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Warrior Diets for The Pragmatic & The Profane by Mark Hatmaker

 




[The following can be read independently, I wager it is stronger brew if one also reads the blog entry The Empirical Fighter: Rules for the Serious Combatant, particularly the sections on “self-refutation.”]

Paleo?

Vegetarian?

If so, lacto-ovo?

Is the “Zone” still a thing? Atkins? Food-scales? Calorie counting?

Meal-Timing? Six scheduled meals per day for maximum nutrient absorption, perhaps?

Organic? Grass-fed? Local-Sourced? Gluten-Free? All-Natural? Unbleached? Decreased Sodium? Zero Trans Fats? Protein Shakes? Supplement Popper? Steroid User? Low-Testosterone Augmenter?

If you said yes to any of these, likely, you are…

A] Concerned with weight control,

Or,

B] Concerned with the increasing impurities in our industrialized diet,

Or,

C] Concerned that turning our backs on “how we used to eat” is anathema to health and performance,

Or,

D] Concerned that environmental toxins decrease the normal hormonal production of our bodies,

Or,

E] Any combination of the above.



Whether an athlete or the standard Jack or Jill on the street, many of us give a loooooooot of thought as to what we put into our bodies. We are convinced that if we get the right octane of food composition or proportion the weight will come off and/or the performance will go through the roof.

If you are reading this, I presume you want yet more advice on how to tweak your current intake to gain these vaunted results.

Just what did the old-timers consume to get legendary results pre-Steroids?

What did the hosses who settled the rugged mountains, tamed cascading rivers, braved dense forests eat to perform with such dogged vigor?

Well, the historical record tells us—they ate what was available, when it was available and kept right on chugging.

Not one Camelbak in Lewis & Clark’s Corp of Discovery. Not one protein shake for the unflagging Apache warrior. Not one gluten-free tortilla for a Tarahumara runner. Not one tub of creatine on the Oregon Trail. No ready supply of steroids in a Union Pacific “Hell on Wheels” town.

Here’s one noted non-steroid user who seems to have had no issues with body-fat or muscle-growth on the subject of diet. [Any photo of Mr. Sandow tells the tale.]

“I am myself no believer in a special diet, still less in a rigid one, as necessary while training. The old nonsense on this subject, about raw eggs and underdone meat, seems to be passing away, and more rational views now prevail. I eat whatever I have a taste for, without stinting myself unduly; nor do I restrict myself seriously in what I drink. Commonly, I abjure anything intoxicating, confining myself mostly to beer and light wines. Tea and coffee I never suffer myself to touch. All I impose upon my appetites is that they shall be temperately indulged.” – Eugen Sandow, System of Physical Training

So, the man who spawns the modern era of bodybuilding, who was in turn inspired by the Greek ideal sees no special mojo in diet.

Well, he does think over-indulgence an issue.

“What has struck me, in the case of American living, is its generousness – a quality which however good in its way, is not always wise in itself, or fairly dealt with by those who are permitted to minister to it. In matters of the table, the popular habit appears to be, to get the best that money can buy, and have lots of it.” Eugen Sandow, System of Physical Training

So, quantity is the main issue here, as in, too much quantity consumed and not enough quantity in expelled activity.

To be indulgent to the restrictive side of dietary arguments, Mr. Sandow in the same work offers his preference for “wholesome” foods.

“Aha, Mark! Got you! See? Even Sandow says ‘wholesome’ foods!”

He does indeed say that, but let’s place “wholesome” in context. Mr. Sandow was writing and exhibiting himself in the late 1800s to early 1900s.

“Wholesome” then was not our “wholesome” now.

Consider Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle which sought to expose the working conditions of those who labored in the slaughter and meat-packing industries.

The novel hit the mark a wee bit with workers, but most readers were appalled at the details of how what they consumed was handled.

All day long the blazing midsummer sun beat down upon that square mile of abominations: upon tens of thousands of cattle crowded into pens whose wooden floors stank and steamed contagion; upon bare, blistering, cinder-strewn railroad tracks, and huge blocks of dingy meat factories, whose labyrinthine passages defied a breath of fresh air to penetrate them; and there were not merely rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and rendering vats and soap caldrons, glue factories and fertilizer tanks, that smelt like the craters of hell—there were also tons of garbage festering in the sun, and the greasy laundry of the workers hung out to dry, and dining rooms littered with food and black with flies, and toilet rooms that were open sewers.”

Passages such as these spurred improvements in how food was processed and delivered. These changes were not wrought overnight and even when implemented the improvements were nowhere near the level of sanitized deliciousness we enjoy today.



Also, pay attention to that timeline. Sinclair’s novel appears on the scene in 1906. Mr. Sandow built that heroic physique sans drugs and pre-“wholesome” regulations.

Clearly, magnificence can be built on what we would now consider far below par.

We could continue on with the publication The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans published by the USDA.

We could delve into the food industries “Filth Indexes” which details the allowable limit of insect parts, rodent hair, and mammalian feces that are permitted in food items.

Yuck? Sure, but…

If you’ve eaten food, you have consumed all of the above—and guess what? You’re still here.

The message is, the purity and quality of food has been improving exponentially since Sandow’s day and yet…

We still lament at “How much the food and environment is affecting our bodies.”

I will now turn the stage over to a lengthy, well, rant, from “Paul Wade” on the topic. This is extracted from C-Mass.

[I warn the delicate, the style is profane, but is well-used profanity to drive home the emotional content of silly-reasoning.]

THE MODERN TESTOSTERONE MYTH

“Before I finish I want to take on one increasingly popular defense for steroids and TRT [Testosterone Replacement Therapy.] This argument goes as follows: Modern men live in a world full of environmental pollutants and toxins, and are forced to eat food which has been stripped of its nutrition due to industrial agriculture and food processing. For these reasons, it’s impossible for the average man of today to possess normal levels of testosterone, like previous generations of males did. Guess what I say to this? It’s flat out nonsense! In fact, it stinks worse than a hobo’s cock cheese. If athletes choose to take steroids, that’s their business. But this argument is totally full of shit—it’s a justification many lazy athletes have jumped all over though, and as a result I’m sure you’ve heard this horse-crap somewhere. Even athletes who consider themselves “old school” or “Spartan” admit to using testosterone, because they have bought into this shit! These weakwilled pricks wouldn’t know old school if it kicked them in the ass. For what it’s worth, I got no doubt that as time goes by male testosterone levels are dropping. No doubt at all. In fact, I think the current generation is pretty much testosterone-starved. I just have to walk the streets and see these lazy-ass, Xbox playing, metrosexual, Justin Beiber-looking motherf***ers strutting all over to realize that. My problem is not with the suggestion that men have lower test levels than their forefathers did, my problem is with the theory as to why.



…Think about this: Our ancestors worked hard manual labor jobs with their hands—they got the equivalent of a tough workout every damn day. These days, more and more guys let machines do the work, or they sit behind desks. That’s why their bodies aren’t producing enough testosterone….

This is exactly why men have less testosterone these days. It’s got jack shit to do with this limp-green bullshit that the environment is all f***ed up and full of toxins and pollutants. For those of you concerned with modern toxins, I say this: don’t be such a f**ing pussy. Jesus, cowering in the corner, quivering over every little chemical in the air and the food chain? No wonder your testosterone is low, you’ll be braiding your f***ing hair with pink ribbons next, you friggin’ cream-puff! Newsflash, Kermit. There have always been toxins in the air; in the food we eat, the water we drink. Christ, when life first flourished, the planet was a seething volcanic chaos of poison gases like ammonia and methane. Times have been tough for life on earth since day one. That’s what makes us evolve. Modern fitness writers jaw on and on about the healthy “paleo” lifestyle as if it was some kind of toxin-free paradise, but if you actually ask an archaeologist they’ll tell you that this is just bullshit. Lungs of mummified bodies from the Paleolithic era are typically black. This is because many of our ancestors lived in caves choked with smoke and soot from constant fires, kept going for cooking, warmth, and to keep away pests and predators. Our ancient ancestors were victims to all kinds of pollution. A surprising number of early humans have been found who died from lead poisoning, for example; if there was a seam of exposed lead in the pond you drank from, that was it. You wuz pushing up flowers. And you’re telling me today’s environment is too “polluted” for us to match these hairy dead bastards?!

Folks also argue that our modern food is too contaminated with toxins to allow us to get the nutrition we need to make the right hormones. It’s true that in the past, our forerunners had more natural food (when they could get any food), and they weren’t force-fed synthetic high-carb foods all day. But if you reckon foods back in the day were somehow perfect, you are not in possession of the facts, my man! Much of the food consumed by bodybuilders and strongmen of the Golden Age, a hundred years and more ago, would not pass FDA approval today—in fact, it would be illegal. In Victorian England bakers added alum—aluminum poison—to bread, as a preservative. To hide the stench when milk went rancid, dairy farmers often poured generous amounts of boracic acid into their product. Highly toxic carbolic acid was added to almost all soap. Food was stored in lead cans, gas lighting gave off choking sulphuric vapors, and practically every building had lethal asbestos in it. Yet the men who ate this food and lived in this environment thrived and achieved things which the modern generation wouldn’t even attempt without help from a pill or syringe.



 It makes me laugh when modern writers go on and on about how industrial-level food production has left us with a devastating lack of nutrition in modern food. As if our ancestors somehow all had these fantasy diets. My ass! These writers don’t seem to realize that before the last century—yeah, before the Industrial Revolution made food cheaper and more plentiful—one of the most common causes of death in our species was malnutrition! Huge swathes of the population struggled to get enough quality food in their diets to make their brains, hearts and lungs work another day, let alone grow eighteen-inch arms. It’s still the same in much of the world right now. We are one of the first generations of our entire species—of any species, ever—to have such ready access to virtually limitless amounts of varied, nutrient-dense food. (That’s why everyone is so friggin fat...our caveman DNA still can’t quite believe we’ve done it.) True malnutrition in the First World is so rare today as to be virtually unheard of. So stop wringing your hands worrying if you are getting enough nutrients. Eat a steak, have a Coke and a smile, and shut the f*** up!

Bravo!

In short, eat well, live well, work hard, work smart and leave the superstition out of the kitchen. Kitchens, like bedrooms, are made for pleasure and leisure not worry and hand-wringing.

Wanna jump in feet first to the Real Deal Old School Way of Rough ‘n’ Tumble Combat and the Lifestyle of The Warrior Tradition?

In The Black Box Project we provide old-school combat nitty-gritty straight from the historical record, and yes, it is empirically verified or it ain’t in.

For skinny on The Black Box Project itself.



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