Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Gardening, Exercise, and S**t-Talkers

The Owl is Looking out for Pigeon Intruders...

You can't really blame the pigeons for wanting to be near the greenery...living in this city isn't exactly the most connecting thing to nature. Did you know pigeons are still raised for meat in many areas of the world? Even in the Midwest, where they eat nothing but grains and corn, people still eat them. Anyways...

The garden is going bananas recently. And its the near the end of October. There is absolutely no reason for your garden to be empty after October 1st. It could actually be the most productive time in regards to high-mineral greens.


The Lacinato Kale is a deep dark green, the Southern Collards are huge and making great wraps. I like to use a little nut butter blended with Sun-dried Tomatoes, sprouts, sliced cukes, and shredded radishes. Roll it all up like a burrito or a nori roll and...HEAVEN!!!

The Broccoli is charging...but no florets yet. I eat the bottom leaves though. Everything is going really well. Its all about good soil, and watering every other day. The damn aphids are a problem, and I never got ladybugs because I thought it would be too cold for them by now. WRONG. I still wipe their leaves clean whenever I can, and make sure they are getting enough warm water with sea salt.

However, according to this joker below, Im raising these poor plants so I can cruelly devour them and take their lives away. Check it out...

"While I understand what your saying about not eating animals, you kind of disregard the fact that your eating other living creatures in the plant kingdom. Plants are just as much as living as animals! Why is it ok to eat them, and not ok to eat an animal? There has been studies that have shown that plants feel pain, plants listen, plants communicate, and plants know what are going on around them much like a human does. When a caterpillar or a human tries to eat them, they will send out chemicals to try to repel them. They clearly don't want to be eaten! So what does that say? They might not have a inner body system like us, but they have life in them, they have blood, which is known as chlorophyll."

So what do you think? First off...everyone please look into this book. I've read it and watched the corresponding documentary. I realize that plants are indeed living and conscious creatures. However, plants give us fruit to eat so that we spread their seeds. This causes them nothing but beneficial results. And a person can eat many leaves off of a plant and the plant will still be alive if not healthier in the long term because of the pruning. David Wolfe writes very well about this issue. Its all about good and bad karma while eating. Eating roots and tubers like beets and carrots obviously kills the plant. I believe that we aren't supposed to eat the roots, just the greens. And if not, what should we eat? What do you suggest ANONYMOUS? Maybe I should learn how to sun-gaze and study breatharianism.

And to equate animal suffering with plant suffering seems a bit nit-picky. We can go back and forth forever, but in REALITY...we must eat the diet we are made for. Green leaves, fruits, and a small amount of nuts and seeds. Am I going to label the horse as a tyrant because it eats all of that defenseless grass? How about the lion that eats zebras? This is what they are supposed to eat, and I suggest that humans do the same thing. Yes, plants are living things, and they dont want to be chewed on any more than I do, but this is the game of life we are in, and we must play according to the rules. To raise and destroy billions of innocent animals that we are not supposed to eat anyways is asinine beyond belief. That is what I must speak out against...that needless cruelty and suffering that affects them AND us extremely negatively.

I have to admit that I love these people that bring up this topic...it gives me that eye-rolling laugh that I need once in a while. Fruitarianism is great, but you have to get the green leaves in there somehow. Im basically a fruitarian anyways, besides the sea vegetables and minuscule amount of nuts that I eat. But you have to eat the greens. Study the primate diets and you will see that this is what is for us. Plant suffering or not...we need to eat green leaves.

Maybe the day will come when people stand outside of jamba juice and dump green liquid all over people to label them as plant murderers like they did with red paint for fur coats back in the day. Why isnt THAT still going on? If you wear a fur coat...I'm sorry...I love you, but you are seriously deranged and need help NOW. Wearing dead carcasses as fashion is MESSED UP.

Exercise Anyone?


This is what I do...(besides trying to look SOOO serious)

You must realize that its all about long-term CONSISTENCY. The tortoise wins the race every time. No Joke. Little things done consistently ADD UP.

I used to be BIG into going to the gym. When I was there I was totally focused on my workout. I realized that I was working way too hard though. Way too much cardio when I could have just eaten earlier at night and cut out more sugar. Thats the great thing about raw foods...if you do it right and eat earlier before you sleep, you really dont have to work out that much. You will lean up naturally, and your muscles will start to show. And by doing muscle exercises, your heart-rate will beat at the fat-burning rate...its all good. I gave up the gym, and do everything at home or do my power-walks on the Hudson River Parkway.

I do push-ups whenever my chest isn't sore. I do them until I cant do anymore...even on my knees, and then right at the end, I try to suspend myself right in the middle until it BURNS. MAKE IT BURN. Thats the idea. A nice combo is to flip onto your back in between your push-up sets and do crunches. Again...make it burn. Slow and steady...make it hurt. I also do leg raises to focus on my lower abdominals. SLOW....

Ok...so thats chest and stomach. What else? For biceps, triceps, and shoulders, I use a 12 lb weight that I bought for $10. Its not very heavy at all for the biceps, but again, I do it slow and really squeeze hard during every rep. My arms still get sore the next day. I like to do arms while watching a documentary. I also do some twists and boxing moves while I watch something...along with jump rope whenever I have the time to go up on the roof and do it. Thats really a good one to include, and so affordable. For balance and endurance and breathing, jump-rope cannot be beat. And I still do some power-walking while listening to an audiobook or a podcast. I used to need high energy music while I did that stuff, but now I see it as a missed opportunity to learn something. Do what works for you.

Simple, eh? Its really about doing it consistently every day that you are able to. That is where the results come from. Not some fancy gym membership and working out really hard 2-3 times a week while still trashing your body with cooked and processed foods. Your progress with greatly accelerate by avoiding late night eating, and working out before breakfast as well. Pretty soon you will be able to see veins under your skin, and thats when you know you are really shedding the fat.

LONG POST AGAIN! Sorry everyone...I was thinking about doing the exercise post for later, but Id hate to break the promise...so there it was. I'll do a Q & A post soon in case you have any questions that you want answered directly.

Stay juicy and remember...little things ADD UP. Consistency is the winner...persistence cannot lose.

Peace and love for all creatures (EXCEPT PLANTS!! CHOMP CHOMP!!!).

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you feel about bodyweight & self-resistance exercises? Such as the Charles Atlas exercises based on animal movements. Is it possible to get as cut/ripped looking as you do with just those, or do you need to use weights? Also how do you feel about sprinting?

This doesn't pertain to your post, but I was wondering if your tan is all natural, or is it from a tanning-bed, or a sunless tanner?
Also when you go out in the sun do you put on sunscreen or something natural like coconut butter?

Dhrumil said...

Holly shit. This was a great post man. I laughing like crazy.

We'll start a plant murders club.

Thanks for posting your workout routine. Lots of people were asking me about that.

See you Sunday for dinner.

William Mize said...

Great post, Anthony!
I know I was one of the people who wanted to know about your workout and I truly appreciate the long post.

Don't EVER apologize for your long posts, my brother.

Love the fact that you've boiled down HIT (High Intensity Training or Go Slow or Slow Burn, whatever they are calling it these days) to a few simple body weight based movements to achieve amazing results.

Top notch. Keep 'em coming.

Anonymous said...

I found your blog somehow??? Who knows how I got here. I have found a lot of great information here and you have some interesting ideas. I am wondering if you find though that your line of work - promoting Target and other "industrialized" free enterprises through your modeling isn't also promoting the very thing you proclaim to want the demise of, i.e. industrialized civilization? How do you justify it? I mean I know we all have to support ourselves to live, but where does it start and where does it end? I am just trying to wrap my brain around ending industrialized civilization. I was born in the wrong century myself.

Anonymous said...

Everything you say is great. It just is the biggest hypocracy ever. I can understand why you do what you do but then to write a blog about the opposite.....real ispiring. Go promote your big industries and fill your pockets so you can live your dream but just know that you are a part of what you preach against. Maybe take your own advice rather then make up your selfish exuses on why it is OK for you to help these "non-local" business to reign in our communties, i.e. Target, so you can get where YOU want to get in life. That is like G.W. Bush giving speaches about foreign oil dependencies....we all think he is BS when we hear him talk about getting away from being dependant on foreign oil as he and his family/friends get rich on oil. How many bucks have you made for Target? My family owned a local business that got driven out of town because a Target came in and made it impossible to make ends meat. You are a part of that in one way or another which would be fine if you didnt have the knowledge that you did. It is obvious that you are smart enough to know what is right but you just tell yourself that it is justified. Keep telling yourself that but you can live with the guilt while i refuse to support those companies. I wouldnt be found dead doing any kind of job for them even if it did help me out because it very likely is effecting someone else. IF you are going to talk big about supporting local businesses and thinking big picture, then take a stand and walk the walk. I have always liked your blogs but cant support you because of who you support. I am sure you will come up with some blog about how you just have to do what you have to do to get where you want to be but in the end it is just justifying the wrong. Plain and simple. My family would say the same thing because our business was supporting my parents dream farm for decades and now they were forced to move to another area working 9-5's for someone else's dream. Rawmodel: Your vision shouldnt stop where your $$. starts.

Anonymous said...

hi anthony
this isn't really related to this post but i was wondering that if when you went raw your eyes changed color? i've read that other people's eyes have gotten lighter. what do you think?
peace :)
and keep the posts coming please! they are REALLY inspirational and intelligent!

Anonymous said...

Hi. I was wondering if you still follow the same guidelines below or have you change it since? I'd like to know, thanks.

Also how will you change your workout since your bike was stolen?

" I start my day off with an hour on the treadmill, then I ride bike at least one hour around the city every day, I lift weights for an
hour, and Im walking around doing castings at least 3 hours a day. This is serious physical activity, all on four hours of sleep and no animal meat or dairy."

About Me said...

Anthony,

Thank you for your blogs :) The pictures of your greens show how healthy and strong they are! I'm very inspired - can you recommend some resources and/or give information about how you started learning to grow things like kale, etc? I know very little at all about how to start...

Thanks for everything!

Courtney

Anonymous said...

I highly recommend "The pH Miracle for Weightloss." You obviously don't need to lose weight; however, the book speaks to alkalinizing the body. The high-fruit raw diet didn't work well for me..at ALL. I developed cavities, teeth sensitivity, candida, poor circulation, embarrassing and incessant flatulance, and dull and dry skin. I'm sure that I could things of a few other unpleasantries, but I think that you get that I didn't fair well. Anyway, the ideal pH Miracle diet could be oversimplified as a low-carb, moderate protein and moderate fat plan. The majority of fats come from raw mono- and poly-unsaturated fats (e.g., olives, hemp/flax/sesame/sunflower/pumpkin seeds, avocados). Plant sourced raw saturated fats like coconut and palm oils are highly recommended as well. The diet centers around green vegetables and non-sweet fruits (e.g., cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, avocadoes, lemons/limes, olives)It seems that the high-fruit protocol is working for you, and you may want to skim the book at a B&N on a rainy afternoon just to see what it's all about.
I also found the high-fruit approach to be much more expensive. Many of my friends and I discussed the sustainability of the lifestyle as well. While a much more sustainable option that the SAD, sweet fruit trees/bushes deplete the soil more than non-sweet varieties and green vegetables. The latter are also much more nutritionally dense and less calorie dense. Just more food for thought..pun intended.

Oh, in this latest book in the series, Dr. Robert O. Young lays out a very effective and much more efficient workout regimen. He is a pioneer. Again, he doesn't necessarily recommend 100% raw or vegan, he does strongly advise that at least 80% of veggies be consumed raw. I think that you find his "New Biology" and exercise recommendation intriguing, indeed. Thanks, again, for your efforts. You are much appreciated. Best.

David Thoreau said...

Dear Anthony (and friends),

I want to share with you, in response, the conclusion that I have arrived at regarding the eating of flesh after many years of arduous struggling and the spending of much deeply introspective time with. I share it with love and in appreciation of your own free and generous sharing of the ways in which you've come to see the world. As we each do this, I believe, we all draw that much closer to one another and remember with deeper gravity the very literal oneness that we all share.

This, in short, is the truth that I've arrived at and come to adopt on the matter:

Eating flesh is the way of the Earth. Whether an animal is directly consuming the body of another animal, the body of a plant, or the offspring of a plant, he is taking the flesh of that other conscious entity into his own physical being; the flesh of the one becomes the flesh of the other; the flesh of the eaten becomes the flesh of the eater.

In the wild, when a fox kills a bird and eats it, the body of the bird is literally becoming the body of the fox, and so continues the cycle of rebirth and regeneration that is inherent in all manner of physical life on this planet. The flesh of the bird becomes the flesh of the fox, for the proteins that create the body of the bird will be deconstructed, assimilated into, and build now the body of the fox; the knowledge of the bird becomes the knowledge of the fox, for the emotional and experiential memory stored in the cells of the bird will now be taken into and taken up by the body of the fox. It is a very intimate exchange, really, perhaps even more so than even the most loving and connected form of sex, for in eating, the very physical being of one is dissolving into and becoming the very physical being of another.

Think about that for a moment.

So, to put this now into the greater perspective of human animals eating the flesh of other animals : there is nothing wrong with or inherently "un-natural" about it at its core. Just the opposite, in fact. Whether it is animal or plant, its flesh becomes our flesh and, quite literally, it becomes us; it is literal and logical that we are, indeed, what we eat, for the flesh of one is ALWAYS borne out of the flesh of another. This is simply how physical life on Earth manifests itself.

To say that it is more humane to eat the flesh of a plant than it is to eat the flesh of an animal assumes a grave misunderstanding of consciousness and a serious insult to plants. All creatures--be they plant or animal--are alive and conscious. All creatures emanate from the same God-consciousness and are a DIRECT extension of the All That Is. There is just no other possibility, logically. It cannot be that some living things emanate from God-consciousness while other beings do not. It is a logical impossibility. (And for anyone who would like a venn diagram and further explanation of this, I will be only too happy to draw one out for you.)

That said, eating an animal and eating a plant are not so different from one another, at their core. It is only that they LOOK different on the outside. We associate eating plants with gentle creatures that do not hunt (although the overwhelming majority of "herbivores" also supplement their diet with small insects, most notably among these being gorillas and squirrels), we associate it with peace, with sustainability, with goodness, with nature, with love. But, my friends, you must understand that these associations are simply that: associations. And by its definition, an association is the imperfect and intentional aligning of or likening of one thing to another thing to which it is not inherently or logically aligned. E.g., I may associate the color olive green with my young adulthood and all of the things that it therefore reminds me of and the emotions that follow when I think back to such times. But, at the end of the day, olive green is just a color, and it has no identity or set sense of self other than its physical nature as the hue we call olive green. Similarly, the pieces of colored linen that we refer to as dollars have no inherent value or worth in and of themselves apart from the value that we, as a whole society, agree to put upon them and to honor. But the ink-covered linen is simply that. It is not money without our associations and without our mutual agreements that it is to be used and honored as a medium of exchange.

So, coming back to the matter of flesh. When you eat a carrot, you are eating the flesh--i.e, the physical body--a sentient being whose consciousness is housed in that, which we call a carrot. When you eat a chicken, you are eating the flesh--i.e., the physical body--of a sentient being whose consciousness is housed in that, which we call a chicken. When you eat the egg of an animal, you are eating the new beginnings of the physical body of a sentient being. When you eat the egg (i.e., seed) of a plant or the flesh that surrounds it, you are eating the new beginnings of the physical body of a sentient being. There is simply no way of getting around it. Flesh is borne out of flesh. Life is borne out of life. Whether you choose to entirely animal flesh, entirely plant flesh, or any combination thereof is up to you, and each will yield different consequences, physically and otherwise. But the point of note is that one is not RIGHT, thus making the other one WRONG. These are simply moral projections, and nothing about them can ever be absolute or inherently accurate, given the very nature of what they are.

Looking at this from the perspective of a raw foodist, I believe the important matter isn't whether or not to eat animal flesh but whether or not to eat dead flesh of any kind, plant or animal. THAT--physically, mentally, and emotionally speaking--is the real issue of consequence that is worthy of great consideration. Whether one is speaking of cooked animal flesh or cooked plant flesh, the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates are similarly denatured and/or restructured, chemically, bearing the same burdens upon the body upon digestion and assimilation. Both are similarly dead and essentially toxic to any physical system that is designed to eat, digest, and assimilate into itself living matter--a physical system that nearly all creature share, with the special exception of those we call scavengers.

In fact, far beyond the differences between cooked and raw flesh, I believe--philosophically and in theory, for there is too little hard evidence to support this without refute--that there is an even more important and notable difference difference between eating uncooked flesh that is freshly devoid of its life force (i.e., a squirrel whose neck has just been snapped by a fox or a carrot that has just been pulled from the ground) and uncooked flesh that has been dead and, therefore, already in decomposition for several days before arriving on your grocery store shelf or restaurant plate, no matter the price or perceived quality of the item by way of its raising and handling. In the wild, food is eaten fresh and just recently deceased, whether it is the flesh of an animal or plant. In fact, food is often eaten at the precise moment of death, such as when one animal eats another animal whole or when an animal eats of a plant while still in the ground or of its fruits, flowers, or seeds while still attached to the bearer of such.

In short, if your intention is to eat living, thriving flesh and assimilate that into one's self, then let living, thriving flesh be your food source. And the ways in which to do this are to eat living plants or to eat living animals, just as is practiced by every non-scavenger species of the planet--the latter of whom are the only ones who are biologically engineered to prefer and thrive on dead flesh. But cast not your judgment on the eating of animal flesh, for to do so is by its very nature a hypocrisy of incorrect logic and a misunderstanding of consciousness and the physical expression of God; the plant is no less alive, conscious, or divine than the animal.

By all means, if you must denounce something, then denounce the cruel raising of slaughtering of animals for human consumption, denounce the waste and brutality therein, denounce the lack of human respect for their animal friends (as well as the plants), and denounce the lack of regard most humans have both for their collective home of the Earth and the individual home of their bodies and what they choose to put into each of them. But, if you must denounce, temper it with love, temper with a greater understanding of the ways of the Earth, temper it with a greater understanding of physical life as the experience of relativity--of God knowing through experience what God is by way of knowing through experience what God is not. Be an example to other humans as to what they may become, if they so choose to. And remind them that there are options and opinions outside of the tiny box within which they may presently be living.

But do not me misled into taking up residence within such a tiny box, yourself! And if you desire to think critically and carefully about the matter of eating, see the big picture from the perspective of the the exceedingly beautiful and supremely intimate exchange that it always is: my body, as the eaten, now becomes your body, as the eater. Every such exchange is a beautiful gift from the eaten to the eater. And every creature, be it plant or animal, is fully aware of this fact on a deeper level of its consciousness, and it gives itself joyfully over to you. Do not take the plants for granted in this way, just as you would not take the animals for granted in this way. Give love to what you eat, give thanks as you take it into yourself and create your flesh out of it, and eat it raw and fresh and full of life!

Peace to you and much love,

David

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