I do 20:4 5 days a week on a vegan plant-based, complex carb diet where the average carbs is around 240 grams and the average calories is 2100. But on 2 days a week, I do a vegan Keto diet (just 800 calories) where the net carbs is only 10 grams, so that the subsequent fasting periods for those two days kicks in the ketosis much sooner because of the low carbs digested. I also do one 48 hour fast every month. That 48 hour fast has the 2 Keto days on each side of it. I put all my meals into cronometer.com. It is clear to me from cronometer, comparing the high complex carb diet to the Keto diet that the former has much more nutrition. But I do use Keto on those 2 days to boost ketosis. People who do Keto 7 days a week get their ketosis from Keto, but I get mine from intermittent fasting boosted by Keto — there’s a significant difference there. Personally, I don’t think the Keto diet is a very healthy one.
Author: Henry Barnard
I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.
Health — No Accident
Health isn’t an accident, it is a choice. You make choices when it comes to nutrition, exercise, rest/sleep, etc. Make the right choices and you get health. If you make the wrong choices, then…
The person who smoked since their teenage years and died prematurely from lung cancer made the wrong choice. It was no accident, it was not fate, it was not in his genes. That person did it to himself.
If you eat a diet low in fiber, you will have intestinal issues and probably leaky gut, which leads to all the autoimmune disorders.
If you eat a diet high in meat and dairy, you are more likely to have heart disease, cancer, and intestinal issues.
If you eat a diet high in saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, you are more likely to have heart disease.
If you eat a lot of refined sugar, refined flour, and processed foods, you are like to have significant weight gain, insulin resistance, and ultimately diabetes.
If you don’t discipline yourself and get regular exercise, you will subject yourself to all the major diseases.
If you don’t get regular and deep sleep, you are not allowing the body to repair itself, and you will suffer the consequences.
All of the above are choices. Make the right ones, not the wrong ones, for the sake of better health. It’s your choice.
Teas
I started to drink tea in earnest about 1 year ago — for the first time in my life. Went through dozens of different teas to find the 3 I’ve settled on for now — Traditional Medicines Organic Hibiscus — interesting berry like taste, Gaia Herbs Liver Cleanse Herbal Tea (Licorice root, Dandelion & Peppermint) — my favorite taste wise, and Whole Foods Organic Lemongrass Bergamot Green Tea — very nice refreshing taste but both the Bergamot ingredient and the green tea have spectacular health benefits. I would recommend this Whole Foods green tea to anyone because of the Bergamot.
I don’t like tea without adding the Stevia for the sweetness. My teas have to be sweet for me to enjoy them. Without the Stevia, I wouldn’t like any of these teas. But the rub on Stevia is that there is one recent study that using Stevia, particularly in excess, may damage the gut bacteria in the large intestines, although there are earlier studies that say it is harmless. So who do you believe?
I’ve found that drinking a cup of tea is a good way to deal with sudden hunger if you want to avoid eating, so it can help with intermittent fasting. particularly at the end of one’s feeding period when it is so easy to go overboard with food. Drink tea instead and the hunger may well pass.
Canelo
I was watching a video of Canelo in the gym punching the heavy bag. He was concentrating on heavy-hitting hooks to the body, with both hands. Really trying to hit the bag as hard as he could. Punch after punch.
What he wants to do with that body punch is plant his feet and get maximum leverage in a hook to the kidney area. That is his power punch (reminds me of Micky Ward). It is Canelo’s game winner.
But it is also his maximum vulnerability because when he plants his feet to throw the body punch, that’s when he is most stationary and vulnerable, as his focus is on hitting his opponent’s kidney area, not on his own defense, particularly with regard to a counterpunch head shot from the opponent.
Cardamon
Do you prefer the green or the black?
Comic Books For Adults
American movies are comic books for adults. You lose 1% of your IQ for each one you watch.
Salt
Reading Fuhrman’s Eat For Life. Has a very interesting section on salt. Views salt from the evolutionary perspective of what humans in the bulk of their existence have taken in, that is, just the salt in the food and nothing more. That’s the amount our bodies through all those perhaps millions of years the human body is accustomed to need.
But then he compares that to the modern diet where everyone adds salt to virtually everything, so our current salt intake is spectacularly above where it should be. So we eat way too much salt compared to what we should be consuming, but worse, that amount of salt changes one’s taste buds to having to expect virtually everything one eats to be salty. So the current modern salted diet has radically changed the modern taste buds.
Only by drastically reducing salt can someone eventually get back to taste buds as they were meant to be, where one can pick out the more subtle flavors of various foods.
So the current heavily salted diet leads to high blood pressure and poor health, but also undermines one’s sense of taste. Goes on to say that his Nutritarian diet will lead to this reawakening of one’s true taste buds, and so you will get much more enjoyment out of actually tasting a variety of unsalted foods.
Bleeding Hearts
Bleeding-heart liberals live in a land of make-believe where everything is black and white, a bit like TV back in the 50s and 60s where the good guy, dressed in white, always prevailed against the bad guy, dressed in black.
They, the liberals, are always the good guy, on the side of justice and everything noble and blameless, no matter how foolish their ideas and how horrendous the consequences of those ludicrous ideas may be.
These liberals are particularly susceptible to anyone’s sob story. Give them a sob story and you are half way home to having a diehard ally on you side, no matter how ridiculous the sob story may be. And that’s where the simple-minded liberal really goes off the rails because he or she ends up aligning themselves with any number of never-do-well scoundrels out to hoodwink them with a sad — but very imaginative — tale of woe.
Easy Health Tricks
First thing I do in the morning is drink a half glass of water, as I wake up slightly dehydrated. But instead of just plain water, I put in a few drops of chlorophyll. It is supposed to clear out metallic toxins in the body.
When I drink my black coffee in the morning, it isn’t exactly black. I have this concoction of turmeric/ginger/cinnamon with a pinch of pepper. I add a half a teaspoon of this to the coffee. All three ingredients are supposed to have wonderful anti-inflammation properties.
Guns and Abortion
Half the country loves guns, and the other half hates them. Same with the abortion issue. So in both cases, nothing will change. Deadlocked.
I find myself completely ambivalent about abortion, as I can see the points of view of both sides, which leaves me completely undecided.
As to gun violence, I don’t see America ever leaving guns behind like GB did. After all, guns are actually protected by our Constitution.
So these incidents with crazies going off and killing innocent people will continue to be our Achilles heel well into the foreseeable future.
Guns and abortion — two issues that will cause endless and tremendous rancor with no resolution in sight.
Henry's Views 