Mindconnection eNL, 2007-07-01

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In this issue:

1. Product highlight
2. Brainpower tip
3. Time tip
4. Finance tip

5. Security tip
6. Health tip/Fitness tip
7. Miscellany
8. Thought for the day

The "secret" to having a lean body does not lie in any of the commonly-pushed schemes for "weight loss" or in some pill. It lies in the very simple formula: calories in minus calories out.

Let's put two facts together:

• Fact: Nobody at Auschwitz was obese. *
• Fact: People at Auschwitz did not eat much.

Hmm. There's a major clue. Can you guess what it is?

Now, let's put two other facts together.

• Fact: Americans, who are more obese than Europeans, eat significantly more than Europeans (in general).
• Fact: There are people who live on soda and chips but are not fat (they aren't healthy, but at least they aren't fat). The trick is they don't eat many chips or drink much soda.

Hmm. Could it be that simply eating less actually works?

• The short answer: Yes.
• The long answer: Yes.

Of course, it's important to eat the right foods. The less processed, the better. Eat mostly produce. This gives you a strong body. But for a lean body, you must eat less. Combine the two (better + less)with a decent exercise program, and you succeed. It really is that simple.

"But eating less makes me so hungry I could faint." If this is your excuse for binging, you probably eat "three squares" a day. Bad mistake. This stretches your stomach and causes hunger-inducing blood sugar swings.

Update: As of 2015, we have stopped endorsing MRPs because the good ones are off the market (as far as we know).

Why not use the strategy used by movie stars, body builders, models, and many others who enjoy a nice, lean physique?

• Strategy #1: Eat six small meals a day.
• Strategy #2: Make three of those meals with an MRP.

That's an MRP at right, and it's the one I personally recommend. Click the picture for more information on it. Use this correctly (along with proper diet, rest, and exercise), and you will have the lean, healthy body you want without going to any extremes and without doing things that are unsustainable (such as diet pills).

A note on whey shakes. You do not "lose weight" by adding whey shakes to your present diet. Many people think if they visit the gym and do a low-intensity workout, they need a 1.200 calorie whey shake. They then take diet pills in an effort to fight off the fat they subsequently pile on.

Whey is a short chain protein molecule, which means it is absorbed very quickly. After an intense workout (very rare among gym rats), your muscles are depleted enough for you to use whey. But for most people, what happens is their bodies can use maybe 10% of that shake and their livers convert the rest to fat.

There is nothing wrong with whey protein supplements. The problem is most people misapply them and thus get the opposite results of what they intended. Use a protein blend, and use small servings of it (aim for 20g of protein per 150lb of lean body weight--that weight is your body weight minus your body fat) to prevent this problem.

Footnote to Auschwitz comment:

I'm not making light of Auschwitz. People there were starved to death, and worse. I'm a big fan of Wiesel; I think any time we can mention Auschwitz in conjunction with the idea of starvation, we should do it. It wasn't just a "prison camp" or "relocation center." It was a place of immense suffering and horror. Too many people are too willing to forget. When I was in middle school, we saw film clips of those camps many times. I won't forget.

Let's use a hypothetical example. You are in a large building with 12 rooms. In each room is a little workstation for a larger project. To complete the project, you must complete a few tasks at each workstation.

The building has no lighting, but you have 12 little portable lights. You can choose to light up all 12 rooms at once or to concentrate the lighting on the task at hand. Which choice will you make?

The obviously correct choice is to concentrate that lighting.

Apply this same philosophy when learning something new, solving a problem, or doing anything else that requires brainpower.

As an example, consider what happens when the typical person buys an electronic device. Instead of walking through the manual a section at a time and mastering that section, most people will go out of sequence (skip around) or try to absorb it all at once. This is exactly why it was famously "impossible" for most people to program their VCRs. This same issue applies in many other scenarios, not just electronic devices.

The issue is mental fragmentation. Rather than divide your brainpower up across the entire problem, use all of your brainpower on first one aspect of it and then the next. You will reach the desired result far more quickly.

Here are a couple of time tips articles:

• https://www.mindconnection.com/main/timemanager/files/timetips/grocerytime_003.htm
• https://www.mindconnection.com/main/timemanager/files/timetips/grocerytime_004.htm

I keep hearing about the price of gasoline--people seem to be obsessed with it, now. Long-time readers know I've addressed fuel savings before. Rather than rehash or republish that same information, let me just describe the primary strategies:

• Select the right vehicle. If your vehicle gets less than 30MPG on the highway, replace it. (I am referring to regular passenger vehicles that people drive to work, grocery, etc., not the van you use in your plumbing business or whatever). Buy a manual transmission, if offered in the model you choose--this provides a huge savings in fuel economy as well as overall cost.
   
• Drive less. This reminds me of "eat less" for losing body fat. This is common sense, but it is not something most people even think of. Think of it. Then, do it. Combine trips, car pool, telecommute, etc.
   
• Maintain your vehicle. Use only synthetic oil and change both it and the filter regularly, rotate your tires per mfr's schedule, keep the front end aligned, check tire inflation monthly (or more often), and do all of the maintenance recommended in your owner's manual.
   
• Do not idle your engine. Doing so causes fuel to drop out of suspension and contaminate your oil. The reason has to do with the design of the intake manifold and the basic physics of Bernoulli's Law. The contaminated oil has reduced lubrication properties, thus lowering your fuel economy.
   
• Clean it out. I don't carry all kinds of junk in my car. It has surprised me to learn that other people routinely cart around all kinds of unnecessary items in their cars. That extra weight requires energy to move.
   
• Maintain your proper body weight. Most people grossly underestimate how fat they are. I have read fitness books written by fat guys who insist that their 17% body fat level is "normal," as in "nothing wrong with it." That's because they are pushing their own personal views on what fitness is and they want to believe that their ineffective programs work.
  
  Unless you are extremely muscular, you should not weigh more than 155 lbs if you are 6 feet tall. Use that as a yardstick, and follow the recommendations in the first article of this eNL to correct any deficiencies. A lot of people who are heavy claim, "Yah, well, I am big-boned." In most cases, that is not true. If you think it is true in your case, ask your physician to get you an official determination. You can also buy a scale that will tell you your skeletal weight. Remember, nobody ever improved anything by making unsupported excuses.
  
  You can find a slew of accurate, useful free articles at www.supplecity.com. You do not need special pills and potions, though the supplements recommended there can help (using the wrong ones for the wrong purpose works against you, though). In addition to reducing your fuel bills, being at the correct body composition means you'll reduce or eliminate future medical bills.

Most of the danger to our persons and property are perfectly legal. For example:

• It's legal for another person to attack you with a cigarette, and spew over 500 different carcinogens into the air you are breathing.
   
• It's legal for some kid to drive by in the wee hours with a overdriven speakers thumping out bass that wakes you. The loss of sleep dulls your mental edge and might be what causes you to have a fatal car accident or screw up that promotion you have been working so hard on.
   
• The government steals via excess spending and taxation, a situation exacerbated by individual government employee fraud, incompetence, corruption, and unaccountability. All perfectly legal.
   
• It's legal for a restaurant to spike your food with hydrogenated oil, which is a powerful carcinogen. Then again, most Americans willingly buy packaged "foods" that contain this poison anyhow. Read your bread labels.

It's also perfectly legal for people to violate their own personal security. For example:

• Every lawnmower manual instructs you to wear safety glasses. In industry, the rule is if rotating equipment is in your immediate environment, you put them on. How many people do you see actually doing this? Wear those safety glasses, to protect your eyes. You can buy attractive, UV-rated safety glasses inexpensively. If there aren't any stores that sell them in your location, search online and buy them.
   
• Ditto for hearing protection. The rule is if you have to raise your voice, you wear hearing protection. Wear it if operating a lawnmower.
   
• You would be pretty upset if someone pounded your knees, back, and hips with a wooden baseball bat, wouldn't you? Yet, over 80% of Americans carry so much extra body fat that their skeletons are mechanically tilted out of plane to balance the accumulated body fat. The effect on their joints, over time, is similar to being maliciously beaten.

What you need to do is step back and assess all of the various threats that present themselves. Ask these two questions:

1. What is the possible danger, here?
2. How can I protect myself?

The most serious threats you face are not the spectacular ones, such as a break-in. They are the day-to-day insidious ones that most of us simply do not guard against.

http://www.supplecity.com/articles/cholesterol.htm

1. Most hospitals make money by selling the umbilical cords cut from women who give birth. They are used in vein transplant surgery. So far, nobody has come up with a way of giving a Congressman a brain or a spine.
    

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