Vegan Diet and Exercise: Not an Athlete, Not on Vacation.
14 September 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I banos yen hey guys I don't normally
make videos address to health and fitness and exercise uh if you don't want to watch a video that kind close the window and I hope that this is an unusual video for this channel I think there are some good reasons why someone who is not an expert would share their experience of their perspective I think one of the interesting contrasts between snake oil salesmen and people giving sincere advice but sometimes you see it even within the same source of advice is actually the promise that these things can be or should be effortless that you can lose weight effortlessly that you can gain strength or you can gain muscle mass effortlessly and I think the mean value in hearing the perspective of someone like myself someone who is not an expert someone who's not a health and fitness guru or die coup or what have you um is actually just being honest about the opposite that it's not effortless that it is effort that involves hard work and suffering and sacrifice it's pretty common to hear people verbally or on the internet talking about feelings of guilt that they feel guilty for not exercising they feel guilty that they didn't go to the gym they feel guilty that not getting exercise for me personally it's the opposite I experience guilt that I do exercise I experience guilt that I am spending time on physical fitness instead of studying instead of learning something doing something productive economically instead of doing something with my daughter I'm a divorced parent instead of doing other things that I value more and you know if diet and exercise were just about vanity I wouldn't do them at all as you guys have probably heard me say before on this channel ultimately my reason for exercising in the way that I do is to be prepared for violence for unexpected situations in any given time it's part of an overall aesthetic of self-reliance and preparedness it's not about it's not about personal beauty for me uh but even so I actually find it hard to justify the time and effort that goes into exercise and it is true that it has negative impact on my life outside of the time at the gym it is true that if you lift weights seriously you do often enough go to sleep with a lot of physical pain with aching in your muscles it'll mess up your sleep cycle it'll mess up that's it'll mess up your your work cycle messed up the other things trying to do in the day it can take a big chunk out of your um out of your adult life if you go to the gym for one hour a day seven days a week that's a huge commitment and a huge sacrifice now by contrast many many people my generation spend much more than one hour a day playing video games or watching movies or doing other things so you can justify it to yourself some extent by replacing those activities with exercise or by doing the same time you can work out while you watch TV something I mentioned later on in this video but that's just my disclaimer at the start of this video is there some value in getting the perspective someone who is not an expert I think the value is probably just in being upfront about the type of effort it is and the type of pragmatic down-to-earth considerations we all have to make when we're not athletes and we're not experts and when this is not the highest priority in our lives it's not for me in a video recently posted this channel I remarked that the best form of activism political activism is whatever sort of activism really fits into your daily life if you can be honest with yourself reflect on what you can and can't do in a day this video is about the topic of diet and exercise the best form of diet and exercise is what ever really fits into your life it's very difficult I think for us to be honest with ourselves about that many people struggle with setting expectations for themselves they can't meet setting goals or targets they can't live up to and may be embraced in one ideal after another in terms of their diet even if it's within a deep vegan diet now I can throw up a selfie picture of the shape i'm currently in i am not an athlete I spend most of my time over a desk whether that's been at the University at whatever job i may have the time or uh you know studying researching writing on my own i am a book bound desk bound intellectual so i have no complaints about the physical shape that i'm in for many many people the questions about diet and exercise the main question it comes down to is the number of hours in a day to spend one hour at the gym is really a very serious sacrifice that many people can't make if you can't go to the gym for one hour a day if you can't go to the gym for one hour every second day I think you really need to look at everything in your life and find a combination of sources of exercise that will work for you practically about diets I can put up here some video footage of what I actually eaten one day here in China but the reality is again the solutions have come up with living in France Canada Cambodia Taiwan living in different countries around the world different times in my life and having different jobs that took up the hours the day in my life I've come up with radically different solutions at one point in my life I'm divorced back when I was married I remember my wife and I had a bread machine you know an automatic bread maker and I totally changed her diet early changed our daily habits so we used to set the timer on the bread machine wake up in the morning and have fresh baked bread there was another very different time in my life when i bought a deep frying machine again this is all vegan and I used to on a daily basis make french fries for my wife even though I myself do not really eat french fries and I would make hummus from scratch I would buy dried chickpeas and do the whole process starting from dried chickpeas of making hummus from scratch but was just during one period of my life in France that I did that I have never made hummus before that I never made homeless when i was living in canada before I was in France and I think I've never made homeless after that like living here in China now I don't buy chickpeas and make hummus so there's one period of my life in which we made our own bread albeit with a machine that you know automated the process made it a lot simpler than the making bread out of the oven there's another time in my life when I made things like french fries and hummus myself there been many different times where life in which i made pasta I like that most vegans you know chop up some garlic chopped herbs and tomatoes make her own past the sauce etc it's a touch up some onions um but what I've eaten outside of the house you know you know in terms of buying food other people make in terms of cooking for myself it has been totally profoundly different it's almost needless to say in a country like Laos or Cambodia you don't eat the same things that you eat in Saskatchewan so it came up with radically different solutions there have been times in my life when I had absolutely no access to a gym and I had to come up with bizarre solutions from my own exercise also when I first arrived in France I had no exercise equipment I had no access to a gym and I should this happen several times in my life i actually purchased really big bottles of water i bought six liter bottles of water and i would work out having one bottle in each hand and i figured out all these different exercises i could do with six liters of water in each hand um to try to simulate the kind of work that you might go to the gym and of course push-ups doing push-ups their feet elevated this is often been the main form of exercise if you get when I had no access to a gym no access to normal fitness equipment or what have you I just didn't have those options my point here is I am NOT an athlete I'm not trying to be an athlete I think the vast majority of people watching this video who may or may not appreciate this advice or these reflections you also are not athletes and are not planning to become athletes so the kind of pragmatism you need to have both in terms of the methods and means you're using in terms the fruit food preparation you're doing how many hours you have to prepare food you're not a professional chef you're also kind of professional athlete how much exercise can you get and what are the targets or goals you set for yourself women and men alike I think struggle with setting targets or goals that are aesthetic or emotional how they want to look how they want to feel I think that's a bad target or goal to have I think you should set targets or goals that are completely objective in terms of strength so for myself for many many years I've had a very simple target or goal as long as I can do 200 push-ups and I can bench press 200 pounds I'm happy now here in China we use kilograms for me to lift 90 kilograms 95 kilograms this is approximately 200 pounds it's actually not that big a deal I do that quite casually at the gym now I do bench press 200 210 what have you I me get up to doing 220 with you know equal ease my point is not that this is a ceiling on how much I want to lift but I never plan to lift 300 pounds i'm not trying to inch my way up to 300 if i'm doing 200 comfortably than i'm happy whether or not i once in a while lifting 230 or something the the upper limit is not what I'm concerned about but the point is that I can lift 200 pounds now my own body weight I is I don't think it's ever going to be below 200 pounds so when I do push-ups I do push-ups with my feet elevated dramatically elevated not slight little bit dramatically elevated with my feet flat so there's almost no way to my toes I'm lifting a very large percentage of my body weight when I do push-ups so given that my body weight is about 100 kilograms it's not surprising you know given the regularity of doing push-ups with that much body weight that I would also be able to bench press more than 90 kilograms so those are very reasonable attainable goals for me not just to reach I've already reached them now I've already surpassed it now whatever you want to say uh but for me to maintain over the long term they're not based on how I look they're not based on how I feel they're not based on how much I away even not I for me as a man I do not really care about my body weight in terms of how much fat I'm carrying around with me my main concern really is my capacity to cope with injury to defend myself if violence situations arise to be prepared at all times to deal with extreme situations that do come up as life goes on and other than that I'm concerned with wasting time I don't want to waste time or money with preparing food with consuming food I don't want to waste time with exercise either and that's one of the reasons why I tend to go for more brutal simple workouts that get a lot done in one hour or in however much time you have coming back to France I started off with just those six liter bottles of water and push-ups I did order waits that eventually arrived you know ordered on the Internet some weights that I could use in my apartment and that was many times my life where I had no gym and where you know I think for many people the main opportunity you have to work out is when you otherwise would be listening to the radio when you will be watching television if you watch the television news for 45 minutes that may be the only time you've got in the day when you could be lifting weights so if you can get set up in a way where you watch the news or you watch this youtube video now while you're lifting weights your home I think for many middle-aged people those type of workouts you need to look into you need to look into getting yourself an olympic bar and disc weights and to be able to do basic powerlifting in the comfort of your own apartment because when you include the travel time to and from a gym i think the vast majority of people have jobs you have kids do not have the option of exercising in a gym so when I was taking care of my newborn daughter again I'm now divorced uh but during those long months long sleepless nights there are many many times where i cradled my daughter in my arms i rocked her to sleep and then as soon as she fell asleep as soon as she she drifted off to sleep I you know came to the other end of the room was one big room the crib was actually in the safe room and I was I was lifting weights at the other end of the room and if my daughter woke up from her nap woke up from sleep put down the weights pick up my daughter you know you juggle it this way so whether it's your work schedule or your parenting schedule the responsibilities you have in life one of them's are reflected on many times this channel is that it's rather sad I think that so many people try to model their lives after people who are on permanent vacation people who have no jobs no responsibilities people who have many many hours to spend worrying with a diet worrying about food preparation and also an unlimited amount of time to spend on both exercise and relaxation for the vast majority of that is not useful at all there is another guy who gives health advice you're on YouTube called Joe best many people criticize him because they point out that he's in worse shape than I am you know in terms of his body fat level of musculature would have you he's not a typical example of a health guru but one of the things he says in his own defense which i think is an interesting point he says um you know if you want to learn about making money don't ask someone who's born rich don't just ask someone who's skinny about how to manage your weight or how to exercise or what have you you need to learn from people who've struggled with their weight i would say instead you need to talk to people who struggle with circumstances similar to your own when I was the University of Victoria just a few months ago the University in Canada I actually have many questions about diet and exercise from my own professors in a sense that's smart they're asking me not because of expert I'm not an expert uh they're nice because men athlete I'm not an athlete I'm not a Paragon I'm not some standard of unattainable health or well-being but I was someone who was in many ways struggling with exactly the same schedule at the same grocery store the same geography that they were they went to work every day on that same campus where I went to work as a student they're going to work there as a professor so for me as some day I'm 37 years old they were looking to me and wondering ok how are you coping with all these same factors now a lot of them didn't like the advice I gave them one of the best tips I had there in that climate and that circumstances for weight loss or fir adding more exercise to your day was that when you walk to the University which me was a very very long walk uphill long walk uphill get a backpack and fill it with stones you'd be amazed you get a wonderful work out with a backpack full of stones what would just be a passive low-impact exercise your day can actually become a really serious source of exertion you can really get a great workout that also in my opinion energizes you for all the other exercise you do push-ups or what-have-you whatever other forms actually no wait so heavy um III I think in every way you know whether you fill up your backpack with a bunch books you're not playing to to read that day or you managed to fill up your backpack with a bunch of stones I think there are little ways that you can work more exercise into a hectic schedule but what's interesting to me is that's exactly the kind of advice you're never going to get from a pro athlete you're never going to get from someone who's on permanent vacation that's kind of advice you would only get from someone who's struggling with the same schedule and even the same geography you know as where you work and where you live so that's about it guys um in many ways what I have access here to here in China I green vegetables every day I white rice every day I had a very kind of minimalistic diet there's no way for the vast majority there's no way you could imitate it if I moved back to Saskatchewan in Canada there's no way I could eat the same stuff i'm eating now there's no way i could even afford to spend the time preparing the dishes for myself that i'm currently eating to take something like a white cabbage and blanch it and prepare it if you're cooking a meal for a group of people you do that when you live alone you're not going to put in that much time and effort just have a plate full of white cabbage and I eat a lot of cabbage you're a shy I eat a lot of cabbage eat a lot of broccoli what have you so um these are the these are the minor miseries and obstacles that we all have to cope with in some kind of pragmatic down-to-earth way
make videos address to health and fitness and exercise uh if you don't want to watch a video that kind close the window and I hope that this is an unusual video for this channel I think there are some good reasons why someone who is not an expert would share their experience of their perspective I think one of the interesting contrasts between snake oil salesmen and people giving sincere advice but sometimes you see it even within the same source of advice is actually the promise that these things can be or should be effortless that you can lose weight effortlessly that you can gain strength or you can gain muscle mass effortlessly and I think the mean value in hearing the perspective of someone like myself someone who is not an expert someone who's not a health and fitness guru or die coup or what have you um is actually just being honest about the opposite that it's not effortless that it is effort that involves hard work and suffering and sacrifice it's pretty common to hear people verbally or on the internet talking about feelings of guilt that they feel guilty for not exercising they feel guilty that they didn't go to the gym they feel guilty that not getting exercise for me personally it's the opposite I experience guilt that I do exercise I experience guilt that I am spending time on physical fitness instead of studying instead of learning something doing something productive economically instead of doing something with my daughter I'm a divorced parent instead of doing other things that I value more and you know if diet and exercise were just about vanity I wouldn't do them at all as you guys have probably heard me say before on this channel ultimately my reason for exercising in the way that I do is to be prepared for violence for unexpected situations in any given time it's part of an overall aesthetic of self-reliance and preparedness it's not about it's not about personal beauty for me uh but even so I actually find it hard to justify the time and effort that goes into exercise and it is true that it has negative impact on my life outside of the time at the gym it is true that if you lift weights seriously you do often enough go to sleep with a lot of physical pain with aching in your muscles it'll mess up your sleep cycle it'll mess up that's it'll mess up your your work cycle messed up the other things trying to do in the day it can take a big chunk out of your um out of your adult life if you go to the gym for one hour a day seven days a week that's a huge commitment and a huge sacrifice now by contrast many many people my generation spend much more than one hour a day playing video games or watching movies or doing other things so you can justify it to yourself some extent by replacing those activities with exercise or by doing the same time you can work out while you watch TV something I mentioned later on in this video but that's just my disclaimer at the start of this video is there some value in getting the perspective someone who is not an expert I think the value is probably just in being upfront about the type of effort it is and the type of pragmatic down-to-earth considerations we all have to make when we're not athletes and we're not experts and when this is not the highest priority in our lives it's not for me in a video recently posted this channel I remarked that the best form of activism political activism is whatever sort of activism really fits into your daily life if you can be honest with yourself reflect on what you can and can't do in a day this video is about the topic of diet and exercise the best form of diet and exercise is what ever really fits into your life it's very difficult I think for us to be honest with ourselves about that many people struggle with setting expectations for themselves they can't meet setting goals or targets they can't live up to and may be embraced in one ideal after another in terms of their diet even if it's within a deep vegan diet now I can throw up a selfie picture of the shape i'm currently in i am not an athlete I spend most of my time over a desk whether that's been at the University at whatever job i may have the time or uh you know studying researching writing on my own i am a book bound desk bound intellectual so i have no complaints about the physical shape that i'm in for many many people the questions about diet and exercise the main question it comes down to is the number of hours in a day to spend one hour at the gym is really a very serious sacrifice that many people can't make if you can't go to the gym for one hour a day if you can't go to the gym for one hour every second day I think you really need to look at everything in your life and find a combination of sources of exercise that will work for you practically about diets I can put up here some video footage of what I actually eaten one day here in China but the reality is again the solutions have come up with living in France Canada Cambodia Taiwan living in different countries around the world different times in my life and having different jobs that took up the hours the day in my life I've come up with radically different solutions at one point in my life I'm divorced back when I was married I remember my wife and I had a bread machine you know an automatic bread maker and I totally changed her diet early changed our daily habits so we used to set the timer on the bread machine wake up in the morning and have fresh baked bread there was another very different time in my life when i bought a deep frying machine again this is all vegan and I used to on a daily basis make french fries for my wife even though I myself do not really eat french fries and I would make hummus from scratch I would buy dried chickpeas and do the whole process starting from dried chickpeas of making hummus from scratch but was just during one period of my life in France that I did that I have never made hummus before that I never made homeless when i was living in canada before I was in France and I think I've never made homeless after that like living here in China now I don't buy chickpeas and make hummus so there's one period of my life in which we made our own bread albeit with a machine that you know automated the process made it a lot simpler than the making bread out of the oven there's another time in my life when I made things like french fries and hummus myself there been many different times where life in which i made pasta I like that most vegans you know chop up some garlic chopped herbs and tomatoes make her own past the sauce etc it's a touch up some onions um but what I've eaten outside of the house you know you know in terms of buying food other people make in terms of cooking for myself it has been totally profoundly different it's almost needless to say in a country like Laos or Cambodia you don't eat the same things that you eat in Saskatchewan so it came up with radically different solutions there have been times in my life when I had absolutely no access to a gym and I had to come up with bizarre solutions from my own exercise also when I first arrived in France I had no exercise equipment I had no access to a gym and I should this happen several times in my life i actually purchased really big bottles of water i bought six liter bottles of water and i would work out having one bottle in each hand and i figured out all these different exercises i could do with six liters of water in each hand um to try to simulate the kind of work that you might go to the gym and of course push-ups doing push-ups their feet elevated this is often been the main form of exercise if you get when I had no access to a gym no access to normal fitness equipment or what have you I just didn't have those options my point here is I am NOT an athlete I'm not trying to be an athlete I think the vast majority of people watching this video who may or may not appreciate this advice or these reflections you also are not athletes and are not planning to become athletes so the kind of pragmatism you need to have both in terms of the methods and means you're using in terms the fruit food preparation you're doing how many hours you have to prepare food you're not a professional chef you're also kind of professional athlete how much exercise can you get and what are the targets or goals you set for yourself women and men alike I think struggle with setting targets or goals that are aesthetic or emotional how they want to look how they want to feel I think that's a bad target or goal to have I think you should set targets or goals that are completely objective in terms of strength so for myself for many many years I've had a very simple target or goal as long as I can do 200 push-ups and I can bench press 200 pounds I'm happy now here in China we use kilograms for me to lift 90 kilograms 95 kilograms this is approximately 200 pounds it's actually not that big a deal I do that quite casually at the gym now I do bench press 200 210 what have you I me get up to doing 220 with you know equal ease my point is not that this is a ceiling on how much I want to lift but I never plan to lift 300 pounds i'm not trying to inch my way up to 300 if i'm doing 200 comfortably than i'm happy whether or not i once in a while lifting 230 or something the the upper limit is not what I'm concerned about but the point is that I can lift 200 pounds now my own body weight I is I don't think it's ever going to be below 200 pounds so when I do push-ups I do push-ups with my feet elevated dramatically elevated not slight little bit dramatically elevated with my feet flat so there's almost no way to my toes I'm lifting a very large percentage of my body weight when I do push-ups so given that my body weight is about 100 kilograms it's not surprising you know given the regularity of doing push-ups with that much body weight that I would also be able to bench press more than 90 kilograms so those are very reasonable attainable goals for me not just to reach I've already reached them now I've already surpassed it now whatever you want to say uh but for me to maintain over the long term they're not based on how I look they're not based on how I feel they're not based on how much I away even not I for me as a man I do not really care about my body weight in terms of how much fat I'm carrying around with me my main concern really is my capacity to cope with injury to defend myself if violence situations arise to be prepared at all times to deal with extreme situations that do come up as life goes on and other than that I'm concerned with wasting time I don't want to waste time or money with preparing food with consuming food I don't want to waste time with exercise either and that's one of the reasons why I tend to go for more brutal simple workouts that get a lot done in one hour or in however much time you have coming back to France I started off with just those six liter bottles of water and push-ups I did order waits that eventually arrived you know ordered on the Internet some weights that I could use in my apartment and that was many times my life where I had no gym and where you know I think for many people the main opportunity you have to work out is when you otherwise would be listening to the radio when you will be watching television if you watch the television news for 45 minutes that may be the only time you've got in the day when you could be lifting weights so if you can get set up in a way where you watch the news or you watch this youtube video now while you're lifting weights your home I think for many middle-aged people those type of workouts you need to look into you need to look into getting yourself an olympic bar and disc weights and to be able to do basic powerlifting in the comfort of your own apartment because when you include the travel time to and from a gym i think the vast majority of people have jobs you have kids do not have the option of exercising in a gym so when I was taking care of my newborn daughter again I'm now divorced uh but during those long months long sleepless nights there are many many times where i cradled my daughter in my arms i rocked her to sleep and then as soon as she fell asleep as soon as she she drifted off to sleep I you know came to the other end of the room was one big room the crib was actually in the safe room and I was I was lifting weights at the other end of the room and if my daughter woke up from her nap woke up from sleep put down the weights pick up my daughter you know you juggle it this way so whether it's your work schedule or your parenting schedule the responsibilities you have in life one of them's are reflected on many times this channel is that it's rather sad I think that so many people try to model their lives after people who are on permanent vacation people who have no jobs no responsibilities people who have many many hours to spend worrying with a diet worrying about food preparation and also an unlimited amount of time to spend on both exercise and relaxation for the vast majority of that is not useful at all there is another guy who gives health advice you're on YouTube called Joe best many people criticize him because they point out that he's in worse shape than I am you know in terms of his body fat level of musculature would have you he's not a typical example of a health guru but one of the things he says in his own defense which i think is an interesting point he says um you know if you want to learn about making money don't ask someone who's born rich don't just ask someone who's skinny about how to manage your weight or how to exercise or what have you you need to learn from people who've struggled with their weight i would say instead you need to talk to people who struggle with circumstances similar to your own when I was the University of Victoria just a few months ago the University in Canada I actually have many questions about diet and exercise from my own professors in a sense that's smart they're asking me not because of expert I'm not an expert uh they're nice because men athlete I'm not an athlete I'm not a Paragon I'm not some standard of unattainable health or well-being but I was someone who was in many ways struggling with exactly the same schedule at the same grocery store the same geography that they were they went to work every day on that same campus where I went to work as a student they're going to work there as a professor so for me as some day I'm 37 years old they were looking to me and wondering ok how are you coping with all these same factors now a lot of them didn't like the advice I gave them one of the best tips I had there in that climate and that circumstances for weight loss or fir adding more exercise to your day was that when you walk to the University which me was a very very long walk uphill long walk uphill get a backpack and fill it with stones you'd be amazed you get a wonderful work out with a backpack full of stones what would just be a passive low-impact exercise your day can actually become a really serious source of exertion you can really get a great workout that also in my opinion energizes you for all the other exercise you do push-ups or what-have-you whatever other forms actually no wait so heavy um III I think in every way you know whether you fill up your backpack with a bunch books you're not playing to to read that day or you managed to fill up your backpack with a bunch of stones I think there are little ways that you can work more exercise into a hectic schedule but what's interesting to me is that's exactly the kind of advice you're never going to get from a pro athlete you're never going to get from someone who's on permanent vacation that's kind of advice you would only get from someone who's struggling with the same schedule and even the same geography you know as where you work and where you live so that's about it guys um in many ways what I have access here to here in China I green vegetables every day I white rice every day I had a very kind of minimalistic diet there's no way for the vast majority there's no way you could imitate it if I moved back to Saskatchewan in Canada there's no way I could eat the same stuff i'm eating now there's no way i could even afford to spend the time preparing the dishes for myself that i'm currently eating to take something like a white cabbage and blanch it and prepare it if you're cooking a meal for a group of people you do that when you live alone you're not going to put in that much time and effort just have a plate full of white cabbage and I eat a lot of cabbage you're a shy I eat a lot of cabbage eat a lot of broccoli what have you so um these are the these are the minor miseries and obstacles that we all have to cope with in some kind of pragmatic down-to-earth way