We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
My fitness trainer is no musclehead. It's his second career, following his passion. Yes he is strong and athletic, but he knows physiology and anatomy as well as any civilian and loves learning as much as he can.
He has now instructed me to gain 5-10 lbs over the next 4 months with a correct balance of carb+extra protein+fats.
I may be abnormal, but in recent years - maybe since turning 50 - my appetite has decreased, and decreased even more since I have been working out hard almost daily. He says my current diet is not sufficient to get me through the physical demands he is now putting on me with the weights and calisthenics. He plans to push the heck out of me this year with his daily grind claiming that, after one year, I am experienced enough to work really hard. He is not kidding. It is now brutal beyond my imagining and highly unpleasant. But I can do it, mostly. No pain, no gain. Loud grunts of agony and exertion.
The strong lifts - barbell squats, deadlifts, bench, etc. just kill me at these current weights. He keeps a record of what I do, and ups it every week mostly in weight, not reps. As they say, tho - if you want a 200 lb dead to feel light, do 225. Otherwise, 200 will always feel heavy.
I will grant that my muscles and overall strength, and my endurance, have improved dramatically, as well as the shape of my old cadaver. Same with Mrs. BD. However, my recovery time for a hard (ie weights or calis, not my cardio) workout is about 48-72 hrs. I know, because I am afflicted with DOMS. The consequence is that you never get to feel as good as you deserve to because you always feel sore or weak with fatigue from a day or two before. Sheesh - where is the pay-off? Vacation?
Since I often have to force myself to eat a meal and can rarely if ever clean a plate of food, I told him that this challenge will be as difficult for me as it would be for someone who was charged to lose 10 lbs. BTW, I am not scrawny at all but I do not carry much fat and my belly is cut, as they say.
We agreed that wine is an appetite-stimulant and I should try that with supper. Although I love a good wine, I usually only have wine with meals in restaurants and parties.
Any suggestions? I definitely need to add a second protein shake daily. Another thought was to try McDonald's or Wendy's for lunch for a while. A Big Mac with a small fries is probably a perfect balanced diet. Or a glass of milk, and maybe some ice cream at night. I like Subway, but they don't put in enough meat.
Another trouble is that midday food makes me drowsy for an hour so I can't really eat carbs at lunch. I don't know how other people do that and keep their functional edge. I don't know how anybody can eat breakfast either, beyond 2 coffees. Who wants food in the morning? Gross. Morning is for coffee. I will try to force down a protein shake or protein smoothie to be a cooperative client, but I don't want it. Breakfast is for children.
If I can gain 1/2 lb of muscle per month, that would be remarkable but probably unattainable. I would not enjoy that in adipose tissue. I am not anorcetic, but I just think fatty tissue is gross and definitely not sexy.
Mrs. BD planned, as she always does, a fine trip for me. This time, a surprise 3-night anniversary splurge at her current favorite 5-star NYC hotel (The Pierre). Best guest service in NYC, with a Jag and driver waiting for you at the door 24/7. But we are walkers, mostly.
Mrs. BD and I each lived in NYC for several years in youth and broke (not knowing each other), but because there is so much there, we like to approach it now as happy tourists (technically, "Bridge and Tunnel Crowd" I suppose) on voyages of discovery. Great fun for this ol' country boy. Of course, international tourism is booming in NY too. Mostly Europeans, plenty of Asians. We go to Europe but Europeans throng here to get away from their tired old things.
Our NYC posts are mostly for our NYC-avoidant readers. Taunting and teasing y'all. There is nothing new here for our NYC folks.
Manhattan sunrise, looking north up the East Side from our room on 5th and 61st, Nice:
Random fun pics below the fold. Marianne would have loved these -
Sicilian cheese is not very tasty, but I'll put in a free plug for the northern Italian Asiago. A fine hard cheese, and they now have it at Costco.
I tend to prefer stinky softer cheeses for dessert with a slice of fruit or some fruit preserves, but with an antipasto I don't mind hard cheeses. My favorite hard cheese? 6-month-old (ie young, before it gets grating-hard) Parmesan. Can't buy it in the US as far as I know. Second favorite? Pecorino. Third favorite? Dubliner. Now Asiago competing. I have yet to find an American cheddar that can compete with these things, but it might exist somewhere. A grandfather-in-law used to say "All good things come from Italy."
Ricotta Salata is good too, drizzled with some honey and sprinkled with chopped pistachio, but dog kibbles would be good with that too.
"BOSU" stands for Both Sides Up, or Both Sides Used. BOSU exercises - calisthenics basically - supposedly train balance and strengthen the core.
It is challenging just to stand on them (either side is wobbly), but I had to do 3 sets of squats on both sides. It is sort of amusing to watch your legs wobble and vibrate under the effect of the proprioceptive storm.
I'll admit that I could not do all the squats on this thing without a light touch of my trainer's hand. Worth doing? I doubt it but it's more exciting than sitting on a chair or watching TV.
Hillary Clinton breathed new life into her “girl power” campaign when she complained last week in a New York Magazine interview about latent sexism. According to Mrs. Clinton, she’d encountered people at campaign events who told her
“I really admire you, I really like you, I just don’t know if I can vote for a woman to be president.”
Squats are among the handful of essential strength-building and strength-maintenance exercises. They also happen to be highly-functional and, done properly, they can engage about 200 different muscles.
People tend to want to do barbell squats because they are the most demanding and stressful, but for beginners and for those who just want to stay fit and mobile without really increasing strength, higher-rep body-weight squats or light-weight squats (eg four sets of 20+ per week) are good exercise. You have to get low for it to work.
Is domestic Wagyu beef a scam? Since Japanese beef is no longer imported to the US, beef epicures are left with the US version of Kobe.
I would say it's not a scam. On Sunday morning I had a Wagyu steak salad for brunch at the member's dining room at the Metropolitan Museum and it was the best steak I have ever had. Pan-fried, caramelized crust, rare through, cuttable with a fork, dynamite flavor. I think it's my first time with Wagyu.
(Which reminds me to mention my view that, if you have some good steaks, do not cook them on a grill. London Broil, ok, but not good steaks. Pan-seared is the only way to do them.)
And speaking of steak, do you like to serve whole ones, or sliced? I think 1/2-inch slices are best except for ribeye. For London Broil, thinner. Need a good carving fork - a pique - to get it right. Same with grilled butterflied lamb which is my favorite grilled meat.
The midtown west side of Boom Town, USA has been transformed over the past decade. First came the giant high end residential Trump complex, as seen in my car pic below from the West Side highway. River views. A city itself, built on the old Hudson Line railroad yard. I think one or two more such apartment towers are in the works.
If you stroll over to the far west end of 42nd St., new luxury construction is everywhere. It all feels kinda sterile, but people want to live there now.
Passion, lust, desire, romantic enchantment are obviously the most powerful human human qualities. Forms of natural intoxication, the older folks say. To paraphrase the apocryphal Washington quote, they can be a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Also, a source of joy and deep contentment.
The classical scholar Bruce Thornton concludes that the ancient Greeks had an “overwhelmingly dark view of sexuality,” adding that “our own Romantic-inspired idealizations of sexuality as a force of personal liberation and self-fulfillment would strike most Greeks as a dangerous folly and delusion.” We can see an instance of their fears in the well-known story of Helen, a daughter of Aphrodite, in which the city of Troy was laid waste as the consequence of illicit sexual passion. Very sensibly, the pre-Christian Greeks believed that sex needed to be controlled in various social institutions. Rejecting such wisdom, we moderns “continue to cling to shopworn Romanticism that idealizes sexual passion and justifies abandoning the time-honored social controls -- marriage and chastity, guilt and shame -- that once helped to prevent sexual excesses from destroying American society,” in Thornton’s verdict.
1:11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin;
1:12 for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
1:13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.
1:14 I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.
1:15 But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased
1:16 to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being,
1:17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
1:18 Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days;
1:19 but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother.
1:20 In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!
1:21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,
1:22 and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ;
1:23 they only heard it said, "The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy."
Note: All of our physical fitness posts are about "fitness for life" for ordinary people. That means functional strength, power, agility, and endurance - and it includes getting rid of excess fat. We are not about body-building, becoming an underwear or swimsuit model, or a serious athlete. However, "fit for life" does look much better than its opposite. We try to cover the three main categories: strength, cardio, and calisthenics. You can review our fitness archives here.
- Deep squats are killers for me. They are, however, one of the basic full-body exertions and no fitness program can be complete without them. It's best to start with just body weight 90 degree squats, then deeper ones, then goblets, then to barbell, over months. Ass (almost) to the grass, they say. Not at first, though.
What's a good weight goal for the average, non-gym rat? Just your body weight on the barbell for 5 deep reps. That's good enough for sturdy "fit for life" legs. How Much Should You Be Able to Squat?
I would not suggest that anyone, regardless of age, begin the very good and simple 5X5 without at least several months of mixed training to get in decent conditioning first. Once prepared, it's a good approach for ages 18-90.
- Isolation exercises (ie weight exercises that stress less than large and multiple muscle groups): Isolation exercises are mainly for remediation, rehab, or aesthetics. The goal is to get past these things to do the big, hard things.
Megan omits from her discussion the likelihood that real, meaningful warming, were it to ever occur, might be good for the planet and for humanity. It certainly was with past warmings.
Yale
Students Demand That Major English Poets Be Abolished for Being
Heterosexual White Males - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=72797#sthash.XvklNnlF.dpuf
Concert promoters in Europe cancel gigs in order to satiate politically correct millennials, but things are changing here. Where offended students used to get safe rooms and sympathy, they are now being derided. When they said seeing “Trump” written in chalk on their school made them feel “traumatized,” we had #TheChalkening where students all over the country wrote “Trump” in chalk all over schools. I don’t even think they were necessarily Trump supporters. They’d just had enough of whiny liberals and their culture of fear. We lost France a long time ago. Britain is on its deathbed. But Eagles of Death Metal are an American band and we don’t tolerate terror over here. We’ve let the multicult run the show for seven years and they failed. It’s time to take our country back and the first step is to stop apologizing.
My fitness trainer is no musclehead. It's his second career, following his passion. Yes he is strong and athletic, but he knows physiology and anatomy as well as any civilian and loves learning as much as he can.
4 Reasons
Everybody loves the taste of basil. My father-in-law likes to just take a leaf and munch it up, and so do I. 
"BOSU" 
Wolves (dogs)