Where do we go from here?

February 5th, 2012

I’m at a point where my vision of existence is evolving. I am leaving some foundational concepts but have yet to establish my new ones. Leaving behind my vegan, vegetarian practice beliefs was after all the beginning, and I’m still in the process. My ethics haven’t changed, I still believe in world peace, equality, liberty of choice, I’ve always been a romantic idealist, sometime verging on utopist. This hasn’t changed much, but the actual concrete science of it all makes me look otherwise. I became paleo/real food/unprocessed food because of recent nutritional science.

http://lierrekeith.com/vegmyth.htm

http://www.compassionatespirit.com/Keith-Blog/2010-03-21.htm

After the deconstruction of the China Study by Denise Minger, I was ready for Keith’s book : The vegetarian myth. This book is deeply shaking my foundations. Basically Paleo was saying that grain agriculture was a big mistake for our personal health, she goes further by showing how grain agriculture is basically destroying our planets ecosystem, and eventually the survival of our species. There is an urgency in her writing that turns many people off, along with political and feminism issues, but if you separate the emotional load and activist side of the book, I find the basic environmental information serious enough to be concerned. People on vegetarian diets are mostly choosing this for ethical reasons, against animal cruelty, factory farming and such, antibiotics and hormones. These were my reasons, along with preconceived ideas about a healthy nutrition. So her book is not about the ethics of vegetarians, but about the concrete consequences of doing mass agriculture. Being vegetarian is not only detrimental to the human body in the long run, consuming grains means growing grains/soy/corn which are emtpying top soil and rivers, which are not renewable ressources. Agriculture is destroying the environment, so vegetarians unknowingly are destroying the environement believing they are saving the planet on ethical ground. How messed up can this be! This is why her book and message is getting such violent reations in the VG community. Basically like an addict, how can something that makes you feel so good be so bad for you? How can having so good ethics about saving the planet and against cruelty can actually be destroying the planet? That’s the Myth part in her title.

Of course it’s not only the vegetarians who eat breads, corn and soy, the food pyramids are good examples, so VGs are not single handedly destroying the ecosystem. Her book is for people who walked in her shoes, recovering VGs, and VGs who don’t know better, like I used to be. Such a book, like Gary Taube’s book, should be written for everyone whatever their food choice, and with all the hard science. Her book is the first step, hopefully, as Loren Cordain or Atkins were years ago. And there is a solution, with yet another catch word, Locavore, meaning eat local produce. If you want to save the human species (the planet will do fine without us, no need to save it, that’s pure anthropomorphism), we have to stop agriculture, let the grass grow and let the animals graze. Concentrate on perrenial food with some annual crops, but always returning nurishment to the soil we deplete. This can be achieved by eating locally, but not from importing foods from other countries. The book explains the reasons behind this. Just from reading this introduction to the concept of locavore you can see that many of our current cities/societies/nations cannot continu to exist has they are today, which is why her book is so disturbing. It is not just another diet, it’s an awakened view of our present dilemna. As a species we have painted ourselves in an environmental/demographic corner for the last 10,000 years. How do we get out of it? Well we start by reading her book, and hopefully in the coming years more books with concrete science will come and be written down, and the awareness will grow.

As for myself, I know I am in the corner, and I have to figure out what to do, for my sake, for my daughters sake, and her childrens.

Bless you all!

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Et si on faisait connaisance…

Et si on faisait connaissance…

25 avril, 2011

Et oui! Guy Le Gars Paleo Santé ne l’a pas toujours été. Comme j’ai récemment écrit devenir Paléo implique aller à la recherche de ses racines, et de prendre le temps de les apprécier. Donc GLGPS était avant Guy l’Artiste Exposant Multimédia. J’ai étudié les arts visuels au College, à l’Université, et par la suite à la Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten d’amsterdam. Donc officiellement j’ai toujours resté fidèle à ma vocation. Depuis 1977, bientôt 35 ans déja, j’ai pratiquai mon art.

La peinture, sculpture, dessin, céramique, photo, j’ai exploré la plupart des techniques traditionnelles. Ces dernières années je me suis naturellement dirigé vers les nouveaux médiums, comme les installations, la vidéo et les performances. Des mes premières créations je me suis intéressé à la condition humaine, peignant des gens de la rue et d’autres images de critiques sociale.

Le temps passe…

En 1991-1992 avec la série d’installation ”The Family Show I – IV” ( Régina, Windsor, Peterborough et Montréal ) je questionnais les liens à l’intérieur de la vie familiale : la famille comme un lieu de socialisation et unité formatrice de notre individualité, posant la question de l’apport de l’éducation familiale et des ‘traces’ ainsi laissées sur l’individu.

En 1993 avec ”De l’autre côté d’un pont”, je traitais du déracinement et de l’aliénation de l’individu résultant de la violence chez les personnes ayant vécus des abus sexuel, les réfugiés de répressions politiques et les autochtones dépossédés de leurs droits ancestraux. Ces expériences amenant une quête d’identité et résultant en la création de nouveaux liens sociaux souvent interculturels et intergénérationels.

En 1999 avec Le Lavoir j’ai exploré les liens entre l’individu et sa communauté.

À l’été 2002 j’ai présenté  Angélique 1734 : une installation sur la présence d’esclaves africains etautochtones au Québec au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. (on peut le voir ici) En 2004 j’ai réalisé 12 vidéos : ”Angélique 1734 – Haïti 2004 : l’histoire des Maîtres”. Pour cette dernière réalisation j’ai interviewé une cinquantaine de chercheurs ainsi que des membres de la communauté haïtienne de Montréal afin qu’ils me racontent leur histoire d’Haïti, l’année 2004 étant le bicentenaire de son indépendance.

The Family Show I-IV

Ce premier article va donc focaliser sur cette série, et vous les chanceux vous n’avez qu’à vous asseoir et visionner!!! Pas besoin de lire car j,ai produit des DVD documentaires avec commentaires, en francais et en anglais. Il y en a 5, le premier est un survol des 4 expositions, et apres vous pous visonner chaque installation en détail. Quoique la plupart des oeuvres sont rempli d’humour, certaines images sont troublantes, donc à regarder avec votre discretion.

Dernier mots, une ‘installation’ est un peu comme une mise en scene de théatre, en utilisant les sons et lumieres. Il n’y a pas d’acteurs, le visiteur se promene dans l’oeuvre comme s’il pouvait marcher dans une peinture. Assez dit, bonne visite!

Un survol des 4 expositions:

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Regina,  Neutral ground, Family Show I

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Windsor,  Artspace, Family Show II

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Peterborough,  Artcite, Family Show III

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Montréal, Dare-Dare, Family Show IV

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Aujourd’hui étant Paques, on pourrait dire que c’est un peu ma renaissance personelle!

So until next,   GGrrrrrrrrrrr    Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy

Getting to know you…

April 25, 2011

Yep! Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy wasn’t always so, it’s a long process. As I wrote recently going Paleo meant looking for your roots, and to give them full appreciation. So GTHPG used to be Guy The Exhibiting Multimedia Artist. I studied visual arts at College, then University, and later Post-Graduate at the Rijksademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. So officially I’ve never diverged from my calling. Since 1977, nearly 35 years ago, I’ve been practicing my craft.

Painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, photography, I’ve touched most of the traditional techniques. These last years I’ve naturally grown into the more contemporary mediums such as installation, video and performance. Since the beginning I’ve being studying the human condition, painting portraits of homeless people and other images rooted in social criticism.

How time flies…

In 1991-1992, in a series of installations entitled “The Family Show I-IV” (produced in Regina, Windsor, Peterborough and Montreal), I questioned the relationships that binds family life. My interest lay in the influence of the family for socialization and the forming our sense of individuality.

In 1993, in “De l’autre côté d’un pont,” I looked at the alienation of individuals who have suffered sexual abuse, political oppression, exile, or deprivation of ancestral lands. These experiences forces you on a quest for identity and leads to the creation of new social bonds that often transcend cultures and generations.

In 1999, in “Le Lavoir,” I explored the links between the individual and his community.

In 2002  “Angélique 1734″ was a photo and text installation on the lives of African and Native slaves in Quebec in the 17th and 18th centuries. (View it here). In 2004, I produced 12 videos: “Angélique 1734 – Haïti 2004: l’histoire des Maîtres.” where I interviewed researchers and members of Montreal’s Haitian community to learn how they view their country’s history (the year 2004 being the bicentennial of Haitian independence).

The Family Show I-IV

So this first art posting will focus on this series, and luckily for you all you have to do is sit down and watch!!! No more reading since a few years ago I produced documentary DVD’s of the whole experience, in french and english. There’s 5 in all, the first one gives an overview of the exhibitions, and then you can get more details on each individual installations. Although I often use humour in my work, some of the images can be disturbing, viewer discretion, as they say, is advised.

By the way an ‘art installation’ is a bit like theater scenography, where you set up a stage with lights and sounds. There are no actors or timeframe presentations, the visitors walks in the artwork as if you could enter a painting. Enough said, please enjoy.

General Overview of the 4 exhibitions:

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In Regina, at Neutral ground, Family Show I

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In Windsor, at Artspace, Family Show II

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In Peterborough,  at Artcite, Family Show III

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In Montréal, at Dare-Dare, Family Show IV

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Today being Easter, I guess you could say this is kind of my personal renaissance!

So until next,   GGrrrrrrrrrrr    Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy

Down we go! Definitively not the Easter Parade!

Down we go!

Definitively not the Easter Parade!

April 23, 2011

Today, I’m going to show you why you’re going to love your fat! Why your body prefers to ‘waste’ your muscles rather to burn all your fat away (which is why we have now diseased people called skinny fat). You see fat, like cholesterol (which is not a fat), has gotten a really bad rap, a kind of Eminem job…(actually his first 2 albums were great). Fat is not only your friend, it’s your life!

Fat will save your life

Ever heard of the Ketogenic Diet?  The ketogenic diet is a special high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that helps to control seizures in some people with epilepsy. When the body burns fat, it creates substances called ketones, and ketones are the prefered fuel for energy instead of sugar (glucose) from carbohydrates. Fat is energy, fat is life.

The body can, and does, convert fat, proteins and carbohydrates to fuel the body, because without fuel you’re dead within minutes. Can you imagine, within minutes you are a goner, a weenie in a coffin, eating daisies by the roots (I’ll  tell you why in a moment). Your body converts excess proteins and carbs into saturated fats. It cannot store excess proteins, and excess carbs is sugar. Sorry, any carb is sugar. It may look like bread or pasta, coke or juice, whatever, it enters the bloodstream as sugar. Proteins get broken down to amino acids, carbs to sugar, that’s it, that’s all, Hasta Manana.

We all know these donuts carbs high and carbs low, but you don’t get fat highs and fat lows. Why is that??? Because the body is meant to run on Fat Power, not carbs. A bit of carbs the body can handle, don’t worry about it, like real whole foods are fine. Actually when you eat carbs your body freaks out and must use it right away, not because it ‘prefers’ it, but because any excess carbs are toxic, yes toxic (note the word excess). Why do you think it gets converted into fat??? Without getting too technical, mitochondrias burn the blood sugars with oxygen, and there’s the problem!

Love is like Oxygen

Man, these guys look out of shape, granpa power!!! Anyhow, Oxygen, can’t live with it, can’t live without it (7 minutes). Oxygen made it possible to move from unicellular bacteries to multicellular organisms, you and me. Why do you think plants reject oxygen??? They breathe in the CO2, carbon, mix it with H2O, water to create, you guess it, carb0-hydrates! And then they reject the oxygen because…….oxygen is toxic! How do you extenguish a flame? Take away the oxygen and it is instantly gone! Add oxygen, BAM, it starts again. Believe me yet?

Last part. Here’s a few words you’ve heard before: free radicals and anti-oxydants. Well here’s the low down: To burn blood sugars the mitochondrias needs Oxygen. This is why we breathe!!!! Simply! And this is why we die within minutes of not breathing! It’s that simple. But the burning process uses oxygen which creates free radicals, so some people will take some anti-oxydants (anti-oxygen…get it!!!) If you could create the perfect anti-oxydant pill you’d be dead because you’d stop all oxygen reactions in your body! Dah…

Yes it’s that simple, oxygen keeps you alive, and, oxygen kills you! At the same time! Talk about a Faust-ian deal! Now you see why excess carbs is a problem, it means excess oxygen, excess free radicals, excess damage. It also means glycation, where the body, freaking out, combines the excess sugar with proteins, making them inoperable (you know, wrinkles on your face….) The body just wants to get it out…the plants did.

So your body in all it’s survival wisdom converts as much blood sugar as saturated fats as fast as possible. Fat is saving your life. But your body cannot do this fast enough with processed carbs (processed means basically pre-digested), so you end up diabetic, glycated and litteraly burnt-out. The oxygen has burnt you from inside out, you end up crispy chicken.

Down we go

From the Family Show installation in Windsor, 1991

So why do we die only after 7 minutes?  You see, the Faust-ian deal we made to become multi-cellular organism is to use oxygen as a fuel source. And as simple as that sounds, when we go back on our deal, refuse to use oxygen, multi-cellular life is no longer possible and the bacteries take over. We are basically fighting for our multi-cellular self every instant of our existence. We are like the little boy with his finger plugging the hole of the Dutch Dykes. We are Sisyphus pushing our bolder up the hill, let it go and your done!

When someone’s heart stops pumping blood around their body, the tissues and cells are deprived of oxygen and rapidly begin to die. But different cells die at different rates. So, for example, brain cells die within three to seven minutes, while skin cells can be taken from a dead body for up to 24 hours after death and still grow normally in a laboratory culture.

From this point on, nature is very efficient at breaking down human corpses. However, the exact rate of decomposition depends to some extent on environmental conditions. Decomposition in the air (Oxygen again, get it?) is twice as fast as when the body is under water and four times as fast as underground.

The intestines are packed with billions of micro-organisms that don’t die with the person. These organisms start to break down the dead cells of the intestines, while some, especially bacteria called clostridia and coliforms, start to invade other parts of the body. At the same time the body undergoes its own intrinsic breakdown under the action of enzymes and other chemicals which have been released by the dead cells. The pancreas, for example, is usually packed with digestive enzymes, and so rapidly digests itself
The decomposing tissues release green substances and gas, which make the skin green/blue and blistered, starting on the abdomen. The front of the body swells, the tongue may protrude, and fluid from the lungs oozes out of the mouth and nostrils.

This unpleasant sight is added to by a terrible smell as gases such as hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg smell), methane and traces of mercaptans are released. This stage is reached in temperate countries after about four to six days, much faster in the tropics and slower in cold or dry conditions. A corpse left above ground is then rapidly broken down by insects and animals, including bluebottles and carrion fly maggots, followed by beetles, ants and wasps. In the tropics, a corpse can become a moving mass of maggots within 24 hours. If there are no animals to destroy the body, hair, nails and teeth become detached within a few weeks, and after a month or so the tissues become liquefied and the main body cavities burst open.

Within a year all that is usually left is the skeleton and teeth, with traces of the tissues on them – it takes 40 to 50 years for the bones to become dry and brittle in a coffin. In soil of neutral acidity, bones may last for hundreds of years, while acid peaty soil gradually dissolves the bones.

http://www.vbs.tv/en-ca/watch/motherboard/the-body-farm

Food for though

So you get the point. Every moment of your life your multi-cellular self is fighting against the natural unicellular bacterial forces of nature. When we stop breathing we don’t ‘die’, we just let the bacteries do their job. Bacteries take over and feast on our body because we are no longer a multi-cellular offensive force. We don’t die, we just revert to our un-oxygen state.

Love your fats, because every instant it is saving your life!!! From yourself if you’re still loading up with process carbs, and from the gazillion of bacteries who are just waiting for a a good lunch, Easter or not!

Love you all, to bits!!!

So until next,   GGrrrrrrrrrrr    Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy

51 years and 6 months

April 21, 2011

51 years and 6 months, that’s what it took to finally get rid of my past. I know, I know this sounds pretty cryptic, I mean isn’t this a Paleo blog? Paleo was just a stepping stone to get where I am today.

Eating Paleo meant taking charge of my life. Who am I going to trust about my health? Well, until recently my past would dictate whatever beliefs I had about nutrition. These were acquired from my family, passed down to me, as well as the many unspoken social truths, like about calories and cholesterol. What is real and what is not? In the end it comes down to a simple question of personal responsability.

History recalls

In my last post I made the point that going Paleo implied considering evolution and our origins as a species. One had to consider the apparition of life itself, of our sun, planet and the whole universe. We are the children of reality itself, an integral part of it’s whole history. Once the cover is lifted you end up with a real Pandora’s box of treasures. This is what this post is about. The last one was about Nitty Gritty Existentialism, this one is plain old meta-physical.

What I am going to say, what I am going to write about is more than an idea or a concept. These are words I actually live by, every day, every moment, because that’s the point, there is actually just … the moment.

Je vis aujourd'hui sur la terre, dessin 1996

There is no past

That’s it, it’s out! Headline news, the past doesn’t exist! When it’s gone, baby, it’s gone for good! I could tell you there is no future (there is….none) but I’ll wait. Let me rephrase this before you tune me out. Our general conscencus (meaning all agreeing at the same time) at one time was that there was such a thing as the past, and we’ve been repeating the same thing over and over, a bit like the calories- in calories-out mantra, or the cholesterol theory. Repeat it long enough and it becomes a truth. So give me a chance to prove you wrong.

Focus for a moment on a memory, of someone you loved a long time ago, let’s say 20 years ago. You know, one that you look with nostalgie and regret at the same time, selecting only the good times and forgeting the rest. Ok, got it? You do feel it, right? Now think of something that happened 10 years ago, another feeling, another place in time. Now 5 years ago, now 2 years ago. Can you see that they are all the same, they all have the same ethereal quality of not being the present, they are not in the here and now, they have no interaction or presence in the here and now. Where are they then, what are they? Use your own words. I think we can all agree on this.

Now follow me one step further, we went from 20 years to 10, 5, 2 years, now go last year, last week, yesterday, this morning. There is no difference (that’s gotta grab you somewhere!). Whatever you did an hour ago has as much substance and reality as what you did 20 years ago, or 40 years ago for that matter. It doesn’t exist, it’s gone, nada, vanished, extinguished. It is all ethereal and has no hold in the present moment.

What does it mean?

It means so many things. One thing it means is that you can change your life in an instant because the past has no hold whatsoever on the present. Each instant you create your life, the past is totally irrelevant. Now the thing is that everyone around you is going to hold you accountable to your past because that’s what they do to themselves, it’s their belief system. You are a pionner when you leave your past behind.

So not only can you change your life in an instant, it also means that your past in no way defines who you are in the present. The past is totally irrelevant. Whatever you lived through, whatever you’ve experienced or survived is totally irrelevant. This is a hard one to swallow and to give up, because we have been taught to define ourselves by what we’ve lived through. No wonder so many people die only a few years after retirement, they have lost their sense of self, they were ‘past defined’ and not living in the present in the here and now.

One last thing, because I don’t want this post to be too long, is that it also means that the past doesn’t define the future! There is no connection whatsoever between the past and the future. The past doesn’t exist, and so neither does the future. You are free to do and be whatever you want. Doesn’t mean you are going to achieve it, no way!!!! Again I repeat it: You are free to do and be whatever you want. Doesn’t mean you are going to achieve it, no way!!!! Achieving it or not as nothing to do with the past, there is no past.

Performance à Paris 1994

As John Lennon said “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans” Yep, while you are focusing on an illusionnary past or future, life trickles away. You are missing the point. there is only one life, only one, yours. There is no past. Sorry. And there is no future. Sorry. So how do you live without a past and a future? You live fully, and that’s for another post…. (à suivre)

So until next,   GGrrrrrrrrrrr    Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy

Paleo, so far…….

Montréal, March 26 2011

Yep, it’s close to a 6 months now, half a year, can I imagine!!! The transition (read struggle) with my family is almost over. I’ve become a Master Chef, even make whipped cream by hand with a whip! So with such amazing new recipes and colourful food fantasies, our vegan ways starts to feel like a distant bland past.

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Do I miss the what not to eat eat food? No, rarely…bread, pastas, sugars, after a while they are just not interesting foods. Actually compared to meat and vegetables they are not food, they are concoctions, inventions, man-made condiments. And now that I have developped a taste for 35% heavy cream, in my coffee or just as a sip, they have just become boring foods. They offer no depth of experience, they don’t linger on the pallate. They just actually leave you with a feeling of needing more. They are not fullfilling…

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Homemade Crettons

This is how I have been eating for the last 6 months, the change was progressive, and I am convinced of the benefits of what I write. I was a vegetarian/vegan for many years, so the desire to make such a dramatic change in my life comes from new knowledge. The nutrition I now put in practice today is based on the new science of nutrition, which exists for hardly 30 years. Generally all that is conveyed by the media and official medicine is not based on science, therefore if you speak about my list with your doctor, they will disagree and stir you away from this healthy way of life.

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What you can eat:.

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1- All the meats you desire, beef, pork, cretons, liver, patés, poultries, fish, sardines
2- All the eggs that you want
3- All butter that you want, hard cheeses, plain full fat yogurt, 35%cream, but not milk
4- Potatos and other roots, peeled, and white rice, but never whole rice, and not too much 5- All salads and vegetables as much as you want (put the butter on)
6- Avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, salt, pepper, spices and herbs.
7- Nuts, nut butters and flours, but not to much, and not peanuts (they are not nuts)
8- 2 fresh fruits per day, not dried, strawberries/raspberries/blueberries with cream
9- Coffee, tea, herb teas, water according to your thirst.
10- Black Chocolate 75% cocoa, 85% is ideal as a small treat

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What you should not eat:

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1- No sugars, honey, brown sugar, molasses, maple sirup, coke 7up, fruit juice, none
2- No cereals/flour, no breads, cereals, oatmeal, donuts, wholegrains or not is irrelevant
3- No noodles, spaghetti, ravioli, wholegrains or not is irrelevant (exception noodles of white rice)
4- Absolutely and definitively no ‘vegetable’ oils (the 2 exceptions being olive and coconut oil)
5- Nothing soya: milk, tofu, nothing, and no legumes, beans
6- No Processed Cheese: Cheese Whiz, Velvetta, slices and stuff
7- No Processed Meats: hot dogs, baloney, peperoni, lunch meats
8- No mayonnaises, vinaigrettes, relisch, commercial condiments (sugar +vegetable oils)
9- No fried foods, chips, breadded, if you do eat a hamburger throw the bread.

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What is also good to add

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1- Coconut oil, I take three large spoonfuls each day, one before each meal
2- Coconut milk (you need to get used to it in the beginning)
3- Vitamin D

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There is nothing to weigh or calculate. Every lunchtime I eat bacon with eggs, sometimes with tomatos, ham, cretons (without flour, more difficult to find), peppers, olives, avocado, salad, and a fruit. Mornings I do not eat, I have coffee with coconut milk and/or 35% cream till noon, (you can take a fruit, cheese and nuts if you like) and in the afternoons more coffee with nuts. My evening meal is the larger one. You can have 2 meals per week from the What you should not’ list if you want time to ease the transition.

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One last thing, sugars and grains act on the opiated receptors in the brain, you are literealy addicted, and this is no joke. Thus in the beginning expect to have withdrawals symptoms, being hyper, headaches, speed, but it generally does not last more than three days. In the balance you should feel more energetic very quickly.

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PS : If you have access to raw grass-fed milk, then you can drink milk. Grass fed meat is better than organic meat which is better than store meat which is better than no meat at all which is better than proccesses meats.

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So until next,   GGrrrrrrrrrrr    Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy

Nitty Gritty Existentialism

Montréal, March 26, 2011

Why, why oh why?

One of the first conflicts on I had going on Paleo, after dealing with giving up bread, was with Christians. It could have been with Muslims or Jews, the faith itself is irrelevant. Being a white french québecois I was born and raised a catholic, this is just a fact of life, again irrelevant. But somehow, or actually understandbly Paleo nutrition goes against the grain of believers, and some see it as a personal attack against their faith.

Daddy, why is the sky blue?

Well, that’s exactly the point, why? Why is the earth round? Why is there day and night? Why? Why? Why? Such innocent questions from children that often we brush away with a scientific or a godly answer. But this doesn’t get us any closer to the real question at hand, until you hit Paleo. You see Paleo has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with science. It has nothing to do with faith or believing, and everything to do with facts (at least the ones they are able to back up). The field of nutrition is actually filled with beliefs! Say for example that: you don’t believe in cholesterol as the cause of heart disease! you are there and then accused of heresy for not believing in it. Since when is nutrition based on beliefs??? All I want is the best possible health for this body, not a belief system!

My body, your body, everybody has some body.

This is where it starts and then it cascades on and on and on. You have a body, your body comes from the fusion of one sperm and one egg, and you were in gestation for 9 months in the body of a caretaker you call mother, and she was born from one sperm and one egg, and so was her mother, and so on and on. How far down are you willing to go? Now the believers don’t have so much of a problem with this, they just call it the miracle of life and change the subject, unless you bring up Darwin. You see, Paleo is based on the concept of evolution, that we evolved as any other species, that we developed a niche and became so succesfull we litteraly ate our competition. So far so good, but as a species we came from some unicellular organism about 4 billion years ago on this planet. Yes we are on a planet in the middle of space just hanging out (actually falling at thousands of mph). So from archeology Paleo brings you to cosmology. (in between there is chemistry and physics somewhere).

To be or not to be?

To bed or not to bed? that’s the title of an art installation I exhibited 20 years ago (how time flies). So we live on a planet around an average sun which is dying, and eventually in it’s death throws it’s going to engulf the earth, burn the whole darn thing away to a cinder, before finally imploding into a neutron star. Most scientist concur that we’ll have moved to the suburbs by then. So eventually you’ll reach the Big Bang or the Big Freeze, quantum multiverses and dimensions… The sort of stuff that doesn’t help you commute to work, but kind of gives you an idea of what beingness is all about. Yep, Paleo does have more to do with the substance of reality than subsistance with real food.

Am I going to die?

Of course I am, so are you! Isn’t funny that religions always have stories about where we go after death, but no stories about where we were before we became flesh and blood? I’d love to hear stories about pre-heaven and pre-hell, a kind of prequel to your soul. Were you bad or good even before you were born? But they don’t preach that kind of stuff. So yes you do die, and like the buddhist say, don’t worry about it, you will succeed doing it! Anyway, food for thought here, if you’re so worried about what happens after your death, why aren’t you worried about what happened before your life? Whence you came from? And that’s the issue with Paleo: once you do agree that you did evolve from an unicellular organism, and that your home was created 4,5 billion years ago out of the radioactive waste products of supernovas, then you know you live the same way you die, nothing more nothing less.

Barmaid! Fill my friend’s glass!

I lost a few friends because of my Paleo ways. I wasn’t preaching my ways, but just my beingness was too challenging to their beliefs. I always appreciated Plato’s metaphor of the Cave, where one man turned around and saw that the shadows on the wall were just projections form another reality. Eating Paleo is turning around and admiting that I am but a projection of evolution, that I was born from nowhere, and that my existence will leave no trace whatsoever, either once I’m dead, or when the next ice age, earthquake, solar flare, meteorite (whatever event that first brought evolution into motion or extinction), or the sun’s expansion takes place. Now this is what I call Nitty Gritty Existentialism.

So?

No I won’ t leave you hanging like this, but neither can I give you an answer, I am neither a believer nor a religious leader. I can share with you how I’m taking care of business, and you can tell me how you are doing yourself. Personally, after these first 6 months of a Paleo way of viewing things, I feel I’ve got a good idea where diseases comes from and how to eat to promote a better and sustained health (my recent posts). I’m still exploring eating patterns and Intermittent Fasting (IF), also with a few supplements such as D3 and K2, and I’ve stopped with exercises (but got my bycicle out) until I read more on it’s effects.(this field is also filled with loads of beliefs!) I feel I’ve reached my goal weight and health, so will stop obsessing about it, and I’m definitively giving up these muscleman/ribbed images, I’m interested in health, not the mirror effect.

So let’s just that during my first 50 years of life I was obsessing with belief systems from outside my self. I was acting according to society’s beliefs, looking for recognition, acknowledgment, having to prove myself through my accomplishments. Today I’m in love with my wife, my daughter, my family and friends, and the rest, well the rest is as the sky is blue. The rest simply is.

I am here, now, and these are the best of times.

So until next,   GGrrrrrrrrrrr    Guy The Healthy Paleo Guy