8 tips to healthier living

[bivonic]

I picked up this book I\'ve been reading, Unlimited Power by Tony Robbins. It\'s a very good read, I just read a chapter entitled, \"Energy the Fuel of Excellence.\" He talks about how he gets by on only 5-6 hours of sleep a night, mostly due to his diet. 6 keys to living healthy,

- breathing exercises: think yoga, inhale for a 7 count, hold breath for a 28 count, exhale for a 14 count 10 reps 3 times daily, if you cannot work with those parameters then scale down the counts but keep the 1:4:2 ratio.

- eat water rich foods & have them make up 70% of your diet (in the morning, make fresh juice & consume it up until noon), when you eat fruits always eat them on an empty stomach & never after a meal otherwise it ferments in the stomache. If you look to nature, the strongest animals are herbivores - Elephants, Gorillas, rhino\'s - every seen a muscular vulture? you get the point

- effective food combining - examples of BAD combo\'s: meat & potatoes, cheest & bread, milk and cereal (!), fish and rice. Those combos are totally destructive to your internal system & rob you of energy. Different foods are digested differently. Starchy foods require an alkaline digestive medium (initially in the mouth by the enzyme ptyalin), Protein foods require an acid medium for digestion (HCL acid & pepsin). It is a law of chemistry that two contrary mediums cannot work at the same time. They end up neutralizing each other. If you eat a protein with a starch, digestion is impaired or completely arrested. ADVICE: Eat only one condensed food at a meal accompanied by a salad. A condensed food is any food not rich in water. While you\'re sleeping your body is working overtime to digest the incompatible combinations of food you\'ve put in your stomach.

- law of controlled consumption - eat less more frequently

- the principle of effective fruit consumption - Fruit is the most perfect food, it takes the least amount of energy to digest & gives your body the most in return & it\'s 90-95% water. You must always eat fruit on an empty stomach, fruit is not primarily digested in the stomach but rather the small intestine, if your stomach is not empty it cannot get to the small intestine.

- protein myth - eating meat for protein is one of the worst things you could do. One of the by products of protein metabolism is ammonia, meat contains high values of uric acid which is one of the body\'s waste products, the kidney\'s extract uric acid from the bloodstream and send it to the bladder to be passed out with the urea as urine. Dairy products - main effect of milk on the body is it becomes a clogging, mucus-forming mass that hardens and clogs and sticks to everything inside the small intestine, making the body\'s job that much more difficult (cheese is worse, it takes 4-5 quarts of milk to make 1 lb of cheese) Pizza, brie, yogurt, ice cream - bad, bad, bad, bad. Take a frozen banana & put it through a juicer to create something that tastes & feels just like ice cream but is totally nurturing to your body. Cottage Cheese - contains Plaster of Paris (calcium sulfate), No kidding, it\'s allowed withing federal standards, although it\'s against the law in California.

That\'s all I have for now, oh yeah my own personal addition. Take more naps! Like 30 minutes to an hour when you get off work, or anytime you can squeeze it in. In the military they have the soldiers take a short rest break (10 minutes or so) for every hour of intense exercise. Studies have been done ages ago about labor intensive occupations. Taking rests in between strenuous intervals resulted in higher productivity compared to working 8 hours straight.

Oh yeah one more I got out of another book, this applies to studying or doing intense thinking at work. Take a 10-15 minute break to let your subconscious effectively \"digest\" all of that information your conscious mind just absorbed.

[Andy]

Comments ...

breathing exercise: focusing on your breathing is a nice way to achieve a relaxing surface meditation like experience.

water rich foods: The idea is nice, foods are good for your health but the comparison is lacking one essential point ... humans aren\'t herbivores ... on the other hand ... go tell a lion or a bear that he\'s a weak wimp and see in how many parts he\'ll tear you apart [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img].

effective food combining: Though the idea of \"seperation food\" is really nice (you\'d have to leave the salad to each meal out because it\'s another group then i.e.: meat), I am highly in doubt this stuff makes any sense. Evolution took helluva time to give us the ability to digest almost everything at any time. It\'s harder to digest a heavy combined meal than a smaller amount of what you call \"condensed food\" combined with \"light\" food. But that has other reasons, it\'s harder to break solid foods than water rich foods to digest them, that\'s all.

law of controlled consumption: That\'s right. That belongs to the upper point, your body will have less work to break the ingested food, you might as well leave the point above completely aside and spread your meals to 5 to 10 units, this alone does the trick.


I don\'t have enough background information to comment the \"protein myth\" part. Maybe someone else has.

Your \"nap-addition\" ... this will draw the energy from your body ... There\'s a cultural merged nap in the mediteran society. (The so called \"siesta\" in italy for example) It\'s basically a nap around noon (after lunch) that\'s between 30 mins up to an hour. Studies have shown that sleep at any other time or of a longer period leaves you in a less productive state for the rest of the day! There\'ve been even cases in which some people weren\'t able to be as productive after the \"siesta\" because they\'ve been of a different decent (It has been worse in nordic peoples afair). I might add that I\'ve been in the military for a quite long time and nobody made us have a short break every hour.

[seadove]

As usual, Bivonic and Andy chipping in some of their best items.

Thanks.

[img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[bivonic]

Just some additions, there is a lot of detail covered in the book...

- Breathing exercises - more to cleanse the lymph out of the cells by bringing more oxygen into the body (athletes are shown to have much fewer cases of cancer due to the fact that exercise improves their immunity systems & they provide more oxygen for their cells).

- I\'m willing to follow his advice on food combining for 30 days & report back my results, worst case I have a more healthy diet. By condensed food he means instead of having a steak & a potatoe (or french fries), have a steak with salad & steamed vegetables for one meal and for a different meal you can have a baked potatoe or two with a salad. I know I personally do not eat enough water rich foods, heck I\'d be surprised if I take in more then 1-2 servings per day. What is the RDA for fruits & vegetables? Something like 8-10 servings? I plan on getting a juicer soon & will follow that advice for 30 days as well (nothing but juice up until noon). Funny I just spent close to $200 on all of these body building supp\'s & now I\'m considering pulling a 180 on my diet. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

- I think one of the points he was trying to make is that while we do need protein to an extent, you can get all the protein you need without eating meats, also taking in too much protein can be detrimental to your health (perhaps if a sedentary person takes it in without proper exercise).

- I\'m a firm believer in a nap after any large meal, or at the very least don\'t go exercising. Your body has enough to deal with in trying to digest the food you just took in. Not sure how naps can rob you of energy, maybe it slows down your metabolism & when you wake up you are not as motivated? I love taking power naps after work, even if it\'s just lying down & relaxing for 30 minutes without dozing off - kind of like a meditation I guess. I had read about the short breaks in the military on physically strenuous exercises, but I\'ll take your word for it. I also read about productivity studies of men that used to lay railroad tracks (a long long time ago). The person doing the study altered the routine of one of track & tie movers by having him take a 15 minute break between 45 minute intervals & after doing so his productivity went through the roof, I don\'t remember the gain in productivity but it was huge 85-100% improvement if I remember correctly (maybe even more), let me look it up in my Da Vinci book, I think that is where I read it (7 steps to genius everyday - hmm can\'t find it, maybe some other book had this info). Just another quick comment from that book, Da Vinci was a vegetarian & it was said this guy was \"superman\" strong. According to this book about him he could bend horseshoes with one hand! Additionally witnesses say he stopped horses at full gallop by catching their reins.

[seadove]

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I\'m a firm believer in a nap after any large meal

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I don\'t have to \"believe\".I just doze off after a large meal.

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[Hungry]

Hiya bivonic.

Interesting post. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Excellent point about the breathing exercises, everyone should do them.


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- eat water rich foods &amp; have them make up 70% of your diet (in the morning, make fresh juice &amp; consume it up until noon), when you eat fruits always eat them on an empty stomach &amp; never after a meal otherwise it ferments in the stomache. If you look to nature, the strongest animals are herbivores - Elephants, Gorillas, rhino\'s - every seen a muscular vulture? you get the point


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I agree completely with Andy. Those animals have digestive systems that evolved to efficiently digest plant matter. Far more efficiently than we can. We\'re not herbivores, we\'re omnivores. The proof is the digestive system. Herbivores have very long digestive systems, mainly in order to process cellulose. Humans are incapable of processing cellulose, which is present in most plants. If you tried to eat grass, for example, without juicing it in a machine, you wouldn\'t get much nutrition out of it. Carnivores have very short digestive systems, mainly because meat is *very* easy to digest (much easier than most plants). Humans have medium sized digestive systems, and it can digest a wide range of foods.

Also, picking a weakling carnivore/powerful herbivore to illustrate the point just doesn\'t work. I\'ll counter your elephant/vulture with a tiger/caterpilla. See, it works both ways. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

The water-rich foods thing is good though, the water in those foods is generally much cleaner and healthier than the polluted stuff from municipal water supplies, so the more you eat, the less tap water you drink. Gotta be good.


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- effective food combining - examples of BAD combo\'s: meat &amp; potatoes, cheest &amp; bread, etc etc

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Food combining can really help people with sensitive digestive systems. Similarly, not drinking liquids with meals (and therefore dilluting digestive juices) can also help. People with strong digestive systems probably won\'t notice much difference with either, but it can\'t hurt, and may help in the long run.


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- the principle of effective fruit consumption - Fruit is the most perfect food, it takes the least amount of energy to digest &amp; gives your body the most in return &amp; it\'s 90-95% water. You must always eat fruit on an empty stomach, fruit is not primarily digested in the stomach but rather the small intestine, if your stomach is not empty it cannot get to the small intestine.

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Fruit is a wonderful food, and yes it is best eaten on an empty stomach (especially very sweet fruits like melons). But don\'t think that means humans are naturally fruitarians or anything, because fruit simply doesn\'t supply all the required nutrients that most people need in the right amounts. Of course, there are always exceptions. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Some people thrive on a fruitarian diet.


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- protein myth - eating meat for protein is one of the worst things you could do. etc etc

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Sorry, it\'s just not true. Vegetarians have published all sorts of claims over the years to try to convince people to stop eating meat. Things is, many of their claims are just not supported by scientific evidence. And certainly not supported by human evolution. Protein and fat are actually very *easy* for us to digest, contrary to some claims. Fruits are generally easy to digest, vegetables vary, and whole grains are very difficult. Stuff like grass, leaves etc are indigestible to humans.

Regarding milk, it\'s true that milk produces a great deal of mucus in many people, but that\'s because most of the milk available has been denatured through pasturisation and homogenisation. Unfortunately it\'s very difficult to get clean raw milk these days (and it\'s illegal in some places), but clean raw milk does not produce mucus, and is very healthful and nutritious. Refined carbohydrates are far worse for \"clogging\" the digestive system. Ever mixed white flour with water? It\'s glue. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Oh yeah, here\'s an interesting site to read if you\'re interested in this dietary topic: http://www.beyondveg.com


Finally on this topic, Dr D\'Adamo\'s blood type diet is a very interesting read. Basically, he claims the different blood types (A, B, O, AB) have very different dietary requirements, and more importantly, that proteins in foods can interfere with our immune system. I won\'t go into it here, but essentially he claims that O\'s are primarily carnivorous, A\'s are primary vegetarians, B\'s are omnivores, and AB\'s are weird omnivores. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Those are just general classifications, not strict rules. For example, he lists many recommended meat sources for A\'s, so he doesn\'t support the idea that people shouldn\'t eat meat at all. Worth a read for a different perspective.


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That\'s all I have for now, oh yeah my own personal addition. Take more naps!

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Naps are always good. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] Pity more employers don\'t realise this. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]


Hungry

[Elana]

It\'s rather simple. Don\'t eat crappy carbs, eat whole foods, get a juicer and use it, do yoga, pilates or your choice of exercise daily.

[Hungry]

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It\'s rather simple. Don\'t eat crappy carbs, eat whole foods, get a juicer and use it, do yoga, pilates or your choice of exercise daily.

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Well said. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


Hungry

[MaxiMog]

Don\'t forget the good ol\' Omega fats!

[Elana]

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Don\'t forget the good ol\' Omega fats!

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I sip on my nasty Flax seed oil everyday. Blech [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
I hate fish.

[B2C]

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Don\'t forget the good ol\' Omega fats!

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I sip on my nasty Flax seed oil everyday. Blech [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
I hate fish.

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Dear, are you drinking Flax oil or Fish oil!?!?! Pleeeeeease don\'t drink fish oil unless you have serious masochistic issues! Look into Flax gels if you can\'t stand the taste BTW, or maybe some fresh Barleans or Udo\'s...

B2C

IMHO, the Tony Robbins health advice above is \"nice\".

[Elana]

[img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] Read my post silly. I am drinking Flax seed oil because I don\'t eat fish. Fish has the omega fatty acids.

[Mtnjim]

\"Read my post silly. I am drinking Flax seed oil because I don\'t eat fish. Fish has the omega fatty acids.\"
I think he meant take caps instead of drinking [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] it. Not anything about fish or flax (could be either).

[Elana]

Ohhhhhhh....my bad. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

I have been drinking it for years. It\'s pretty gross, but I like it better than the caps, because I think it is fresher. It has to be refrigerated, and only lasts a few months.

[B2C]

Well Elana if you absolutely have to drink it please go with a good brand ie. Udo\'s or Barlean\'s. The rest IMHO is crap.

B2C

[Elana]

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Barlean\'s.

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That is what I use. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[B2C]

Good deal! You may want to give Udo\'s a try if you can find a bottle sometime, IMO it tastes a bit smoother than Barlean\'s, but I\'ll stick to my caps! [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

B2C

[Hungry]

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It\'s pretty gross, but I like it better than the caps, because I think it is fresher.

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Nah, it\'s the other way around. These oils oxidize very easily, which is why they need to be refrigerated. They still oxidize in the fridge, just more slowly. The oil in capsules doesn\'t oxidize readily because it\'s sealed off by the gelatin. I\'m not sure how much oxygen gets through the gelatin, but it\'s a whole lot less than if it\'s exposed to air like the stuff in a bottle.

Biggest benefit of the bottled variety is that it\'s more economical.

Also, taking it with some vitamin E is generally recommended because it reduces the amount that gets oxidized in the body (before it gets used).


Hungry