rawlife’s BodyBlog

…is sugar.  Someday I’m going to take this blog down, put it into a short ebook and sell it but right now I feel like getting this off my chest.  Pretty early on in my candida problems after a 1.5x bout of antibiotics, I realized that there was something seriously wrong with the current candida diet paradigm.  I only realized this because I was, at the same time, making my own probiotic cultures from store bought probiotics.  The anti candida diet is just that-a diet focused on minimizing yeast in the blood and intestines.  The reason people have to stay on it for upwards of a year or even two years is because it’s totally worthless at repopulating your own intestinal flora.  Our own gut flora grows fastest on sugar as well.  If I fed my cultures fiber, like the establishment says you should do when you have candida, they would take forever to grow.  A candida overgrowth problem is first and foremost a gut flora undergrowth problem.  If you are on a diet that starves you of sugar, then you are on a diet that is also keeping your own gut flora from really flourishing like it should. 

    The problem probably isn’t that you’re eating sugar, it’s that you’re eating either way too much, the wrong kind, or it’s staying in your blood stream for way too long because you’ve been eating like most everyone else does-that being a combination of fats, carbs and protein, like you normally should-unfortunately, the fat blocks the sugar’s access to the cells it needs to get into, resulting in a blooming of yeast and possible diabetes in the long term. 

   Here’s what you do: You stay away from all white sugar and refined carbs.  You do not, on the other hand, stay away from fruit.  You also stay away from fats and anything but the leanest protein.  You start by eating a little bit of fruit, then wait.  You let it digest completely, wait maybe an hour or two hours.  Then you eat a little bit more.  You do the same.  So on and so forth.  There two problems with this though: 1st, your gut flora is not ready to digest it, so it might be uncomfortable or likely will be uncomfortable.  You know your gut isn’t ready to digest it because you are in the situation you are in.  2nd, your cells aren’t ready to assimilate such a high proportion of carbohydrate with nothing else.  You’re not going to function as well and that’s also going to make you feel uncomfortable.  It is for these two reasons that you then have to back off the sugar and go back to a typical ‘anti candida diet’ to get you back to default, giving your body what it currently needs to function properly and healthfully.  Then once you’ve done that, you go back to the slow sugar build.  And everytime you go back to default, you do so in exact accordance to how much you feel you need-protein and fat that is.  After several weeks, you should have an entirely new gut and cells ready to function on a high percentage of carbs. 

I’m having a great time with these workouts.  My left glute, especially mede and min, are dying along with my left tricep and my right bicep.  I don’t know how I ignored all this for this long.  Anyway, the back is feeling much better as well.  I’ve come up with a couple of great exercises for the thoracic and cervical areas to help take some load of the lumbar, along with the extra glute work in the left to do the same. 

   In regards to the grub, I’m still bouncing back and forth between high fruit/very low fat and almost no carb, high protein/high fat.  I have to say, I am really leaning towards the high fruit nowadays.  Especially the acidic fruits-starchy ones, like bananas, don’t sit too well with me…thus far anyway. 

   In other news, I haven’t worked too much on the book this past week.  Been working on another project, one that will hopefully lessen the pressure of the book making process.  The only other news is that I went out to a club last night.  It was real good times.  I’d forgotten how much I like the release of partying and good music-and to be honest I didn’t really even let go.  I’ve been feeling for a while now that I’d like to mesh my old life with my new lifestyle and it seems like that’s happening more and more these days.  I’m not drinking, I’m not doing stupid shit, but I’m becoming progessively more social and more open to partying at the same time.  That paints a very cool future in my mind-one that’s much more focused on the whole.  It allows me to have fun, while still being physically healthy-trying to eliminate the negative while maintaining the positive. 

     Another reason I’d really like to go out clubbing more often now is because I’m painfully aware of how uncomfortable I am in that environment.  That’s a big weak link in my chain.  I only talked to one girl last night and that was only because I recognized her from a, roughly, 3 minute conversation we had 8 years ago in LA, where I met her just the once and approached her on the grounds of my school.  Absolutely crazy to see her, and recognize and remember everything about her and our meeting, here in Stockholm.  Anyway, I have to iron out this wrinkle, if you will.  I simply can’t be as lacking as I was last night. 

   In keeping with my decision to just hit my weak links until I have no pain any longer, I decided that I also have to even out a lot of muscle groups.  Today’s training was dedicated to just that.  I did single legged squats with my left leg, deadlifts bilaterally, unilateral stiff arm pulldowns with the left arm, external rotations with the right arm, bicep curls with the right arm, dumbell tricep extensions with the left arm, and then back to some glute work for just the paralyzed left glute.  Felt pretty great afterwards actually, got that kind of ’click’ that I get when I know something is right.  Not a strong one, but getting there.  What I really felt a click after was a conversation I had with my napprapat which resulted in me figuring out what the problem was.  Here I’ve been dilligently working on isolating one tiny ass square inch portion of my left lumbar spine, trying to stengthen it as it is my weak link and I’ve totally ignored my own advice-that the pain is the summation, the symptom of the underlying problem.  It’s the leg that’s the F-ing problem!  I’m blaming a tiny tiny tiny piece of body for something that only a much bigger muscle group could cause.  My left leg is dramatically smaller and weaker than the right-it’s been that way for as long as I can remember, I’ve always leaned on the right while squatting.  As the left leg get’s weaker, so does the left portion of the lumbar spine as it is forced to do more work than it should and then in the end, the opposite happens-the weakness of the left leg and the reliance on the right keeps it from ever getting strong again by way of ignorance.  Big click. 

   In other news, my goal is to do a one arm chin up.  I’ve done 2 workouts thus far including them.  The first consisting of only a 1 negative rep per side.  The second being a 1 rep neg for two sets.  So two reps total.  Now, three days later, I’m still sore.  I even think I am pushing the limit on the strength of my right pec-I feel like I’m close to a tear, like I did something extranormal that last rep-it’s the second time that’s happened and I’m not waiting for a third; I’m going to go to work on that as soon as I feel better.  It’s not that bad though, should be back in action in a few days.  

   In regards to diet, I am still leaning towards the vegetarian side.  Having whole days on lots of mono fruit meals, vegetables, and a bit of nuts.  Feels really good, but not perfect.  My skin is a whole lot better and I need roughly 2 hours less sleep at night, which is very cool.  I also don’t really feel the urge to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night as much either.  In fact, I think that might just be on it’s way out, which would be nice given that I have had to get up once a night every night for the last 8 years or so.  I’m almost positive that is going to boil down to a blood sugar issue and the fact that I’m eating so little fat is allowing the sugar into the cells as it should rather than being stuck in the bloodstream with oil coated cells not able to recieve it.  Very interesting, not perfect yet, but interesting.  I can’t say that I am particularly drawn towards becoming a raw vegan to be honest, but if it is the best path for me I’ll take it.    

   Second post for today, first time I have ever done that.  Forget harvesting forests, I can’t believe I ignored the truth so long right before my eyes-and it was me who proclaimed it no less.  When I first started waking up, about 5 years ago, I remember coming to a major conclusion(my first ever): that we would have a whole lot more trees and vegetation if we stopped cutting the grass.  I’ve had that in my head for a while and just ignored it basically.  Now I feel silly. 

   I felt a kind of weird draw today to go out of my way and walk through the park instead of the way I had planned on going.  As I’m doing so, this being spring, I see little baby maples popping up out of there helicopters.  Maples that will 100% guaranteed die because they will be mowed over.  Holy crap, get my shovel, Batman!  My balcony is going to be a friggin sweet forest with all kinds of livelyness, life giving oxygen, and hot as hell forest nypmhs.  We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of would be trees here within the confines of one large park dying for no good reason at all.  Talk about a waste!  This is really helping to open my eyes to how much more efficiently we can do things than we are now.  Go get yourself some trees, dude.   

   What did you do?  I had my family over to my new apartment, grubbed a bit with them(I had my own food) and chilled with my brother afterwards for a while.  Then when I woke up this morning, read some out of an old Bible that I bought at a second hand store and got some information to chew on.

    In other news, I’ve been bad.  I’ve been tree stealer.  But I remind you, one should do what is right and not what is legal.  I’ve been very in love with trees for a good long time now, sometimes I gasp when I see them.  What I’ve been doing is ordering tree seeds online for trees that can grow indoors-mainly different ficuses and growing them to my heart’s content, but I’ve always wanted some less normal kinds of trees to have at home like oaks and maples and forest trees like that.  Problem is that 1. I never had a balcony and 2. I didn’t know how to grow those kinds from seed.  Funny I refer to them as forest trees-if I went to India, the ficus is the forest tree, but you get the drift. 

    So anyway, I said to myself ‘now wait a second, I know for a fact that people are paying a lot of unnecessary money to buy trees have landscapers bring them in and plant them in their backyard.  I know this because probably 9 out of 10 or so trees in the forest die because they grow too close to one another.’  So with that, BAM "I’m gonna save some trees and get some for my balcony at the same time"…into the park/forest I went with two plastic bags and my gloves on.  First I found a small maple ’grove,’ we’ll call it, with ten billion frickin maple trees all growing within inches of eachother.  Dug up a sapling and told it that I loved it.  Took some soil, carefully mashed and wrapped it, along with some Maple scree, around the roots and went on my way.   

    I didn’t really care if people were watching, to be honest, as I consider what I am doing to be a good thing.  We are the care takers, the stewards of the earth(you can tell where my influence is coming from this morning), we are to ACT upon the Earth as best we can, not ignore the Earth and let it sit there doing as it did before we came along-it is partly for us as well, we too are animals and souls.  So I got me some oaks too.  These grew very close to one another as well, although there were less of them in general, as compared to the maples, and I questioned whether it was a good idea-but I came to the conclusion that it was, given how big they were going to get and how many were in such a small area.  Although, I will duly admit that there is a selfish desire that must be railed against when doing this.  I have given in at least one time and I am not so willing to do it again because of the shame I feel.  I also admit that I am an amateur here and I could definitely be mistaken in my estimations, as I am only going by what I see.  But nonethess less: the forest is number one.  My balcony is number 10 million, this must be kept in mind.  The growth of the forest comes first and I’ll do my best to make that happen-and part of making that happen is actually DOING…whether it’s right or wrong, ACTING, but with the right thought in mind, so as to come to what is ultimately right.  Having said that, I think I did pretty good anyway, this first time. 

   I knew before, but now I am keenly aware of just how many saplings we are trampling when we walk in the forest.  Look down!  They are often masked by leaves and look just like little sticks sticking up out of the ground-especially when they don’t have leaves yet.  Adult trees cast hundreds of thousands of seeds and lots of them take.  Tons of them take.  We’ve got to do as the natives Americans did and walk and hunt and gather with consciouness.  I have made a pact with myself to get better, it would be good if you did too.  Use the rocks, use the logs, be like the elves and the nymphs, light footed and bounding, floating almost.  Not the trolls and the giants whom stomp and trample and crush.

   Anyway, I’m moving closer and closer to being vegan or vegetarian.  I’ve still got tons of experimenting to do, but I’m noticing a lot of detoxing going on on these days when I don’t eat meat.  That’s usually a pretty strong signal.  Fits of sneezing and spitting out a bit as well-kind of like a mini version of what happened when I first switched over to raw.  We’ll see what happens, I’m bent on doing what’s right for me in this regard.  Hope you’re well and have had a nice long weekend.  I’m going to run an obstacle course today. 

      P.   

   Seems like a lot of my ideas have been panning out lately, thank God.  As I said a couple of blogs back, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve tried to quit doing anything on sole ’will power’ instead of complete understanding.  I don’t actually think will power exists, to be honest.  I think it’s just a way to describe an understanding that is less than complete. 

    Anyway, I’ve been allowing myself cooked and even total junk food when my bodily feelings demand it, and I allow them to myself to my full feeling’s content-meaning I do just as much as I desire.  Then I assess.  For at least a full 24 hours.  I’ve been doing this my whole life, of course, like we all have-it’s just another way of saying I’m learning-but now I’m doing it consciously and with purpose so it goes much faster.  As a result my feelings are getting much closer to being representative of my true thoughts-meaning they are lining up with that which I think is right, instead of just being representative of my past experiences and feelings associated with whatever it was that I was doing.  It’s pretty sweet.  Junk food scares me now.  It’s still attractive in the sense that alcohol is probably always going to be attractive to an alcoholic, but it’s much less now.  The truth is that none of these things are inherintly good or bad so they will always have both positive and negative draws, but the whole truth is that most of these acts will likely lean very heavily towards one side or the other, and that whole truth makes itself known very clearly through giving yourself experiences and assessing them. The thought of junk food now comes with all the feelings associated with the whole picture-the crap ass feelings afterwards.  It’s very cool how this all is playing out.

    The moral of this story is that I think that we learn our way out of and into things.  Discapline, will power…all that stuff are kind of illusionary.  They don’t often last and if they do, it would seem that that would be a very uncomfortable way to live.  Rather it would be better to sacrifice a little bit more of your immediate feelings and act out whatever it is you are trying get a better grip on and assess it so you can know why and actually feel why you shouldn’t do it or should or whatever…I love the perfection of life there.  We are what we have sewn.  We are the summation of that which we have experienced, and the more we experience, the more we assess, the happier and more loving a summation we become.  It’s a grind.  A narrowing.  A kind of wittling out of the inefficient and revealing the efficient. 

   Training: same old, same old.  Rehab, trying new things to gain a better understanding of the body and exercise theory.  I’m editing the book on exercise theory as we speak.  I had a damn good lower back workout today.  Came up with a couple of new exercises there that were pretty sweet.