How To Live Forever: Laird Hamilton

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-0521-laird-hamilton-20160521-snap-story.html

Ask Your Beer Belly Where The Hell Your Penis Went.

Wheelchair Bodybuilding competitor Jason Greer.

And you thought YOU were having a hard time getting to the gym.

I like my penis and I like the idea that when I look down, there it is. I can see it. But there are millions of men who haven’t seen theirs in years — even decades. They carry around this huge, ponderous, balance-challenging belly, many even as a badge of honor. I admit I was at the same time both fascinated and repulsed finding out that there are women and gay men who have sexually fetishized men with huge guts. But that’s another story, best addressed never.

Health-wise big guts are a screaming red flag indicating imminent health danger. A big gut is also a major factor in falls in both men and women, both due to people not being able to see their feet and the tripping obstacles before them, but also because their center of gravity is thrown off balance. This means, hire somebody to patch your roof rather than climb up a ladder to tackle it yourself.

Other medical views include the belief that the beer gut is not filled with beer, or fat, but oftentimes with feces. That some people are carrying around twenty pounds of petrified shit 24/7 which cannot be expelled naturally, and they do nothing about that, is just downright disturbing.

As humans we possess an uncanny ability to adapt to diminished mobility and health. This fascinating phenomenon was highlighted in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when emaciated people with AIDS were admitted to hospitals with infections that might have killed a healthy person, but somehow they recovered. Despite being faced with life threatening challenges, in many of these cases the body was able to fight off infections, both bacterial and fungal, that no one believed the patient could ever survive.

Such as it is with all kinds of adversity. People adapt to a serious threat or inconvenience, especially if they believe they cannot overcome it. We endure by convincing ourselves that the adversity is only temporary, that we will somehow resolve it at some point.

We really can’t control much of anything, but we are in total control of what we ingest (eat, drink and inhale) as well as our physical activity. Old age is absolutely the wrong time to nurture a beer gut, whether caused by beer or not. We can begin resolving a big gut, which is as literal an obstacle to a great sex life as it is  to our health, mobility and safety, by reconciling that it didn't just happen suddenly, all by itself.

More Stupid Bullshit From Salon.com

According to this fear-mongering cesspool of a website, America's poor put-upon men are suddenly suffering intolerable pressures to look like a superhero...

...or so claims this expert on such things.

The Great Bob Paris On Ego and Steroids.

Bob Paris was always the voice of reason in the bodybuilding world.

Psychology and Weight Loss

Chris Pratt before and after.

In all that we read or see in the media about obesity and fat loss, the words "deprived" and "deprivation" crop up continually.

People say the hardest thing about "going on a diet" is feeling deprived of all their favorite foods. They intentionally fail to connect the uncontrolled eating of their favorite foods to the inevitable result of that: obesity.

The psychology of it all is complicated. 

It comes down to choosing your brand of deprivation. "Depriving" one's body of the foods that made one fat in the first place in favor of a better looking, better feeling, better functioning body sure doesn't sound like deprivation — it sounds more like a well-deserved reward.

Weighing the momentary pleasure or comfort of eating whatever one wants whenever one wants it in any amount one craves, against feeling, looking and functioning better 24/7 is no contest. This is why people concoct the most complicated and convoluted justifications for the poor physical state they are in, because the solution is so obviously simple: eat less, move more.

I like snack foods almost as much as the next guy, but being in shape, knowing I can run or climb from danger, looking good, feeling great physically rather than feeling diminished and old rather than worrying about the outcome of my poor condition, FAR outweighs any temporary minute-long satisfaction I get from gorging on pizza or ice cream. 

I do eat pizza and ice cream, but the frequency and amount I can enjoy without it taking a physical toll are well known to me, because I pay attention. Often I read that seeing one's self in a photo or video in their obese state is what snapped people out of their obesity denial. It's intriguing that someone can be carrying around 50 extra pounds or more night and day and psychologically speaking not be aware of what a constant burden that is, yet one view of themselves as others view them can change their entire outlook.

Your Body Is Out To Get You! Excuse-Making In The New York Times

As a fitness author and instructor allow my opinion that competent journalism might compel the writers/film makers of this New York Times piece of May 2, 2016 to balance their story just a tad by spending as much time and effort highlighting those who did NOT revert to their former ways. The Times' sympathy and bias are all too blatant.

No one here, neither writers nor commenters, address the truth: it requires cramming a gargantuan amount of food down one’s gullet to achieve such an astonishing and destructive weight gain as 100 pounds and more. Metabolism my foot!

The core issue is the uncontrolled eating that none of these people admit to (notice how she distracts by carefully weighing her seeds/nuts; I challenge the film makers to return on a surprise visit and open their cupboard to reveal shelves of snack foods), because, it’s all the fault of their bad metabolism! The former excuse of “thyroid problems” from back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, once accepted as fact, has now been laid to rest in favor of a metabolism disorder justification. What a bunch of ongoing denial BS.

No one is THIS hungry. This is compulsion in a tailspin. These people went right back to their former ways, the ways that led to their gross obesity in the first place. And my using the term “gross obesity” is not a judgement — it’s a literal, medical fact.