Jujimufu on nutrition

I've been adding and removing stuff from this article for 2 years!  My thoughts on nutrition have been an ongoing effort in balancing a desire for maximum human performance and physique enhancement with three other virtues: frugality, practicality, and hardcore'ness.  So here we go!

Organic produce vs. Conventional produce

1. I mostly buy conventional produce because it's cheap. I'm not convinced the pesticide toxin in conventional produce decreases my performance, increases my mortality, or makes me uglier.

2. After my liver destroys the toxins present in these foods, I pee out the chemical debris. But some toxins hide in fat tissue within the body! Oh no! Yes, but if the toxin is hiding, it's obviously afraid for its life and isn't doing anything harmful, it's just hiding. Exercise forces these toxins out of hiding. I sweat them out or my liver annihilates them. Besides, the toxins have no fat to hide in within my body; I stay deadly lean for most of the year.

3. If I was concerned that my liver's workload was too high, I'd just take some liver detox supplements. Like maybe a gram of milk thistle, a gram of ALA or r-ALA, and some Liv52 capsules each day (per John Meadows).  And some Schizandra berry extract. Maybe I'd eat some lemons or increase my water intake. Or eat more garlic than I already eat now.  How about detoxigest?

4. But this is becoming myopic.  Toxins don't only affect the liver after all.

5. So if I still wanted to reduce my exposure to toxins in conventional produce I'd avoid the dirty dozen. These foods usually have higher than average pesticide residues:

• Apples


• Celery


• Strawberries


• Peaches


• Spinach


• Nectarines


• Grapes


• Sweet Bell Peppers


• Potatoes (Not Sweet Potatoes)


• Blueberries


• Lettuce


• Kale


• Collard Greens


• Milk


• Fatty Meats


• Coffee


• Socks

6. "Ummm.. Juji. That's 16 foods not a dozen, and it includes socks for some reason." Yes.  Why do you think organic cotton is such a big deal? So with this knowledge what do I do? I only eat organic socks since conventional socks are typically high in pesticides.

7. Look: purchasing organic fruits and vegetables from your grocery store is not going to be the "edge" you need to ascend to olympian levels of athletic performance. It won't make you even 1% more jacked than you could be. It won't give you extra energy. It won't help you dub-dub on concrete. It's not going to do anything noticeable at all for your performance.  It's not going to revolutionize your health and well being.  Making the switch from conventional to organic isn't going to safeguard you against cancer or heart disease.  Switching from conventional to organic is just going to liquidate your purses.

8. I eat home grown stuff because I maintain my own vegetable garden, and I think some things taste better home grown (tomatoes). Also, some of my plants are my friends, I'm particularly fond of my rosemary bush. I love vegetable gardening.



9. I live in the Southeastern United states, so I know a bunch of rednecks and "good ole' boys" who overproduce vegetables in their own gardens and I get free, local, homegrown goodness through them. If I'm not getting enough through them or my own garden, I can always find some dude out on a country road during a Saturday morning peddling his produce from the back of his pickup truck. But even though all of this is around me, I still buy conventional produce too.

10. Home grown and locally grown organic produce may have more nutritional power than conventional produce, because conventional produce may be grown in destitute soils. But I don't see why one couldn't just eat more conventional to make up for any deficiency that was manifested in the food that was grown in this destitute soil. Example: if a carrot grown in poor soil only has a 1/4th of the Vitamin A content of a carrot grown in good soil, why not just eat 4 of those carrots grown in the crap soil instead of 1 grown in rich soil? Then, since we are active tricksters and athletes, we'll just balance the increased caloric load by training. Training which also helps detox any toxins found in the conventional foods themselves.

11. But balancing the increased caloric load by training more is unecessary, because you will not get fat eating excessive vegetables. However, you might get gassy or bloated or full, which can only be mistaken for getting fat if you're inexperienced. It's also unnecessary to do this because conventional foods aren't too far behind organic in terms of nutrition (if behind at all).

12. In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan makes a comparison between an apple grown in the 1940s vs an apple grown in the 2000s.

USDA figures show a decline in the nutrient content of the forty-three crops it has tracked since the 1950s. In one recent analysis, Vitamin C declined by 20 percent, Iron by 15 percent, Riboflavin by 38 percent, Calcium by 16 percent. Government figures from England tell a similar story: decline since the fifties of 10 percent or more in levels of Iron, Zinc, Calcium, and Selenium across a range of food crops. To put this in more concrete terms, you now have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple, and you'd have to eat several more slices of bread to get your recommended daily allowance of Zinc than you would have a century ago. The result is the nutritional equivalent of inflation, such that we have to eat more to get the same amount of various essential nutrients. * (Section Three: The Industrialization of Eating: What We Do Know, Subsection 3) From quality to quantity.)

So the the apple grown in 1940 contains more vitamins, enzymatic cofactors, and phyto-pythons making it superior to our modern apples. He wants to go back in time and live in the 1940s and play the monopoly board game. He will. And he will own the railroads. He will throw top hats from a hot air balloon.

13. There are a few problems with Michael Pollan's statements: first, who wants to eat an apple that's nearly a century old? That's disgusting. Second, let me twist the wording of his objective statement without changing the underlying statistic:

We've made agricultural advancements that allow us to continue feeding a booming global population while speculating pajamas. Since the 1940s, the world population has increased by about 35%. And yet this increase has minimally impacted the quality of our food crops. Just take a look at recent governmental micronutritional comparison for key nutrients across 43 crops between the 1950s and the 2000s: modern US crops have retained 80% of their Vitamin C value , 85% of the Iron, and 84% of the Calcium content. Government figures from England tell a similar story: up to 90% retention of Iron, Zinc, Calcium and Selenium across a range of food crops since the 1950s. Our technology is wonderful. Let's continue to grow Earth's population in an effort to realize Jared Diamond's prophecy.

14. Finally, Pollan talks about getting Iron from apples. Seriously? Iron from apples? Apples were always a pathetic source of Iron anyway! If you want Iron eat beef, seafoods, nuts, legumes, or spinach. Fuck it, take an iron supplement.  Do you even need iron?  Probably not if you're male. In fact, don't take iron unless you've had a blood test that reflects low levels,

Ever wonder why so many vitamin manufacturers offer multiple vitamins "without iron"? Here's why: Iron is one of those weird substances where if you don't have enough you can have some real problems (e.g., iron-deficiency anemia), but if you have too much, look out! Iron is highly susceptible to oxidation.  (Imagine someone leaving a barbell from your gym outside in the rain for a couple of days.  It's going to rust like crazy. That's oxidation.) Iron levels in the body are cumulative (stored in the muscles and other tissues), and unless iron is lost through menstruation or by donating blood, over the years toxic levels can build up in the system.  Although this danger always exists for men, it becomes a real risk for women after menopause.  Both of us are adamant that no one but premenopausal women should ever take vitamins with iron, or supplemental iron of any kind, unless prescribed by a doctor. * (The Great Cholesterol Myth by Jonny Bowden and Stephen Sinatra. Chapter 9 page 173/241)

Great!  Let's go on the "low Iron diet" !! Low Iron foods!!!  Apples are low in Iron!!!! YAY!!!!!

15. People get all excited over apples for the same reason they get all excited for stupidities like bananas and grapes: because they're beginners.

16. Even if I could eat an apple as pure and robust as the apple from the Garden of Eden I wouldn't care. Why? Because APPLES suck!

17. While Adam and Eve were sharing an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, Juji was digging up onions from the Ditch of Virility. Adam and Eve, awakened from their dreamy ecstasy of ignorance by the apple, hid their private parts from God with leaves. Juji, granted eternal youth and madness from the onion, drilled hyper swipes and jacknives with his balls-a-floppin while muttering nonsense about buttered pottery. The story has been told wrong for millenniums: what actually occurred was Juji murdered Adam by tearing out his lungs using Adam's own hands. Juji then mated with Eve and built her a collection of bird houses as a token of his love for her.

18. You want performance enhancing produce? Skip apples. Skip grapes. Skip oranges. Skip lettuce. Skip pears. Eat things like garlic, onions, chard, collards, cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli; herbs like rosemary and parsley and tarragon; blackberries and lemons, ginger root and hot peppers. Possibly a coconut. Probably a cactus. The more belligerent the food item is, the better it is.

19. But what if those foods may be over-produced and suffer the same fate as an apple? What if they are grown in "destitute" soils? Do they all? Do they all at all times? Are all mass agricultural soils in this world over-farmed at all times? Hey, all I know is that they somehow magically appear in the grocery store. And somehow, the conventional garlic and onions I buy in these stores gives me dragon breath that burns the hell out of my mouth and keeps children away from me at open gym. That's good enough for me. There must be something in the soils still worthy of my eating the products grown therein. And the same goes for almost any conventional food you could buy.

20. One more thing about Pollan. I like him, he's very smart. His intentions are good. He looks like Michael Foucault.



 



And that's my point: don't blindly take food advice from philosophers or those with moral or social agendas unless you want to look like them.

21. Even Nietzsche, whose mustache all men respect unconditionally, and whose books I be-love, spoke at some length about nutrition in his excellent autobiography Ecce Home. He has an opinion on coffee:

...no coffee: coffee makes you gloomy.
(Ecce Homo, Why I am So Clever, §1, Duncan Large's translation)

I'm sorry your syphilitic condition didn't allow you to enjoy stimulants Nietzsche, but there's no need to be a bitter xanthine about it (did that pun work?).

22. Nietzsche, I'm going to consume an entire pot of coffee before I do deadlifts in my garage. Then I'll give you something to be gloomy about when I unload the bumpers and thwack you in the skull with the naked barbell.

23. And same with Henry David Thoreau. If you want to rape heavy weights and turn three spins in the air, don't listen to Thoreau when he talks about nutrition in his classic book, Walden. You will read about him preparing "genuine hoe cakes" according to ancient roman recipe, and growing green beans. He mocks his meat eating, hard working neighbors for fueling pointless farm labor with energy supplements like coffee and butter. The truth is, Thoreau didn't eat enough to do more than "saunter" in the woods for a couple hours each day. He spent the rest of his time laying on the ground in exhaustion from his hypocaloric diet.

Overcooking foods and RAW dieting

24. My mom surprised me with this piece of food logic of her own: I criticized her for steaming her cauliflower too long, "It's mush. There's nothing left of nutritional value. It's like eating pointlessness." and she replied "Well it still tastes good, so SOMETHING must be left." and this got me thinking. If flavor compounds are left, maybe it's not a sin to microwave or overcook vegetables until they're mush? Some "things" are obviously still in the food if you can still taste the food. I bet there is still plenty of nutritional value left too. I still prefer not to overcook my veggies, I still eat a lot of them raw on purpose, but now I'm not as obsessive compulsive about other people doing it.

25. Speaking of the microwave.  Did you know it has a POTATO button?  I think I've used it maybe about 1000 times in the past two years.



26. RAW dieting is pretty cool I think, it's interesting. I eat a lot of my foods raw. But to go completely raw? Maybe as an experiment. I think an experiment here would go about as far as it could until my coworkers openly complain of my farting (again). Or until I have just one too many gassy tricking sessions. Or until I need to see a doctor for jaw tendinitis. Or until sleeplessness drives me mad when my stomach, in a torn up rage of discomfort, gripes at me all night about the stupidity of the gigantic feast of raw food I stuffed into it at dinner time.  Oh wait... I guess I already have my experimental data.  Fuck that experiment.

PRAL Score

27. I used to eat green vegetables / vegetables / dark fruits at every meal. I was obsessed about the total PRAL score of the meal inducing a net acidic effect on my body (if you don't know what PRAL is, Google it). I tried to eat green vegetables at almost every meal. I even supplemented some meals with baking soda and Glutamine to lower the net PRAL score.  I was obsessed.

28. Then I stopped this nonsense. I still eat a ton of vegetables and plant foods, but a couple meals a day I allow myself to slack on this. Mainly the meals around my workouts like these. Now I get less gas. I'm not bloated as often. So it's actually been a good thing I backed off on the green stuff. Because let's face it, we're not going to get cancer if we don't eat produce at every meal: we're going to get cancer from things like traffic, polycarbonate resins, shoe store smell, and sitting inactive everyday for hours and hours watching YouTube.

Macronutrient wars: Carbohydrates are context sensitive

29.  Demonizing macronutrients is novice. What makes more sense is food vs. food. Such as pasta vs. rice vs. sweet potatoes vs. banana vs. oatmeal vs. cane sugar. All these foods could be thrown underneath the header of CARB, but it's a lot harder to get fat, and eat an excess of sweet potatoes than it is to get fat and eat an excess of  pure cane sugar.

30. Why?  because "foods" are complex.  There is a lot more going on in a sweet potato than "carbs" ... and there are a lot of different kinds of carbs.  Monosaccharides, Disaccharides, Oligosaccharides, Polysaccharides, Nucleotides. These are some of the classes of "carbs", within each class there can be several types of carbs.  Your body reacts to every one of them a little differently.  So next time you feel compelled to demonize a macronutrient, especially "carbs", just don't.

31.  Demonizing foods is even novice. In order to demonize a food, you will first need to demonize it within a context. Your reaction to a food is dependent on a lot of contexts, like what else you eat in your diet, your genetics and your activity levels.  A carbohydrate rich corn cob is not a carbohydrate rich corn cob.  Your body's reaction to that corn cob can change day to day, week to week, year to year.  Once a bad food for you, not always a bad food for you.  The biggest factor affecting your reaction to a food (other than allergy) is your activity level.

32.  Since most readers here would agree that the most worthy goal, and context to base our food decisions upon is to become a super-human trickster or athlete with badass physique, we need to look at which foods will promote the attainment of that super-human badassery.

33.  Okay so we need energy.  Energy to do things to reach our goal of badassery.  What supplies energy?  Fuel.  What's the best fuel we have at our disposal here?  Carbohydrate rich foods.  Specifically starchy carbohydrate rich foods.

34.  Most starchy carbohydrate foods provide energy and induce sick-ass muscle pumps. You can use this energy and these sick muscle pumps to help burn fat. Carbohydrates facilitate the nutrient re-partitioning necessary for maximum performance/physique enhancement.



35.  What else is cool about carbs? They assist in your body's absorption of calcium.  Help optimize cholesterol levels and blood pressure.  Spare the use of protein as an energy source (which means you have to eat less protein to build muscle and stuff).  They increase leptin levels, offset drops in T3, blunt excessive cortisol, replenish glycogen, aid in protein synthesis, and act as the primary macronutrient for relaying crucial regulation signals to the hypothalamus.  Fibers absorb and help pass toxins within the body (not just good for pooping).  Just google for a bit!  Carbs are not just for energy, they are bad ass little molecules.  You want performance and physique enhancement, work out harder and eat more carbohydrate rich foods in conjunction!

36.  Tom Venuto's book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is a classic. Tom's mantra is "Don't starve the fat, burn it by fueling the muscles for intense exercise." Beats the hell out of "Cutting carbs to less than 100 grams a day" and feeling like you are castrated after doing cardio, or trying to get freaky with your deadlifts by fueling up with a palm full of almonds and a scoop of whey (lol).

37.  There's always a lot of talk about "cutting carbs," but cutting carbs does not need to mean cutting carbs to zero. Next time you want to lean up a little bit and find yourself cutting carbs (but cutting them to some overly-aggressive and ridiculous, arbitrary number like less than 100 grams per day), do yourself a favor and don't do it.

38.  Seriously, it doesn't take carbohydrates to store fat.  You can store fat off of protein or fat intake.  There are plenty of athletes who jump onto "low carb" diets that end up looking flatter and fatter than ever.  I've tried it myself many times, the results were never good.  If you do almost any sort of physical activity daily, you need to be eating carbohydrate rich foods.  Period.

39.  I've gotten incredibly lean eating 500 grams of carbs a day worth of potatos and white rice, even bread! All while doing it by using those carbs to fuel intense workouts.

40.  Find me an olympic athlete who eats a low carb diet (or a low calorie diet for that matter).  You are not going to find one.

41.  Find me a bodybuilder who hasn't gotten stupidly shredded on a pre-contest diet full of carbs.  How about Antoine Vaillant?  He looked good in back in 2011 right before his national contest.  Do you want to see what his diet was, which was created by his coach at the time Jose Raymond?  Here you go:

BOOM!

Meal 1 8oz lean ground beef 1 cup eggwhites, 1 cup oats
Meal 2 10oz chicken breast 2 cups rice of your choice
Meal 3 10oz turkey breast 10oz sweet potato
Meal 4 10oz chicken 1 cup rice
Meal 5 10oz white fish 2 cups greens

I will have 2 shakes in the day. One post workout with CarbMax (50g Ultra Iso Whey with 30g of Carbmax), and one before bed that will be 50g of Ultra Whey Pro, with 20g Glutamine.

THERE IS MY DIET!

- Antoine Vaillant via e-mail on July 1st 2011.

42.  So eat carbohydrate rich foods.  The starchy and fibrous ones are the best.  Eat them everyday.  If you still feel like tweaking your carbs, change your carbohydrate rich foods of choice (try lower allergy ones such as rice and potatoes instead of grains and oats) and try carb cycling first before reducing your everyday intake.

43. Carb cycling is simple.  I laugh at the people complicating this one.  Here's how to cycle carbs: eat more carbs on day one, eat less carbs on day two.  Repeat.  Any complications after that are futile.  Don't worry about timing your carb cycling with your exercise, it doesn't matter as long as you aren't cutting carbs too aggressively on your "less carbs" day.

44. I eat grits. And white potatoes. And white rice. And I love them. In fact, I started eating wheat again...

I eat wheat again...

45. June 2012 I was on a business trip. I got myself into an aggravating food situation. I subsisted mostly off of complimentary hotel apples, coffee, and wheat bagels for the majority of two days. I was infuriated and hungry.  I wanted protein! However, the experience ended up being positive because it cured me of my phobia of gluten and wheat based foods.

46. I did not get gas or stomach cramps. I didn't experience "wheat fatigue". I did not get tiny bumps at the top, back part of my throat. I was not retaining water. There was no allergic reaction I could perceive. The bagels actually satiated me. I was eating lots of bagels and my physique did not become soft. Stripped, in front of the mirror in my hotel room, I was still shredded after two entire days of eating bagels. Why did I stop eating wheat products years ago? I think some pinky-dinky performance nutrition authors probably inspired an unfounded fear of wheat and gluten in me.

47. So now I'm done being one of those butt holes who lie about having a mild form of celiac disease when presented with the option to eat a food containing wheat. I will eat toast. I will eat ordinary pasta. I will eat a sandwich. Crackers? Why not. This doesn't mean I will start eating tons of wheat, because things like potatoes, yams, and rice are better options. Hell, I think wheat is actually less insulting to my body than oatmeal!  I've had more bad experiences with oatmeal than wheat.  So I will not fear wheat because looking back upon this recent experience, I personally can tolerate eating tons of wheat.

48. Here's what I mean. Here are some pictures I took the morning of June 19th 2004:



I think I'm fairly lean here. I also have daily diet logs for that entire Summer. This is what I ate June 18th, the day before that morning.



Toast, A foot long sub sandwich on wheat from Subway. Lots of whey, milk, cheese, and tons of sugar from maltodextrin and dextrose and sucrose (Accelerade = Gatorade = Sucrose). Around 500 grams of carbohydrates mostly from wheat and pure sugar. My diet for that entire month looks about like this. Wheat, dairy proteins, and tons of sugar from training drinks and meal replacement shakes. How could I get away with that? Am I just blessed with genes that allow me to indulge in wheat products and carbohydrates? No. Because I get fat if I train less or eat too much. That summer, I was training with a high volume, often twice a day, doing shit loads of roller blading and counting calories making sure I didn't eat too much.

49. Athletes have different needs than non-athletes, especially super athletes who train with a high volume. That's why they can get away with eating junk. Here's what I looked like continuing that diet and training style, two months later:



So before you become prissy about wheat or dairy, or before you tell yourself stories about how your hereditarily/biologically inept at metabolizing carbohydrate rich foods: get an allergy test done. Try training hard twice a day, regularly underneath the hot sun, while counting calories and keeping them within a moderated range. This isn't a license to eat these foods into oblivion, it's a license to see if you can sometimes eat them without problem.  See if wheat and dairy are still the devils you made them out to be, try just a bit every now and then...  Don't be a sissy like I was these recent years.

50. Speaking of training hard twice a day, regularly underneath a hot sun... Do you think Intermittent Fasters are doing that?  What are they up to these days?

Intermittent Fasting (IF)

51. There are several aspects of intermittent fasting (IF) that I think are very cool. The evidence that regular fasting increases lifespan is convincing to me. The evidence that fasting is healthy for the digestive system in the long run is convincing to me. The psychology of fasting fascinates me. Learning to cope with hunger is hardcore. It's a useful skill (especially in airports). This level of self control is so amazingly hardcore: "I choose not to eat right now." That attitude is simply respectable. Self-imposed hunger is very bad ass. And actually, the seemingly disadvantageous drop in testosterone in fasters may become offset by the body's androgen receptors becoming more proficient in responding to whatever free testosterone is available. So IF may not have a negative impact on androgen levels in the long run. Also, many famous greek philosophers extolled the art of observing hunger as a means of building self discipline. And the whole idea of hunger facilitating creativity fascinates me, and seems somewhat plausible. The result of intermittent fasting as a means of fat loss speaks for itself, most people who do a form of the intermittent fasting diet get so lean it'll blow your head off. Intermittent Fasting also seems to be "tricking friendly" as a nutritional lifestyle. Many claim that it is convenient for them too: you can sleep in longer because you save time in the morning by not cooking breakfast. More sleep is very good! Intermittent Fasting has a lot going for it and as a means for fat loss or as a personal lifestyle choice, I think it's a great option. Especially for tricksters.

52. Now that I've covered why I think IF is bad-ass, I will now wage war against the proponents of IF: because my problem with IF is not the system itself but how its advocates behave.

53. First, maybe it was cool to brag about how much you can eat when you were a 12 year old kid, but after that, it's not cool anymore (unless you're Furious Pete). Intermittent fasters take this bragging contest a step further into stupid: they brag not only about how much they can eat, but also how they can do this without getting fat. Which is even worse than simply bragging about how much food you can eat. Dorky.

54. Second, they claim that they obsess less about food than the 6-small-meals-a-day clan. No!  Bullshit!  Consider the unbelievable amount of meal pictures they snap and share and the absurdity of some of the meals they eat. They think about food way, way more than normal dieters.  Why do you want to eat an entire box of chocolate cereal? I don't care how much pink cottage cheese you can eat. Okay, I get it, you like eating 4 cups of chocolate oatmeal with Hershey's syrup. Okay okay, I get it. Protein cupcakes? Pancakes? Why so many IF dessert recipes? What is wrong with you people? Oh. Right. You're very hungry because you haven't eaten breakfast this morning and found a way to partake in binge, junk feasts daily without jeopardizing your eight pack.

55. Third, Intermittent Fasters have this ridiculous phobia of breakfast. They're absolutely terrified of it. They will never stop ranting about how breakfast is the worst possible meal to eat. I think some of them have nightmares about eating breakfast.  They won't leave those of us alone who have the sense to eat something substantial before morning activity. This annoys me. And it leads me to morning training and two-a-days:

56. Twice a day training sessions and 5 am sub-maximal deadlifting with a high volume: let's see Intermittent Fasters do that. Oh wait, they don't lift weights in the morning because they don't have to train before work because they don't have jobs because they don't want money. They train in the evening, that's fine I guess. Or wait. Do they? It seems that they're busy binge feasting over and over again in the evening trying to cram as much food down into their guts during their tiny meal window because they're starving. Which leads me to my next point,

57. An IF culty might question my wanting to train twice a day. Isn't it unnecessary to train that much? To that, I retort: What's more hardcore? Eating even, meager, plain, spartan and disciplined meals throughout the day to fuel two training sessions or Fasting before noon, not training before noon because of this fast, and fasting in an effort to justify your out of control binge, junk feast megalomania?

58. What the hell happened to the super-macho mantra: FOOD IS FUEL NOT FUN? I miss that one.  I miss that mantra.  For Intermittent Fasters, food is more fun than training, so they'd rather skip morning training and two-days so they can eat lots of garbage food at night and get a "food high".  They'd rather film themselves eating than training.

59. IF can result in an eating disorder: not being able to stop eating until one is stuffed to the gills is a problem. I can eat to 60% capacity and be just fine. An intermittent faster cannot do this, they have a real problem stopping short of being so stuffed they can't breathe.

60. Finally, eating small meals throughout the day keeps my energy levels kind of even. I do not think about food much because I'm never full nor hungry: My meals are boring and manly, but at least I'm always ready for action. Binge eating, however, makes me want to sleep and lie down. Do you want to work on a writing project or do yard work after you eat at a buffet? Intermittent Fasters are not doing yard work or trying to write essays in the evening. Instead, they're lying on their bedroom floors around 7 pm looking pregnant from their bizarre binge eating fun fests.

61. Okay, all of this is exaggeration on some of the out-of-control tendencies I've seen in intermittent fasters. This behavior I've observed is more exception rather than rule. But I'd just like to poke them to let them know I'm watching them. Again, I have no problem with IF, it's awesome as I said, but IF Jedis need to be made aware of these idiosyncrasies that manifest from their chosen dietary ideology.

62. I'd also like to poke them to let them know that you can achieve the similarly impressive results IF gives by eating balanced meals throughout the day.  How many pro builders are intermittent fasters?  Almost none. Actually none at all.  Find me a drug free bodybuilder who has achieved similar results as an intermittent faster by eating traditional bodybuilder foods at regular intervals throughout the day.  They're everywhere.  IF is preference, not advantageous.

63. Now, if I were to troubleshoot IF for my own purposes, I could easily hack the 16:8 lean gains style IF template by a) Not intermittent fasting 16:8 everyday: why not just do it a couple days out of the week? b) Why not eat normal, healthy foods for the eating window instead of all these god awful protein dessert concoctions?

64. So those two patches to the 16:8 lean gains IF template would probably do the trick to suit my own preferences... FOR CUTTING or MAINTAINING.    IF bulking is nonsensical.  You can science me all you want but I'm not going to listen to you telling me the best way to gain muscle is not to eat for most of the day.  Let's talk about bulking.

Bulking

65. I once tried something I called "Trick Bulking" ... Basically I ate more food and tried tricking much more than usual. I thought the increased amount of tricking would make use of the increased caloric load, and the increased caloric load would be used to facilitate recovery. It was a very bad idea. I got fat and my tricks went to hell. I looked sloppy and I began hurting.  If you think you can bulk and just trick don't.  Bulking is for people lifting weights, sweating bullets and getting pumps and trying to grow muscle, not for people throwing a handful of trick combos over the course of an hour.

66. GOMAD. (Gallon Of (whole) Milk A Day). I did this from December 10 2010 - February 2nd 2011. I went from 180 lbs to 225 and got fat. My lifts all went back up from ground nothing to strong, since I had not lifted the year prior, a lot of this was just regaining what I had lost from the lifting sabbatical. I was also eating something close to 20-30 whole eggs a day ontop of a normal diet, and holiday foods since it was near Christmas. It was fun, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. When I layed down at night my resting heart rate was like 90 beats per minutes.   My stomach after one month had chronic soreness, seriously I felt like my stomach itself had Delayed Onset Muscle soreness (DOMS). I had trouble breathing at night and started snoring (indicator of hypertension). What a reckless, dirty, nasty bulk. I will NEVER do GOMAD again. But it was still fun for the first two weeks.



67. Should you try GOMAD?  Should you bulk?  What do I think of bulking for muscle and strength gain?  I suspect that the degree of bulking matters.  Once you reach a 1000+ calorie surplus, is 1250+ calories going to help you, or is it just going to be something that will put unnecessary stress on your body?   If you want to dial into something probably more effective but less fun, then I would increase your caloric intake and extra food intake with a degree of mindfulness and caution.  Keep records of your eating and keep an eye on your weight, mood, energy levels and strength numbers.  All that extra work is not nearly as fun as a reckless, way over-the-top, health threatening, sloppy, evil, dirty bulk.  If you've never done a big and reckless bulk before it will be fun for you.  Do it. haha.

Macronutrient Wars: Fats are over-rated

68. Healthy fats does not = Instant Testosterone boost. Unless you want a soap belly, reduce carbohydrate foods when you increase fatty foods, and vice versa. I mean... Unless your training volume is legendary like Mike Tyson's. And I don't care about the old-new dogma "fat doesn't make you fat", because it's wrong. Your body can store fat. It can store fat you eat.  It's super effective at storing fat actually.  But nowadays hobby athletes everywhere are over consuming fat thinking they're cutting edge. Oh god...

69. Broscience states Fat + Carbs = Insulin facilitating fat storage.  I love broscience. Popular contrarian blog authors and those indoctrinated into the cult of IF love to attack this piece of broscience. But why are they so obsessed with debunking this as myth? Is there some sort of advantage missed when one separates these macronutrients? What? It has something to do with enhanced absorption of minerals and vitamins from certain foods associated with the inclusion of fat within a meal? Is it convenience? How much fat is really needed to facilitate this process of mineral and vitamin absorption? How much fat is necessary to do this? Do we really need as much as 20 grams of fat from oil to absorb the nutrients in a medium sized tomato? Would 1 gram of fat do the job? What's the real motive for those trying to debunk this myth of Fat + Carbs = Insulin facilitating fat storage? Oh yeah, they just want to rationalize their desire to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bunch of Oreo cookies dunked in milk as a post workout meal.  Dorks.

70. Stop being lazy.  Avoid eating a diet high in both fat dominant foods and carb dominant foods, if you increase one reduce the other... unless you are a construction worker, a triathlete, or a hummingbird and burn off your entire bodyweight in calories everyday, you won't need a lot of both. Pick one to increase and reduce the other, or keep both even.

71. Fat satiates. Yes, but how come when I reduce total healthy fat grams to about 40-60 grams per day, which constitutes 10-15% of my average daily caloric intake, this allows me to increase good carbohydrate food calories and protein food calories while staying lean, and I'm even MORE satiated and get no brain fog? Oh wait, the whole "fat satiates" thing is over-blown, and again, healthy dietary fats are over-consumed by most hobby athletes trying to boost performance.  Oh god...

72. Fat is over-rated for performance enhancement. Eating the skin off a rotisserie chicken isn't going to make your joints feel better despite what Dan John says about his athletes jumping on each other's household furniture wearing nothing but socks. Don't be taking shot glasses full of olive oil or cream because Anthony Ditillo did it in the 1970s and said you can get shredded that way while gaining muscle.

This next diet is the one that I have been all along leading up to. It is the latest one I have tried and is, so far, by far the best. I ran into this theory some time ago while. Do you fellows remember a while back when the ‘high protein and cream’ diet was popular? Most claims were very impressive to say the least. And it was this diet which first prompted me to try my variation of it. I read how those famous bodybuilders would live primarily on a high protein diet mixed with cream and drunk throughout the day. Most of these fellows claimed that this type of diet really enabled them to grow like mad and also, they lost excess fat from around the midsection while their training energy really soared. Now I always understood this theory. The high protein assured the trainee that his muscles were fully nourished and the high fat (cream) part of the diet would perk up the metabolism and allow him to oxidate more body fat while the high caloric value of the cream would give the trainee more than adequate training energy. The end result: increased muscle size and strength, decreased body fat. The bodybuilder’s dream come true! (Effective Methods of Training Down (1971) by Anthony Ditillo)

Ditillo had all the aesthetics of a powdered donut hole.  In his defense it was the 70s, and he was stupidly strong as fuck.  But he was maligned with his advice to slam shot glasses of pure milk fat throughout the day for increased muscle size, strength, and accelerated fat loss.

73. Okay, so far I've been pretty harsh on dietary fat.  Not because it's bad though, it's essential. I'm being harsh because nowadays I see more people overeating it as a reaction to the old 80s dogma of fat being bad.  Of course you want fat in your diet. I would recommend for long term dietary purposes, 20-30% of your calories should come from healthy fats.  I'm just tired of people over-reacting to the new "fat doesn't make you fat" dogma which is an over-reaction to the "fat makes you fat" dogma.  Actually I'm just tired of talking about fats altogether.  You need some.  So what should you eat?

74. Just eat some wild fatty fish and take fish oil supplements, eat an egg yolk.  Eat one avocado.  Eat a little coconut oil.  Don't go overboard on the coconut oil just because John Meadows is a big fan of it.  He may be a big fan of it but he's not saying you need to eat a ton of it.  A little bit, 1 serving a day.  Nuts: one serving a day is a decent allowance. A couple tablespoons of ground flaxseed.  With those recommendations we're sitting at about 80 grams of healthy fat total per day from mixed sources, which is good.  That's in addition to other fats present in the foods you eat.  See how easy it is for fat to add up quick?

75. This is why I'm tired of people drowning their salads in pints of olive oil and snacking on handfuls of almonds and walnuts at a sitting thinking they're being healthy.  They have no clue how huge their over consumption of dietary fat really is...

76. Stop eating handfuls of almonds and walnuts you're just getting fat!  Stop eating a dozen whole eggs at a time you're just getting fat!  Who cares if it's not bad for your cholesterol, it's still making you fatter!

Cholesterol and heart health

77. When I was 21 years old I went to obtain my physician's authorization to get some blood work done. I disclosed to my physician that I was eating up to a dozen whole eggs a day. He went berserk. He raved violently about how dangerous consuming this much cholesterol was, and how irresponsible I was with my body; he threw a stubby little doctor's stool out the window and ripped all of the doors off the medicinal cabintry in the room we were in. This outburst frightened me!

78. So I went to the hospital and gave them blood samples. The test results were sent to my doctor a week later, so I returned to review them with him. My LDL was flagged as too low. I asked the doctor how I might go about increasing my too low LDL cholesterol. I sarcastically asked him if eating more eggs would help increase my cholesterol since my levels were too low according to the panel values? He imploded.

79. The moral of the story is this: the doctor didn't know what else I was eating. The doctor didn't know about my training. Taking the dozen whole eggs out of the context that was my diet and training left the doc at the mercy of 1970s medical food science nonsense.  So I fired him.

80. A few months ago, at age 28, I got another lipid test done (with a new doctor of course).  My LDL is still flagged as too low.  Take a look:



So should I be eating more cholesterol?  It doesn't matter it's not going to do anything.

81. There are different kinds of LDL and different kinds of HDL.  Saying LDL is bad is like saying all CARBS or all FATS are bad.  So even if my LDL was high it wouldn't matter much if it was mostly good LDL.  Cholesterol isn't the cause of heart disease anyway. Inflammation is.  So are cholesterol readings on blood tests useless?  Not exactly, you just have to read them differently. There is one way to use the results to predict risk of heart disease.  The best way to read my blood results is to calculate the triglyceride to HDL ratio.  The triglyceride to HDL ratio is a far better predictor of heart disease than cholesterol levels or LDL to HDL ratio.  Mine tested at 1.12 that day.  2 and below is considered perfect, anything that is 5 and above is problematic. This ratio is also an excellent predictor of insulin resistance.  A ratio of 3 or greater is a reliable predictor of insulin resistance. See, getting a lipid panel done is cool!  And in fact, your triglyceride to HDL ratio can tell you about the kinds of LDL you have.  The better your ratio, the better your LDL types. So usually there is no need to test for the sub types of LDL and HDL cholesterol. Just look at the triglyceride to HDL ratio and you can pretty much ignore the rest.

82. And as for inflammation. Yes, inflammation is actually the primary cause of heart disease.   That's why I requested to get my HSCRP tested.  See that line on my test above?  I requested that and payed out of pocket for it. The higher that is, the higher the inflammation in my body.  So apparently my HSCRP is great and so is my triglyceride to HDL ratio.

83. The last measures I thought to take to check my heart health was to get a chest x-ray and an echocardiogram to see what was up.  Okay so this is getting extreme.  Why was I getting all these tests done? I was worried. I've been heavily abusing stimulants for a decade now and I'm almost 30, I've been using ephedrine almost everyday since I was 18!  And that's probably the least dangerous thing I'm taking... I've been having some chest pain.  How did my heart look?

84. Check and check, perfect on both measures my heart is normal size and looks fantastic. My new general physician was very pleased.  So what was the chest pain from?  Anxiety. My heart is in awesome shape, I'm just a hypochondriac.

85. Anyway, here's to another decade of daily intake of caffeine, ephedrine, DMAA, and other sketchy stimulants!  Hooray! I can keep taking drugs and pills that increase my anxiety levels and blood pressure through the roof!  Oh.

Pain Killers

86. ECA.  Ephedrine-Caffeine-Aspirin stack. Why the aspirin? Some people continually discount the aspirin, saying it's useless. You know what? Take the fuckin' aspirin. Blah blah blah prostagladins blah blah blah mice who didn't adapt to training because NSAIDs blunt the recovery response in skeletal tissue blah blah blah gut damage blah blah blah leaky gut syndrome blah blah blah blow me. It's an aspirin. Take it.  One aspirin before training as part of a stack with caffeine and ephedrine isn't going to negate an entire training session. It's a tradition to take an aspirin as part of this stack even though it does absolutely no good at all. If you still want to be a wuss about this, take a baby aspirin (81 mg) or half of an adult Aspirin (162 mg)... Or even half of a buffered aspirin.  Jesus Christ.  This is like jerking off with a condom on.

87. Jaime Colon takes Ibuprofen before every tricking session. Look how much his tricking has improved in recent years.  Someone could say: "Yeah who cares? He probably could have gotten the same result without it." Horse shit. I will not give Jaime Colon credit, he is what he is because of analgesic technologies like Ibuprofen. Without Ibuprofen, he would have never been able to bare the pain of continuing to trick with a body as used and battered and fucked up as his own. He is nothing without Ibuprofen. NOTHING!

88. So, when you've been tricking as long as Jaime, at his age, and at his level, then you may have a worthy opinion about the virtues or sins of pain killers. But you're not, he's better than both you and me at tricking.

89. And when a 60 year old man you know pops an Aleve before going to the gym, leave him the fuck alone. It may be the only thing that gets him to the gym in the first place. No, he's not negating the entire training session by taking a strong NSAID like Naproxen Sodium you dork. Leave him alone. And don't tell him his vitamins are useless either...

Vitamins

90. Are you in the multivitamin supplement camp? Some people think they get enough from food. Some people say the foods these days do not give you the amount you need anymore (because of over-farmed soils). What does someone who does not take a multivitamin supplements look like? Do they look like a Morlock from H.G. Well's book "The Time Machine"? No. Some are excellent specimens and world class athletes.

91.  But didn't Jack Lalanne take vitamins and supplements and stuff? Yes he took a bowl full of pills everyday. A BOWL.  (Actually I'm serious, I watched a news broadcast of his activities on television and there was a shot of him taking pills that were piled in a dining bowl for his breakfast and chasing them with water.  He used so many supplements he had to put them in a dining bowl and work his way to the bottom one handful at a time!).  If you asked Jack what he took, he would say "Everything A-Z".  Jack was fucking serious about this stuff.  I'm not going to argue with his results...

92. What should you do? What do I do? Well, I make my own multivitamin pack (like an animal pak) and take that.



 



I like eating 20 pills at once. It's the main reason I do it. The other reason is because the amount of vitamins/minerals in a one-tablet multi is not enough for performance enhancement. I'm also a fan of the niacin flush.

93. Once I gave my dad a niacin (also known as Vitamin B3, or nicotinic acid) with his morning coffee. I came back 10 minutes later and he looked like a furious lobster. Without looking up from his newspaper, he yelled at me in caps, "WHEN IS THIS SHIT GONNA END?" and I laughed. My mom was upset because she thought it was hurting him. Maybe I'll niacin flush her next.

94. The niacin flush should make an appearance at a tricking gathering: crush up one or two niacin tablets in someone's food and watch with amusement.

95. The niacin experience actually taught me something valuable about digestion too.  Answer me this riddle: how come I can eat a giant breakfast, knock back a niacin pill, and within 6 minutes I have a niacin flush? Isn't that pill just sitting on top of a bolus of food?  Doesn't that niacin need hours to hit the bloodstream? Doesn't it take hours for the energy of a normal meal to be released? No. It doesn't. Digestion happens quicker than I once thought. I've always imagined a big carb + protein meal takes hours to digest before the energy is realized from such a meal. No that's not true. It begins digesting immediately and releasing energy immediately.  And it continues to do this until it's "digested" ... When it's digested that's the end of the road. You will begin reaping the benefits of a meal the minute it hits your stomach.  I don't care how "fast" or "slow" digesting your particular food is, you're getting energy from it the moment you swallow it.  So don't worry about eating too close to a workout. Just eat and go right away. Now... back to vitamins.

96. What about those people who think they need to take multivitamins x3 a day, or x2 a day? To split it up? I think that would be optimal, but it's annoying. So I take one-pack-a-day or one-pack-every-other-day.

97. Why is it optimal to split your multivitamin intake? Can't the body store vitamins of almost every kind in a highly efficient way? Why yes it can.  If it couldn't store vitamins efficiently you'd develop pernicious anemia if you didn't eat vitamin b12 foods for a couple days, right? Or you'd develop scurvy if you went a few days without vitamin C. But this doesn't happen. Why? Because the body stores vitamins efficiently in a myriad of tissues found within the body. Often those tissues contain reserves that could last through weeks/months of a reduced vitamin intake. That's why vitamin deficiencies can take a long time to manifest in desperate conditions, and can be restored rapidly with just a few large vitamin infusions.  This is why japanese men can live off of nothing but microwaved popcorn for weeks before their productivity begins to slow down.

98. But there's something to be said about the idea of "dynamic flow," (IE, maintaining consistently high levels of certain nutrients in the body at all times). There is a performance enhancing benefit of not relying on the limited release output from our vitamin reserves when intake is low. In other words: in a dynamic flow situation, you could maintain a maximum blood concentration of 200 ug/L of Vitamin X because you just keep popping vitamins. The point of this is not to restore reserves, because they're already saturated and you're pissing out a lot. The point of this consistenly higher intake is to raise the blood concentrations to a higher threshold than would be possible from relying on the limited output from drawing on your reserves. When you draw on your reserves, there is a maximum release rate from any given tissue. So ultimately you may be limited to maintaining a maximum blood concentration of 6 ug/L of vitamin X in this example when drawing on tissue reserves: the body can and will only release so much from the reserves so fast. So 6 ug/L may be enough to get you through your squat workout, but 200 ug/L may have been what you needed to feel good enough to go through with your stretching routine after your squatting.

99. So, when someone says you don't "need" multivitamins, don't listen to them. Of course they're most likely correct, but they're missing out on an important perspective: you probably don't "need" them if your goal is to stave off pelegra or rickets, but we're looking for maximum human performance. I don't care how much I need to prevent debilitating diseases and death.  I want to know how much I can get away with taking that would induce a performance enhancement for tricking and lifting heavy things and moving quickly and looking great. I want to know how much I need to become psychic and teleport. I want to know how much I should take to feel incredible! These different goals produce different needs. Is your goal merely to survive, or do you want to thrive? Make sure your vitamin intake is consistent with your goal.

100. But anyway, I don't play the "Dynamic Flow" game with everything. I try with Vitamin C and maybe some B-Vitamins, and I still like to eat frequently despite the pokes from the Intermittent Fasters, but I'm not perfect, so I don't split all my multivitamins up throughout the day. I can think of better things to spend my money on for increasing my performance than doubling/tripling up on my vitamin intake.

101. One more reiteration of the difference between a vitamin dosing that prevents disease, and a vitamin doping that enhances performance: think about it this way: you don't need creatine supplementation, but it's awesome and helps sport performance when you intake supraphysiological doses of it. Similarly, you don't need Vitamin B supplemention, but it's awesome and helps sport performance when you intake supraphysiological doses of it. Supraphysiological doses of vitamins are awesome.  Supraphysiological.  Say that word.  Supraphysiological.

102. In fact, some groups feel it was unfortunate that certain vitamins fell into the vitamin category: because vitamins are typically thought of as being "micro nutrients" , things we should be getting in teeny-tiny amounts. Ascorbic acid, for example; some groups think this should not be a vitamin, but should instead be re-categorized as an essential nutrient like protein, water, etc. But instead people think of it as a vitamin, as something we should only ingest micro amounts of.  Not sure if Linus Pauling was really onto something, but it didn't seem to decrease his longevity. The bastard lived to age 93 and hardly did any exercise.  All he did was eat Vitamin C powder by the spoonfuls and write books.

103. One more thing about Jack Lalanne, I love this piece of logic from him: "Everything in your body is because of circulation. Your nails, your hair, your libido. It's all because of circulation. How do you increase circulation? Exercise!" This is why, to Jack, Exercise was KING, and more important than good nutrition. He used to say "Exercise is KING, Nutrition is QUEEN. Put them together and you have a Kingdom." I agree with Jack. You can eat super healthy foods and take supraphysiological doses of vitamins and lots of supplements, but if you don't DELIVER those wonderful things within your body using exercise, by getting your blood flowing, by getting a muscle pump, it'll all be nearly useless.

104. You must DELIVER the nutrients you consume.  You have to tell them where you want them to go by exercising. It's not enough to just intake them, you have to DELIVER them.  Taking more and more supplements isn't going to do you good if you aren't sending the signal: go here! Exercise is that signal. Exercise every day! And try my pee squat drink routine for increasing blood flow at regular intervals. Do it everyday.

On Insects

105. Insects haha wtf? Eating insects is one of the best ideas in the world. Insects are abundant. Insect protein is supposedly of ridiculously high quality. Insects are really cool and fun to observe! But I haven't ascended to the level of eating them yet. Give me a few more years and I'll report the results of my insect farming endeavors and the supplemention of my diet with insect protein. Oh, protein... Oh wait, I haven't even really said anything at all about protein yet!  Oh god!

Macronutrient Wars: Protein is "not" over-rated

106. Some say protein is over-rated. They're wrong. Protein is not over-rated. Protein is as awesome as it has been made out to be. The hype about protein is true. So why figure out how little you can get away with?

107. Debates about how much protein you "need" will continue forever. People will always question how little protein one could get away with. But it would be a much better idea to figure out how much protein you can intake without getting fat instead. So fuck Dr. Peter Lemons, he just plays with his lemons too much and likes tonguing his skiers' tight-tights. He also sprinkles exactly 1 teaspoon of L-Leucine in their underwears before their metrobolism juice-training. They don't know he does this. They don't even know exactly who he is. But he does. He always does. He knows himself well.

108. Just eat a high protein diet and piss out the excess. 1 gram per pound of body weight is weak. You'll want 1000 net grams of it a day strictly from animal sources for protein brain. This'll give you the high score in the PRAL game too. YEAH!

109. Okay seriously: in recent years I've been in-taking on average 2 grams of protein per pound of  body weight each day.  My diet is very high in protein because I want kidney dysfunction and because I want to piss away all my money. A pure trickster or novice lifter will not need to follow my high protein example, 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight daily would be more than enough. But when you're carrying a higher amount of muscle mass around like me, this common recommendation just doesn't work anymore. 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily was enough when I was a 185 lb trickster back in my late teens, but now I'm holding up around 230 lbs and I'm fairly lean, and nowadays I'm doing bodybuilding style workouts several times a week with a high volume of isolation work; this type of training results in much higher tissue turnover rates comparatively to tricking or low rep strength training. You see, I teetered between 195 lbs and 210 lbs for years before I figured out it simply took more protein and more isolation work to look more like a bodybuilder.  So now I prefer an average of 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight daily to support this type of activity and level of musculature. In order to get this much protein, I consume a lot of protein powders, that's why so many of my meals are blended meal shakes. (There is only so much meat I want to chew). This is also the reason I use such a wide variety of protein powders; I've tried getting this quantity of protein through scoop after scoop of cheap whey protein, and I just kept getting stomach cramps and diarrhea.  So that's why I like protein powder mixes, rice protein, pea protein, casein, whey, egg, etc.  Mixes are better.

110. Speaking of kidney problems and protein, here I will create a new piece of bro-science: if you do not have kidney problems already, then increasing your protein intake to over 2 grams per pound of bodyweight will not be bad for your kidneys or perpetuate kidney stones as long as you 1) Keep your blood pressure below pre-hypertensive levels and 2) Drink over a gallon of water a day in addition to whatever other fluids you consume.

111. Another thing that bothers me about most people's perception of protein: they think it's only for building muscle and that muscle isn't used for anything except moving dumbells. Wrong...

112. Everything that's visible on you consists of proteins. Your hair, nails, eyes, skin: all protein. You know what lymphocytes are right? And anti bodies? They're constituents of your immune system. What are they made out of? Protein. Your immune system is made out of proteins.

113. When we trick, we are training our CNS to produce faster, more esoteric movements. The CNS's standard currency is neurotransmitters. Without neurotransmitters, the CNS is nothing. A CNS without neurotransmitters is like an economy without money. So what are neurotransmitters made from? Proteins. Neurotransmitters are made from proteins.

114. What about hormones? Specifically peptide hormones? Look up IGF-1, Insulin, GH, and other peptide hormones. These things are responsible for growth and recovery within the body. Their resume of positive functions within the body is robust. When we sprain an ankle, or strain a muscle, we want peptide hormone traffic in our body to be very high so we can get back to tricking quick. How do we keep peptide hormone traffic high? We keep the levels of these hormones high. What are these peptide hormones made out of? Proteins. They're made from proteins.

115. Skeletal muscle is the only reserve the body can tap into to derive proteins when we aren't eating it. More muscle = Bigger Protein Reserve. More muscle = Stronger immune system, richer neurotransmitter supply, and more peptide hormone traffic. Skeletal muscle reserves are saturated by dietary proteins. Skeletal muscle has more functions than just moving dumbells and jumping. But hey! What about the theory of dynamic flow in terms of protein? A higher, and more frequent protein intake is becoming a more and more attractive option isn't it?

116. Eat. More. Protein.

Animals and their protein

117. Now what about animals and their protein? Are animals a good source of protein? Sure, yeah, they're pretty good. What about toxins and hormones and antibiotics in non-organic, caged meat, and the skewed Omega 3:Omega 6 ratios in grain fed animals? You are what your food eats, yeah? Grass finished beef is so good for you it's high in Omega 3's! Right?  Right??

118. First of all, I don't eat beef or eggs for the Omega 3 fatty acids. Why would I? Fish and fish oils have infinitely more of this Omega 3 fatty acids stuff. Eating beef and eggs for your Omega 3s is as pathetic as trying to eat an apple for Iron. Just eat some fish or take a fish oil supplement if it's Omega 3 you're after.

119. Next, let's distinguish between cage-free and free-range. Cage-free is like living in a crowded elevator: the animals are not much better off. And free-range is cool and all, but what if they're not pecking at the good stuff?  What if your free-rangers are still eating boils and bungee cords? Ah fuck it. You know what, you have to give credit to evolution: the biological machinery within an organism such as a chicken, which is an ongoing developmental project that began many toilets worth of time ago, is quite robust. It's going to take a lot more than a lifetime of eating rubber and glue, and being immobilized in a cage to completely disrupt the chicken's biological machinery: because at the end of the season, you still get a chicken. You still get a chicken breast. You still get a damn good source of protein. Likewise in humans, at the end of a decade eating corn chips and drinking soda, whilst being immobalized on a sofa playing video games, you still get a human. You still get human meat. You still get a damn good source of protein.

120. At the end of your training season, with a diet consisting heavily of "tainted" meat, you're still human, you're still athletic, and you still got incredible results from murdering helplessly unhealthy and hopelessly tortured "animals".

121. Morals. haha.

122. Finally, let's consider the value of animal foods based on some things other than protein content. I think it's common for people to think meat = protein. But, you know, meat has a lot more going for it than just protein. Especially organ meat. This is one reason I buy grass finished beef organs from my friend. He also sells me raw milk and other things. In fact, this organ meat is more economical than buying cheap, conventional meat in the grocery store, and it has a lot more going for it... A lot more. I eat beef lungs and ox tongue. My favorite is heart.  In fact, my old school buddy Taegashi is now raising a farm full of goats and chickens and soon I'll be getting a lot of good stuff from him too!  Check out the goat's milk in his fridge!



123. Anyway, beyond calories and nutrients, there is one performance enhancer more powerful and overlooked than everything else combined on this page.  It's water!

Water is still a magic potion

124. The first thing I've written for nutrition back twelve years ago was about water. I hyped up water, talking about how it cures bladder cancer and how hose water is hardcore and I gave a thumbs up to toilet water yeah yeah yeah whatever.  I paid homage to that original write up by rewriting it recently. The thing is, I owe a lot to the simple decision to be a water drinker. Water acted as a gateway drug to hardcore training, eating, and spirit for me. Becoming a water drinker was a big part of how I made the tricking/training progress that I did.

125. Last year I had a water renaissance. Yes, I guess I knew the importance of drinking plain water, but I wasn't drinking as much as I thought. Somewhere along the line I just started taking my water drinking for granted. Whenever I felt like it, I'd fill a glass up and drink. So during my water renaissance, I started measuring how much I drank. I measured more, I drank more, I drank more regularly.  I put intention behind my water drinking and was blown away. I believed in water again. I drank water religiously again! And that same day, when I knelt down before the office water cooler and gave my allegiance to the colorless provider of life, libido, and missleg tricks, I stopped experiencing end-of-workday fatigue.

126. Beyond the physiological health benefits associated with drinking plain water, the simple action of choosing to drink plain water, and make it your drink of choice instead of juices, sodas, teas, coffees, and calorie free sweet beverages, does something to you psychologically that should not be under-estimated. It must be experienced, and it must be a cultivated as habit to understand the benefit. The deliberate choice to drink plain water, regularly, everyday, will give magical results.

127. Here's a challenge for all of you out there who aren't already drinking copious amounts of plain water daily: make it your goal to drink as a minimum, 1 gallon of plain water a day in addition to anything else you may drink. From tap or filter or spring or wherever. Do this for half a year starting tomorrow. If you don't become a believer in the body and mind trans-formative powers of plain water, you are destined for mediocrity. Blame your mother.

128. And now, let's bring up the idea of "Dynamic Flow" again. Shouldn't you be drinking copious amounts of water throughout the day and especially while you train to keep your body in a constant state of "Dynamic Flow" in regards to its water content? Is anybody really ever going to say: "No you don't need to drink water because you get enough from the foods you eat.  And your body is good at storing water, so you don't need to drink it while you train.  You can tap into your reserves and replenish it from your foods later." (So why do we still use this sort of logic for proteins and vitamins?)

129. Right, that's a good idea,  Sure.  Come on! Nobody will ever say these things, you know why?  Because human performance suffers remarkably from even a mild drop below optimal water intake.

130. And so again, why do we do keep taking this kind of draconian stance on nutritional needs for other things like vitamins and protein? Why do we keep focusing on "needs" from the perspective of what is needed to stave off biological failure, instead of keeping our focus on ultimate human performance by an augmented/supplemented/unnatural/super-human intake?

Drink. More. Water.
Eat. More. Protein.
Supplement. With. Vitamins.

Treacherous Environmental Toxins

131. Tap water vs. Non-tap water. Given the choice, I choose drinking out of the water cooler at work, and the filtered water from my fridge. Given the choice, I drink bottled water over tap water. Given the choice,  I will choose tap water over no water. I choose not to obsess so much over it, at least all of it is clean and drinkable. Who cares if there are 11 ppb of atrazine in my tap water? 11 ppb is very close to not even existing. It's so small it's almost imaginary. Clear water is good enough, choose the best source you can but don't stress too much about it.

132. BPA. I hate the fact I can't avoid it in toilet paper and canned tuna. Everytime I wipe my ass I just know I'm absorbing BPA through my anus. Everytime I eat canned tuna I just know I'm jacking up my blood levels of this endocrine disrupter. And receipt paper contains BPA, so everytime I eat a grocery store receipt I just know I'm loading my bloodstream up with it.

133. Soon, not a single person will be walking around without a cute little steel drinking container with personally applied stickers espousing an affiliation. And metal eating containers and titanium sporks and glass. Well, I have to draw the line somewhere. This has gotten out of hand. I'm not going to stop drinking out of a plastic gallon jug like some wannabe 90s body builder. I will eat with a plastic fork. I will pack my lunch in plastic ziploc baggies and plastic tupperware.  I will wear cheesy body builder pants. I want to look like a 90s action figure!!!



134. I mean, for heaven's sake, how many of us in the past few years have switched to non-plastic eating and drinking containers and noticed some astrological increase in sports performance? Seriously?

135. Hey, even if we did level up during a time when we began excluding plastic from our daily background, was it the switch from plastic to non-plastic that made the difference?

136. Still afraid of BPA? Buy L-Glycine and supplement with it. I did once. I noticed nothing. It tastes good though! L-Glycine is okay. GLYCINE GOLEM!

137. Though, I'm a little more lax about BPA than my fellow health nuts, I'm not lax with teflon coated cookware. I avoid it at all costs. Why? Because I think I have symptoms of brain degeneration from using teflon cookware.

138. While BPA doesn't scare me, Teflon does. Why? Because I noticed after years of cooking my omelettes in teflon coated cookware, my short term memory started to fail. Maybe it's affecting my brain?

139. Though I'm not worried about BPA, I am worried about teflon! I choose cast iron cookware and avoid teflon like I'd avoid a 100% Cotton pair of sweat pants during a humid summer afternoon tricking session. Why? Because after a few years of cooking cotton skillets in my omelets, I noticed my eggs were failing me. I think she might be suffering from 100% pants. I must investigate her holes.

140. Psyche. I use a George Foreman grill. It's made out of Teflon. And I cook all my omelettes and ground meat in a non-stick Teflon pan.

On Coffee

141. Compared to one of the prepubescent canned energy drinks available that rob you blind, such as Nebraska Rocket, Pump's Bladder, Blue Bear, and Knob, black coffee is a hardcore and economical alternative (if you brew it yourself and drink it black). The home brew, two scoop black coffee culture is a step in the right direction toward maintaining your dignity when you feed your caffeine addiction.

142. However, compared to the hardcore ultra-utilitarian efficiency of feeding your caffeine addiction by a pill, coffee is goofy. It's bean juice. We who celebrate our passion for coffee are celebrating a passion for bean juice. We are obsessed with bean juice, and our teeth are stained, and our breath stinks. And we walk around spilling bean juice everywhere from our stupid little mugs.

143. Unless we use the spill not! BOOYAH!



144. Coffee needs sipped, which is not manly or hardcore. Sipping is for cowards. The only way to drink something without being a coward is to drink it aggressively, to attack it, and then have a napkin handy to wipe your mustache.

145. Buying coffee from anywhere other than a gas station or an unpresumptuous breakfast serving restaurant like Waffle House or Burger King is metrosexual or bad sense. Let me whip out my Mac Book and update my minimalism blog with a post on living with less at my local bay area Starbucks, compliments of the free wifi! (EUGH).

146. Besides, unless it's grown and processed in some sort of "organic" way, coffee is sprayed with a lot of pesticides and glass cleaners, which my liver must inevitably take care of.  Oh my poor poor liver!  And CANCER! Egads!

147. So by taking caffeine pills we avoid these maladies present in coffee.  Caffeine pills take the pleasure, the taste, the ritual, the culture, the time, and even the cost out of the consumption of caffeine. Thank goodness.

148. However, I'm not always as hardcore as I want to be, and so I still go through coffee drinking phases, fooling myself into imagining I'm being manly and grown up by drinking it, being the idiot and and coward and phony I really am. *cries* I love coffee.

Food combining

149. I think food combining needs a second look.  I'm not talking about macronutrient combinations (protein + carbs, protein + fats, etc).  I'm talking about FOODS themselves, taken on a food by food basis.  Does red meat combine with white rice as well as chicken combines with white rice?  Are there foods that do not combine well with cottage cheese?  Are there foods that do not combine well with oatmeal?

150. I glossed over food combination theory when I was younger thinking it was hippie nonsense.  But recently (this past year) I have adopted one guideline I do like a lot: I eat fruit, in moderation, by itself between meals if I'm going to eat it.  I don't combine fruit with anything else other than other fruits.  In the evening before dinner I have been eating lemons, blueberries, melons, etc. One serving or two with some water about an hour before dinner.  I noticed that since I have been doing this, I get a little "pick me up" in my energy levels.  Enough of a pick me up to make cooking my dinner after a day of training and work not such a daunting ordeal...

151. I have not been a big fan of fruit for awhile now, but now I'm starting to find that eating it in this way, in moderation, I do feel "better" ...  And that, to me, is cool.  Fruit never made me feel this way before, maybe because it doesn't combine that well with other foods?  Who knows.  Anyway, this is just one example of why I feel that food combinations may be the next big thing in the fitness world, and not just some foot note from nutty spiritual writers.

Fear

152. If you are willing to pay the price, then by all means it's a good thing for you to look into choosing the more promising options available to meet your athletic goals and health objectives. My intention writing this was not to dissuade you from doing what you think is best for your body. Instead, I merely wish to mitigate those phobias and fears the industry and cults strive to cultivate within you for their goals of selling their ideas and ideologies. Those peers you compete against buy into it, and you see yourself at a disadvantage because of it. But do a little work to keep some clarity, to really discern what matters and what doesn't matter, and you'll save yourself a lot of time and money while keeping to a hardcore, admirable style of your own.

153. And none of this has to be rational. I will avoid sweeteners in my protein powders, but I will sometimes buy a diet soft drink which is loaded with them. I avoid over cooking my meat because of the "carbons" ... yet I will drink a cup of coffee made from coffee beans that are loaded with them. And I eat ketchup!  Isn't this just a little insane? Of course it is.

154. Why does it have to be all or nothing? I think there are very cool things about veganism, vegetarianism, RAW food eating, Intermittent Fasting, and many other ways of eating. All have really excellent features. But why does it have to be all or nothing? Why not have just one vegan meal a day? Or include more raw foods in your diet without going in 100% raw? Or do Intermittent fasting lean gains style 2 days a week or a few days a month instead of everyday? You want to know why it's usually all or nothing? I don't know.  I really don't!  But I think at least one reason we are susceptible to an all or nothing mindset is because we want to feel like we are part of something bigger. Part of a guild. We want to feel like we have support by the others in the guild. We want excitement, we want to be different, and we get it by picking an extreme side, a dietary movement of some sort, and waging war against another faction. We want a badge, and we think we get to wear a badge by going 100% in someone other's ideology.  We want friends and respect, so we embrace guild mentality when it comes to our nutrition.

155.  This entire page was polemic, I picked all sorts of arbitrary and biased stances. My logic and science is not infallible. I didn't provide references for a ton of shit I wrote.  I hand selected and cherry picked my battles arbitrarily. I'm as guilty of being an extremist as anyone else. But I'm trying my own thing and I'm having a good time doing it and making light of it all.

156. I like my results, I like the way I eat, and I'm happy.