People don’t spend enough time looking at their stool after they go to the bathroom. Poop is, after all, what is left after our bodies digest and absorb food. It is waste; basically the useless stuff that the body does not need and cannot do anything with. If one is eating a well balanced nutritionally sound diet the waste they create should be the same all of the time - given that the body will consistently absorb the same nutrients and leave behind those items that offer nothing of nutritional or biological value.

Take a look at the following chart:

Once you get over what exactly it is that you are looking at, you should notice that stool ranges from solid to liquid. You can make certain determination about digestive system health based on what your waste looks like.

For example, type 1 and 2 are more solid and very dense; indications of a lack of fiber and possible dehydration. Type 3 and 4 are regarded as healthy. Type 5 to 7 are less dense and almost formless - indicating that water is not being reabsorbed from it or that you’re body is trying to rid itself of something in the digestive track.

It is not unusual for the body to produce a greater volume after increasing fiber and carbohydrate consumption or for decreased volume to accompany increases in meat and protein consumption. However, changes that last longer than a couple of days are an indication of a problem.

Alkalize or die outlines the negative consequence of acidosis (having too high an acid level) on the body.

Acidosis is the basic foundation of all disease. We need to understand the simple process of alkalizing our body and the important role a properly alkalized body plays in restoring and maintaining our overall health. Our glands and organs function properly in exact proportion to the amount of alkaline and acid levels in our system.

Have you ever been so upset with someone or something that you get an upset stomach? All negative emotions create an acidic environment. Have you ever heard anyone say you are letting your problems “eat away at you” or “get the best of you”?
 
Fear is the underlining cause of most disease. It will undermine your life and your health. Fear causes anger. Anger causes hate. Hate will consume you with continual suffering. Love and understanding cleanse and heal the body creating an alkaline environment within you.

Worth the read because it explains what happens to most of the main organs when acid levels increase and it offers some solutions on how to lower pH level. Not a big surprise that exercise and eating vegetables are on the list of things that make you more healthy. 

The skinny on fat by The Telegram is an editorial comment that is based on a study released by the American Institute for Cancer Research. The full report is available at http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/?p=ER if you want to read it. It is an average read and confirms a lot of what people have been saying about cancer and environmental influences. It contains a really nice break down on the impact of specific environmental influences on specific cancer rates. It is worth checking out.

I do not believe, however, the author of the Telegram editorial article took the time to read anything OTHER than the summary of the report. It wouldn’t normally be a big deal but they drew a conclusion that I wasn’t able to find in the report:

But whatever mysteries remain, the study stresses there’s no question that fat fuels cancer rates, to the point that the AICR believes poor diet causes as much cancer as smoking.

The study does not stress that there is no question that fat fuels cancer rates. The study doesn’t say much about fat at all. It reports a lot of findings about BEING fat, or over-weight as determined by BMI, as it relates to cancer but it doesn’t make any statements about actual fat. There is a very good reason for that - no one eats a diet of just fat.

The cited report is an epidemiological and meta analysis study that correlates dietary factors to the incident rates of various cancers. It is NOT a experiemental study that controls any dietary variables. These types of studies have a good track record in science but cannot be used to draw any causal conclusions as the author of the editorial has done.  

I think this is an important point to make for a number of reasons:

1. It is irresponsible for an author to attribute their claim to another person or group
2. It is irresponsible to report feelings as facts
3. Misinformation is rarely helpful because it moves one away from facts

In a more general sense, unprocessed fat is NOT harmful to an individual when consumed in the right combination with other macro-nutrients. Eating fat with high glycemic index carbohydrates will result in greater fat storage but eating it with protein will not. For example, eating a large steak with a salad will result in less fat storage potential than eating a small muffin with butter. The stake may have more fat calories than the muffin and butter combination, but since it and the salad do not contain any carbohydrates that rapidly increase blood sugar, there is a lower chance that the body will go into fat storage mode.

I don’t blame the author for drawing the conclusion that they do because fat = bad is something that has been said so often that it understood to be a fact. However, to attribute this understanding to the World Cancer Research Fund International and the American Institute for Cancer Research is just wrong. They haven’t made that claim in their report and it is unlikely that they will ever make this claim. Their conclusion is that being OVERLY fat WILL increase your likelihood for developing certain types of cancers.

Part of what I like most about Rachel is the way she seems to energize and drive many people to achieve a little more of their potential. I am no exception in this and when we moved in together in August she immediately started sending me help wanted ads for jobs that she thought that I may like to do.

One in particular caught my eye and I applied for the position. It was for the operations manager role at a company call SST in Burlington. I hadn’t heard of them before but Rachel was very familiar with them through one of her professors at Sheridan college. SST, or Sport Specific Training, is a straight and conditioning center. They have been successfully training young athletes for the last ten years and their approach is rather different from the method used at the fitness clubs that I am more accustomed to.

I submitted my resume and got an interview a few days later.

The facility is small, about 5000 square feet, and doesn’t have any cardio machines. They have a lot of equipment that I have never seen anywhere else other than in the demonstration photos that appear with some of the t-nation articles (sleds, fire hoses, tires, etc…). It is not a bells and whistles place, it’s more of a blood and guts training center. This is part of why I love it - people come there to work hard and they leave quickly because there is no reason to stay. They have a lot of signed pictures on the walls of different level athletes who have trained there and achieved more success. People go to SST to get better results on the playing field, track, court, wherever.

The interview process was grueling because I had to meet with all of the key leadership figures to ensure that we would be able to work together. It took about 2 weeks and each step drew me in deep because it was evident that each member of the team was picked for their specific talent and unique personality. They were looking for a career minded person and not someone who as seeking a short term job. Given that I knew nothing about the company before I submitted my resume, I was able to synthesize and add to my understanding with each interview. In the end when I was offered the position I was ecstatic because I knew the fit was right for me and I knew that I was the right person for the job.

The only downside is that my blog is suffering significantly because I love working at SST. I am up early and really eager to get to work. I leave work late, workout and come home to eat. Rachel gets home about an hour later around 10 PM, when we’ll chat for a few minutes until she opens the books to study before calling it a night near midnight.

I wouldn’t change anything about my life right now but I do look forward to becoming good enough at my job so I can devote a little more time to newstasis.com again. In time I know my site will begin to see the impact of all the new experiences that SST is facilitating in the form of original content.

I spent a lot of my life miserable until my dad told me to stop mistaking my emotions for thinking. 10 years I had no difficultly accepting Des’ claim that spontaneous emotions exist to let us know that something significant is happening, that we’ve picked up on something important or that our conscious attention is needed on something. Emotions are a window into our the unconscious mind and what they bring forth in our awareness is the immediate representation of the quality of dissonance between the world we are perceiving and the world we are predicting.

The human brain is very effective at processing and storing information. This processing capacity allows it to compare present sensory and perceptive input against years of stored experience. Any input that matches a stored memory can trigger an emotional release and what that release is depends on your emotional state when the initial memory was encoded and stored - matching on a negative experience will mostly likely trigger a negative emotional response. It is very effective at bringing forward distant memories and aiding in our survival; given we are still alive, doing what we did last time will likely result in the same thing.

This useful system that has one major draw back, it is also triggered by the perception of something not just the sensation of it - those with a fear of clowns can trigger an anxiety attack by just thinking about clowns. This characteristic of emotions makes it very easy to create a feedback loop and when paired with the belief that emotions are thinking, led to a lot of my misery. Imagine you think about a clown and start to get a little anxious. If you tend to mistake emotions as thoughts, you will believe that there is an actual physical reason to feel anxious. As you look for the reason why, you will undoubtedly think about clowns which will cause more anxiety. The cycle will continue until the anxiety dissipates.

The realization that feelings are not thoughts stops this cycle because it gives us a chance to engage or talk back to the emotion. Once we are able to figure out where the emotion came from we are then able to determine the true value of the information that it is giving us. In the case of the clown loop, we’d be able to say I feel anxious because I am thinking about a clown instead of believing that I feel anxious because there is a good reason to feel anxious.

Emotions are not thoughts, they are real and they contain valuable information but they are not the same thing as thinking.

Eight foods you should eat every day by Ben Hewitt of Bestlifeonline.com lists the reasons why you should eat spinach, tomatoes, blueberries, yogurt, carrots, black beans, walnuts, and oats as often as possible.

I was happy to see oats on the list given that oats make up about 25% of my diet. Also nice is that none of the foods on the list are particularly expensive or hard to eat. Spinach is about the worst of them and even it is only mushy and slightly bitter.

Improve your health and boost the colour of your meals (and maybe your teeth so don’t forget to brush your teeth after eating).

Deconstructing Paul Chek by t-nations by Chris Shugart is a bullet point recap of a 4 hour conversation with the therapist / trainer / coach. He has been at it for a very long time and remains in the best shape of his life.

Personally I like the holistic nature of his approach; even though I’m not religious, I can see the value of including all aspects on ones identity into their health and fitness development plan. He draws a distinction between the different religious views that people hold but only in so far as to say that each is a very important aspect of the individual.

• It’s only through a healthy body that you can have a functional, rational mind. Aristotle made his philosophy students workout with the Olympic wresting team. One of the main reasons I train my body is so that my mind works effectively.

• Toxicity means you’re bringing in more toxins from the outside than you can release. You can’t have a functional detoxification system unless you have a functional digestive system. Anyone who’s eating cheap food is likely to have a digestive system that isn’t working.

• If you don’t want to have problems, eat real food. Stop eating all this cheap crap. I’ve had multi-millionaires and world-class professional athletes in my office tell me that organic food is too expensive.I walk them to the window and point to their $140,000 sports car and say, “Eat that fu#ker then! Because when you die they aren’t going to bury that son of a bitch with you!” It’s just a matter of getting your priorities right. The more toxic your body is, the lower your quality of life is.

• We have a tremendous dehydration problem today. The only thing that substitutes for water is water. When you’re drinking water you’re actually drinking nature’s most powerful detoxification agent. The best solution for pollution is dilution. And that means water, not tea, not soda pop, not orange juice… water!

It will probably take a few reads for everything to sink in. Even if you don’t agree with all that he says, try and let his words impact you if for no other reason than he’s 44 and still stronger than everyone you know.

I was tagged by JoLynn from The Fit Shack to participate is a meme and write a post based on the following premise “the blogosphere has come to an end, and you have one last post to write. What would you say?”. She got the idea from Albert of the urbanmonk.net who is going to donate a dollar for every person who trackbacks to him.

The post made by JoLynn is about the addictive power of the sugar, an addiction I have no problem admitting to. My advice is contained in an old article when I posted “eat only enough so that you are hungry in 3 hours and then repeat in the post “If you listen to one thing, listen to his…”. This is the one thing that I have found has made a world of difference in the way I feel and look. It is also the piece of advice that I give out most frequency to anyone who asks me what they can do to improve their energy and the way they look.

But I give out this advice for free so it doesn’t really have any value unless you follow it.

If you are going to the gym or training at all, you should be paying particular attention to what you eat immediately following your workouts because this is the most important time for muscle recovery. After 40 minutes of intense exercise, the body’s initial response to the introduction of sugar is to replenish muscle glycogen and start protein synthesis for muscle repair and not an increase in fat storage which is the non-exercise response. If you can consume the right combination of sugar and protein in water within 30 minutes of ending your workout, you will capitalize on this tendency.

After reading and trying what the author’s online in the following articles I noticed a dramatic increase in my recovery ability in both the gym and on the bike trails. I highly recommend carbohydrate and protein shakes after every workout.

The Window Of Opportunity
The Window of Opportunity—Layman’s Version (Non-Technical)

Reducing Catabolic Hormones

All body builders have a sworn mortal enemy—cortisol. This hormone acts to breakdown muscle tissue, and creates a catabolic environment, contrary to growth.

The most effective way to decrease these catabolic hormones is:

• To consume an easily digested carbohydrate
• Stack it with an easily digested source of protein

Protein Synthesis and Degradation

Skeletal muscle protein synthesis can be defined as the formation of whole muscle proteins, from individual amino acids.

Protein degradation can be defined as the breakdown of proteins, into individual amino acids and peptides.

Muscle growth is ultimately the difference between protein degradation and protein synthesis. Therefore, we want to both minimize protein degradation, and maximize protein synthesis.

Consuming protein is generally responsible for enhancing protein synthesis; while carbohydrates play an intricate role in decreasing protein degradation. The role carbohydrates play in protein synthesis is in debate. However, it appears that when easily digested carbohydrates are accompanied with proteins, the enhanced effect from these nutrients increases muscle growth.

Do you have one of those friends who always seems to have bad things happen to them? No matter what is going on in your life, there is something worse going on in theirs. Any joy you try to share with them is beaten back with another story of their victimization. It’s constant drama about stuff you didn’t even know existed let alone mattered. It isn’t just boring, it’s depressing and it’s a tax on your happiness.

If you said yes there is a good chance that you have a few of them. If you have a few of them, maybe it’s time to start looking at your own behavior to see why these people are flocking to you. It may be tough, but you need to consider the fact that people do what they feel comfortable with and what they can get away with doing. In the case of your drama-prone friends, you are enabling them at best, and at worse, you are one of these people. If you are one of them, you are giving others the permission to do the same thing. It’s an ugly thought that you might be manufacturing the victim role just so you can perpetuate a sense of suffering but you need to consider it because if you are doing it, you are really hurting the self-development of you and those around you..

What are the benefits of viewing oneself as a victim?

• It frees them of responsibility for their place in life. It’s a life preserving fiction that ensures the ego remains intact because they never actually try anything. One never fails because they never try. Never failing is a good thing because only failures fail.
• It frees them of the need to expend effort - since they are a victim, failure is going to be the outcome regardless of their actions. This learned helplessness ensures that they conserve energy because they’re smart enough to know how things are going to go.
• It frees them of having to think up something useful to talk about. Nauseating as it may be, people who view themselves as victims always have something that they can talk passionately about.
• They never get caught up in self improvement project or pursuits. Guess why? Because they know they don’t work. Something is going to come along and ruin their efforts.
• They will never be alone because misery prefers miserable company and perceived victims are execeptional at passing along this characteristic to the people they engage, including their children.
• It is very easy to sustain the victim role because, if you are already playing it, it is a part of who you are. Playing it is effortless, changing it requires effort; first in identifying and accept the fake role you are playing and then in the actions you take to make things better.

Wait a minute you say, these aren’t really benefits at all. Good sign, you may not be a victim so you can use this list to help you identify the drama people in your life. Have you heard any of this defeatist talk coming from any of your friends?

What do you do with drama friends?

You have a couple of options and your course of action will be determined by the quality of friend that they are. For really good friends and family members you have two options:

1. Blank face conversations - just start to withdraw from the conversations about their victimization by blank facing them. Give them nothing in terms of body language or words that they can take as incentive to continue sharing their misery. People will stop talking very quickly when they get no validation from you in a conversation.
2. Try and help them see how they are behaving - this one is a lot tougher because you are not just trying to stop a behavior, you are trying to change one. It’s a lot of work to get someone to see that things are not the way they think they are and they need to be open to change. But, like most interventions, hearing it from a loved one is likely going to have a bigger impact than hearing it from someone else.

For other people, you have three choices, blank face them, try to help them or get rid of them.

1. This blank face can have contempt in it because you probably care less about their feelings and more about getting them to stop being a big downer. You’re not looking for their happiness, you are looking for their silence.
2. You are welcome to try and help them, but be warned, it’s a poor investment of time. The chances of success are very small in relation to your almost certain vilification. If you do try be sincere about it, at least you’ll know you tried to do the right thing when they lash out at you.
3. You can remove them from your life completely so you don’t have to deal with their drama anymore. This can be as simple as just not communicating with them. If you’re lucky it just ends, it can be that simple some of the time. But most of the time, it’s like pulling off a band aid. You are, in essence, breaking up with someone. It’s an interpersonal conflict. It isn’t likely to get ugly but it can be uncomfortable. But just pull fast and get it over with. It’s better for everyone, mainly you, because your life will immediately get better. Again, try to be decent about it because something has happened to make them this way. Just because you don’t care enough about them to try and help shouldn’t mean you deliberately try to hurt them. You have no idea where life will take you so be genuine and fair.

If you are not a drama person, you really have no business hanging out with drama people because they will ruin your happiness, they will chew up your free time and they will add very little to your life. By continuing the friendship you are killing your chances at happiness as well as making sure they don’t get any better. Do the inventory and set free anyone who keeps you bogged down with their drama.