Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.
June 3, 1983, Hollywood: The movie “WarGames” was released. My good friend, Harvey Warnke, created these huge display screens that you see in the movie, just as you see them in this famous scene from the film.
That was 40 years ago. He actually created these huge displays with dozens of slide projectors, projecting from behind the set, triggering them remotely, because computers at the time [Read more…]
Mt. Shasta, California, June 15, 2022: When I was 26 or so, I figured out a handy truth …
After failing, since age 26, to find an exercise-and-eating method that worked well and that I could keep up, because I never actually quit trying, not long ago I stumbled across a combo that works for me: (Exercise = X3Bar stretchy bands 15 minutes is the main part.)
Eating: Turns out that fast-converting carbs are my nemesis. Once I have more than about 30-50 grams of “fast carbs” like breads, potato, sweets, then I have the “gobbles” for the rest of the day. Further, these carbs make me feel bad, and I grew fatter and fatter from 40 up through almost 75 years old. (Picture to the left is me at age 40.)
Not because of any real wisdom but really through accident, I found a “gradient” of changing things that made each step easy, and yet it took me in just a handful of months to a low-carb diet largely free of processed foods and fast foods, a daily intermittent-fasting schedule of eating within an 8-hour window, and 14 days during the month when I fasted completely (no food, no juice, no broth),
Seen in retrospect, it’s become clear why this sequence worked —
a) First, get OFF the fast-carb roller-coaster. You will NEVER be healthy eating todays high-carb diet. The invention of agriculture was destructive to individual humans, but elongated the survival of the species. But, the body body wasn’t originally designed on such a diet. Recent changes from big agriculture and big business have made carb-heavy foods even more addictive and more damaging. So the first step is — how to cut the foods that have you addicted and ruin your health?
The answer is to find low-carb veggies and clean protein, and TANK UP all day long. After some number of days, your urges to gobble grains and sweets will diminish, and (by avoiding processed foods) you’ll avoid poisons which trigger over-eating (like MSG) and hidden sugar.
Don’t be afraid of eating fat. The energy from fat will keep you feeling satisfied, and you’re replacing sugar/grains with fat as your main energy source. Just make sure they are the clean and healthy fats. There’s lots of lies in food marketing. For example, Canola Oil is a manufacturing byproduct, Crisco is harmful, “vegetable” oils are mostly bad for you, as are most commercial salad dressings with soybean oil, and as is margerine, and any “low-fat” imitation fat.
If it’s a fat without manufacturing, it’s probably OK: olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and butter are all pretty good for you. Others aren’t. They were made up to make money for their makers, not for your health.
You want to get your carbs UNDER 40 grams a day. To calculate, here’s a free tool: https://cronometer.com/
Use it till you got this down. Note: three normal corn tortillas are about 45 grams of carbs. But you can tank up on salads, soups (without potato or grains), and stir-fries of the right ingredients. All leafy greens and the sulphur veggies, and many others. So for example: huge salad with seeds and healthy salad dressing, curry made with cauliflower and spinich or other greens and coconut oil, soup made with chicken carcass and all the healthy veggies you want. All these will fill you up with high nutrition and satiety, without addictive, fast-converting carbs. All the steaks and chicken and pork you want, avoiding additives as much as possible.
b) As your compulsive urge to over-eat fades away, choose an eating window for every day. Instead of eating all day and all night, eat ONLY within a 6-hour to 8-hour window. Eat TONS so you cannot be hungry. And in a surprisingly short time, you’ll find it’s actually easy to only eat within this window, which is MUCH closer to how we ate over 100,000 years, and for which the body was originally designed.
If you have to, you may need to start with a longer window (eg: 10 or 12 hours) and then when that’s comfortable, narrow it down.
c) When the 6-hour or 8-hour window becomes easy — probably a matter of some weeks since you began this … Try a ONE day fast.
I discovered that it wasn’t a big deal. Seemed weird, but I wasn’t particularly hungry. To make it really easy, start your day with “Bulletproof Coffee” (look it up), which is black coffee with butter, or MCT oil or coconut oil added in. This gives your body some fat, producing satiety.
And once you can do a one-day fast, then you can do another one. My first step was to fast one day on the first and 16th of each month. After a couple months of this — easy peasy — you can add another day or two. Once this was comfortable, I thought to try a 3-day fast. Holy cow! It wasn’t all that troublesome.
Now at this point, your body is already making your immune stronger, and autophagy is starting to kick in, which recycles dead and damaged cells, and the study above suggests you’re getting some protection from Alzheimers.
You just keep adding some more fast days. I finally got to a 3-day fast on the first and 16th, then three one-day fasts in each two-week period. And … it’s bloody easy, energy goes up, sleep gets better.
d) Now, I combined this with an exercise plan. I do not know if this is essential or not, but that’s what I did. I purchased the X3Bar system, which is heavy duty bands and a short routine of 4 whole-body exercises most days, takes 15 minutes, and takes your muscles to exhaustion in a clever manner, with super-low chance of any injury.
Now, because my work is sedentary, I found that a couple more very short exercise periods kept me awake better. I added a walk up the hill behind my house in the morning, and when that became comfortable after a month or two, then I began short bursts (sprints), and now it’s a couple blocks of hill sprints. I wear minimal clothing, because low cold strengthens the immune system, and the impact of the sprinting is good for bone density. And this takes under 10 minutes.
And then I added a brief kettlebell session in later afternoon, kettlebell swings and presses just enough to make me breath heavy.
That’s it. I dropped 70 pounds fairly quickly, got stronger, sleep better and my mood seemed to improve as well.
If you try it, I’d love to hear your experience.
Today I was online reading something, and I was *so* tempted to respond in argument with something that someone said.
Even knowing better, I find it hard to stop myself, all too often.
And my particular reason for desiring to restrain myself is this —
A) We greatly create our own experience of life (our reality) by the thoughts we harbor in our heads. Some say these thoughts actually create reality, but for certain they create our experience of life.
B) If you create ill-will thoughts, no matter where you intend to aim them, you are creating ill-will thoughts. And it’s in YOUR head.
C) You suffer as a result of the painful thoughts in your head, and it paints your picture of your universe, and you create your painful experience of life.
D) The more you focus thought on negative stuff (problems and pain), the more you overlook (or miss) many of your opportunities, and you miss out on enjoying the bliss you could be enjoying from your life.
E) So it boils down to — It’s your gun. It’s your foot. Do What Thou Wilt.
Want to live in a world of devils? Or a world of bliss? Although it may seem strange the first time you hear this, with a bit of practice, it is actually possible to control your own mind, and your thoughts WILL create your happiness (or suffering) in this life.
(A word to the wise is sufficient. Let he that hath ears hear!)
🙂
Mount Shasta, August 31, 2019 – Today on Facebook, someone was railing against low-carb, animal-based diets.
But you know, my current way of eating — low-carb, moderate protein, with lotto lotto veggies … it’s working for me, better than anything I’ve ever seen. I stuff myself every day, and I’m dropping excess weight, but before going into that …
In fairness, I gotta say I see a lot of extreme variants of “low carb” approaches, and my guess is some are not optimum. I settled on the formula that Dr. Joseph Mercola espouses in his “Fat for Fuel” book. (See it on Amazon here.)
So, yeah, I eat “low carb,” usually no more than [Read more…]
Panda Express, Medford, Oregon, May 14, 2018 — My favorite, and pretty much only place I get lunch when I don’t want to cook/prep, is Panda Express, because you can get vegetables instead of rice, and while not perfect, it’s a pretty healthy meal.
I take gooddog Charlie so he gets an outing, but I don’t let him out so I bring him the fortune cookie. (He eats them, but I do not.) And so naturally that means the fortune is actually gooddog Charlie’s fortune.
Lately I’ve begun to question these Panda Express fortunes that he gets. I was suspicious last week when he got, “You will be a great success, both in business and socially.”
And now, after yesterday — when he got “Good news will come to you by mail.” — I am seriously questioning the accuracy of these Panda Express fortunes.
Medford, Oregon, May 6, 2018 — Sometimes I’m kind of material-minded, and think “down to earth” thoughts. Other times I feel rather woo-woo, but there it is.
I believe there are multiple universes, our physical universe being but one. And that, in a way, these can be pictured as all in ONE place, but “invisible” and generally inaccessible to each other. My hippie years suggest they have a different vibration, but really I’ve no clue, and because time and space seem to be pretty darn twisty anyway, it may be that 70 million light-years away may sometimes be as nearby as the house next door, under the right conditions.
And I believe that these universes are infinite, and that more are created all the time.
I *suspect* that every time one of mus makes a decision it *may* spin off another child universe which is the same except for that decision which was made, so there is a YOU in many or most of them.
Now because of decisions made by someone else way back, perhaps in some of those universes you are the Queen of England, and in another it’s called the Queenie of Poodlesnoot, and in another you’re living under a [Read more…]
North Texas University, Denton, Texas, 1965. Heartbroken, after running off my high-school sweetheart, envious met her new flame, a boisterous trumpet player driving a red MGB.
Shortly thereafter when crazy Becky Jarvis said, “You ought to get a Morgan.” I said huh? And then …
I bought a Morgan Motor Car in Dallas from a garage guy named Big John, who imported them and raced them. This one was blue, with tan upholstery and black top. Three thousand dollars.
Built with a wooden frame atop a steel z-frame, whatever that might be. The whole car flexed. Weighted 1400 pounds and had a 1.5 liter engine, hopped-up Ford Cortina with Lotus modifications, Jaguar trannasaurus, ran like hell, whining high-pitched, a redline at 9000. About four inches from the ground. That would be your butt, flying above your asphalt.
The first night, driving it home, in the dark, was terrifying. It was so fast. Seemed like piloting the bolt from a crossbow, rocketing down that dark backwoods highway. Later discovered it had the wrong speedometer; and my highway trip at 65 was really around 90. It did seem sprightly.
The jack arrangement was to insert the jack through a hole in the floor. This hole normally was covered by the rubber floor mat. However, on rainy Dallas days I have seen the puddle splash up through the hole, lifting the floor mat, to spash against the windshield, on the passenger side. Kind of a defroster system.
Paul Miner drew up cartoons of our gang at that time. Mine was ‘Richard, the sports car nut’. It showed me in riding pants, saying “Of course, she won’t start on cold mornings, but at $2999, she can afford to be a little temperamental.”
Paul was right on the money. One of my proudest moments at that time was during an astounding snowstorm. On Dallas freeway and headed back to Denton, I let the air out of the tires down to about 15 pounds. Then, my 1400 pound car could walk up the icy hills where the big sedans just skidded and spun. Got me through. Good thing. That heater. I probably would have died out there.
A year or so later, living in Dallas in an apartment rented from Dunia Bean, which had a swimming pool, driving to work at the Cabana. And a fool oncoming lost it and bent my car. That was the end of the Morgan.
Regarding that swimming pool. It had an underwater light. Have you ever, at night, on LSD, opened your eyes underwater to look at a light? No?
Well, that Morgan was something.
