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Good “sports nutrition” is the same thing as good nutrition except the word “sports” is used in the first expression.

Many athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike fail to realize how much of a performance and recovery boost they can achieve by simply eating fresh vegetables and whole fruit.

A significant portion of why we become insulin resistant with age is the loss of muscle mass due directly to the aging process (sarcopenia); this can be mitigated and frequently reversed through consistent weight training.

Consistent and appropriate exercise has a dramatic “positive” effect upon our chemical physiology. It strengthens important systems such as our immune system and it rebalances or optimizes our hormone system. It simply improves our overall function!

An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

International Bestseller

A deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality

Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. Today, however, millions of people who are really no more than “worried well” are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world’s most influential psychiatrists, explains why stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, the misallocation of medical resources, and the draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient brains and into the hands of “Big Pharma,” who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the newest edition of the “bible of psychiatry,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), is turning our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of “normal” people into “mental patients.” Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity.

We have way too much faith in pills, supplements and shortcuts, and way too little trust in eating fruits and vegetables, exercising adequately and resting appropriately; rarely is popping a pill or taking a perceived shortcut the best solution.

The author, Aaron T. Beck, one of the founders of cognitive therapy, provides a comprehensive guide to its theory and practice.

We have the personal capacity to quickly improve our own lives without medication and without therapy. Our biased perceptions (or misconceptions) of events cause the majority of our mental and physical distress; it’s rarely the events themselves or the people centered on these events. Negative thinking and inaccurate assumptions are frequently to blame. However, even if our conception happens to be correct, how we choose to respond to the external stimulus is still up to us.

Research links a memory boost to those who are simply more active; the greater the rise in physical activity the greater the boost!

Forget taking supplements for memory – pun intended – just get moving!

Great subject, but this book is poorly written in a variety of ways. Skip it! 

Research and Applications of the Science of Happiness and Fulfillment

Positive Psychology

Have you ever wondered:

• How can I feel truly fulfilled in my life and actions?
• How can I finally meet my life and career goals?
• How can I work toward Happiness?
• How can I turn pessimism to eternal Optimism?

You are in luck

Positive Psychology: Research and Applications of the Science of Happiness and Fulfillment by Jonny Bell provides deep, research-driven analysis and understanding of the new branch of psychology: positive psychology. Positive psychology seeks to fulfill you, to yield true satisfaction in your life. It works to rectify the mundane, to grab your life and shape it into what you’ve always wanted it to be. It lends you the courage to proceed down the path of eternal happiness.

This book’s positive psychology explanation gives way to ultimate, step-by-step instructions on how to achieve true happiness, positive thinking, mindfulness, resilience, and an effortless stream of optimism. The lowest pessimist can rise to the top and reap the health and emotional rewards. This book forces you to stop making excuses. Concentrate. Breathe. Slow your life in order to concentrate on your personal goals, your personal strengths. This book lends you the initial wave into an eternity of success and confidence. You’ll have the ability to speak your mind, conquer your surroundings, and aid your fellow man. Positive psychology is the very thing that will allow you to take this earnest control. Let it. And maintain confidence and joy throughout your entire life.

Topics covered:

• Comprehending Positive Psychology
• History of Positive Psychology
• Positive Psychology Research Analysis
• Achieving Happiness
• Learned Optimism and Hope versus Helplessness
• Mindfulness: Positive Psychology and Balance
• Flow: The Drive to Succeed
• Character Strengths and Virtues
• Positive Thinking: A Process
• Resilience and the Strength to Move Forward

While the majority of personal trainers barely understand antioxidants, perhaps just enough to sell you some worthless supplements; the entire concept has steadily eroded into nonsense. There’s another good article found in Scientific American (Volume 24 Number 1) “The Secrets of Staying Young” is the theme of the issue. The article is called  “The myth of Antioxidants”.

Losing interest in life frequently rests upon a belief that we know it all – that we’re a finished product. The growth minded know better and remain interested in life because there’s so much left to be interested in. Keep Growing!

Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want

Why are we sometimes blind to the minds of others, treating them like objects or animals instead? Why do we talk to our cars, or the stars, as if there is a mind that can hear us? Why do we so routinely believe that others think, feel, and want what we do when, in fact, they do not? And why do we think we understand our spouses, family, and friends so much better than we actually do?

In this illuminating book, leading social psychologist Nicholas Epley introduces us to what scientists have learned about our ability to understand the most complicated puzzle on the planet—other people—and the surprising mistakes we so routinely make. Mindwise will not turn others into open books, but it will give you the wisdom to revolutionize how you think about them—and yourself.

Book Description:

Using the wisdom culled from the world’s greatest civilizations as a foundation, social psychologist Haidt comes to terms with 10 Great Ideas, viewing them through a contemporary filter to learn which of their lessons may still apply to modern lives. He first discusses how the mind works and then examines the Golden Rule (“Reciprocity is the most important tool for getting along with people”). Next, he addresses the issue of happiness itself–where does it come from?–before exploring the conditions that allow growth and development. He also dares to answer the question that haunts most everyone–What is the meaning of life?–by again drawing on ancient ideas and incorporating recent research findings. He concludes with the question of meaning: Why do some find it? Balancing ancient wisdom and modern science, Haidt consults great minds of the past, from Buddha to Lao Tzu and from Plato to Freud

http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Modern-Ancient/dp/0465028020/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372221982&sr=1-1&keywords=the+happiness+hypothesis

Editorial Reviews

Don’t try and fit your body into a random fitness program, the fitness program should fit your body; it should be designed specifically for you in other words.

Reading a well written book or having a meaningful conversation nearly everday is to the mind as exercising is to the body; both keep you sharp and in shape.

Organic RAW nuts and seeds support good health and are a tremendous resource for dense, natural nutrition! They should be purchased in small bags and kept refrigerated between uses; the oils contained within a nut or seed are highly perishable when exposed to oxygen. They should not be purchased from grocery store bulk bins or in large quantities for the same reason mentioned above. Dry roasted is never a good choice, the valuable oils have been destroyed through the roasting process and have lost the health qualities they once possessed. And, although extremely healthy, nuts and seeds should be consumed in small quantities because of the density of their calories.

The killer western diet contains too many saturated fats, as well as, too many altered fatty acids (e.g. hydrogenated oils and trans fats). In addition, the western diet contains too many low quality calories, too much protein and too little of the essential fatty acids (specifically Omega 3). Because there’s too little consumption of vegetables (and secondly fruits) essential minerals and vitamins, antioxidants and natural fiber are dangerously lacking as well. When essential nutrients go missing in our diet for an extended period of time degenerative disease soon manifests.

Vegetables (and fruits to a lesser degree) are a richer source of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and fiber than any other category of food. Animal tissue (or meat from the muscles of animals) contain far fewer vitamins and minerals, less essential fatty acids, high levels of saturated fat and cholesterol and contain zero health enhancing fiber (soluble or insoluble).

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Book Description: Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

All calorie restricted diets, for the majority of people, will result in weight-loss, but the best weight-loss diets will meet high nutritional standards while decreasing your health risks; the majority of popular weight-loss diets, at any given time, do not meet this standard.

It’s best to continue exercising the unaffected areas of your body to avoid physical and mental deconditioning as well as to avoid losing any current positive health and fitness habits that may already be established.

Recommend not eating 3 hours before going to bed; in other words, go to bed with an empty stomach. You’ll avoid weight gain associated with late night eating, avoid diseases related to acid reflex and sleep more deeply. One more piece of research to back up the advice I’ve been giving for years:

This article appeared in the January 18, 2015 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Scientists, like mothers, have long suspected that midnight snacking is inadvisable. But until a few years ago, there was little in the way of science behind those suspicions. Now, a new study shows that mice prevented from eating at all hours avoided obesity and metabolic problems — even if their diet was sometimes unhealthful.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and elsewhere began experimenting with the eating patterns of laboratory mice in a previous study. On that occasion, some mice consumed high-fat food whenever they wanted; others had the same diet but could eat only during an eight-hour window. None exercised. The mice that ate at all hours soon grew chubby and unwell, with symptoms of diabetes. But the mice on the eight-hour schedule gained little weight and developed no metabolic problems. Those results were published in 2012.

For the new study, which appeared in the journal Cell Metabolism in December, Salk scientists fed groups of adult males one of four diets: high-fat, high-fructose, high-fat and high-sucrose, and regular mouse kibble. Some of the mice in each dietary group were allowed to eat whenever they wanted throughout their waking hours; others were restricted to feeding periods of nine, 12 or 15 hours. The caloric intake for all the mice was the same.

Over the course of the 38-week experiment, some of the mice in the time-restricted groups were allowed to cheat on weekends and eat whenever they chose. A few of the eat-anytime mice were shifted to the restricted windows midway through the study.

By the end, the mice eating at all hours were generally obese and metabolically ill, reproducing the results of the earlier study. But those mice that ate within a nine- or 12-hour window remained sleek and healthy, even if they cheated occasionally on weekends. What’s more, mice that were switched out of an eat-anytime schedule lost some of the weight they had gained.

“Time-restricted eating didn’t just prevent but also reversed obesity,” says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor at the Salk Institute who oversaw the studies. “That was exciting to see.” Mice that consumed regular kibble in fixed time periods also had less body fat than those that ate the same food whenever they chose.

Precisely how a time-based eating pattern staved off weight gain and illness is not fully understood, but Dr. Panda and his colleagues believe that the time at which food is eaten influences a body’s internal clock. “Meal times have more effect on circadian rhythm than dark and light cycles,” Dr. Panda says. And circadian rhythm in turn affects the function of many genes in the body that are known to involve metabolism.

To date, Dr. Panda’s studies have been conducted with only mice, but he says the results seem likely to apply to humans. The upshot: Contain your eating to 12 hours a day or less. And pay attention to when you begin. The clock starts, Dr. Panda says, with “that first cup of coffee with cream and sugar in the morning.”

We naturally lose muscle due to the aging process, but the real reason the majority of us lose so much strength before 70 years of age is because we simply stop using it.

Trying to lose weight? It’s what you eat! It’s not how often, how long or how you exercise that matters most when trying to lose weight; it’s what and how much you choose to eat that matters most!

Don’t even consider working with a personal trainer in their 20’s or early 30’s! They have no idea what physical limitations await them in the near future, but you certainly do; find the right program and the right trainer for your age!

We don’t need special diets, human engineered pre-packaged foods, fancy supplements, powders or magical potions… the unprofitable simple truth concerning almost every health ailment we suffer from in our culture can be cured by eating fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables, lean proteins, beans, raw nuts, raw seeds, whole grains and avoiding artificial ingredients.

Recent findings published in “Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise” have found that treadmill running provides a non-pharmacological means to fighting cognitive declines due disease and aging; one could infer that other vigorous exercise performed regularly would have the same positive effect.

Appropriate and intelligent weight training, tailored to your individual needs and biological age, is the most effective method available to fight and slow the aging process. You do not need to push yourself ridiculously hard to garner these health benefits. Remember, it’s not how hard you train but what you can recover from that matters most.

Manual for the Way a Modern Warrior Should Think

A step-by-step approach to applying the Japanese warrior’s mind set to martial training and daily life.

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Martial-Way-Manual-Warrior/dp/0942637763/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391989184&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=living+th+elmartial+way

Alcohol provides very little nutritional benefit, it’s a tremendous source of calories and weight gain, it’s known as a deconditioner (especially for those already out of shape) and it’s an irritant to the nervous system for many people (leading to anxiety, palpitations and even depression). Want to get healthy and stay healthy? Minimize or even avoid alcohol in all it’s many forms.

Really enjoyed the walk!

We raised a lot of money and the cause was indeed worth the effort!

Lets do it again next year!

Here’s the link to the event:

http://act.alz.org/site/TR?fr_id=4933&pg=entry

November 8, 2014
Registration at 7:30 am | Ceremony at 8:45 am | Walk at 9:15 am
Route Length: 3 miles

Wesley Bolin Plaza
1700 W Washington Street, Phoenix, AZ 85007

Recently I read that we shouldn’t seek to be respected and liked by everyone, but, rather we should seek to be worthy of being respected and liked by everyone.  Agreed.

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

Be careful with your thoughts; they are the beginning of your actions.

Physical conditioning and muscular development are routinely viewed in our society as unnecessary; but this notion is incorrect and will inevitably become uncomfortably obvious to those who subscribe to it through failing health or a body simply unable to answer the call.

If you transform everything that you do into an act of physical and mental training, then everything you do becomes important, valuable and worth your time.