Happy Saturday!  Did you get a lot of Christmas shopping done today?  I actually did, which is good for me.  I generally hate shopping.  For me, it’s more of a sprint than a treasure hunt.  If I am not looking to buy anything I see so much stuff I just love and want, but when I am out actually intending to spend money and buy things, I can’t find a single thing that appeals to me.  Does that ever happen to you?

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I rarely get very sore anymore, due to my living foods diet and the massive antioxidants in Mona Vie.  Well, I found a way to overcome all that today.   I am becoming very intense about wanting to gain muscle, especially in my legs.  So Michael and I hit a very hard and intense leg routine this afternoon, and I am already quite sore only 6 hours later.  Michael said he is sore too.  Both of us, right in the deep middle of the meaty part of our glutes.  But it’s a good sore—the kind that lets you know you accomplished something.

Today’s leg workout routine focused on glutes and hamstrings.  The first exercise we did was leg presses.  Normally pretty mundane, but I made them brutal just through a simple tweak in technique.  I set the safety stopper of the machine right where the rack would hit it when my knees were just about buried in my shoulders.  Then I let the rack down in a good slow negative until it rested momentarily on the stopper, and pressed it back up with some explosiveness.  Wow!!!  Now that burns every muscle fiber in the glutes and quads, and the muscle pump was great.  I didn’t use a tremendous amount of weight, focusing more on getting the complete movement and taking the momentum out by resting the rack on the stopper.

My leg workout routine:

• Leg Presses with Stopper, approx. 300 lbs, 3 sets of 20, 15, 15 reps. 
• Walking lunges carrying two 25 lb plates, all the way across the gym, 3 sets
• Stiff-legged deadlifts, 3 sets of 15;  65, 65, & 70 lbs.
• Hammer Strength Hamstring curl machine, 3 sets, 20 lbs each leg
• Standing glute machine press, 90 lbs 3 sets, with explosive kickback
• Donkey calf machine, 3 drop sets
• Bodyweight calf raises during rest between first three exercises, abs in the last 2 (I like to put even my rest and recovery periods to good use!)

I really think those walking lunges were what made us so sore so quickly.  They may not sound like much, but grab a big 25-lb plate in each hand and lunge a couple hundred feet across a gym and see if your glutes aren’t crying ‘Uncle’ by the time you get to the far wall!  Lunges are such a great exercise, and you can do them anywhere.  Hey, lunge across your house as you’re going from one room to another, lunge to the refrigerator (for healthy food of course), do stationary lunges while you watch TV, take a break from the computer and do alternating lunges.  There are millions of variations, and need no equipment–therefore no excuses!

Expense of Eating Living Foods

I had a great comment on the website earlier today, mentioning that they would like to eat healthier but were concerned about the cost of healthy food, especially living and organic foods.   That certainly is a valid concern, given the skyrocketing cost of food lately.  And yes, organic costs more, as well it should.  It is packed full of fresh air, sunlight, water, and living nutrients, and wasn’t raised on soil-depleted wasteland with chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Doesn’t it make sense that quality costs more?

That still doesn’t help when everyone is feeling the pinch and having trouble making ends meet.  My advice is to invest FIRST in your food, because your health depends on your nutritional intake and nothing, nothing, nothing is more important than your health.   Love yourself first and enough to provide your body with the nourishment it needs, or you won’t be healthy enough to enjoy all those other things that seem so important.  When you set your budget, look for unnecessary or harmful things that can be cut out to allow for all the wonderful organic foods.  I felt the same way at first, but I found that when we stopped buying all the meat and processed food, our food budget actually balanced out about the same.   Plus I have almost completely stopped eating out, since I like my own food so much better, so that is saving me hundreds of dollars a month.  Overall, I would say that living foods are a savings for me, not a greater expense.

Now, if I am making a bunch of big recipes that require a lot of raw nuts or things like nut butters, raw cacao, coconut oil, etc, those things can get very pricey.  But they do last for a long time.  And my philosophy is that cheaper is the poorer choice, unless I can prove to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that the less expensive food is the same or higher quality than the more expensive one.   But that’s me.   My nutrition plan is of paramount importance in my life.  You may feel differently, and that’s fine.   Nothing is black and white.  There is a continuum of food quality in living foods–one is not ‘bad’ and the other ‘good’.  Just good, better, and best.  As long as it is organic, whole, unrefined, and unprocessed, you are doing  just fine, and better than 98% of the US population.

Think about this for a minute:  Why is organic food so expensive compared to processed food?  Why is processed food so cheap?   Let’s look at a box of name-brand cereal, for an example.  The corporation has to build large factories with expensive equipment, robotics, and employee labor to process the food.  They have to buy tons of the ingredients, including all the chemicals and preservatives.  Then they have to package it in expensive, brightly-colored, and scientifically-designed boxes that entice consumers to buy, and then ship it all over the country.  Then they have to spend millions of dollars advertising through many forms of media.  And the cereal is about 4 bucks.  Now, a bag of organic apples is about 7 bucks.  No processing, no factories, no marketing, none of that.  Just pick it, bag it and ship it.  Why is the bag of apples so much more ‘expensive’?  Think about that for a while and see if you can guess the answer.

Americans are a strange lot.  We spend and spend for luxuries like iPhones, TV’s, clothes, cars, jewelry, etc, etc.  But we clip coupons for our food.  We seem to expect that we are entitled to free food.  TANSTAAFL!  (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)  Why do we feel food should be so cheap?  We are not entitled to eat for free.  Even the Bible said that food would be earned through the sweat of our brow, after the fall of Adam and Eve.  Before that, it WAS free, plentiful, and incredibly healthy raw living foods.  Thanks a lot, Adam and Eve!  My family has a cattle farm, and we have always had big gardens every year.  That is SO much work.  Growing up I hated all the hot garden work.  My how things change, and how I wish I could have that again.   The farmers work so hard, and it is very expensive to properly build organic soil so that it nourishes the fruits and vegetables.   

That being said, there are ways to save money on great living food.  Join a co-op, buy directly from local farmers and farmer’s markets, buy in bulk and freeze what you can.  Go in with friends to buy in bulk.  Bulk herbs are so much cheaper than pre-packaged.  Grow your own food.  Eat sprouts–they are easy to grow, extremely inexpensive, and exploding with raw energy.  Look on the internet for bargains.  Eat free—learn how to recognize native edible plants.  For example dandelion greens are incredibly nutritious, and what could be more ubiquitous or free? 

OK, so have you figured out why cereal is so cheap compared to organic apples?  The answer is:  government subsidies.  The junk that goes into that cereal—refined grains, corn, and sugar–are supported by government subsidies for their respective industries, making the prices artificially low.  Plus the big factory farmers use the cheapest way out with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, on these huge fields which gives  a great economy of scale.   I even know people who get paid by the government NOT to farm portions of their land, since there is so much overproduction of certain staple crops.   And the crops are largely genetically modified now, which is just a Pandora’s box of  problems to come.  The small farmer just doesn’t have the volume to compete, and it’s really hard to operate a large area with strictly organic principles. 

Your health is your most precious possession.  Yes, family, children, homes, money, etc are important and precious too.  But you are no good to your family and children if you are too sick, tired and diseased to enjoy them.  And what good is a fabulous house and lots of money if your health is gone?  Invest in your health first, and be able to give the best of yourself to those you love.   Please do your best to support local small farmers and keep our organic heritage alive.  It’s good for you, the environment, and for the farmers.

And one more thought…..what is the cost of NOT eating healthy?  Last I heard, cancer and heart disease weren’t cheap.  My friend’s husband had a heart attack and his one-week bill on pharmaceuticals alone was $71,000.   My mother’s hospital bills after her heart attack were almost half a million dollars.   Not to mention the pain and suffering.  Now, which one is more expensive?

The best investment is vibrant health!

Be Defiant!

Christy

December 13th, 2008
Categories: Main. Tags: anti aging, cancer, defy aging, fitness, health, healthy, heart disease, leg workout, living foods, Living Foods Recipes, raw foods, raw vegan, standard american diet, Workout Routines
Author: Christy

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