Saturday, October 24, 2009

Vegan Bodybuilding Diet

What Nutrition Plan Has Worked Best For You?

I am currently a Vegan (I do not eat meat and animal products such as dairy). I primarily eat like this because I am against the cruelty that these animals suffer at today's "factory farms." To eat meat and animal products is to condone the inhumane treatment that these animals receive at these farms. Eating meat and animal products would therefore be bad Karma.

I also find that maintaining my Vegan diet allows me to stay very lean in the off season and super lean during my contest prep.

I eat numerous small meals through out the day at approximately 3 hour intervals. A typical day of contest prep for me might be something as follows:

    Meal #1: 4 oz oats and a 1/4 package of tempeh
    Meal #2: 4 oz oats and a 1/4 package of tempeh
    Meal #3: 1/3 block of firm tofu with 1/2 cup brown rice and 8 oz vegetables
    Meal #4: 1/3 block of firm tofu with 10 oz vegetables
    Meal #5: 1/3 block of firm tofu with 10 oz vegetables

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Aligning your world

Is beauty important for your career when you are not beautiful?

Is curiosity important for your personality when you are a journalist?

What kind of person are you now?

What kind of person were you before?

What kind of person do you want to become?


The answer to these questions have more to do with our choices in friends than we ever might have imagined. What we must do to survive is quite different than what turns us into slam-dunk winners. What turns us on and keeps our interest is very different than workin' for the man. "Finding your bliss" is a new age saying that rings of spaced-out fairies and useless losers who have nothing better to do than hug a tree. 

Or does it? 

The path of least resistance to an object is certainly when it holds our attention.  Nothing holds attention of the average American better than passion addiction and fun. Regardless productive humans require leadership, skills and an interest in real education.  This ups the anti and allow for a more challenging game.  All this is great but without people we're fucked.  Right or wrong, good or bad extrovert or introvert... we need people. We want to admire useless dreamers but when it comes to the business of life and pursuit of human potential we need the best.  That's when the hypocrisy shows up and we become the mirror.

Is beauty important for your career when you are not beautiful?

Is curiosity important for your personality when you are a journalist?

What kind of person are you now?

What kind of person were you before?

What kind of person do you want to become?

The answer to these questions have more to do with our choices in friends than we ever might have imagined. What we must do to survive is quite different than what turns us into slam-dunk winners. What turns us on and keeps our interest is very different than workin' for the man. "Finding your bliss" is a new age saying that rings of spaced out fairies and useless losers who have nothing better to do than hug a tree. Or does it? The path of least resistance to an object is certainly when it holds our attention, and nothing holds attention better than passion addiction and fun. Regardless productive humans require leadership and human skills that up the anti and allow for a more challenging game. We need people. When this is so we can love and admire useless dreamers but when it comes to the business of life and pursuit of human potential we need the best.

It all has to do with the people you know and weather or not they will fully support you or subtly suppress you. The distinction is not always that clear. Morticia Addams once said "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc!" Which translates to: "We gladly feast upon those who would subdue us." Not just pretty words! They (The Adaams') had no need for others. We, however must align ourselves with honorable useful teams of people who know the game of life take our interests seriously, and who in very real terms would carry us, living or dead, home.  Who are your people and are they good enough ...really good enough to cut it when the mustard gets cut?

Reaching your potential is all about the people who live within your sphere of influence. The same applies to criminals in the "hood" and in Washington and in your world too. The South Central Gangs of Los Angeles bear a striking similarity to congressmen the "suits" on Wall Street and in the board rooms of Monsanto, Dow Chemical or even Google. Secret societies, exclusive clubs and informal but rigid family credo's enhance and structure beliefs that literally carry humanity and at the same time defines the modern human family spirit into the darkest corners of mob mentality. To be alone or on the outside of such human structures is to be truly alone. The absence of "we" in your vocabulary renders you powerless as a subject at risk of domination from any number of more powerful agencies whether it be a boss, a family, a business government or gang. Without the right people you're toast.

Watching life with the sound off while at some level hoping you will die during the commercial is who most people really are in this country. The lies we tell each other begin with the lies they tell themselves. Everyone is searching for "real" love and "real" people with "real" lives while taking less responsibility for their own reality as they often foist more upon their constituents, mates or family than they would ever consider taking on themselves. It is literally the emotional equivalent of a ponzi scheme where the takers take more than they ever intended to give. It is for this reason that choosing your friends, boss, the company you work for and your mate are the most important choices you will ever make. You are literally the Human Resources department of your life. You hire and fire your employers, you set the bar for friends and you create the reality of your world when you set the criteria to which, willing or not, the world must comply.

I must have missed the boat, in fact I know I missed the boat. I should have been a journalist. We can't all be journalists but we can push ourselves to tell the truth of our lives. We can tell the real story by tearing away the soft and comfortable lies that surround us as we slowly begin to reveal our true interests, our genuine dreams and the facts of our lives even the facts that speak to limits, fear and inspiration. Understood that daily life should be explored with energy and endurance at what ever level one is capable. And if you are one of those people who's life is spoken for by obligations commitments to the world and others I pity you. Or if you are a person who has fallen to depression or if you have lost faith or simply given up then your prison IS your life. The key is to know that it is not your fault.

In a world of excuses and shifting blame to anybody but yourself the key to surviving your lies is knowing that it is not your fault. Man is not an island they say. And the wisdom of the Addams Family writers makes it clear to wit we must celebrate our inner warrior as we feast upon forces that would limit us. When we shift our view of life in such a way we begin to crack the walls of our prison, much of which was built by others who profit upon our passivity.

When we know the game, if we survive the instruction manual, we can then live life unencumbered. The "sheep", the "walking dead," The "silent majority," all must wake. I myself must continually awaken as I shake life down for all it is worth - what ever that means to me, or what ever yours means to you it is those whom we choose to walk through it all that matter, and frankly... nothing in life matters more.


Orange Juice, what you don't want to know.

May 14, 2009

Squeezed.jpgAsk an Academic: Orange Juice

Alissa Hamilton is a fellow with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and the author of “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice,” which comes out this month from Yale University Press. An edited version of my conversation with her appears below.

Why orange juice?

In general, I am interested in how the food-processing industry is affecting the growing of major agricultural crops in the United States. It struck me that orange juice would be a perfect case study, because so many drink it, and the product is essentially processed oranges.

In your Introduction, you write that most orange-juice drinkers are “misinformed about what it is they are drinking.” Is it the “processed” part that most consumers are misinformed about?

That’s part of it. Most are surprised to hear, for instance, that the big brands, which market their product as “pure” and “simple,” add flavor packs to their juice to make it fresh. But people are also misinformed about the growing of juice oranges. A flight attendant once told me that he gets far more requests for orange juice on flights to Florida, because there’s still a strong association of oranges with the state. Yet most of the juice he’s serving now comes from Brazil, where there are fewer environmental regulations, and labor and land for growing oranges are cheaper.

Woah. Back up to the flavor packs. Why doesn’t orange juice taste fresh naturally, especially if it’s “not from concentrate”?

Flavor packs are fabricated from the chemicals that make up orange essence and oil. Flavor and fragrance houses, the same ones that make high end perfumes, break down orange essence and oils into their constituent chemicals and then reassemble the individual chemicals in configurations that resemble nothing found in nature. Ethyl butyrate is one of the chemicals found in high concentrations in the flavor packs added to orange juice sold in North American markets, because flavor engineers have discovered that it imparts a fragrance that Americans like, and associate with a freshly squeezed orange.

Freshly squeezed orange juice tastes fresh naturally, and some supermarkets do sell it. However, “from concentrate” and most “not from concentrate” orange juice undergo processes that strip the flavor from the juice. The largest producers of “not from concentrate” or pasteurized orange juice keep their juice in million-gallon aseptic storage tanks to ensure a year round supply. Aseptic storage involves stripping the juice of oxygen, a process known as “deaeration,” so the juice doesn’t oxidize in the “tank farms” in which the juice sits, sometimes for as long as a year.

Are these recent inventions?

The tank farms that have come to play a central role in the large-scale production of “not from concentrate” orange juice are a fairly recent innovation. In the nineteen-eighties, Tropicana’s solution to providing a year-round supply of Pure Premium “not from concentrate” juice was simpler: it stored frozen slabs of freshly squeezed juice in above ground tunnels. In the early nineties, it replaced most of these tunnels with the cheaper aseptic storage tanks. Some say Tropicana used to taste better. Considering the degree to which aseptically stored juice must be doctored to taste like orange juice, it’s not surprising that those who have been drinking Tropicana long enough can taste the difference.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to ask you this, but what was your take on the Tropicana redesign controversy?

The controversy was mostly over aesthetics. I don’t have much of an opinion about that, and don’t feel entitled to one, because I don’t buy the product. However, I do have something to say about a statement I noticed on the top of the new and now discontinued carton: “squeezed from fresh oranges.” Although meaningless as is (I would hope the oranges Tropicana squeezes for its juice are fresh), it looks and sounds a lot like “fresh squeezed” and could easily be read that way by supermarket shoppers. It isn’t the first time Tropicana has tried to reinvent its juice from the outside rather than the inside. In the late nineteen-eighties, it came up with the phrase “not from concentrate” to distinguish its pasteurized orange juice from the cheaper “from concentrate” or “reconstituted.” The idea was to convince consumers that Tropicana’s juice was a fresher, less processed product than reconstitute, and therefore worth paying more for. Then, unlike now, the effort was successful: within five years of the name change, sales doubled and profits almost tripled.


Sunday, October 4, 2009

Thoughts on health attitude and culture from the soul

I can't believe it's not Summer! Early October always represents a shift in local weather here in Southern California. It is such a beautiful place but "winter" snaps in exactly now, in early October. Now is the time we pull out all the vegetables that have stopped producing or feed the ones that can eek out a few more lame tomatoes or peppers or whatever.

Next year I am planting HOT peppers and now that I know they do not die in coastal winters it is even more exciting. Chili peppers are really good for you! And they spice up food without the use for salt. I really have to focus on planting beans so I get a big harvest this fall. The snow peas are already six inches high and I have to cage them somehow.

As you all know Americans are reklessly in pursuit of the truth. So in this vein I may go see the Michael Moore movie "Capitalism" and get all upset. Certainly I can take a Xanax before paying my nine dollars to see his "not for profit" movie. I wonder what Moore does with the profits? Have you ever heard of a Michael Moore Foundation? There might be one but I never head of it!

All is calm on the homefront. Taters and beats are baking, lots of organics in the fridge and six weeks under my belt on the Gerson Therapy. I am wondering how to simplify the therapy to make it work for people who have no access to organice or as many organics as well as those who can not afford it? Some things you have to pay for I guess. At the end of the month I'm going to tally up how much I spent at Trader Joes Whole foods and the Ocean Beach "Co-Op" called Peoples Market. I never saw a more profitable "Co-Op." Sure appears to be rather profitable to me considering their prices SUCK.

Locally produced foods usually means expensive because we are supporting local farm families who have to pay all the bullshit taxes and fees and real estate nonsense we all have to pay. So stuff gets expensive. That's why the quality at large chain stores is poor. They ship GMO, artificially raised on life support crops from one distant place to their stores in large trucks that pollute adnauseum. Then expect us to eat what looks good but which is in reality a slury of chemically enhanced crap lacking in nutrients and trace minerals and God knows what else.

I think I would rather eat less, support local farmers and cut out all the middle men including the small chains and "Co-Ops" like Peoples. Also at People's Market they say their quality is better than Whole Foods. Well, it might be true but their produce looks like hell sometimes. Not "old" just tattered and lacking in some way. It might actually BE better that the glistening organics at Whole Foods. Still whole foods has the largest and most beautiful butter lettuce I have ever seen. And it tastes great.

The coolest thing about eating organic and drinking distilled water on this diet is when you go eat something or drink something fake. They taste gross. I rinsed my mouth out with shower water yesterday and it tasted putred. I spit it out and shook my head like a dog that just ate peanut butter. It was dis-GUSTING. Now I am usually pretty easy to please bu this time it was no contest. I have to put in a household water filtration system. Gary is NOT going to be happy about that when I ask him to pay for it. Yeah, that'll happen.

I find myself purifying the air in my house and the water I drink. Not even the reverse osmisis system that cost almost five hundred dollars does a good enough job to clean up my water in terms of what is required by the Gerson Therapy.

The last word on whether or not people should pursue the Gerson Therapy is this: If you are getting achey stuffed up allergic, cranky without explanation, depressed, arthritic, or have low spirits all the time you are probably toxic. Your liver is probably not processing properly. The vegetarian diet, the liver cleansing and the remarkable ability of caffeine to help the liver dump toxins is an effective way to clean up your act. But you must have a good juicer. Centrifical
juicers destroy most of the desired properties of juice. Juice must be ingested immediately after juicing. There is something about this fact that works. They really do not know why. It just does. Time after time Max Gerson tested these theroies. We can thank him for his amazing work and his many discoveries. He cured Albert Schweitzer and Alberts family of many chronic and terminal ailments. That is why Schweitzer called Gerson "the most preeminant genius of our time."