You can't really say that. Many vegetable oils contrain transfats which are pretty dangerous. Coconut oil is a good plant fat though. You also can't say unsaturated fats are bad. They used to say that they are the cause for cardiovascular disease but meta analysis has shown that this isn't the case (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract)

I eat a lot of butter - dangerous, right? Well, grass fed butter ius one of the rare sources for Vitamin K2 which protects the heart, it contains butyrate which helps against inflammation and promotes fat loss.

Avocado is something i can a(d)vocate though. Plenty of good fats, filling and so tasty!
Nuts are also cool depending on your goals. IF you want to gain weight, it would make sense to eat a ton of them. Just LIFT while you are eating. Well, not while, but during the period you are lifting.

There is no way around lifting if you want to improve your body. Judging from your post, you don't have the genes to easily put on muscle doing well..yardwork, whatever. You have to lift hard and regularly. Otherwise you'll just gain fat and feel miserable.

Have you ever eaten wild game? If you haven't and know someone who hunts, I highly recommend trying it. When it comes to meat, this is where it's at. It may seem cruel to kill an animal but this is what humans have always done. Just don't waste the animal of kill it for fun, do it with respect and intention. If you eat deer for instance, you are eating the forest it lived it's life in. The deer eats natural food and roams freely, unlike cows, chickens and pigs raised on factory farms who can't move around and are un-healthy.

Do live in a place where you can have chickens? This is another great source of food. ~40 chickens will give you at least 15 eggs per day and you just hatch a few, when extra roosters are born you eat them right before they become fully mature, as you don't want many roosters. Plus chickens are just cool, and smart, with their own little society going on. They also eat mosquitoes btw.

I live in the city, but here you can have chickens in your yard, just no roosters. I have a friend who lives outside the city who keeps chickens, and turkeys. It seems to me that this is what the plants teach, to get back to living in tune with the earth.

Do you like to fish? It's fun and a good source of healthy food when you have a good day. More importantly all these things get one back to nature.

Yeah, no, that's why I wrote rule of thumb and mostly. For clarification:

Dietary Fat
http://www.cdc.gov/nutri...ne/basics/fat/index.html


Yes, lift moar. But also eat moar. And with eat moar I mean eat moar healthy. See the above link for directions.

Maybe an inspiration for putting on more weight: Steroids Saved My Life

http://www.disclose.tv/user/steroidshow/

Only under the supervision of a medical doctor of course.

That made me laugh. Next time I see some one holding a coffee im gonna think, Yeh your so wise arnt you, dumb ass

You cant beat a decaf soy cappuccino or white tea from Sri Lanka .

Unfortunatly, you also have to lift "right" it seems. I havn't gained a lot of lean mass since i started in august last year. But fat, i gained. Getting rid of it all is really not so nice because i'd rather work on putting on muscle.

Good form > overly ambitious weights. That's my new mantra.

True that. From my active days I remember that weight gain is 70% is nutrition and 30% training:
+ 3kg lean mass is an achievable weight plus per year (if sufficient amounts of protein + creatine are provided)
~ 5-7kg per year if you do steroids responsibly and your nutrition is right.

The weakest member of the chain will determine the outcome. Popping steroids and watching TV will do nothing. HIT training, 1.4 – 2.0gs of protein per kg bodyweight & 2-4gs of creatine per day is a good start.

---

References:
International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih....pmc/articles/PMC2117006/
(note that the word 'meat' isn't mentioned in the article)

International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: creatine supplementation and exercise.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih....pmc/articles/PMC2048496/

I'm on it! Will try that as soon as I get to my parents property, where they grow all over.



Yes it does, and continues to improve, as long as I don't drink too much



Agreed, I quit it awhile back and it was tough, but I was dealing with a tooth ache so it made it easier. But I felt great once I was detoxed of sugar.




Protein shakes + creatine , I will start this. creatine is great for muscle gains and protein shakes are easy and no mess. Me no like messy clean ups!



I don't even know where to start on this one, good good info here. I'm a country boy, so yah, I've got deer meat in the freezer. And I agree about the animals health affecting the quality of the meat. Stress creates hormones and we take that in when we eat that animal. Free range chickens really don't taste better to me, but I've only had them from one farm. Around here EVERYONE raises chickens, I used to sell them at the farm and home store I managed. Just never wanted to raise them myself. Right now I live in town so I couldn't get a coop and chicks, but I know a lot of people that have meat birds. I'll put up a flyer on a bulletin board at the local gas station.




Right back atcha, you've compounded the thought and now I won't be able to hold back a laugh at those old folks who love their coffee.


Lift moar, lift moar, lift moar and you also have to lift "right".....

The fitness gyms are a little pricey, I joined one recently and I need to go more often. And I need a better work out plan.

You guys rock!!!

This seemed to hit home with a few members, I guess a lot of us are thinking about what it takes to be healthy.

I will be continuing the conversation as I improve my body and lifestyle.

Thanks again for taking the time..

I swap out drinking drip coffee for yerba mate most days. I started getting shaky hands later in the day, can't work in the lab or play the piano with shaky hands, I need fine motor skill precision which I value dearly.

It seemed to go away, I used to buy cups and cups of drip coffee from the campus library, now I just load up my massive thermos every morning with strong brew of mate. I drink probably twice as much mate now than I did drip coffee, so I am probably not any lower on the caffeine intake.. but mate seems much smoother. Guayusa is great too.

I never could drink coffee with cream or sugar. But I started drinking it black because thats what my dad did. I can't stand that feeling you get that coats your throat. Besides all it does is distract from the flavour of the coffee or tea.

But ill never give up esspresso. No way. It is too incredible. A pure sensory experience.

A nice cup of pressed coffee made with quality beans is wonderful too on occassion, though that is loaded with caffeine. Don't dilute it with milk or sugar.

Concerning caffeine headaches, I have a very interesting experience with them...

I have only had them a couple times and they were BRUTAL. It was like my brain was telling me GO BUY COFFEE BEANS.

So I found it strange because when I drink coffee sometimes i'll drink it daily for weeks, then take a week off no issue. Some days I just forget to make coffee!

But here is how it goes, this was about a year ago now, I am making my coffee (espresso ) and I notice I only have enough beans for probably a few more cups. So day goes on, next day I make the last cup and say to myself "Ok need to pick up some coffee beans." I was at home at the time without a car so I couldn't really go pick some up when I wanted to.

Next morning get out of bad. MASSIVE HEADACHE. It was like my brain only gave me the headache, not because I didn't have it, but because I COULDN'T have it. The headache was so fierce I was basically useless all day until I could drive into the coffee shop and pick up a lb of beans. And I tell you, soon as I got the beans, headache was gone. That experience of "im OK now that I have my beans" was identical to the feeling an alcoholic gets when he walks out of the liquor store with his bottle. Heh.

I haven't got into the espresso coffee yet. I'm worried I'll never go back, isn't that like the liquor version of coffee?

I've fought those headaches before ans they are rough.

I used to drink mate, I need to go back to that, but I never really felt a cognitive improvement.That's why I like caffeine, mentally it kicks me in overdrive, but too much and I'm lost for words.

i think a standard cup of coffee actually has more caffeine than espresso, depending upon how much one consumes of course.


i recently cut out all stimulants from my diet. i used to work at starbucks years ago and would start my day off with a large coffee with a couple shots of espresso added to it, would have that a few times during my shift, go home and make a pot in the evening. it was sickening to realize how much caffeine i was consuming.


i ended up swapping it for various other stimulants, yerba mate at first, but when i was using a couple inches or more in my press i realized i was doing my adrenals no small favor. green tea, the same. then came the wonderful cacao. was consuming three tablespoons three times a day. i felt great but i found my body would crave it more and more often, with very high irritability during said craving periods. i know its not supposed to be addictive, but something about it made my body dependent upon it.


so a month or so ago i quit everything. i thought i was going to die for the first few weeks. thankfully i used herbs to ease into it. the most effective i found were high amounts of ashwaganda and a high quality reishi mushroom extract. i feel much better not having to rely on anything to get me going through out the day, even if i'm still not at 100%.


on a side note, i agree with the person that said high carbs cause lots of craving for... more carbs i suppose.. when i eat a lot of fruit my body doesn't want to stop eating it. so now i eat a lot of plant based fats, coconut butter, flax, chia and hemp seeds seem to agree with me quite a bit. flax seeds are dirt cheap, and i've found conventional chia seeds rather cheap at some local health food stores.

^^Wow Aprils Fools Fastest Answers!!




I'm starting to feel that fruit craving A LOT. I think of it as a good thing, I don't feel that energy crash like I do with something like a candy bar. I'm probably eating 3 servings of fruit a day.

I'm going to swap out a few servings for nuts. I love cashews but my goodness those are priced too high. So I'll be eating the mixed variety.

Sugar is a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible drug! (She says after switching to an all-fruit-and-berry diet with the occasional dash of honey)

Sugar addiction is very real. Bread and pasta are awful.

I'm hoping all the vitamins and proteins and phytochemicals present in fruits will counteract the vicious sugar-insulin-spike-addiction circle.

I don't think I have a problem with sugar, it can't cause hunger in me, but it does make me crave for more sugar, I'm not noticing this when eating fruits nearly at all compared to eating candy and there have been times that I've even eaten candy every day in moderate amounts and it didn't cause cravings so I'm thinking it's a more complex issue (for me) than just the presence of sugar.

I'll see how it goes with 90% of my diet consisting of fruits.

If this happens to me:



then i'll reconsider my diet and probably start to






for now, the fruits are good for me. <3

I drink coffee. on average maybe one and a half cups a day. I drink 1-3 cups a day. I put in a little bit of sweetener (not so healthy, but I'm not sure if sugar would be that much healthier?) and soy milk (no animal milk). Sometimes I use a nut milk like almond milk. <3

I drink tea too. I don't see the point in quitting coffee when the same amount of caffeine is found in tea anyway. I'd just switch to drinking tea and I'm really not going to stop drinking tea!

There's the middle road in everything... I want to be healthy but not too healthy! because depriving yourself of all pleasure is not healthy for your mind/heart!

Sugar is a much worse drug than coffee anyway

Thank you for this view The craving isn't necessarily a bad thing! and you're right, it's definitely not the same intensity as after eating a candy bar

I'll see how it goes. maybe later i'll switch some of my fruits for nuts too to get healthy fats from my diet. for now, i'm sticking with my fruits, berries, coffee and soy milk!