Stupid Health People (A Rant)

Been reading a lot about health and fitness recently and I find the best information comes from individuals.  As soon as you put multiple people together and ask them to decide on something it all falls apart.  The funny thing is that all the individuals seem to agree with each other as long as you never ask them to admit to that.  But when it becomes a group or a coalition or a wellness center or some other collection of minds somehow not only do they not agree with the individuals but they do not agree with other groups.  I'm reminded of a saying I have seen on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and demotivational posters; "None of us alone are as dumb as all of us together."  There are variations but you get the idea.  The concept that as soon as people try to work together there needs to be a social system and a political system and hierarchy and everyone needs to put in there 2 cents.  With all the systems and processes hardly anything gets done after the easy ideas have been achieved. But worse that that is the idea that everyone must contribute something.  So that when things do get done it wasn't by the guy that came up with the ingenious fully formed concept.  It has been broken down and butchered and twisted until it's originator doesn't even recognize it anymore.

Lets get to what sparked this whole rant in the first place.  I've been researching a lot health topics recently and I started reading one about digestive health and it's relation to gas and bloating.  It started with a lot of good information the bacteria in your colon and the role they play in breaking down sugar and fiber that could not be broken down before. Wonderful.  Then we get to the part where they had to make some ridiculous claim.






"Vitamin dosages are critical in today's world since it's literally impossible to get the daily nutrients we need from the over processed food we eat every day"




Really now?  Define need please.  Need to survive? Well that can't be true because there are plenty of people living without it.  Need for the long term continued survival of the race? Need to fly? Okay that one I'll buy. All the people I know have eaten processed foods at some point and none of them can fly.  That word need that they all use aggravates me to no end.  I would even be slightly less irritated if they were trying to sell me something, but this particular site is not.  Then what do I need it for?  To enjoy my life?  I didn't even know I needed it five minutes ago.  The biggest irritation of all though is the fact that it never mentions what non-processed foods you can eat that will get you the vitamins you need to that you don't have to take supplements that they are suggesting.  This is of course assuming that the comment was aimed only at the processed foods being insufficient.  If the suggestion is that all food is insufficient that I want to know where the vitamins came from back in the day.  I'm picturing something like this

God: "Noah feed eat these each day and you will live well"
Noah: "What are they my Lord?"
God: "Oh I'm going to call them Fintstones.  Funny fictional family, kids are going to love them"
Noah: "Yes my Lord but what is this?" points at small yellow character
God: "That's Fred's best friend Barny.  He's my favorite because he so cheerful and lighthearted"
Noah: Opens mouth then closes it again. Long silence then "Yes lord"

-END RANT-

/Actuator/

Food to start

So I think I'm doing ok to get started but I'm a long way from where I want to be.  Friday night I went to the store and picked up a bunch of healthy looking things but I won't bother you with the shopping list.  The point is what was done with it. First thing was the standard default diet food. Salad. This one consisted of romaine lettuce, red and green pepper, baby bella mushrooms, red onion, and carrots.  This is where the purists say I ruined it with light Asian (aka ginger) dressing.  But like I said I am far from where I want to be and let's not dive into this all at once.

The thing to remember here is that I'm not doing this to loose weight I'm doing it to get healthy. We all know vegetables are good for you in general but do you ever stop to think of why? Just about every vegetable helps your digestion tract.  Let's not get into details but you all know what roughage does.  What you might not know is that many vegetables also help cleanse your liver. If you read my detox post you know that's one of the things I have been looking into.  You can find out more about liver cleansing foods here:
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/liver-cleanse-foods/

But obviously we cant survive on this alone.  Next was the part I was worried about.  I don't do marinades to often and when I do it's normally for a stir-fry of some kind.  So I marinated the other half of what I had put in the salad with a pre-made teriyaki, put it on tinfoil and brought it out to the grill.  We had a little bit of chicken left over from another meal already cooked so I threw that in as well.  While that was cooking I boiled some wheat pasta. Just in case the vegetables didn't work out, I put a little olive oil on that helped the Parmesan and Romano cheese as well as the garlic powder stick. (I'd like to point out that garlic, wheat, and olive oil are also good for the liver, which I didn't know when I was making it)  Thankfully the gill worked just fine as well.  Gotta say I'm proud of the first meal on this road.

I'm out of time for tonight but I'll try and run through my Saturday for you tomorrow.  Not quite as inventive but equally delicious.

/Actuator/

Detox

So I’ve been working on getting in shape for a long time now going through the normal ups and downs of working out consistently and then slacking off and losing the results.  I’m on my up-tick again and hope to stick with it this time, or at least make it last longer.  My biggest goal is to see ab definition.  If I get that for a single day I think I’ll die happy.  I do a decent amount of crunchs: ball crunch, decline crunch, leg raises, and planks are my normals.  I’m about ready to move to weighted leg raises.

I know that it doesn’t matter how many you do.  You wont see definition without lowering your body fat percentage.  I’m working on it. According to a pinch test I’m down to 14% but I think they were being nice.  I want to get down to 10% but that is going to take a lot of effort.

Then I went to this free seminar on detox.  They explained how acid builds up in your system when your liver and lymphatic system can’t handle what you are putting in.  They also said that unless you are only eating all natural organic and living in the woods it’s bound to happen.  When the acid escapes it is called free radicals.  I had heard the term but didn’t know what it meant until now.  Those acids attach to you cells. Your fat cells in particular.  Then your body pushes water to those areas to keep the acid from damaging your cells. This water build- up is what causes or at least contributes to cellulite. (I’m not a doctor and I’m going from memory here)  The point being that in order to remove the water and acid you need to detox.

I bought in right up until they told me how much their product cost to complete my detox.  Sorry I don’t have a grand just laying around.  So after a lot of online research I fount there are many ways to detox that are cheaper and can get you similar effects as long as you combine it with healthy eating.  So I am going to try a wrap (not the kind you eat) that has alkaloids on it.  The theory is that the wrap will make you lose the water and then the alkaloids with remove the acids.  I know for a fact that the first part works because you can lose a couple inches wearing these things for an hour or so. But you can get similar effects from a steam room or other forms of dehydration.  Did I mention you are supposed to drink half your weight in water when your done?
So my question to you is what are your thoughts on detox.  Have you tried one? did it work? And is it going to get me that definition I so crave?

Hope I helped inform some people.  If your interested in hearing more about detox let me know.  I did quite a bit of research.

/Actuator/