risk, reward, and waterfalls

in the gift of fear, gavin de becker argues that “true fear is a gift. it is a survival signal that sounds only in the presence of danger. yet unwarranted fear has assumed a power over us that it holds over no other creature on earth. it need not be this way.”

or some such bullshit (wikipedia…fuck you it’s a source). this means that the fear we feel every day when crossing the street, riding the elevator, or going outside your miserable apartment is not a ‘feeling’ or an ’emotion’, as we often think of it.

thanks, google, for justifying skipping work today!

instead, we feel fear as a response to the brain registering a risky situation. this causes a feeling of aversion to the subject and steers us away, thereby prolonging the lives of many throughout history.

until college

the thing drunken frat boys and the monkey men we all are and should aspire to be have in common is this destructive mindset. something inside us, when faced with a challenge, wants to surmount the fear.

my most recent challenge?

paradise falls. if you’ve glanced at my workout log (and you should, since i’m embarking on a new fitness challenge which i will get to later), you may have seen pictures of this place before.

a refresher.

the lighter colored rocky outcropping to the left of the falls is the challenge. the first time i’d been here, it was with a friend. i jumped then. i returned alone yesterday and stood atop the falls for a good five minutes, thinking about whether or not i should do it. i was alone this time – if something went wrong, i may not make it out alive. maybe the water level had changed. was this water safe to be swimming in, anyway?

as i stood there, hikers would stop and watch. a couple, a mexican family, a jogger. the little mexican boy yelled up to me and asked me if i was gonna jump. his dad made a tarzan noise. so i did it.

and i wouldn’t take it back. i ended up climbing the rocks for another jump before heading back home. to get back to the original topic, the fear involved with that jump was not legitimate – unwarranted fear had assumed a power over me. i faced it down and took the risk anyway, proving myself better. this is nature’s kegstand – this is what men used to do (and when i say ‘men’, i mean it as ‘all mankind’) to show off, show up, and face down fear. is it stupid? yeah, it’s stupid, and it’s led to plenty of deaths before. the skill of knowing your limits is important as well. but there is something to be said for facing down fear and coming out on top – you feel you’ve gained something tangible, even though you haven’t.

so maybe next time you drive by a frat house on a friday night and see frat boys acting like cavemen outside, you should commend them. maybe they are gaining something you’re not.

ps – about this fitness challenge. this is in response to a mark’s daily apple forum thread, and it sounded like a good idea. there are two things that i have done very poorly in eating moderately or not at all – dairy (in the form of cheese or yogurt) and coffee. so, for the next month, i will be cutting out all vices in my diet, including coffee, dairy, and dark chocolate. that is, once i finish off what’s left of this pound plus bar. i would say i can start on sunday, and updates will probably be on my workout log.

dark chocolate: HOW dark?

today i want to discuss something everyone can appreciate: dark chocolate.

somehow i feel like i couldn't get away with that face...

now, i know the the darker stuff can be hard to handle at first, but trust me: once you go black, you never go back.

alright, enough of this.

the common trend in candy advertising is to go darker these days. every major candy bar has now released a new dark chocolate version – meanwhile, the media is appraising dark chocolate as a veritable health food. the intention may not be expressly stated, but the implications are there: are these new candy bars now healthier for you due to their blackness? should we fire our old convenience-store standby and switch?

it ain't right!

the obvious answer is this: neither option is very healthy. even if the chocolate casing were somehow better for your health, the insides are still terrible for you. the chocolate coating, though darker, may not be more healthy for you after all. fuelthefighter, the only non-real-life-friend i have sent to my phone, reports this bit of information:

Dark chocolate needs to be at least 75% cocoa for the flavonols to have a significant beneficial effect…
Chocolate that has undergone alkalinization or “Dutching” can have its flavonol content reduced by as much as 80%…

before we get into the implications of this, let me explain why your chocolate-related decisions just became a fucking math equation, for chrissakes.

chocolate is made out of a few ingredients: cocao solids, some sort of fat, and powdered sugar. sources tell me that the european standard for dark chocolate be made of 35% cocao solids  or more. as a point of comparison, milk chocolate is required to be only 10% cocao solids in america.

sources.

“so, that’s settled, but why should i care about flavonols?” simmer down, i’m getting to that. ” Recent research shows that chocolate can provide natural health-promoting substances called flavonoids. Since flavonoids seem to help prevent heart disease and cancer, the idea of eating chocolate sounds like a tempting and delicious way to better your health.” This article goes on to debate that no, chocolate is not a good replacement for fruits and vegetables, another good source of flavonoids.

msnbc: telling you what you already knew and calling it news since 1996

the overall point here is this: just because your chocolate bar says “dark” on it doesn’t mean it’s any better for you. even if you make sure to buy a plain bar with 80% solids, you are still eating something pretty bad for you – the only difference is that it has an extra boost of antioxidants. so, take it for what it’s worth: dark chocolate should still be a once-in-a-while indulgence, but it doesn’t hurt that there is at least a small benefit to spending a little more on the fancier, more dark bars.

wrusslin’

allow me to preface today’s update by saying that i am myself a grappler at a semi-competitive level (albeit at the end of a long hiatus which prompted this entire blog). i’ve won and lost, but mostly my time in brazilian jiu jitsu was a time when ‘fun’ and ‘exercise’ were synonyms in my life. so get past your opinion of rolling around with sweaty, muscular men, and approach the topic with as open a mind you would any exercise advice.

“studies” have shown (i put “studies” in quotes there because fuck you do your own research – or is your google broken?) that societies have been engaging in sport combatives since before history was a thing. not only that, but animals do it all the time, in play or in anger.

remember when the discovery channel was cool?

not only does grappling develop your prowess in graps specifically, but it also betters your conditioning for the functional use of one’s muscles in general. think about it: if you want to be able to lift a car, you practice lifting heavy things. if you want to be able to fend off attackers, you flex your choke arm.

'choke' arm

beyond self defense specifically, the act of grappling for sport uses your muscles in a functional, dynamic way. in order to grapple and be successful, you need to master key body movements which require your body to use muscles you forgot you had. additionally, grappling of all sorts (jiu jitsu, judo, greco roman wrestling, etc.) claim their spot as ‘the only sport which is both aerobic and anaerobic’. while this may not be necessarily true, you will definitely notice yourself becoming stronger in body, heart, and lungs if you grapple regularly.

if you’ve never grappled before, then you should think of attending a free class at an area school. some schools even offer three or four free days – it varies from school to school. be sure to live grapple at the end of one of these sessions, as light or as hard as you feel comfortable. but do yourself a favor and pick a higher-ranked partner – they are less likely to break your arm than a spazzing white belt.

even if you decide the pursuit of a gym membership isn’t for you, you need not drop grappling from your fitness plan altogether. remember wrestling with your brothers, sisters, or friends growing up? why does that have to stop being fun. if you have a work out buddy, suggest a wrestling match. you don’t even have to try (and probably shouldn’t) for potentially dangerous submission holds or joint locks – just try to pin the other guy to the ground. continue this for rounds – five two minute rounds with a minute’s rest is a good start. go light, don’t try to hurt each other, and pick up the intensity as you learn to not feel completely clumsy.

i assure you, you will feel like you’d never worked out before after a long sparring session, but you’ll have never thought about it during the work out. grappling is fun. you make friends. the group mentality of the school drives you to not let your teammates down or look like a sissy who skips classes. as you progress and gain recognition from your master, trainer, coach (or whatever you call him), you will feel like you’ve really achieved something.

if you think you look silly, that’s fine. but these guys could have kicked your ass.

the absence of evolution

if you understand the general concept of evolution then the idea of not evolving may sound pretty bad to you (unless you’re playing pokemon).

fuck! now you'll never learn thunder!

to the general masses, ‘evolving’ is something we are constantly doing. all living things are constantly in competition with each other to best all comers for whatever food, light, water, or reproduction opportunity may present itself. apple too high in the tree? don’t worry, your genes will make your offspring taller! can’t afford to take a vacation? some day, we’ll have sprouted wings to fly wherever we want! dropped a pen and don’t want to pick it up? in just a couple hundred generations, we’ll be able to pick it up with our massive, prehensile wieners!

a man can dream...

anybody who has taken an intro biology class, however, understands that evolution does not work like this. the uninformed assumption is that evolution occurs in order to better suit the organism to a certain task (ie – the giraffe’s neck grew long to reach the highest leaves on the tree). the truth is the exact opposite – evolution occurs when the limiting and challenging factors of an environment favor certain random traits in an organism (ie – the giraffe’s with shorter necks could not reach their food source as readily as those with longer necks and eventually died out). evolution is not so much an intelligent, intentional process of your genealogy responding to the outside world, but the outside world favoring those with the traits that most easily deal with its obstacles.

outside the human realm, evolution is a painfully slow process. it takes generations for these random mutations which change the course of a species’ existence to occur. however slow the process may be, there have still been some observable instances of speciation during the course of human history (and probably many more than what is referenced here).

humans have been recognizable human for over 130,000 years. there are studies which suggest that, despite this fact, we are indeed evolving at an incredible rate. this is most likely due to the fact that humankind, which began somewhere in africa, struggled through an ice age in a group of caves then spread outward rapidly to new and very different continents across the globe. as they reached new landscapes, climates, and ecosystems, their bodies were greeted with new challenges to overcome. stouter branches of the human genome, for instance, were better suited to the harsh winters and mountainous regions of europe than their more tropical counterparts. darker-skinned individuals dealt more easily with heavy doses of sunlight (but needed more of it in order to gain a sufficient amount of vitamin d) and therefore stayed near the equator in warm climates, and so on.

i was reading digg articles about a week ago and came across this. in the article, a study’s findings that those of african descent have a higher belly button, and therefore center of gravity, claims to explain the dominance of these people in footraces. since the center of gravity is higher, and the act of running is essentially a controlled fall where the legs both propel and stop downward motion, these people ‘fall’ at a much faster rate than caucasians can.

this makes perfect sense – humans who left the tropical climate of africa and ventured into the cold, white north faced fewer apex predators who could chase them down and eat them. in africa, however, where getting eaten by a goddamn cheetah is an everyday worry, the ability to run fast is a much more favorable trait.

all of this was a whole lot of words to get to my overall theory – though we may be evolving rather quickly as a species on our respective continents, the fact still stands that evolution only occurs in response to diverse, natural stimulae. today, we are increasingly homogenizing the world toward the western model.

now you don't have to leave the country to be a wal mart greeter!

as we approach this model globally, a model which removes nature from the equation as we alter landscapes into fields of wheat, corn, soy, etc., we are going to be removing the only thing which can legitimately move our species forward – exposure to the world which is rapidly changing around us. we’ve seen plenty of evidence that our way of life is not sustainable. when the reserves run out and the world has changed drastically around us, how can a species which has removed itself from the natural equation re enter and expect to survive?

some may respond to this by suggesting that reproductive selection will help – women favor men with big muscles. if only the strong survive, then clearly these strong men will easily deal with a post-western world. however, this is not so. first of all, the mass amounts of muscle deemed desirable in our society is completely unfeasible in the wild. shortly after going into nature, a man who eats 120 grams of protein a day to fuel his muscles through two-hour gym sessions will be hard pressed to find the same sort of controlled, isolated lifting and steady flow of nutrients his body needs to remain the same size. in nature, big is expensive and muscle men will quickly wilt down to a more manageable (albeit fit) size.

men and women both prefer a slender mate. those predisposed to fast metabolisms and slim figures, then, are selected for while the more stout individuals are selected against. any amount of fat in our society is deemed bad, and unless your abs are on full display, you’re a worthless slug with no hope of ever mating.

i think his face says it all

again, we’re wrong. these two studies (1 & 2) suggest that having a little extra flab can work as both insulation towards environmental and emotional stresses as well as generate life-giving hormones.

you remember hormones, right?

so, what have we learned today?

1. evolution does not happen in response to a need and never will – it’s more a dying-out of the unfit than a creation of the more-fit.

2. we have seen a lot of evolution in the human chain in the fossil record, due to massive exposure to new environments.

3. we live in a society which seeks to separate us from the natural world which could easily isolate our genes from being altered by a changing earth.

4. we’re doing very little in the way of making up for the lack of exposure to nature’s woes on our own.

i’m not saying we have to give up technology or stop advancing our culture. i’m merely saying, yet again, that fitness goes far beyond how you feel or look. fitness is a broad term which suggests an organism’s ability to survive when left to it’s own devices. as a culture, we foresee little ability to survive. we must make choices and efforts to better the fitness of ourselves and our communities if we wish to keep up with the world as a species- otherwise, we’ll be left far behind by evolution.

the hunt (cardio/conditioning)

if you have read my first post, you know that the human body, as is a squirrel’s or a tick’s, is a machine which evolved in order to complete certain survival tasks. it was not, however, made to do the bench press, bicep curl, or cable row.

or this.

as a disclaimer, these exercises are not ‘bad’. they are good. do them. but your body wasn’t made for these sterile, controlled motions alone. you need to be dynamic, explosive, and imaginative in your sessions to be a real monkey man. that’s what this blog is about, and there is plenty of information about strength training elsewhere on the web (for beginners, try stronglifts).

in today’s workout, i try to mimic a hunt in order to help you not only burn calories, boost your metabolism, and work your muscles but also to focus on visualizing the act of hunting for motivation. so, without further ado, we begin the hunt.

spot the prey

have you ever walked through a forest, seen and heard signs of a potential dinner everywhere, but just never been able to actually see any of these animals (let alone get within striking distance)? when it comes to perception, humans are at a distinct disadvantage. animals smell us out long before we ever even know where they are. if animals in the forest stay well clear of one of us, then animals outright avoid a human encampment. in order to find any dinner, we have to create some distance.

begin the hunt with a moderate run for 5 minutes. get your blood flowing, keep a steady stride, and concentrate on your breathing. these will probably be some of your last relaxing breaths of the session.

the chase

here’s where it gets interesting – you’ve seen a rabbit, a deer, a squirrel, or some other woodland creature. you’ll never beat it in a foot race, but maybe you can tire it out by sprinting behind it, letting it run off ahead, catching up, then doing it again.

sprint as hard as you can for twenty seconds. rest for ten. do it again. try to get eight sets (those in the know can see that, up to this point, this is essentially a tabata session). after the third, you’r sprint will probably feel more like a jog. push through it. imagine that animal just a few yards ahead of you. after you’ve done eight bursts, things get heavy.

the kill

unless you’ve been running with a spear, you have to wrestle this animal and kill it with your own two hands.

like a man!

to simulate this, we’re going to go through a series of bodyweight and, if you have the equipment, kettlebell/dumbbell/waterjug/any-heavy-object-you-can-get-a-good-grip-on exercises. here’s how it goes:

burpees

pull-ups

burpees

pull-ups

push-ups

squats

pull-ups

for this portion, you’ll notice i haven’t prescribed any number of reps. know your limits, then push them off a goddamn cliff.

your limits are wearing a stupid sweater anyway

if you’re in decent shape, try 25 for everything but the pull-ups (for these, you may only be able to do four or five and that’s ok). the key is to push yourself, keep your heart moving, and try to keep breaks at ten seconds or less. oh, and maintain good form.

not a push-up.

if you have something heavy you can hold, like a kettlebell, dress up your session a little. hold it while you do your squats. do ten snatches for each arm between each exercise. substitute a set of push-ups or burpees with ten or fifteen turkish get-ups on each side. or, ditch the entire prescription given above for a kettlebell workout (there should be a few ideas linked through the kb wiki i just linked you to). for most kb exercises, you should be able to use dumbbells or even a jug with a handle and filled with water.

follow the trail

now that you’ve inflicted the fatal blow, your prey (especially large game) will have limped off to die. but, being the supreme hunter and tracker you are, this is no issue. just stay on the scent/blood trail until you catch back up, and use this as a chance to cool your nerves after a job well done.

this is just like the first section of the work out – keep a light to moderate pace and jog for 5 minutes.

carry home the kill

when i work out, i’m usually a brief walk away from home, and this is intentional. if you’re going to mimic a hunt, then you need to carry home your trophy. but, assuming you killed a deer or an entire family of rabbits, you’ve got some weight to move.

you probably hugged them to death

i’ve usually got my kettlebell with me, so i find it pretty easy to simulate. if you didn’t opt to bring any additional weight for the kill, then you’re missing out on one of my favorite parts of any workout due mainly to it’s simplicity. pick up your heavy object. get a firm grip on it. now walk home. switch hands and hold on until you can’t any more. switch again. repeat. try not to put the heavy object down until you’re in the front door.

if you’re working out in your back yard, you won’t have a considerable distance to walk. maybe take this opportunity to go on a stroll, weight in tow, down the street and back?

and that’s it. all in all, this session shouldn’t take you much longer than an hour, if that. if you figure the jogging/sprinting portion should take 14 minutes total, this leaves you 46 minutes to do the heavy portion and walk home. shouldn’t be hard, especially if you don’t allow yourself too many extended rests.

adam.

ps – you’ve just made a kill, and that means you get to eat. this is a pretty intense workout, so make sure to stretch then refuel with some fruit, water, and protein when you get home.

should i eat it?: a quick guide

while exercise is certainly important to get your body into good shape, many experts claim somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-80% of your fitness relies solely on how you eat. i will never tell anybody to go on a diet. ever. that said, i will tell you that your diet (that is, not your weight-loss nutrition program, but what you eat every day) is probably terrible. you might be familiar with this:

eating: ur doin it wrong

if you are, and if you adhere to it, you’ve probably already made your first mistake. i will get into the specifics of each category in other posts (which will be linked within this post as they appear) but here’s a quick run-down of each category. starting with…

grains

the suspects: wheat, rice, oats, corn (to name a few)

the verdict: avoid grains. i know, they are the bottom of the standard pyramid. everything needs a bottom! yours will be much smaller cutting this out or cutting way down, however. avoiding the science of it all for now, grains are essentially pillows of carbs which your body turns into sugar and into fat very quickly. even if you stick to 100% whole wheat, brown rice, and so on, you’re still gaining very few nutrients in exchange for a whole lot of calories and carbohydrates. additionally, any nutrient gain will be easily made up for with your daily helping of…

not the preferred application

vegetables

the suspects: leafy greens, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, capsicum, AND MORE!

the verdict: chow down. at every meal. every. meal. i usually make a big ass spinach salad every time i eat (spinach is very good for aiding in lean tissue generation). i try to eat as much raw vegetation as possible, but cooking them still yields benefits. eat a wide variety, try new things, and eat all you can. these should be the basis of your pyramid.

that peach is sporting some mad camel toe.

fruits

the suspects: apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, berries, melons, etc.

the verdict: who needs candy? eat these like veggies, but let it be known too many will make you poop, and fruits are sweet because of sugar. natural sugar, but sugar nevertheless. eat the freshest fruits early in the morning, after working out, and/or as a between-meal snack.

EDIT: i have heard rumors that eating fruit post-workout is bad due to the heavy antioxidant load. i will research this further in a future post.

definitely the preferred application

dairy

the suspects: milk, cheese, yogurt, butter

the verdict: ingest it if you wanna. a little bit is alright, and there are well-documented benefits of dairy. however, think of this in the mindset of human evolution: back before farms and livestock, humans only drank mother’s milk and possibly a small amount of milk pilfered from a kill (no source, but it’s feasible, right?) every now and then after that. we obviously simply don’t need it, and it is a common allergen. use at your own risk, i’m not condemning it.

no, you’re DELICIOUS!

meat

the suspects: beef, chicken, pork, lamb, duck, goose, deer, moose, bear, fish, liver, heart…anything that once had a cute lil’ face

the verdict: let me preface this by saying that i’m a former vegan. i took a lot of time to figure out my thoughts on the way we as a society use animals and found that i disagreed with almost every aspect of the meat industry. almost. i have no problem with the ‘old way’ of doing things – local, sustainable farming, fishing, and hunting are not morally disagreeable to me. that said, from a nutritional stand point, you should be eating meat. doesn’t mean you have to, but it’s going to be difficult (but not impossible) to make up for the loss of protein, vitamins, and minerals present in meat completely. for those who don’t abstain from meat – eat up! all forms, from in or outside the animal, have their benefits for your health. with as little carbs prescribed by your daily intake (if you’re taking my advice), you will need to get energy somewhere. protein is an incredibly efficient source of fuel for your body and meat is the most readily used type of protein for muscle growth. stick to organic small farms to ensure your food was treated as humanely as possible and that nasty chemicals stay out of your food.

if you choose to abstain from meat eating, be sure to try and take in .7-1.2 grams (depending on goals…if you wanna put on muscle, stick to the high end of the range) of protein per pound you weigh per day. and be sure to supplement and gain your vitamins and minerals from your fruits and veggies!

junk food

the suspects: processed foods, soda, sugar-water sports drinks, everything above and much more

the verdict: my advice on junk food is to stop eating it now. cold turkey. just fucking quit it, alright? try that for a month. or two. or however long you can go without it. then, when you eat or drink it again, you will most likely be surprised to find out that it isn’t what you remembered. sweets are too sweet, soda too caustic, ice cream too heavy, and gatorade gives you heart burn. or maybe not – you might love the same things you’ve always loved. but, once you have one peanut butter cup, snickers bar, bag of barbecue chips, or piece of cake, chances are you will be satisfied. for a long time. junk food doesn’t kill people, people who live off of junk food kill themselves. once you’ve gotten yourself off it, you should be able to handle junk more responsibly.

there you have it – a basic rundown of the food pyramid. as stated before, i will get into the scientific explanations of these choices in other posts. as it stands, though, here’s the food pyramid that’s been put together:

this is pretty general, but i’d say 9/10 of my own days follow this.

remember – being fit is mostly in your diet! eat right and stay healthy.

adam.

ps – it’s totally alright to go ahead and cheat on your nutrition every now and then. it’s actually beneficial to your leptin levels to have a day where you eat some bad-for-you food. leptin is the hormone which suppresses your hunger, fyi.

biology

biology: it’s what you do

alternately: you refuse to break a sweat or crawl on the grass but keep whining about being fat.

there is no arguing with biology. no matter how smart, dumb, rich, poor, well-dressed, or disgusting you are, you are always going to be human.

unless, you know, you aren't.

there are certain things that the human body is good at. we can climb. we can run very long distances and we can run fast for very short distances.  we can pick something up that’s heavy and get it from point a to point b. back when our biology was something we relied on and not just something we slept through in tenth grade, we had to do these things a lot. like, ‘a lot’ a lot. every day. maybe not all in the same day, and maybe each task took a different form on each day, but these were essential objectives that must have been carried out in order to complete a day successfully.

this was basically every day

people didn’t do these things to look good. they didn’t do them for heart health or because they liked the natural high from physical activity. they did these things because they had to. they knew that, somewhere, there was a stream to fetch water at and a boar to spear and carry home for dinner. they also knew that without that water and without that boar (and any vegetation gathered on the way), there would be no survival.  i am reminded of a mark’s daily apple article (http://www.marksdailyapple.com/what-does-it-mean-to-be-fit/) in which mark discusses the meaning of being fit and how it has changed over human history. for humans back then (mark’s ‘grok’), being ‘fit’ simply meant the capacity to survive the next day and eventually mate and spread seed. in today’s society, however, fitness is a superfluous gesture.

this does not excuse your superfluous size.

to be ‘fit’ today means a whole slew of things – being able to bust out a hundred push ups or run a marathon, for instance. but there are other, more important-by-today’s-standards parts to being fit: having ripped abs or huge pecs or simply being fuckable on any level (as evidence, consider the british usage of the word ‘fit’). there is no inherent need for any of these skills or attributes. in today’s society, you can travel across town, buy an entire chicken or pounds of beef as well as all the fixings you need, and get home all without actually moving your own body close to a mile. and the workplace is no better – that small amount of activity we do two or three times a week i just described is about as active as anybody gets on any given day. with the advance of technology, work has become increasingly sedentary and we have done little to make up for it. in fact, in our halfhearted attempts to curb the negative affects of our newly-adopted way of life, we even try to take shortcuts there. we run on treadmills, workout on nautilus machines, and diet until we…well, stay pudgy.

this is all flying in the face of the monkey-people we once were (and still are, biologically). the problem is not that our public is getting fat – that’s a symptom of a bigger illness. we are a society of humans who don’t act like humans. we do everything we can, actually, to avoid being human at all – we avoid human contact through computers, we stay indoors on beautiful days, we walk when we could run. these are all simple things which have been proven (with science!) to be detrimental to the human condition (google it, it’s well-known that many physical maladies come from prolonged time sitting/typing, that sunlight has a positive affect on mood, and that physical exertion should be practiced on a regular basis and with vigor). look back at us as monkey men and picture what he (or she…ladies *wink*) must have looked like. not a bodybuilder, probably, but not a doughboy by any means.

from trappin' to fappin'

and so we arrive at my point: in order to look the part of a fit, prime, and healthy physical specimen, you must first examine the science behind us as an organism. the way we eat, the way we play, and the way we live must be examined with the fact in mind that humans flourished healthily and at a sustainable rate (as organisms and as a species) for thousands of years before we decided to let technology tell us what we should do. no matter what technology is made, there is no substitute for thousands of years of evolution and growth. this is what should be relied on when one decides to get into shape, not which diet or exercise regime fits in the best with the life he or she is already living (probably in error in terms of biology).

adam.