I have been making some changes to my diet. Experimenting with a few things that I have learned.
One thing led to another. I saw the first video below about sugar that was interesting. My teeth had been hurting so I decided to reduce my consumption of fruit including dry fruit which is loaded with sugar.
Sugar
It seems like pretty much everything breaks down into sugar. Well not everything, but potatoes, bread, rice, grains, pasta, fruit, etc.
So what’s the difference between eating brown rice and straight sugar? Is it just the vitamins?
Time restricted feeding
Then I saw another cool video about time restricted feeding. Sounded kinda similar to the fasting I was doing for the last year or so on Sundays.
Well actually sounded more like the first fasting I tried the Warrior Diet (eating 4 hours a day).
Some of the benefits of that which appealed to me were a leaner body: less fat and more muscle. Apparently some studies of mice showed that just restricting their diet to eating in a window between 8-12 hours made them less fat even if they ate crappy food.
More interesting it also made them more muscular. So I have been mostly keeping my feeding within 10 hours and still fasting for 21-24 hours on Sundays.
I used to eat all the time. From when I woke up to until I went to bed.
Apparently eating many meals over a long period of the day isn’t as healthy.
She also made some interesting comments about sulphuraphane and the benefits of eating cruciferous vegetables.
Ketogenic diet
The first video with Gary Taubes mentioned this. I got curious and looked it up and then it showed up again. First with this video.
I guess your body can burn fat instead of sugar and carbs. There are a lot of benefits I guess to this diet. Lower inflammation, less fat, etc. It’s supposed to be good for fighting cancer as cancer cells can’t feed on fat or something like that.
Basically it’s a high fat diet, some protein and few carbohydrates – no pasta, no potatoes, mostly no fruit, etc.
I have been experimenting with this a bit. I haven’t been real strict yet, it’s been a little tough. I was gradually reducing carbs like potatoes, brown rice and sweet potatoes to none.
I guess it can take 6-8 weeks. It’s different for everyone. We’ll see. And I’ll post a future update.
I have been meaning to do this for a long time. I find pictures sometimes around the web that people have taken of me street performing and I thought it might be cool to put them up.
For the last 3 years I have been painting my face blue (or occasionally white), dressing up and going out into the streets performing and trying to make some money. I have been doing a bit of beatboxing, miming, and storytelling.
This was a recent interesting pic that was taken by Trevor Ryan in Chinatown. Those were actually people walking by, but it sort of looks like some paranormal activity or something.
It looks like I was trying to scare someone here. That’s pretty fun. I have seen some pretty fun things. Laughter is good.
I think most figure you are real, but sometimes you can catch someone off guard.
There’s a fair amount of picture taking going on. Which I don’t mind if people ask and if they tip something. Otherwise I don’t really like pictures.
That’s just me and although I may look kinda cool, but it’s just like normal for me. If you had people pointing cameras at you wouldn’t you get tired of it?
Maybe not. People are different. I am an introvert for the most part and can live without them.
Can’t imagine what it’s like being a celebrity.
I am not surprised some of these celebrities flip out and punch people in the face for it. Always ask.
Here I am telling a story that I made up. It’s about “my boat trip” to Taiwan and an encounter with a pirate I had.
This one is old school. It’s probably close to 3 years old. Those hats are cool. They’re great for keeping the sun and rain out. Guess that’s why many farmers use them in Asia.
When I lived in Tainan, Taiwan I took some kung fu classes. Downstairs was a guy who owned a t-shirt shop. He said his kung fu was making t-shirts.
That’s actually the real meaning of the word. Kung fu can be pretty much anything. It can be skill like a martial art, making t-shirts, coding, writing, teaching, playing golf, etc.
I find myself sometimes in awkward positions reaching for something sometimes and then ask myself, “how’s my kung fu?” or just notice that my kung fu is bad.
What’s my kung fu?
Nowadays it’s jiu-jitsu, art (scratching records, beatboxing, performing, etc.), yoga, meditation and ESLinsider.
3 years ago when I started jiu-jitsu I realized I couldn’t kneel without pain. I didn’t know what happened as I used to be able to kneel. But my left knee cap would catch and I couldn’t sit back on my heels.
In fact I used to do it when I did yoga. In yoga there’s a position called child’s pose that is similar. However, somewhere along the way I stopped doing that and lost that mobility in my knee.
I was kind of obsessed with kneeling though as everyone did it in jiu-jitsu, but I couldn’t do it without pain. Then I remember seeing some squatty potty videos and others about deep squats.
It also seemed like the natural thing to do. But that had become a little painful to do, but I decided that I was going to push through the pain a bit and deep squat more often.
FYI, I pretty much never sit on public toilets
Probably TMI, but…
I share bathrooms with many other people here where I live. So since I do I never sat on these toilets or touched them, but decided to go back to standing on them. For a long while I had been hovering.
I also started doing deep squats just here and there and gradually I found myself able to kneel in judo and jiu-jitsu.
My advice…
Do deep squats for your knees. It may hurt a bit, but if you do it consistently I think your mobility will improve.
I think it’s also good for your hips and low back.
Previously a doctors told me that it puts a lot of pressure on the knee. Like 50X or something. He sort of suggested that it wasn’t good, but now I can see how it benefited me.
And you can also sit on your knees on a yoga mat, rug or carpet. Bit by bit for a little longer each time. With time you mobility will likely improve.
This can hurt in the beginning, but if you consistently practice bit by bit I think it will improve.
And as the saying goes…
If you don’t use it you lose it.
I had done a bunch of rehab exercises which didn’t seem to do much or improve the mobility. Deep squats improved it though.
