Energy

I’ve been injured for a while now, and I’m starting to feel the lack of exercise in my energy level. Here’s a good article I found on increasing everyday energy.

Top 10 ways to boost energy

If you’re too lazy to read, it breaks down like this:

1. Increase magnesium intake
2. Exercise
3. Take a 60-minute power nap
4. Don’t skip meals
5. Reduce stress and deal with anger
6. Drink more water
7. Eat more whole grains and less sugar
8. Have a power snack
9. Drink latte instead of black coffee
10. Check your thyroid function and blood cell count

The bits about magnesium and milk were news to me, and a reminder on the water intake is always useful.

Food tip of the day

In keeping with yesterday’s theme..

Next time you’re boiling pasta, throw some frozen broccoli in the water when there’s about 3 or 4 minutes left before the pasta is done. You’ll save yourself the effort of having to boil water separately for the greens, and the pasta will absorb some of the vitamins and nutrients that the water takes from the greens.

Nutrition 101

I’m always trying to improve my diet. Lots of people seem confused about how a diet works, but it’s really simple. There are three things one needs to understand.

1: If you are alive, you have a diet. You can’t go “off” or “on” a diet. Having no diet is the same thing as complete starvation. Eating whatever you feel like is a diet, and so is eating rocks. Neither one of them is a very good diet, but that’s beside the point. The point is, you have a diet already.

2: Baby steps is key. Changing your diet all in one sweep is a bad idea because your taste buds and your brain won’t have time to adapt. A good place to start is to pick your worst dietary habit, like soda for example, and to cut your intake in half. If you’re drinking two cokes a day, drink one. If you’re eating fast food four days a week, make it two days a week maximum.

3: Your optimal diet is unique. There’s no single diet that is perfect for everyone, because everyone’s body is different. Nor is there a single diet that’s perfect for you all of the time. If you sweat a lot you need more salt and water, and if it’s winter you need more vitamin D.

So what’s the optimal diet for you? Depends on your goals. I have three long-term goals for my nutrition:

1. Keep my immune system strong.
2. Keep me supplied with enough energy to work out hard 6 days a week.
3. Give me enough nutrients to build muscle.

With those goals in mind, I decided to do the following things:
*Cut down on sugar by quitting soda and candy, only eating bread that contains less than 6% sugar.
*Cut down on unhealthy fats by quitting fast food and snacks.
*Cut out alcohol to keep my immune system strong.
*Try to keep an eye on how much protein / good carbs / good fats I am getting per coin and bill when I shop for food.

So far, this is a pretty winning combination for me. No restrictions on how much I can eat, no restrictions on when I can eat what. A pleasant surprise is that since I started cutting down on sugar, stuff that’s only kind of sugary taste much sweeter to me. For example, broccoli and spinach taste sweet. I think my taste buds were just overloaded with sugar back when I was drinking soda, because I don’t remember broccoli ever tasting sweet.

I keep making small adjustments though, that’s the key. Never stop adapting and improving your diet, or any aspect of your behaviour for that matter. Right now I’m looking at when and how to use caffeine optimally.

Restless

I was down at the club yesterday and watched everyone else get ready for their fights. The atmosphere was incredible. Sitting on the sidelines, I felt like I wanted to rip my own head off for not being able to join in.

My energy returned today, after plenty of sleep, vitamins and healthy food. The newfound inspiration probably had something to do with it, too. I’ve felt sort of useless these last few weeks, but when I came down to the gym yesterday that all cleared up. I belong on the mat.

I went for a light run after work today, and I’ve been watching some fight videos and techniques to alleviate the longing. Can’t wait to get my ass kicked tomorrow.

The technique of the week is the classy but sexy arm triangle. It was the first submission I started hitting with any regularity. Here it is in action, implemented by BJJ world champion Vitor “Shaolin” Ribeiro:

Escaping nature

Recently I’ve had a few experiences that really woke me up to how much power my biology has over my whole experience of life. First, sickness was kicking my ass, then lack of sleep, lack of sex and lack of exercise came over and joined in while I was already down.

So I had to think a bit about how to overcome biology and function like a human being again.

This is what I discovered: The only way to overcome is cooperation. Imagine it’s dodgeball at gym class in fifth grade, and you’re picking teams. The body always has first pick. And second. And third. And fourth. After that, you can try to assemble your team, but what’s the point if all the good players are already taken?

The only way for me to get anything done well is if I listen to my body’s demands and give it all the sleep, rest, sex, food and exercise it wants. Sometimes I use caffeine to get an advance payment of energy if I’m tired at work, but I always have to pay my dues in the end.

The more I try to ignore my body’s demands, the less of my higher functions become available to me. Creativity is the first thing that goes, then energy and initiative.

Some of the body’s demands are sneakier. You don’t even notice you’re not functioning at your highest level until after you fix the problem. For example, if I don’t release often enough, evolutionary pressure builds up in my ballsack and makes me dopey and stressed-out.

I’m gonna devote some more time to learning exactly what my body wants, and when. I’m hoping that it might release some higher brain functions that the body has been holding out on me my whole life, waiting for me to figure out what I was supposed to do.

Keeping things in perspective

This is the truth speaking. Death is coming. Whether it takes a hundred years or more for your body to decay, or you stumble and fall in the way of a bus tomorrow, it’s approaching. What do we know about death? It’s approaching and it’s inevitable. You are going to die, and you better get used to it, because that fact isn’t going away.

Most people find that idea very scary, but I’ve been friends with the concept of death ever since the time I had cancer. Given the fact that death is inevitable, you are faced with two options.

You can either be the type of person who clings to life, refusing to give it up. If you do, you’ll die a very undignified death, probably in bed, body in pain and mind full of regrets.
Or you can be the type of person who approaches life with a curious and honest attitude, sampling what this life has to offer and moving on when sated with each thing. If you live your life this way, you will probably choose the time of your death. It will be when you have had enough sex, enough drugs, enough food, enough adventures, enough knowledge and enough money. You will be at peace, completely sated with all of what life has to offer. Willing to give it up, just to see if there’s anything else on the menu. Right? Isn’t that the plan?

I want to be able to say “I took this rollercoaster ride and rode it the way I wanted to, I made it mine. Now I’m tired of it and I’ve done all the things I set out to do. What else is there?”

I think I can get there, as a fighter and as a writer. It’s important to have goals, but it’s more important to be aware of fact that the future is unpredictable. If you bet your house on the horse labeled future, then you might not win. You might get diagnosed with a rare, terminal illness next month, or you might get hit by a meteor five seconds from now. Bang, straight through the ceiling with a speed of five thousand kilometers per hour.

Can you say, right now, that you’re happy with everything? No? Then get to work, fatso! Me, I’m ready whenever. I don’t let my goals cloud my perspective. There’s no use pretending death isn’t real. It’s real, it’s closing in, and you don’t know how fast. So make the most of what you’ve got left, whether it’s five minutes or fifty years. But don’t do it out of a feeling of obligation to your goals. Goals change all the time. Do it because you’d like to improve on your experience of life. Do it because you feel like it. This is unintuitive, but you’ll appreciate it more if you’re ready and willing to give it up.

This post was written under the influence of three or four grams of dried cubensis mushrooms.

Sickness

As an automatic consequence of my earlier bragging that I almost never get sick, I am now a miserable, hunched-over germ factory, spreading a vile plague wherever I walk. There are strange fungi growing on my face, and I produce greenish-yellow phlegm at an astounding rate.

I had forgotten what a bitch a common cold can be. My continued attempts to counter the affliction with green tea and vitamin C have been in vain. If this goes on much longer, I may turn to vitamin M. I suppose I should try out some of the exotic herbal cures, but for some reason I’m always reluctant to spend money on something that feels like a shot in the dark. I tried Kan Jang once before, and I couldn’t tell if it made any difference.

Admittedly, it’s my own fault that I got this way. I had been sick and gotten over it, but then I was too anxious to go back to training and didn’t allow myself any additional days of rest once I felt able to move again. On top of that, I went out into the countryside where there are all kinds of allergens to help break down my immune system, which gave the virus free reins to run amok.

What people forget about being sick is that it’s not the direct symptoms that get you, it’s the compound effects. Sure, having your snout turned into snot-spigot can be pretty disgusting, but it’s nothing compared to the socially awkwardness that arises from constantly having to blow your nose and wipe the stuff off your face(Hope you weren’t eating). On top of that, being unable to grapple, box or even run has made me irritable and under-stimulated.

Life tip: Don’t get sick, it isn’t worth it unless it’s serious.

I’m a cancer survivor, and I think it has made me a better person, but it definitely took a while. I didn’t come out the other side stronger, it took me years to build up what I had lost. Some things that happen to you are just so big that you can’t really put them into perspective until much later. At first, being the kid that I was, I exploited my condition and milked it for all the attention I could get from adults. That set me back, because it made me neglect developing social skills that worked among my peers. Now though, I can more easily remember the tough times, and I can remember the times when I could get no enjoyment out of life regardless how much effort people put into making me happy. I can remember what it feels like to be truly powerless, both physically and figuratively, being transported from hospital ward to hospital ward in an adult world that seemed too bleak to be real.

Thinking back on that, my current cold is like a stubbed toe. Bothersome, but highly transient. It always helps to put things into perspective.

Nourishmentality

Seeking any advantage I could find, I learned that paying close attention to your diet can be very beneficial in the game of violence.

When I decided to take the sport seriously two years ago, I set up a couple of ground rules for myself:

1. No soda.
2. No candy.
3. No unhealthy snacks.
4. No fast food.

Since then, I have loosened my rule against fast food into “only fast food once a week or so”, and added a fifth rule of no alcohol. So far, this ruleset is working out well for me. I have gained ten kilos of muscle, and almost no fat. I am sick about one or two weeks a year, as opposed to one or two months.

The most surprising thing to me was how much better everything started to taste after I stopped eating a ton of sugar with every meal (usually in the form of soda). Now I can appreciate the taste of fruit and vegetables much more, because my mouth isn’t numb to their sweetness anymore.

If you’ve never tried it, you owe it to yourself to cut down on sugar for two weeks just to see what it’s like. Only buy bread that is below 5% sugar, don’t put any in your coffee, and don’t drink any soda. Your taste buds will love you for it.