Death/Black Metal and a rejection of "Mainstream" Soceity

In the past years I've made progress by thinking about "what society wants me to do", or less abstractly, "what am I being told to do from the media?"

I find Black/Death metal tends to resonate with my focus on this and the rejection of these suggestions. A message against society. Seeing what is wrong and changing oneself.

In the end, listen to Black/Death metal and think about what you want to reject about society.

NoPorn/NoFap

I've started with this whole exploration of no porn and no masturbation, and it definitely has let me learn more about myself.

I never really thought that I had a problem until I started reading about how porn has affected other people. One person mentioned spending so much time searching for porn and masturbating, with 30min to an hour gone every day. Since that was pretty close to my habit, I realized how much time I was investing in this. This is also at a time when I'm thinking about all the other things I want to work on, and how I don't have time.

There is also the social aspect. Apparently some people use it as a replacement for social contact. Reading that an looking at myself I realized I've done that many times in the past -- staying home on Fridays to read stuff on the internet and jerk off instead of going out with friends.

Given that reflection I've been making changes now. Currently I've started a No Porn restriction that I started back in December 16th. So far it is going well, although I am well aware of temptations to go and seek out some skin. The previous no porn restrictions made me aware of this porn-seeking behaviour, so I'm more aware of it now. I have yet to decide if I change the current restrictions once February comes, if I lift the no fap restriction or not.

This has also raised issues on sexual images being fed to the populace by the media, and how much the current culture seems to focus all on it. Especially the sexualization of women--something that I have become acutely aware of now that I'm off porn. It doesn't take much to get my attention.

The Great Porn Experiment

So I watching an interesting video recently, not sure how I came across it.

Raised some interesting points in regards to overuse of porn (or just use of porn), being that it leads to an arousal addiction. Which I think is actually rather apparent in all forms of internet consumption, especially media (a mindless consumption if you will--TV rots your brain!).

The one thing that I was thinking about is how I've been actively changing my porn habits from just any that I found, to selecting for women with healthy bodies (no tits-on-sticks), and reduced makeup usage. At one point finding nudist blogs were the best, because I could see women in their "natural" state.

Well, looks like I have more to think about in regards to using porn to instill a different cultural value.

State of Paleo

The Paleosphere is definitely changing. As more popularity is drawn to the movement, so are more people trying to take advantage of the free audience, and then there are others who learn a little about paleo, and then give their gut feelings on topics that used to be nicely discussed. I'm pretty much thinking about PaleoHacks with this.

But, then again maybe Paleo is loosing it's newness for me. I've pretty much learned quite a bit of the backing science, and rational, on why one would choose to eat 'Paleo'.

As Paleo is entering more into the light, more crazy shit is going to happen, but I'm just going to ignore it, and do my own Paleo thing. I don't have to agree with 'Paleo' people to eat the way I do. Anyways, I don't really tell people I'm Paleo, I just say I don't eat wheat, and I hate sweet things - which just turns out to be true.

There's also some aspects of my initial reading of paleo that really isn't reflected anymore, that is the departure from the mainstream culture. I remember reading about barefoot running, and squatting to poop, and thinking that it all makes sense, and that mainstream culture is wrong, and I kind of knew it all along. You could say Paleo was just another way that I could distance myself from the mainstream, although with Paleo I've had rather nice results. I like not being mainstream.

Current status

Toned down the fats a bit, earlier I was trying to eat more, to see if it made me feel better or not. I think it made me gain some fat, or I at least stopped leaning out a bit, so I reduced my fat. To fuel my lifting I've been adding in more carbs. Right now I'm cooking a soup for my lunches which is made from a 3-4lb butternut squash, with onions, green onions, mushrooms, hot peppers (habanero, jalapeño, chili) and spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, caraway, black pepper). Also drinking 1-2oz of cranberry juice diluted in 0.5-1L of water, which supposedly helps liver function, but it's also a good way to increase my water intake.

My guess is that I'm eating somewhere around 200g carbs now, especially on WO days. Trying to stay at 200g or a little less on protein. Probably my target is 180g, but I kind of find it hard to eat less protein. Meat tastes good, and it comes in 400g packs, so two of those, and that's all the meat I can eat in a day. I want to eat meat for lunch, otherwise people might think I'm vegetarian - happened once, when I was eating 300g+ protein a day, I had a good chuckle.

Germany and Sweet Foods

I posted earlier about how everything is too damn sweet, which was drawn mostly from my US experiences, but now I often think about German cuisine, now that I live there.

For the most part, German cooking is making a trend towards all kinds of fruit additives to their food. Not additives in a way that apple juice would be added to fruit leather for sugar, but more that there is fruit added to foods just to add a sweet flavor. Sauerkraut can be found with pineapple in it, plum compotes accompany roasts, and others. Then you have salads with a little marmalade added "for sweetness", or with a drizzle of maple syrup. I suppose this is kind of common in American mainstream processed food, added sugar that is, but it seems that even more "cultured" forms of German food has this added sweetness. Which reminds me that for a curry soup, there's often fruit, like mango, added in, or oranges added to pumpkin soup.

No wonder Germany is starting to have problems with diabetes and obesity.

What if

So, John at Hunter-Gatherer posted a link to an article claiming that the economy discriminates against men, which in turn reminded me of some things.

First off, I think the whole "men's rights" thing is a response to society giving men a particularly shitty identity. All the good parts of being male are not valued anymore, or not even considered worthwhile. A blog about cars actually touched on this rather well, which I also found via Hunter-Gatherer sharing it:

"Of course, “man’s work” isn’t what it used to be. Forget the “war on women” you’re hearing about right now, although it may well exist. There’s been a “war on men” for the last fifty years, and it’s been more successful than any of the Middle Eastern adventurism which has burned up the lives of American men like so much unwanted firewood at the end of winter. A war against the ideas of manhood, fatherhood, responsibility, dependability. The traditional American man — think Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird — has been parodied, denigrated, humiliated, ironized, writen out of existence. It’s no longer pleasant or even feasible to emulate our grandfathers and their unashamedly masculine lives.
Instead, we choose one of two paths. We become “modern men”, sensitive to womyn’s needs, ashamed of our basic desires, never sure whether to hold a door or let it slam shut. Most college-educated men take this path, particularly if they want to succeed in life. The men for whom success isn’t even an option — the rural, the uneducated, the discarded — well, they choose a distended hyper-masculinity. They can’t take care of their children, but they can bench-press a small car. They can’t hold a job, but they can kick your ass under MMA rules. They’ll never ascend above the service class, but if you are walking down a narrow hallway towards them you will guaranteedly have to bump shoulders with them. It is the appearance of masculinity serving in the stead of its actuality, an unemployed gym rat living with his parents and riding a Hayabusa covered with tribal graphics to the 7-Eleven on Saturday nights. "


I find this sentiment becoming more common, first I encountered it at T-Nation, but now I'm seeing it more. Men are getting pissed because it's not valued to be a man anymore. In a way it's not good to be a man, since men discriminate against women, and stuff like that. In general, it's just not a satisfying identity to have, much like the generic identity of being "white" in the US.

Jumping topics a little, women and men think differently. I remember reading an account of a Dutch transgendered man, who was a women, describing how his thought process changed as he took hormone therapy, and how he perceived the world differently. Anyway, women and men think different, so why wouldn't it make sense that they have different skills and capabilities? I think some of this gender equality discussion starts making an idealization of what humans really are, although this could just be me assuming they are using biological definitions wrongly, when in fact, they've redefined them for their own scholarly purpose. But, my main question is, what if men and women are different? What if there should be gender inequality?


I work in the science industry, and I wonder what would happen if there were to be only women groups, and only men groups. This would produce a change if men and women have different ways of working together and leading. The way gender equality discussions are going now, no one would ever probably consider condoning formation of single-gender groups, but I think it would be something interesting to consider.

Problems with Identity

I've had ideas for this post for a long time, always floating in my thoughts. Usually being brought up by a certain article I read somewhere. What going to try to address is identity, or cultural identity. I could probably write a book on what identity is, but it's probably already been done, and lengthy definitions tend to aggravate me.

People are having trouble identifying themselves currently. Media is defining people, instead of people defining themselves. People are being defined in terms of other groups, Black vs. White, Man vs. Women, Gay vs. Straight.

If people just defined themselves as who they are, and didn't rely on other groups for identification, there would be a stronger sense of identity among people.

What I'm trying to get at, albeit roughly, is that it seems that everyone is defining their identity in terms of others. There's "Black" Americans defining part of who they are with the racism they experience from "White" Americans. Women defining themselves by the lack of masculine characteristics, and men the other way around.

I guess if people just started not caring as much about how other people define themselves and fit their definition to them, and take a break on political correctness, we'd have more meaningful groups, or at least those that do not feel threatened by the existence of others. In regards to political correctness, I mean that people should still take care not to offend people, but I'm still going to define myself as a man as being strong of constitution and will, and not care that others define themselves differently. This starts getting into the territory of "What is a Man?" on a societal scale, instead of just being a personal definition.

That was a rough snapshot.

And one reason why I like T-Nation, it's a good platform to reach men, and "Your crumbling Y Chromosome" was conveying the ideals of a strong man, something that tends to be avoided, or just not done.

Current Diet: 1-29-2012

Reflecting back on my past 3 or so months I've been living in Germany, I've realized that I've departed quite a bit from what I was eating back in the states. Primarily the frequency and amount of vegetable consumption has gone way down, and the quality of the meat that I eat isn't as good as I'd like it to be.

The main vegetable matter I eat is sauerkraut, spinach, and canned tomatoes, in order of frequency, with all of them being organic. I'm eating organic ground meat (pork and beef mix), organic eggs, Kerrygold butter, and organic/Kerrygold cheese, along with the occasional conventional meat, although lower fat. I eat fruit probably once every two weeks, and I am experimenting with eating more carbs prior to my workouts in order to have more glycogen. I've started doing this as I realized I fill out a lot when I eat more carbs, which shows me that I am fairly glycogen depleted (in muscles) normally. Makes sense due to my pretty low carb diet.

Typical Day:

• Breakfast - 300g ground meat or 6 eggs cooked in 50g butter, with Sauerkraut, coffee [60g P, 50-70g F]
• Lunch - 300g ground meat in broth with spinach, coffee [60g P, 30g F]
• Dinner - 300g ground meat or 6 eggs in 50g butter, sauerkraut [60g P, 50-70g F]

Totals: 180g P, 130-170g F, negligible carbs

Calories: 1900-2250

Recently I've been buying some cheese, and eating 200g a day, adding roughly 30g P and 30g F, and 390 calories to my daily totals.

For lifting, I eat two potatoes the meal prior to lifting, and then two post. On Saturdays I lift around 10:30am, so I've been experimenting with eating two more potatoes on Friday night.

Looking at my totals, I'm a little surprised to see the calorie totals around 2000, I was under the impression I was eating around 2500 or so. 

Everything is too damn sweet

Almost every vegetable or fruit breeder out there is selecting for sweetness, since that's what the consumers want nowadays. We have “super sweet” sweet corn, sweet carrots, sweet cabbage, sweet broccoli, and sickly sweet fruit. There is also a selection for “milder” tasting fruits and vegetables, with carrots tasting less like carrots, and apples less like apples. To me, it seems every plant product is tending towards some form of sugar delivery system.

This irritates me, as I want to cook with “serious” vegetables. Carrots that with slap you in the face with their terpene content, and flavor the shit out of soups. I'm also looking for fruits that actually taste different from each other, in other words, fruits that have higher concentrations of phenolics, and aromatics. In the past years I've been enjoying “antique” apples, and eating many different kinds, since some have more spicy notes reminiscent of licorice, or more milder notes like bananas and strawberry.

Another thing that I've been thinking about, is that since many of the compounds that give fruits and vegetables their characteristic are actually there for defense against pathogens and herbivores, by selecting against these compounds, were actually selecting for plants that are essentially harder to grow. Instead of plants defending themselves against pathogens, we have to take the roll with insecticides and pesticides.

If we just bred plants for being what they are, and not focusing on making a bland, sweet consumable for the masses, we could enjoy more kinds of flavors in our foods, and grow them better.

Now I just need to get some of these heirlooms varieties and breed my own.

Of Low carbs and High carbs

To summarize this post: I ate some ice cream two weeks prior, it caused some fat gain, I'm doing keto for 2-3 weeks and then adding carbs back in once I start lifting again (80-140g carbs a day).


I've recently been reading some articles from Danny Roddy and Anthony Colpo who are both firmly in the camp of higher carb diets. Anthony frequently makes fun of the LCing people, especially LCing athletes.

Reading their differing views also makes me question my views on carbohydrates, which changed a couple of months ago. Previously when I was in keto, I thought that eventually my body would become "keto-adapted", and that I would regain my athletic ability that I initially lost when switching to keto. I never regained my performance, and after getting a little freaked out about hypothroidism by reading some stuff by Matt Stone, I decided to add some carbs back in.

From that point on I've decided that for those engaging in athletic activities, be it strength or endurance, that carbs are a good thing. But I also think that for many people, who don't engage in athletics, that carbs aren't necessarily warranted in their diet. Like many LC people recommend, 60-100g would be fine for them to consume. I also think that there is some truth to the whole "metabolically damaged" thought out there, that some people's insulin receptors are not quite working optimally, or would handle a high carb diet well. I feel that going LC, then VLC/keto possibly reduced the number of insulin receptors throughout my body, and therefore made my body more insulin sensitive. This is all speculation of course. Warm fuzzy thoughts to help me sleep at night.

Anyway, before leaving for Germany I decided to add a greater amount of carbs to my diet, that instead of just eating fruit, I'd add in probably a little under a half-pound of potatoes a day, which I later switched to ice cream. The ice cream idea was still in my head from earlier, when I experimented with ice cream PWO, and also from hearing Danny Roddy talk about how Ray Peat eats ice cream (it seems to me that Ray is the only person Danny reads due to how often he cites him, but I guess it's no different than other paleo bloggers who can't actually do their own first hand research - but I digress).
       I did this for around two weeks I'd say, with some intermittent lifting (throwing rocks, one back day complete with romanian deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, and 600lb tractor tire flipping), although my activity level was definitely lower than normal. At first I noticed that my muscles seemed to be denser, that they took up more volume, but that could of been myself seeing what I wanted. After the first week, I noticed that my abdominal fat was getting a little more soft, and by the end of the second week there was definitely more of it there.
        I didn't really change the fats in my diet, if anything I reduced them trying to keep my calories the same, but since I didn't record anything, this was just qualitative, instead of quantitative.

After that, I decided that I was going to go keto until I find a gym in Germany, which will probably be two or three weeks, as I want to find a gym close to where I'll be living (although finding a serious gym is proving difficult - I definitely got lucky last time when I was living in Freiburg). Probably my main goal is to lean out a bit, kind of undo what the ice cream did, but a second is just to be in keto. If nothing else I like the idea of running off fats, maybe for the shock factor I get when I tell people what I eat, or when they see what I cook. Then there is also the high energy in keto that I've grown to like. For me, it's fun to be in keto.
    One thing is that I kind of see the dangers in being in keto all the time, being that it can lead to hypothyroidism and other such disturbances in hormone levels. That's also the one reason I've decided to do it for a short time, that I think that the problems of keto can't really manifest themselves over the course of two or three weeks.
    Once I find a gym and start lifting, I'll be adding carbs back in, around 50g every morning for breakfast, and another 50g post workout, with maybe around 30-40g coming from other vegetable sources. I will very rarely be eating fruit, and won't include it in my diet until it comes back into season.

Recent visit to the dentist

Before I left for Germany, I went to the dentist for a check-up and cleaning (I've started to think that "polishing" teeth with an abrasive is a bad idea - my paleohacks question). When I went there I got my teeth cleaned, polished, x-rayed, and then later convinced to get some grooves in my teeth filled in, and some weakened enamel repaired with a filling.

The work done is causing me a little grief, and now I'm wishing that I just did what I wanted to do, and assured my dentist that paleo is fine for my teeth, and just make sure to start eating bone broth, get plenty of vitamin D, and leave it alone. Kind of the whole "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of deal.

In short, next year when I go to the dentist, I'll just have my teeth cleaned, maybe polished, and not have any work done.

Fasting, meal timing and Jet Lag

So, I've moved to Germany for a year, and way back (ok, sometime last year) I remembered reading about fasting as a way to reset a circadian rhythm from Hunter-Gatherer. The actual article that he links to is here, with the "trick" revolving around not eating for 16 hours.

I didn't read the article before leaving, but I remembered the whole fasting deal, so here's what I did:
Day 1: ate at 7:00am CDT.
Day 1: Slept for maybe an hour (broken hour) during the 7 and a half hour flight, probably around 7pm CDT.
Day 2: ate at 8:15am CEST (1:15am CDT). Drank an espresso
Day 2: napped for 15-30min on plane around 10am CEST, drank a coffee at 10:30am CEST
Day 2: ate at 3:00pm CEST (8am CDT)
Day 2: Fell asleep at 4:15pm CEST
Day 3: Woke up at 2am CEST

From this, I don't know if my clock has really been reset or not, being that I pretty much didn't sleep the night of Day 1, and even if I were back in my own timezone, I would have passed out at 4pm after a night of only getting an hour of sleep.

I'm planning on eating at 7am this morning, even though I woke up at 2am. I'm thinking that the timing of breakfast is what's key to resetting this clock.

I'll keep updating until I've decided that I've adapted to the timezone - hopefully only a day or so more.

Update - all times in CEST:
Day 3: Nap from 6:40am to 7am, ate at 7:30am - drank one green tea, Nap from 11:00am to 11:30am
Day 3: ate at 2pm, green tea at 4:30pm, ate at 7:30pm, went to sleep at 8:30pm
Day 4: woke up at 7am, ate at 7:30am had a cup of green tea, drank three glasses of mead and had one bockwurst, and someslamb leg between 11:30am and 2:30pm.
Day 4: felt tired at hell at 4pm, almost fell asleep on the bus ride home, fought through it and didn't take a nap
Day 4: went to bed at 8:45pm
Day 5: woke up at 8:10am, ate at 8:30am had two cups of green tea because I felt like it.

Vegans meddling in the Dairyland

"Warning: cheese can sack your health."

You can read here about a billboard (picture and caption above) being put up in Green Bay, by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). Just skimming the article I found out that the PCRM happen to be from Washington D.C., and happen to be vegan.

Well I guess vegans are starting to spread their anti-sat fat/animal products propaganda in the Midwest now. What a load of cow manure.

Revolutionary Health

When I was looking around for a good "intro to paleo" for one of my friends, I stumbled across the 10 revolutionary truths, which relate to a sort of health revolution.

They definitely jive with my views on how the mainstream market culture is "out to get us," and the fact that "the market" doesn't want healthy people per se, only people who have a healthy appetite for consumption.

The 10 truths are nicely digestible, and in a nice format; great for passing on to others.

More about the flux of "Paleo"

What I was talking about in my earlier post on the changing of paleo seems to not have been as well thought out as I would of liked. Or I just didn't think it through enough.

Anyway, for paleo itself, it should be in some constant state of flux, that it's a guiding set of rules, that can/should be manipulated for each person. No "one size fits all" kind of deal. I feel that the need to learn about ancestral nutrition/health and then base one's nutritional ideas off of that is already a little widespread, but the more it's said, the more it gets spread around.

You could say that I've been reminded to say this after I read the PaleolithicDiet's most recent email, which dealt primarily with warning people in the paleosphere not to get emotionally attached to certain gurus, or ideals. I call these overly emotionally attached people paleotards, primarily because I think it's funny, but it's not very PC. Anyway, I try to check myself against emotional attachment, but sometimes I find myself trying to defend something just because I like the way it sounds.

The Evolution of Paleo

A constant evolution is shaping paleo. Many have probably noticed this before, something along the lines of paleo changing until it is "done," or maybe realizing that it's going to be a work in progress as long as it exists. I'm not entirely sure what everyone thinks, but it is apparent that paleo is evolving.

What recently reminded me of the evolution, is a recent string of posts on how carbs really aren't that bad (or at least not as bad as the paleo community has been painting them). This mainly comes from two posts by Danny Roddy, and also Stephan Guyenet's critique of  how Gary Taube's carbohydrate hypothesis is flawed/wrong (I haven't read Good Calories, Bad Calories; or Why We Get Fat yet. This is making me question the worth of reading the two books). Changes in my own diet are partially mirroring the paleosphere, inasmuch that I'm starting to include more carbs and not be in keto as much I as I used to be. From this I would say that my own version of paleo is changing as I learn more about nutrition, and also as I learn more about how I work. 

What I really want to say about the evolution of Paleo, is that is should not really be feared, and in fact it should be embraced. Paleo separates itself from the other "diets" by being able to change, and not be stuck to some kind of dietary dogma that the followers must believe in. In effect Paleo is changing to reflect the current knowledge of human nutrition and it's critical interpretation in an evolutionary light. 

Follow up on Ice Cream PWO

So, it's been a while, but I guess I've sufficiently experimented with ice cream enough to come to the conclusion that it's not for me (at least for PWO applications).

The first time I ate one 14oz container of Häagen Dazs Five mint flavor, and it was pretty hard to finish it off. I felt pretty full after eating half of the container, but pushed through to the end (years of dysfunctional eating came into play there). The ice cream itself was fairly disappointing, being that I remembered ice cream tasting better. I guess I wasn't missing much. I had the other 14oz container PWO later in the week, with both ice cream eatings following a heavy lifting session.

I've recently been doing some sprinting work, and eating a little ice cream after that, primarily just to get rid of some ice cream I bought thinking that I would do more PWO ice cream, but today was that last day I'm doing that. I haven't been lifting regularly, which kind of feels weird, as I moved off of campus, and I don't have easy access to a gym. I'm also traveling a lot, which doesn't help.

I'd say that my body can now handle influxes of carbs better than it used to, since post-ice cream I didn't get any bloat going on, and my weight stayed relatively constant. I don't think I will use ice cream as PWO normally, as I might just save it for when I want to get a couple heavy lifting sessions in, and I will probably use it in conjunction with some higher intensity cardio too.

Ice cream for the first time in a year

Right now there's two half-quarts of Häagen Dazs Five in my freezer (one mint and one lemon - I love mint). I've been seeing some general buzz around about people adding in some ice cream to a weight training diet, with most people citing Ray Peat as why they did it. I eventually decided to add some in as a PWO carb source after reading a paleohacks question about adding back in dairy (in this case ice cream) and noticing recovery of a soft tissue injury.

I've got some good old manual labor tomorrow, and once that's done I'll be off to the gym to lift, so I figure that having 100g of fast absorbing carbs PWO will help my recovery. Also, since I never seem to recover from lifting as fast as everyone else does, I'm hoping that I'll recovery faster with the aid of ice cream.

One thing that I've thought about is that this whole Ray Peat-induced ice cream craze in the paleosphere might just be paleo people looking for an excuse to eat ice cream. I've been wanting some ice cream for a while, so there's that motive in there. Nonetheless I've only got two, and that's for two PWO meals, and after that I'll see how it affects me.

Starting on the Gnoll Credo

Just to keep posting, I've been fairly busy this summer working on coursework, lab work, and also getting ready to apply to grad school, something that I'm getting more comfortable the closer I get to it.

Anyway, I recently decided to get The Gnoll Credo by J. Stanton, and I'm enjoying that it's a fairly short read. I decided to get the book after reading a couple blog posts on his site, and thinking that he's making some good points.

As I'm reading the book, he's developing some of the same philosophies about western civilization that I've been thinking about recently. I'm planning on fleshing these ideas out a bit more, so I'll be writing about them later. I think I'll also analyze more of the book, because the writing style reminds of what Daniel Quinn did in Ishmael, in that to convey an idea, they tell a story. I find this method of idea conveyance quite effective, since it's putting an idea in context, so it can be easily conceptualized. Along these lines I also think Stanton puts a little too much added flesh into the story, but I guess that's me reading it knowing that there's underlying concepts that I should be finding. I'll work this up with more detail later.

Edit: As kind of an afterthought, I'm starting to think about ways to increase my understanding of evolutionary concepts (and how I could possible blend that into what I'l be studying in grad school). There's a lot of evolutionary thought flowing through the Gnoll Credo, and I'd say that if you're approaching paleo right, then you're dealing with a whole lot of evolutionary thought and conjecture. I'd pay not to screw it up.

I'll just add Modern Evolutionary Theory to the list of things I need to read about and learn. Yikes.