee to get me by. My energy levels skyrocket after I do this. I sleep better, my skin regains elasticity. My mood and thinking improve. Almost all ancient cultures–especially the successful ones–practiced fasting. For the most part, their fasts had a religious context, but I believe that they were hitting a reset button even then. Their thinking changed during the fast. Mine does. I write better when I don’t eat breakfast. And the great thing about intermittent fasting is that you get all the benefits of a calorie restricted diet–with none of the negatives such as low sex drive, loss of muscle and energy and moodiness. So as before, I’m advocating some form of the Warrior Diet.
Ori Hofmekleradvocates 1 large meal a day, supplemented with small post exercise meals. He in his 50s. Does he look fat?
Ori Hofmekler made people start looking at intermittent fasting and realizing that they’ve been fed bunk in regards to needing many meals per day. Hofmekler is a former member of the Israeli Special forces and he said his hypothesis started when he and a friend of his in the Special Forces started talking about how much better they operated when they had little to eat early in the day, but then ate as much as they wanted to later. It works.
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