As a student of physical culture, food is a vital component of my studies. I came from the New York fried-crap school of eating. Food was something to get out of the way so I could get on with my life. I'm coming to understand that our national relationship with food, how we think about it, how we consume it, and particularly how we produce it are issues central to health, strength and life.

I used to be ~40 heavier, sedentary, comparatively weak for a guy my size, and in and out of chronic pain. So yeah, I've give this stuff a fair bit of thought.

[Fat] is not a cause of illness and death; it's a symptom. The real killer is inactivity...

It starts as a reflection of our modern lifestyle and degenerates into musculoskeletal system dysfunction. Functional women are active women; they have the right stuff and use it. Dysfunctional women are not active — and it's not because they're lazy. They simply lack the musculoskeletal resources that would allow them to be active enough to control their weight...

There's a big difference between management and manipulation. Without being conscious of it, most people with weight problems are manipulators. They aren't feeding themselves in order to fuel the 700 trillion cells; they are, rather, eating to manipulate their blood chemistry and metabolism in order to feel good enough to get through another day...

In fact, all the best-selling diet gurus are manipulators, not managers. Their solution to obesity is to encourage other forms of fiddling with blood chemistry to adjust the body's metabolism...

All of them overlook the central question: why does our metabolism need such overt adjusting?...

My answer to all these questions is musculoskeletal function. Those who are immune from obesity are functional. Their bodies are able to efficiently process whatever they eat and turn it into energy. They don't need to fiddle with their blood chemistry because thanks to a robust, muscle-driven metabolic process, it takes care of itself. They easily meet all three requirements for weight management:

1. Overeating isn't a problem for them, because their metabolic burn rate and their intake of calories naturally converge. They feel no craving for salt, sugar, and excess fats and carbohydrates to make up for an imbalance.
   
   
2. Since it's a pleasure for them to move, they have enough physical exercise to convert fuel into energy.
   
   
3. They have full musculoskeletal system function, to keep the major muscle groups up and running

-Pete Egoscue with Roger Gittines, Pain Free For Women: The Revolutionary Program for Ending Chronic Pain

What I want to ask people who are doing Ornish or Atkins or other types of blood-chemistry manipulation diets is Can you keep feeding your body like that for the rest of your life? The research seems to indicate "no". Read Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata

The CBC did a segment on The Shangri-La Diet. Seth Roberts himself is interviewed, and he explains how it works. From personal experience, it works. And it's not like the other diets (I believe) because it's not trying to manipulate blood chemistry, it's about managing your food intake (as well as dealing with hunger). And it's not eliminating whole classes of food, or forcing you to buy specially packaged corporate meals.



And even if someday science proves that Roberts' theory is wrong... who cares? It still works, and does so without sending you into states of abnormal blood chemistry.

piemancer put up a very telling post about how Shangri-La changed her relationship to hunger. I've had the same experience with hunger. This is part of what Gina Kolata's research demonstrated. Go read about the prisoners who volunteered for the feeding study. Someone with a low set-point just doesn't experience hunger the same way as someone with a higher set-point, and the hunger shut soff much sooner.

And by the way, y'all so-inclined can just put a fucking cork in the Oh, the fatties just need to show some self-control. Not only are you being a hateful ass, you don't understand the biology behind it. Go read Kolata & Roberts before you go flapping your gums and getting all haterish. The body uses hunger to achieve the set-point that genetics wants.

One of the main reasons Lexi & I are so big on Egoscue is that it addresses one of the central realities: Movement is absolutely central and indespensible to health and maintaining healthy weight. No ifs, ands, or buts. The problem is if you have dysfunctional musculoskeletal system, movement does not feel good, and pain is the end result. If you're fully functional, movement feels joyous and you don't develop pain.

And to move requires energy. Fuel. Food. Without it, there can be no movement, hence no life. And we, as a society, have developed a profoundly unhealthy relationship with food. (The subject of what the corporations have done to the quality of our food is a whole 'nuther post.)

This is why the car dying is the greatest thing that ever happened to my heath. I firmly believe I't still be overweight and unhealthy if I was still being ferried around instead of moving myself. (The subject of why strength training is a necessity for weight loss is also the subject of a whole 'nuther post. But really, get off the freakin' treadmill [you're a human, not a gerbil!], stop wasting your time on the stair-nothing, and pick up a kettlebell.)

It's not eating meat that killing us and destroying the planet. It's how WE eat (and just as importantly produce) meat that's killing us and destroying the planet.



If you're out killing your meat with a stick, rock on. But if you're like most 'Murricans who either get their meat from the drive-thru window or wrapped in plastic at the supermarket... EAT LESS MEAT.

Previously in O,DIKTO?

-Thoughts on Physical Culture

-So, About This American Diet Of Ours...

-I <3 Jack LaLanne

-Middle-aged housewives gettin' all hot & sweaty together. IN PUBLIC!

-Bigger, Faster, Stronger*

-Fuck what I weight on Mars, show me that Earth reaging again!

-Are You Fit To Live?

This was your Buccaneer-American back in 2005, at tongodeon's surprise going away party.* I was probably about 235-240lbs the time. And nowhere NEAR as strong as I am now. Probably not as flexible either.

This was back when I was driving a car to & from work, and a truck during much of the work day. And eating absolute junk food daily. Carrying a heavy bag of handy-monkey tools up and down people front stairs seems not to have been much of a compensating effect.

This is what a sedentary lifestyle looked like on me. And honestly, I'd looked like varieties of that for many years.


This is Pirate in mid-2008, after 5+ months swinging his kettlebell(s), and slightly longer with the Shangri-La Diet.

The 2005 me was unhealthy, unfit, and heading for physical decline, pain, and decrepitude on the way to an early grave.

The mid 2008 me, not so much. Although there seems to be a curious spike in Lexi's libido associated with the latter version. ;-)

Few things are truly impossible. And while shooting for the impossible, we often land at the merely incredible.

If this monkey can do it, you can too. Exercise (specifically strength training) is the fountain of youth. And your extra comfortable chair in front of the television is the express elevator to the decrepitude basement.

I know. I've been there.

---

* No, don't ask what horrible thing is on the laptop screen, wearing a deeper groove into the horrible crease in my brain, populated with images that will never go away.

Srsly. Don't. You don't want to know, I'm not going into it.

Attention my fellow low-flavor oil drinkers. Just tried something on the spur of the moment and, WHOA!

Cheggidout: I poured a shot-glass of oil, 3/4 full. Add juuuust enough tap water to fill the shot. The water forms a neat little bubble at the bottom of the oil.

Throw back the shot, and the water (last out of the glass) washes the oil on down. Hardly any Mmmmm, mouthful of oil sensation at all. Not that I mind all that much. But if I'm going for that, I just prefer it with a little bread & balsamic vinegar. Oh yeah, and flavor of it's own. Otherwise, just get it out of the way.

Neat. Forgetting where I heard it mentioned first.

For some reason, PBS no longer makes home videos of their Frontline report Fat available for purchase, other than to educational institutions.

The world loves fat. It's what food industry executives say adds precious flavor and "mouth-feel" to our foods, and what doctors say adds detrimental calories to our diets. 91 million Americans are considered obese-defined as twenty percent above ideal body weight-and the incidence of obesity is rising around the globe. Today, inundated by tens of thousands of food ads each year, influenced by a standard of beauty built on being thin, and fighting a primal craving, we are losing the war on fat.

Massive bummer, especially since they don't offer it to view online.

Still, the transcript is available on the PBS website. I highly recommend it to anyone who eats food and is interested in their physical health.:

NARRATOR: The [height/weight] charts that doctors use allow for differences between the sexes, but make no other distinctions, whether on the basis of age, heredity or body shape- no suggestion, in fact, that the point where weight becomes unhealthy might vary from one person to the next.

Today more and more people are beginning to see medical [height/weight] charts as unscientific, impersonal, even dangerous. David Alexander is in peak condition. He is 5 foot 8 and weighs 250 pounds, 100 pounds more than the recommended "ideal" for someone his height, and yet he is training for one of the most grueling competitive sports, the triathlon.

In a typical week, Dave will swim 5 miles, run 30 and cycle 200. He has completed 264 triathlons, everywhere from tropical Jamaica to northern China. Yet in spite of this record, David's weight supposedly puts him in a life-threatening category known to doctors as "morbid obesity." Their recommended ideal for someone Dave's height is a weight range between 130 and 165 pounds.

DAVE ALEXANDER: That would be impossible for my body type, the size of my bone structure. My total lean body mass weighs more than that.

INTERVIEWER: Where have the medical doctors perhaps got it wrong?

DAVE ALEXANDER: Everyone's different, and I think the range is much broader than they will admit. I've had problems with insurance companies wanting to rate me in high risk, and yet I can get up and run a marathon right now, and I'm sure the man giving me the physical can't do that.

Dr. CRAIG PHELPS, Dir. Phoenix Sports Center: Dave is overweight, but he's fit. It seems that there's a population out there demanding to be heard. "I'm overweight, but I'm exercising, and I'm fit."

NARRATOR: Craig Phelps has been Dave Alexander's doctor for 12 years.

Dr. CRAIG PHELPS: Dave's resting pulse is in the 60s, like a trained athlete. His blood pressure is usually in the 120s over 80s, which, once again, for most people is a very normal blood pressure. We've exercised him to the point of exhaustion on the treadmill many times to check and make sure there's no risk of any obvious cardiovascular disease, and that has turned out normal. So we have to kind of say that Dave is fit.

Getting all bent out of shape about being skinny misses the boat. Which would you rather be? A skinny, enervated couch-potato? or a human fireplug who runs international triathlons?

More to the point, you have a genetic predisposition to a certain size and shape. Do you want to be a healthy, fit, strong version of that genetic blueprint, or the unfit, weak version?

I contend that your ability to influence that decisions is much greater than you give yourself credit for. Personally, kettlebells and Shangri-La have made more combined difference on my taking control of my health than anything I've done in the previous 39 years.

Don't sell yourself short.

Previously in O, DIKTO?:

-Are you Fit To Live?

I had to borrow a black vest for the ritual of adolescent rhythmic dry-humping prom I worked last night.

Twenty pounds ago, that vest would have NEVER fit this monkey.

I gave credit to my kettlebell, and the Shangri-La Diet when I mentioned the vest situation to the crew during set-up.

The new guy chimed in, Oh yeah, I lost 40 pounds on Shangri-La. Got a few more to go. I don't even bring it up to people any more. I'm tired of being told I'm crazy and that it sounds like it wouldn't work.

That is all.

Did a full hour Callanetics workout today, after spending the afternoon out with Lexi, walking through Berzerkeley to get Indian fud and run errands.

That's probably the first time since before the accident that I did a full beginning-to-end run though. Oh, that stuff burns. But I was impressed with my ability to do the ab section and the kill-me-now belly dancer moves without collapsing into a puddle of unmanly tears.

The kettlebell really kicked up my ability to do that workout, no doubt. And I'm thinking I really like the fact that it has its roots in classical ballet and the Lotte Berk method.

Good to be strong. Very good. Better to be strong and graceful. And getting lean and tough and tight attracts attention from the opposite sex.

How tragic to find oneself in that position... and you can't dance!

Also, note on the Shangri-La diet: while Lexi and the monkey we out for Indian fud, the monkey ate until he was full. And there was still fud on the plate. Twenty pounds ago, I would have scarfed that down, no problem. We're talking bhatura cholay here. And the bhatura was deep fried perfectly, barely oily at all. The cholay... I think the cooks brought out their A-game for mothers' day.

Didn't make a difference. Rather than stuff myself, I left it unfinished. I find this to be an example of the SLD's appetite-curbing effects working as advertised. I've been doing my oil shots and losing weight.

Oh, and since I've gotten back on the oil (got disrupted during my road trip), the psoriasis I've experienced for years is starting to get back under control, just like it did before when I started the oil.

I'm pretty convinced: no oil, psoriasis flares up and it sucks. Oil: psoriasis calms down, even to the point of basically disappearing.

The monkey's workout diary

We haven't had a scale in the house for some time, the old one broke and we didn't replace it. I generally don't think they're a very good idea to have in the house. Your weight fluctuates over the course of a day, and keeping track of little fluctuations is, I think, crazy-making.

For years, I've held to the belt-&-clothes-&-mirror school of personal physical assessment: What notch is my belt on, how are my clothes fitting, how do I look in the mirror?

I've gone from the 1st to the 2nd to the 3rd notch on my belt, and gone from wearing a size 38 waist jeans to a 36. Actually, I'm probably a 35, as 36s tend to bunch up in the back slightly and 34s are too small.

Also, my back-of-the-comic-book-style leather wrist strap has actually gone from wearing on the 2nd to the 3rd notch.


Friends and former cow-orkers I haven't seen for some time have seen me on the street and not recognized me. Ones who have seen me as recently as the Tour of California road trip have commented that I've slimmed down.

And so the other night, I'm pouring at a shin-dig up at Chabot Space & Science, and they've got one of those "WHAT DO YOU WEIGH ON THE OTHER PLANETS?" scales. And once we're done setting up, I figure What the hell, lemme find out.

The last time I stepped on a scale was probably over 6 months ago, before the broken shoulder. I weighed in at around 230lb(104.5kg) back then. My drivers license says I weigh 240lb(109kg). That's years out of date, but was accurate at one time. People who remember me from me from UVM will remember the 225-240lb(102-109kg) Pirate (commonly known as "Nick" at the time). And the lower-end of that was my fighting weight when I was doing full-contact competitive TKD.

The machine last night told this astronaut he weighs 208lb(94.5kg) fully clothed, lightly shod.

SAY WHAT?

I haven't been under 215lb(97.5kg) since high school. Maybe even junior high. But to be under 210lb(95kg) is... wow.

Because I look in the mirror and I can still see there's some insulation I can shed. Especially because it's the dangerous middle-jiggle. The research is starting to show it's particularly unhealthy.

But then that means it's quite likely I could end up under 200lb(91kg). I think I may easily have been that heavy in 9th grade, and I can't remember stepping on a scale and coming in at less than that.

Strange, positive place to be. Taking on new perspectives on life and the shape of the future. Starting to ask myself Why have I up till now considered "X" to be bordering on impossible? As Lexi & I are fond of saying, "Feels like another red pill I've taken."

And I'm not just losing weight, I'm definitely buffing up. I knows, mah sweetah tells me so! :D It's also somewhat humbling moment to realize the guy you thought you saw in the mirror for so long was actually only in your head.

Now? Well, objects in mirror may be closer than they appear...

I credit my Shangri-La Diet and my kettlebell for working this transformative process.

If you're looking to shed extra insulation, I have found that Shangri-La works as advertised. As one commenter once put it, "There are two types of people: Those who think it sounds hokey and can't work, and those who have tried it". I think the scientific/evolutionary explanation seems sound, and in line with the most up-to-date understanding of the role of set-point theory, the reason behind why most diet plans fail to produce long-term results.

And for buffing up, I am ALL about swinging with my red-headed Russian girlfriend! One of the greatest inventions as far as all-over-body strenf. I realized at Chabot that I do a WHOLE lot of lifting at work: cases of beer & soda, folding tables, racks of glassware, bags of ice, etc. Lots of bending, twisting, odd angles in cramped quarters, and STAIRS in this industry.

That's what functional-strength training like KB work has over benches-&-machines, learning to develop strenf on your feet and at odd angles. And by developing whole-body strenf, one doesn't need to develop bulky, hypertrophic muscles. And all in an iron ball that takes up as much space as a basketball.

If you're wanted to get in shape but haven't been able to, get you a kettlebell and a book/DVD combo. The Dragondoor products are top shelf. These KBs seem to be a quality product as well (and a bit less $pendy than the Dragondoor ones.) They also come as small a 9lb(4kg), ladies. Start small, and work your way up. Exercise and strength looks good on anybody (no matter your body type), and slack, jelly-like, lack of muscle tone looks good on no one. And it isn't healthy.

Srsly, lose the machine-&-benches-gym membership and get you a side-handle cannonball. You'll never look at working out the same.

---

I realized that my own personal weight and the weight of the cannonball in my grip are excellent ways to accustom myself to thinking in terms of kilograms. Fuck this pounds and ounces shit. I'm all for going metric.

Previously in O,DIKTO
-Motion Starvation, or "Why do so many Americans live with chronic pain?"

-15 Second with Pirate: More Nekkid Kettlebell

-The Male Physique: Options

-In better shape now than when I was fighting full-contact TKD in college

-I can has skinny pants again!

I'm comfortably wearing size 36" waist pants for the first time in over 10 years.

The last time I wore size 36" waist pants, I was too poor to afford food and biking up and down the hills of Seattle constantly.

Bulking up and gaining strength have never been particular problems for me. Slimming down... not so much. The love handles have been offering quite a bit of gription for some time. Lifting weight in the gym for strength, Callanetics for core strength and flexibility, all good for me. But slimming? Not so much.

After breaking my collarbone back in September, I entered a period of time when I was:

The most sedentary I've been in years. No biking, no Callanetics, barely moving off the couch for weeks.

Recovering from a broken collarbone.

Spending weeks (literally) hacking and coughing up gooey lung-ick with this season's Bubonic-Whooping-SARS.

Making almost no qualitative changes to my food consumption. And since Lexi's been sick & injured too, the Monkey has been doing much of the cooking, so rabbit food veggies have not been as forced upon the monkey featured on the menu chez LexiMonkey as they usually are. Comfort food has, as has convenient food (like Trader Joe's Thai tuna — mmm, spicy Thai curry to clear out the sinuses). And with my off-the-wall catering schedule, I'm eating at odd hours: one day it's a slice of pizza on the run, next day the caterer feeds us steak and Caesar salad. But it's nothing one could even come close to describing as "regular meals" or a particularly "healthy diet"* (not that that's something we 'Murricans are known for in general).

And it was during this particular period that I suddenly discovered that the black denims that used to make me look like my legs would pop if you stuck them with a pin (and just forget about bending the legs enough to sit down in them) suddenly fit. And all my old, 38" jeans were getting hella bunched up in the back and drooping off me.

I've tossed out all my old big jeans and have been picking up jeans at the Goodwill store in a size I haven't worn since early high school.

There is one, single, identifiable change I made during this time, and I credit it with being the reason I look in the mirror and see the love-handles melting off my waist.

I started The Shangri-La Diet.

Here's a brief summary of how it works:

The Shangri-La Diet developed by Seth Roberts has a "set point" theory about weight, that it behaves like a thermostat, having no fixed point. Reducing your set point by eating foods with low or little flavor associations will cause less hunger between meals and feeling full sooner during meals. By adding sugar water and/or flavorless oil to your diet, you will think about food less, have fewer cravings and develop better food choices - along with effortlessly losing weight.

Now remember, as Roberts points out, an unhealthy diet is still an unhealthy diet, even if you're feeling fuller and eating less. Here's a link to a more detailed look at the science behind Shangri-La.

Someone commenting on (I think) Amazon wrote that there seem to be two kinds of people: the kind who say "Oh, that sounds too loopy and out there, that can't possibly work," and the ones who've actually tried it. I've already had friends I've told about it immediately come back with "Oh, you must be eating better and getting more exercise, that's what's doing it."

Not from this monkey's point of view.

The reason I really believe Roberts is on to something re: the body's set-point (aside from the evidence Lexi & I see every morning in the mirror with my shirt off) comes from the book Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting by Gina Kolata. I have as usual, been ignoring Lexi's reading recommendations not had a chance to read it, but Lexi has and she relayed some of the important highlights.

They did experiments on volunteers in prison. Not bad experiments (paging Dr. Zimbardo!): they took skinny prisoners who were willing to gain weight and fed them massive amounts of nutritionally-balanced, high-calorie food. And, the subjects being prisoners, the researchers were able to precisely track how many calories the subjects were consuming.

It took massive intake of calories (like 10,000 calories per day) for the "naturally skinny" prisoners to put on appreciable weight. And once they stopped eating unnaturally large amounts, they shrank down to their old size without even trying.

Weight is largely genetically determined.

Not a popular idea because society (to say nothing of the diet and weight-loss industry) has so much invested in seeing overweight people as weak-willed, lazy, bad, and possibly contagious in their fatness. But given that we evolved for most of our species' history in borderline starvation conditions, now that calories are in abundance (in addition to labor saving devices like cars and desk-jobs), people's genetic predispositions are getting fuller expression.

Which comes back to set-point.

Your body has a weight that it wants to be at, given adequate calories. Get too far above that point, your hunger just turns off because you feel like a goose getting fattened for foie gras when offered food. Get too far below it, and the hunger becomes unbearable (but it's foisted off on "not having enough willpower, you lazy, bad person").

"Naturally skinny" people have a low set-point. Their brain tells them to stop eating and turns off their hunger quickly. Their genetics situate their set-point at that end of the spectrum.

This is why we have the term "yo-yo diet". You force yourself to restrict your calories. But as soon as you relax the unnatural restriction, your body wants you to eat more to get your weight back up to your set-point, where it thinks it belongs.

What Seth Roberts has figured out in the Shangri-La Diet is how to lower your body's set-point. Simple as that. It's not about eliminating whole classes of food, buying specially packaged foods at a premium, or any obscure math.

You add flavorless calories to your diet twice a day. Don't have anything with flavor (not even brushing your teeth or chewing gum) for an hour on either side. And that's it.

Like I said, there're two kinds of people out there with an opinion about Dr. Robert's book: Those who've tried it, and those who haven't.

I've tried it. I do a couple of tablespoons of extra light tasting olive oil twice a day-ish. And I see the love handles melting off and 36" jeans sitting comfortably on my hips.

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* What's a balanced diet? Michael Pollan, in The Omnivore's Dilemma, says it comes down to seven words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Sounds good to me.