The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

What Goals Make You Happiest?

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Mt. Shasta, California, June 15, 2022: When I was 26 or so, I figured out a handy truth …

a) Havingness goals, once met, most often satisfy for a few days or a few weeks.
b) Beingness goals may bring benefits, but if you try to dwell in satisfaction, then you’re no longer in that beingness, so you usually spend little time experiencing the satisfaction of attaining a beingness.
c) Doingness goals can satisfy as long as you’re doing the thing you intended to do.
For example, years ago in Dallas, one particular day, I found myself uncomfortable and ill at ease. And after a few days of pondering realized that I’d accomplished the goal for which I had gone to Dallas, and that I needed a new goal–because humans function well when seeking a goal.
And so I chose “creating music” because that is a doingness goal, and you can never reach the end of creating music.
It worked.

Easy-Peasy Exercise and Eating – Stay Trim, Strong, and Healthy

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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 —

THE HIDDEN “FOOD” THAT DOOMS YOU TO BEING FAT

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.

THE EASY WAY TO DROP WEIGHT WHILE EATING TONS OF FOOD

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.

LIVE LONGER, AVOID ALZHEIMERS, KEEP YOUR IMMUNE HEALTHY

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.

EXERCISE FOR BETTER STRENGTH, ENERGY, AND SLEEP

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 GIVE IT A TRY —

If you try it, I’d love to hear your experience.

Creating Your Reality

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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!)

🙂

Band of Thieves

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Shady Shores community, near Dallas Texas, 1964: Paul H. was the largest roommate, and visiting his girlfriend in Fort Worth, he drove that highway often. A large and quiet guy, when he returned that day, all excited, we knew something was up.

“What is it?” asked Hardy M., the art student, a rugged fellow of sour demeanor. Paul lowered his voice.

Really Living on the Lake!

“It’s a boat, with two big Evenrude motors,” he said, “It’s just sitting on a trailor beside the highway!”

My roommates, and myself, instantly became criminals.

“You mean … just sitting there?” asked Pat M. Always affecting calm, always worried.

“Trailer hitch,” Paul said. “I’d have grabbed it but I don’t have a trailor hitch.” On his car, he meant. They all looked at me. My car had a trailor hitch.

“OK,” I said. And so off we drove, to steal a boat.

Along the way, Hardy in the back seat was dozing. Each time he nodded off, Pat jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “Stop it!” Hardy said, irritable. Pat told him not to be leaning on him. Hardy said ok, and a short time later, was dozing again.

With the two of them bickering like children, we drove. The day was late, and daylight fading. I’d forgotten a ham in the oven. We found it the next day, much smaller and very salty.

Watching for the boat as we drove, it seemed like we’d never get there. And finally, Paul said that either we’d missed it, or somebody had picked up the boat. So we turned around.

By now, Hardy was deep asleep in the back seat. He woke occasionally, but Pat told him we weren’t there yet. This continued until we were pulling into Shady Shores, where we lived lakeside in a concrete-block house.

About a block from our house was a small copse of wood, and, as it was now full dark, instead of going home, I pulled my car into that tiny wood. In the dark, the nearby houses were invisible from within the trees.

Hardy woke as we exited, but we told him we were going to get the boat, and needed him to stay with the car. Sleepy, he agreed, and promptly fell asleep again. We walked to our house, and stayed up late, talking about our big adventure — failing to steal a boat — and then eventually everybody went to bed.

Hardy, of course, woke up sometime during the evening, but didn’t dare leave the car. He didn’t want to be stranded in an unknown place near Fort Worth.

In the morning, about coffee-time. Hardy came through the door.

“That’s not funny,” he said.

Are You a Pirate?

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In one of the last scenes in the fun movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the heroine makes a statement about the leading man. She says, lovingly, “He’s a pirate.”

As you may recall from the movie, that young man started out hating the pirates, and yet, in the course of his adventures, he’s become bolder and he has dared great things, and by golly he has become a pirate. And that’s a good thing.

And so … why is it a good thing to be a pirate?

[Read more…]

Michael Murphy – North Texas Troubador

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1308 1/2 W. Hickory Street, Denton Texas, Spring, 1963: The movie ‘Hatari’ was unmemorable, but the Henry Mancini song called ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ had been on the radio for weeks and weeks and weeks.

That warm day, an abundance of visitors from the HobNob to my minuscule apartment somehow drove us all to clamber up onto the flat roof. We also had beer. That may have been part of it.

On the front edge of the flat roof, with our feet dangling two stories above Hickory Street, we lined up to tell stories and watch the students and passers-by across the street on the campus.

Michael Murphy had brought his guitar.

You may remember Murphy from later, because in 1975, along with Linda Ronstadt, John Denver, the Carpenters, Doobie Brothers, and Ozark Mountain Daredevils, his pop single was at the top of the charts with lots of airplay across our great nation. His song was about a horse and a blizzard, and some mountains in Nebraska. The song was called ‘Wildfire.’

(Want to hear it? It’s on this musical video from a tv performance.)

That song haunts me still.

Odd, too, because back on that day when we were all sitting along the edge of the roof, Murphy had earlier come busting into the HobNob, grinning and giggling and just beside himself. He’d just sold his first song, for actual money. He’d made $50. That was a *lot* of money.

For a song!

He’d sold his song to the New Christy Minstrels.

Murphy was a handsome kid then, with a square jaw, blonde hair, an engaging smile and a friendly manner. We didn’t know just how good he was. But he was focused. He was going somewhere. And I guess selling an actual song, for actual money, to an actual known group … well, maybe this was something that consoled him, drove him forward, perhaps he heard fate whispering in his ear, ‘You can do this. You can do this. Just keep on.’

But on that day, as was common, he’d brought his guitar, and after he scrambled to the roof, we passed it up to him, and so, sitting on the roof above the street, he played for us, and we sang snippets of popular songs.

The sun was warm, and we had beer and comraderie. I suppose school officials would have been horrified, but nobody noticed us there despite our catcalls and hooting and laughter.

Down below, an ongoing parade of people walking provided more amusement.

Then a very rotund girl came chugging up the sidewalk. It wasn’t that she was fat, though that was unusual in those days. It was something prissy about the way she walked. She was swinging her shoulders as she came, walking all prissy, and moving right along.

From the guitar, suddenly we heard a tune we all knew. Baby Elephant Walk.

We fell apart, laughing.

And that’s how we’ll remember that day, on the edge of the roof above the street, with friends and laughter in the warm sun, and the Baby Elephant Walk.

Introduction to Poetry

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I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

— Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate

 

 
 

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