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Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Eating Healthy & Staying in Shape
An update on what've I've been eating and doing fitness wise and how it
has been working for me so far. Not only is your body your most imporant
tool, but also your health directly impacts both your chances of
survival and quality of life. Remember that!
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5 comments:
Fernando
1) I don't know if you are interested but I found some interesting information about a US government program that provides money for food purchases to poor people here in the USA.
Formerly known as Food Stamps it is now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).
2) One thing that was interesting is that the government thinks it is possible to live on a pretty low budget --about $124 per MONTH per person in Pennsylvania.
Obviously this requires people to eat a lot of pasta, peanut butter,beans and rice, tuna fish etc and to cut back on the
steaks and expensive prepared foods --but it is supposed to be possible. It also requires
people to spend time preparing food from low cost staples.
3) It seems to me that trying to live on this austere budget /diet for a week or a month is a good training exercise for survival conditions. To force people to figure out what is possible,
to motivate them to figure out what menus work best and to give them experience with mild hunger if they screw up and exceed their budget discipline.
To also force them to deal with the mental stress of living without junk food like candy, fruit juices, alcohol, tobacco,etc.
To show them the reality of being poor, of being restricted to water as a beverage and of sometimes having unappetizing food as the only meal. To also unearth food allergies to wheat, rye, peanut butter,etc.
4) Some funny experiences of middle class people who have tried to live within SNAP constraints:
http://www.pahunger.org/html/hunger/Taussig.pdf
http://www.pahunger.org/html/hunger/Food_Stamp_Challenge_Eval.pdf
5) It is also interesting to see how the cost of food varies from location to location within the USA as reflected in the government's minimum budget. Food in Hawaii, for example, is very expensive.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/18SNAPavg$PP.htm
6) Finally, I suggest people actually buy and eat one military MRE (Meals Rejected by starving Ethiopians ) before stockpiling cases of MREs as disaster preparation.
7) Due to your experience in Argentina, you may not appreciate how spoiled many Americans are.
Hey Don, it does sound VERY interesting. I tihnk its a good way of both saving money and eating healthy.
1)Update: Here is a US Government SNAP site with a lot of pamphlets on how to plan and cook low-cost meals, menus, purchasing advice,etc.
https://snap.nal.usda.gov/resource-library/manage-your-food-resources-wisely/meal-planning-shopping-and-budgeting#meal
2) Haven't tried them yet but intend to look into them. However, I'm reminded of Crocodile Dundee's observation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6EyoqFWQM
Just one tip for staying in shape: standup desk with a bar height chair.
The bar height chair lets you sit down when necessary, but the default mode, when you have a high desk/chair, is to stand up for 45 min, sit for 15 min. This is a far cry from the default using a low desk/chair, which is more like sit for 2 hours, stand for 15 min.
Just this one change will increase the amount of calories you burn, by approximately 1500 calories a week, with no cost in time spent. To burn 1500 calories by jogging, you'd need to jog for 2 hours.
I went with a stand up desk about 3 years ago, and while it takes a month to get used to it, once you get over the first month, sitting down for long stretches at a time becomes annoying, as your body readjusts to the new normal.
Hey Fernando
It's great to hear how these changes are working for you.
I will share a bit of what I have learned and incorporated and observed directly in many people over a decade.
Animal food is the most nutrient dense food per weight there is. The most dense is organs, liver. Animal bones/connective tissue/ribs/spine/joints boiled down and bones removed after all tissue is in the water. Boil in rice or vegetables and its not just meat. Its eating tendons and minerals from the bones, gelatin, joint tissue.
Quality of animal food is paramount. Heart disease and the like are connected to animals fed grain/corn and soy based diets which alter their fat ratios such as drastically increasing the omega 6 profile to the omega 3. Cows eat lots of grass. Grass seeds are available not all year naturally. Chickens: insects and whatever they find. When fed grains and soy too much their tissue becomes unhealthy for us. I mainly eat wild or free range. Not so much free range organic because of cost. I am fortunate to be able to eat mostly wild. If not I may eat way less animal food.
I find after eating muscle meat I am still hungry until eating a few handfuls of greens or leaves. And/or a common fat that is safe to eat in whatever quantity until the body says that is enough. Clean saturated fats in coconut, clean cloven foot mammals and birds. And high quality butter if i can afford it. Or monounsaturated fats: olive oil, avocado. Many wild animals have high monounsat. fat and saturated fat profiles. And low polyunsaturated profiles. A diet too rich in polyunsat. fats contributes to inflammation in places on someone's body where they are predisposed to. Or makes and injury flare up more.
A caution on rice grown in China. There is evidence that it is contaminated with heavy metals from their polluted soils. Lead. Googling Mike Adams, he does independent research in his lab. Tuna seems to be commonly high in mercury.
An interesting read is Weston A. Price's Nutritional and Physical Degeneration. A dentist from pre WW2. Studied and documented indigenous peoples all over the planet living on their traditional foods and their accompanying people's who switched to the current food provided by trade and colonies. Their teeth rotted and diseases sprang up that they had never gotten. Anyway I found it interesting.
I hope that is not too much. Just some thoughts.
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