Exercise is NON-NEGOTIABLE

by | Jan 14, 2013 | Exercise, How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Yet another copy of a post I just commented to at forum.lowcarber.org about exercise

KristyRusi Said:

So.. i’ve been reading my Atkins New Diet revolution book. (i’d slacked on that focusing only on getting induction down but as i’m done with my 2 weeks tomorrow i figured i should get crackin’) And i came to chapter 22 titled “Exercise: its Non-negotiable”

The very first line is ” Calling all couch potatoes: if you’re not getting regular exercise you aren’t following the Atkins Natural Approach. It’s that simple.”

(the chapter goes on to give reasons why and how much and what exercises to do, but non the less, it is non-negotiable)

The reason i bring this up is because i’m new, i want to do this right, and i’ve all but said that no diet works without the same key ingredients. reduction (in food types or quantities), staying on path (if you stop you gain, in all diet types) and exercise was my big question mark. I’ve assumed at some point exercise would be required even calorie reduction (which he also says YES you eventually if you stall may have to count calories too), no one can expect to eat a list of ingredients limitlessly and lose weight by laying on the couch. Maybe at first but not for a real long term goal. At least i know the book clears it up. (i know i know everyone said read the book >.<)

My biggest reason for posting, is that so many people make a big deal about how they did no exercise and lost all their weight.

Well, good for you. But it’s not realistic, and you aren’t following the plan per Dr. A. No matter what i wouldn’t have exercised during induction anyway i felt horrible, i still dont’ feel back up to my old energy level either, but for the future i want to give it the gung ho try, so i guess exercise it is. For me this only adds a bit of self doubt. Can i not eat carbs? sure. that’s easy… will i keep an exercise plan?… i dunno, it never worked in the past. It sounds like old times again (old long failed but never forgotten diets).

No one should promote this diet to work without exercise (or gloat giving a new person false hope). At least it makes sense to me now. At least the fog (not just induction fog) has lifted and i see it clearly. This isn’t about being Low Carb or Low Calorie, this is just a mind trick to get me to realize i can not be thin without sacrafice, and hard work. I can’t be a couch potato and reach my goals.

I guess i just needed reassurance that its okay to work this into your lifestyle slowly, and mold it to work for you food wise as best you can stand as far as eating, but as he said.. exercise.. it’s non-negotiable. *gag*.. I will say that i hope that this won’t be another failed diet. I hope this will be the one that worked for me. I hope that my attitude (though pretty grumpy and depressing verbally as of late) stays positive towards sticking with it and with that said…. here we go phase 2 bring it on.

 

My Response:

I used to do loads of exercise, mainly weightlifting and circuit training. The reason behind that was at the time, I needed to be strong for the job I was doing. Yet, the problem I found with the conventionally suggested diet was that while it indeed gave you the nutrients your body needed in order to make up the muscles that you are building up, along with it came a lot of extras that you didn’t need and this led to not just muscle gain but also fat gain at the same time. The picture however changed drastically when I switched to low carb, as I think I have mentioned elsewhere.

That was many decades ago and things have changed now, whereas once upon a time I was happy to spend an hour and a half, two hours in the gym building up my lovely muscles. Age, wisdom and the consciousness of time have made me realize that perhaps, those two hours could be better spent. Now, instead, I do 10 minutes of simple body weight exercises everyday. Things like push ups, pull ups, Hindu squats and that sort of things and I find it gives me more than enough strength to go through my day to day activities and I can still surprise some of the youngsters around me, able to lift things that they would only just look at; all that, without ever finding me in the gym.

For the last 10 years, my exercise of choice has been salsa and jive dancing. So you can imagine, I’m fully behind cnmLisa where she says exercise is movement and that can be as mild as a walk or something that challenges your muscles.

The thing about the gym is while, yes, it may challenge your muscles, it doesn’t really challenge the rest of you. Whereas, something like dancing means that you have to challenge your brain for remembering patterns of movements and so forth, stamina, (yes, I can dance from 7 pm right away through to 2 am), your sense of timing, your sense of balance and a whole host of other things.

But the really great thing about an exercise form like that is that it is social, you’re not just looking at the machines screen or something like that. You’re interacting with other real people and enjoying yourself. So if anybody’s got their mind to, why not take the challenge, why not go out dancing or find yourself another physically active yet social activity to join in with?

Hope that helps,

Mark

Pork (bacon)

by | Jan 14, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Meat Products | 0 comments

Here is another copy of a post I have commented to at lowcarber.org regarding meat products 

Liz53’s Post:

Excellent post, MarkMoxom. I’ve been eating primarily grass fed beef and free range pork and poultry since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006, with nothing but improvements to my health.

I truly believe the body is satisfied with less food if it is of high quality. It makes sense because, bottom line, food is fuel for us. The body is going to continue to signal that it needs food, and we will likely continue to eat, till its essential needs are

Stuart, you may want to check out eatwild.com They have a list of local purveyors of sustainably-grown meat and vegetables in the US and Canada, organized by state and province. You might find something close to you.

My Reply:

Liz53,

Thank you for that link. It’s an excellent one by the way. Another one you might consider is polyfacefarms.com. They have a fantastic program of raising food totally naturally themselves. Also they take on apprentices who then go off and start out farms and repeat the same pattern, naturally produced in the old fashioned time all that way.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Re: I’m Starting Again

by | Jan 11, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Meat Products, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Here is a copy of another comment I made at fattoskinny.net about a previous thread on weight loss

 

Here is the thread:

 

From: Itsoversugar

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve checked out prices online. They’ve always been more expensive than I could get locally. Where do you order from?

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From: Umpa

Welcome MarkMoxom! I am Umpa Dougs wife if I can help you please ask.  I have a column on the homepage where I can convert your favorite foods to fat to skinny friendly.Enjoy the forum

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From: TooSweet

Welcome to the forum MarkMoxom     I’m curious where you order your meat as well

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From: mouseissue

Welcome to the FTS family, Mark!!!      

We are blessed to live around a LOT of ranchers.

We buy our beef by the side and save a good deal of money compared to stores prices.
And we get the prime cuts too!… Those are the ones usually reserved for restaurants only. 

Tony

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My response: 

 

Hi everyone!

Thanks to Umpa, TooSweet and mouseissue for the nice welcome.

I’m now fortunate enough to spend a lot of my time in France so a lot of what we eat comes from the farms, literally, just next door all around us. Our chicken comes from Pernwal who is just across the lane. Our fresh eggs come from Petit Poulet who lived just down the end of the lane. In fact, virtually, everything we eat, vegetables, cheese, meat, you name it, is locally produced because we decided some time ago to make the effort to eat as cleanly as possible, by clean, I mean, free from preservatives and things like that, artificial flavors, colorings, and all those sort of things our body neither needs nor wants. There are two really good things about living in the country. One, you can see exactly where your food comes from and two, because your buying form the actual producers, you’re getting more or less, market prices. This can be typically to a third, or four, even half the price to what you would see the same type or produce in the Bio section of your supermarket or delicatessen in many cases.

So in answer to Itsoversugar, it’s been a while too since I actually ordered naturally raised products by mail order. Some months in fact, I’m now thinking about it, it’s even longer than that. Many of my circles who continue to live the urban lifestyle and they keep me upraised about what’s going on in various parts of the world. One supplier, I’d like to draw your attention to, and I have no connection to them, by the way, I just think they are a brilliant, brilliant operation, is Polyface Farms. They are based in Virginia, but I think they serve Virginia and Maryland but one of the great things about Polyface Farms and many others who follow a very similar pattern is that take on apprentices. Once the apprentice is qualified, they then go off and start farms of their own so you’ve got them in Ohio, Iowa, Oregon, Pasadena, quite a few places around that part of the States. The thing is they’re not alone. It really is a simple matter of going onto Google and  putting in the search term, firstly, “farmer’s market” and the  your local area or “grass fed beef” then your local area, county, state or whatever and you’ll find a whole hosts of different producers producing exactly the type of food that we as low carbers want to eat. If you got the opportunity to go to one that is near to you, you’ll often find that the price that you pay on the farm is a lot less than your paying mail order. The thing to do then is to get together with other people who would like to eat the way you do and buy, say, half a cow, or half a sheep, or that sort of quantity and divide it up. Another good thing about doing in that way is that, if you buy half an animal, you get virtually everything that comes with that half of the animal. They are also buying it a lot earlier in the food supply chain so you can guarantee its freshness.  And as just as mouseissue had said, you get the cuts that are often sold off to restaurants or specialist delicatessen. Where we are, they have a very, I’ll say, a curious system, but it’s not curious in many ways. It’s quite sensible. Quite a number of these small farmers all over Europe, in fact, will at certain times of the year, allow you either on your own or as a group to buy,  say, a calf and you pay for it  there on and it becomes your calf. You are the registered owner of cow number, whatever its ear ticket says but you don’t take it home with you. It stays on the farm and the farmer will continue to raise it for you. This is normally done through the grass feed season as well so you can be sure that most of its feed is on good, natural pasture. Once it has reached its table weight the farmer will also organize the preparation for table giving you excellent quality meat at a very reasonable price.

The main thing I’d like people to take away from this is that we don’t have to accept just what the shops have to offer, that with a little bit of investigation,  a little bit of tenacity, and not being shy to ask around, we can find some of the best food for our table and our families that is possible to find.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Get started Part 2

by | Jan 11, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Sensible Eating | 0 comments

This is a copy of a recent post that I have commented on at About.com Low Carb Diets about carbs

sunnydesertday wrote:

Thanks, Mark. Many people do eat the same foods over and over. I think it is a great idea to try new foods, cook new foods. It helps keep life a little more interesting. I am trying cauliflower “rice” and cauliflower “mashed potatoes” this week. I may like them, I may not, but I am looking forward to tasting the results.

I replied:

When I started low carb, I wasn’t going to let the few things I couldn’t eat be the limiting factor to what I could eat. Realizing that my diet up to that point had been fairly limited, I decided that I would start to look all around the world, metaphorically speaking, to find new things to try and new things to eat. So once a week, I designated a certain day when that would be the day I visited the culinary delights of a foreign land. So I got out my map of the world,  drew a line through as many countries as I could to try and circumnavigate the globe until I came back to my own doorstep. I visited France where I discovered the delights of beef bourguignon and so many other dishes. Spain, where I introduced myself to the delights of serrano ham and the delicious beef and almonds stew. Portugal for espetadas, then on to Italy for veal scallopini, only there, instead of using breadcrumbs to cover the veal, I used crushed nuts….. Really delicious!! And it was turning north, up through Eastern Europe, Germany, out through Denmark, across into Norway for a smorgasbord, right turn into Russia, well, I’m sure you get the picture.  You know, there are nearly 200 countries in the world, I think it stands at around 196 in the moment and I still haven’t visited everyone in the culinary sense and even if I only found 2 dishes from each country, it would be over a year again if I had one new meal every day before I visited the same country.

So, there’s a bit of a challenge. How many countries are you going to visit this year?

Hope that helps,

Mark

P90X

by | Jan 11, 2013 | Exercise, Fat Loss, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Below is a copy of the post at Jimmy Moore’s where I commented on regarding exercise while on a low carb diet

 

Here’s what greggers19 said:

Has anyone tried to do the P90X workouts while on a low carb, high fat diet? I am starting it today but wanted to know if someone on here has done it before and what to expect. I’ve done P90X before but it was when I wasn’t low carb, and I saw mild results, I wonder why ha. 

Thanks, Greg

 

My comment:

Hi greggers19,

I have to tell you, you’ll find some seriousrly brilliant resulsts if you do any type of exercise when you’re on a low carb diet. I remember when I first started low carb, I used to be a body builder and I would spend anything up to an hour and half, 4 or 5 times a week doing a number of sets. Now the concensus of opinion among many in the bodybuilding arena is that you can’t do low carb when you’re doing weight training. They says it zaps your energy.

Well, after a  few, maybe 6 weeks on low carb, the most amusing thing was is that towards the end of my time at the last gym I was at, the trainer used to follow me around and he couldn’t believe that I was doing the same sort of weights in the time I was doing them in, mind you, at that time, neither could I. So as ecocarnivore has said,  any exercise program works on low carb, I would change it, just slightly, any exercise program works better on low carb.

Hope that helps,

Mark