forestG @ forestG @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

Took me longer to read the article than it took me to learn how to ride one :P

Nice read though!

I don't know what eating like a little piggy means in your situation, but in mine, that meant going upwards of 5000 kcal surplus than my normal intake. Still mostly from healthy food (like nuts, I am addicted to nuts XD). Which I never really obsessed about, since I tend to use great amounts of energy some days of the week (cycling alone can go upwards of 3000 kcal some days). I really don't like diets either. All I 've ever done, and still do, is try to understand what is good for me, why and in which amounts. I find food (all aspects of it, even having pots with the herbs I use most often when cooking) one of the greatest joys of life, along with movement (simple stuff, walking, running, cycling, swimming). And while I find their relation fascinating and I experiment a lot (been on keto for a year or so), I prefer joy and understanding being the guiding forces, not simple discipline and blindly following rules I don't completely understand towards goals I don't really care about.

There are a few things I 've learnt over the years that are pretty easy for me to follow, especially since I 've seen how badly they affect my mood when I don't.

• Super processed foods are not worth it (i.e. energy drinks).
• Processed foods cannot be a foundation for health, but won't harm me once in a while (i.e. flour products).
• I don't eat sugar. But I don't obsess about it either. i.e. prefer water melon to ice cream, but I get the latter a few times in the summer.
• Some carb sources can be very dense in nutrients (i.e. oats & legumes), don't mess my insulin levels, so they make a good foundation as a carb source. They are also cheap, easy to prepare, and there are so many of them.
• Super easy (takes less 1 minute to prepare), super dense in nutrients daily breakfast with oats, nuts, seeds, cocoa, cinnamon, raisins. It's packed with things I won't need to care about later in the day (i.e. magnesium).
• No supplements (part of the "eat real food" axiom).

Even though I can handle carbs well (mostly thanks to decades in different sports and a pretty active life), I like to think that respecting the metabolic pathway our body uses to metabolize them will allow me to keep using it without issues later in life. Besides just feeling better when I do (no cravings, no crashes, no insulin related side-effects).

Overall I have a pretty good sense of what each food I eat contains (in every sense you can think of, macros/micros/phytochemicals/lipid types/amino-acid profiles/energy/water/fiber -its been almost 2 decades I look up every food I introduce) and do 2 simple things. Reloading glycogen stores (slowly) between days of long rides on the bike is ok. No bike or very diminished activity after a few days? Turn to foods that mostly contain fats (which also allow me to skip meals way easier) with fresh vegetables (limited carbs). Which is what I tend to do in weekends.

I enjoy cooking, or even preparing the materials I will cook beforehand. Got my own tofu, which I tend to make close to 3kg (really hard pressed, the way I like it) each time and lasts for a few months divided in portions, in the freezer. My own tempeh and seitan. All low (close to zero) carb/ low energy protein sources. These and eggs, are really easy to prepare in stir fries and can be really delicious.

Btw, I went from 96kg to 84 in 5ish months following the stuff I just wrote. Flat stomach isn't something you lose or get with one meal, it takes bad habits to lose, and good habits to maintain. And I am not mentioning flat stomach as something related to the image of the body. I am mentioning it as an indicator of health. Having your vital organs take up the space they need to perform optimally, especially during movement, feels great.

Finally, if you read this far, don't beat yourself up! It's a learning process and it looks like you are doing fine. Don't rush it either, habits take time to form, but can last a lifetime. The more you develop one good habit, the less effort it requires, freeing your focus to form the next one. Don't try to change everything at once. And it shouldn't feel bad, or else it's not sustainable. Takes time, but it's totally worth it!

Well, I thought I should omit the first line of the introduction (which contains the number) for the same reason you pointed out in your initial comment. What kind of study has 5 person sample with pretty much no control? I debated myself (english is not my first language) whether I should use the word "study" in the title, or an another word, like observation or something. But they call this a study in their article. Besides, if taken at face value, it's not prompting people to do something unhealthy (moving a little more than zero), doesn't push some magic thinking towards a super processed food (or supplement, or drug), so ..

Not the 3 am, or stoned or whatever. Most of us have been there :P It's the "not going past the second sentence but posting a comment anyways" habit that feels bad to me.

what the comparison would be to people who did not go through bedrest and were constantly active through the decades

I am curious too, but the more I look for such studies the more it becomes apparent that I won't find them. Looks like there is not much motive to study what prevents our health from deteriorating..

Well, at least people living away from urban environments, usually have a few examples of this. Active persons, refusing to remain idle for too long. You know.. that person who was still standing, fully functioning (well, with some arthritis :P) and able to tend to a garden in his 90ies?

the potential impact office work will be on a portion of the population

If jobs were good for us, we wouldn't get paid to do them.

You can work construction, be active all day, but end up with serious debilitating injuries of overuse. You can work in an office, and get all kinds of underuse issues.

As long as most of us have to work, we need to find ways to balance what our kinds of jobs do to our bodies. Long before we go to doctors for fixes, in systems that have already broken down. A very clear (and becoming more and more clear) example of this, is insulin resistance. The liver of an average person can hold something around 120g of glycogen, which is way more than most of sedentary people consume in carbohydrates daily. It doesn't take much before the system starts saying "no more triglycerides, all vital organs are cramped in here!" and starts doing all kinds of less than good compensations for the extra energy coming in from this metabolic pathway. Our muscles that hold that absorb glucose and turn it into glycogen do not share it with other body cells (like the liver does, i.e. by feeding the brain and all other body cells that require glucose through blood). If you don't move, they don't break it down to glucose and use it. If they are full, they don't absorb glucose from the bloodstream. So, even if they can hold like 500g of glycogen, how many meals of carbs before they are full? 2? 3? 4? Excess carbs from that point on become triglycerides (fat). It's such a simple concept to grasp..

What is sad, is that while usually kids do not have to work many of them stay inactive anyways..

Tiny indeed, especially if it were to draw general conclusions. But it doesn't.

I am glad that you wouldn't get worked up about the fact that one of the most important markers of health of the human body quickly deteriorates when you don't move at all. I wouldn't either. The fact is so obvious that it should be common sense.

What is interesting in this study, is the follow-up, on those few people. Not just the very rapid decline of their cardiovascular systems shown initially, but the comparison of the decline shown 30 and 40 years later. Even if those 5 samples are outliers (maybe they are the worst cases, maybe they are the best cases, we can't know, 5 is too few), the comparison remains impressive.

But maybe its just me.

As a cyclist I have to say, this is so bad and on so many levels that I couldn't stop laughing. Many bike lanes are made poorly, but this is clearly one of the worst I 've seen.

Besides, if one does not see certain actions, those actions might as well not be happening at all. If only there was a way people who cause the greatest harm to control what gets reported in mainstream media, effectively shifting people's attention away from the harmful practices of their businesses..

As a tall guy who wanted to read and write poetry and also enjoyed moving my body a lot, which included dancing while being quite shy, I 've been called "closeted straight" when I was young.

I agree with everything you wrote, especially with the books > videos. Beside the space a book provides for the author to express himself clearly, it is also a quite active mode of engagement with content, since in following the narrative, imagining and understanding it, who we are is actually quite important too.

Oh, and Fahrenheit 451.. what a great book!

Elon Musk tweeted on his official account on Sunday that Twitter would be changing its logo to an “X”

Am I the only one that thought of house Bolton ?

Some don't need the carbs though and that's not as easy as getting the proper amount and kind of aminoacids when going completely plant based. If you have the time you might find this interesting.. The number of people that have a messed up body when it comes to carbs, is beyond impressive.

I am commenting on the "healthy" aspect. Healthy, sometimes is not just about adequate.

100g of wheat gluten is almost 80g of protein. Which easily provides the amino-acids most legumes have in lower concentrations. Besides seitan which is very easy to make from wheat gluten, tofu, tempeh and many other plant based (and really easy and cheap to prepare on your own, in large quantities and store in the freezer, I have a drawer in mine full of them) foods in some traditions that are even low in carb content for people with insulin resistance. Or just low in calories so you can cook them whichever way you want with whatever else you want to add to your food. It's not really hard to actually do it.

Being "not flabby" has more to do with your understanding of how insulin works on the body than it has with anything else, even activity levels. Especially in western societies. And its pretty damn hard to think properly about your food, even though its scientifically clear those in charge are pushing shitty guidelines to the people. For example, as you can see here :

Conflicts of Interest: First-ever systematic review of the extensive financial conflicts of interest on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Findings: 95% of the 2020 committee had at least one tie to a food or pharmaceutical company; Over half had 30 such ties or more; USDA does not disclose conflicts of interest, despite a National Academies recommendation to do so.

I just watered my plants on the balcony. I noticed that one pigeon had taken a shit near one of the pots. Then I remembered that neighbor that feeds tens of them before they fly to bombard every balcony near him. I started feeling some kind of frustration. Then I opened this thread, saw your nickname. Started reading your comment. Negativity started going away. A laugh escaped near leg day. Cool.

On topic, there are quite a few reasons why women are better the longer the distance gets. Which is very nice, since ultra-marathons are one of the few sports that are not yet super-tainted by commercial interests and steroids. One of the few clean sports, and women are better XD

The little time I spent looking for information on persistence hunting, I didn't come across any convincing arguments against it. That's why I commented the way I did in my first comment. But I like the idea very much.

As for the gym bros, all I have to say, training for pleasure instead of training for pain is way more sustainable in the long run! ;-) No hate though, something is better than nothing. I guess.

This article attempts to provide some reasoning.

As for the neighbouring area, since it's mentioned near the end of this article, a related fact from wikipedia:

Notably, opium production in Myanmar is the world's second-largest source of opium after Afghanistan, producing some 25% of the world's opium, forming part of the Golden Triangle. While opium poppy cultivation in Myanmar had declined year-on-year since 2015, cultivation area increased by 33% totalling 40,100 hectares alongside an 88% increase in yield potential to 790 metric tonnes in 2022 according to latest data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Myanmar Opium Survey 2022[283] With that said, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has also warned that opium production in Myanmar may rise again if the economic crunch brought on by COVID-19 and the country's February 1 military coup persists, with significant public health and security consequences for much of Asia

More often than not, ethnic disputes are just leverage used by people in power to achieve their goals.

Besides the brutality of mentioned in the OP, there have been tens of deaths in the area during the past few months.

If persistence hunting was really happening, female bodies might actually be better suited for the task.

Our ancestors probably weren't eating horses in cool climates though. At least not very often! :-)

I think you might enjoy Walden from Thoreau.

For most people, eating bugs is only natural.

So, while we globally enjoy this heat wave, most of us hoping for lower temperatures. While some discuss the political aspect of this, which really is large, already established, economic interests resisting alternatives. I am just going to quote something near the end of the article.

Insect farming is arguably much more efficient than cattle production. One hundred pounds (45 kilograms) of feed produces 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of beef, while the same amount of feed yields 45 pounds (20 kilograms) of cricket.

Yes!

I find that foraging wild plants and mushrooms, educating myself as much as I can about the ecosystems I have access to, and actively locating patterns of plants and mushrooms when in nature, really enhances this experience. Helps me with the perspective too.

Cycling, outdoors. The longer I am holding the handlebars, pushing the pedals, the quieter my mind gets. It's not long into each ride before I completely lose track of time. All the while enjoying natural scenery, reaching high summits of uninhabited areas near my town, exploring the area in a manner that all the natural beauty I can perceive gets strongly imprinted into my memory -my heart is pounding. I really love cycling.

Foot immersion, especially if you are going to sit somewhere for hours (i.e. office chair), can be really helpful. Has been for me during a heat wave (temperatures inside the house well over 90 degrees) without a/c. It's quite easy too, as long as you have a large enough medium that can hold enough cold water to cover your ankles.

Well, it certainly challenges many aspects of how I think about the very-long-ago past. Looking at the contents of the book and the work of David Graeber in general, this just became the book I will start reading after I finish the current one. Thanks for the very interesting suggestion!