Daniel Dessinger

Category: health

  • My Intermittent Fasting Story

    It’s Day 1… 10:15am. Intermittent fasting has begun. I’ve literally been awake for two hours, and my stomach is growling more than I can recall in recent months. I feel nervous, as if I might explode before the day is done. Drinking so much coffee has me feeling bloated. I may need a couple extra emergency trips to the men’s room. But I’m committed. Not because I need to lose weight, although I really, REALLY do. Not because it will make me look better, though it really will. No, I’m doing this because I need momentum.

    One of the hardest things to establish after years of defeats or surrender is momentum. Sustaining movement takes less effort than initiating movement. Gravity is working against you. You have no motion in your favor. You have to exert enough power from a stationary position to overcome gravity and negative leverage. Therefore, the most difficult moment.

    Once you achieve motion, it’s much easier to adjust your direction. You can move left or right or just correct by an inch or two either way.

    Intermittent fasting is my momentum. The hardest thing for me to do is to wake up every day from a state of rest and initiate thinking, planning, and motivation. It’s almost like those abilities are hidden and I need someone else to come find them in me and draw them out. So I’m doing what appears to be the easiest of the available options to build momentum. Rather than creating, I’m subtracting. Say no to food from waking to 2PM. Check. I don’t have to write a sonnet or strategize. I just make myself a LOT of coffee and tell myself no. And then I hold on and wait for 2PM. 🙂

    Again, this is two hours into Day 1. I sound so sure of myself, don’t I. What do I know?

    What Kind of Fasting Are You Doing?

    I’m following the Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting guidelines. That basically means I eat as much as I want from 2pm – 8pm. Then I am fasting from 8pm – 2pm. In the morning, I make and drink as much Bulletproof coffee as I want. When I eat, I adhere to the Bulletproof Diet guidelines, which are essentially the organic, grass-fed, wild caught Paleo lifestyle we already live.

    I can eat as many meals as I want between 2-8pm. The rest of the time my body is achieving a ketogenic state via fasting and drinking Bulletproof coffee (clean coffee beans w/no mycotoxins, two special coconut oils, and a few tablespoons of grass-fed butter.

    Stay tuned.

  • Obesity Isn’t What We Thought, And That Changes Everything

    I’m so excited about a book coming out by Dr. Alan Christianson. He has performed studies on obesity and concluded that unlike EVERYTHING we’ve been told, obsetiy is not an issue of character or laziness. It’s an issue of adrenal health and what your adrenals tell the rest of your body.

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  • Coffee: The Greatest Addiction EVER

    [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg]

    What does this say about me?

    Being a participant in the crunchy movement (whether by association or choice no longer matters), I’ve agreed with many statements that say “Ingredient X is bad for your health because it has been used to kill rodents/roaches/alien babies. Therefore, whatever is used to kill other forms of life must not be healthy or acceptable for human consumption.”
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  • Why I Care So Much About Health

    Day 9 of 30

    It’s easy to be lazy, eat whatever’s convenient, and waste my life away watching tv. But each action leads to a habit, which forges a lifestyle.

    [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/JohnPaulJackson/statuses/92267467870699520″]

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  • A Personal Health Experiment: Life Without Corn or Grains

    Mister Sensitive

    More than the average person, I seem to be sensitive to the foods, smells, and chemicals around me. I’ve experienced more than my fair share of mood instability due to undiagnosed chemical reactions to ingredients in my meals and beverages.

    It turns out that the ingredients I “love” the most are the ones that affect my mood the most. Like drugs, they elevate my mood into near mania and then cause me to crash, whether from insulin reaction or something else.

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  • The “Turn the Wifi Off at Night” Challenge

    Okay, for all of you who insist that there’s nothing to the claims that wifi and cellphone signals are hazardous to your health, I challenge you to a dare. (more…)

  • How Do You Survive a Sick Day?

    I’m sitting at home, trying not to touch my computer. But I have a two-year-old running around the house yelling. Sleep isn’t much of an option. I’m resting comfortably, but without sleep I need to occupy my thoughts with something.

    What do YOU do when you take a sick day? Watch tv? Sleep? Read a book? Journal? Sit in silent misery?

  • Day 101: Yoga and VFF Classics… Not So Much

    You read it right: I’ve completed my third yoga practice since last week, and I’m here to tell you it’s the hardest physical exercise I’ve ever encountered. I was fairly confident that my FiveFingers Classics would excel in yoga forms and stretches, but not so. No matter how I tightened my VFFs, my heels kept popping up out the back. That only really happened maybe four times.

    I don’t feel free to express all my impressions and feelings about yoga at this time. A deep internal work is going on, and I don’t want to spoil it. I WILL say that each of the three sessions I’ve attended are taught by different people, so I’ve experienced three very different approaches and speeds.

    The first practice last Thursday was slow and meditative. The woman leading spoke very gently and calmly. She explained every single move, and I was amazed by the experience.

    The second practice was late Saturday afternoon involved some pop music and we changed forms three times faster. I lasted 35 minutes and lay exhausted on the mat for the remaining 20.

    The third practice on Tuesday night involved more music and was led by a young woman who is no doubt attempting to take over the world. We changed forms at such a terrific pace that I basically only performed every fourth form. It was probably three times faster than Saturday’s practice. There were very few pauses or reflection. It was much more aerobic.

    Needless to say, I have many obstacles in my path, the first being my weight. The “resting” positions which are meant to allow you to completely rest for a moment are extremely difficult for me because of my belly. It’s in the way of everything. Some of the basic holds involve shifting most of your weight onto the shoulders and palms. At my current weight, my wrists and shoulders were hurting more than is healthy. It doesn’t help that I’ve gone from complete couch-potato-desk-job-man to pretzel-gumby-man.

    I am currently one of the LEAST flexible people I know. My muscles are WEAK from a lack of consistent exercise. This is difficult for me in just about every way. To give you a mental image, picture everyone else in a resting pose, breathing calmly. Now picture me panting like a dog and turning red because I can’t reach the resting position and my belly is shoving my organs into my spine. Yes. There you go. Feel my pain.

    Did I mention that only women lead my practices and they have no “parts” in the way when demanding we stand with feet together and thighs squeezed together. It’s just not that simple, ladies.

    That’s it for now. I have excluded most of the profound parts because for now, at least, these are all mine and not for sharing.

    Namaste.

  • CNN Video: Why Barefoot Running is Better

    Check out this video from CNN. The guy they’re interviewing gives some historical background as to how and why he transitioned from traditional running shoes to barefoot. He wrote the book, Born to Run. He also shares some explanations of why barefoot running is better for your body.

    My favorite quote from the video:

    “The foot is the greatest disciplinarian. You can’t over-pronate, can’t over-train, can’t over-stride … if you do anything wrong, the foot will tell you `uh uh, don’t do that’. Shoes are like morphine: a sedative that deadens the pain.”

    Dr. Mercola posted this video on his site and added some commentary beneath about some health benefits of barefoot running. I also discovered from this page that Dr. Mercola wears VIBRAM FIVEFINGERS on a daily basis as well. We’re an elite club.

    You can order Christopher McDougal’s book, Born to Run, from Amazon.com below.

  • Day 78: Wearing Regular (GASP) Shoes Today

    Last night was a crazy severe thunderstorm in my neck of the metroplex. Rather than face the world with soggy feet and a bitter heart (the inevitable result of cold, soggy feet), I chose to rebel! That’s right, I wore REGULAR shoes!

    Wow. How exciting. I’m a regular extreme sports spontaneous kind of guy. Who doesn’t like to get his feet wet.

    That’s right. Both pairs of my Vibram FiveFingers are porous just above the hard rubber sole and let all kinds of water in. And once the water is in, there’s no having dry shoes for the rest of the work day. So I abandoned my VFFs and picked up a pair of tube socks (GASP) and my trusty old Diesels.

    For this one day, no one will stare at my feet or ask me where I got my shoes. Sigh. Normalcy is so boring.