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  #1   ^
Old Sun, Apr-30-17, 05:20
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thud123 thud123 is offline
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Plan: P:E=>1 (Q3-22)
Stats: 168/100/82 Male 182cm
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Progress: 79%
Default Low Carb or Activity for maintaining good health?

Hey, here's an idea; Why not do both?

http://www.globalhealthminders.dk/t...of-east-africa/

inspired by Mama Sebo journal noting that she studied the Massai - maybe not the diet but the peoples.

Look at how beautiful this is? Jumping dance from Wikipedia - I say dump the sugar and start to Jump!


Last edited by thud123 : Sun, Apr-30-17 at 05:31.
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  #2   ^
Old Sun, Apr-30-17, 06:48
teaser's Avatar
teaser teaser is offline
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Posts: 15,075
 
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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I would say both, too. I don't feel as well if I don't do both some intensity type training, like lifting weights, and a fair amount of low intensity movement as well.

"You can't outrun a bad diet" might be better expressed as "you can't outrun the worst diets," I think you probably can make a difference with an almost-good diet.
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  #3   ^
Old Sun, Apr-30-17, 06:50
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teaser teaser is offline
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Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
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Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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I was always better at jumping down than jumping up. Probably because I started closer to the ground than a lot of the other kids during my developmental years.
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  #4   ^
Old Tue, May-02-17, 16:06
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
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Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Fitness and health are not the same. Neither are activity and diet. It's not possible to outrun any physical disorder of any kind whatsoever, including obesity. To illustrate, consider health as the basis for fitness, or the potential for fitness. The higher this potential, the greater the benefits of activity, but no amount of activity can compensate for a lack of this potential.

Think of Pottenger's cats and generational epigenetics. With subsequent generations eating a equally bad diet, health gets worse and worse until a point of infertility. For any particular generation, it's possible to begin restoring health back to optimal over the next few generations by using an adequate diet, but it's impossible to do it for the current generation. It's even less possible to do that with activity alone.

Now consider two individuals with less-than-perfect health. They have the same fitness potential, but neither have the best possible potential. Now put one on an exercise regimen, while we keep the other on a bench. The one doing some activity will appear to improve his health, but only because his health is the potential for fitness, and his fitness has improved compared to the guy on the bench, but only so much as his health allowed.

Now consider two individuals, one with perfect health, the other not. Put both on an exercise regimen, the one with perfect health has the potential to reach the best possible fitness, while the other has a lesser potential. The point is that the one with less-than-perfect health cannot possibly reach the same fitness level as the guy with perfect health, because his potential - health - is less.

We can see this with sports teams and some individuals adopting a low-carb diet as a way to improve their game performance, and it works quite well, but now imagine if we started this with their parents, and their parents, and so forth, until we finally restored perfect health for the individual a few generations down the line. His health will be that much greater, so his fitness potential - therefore his game performance potential derived from the same amount and quality of practice - will also be that much greater.

Oh yeah, forgot. Fitness is not just physical ability to perform, it's also neurological ability to perform. This is due to the fact that strength for example is neuro-muscular in nature, so the act of practice, even if muscles don't grow bigger, produces greater strength and the ability to lift heavier weight for example. In my case for example, I play golf, and I have an extensive amount of practice in my bag, so while I'm not physically fit, I am certainly able to perform the required motions with a much greater degree of precision compared to somebody without that practice in his bag.

So, with practice and study, we develop, improve and maintain skill. This means fitness is skill, or at least in large part skill. This is pertinent for fitness where we need time, endurance and something called strength-endurance to practice enough to improve skill, to improve fitness for any particular activity. The very act of practice requires health for an adequate amount of practice to be done, so the act of practice cannot in and of itself compensate - well, it can but not fully - for any lack of health. It can compensate for a little bit, because with practice, we improve skill, you see?
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  #5   ^
Old Tue, May-02-17, 20:15
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
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Location: Herndon, VA
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I would say both, as long as one realizes that they provide different benefits for improved health.
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  #6   ^
Old Tue, May-02-17, 20:37
kirkor kirkor is offline
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Plan: IF dairy-free keto ish
Stats: 175/175/170 Male 71
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Quote:
Originally Posted by M Levac
It's not possible to outrun any physical disorder of any kind whatsoever, including obesity.


You see obesity as a physical disorder? Or do you mean that more than activity must be changed in order to correct the condition?

Quote:
Originally Posted by M Levac
Now consider two individuals with less-than-perfect health. They have the same fitness potential, but neither have the best possible potential. Now put one on an exercise regimen, while we keep the other on a bench. The one doing some activity will appear to improve his health, but only because his health is the potential for fitness, and his fitness has improved compared to the guy on the bench, but only so much as his health allowed.

Now consider two individuals, one with perfect health, the other not. Put both on an exercise regimen, the one with perfect health has the potential to reach the best possible fitness, while the other has a lesser potential. The point is that the one with less-than-perfect health cannot possibly reach the same fitness level as the guy with perfect health, because his potential - health - is less.


Couldn't that 2nd pair also be the first pair, but farther along their journey towards optimal health?
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  #7   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 03:44
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teaser teaser is offline
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Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
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Location: Ontario
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I agree maybe halfway with what Martin is saying--fitness can be as much a symptom of health, as a cause of health. But that could be true of diet as well--of course eating in a certain way will be more conducive of health, but also how a person eats could be symptomatic of their physical/neurological health, as well.

Fitness and skill--here I'd throw in that effects of exercise on the brain, neural plasticity, etc. work in with the development of skill, this is also an aspect of health and wellness.

"You cannot outrun a bad diet,"--I'd like to rephrase that, to there's no exercise program you can't ruin the benefits of through diet. Can you run fast enough to make twinkies a superfood? I don't think so. Can you enhance the effects of a reasonable dietary regime, with a reasonable exercise program? I think so.

A twenty year old man adds exercise, goes from slightly more muscular than his friends to much more muscular than his friends. This might arguably be a fitness improvement rather than a health improvement. An eighty year old man, sarcopenic and osteoporotic, takes up exercise and regains some of that lost muscle and bone mass, this is arguably both a fitness and health improvement--even if you argue that more muscle isn't necessarily more health--improvements in balance and strength mean that he's less likely to fall and break something, not falling and breaking something is a pretty important contribution to health at that age. "Use it or lose it" is fitness gospel, that applies to body and brain both.
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  #8   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 07:21
raun01 raun01 is offline
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Plan: my own designed
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Well i love jumping....Is there a trampoline in the ground?
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  #9   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 07:47
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
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Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kirkor
You see obesity as a physical disorder? Or do you mean that more than activity must be changed in order to correct the condition?



Couldn't that 2nd pair also be the first pair, but farther along their journey towards optimal health?

Yes, obesity is a physical disorder, more specifically a disorder of excess fat accumulation.

The two pairs are different in both their health and their activity.

It's important to specify what physical disorder we're talking about so we understand the actual potential for improvement just from activity. For example, Teaser made the example of a young man and an old man, that's another pair where one is young and healthy, while the other is old and sick.

So let's look at that pair in detail. The young and healthy guy, he's got no physical disorder, his potential for fitness is greatest. But why does the old guy have a lesser potential for fitness? Is it just because he's old? Doesn't make sense, age has nothing to do with health. But disease acts over time, therefore the more time we're sick, the older we get, the sicker we get. We're not sicker because we're older, that's just incidental. Both age and disease progress simultaneously, that's why we make the assumption "age-related diseases".

To illustrate, take a kid, make and keep him sick all throughout puberty. As he reaches adulthood, he's still sick and moreso than he was when he was still a kid, but it's certainly not because he's an adult that he's sick or more sick, right? No, puberty acts over time, so he's grown into an adult independently of any disorder, but the disorder he's been suffering from has been progressing too, so he's sicker also because of time. It's no different when we start with an adult, then let him grow old or older. There's no a priori reason for health to decline, and if health does decline, it's not because of time, it's because there is an actual disorder acting over time.

Worded differently, the complete list of all known disorders does not include growing old(er). Growing older is normal, but it's not normal that we also grow sick for no other reason than time.

If we also include practice into the mix of growing old, isn't it plausible that our cells should be better at doing their thing of maintaining their integrity, in maintaining the body's health? They've been doing it for decades now, they must be genuine experts by now. If that's true, why do the facts prove this wrong?


Absence of activity is not a disorder, it cannot cause disease. This is because even though we are not active, our body is alive and maintains its health independently of its apparent activity. This means the baseline for health is perfect health. But what does it mean to be alive in the context of health? It's the cells doing their thing according to their DNA, that's it. Is there any gene that purposely makes us sick as we grow older? Absurd. The implication would be that we are programmed to grow sick and die at a predetermined time. Are we?

I'm off on a big tangent here but that's where the question of health and fitness leads inevitably as we dig deeper.

Fitness is improved through practice alone; health determines the potential for fitness; while practice appears to improve health, it merely does so because fitness and health tend to track together without any additional effort, so improving one will appear to improve the other as well.

Does our DNA control this ability to learn? Yes, more appropriately it possesses this ability. If it didn't, it would be impossible to learn and develop skills, fitness would be fixed at conception and could never be improved. It's even possible that growth would be impossible without this ability to learn, because growth stops eventually once we reach adulthood, and without the ability to learn when to stop, growth wouldn't start and if it did it wouldn't stop. The point here is that disease can be seen as disruption of DNA, therefore disruption of the ability to learn. However, DNA also includes the ability to learn about the disorder itself. But, there is no ability to overcome chronic disruptive pressures, i.e. a bad diet. We can see this with Pottenger's cats and generational epigenetics.

Now imagine a lean sprinter and a fat sprinter (more accurately, a light sprinter and a heavy sprinter). Both are lean and fat through their genes, nothing else, no disorder of any kind, their DNA is what it is without having been messed with, they are both in perfect health otherwise. Both are as fit as can be for the purpose, they can both run as fast as is possible according to their overall physiology. Which one wins? The lean one, the light one. To illustrate, let's pit a formula 1 car and a 10 wheeler truck. Which one wins?

Now we ask, can either of them get leaner or fatter just by doing more or less sprints? No, activity or lack thereof does not have the capacity to change their physiology in this respect. However, since we maintain skill through practice, we can improve (or in this case, maintain) or reduce skill with more or less practice.

Now let's look at our cells and wonder what happens as we grow older. If cells maintain the body's health, and if health declines as we grow older, doesn't that imply that our cells in fact practice less and less as time goes by? There's no a priori reason for this, so there must be some disorder going on, and this disorder only grows worse as time passes, or keeps constant pressure that accumulates and gradually overcomes the cells' ability to compensate, i.e. wear and tear or something like that. Well, when we're sick but still young, it's the same principle.

We could go on another tangent, hormones, it's quite interesting.
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  #10   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 08:11
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
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Location: Herndon, VA
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Interesting points by Martin. Just keep in mind that DNA provides the parameters controlling a broad spectrum of traits and potential. In other words, traits governed by DNA can be turned on or off by many factors including environmental factors, which in this case would include dietary exposure and activity levels. These DNA parameters are simply traits, behaviors, or other physical manifestations that can be exhibited or not due to environmental exposure. These manifestations are simply following the DNA blueprint and are not the result of recent DNA mutations; rather, they occur at the cellular level due to whatever it is the individual is exposed to over the course of time. DNA does not have time to mutate from one generation to the next, but it does provide the blueprint for one to express or suppress traits. This expression or suppression occurs at the cellular level and is the reason for the interest in Epigenetics today. I've referenced a book by Bruce Lipton before, and it's a very good summation of this epigenetic dynamic. It relates well to the environment we expose ourselves to through diet and physical activity and explains the reasons for varied manifestations of traits related to health and metabolic response.

Biology of Belief, 10th Anniversary Edition by Bruce Lipton

Fascinating book and very relevant to our pursuit of a perfect human diet, or rather, a perfect N=1 WOE.
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  #11   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 09:38
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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The most obvious is deficiency.

No amount of jumping can create vitamin B12 (or the essential of your choice). Conversely, we need B12 to jump for any significant amount of time, or at all if deficiency is severe.

With hormones, it's a similar principle. A testosterone deficiency for example, cannot be overcome by any amount of weight lifting, in spite of the stimulus this creates. Lifting weights stimulates testosterone production, so it rises, but only as high as the regulatory systems allow. If these systems are disrupted to a point where testosterone production is lower, that will be the maximum level achievable by lifting weights alone. Conversely, testosterone alone can cause muscle growth (among other things, like more hair and more manly features, etc) independently of the amount of weights we lift, this is even more true as a child grows because that's when hormones have the greatest effects. Growth hormone is the most potent hormone (opposite insulin), same principle.
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  #12   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 10:38
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teaser teaser is offline
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Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
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In a similar vein, though, send somebody into space, they'll lose bone and muscle mass. Or give them excessive bed rest, it hasn't been established that diet alone can make up for these, any diet.

Can exercise improve b12 status? I can think of one way--increased appetite. It's often pointed out that exercise can work against weight loss, but then weight loss is not always the desired outcome. Exercise can improve recovery of lean mass, with starvation, or improve the ratio of lean to fat mass put on (I'll say improve, because it pushes things closer to what they would have been without deprivation) at a given protein intake.

Just like food, exercise is an input that has an effect on hormonal expression, so just like food, I don't think you can say, this is hormonally controlled, so exercise lacks relevance.

Can you be healthy without being fit? Well, I'm not fit to run a marathon, I think I can be healthy without that. I'm not fit to be on the Canadian Olympic gymnastic team, hopefully that's not a requirement... but let's make this average person useful, I can climb a hill or stairs, I can bend over and tie my shoes, I can stand all day working without a whole lot of discomfort, I can squat. At some point you get diminishing returns, when it comes to health, optimizing for strength, speed, endurance are not optimizing for health--but I do think enough activity to develop decent balance, reasonable strength, a spring in your step is conducive to health, how much exercise is optimal, we don't know, I think we do know that being sedentary is not optimal, though.
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  #13   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 10:56
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
BF:
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Location: Herndon, VA
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Exactly, different influences on health by diet and activity (is exercise the right term?). If one is not fit, it makes it harder to obtain food for diet, whether it was a situation during the Paleo period or a current situation today that requires a certain level of good health to function most optimally in a job providing the means to acquire healthy food. The idea of being fit today lacks a clear definition, as many (I was one myself for years) tend to overdo fitness pursuits to achieve what is really a necessary baseline for a fully functioning human. Chronic cardio is not necessary for health or fitness.
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  #14   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 12:06
M Levac M Levac is offline
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Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Teaser, you talk about "enough activity to develop [various skills]".

In my experience with extensive golf practice and a bunch of other stuff I got hooked on over the years, the first few hours of practice are the most productive, the most instructive and produce the largest improvements in terms of ability to perform (relative to baseline zero). A few hours won't make one an expert, but it will certainly make him better by a wide margin, wide enough to brag to his golf partners at least.

Now the point here is that the amount of activity that is enough to make it seem like we've improved is likely to be actually small. If we're talking fads, golf is king. Every week, nay, every day, there's some new fad about some fancy advice about some complex technique about some mysterious skill about...you get the picture. Nobody actually practices golf, except the pros. With every new thing, we all get excited and this fools us into thinking we've improved in some way. We haven't, not exactly, it's just that the systems that control learning also control pleasure, and it's so very easy to stimulate one to give the illusion we've activated the other. The hormone responsible here is dopamine.

The second point here is that we learn much more quickly when it's fun, and it's most fun when it's new because dopamine is highest when; we're learning, and learning something new. From an evolutionary point of view, this makes perfect sense, we don't have ample time to learn how to survive. We learn now, or we die. Those that live, pass on the quick-learn gene.

I don't want to brag but I figured out two sure-fire lessons that take only a few seconds to teach to anybody to produce instant positive and significant results on the spot. In golf, we call them tips, but I promise those are genuine lessons that bypass about 99% of all the golf BS and it goes straight to the crux.

Anyways, you see my point, it's about the first few hours we're exposed to something new.
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  #15   ^
Old Wed, May-03-17, 12:42
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teaser teaser is offline
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Posts: 15,075
 
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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Well, yeah, but maybe what I take from your perspective is that we should try new things on a regular basis. And--it doesn't take as much to maintain a skill as it does to gain it in the first place, you never forget how to ride a bicycle, but not doing it for a very long time will make you significantly worse at it, at least it does me. I'm right there with you with making things fun and interesting. Some weirdoes find running fun--one man's fun/slightly hormetic stressor is another man's hell.
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