Health

Exercise to increase your physical abilities. Exercise to increase your physical capacity, build your confidence, play your game, prevent sarcopenia, turn over cells, kick start recovery and healing, make it easy on the pancreas when it comes to storing energy…the list goes on.

Oh, and by the way, you can lose weight without exercising. Make grains and grain products (pasta and bread and alcohol) 5% or less of your diet instead of 90% (0% is best). Eat colorful vegetables, meat, fish, nuts, seeds and fruits. Do this and your body will have a very hard time assembling fatty acids into triglycerides inside of cell walls. I can add body fat or take it off just by altering the composition of my diet. I can eat corn (a grain), toast, and drink beer frequently and add 5lbs in 2 weeks. I can switch back to eating as described above and remove that 5lbs in the next two. I am constantly testing this and finding it to be true. A little bit now and again seems to be just fine, but high frequency grain consumption should only be embarked upon if you want to gain for an Arctic winter stay.

When you eat this way, you will quickly see if you have muscle on your frame. If you don’t, start putting some on so can outrun your grandkids until they are 7 or so. Put some on so that when you are sixty and get pneumonia you can rebound more quickly. Put on some muscle so you can get out of a chair when you are 80. Life is short, be as strong as you can for as long as you can so your quality of life is as good as can be.

Lift some heavy things now and again. Take long walks. Eat as I said.

As I was being Rolfed today, I heard something that I had never heard before. The limbic system, or the part of our brain that is the most reptilian (fight or flight) is linked the extensor muscles. When a person becomes alert, the extensors straighten the body and neck and lift the head. Imagine a deer eating grass in a meadow and it hears a startling sound. It lifts it’s head. It’s alert. After the starting sound passes and there’s no sign of danger, the deer will relax and begin to eat the grass again.

So imagine humans who work in high-demanding jobs and have young children and commute to work. Or, imagine people who have two high-demanding jobs, or one that keeps them for long hours. People in these kinds of situations are on constant alert. They are on alert at work, on the way to and from work and at home. Time for rest is not considered until it’s time for bed.

It is in this high-stress kind of situation that the extensor muscles will fire. If the alert is constant, the firing will be constant. This firing will fatigue the body and cause low grade inflammation. This is the link between stress and back pain or neck pain or any kind of pain that comes from extensor muscles.

If you see a deer in the winter, you will see a hard deer. It will look haggard and tough. Winter is a hard time for deer. Winter is a time for being on alert for the search of food and constant muscle firing with the shivers. A winter deer is a stressed deer. When summer comes around and the food is plentiful, the deer is more relaxed and looks more supple. When a wind blows and ruffles the leaves, the deer becomes alert for a moment until the wind passes and then relaxes.

People in high-stress situations need for the wind to stop blowing so their body can relax.

Friends and co-workers keep coming up to me and asking me what I’ve been doing to get into shape. Often they’ll start to tell me about what they are doing and ask if it will work. People will talk about their running plan and how they want to change their bodies. I listen. It’s very interesting.

Then they ask what I do. When I mention things like “I eat only nutrient dense food” or “I don’t eat grains”, I can see immediately many are not interested in following my path. They like eating that high energy stuff. It’s ironic that’s exactly what they should avoid and the “look” they are after will materialize very quickly. When a person stops eating a regimen with so much glucose-laden foods, the ability to store fat will decrease. Fat cannot be stored without the burning of glucose as fuel.

Having followed this knowledge myself, I know it works. I’ve haven’t been this lean since my teenage years. If people want a formula, it is this: eat unprocessed nutrient dense food + walk often + do brief, (relatively) intense full body movements. That’s it.