Healthy lifestyle basic concepts - avoiding monotony and repetition

In this video I talk about some basic concepts, which are part of more natural way of living. In short the idea is that it was unlikely that our ancestors had 3 square meals a day and they rather ate and exercised in unpredictable and chaotic way. So, to emulate as close as possible that lifestyle, for which we evolved, we should try to avoid repetition and routine.

Also the primitive human never knew when will come next meal (if it comes at all that day), what is going to be and what physical activity will be required to get it. In the same spirit we should try to surprise more often our bodies with the food we eat and exercises we do.

Below follows excerpt from the video:

"In this video I'll be talking about the rigidity of the life styles we'd like to maintain. First my core idea of whatever I do is to avoid the monotony and repetition. In the case of exercising for example I'll have one day one or two hours jogging, another day will be simply a long walk. Next day will be lifting weights in the gym. Another day will be wrestling, kick-boxing and so on. The general idea is to avoid repetition at any cost, because we are not designed and our body waste quite fast if we begin repeating the same physical motion again and again.

Same goes for the food. Despite having few core components, like meat, fruits, vegetables and nuts, what I'm trying to do is to avoid repeating the exact type of food that I'm eating. For example one day it could be meat, another day it could be fish. I recently tried elk meat, which was very tender and with much better taste then the cooked version. The berries that I normally eat can be swapped with grapes, apples, mango, orange, kiwi etc.

Also normally I eat some kind of onion. This could be swapped with garlic. Sometimes I eat row eggs but I try to eat as diverse as possible types of eggs. For example instead of the normal chicken egg I eat quail eggs. Also there are many, many types of nuts which all have different properties and different chemical components. I have hazelnuts, almonds, pecan nuts and so on, and so on.

Avoiding the monotony and trying to make my life style as diverse as possible goes up to the point that once a week for example is OK to completely skip the paleo food and eat just cheeseburgers or other very unhealthy food which essentially can't do any damage and likely will be beneficial if eaten rarely.

Another thing that I'm doing is sometimes maybe once a week or once biweekly I'm having one day when I'm skipping eating at all. This is not at all harmful and after a while we you can get used to it and it could gives you boost of energy the next day.

Another important thing is that the amount of food that we eat to be according to the energy spent. Despite of eating healthy food if we keep overeating we can get very obese and exercise is not going to help us as we can see in the case of sumo wrestlers.

The other site of the spectrum we can see people who eat very healthy but don't exercise at all. They have the kind of the aspect of dead fish. Humans have to maintain a certain level of physical activity a day and certain level of energy consumed in the form of food eaten."

Ceviche - My simplified version

I this video I am showing how I make my simplified version of ceviche.

Ceviche  is a seafood dish popular in the coastal regions of Latin America.

The dish is typically made from fresh raw fish cured in citrus juices, such as lemon or lime, and spiced with chili peppers. Additional seasonings, such as chopped onions, salt, and cilantro, may also be added.

I am putting and mixing together chopped fish, onions, parsley, chili and black pepper. After that I am pouring on lemon juice and mixing it for a couple of minutes until the juice soaks and then I am adding chopped avocado and extra virgin olive oil and again mixing it lightly. And last if you want to try it but you are not used to raw food you can add salt, which will greatly improve the taste and by the way is the main difference between the taste of raw and cooked meat.

See more in Wikipedia and my raw minced pork dish

Natural Running - basics

What I am saying in this video is that generally speaking we should try to run bare-feet, because of the many positive implications it brings to the health and the overall well-being. Also I am explaining the basics of the correct technique of the barefoot running. In short the idea is that we should run on the outer edge and forefeet, which is the more natural way of running as opposed to the heel first strike technique, common between the modern runners. Applying these ideas should improve our health and we'll avoid many injuries and deformities caused by shoes and unnatural running form.

See more:
Health benefits of walking and running barefoot
My thoughts about jogging
Wikipedia - Barefoot
Jogging
Wikipedia - Endurance running hypothesis

Jogging - core human activity - the basics

Humans evolved to walk and run at low speed for long periods, so to compensate the drawbacks of the modern sedentary life-style we have to turn to the roots, and there is a lot of walking and jogging.

Its not necessary to do daily marathons, but 2-3 times per week for 30 min or 1 hour we must do some jogging and another 2-3 times per week for 2 or 3 hours we should walk. The best way to do this is to be barefoot or at least with some minimalistic foot-wear. While jogging, only our fore-foot should come in contact with the ground. This will teach us the correct posture and technique for natural running, so we can avoid pains, injuries and deformations, which nearly all modern people suffer.

Some food for the thought:
Jogging
Endurance running hypothesis

Paleo life-style - basics

In this video I am explaining some of the core ideas of my version of the paleo life-style. Mind that when we say "Paleo" it is simply rough approximation as most of the fruits and vegetables were pretty different even few centuries ago, but is the best we can do in urban setting. 

Essentially I am doing 1-2 hours of physical exercise a day, which consist of jogging between 30 and 60 min, several series of sit ups, push ups, squats, shadow fighting and more.

My daily diet consist of eating once (rarely twice) a day in the evening the following:

*grapefruit

*200-300g of meat (fish, chicken, pork, etc)

*half avocado scooped with spoon

*onion (garlic or something similar)

*juice from half lemon

*50g nuts (walnut, hazelnut, pecan, etc)

*random fruit or berry

*random vegetable

*banana

And as general note, most of the calories should come from meat

Below follows excerpt from the video:

I'd like to share some basics of my lifestyle. First I have to give you some background. Few years ago I used to be 120kg. Since then I dropped around 40kg which was about one third of my weight and I managed to maintain the muscles and improve my health with a simple combination of exercises and diet.

First I'd like to talk about the exercises. The basics are I'm doing everyday between 1 and 2 hours light exercises, which includes jogging between half and one hour, and some general exercises like kick boxing, push ups, sit ups etc. I'll describe in more details what and how exactly I'm doing in another blog. For now I'd like to concentrate on the other component which is the food.

There are several core elements that I'm eating every day – meat, grapefruit, banana, some fruits, berries, onions, nuts, lemon and avocado. Some of these thing may be changed in some of the days, but essentially that's all. I'll explain the reason in another blog.

The first thing that I'm normally eating is one grapefruit. It gives me a sense of fullness. The next is about 300gr of row meat, more often fish, with onion, lemon and half avocado. I normally eat after that some nuts, usually about 50gr and after that some berries, carrots. Some days I may eat one raw egg, which turned to be my favourite part. I like it's taste. Finally I eat a banana, which improves my digestion and generally because I like the taste.

This is my one and only meal most of the days and I'm eating it normally after 6pm. After few days you can get used to eat only one meal a day and all this is giving us much better sense of fullness then cooked food, hamburgers and so on. Probably the reason is that we've been design by Nature to eat this kind of things, without salt, sugar, and other processed food, and so our body doesn't receive wrong signals if we are full of if we have to gorge more for some reason.

Another thing that I wanted to say today is that I gave up smoking half year ago. I'm using Nicotinell lozenges in case I crave nicotine. The nicotine itself is not the bad part of cigarettes. The tar is. I feel big improvement in my health and well being.

These are the basics. In future blogs I'll be explaining in more details each one of the things that I'm doing and why I'm doing them.

Paleo diet - minced pork

I've been asked to show some dishes from my version of the paleo diet. I'll have another video explaining all components of that diet, the meaning of them, why I am doing it, how I'm doing it, but for now I'll show just couple of dishes that I'll eat today. First and main meal is going to be minced pork, which I bought from the local shop, fresh pork with fat, minced. Next component is going to be fresh chopped onion and pepper, and parsley fresh and chopped also. Also we'll add an egg and couple of spices, black pepper and paprika. First we mix the egg and the mince. The mince is about 200 gr and the egg is about 70-80 gr. We mix until it's consistent. We'll eat this row, but the taste is not really different of runny eggs. It's quite common food. Also the minced pork is quite common to be eaten row. There are many national dishes in Europe and Asia that include row mince. Add a handful of fresh chopped onion, parsley, chopped onion and a bit of chopped pepper. One of the issues of this dish for people who are not accustomed to the paleo diet, and are used to eat salt daily, is that it is tasteless. To overcome this we can add some spices like black pepper or paprika. We need to spent about couple of weeks eating only raw food without salt and sugar so our sense of taste could sharpen and we'll perceive the normal raw meat as quite salty and tasty. Mix all ingredients well. We'll have about 300 gr of main meal at the end.

Health benefits of walking and running barefoot

Recently I've got interested in the topic of barefeet running and walking in general. So, I made some research and after trying it I empirically confirmed for myself the stated in Wikipedia health benefits. Just to list a few:
1. The natural position of the toes if shoes were never worn is sprayed and this puts the centre of the weight of each feet exactly above the axis between the big toe and the heel and therefore diminishing all unnatural forces that bend and torsion the ankles, knees and hips. This actually leads to diminishing the pain and damage in all these relatively fragile points of the body.
2. Without shoes, the gait tends to be more natural, while running its easier to lend more naturally on the middle part of the feet instead on the heel and thus diminishing the forces and damage suffered by the knees and other parts of the body.
3. Without shoes, we can easily see that big part of the walking actually is how the big toe grips the ground and this makes us much more stable and in general trains and develops the muscles in the feet and therefore decreases the risk and severity of the injuries suffered.
4. Happen that the surface of which we walk stimulates the skin and nerves on the feet and make us feel pleasure, which by itself normally is sign we do something that is good for us.
5. Risk of athlete foot type infections is greatly decreased, because the feet are pretty well aired and dryer
6. Last, but not least, barefeet walking allow our skin to get in contact with the dirt and with this we allow certain number of environmental bacteria and allergens to enter in contact with our immune system and to "train it" and therefore make us healthier.

Comparison of an adult foot that has never worn shoes displaying natural splayed toes and (Right) cast of boy showing damage and inward-turned toes after wearing shoes for only a few weeks. Image courtesy: Wikipedia

There are also some minimal risks, mostly of injuries like cuts, but my experience says that this risk is so insignificant and so much out-weighted by the benefits, that is not even worth thinking about it.
Other then that, there are problems walking barefeet if the whether is bad and some other issues, about which I'll write in separate post and I'll try to find some solutions.

Sources: Wikipedia