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Liars! What Can We Believe?

 

Admittedly I was jaded long ago when it comes to liars. When I was growing up I used to believe that most people told the truth. Boy let me tell you I like most people that believed that were in for a rude awakening! All of the untouchable honest people in authority fell from grace so to speak. Teachers, policemen, legislators, presidents and even clergy! So what is a person to believe?

 

First let’s examine what honesty is and if you – like me, assume that a lie is the opposite of honesty, we can agree on a definition of honesty.

 

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Re-Opening LeanAnMean

 

Welcome back to leananmean.com. I made the decion last March to close this website down but over the the many months I’ve missed the oppertunity to speak out on various goings-ons around me. I guess I have a big mouth and I need an outlet to expouse my views. :)

What you can expect from me is the occasional post about anything that seems interesting – especially if I think whats out there is not the whole story. I should have pleanty of fodder. I will continue to speak about heath and fitness too as this is an interest of mine.

What’s happened this year of interest in my life? I was promoted to Rokudan (6th degree blackbelt) in Kenpo. That was totally unexpected but perhaps should not have been. Let me explain. A few years back I received our organizations lifetime acheivement award and a couple years back I was entered into the Kenpo Hall of Fame. I created a website for the karate school here so I guess it should not have been surprising that 10 years after my 5th degree promotion (where I had to write a thesis), that I would get the largely honorary (no specific deliverables) promotion to Rokudan.

Anyway I am happy to have the new degree and I’ll try to live up to the standards of this honor.

On the weight loss plan – I am not focusing on any diet anymore (as that seems fail mostly) but I am going to try and achieve a balance of mind, body and soul. I’ve never had a problem keeping my mind sharp. I have an MBA and I received my windows 2008 system administrator certification from Microsoft this year (3 tests).

As far as my body, injuries and appetite have been my downfall. Interestingly enough working out at the karate school (specifically sparring) and bag work at home (throwing punches incorrectly) have actually kept me from working out. I’ve inured my wrists, hands, knee, and feet over the last year and had to take time off for recovery. Although I’ve tried to do different exercise – it was a challenge this year.

As far a soul – I’ve reconnected with my Catholic roots and I’m trying to reconcile the child understanding of the faith with the adult version. The child version was far easier… all I had to do was go to church with my parents. Now I have to actually study the bible and ask the Lord for forgiveness as well as find time to worship, help the needy and pray. Whew… I actually find it all very rewarding and I feel like I’ve plugged a missing dimension in my life.

As far as the plan forward – mostly it is the body that needs work. I am not dieting any more but simply going to eat healthy meals (yes – fewer calories than I actually need but I’m not counting) with the good tasting foods I grew up on. For instance I’ve started drinking whole milk (from no milk since I was a kid) because it is very satisfying and helps be stay full.  Many more examples but in a nut shell I am feel satisfied all of the time now and should slowly take off the inches.

I’m steadily working out again since my last sparring session. I re-injured my knee and cut my face. The face injury healed fast but the knee still smarts. But I am able to bike, hike, walk and do bag work. This year I am going to stop sparring for the most part as 80% of the time I get injured. I don’t really need to spar to stay in shape for self defense and I’m not going to fight a MMA match anytime soon so why go overboard. I’m not anymore. I’m gonna be smart about this now.

Welcome back and I hope you stop by from time to time. I also wish all a happy new year!

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Closing LeanAnMean.com

Update – I re-opened LeanAnMean.com on 12/29/2011.

When I started this blog I had just started MySelfDefenseBlog.com the year before and was really enjoying that blog. I was envisioning a blogging empire as the previous ebusiness venture on eBay did not turn out to be very profitable. So I reasoned blogging about stuff I was interested in would translate into traffic revenue.

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Soup & Bag Work – Perfect Combo!

This is just a quick update about the diet and exercise efforts I’ve undertaken this year. I’ve found that rededicating myself to do what was working and throw everything else out has been steadily working so far – all things considered. Here is the running scorecard:

  • diet – this is easy to consistently eat good foods
  • workouts – stalled a bit by injuries but have started doing hands only bag workouts – paused sparring

So the dieting is going well because five days a week I’m not going hungry. I eat my normal egg sandwich, roast beef sandwich, and lean beef burger with all of the appropriate side dishes like fruit and veggies to be fuly satified (for 1500 – 1800 calories a day).

I’ve started making soups because I could not find any canned low-sodium soups I liked. If found recipies by googling lentil and navy bean soup and found a site called http://allrecipes.com. This is great because all you have to do is then scroll down through similar recipes to find one with the ingredients and look you like. I made some wonderful low-sodium lentil soups last month and today am finishing up a wonderful (I hope) navy bean soup. I’ve had to add less ham because it seems to have almost 300 mg of sodium per ounce but the final serving should be about 400 mg of sodium per serving (acceptable as part of my daily salt intake).

In this post I’ll talk about how I am making foods I like to stay on course as well as how I’ve been modifiying my workouts to say on course. I found one gal willing to take a break from sun bathing to make some bean soup for your consideration.

 

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Diet? No – More Eating to Live!

The word “diet” is becoming passe like vampire movies. Everywhere I turn there are diet pills, commercials, books, websites (yes this I guess is one more to a point) and people espousing the latest, greatest diet! I am sick of diets!!!

Whats more I would hazarda guess and say that fad diets of any genre do not work. Now wait a moment – I’m not saying you cannot lose some weight with many of them, I am saying that if you are trying to reverse obesity – diets are not going to do the trick.

Here is what I have found to work. Eat or burn less calories than you take in. Now how you decide to do that is the only trick. You can pay some company the big bucks to “do their plan” or figure it out for yourself. The cool thing is if you figure it out for yourself (hopefully) you will find a compromise (yes – there will be some hard decisions) you can live with!

Now I happen to like eating less and exercising more because this is a good strategy for getting fit. But the devil is in the details. In this post I will go over how my diet is helping my overall fitness level and will not focus too much on exercise (see other posts for that). To start the conversation I found a couple of videos stating that diets do not work for your perusal.

 

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Karate Sparring Workout!

Do you find jogging and the gym membership tedious and have been looking for a new, fun, and a meaningful workout for your real life? I mean have you ever wondered if reading the latest gossip magazine on the treadmill is as good as it gets? How many monotonous hours have you wasted doing the same “exercise” with very little input? Is it driving you mad?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have an idea that you too might find interesting and rewarding. Have you ever thought of adding meaning to your unceasing quest for the six-pack abs or firm buttocks?

One way to accomplish both goals is to find an activity that can help you get into shape AND contribute to another goal. While mountain climbing fits this definition (fresh air, good scenery), what I am talking about for this post is sparring (boxing or karate)!

In this post I will speak of the merits of sparring for self defense and fitness. Have you noticed that sparring (boxing or karate) is reported to burn over 1000 calories per hour? My background is in karate, kick boxing, and boxing as well as some wrestling but I have not sparred much in recent years.

You see I focused on my desk job, raising a family and I found myself in middle-age and out of fighting shape! Sure I can jog, walk, climb and do bag work in the garage but I have been missing out on the best way of training (sparring). More on the merits of sparring and my recent plunge from merely doing bag work in the garage to sparring to get ready for a tournment this spring! First take a look at the more traditional karate aerobic fitness training offered by one school.

 

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Retirement; Who’s Responsible?

 

Here is a scenario to consider. Suppose you are a middle class person with a reasonable job. You are happy with your career and can pay your bills. But every year human resources sends you emails about increasing your contribution to your retirement fund. You already put away 2% but your company will match up to 8%.

Here is the dilemma, you cannot save 8% or more of your paycheck and still do all of the fun things you want! I mean buying the toys, vacations, eating out often at fancy night clubs are what life is about – right?

In this post I will talk about retirement from the perspective of what we can to reasonably today and still retire ok – and oh yeah… have some fun. Here is a funny video about a social program most of us are signed up for that will set the stage for this conversation.

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