kicking it old skool

I struggled a bit today, mostly because I ran out of food midway through the afternoon. My energy levels feel a bit down also, I reckon this is due to the strictly vegetarian diet.

I’m beginning to question the logic of this exercise (well, I’ve questioned it many times!). Annelie kind of put it best, by saying that it’s a scary insight into what it must be like for over-obsessive eaters. Because our entire lives revolve around eating at the moment, so much so that it impacts other areas of our lives. For instance, I dearly wanted to take my wife out to a movie tonight. But the idea that we would miss dinner (because it will take to long to cook) was the deal breaker. More so, what about the usual staple of popcorn and slurpees? Can’t have those, it’s pure sugar and aerated salt.

I’m also still trying to poke holes in this diet as often as possible, since the essence of this exercise is to have an 80% alkaline diet. So how come there are so many foods omitted from our approved foods list? Pineapple, hummus, hard boiled eggs, Almonds and yogurt for example are all alkaline foods. I’ll ask Morne about this, but I suspect he’ll say it’s because of the detox requirement. The way I figure it at the moment is that there are multiple aspects at work:

If you purely want to lose weight, it stands to reason to EAT LESS. That’s a “duh” moment. Obviously, the next point is to not only eat less, but eat quality foods. So the “eat less” bit does not equal “stuff less food in your mouth”. It’s around calorie intake. It has been found that an average person needs around 2500 calories a day to keep going and be considered healthy. If you’re an athlete, that number skyrockets, but that’s cool, cuss your body can absorb and expend that energy more efficiently. So the “duh” moment is, is that if you take in 5000 calories a day and only expend 2500, you store that as fat.

On this diet we are on, Annelie has calculated that we barely touch 2000 calories a day. So it’s obvious that we will lose weight, as common knowledge is proven accurate. You don’t need a machine, or fancy slogans to do this. It can be done by anybody.

The next aspect is the detox bit. Lot’s of trains of thought out there, but ok, let’s stick to this plan. The idea is to pump your body full of natural foods to get it to an almost starved state, where detoxification happens on a cellular level. This will burn out whatever fat stores you have along with the toxins contained within.

The machine, in my humble opinion, is just a substitute for going to gym. Any personal trainer can help you focus training on the "problem areas" coupled with a good diet. But working out is far more pressing than lying on your back and having mild shock treatment.

My question is thus, why only the specific foods on our list? And what scientific evidence can be presented that I can, for instance, not just swop out any old alkaline food? Will it really make that big a difference, or is this a losing case of diminishing returns? In other words, I will get great joy from being allowed pineapple, cottage cheese and eggs, for example, but it won’t hamper my progress that much.

Examples:

Cottage cheese with smoked salmon!? Bring it on!!

Pineapple with ANY salad will make the hurt stop

Two hardboiled eggs, again with salad, heck, even as a stand alone meal!

Almonds to scoff on between meals.

Yeah… a long rant. But I’m wired to ask questions and hack the shit out of any authoritative program or instruction. And I will be fair, this is the first batch of folks they’re putting through this. It’s a beta run, right? You will always trip over the details. I hope I can at least provide enough constructive criticism to help them along. Ultimately, I just want some more variety in what is still, in week two, a damn hard thing to do.

[G, out]

Roll for perception check