nutrition

Even the surroundings are kind of primal!

Thanksgiving Podcast

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to engage in mindful eating. This podcast (click the link above) takes you through a relaxation exercise – after all, Thanksgiving can be stressful. Stress causes the production of cortisol and too much cortisol will kill us!

I also talk about Robb Wolf‘s idea to re-brand Paleo to avoid the resistance and just get people eating healthfully.

Also, go to Boomer Ronin and sign up for our December 15th workshop!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

With Love,
Hans & Brownstone Fitness

I am getting a better handle on the sources of my Paleo lifestyle fascination.  One of the wonderful legacies left to me by my parents is that I am one of the “And People.”  For me, this means that I wear the cultural fabric of the Africans and Native Americans passed through my mother’s genes AND that of the German Lutherans on my father’s side who made a living farming the land of Nebraska.

Yes, I love NY but I have always felt a restlessness in this place.  The deserts of Sudan and Utah, the wilderness of Montana and New Mexico, a lake in Maine, a village in Nicaragua – these have seemed to hold (at least for the short period of my stay) the rhythm and resonance that I need.

This realized rhythm and my genetic inheritance let me know that I am not suffering from orthorexia or a juvenile and dramatic desire to play a role in a caveman reenactment. My ancestors from all the branches of my family tree shout to me that factory farming is wrong.  It is disrespectful and deadly to the land and its animals;  it is disrespectful and  deadly to the people who are victims of poverty and the trance caused by false abundance.

I don’t wear the robes of a Paleo priest or subscribe to a nutritionism orthodoxy.  I do know that the lowfat  high carb movement of the 70′s and 80′s coincided with the beginning of the obesity epidemic.  I know that the poor, especially poor Native Americans and African-Americans suffer disproportionately under the weight of the food pyramid with its choice of either cheap and  harmful calories or hunger.

As Wendell Berry said, “Eating is an act of agriculture.”  Those of us with options can no longer pretend that our food choices have no consequences.  We have a responsibility to support the local food movement and to expand the market for this food.  Subsidies that allow the increased production of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils should instead be made available to people who want to produce vegetables and pasteured, free range animals.  We can no longer afford to ignore the externalities we support in exchange for cheap unhealthy food.  At least that’s the message from my ancestors – ALL of them.

Western Medicine
Like education for our children, we abdicate too many decisions affecting our health to the professionals. On the surface, this makes sense. The specialized knowledge, training, and tools are the realm of the expert. Western medicine has its place. With acute or mechanical medical conditions, Western medicine should be the default. I don’t want a Thai massage therapist treating my mother for a stroke. The surgeon who put my knee back together after I tore my quadriceps tendon, was great – the first doctor who diagnosed it as a tear of my patellar tendon, not so much. I do know that my Reiki wasn’t going to get ‘er done.

An article in The Atlantic Monthly titled, Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science profiled Dr. John Ioannidis – He and his team have shown in many different forums that “much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies … is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong.” He charges that “as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed.”

ProPublica has documented the “play for pay” that thousands of doctors engage in as they take money from Big Pharma as they push unneeded pills on their patients.

What Everybody Knows
I have many flaws but one of them is not a lack of epistemocratic humility. I have been aware of the limits of my knowledge for as long as I can remember and that has made me a seeker. My intuition and common sense dictate much of how I live my life. These things have informed my recent decisions about my diet and my family’s diet. As I mentioned in earlier posts, we are now eating Paleo.  We do this in an effort to improve our health, fitness, body composition, and quality of life. We hope, but have no proof, that this will also improve our longevity.

Yesterday, during leadership training I was conducting for the Baltimore Police Department, we “somehow” digressed and had a brief discussion on nutrition. In my work with football players and police officers, I take some chances and bring up seemingly taboo topics like “love.” I had an easier time talking with these officers about the mythic quality of love as it applies to warriors for peace than I did when I tried to convince them to give up their bagels and “healthy” cereal.

They wanted to talk about the lack of significant human incisors for chewing meat and I talked about something more dangerous than incisors and claws – the human mind that developed with a diet dominated by animal protein that allowed it to create things like wheels, fire, and sharp pointy sticks. At least I did not have to worry about pointing out the health fallacies contained in most vegan arguments. Law enforcement vegans would definitely have been a shock!

In summation, let me share with you what I shared with them (courtesy of people like Robb Wolf).

• Eliminate gluten(wheat), rice and grain products from your diet
• Have plenty of spices in your pantry
• Limit or eliminate dairy (with the exception of  a little aged cheese and goat’s milk)
• Eat animal protein, vegetables, and fruit (limit the fruit if weight loss is your goal)
• Eat good fats in the form of olive oil, avocado oil, almonds, macadamia nuts, etc.
• Limit cortisol by meditating, praying, sleeping in a completely dark room, and learning proper breathing techniques
• Limit “chronic cardio” and engage in brief, intermittent, and intense exercise that includes resistance
• Walk 30-45 minutes every day

Please share your goals and questions!

Does anyone remember the 50 Million Pound Challenge? I don’t really, either. It was part of an effort in 2007 to address obesity in the Black community and the rising tide of preventable “lifestyle diseases” that are associated with it.

I See Fat People
When it comes to nutrition, the American people in general and the poor in particular have been lied to by the government which does the bidding of Big Agriculture. Big Box gyms and basketball courts capture most of the small number of my community who exercise regularly. Functional, lifetime exercise is a rarity. Information about a diet consisting of moderate protein, high fat (the good kind – yes, there is a good kind), and low amounts of carbohydrates gets washed away in a flood of high fructose corn syrup.

I’m Starting with The Man In The Mirror
Well, I intend to do something about it. First, let me say that I am not obese. My middle-age exercise regime now includes more flexibility and hypertrophy components but I will not leave the power exercises alone. The meal above – barbecued chicken with an apple compote, brussel sprouts sauteed in grass-fed butter, avocado, zucchini, and a pickle (helps with digestion), are representative of what the diet in my house has looked like for the past 3-4 weeks. The macronutrient profile is also representative of what our Paleolithic ancestors ate. This is also the diet that is more evolutionarily appropriate for our bodies. It’s the diet we will be following from now on with some concessions in the form of basmati rice and corn pasta for the younger children and guests.

Next Steps
Over the coming weeks and months I will be seeking platforms to spread the gospel of a Paleo lifestyle to people in poor communities. I have a feeling that I won’t get a lot of help from the established medical community since they are a subset of the triad comprised of politicians, pharmaceutical companies, and Big Agriculture.

Let me know if you’re interested in taking on a Paleo challenge involving exercise and diet. If I get enough people interested in being better than they are, I’ll find a suitable reward. We can join the world of Paleo pioneers covered by the New York Times; the exercisers who follow Movnat; and people like me, who became convinced by the case made by Robb Wolf in his recent book. This is the Internet at its best. Stay tuned and in the meantime, let me know if you’re in. BTW, watch out. I just got my All-Clad Slow Cooker!(NOT an affiliate link!)