LIFT-RUN-BANG

The single life - Why dating sucks for women

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 14:41:00 +0000

I'm gonna write this for all of my single friends, who talk about how difficult the single world is today and how frustrating dating can be.

Here's what I HOPE should be the take away from this. A huge part, from what I can tell, about why dating is so tough (multitude of reasons) is because people have very little legitimate introspection about their own negative traits.

Most people think they are a catch, bring a lot to the table, talk about "not settling" etc, and are hyper focused on the other person being "good enough" without realizing a lot of the negative traits that THEY keep bringing to the table.

I ended up reading through a butt ton of surveys and studies about what people consider nonnegotiables and turn offs in dating.

If you read through enough of them, eventually almost everything in the world gets listed as a turn off.

"Didn't load the dishwater correctly"
"Has a really annoying laugh"
"Had on the wrong colored shoes for their outfit".

"Teeth weren't the right size".

If you went through every article you'd end up reading anywhere from thirteen to seventy-four things that were turn offs.

So you have to narrow it down to what's most common (like a meta analysis) in each one.

These spanned from early casual dates, to people who dated for a little while but found a reason not to commit long term.

Don't shoot the messenger, jackasses. Stating that right now. I'm trying to do you a solid here. And yes, there will be a part 2 for why it sucks for men. So keep your thong out of it's knot.

Shared traits (complaints from both men and women)

Jealousy / Talking about your ex

Newsflash, if you're dating someone you need to leave your baggage and former relationship at the door. Save that shit for your therapist. The person you're dating doesn't want to constantly hear about how shitty your ex was. It doesn't mean it can never come up, but if you want to date someone then focus on that person. Not what someone else did to you, lied to you about, cheated on you, etc. Talking about that shit all the time is gross behavior. And it's a major turn off to EVERYONE.

Jealousy was a big factor for both sexes, and is the antithesis of confidence. Also, DOING THINGS to make the other person jealous is just as gross as talking about your ex. And you know when you're doing this (most people have done this at some point.) Trying to inject jealousy into the relationship makes you look like a spoiled and immature child. So don't do it.

Too much make up / lack of hygiene -

I think it goes without saying that personal hygiene is important and how you look does matter. Especially if you're meeting someone for a date.

I don't know what the hell you guys are doing but apparently a lot of you don't shower, use deodorant, and brush your teeth a lot. I promise, that's important to women.

Dudes complained that women often showed up looking like they were headed to a clown convention rather than a date. Newsflash ladies; we are fine with a slight amount of make up and a somewhat more natural look and often even prefer it.

Too much phone -

I think we can all agree that cell phones are a common problem in cultivating intimacy and closeness and play a part in impacting those things. It also tells the other person on the date they aren't so important to you. Which makes you kind of a shitty person.

If you're on a date, put your phone away for the love of God. It's rude AF. Whatever it is you think is important I promise it can wait. And if you can't go on a date without checking your phone and texting then YOU have a problem. It's completely inconsiderate of the other person's time, and says a lot about you (and not in a good way).

Women's biggest turn offs -

Neediness -

This one was number one or number two on the reasons why things didn't continue further. Needy people often have anxious attachment styles/types. If you don't know what attachment theory is I highly suggest reading up on it. Because it ultimately shapes your behavior in relationships. It can be changed but it takes some work.

Anywho, needy people (there's plenty of needy women and men) need a lot of reassurance and people often pass this off as them simply being "insecure". Fact is, if someone has an anxious attachment type they can't really help it. Not giving them a total pass, but people who grew up with a lot of unmet emotional needs from their caregivers have trouble centering themselves without external affirmation that they are desired, wanted, needed, etc.

Generally speaking, women are more prone to be anxious attachment types but in the dating world neediness from men is a big complaint. Where men don't seem to complain about needy women as much.

What does needy behavior look like? Constant catering to her with romantic gestures and/or smothering her. What this tells her is that you don't have shit going on in your life that is important outside of her.

It doesn't mean you need to "play games" and ignore texts for two days or act like you missed her call. What it means is that you actually need to focus on cultivating a life worth inviting her to be a part of with you. If you're always at her beck and call then it tells her that you don't have a lot going on in your life.

Women see men as high value when they have shit going on that is important to them outside of her. Women see men as needy and low value when she says "jump" and he says "how high, my love?" Neediness is a repellent because it tells her that you lack confidence with women.

This is also tied in with "moving too fast". When a needy dude finally gets a date, he tends to want to lock her down into commitment very early. This scares the shit out of women because it feels controlling and possessive (those were often on the list too).

Generally speaking, men who come across as needy often have a long history of rejection. The cycle there is they were often rejected because of their needy behavior. Which makes them more needy in future relationships. Which cause them to end up getting rejected a lot. Which makes them more needy. Round and round you go.

What's the solution there? Learn how to give a shit, without giving a shit.

Tell her you'd like to take her to dinner. She's not free? Don't take it personally.

"Some other time then." is a perfectly acceptable non-needy reply.

She hasn't texted you back from four hours ago? Maybe she's busy. Maybe you should find something to be busy about too.

Which also circles us back around to what women more or less desire in a man. And that being, one that has shit going on in his life. One that is creating an awesome life with or without her. Women tend to be very attracted to that.

Also of note, there's a big difference between having needs, and being needy. Confident people with shit going on in their life will still have needs and strong boundaries. And it's fine to state your needs in the relationship, and is a part of developing a healthy, high functioning relationship.

Needy people have weak boundaries and need constant affirmation.

Laziness -

This wasn't just about work. But mostly about noticing her. I don't feel as though I need to type another three hundreds words to explain that if you're not generating income or working that you probably shouldn't be dating. Showing up for a date to expound on how you're unemployed but mashing up kids in Call of Duty all day doesn't tend to get a woman's knees to knocking.

The laziness they complained about here was simply a lack of paying attention. It was mental and emotional laziness. It means paying attention to her particular needs.

"I thought you just said not to be needy."

See, this is why you have issues. Because you can't discern the difference between paying attention to her needs, and needing validation from her. They aren't the same. Paying attention to what the person across from you is saying, and actually understanding those words, shows a high degree of intellect and that you're interested in them.

Going forwards, those things tend to pay off in the way of increased intimacy because being known by someone is basically what intimacy is. What we all desire at some level, is to be known and accepted and understood very deeply.

Despite the fact that it's commonly said that women only buy certain purses and get their hair and nails done to compete with other women, it's not entirely true. Yes, women want to impress and compete with other women. But women want a man to notice everything about her, and pay attention to her when she's offering up who she is emotionally.

I'll give you an example about this.

I had a former boss lady and one day I walked into her office to update her on some work. When I saw her I immediately noticed her hair was different.

"Ahhh, you got a new color and cut. Looks good."

She was blown the F away. Her husband didn't even notice. And that right there people is how affairs happen (no, I did not sleep with her either, so pipe down).

If she has to ask you if you noticed, you've already lost some points. But noticing little things go a long ways to show her that you're paying attention, and aren't lazy, and are putting in some effort.

But it's more than noticing the physical.

All you have to do is actually listen to her instead of thinking about all the ways you can trick her into getting into her pants (which ironically tends to make that happen faster).

A great example of this was in one of the quotes from a woman who said she knew she'd met the man she potentially wanted to marry. They were shopping at a candy store, and when offered up a free sample the clerk said to them "this one has almonds".

Her date quipped "not that one, she hates almonds."

"He had remembered that from a passing comment I had made from a previous date. So I knew he was paying attention to the small details."

Hyper focused on sex / bad at sex -

This is going to rub a lot of dudes the wrong way, but what that should tell you is that maybe you need some introspection here.

Men have incredibly fragile sexual egos. This is because a massive part of most men's identity revolves around his sexual prowess. So if a man is told he's bad at sex you might as well just go ahead and kick him in the balls and tell him he has ugly ass kids too.

This one jumped out at me because in the research done at looking at satisfying sex lives, the two most common factors were the emotional state of the relationship, and sexual disclosure. Basically, how well two people feel connected emotionally and how comfortable they are talking about sex with one another.

The key in all of this is that intimacy and comfort cause the manifestation of those factors. And the former, emotional connection and closeness, takes time. And men who want to get laid aren't often very patient (and are often super needy, and pushy, which doesn't create for comfort and are major turn offs).

It's true, some people just want to bump ugly in the night without any potential for commitment. But in the context of this blog post, that's not what we're discussing here. It would save both people a lot of time and effort if you're just honest enough to say "listen, I don't really want to date anyone exclusively and am just looking for casual hook ups here and there."

Right.

The women being interviewed here were looking for dating or a potential partner. And in those situations they complained that way too many men pushed for sex before they felt like they even knew him very well. Meaning, you're probably moving too fast physically for her, or you're sliding in sexual innuendos very early to gauge where she's at with you sexually.

Again, major turn offs for women who are looking for a serious relationship or potential commitment.

From there, the women who did go ahead and allow the man to bump ugly with her complained that the sex itself wasn't often very good.

Which ties us back around to the things I mentioned before. The state of the emotional connection and sexual disclosure. Both of which are intricately connected to comfort and intimacy. So a lot of that falls on her too. Because it means she also wasn't selective enough with whom she chose to sleep with. Neither person was patient enough to actually see if the other was the kind of person they wanted to have something "more" with.

These things take time. Ask any couple that has been together for a while and they will often tell you that the sex got better over time. This is because the emotional state of the relationship deepened, and because they learned what one another liked the most sexually.

For guys who are needy and lazy (pushing for sex, all the while not paying attention to her needs) they circumvent the factors needed to create a fulfilling and amazing sex life. Almost everyone will agree that the deeper the emotional connection the better the sex is. It's the explanation as to why sex was so good with one person and so awful with someone else.

If you're not willing to cultivate the emotional connection and build comfort to a degree that allows you both to feel very free sexually, then the sex is probably going to suck for her.

Uninteresting -

This was also on the most common lists. Men were just uninteresting to a lot of women, and failed to hold their attention with intellectual conversation.

While men are visually wired, women are more emotionally stimulated. Which means in layman's terms he needs to stimulate her intellectually. Those two things are intricately connected.

My own particular theory about this is that the internet and social media has neutered a lot of men in this regard because they often reduce potential dating to sliding into a woman's inbox or DM's and work from those spaces. Nevermind that there's a massive sausage fest going on in her inbox already. So you're probably not differentiating yourself to some incredible magnitude, no matter how clever you think you are.

This also tends to create for short attention spans as it's not uncommon for a guy to be in a multitude of women's inboxes or DM's playing the numbers game and just shooting their shot all over the place.

But back to the lack of being interesting.

Most dudes think they are interesting. And funny. But have you ever considered that maybe you're not?

If you're a "tl;dr" kinda guy then you're probably not reading a lot of books, or doing a lot of things to deepen who you are intellectually. No matter how "smart" you think you are.

Don't leave the house other than to go to the gym or bar with your buddies? Yeah man, you're one unique and interesting individual.

And what it is we've cultivated about ourselves, is ultimately what we have to offer the person across from us.

All of us enjoy stimulating conversations and individuals who appear to have put some effort into creating the best versions of themselves. These things take effort, and effort tends to grow us. And a well grown individual often has a lot to offer to someone in the way of companionship.

But it's not just about expounding on all of the positive virtues about who you are, either. It's about being introspective about the negative aspects that keep circumventing your ability to connect with people and develop deep relationships with them. And that's usually the factor that turns people off the most. Men and women alike.

Which is the segue into part 2 - The shit that turns men off in dating.

To be continued......

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What's silently killing men....because they won't talk about it

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 17:53:00 +0000

If you ever need to mainline a 100% shot of straight awesome, then I urge you to go watch that split second win the U.S. swim team pulled off against France in the Olympics a few years ago. It's one of those moments that defy words. Well, it defies a sentence of words. It's a sports moment that cause us to shout out repetitive phrases in jubilant abundance. Like "Oh my God!" "Did you see that!" "I can't believe it!" "Wow!"

It's one of those moments.

On a much smaller scale, many of us get to experience these moments first hand. A moment in our life that truly sits at the precipice of achievement. It's the culmination of hard work, perseverance, and white knuckling through repeated bouts of oscillating between quitting and finding the desire to keep grinding. Like that time I had to carve out a sailboat for Boy Scouts and had to race my sailboat against all the other scout clans in the local area. I beat all of them. You blew on the sail to move your boat down the trough. And I destroyed all. Because I blew harder than all of them. Got my blue ribbon for being the biggest blow hard of the whole area.

I'm sure what I felt on that day wasn't dissimilar to what Michael Phelps felt as he realized he was about to get yet another gold medal in the Olympics. Blue ribbon in Boy Scouts, gold medal in the Olympics. Same shit.

As men, we live for those moments. Declarations of achievement that we get to boast about to one another to set the pecking order. Can you imagine being in a room with Michael Phelps trying to talk about that time you scored three touchdowns in high school to help your team overcome a halftime deficit?

"That's cool, man. This one time in the Olympics..."

Well played, Phelps. Well played.

As men, we find a great deal of our identity in achievement. The greater the achievement, the more manly we are. So a man such as Michael Phelps, who has a zillion gold medals, a fat bank account, the love and adoration of millions worldwide, has to be to men what the Grand Canyon is to ditches. Surely he has to be filled with confidence each and every day that is unparalleled to what the high school football star or Boy Scout sail boat champ could ever know about.

Yet recently, Phelps came out about the many bouts of severe depression that he had struggled through. To the degree that he worried about his own safety. How could that even happen? How could an ultimate man-bro such as Phelps, find anything to be depressed about?

The problem lies, for many men, in that the very thing that catapults them into those moments of exhilaration, is the very thing that sends them into the pits of despair. The loss of self due to identification in what we do, and what we achieve. When what we do becomes who we are, then all the moments that exist in between, life can become very empty.

Phelps talked about the great periods of depression between the Olympics. And how he self medicated in order to cope in any way he could. Eventually, coping through smoking weed or alcohol in order to numb down the pain just wasn't cutting it. What saved him took more strength than swimming laps in a pool faster than anyone else alive. And that was, being vulnerable and open about the very fact that he was depressed, and had contemplated suicide.

Depression and achievement -

Let me spell this out for you in case it's hard to understand. Achievement will not save you from the droves of depression. If Phelps story doesn't punch you straight in the face about that, then you're fooling yourself.

You broke a world record in powerlifting. Big deal. He won a zillion gold medals against the most elite athletes in the world. You can never know that level of achievement. Yet he wasn't immune to feeling so overcome with depression, loneliness, and isolation that he almost ended his life.

When I was powerlifting, I got caught up in the same achievement based value system. Constantly comparing my lifts to someone better. Eventually, a huge sense of my self worth was derived by what I could lift. This was affirmed to me by the internet and people with huge followings that never recognized my lifting. Why would they? I wasn't breaking world records. Lost on me was that I allowed them to dictate how I felt about myself. How I felt about myself was dictated through pounds on the bar. Let me state that in retrospect, I can't believe just how shallow and stupid that is.

Lost in this game of personal comparison was my joy.

Eventually I didn't enjoy training or competing because it was always about the numbers. My sense of self worth was up or down, all depending on how my lifts were going, or how I performed in a meet.

When you attach your happiness to obtaining something, then once it's attained, you'll realize that the happiness attached to that becomes very fleeting. From there we often set off on another road of goal attainment, once again believing that achievement is what will make us feel better about who we are. But it won't sustain us. It never does. That road is paved with discontent and the reminder that we're so terribly unhappy because we don't have something. Our identity ends up being what we do. And when we're admired for what we do, then no one really loves us for who we are. That's the story we will tell ourselves whether we openly acknowledge it or not. Even worse, we don't come to love and appreciate ourselves for who we are.

That's the definition of an emotionally bottomless pit.

By the numbers -

30% of men have admitted to suffering from some form of depression.

The suicide rate for men is four times that of women.

The older we get, the more likely it is we will succumb to these statistics. Males that are 85 and older have the highest suicide rate of any demographic in the United States.

People suffering from loneliness or isolation are twice as likely to suffer from a premature death than those who aren't.

"Cool story, bro. I want to know how to get jacked, swole, and put some numbers on my bench."

Cool story, bro. You can't do any of those things from your grave. But since you asked, here are some of the very real issues we as men suffer from physiologically when we're fighting loneliness.

Sleeplessness - Less sleep means a higher degree of muscle loss and less fat oxidation
Crappy immune systems - Impaired systemic recovery
Increase in cortisol - Worse body composition

In order to take care of what the outside looks like, it's vitally important to address what's going on inside first.

In order to possibly understand the cause behind these staggering numbers, it's imperative to look on the other side of the coin. What men are living longer with a higher quality of life than men who find themselves in such dark places that they see no other way out than to take their own life?

What can we do as bros in order to keep ourselves out of those pits of despair, and cultivate a stronger sense of self that transcends into a higher quality of life each and every day?

Embrace vulnerability and talk about it -

Phelps said his own personal healing didn't start until he found the courage to open up and talk about his depression.

Talking about feelings are usually alien concept to men.

The myriad of emotions that fill up the spaces between apathy and anger are vast and wide, but being openly expressive about feeling sad, lonely, isolated, or melancholy is usually avoided because men fear it can be perceived as weakness. And yes, it is us as men that often perpetuate this problem by making other men feel as though it's Nancy Boy stuff to express any of the emotions that exist between apathy and anger.

Paradoxically, it's the weakest of men who refuse to admit they feel said array of emotions. Which is why they often find themselves in the valleys of depression, and overcome with grief. You feel weak in those valleys, but the ability to admit it is stunted by pride.

As men, we are great at compartmentalizing problems rather than expressing them. We'd rather not talk about them because we feel it's a waste of time or just really freaking weird. It's what women do.

Boohooing about sadness or feeling isolated is stupid when we could be installing a new nitrous kit in our drag car, or fighting a bear at the zoo. Anything to distract us from talking about our problems.

But the real problem is that we can't distract ourselves forever, and at some point peeling back the layers of discontent in our lives has to happen in order for us to heal, and become truly strong men. Not just physically, but emotionally, and mentally.

Women are outliving us by the decades because they are more robust emotionally. It's not unusual for a widow to continue living and finding purpose in life after her husband passes. It's also not unusual for a widower to pass shortly after his wife does. Women have no issue talking about their emotions, and tend to support one another by expressing them. Women tend to offer consolation to one another and do a better job of being there to stand beside each other during those moments of internal struggle.

As men, we just struggle with wrenches and plumbing. Depression is a term we use to describe after our favorite sports team lost a game.

I'm going to continue to assault your manly senses by helping you to understand something called your inner child. And we all have one. The things we learn about emotions, love, intimacy, and self expression is learned in childhood. And it's something we continue to live with even as we become grown ass men.

As young boys, many of us have suffered from neglect, abuse, assault, abandonment, and rejection. Often from the people we entrusted to give us security, love, and encouragement. When we don't receive the latter, we end up working from a very fractured framework about who we are. When that happens our self esteem and sense of self worth takes a massive hit, and we seek out increased self esteem through existential means. Like sports achievement or sexual conquest.

Think about it; who doesn't admire the sports star who has a hottie on his arm all the time? We as men once again perpetuate this very issue by exalting other men based on virtue of achievement, then adopt the belief system that if we just achieve more, we are worth more. We believe we are worth more because of the admiration we receive about what we do. And there you go. You're not admired for who you are. But what you did. What you can do.

Phelps was admired by millions and millions. It didn't save him from bouts of depression so severe he wanted to end it all. Who was he between the times of Olympic competition? He probably didn't know. Competing was where he found his worth and boost in self esteem. And much like Phelps, if you believe that achievement is what you are worth, then you're going to end up struggling with an identity crisis and depression will soon make its way into your life.

If this happens, it's imperative to find the strength to go to your support system to be honest and open about it. If you don't have such a support system in place, then find a good therapist to open up to. There's nothing weak about seeking help.

Now here's the rub. Other men will indeed find strength in your ability to be vulnerable, and will gravitate towards that strength. Don't believe me? I write about this stuff all the time, and I get messages daily from men who tell me that my openness about my own struggles with depression and anxiety and being honest about them, helped them in some way, and made them feel safe to express their own struggles as well.

One of the strongest bonds we can create between us as brothers, is our ability to find identification with one another. All of us live through periods of brokenness. When another bro can look at you with sincerity, and say "I've been there bro. I got you." it can dissolve the feelings of being completely alone in your struggles. And can serve as the catalyst to give you the strength in knowing you can get past this.

Which leads me to my next part.

Create awesome friendships -

In my youth, despite all the hardships I endured, I still look back on that time and understand why it was so amazing. Not high school. High school really sucks for everyone because it's mostly full of conditional relationships that revolve around how cool you are, or aren't. I'm glad I didn't attend and dropped out of school after 9th grade.

I'm talking before then. When life was incredibly simplistic. And one of the things that made it awesome during those years was our friendships.

Your friendships were vitally important. From the time you got up for school, until you got home, most of your time each day was spent around said friends. The summers were spent doing shit with those friends that often make up some of the best memories we'll ever have.

Then life and adulting sets in later, and we're overrun with bills, jobs, kids, and that shit we hate called responsibilities that suck the life right out of us. And whether you realize it or not, you aren't spending time cultivating awesome friendships like you did in your youth. And not doing so is a huge part of why men are suffering in depression and loneliness.

Before a bro can ever feel like he can be vulnerable with a fellow bro, it's important to bond in the way that men do from the time they were boys.

And that is by storming Castle Greyskull in the backyard with He-Man to recuse Teela from the clutches of Skeletor and his henchmen.

No but seriously, that's what we gotta do. But an adult form of it. It's a metaphor. Work with me here.

Men bond and create dynamic friendships most often, through shared physical adversities. That's why we develop such strong bonds with those we serve in the military with, go hunting with, play sports with, or lift stupid weights with. Women bond by talking about muffin recipes and home decor. And there's nothing wrong with that. We're just different in that way.

When is the last time you made plans with a bro to go hiking, fishing, hunting, or bike riding? Sure, getting together at the bar to down some beers is fun too, but the fact is, those times are often filled up with groaning about the bills, and kids, and car, other adulting chores.

The point of creating bro time adventure is to unplug for a while from those very things. To fill up more moments of our lives with bro-fists and immaturity that makes us feel young and alive again. If we aren't taking time to disconnect from all the things that are plaguing us with worry, then worry is what we're usually filling our lives with.

"But I work a million hours a week, and have fourteen kids, and a wife and a girlfriend, and an ex wife that set my car on fire last week and all of these other responsibilities. It's selfish of me to take that time for myself."

Well maybe start by ditching the girlfriend if you have the wife (more on that later), and by embracing the ideology that you will be here a much shorter period of time if you don't take care of yourself, so that you can take care of those you love.

If you do have a wife, and you guys do things with friends, and have a healthy social life then you're probably doing ok.

But even if you're married or have a girlfriend, then it's still important to create some bro time. Even if it's once a month. Go do a Spartan race together. Have paintball wars. Play miniature golf. Just make the time with some bros where you can bond and expand socially and emotionally in areas that are fulfilling. It's from creating those bonds and within those spaces that men find the ability to open up to one another about struggles when the arise. That's how we as men can build and strengthen our support systems.

But speaking of wives or girlfriends....

Cultivate amazing romantic relationships -

Marriage has taken a hit in recent years. And by that I mean, men and women aren't tying the knot as often as they used to. I could probably write a million words opining on why that is, but I won't. Half a million will have to suffice.

What I can say is that married men live longer and healthier lives than single bros swiping on Tinder all day, trying to find that next date. And yes, it's marriage, not cohabitation that appear to make the difference. According to the CDC....

Nearly 60% of adults are married, 10.4% are separated or divorced, 6.6% are widowed, 19% are never married and 5.7% are living with a partner. Marital status varies greatly among race/ethnic groups: approximately 61 percent of white adults, 58 percent of Hispanic adults, and 38 percent of black adults are married, according to the survey.
Married adults are less likely than other adults to be in fair or poor health, and are less likely to suffer from health conditions such as headaches and serious psychological distress.
Married adults are less likely be limited in various activities, including work and other activities of daily living.
Married adults are less likely to smoke, drink heavily or be physically inactive. However, married men are more likely to be overweight or obese than other men.
Adults who live in cohabiting relationships are more likely to have health problems than married adults and more closely resemble divorced and separated adults.
The association between marital status and health is most striking in the youngest age group although it persists throughout the age groups studied.

So for those of you who live together, I'm sorry but it's not the same as actually getting married. The stats bear this out over and over.

"What does a piece of paper have to do with my health?"

Because your brain does in fact recognize that piece of paper as a deeper level of commitment than cohabitation and it does in fact "relax", and there's less stress.

How you "think" about the nature of your relationship does in fact have a physiological effect on you. To me, this isn't surprising but I'm sure some first rate ass clown will want to debate it.

So here's the science. The University of Virginia did a study to measure physiological stress to women who were about to receive a mild electric shock. They held the hand of their spouse, a stranger, and no one at all before each shock was delivered.

While holding the hand of their spouse, the women had the lowest degree of physiological stress than when holding a strangers hand, or no hand at all. The study had limitations because there were only 16 couples involved. However it was later expanded to include couples in cohabitation together.

What was found in the follow up study showed that married couples still exhibited lower stress levels before the shock treatment, than couples who were living together. In fact, there appeared to be no difference in the physiological response between the couples living together, and holding the hand of a stranger.

The fact is, marriage is a socially recognized ideology and your brain knows it. And it understands that there is a degree of commitment by your partner to be all in with you, than if someone is just living with you.

I do understand that in some marriages you might pray to the God of Thunder for lightening bolts to strike you with such power that it would cause you to disintegrate from existence. But in most cases, a couple got married because they believed they wanted to spend their life with this person and fill a lifetime of memories with them. And those people did so because they made a choice to go all in with their partner. No matter what you may say, the fact is, cohabitation means there's something being held back in terms of commitment. And your partner's brain and physiological responses know it. Boom. Science.

So it's kind of important to create an important marriage, seeing how married bros live longer and healthier lives than single bros. And it's well beyond the scope of this article to cover the myriad of ways to make your romantic relationship better. But there's a few things that can help.

Actually be committed -

If you're married, or in a committed relationship, perhaps slicing off a large piece of integrity and decency in your life by not sliding into the DM's of women outside of your significant other might be a solid idea. Maybe delete the dating apps from your phone as well. I don't think the world is suffering from a shortage of douchebags at the moment. Try not being one.

But allow me to offer up a real life version of this.

A few years ago I was doing a seminar and went to lunch with an attendee. He confided in me that he was texting quite a few women outside of his girlfriend. He minimized the texting by offering up "I just respond back with stuff like "what's up, hottie? It's no big deal"".

I bet his girl would had felt differently.

Rationalizing is what we do in order to suppress our consciousness. "This is bad...but it feels good, so here's my list of excuses as to why I will continue."

He elaborated that he'd been with his girl for quite some time and that, you know, after a while it gets boring and mundane. The same woman day in and day out. That a little texting wasn't hurting anyone. I wondered if his girl would have felt the same?

Anywho...

After listening to this I turned and said to him "what if you stopped texting all of those other women, and instead just put that energy into your girl? Instead of texting some other girl "what's up, hottie" just text that to her instead. What do you think would happen?"

There was some mumbling on his part about my advice, and I don't remember the rest of the conversation. I thought my bit of advice was completely lost on him.

A year later he called me to tell me what I said to him that day really hit home. That he cut out all the other women he was talking to or texting, and put his energy back into the primary relationship. He remarked at how much her energy and attitude towards him changed when he did this. Turns out, she was just as bored as he was. When he started putting positive energy, words, and affection back into her, she responded in kind.

They got married and had a baby not too long after this. Live improvement achievement unlocked.

The quality of your romantic relationships, much like your relationship with the weights, will most often be determined by the amount of effort and attention you're giving it. There is no perfect person out there, and all relationships will come with dysfunction. If you make a choice to lead from the front, and consistently try to work from a position of love and empathy, then the quality of that relationship (all relationships you have, really) will improve immensely. And so will the quality and quantity of your life overall as well.

And for any ladies reading this, you're not off the hook either. I can tell you with certainty that if you speak power and confidence into your man's life, he will become those things. Make an effort to let him know how much you appreciate him, how handsome he is, and remind him about all the amazing qualities he has that made you fall in love with him. Men won't often convey to women that we need to hear these things. But we do.

Understand bids -

John Gottman is like the Michael Jordan of relationships. After three decades of research he can predict with about 97% accuracy what couples will divorce within a certain time span, based on characteristics and behaviors within that relationship.

One of the strongest predictors of whether or not a relationship will flourish, or get some Mortal Kombat finisher move, is how people respond to their partner's bids.

A bid is when your significant other offers you up an opportunity to be a part of something they find interesting, or are passionate about. What you do with that bid has an enormous impact on the quality of your relationship with them. In fact, Gottman hooked up partners to assess their state of physiological stress when together, and eventually determined that the partners with the highest degree of anxiety around the other, was related to the degree of bids they turned inwards to, or away from.

Allow me to explain.

If your lady is into wine, and asks you to go to a wine tasting event, that's a bid.

Inwards turn - "Absolutely, honey. Let's go get wasted and have a blast!"

Outwards turn - "I hate wine. Find someone else to do that crap."

The more inwards turns to a bid that a partner makes, the more the quality of that relationship increases. It's a fairly simple act, but how many times have you seen someone act completely uninterested in what their partner is passionate about? When that happens often enough, resentment will build over time. And the quality of the relationship will take a nose dive.

Take an interest in one another when these moments arise, and watch the quality of your relationship increase exponentially.

Conclusion -

Feeling connected socially is vital to our health and well being. More than eating chicken breasts and broccoli. More than adding reps and weights to your sets. Isolation is where our souls go to wither and die.

Healthy social bonding is potentially the biggest driver behind increasing our well being. What the hell is life without meaningful connection? In prison they use solitary confinement as a means of extreme punishment. Well, you're not in prison. Stop treating yourself like you are, and develop a social life, cultivate an amazing marriage or relationship with your significant other, build a strong support system. All proven ways to keep your heart and mind out of the dumpster and to find vitality and meaning in this one life you have.

And despite the fact that social media has the word "social" in it, it's not going to keep you company on lonely nights. Not in a meaningful way. No amount of likes or comments will fill the void in your life like true connection will. Get off your phone or laptop and get out there with friends and loved ones.

Make time for it. Your life literally depends on it. Ask Michael Phelps.

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Finding your design

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 17:49:00 +0000

I love lions.

I think I've watched just about every documentary ever made on them. I even wrote about them in my first book Strength, Life, Legacy. I have a lion picture hanging up in my guest bedroom. If I ever get inked it will be a lion tattoo.

But I'm having second thoughts about that because eventually everyone on the internet decided that they were lions or some other apex predator when it came to facing life's hardships, or that it symbolized their strength. Nevermind that male lions weigh over 400 pounds, and can take down buffalo and scare crocodiles back into the water. You on the other hand, can't take down a fully stuffed burrito from Chipotle or get your two year into bed at night without a fight that leaves you completely disheveled.

One thing that social media has done is saturated people's minds with is meaningless platitudes to make them feel better about who they aren't. Read that again.

There's not a day that goes by that I'm not inundated with some catch phrase or meme about being some wild animal that cannot be stopped, and how you can't let your passions elude you. Or how that scoundrel will be sorry that he didn't love and appreciate you, and one day you'll be riding an Elephant over the top of corpses of men that are just like him. Firing an M-60 into the air while a bald Eagle rides on your shoulder.

So forth and so on.

Hey I don't dislike em, myself. Motivational memes and quotes, I mean. Not really a fan of women who want to step on me with elephants while firing fully automatic machine guns into the air. I know I can elicit that response from them at times.

When a proverbial shitstorm rolls into your life finding a few snappy quotes to put things into perspective can be enlightening or give you some encouragement. In the worst of times, those few moments can offer the reprieve you need.

It's the strength of identification that resonates with us.

"This quote gets me. Someone else felt exactly what I feel. Will post 10/10...hope my ex sees it."

The thing about identification is that for a moment, we don't feel so alone in our adversity. And as a companionship species, we desire community and belonging. Even if it's sharing in time with other miserable people. At least we know we're not the only ones suffering and crying in our beers. And maybe they have elephants to ride on.

I feel like if you drill down a bit, it should be obvious that there's a lot of people that like these memes because it does make them feel empowered for a moment. Or it reminds them that the significant other they are lying in bed awake at night, crying over, really ain't shit. And that there's about 7 billion people in the world and that everyone can be replaced.

And that's all well and good, but it wholly misses the mark if someone is actually trying to, you know, work on real self development, and truly change their life. Prospects that are not fun. And introspection about your own life can be uglier than Steve Buscemi and more painful than taking a cactus up your butt.

Not that I'd know, but I bet it's painful.

Few people are going to read a quote, and set out on a meaningful life change. Most people love those meaningless platitudes simply because of the reprieve. Then enough time passes, and the wounds close up, and they hunker back down into the same life and relationships that look exactly like before. And the emptiness returns. So do the patterns of life most people find themselves repeating.

Unfortunately, it's how we are wired. And some of that wiring cannot be undone. It really can't. But each of us has the ability to change how we feel about our lives, even if from the outside looking in, it looks the same to virtually everyone else. That's what self improvement and self development is. To find the processes we need to go through and accomplish in order to find happiness, motivation, and satisfaction as byproducts of those processes. Those things arrive naturally when the process is in place. Memes not needed.

Adversity is the stimulus and the opportunity that gives us pause to reflect on what it is we want to change, and what we're willing to give up and go through for that change to manifest in our life.

Without adversity, we tend to cruise right along in the status quo. It's not until something shakes the foundations of our life that we wake up to the need for a paradigm shift.

The real questions we need to be asking -

At the core of each of us, what our heart is asking us in these spaces of hollowness that get filled up by quotes and memes is this...

"What am I designed for?"

"Who am I designed for?"

I mean outside of scouring the net for memes, mating, eating, and some rando you swiped right for on tinder.

I have this belief, that's backed up by nothing more the thoughts in my tiny man brain, that everyone has something they can be exceptional at. Something they were designed for. This doesn't mean they are going to be the next Bill Gates or Elon Musk. It just means they are in possession of something they can do better than anything else in their life.

I also believe that we have someone else we are best designed for. But much like finding what you're designed for, that often doesn't happen until you spend some time developing and cultivating who you want to become through periods of severe adversity. But that's a whole different article.

What you've been designed for, may not be what you're passionate about. And most people have been on the net long enough to read some rah rah shit about how your life should be spent chasing your passions. Fulfilling your dreams.

But there's a huge chasm here that I believe plays a part in why so many people feel this sort of emptiness about their place in their world.

Our passions are often a product of things we've been exposed to. After all, you won't know if you're passionate about something unless you're aware that it exists and an interest develops. You won't know if you're passionate about it until you try it, either. Fear often keeps people from collecting new experiences and from moving away from stagnation in their life.

As young men we grow up watching sports, then proceed to run out into the yard, and play catch with our friends while wearing a jersey with another dudes name on the back of it. And that's an amazing and enthralling part of childhood. Make believe.

The problem lies when too much childhood make believe still exists during all those adulting years.

I found myself playing semi-pro football out in Texas, watching the NFL every Sunday, and dreamed of one day donning an NFL uniform. Hey, Eric Swann was found playing semi-pro football and went on to be an NFL all-pro. It can happen!

No, Paul. It really can't. That's one dude in the history of the entire NFL that it happened to. You're more likely to find yourself working as a stunt double for Jason Statham than that happening. Ok, that doesn't seem like such a bad option either. I'll take it.

So was playing semi-pro a waste of my time? That depends, doesn't it?

Did I have fun? Yes.

Did I make some friends and collect some memories? Absolutely.

Did I find myself serving gatorade to Tom Brady in the middle of one of his Super Bowl winning drives and blasting champagne with him in the locker room after?

Yes, I did.

You didn't expect that did you? You expected a "no" right there, but I pimp slapped you with a "Yes, I did." Tom and I went out after the game and partied with super models all night and did a butt ton of ecstasy. It was glorious.

Ok, so no that never happened. My football story wasn't even good enough to get a movie made after it, like Rudy. And Rudy sucked at football.

I was pretty good at football. But only good enough at it for it to serve as an appetizer in my life. A hobby that I was passionate about. It was never going to pay my bills or feed me and my kids. I could make friends through it, create some fun and amazing experiences with it. But I wasn't designed for it enough that it would provide a real degree of sustenance for me.

If my mindset in chasing that passion was that I was going to play in the NFL, then yes it was a waste of time. And it was for a while. Stupid, I know. But we all have dreams.

And for many years there was this emptiness and longing of wanting that. It wasn't until I woke up one morning after a practice with an indoor team, where I was so sore I couldn't turn my head that I realized I was done with such stupidity. And right there, I never put on cleats again. And I never missed it after that. I barely watch football now. And because of that, I let go of chasing that dragon, and I found other passions and hobbies that filled up my time. Most of which actually do provide for me and my kids.

I found out I was pretty good at this whole writing thing, and that I really liked it a lot. Not only that, I was able to combine all of my years lifting stupid weights and living through a lot of stupid decisions I could pen about, and people seemed interested. Mainly to make fun of me. So everyone benefited.

My belief is, I found my design. And it just so happens, I was able to enmesh my design with my passions and cultivate a life that had both meaning for me, and the ability to provide.

But not everyone can be so lucky.

If you're lucky enough that your design and passion aligns, the that's lottery type stuff. For the great majority that feel as if they are wandering aimlessly at times, the question they sit around and ruminate on is "what do I want to be when I grow up?"

Age is irrelevant here. You could be 17 or 47. Lots of people drift through their life with this sense that they lack purpose, jumping from job to job trying to "find that right fit".

Then there's the other kind of people who dream all day about developing or finding their design and finding what they are passionate about, but are never brave or ambitious enough to do anything about it.

That's a bitch isn't it?

You're going to be sitting on the toilet one day when you're like 79, flipping through whatever cosmic device that's been invented by that time, looking at lion memes, and it's going to dawn on you, right there in mid-shit - "I wasted a lot of years, doing a lot of stuff that I wasn't designed for, nor passionate about."

Lions understand their design. The males get thrust out into the nomadic life until they are big and strong enough to take over a pride of their own. Then they mate with the females, protect the cubs, and show up to dish out massive cans of whoop ass when needed. They also lie around in the sun not doing shit at all the rest of the time. A lioness knows her design. To get mounted and have the cubs, and to hunt together with the other females to provide for the pride.

Lions aren't out trying to catch footballs so they can play in the NFL. And the Detroit Lions suck, and have never even been to a single Super Bowl. That should tell you something.

Lions don't set out to do what they aren't designed for. And you're not designed to be a lion, no matter how many memes you post about them.

Closing up the emptiness in our life usually means we feel we've found what we're supposed to be doing, with whom we're supposed to be doing it with. People can argue that ideology all day, but our physiology says otherwise.

Meshing your design with your passions so that the ability to actually live them is tricky. And for most people, what they end up settling into something that they can get paid for, that affords them the ability to have hobbies and passions that they enjoy.

And there's nothing wrong with this. In fact, I'd take a guess that most people fall into this category and find a significant degree of happiness that arrives with it.

For those living with that underlying ache of emptiness, my belief is they feel they have a greater purpose for being here, than just eating, crapping, and mating. That existence should have meaning beyond the mundane, and that in some way, when we leave this life, we will have left our mark on the world in some significant way. That all of this shit we went through and survived can't just be for no reason.

And then there's some questions that you may have to ask, so you can potentially step forwards into where you want to be, who you want to be...

1. How do I want people to remember me?

2. What do I want my legacy to be?

3. What do I kick ass at? Can it afford me the life I want to live?

4. How can I simplify my life so that I'm spending more of my time cultivating these things, than wasting time on what really doesn't matter?

Those are the questions you will need to be honest with yourself about in order to arrive at potentially knowing your design, and creating a life that offers up fulfillment, vision, and an overall sense of happiness and well being about living it.

Life sucks sometimes. It sucks less when we're in pursuit of knowing who we truly are, want to become, what we feel we were designed for, and what makes our heart swell.

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You're fat, and always will be

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 15:41:00 +0000

I like the title of this article. It's super click baitey. When I wrote it, I heard Jimmie's Rustling from the penis tip of Florida to the armpit of Ohio. Which is all of Ohio in case you didn't know.

Now I've got fat people from Ohio hating the shit out of me right now and I'm only a few sentences in.

Championship white trash achievement unlocked.

But for serious now, let's get down to bidness.

This past week in a passing conversation someone....well, it was through text actually, not in real life (I don't think we know people in real life anymore or have in person conversations) made a statement about some guy who was complaining how hard it was to get into contest shape.

He wrote "how hard is it, really? You eat some chicken and some rice. You just do it."

I have no idea why that seems so obvious to me but truly, that's about the gist of getting into contest shape. Or just dropping some excess bodyfat all together.

So why can't people do it? Not everyone wants to do the spray-tan, underroos, and salad dressing flex party. So we can eliminate getting into contest shape for the sake of this article. In fact, most guys that are getting into contest shape....don't even get into contest shape.

And for the most part, it's for all the same reasons that fat people really can't turn into skinny people again either. Or get jacked. Or get anything but fatter.

So what's the problem? Why is it so hard to unfat yourself once you get fat?

Before some former fatty jumps on this article, and proclaims that I am wrong (because they are a FORMER fatty) and that I need to be tarred and feathered in front of their favorite Ken-Taco-Hutt (that's one of those joints where KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hutt are inside. Also known as fat mans orgasmic paradise), then fried in a deep batter and turned into a delicious man-meat treat, lemme explain something about getting fat.

Once it happens, getting fat that is, it's like going black (or so I hear). You never go back. To being skinny that is. Or being of normal size. Or really being anything but trapped inside a mushy goo of squishness that will never look good naked.

Spare me your estrogen laden counter-point about "beauty at all sizes" that was written by some pixie cut feminist at Elitedaily. Google told me so........

it's on the internet, so you know it's true

If you Google machine around for a while, you'll come across this figure thrown out over and over again, that tells you science has shown that approximately 95% of everyone who gets fat, and goes on a diet, will regain all of their weight within the next three years.

This appeared odd to me because the look AHEAD trial showed a much different picture, even after eight years. More than 50% of the participants had kept 5% of their weight loss off, and more than a quarter of the participants had kept more than 10% off. Now, depending on the degree of fatness said participant had when they started, that could be a lot, or very little. But it clearly shows you're not doomed to regain all of your previous weight once you decide to take matters into your own hands by removing the burger from them.

The dietary method they used was complex, and completely and utterly scientific. It combined nutrient timing with....wait no, none of that happened. This is what they did.

1. Reduced fat intake to less than 30% of the total calories for the day
2. Reduced intake of highly processed foods like sugary drinks and high calorie snacks.

My favorite part was this, however.....and there's no sarcasm in that either.

It is impossible to say whether a different dietary approach would have given different event rates. The investigators opted for an approach that had been found to work.

With all of the complexity in the diet industry, what they had found to work was just reducing fat intake and processed food and drink. Back to that later...
The total amount of exercise done by these people amounted to an average of 175 minutes a week. Or about 35 minutes a day, if you're training 5 days a week. It's a measly 25 minutes a day, if you move that to 7 days a week. Mind you, these were "extremely sedentary and elderly" people. So I don't think the degree of savagery in those 175 minutes a week was off the charts. I doubt very seriously that fat Netflix grandpa was doing kipping pullups and vomit worthy WODs.

But notice the wording in what they asked the participants to do when it came to the diet (I said we'd get back to it). To REDUCE fat intake, and to REDUCE the intake of highly processed foods. It wasn't eliminated. Just reduced. This falls directly in line with what I've always called the 90% rule about nutrition in that if you're making proper choices 90% of the time, then weight loss and body recomp should happen (though it's not always linear) over time.

Not only that, there was no elimination of a certain macro-nutrient nor the elimination of certain types of foods all together. There's a bit of psychological warfare at play with this. When something is eliminated or put into a "you can't have this" category then the scarcity effect kicks in hard and suddenly we desire it far more than when we had access to it. Truly, as humans, we most often desire the very thing we're told we can't have.

I actually have a story about this from when I was in basic training.

There was this patio that had been deemed off limits by our drill instructors. Sitting inside said patio were some vending machines. Inside said vending machines were "foods" (I use the term lightly) that I had never had cravings for before. I was all about my bro-diet before military life. But I remember wanting to get onto that patio and eat every candy bar and bag of chips that was contained within those machines. Which clearly had been created by God. Never before in my life had I desired a Baby Ruth as much as I did during that time.

After a few weeks we received the news that patio access and vending machine sustenance would now be allowed. I'm sure we looked like the kids from Narnia looked when they walked into that closet into a land they had never seen before. We were finally allowed to venture into the previously forbidden land of snacks.

I ate nine candy bars and three bags of chips. I remember each bite feeling completely and utterly orgasmic. Junk food had never tasted so good in my life. Inside every Airman there was a chocolate orgy going on and we might as well have been lying around on that patio naked, slathering ourselves in melted Snickers bars while fairies sprinkled crushed up Doritos on us. Which I believe was in fact a scene out of Narnia. But maybe I'm remembering wrong.

If so, it doesn't matter. We were all in a complete state of bliss.

Life did get better than a few Old Milwaukee's. Those dudes sitting around drinking beer by a campfire in those commercials were wrong. Right there in San Antonio, Texas I had found the Stairway to Heaven that Zeppelin had sang about. And you did in fact have to buy it. Except it wasn't a stairway at all. It was this big vending machine that ate your dollar bills and then uncorked some chocolate for you and dropped it into this little bin at the bottom. I was inserting dollars into that thing faster than a retired dude could insert coins into slot machines in Vegas.

I could blather on about this for a while but I need to make a point here.

Restrictions generally fail because we just end up desiring what it is we're aren't supposed to have. I'd never pined for candy bars like that before. But having that freedom taken away made me want them more than I ever wanted for anything else in my life. All diets that actually work have calorie restriction in them in order to facilitate weight loss. But this can be done without demonizing certain macro-nutrients or food choices all together.

So my title of this article is incredibly misleading. And I don't care.

Here's what people who struggle with diets and fat loss really need to understand.

1. Understand the role food may have played as a coping mechanism in your life when you were young. All of us found coping mechanisms in our youth to ease the pain of some emotional need we had. Don't be dismissive of this. Our entire framework for navigating through life gets imprinted upon through the experiences we had when young.
2. Don't eliminate. Reduce. Making solid nutritional choices 90% of the time will get the job done.
3. Falling off the wagon doesn't make you a horrible person. Driving a Prius does.
4. You're not destined to be overweight for life. You get to decide what goes into your body and your level of activity.
5. Empower yourself each day, one day at a time, by reminding yourself that you get to decide the outcome. Your words, your actions, your choices. People are often afraid of empowerment because it puts the onus on them to be responsible. Accountability to oneself is often the hardest kind.
6. Create habits that are sustainable for you that don't circumvent your desired goals. If your desired goals are to create the body of a Greek God, but your habits are playing World of Warcraft for 16 hours at a time, I feel as though it won't happen. Your eating and your functions create your form. Figure out if they are in alignment.

Most importantly, it's vital to understand that hitting a goal for weight loss is really just step one. Keeping the bodyfat off afterwards is about the transition into a lifestyle you can maintain.

It's not dissimilar to seeing a pretty lady across the room, and making your way over to her and throwing a lame opening pick up line on her.

There's nothing magical in the pick up line. Any pick up line will work, so long as you're interesting enough to make her forget about it in the conversation that flows afterwards.

The magic happens in sustainable transition after initiation. Where you go on dates to fancy restaurants, buy her favorite wine, and put your sexual A game on her. I kid, actually. Where the magic happens is still making an effort on an average Tuesday. The average conversation while stuck in a traffic jam together. Another meal of chicken and rice. Another average day at the gym.

The cultivation of anything exceptional is mostly about doing the work even when it doesn't feel good, is boring, and feels terribly unrewarding. It's about unstitching the painful fabric we've been woven into and then sewing ourselves back up together into something greater.

You aren't doomed to remain anything. You just have to decide what it is you really want, and what you're willing to give up in order to attain it, and keep it.

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Why calories in versus calories out doesn't work

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Tue, 21 Nov 2017 14:31:00 +0000

I click baited you here. I admit it. I'm not sorry.

I'm even going to put a chicken breast pic in the preview so that it looks totally legit. But keep reading.

To lose weight, you have to essentially move more and eat less. You have to have an energy deficit. That's the end of the discussion. It really is. right? It's all thermodynamics and energy in versus out and blah blah blah blah blah.

That's all it is, right?

Right?

Wrong.

If we lived in a vacuum, like a bunch of rats in test tubes and this could all be compartmentalized, then all of that would be correct. But we don't. There's something called the human condition - dealing with people and their life, their history, and their experiences that outweigh all of this drivel. If you don't understand that, then you don't know shit. I don't care how many studies you can cite or how many letters come after your name.

Losing weight is about calories in versus calories out. Keeping it off, or maintaining the body composition you worked hard for, is an entirely different subject.

Knowledge has no power without application -

A few days ago someone said to me "you know more about relationships and all of that garbage than anyone I know. How to create healthy romantic relationships and whatnot. So why so many fuck ups in your own life?"

"Because my application sucks."

"Well, at least you're honest."

That's the truth. I could blame other people or circumstances without acknowledging my own involvement but I don't. I know my strong areas and my weak ones. My own application can at times, suck nuts. There it is. Now you know. And G.I. Joe told me knowing was half the battle.

But there's the other half. The more important half. Really, it's the only half that matters. The application of what you know. And existing within that half, is the applicable ability on a consistent basis. That's what sustainability is.

Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is the metaphorical baseball in your hand. Application is your ability to throw a strike with it. And just like learning how to throw strikes consistently, we have to practice the application of our knowledge on a consistent basis if we want to increase our chances for desired outcomes. And that can't happen if we don't understand why it is we have trouble applying what it is we already know.

The flow chart goes likes this...

Knowledge -> application -> application applied consistently enough = change

You know how to lose weight. Yes, you. Yes you do. Yes...you do.

You put less food on your fork that goes into your mouth. You walk a little further today than you did yesterday. You repeat this each day until you arrive at your goal.

Everyone knows these things. Everyone!

You know how to create a better relationship. You really do. No, I swear you do. In no particular order...

1. You spend some time understanding the needs of your partner, and they do the same for you.

2. You make each other a priority.

3. You learn how to listen to each other earnestly, and sincerely.

4. You don't cheat when you've told him or her that you're in a committed relationship.

5. You say "I'm sorry, what do I need to do to make this right?" when you screw up, then actually do what is required.

6. You let some arguments go, because you realize there's no real "winning" when you hurt one another.

8. You don't keep a scoreboard of wrongs.

9. You forgive each other.

10. You turn inwards to each other's bids.

11. You make sweet love as often as possible.

Ok, so the list for cultivating an amazing relationship is longer than "eat more, move less" but that's because there's two people involved, and creating an amazing relationship is infinitely more complex than losing weight.

But it's still not really that difficult to know what the right thing(s) to do is/are.

The knowledge is not in some book that's locked away 10 floors under the Vatican in a room that only Nicolas Cage can unlock with a key made out of a dinosaur bones. Despite all of the articles and books I've written on the various forms of training and dietary witchcraft, the knowledge is quite simple.

1. Lift some weights.
2. Eat less.
3. Walk around a lot.
4. Repeat those three things for a long time and you'll look better.

So why can't people just do that? Why can't people just eat less, lift some weights, and move more? Why can't people just get into a calorie deficit, or create an amazing relationship with someone they say they love? Why can't some people, who claim they want a physical life change, do this on a consistent basis?

Because they are people.

And people have stories. And experiences and baggage. People don't live in test labs under controlled conditions where they are fed and exercised like mice and life doesn't happen. They live in the real world where what they would like to be able to do, is often circumvented by painful experiences they haven't resolved yet.

"It's because they are weak and undisciplined."

Says the meathead who can't hold down a steady job because, "gym life".

Look, being able to eat chicken and broccoli six times a day and hit the gym twice before 6 P.M. doesn't make you some mental and emotional superhero from the town of Disciplineville. Plenty of people I've known that can do this day in and day out are about as emotionally robust and evolved as a toddler in every other facet of their life. People tend to be incredibly disciplined in certain areas of their life, and very undisciplined in others.

here's that chicken breast pic I was telling you about earlier

Discipline is not salad dressing. It's not something we can slather all over every part of our life in equal degrees. We generally have a few select areas of our life that we can be consistently disciplined in. The rest of it often gets thrown together with whatever mental and emotional energy we have leftover after we're done doing what deem to be most important.

We tend to be very disciplined in areas that we feel the greatest amount of reward from. Even if the reward is temporary and brings about negative consequences with on a consistent basis.

People don't fail in diet adherence because they are "weak minded". People succumb to unhealthy coping mechanisms like binge eating because it offers a retreat from confronting the fragmented parts of their life that carries a lot of emotional pain and reminders.

10-freaking-miles -

I am fond of the saying "if you walk ten miles deep into the woods, you have to walk ten miles out." I am fond of saying it because someone wrote it to me on social media once, and I liked it and have used it a few times. So whoever did that, you're awesome. Brofist.

In order to even begin the walk back out, we often have to come to an understanding of why we made the walk in. Why we didn't stop at mile four, or seven.

"But why ten miles, Paul?"

Hey it's my stolen metaphor and it only goes ten miles. That's what we're working with here, so don't ask "well why not five hundred miles like The Proclaimers song?"

Because they ended up walking a thousand miles because it was five hundred MORE.

Back to that later.......

Years ago, I remember this bodybuilder who talked about how this fat kid wrote him a letter telling of how he dreamed everyday of being jacked, but lived in this state of despair because he had always been fat. He wrote how he really wanted to go to the gym, but the thought of it brought about a great deal of anxiety so then he'd eat a whole loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and drink a gallon of chocolate milk to soothe that anxiety.

Luckily, the bodybuilder gave the kid some great advice. He told him to start by just eating half a loaf of PBnJ, and to switch to 2% milk. Certainly, he cut his calories down, but he did so in a way that was mentally and emotionally manageable. He didn't tell him "get your fat ass to the gym, and eat egg whites and oatmeal." Does this even seem logical? It doesn't take a Sigmund Freud to figure out that the answer to this poor kid's desire to be jacked wasn't a training program or a special diet.

You don't deal with the diet first. You deal with the person.

Telling the girl who is an emotional eater that finds solace and comfort in food in the middle of a depression that she "needs to eat less and move more" and "just shove some chicken and salad down your throat" is some real Einstein shit. Thanks for that newsflash from the city. Your people solving skills are exemplary. She might need to deal with the underlying issues related to the depression that cause her to seek comfort foods first. She might have to talk about the pain she had in growing up where she was bullied by other girls or ostracized for any number of reasons that girls do that to one another.

She might have to talk about how eating was the one thing that made all the pain go away temporarily because it was one of the few things she could control in her life, when everything else felt completely out of her control. She might have to talk about how she had this great big empty inside of her, and that it felt better to eat and feel something...anything...other than the pain that existed because of that emptiness. She might have to talk about how the shame she felt in sneaking food because she didn't want to be ridiculed for "eating more", and that the ridicule also made her eat more.

Or she may have to talk about how she eventually just accepted her obesity, and lost her identity in it. That she ceased being "Nancy" or "Jane" or "Alice". That she became "the fat girl". Or even worse, THAT fat girl.

And you know where we continue to exist as adults if we don't confront all the demons that laid the framework for the fragmented parts of who we are?

In that fat kids mind.

In that bullied kids mind.

In that abused kids mind.

In that abandoned kids mind.

I was the skinny kid who lost his best friend in a motorcycle accident when he was 13. Who suffered at the hands of some violent events that no kid should ever have to endure. Who experienced being abandoned and saw the effects of substance abuse in people he loved and cared about.

My coping mechanism was the gym. I desired to build as much muscle and strength as possible because having that exterior gave me something to hide behind. It was my comfort food. I was lucky that it wasn't drugs, or alcohol, or food (well, food was in there but only as a means to an end). And over time, I was able to let go of the need for that exterior armor, and I started confronting all of the awful shit I had gone through that manifested in the way of shit decisions in my life.

In essence, people have to get their soul healthy first. Before they can center themselves enough to get their body healthy. They have to have the discipline to heal their mind, to be strong enough to overcome the fears and pain that engulfed them when they were young. Confronting those fears takes an infinitely greater degree of courage than eating some chicken breast and bench pressing.

Some will say it's not a coaches job to fix people. I don't disagree, but I also don't fully agree.

I can't fix anyone. I can barely fix myself half the time. And when I do fix myself, I often break the shit I just fixed from the day before. Now I'm exhausted. And most likely have hurt someone else's feelings in the process as well. Now I need to fix myself and make amends. And I only have so much salad dressing to go around.

But we can't help someone if we don't understand the reasons for their ten mile walk. We can't help ourselves unless we do the same. The changes we need to make in our lives are often inspired by how shitty we feel. The paradox there is that the fear and pain of change keeps us from changing what makes us feel so shitty to begin with.

Changing your body, for a great many people, isn't about chicken breasts and contractions in the gym. It's about flexing your emotions through the pain so that eventually you're strong enough to not need something anymore. And when you realize you don't have a need for something in your life, then it no longer has any power over you.

And that is everything. Not just dieting. Not just the training. That is everything when it comes to being unbroken. Not calories in versus calories out. But exhaling the bad shit, and inhaling the good.

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Ketones and body composition improvement

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 16:49:00 +0000

Well, here we are again. Keto diets have made their way back around to incredible popularity and are all the rage once again.

For those not in the know, keto diets are not new, and bacon isn't the new black. Keto diets have been around since before Twinkies were invented. That's not entirely a joke. Twinkies were invented in 1930, and keto diets were being used to treat epilepsy back in the 1920's.

Wait a minute...is it possible that Continental Baking Company invented twinkies as the evil villains weapon in order to thwart the Mayo Clinic from stopping epileptic seizures?

Keto's ultimate nemesis

Patient - "I can't eat that, I'm keto. Keto has stopped my seizures."

Continental Baking Company Dastardly Villain shoves twinkie into patient's mouth.

Patient - "Oh good God, what is that?????"

Continental Baking Company Dastardly Villain - "You like it, yes?"

Patient - "It's heavenly!"

Continental Baking Company Dastardly Villain - "You want more?"

Patient - "Yes I want more. It's definitely worth a seizure!"

I bet this happened.

Anyways, keto diets are not new, and aren't even new for people trying to shed fat, or potentially use it as a way to improve body composition. Lots of bodybuilders used keto diets to get shredded for the stage back in the day, and there's been a bit of a resurgence in that lately as well.

Let me state unequivocally here, I don't keto. And there's a huge misconception that keto diets hold some kind of advantage over other "types" of diets that are sound in nutritional approach when it comes to achieving better body composition. But that's not the case.

It is generally believed that because of the way endogenous (inside the body) ketones are created that it means fat oxidation is higher in keto or low carb diets. And technically this is true. But people need to understand how to interpret this correctly in order to understand it.

If you're eating high fat and low carb, then eventually there's a metabolic shift so that your body becomes more efficient at using fat for energy. If you throw carbs back in, guess what happens? You start using glucose for energy again because it's easier to access as fuel for the body.

"AH HAH! See, you just wrote that eating fat burns fat!"

Yes, but it is due to a lack of carbohydrates being available. To simplify this even more....

3,500 calories high fat/low carb = the body is using the fats as the main fuel source

3,500 calories higher carb/lower fat = the body is using glucose as the main fuel source

3,500 calories is still 3,500 calories. (yes, food selection does matter as well).

I'm oversimplifying this but that's the high level overview.

If you stop and think about that, you'll realize that it's carbs that dictate the fuel selection source for the body. In the absence of carbs, the body will have a metabolic fuel shift to fat. When carbs are thrown back in, it will have a metabolic fuel shift to glucose again.

I'm not going to drill down into a million areas here because that's not the focus of this article. I could even make the case due to the fact that fat has the lowest thermic digestion rate of all three macros, that the higher fat diet burns fewer calories each day than the higher carb diet, and that the higher carb diet contains food higher on the satiation index, but that would be a lot of typing that my fingers have no desire to engage in.

I don't have anything against keto diets at all. I don't think most of the smart people in-the-know do either. I think it's the misinformation about keto diets that get under their skin. You cannot just go eating 10,000 calories a day of bacon and butter and be in some blistering state of fat loss "because keto". I'm sorry, energy in vs energy out is still going to dictate your degree of fat loss or fat gain.

But some people do love eating keto, and can and have achieved magnificent improvements in body comp using keto, because they found it to be a sustainable paradigm of eating for them. And sustainability in any sound nutritional plan is really the most important aspect. If you cannot stick with a particular diet or eating lifestyle, then no matter how amazing it looks on paper or in research, it's not going to do you a lot of good.

"How do I fit twinkies into that paradigm, Paul?"

"IIFYM."

"Thank you!"

With that said, enter exogenous ketones. I've written several other pieces on them and the anecdotal evidence I've seen with them has been very promising on a number of levels. The main one being their ability to improve body composition. And I define an improvement in body composition as the ability to gain or retain muscle while fat loss occurs. I mean, at the most basic level that's what most everyone who is training to improve their physique is after, right?

More muscle, less fat.

This is what gives women real curves. More muscle, less fat. The kind you find on women that squat, deadlift, lunge, and pay attention to the quality of food that they fill their plate with.

More muscle, less fat is what gives doods rock hard abs and big shoulders. You've never seen a single romance novel where a guy rocking a 40" waist and man boobs was holding the damsel in ovulation distress. Because guys with beer guts and man boobs don't put women into ovulation distress. Women want to read a story about how she peeled the shirt off of his muscular torso in the kitchen while they danced on rose pedals, and then took her to pound town. That's what women want to read about. Not about how they watched NASCAR while pounding a greasy bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Where was I? Oh yeah, improving body composition. I got hot and bothered there for a minute.

The three things I've really settled for improvement in body composition are a high degree of fat oxidation - which is obtained by being in an energy deficit either through diet, training, or a combination of both (usually the latter). A high degree of muscle retention or muscle gain. Muscle retention is what those who have already put in the time building muscle will be seeking, while noobs can actually put on some muscle even while using a hypocaloric diet, or in an energy deficit due to the new stimulus the body is adapting to through lifting weights.

Sound nutrition that is sustainable over a long period of time that creates an energy deficit + weight training + some cardio = the body you're after.

lift weights, do cardio, drink your ketones, eat all the protein

The last is an improvement in insulin sensitivity. The reason why this is important is because insulin is your storage hormone, and because it also has exceptionally powerful anti-catabolic properties. Insulin blunts or reduces muscle protein breakdown. And if you want to hold on to muscle and keep excess fat storage to a minimum, then it's important to improve insulin sensitivity.

So let's get to it...

Fat oxidation -

Regardless of what type of diet you settle on, in order to burn more fat, you're going to have to be in a calorie deficit. Let me be clear about something here that you may not know. Exercise does not burn a lot of calories. It really doesn't. You can use the Google machine if you like to go find this out.

In comparative fashion, doing an hour of walking (all depending on how fast you walk, how much you weigh, how much muscle you have or don't have) can be undone rather easily by a few Krispy Kremes. Trying to achieve a high degree of energy loss (fat loss) through exercise is a great way to get really tired, make yourself super hungry (making it harder to stick to ANY diet), and deplete your motivation.

So lemme make this easy for you.

You lift weights to build muscle. You do some cardio for your heart, and as a supplemental form of creating energy debt. Remember, supplemental. Don't believe for a minute that your hour of (insert type of exercise here) is going to burn enough calories to offset even a single calorie dense meal.

The people who believe they can out train a bad diet usually find that they can't do that for very long before the Continental Baking Company Dastardly Villain shows up, and they are smashing through boxes of Twinkie's faster than Sherman went through Atlanta.

So delicious.

So let's say that you pick out the diet that fits "you". Keto, Paleo, Southbeach, IIFYM, whatever. You know (yes YOU KNOW NOW) that you have to be in a calorie deficit with your diet in order to shed that blubber.

One of the biggest keys in finding sustainability with any eating plan is the satiation factor. If you're hungry all the time, then it becomes harder and harder to sustain an energy deficit with the diet because of binge eating or "falling off the wagon".

The key to this suppressing your hunger hormone, ghrelin.

This actually does lead me back into talking about ketones.

If there is one advantage that keto diets have over other diets when it comes to fat loss, it's that they do a better job of suppressing the ghrelin hormone, so that you have a higher degree of satiation.

Well, as you'd sort of expect, exogenous ketones do the same thing. As this study points out...

==================================================

Results

KE consumption increased blood BHB levels from 0.2 to 3.3 mM after 60 minutes. DEXT consumption increased plasma glucose levels between 30 and 60 minutes. Postprandial plasma insulin, ghrelin, GLP-1, and PYY levels were significantly lower 2 to 4 hours after KE consumption, compared with DEXT consumption. Temporally related to the observed suppression of ghrelin, reported hunger and desire to eat were also significantly suppressed 1.5 hours after consumption of KE, compared with consumption of DEXT.

Conclusions

Increased blood ketone levels may directly suppress appetite, as KE drinks lowered plasma ghrelin levels, perceived hunger, and desire to eat.

==================================================
If you find the biggest culprit in your desire to shed bodyfat is that you are an emotional eater, or have trouble dealing with hunger, then using exogenous ketones offers a massive benefit in that regard.

But that's not all. There's more.

While this study showed an reduction of power output in cyclists who used ketones, it did show that fat oxidation was higher in those that used ketones prior to exercising.

Total fat oxidation was greater in the ketone versus control (p = 0.05). Average time-trial power output was ∼7% lower (-16 W, p = 0.029) in the ketone condition. Ingestion of ketone salts prior to exercise increases fat oxidation during steady-state exercise but impairs high-intensity exercise performance.

My thoughts about the reduction in power output is that I think we need to work to find the proper dose-response ratio over a number of studies to get clearer picture here. Because there have been other studies that showed an increase in performance, and there's also a ton of anecdotal testimonies where athletes did improve their performance with them. Nevertheless, if we're talking fat oxidation/ fat-loss, then using ketones prior to steady state type exercise offers an advantage in that area.

Muscle sparing/retention -

I gots no study for this one, but over the last two years, everything I've hypothesized about with my own reading and work with exogenous ketones has come to fruition. So I believe this will eventually pan out. Just a second there to toot my own horn.

Ok, I'm done.

This one should make sense if you follow along.

If you're using a low carb approach to achieve your energy deficit, and are trying to retain muscle, (you should be, duh) one of the issues is that due to low glucose stores, your body will end up creating glucose from protein through something called gluconeogenesis. This is where you end up robbing Peter to pay Paul, more or less.

What we've seen with exogenous ketones is that there is a reduction in glucose oxidation (using glucose for fuel) while an alternative energy substrate is present (the ketones) and that the ingestion of them (the ketones, again) induces hyperketonemia, which is an elevation of ketone bodies in the blood and body. Wait...that sounds like ketosis....without a keto diet.

Reduction in glucose oxidation...elevation in ketone bodies in the blood. Mmmmm that sounds an awful lot like being in ketosis.

Knowing that, what I believe is this - if you're using a low carb approach to find your caloric deficit, and weight training to retain muscle, then the use of ketones will spare muscle protein because the body won't be tapping into it to convert it to glucose. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Insulin sensitivity -

This is an area where the use of ketones ends up offering a benefit as a side effect of something else.

That sentence makes so much sense, I know. But bear with me. I'm actually going to make this quite simple.

BHB reduces inflammation. I've covered that before, but here, here, here.

Our findings suggest that the anti-inflammatory effects of caloric restriction or ketogenic diets may be linked to BHB-mediated inhibition of the NLRP3 inflammasome.

These findings demonstrate that BHB exerts antidepressant-like effects, possibly by inhibiting NLRP3-induced neuro-inflammation in the hippocampus, and that BHB may be a novel therapeutic candidate for the treatment of stress-related mood disorders.

Now that we've established that BHB serves as an anti-inflammatory agent, let's understand how chronic inflammation effects insulin sensitivity.

First off, losing fat in general should decrease chronic inflammation in the body, and decreasing excess adipose tissue should improve your insulin sensitivity. Weight training also improves your insulin sensitivity as well.

But reducing chronic inflammation will not only improve your quality of health, it should also improve your insulin sensitivity as well.

Also, linky dinky........

"If we can block or disarm this macrophage inflammatory pathway in humans, we could interrupt the cascade that leads to insulin resistance and diabetes," said Olefsky.

If you want to use the Google machine you can find a metric butt ton of information connecting the dots of chronic inflammation to a key factor in insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

Now let me be clear........

This doesn't mean you can drink ketones and expect miracles. If you're not reducing the amount of Omega-6 coming in and increase your Omega-3 and also lifting weights and doing some conditioning, it's fool hearty to believe that simply ingesting ketones is going to magically fix your problems. They won't. But they can play a major role in accelerating the reduction of chronic inflammation in the body, they can improve the degree of fat oxidation during steady state exercise, and they can suppress the appetite, making it easier to stay in your caloric deficit. All things that will lead to a significant improvement in body composition, and land you on the cover of a romance novel.

Ok, probably not. You're not that good looking. But looking better naked tends to make you and anyone seeing you naked much happier.

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Necessity vs luxury in relationships

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 21:54:00 +0000

If you've ever seen those social experiment videos with the dudes who approach women and ask them out, only to be spurned, then show up later in a lambo and have her drop draws on the spot, then the term "gold digger" probably comes to mind.

I can't argue against that. Not if we're going to judge women superficially on a single factor. One in which in fact is hard wired into them, whether you like it or not. And that is, security. It's a trait that women will seek out in a man, more often than not, because physiologically women are wired to seek providers.

I don't want to paint this as something as simple as a caveman era DNA issue, where women subconsciously seek out a man simply based on whether or not he can provide a lambo, because providing is more intricately layered than that. Which I will get to.

Genetically and environmentally, we tend to gravitate towards specific people to "mate with". There's a reason why certain people are almost universally accepted as being attractive (it's due to facial symmetry), and why lean and ripped male bodies often appeal to women more than a "dad bod" (let's stop kidding ourselves here) and why that 0.7 hip to waist ratio constantly scores highest on the men's scale of dimes. It's all about procreation and what makes us want to go into baby making mode with someone.

Women certainly understand the value, pun intended, in a dude driving a lambo compared to a dude driving a 1979 Gremlin. The car is merely a representation of security. Not from an all encompassing standpoint, but it does serve as a representation of it. Especially for women who might not be as financially capable as they would like to be. That or they dated the 79 Gremlin guy at one point and realized that the height of romance with that dude was slamming pancakes and ham at the Waffle House on a Saturday night.

Not that slamming pancakes and ham at the Waffle House can't be a good time. Certainly it can. But she might want the ceiling raised a bit in regards to life experiences with her significant other. And again this is all related to social and physiological wiring in which we find someone sexable. And most of the time, women find men more sexable if they represent security, and can provide at a level that is greater than their own at a myriad of levels. This doesn't mean money makes you sexy. It can make you sexier, or at least appear so due to the fact that having money will increase the depth of your dating pool. But I don't see droves of women lining up outside of Bill Gates house throwing panties over his possibly diamond studded fence trying to get his attention. And since you don't have Bill Gates money, you can relax a little bit. The point of "money" is that you can pay the bills. The mortgage. That you can provide, and not be a burden or deadbeat. It's simply a single unit of measure in security.

If men are hunters, and women are nurturers, then women look for men who can bring home the meat. Yes, that's low hanging fruit right there in terms of jokes, but allow me to explain that wasn't necessarily sexually laced innuendo.

Survival, in ancient times (which would be the 1970's if you ask my kids) meant that men who had the ability to be great hunters, and bring home the meat, meant they were capable, and obviously had a higher social value. It showed physical and mental capability. It meant he could provide. The food he killed and brought home was the representation of his ability to provide and create an environment that was conducive to mate in. Ain't no one got time or energy for getting sexed up while they are starving. Not to mention that the chances of survival for the woman and her offspring are much higher with a man who can physically protect her, and also provide for her, and the children.

Lambo guy is the dude hauling in the bison with his bare hands with blood covering his face, looking like William Wallace after slaying some scurvy ridden Brits, while 79 Gremlin boy is bringing home some wilted lettuce.

Physically, women usually want a man they feel could whip some ass in a situation where she needs to be protected. If ol' boy is hiding behind her when the need for meeting violence with violence arises, she might be a tab bit perturbed. I will say that I've met some women who I wouldn't want to meet in a dark ally if Aunt Flow happened to be in town that week. But I digress......

Financially, maybe she doesn't need a man driving a lambo (ok let's clear this up, you don't NEED a man in a lambo, but it's an awfully big bonus) but she is most definitely looking for someone physically and financially capable.

"Capable of what?"

You understand what capable means, don't play semantic games here.

Emotionally...well that becomes incredibly complex because of different attachment theories, and there's a reason why therapists are trying to help men break through the Matrix style coding that is "woman". But at some level, the male has to be able to appeal to her emotional needs as well. After all, women are far more emotionally wired creatures than men. They process emotionally based situations far differently than men, and those emotions tend to transcend across every landscape of their life, where men tend to compartmentalize each situation separately.

This is why men tend to offer up solutions to a problem, compartmentalizing the issue into a broke/fix solution, which often enrages the woman because she really just wants him to listen and be present in the moment with her. He gets frustrated because he doesn't understand why she's all pissed off now because he told her how to fix something. She leaves the room and he turns on Sportscenter. In a round about way, he fixed his own issue by getting her out of the room and nagging him about her problems that she never really wanted a solution for to begin with.

I jest, but it's kinda true.

If guys want a real solution when this arises, what the woman really wanted was for you to just listen to her, be present in her struggle with her, and allow her to come to her own problem/resolution (which she's already done before she ever brought this up to you) process but to feel as though you have emotionally supported her in that process.

But Sportscenter, tho.......

Anyway, what all of that boils down to is her also feeling emotionally protected and tended to.

There's a theme here that keeps occurring and you should be able to spot it fairly easily.

1. Protect - physically and emotionally. That means her in both occasions. Protect her from harm, and guard her heart by not doing things that betray her trust, or trigger awfulness from prior relationships.

2. Provide - financially, to some degree. Past the Waffle House pancakes and ham, I mean. Have something better than the 79 Gremlin.

Most all of the things that women will seek out, due to their physiological wiring, can be traced back to those two factors.

So why is it that we hear this phrase and see meme after meme about how there are no good men left for women to choose from?

Well, again, I'm going to take a stab at it that due to the environmental and social factor that comes into play about mate selection, that the world we live in today, has caused a lot of women AND MEN (lest I get labeled a sexist here) to lose sight of what is necessity, and what is luxury. And often times, the ones that find themselves in relationships that peter out over time and find themselves left "wanting" is because they ended up selecting a person based far too much on what appeals to luxury, while minimizing the necessities.

Mathematically, it flat out cannot be true that there are no "good women" or "good men" out there available to cultivate a relationship with.

Separating luxury from necessity -

If you've ever had a talk with someone who is single, and has been single for a significant period of time, but has done a lot of dating, they will often tell you the reason they haven't found the "right person" (insert eye roll at this point) is because "I'm really picky, and I'm not going to settle."

Perhaps dear reader, you've uttered this phrase.

So what defines settling? That's really something the person has to be aware of, and what really falls under the realm of necessity in a mate, or if they are putting too much emphasis on what really are luxuries in one.

For some guys, "breathing" is the one necessity they seek out in a woman. That's going to be the running joke here so we will get it out of the way early. Men are actually a bit more complex than that, despite the fact that society tries to paint us as being these incredibly simple skirt chasing knuckle dragging simpletons. And because men also need fulfillment on a myriad of levels, this is why eventually, men too end up finding that one woman they will commit to, and feel as though they can't be without. That woman will haven no doubt who she is, because he will go to the ends of the Earth to let her know, she's the one he wants. If your "man" is not doing that, then you're not the one. I can promise you that. The guy that's waiting three days to text you? He's not that into you. Remember, men are hunters. And when it comes to finding his woman, he's looking for someone to bring bison home to. Not the lettuce.

You're welcome?

It's possible I just shattered some hopes and dreams. I love to deliver the good news. Sometimes a harsh dose of reality is what's needed though.

But for the people who constantly chirp about how no one is measuring up and how they won't settle, well no one is asking for you to settle, however what is it that you believe you're settling for? Most happy people end up with someone they believe are equivalent to their own sense of self worth.

That's actually the reason why you see the guy in the lambo dating the super hot chick who most often, tends to have more going for her than being really good looking. Though that is sometimes the case, the guy in the lambo, if he earned it, most often has a pretty high sense of self worth and is going to be attracted to a woman that will have the same. At least if we're talking about an on going relationship here, and excluding douchebags such as Dan Bilzarian.

Everything has to start with some semblance of chemistry and physical attraction then. I mean, that's all you have to go on at first. Women of course, are wired a bit differently in that way than men. Men are very visually wired and tend to seek out women based on appearance in the initial stages. Make no mistake, a man will only stay in a relationship with said hottie if she is also meeting his other needs as well. And despite the type casting of male shallowness that goes on, men do have needs outside of a sammich making hottie that allows him to watch the game. They will vary from man to man, of course, but men have emotional needs as well. And yes, that's probably a news flash from the city for some of you, but men do like snuggling on the couch and being told how handsome we are from women we don't call "Mom". In fact, I can tell you this...your man (if you currently have one) will become what it is you speak about him. Tell a man how awesome he is, how amazing he is, and speak empowerment and confidence into him, and he will embody those things. Tell me what a sack of crap he is, and you'll find a man drinking at the bar on Friday staring at other women's rear ends.

Don't like that? Then change what you speak into your man, and about your man.

Women on the other hand, well they can be a bit more pliable in regards to looks. As long as she doesn't find a man completely repulsive physically, and she doesn't friend zone the living hell out of him, if he can get her emotions interested in him then he's got a shot. It's why we often see dudes that look like they lost all 12 rounds in a boxing match with a pterodactyl on trenbolone, dating incredibly attractive women that are just all about ol' boy.

"This man..." she proceeds to write on social media, underneath a picture of him wearing that dog shit ugly sweater she bought him (that he hates but wears for her) making the heart hands. You know what I'm talking about.

Because he's appealing to the things we went over above. He's providing. Emotionally in some way, he's providing for her in a way that is fulfilling. He probably doesn't drive a 79 Gremlin either.

So back out of this rabbit hole, and back to the main point - since everyone is so picky and women refuse to settle, what is it outside of chemistry and being physically attracted to a man that women are having trouble with in regards to "finding a good man"?

I mean, if we're accepting that women are more emotionally in tune with who they are, and what they need, then what are the characteristics that make a man, a good man? Or make a man good at being a good man. Because there is a difference. One requires a penis. The other requires that and some virtues to go along with it.

Let's pretend said man has his crap together, i.e. has a good job, takes care of himself physically and isn't out doing competitive beer bong challenges with his college friends on the weekend...what are the necessities required for a man to be..."good"? And what are the luxuries?

I could make a list. Things like honesty, loyalty, kindness, ambition, and courage. I think this is a good list. I can understand a woman saying these are necessities. And anything that falls outside of this list, most likely, might fall under the list of luxuries. Him not being a meth addict or alcoholic could be deal breakers, unless you too enjoy some fine midwest methamphetamine or binge drinking on the daily. But again, that comes back to being attracted to someone of equal value. And equal value tends to encompass those kinds of things. We gravitate not only to those that share the same beliefs as us, but live fairly equal lifestyles, and also reaffirm what it is we believe about ourselves (but that's an entirely different subject all together).

It's really up to the individual to determine what it is they view as necessities and what are truly luxuries in a person. Then eliminate people as they don't meet the necessities required to be in a committed relationship with.

The luxuries are the cherries on top. The icing on the cupcake. The cream filling inside the glazed doughnut, when the glazed was really just as equally delicious. But you tossed out the glazed doughnut because it wasn't cream filled, and you threw away the cupcake that didn't have icing, and whatever it was that was supposed to have cherries on top of it, well you tossed that too.

But lots of times, there are good women and men walking around who refuse to commit again because they were indeed all of the necessities, and even to a large degree, the luxuries. And they found themselves being all of those things, or to the very best they were capable of, only to find the other person wasn't willing to meet them halfway in their efforts, or be the necessities themselves.

Tragically enough, I think there are plenty of good men and women out there who have just closed off all the roads that lead to their heart because they just became exhausted at some point in giving to someone, only to find themselves left empty over and over again. Exhausted at the litany of excuses that were constantly laid before them as to why someone "just couldn't". Can't never could. And people do what it is they really want to do; what's important to them.

1. Priorities
2. Level of effort
3. Number 2 will tell you all you need to know about number 1

Being all the necessities, and even the luxuries won't ever be enough for the person who was never supposed to fit into the cracked spaces of who you are. Not because you're not worthy. But due to their own inability to understand or appreciate your worth, and lack the ability to offer up those same virtues.

Someone can only give back the very thing they are in possession of. No one can give you a lambo if they don't have one to spare. And no one can reciprocate love, honesty, sincerity, and devotion if they don't contain those things in their gift giving mechanism. You could be the most infallible creature ever placed on God's green Earth. Do you think you're going to be able to create a dynamic of harmony with anything less than the other infallible person that doesn't actually exist? Probably not. You're flawed. So is everyone else. And there is no "right person". There's only a bunch of wrong people out there to choose from. So what it really takes is a deep breath in which you inhale the fact that you're looking for the right wrong person. The person you're attracted to, but has the list of necessities required to cultivate a relationship that can bloom. Anything on top of that is a luxury.

So before you remark that there are no good men or women out there, ask yourself first if you are one. Are you the very things you are seeking in a person? Because we tend to attract the people who will affirm what it is we believe about ourselves. Our selection process tends to be a reflection of where our heart is in that moment in time, but also reinforces the framework of the belief system we have about ourselves.

If you consistently find yourself opening up people who disappoint you in who they are, then be honest enough to ask if you're seeking necessities, or luxuries. And be introspective enough to know if you're able to give the very things you keep saying you want to receive.

I'm too picky.......

In essence, be the lambo and you'll find your fellow lambo companion. Your ride or die partner.

Be a 79 Gremlin and well, you know the Waffle House drill.

Please stop loving yourself "just as you are"

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Mon, 01 May 2017 16:04:00 +0000

Most of us remember significant firsts.

First love, first day of school, first fight we got into, first time we got our heart broken, the usual run of the mill life stuff. Sometimes we even remember our lasts. Last time we saw a loved one alive that passed away, the last day at a particular job, graduation day, the last time we got drunk and woke up in a urine filled ally with a homeless man rummaging through our pockets for spare change. Stuff like that. Run of the mill.

I don't know how many days of football practice I've had in my life, but I remember my first and last.

My last wasn't significant other than I knew I didn't desire to chase that dragon anymore. I would love to say I retired, but since that day I've checked the mail for my checks and not a single one has arrived.

My first day of practice however, was far more significant.

I was ten years old and scared out of my mind. I had already been in plenty of school yard scraps by that age, but duking it out with another G.I. Joe enthusiast was quite different than strapping on way-too-big shoulder pads and an even way-too-bigger helmet, and smashing into other waddlers. That's what it looks like at that age with those giant shoulder pads and helmet on, right? You kind of waddle around, unsure of where to run or what to do. Not unlike being at the front of the crowd during a black Friday sale. Face smashed up against the sliding glass doors, just waiting for them to open so you can dash inside and run around frantically trying to find that television that will now be on sale for ten dollars less than it was just hours ago.

Where was I? Oh yeah, first day of football practice.

So there I am, totally confused at every drill, scared out of my mind. And there's these Magnum P.I. wannabe mustachioed men wearing daisy duke style jogging shorts, standing around yelling at everyone. Blowing their whistles at what seems like ambiguous moments throughout the day.

"I'm just getting up to full speed, coach! Wait, what? Stop? Ok. Now you're yelling at me and I have no idea why."

Thoughts that go through every married guys head while he's trying to make a baby with his wife.

But I digress.

The final drill for the day was something called bull in the ring. There's one kid in the middle of this circle of other kids surrounding him. Every kid in the circle has a number. When Magnum P.I. calls a number, whatever kid is assigned that number runs at ol' boy in the middle and they smash their wee little bodies into each other.

My number gets called a few times. In my mind, when it gets called, I'm running so fast that if I had been beside Usain Bolt I would have pulled his flesh right off his body with my blinding speed. When I hit the other wee little dude who was in the middle, in my mind, I was crashing into him like that comet out of that horrible movie Deep Impact. I'm causing tidal waves of death from Mississippi all the way to New York in these collisions.

But not really.

Apparently, I wasn't running very fast at all. And also, my hitting was apparently less than the magnitude of 70,000 tons of TNT. I looked it up. That was apparently the force for the comet in Deep Impact that Frodo Baggins was able to outrun on a really shitty motorcycle.

So dumb...

After a few of my less than stellar collisions, I felt something pulling on my jersey. It was a non-mustachioed man, who was not wearing daisy duke jogger shorts. He didn't have a whistle to confuse me with, either.

Oh, it was dad.

He pulled me off to the side and said to me "if you don't start hitting harder I'm going to take you off this field, put your ass in the car, and drive you home."

The scared shitless ten year old inside me thought this actually sounded like a very good idea in that moment. So I agreed with him that he should just take me home. But I probably sounded more like a scorned woman at the time, because I started my retort to him with a "fine".

You know what I'm talking about.

"Fine, just take me home."

Something a husband has probably heard from his wife during a night out at a romantic restaurant overlooking the city during a seven course meal, where things went from awesome to awry in less than thirty seconds, and he could not figure out how.

But I wasn't having a seven course meal. I wasn't overlooking a beautiful city from the 40th floor either.

Clearly, however, I was acting like a little bitch. And like a little bitch I got in the car and pouted. Dad drove off in front of everyone, and the whole team had stopped the drill to watch this scene unfold. We didn't make it home however.

Dad pulled off to the side of the road, to have one of those after school TV special type talks with me. You know the one. Some big life lesson is about to go down. The dad, or older father figure type who has been consistently rejected despite his efforts to just show the wayward kid that he cares about his well being and what he's doing with his life. That one.

"Listen son..." as most genuine dad speeches start off with.

"I just want you to be the best player you can be. Go out there and give it your best effort."

That was it. I know, after this already long write up that that speech seems very anti-climatic. There was no one dying of cancer to go out and play hard for. There wasn't some golden scene of glory that was going to fill up the screen in my after school special because I decided to actually try to the best of my ability.

In modern day speak, this is what dad said.....

"Son, you suck. You play like a little bitch. Man up."

Are you triggered? I read a couple of years ago that telling young dudes to "man up" was bad in some way. I got triggered that day. For sure, that happened.

"Take me back to the field."

Also in modern day speech..."release the Kraken."

Dad smiled that crappy overacted Bill Paxton style smile and drove me back. I got back in the line up, and I remember seeing red. Ok no I'm not exaggerating this time. I was mad as hell. When my number got called, I decided it was indeed time to ring the bell. Namely, my own. As I actually did run as fast as I could, and did slam into the other plastic plated toddler really, really, hard. Well, as hard as a ten year old can.

Shut up, Dad

Anyone who has ever been involved in contact sports where you take blows to the head, knows what the black lightening is. That "flash" where it's black, but you get that white flash in it? You know the one. The one you eventually come to love after enough brain trauma has occured.

Well I got that. Not sure if the other kid did, but I knew then by contrast, that indeed prior to this I had not been running very fast or hitting very hard.

Dad's after-school special speech had paid off. I carried that moment with me until the last practice I ever had.

"Man up. Stop being a little bitch. Your best probably isn't as good as you think it is."

Probably not the title you're going to see headlining an article at elitedaily, or any other such horrifically similar internet soapbox that carries article after article about how loving yourself "just as you are" is so vitally important.

And it is. I think you should love who you are, exactly as you are....if you have zero desire to improve anything in your life.

If my dad had been an elitedaily reader, he probably waits until after practice is over to hand me a coconut water and tell me what a "good job" I had done. Totally enabling my lackluster effort and sense of paralyzing fear.

"Love that effort out there, son. Good work. Drink this coconut water. Hydration is important."

But this was late summer in Mississippi. There was no coconut water, and my dad was born in 41, had 19 brothers and sisters, walked up hill to school both ways, worked in the fields all day after said walk, and later served in the 'Nam.

In other words, that coconut water speech wasn't happening because my dad? Well, he was a man.

And he treated me like a man. Wanted me to compete to the best of my ability, and wasn't making excuses for my fear, and lack of effort.

He didn't tell me to love myself "just as you are son. You're my only son, and whatever effort you give is good enough. You'll get better in time. Just hang in there, kiddo."

No he impressed upon me that the here and now mattered, and that it presented a time to get better. To not be satisfied with my poor effort, and that if it meant him embarrassing me in front of my teammates to get the best out of me, then that was happenin'.

"Well, all kids are different, and some respond better to..."

Blah blah blah.

I don't believe that the hammer should be the only tool used to in order to drive someone to strive for better. But the elimination of it is just as wrong as pulling it out for every occasion. My dad was all accolades when I deserved it. When I didn't, out came the "son, you really kinda suck" speech.

Show me a kid that is consistently coddled and never has foot broke off in ass, and I will show you a kid that consistently under performs in everything they do unless they are naturally driven on their own. Some kids do have that, but even those kids, I've found, are receptive to tough love and hard, but fair, criticism. Most kids, however, will skate by with doing the bare minimum effort if the bare minimum effort is what you've taught them is good enough.

And those kids, the coddled ones, the Coconut Water drinking after practice where they didn't break a sweat kids, become adults. And they preach this coddled message that lacks any bite about self awareness, self improvement, self discipline, and the very fact that loving yourself, "just as you are", is not really loving yourself at all. It is indeed a form of apathy. And what's the opposite of love? It's not hate. It's apathy. And apathy is the very thing that stunts personal growth, and makes someone shrink in the face of hard decisions and criticism. Apathy is the very thing that will encapsulate your life in a world of mediocrity, misguided self appreciation, and an unhealthy level of acceptance about who you are.

In the serenity prayer, we ask for God to help us accept what we cannot change, but also to give us the courage to change the things we can.

Not, "God, I don't need to change anything because I accept the conditions in which I totes have control over."

"Did you just say a prayer to me using the word "totes?" Ok, it's Sodom and Gomorrah time for these kids." -- God's answer to your totes prayer.

"The Lord God is totes fed up!"

There's a segment in society, and its very clear message is that we all are special, yet at the same time somehow equal. Completely deserving of things we don't have to work for.

I quit coaching football because of this. We're back full circle to me being in fourth grade here.

Back then, I had to earn the right to get on the field. The kids with no hand eye coordination that couldn't catch a cold or hit the broad side of a barn with a bass fiddle didn't get playing time. Fat Johnny or Skinny Samuel weren't shunned because of how they looked. They didn't see playing time because either they sucked, and couldn't play, or because they were cowards who shrunk in the face of adversity.

There, I'm not sugar coating it.

No, it wasn't Normandy, but as young men our initiation into manhood, or adulthood in general, often does start by cutting our teeth through physical conflict. And this most certainly established a pecking order, both on the field and off it. It separates the wheat from the chaff, as they say.

I remember years later when I played both quarterback and middle linebacker that I had flowers delivered to the the prettiest girl in the school, as she was named homecoming queen. Had I not been the signal caller for the offense and defense and been respected by my peers, then I simply established very early that I was totes a creepy stalker child.

Yeah, I just used totes again. And that whole last paragraph read like it was written by Uncle Rico or Al Bundy. I actually had a point in there so let me make it. I could send her flowers without it being creepy as hell because of the position I had earned with my team, and peers. I know, it's nuts to have certain perks like that due to earning something, but sometimes that happens in life.

So where was I? Oh yes...

So I quit coaching because I was forced to play kids that reduced our odds of winning, because the school created a mandate that all kids got equal playing time. Now you think about that for a minute and what that does to desire, passion, and motivation. How does that set kids up for success when they are coddled and led to believe that effort is unimportant in the process of earning something?

Then they are set free to adult in life. And grow up to believe in this warped ideology about what they deserve.

"You deserve a good man/woman."

"You deserve a good job."

"You deserve $15 an hour to dip those potatoes into a bucket of oil."

"You deserve free college. Let someone else pick up the tab."

"You deserve to be on that field because it's shaming you to let you sit on the sidelines while the other kids that worked really hard get all the playing time."

At what point were they told that the only thing you deserve, is what you can work to obtain, and work to keep?

I'm not advising you hate yourself. But you can hate your efforts, or lack-thereof.

You can wake up and hate how you feel because you're 50 pounds overweight. You can understand that you have the power to change it, and somehow find the "courage" (I know, it's hard) not to eat 42 tacos that day, or rationalize how you earned food like a trained dog because you did 30 minutes on the stair stepper the day before.

You can change your whole life with one decision if you want to. But in order to do that, you have to care enough about your life to not become apathetic to it, or the situation you are in.

The net is overrun with articles about what you deserve, how to change your life into the "one you always dreamed of". And then often times, these same internet publications tell you "just love yo self like you are."

You want a new life? Does it suck? Care enough to change the one you have. Find the courage to make that one decision.

You want a new body? Does your physique suck? Care enough to change the one you have. Stop being slothful and make better food choices. Stop reading articles about beauty at all sizes.

You want more money? Bank account sucks? Get a second job, or get educated in a field that offers better pay, or sell all your cats on e-bay, cat-lady. Maybe if you did that, you'd get a date.

Any form of self improvement does not come with self love. It comes with an overwhelming desire for self change. Which will come with an eventual acceptance that a lot of work and adversity will present itself to you. That's good, I like that.

It does not always come with self hate. But it can be encased inside of the dislike or disdain for what currently exists. Change or improvement in any fashion certainly will not come if you drown yourself in an ocean of apathy all the while calling it self love.

There's a difference in being the best, and giving your best. Something I too have impressed upon my girls at everything meaningful they will do in life. There's too many factors out of their control that may keep them from the best at something they want to do, but it's 100% within their control to be the very best they are capable of.

Maybe the reason why your life sucks, is because your efforts sucks.

Maybe you should stop being a little bitch and man up if that's the case.

If that triggered you then then I suspect it's the case.

Thanks, Dad.

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The beginning of the end, and new beginnings - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 14:51:00 +0000

There's nothing I detest more than people constantly posting their break up drama for everyone to see. We know why you do it. Because you need all those "friends" (real or not) to comment about how
bad they feel for you, and how the other person is a piece of trash, and you deserve better, and how the right person will come along, and this and that, and I could go on forever with all the canned cliches that will be offered up.

"Girl, you deserve better than that."

"Dude, she sucks. Just go bang her friends."

Phrases you're probably not going to hear from educated people who actually work to help those through difficult phases in their life in regards to heartache. Also, and let's just be honest, there's often not any words that are going to just lift the pain and give you instant clarity in regards to moving forwards in your life once you're single again. Generally, you pour out to friends because you often just need an ear during the worst of times so you can vent about all the pain and anguish and confusion you're dealing with.

Friends can often be your worst enemies during these times to be honest. Or let me clarify, friends that aren't honest with you about your own problems. Your own baggage. Your own repetitive cycles that keep manifesting in your life that leave you saying "there's no good men/women out there!" without ever considering that right now, maybe you're not the good man, or the good woman.

Great friends are the ones that know you well enough to point out the issues you keep creating. And have the courage to tell you the things you really need to hear, and not want to hear. Bad friends are the ones that keep telling you about all the things you deserve, and ignore all the flaws you need to fix or at least become aware of, that serve as the root cause in all the failed relationships you keep having.

Good friends aren't going to tell you how you deserve much better than him, if "him" looks just like the last 4 guys you dated in regards to how he treated you. They are going to tell you that there is clearly something wrong in your selection process that needs to be addressed. That you are the common denominator in choosing these same types of men.

Good friends aren't going to tell you to "go bang her friends" because that's seeded in a form of revenge. And as the saying goes "anytime you set out on a course of revenge, make sure you dig two graves."

I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people who have told me about all of the bad decisions they made after loss...after heartache. And how much they regretted those choices. Letting your emotions rule you completely during this time is like covering a gaping would with filthy bandages. It only makes the wound fester and takes far longer to heal. Unhealthy coping mechanisms are what we use delay the inevitable. That is, coming to grips with what we lost, the choices we made that caused said loss, and then the recovery that has to take place in coming to grips with all of that.

In all honesty, even true friends often give bad advice during these times, so maybe I'm not being fair. The reason they usually do so is because they know you're in pain. They know about your loss. But sitting down across from someone you know is in pain, and telling them that a lot of it was self inflicted isn't a conversation most friends have the courage to do. But they know about your issues. I mean the ones that you played a part in creating your own mess.

Trust me, they know them. Because they most likely talk about them to other friends, then tell you to your face "you just need the right person."

Good friends who know you well enough also aren't going to tell you to keep trying to salvage a relationship that has been vaporized. You don't take a car that has been totaled to the shop and ask them to fix it. You understand the vehicle is no longer worth saving, and you purchase a new one.

All romantic relationships get fender benders. Things that are fixable. And some romantic relationships get totaled, and people refuse to acknowledge that it's done and that no amount of work could really make it driveable again. I can't tell you how many couples I know that are in totaled relationships that refuse to acknowledge that the scrapyard is the only proper place for said relationship to go.

"You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away, know when to run." -- Kenny Rogers

After my divorce, I knew I was screwed up. My closest friends were there for me, but they also didn't enable me continuing down destructive paths that were leading me straight into hell. They told me I was screwed up. And I'm glad they told me that, because it's what I needed to hear.

I had devolved from the man I had been for a very long time, into someone I didn't recognize anymore. And I knew that. I knew I had strayed from so many of the principles that I had built my entire life around.

And each and every one of them told me the same thing. That I had to make choices to change things. That it was on me. Which is also what my therapist told me. Which is what any good therapist is going to tell you. A good therapist isn't going to ask you "how does that make you feel?"

More than likely, you already told them how you feel. The question that should be asked is...

"what are you going to do about it?"

Do you even need a therapist for that? Once I accepted all of the things I had control over, and let go of the things I didn't, I realized I had an enormous amount of power and capability in my life. And most people truly, I believe, are afraid of that power. Because then the onus is completely up to them to "fix" whatever it is that ails them. And there's a lot of people that love to squat down into suffering and not move, because of how hard change can be.

But change, no matter how painful, is a lot less painful than being emotionally isometric and not doing a damn thing to get out of the mess you've made of your life.

Think about it; when you have this great big emotional crisis in your life that you can't or won't properly address, every other problem that comes along feels ten times larger than it really is.

Don't read past that and not let that really sink in.

People talk about how problems come in bunches, but for the most part, we usually have all of the little problems going on, that roll off of us like water off a duck's back. However, when there is a huge emotional cyst in our life that we won't pop, then suddenly all of our problems loom much larger than they normally would. Everything feels "heavy". Everything is a crisis. Because underneath it all is this groundswell that we refuse to address.

Fix that big problem, and the little issues tend to take care of themselves. Or let me say, at least we have the emotional strength available to us now, after addressing the big problem, so that the little problems become "little problems" again.

Since I've spent a lot of time owning that I did so many things wrong that caused my problems, I can also say with all honesty, I did a lot of things right in the aftermath of my separation and divorce.

Namely, I spent time alone. Even after the former Mrs. Carter and I came to the conclusion that we wouldn't be reconciling, but that we weren't ready to divorce yet. I didn't go out and date. I spent those months working on restoring myself. Identifying where I lost my way, why I made certain decisions, and what needed to change in my life in order to grow into the man I wanted to be.

Someone told me during this time, "the path a lot of men end up finding they walk when they go through this is that, they lose who they were for a while, then come out on the other side a better version of the man they were before all of this happened."

I knew that's what I wanted to get out of all of this. I didn't want to continue sinking into the emotional abyss that had consumed my life, and left me in a place where I would lie in bed some nights and cry until my whole body hurt because I was ashamed of what I had let my life spiral into.

I knew for me, I needed to put my energy and efforts into myself and into the people whose lives mattered the most. And you know who that was?

Me.

Let me be clear about something here that really annoys me. If you want to fix your life, you have to be selfish enough to fix yourself first. I've written many times about how on a plane, they tell you in the case of an emergency that you need to put your oxygen mask on first before putting it on your child or someone who can't take care of themselves. It's called healthy selfishness. You can't be good for anyone until you are introspective enough to understand your own problems, and then take steps towards fixing them.

You should see a pattern developing here if you piece it all together.

I didn't band aid my problems with unhealthy coping mechanisms. I didn't have friends enabling my previous bad choices. I owned my part in how my life had become unraveled. I worked on taking steps towards becoming the man I really wanted to be. And that required me putting myself first for a while, so that way I could be the best version of myself in order for that to transcend into the lives of those I loved.

If you wanted my recipe for how I got my life back on track, I'd say those were the ingredients.

But there was something else that happened in all of this that manifested in my thinking....

My struggles didn't have to define me.

I know far too many people who cling to victimization and allow all the bad shit that has happened to them define who they are. We can make poor choices and grow from them. Or we can let them define us and our life because we sit down into those choices and say "this is who I am." instead of saying "that is who I was, and those were the choices I made, but it doesn't wholly define me."

I also wasn't going to let other people define who I was, because I can tell you this. When you let other people define you, especially the people who want you to live in a way they think you should be living, they will always make you smaller than you are. Those people will define you by your mistakes, and by your poor choices, and leverage that against you emotionally to manipulate your life so that your future choices are based on making them happy.

My dad tried to do this to me. He called me and told me I was a fool for allowing my marriage to slip away. He tried to shame me into going back into it. I wasn't having it. I knew that I couldn't be happy in that relationship anymore, and that we were not going to create the model of a marriage that I would want my kids to be in. I knew I couldn't make her happy, and she knew she couldn't do the same for me. No one was going to shame me into a life I didn't want anymore. If you ever want to know the true definition of selfishness, it was written by Oscar Wilde....

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbor that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.”

It wasn't selfish to want to move forwards into a new life. Into one where I could make choices to invite happiness back in. To allow healing to take place.

It was healthy. And I couldn't be the man I wanted to be if I wasn't healthy, and happy. Single, married, whatever your relationship status may be, it all has to start there. If I was ever to be good for someone again, I had to be able to bring a healthy and happy Paul to the table.

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The beginning of the end, and new beginnings - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 02:26:00 +0000

I've debated on sharing this for quite some time. For a myriad of reasons.

My personal life has been one that, for the most part, I've kept off of social media.

I made one post about my divorce. In which I tried to be as transparent as possible but also making sure to respect my former wife, kids, family, and friends who all knew in details of how things arrived at that place. I've said many times, my private life is private. That word private is in there for a reason.

But since that post, I've gotten I don't know how many messages asking how me and the former Mrs. Carter ended up in the place we are now. Where we have a great friendship, and co-parent about as well as I think any two couple could. Or people who were going through a similar crisis, and just wanted some words of wisdom about what my thoughts about their situation was.

Divorce can be a hard place to arrive at. The finality of it all. But it can also be a liberating one. I remember leaving the lawyers office after our final visit feeling like the weight of the world had been lifted off of my shoulders. There was closure. A chapter in my life I could finally turn the page on. And my future was now this blank canvas that I could paint with any types of shapes and colors that I wanted to paint it with. That can be scary for some people. Or as it was for me, it can feel very freeing.

I only had one person tell me "congratulations!" when I told them about my divorce. She too had divorced and also hated when people said "I'm so sorry" about it. Louis CK had the same take.

"It's a stupid thing to say."

The whole "I'm sorry" bit.

Yes, it is. It's stupid. Or let me say, I think it is.

Because, and to borrow from him....no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. None. Not one.

"If two people got married, and they had a really good thing, and then got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has literally happened zero times."

So just for your own insight here, when someone tells you they got divorced, just say congratulations. Or simply ask "so what's on the horizon?" But at least try to avoid saying "I'm so sorry". Even if they feel broken up about the split, you can ease the pain a bit by helping them to realize that as an adult, they have a future in front of them that is probably not shackled to a romantic relationship that wasn't worth being in anymore. They have choices. They have control. People have to learn to embrace those things post divorce, and take steps towards moving on with life. As a great friend told me "you're not starting over, you're just getting on with life."

But that's not the social norm. Saying "congratulations" about divorce, I mean.

And I know there's probably quite a few people reading this that don't agree with me. And that's ok. Because you know what? You'll never walk a single mile in my shoes, and you'll never pay a single bill of mine, or carry any burden I will ever have to bear. I also know what a lot of people are probably thinking as well.

"No, it's sad because of what it puts the kids through if they are involved."

And I have an answer for that as well.

You shouldn't save a marriage, or stay in one, for the kids.

Two people staying together for "the sake of the kids" and creating a model of a relationship they see everyday, that isn't filled with love, passion, enjoyment, togetherness, and harmony. That's what sad.

Those are the traits kids should be seeing day in and day out, along with how to resolve conflict, which will happen in every marriage, in a way that helps the relationship to grow and prosper that they too can learn from.

It's better for kids to exist inside of a model where two people are split, but co-parent effectively in a loving manner, than for them to exist inside of a home where to people co-exist but don't share intimacy and a deep seeded love for each other. Couples living as roommates that split bills? You can find one of those on Craigslist. That's not a marriage.

A loveless relationship without passion and excitement is a tomb. It's where souls go to die before our physical body does.

I wonder how many people surrender their happiness to a life of misery in those relationships? For their kids of course, I mean. Because splitting means there will be emotional trauma, pain, long and unpleasant talks about why mommy and daddy aren't together anymore. That shit is not fun. And many people avoid all of those things because it's painful. It's painful for them to have to watch their kids try to understand the complex natures of these relationships and the emotions involved in them.

But you know what else causes trauma and damage? The kind that is not easily undone either.

Keeping the kids in a loveless home where two people sleep in a bed together (or maybe he's on the couch some nights), talk about finances, and do shit together...with the kid(s) of course...but there's no real joy in it all for them as a couple, is tragic. And you're fooling yourself and lying to yourself daily if you don't think the kid(s) don't know that.

We don't give kids enough credit, even at young ages, for really understanding the lack of love and intimacy shared between their parents. They may not can express it or articulate it in grown up words when they are young, but they certainly can, and will, when they are older. The recognize it. They feel it. Trust me, they know mommy and daddy don't hug, kiss, and snuggle on the couch together. They see disconnect and apathy. They are fully aware of it.

"We don't yell, or argue in front of our kids."

Take yourself back to your childhood for a minute. You didn't always understand what your parents may have been arguing about, or the complexity of what they were hashing through. But you did understand emotions. You did understand love or anger or bitterness. Even at a young age. You did understand rejection and apathy and rejection and a wide array of emotions that we as adults like to pretend kids don't grasp.

They don't grasp the depths or the complexity of the situations that caused us to arrive there. But they understand what the emotional destination looks like.

And this is how people lie to themselves. Kids end up enduring the emotional alienation that exists in the paradigm of the relationship shared between their parents. What's the opposite of love? It's not hate. It's apathy. If kids can feel love between two people, do you really believe they can't feel apathy as well? Damage doesn't have to be loud. It does't always exist in the form of furious words or physical abuse. It can and does exist in the the vacuum that is known as the absence of love and disowned romance. That's the tomb.

And kids are sponges.

Give them anger, and they will soak that up, and wring it out in their future relationships. But show them nothingness, and they will suffer through repeated failed relationships in their future because you'll be the one responsible for having left their sponge empty. How are they to shower someone with genuine affection, love, and sincerity when you never genuinely showed them what that meant at a truly authentic level with your significant other?

I give my former wife all the credit in the world for being an incredibly courageous and strong woman, for having the knowledge and strength to know we were no longer showing our kids what a great marriage looked like anymore. So she walked.

And she always give me credit for working my ass over in the years after that, to make amends to her and working hard to co-parent with her in a way that ended up creating a new and wonderful friendship between the two of us. A co-parenting relationship we've been able to watch our kids thrive and flourish in.

After our divorce was final, I actually took her out to dinner at this really nice restaurant and we toasted to all the years that were great, not so great, and to our future together to be the best parents we could be for our kids and to a new friendship. Our kids still see love between us. Not discontent or anger or resentment. They got to watch what letting go of resentment looks like. And in retrospect, I also realized we've given our kids a model that when or if their relationship is no longer serving them or growing them, or isn't fulfilling, that there should be a time when letting go of it will serve them the greatest.

All romantic relationships aren't worth saving. That includes marriages. And certainly, there comes a point where you should be introspective enough to recognize that while relationships take work, they shouldn't BE work. I had a psychologist tell me that people have to learn what to "fix" in their relationships. And they often don't understand that "fixing" a relationship, sometimes means ending it. For your health, your significant others health, and the health and well being if there are kids involved. That most people do not understand that kids growing up in a home that is devoid of love between their parents is horrifically damaging.

We were smart enough to know that it's better to split for all the right reasons, than to stay together for all the wrong ones.

Falling on a sword and being a martyr in a romantic relationship is a benefit to no one. Not even your kids. There is absolutely nothing heroic about it. I don't care what your therapist, friends, or the dude behind the counter at Quick Trip tells you.

No one ever fixed a problem in their life by waiting around. Reactive people are the ones that end up with mountains of stress in their life because they are constantly having to duck and dodge all the shit that is being hurled at them. If you've ever watched boxing, you'll know the guy eating all the fists to the face is the one standing still, and not bobbing weaving. The problems in life aren't a lot different. If you're just standing in one spot, expect to eat a lot of punches.

Proactive people have stress too. But proactive people understand that usually there's one major underlying issue that has to be resolved, that has a domino effect in their life that transcends into resolving other minor problems. The proactive boxer responds to stimulus by making a choice to try and avoid getting hit, while answering back with his own fists.

Staying in a relationship or marriage for no other reason than the other person is the mother or father of your child is is faulty logic. It's failure. Plain and simple. And one that is going to leave you with a very fragmented legacy because one day your children will be adults. And most likely, unbeknownst to you, they may be in a conversation with friends, or even with their significant other where they utter a sentence, or sentences, that if you knew about, could break you.

"I knew my mom and dad never really loved each other."

"They only stayed together for us."

I read from a Christian author that, the greatest gift we can give our kids is a marriage that radiates love and passion and desire that is undeniable to them. Because that's the representation of what Christ gave to us. Whether you are a person of faith or not, I think that's a hard concept to disagree with. And if those things aren't there, then something else has to be existing in place of them. And those things will be what they take from you to carry on into their own romantic lives as adults. You get to be at least partially responsible for the model they create in their future romantic adventures.

"Paul, this whole thing sounds like it's very pro-divorce".

I'm not pro-divorce. I'm pro-awesome marriage. And I'm fully aware that it can't be awesome 100% of the time. But if you can't meet the 80/20 rule then something is amiss. 80% of the time, it should be awesome. Everyone should be able to put up with 20% of bullshit, or times where things suck.

I'm pro-working on things to make it better. But you can't get blood from a turnip. And you should reach a point where you know that what's going to serve you best after you've exhausted your emotional and mental resources, is to walk away and work on that new blank canvas.

So what happens after all of this? What was my aftermath?

I was single again.

No I really was. Apparently that's what happened after my divorce decree arrived in my e-mail. It didn't tell me "hey Paul, you're single." I kinda figured out that it went without saying.

So there I was...........single again. With more baggage than LAX at Christmas time that I had to figure out what to do with.

Part 2 later.........

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The process of identification

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 04:28:00 +0000

I've been asked on numerous occasions as to how I came into this personal insight about life, and relationships, and all sorts of crap I write about. I hate even writing that sentence because I feel like it comes across as haughty or arrogant. And I certainly rarely feel like I truly have the answers to people's problems. Mostly, I write about what I've experienced, what I've learned from those experiences, and the things I feel I could have done differently when I was existing inside of those times in my life.

I'm not special. Or unique. I'm just old enough to have enough seasoning, if you will, to have walked down enough paths in my life that I can often identify with what others in similar situations are going through. I've also read enough crap on all these things that if combined, would probably fill the library of Congress. Not that it's always served me. After all, knowledge is useless without the ability to apply it. Which is something that hit me most recently when I was pondering over a certain phrase I hear quite often in relation to the average dude/chic.

And that is "people are just stupid."

I have no doubt, that some of my closest friends, who love me dearly, could at any time utter that phrase about me. Despite all I've written, all I've read, all I've learned through books or life or whatever, I'm positive the people who know me best could tell you "Paul can be really stupid."

And that's not true. Ok, so it is.

And you know what? You're probably not that stupid either. Or maybe you are. Bear with me...

Someone reading this right now probably does think I'm stupid, mostly because of something I wrote before that they didn't like. But disagreeing with me on something doesn't make me stupid. If you're smarter than I am (which most are, trust me), then perhaps I was just ignorant. Or perhaps I didn't care. Which would make me apathetic. Or maybe I was ignorantly apathetic.

Possibly, I didn't have enough sleep the night before and just had my asshole meter pegged out. Take your pick.

Where am I going with this?

I don't think it's stupidity that holds most people back in life, or keeps people from making what others would deem a more "proper" or "appropriate" decision. You know why I think that?

Because anytime you're immersed in a situation where you have some type of investment in it, your own personal decision making can become very shoddy. To everyone else looking in from the outside, they often can and do give the same advice. Think about that; if you have 8 people all telling you the same thing, there's probably some truth to it. And in your mind, you may already know those truths. But your heart tells you something totally different, doesn't it?

Like......."don't listen to them! WTF do they know?"

Or there's just so much conflict between your head and your heart that the noise reverberating between the two creates and echo chamber, where everything is so loud that you can't differentiate between what seems like a logical decision, and what seems like an emotionally driven one.

Logic most often seems so sound doesn't it? It's like putting the key into a car. Someone asks you to start your car, logic has you put the key in and turn the ignition. Simple. Straight forward. I like it.

But life isn't starting a car. Life is driving down the interstate on cruise control, with your favorite jam on, with the windows down in 72 degree weather, and you have this amazing tan, and your hair or beard or eyebrows are on point, and there's nothing but open road in front of you.

Then you look over and gaze at the sun, to notice it's starting to set and the sky is filled with all these magnificent colors that look like God hand painted it all just for you to marvel at.

Then you look back to the road, and you have no idea where that petroleum truck came from, but it's veering all over the place, and then smashes into the bus full of toddlers, exploding into flames as you cry "Oh God, NO!!!!!". And there's no time to lock up the brakes to avoid a head on crash into the chaos you've just witnessed, so you veer around it only to see the ground opening up, and realize it's a massive sinkhole developing right there in front your eyes. And you can't avoid it and drive right into it, falling for what seems like an eternity into this deep dark black hole. Then suddenly it all stops. Miraculously your car stops and you realize it's landed on something sticking out of the ground.

"Why...that looks like part of the root of a giant tree! What a miracle!"

Suddenly, a light from above starts illuminating the pitch black you were enveloped in, and you look up to see what it is. Then realize it's that petrol truck. Somehow it too fell into that sinkhole with you and now it's coming down through the blackness right on top of you.

And then....

Well, you know what I mean. In a split second things can change in our life, and most of the time, those things are completely out of our control. And we often do our best to navigate past the toddlers on fire, and avoid the giant sink holes. But sometimes we crash right into that pre-K school bus too. Or we do drive right off into that sinkhole. And in those moments, I bet money, if someone really cool and collected was watching from the side of the road they would have all the answers as to how to avoid that whole mess.

"Ya see, dumbass, you shoulda just eased on the brake a bit then veered further over to the median where there is safety and comfort, and mixed drinks. But noooooo, not you. You lost all composure then then you're all baffled as to just how in the hell you went careening off into a big ol' sinkhole."

Yes, we all have that friend, with all the answers.

But they aren't the one behind the wheel, and they aren't the one trying to avoid the flames and massive holes in in the ground that swallow us up. And even worse, if they have been your friend long enough, you've seen them punch on the gas and plow right into the flaming toddlers and asked them "just what in the hell were you thinking??!?!"

But in a jumbled mess, we often do fall right into that sinkhole.

And when we do get swallowed up, it's hard to be logical sometimes. Most of the time, I actually do believe we "know" the right things. We have the answers. Here, let me make this simple. Is your current situation one filled with doubt and uncertainty? Is it filled with angst and trepidation about your future?

That's good. I like that.

You know why I like that? Because it means you are on the cusp of growth. But not until you figure out what you want to lead your decisions with. And that's the other part in all of this. Sometimes we need to lead with our heart, and sometimes we need to lead with our mind. And sometimes, it's a little bit of those two things helping each other to reach the decision we need. In fact, most often, I have found that it takes our heart and mind getting on the same page before we can have some clarity, and find the strength to make the choice we feel is right....in our heart.

So in the end, it's our heart we need to appease. Because ultimately, that's where our passion and desire comes from. Our mind is the voice that says "the speed limit is 65". It's our heart that screams "but I like to go fast!"

Then that petro truck....

Anyway, there's another point to all of this. It's through all of this "crap" that gets filtered into our roadway that we navigate through that serves us with something called "experience". And it's that experience that allows us to connect very deeply on a level with others who have also witnessed the Petro truck/toddler horror/sinkhole combination.

"This one time, I was driving..."

"Holy shit, me too!"

You've had those conversations. And when someone gives you the "holy shit, me too" there's an instant form of connection that happens within that moment. The process of identification.

The "I too drove into massive sinkhole..." connection. Not many people have that. It's a rare one.

But your problems and conflict feel rare to you, don't they? They feel unique and probably most often make you feel like you're isolated from the rest of the entire universe in your pain, and that certainly no one else has been through it.

"Not like this."

"And this ain't her first heartache
But it feels like, it feels like the worst
And she says
Can someone tell me how this can happen
And I guess that God only knows
My heart used to be
The sweet shop of love
But now the sign on the door
It says sorry we're closed
And I hear myself tell her
Some old words I know they won't help
And then I feel guilty
'Cause I closed some sweet shops myself" -- Edwin McCain

This one part in this song encapsulates everything I'm taking 9 million words to write about here.

She's heartbroken. And it's the worst one ever, and she feels alone in this, and has no idea how this all happened. And Ol Edwin, he's trying to throw some verbiage at her that will soothe the pain, but he knows through experience, through identification, the pain she's dealing with. And that there's no words to ease what she's feeling. And then he feels like shit, because he sees in her, what...most likely, he's done to someone else.

Hollllllllllllly shit that's deep. No, it really is. I think it is. You don't have to. That's fine.

But because he's been there, on both sides of it, he can identify with what she's going through. Maybe he can't ease it, and his words may give no consolation, but there becomes a connection through experience, that only experience can create. And this is how we develop those bonds of friendship or love or romance or trust. It's through the experiences we've had that we can see in someone else. All the ways our lives unfolded in front of us, that they too have had unfold in front of them. And boom, connection.

I've read many times the criticisms of motivational memes, or memes about success and that "none of the people posting these are successful, or are inspiring people". But I really don't think that's why people post them. I think they post them because they are trying to inspire themselves. Or perhaps said meme resonates with them in a way that conveys how they are feeling in those moments. I don't think it's really for anyone but the voice inside their head that is in the waves of feeling particularly good, and riding the crest, or particularly low, and trying not to drown.

Certainly, some people peacock on social media about their relationships. We all know "that couple". The one who puts up pics together and writes gush post after gush post that starts with "this man..." or "this woman...". But behind the scenes, for those that know them personally, know things aren't so peachy keen. For those people, it truly is about presenting an image they wish they were truly living. Who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want a relationship or love life filled with deep feelings of limerence for someone? Dopamine is a hell of a drug. And truthfully, one we need fairly often to simply feel alive again.

People going through the down slope in their lives enjoy a "like" or five-hundred when they post a pic of them and their significant other. I read a while back that we're at the point now where people cannot differentiate between a like on social media, and a truly genuine compliment in real life. And when you apply that method of reward in a deteriorating relationship, you can understand that it's immediate feedback that "everything's ok." Even when it's not. But the temporary release from the clutches of despair due to all of those likes can offer up the reprieve one may need. It doesn't make it "real". But who knows what is real anymore? Is the feeling of relief one gets from fake affirmation real? To the person feeling it, it is.

I think the saturation of social media has created a lack of connectedness in real society. We see memes or read a status that makes us laugh, and we more or less share in that with someone by liking or commenting. But roll our collective eyes at the ambiguous writings or pictures related to pain or anguish and dismiss them as attention seekers, who should just "get their shit together."

You know who really has their shit together? Kids. You know why kids do? Because life is often fairly simple, and because it's simple, they can apply straight forward simplistic solutions. Kids who aren't inundated with social media by having a smart phone can read people better than most adults, because as adults, most often we become so fixated on our own world, we don't often take time to pause and remember the universe doesn't revolve around us. When we have personal pain it's really hard to remind ourselves that there are people living in the rest of the world dealing with pain and anguish as well.

I had someone tell me one time "the thing about emotional or personal pain is that it's like hitting your hand with a hammer. If you miss the nail, and smash your finger or hand really hard, then until that pain subsides, you'll have trouble finding empathy for someone else's pain."

So there you sit, scrolling through your news feed, enveloped in your own personal crisis and what jumps out at you is some meme, that resonates with how you're feeling. Without taking a moment to think the reason the person posting it, might also be dealing with some personal crisis or area of pain in their life, and that it spoke to that place inside of them no different than it is doing for you at that moment.

But you've smashed your hand really hard with that hammer, so your focus is turned very inwards, and the rest of the world gets shut out. And the truth is, that's not always a bad thing. One of my favorite metaphors about dealing with problems is comparing it to the safety check they give you on an airplane. They tell you before you put the oxygen mask on your child, or person you are caring for, put yours on first. Because you have to be at your best before you can take care of someone who can't take care of themselves.

And often times, through social media, I really believe that people post stuff or write stuff out of a longing for a certain degree of connectedness while they are navigating through pain points in their life.

I can scroll through my feed now, and when I read something or see a certain meme, especially if someone keeps using similar themes over and over again, I say to myself....

"struggling..."

"struggling..."

"peacocking..."

"really in love..."

"ambiguous status means someone will see it and know it's about them and it's there to get some response...possibly in private..."

That last one was long, but I really think that.

The reason I come to these conclusions is because I've been there, and writing is my outlet. But I've never written for anyone but myself. It's an outlet for my own personal pain, or high wave crest riding.

And you know what's happened over the years? Since I'm usually fairly transparent about all of the really bad choices in my life, or the struggles I've gone through? I get a lot of messages from someone who reads it, and they too feel like...

"Oh man, I fell into a sinkhole once too!"

And that's what binds us together as friends, family, casual acquaintances, and significant others. And without our sinkholes, we can't have personal identification with others who are struggling as well. We need those toddlers to be set on fire. We need those sinkholes. It's those moments of terror and chaos and uncertainty that eventually shape who we are, help us connect with others in crisis or pain, and give us the chance to grow into more than what we currently are.

And at some point, you're not going to be hooked onto that tree root, deep down in the depths of that sinkhole with the flaming petrol truck bearing down you. You'll be back on the road, with your favorite jam on. You'll have stopped to take a look in the mirror and notice your hair or beard isn't as perfect as it once was. A reminder of what had previously happened. And your car won't be so pristine looking. Someone will stop to ask you if you got in a wreck. And you'll say "Yeah..." and tell them what happened.

And every once in a while, when you tell someone this, they will look back at you, with a familiar look, and say "oh man, that happened to me." And you'll realize at that point, that most of the roads we traverse down, were beaten paths already. Walked by so many people long before they presented themselves to us. And eventually all of these struggles and pain and toddlers that are engulfed in flames by petrol trucks, aren't situations that were unique. They were just unique to us. But they serve as a means to identify with others who have struggled with those same situations, and found a way to get back out. But it also serves a means to help others, who have fallen into a hole, and have no idea how to get back out.........

A hopeless chronic relapsing alcoholic addict had fallen into a hole and could not find a way out.

Friends and family heard the alcoholic addict crying out for help in a sincere and despairing appeal, "I cannot go on like this! I have everything to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!" So they offered the addict "frothy emotional appeals," bailed the addict out of trouble and gave the addict a ladder to climb out of the hole with, but the chronic relapser sold it to finance the next spree only to realize afterwards that the hole was now deeper than ever!

A doctor who was walking by heard the alcoholic addict crying out for help, stopping the doctor said, "Here, take these pills, it will relieve your pain." The doctor offered the addict methadone, suboxene, and a whole plethora of anti-depressants. The alcoholic addict took the pills and said thanks, but when the prescription ran out the pills ran out and the pain came back and the addict realized that he was still stuck in the hole.

A religious person happened to be strolling by and hearing the addict calling out for help stopped and gave the addict scripture, replying, read this scripture while I say a prayer for you." The addict read the scripture while the religious person prayed, but it the help was all faith and no works and the addict realized he was still stuck in the hole.

A renowned psychiatrist walked by and heard the addict pleading for help. He stopped and said, "How did you find yourself in that hole? Were you born there? Are your parents to blame? Tell me about yourself and your life in that hole, it will alleviate your sense of loneliness." So the addict talked with the psychiatrist for approximately an hour, then the psychiatrist said he had to leave, but he would come back next week. The addict thanked the psychiatrist for his time even though he was still stuck in his hole.

Finally a 'recovered' alcoholic addict happened to be passing by and heard the poor man's cries for help. Right away, the recovered alcoholic addict jumped into the hole with him. The suffering alcoholic addict said, "Why did you do that? Now we're both stuck here in this god forsaken hole!" But the recovered alcoholic addict said with a twinkle in his eye, "It's okay brother, I've been here before; I know the way out!"

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Exogenous ketones and hunger hormones: Why they provide satiety

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 14:11:00 +0000

Possibly the biggest key in fat loss is finding a diet that is sustainable due to the degree of satiety it provides for the dieter.

Let's be honest here; we're all human and thus, are filled with various kinds of hormones that for the most part, dictate a great deal of our behavior. One only need be around a female with uh, well you know where I'm going with that...........

Fad diets often cookie cutter people into eating into ways that, while they create an energy deficit (which is required for weight/fat loss), also don't take into account a persons eating preferences or possibly foods that do provide a great deal of satiety.

Which leads us to the satiety index. A list of foods that provide the highest degree of "fullness" we feel when we eat them.

This index was created through a study done back in 1995 by Susana Holt at the University of Sydney. Linkie dinkie....

"Susanna Holt, PhD, has developed the Satiety Index, a system to measure different foods' ability to satisfy hunger. A fixed amount (240 calories) of different foods was fed to participants who then ranked their feelings of hunger every fifteen minutes and were allowed to eat freely for the next two hours. Of all the foods tested, potatoes were the most satisfying."
I believe it was boiled white potatoes that pretty much crushed every other food in regards to providing a high degree of satiety.

So, if one were to just be logical then a person could easily conclude the easiest way to set up a diet for fat loss, that was the most easily sustainable, then you'd just look through the list of the most satiating foods, that were also lowest in calories, and presto, there's your "diet".

And one could do that. However it's a little more complicated than that. The palatability (taste and texture) of foods are kinda important. I mean if boiled white potatoes make you gag, you're probably not going to feel "satisfied" when eating them. So you would also have to factor in what foods you actually LIKE to eat as well.

Ok so I guess that wasn't so hard after all.

But that's not where this rabbit hole is leading me down, actually.

When I started using exogenous ketones I noticed a significant decrease in hunger. Often times going longer than usual before I realized I hadn't eaten "every 2-3 hours" (every 3 hours is my usual), and would basically have to make myself eat.

When I started interacting with people who were using the product, they too would say they noticed they weren't hungry, or had a significant decrease in hunger, when using the product. Upon attending the various educational conferences and such related to said product, this theme kept coming up.

"Decreased hunger/appetite".

I have to be honest. I kind of overlooked it for a while because I just thought "ehhh, there's something in your stomach, and that's why."

But there's plenty of foods I can eat that actually cause my appetite to soar shortly after eating them. And back to the satiety index, some foods keep me sustained for longer periods of time.

But this wasn't a food. It was some powder, with exogenous ketones and some select amino acids in them, and a little bit of fat from MCT oil. Hardly enough in the way of calories or volume to keep my appetite at bay.

So why was it happening?

Then a light bulb went off a few weeks ago and I wondered about hunger hormones, and if they were altered when someone was in ketosis.

As not to make this article too damn long (that'd be a first)...

Ladies and gentlemen your hunger hormones!

Leptin - a hormone produced by your fat cells. When you eat, leptin rises and tells you to stop shoving food into your mouth. When leptin is low, it tells you to shove food into your mouth. Easy enough.

But there's an issue.

The more fat cells you have, the more leptin you produce, and the more your appetite decreases. Wait, that can't right because most often, obese people tend to eat a lot. I mean after all, that's how that happened. If leptin was working correctly, people would not become obese because their fat cells would produce the leptin that tells their brain they are full and should stop eating.

Right?

Negative.

Once someone becomes very overweight, leptin signalling to the brain stops working properly, and despite having plenty of fat on their body (someone is gonna get triggered at that), they "think" they are hungry despite having eaten a lot of food. The term for this has been called being called leptin resistant.

Now on to ghrelin.

Ghrelin - Ghrelin is a hormone produced in the stomach. It's the quick indicator of "hey yo...bruh...I'm hungry."

Your stomach makes ghrelin when it's empty and thus it rises to signal to the brain to eat, then falls once you do.

The difference in the two is that leptin tends to be more highly related to eating habits or patterns along with body composition, where ghrelin tends to establish short term hunger levels.

There. That's covered. There's Bible long articles on both of these hormones and studies for days, so feel free to Google machine them all you like if you want to know more. That's the high level overview.

The meat and potatoes I wanted to find was "are these two hormones affected by exogenous ketones?"

Of course, the only way to know that, would look to see if endogenous ketones, mainly beta hydroxybutyrate, manipulated them somehow.

Down the rabbit hole I went.

And it led me to this..........

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23632752

This study wanted to look at the possible evidence that ketogenic diets play a role in suppressing hunger due to altering the hormones that play a part in regulating appetite.

Of 50 non-diabetic overweight or obese subjects who began the study, 39 completed an 8-week ketogenic very-low-energy diet (VLED), followed by 2 weeks of reintroduction of foods.
Following weight loss, circulating concentrations of glucose, insulin, non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA), β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), leptin, gastrointestinal hormones and subjective ratings of appetite were compared when subjects were ketotic, and after refeeding.

So 39 folks completed the ketogenic diet study, and then after 8 weeks were able to add back in their "normal" foods (the refeeding) and they took a look at comparisons between blood glucose, insulin, leptin, etc.

K...

Now like any diet, you still have to be in a calorie deficit using a keto diet in order to lose fat. You can't just load up on bacon grease, cheese, and hot dogs all day and lose fat. However we're not really concerned about that right now because what we wanna know is, when they were in ketosis, did the increase in endogenous ketones have an effect on their hunger hormones.

When participants were ketotic, the weight loss induced increase in ghrelin was suppressed.

O Rly?

The circulating concentrations of several hormones and nutrients which influence appetite were altered after weight loss induced by a ketogenic diet, compared with after refeeding. The increase in circulating ghrelin and subjective appetite which accompany dietary weight reduction were mitigated when weight-reduced participants were ketotic.

“In mildly ketotic participants, the increase in the circulating concentration of ghrelin, a potent stimulator of appetite, which otherwise occurs as a result of diet-induced weight loss, was suppressed. The present findings are in keeping with a recent report of a 12-week carbohydrate-restricted diet, during which 28 overweight subjects lost ~6.5% of their starting weight without a significant change in fasting plasma ghrelin. In our study, postprandial ghrelin concentrations were also measured, and found to remain unchanged following weight loss as long as subjects were ketotic. After refeeding, fasting and postprandial ghrelin concentrations rose significantly.”

Just to make that simple to understand, ghrelin was suppressed when concentration of the ketone BHB was higher, and then rose once concentrations of BHB fell. Meaning, it's very possible to draw the conclusion that one of the reasons that the ketogenic diet (or exogenous ketones) cause satiety/suppress appetite is because it has an effect on ghrelin.

But what about leptin?

As noted, that's something that tends to get regulated based on how leptin sensitive you are, or what your body composition is at the time. Leaner people tend to have less leptin, as they have less fat cells in their body. Fatter people (yes, I wrote fatter, stop being so PC) tend to have more leptin, but as discussed, getting overly fat can disrupt proper leptin signalling to the brain.

Since exogenous ketones get in and out of the body within hours, it would make sense to me (going off of what the study found) that while the body had the increase in exogenous BHB, ghrelin would be suppressed. Thus, appetite control or that feeling of satiety. From there, it isn't hard to connect the leptin dots.

Sustainable diets require a degree of satiation by the dieter.
The longer someone can remain in an energy deficit, the leaner they will get.
The leaner they get, the more leptin and insulin sensitive they become (insulin is known to stimulate leptin synthesis).
Use exogenous ketones to keep appetite in check by suppressing ghrelin.
???
Profit.

Of course, there's still a lot of research to be done, but thus far, every conclusion I've arrived at on my own with exogenous ketones keeps surfacing in the studies related to them. For example, my first question when I used the product was "what is my body doing with glucose if it's using ketones that I'm drinking???"

I eventually arrived at the conclusion that there had to be a down regulation of glucose metabolism if ketones were being used for energy.

And now.........

http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdfExtended/S1550-4131(16)30355-2

Nutritional Ketosis Alters Fuel Preference and Thereby Endurance Performance in Athletes

I'm the smartest man alive.

No, not really. But it was cool to see that my own observations did match up with some solid testing.

As noted, there's still a lot of testing to be done but so far, it's all been promising from an anecdotal standpoint. I think down the line what we will find are the most optimal ways to use ketones along with glucose to increase both aerobic (which was proved in the study above) and also anaerobic training (I think ATP will end up being the key here).

I've already seen first hand how well exogenous ketones work for physique/bodybuilding/fitness competitors when they are severely depleted. The study above shows an improvement in endurance athletes using the "duel fuel" method. Balancing out glucose and ketones, I believe, will be something that almost every athlete will eventually be able to take advantage of, and use them to increase athletic performance.

If you want to try them out, here is my link to them.........

https://liftrunbang.pruvitnow.com/

Or don't. I don't care.

The road to happiness through suffering, surviving, thriving, and personal empowerment

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sun, 27 Nov 2016 18:23:00 +0000

Sorry for the overly feel-good almost "elitedaily" type title for this particular piece. I ruminated for a while on what I would call it, but nothing snappy enough really came to mind. So I just went with it.

The last few weeks I've read a lot about life improvement. Mainly because the last few years doing so has been such a huge priority of mine, and I've taken a lot of steps and implement measures and habits that would improve the quality of my life.

By no means does implementing these measures mean you are going to avoid suffering, trials, struggles, and setbacks in life. In fact, in a lot of ways, those are the very things you need and the stimulus that serves at a catalyst for pushing us forwards into making changes that can create a higher quality of life. When the pain of staying the same ends up being greater than the fear of change is usually the crossover point where we often make dramatic life changes. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worst. Or let me state this, sometimes the change feels like the worst choice initially, but usually we need to let enough pieces of the future puzzle fall into place before we can adequately judge the quality of our choices, or what they truly manifested in our life. It's not like eating at Chipotle and realizing 90 minutes later that the outcome of doing so had negative consequences.

Possibly the worst choice we can make, is to avoid said pain and suffering because by doing so we end up with very fragmented lives that feel incomplete and unrewarding, sending us into a downwards spiral that we don't often recognize is even happening until we've landed at rock bottom. Along the ride into that seventh circle of hell, we often develop coping mechanisms so that we can avoid fixing the very things that unstich us. We love avoidance. We love rationalizing. These two things enable us to emotionally survive temporarily until doing so is no longer enough to make up for the "loss" we live with day in and day out.

Pharmaceutical companies make billions a year off of these mechanisms in the way of Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, and Paxil. As a society, better "living through chemistry" has become our life motto when adversity hits us the hardest, rather than using said adversity as a means for personal growth.

Our most difficult times in life are the ones we need the most as the stimulus for embracing change, conquering fears, and evolving into the very best version of who we want to become. That can't happen if we numb ourselves down through drugs, rationalize the putting off of making choices, and allow these times to bring out the very worst parts of who we are.

Even worse, using SSRI drugs are eventually going to make our depression worse.

A recently released scientific study published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews claims that the entire theory behind the usage of SSRI’s is completely backwards, even going as far as to suggest that SSRI’s actually make overcoming depression more difficult, especially in the first weeks of taking antidepressants.

‘”Those serotonin-boosting medications actually make it harder for patients to recover, especially in the short term, says lead author Paul Andrews, an assistant professor of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster.’

This new research gives us an explanation as to why so many people do not improve once they begin taking SSRI’s, offering evidence that taking SSRI’s may actually make it more difficult for people to heal depression, as the medication interferes with the brain’s natural processes of recovery.

“When depressed patients on SSRI medication do show improvement, it appears that their brains are actually overcoming the effects of anti-depressant medications, rather than being assisted directly by them. Instead of helping, the medications appear to be interfering with the brain’s own mechanisms of recovery.”
The mental health industry is founded on prescribing mood-enhancing drugs rather than uncovering and confronting the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual and environmental root causes of depression, anxiety and attention deficit ‘disorders.’

The other studies are just as alarming. Linking a high rate of suicide to those on antidepressants, that often begin with shaking, consistent nightmares, withdrawing and isolating oneself from friends and loved ones.

There's a few things that really jump out at me there. The first is that our brain, much like our body with training, has the ability to help us heal and become stronger through emotional, psychological, and environmental trauma. And much like how stress in the gym serves as the catalyst for building us a stronger and more robust physique, going through times of stress and dealing with it appropriately gives us the emotional and mental ability to forge through future times of stress and discomfort far more easily. We have the ability to tap into these measures with the proper help, the right support systems, the right attitude, and the right choices so that we can heal properly from the toll life often takes on us.

The second thing is much more obvious - Drugs aren't going to fix your problems because once you become numbed down, how on Earth are you going to be able to make logical decisions about changing your life when you feel nothing? There is a hand shaking mechanism between logic and emotion that we need to use in order to arrive at a decision that we feel is best for our life, and offers us up the highest quality of it. Even if that means we have to endure wave after wave of adversity for a while.

To quote a close friend of mine who battled depression for a while and was using anti-depressants to cope, was told by the psychiatrist "you don't have clinical depression. I'm taking you off of all anti-depressants because you need to FIX THE PROBLEMS IN YOUR LIFE!"

The truth is, it's hard to get good help these days. Doctors numb people down and get them addicted to drugs because it lines their pockets. Most therapists don't really push for people to make for life changing decisions because it behooves them to have them on their couch each week talking about "how they feel". If they were good at their job, and forced people to move, rather than sit idle in their life, they don't have patients for years on end, helping to increase the size of their bank account.

That's right. The medical, big pharma, and the therapy community for the large part doesn't really have your best interests at heart. People who are suffering from normal life problems and adversity (I'm talking outside the scope of legitimate chemical or physiological issues), don't need therapy for years on end. They don't need drugs. They need to embrace the small, uncomfortable confined space that life has put them in, and summon the strength to break free from it. That is where personal growth happens. That is the wellspring from where creating something anew begins.

I think that a good therapist can give you the tools to do this; but they also have to force you to examine your life and instead of asking you the question of "how does that make you feel?", and instead ask you "and what are you going to do to change it?" and hold you accountable. More importantly, you need to hold yourself accountable for personal growth, and have a loving and sincere support system that does so as well.

As someone who suffered from severe anxiety and panic attacks for years (at one time to the point of causing irregular heart patterns that landed me in the hospital) I was told by many to see a doctor about getting on "something" to help me.

I refused.

I knew that dealing with it was within my control, and that I needed to learn how. And over time, I did. And I've had fewer anxiety attacks as I learned my own personal coping mechanisms to deal with them. When they have happened again, I learned how to shorten the time span in which they lasted. Not a single drug was ever taken in order for me deal with this.

I'm not a doctor, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night (I'm way too snobby for that), but I can write a little bit about how to find some personal empowerment, and some steps you can take that will eventually set you on the course to alleviating stress and personal grief. Maybe you don't need this, but maybe someone you know does. Maybe my advice doesn't help at all. But if it helps one person, then writing this is worth it.

Seek happiness through positive selfishness -

The word selfishness has a very negative connotation. It invokes the idealistic view of someone doing things that only serve themselves, at the expense of hurting others. And that is a TYPE of selfishness. It's negative selfishness. But there's also a thing called positive selfishness that should be a part of your ideology if you actually want to be the best person you can be for the people you do love and care about.

Servitude can be exhausting. Doing for others is a great thing, and is something I will expound on later. However when your efforts are constantly centered around making everyone else happy, especially at the expense of your own happiness, it will leave you depleted.

There is a saying about training that goes "fatigue masks fitness." In other words, if you are tired and/or exhausted then you will not be able to perform to the best of your abilities in the gym, or athletic field. No one ever told an athlete that resting was selfish, or that it wasn't a part of an intelligent training program. It's an integral part of becoming better.

Likewise, how do you expect to be at your best, when you don't take time out for personal recovery?

Treating yourself to the things that make you happy is something you should learn how to embrace without feeling guilty about it. You need the things that exist outside of everyone and everything else that you can immerse yourself in, that invigorate you and restore your emotional energy.

I often refer back to my oxygen mask metaphor. When you're on a plane and they talk about safety procedures, they tell you in the case of an emergency if you are with a child or someone who cannot take care of themselves (like an elderly or handicapped person), to put your oxygen mask on FIRST.

Is this selfish? YES! It's a form of positive selfishness because unless you are of sound mind due to getting adequate oxygen, you cannot take care of the people that need you the most.

Put your mental, emotional, and spiritual well being first, and you will be at your best in regards to making choices that better your life, and those you intend to keep in it.

Treat your relationships like entities / Build a dynamic support system -

A few weeks ago I had a great conversation with someone who specializes in this area. And he gave me a great way to look at the various relationships we have in our life, and how they either create a strong or weak support system in it.

To paraphrase.......

There is an identification process embedded in creating your relationships. No different than running or owning a business.

"If you run a business, you hire the most qualified people, and eliminate those not qualified. You don't keep unqualified people employed and then hate the job they do each day as the company loses money. You identify they can no longer do the job or are not qualified for it, and let them go. The company benefits and grows by replacing them with someone who can. If you view your love life or other relationships as an entity, which it is, then you only hire the most qualified persons so that it can prosper and grow. If a company isn't growing, it can't serve its customers to the best of its ability. It can't function efficiently. People don't often think about how their romantic or personal relationships transcends into other parts of servitude in their life. Fulfilling relationships will strengthen all the other facets of your life no different than a company works at a more efficient capacity for its customers when it has fantastic employees and managers."

This should lead you to some easy conclusions, and probably some hard questions to ask.

"Do the people I keep in my support system, and the ones I share intimacy and love with help our "business" to grow, or are they leading me into emotional bankruptcy?"

If you know the answer to the bankruptcy question is "yes", then why are you keeping them "employed?"

Change or create a new support system. The people in your life should make you feel empowered, strengthened, loved, supported, and cherished.

If they don't, then I can promise you they are robbing you of your ability to cultivate the life you're trying to carve out. Your support system has momentum built into it. And here's the thing about momentum; it goes both ways. The wind is either at your back, or it's blasting you in the face. Which one is your support system doing?

Give back -

A few weeks ago I decided on something that had been on my heart for a long time. I have given to charity and participated in various outreach programs, but for quite some time I had wanted to create something that was genuinely part of me. To give back to the community, and to those less fortunate.

And that's how the Strength Giving Project ended up happening. I wanted to put my time and energy into giving to those less fortunate. I wanted to do the work. I still think giving money to great charities is exceptionally noble and worthwhile, however it's not quite the same as "getting your hands dirty" and putting your own personal time and efforts into making a difference.

I wanted to get out and talk to people that were suffering from being homeless, and hear their stories, and give them something to smile about or feel good about. Even if only for a day. That's one less day of their life that was spent in depression or sadness. That was something I could help give them and I had the power to do that.

Putting in that time, money, and energy to do so was exceptionally rewarding and has given me an outlet for a passion I've had for a long time, but didn't enact upon. Now it's something I will be making one of the priorities in my life, and something I hope grows into a program that helps people all over the world.

Which brings me to.....

Set powerful goals -

Let me preface this part with something about happiness as well.

Goal attainment should not ever be looked at, as something that will make you happy. Yes, achieving goals will most certainly make you happy, but the problem is, that happiness is fleeting. It's very impermanent. And yes we can later reflect back on those achievements and be proud of them, but most of us have come to believe that attaining something or achieving something is where happiness lives at. And then we spend all the time in between attaining that "thing" (whatever it may be) in a state of unhappiness, or a feeling of being inadequate. We believe if we can squash the phrase "if I could only..." that suddenly personal completeness will arrive.

It won't. After we attain whatever that thing is, there's assuredly something else we inevitably find we believe we are missing for "more happiness."

This doesn't mean you shouldn't set powerful and meaningful goals in your life. You should. But along the way the work to that achievement should be something that gives you happiness as well. People often cite the phrase "live in the moment", then fail to do so because they are so focused on goal attainment.

Aerosmith wrote "life's a journey, not a destination." Create a magnificent destination you are traveling towards. But make sure you don't miss all of the wonderful things on the drive there that really make it worth while.

I have huge plans for the Strength Giving Project. I hope more people want to get involved with me in this outreach program.

Empower others through your experiences -

Over the years, I've gotten asked by a lot of people how I ended up with...I guess...great insight to navigating through life or offering advice on how to improve..."things" (I hate writing this part because it feels arrogant and haughty and I don't want to come across that way) or themselves.

This all ties back into the previous part about using suffering and adversity as the most significant times in your life for personal growth.

I could never sit across from someone, and be able to identify with their struggles or suffering, if I had numbed myself down through drugs, or wasn't introspective enough to look back on my life and own my mistakes, do my best to make amends for them, and ultimately make positive selfish choices that helped me love and listen better. I could never sit across from someone and possibly help them if I hadn't made a lot of the very difficult choices I had to make in order to improve the quality of my life. Which is what all of us should be doing, in my opinion.

Yes, I've had a lot of people seek me out in previous years for advice on traversing through the worst parts of their life. And I hope in those times, I was able to help them in some way. If I did, it was only because I had walked down similar paths (not the exact ones, because everyone's struggle is uniquely their own), made a lot of really bad choices, and somehow....someway...I found myself searching out the best way(s) to let go of resentment, shame, and anger and learned how to replace them with patience, empathy, sincerity, and forgiveness.

I can almost bet, anyone reading this has a story. You have your own story about your life, and the hardships it has bestowed upon you at times. And I can also just about bet money, looking back on some of those times you are proud of how you responded and grew from them. And there's also a good chance, you've shared that with someone at some point, that learned something from what you went through. And that in itself, is empowering others through your own experiences.

Being able to do so requires the suffering of course, but it also meant you might have been able to give someone a few encouraging words that helped them get through a period where they weren't sure how to cope anymore. Or how they would face another day of the personal pain they were experiencing.

I've had times in my life that felt so debilitating that it took all the energy I could muster up just to turn out of bed, and put my feet on the floor so I could stand up. I've had plenty of days where I prayed to God that I had no idea how I would face another day of agony, and felt completely defeated in life.

If you've ever been there, in that place of loss and despair, and sat down on the cold, damp floor at rock bottom and felt like you'd never have a day in your life again where you woke up happy again, I promise you that when you sit across from someone in that exact place....you'll see it in their eyes.

And if you found the strength to climb out of those places, you'll be a great source of strength and encouragement for the person you are sitting across from who is struggling with all of the same questions you had in those moments.

Make happiness and love your priority -

In closing, I am going to reference the Grant study.

I have many times before, and will do so again, and probably will again at some point in the future because I think everyone should grasp and understand just how important love and a high quality of life is linked together.

Our life, from childhood to when we say goodbye to this world, the degree of happiness we get to experience in it, is directly related to the amount of love we experience in it as well.

What is the Grant study?

The project, which began in 1938, has followed 268 Harvard undergraduate men for 75 years, measuring an astonishing range of psychological, anthropological, and physical traits—from personality type to IQ to drinking habits to family relationships to “hanging length of his scrotum”—in an effort to determine what factors contribute most strongly to human flourishing.

Financial success depends on warmth of relationships and, above a certain level, not on intelligence.
Those who scored highest on measurements of “warm relationships” earned an average of $141,000 a year more at their peak salaries (usually between ages 55 and 60).
No significant difference in maximum income earned by men with IQs in the 110–115 range and men with IQs higher than 150.

The warmth of childhood relationship with mothers matters long into adulthood:
Men who had “warm” childhood relationships with their mothers earned an average of $87,000 more a year than men whose mothers were uncaring.
Men who had poor childhood relationships with their mothers were much more likely to develop dementia when old.
Late in their professional lives, the men’s boyhood relationships with their mothers—but not with their fathers—were associated with effectiveness at work.
The warmth of childhood relationships with mothers had no significant bearing on "life satisfaction" at 75.
The warmth of childhood relationship with fathers correlated with:

Lower rates of adult anxiety.
Greater enjoyment of vacations.
Increased “life satisfaction” at age 75.

Vaillant's main conclusion is that "warmth of relationships throughout life have the greatest positive impact on 'life satisfaction'". Put differently, Vaillant says the study shows: "Happiness is love. Full stop."

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Pain management - Get busy living.....

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 18:23:00 +0000

Injuries suck. I love opening with a provocatively obvious statement right out of the gate.

Oh let me add, being sick also sucks. I mean when you're really sick with the flu, or some type of bronchitis that makes daily living outright miserable.

None of this is news, of course. I'm stating the obvious for a reason as a vehicle for the rest of this article.

What is it that we do when we are injured? We train around it. We rehab. We compress it and elevate it, some people even still apply ice (groan). In other words, we do all the things to manage dealing with it until said injury is healed.

When we are sick, we often medicate ourselves. We take some off the shelf coma inducing elixir to help us manage the aches and pains, and numb us down as much as possible until it runs its course.

The commonality here is that we do things to manage illness and injury until it subsides, and we can resume feeling good again, or at least normal. Because that's the goal. Not to be in pain. Not to feel sick. Not to be injured. And the best part of that, is once it does subside is that we are exceptionally appreciative to not be in pain anymore. To not be coughing a lung out all day, each day. To not feel like hammered shit.

I remember the night I drove myself to the emergency room in severe stomach pain that had been going on for a few days. I had tried everything I could think of to relieve it. Tums, ibuprofen, gas medicine, pepto. Hell, I even made myself throw up, because I thought maybe I had something in my stomach that wouldn't come out either end and that if I "got it out", that I would feel better. No such luck.

It was around 2 a.m. that it hit me, to test something out. I pushed in on the lower right side of my abdomen, and then quickly let off and pain shot through my body like I had been hit by a lightening bolt. Right then I realized the severity of my situation and I drove to the ER.

That night they wheeled me into emergency surgery and removed my appendix.

I awoke over a day later burning up with fever, that plagued me for a few days. The pain was enervating. On the third day my surgeon came in and told me that had I waited a few more hours that most likely I would have died. I had obviously put my pain aside by "managing" and the infection from the rupture had spread into my body.

Luckily (probably to the dismay of some), I did survive. But the experience did give me pause for thought, as my father called me while in the hospital and said "son, don't you think maybe you need to do a better job of assessing your pain management?"

His words weren't lost on me, as since then I've tried to not play the role of ultimate macho man, and understand that gutting everything out (in that case, literally) isn't always the best idea, and actually taking care of myself is kinda important. Because I don't have an extra body lying around I can climb into if this one goes to hell in a hand basket.

All of this sort of hit me the other day as I was driving around running errands and rummaging through my thoughts.

I had gotten off the phone with my best friend and the conversation had left me feeling pretty awesome. We laughed about a bunch of silly shit, and made fun of each other as we often do. Then I set out to do my adulting for the day.

The levity from the conversation actually opened my eyes to the fact that, I realized I had mostly been "managing" a lot of shit in my life. And management can be a good thing. We are mostly required to manage shit throughout the day. That's what adulting largely is. You could easily interchange the terms coping with managing, I think. You have a checklist of things to do, and you need to do them for the day. Fair enough.

We get to infuse those moments of levity so infrequently because we spend so much time managing the uncomfortable life we live in. It's our fault. It really is. After all, we created it. We teach the people we hold closest to us how to treat us. Because we allow it. We tolerate it. Then we develop coping mechanisms that enable us to become comfortable in the discontent of it all. We emotionally medicate and numb ourselves down so we can "manage" our life. And at that point, we're not really alive. We're just breathing.

The awareness of such often happens in these epiphanies where levity removes our injuries, illnesses, having to perform pain management. Our eyes become opened to just how much pain management we've been doing. I've sat across tables from people I loved who I knew had immersed themselves so heavily in pain management that they had climbed the ladder to pain CEO levels. Outwardly, to most people, they were doing just fine. They had their shit together. They knew how to smile through the pain and had a life that from all appearances, looked "normal". And that word right there, normal, I don't even know what that means anymore because I don't really know of anyone that isn't consistently waging some battle in their life that incarcerates and shackles their joy in some way.

I'm not saying our life should be Disney land everyday. Nor should it be. How are you ever going to have periods of personal growth if you don't walk through some suffrage?

Pressure is the catalyst for growth. Change doesn't often happen until the pain of staying the same outweighs the fear of change.

My realization during that drive was that, most often something happens that gives us that moment of levity that provides contrast to just how much pain management we've been doing, or we hit a breaking point where we can no longer manage the discomfort, and something must change.

The worst part of this actualization is we see how much in our life we've been "managing". You find yourself saying "I thought I was doing ok." Then realize that well, you haven't been. And those movements are either the launching pad for the initiation of change in our life, or we wake up everyday with far more clarity about just how much our life doesn't look like what we desire it to be, but succumb to simply "dealing with it".

Nothing like having it all come crashing down on you suddenly like that, eh?

I am totally down for adhering to the mantra that we should wake up each day and be thankful for so many of the things we do have in our life that are genuine blessings. Somewhere this morning someone is praying over their child who is fighting a battle with cancer. And you're not that person.

Somewhere this morning, someone is trying to figure out where their next meal will come from. And you're not that person.

Yes, it's true. I could be labor on and on about this all day about how "someone else has it worse." And as I was once told, as I minimized the problems in my own life to someone - "Yes Paul, someone else has it worse, and those people are dead."

The mindset of minimizing your own grief is an awesome way to make sure you don't seize a life you'd be much happier and more productive in. Because then you rationalize with that old and tired cliche that "it could be worse." Yes, and as noted, you could be dead. But if you're reading this, you're not.

People bypass seizing the life they would rather have because doing so often takes work. A lot of work. A lot of change. And change is often frightening.

It often requires overcoming fears that are rooted in the unknown. So we don't change our life because we're afraid of change, and failure, and ridicule, and ostracizing, and thus we say "I CAN live this way."

And you can. Truly, you can.

I CAN eat dog food and survive, but I probably won't be very fulfilled and happy in doing so. Not only that, dog food is designed for dogs. I'd probably be better off eating food humans should be eating. Even more, I'd probably feel better making food selections that improve my quality of health and well being.

If your "life diet" has been Alpo, then after eating it day after day after day, you'd eventually just adjust to the fact that "hey, this is what I eat. And you know what? It could be worse. I could be starving."

Yes, and starving people...if they keep starving, eventually die. And at some point, you'll either grow tired of eating the dog food, and starve to death, or you'll get a taste of food that is fit for human consumption and decide that "I don't have to eat this dog food shit each day."

I know, that's really deep right there - dog food and all. I'm like a modern day Socrates with this shit, but I think you probably understand the spirit of it all.

The actual real life newsflash here is this - moving out of the pain management zone often requires one change. Just one. Not four. Not three. Not twelve. Not four hundred. It's the one.

Yes that one often means a lot of decisions and changes that will domino afterwards, but I can tell you this - a huge part of excellence in our life is mustering up the courage to bring issues we need deal with to the forefront of our life, and make a choice about them. When we don't, we are left with alternatives that we haven't chosen for ourselves. Paraphrasing from Bonhoeffer.

And that is often the predicament that leaves us managing. Because now we are coping with a life that has been created through situations that we didn't choose. That we didn't really want. That don't allow us to wake up with that overriding sense of consistent levity that truthfully, we all more or less desire. So we cope. And we say "I am doing ok. Yes, that milkbone is just fine."

I wholly agree that our mindset of happiness requires us to be introspective about the things we should be thankful for in our life. But it also means we should be introspective enough to identify when we are merely coping, or applying pain management to our life as well.

When my appendix ruptured, I had a choice. To sit in my house and die a slow and agonizing death. Or to drive to the emergency room and get help. I chose to help myself. That meant getting cut open, and having parts removed from me that were causing my pain, and would eventually lead to my demise. I had to make one decision in order to live. Drive myself to the hospital.

Life, for a lot of people can look a lot like that, but on a longer timeline. They will suffer and live in pain, and find ways to manage. All to avoid making a drive to a new destination where yes, they may get cut open, and have to recover from that on the other side of it all. But afterwards can wake up each day without that nagging ache that doesn't require so much management.

"Get busy living, or get busy dying". -- Andy Dufresne

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Thoughts about life, crap, training, and stuff - Collection 1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 15:24:00 +0000

Oh hey there.

Yes, I know my writing here has been fleeting and absent for weeks or months at a time. I've had so many things going on in life that it's largely taken a backseat. Not my writing, just writing on here. In case you haven't been following most of my training articles have been going to t-nation and I'm also busy working on a new novel.

With that said, I realized the other night as I was swiping through my social media that there's so much good information in regards to training being distributed now that it might be a decent idea to grab some of the things I see and just collect them on here in blog posts now and then and throw in a few comments.

I titled this one "Collection 1" however don't expect me to keep the count in order. When Jamie Lewis and I were doing the Chaos and Bang podcast we lost count on the episode number all the time and it became a mainstay of comedy to use a random number on purpose.

With all that said, let's get to it, shall we?

Conditioning - EPOC and steady state cardio

I happened across two pieces this week I read that were interesting.

The first one was from pubmed.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26950358

This is the second time I've read about EPOC (excess post exercise oxygen consumption) the last few weeks. In case you didn't know, one of the supposed benefits of doing a lot of intervals or HIIT is that you're going to have the ol' metabolism revved for hours and hours post workout, burning calories at a blazing clip that will turn you into a real life Professor Klump (go to bed fat, wake up shredded).

Unfortunately, it's really not the case. From the other studies I read basically EPOC values came out to around an additional 14% of calories burned from HIIT style training, with about 7% of calories burned EPOC when doing LISS.

Now you may say "hold on, that's twice the amount!". However what actually matters the most is the total number of calories burned during AND after conditioning/cardio work. 200 calories burned from interval training with an additional 14% added on through EPOC is 228 calories. If you burned 300 calories through some form of steady state with an additional 7% we don't need to do more math here. You had a larger energy deficit through the steady state.

I didn't have to write all of this really. I could have summed it up quickly and just written "total calories burned during cardio style exercise is more important than the type you use when striving for fat loss." With that said, I still think doing intervals is a great idea for reasons outside of fat loss. Mainly because getting in great shape helps to increase work capacity in the gym, i.e. you can recover faster between sets, thus allowing you to do more work, and volume has some direct correlations with muscle growth.

LISS gets a bad rap sometimes and I'm not sure why. It serves a number of valuable purposes not only for fat loss, but stress reduction (if used properly) and can help aid in recovery. Where HIIT style training tends to be another form of training that detracts from it.

Which led me to end up reading this piece as well....

http://www.8weeksout.com/2016/11/01/why-conditioning-may-save-your-life/

This was a great piece because he goes into inflammation, something I've covered a lot in the past, and the difference in good inflammation that does it's job, and chronic inflammation that speeds us to an early grave. As noted above, HIIT is a high form of stress that tends to turn on the sympathetic nervous system and is another inflammation driver. If you're already busting balls in the gym, and doing intervals, and you have a high level of stress in your personal life, then it's a good bet you're driving a high degree of chronic inflammation into your body. Not good.

Take home note here - Use both steady state and intervals. But balance it out so that fat loss goals are being met in conjunction with recovery needs. For every HIIT/interval session you do, you should have around 5 sessions of steady state in between.

Driving down inflammation was also one of the reasons I became so interested in the exogenous ketones as well. All you have to do is Google "BHB inflammation" and you'll find a metric ton of peer reviewed research on how well BHB fights inflammation. I've covered at at length before, so just do some searching through here and you'll find it all. If you are interested in using them, here is my link.

https://liftrunbang.pruvitnow.com/

Training - Yeah, carbs are good

This one should be no surprise.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27766133

This study investigated the effect of three consecutive days of high CHO intake on CrossFit performance and corresponding metabolically -related variables in strength trained individuals.

This study was only 9 days long, but for serious I don't need a study that spans a century to know that a diet rich in carbs is going to promote a higher degree of performance for the athlete.

Basically this study showed that the longer training went on, the group that was eating more carbs started performing significantly better. Thanks for that newsflash from the city. Again, the study was short, but I think you'd see that trend continue even if it were much longer.

If body recomp is your goal, then at some point you'll need a hypocaloric diet, which does often mean reducing carbs (and fats), but if you're after performance then using carbs is essential. Yes I wrote essential because the evidence is fairly overwhelming that diets higher in carbs allow one to perform better than one low in carbs, or (God forbid) no carbs at all.

Fat loss -

For this one I want to give a shout out to Vince Dizenzo, who lost 100 pounds. I've watched his transformation happen and he's been very candid about all the struggles that came with it, and I really appreciate that kind of transparency when someone sets off on a journey like that.

https://www.elitefts.com/coaching-logs/operation-be-less-fat-100-lbs-down-i-did-it/#.WCCA_zmqKcw.facebook

When you read this (and you should) take note of this part........

The long and short of the story, it's been a slow and steady process. The only exception was one time when I lost 40 lbs in 12 weeks. I ended up putting that all back on and then some. Since then, my weight loss actually averages out to just around 1.5 lbs a month.

1.5 pounds a month. For those complaining during their fat loss or body recomp journey, think about that for a long time. No seriously, think about a whole month of dieting and training for 1.5 pounds. Most people complain when they don't see that each week. Then they blame the diet coach or get discouraged, and quit and then later have to start all over again.

As I've written before, if you walk 10 miles into the woods, it's a 10 mile walk back out. Don't expect to undo 10 years of bad habits in a few weeks. The struggle will be real. Make a choice to dig deep and see the process through, or quit like the majority of new years resolution people do after 6 weeks or so.

Vince is also candid in that fact that he believes he most likely developed an eating disorder while getting over 300 pounds. And that it's something he will always struggle with. I think it's great he brings up that point because eating disorders are usually just associated with females, but I've talked to plenty of males who do suffer from them, and I believe it's an issue that should be brought to the forefront more.

Powerlifting drives the whole "get your weight up" mantra. One that often leads strength athletes down the road of poor eating habits and consistent binge eating in order to put up higher numbers. At some point, all of that is going to be gone, and the lifter is often left hating how they feel and look. I've talked to enough of them to know this, and was one myself.

It's also a reason why a lot of lifters struggle to break free of the mentality of "weight on the bar" when they do set down that path. It's been ingrained in them so long to lift more and more and more that as soon as they see some dips in strength, they freak out, and go right back to shoveling in food in massive quantities.

It's your life. Do with it what you please, but also understand at some point there will be consequences for chasing numbers if your means to an end includes huge drug cycles and gaining a massive degree of bodyfat. It's hard to kick ass or get on the platform when strapped to a kidney dialysis machine or are awaiting open heart surgery. Nope, you don't have to set out to get shredded or get into single digit bodyfat, but I firmly believe that you can keep your body comp in check and still hit the numbers you are after. It may take longer, but it will take a LOT longer to reverse all the damage done later if you throw caution to the wind in regards to your health.

Recovery -

This ties in with the article above about steady state vs interval work. I have no idea how I came across it but it's worth a read and echoes things I've covered in the past about recovery.

http://www.ptonthenet.com/articles/activate-the-parasympathetic-nervous-system-to-improve-recovery-3910

What I liked about this one is that she drives home the importance of implementing a recovery protocol. That's something I don't think many people take into account. People bark all the time about how important recovery is, then when you ask them what they do for recovery it's usually something about deloading. That's just not enough.

When you start to take into account all of the things that drive stress and turn the sympathetic nervous system on, it's not enough to have a few days or even a week of less training intensity to spend more time allowing the parasympathetic nervous system to recover.

Think about the stress involved in something as simple as body recomp -

1. Dieting - generally a stress
2. Training - a stress
3. Interval training - a stress
4. Job - often a stress, usually is
5. Kids - stress
6. Relationship problems - stress
7. Traffic - stress
8. Finances - stress

We could keep going but I think you get the point. There has to be some time where you decompress completely to allow systemic recovery to happen. Localized recovery at the muscular level isn't that big of a deal. Unless you trained so hard that you can't walk normally from the soreness, most of us don't need to balance that out. However we do need to balance out meeting the demands for nervous system recovery.

1. Massage
2. Reducing intensity in training
3. Steady state cardio
4. Periodic breaks from dieting
5. Creating healthy coping mechanisms for life and relationship stress
6. Doing things that release more oxytocin and endorphins (cuddling, laughing, petting your dog or cat, etc).

Have a recovery protocol and be just as strict about it as you are about going for that bench PR. The bench PR is going to come much faster if your recovery demands are being met.

Life and crap -

I read this piece twice I loved it so much. I can literally use "LOL" here because I did in fact laugh out loud several times in reading this piece. I won't spoil it. Just read it.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26792/honesty0707/

I'm not sure where this next article could fall under, or if it's even real as I did not want to research it to find out that it was false, because that would have ruined it for me.

http://www.allhealthynews.com/623/eating-a-vagina-cures-cancer-according-to-cancer-treatment-studies/

Two things.......

1. I know of no restaurants that serve vagina. I obviously assume they meant performing cunnlingus.
2. If that's the case then vegan and vegetarian men are clearly at a higher risk of cancer. Because they don't perform cunnilingus. They just lick the bush.

I'm out!

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Thoughts about life, crap, and stuff - "Grab her by the...."

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 14:14:00 +0000

I usually wait a while if I am going to write about some social issue that is dominating the news. I like to ruminate on it a bit because I like to read different opinions in regards to it, and not have a knee jerk reaction to things.

However some events in my life have unfolded in the last week that made me revisit this piece of prose, and rewrite a lot of it.

Yesterday morning, I found out my mother had a stroke. And as I continued writing this article it took on a different turn due to being reflective about what she has meant in my life. Something I will get to later in this.

But first, I wanted to address the comments from Trump that was dug up from 11 years ago in a "locker room" type conversation because it is relevant as to where I arrived at by the end of this post.
This isn't about the presidential race, or what a shit show it is. It's about what it has brought to light. And that is the cultural line of hypocrisy we live in.

As a father of three girls, I can tell you that me and their mother talk to them on a regular basis about boys...how they talk, and how they treat them. And the main theme is this -

"You teach men how you will be treated."

That means I expect my girls to carry themselves with dignity, respect, and modesty in their own behavior. Because if they do so, it's what they will command that people give back to them.

This seems like a simple concept, but it's one that has largely gotten lost in the proverbial social sewage tunnel that is modern day feminism, where they preach that men must respect them, regardless of how deplorable their own behavior is. For example...

"Slut shaming is wrong."

This is based off the apparent double standard that, if a man sleeps around with lots of women, it's ok. But if a woman sleeps around with a lot of men, she's a slut. And that calling a woman a slut for the same behavior men get a pass for, is wrong.

Ok, so let's decide here which one is acceptable.

Should we call males "man whores" and tell them that sleeping around with all the women they want is wrong? Because if so, then women doing the same thing should get judged by the same standard.

If men are sluts, then women are sluts for the same behavior.

Which one shall we have?

"I don't think people should be judged for..."

I really wish people would stop this nonsense. As an adult, you are free to live your life as you please. That's your right. And it's absolutely my right to have an opinion about it if I am asked. It's absolutely my right to judge you for your words and actions. Should I judge you fairly? Of course. However people are in fact going to make a judgement about you based on what you say and what you do. This is reality. This is factual. You don't have to like it. But it's better to get pissed off, than pissed on, I suppose.

Femnazi's want women to be respected REGARDLESS of what they say or do, based on their gender alone. Of course they hide behind the equality badge in all of this but it's not about equality at all. We don't have social equality because women can get away with shit men can't, and vice versa. All you need to do is watch some social experiment videos where women beat on men to the laughter of all who watch it, to understand we're never really going to live in a society of equality. This doesn't make it right. I'm just stating for obvious reasons what real life actually is.

As I've read all these opinions, and watched these videos of women literally crying over Trump's comments, all I could think was the state of social constructs we have right now in this country.

And I am going to write this - Women, you can't have it both ways.

You cannot run around half naked, having all the casual sex you want, and EXPECT good men to respect you. You cannot put your hands on a man in anger and it be "ok". Men should never put their hands on a woman in anger either. But the reality of these situations are, men get a pass on casual sex, and women get a pass on violence towards men. Maybe if we held each other to the same standards this would jolt people into reality, but again, I don't see that happening. And I'm not fighting that battle because I have kids to raise, and I can't change the world.

I teach my girls to dress appropriately because I live in real life. Not in some made up fem-nazi utopia where women can dress like street workers and still garner the respect of a good man. And yes, I want my girls to marry good men. But I can't expect them to gain the love, respect, and admiration of a good man if they don't carry themselves as respectable young women.

Women you cannot post videos of you twerking and expect good men to take you seriously and respect you.

Women you cannot post pic after pic after pic of your tits and ass, in order to get affirmation and validation from men, then complain about all of the "creepy" messages you get in your social media inbox. When you objectify yourself by creating the persona that you WANT and DESIRE for men to look at your tits and ass, then they will reduce you to being nothing but tits and ass. YOU DID THAT. Not them. You objectified yourself.

Do you understand that?

Women, you are the ones that bought a book about a man who dominates and objectives a young woman in the realm of S&M and got all hot and bothered by it.

Women, a large percentage of you watch porn. Know anything about the porn industry? It preys on the young, helpless, naive females who are often in horrible places in their life and it's an industry filled with abuse, drug addiction, disease, and objectification. Why don't you do some research on all the women who have left porn and shared the same stories about how awful the industry is.

As a man, I've been very vocal in my stance on porn in that I don't watch it (no, I REALLY don't), and I think the whole industry is a shit pile and that any man sitting around the house, with a woman in it, who is watching porn and jacking off has serious issues. So THIS MAN, has been vocal against porn. Because there's not a damn thing respectful about the porn industry in regards to how it treats women.

"They aren't hurting anyone" blah blah blah. I wonder if the people who say and write that nonsense have ever listened to the people who have exited the porn industry and exposed the horribleness of it all?

Young males, with such easy access to porn often end up seeing women as nothing more than sexual objects? Yes. And it possibly warps their ability to cultivate honorable and respectful relationships with women? Yes to that too.

Male porn stars who participate in porn, often end up seeing women as nothing more than sexual objects. So how could you expect young men who watch porn be left with anything but the same state of thinking?

Yet I've read plenty of times from progressive liberal minded women that we shouldn't judge women in porn because it's an "honorable" job.

I guess the word "honorable" has become extremely flexible in today's society.

I wonder if people who say or write that "they aren't hurting anyone" have been in the presence of a family who has a daughter or son whom they love and care about, and mourn daily over watching the state their life is in?

Life isn't lived in a vacuum where your actions don't affect anyone at all. As someone who lived half of their life watching a sibling struggle with drug addiction I can tell you, it's an absolute lie that people who are addicted to drugs aren't "hurting anyone else." And the same goes for porn.

Many teens never have the chance to learn what a healthy relationship is like before porn starts teaching them its version—which is typically filled with violence, domination, and abuse. [11] Since most people aren’t too excited about the idea of being in an abusive relationship, teens that have gotten their sex ed from porn often find that they struggle to connect with real romantic partners and that they don’t know how to be turned on by anything other than images on a screen. [12] As biologist Gary Wilson said, “Using porn is more than just training for the wrong sport. It’s replacing these guys’ ability to play the sport they really want to learn.” [13]

Erections are powered by chemicals in the brain’s reward center (See Porn Is Like a Drug] that are released when a guy sees, hears, smells, or feels something that turns him on. [18] The problem for porn users is that they’ve hijacked their reward center by using porn to get it to overload on these chemicals. [19] As a result, the user’s brain responds by cutting down on the amount of pleasure chemicals it produces and stops responding as well to the chemicals that are being released. [20] It’s like when you’re standing next to a fire alarm that goes off; it’s too much noise so you cover your ears. That’s what porn user’s brains are doing. When chemical levels are too high, the brain fights back by blocking some of the flood of chemicals released.

On top of that, porn users have wired their brain to get aroused by sitting alone in a room looking at virtual images rather than connecting arousal to being with a real person. [21]

There's plenty of studies that prove over and over again that relationships that involve porn are diminished in quality and commitment than ones that are porn free.

"I watch it with my partner."

Again, this doesn't matter. Nothing like disconnecting emotionally with the person lying next to you and eroding intimacy over time by staring at two actors and fantasizing about that, rather than spending that time being in that moment with the person you claim to care about.

So why aren't women, who believe that men should respect women, taking a hard stance against the sex industry which CLEARLY objectifies and abuses women and decimates young males ability to cultivate the proper social skills required to create nurturing sexual relationships?

You see, Trump's words don't have much of an effect on plenty of young men, because so many of them already see women just like Trump described them. And plenty of women play a part in that by espousing that casual sex and flings are "perfectly ok". By not holding themselves to a standard that commands respect.

Why all of my talk about porn? Because it's become a sexual acceptance in today's society despite all the peer reviewed research going back decades documenting the damage it does to people's lives, and reducing both males and females to nothing more than a means to an end of sexual gratification (which really isn't anywhere near as gratifying as investing in intimacy with someone you love). This is science. Not your opinion. Yet when the issue of Trump's statements come up, women are horrified that in this day and age so many men have reduced them to sexual objects.

So I will ask again, which one is it? Do you want and command for men to respect you, or do you want to live a life of promiscuity and sexual liberation where men see you as nothing more than a piece of ass?

Do you desire for men to speak, act, and treat you in an honorable way? If so, then speak, act, and cultivate a personality that others see from you that radiates these qualities.

I'm sorry, you have to pick one or the other. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I look at the road we're headed down, and have been headed down as a society, and it depresses me. For my kids.

Marriage is on the decline. And you know why? Because women now see casual sex as perfectly ok, and men are tired.

Men are tired for being blamed by the modern day feminist movement for all that's wrong with society. They are tired of being told that there's something fundamentally wrong with them. They are tired for being blamed for everything that makes a woman unhappy. If the man is the breadwinner, then somehow she's automatically put into a subservient role. But if he's a stay at home dad, then he's a beta male with no ambition.

Men can't win.

Men used to court women, get to know them, figure out if they were the kind of woman he would want to marry. Now, men don't have to go through all of that. Because as a society women now shout from the rooftops that casual sex is perfectly ok, that "slut shaming" is wrong.

So now a man can get all the sex he wants, well...after signing some documents that shows she consents to it, and all the various positions and sexual actions that can or cannot happen after the invitation to sex has been granted. And then he doesn't have to lose half of what he owns, because feminism has proclaimed that the nuclear family causes women to be submissive and is oppressive to them.

So men retreat into porn, and engage in too much casual sex, and become completely inept at developing quality relationships with women. Women then say they can't find a good man, and blame men for all of it. Round and round we go.

NO. Decide on a standard for both genders. Is it respectful and honorable to be selective about who you sleep with, or is it perfectly fine to engage in sex with on a casual basis with people you barely know? To me, this seems fairly obvious.

Women, you cannot control what men say. You never will. It's never going to happen. What you can control is what you say, what you do, and what you will tolerate. Who you will keep in your circle, who you will give your love to, and who you will be vulnerable to.

This isn't about rape culture. This is about acceptance and rejection.

People don't accept or reject YOU. They accept or reject what you offer them. And if you reduce yourself to nothing but tits and ass and casual sex, like the hundreds of women that flock to a guy like Dan Bilzerian on the daily, then that's all you're ever going to be. And you can't blame men for that. Take a long hard look in the mirror and try some self reflective honesty.

Rape or sexual assault is deplorable. Again, as a father, I'd gladly serve time in prison for killing any man that hurt my daughters in that way.

At the same time, I work diligently to teach my girls to carry themselves in a way that will attract a man that will love and respect them and that how they speak, act, and dress will determine the quality of man they attract. And to reject behavior from men, and people in general, that isn't respectful towards them by walking away from it.

As their father, I do my best to behave in a way THEY are proud of. When I have failed at that in the past, I have worked very hard to make amends for it, and tell them MY OWN BEHAVIOR WAS WRONG. I didn't sit back and justify it because of gender or social acceptance. I can't sit back and tell them to act in a way that will attract a good man, if I also don't work to be a good man as well.

You will attract what you give off. Act like a lady, and you'll get a gentleman.

But don't write on social media about how appalled you are at the comments of men if you're supporting the sex industry, twerking, buying books that promote misogyny (ironically written by a woman), posting pics of yourself with the camera facing down into your tits or with your ass stuck out for all to see, then "like" the comments about how "sexy" you are. Oh and then turn around and bitch about men objectifying women. This just makes you a hypocrite.

Now I'm pretty sure there are probably some men who are clapping and blame all of these problems on the modern wave of feminism alone, but we're going to be real about this as well.

Men are a huge part of the problem as well. Obviously.

One thing I have trouble getting my head around is men who have mother's they love and respect, or daughters or sisters they love, and would never tolerate another man talking about them in a disrespectful way, yet do so about females outside of that group.

You're all hypocrites too. I have been at times as well. So let's be real with each other about this.

Men, we don't often keep each other in check. The "locker room talk" we deem acceptable wouldn't be acceptable around our mother, daughters, or the woman we love. There isn't a man on the face of the planet that genuinely cares about his daughter(s) that would tell her that a man speaking to her in such a way is "guy talk" and that it's "perfectly ok". If he did, then he's not a very good father or role model. And being a great role model starts with your own behavior.

Living the life as an honorable man will often mean treating people with respect and courtesy even when they may not deserve it. It may mean asking yourself "what is the role of an honorable man in a dishonorable world?"

As men, we have to be accountable for our words and actions, and the ramifications they can and will have. I'm sure Trump now regrets his "locker room" talk from 11 years ago, no different than if I could have a talk with my younger self, I would tell him to consistently talk and behave in a way his mother and daughter's would be proud of.

Gandhi once said "be the change you want to see in the world."

As men, if you want other men to treat the women in your life that you love with respect and dignity, then it starts with you. You have to set the example. You can't complain about your daughter's picking dirtbag males when you yourself act like a dirtbag.

As men, we need to keep other men in check in regards to how they speak to and treat women. And by doing so, hope they hold the other men in their circle to the same standards.

Women need to understand that some men aren't going to do this. That some men are going to be ok with reducing females to sexual objects not worthy of respect. But you can't lump ALL men into that proverbial basket. There are plenty of good men in this world. And if you're living your life through the words and actions of an honorable woman that commands respect, that the good men will reveal themselves to you.

I can't change the world. A blog post can't change the world. But it might make someone pause for reflection about these things and decide to make a change in their life about these things. And that change may have a reverberating effect throughout their inner circle of people they care about. And that cascade effect may continue from there. And one day down the road, one of my girls may meet a good man. An honorable man. A man that talks to her and treats her in a way that makes her feel loved, respected, and honored. And it's possible that through some kind of positive degree of karma, that he was taught how to do this because he had a male role model talk to him about it. And going back, that somehow this simple blog post or my words or actions played a part in that.

And despite my stance as a libertarian, I wholly understand that my words and actions aren't encapsulated inside an isolated world.

The smallest of gestures can set off a chain of enormous outcomes. A phrase of few words can change a life.

In The Vocation of Man, Fichte says that "you could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby ... changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole".

The root of compassion, empathy, love, and consideration all start with respect. Even when we feel as though we are being wronged. That's when we find it most difficult to show love and respect.

But if there is one very hard lesson I learned over the past few years that I always "knew" but often failed to apply, is that if you keep showing someone respect and love, even when you aren't getting it back from them, love will win out in the end.

I am thankful for all the great women in my life who have taught me so many valuable lessons about what it means to be an honorable man. I've had many great men do so as well. However I think as males, we don't often take a step back to be grateful for the women we've had in our life that teach us so many things that truly, we can't often learn from other men. And maybe that's part of the problem we have that separates the genders at times. As men, we need to acknowledge the influential women we've had in our lives that tried to help shape us into good men. Because they can often offer a perspective that only a woman can. And rather than be dismissive of that, open our minds to accepting that gift. Because it's a priceless one that we should be incredibly thankful for.

So many of the great parts of who I am, came from my mom. And the older I get, the more cognizant I become of that. She is one of the most incredible people I have ever known. And I know that she would want me to treat women with the same degree of love and respect that I always did with her.

The saying of "behind every great man is a great woman" is blatantly wrong. Because I don't want my woman behind me. I want her beside me. Letting me know that if it means burning the soles off of her feet to be there, she'll walk through hell to do so. Because I will for her.

And she'll know the only thing I reached out to grab, to make her want to be there beside me, was her heart.

I think my mom would be proud of that.

The toxicity level in your blood

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 21:30:00 +0000

I like to think I'm fairly transparent individual.

I say what I mean, and mean what I say. I still try (and sometimes fail) to adhere to doing and saying things I believe are the "right" things I should say and do. After all, once you say something or do something, it becomes cemented in time. You cannot rewrite history, and your past is indestructible.

Living in it can cause a great deal of angst, and anxiety. Trust me, I've traversed that road and it's not one worth traveling down. I'm not suggesting that you take on the attitude of "oh, who gives a shit what I did/said", I'm just saying that there's a better attitude to immerse yourself in that leads to a better version of yourself, than an attitude that keeps you muddled up in personal victimization.

I'd like to believe that the people who know me best can attest to the fact that I am transparent, and do my best to try and love and support them to the very best of my ability. That's generally a goal of mine, and one I work towards each and everyday in order to make my own life better.

I think it's hard to be terribly unhappy doing your best to love people to the very best of your ability. Because after all, if you squeeze and orange, what comes out of it? Orange juice. If what you're giving out each day to people closest to you is love, empathy, and kindness, then it kinda means those are the traits dwelling the strongest inside of you. You can't give something to people you aren't in possession of, after all.

This doesn't mean there isn't a caveat to all of this. Because there is. And it's about what and whom you're giving those emotional investments to.

From a very pragmatic standpoint, if I have a million dollars, and I keep investing it into stocks that I clearly see are declining in worth, and spend time researching them, KNOWING that the chances of my investments being lost makes me well, kinda stupid.

I like to think of our positive virtues in a similar fashion. We've only got so much love to give. And we have different types of love investments as well. The way I love cinnamon rolls is obviously vastly different than the way I love my kids. I love training. I love what it gives back to me in regards to health, how I look and how I feel.

So love itself cannot be encompassed into some singular idea because it's dynamic in nature. There's different kinds of love, and different amounts of investments we have inside of us for the things we choose to give it to.

Just because I love cinnamon rolls doesn't mean I'm going to eat them everyday. But I will wake up and choose to love my kids to the best of my ability all the time.

If I loved cinnamon rolls the way I love my kids, it would eventually detract from my quality of life. I'd get fat, feel like shit, look like shit, and my quality of life would decline immensely.

Where if I love my kids, there will be times of disappointments and suffering, the return on that investment improves the quality of my life a million fold.

This last month of my life has been filled with tremendous adversity. Possibly more than any other month of my life. I've been open about that because as noted, I try to be transparent, and write about it because well, I'm an average dude. And I think all us "average dudes" probably go through a lot of the same things, and suffer in a lot of the same ways, and search for answers and clues as to what to do with our life while mired in the mess of things.

I've worked exceptionally hard to try and keep a positive mindset despite all of this. Because I've lived long enough to know that no matter how hard the path we're currently walking down is, at some point the road does clear, becomes smooth underneath our feet, and....at least for a while...offers us a reprieve.

One of the greatest parts about arriving at the "smooth in the road" is our ability to appreciate it. To really inhale how great it truly feels, and just how glad we are to have arrived there. To turn and look back, and say goodbye to the road behind us. That we survived, and that in doing so, learned something. Whether that be all the things we know we want in our life, or don't want in our life, it probably served some purpose that, if we let it, can help us immensely.

But just like eating or not eating cinnamon rolls everyday, a huge part of actually getting off of the path that shreds the flesh from bone on the soles of our feet.....is choice. We simply decide not to eat cinnamon rolls all day long. And we simply decide we no longer want to walk down that path.

This doesn't mean it immediately happens. But it certainly won't ever happen if don't make a choice to stop walking down it.

And because my writing is long and drawn out most of the time, I will do my best to condense some of this and tell you that I actually am going someplace with the orange juice, emotional investments, and "roads we don't want to travel" metaphors here.

And that is this - often times, in fact maybe all the time, the reason we begin to fail in our efforts to find ourselves in the place we want to be, is because we refuse to actually remove others from that environment.

And that environment, is toxicity.

Have you ever known someone, who used to be something?

They used to be happy, or they used to be endearing, full of life and passion...or they used to be a friend that was there through any situation to help you. They used to make you feel loved, or that you mattered in their life.

Notice I asked if you knew someone that "used" to be something?

Because now, they aren't those things anymore.

Maybe that person is you. Maybe it's not. I don't know. I'm not all knowing. Hell, I barely know where I put my car keys half the time. That's always a fun time of day when I know I have to pick the girls up from school and I can't find my keys and I get this semi panicky feeling of "OMG my girls will be stuck at school for the rest of their life!" Of course I find them, and manage to accomplish my goal.

The last few days, I happened to end up reading a lot about toxic people, toxic relationships, toxic families. Toxic everything.

Funny enough, the fitness industry is loaded with "detox" methods for your physical body (which are all bullshit of course), but the one NON BULLSHIT version of detoxing, that really works, is the removal of toxic people, relationships, and toxic behavior in your own life.

If you want to find a higher quality of life, better health, a better sense of well being, and better "you" overall, then stop looking for pills or powders or diets that are going to do that. And start with detoxing your life by spitting out the poison that is killing you emotionally, spiritually, and even physically (stress), on a daily basis.

The one that is causing you to sink all of those millions of dollars into stocks that are crashing, and will end up sucking you dry, and leaving you broke. And that's most often the word you will find from people who have been stuck in suffering for too long because they refuse to rid themselves of these "bad investments".

"I just feel broken."

Because you are. Emotionally, you become broke. There's nothing left to give.

When your ability to invest in people with all of those dynamic versions of love and sincerity have been depleted, what is it that's left for people to squeeze out of you at that point?

Bitterness. Apathy. Discontent. Anger. Cynicism.

In all the articles I read about toxic relationships and such, only one addressed this very issue. That the longer you stay in those toxic environments, the more toxic YOU BECOME. I think this got lost in so many of the other articles because most often, people like to victimize themselves in bad situations without taking a long hard look at who they have become, and wonder if they too have simply "meshed" into the environment around them. Because that really is most often the case. And when you arrive at your own place of personal toxicity, there will be things that happen that should be obvious to you, that you have now become part of the very problem you're complaining about.

The friends you used to have, no longer want to be around you.

People tend to see you as unhappy all the time.

Your thoughts are consistently filled with negativity, and it becomes manifested in your words and actions.

Everything that happens to you, you take personally.

You consistently see yourself as being the victim, when in all reality you've made yourself one by refusing to make a choice not to be.

You've become toxic. You're now part of all of those "toxic relationships" you read about, that is apparently, ruining your life. Perhaps, some self accountability is in order here in that, the whole reason you "became someone else" is because you simply became just like the toxic people you kept within your circle.

That's generally how it works. What's that saying........

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

Now this doesn't mean all five people are toxic. The odds are that are well, pretty slim. But it is likely, that the longer you keep the toxic people in your life, one of those five people will remove themselves from your circle, because they are aware of removing toxic attitudes, words, actions, and people in their life and don't want it. In essence, they were the ones that made the choice NOT to stay confined within that toxic environment.

And upon reading through all of these articles, the most common place they all kept coming back to for most people....was family.

California psychologist Sherrie Campbell, author of the book “Loving Yourself : The Mastery of Being Your Own Person.” wrote about this, and the fact that cutting ties with family is often the hardest thing to do, but if they indeed are the root cause of the toxicity in your life, then it's imperative to do so in you actually want to start improving the quality of said life.

One thing I think often gets lost on people about "family" is this.

They aren't special.

That's right, I just wrote that. Let it sink in. Or let me rephrase that.

They are just people. I'm only "special" to my kids because of my efforts to be devoted to them. Someone can adopt a child and become "special" to them because of the love, nurturing, and care they give in raising them. Their biological parents are not special in that way. Those things have to be earned.

And because "family" are just people, they too can be very unhealthy people to keep in your life.

Because of social ideologies and and phrases like "blood is thicker than water", most people grow up with this idea that family gets a pass on anything and everything they do to us, when there's no way in hell we'd allow anyone else to treat us that way and still remain in our life.

This doesn't mean to dishonor your family by being an asshole. It simply means that creating space and boundaries in regards to them may have to be done if you are to find yourself walking down the path of unhappiness, sorrow, and ridicule because of them. Because while you are walking down that road, that's exactly what you're probably going to be giving out to the other people around you.

As I said, now you too have become toxic.

Because I've already written enough, and I think that Dr. Campbell summed all of this up in a high level overview, I will just do a good ol copy and past with the link.

Campbell's 7 reasons to terminate relationships with family:

1. When the relationship is based in any kind of abuse, mentally, physically, sexually, verbally or emotionally. When the relationship is based in manipulation, overt or covert, you can be sure you are being used and abused. When you are living in constant anxiety never knowing or being able to predict how any engagement is going to turn out, it is time to love yourself enough to let go.

2. It is time to terminate a relationship when the only contact you have with them is negative. The contact you have with them serves to bring you down, put you down and/or make you feel you are not good enough, or you haven't done enough for them.

3. When the relationship creates so much stress that it affects the important areas of your life at work, home or both. When your emotions are totally caught up in defending yourself and wanting to explain yourself and the chaos of your relationships with these people is all you talk about, it is time to let go.

4. If you find yourself obsessed with the gossip about you and trying to right wrong information, and you are constantly being ostracized to the point you are losing sleep over it, you are becoming poisoned with their toxicity. Gossip only serves one family member to get others to gang up on you and you are left defenseless against the false beliefs about you being thrown your way. There is usually a ring leader gathering the troops for the assault and because they are joined together, you begin to wonder whether it is you that is the problem.

5. When the relationship is completely all about the other person and there is no real reason why the other person cannot make any effort toward the health and maintenance of the relationship with you. One sided relationships are set up for your failure. When you realize there is never going to be an "enough" place for you to reach in the relationship, you need to let go and start to focus on your own healing.

6. When and whether the relationship is only about borrowing or needing money.

7. When crazy-making, no-win games dominate the relationship such as the silent treatment, blame-games, no-win arguments that spin around on you, there is no point in continuing in this battle. Verbal warfare is never the place you will convince them of anything and these kinds of verbal interactions are set up to be their way or the highway. If these are the negative consequences you receive each time this person or people don't get their way, it is time to let go.

To offer up my own story of what you just read, I too had a toxic family member in my youth/teenage years. My sister. Who became addicted to drugs, and I spent most of those years trying to save her from herself. Her behavior, like most addicts, was destroying and wrecking the serenity of my and my family's life.

Once I left for the military, and had my first child, I would still get phone calls about what all my sister was doing and it would leave me angry and frustrated. One day, my wife at the time finally told me what I needed to hear most.

"You have a daughter now. Your sister isn't your problem anymore. You need to let her do what she wants with her life, and whatever that is, it's not your problem anymore. Just let her go."

I remember that moment like it was yesterday. And it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off of my shoulders.

If you're at home, and still under the order of your parents, then you should still respect and honor them as truly, it's the right thing to do. But all baby birds leave the nest. And if your family is part of what is making you miserable, then creating space and boundaries so that you can breathe and find your own happiness is what you WILL HAVE TO DO.

There's no other option. And the battle you will be faced with initially, is that they are going to fight even harder once you try to apply this resistance. Because they have probably spent years bullying you into doing what they want you to do, instead of respecting that as an adult, the choices you make in your life should be your own. Sometimes even if they are destructive.

Why do I write that?

Because ultimately we are the ones that are held accountable for our actions. In every fashion, in the end, we are the ones that have ownership for our choices and decisions.

But that also means that if you truly want to be happy, and after reading this realize that you too may have become part of the toxicity in your life, then the only way to rid yourself of it, is to snuff out the root cause of it, and decide you won't allow it to exist in your life anymore.

If you find the courage to arrive at such a decision, don't expect it to be easy. After all, you're the one who has spent all these years teaching people how to treat you. Yes, it is YOU who is responsible for it. People treat us how we allow them to. It's our fault if we keep bowing to it. And when you decide to get off of your knees and rise, and proclaim that your life is your own, then be prepared for an emotional onslaught. It WILL happen.

What also will happen, is the longer you stand your ground, and the longer you stop tolerating it, then eventually.....as you might expect, how they treat you will begin to change as well.

There's a very simple word to describe what that destination is.

Respect.

And until you are strong enough to make these changes, then whoever it is in your life that keeps bringing you down, and bullying you emotionally, will continue to do so. Until there's nothing left of "who you were".

And then there's going to be a group of people you used to call "friends" sitting around one day, and you know what they are going to talk about?

Who you used to be............

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Ketones, TBI, and brain function

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 23:48:00 +0000

I'm not a doctor of any sorts. Hell, I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. In fact, on my trip back home to see my family we ended up staying at the Hampton Inn on two separate occasions (which promoted fat baybay to say on the drive home "we better not stay at another freaking Hampton Inn!").

Nevertheless, I read an enormous amount of studies and research articles to do my best at understanding the various facets of hypertrophy, nutrition, and of course as of late, all the benefits that come with the intake of exogenous ketones.

I've documented much of the success I've had with them in regards to physique competitors in the depleted stages of contest prep. I've used them to help people get over nagging injuries, and even helped people overcome hypoglycemia with them.

But as of late, the one area I've spent the most time reading about in regards to them, is how they function in regards to those that have suffered a traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

The reason for this is because it has become a serious issue with players in the NFL. And from my outside view, the league has done very little to actually address the seriousness of the issue.

Let me be clear here about one of my biggest problems with the NFL before I delve into this.

I abhor the NFL's policies on performance enhancement drugs. But all the while having no problem prescribing narcotic drugs to their players, some of who end up with serious addiction and dependency issues on them well after their careers are over. I'm going to put on my tin foil hat here and just take a stab that the NFL somehow is in cahoots with big pharmacy from a financial perspective. I mean it just makes too much sense to me.

We can't have players taking growth hormone, or peptides. Which have been proven to speed up healing and would get them back on the field faster. But it's fine to load them up with a various cocktail of drugs that numb them down but don't actually address the problem causing the pain. Players know their livelihood depends on playing, and playing at a high level. So they will do whatever it takes, and play through a litany of injuries to keep their jobs because they are all aware that their time in the league most likely, is going to be very short lived. The average NFL career I believe, is a little less than three years. So if a guy is always in the trainers room, he won't be on the roster for very long.

The NFL has made some rules now about players and concussions. As they are required to leave the field and get clearance before they can return to play. However, even if the doctor rules they can't return to play that day, it doesn't take away the fact that the player is going to deal with the aftermath of said concussion.

Even worse, by the time a guy reaches the NFL, it's very likely he's already suffered concussions all the way from high school, through college.

There's actually a list of former players who, upon post post-mortem inspection, were found to have suffered from something called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

From wiki..........

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease found in people who have had a severe blow or repeated blows to the head. The disease was previously called dementia pugilistica (DP), i.e. "punch-drunk", as it was initially found in those with a history of boxing. CTE has been most commonly found in professional athletes participating in American football,rugby, ice hockey, boxing, professional wrestling, stunt performing, bull riding, rodeo, and other contact sports who have experienced repeated concussions or other brain trauma.

This hits slightly home with me, because one of the players who was diagnosed with CTE was a friend of mine. Jovan Belcher. The middle linebacker for the Chiefs, who was involved in a murder-suicide. He killed his girlfriend at the time, then drove to the Chiefs facility where he shot himself.

Junior Seau, the all time great for the San Diego Chargers, shot himself in the chest, so that his brain could be examined.

On January 10, 2013, Seau's family released the NIH's findings that his brain showed definitive signs of CTE. Russell Lonser of the NIH coordinated with three independent neuropathologists, giving them unidentified tissue from three brains including Seau's. The three experts along with two government researchers arrived at the same conclusion. The NIH said the findings on Seau were similar to autopsies of people "with exposure to repetitive head injuries."

Seau had no prior reported history of concussions. Junior was a football warrior. Anyone that ever watched him play knew the kind of wreckless abandon he played with and he was admired and feared as a tenacious player. But in the end, his brain just couldn't take the damage that had been caused by all the human car wrecks he had subjected himself to.

Neither Jovan or Junior are alone in this regard. All it takes is a google search to find all of the players whom, upon autopsy, suffered from CTE.

Sports related concussions occur when there is a sudden acceleration or deceleration or rotational forces imparted to the brain. The connection between TBI and CTE is clear. CTE is caused by those who have suffered repeated concussions or traumatic brain injuries, such as those in contact sports, and even our military personnel.

http://www.protectthebrain.org/Brain-Injury-Research/What-is-CTE-.aspx

The brain of an individual who suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy gradually deteriorates and will over time end up losing mass. Certain areas of the brain are particularly liable to atrophy, though other areas are prone to becoming enlarged.

The symptoms of CTE can be debilitating and may have life-changing effects for both the individual and for his or her family. Some of the most common include loss of memory, difficulty controlling impulsive or erratic behavior, impaired judgment, behavioral disturbances including aggression and depression, difficult with balance, and a gradual onset of dementia. An individual with CTE may mistakenly ascribe the symptoms to the normal process of aging, or might receive a wrong diagnosis due to the fact that many of the symptoms are similar to other conditions such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. CTE has been diagnosed in several notable cases which received widespread media attention, including the suicide deaths of NFL player Junior Seau, and professional wrestler Chris Benoit who committed suicide after murdering his wife and son.

Obviously, this is a very disheartening thing to read. And it's one of the reasons I detest when people start talking about how "watered down" the NFL has become because they don't allow people to "spear" people anymore, or lead with their head in tackling. I mean, I played ball. At no one was I ever taught to lead with my head in tackling drills. The guy sitting on the couch drinking his Coors Light on Sunday afternoon complaining about how "pussy" the league has become, will never ever sit in a trainers room after the game wondering what his name is, where he is, or deal with the incredible migraines that come in the post concussive state.

With all that said, one of the things I happened across when I became involved in using exogenous ketones was the fact that the brain uses ketones in a very preferable way for fuel.

So what's the tie in here, you ask?

During a TBI, glucose metabolism is depressed.

Mild traumatic brain injury results in depressed cerebral glucose uptake: An (18)FDG PET study.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23829400

Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in humans and rats induces measurable metabolic changes, including a sustained depression in cerebral glucose uptake. However, the effect of a mild TBI on brain glucose uptake is unclear, particularly in rodent models. This study aimed to determine the glucose uptake pattern in the brain after a mild lateral fluid percussion (LFP) TBI. Briefly, adult male rats were subjected to a mild LFP and positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)FDG), which was performed prior to injury and at 3 and 24 h and 5, 9, and 16 days post-injury. Locomotor function was assessed prior to injury and at 1, 3, 7, 14, and 21 days after injury using modified beam walk tasks to confirm injury severity. Histology was performed at either 10 or 21 days post-injury. Analysis of function revealed a transient impairment in locomotor ability, which corresponds to a mild TBI. Using reference region normalization, PET imaging revealed that mild LFP-induced TBI depresses glucose uptake in both the ipsilateral and contralateral hemispheres in comparison with sham-injured and naïve controls from 3 h to 5 days post-injury. Further, areas of depressed glucose uptake were associated with regions of glial activation and axonal damage, but no measurable change in neuronal loss or gross tissue damage was observed. In conclusion, we show that mild TBI, which is characterized by transient impairments in function, axonal damage, and glial activation, results in an observable depression in overall brain glucose uptake using (18)FDG-PET.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652873/

In contrast to dietary approaches to re-establish TBI-induced deficiencies in brain metabolites, diets have also been used to replace or redirect essential brain substrates. TBI-induced impairments of the glucose metabolic machinery may make glucose a less favorable energy substrate. In fact, hyperglycemia has been long associated with poor outcome after TBI. Early administration of glucose after severe TBI suppresses ketogenesis, increases insulin and increases lactic acid production (Robertson et al., 1991). TBI patients who were fasted or maintained on a ketogenic-like diet to minimize hyperglycemia showed significantly lower plasma glucose and lactate concentrations, elevated ß-hydroxybutyrate levels and better urinary nitrogen balance compared to standard fed patients (Ritter et al., 1996). Similar plasma substrate changes were observed with 24-hr starvation in the adult rodent after controlled cortical impact injury. The fasted animals showed significant cortical tissue preservation, improved cognitive outcome and improved mitochondria bioenergetics (Davis et al., 2008).

As I've had to read through all of these very, very scientific/medical studies, what I learned was that post TBI there is an immediate but transient elevation in cerebral glucose metabolism, followed by a prolonged period of glucose metabolic depression. The brain is metabolically flexible. So it has to ability to tab into various fuels for different needs.

For example, during fasting (not starvation, but fasting!) two thirds of the brain fuel is derived from ketones. The rest come from lactate, pyruvate, amino-acids, glycerol and other gluconeogenic precursors.

Post TBI, we have seen in studies on rats (and humans) that there is a tremendous demand for energy to restore homeostasis. To repeat myself, there is a depression in glucose metabolism during this period. Meaning, the brain cannot use glucose as needed in order to meet the demands required for said repair. This is something seen in studies over and over again.

So where does it try to derive fuel from?

Apparently, lactate and ketones.

TBI-induced impairments of the glucose metabolic machinery may make glucose a less favorable energy substrate.

But what I found interesting, is that the brain had no problem using ketones and lactate as the fuel sources to help return it to homeostasis, and that the ketones also had neuroprotective effects after a TBI had occured.

Whether ketosis is achieved by starvation or administration of a ketogenic diet, the common underlying conditions of low plasma glucose in the presence of an alternative substrate (ketones) have consistently shown neuroprotective effects after various types of brain injury.

Allow me to lead you down a rabbit hole for just a second, but I promise I'll round you back to the main point in all of this eventually.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23228828

A dietary therapy for pediatric epilepsy known as the ketogenic diet has seen a revival in its clinical use during the past decade. Although the underlying mechanism of the diet remains unknown, modern scientific approaches, such as the genetic disruption of glucose metabolism, are allowing for more detailed questions to be addressed. Recent work indicates that several mechanisms may exist for the ketogenic diet, including disruption of glutamatergic synaptic transmission, inhibition of glycolysis, and activation of ATP-sensitive potassium channels. Here, we describe on-going work in these areas that is providing a better understanding of metabolic influences on brain excitability and epilepsy.

I bolded that part for a reason. Because it is related to the cascading issues that come with brain injuries.

Glycolysis and TBI -

The postinjury period of glucose metabolic depression is accompanied by adenosine triphosphate decreases, increased flux of glucose through the pentose phosphate pathway, free radical production, activation of poly-ADP ribose polymerase via DNA damage, and inhibition of glyceraldehyde dehydrogenase (a key glycolytic enzyme) via depletion of the cytosolic NAD pool. Under these post-brain injury conditions of impaired glycolytic metabolism, glucose becomes a less favorable energy substrate. Ketone bodies are the only known natural alternative substrate to glucose for cerebral energy metabolism. While it has been demonstrated that other fuels (pyruvate, lactate, and acetyl-L-carnitine) can be metabolized by the brain, ketones are the only endogenous fuel that can contribute significantly to cerebral metabolism.

ATP and TBI -

http://dmm.biologists.org/content/6/6/1307

Glucose is the primary fuel source of the adult brain and its processing through the glycolytic pathway provides carbons for the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle for energy production in the form of ATP.

Comparison of glucose metabolic changes in TBI between different age groups within the pediatric population, or a comparison between adults and children, has not yet been made in humans. Regardless of age, the prolonged glucose metabolic depression reflects a period of time during which glucose uptake into the brain is compromised. This could cause downstream negative effects if the energy demands of the brain are not sufficiently met.

Pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) is the enzyme that connects the glycolytic pathway to the mitochondrial TCA cycle. Phosphorylation of the E1 subunit of PDH, which inhibits PDH function and therefore carbon entry into the mitochondria, has been shown to occur at a higher frequency than normal at 24 hours after CCI injury (Xing et al., 2009). These TBI-induced alterations in glycolytic enzyme functioning ultimately decrease the ability of glucose to be efficiently processed for oxidative metabolism, and thereby contribute to the post-TBI energy crisis, reflected by reductions in ATP production (see poster, panel D).

Free radicals and inflammation -

The other issue involving TBI is the increase in both inflammation, and free radicals.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1276814/

In addition to increasing ATP production while reducing oxygen consumption, ketone body metabolism can also reduce production of damaging free radicals [14,16,48]. The semiquinone of Q, the half reduced form, spontaneously reacts with oxygen and is the major source of mitochondrial free radical generation [14,51]. Oxidation of the Q couple reduces the amount of the semiquinone form thus decreasing superoxide production [14]. Since the cytosolic free NADP+/NADPH concentration couple is in near equilibrium with the glutathione couple, ketone body metabolism will increase the reduced form of glutathione thus facilitating destruction of hydrogen peroxide [14]. The reduction of free radicals through ketone body metabolism will also reduce tissue inflammation provoked by reactive oxygen species. Thus, ketone bodies are not only a more efficient metabolic fuel than glucose, but also possess anti-inflammatory potential.

Ok so where am I going with all of this?

First off, despite the fact that death via TBI is a major issue in this country, and a major issue in contact sports, believe it or not it's not at the forefront of research in regards to finding the most effective therapeutic solutions for it.

What we have, for the most part, is a lot of research done on rats, and some research done on humans. This is quite puzzling to me because TBI is, once again, a major cause of death in the world.

But even if someone doesn't die, the amount of damage done after repeated bouts of TBI like in Rugby, boxing, football, hockey, etc means that those athletes tend to live an exceptionally poor quality of life after sports. With many, such as Jovan and Seau actually resorting to suicide.

I'm not saying that exogenous ketones will fix all the problems associated with TBIs. But if you look at the fact that they reduce free radicals, reduce inflammation, and provide the brain with a more preferred fuel source while glucose metabolism is depressed, then I can't understand for the life of me why more people who are responsible for the health and well being of our pro athletes aren't at least including exogenous ketones as part of dietary therapy for their players who have or do suffer from brain injuries.

What we're currently doing is not working. And when you add up what evidence we do have, I do see promise in regards to the inclusion of exogenous ketones as part of therapy to help players suffer minimal damage in the post TBI stages.

Or they can just keep feeding them prescription pills from big pharma. That's clearly working. /sarcasm.

If you want to learn more about exogenous ketones..........

http://liftrunbang.pruvitnow.com/

The modalities of training efficiently

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 18:13:00 +0000

Specific goal prioritization - Decide on one thing

Wanting to squat more weight and wanting bigger quads are not the same goal. Squatting more weight might not even be an efficient means to that end. And yet so many guys that say they are interested in growing get caught up in the trap that if they aren't hitting PR's at every training session, that they weren't stimulating growth, or getting better.

Strength and hypertrophy are more like, distant cousins than identical twins. Basically there are some connective ideologies but there's also a lot of things that make them very dissimilar. I mean ping pong is called table tennis but I doubt Serena Williams is going to challenge any Olympic level ping pong players.

Training for maximal strength in order to grow is a lot like trying to get better at tennis in order to be better at ping pong. Yeah, you might find some carryover but for the most part you're not maximizing what is most effective.

A good example of this would be someone who say, does distance running. They might throw in some track work intervals once a week or twice a month, but the majority of their training is built around doing the things needed to get better at distance running. That's because whatever it is you are trying to maximize with training has to be geared towards maximal responses.

Strength training has a large neurological base associated with it. Training for size, does not.

One can actually train with relatively low intensities (as little as 30% of 1RM) and stimulate growth via muscle protein synthesis. But you cannot develop maximal strength at loads that low.

There's at least a dozen other things I could write out that separate training for strength vs size, from training frequency, to volume, to how the movements are even executed, but without doing that I am just going to say that your training should always be focused on a singular goal to achieve as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

If you are training for strength, training for strength. Do not plan on getting "ripped" at this time. There might be some growth as a side effect, but again it absolutely will not be maximized because training for maximal strength is not training for maximal growth. Generally this means training in low to moderate rep ranges using intensities between (give or take) 75-90%. Volume can be waved throughout periodized blocks all depending on where the intensity zone is being utilized at the present time. Training should be centered around being explosive, refining technique and motor patterns and not generating fatigue through training to failure.

If you are in a fat loss stage, then muscle retention is a priority. That means you must give your body a reason to hold on to the amount of lean tissue it is currently in possession of, while using your diet and probably some form of conditioning to put yourself into a hypocaloric state. This means you should still train hard, but understand two things - neither increased mass (you cannot get big and ripped at the same time) nor increased strength should be counted on at this time.

If you are training for maximal growth, then (obviously) you will have to have an excess of calories coming in to support the growth process. Training should reflect the fact that you are training for maximal growth via efficient training modalities like increased time under tension. Emphasis should be placed on putting the muscles into fully lengthened and shortened positions (through various movement selection) and generating as much tension as possible on the muscles you are trying to work. Generally speaking this also means rep ranges of 8-20 or possibly even more. Generating fatigue in some fashion (where failure is hit, or something close to failure is achieved) is also highly desired as well.

As you can see, whatever phase you feel like you need to concentrate on, they have very different approaches in order to maximize efficiency. Of course, none of these are completely set in stone or are "rock hard facts" but through both anecdotal evidence and what we've seen through research these are solid starting guidelines for most.

Cognizant selection - Know why you are doing what you are doing

A training program or methodology is generally made up of a myriad of properties. And you should be able to answer the questions under each one without hesitation.

Training volume.

Why are you using X amount of sets?

Training frequency.

Why are you training Y number of times per week?

Training intensity (both perceived effort and percentage of 1 rep max).

Why are you using certain loading in your training or training with a certain RPE?

Movement selection.

Why are you performing each movement in the manner that you are?

Rep range (which could also fall under the volume umbrella).

Why are you using certain rep ranges for both warm ups, and working sets?

Movement execution.

Why are you performing each movement in the manner that you are?

For every single part of your training, you should have a clear understanding of what you are doing what you are doing. Why you are training X number of days per week, why you are doing your chosen rep range, why you are using Y amount of volume, and why you are using certain training intensities.

All of these variables should be defined by you for very specific reasons. Even to the point of having variation within training sessions built on how you feel for the day. For example, if you got very little sleep or nutrition was sub par for the day (or the day before) or you're just generally feeling very under the weather, then "going for it" on such a day is probably not a good idea.

Being aware of your own natural recovery rhythms is a huge factor in sustaining progress. Getting injured because you refused to deviate from a plan that called for you to do a max set of 10 reps on bench press, when you could "feel" things were off that day, means you refused to leave your training ego at the door.

This too means you know why you are pulling back on training intensity for the day. So you backed off because you knew you your body was not going to be capable of putting forth a significant amount of effort. This is not an excuse to be lazy. It simply means that you're aware that the nitro button shouldn't be pushing during a time when the engine was sounding clunky.

This is where so many people lose out on months, years, potentially a decade or more of productive training. Because they often just copy what someone else is doing without ever questioning why they themselves are doing it and/or never learn what would be best for them. Copying what someone else is doing means you've decided to put your logical reasoning to the side and just be a training zombie.
I'm not saying you can't borrow something from someone else that does in fact work well for you, but using wholesale routines "because that big dude trains that way" doesn't make a lot of sense. You're not that big dude. And he probably didn't become that big dude training the way he does now.

One of the most important aspects of creating an efficient training program or ideology that paves a faster way to goal actualization is to breakdown every facet of what you're doing, and identify the reasoning for it.

If you cannot answer the questions provided, then take some time to think about it until you can. Then start to apply the answers in your own training, and see what it produces.

Individual bias - What resonates with you

Perhaps the single most important factor in regards to training efficiently, or shall we say, maximizing results, is to embrace what resonates with you.

Some people will find that some sort of DUP or block methodology will really appeal to them. And some won't. Some people will love training lower volume with brutal all out intensity techniques. And some will prefer a much higher degree of volume in their training, avoiding failure all together.

Despite all the studies you will ever read, the one thing none of them can take into account is what resonates with each individual. In regards to pretty much everything. That's life, and training.

Some people like cats. Some people like dogs. Some like both. Some don't like either.

If you asked each person their reasoning for such, you'd likely get some simple answers as to why, but believe it or not, most of those things are just surface level responses and the majority of people cannot really tell you the deep meaning of why they gravitate towards certain things in life. They know they do, and they have their own answers, but they cannot explain to you why they like "red headed women".

"Because I'm attracted to them."

Yes, that's a really surface level answer, but truthfully people can't really tell you the why behind their answers. And let's be clear, with everything in life you don't have to. The person who loves country music, and hates metal can't tell you why they do. They just do. And vice versa. Again, one person may say "it's all a bunch of screaming I can't understand" or the metal guy may say "country sucks because it's a bunch of whining."

Again, surface level answers.

People can't really answer the "why" to those answers.

"Why don't you like all that screaming in metal music?"

"Because I don't."

To them, that's enough. And it is. No one has to justify their reasoning for their preferences. But there tends to be reasons deeper than "I do/don't like..." certain things. But I'm not a psychologist and I don't intend to ask you about your relationship with your mom/dad or your childhood fears.

Training is no different. People are going to gravitate towards certain training "styles" because it speaks to them and they enjoy it. There's probably a deeper reason "why" to all of that, but I can't answer those things for every person. Some people are more analytical in their approach to things, and like structure. Some people gravitate towards a more haphazard brutality style approach and tend to often live their life with a bit more edge to it as well.

That's just my own observations and is in no way factual. I'm just never surprised when I have a chance to get to know someone personally, what training style they tend to favor. It's almost always a reflection of the actual person I know.

But here's the thing. You will be the most consistent with whatever training program resonates with you the most. Even if the training program is sub-par in some aspects, if you're applying it will consistency and exceptional effort, then results will manifest themselves in some way.

Dieting is no different. People have been debating low fat/low carb for fat loss for decades now and there have been a zillion studies done with each side trying to prove one is more effective than the other. When the fact is, the most effective one, is the one someone can use on a consistent basis because they enjoy it (I mean to whatever degree you can REALLY enjoy dieting). From satiation to food selection, people will be more likely to stick to the diet that for whatever surface level reasons, resonate with them.

Conclusion -

These three things are basically the pyramid or trinity or trifecta in regards to outlining a complete training/diet strategy to reach your goals the fastest. Within each of these there is of course, a complicated set of questions and answers that you must ask, and be willing to answer. Once you can effectively "fill in the blanks" to all of that, you'll be well on your way to smashing through roadblocks and understanding how to apply the things that best suit you and your individual needs.

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And not a single mountain was ever climbed......

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 01:14:00 +0000

There is an idiom most often used to describe people as pessimists or optimists.

And it's commonly "glass is half full" or "glass is half empty".

I try not to use absolutes in my life now. By that I mean, the words and phrases "never" "always" "all the time", etc. Because for the most part, they are rarely true (see, I had to be careful right there not to say they are "never" true).

The reason why is because using absolutes distorts our perception about how true a situation really is, or isn't.

And most people are not always half-full or half-empty types "all the time". We tend to see the liquid in the glass quite differently based on different situations in our life.

When we are in a glass-is-half-empty state, we tend to over analyze every word, action, and reaction involved in whatever situation is plaguing us. We do this, I believe, because we often find ourselves at a crossroad in our life that requires us to make a decision that we feel like will be life impacting. That once we take that step off the proverbial cliff, we accept that we are in a free fall and have no idea what our landing is going to be like. It would be nice to know well ahead of time that a mountain of cotton is at the bottom, just waiting to cushion our fall. But we can't know that. And depending on where our mindset is at in the time of that free fall, we either envision said mountain of cotton (glass is half full), or envision razor sharp rocks (half empty) that are going to slice us into bits and disembowel us. Even worse is that we don't die from it. We just get split wide open and lie there bleeding eternally in a lake of our own blood and pain, metaphorically speaking, and think "this is going to be my life." Pain, misery, anguish, and suffering.....eternally.

Now that's a rosy ass picture I just painted, let me tell you.

But that is rarely the case. If ever. Yeah, I used an absolute there (sort of, I did add the "if") because I think I'm ok in saying that at some point, the misery does end. At least for a while before life presents us with a new set of circumstances that will require us to make a choice to have faith in yet another free fall.

Most of the time, life gives us a bit of both, however. The razors and the cotton.

Generally speaking, taking big risks and big decisions usually means getting split wide open for a while until we find ourselves in emotional comfort. Or we get comfortable being uncomfortable. And there's good and bad in that as well. Sometimes we aren't aware of how unbearable the discomfort is until something awakens us to it.

I heard a story about a woman a few years ago who, by all accounts had a fairly good life. That is, until her husband died. Now I know what you're thinking at this point. It all went into the shitter for her at that point. But actually, it was the opposite. Once she was unshackled from the chains of the discomfort she had grown so used to in that marriage, her life blossomed and she began doing all the things she had ever wanted to do in her life, but was never free to explore. The person who was closest to her said of it all "it was a bizarre duality of joy and complete sadness. Joy, to see her with the ability to feel free to explore who she wanted to be, and what she wanted out of life without limits, without reservations, without oppression. And sad at the same time, that she let so many years get washed away by not finding the strength to actually make the choice to free herself from that emotional slavery."

People can and do willingly chain themselves to life draining situations for sometimes illogical and inexplicable reasons. Or let me rephrase, illogical to everyone else from the outside looking in.

I can't read minds, and I do my best not to speak for others, but in the time I've spent on this Earth, and in my own experience in life, most of us end up in those prisons because we are paralyzed by the fear of change.

Exceptionally cliche thing to write, I'm aware. But cliches exist for a reason. They exist because most of us live some sort of the same situations throughout life, just painted with slightly different colors and patterns. One person's mauve is another person's thistle.

The paralyzing effect in people's life isn't just fear, but habit.

The FBI's database shows that about 8% of people who are taken hostage end up developing Stockholm syndrome.

If you don't know what that is, I can enlighten you.......

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon described in 1973 in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

Essentially, there is a sort of illogical bonding that happens in spite of the fact that the person being held hostage is in fact being abused by their captors. Symptoms include but are not limited to.....

Positive feelings by the prisoner toward the captor.
Negative feelings by the prisoner toward his or her family, friends or authorities attempting any rescue.
Support for the captor's reasons and behaviors.

The most common thought behind the development of these irrational and illogical thoughts come back to one of the two things that we as humans, are designed for, physiologically.

1. To procreate.

2. To survive.

It's #2 that psychologists agree on (for the most part) that causes this phenomenon. In essence, self preservation.

Once the hostage is in the clutches of the abductor, they are isolated from the outside world. Everything now, in regards to survival, is dependent on that relationship. The longer the abduction goes on, the more reliant the hostage becomes. Their life depends on it. So there is a shift in their mental and emotional state that creates a coping mechanism. Most of us do in fact develop coping mechanisms for physical, emotional, and mental stress in our life.

Hell, let's go ahead and break the rules here and use an absolute (shit I'm breaking that rule all over the place in this article). We ALL develop coping mechanisms for the hostage situations we have in our life. Whatever they may be, we will find a way to cope. It may be healthy, or unhealthy, but it will happen.

Unfortunately, as I've seen all too often, people that become aware of such issues and find themselves lying on a therapist's couch, end up trying to fix all the coping mechanisms, rather than addressing what's actually causing them. This should make sense, if you understand how the world of therapy and therapists can and is often filled with people who don't desire you to get off that couch.

I read an article a while back, which I cannot seem to find now so I will have to paraphrase, where the author (who is a therapist) was railing on the entire field of therapy because people should not find themselves in therapy for weeks, months, or years. I'm not talking about things like drug addiction or such, I'm talking about getting through normal, yet difficult life situations.

Her stance? Make a fucking choice.

That's it. That's all.

And her problem with most of the people working in the field of therapy was that it wasn't their desire to help these people make a choice. Her pet peeve was the common question asked by therapists to their patients.

"Well how does that make you feel?"

Her retort was basically, "this is fucking stupid. I already know how it makes them feel because they told me. So my question back to them was "and what are you going to do about it?""

Her success rate was pretty high. Her style of counseling was to essentially force people to recognize the root of the problem, rather than worrying about the coping mechanisms, then make a choice to change the actual problem. To get them to actually say what they needed to change, then actually act on it. To understand what their control in life was, and to seize it, and make it work for them. To stop waiting for things to "magically change". To stop trying to put band-aids on the problem by addressing the coping mechanisms and to actually kill those off, by making a choice to change what was causing them.

Her average number of therapy sessions per client?

Two.

In other words, "shit or get off the fucking pot." Amazing that she was smart enough to go to school all those years and arrive at a saying most of us already knew, but have trouble applying.

The problem is, most people really do already know the answer, but don't have the courage to break away from their metaphorical or real life in-person captors.

People stay shackled to jobs, marriages, friendships, and all sorts of shit in life because of fear, habit, and the development of an ideology that their self preservation is dependent upon these things existing. In other words, they can't imagine their life without those things in place. No matter how bad or horrible or shitty they may be. No different than the hostage.

How many people have you ever known that were in a life sucking relationship but would not get out of it?

The most common answer as to why, that I've ever heard is "well I love them." To those people, I don't think they understand the concept of what that word means. And it can mean a lot of things. But I don't often associate love with destruction or the tearing down of someone in a way that lessens them. I mean wiki told me this.......

Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection ("I love my mother") to pleasure ("I loved that meal"). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment. It can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.

I mean just borrow from that..........

"I loved that meal".

Pretty sure no one has ever said that while gagging on a food their taste buds rejected like your intestines rejects Chipotle (and while you may love Chipotle, your intestines usually do not).

This isn't to say that you don't love that person. But it shouldn't be reason, the sole reason, you keep arriving at to stay in that state of Stockholm syndrome with them. There's been enough articles written about toxic relationships on the net that you could have found a few and come to the conclusion if you happened to be in one or not, and found the courage to get out of it. Why on Earth would you waste another minute of your life in something that consistently takes more than it gives back?

Wait. That's how Casinos stay in business. But I digress. Even then, people end up in therapy for gambling because they watch their life crumble due to their "love" of gambling. Everyday that you stay in a relationship with someone you "love" that causes you to empty out your emotional bank account, the closer you get to being broke(en). And once that happens, just like in gambling, you will have to take a long hard look at your own self worth.

Ugh. This article is really uplifting isn't it?

I've worked with people who bitched daily about the jobs we were in.

"I hate this fucking job so much."

"Well go get another one."

"Well rabble rabble mumble mumble....stuff, things, you know."

I get it. Change is fucking hard. We like routine. We like habits. We wouldn't have habits if they weren't habits! Get your mind around that for a while. But routine and habits that cause us to be hostages is no way to go through life. I mean that's really deep (sarcasm) and should be on a Pinterest meme somewhere with a chick walking on the beach in the background, but at the core of it, the message still rings true.

And it's not until that moment, that epiphany, that paradigm shift that happens that causes our eyes to be wide open to it all, and creates pause long enough to let fear sink in that maybe, possibly, probably....we need to make a change. We need to step a step off that ledge, and embrace that free fall. That whatever comes with that decision, fuck it, we will deal with it. Cotton or razors, cut open or cushy, I'm making a choice to change things.

No one ever climbed a single mountain by just looking at it. Not one person. Ever. Yes, I used a few absolutes there because that is an undeniable truth.

You will never ever climb a single mountain just by standing at the foot of it. And life can't improved by living in self imposed victimhood. Choosing to change things to accept happiness is not selfish. And a lot of people in your life that you may have to remove to find happiness, may tell you that you're being selfish. Most of the time, those are your captors. The ones you've been so reliant on. The ones who have shackled you and imprisoned you and made you believe that your self preservation depends on them.

It doesn't.

Empowerment is something people can find if they are willing to embrace change. If they are willing to embrace that fall. If they are willing to go through the myriad of pains life will bring with change.

But the journey up that mountain has to start with the first step. The free fall has to start with that first step.

Every major change starts with that one first step. That one usually proves to be the hardest. And if you're ever to find yourself in a place where you carved out the life you really wanted, you'll look back and realize that step was indeed the hardest, but absolutely the most important one.

The competitor and keto/os

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sat, 16 Jul 2016 01:17:00 +0000

The last year I've been involved with a company that distributes exogenous ketones called keto/os designed by Pruvit.

Like most supplements, and rightly so, they have undergone a lot of scrutiny and lashing across the net for being the product of an MLM based company.

I myself was very reluctant to get involved for those exact reasons and it took me a long time to get on board with it all because I am a skeptic by heart. Especially when it comes to supplements.

I wrote an article before outlining how I ended up buying in and I will link it here.

One of the common misconceptions about using exogenous ketones is that you need to be on a ketogenic diet in order to use them. The only reason I feel like people can arrive at such a conclusion is just because of the fact that the supplement is in fact a ketone itself. Beta-hydroxybutyrate, or BHB.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

The entire point of using an exogenous ketone (exogenous meaning it comes from outside the body, where endogenous means from inside the body) is to get the benefits that ketones provide without actually having to get into a state of ketosis. In other words, you can have your carbs and derive the benefits you get from that ketone BHB itself.

To be completely up front, I am not a fan of ketogenic diets. Or let me state, not from an athletic or muscle building standpoint. And I will tell you why.

Carbohydrates have a protein sparing effect in regards to the fact that the keep the body from using amino acids through the process known as gluconeogenesisto create glucose.

In the absence of glucose, gluconeogenesis essentially robs Peter to pay Paul. If someone is interested in growing as much lean tissue as possible, then robbing muscle of the very building blocks needed to grow is not a great idea. Let us also not forget that carbohydrates serve as a catalyst for the pancreas to secrete insulin, which is responsible for reducing muscle protein breakdown.

Yet at the same time, there's actually no such thing as an "essential carbohydrate".

We have essential amino acids, the ones that cannot be created by the body and must be found through food or supplementation. Those being histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.

And we have essential fatty acids, Omega-3 and Omega-6. Just like the 9 essential amino acids, these cannot be synthesized by the body and must be obtained through diet.

In fact, as we break down what the essentials are by the body, you actually won't find carbohydrates in the list anywhere.

- Water. Without water well, you die.
- Essential amino acids
- Essential fatty acids
- Vitamins and minerals
- Trace minerals

The only knock here is that reducing your diet to protein and fats is said by some to cause deficiencies in some of the areas listed above. Potentially potassium, zinc, selenium, and vitamin D. However let's be clear about something here - if your diet doesn't contain a variety of foods in it then regardless of the "style" of dieting you choose, you'll end up deficient in something somewhere. So even if you decide that a keto diet is right for you, make sure to do your homework in regards to food selection so that you have your bases covered as thoroughly as possible from this standpoint.

With all of that said, from both an athletic performance standpoint and muscle building standpoint, carbs really are king, but only when working in conjunction in a synergistic way with proteins and fats. You need an optimum supply of all three macros in order to either grow muscle, or perform athletically at a high level. Carbs supply an immediate and "cheap" source of energy that is easily converted into ATP which is the driver for fast and explosive muscular contractions.

So while carbs may not be "essential" their role in regards to sports performance and building muscle cannot be overstated.

So where in the hell does that bring us back to in regards to exogenous ketones?

Those on keto diets and those not -

Well this one shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Anyone that decides to implement a keto diet, which has been proven to be an excellent choice for rapid fat loss, can use the exogenous ketones to achieve a high rate of ketosis in that state.

But what about those who either subscribe to a higher carbohydrate diet, or someone just going low carb for the sake of fat loss, either for physique competition or just using a low carb/high fat paradigm to shed more fat?

I'm glad you asked. Or maybe you didn't. But here you are, reading this tripe anyway.

The brain uses about 120 grams of glucose a day (give or take). When the body is low on glucose, such as in a state of low carb dieting, the brain competes with the glucose supply for normal functioning.

Anyone who has ever done a contest diet should understand the manifestations of this quite well. When someone is only ingesting 50-150 grams of carbs a day, then training, then doing cardio, there's not a lot of that "cheap energy" to tap into. When I was in contest prep and carbs were at an all time low, I had times where I had no idea where I was driving to or what my cats name was anymore.

If you doubt the impact on glucose availability for proper brain function, have a lookie at this guy here......

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21636015

Previous research has found that the ingestion of glucose boosts task performance in the memory domain (including tasks tapping episodic, semantic, and working memory). The present pilot study tested the hypothesis that glucose ingestion would enhance performance on a test of prospective memory. In a between-subjects design, 56 adults ranging from 17 to 80 years of age performed a computerized prospective memory task and an attention (filler) task after 25 g of glucose or a sweetness-matched placebo. Blood glucose measurements were also taken to assess the impact of individual differences on glucose regulation. After the drink containing glucose, cognitive facilitation was observed on the prospective memory task after excluding subjects with impaired fasting glucose level. Specifically, subjects receiving glucose were 19% more accurate than subjects receiving a placebo, a trend that was marginally nonsignificant, F₁,₄₁ = 3.4, P = .07, but that had a medium effect size, d = 0.58. Subjects receiving glucose were also significantly faster on the prospective memory task, F₁,₃₅ = 4.8, P < .05, d = 0.6. In addition, elevated baseline blood glucose (indicative of poor glucose regulation) was associated with slower prospective memory responding, F₁,₃₅ = 4.4, P < .05, d = 0.57. These data add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that both memory and executive functioning can benefit from the increased provision of glucose to the brain.

To clear this up, once you remove carbs, brain function drops if there is not an alternative source for improving cognition.

Now when I write "remove carbs" I'm talking about low carbohydrate diets, and not ketogenic diets. The brain cannot use fatty acids for fuel. [1]Fatty acids do not serve as fuel for the brain, because they are bound to albumin in plasma and so do not traverse the blood-brain barrier. In starvation, ketone bodies generated by the liver partly replace glucose as fuel for the brain. So if someone is going low carb, but not in a ketogenic state, then essentially brain cognition is going to be in the shitter.

Ketosis can only happen once your body no longer as the ability to draw upon glucose for a fuel source, and then a switch in the metabolic pathways happens so that ketones can be used instead of glucose. The process here is that fat gets broken down in the liver, and glycerol and fatty acid molecules are released. Ketogensis happens, then and a ketone body called acetoacetate which is then converted into BHB and acetone. Acetone is the one that makes your breath smell like you've been feasting on the flesh of rotting corpses in a truck stop bathroom.

BHB however, is quite amazing.

The therapeutic uses for ketogenic diets have been documented quite thoroughly, like right here....

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11569918

Surprisingly, D-beta-hydroxybutyrate (abbreviated "betaOHB") may also provide a more efficient source of energy for brain per unit oxygen, supported by the same phenomenon noted in the isolated working perfused rat heart and in sperm. It has also been shown to decrease cell death in two human neuronal cultures, one a model of Alzheimer's and the other of Parkinson's disease. These observations raise the possibility that a number of neurologic disorders, genetic and acquired, might benefit by ketosis.

But to expound on BHB, is in fact the preferred fuel source by the brain. But even more than that, BHB appears to suppress brain glucose function. Yah, this was done on rats, but I will follow up with some people stuff after this as well........

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874681/

It is hypothesized that ketone bodies play a neuroprotective role through an improvement in metabolic efficiency, by sparing glucose, and the degradation of muscle-derived amino acids for substrates15. During hypoxia, ketone bodies have been shown to be neuroprotective16,17 by depressing glucose uptake and CMRglu possibly due to metabolic bocks as a result of oxidative damage. Ketone bodies are thought to stabilize the lactate/pyruvate ratio and bypass the metabolic blocks associated with oxidative stress induced impairment of glucose metabolism.

So over the last many months, what I've seen with competitors who are in a very depleted carbohydrate state is this very thing when they added in the ketones during those times.

And while it's true that the brain draws upon different fuels for function, a brain trying to run on trace amounts of glucose that is being constantly depleted through cardio and training will be a brain that isn't working all that well.

So as I dispersed this product out to competitors in a state of severe carbohydrate depletion, they all kept coming back amazed at what happened. Brain fog gone, the ability to generate hard mind to muscle contractions during training had returned, and the feeling of death washing over them every hour of the day was gone. Or at least, for the hours that the exogenous ketones were running through their system.

This didn't happen once, or twice, or even three times. It happened with every competitor that ended up using the product.

When the brain cannot draw upon enough glucose for efficient functioning and the ketones are implemented, it now has a fuel source that it actually prefers. Especially in the times when the body is depleted of glucose.

In summary, this is the first study directly showing acute utilization of BHB in human brain. The concentration of tissue BHB is in agreement with earlier acute hyperketonemic (nonfasted) data, with concentrations of brain BHB quite low. At the plasma levels of 2.25 ± 0.24 mmol/L BHB, the appearance of the 13C label into the brain and into the amino acid pools is rapid, reaching a steady state for Glu4 and Gln4 at fractional enrichments of 6.78 ± 1.71% and 5.64 ± 1.84%, respectively. The distribution of label resembles that of glucose, consistent with the view that BHB is metabolized primarily within the large neuronal compartment. Modeling the glutamate and glutamine steady-state fractional enrichments based on a single compartment gives oxidative rates of BHB of 0.032 ± 0.009 mmol kg−1 min−1 that are consistent with whole brain human brain measurements made earlier using AV difference methods. Analysis of aspartate labeling is consistent with the view that in these compartments of BHB consumption, aspartate and glutamate are not equally distributed. We anticipate that information gained from these BHB studies will contribute towards defining the extent of BHB accumulation and the metabolic contributions that are not glucose dependent, which may be helpful towards understanding and managing clinical situations where glucose is not readily available, for example, the ketogenic diet and hypoglycemia.

^ and the above is exactly what competitors are often dealing with, and why it is they see such dramatic results when implementing keto/os as part of their competition cycle. And it's exactly what happened to me when I hit the "wall" in prep for my show as well.

But even if you're not a competitor, or do enjoy a diet rich in the delights from places like the Cheesecake factory or Olive garden, the benefits of BHB go far beyond that of just supplying the brain with an amazing fuel source. From appetite suppression to its very well documented anti-inflammatory properties, it's not just a supplement to be thrown in by guys and gals trotting around on stage 95% naked. You can still keep your clothes on and derive tremendous benefits from an overall health perspective with the inclusion of said product, and drastically improve your quality of life.

Or don't. I don't care.

But if you want to, try a pack out here.........

http://liftrunbang.experienceketo.com/

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22436/

Tomato plants, weeds, and life....

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 03:33:00 +0000

This past weekend I sat in a hotel room with my brother from another mother, Fred Smalls.

Fred was getting ready for the IFBB Wings of Strength show, and I had flown in to see my friend and help him out with some final preparations.

We had a day before his wife arrived, and if you read my past article about contest prep, you know that basically you're pretty much exhausted at that point so we just sat around and talked about life, our kids, and all sorts of deep shit that I don't think women think men sit around and talk about.

I told Fred about a metaphor that had hit me a few days earlier in regards to people and life, and how some people are tomato plants, some people are weeds, and some people are the support for the tomato plants.

"Tell me what all this means." he said.

I went on to expound on my metaphor by explaining it to him like this.

If life were a garden, or specifically a field of tomato plants, then most people you know fill some sort of metaphorical role within that garden.

Tomato plants, properly watered and fertilized can grow delicious fruit, obviously. And I'm not talking the store bought kind. Anyone who has had farm grown tomatoes knows they don't taste like store bought tomatoes.

But a tomato plant can't grow their fruit to its fullest potential without a stake, or wire cage you can tie the plant up to as it grows. If you don't do this, the tomato gets very heavy, and can pull limbs or the entire plant to the ground. Potentially snapping the branches in the process.

If any of those things happens, the fruit it bore sits on the ground, and is vulnerable to various diseases that will rot away at it. That or some animal comes along and eats it. Point being, without the support system, the tomato plant can't grow to its fullest potential without the support system in place.

At various times in our life, we are the plant. And in order to grow and fulfill our greatest potential, we will need a support system to do so. One we can tie ourselves to, and keep us protected, and help keep our branches strong, and free of as many problems as possible. A support system that will keep us off the ground, away from diseases and predators that certainly don't have our bests interests in mind, and want nothing more than for us to fall to the ground, so they can devour us or take part in helping to rotten our lives.

We aren't weak for needing that support system. After all, with it, we have the potential to grow into something grand and magnificent. There's nothing detracted from our ability to reach our potential because we had support to help us climb up while we did so. Not every battle has to be fought alone. Not every growth spurt in life has to be done in solitude.

Most of the time, it's going to take a support system for us to find our greatest potential. The kind that will be steadfast in the rains and wind, and tie us off so that we can focus on becoming the very best version of that damned tomato plant that we can be.

With such a support system, we can not just survive, but thrive. And bear fruit that we couldn't have done so without it.

Of course, even with that support system, we will have weeds in our life too. And their purpose is to do nothing but try and suck as much of the nutrients out of the soil away from us as possible. Without a good gardener, another part of the support system - who cares for and loves the plants, the weeds can take over really fast. And eventually the tomato plants can succumb to the weeds.

At various times in our life, we need a gardener. Someone who will alleviate the weeds that rob us of our nutrients, that keep us from growing. Someone that will tend to the soil, and prepare it for us ahead of time to make sure we are given the best chance to succeed. Someone who will get their hands dirty for us, and get on bended knee and do laborious work with their hands so that our foundation is strong.

As kids, it will be incredibly difficult to reach our potential as adults without a strong support system in place to help us grow. This is why, our jobs as parents is so fundamentally important for them. We are the stake in the ground. We are the gardener. We are the one that is supposed to tie them to us so they feel protected and loved and taken care of. We are the one that is supposed to work tirelessly to pull the weeds from around them so that they have their best chance to grow without succumbing to what is trying to rob them of their potential.

It doesn't mean all out protection. The rains and wind and storms will all test both the plant, and the support system. They need each other to thrive even without the weeds trying to overcome them.

But even as adults, we need to find our place with the people we love and care about in regards to these things. Sometimes we need the support, and sometimes we need to be the support. We need to understand when we need to tie ourselves off to that support system because our problems have made our branches heavy and wary. And we need to know when to tie our loved one off to us, so that we can be the broad shoulders they need, and the strong arms that can carry them for a while.

Most importantly, we should never find ourselves becoming weeds. We shouldn't find ourselves sucking the life out of the people we claim to love and care about, due to feeding our selfishness. Yes, there are times where we need to be selfish enough so that we pull away from the weeds, but that's not really being selfish as it's more about personal survival. People can and will suck the happiness and life right out of you if you do not pluck them from the ground they are trying to overcome from you.

It's not selfish to want to grow into something that is the best version of who you can become. It's not selfish to want to disconnect from people who wants to tear you off that stake or your wires because they want nothing more than to see your fruit lay rotting on the ground.

It's selfish to be the weed.

After explaining all this to Fred, he simply said "I see."

Nothing more.

But we sat in silence for a few and I could see him ruminating on the whole thing.

Fred is part of my support system, and I am part of his. We've both been there for each other throughout various struggles and sufferings and have learned how to lean on each other for issues related to both training, and life.

Family, friends, romantic partners....the relationship should represent the stake, the gardener, and the ever growing plant. The roles should all be intertwined and interchangeable at times.

Without surrounding ourselves with people who want to be those things for us, out of nothing more than their love and desire to see us grow, then we will struggle to grow the best to our ability. And so will they.

Be a good stake. Be a good gardener. Be a bad ass tomato plant too.

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Why we won't or can't fix the problem of obesity in America

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:09:00 +0000

Anytime the talk of particular age and nutritional habits come up, there's usually that ONE PERSON that chimes in with the fact that their grand-pa is 184 years old, and smokes 2 packs of camel a day and lives by drinking a gallon of bacon grease each day and eats a pound of hot dogs and is "in perfect health".

To me, the short circuit in this argument has always been obvious.

You're talking about someone that grew up in a totally different era, in a different way of life, and set a standard of health via different means than the people living now, who are either dying at a far younger age, or if they do live as long the quality of life is much lower.

According to research led by Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, Americans often have to cope with a range of medical problems during those extra years of life.

They are "not necessarily in good health", he told the Wall Street Journal.

Obesity, diabetes, kidney disease and neurological conditions like Alzheimer's are all on the rise, both in the US and in much of the developed world.

So while we can expect extra years, they may not necessarily be golden - which is itself a good reason to stay away from the pies.

However, the New England Journal of Medicine, which is made up of kinda smart people, actually don't even agree we're living longer. As far back as 2005, they were already sizing up the fact that we are scheduled to check out earlier than most of our parents will.

For the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children in America may have shorter life expectancies than their parents, according to a new report, which contends that the rapid rise in childhood obesity, if left unchecked, could shorten life spans by as much as five years.

The report, to be published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, says the prevalence and severity of obesity is so great, especially in children, that the associated diseases and complications -- Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, cancer -- are likely to strike people at younger and younger ages.

People can debate about the actual numbers until the cows come home, but you really do not have to be a scientist or researcher to understand that technology has changed our way of life in first world countries.

My dad is now 75 years old. He grew up walking to school, then would come to work all day in the garden where his parents grew most of the food they ate. They spent the winters hunting deer, and the summers fishing and working in the fields. I think he had 4 thousand brothers and sisters, so it was basically a sweat shop for farming, hunting, and fishing. But that's how a lot of families lived back then.

My dad is currently around 6' and 230 pounds. So he's not thin. But his health is pretty darn good. So I will be that guy. My dad still eats like shit, and is overweight, but his health is good (watch his heart explode through his chest next week like something out of Aliens after I write this) and he's still exceptionally active. He still works his own garden, he still hunts all winter, still goes fishing, and up until just a few years ago, he was still officiating baseball, football, volleyball, and softball games all year. That's on two knee replacements as well.

The point is, our parents or our grandparents grew up in a time where they usually established a work ethic that became a part of their daily life. My grandmother is still alive, 96 years old, and she still tills her own garden. She's thinner than an ironing board, but her brain is still sharp and she's still spunky. She might eat once or twice a day, and it's usually from her garden and livestock she has raised or someone else brought to her for meat.

When you parallel that to the generation of kids growing up now, it might as well be like they are being raised on a completely different planet.

Kids go home now to Xbox1, play on their computers or iPhones all day, get very little time to exercise at school, and have a high level of access to calorie dense low-nutrient foods.

But I don't even need to go back to my parents or grandparents time in order to draw such a strong contrast.

I grew up riding my bike all summer. Playing tackle football (without pads), pick up baseball and basketball games, and going hiking through the woods with friends. We ate what we wanted and as much as we wanted, and still usually stayed pretty scrawny. I miss those days.

We didn't have access to a McDonald's and we didn't drink 1,000 calorie "coffees" from any franchise because they didn't exist. We drank Coke here and there, ate tons of sammiches, and generally every night most of us went home to a family that cooked a very large, complete dinner that usually consisted of beef, chicken, pork, along with tons of veggies, rice, or potatoes.

I've written a lot about obesity here, and sometimes it has caused a ruckus and sometimes....no it still did each time.

But the fact is, society actually makes it more difficult on a lot of levels to not be obese, despite the fact that there is a constant outcry to get the obesity problem under control.

First off, despite the fact that we are currently living in a time where crime is basically at its lowest, people are scared as shit to let their kids go outside and play alone. Growing up, during the summer the street in front of my house was like a virtual parade of kids all summer who were on their way to "play" or just "do stuff".

The street in front of my house today? I never see anyone, despite the fact that I know there are lots of families with kids in the 8 to 15 year old age range. Sometimes I will see a few kids here and there that are forced to ride their bike in a 12 by 12 foot area in front of the house, lest they get kid napped immediately by the thousands of predators just waiting to throw little Johnnie into the trunk.

I'm not minimizing anyone's pain that has lost a child to abduction here. I cannot imagine what that would feel like. However, the odds of your child being abducted by a stranger are about....1 in 610,000.

This doesn't stop the fear mongering, however. On my own facebook wall I've had parents chime in with the fact that they basically don't let their kids out of their sight for any reason ever. And while I commend them for being responsible, in some ways helicopter parenting could be contributing to the obesity problem.

I'll tie all this together, so just hang in there with me.

Right now, Americans work more than anyone.

We're overworked, and overstressed.

Recent studies have painted a grim picture of the American working world: Longer days, less vacation time, and later retirement, and — and that was all during the good years of the 1990s.

The last few months have done nothing to ease those conditions, adding job insecurity to the mix as an increasing number of companies lay off workers to "downsize" in the slumping economy.

Those lucky enough to still have a job can expect to be asked to do more, to make up for the "streamlined" workforce.
Not only are Americans working longer hours than at any time since statistics have been kept, but now they are also working longer than anyone else in the industrialized world. And while workers in other countries have been seeing their hours cut back by legislation focused on preventing work from infringing on private life, Americans have been going in the other direction.

Nowadays, most kids are victims to convenience of use. In other words, its far easier for the parent(s) to make something quick and easy for dinner, rather than actually cook a well balanced meal for the family each evening. To add to that, because people are often working more hours and are still scraping by, food selection will often be of the cheapest variety. Lots of processed foods and heat up dinners and pizzas can be the regular in most homes every night.

Kids are now overburdened with mounds of homework, because apparently that's how you make them smarter.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-more-homework-means-more-stress-031114#1

A Stanford researcher has found that students in high-achieving communities who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance, and alienation from society.

So actually, it looks like schools are in fact doing a great job of teaching kids what life as an adult will really be like. Too much stress, too much work, not enough time to enjoy family, socialize normally, and grow into a well rounded individual.

I see this at expos and events I go to, where I've met people with hundreds of thousands of followers who seem perfectly normal posting online, but are socially awkward in person.

But I'm getting off track here with that.

Right now, there's no one single answer to fixing the problem of obesity in America. It would require a massive social and ideological shift in order for change to happen.

Jobs would need to stop asking for 50+ hour weeks. A huge emphasis on the importance of the nuclear family would have to be put at the forefront again (buh bye feminism), kids would need more time for activity both at school, and at home where parents would need to stop hovering over them and being overly protective. In other words, they would need to be allowed to go outside and play unsupervised. I know, that's crazy talk but that's how normal people used to grow up.

And emphasis on educating about food would need to be made starting at a young age by qualified individuals. I'm against making franchises change their menu because that's wrong to me. I'm about educating people so that they can make better choices.

Basically, we'd need to revisit our past in some ways and think that maybe our grandparents and great grandparents generation lived as long as they have because of the dynamics they grew up in, were pretty simple. You moved a lot, you played a lot, you worked a physical job, you went to Church on Sunday, you ate highly nutritious foods, you let your kids run around the neighborhood, and you didn't spend 30+ hours a week watching TV.

There's really no simple answer here because the complexities in "solving" the obesity problem isn't singular by any means. It's complicated and layered in problems all the way from food selection to social habits to work, school, and family.

I don't have an answer to be honest. Education can only solve so much.

American needs a bit of a reboot button if it wants to fix this particular issue. It's not a single issue vote. And I don't think as a society, as a whole, we're going to be willing to push that particular button. At least, not right now.

Earn your offseason

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 15:38:00 +0000

Ahhh, the "offseason". A time when one can relax a bit on food selection, training intensity, and basically half ass it until it's time to get your game face on.

If that's your attitude, then you can definitely expect to fall short of your strength of physique goals when the time to "turn it on" does come around.

The offseason is actually the "onseason" in regards to improvement for the competitive strength or physique athlete. The worst thing you can do is treat this time with a lackadaisical attitude that many approach it with once the competition is over. I too fell into such a mentality, and realize in retrospect that I wasted many years being highly unproductive during the times between competition.

For a lot of people, once the competition is over, there is a certain amount of drive that is lost because there may not be an eye-on-the-prize at that moment. This doesn't mean one has to get online and sign up for a competition right away. However, if you do plan on competing again then you need to approach the offseason with the mentality that it's the most optimal time to set yourself up for success on the stage, or the platform.

There's a lot to be said for what you do with this time in comparison that you do with the time leading into competing. Some of the issues that can, or need to be addressed in the offseason are the following....

Address weaknesses - Any muscular area that is creating a weak link either in your physique or strength movements. The offseason is the time to put them at the forefront of training so that when competition time rolls around, this is no longer a problem. For strength athletes that means assessing the musculature that is often the secondary or tertiary mover that is holding you back. For the bodybuilder or physique competitor, this is where you put that lagging bodypart on the training version of a nuclear meltdown mode for a few months to bring it up to give you balance.

Once in prep, the time to do so has either passed or it will be far less efficient due to either needing the time to specialize in certain movements, or a lack of calories. Prep time is when focus should be centered around working the movements you will perform in competition, or muscle retention while fat is stripped off for the stage. This is not the time where energy should be taken away from those things so you can fix something you knew was broken after your last competition.

Address mobility issues - This is another assessment. Are you immobile, or just too weak to hold a position? Everyone thinks they have mobility issues, but most often what I've seen is that it's the weaker guys that tend to have these problems more than stronger guys. I'm not saying this is the case 100% of the time, but the guys squatting 225 often think they need to foam roll, and do 17 mobility movements in order to squat, when the fact is, they are probably just too weak to hold the proper position when executing the technique.

However, I'm not bypassing legitimate mobility issues. So if you have one, use the offseason to address becoming more mobile in whatever area needs that attention. . This should be something that helps with injury prevention. And injuries are probably the biggest issue in regards to setbacks that there is. Time spend in rehab is less time spent improving at whatever it is you are preparing for. Again, once competition prep time comes around, this should have been taken care of.

Address technique - This is far more paramount for the strength athlete. If you're in meet or strongman prep mode, that is not the time to be changing around technique and tweaking your movements. That's a great way to second guess yourself on game day, and end up failing due to overthinking, or falling back into old habits that were causing you to fail.

The offseason is time that should be spent drilling technique every time you set foot in the gym. It should be second nature by the time you are getting ready for competition. You should have training blocks during the offseason where technique is drilled at high volume and moderate to low intensity blocks. By the time you start getting ready for your next competition, your new and improved technique should be an afterthought. If you're tweaking and playing around with technique during the preparation process then your focus is not where it should be. And that is executing the movements in the manner you're going to perform them with on competition day. If you are tweaking your squat every workout going into the competition, what squat is going to show up on game day when it's max effort or max repetitions?

Address specialization - This could essentially be the 2nd part to addressing weaknesses. Specialization means you're going to be spending the majority of your training time working on improving musculature that is lagging or weak.

For the strength athlete that is weak off the floor in deadlifts, this is the time where they would work on quad size and strength, because that's actually what creates more power off the floor.

However I want to be clear on something here, both the strength athlete and the competitive bodybuilder should have the same goal in the offseason. And that is, building lean muscle mass. This is not a time for doing 1 rep maxes for YouTube likes. Strength athletes should be doing movements that help build the musculature involved in the competitive lifts, and bodybuilders should be specializing in building muscle mass in their weak bodyparts. It's hard to grow in a calorie deficit, and basically impossible unless you're a noob. And it's hard to specialize with extra training days a week if you're already doing three or four big training sessions based around the competitive lifts.

Have a training block in the offseason that is designed for overall hypertrophy, but also one designed for addressing a particular bodypart that is holding your strength or physique goals back.

Recover from injuries and implement preventative measures - Again, this could be an extension of the mobility part, except that maybe you don't need to do mobility, you just need to give the joints a break from pounding a heavily loaded bar in fixed mechanical positions for those movements. I once had a hip injury that no matter how much I rehabbed it, got any better. Everytime I squatted it would flare up.

I tried everything under the sun and worked with two physical therapists to fix it. Nothing helped. Eventually, I just stopped squatting and left it alone for a few months. When I went back to squatting it was fine.

Part of assessment, especially when it comes to overuse and chronic pain from training, is to be smart enough to know that you need to stop doing certain movements, and let go of the notion that you have to marry yourself to them. There's nothing more bewildering to me than someone so stupid (ahem, me) that they won't stop doing a movement that causes them pain, because they've convinced themselves that they will shrink or lose all sorts of strength if they stop doing it each week.

If you're a very advanced lifter, and have spent years and years building a foundation, it will take all of about 2 sessions of bringing a movement back before it feels natural again. And if you're smart, it will take all of about 4-6 weeks to be back at your baseline level of strength for it. The body is smart, and does not forget.

This is also the time to sit down and figure out, if you can, how you ended up injured. Is it overuse? Stop doing it so damn much. This whole mantra that has taken over in regards to strength that you have to do the lifts 10,293 times a week is baffling to me. If you're playing the long game, then part of that is understanding that longevity means not putting the gas pedal to the floor all the time. That's a great way to cut your lifting career short. Just ask Ronnie Coleman.

Remember training gives and takes. And the type of training you are doing, if it is extreme, will end up taking a lot more than it will give back. If slow and steady does indeed win the race, then understanding how moderation works is imperative. This doesn't mean not to train hard, or train heavy, or train with low volume, it means finding balance among those things that keep inching you forwards, without putting you on the ropes later because you got silly and stupid with your training ideology.

Implement conditioning and eat properly - Once again, once people think "offseason" they can often become a sloth in regards to conditioning, and undisciplined when it comes to their habits at the dinner table.

If training in the offseason is going to be as productive as possible, then your work capacity needs to be high. After all, this is the time when growth should be taking place due to extra calories. If you're gassed after a set of 5 reps on the squat, then you're short changing yourself in regards to growth. You need to be able to recover from balls out sets within a few minutes, and do another if possible. And possible another. For decades 20 rep squat workouts were the staple for growth. If you want to throw up at the mere thought of doing a set of 20 reps on squats, then what does that say about your work ethic and work capacity? How about two sets of 20 reps?

Without some level of conditioning then doing a significant amount of volume, or doing gut busting sets is going to be a wash. This doesn't mean you need to turn into a marathon runner at all. But you should at the bare minimum have two or three days a week where 20 minutes of your training is dedicated to improving your work capacity through cardiovascular work. That can be a fast paced walk, sled pulls and pushes, or sprints. But it needs to be something.

This should also be a time where you keep your bodyfat in check, or get it in check, and implement the 90% rule in regards to whole, nutritious food. Here's an idea - earn a cheat meal in the offseason. Most people equate cheat meals during a dieting phase only. But your surplus in the offseason should still be made up of whole foods and not processed garbage. Force yourself to earn your cheat meals in the offseason as well. I know, that's an alien concept but if you're going to diet down later on then you've used the offseason to implement the ideology that cheat meals still need to be earned.

Conclusion - The offseason in some ways is actually far more valuable and important than the time being spent just preparing for competition. This is where you continue to work on your foundation of strength and muscle mass, implement techniques for injury prevention, address current injuries or nagging pains, address weaknesses, and set the stage for a better performance come competition time.

This is a time where you should be training as hard as possible and eating in a very disciplined manner in order to make sure those things come to fruition. Don't treat your offseason like time off. Use it wisely and destroy your old performance easily when it rolls back around.

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Training nutrition revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Carter) — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 17:14:00 +0000

I've done a myriad of protocols for pre-peri-post training nutrition over the years. Most of which follows the usual thought of moving carbs and proteins in at various times in order to enhance recovery and promote growth. I mean, that's what all the fuss is about right? That's the debate involving what to eat or drink prior to and post training.

During prep, I did a lot of studying on enhancing this even more since I was using the exogenous ketones in that time to keep training intensity high, and not feel brain dead all the time. Especially in the last 4-6 weeks prior to the show. I wanted to come out of the show and take advantage of post show rebound growth, and have the best plan I could write out in order to do this. Some of these protocols I used for the show (shouldn't be hard to figure out which ones), and others I'm using now in offseason mode.

This isn't a huge deviation from what I've done previously, but there are some details I thought were worth sharing. Let me preface this with I'm not going to go back and forth all day about minor details. I implemented a plan that worked. It WORKED FOR ME. There. That's done with. If you don't want to implement it and argue that's certainly your right. I'm simply offering it up since I get asked these questions a lot, and to give some insight as to how you COULD implement this into your nutritional paradigm in regards to enhancing the training effect.

So let's get to it.

Pre-workout - 60-90 minutes prior to training

Casein pre-workout with a banana and some peanut butter. This combination, especially if it is micellar casein, which causes no insulin response, is great for a few reasons. Casein tends to be a slow digesting protein, so while you're training you're going to have a full spectrum of amino acids still getting into the bloodstream. Bananas are a low glycemic index carb, but it doesn't even matter since we're adding in some peanut butter which would bring down the GI score of any carb ingested with anyway, but I still like playing this on the safe side to keep blood sugar levels from bouncing off the wall before you train. So with this combo, I kept insulin and blood sugar on the down low.

- 20-30 minutes prior to training

I use the 3.0 keto-os. Which has leucine in it, which is the branch chain amino acid for activating mTOR, the primary muscle building pathway in the body. So now we're activating muscle protein synthesis half an hour before training, and getting the benefits of including exogenous ketones, which give us another energy source in addition to glucose for training. For those in a highly depleted state, like being in contest prep, the reason they tend to notice a huge lift in brain fog and have focus again is that, from what we're seeing is that the ketones go towards energy for the brain.

Which would explain why you go from being like a zombie, to suddenly having that drive and focus for hard training again. But even if you're not carb depleted or in prep, you're still getting the benefits of reducing inflammation with BHB, which means faster recovery time between workouts, which means you can train more, which means you have more opportunities to stimulate growth. Not only that, but inflammation is related to just about every illness known to mankind. So if you want to improve your health, it's a great overall addition to your diet. If you don't give a shit about all of that, don't buy it. I don't care.

Peri-training -

During training, I started to hyperdose BCAA. I know there's been a lot of back and forth on the net about the benefits of BCAA, and I'm not sure why. There's a mountain of studies that have shown that using BCAA helps stimulate muscle protein synthesis, helps reduce soreness and promote recovery and a more highly anabolic environment. I have actually found that using around double the recommended dose (around 40 grams instead of 20) does in fact make a difference in recovery time and reduced soreness from training. Now for a while, I was using cyclic dextrin during training, but I ended up realizing that if my carb intake was high, the truth was I wasn't going to go through all my muscle glycogen and liver glycogen during a training session that was only 45 minutes to an hour and fifteen minutes long. Are they going to get depleted? Yes of course. But you can replenish your glycogen stores just fine and your body is actually in a more primed state to do so post workout.

Second, I just prefer having something that has a "taste" to it during training. I drink over a gallon of water a day as is (and at times more than 3 gallons a day during prep), so having something that has "flavor" to it is mostly a personal choice.

Post-workout -

Which leads us to post workout nutrition. Now the thought for a long time has been that as soon as training is over you have to slam your carbs and protein in order to recover, and replenish glycogen stores immediately post training.

Net protein balance is an absolute requirement for muscle growth to happen (net protein balance is when muscle protein synthesis is greater than muscle protein breakdown and is a MUST for growth). But muscle protein synthesis is elevated for up to 24 hours or longer post training, and glycogen synthesis is elevated for up to six hours post training before returning to baseline. Not only that, but fat oxidation is also increased in a post workout state. So post workout your body is actually in a fat burning mode. There is the debate that you're turning off this time of fat burning if you ingest carbs immediately post training, however the counter argument to that is carbs post workout go towards nothing but glycogen replenishment, and that fatty acids fuel normal resting requirements. I'll come back to that.

Now to insulin sensitivity post workout. Insulin sensitivity is high post workout. And whey protein alone spikes insulin very efficiently, and insulin is what we need in order to reduce muscle protein breakdown. Whey isolate also increases muscle protein synthesis. So it's pretty easy to conclude that post workout, you can wait while fat oxidation is high, then get in your post workout shake sans carbs and find a positive net protein balance while keeping the fat burning furnace high. I also recommend a mixture of 50/50 isolate and casein post workout (25 grams of casein and 25 grams of isolate) as isolate is a fast digestion protein that gets the amino acids into the cells quickly due to it's high insulin response, where as noted before with casein, it's a slower digesting protein that will feed the cells amino acids for several hours afterwards.

Now we've set the stage for a few things

- Longer period of fat oxidation post workout, so this means an increased time in fat burning mode
- Achieving a positive net protein balance with the inclusion of whey isolate by reducing muscle protein breakdown, and increasing muscle protein synthesis.
- Using a slower digesting protein to prolong the anabolic environment.

The flip side of this is for those who want to gain weight, or are in offseason mode where fat burning is not a primary objective. In that case, 50-100 grams of carbs coming from waxy maize or cyclic dextrin is a great idea, as it clears the gut fast and replenishes glycogen stores very quickly. But even for those who are trying to get leaner, you still need to replenish glycogen post training, but this can be done so efficiently in the six hours post training when the body is in a state for increased uptake of glycogen. It really all depends on goals and what you're trying to maximize in your training or body composition.

So here will be the counter argument about all of this. And I will say I'm on board with either and will give my two cents, and then be broke as fuck.

Truthfully, you can do either regardless of whether you're trying to get lean or gain mass. At the end of the day you're still going to need to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, or a calorie surplus to gain mass. However, you can tweak this process a bit in order to eek out slightly better results for both. Obviously eliminating 50-100 grams of carbs (200-400 calories) will help with getting into a calorie deficit. However, those quick digesting carbs are far more likely to be stored in the muscle post training, and then you could just as easily manipulate your carb intake for the rest of the day to find the desired deficit you need. The addition of those 200-400 calories will obviously be a great idea for someone looking to add calories for mass gain.

See? No reason to be dogmatic. It's possible both approaches work. I know, that's effin crazy, but it's true.

Experiment with BOTH to see what YOUR results are. Don't argue. Try both out. People have gotten lean doing it both ways, and people have gained mass doing it both ways. Tweaking it for yourself will help you to understand which works better for you, and your goals.

For the novice, most of this is irrelevant. Get a good meal in 90 minutes prior to training and within 1-2 hours post training. For the advanced lifter, these things will make a difference in recovery and growth.

Conclusion -

Lastly, this protocol has worked VERY WELL for me. So while I'm including studies, I really am done with going back and forth over the net arguing about all of these nuances.

Here is the REAL DEAL - you're going to have to experiment to find out what works FOR YOU. Period. Citing study after study without ever applying methods or ideologies into your training or nutritional paradigm is just mental masturbation. And it's annoying. Feel free to copy and use my plan, or play around and design your own that you find results with. People THAT, and that alone, is the best way to find out what works most efficiently FOR YOU.

I hope to hear back from anyone who implements this and talks about their results. My suggestion is to give a protocol a try for an extended period (at least 8 weeks) before you come to conclusions about it, and to also have your DIET AS A WHOLE, dialed in before you come to those conclusions. What you eat from sunrise to sundown is more important than this particular window of nutrition. This particular paradigm is merely a piece of the puzzle. It's an important one, but if the rest of your diet isn't on point it will be nearly impossible to gauge how significant or insignificant the results from implementing these strategies will be.

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