weekend wind down

Will and myself skated Willing park in tamaqua yesterday. Small park, has a nice box and small pyramid, couple of quarter pipes. Simple yet fun, especially considering it was my first time skating anything but my cruiser board for a long time. Before I could go though, I had to stop at homebase to get my new setup. Talked with Po and caught up a little bit, also got some sick new nikes. Got home, set up the board, and left to meet Will. I was slightly excited to go skate, as this picture will tell you.





Was very happy with how the session turned out. Did tre flip over the hip, took a few tries but did it. Even had a couple of ledge tricks still in the bag, crook and back tail both first try. Muscle memory is a funny thing. They can forget too though. After skating and really firing a lot of fast twitch muscles, my legs are quite sore tonight. It's been a long time since they'd done that sort of thing. Its a different sore altogether then what I was getting after cycling or lifting. Going to continue skating very carefully and use it as a way to make my ankles stronger. Not taking risks or jumping down stairs anymore, thats for sure. Here is a few photos we got from the goPro. More pics to come once I upload the mark II pics.

my k grind

will 5-0 180



and why not end with a clip from the good old days of when I was hucking myself down stairs or off of whatever else I could find.

warning: diet/health/sitting rant. Read at your own risk

My job is to be on the phone, and sell health, prescription, and/or dental insurance plans to people over 50 years of age. This is proving to be an extremely difficult thing to do on a daily basis while I continue on my quest to better health. A good portion of people I talk to have clearly neglected themselves and their bodies throughout their lives and are now in need of dire help, some as young as 50, taking 10+ prescriptions a day. Perhaps this is part of the reason I've decided to reconfigure my diet. Eating more as nature intended so my body is able to do the things I want to do not just now, but many years down the road. It is genuinely scary to hear people who are 60 years old, that sound like they are 90, who have multiple chronic conditions, and are unable to get health insurance. On the other end of the coin, it is very uplifting to speak with someone in their 90s who is completely with it and able to take care of themselves and their business.

Sometimes bad things happen to good people regardless. Disease, sickness, accidents, what have you. I understand that. At the same time though, I very much feel that you create your own luck to a certain extent. It is beyond safe to say that the 90 year olds I talk to who are totally competent did not abuse themselves like the 60 year olds that are near death. The word abuse here can mean many different things, but for today I'm simply talking about 2 things: diet and a sedentary lifestyle. 

In the words of Professor Arnold Ehret, "There is no animal that abuses food such as man." The 3 meals a day concept is complete nonsense. The quantity of food an average restaurant serves for a 'meal' is well beyond what the stomach can handle at any given time. Natures intention, as far as food is concerned, is to give us enough energy to function. Simple. So many people seem completely ignorant to the fact they are destroying themselves with the way they eat and how they act, or don't act. Entirely too many people go to work(much of them sit at work), then come home and sit in front of the TV. Sitting wreaks havoc on our bodies and can technically be called a cause of death. I strongly suggest you research it yourself and I'll even start you with this, a simple info graphic with some figures on how badly sitting is killing us.

While I consider myself to be on the path to better health, I do not consider myself to be very healthy. In my eyes, someone who is very healthy has at least an average range of motion in all their joints. Another thing I consider to be extremely vital in being healthy is posture(also very neglected). I've come a long way from where I was in this regard and continue to be conscious of it on a daily basis. While on the outside I may appear to be healthy simply because I'm not overweight, it's just not the case. I have limited ROM in my hips, ankles, spine just to name a few, as well as chronic pain in a few of those areas. Golf and my lack of knowledge of posture created my back issues, skateboarding with little to no regard for my body for 10 years is how my ankles reached this point, and working in a call center is what has created my lack of mobility in my hips and spine from sitting too damn much. Even as active as I am outside of work, sitting for that many hours is extremely detrimental to the body.

At the same time, however, I am extremely grateful for my body and all of its flaws. It presents one hell of a challenge to restore and rebuild it to what I consider to be good health. I feel I've taken a lot of the right steps so far on this journey and am extremely proud of what I've accomplished. One thing I would like, however, is to see more people take an interest in themselves and their own health and well being. If we work together and are able to support each other by taking a path to better health, it will be easier for all of us. I see way too many people, some of them close to me, that seemingly do not care, or do not see the reality of the situation. Eat at least a somewhat balanced diet, exercise a fair amount, don't sit too much, or you will eventually die because of it!

"Why don't you take a good look at yourself and describe what you see, and baby, baby, baby do you like it?"

Sounds better when you listen to Robert Plant wailing it(misty mountain hop), but even written down it still holds some meaning.

To follow that, I ask you, do you care enough about yourself to do anything about it?

what have you..

I'm a huge fan of the Big Lebowski. You'll start to see that with subtle references from time to time, so if you ever see one, please, feel free to finish the quote or drop a lebowski line. Much obliged.

I've got a couple of clips and photos from riding at the lehigh gap the other day. It was a strikes and gutters day for sure. I'm about halfway through making the clip, but here's a photo for now! About 28 degrees, 30 mile an hour gusts..    Laughable man, HA!!

Virginia visit

Went to virginia this past weekend for allises birthday. Had a great time of course but my body is letting me know about it already. All part of the experiment I suppose. Ate quite a bit of delicious food and today I woke up feeling quite gross. I'm anxious to get on with my next phase of the experiment, which will begin tomorrow. I'm going to continue with a mainly mucusless diet, although I'm going to add some grains and possibly eggs on workout days here and there. I'm confident in the knowledge I've gained so far and look forward to seeing my body transform further. If I can eat the way I did for those 12 days on my first attempt, I'm certain I can go for much longer then that and see even more results. Going to skip out on yoga tonight as my body is too dehydrated and could certainly not handle it. I may go to tomorrow evenings session depending on what my body is telling me at that point.

Psyched!!!

Today was an amazing day.

A phase

Today I write neither in victory or defeat. Not happy or sad. Not in, out, up or down, but simply from an objective perspective. As I sit here mindfully enjoying my chicken ceaser wrap, I've got a few reflections on the beginning phase of this diet experiment. These notes are mainly meant for myself, but obviously your free to read them, otherwise it wouldn't be posted :)

Eating the way I did for the past two weeks has opened my eyes in numerous ways. Namely the amount of food that is actually necessary to fuel the human body from a mechanical standpoint. If you look at the body as a machine, it was certainly not 'designed' to have 3 meals a day, or for them to consist of the things we Americans decide to fuel them with on a regular basis. Fruits and vegetables have almost entirely lost their place in our diets when they could really be the only thing we need.

The next phase of my experiments will continue as follows. Meat and dairy on a limited basis, I just love food so I'm not giving them up entirely anymore. These foods are mucus forming and ultimately slow down our bodies and obstruct, as professor ehret says, our bodies from circulating properly. Continue with eating lots of leafy green vegetables and fruit to continually cleanse my system. Fasting will become another integral part of the cleansing process and I will eventually work up to multiple day fasts.

In summary, my body feels spectacular at the moment, just having had my first chicken ceaser wrap at I consider a fairly long time. It will be interesting to see if there is a noticeable change in my body tomorrow when I wake up. Until next time, I'll continue the trend of a random photo, I like the golf theme at the moment. I like this one because of how the tee looks, and because I hit an awesome drive on this shot!

Thoughts

So far I'm 11 days with a mostly mucusless diet- fruit, veggies, and nuts. There were just 3 times where I had bread, albeit on a veggie and hummus panini. Today, however, was a challenging day. Lot of doubts creeping in my head which I'd figured would start a little sooner. The fact it was a rainy day and I didn't have much to do made it that much more difficult. I was really craving a chicken ceaser wrap, or even a subway sandwich that I was somewhat addicted too for awhile, but I resisted. Allise made me feel a little better saying that I should be having doubts and that I'll probably feel like crap but that it's part of the healing process. That is normally what I would tell myself, but for some reason today I was having a hard time saying it, so it was nice to hear it from her. So all in all just another day and another salad. Going to do some strength training and see how many squats and pushups I can do before working out my busted ankles with the theraband. If I'm going to continue getting stronger and becoming more balanced, it needs to start from the ground up, so I need to make a better commitment to my surgicled feet. For no reason at all, I'll end with a random video clip from a round of golf my dad and I played at iron lakes, enjoy.