— Prepare for a no-BS dietary epiphany; scare quotes are the clue I’m very confident in guaranteeing that by the time you finish this post, you will: How could you have missed it? Well, it kinda turns out that we’re all a lot more ideological, biased, and confirmation-seeking than we care to admit. Even worse,……...

— It has been a very long time since I’ve seen anything new. This is new. It must have been sometime in 2008, 15 years ago…. About a year prior, concerned about my shrinking clothing, I started going to the gym, met with some initial success, blogged about it here, and someone commented that the……...

— Has Justice Been Served? If So, To Whom, and For What? PREVIOUSLY: The Arrest of Jimmy Moore For Underage Sex Well it is a pathetic spectacle, I’ll give you that. Do I feel sorry for the guy? I don’t feel one way or the other about it. What motivates me out of a state……...

— “Toto, I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore” Alright, we’re closing in on the new year and my publicly-available posting campaign together with end-of-year sale/anti-sale is running out of time with lots still in the outbox. After this, I’m shifting to a couple of Thailand-Life updates and might close it out with a……...

— It's Not Hype To Say Miracle Drug...Miracle Plant

If you're reading this via the Newsletter, note that the post title differs from the email subject line to [hopefully] not get caught up in filters of a certain kind. If you haven't read yesterday's post, I would encourage you to do so. It says what's in store for us this week, like all posts will be public until the new year. I did a short video trailer from the beach after a 1.2km swim, see below. Here's what's planned over the next few days on the heels of this marvelous discovery, below. First, I'm back together with Yui (the girl...and just as importantly, her two girls) and there's a whole history and story and reason behind that and lessons learned and new insights. I've got some cooking posts, including how to make wonderful 30-minute German-style fried potatoes in 6 minutes (video too). I've been swimming and snorkeling a lot and have some pretty cool underwater GoPro footage. There's new research hot off the presses this week that suggests or even confirms that the immune systems of billions worldwide may be compromised or wrecked. Does America stand a chance anymore, politically? And more...

A good place to start this unbelievable and serendipitous story is at the beginning.

Last September I moved into this new place and found myself residing between two young Thai women. Both turned out to be real sweethearts. The one to my left, Thanida, works at a French-style bakery owned by a Vietnamese guy (the one to my right, Khip, works as a secretary at a hotel and is pregnant). Thanida had a British boyfriend but he liked hitting the girl bars too much so she dumped him. They're still friends and I'm acquainted. He's older, in my age range, a bit of an asshole, but smart and competent. Good hearted fundamentally, he set her up with a real computer and still helps her in various ways.

Here's her and I on a morning walk and then breakfast. Yes, the 2.5 min video title is shameless and intentional clickbait.

Enter her new boyfriend since last year, Pico, who recently arrived from Germany for a few months. Near the same age, he and I have hit it off marvelously. Super good guy.

Notice the age difference (she's about 35, he's over 55); and Thanida is neither a gold digger nor has she ever worked in a bar. She works 10 hours per day, six days per week, for incredibly low wages by our standards (less than $500 per month). He helps out, but she insists on working.

So, in reference to the foregoing pike and what's coming down it, I have a post on that general topic as well. Prepare to have assumptions, stereotypes, and projections utterly, iconoclastically dismantled (in a gentle way...especially for the ladies who, in some sense, have a perfectly natural and logical disdain for this sort of thing).

...A few weeks ago I saw Pico munching on something and I asked what it was. He had no idea, but said it's a root, like a potato, but is crunchy and a little bit sweet, like an apple. He gave me one out of the fridge, which he recommended doing.

On the outside, it looks like a typical sweet potato, or what some erroneously call yams. Thanida had acquired them from up in Chiang Mai, 1000 miles away. There's some altitude up there and it's cooler. Apparently, this Andes native—colloquially known as Peruvian apple—grows well up there and a farmer ships them for 160 baht for a 5 kilogram box (11 pounds for $4.65, including shipping).

What are they? I snapped a photo and did an image search and one of the results was a plant called "yacon." Then image searching on that specifically confirmed it because of the melon or apple-like inside. (I always have to be careful typing it, because autocorrect thinks I mean bacon.)

So, nothing much to see yet and your first query would naturally be various cooking alternatives.

But nope, you eat them raw.

I'll get to taste and texture in a bit. They're extra delicious and could easily be my favorite "fruit." I need to buy a blender so I can make smoothies from two of them and fart up a damn storm (1st hint).

I noticed something quite radical after eating a couple of them per day for a few days in a row. My ravenous hunger subsided. Remember what motivated me to try cutting out the booze? Complete loss of appetite. The rest of that story is history.

But when I stopped boozing and in 3 days had my appetite back, it went all Yin to Yang on me and I was hungry all the [damn] time. So, what I'm saying is, that experience was serendipity number one. I was in the ideal time and place to notice a profound change and it was highly correlated with consuming these things. Add to that, I know a thing or two about gut health, and profound flatulence informed me on that score.

So I started looking into it, just idle Google searches, including for those touted to produce weight-loss results with before-after pics like the one to the left. Interestingly, there are few pics and not a lot of information. Contrasted with new and hyper-expensive Wegovy—which you'll learn about below—there's tons of stuff to be "found." Thanks, Google. One hopes there'll be lot more info about cheap yacon syrup soon. I'm sure you're anxious to include it in search results, right along with patented and expensive Wegovy.

I did come up with an interesting read and it contained a study with head-shaking results.

— I seem to be undergoing a transition of sorts from where initially, alcohol cessation was all about the ways and means of getting it done—arriving at that point of no return—to now, increasingly, towards a more observant and deliberative consideration.

Preface

Kind of like: the chicken or the egg; what comes first? Do you get plastered because life sucks and it's an effective acute-pain reliever for that; or, is it that you typically drink for a multitude of reasons (or excuses), it eventually gets out of hand, and then proceeds to 'suck' up your life to the point that alcohol becomes a veritable coping requirement?

"Oh, boy...I could really use a drink."

...Or is it both, since the real answer to the question about chickens and eggs is that there's not the one, without the other. They're inexorably integrated, inseparable.

But still...I can wax philosophically or psychologically all I want, but it all has to meet a single criterion for me:

Does this nugget or tidbit or realization or actualization or idea or aha moment...bring someone to the Easy Place? Because let's face it: you're probably not going to brute force this thing to success. If it sucks, then it's likely going to get suckier and the suckier it gets, the more likely you are to fail.

...But fear ye not!

...That failure can be "magically transformed" into success, see? All you have to do on the back-end of failure is float the notion that it was just a test to show that you actually can abstain and now the test is over.

See? "I can quit anytime I want!"

...Though I've surprisingly not faced this [what would be] understandable criticism anywhere, it nonetheless nags at me a little. What am I doing, essentially creating what purports to be an authoritative gospel for kicking the bottle when I've been at it such a short time?

It smacks of unbridled exuberance—like when you're a kid and had your first beer. Or, you've discovered a hammer and so now, everything is a nail.

But that's just me and has always been me. Once I really get into something I take it up with a very rapid gusto so I can master the essentials, which is a process of shit-canning most of what's out there, leaving only the valid stuff. That's why most stuff is easier than it looks—or is purported to be by those seeking your money. They want you to think it's hard. Not to worry. They're here to help.

Those with the most just and valid reasons to ask you for compensation are those who are constantly simplifying, clarifying, and deconstructing for ease of implementation and better chances of success. Others continually complicate, obfuscate, qualify, manufacture exceptions, and issue rules that are self-serving, requiring endless guidance and management.

C'mon, look how simple I make shit: don't [eat, drink, or do X] too much, too often. What's amazing is how damn difficult it is to get out a simple message like that, undercutting all the abject bullshit. It's because it's perceived to be obvious, so of little value. Ironic, that, isn't it?

In most things being touted and marketed, "simple steps to..." are never simple. Rather, they are intentionally near to impossible. But all that will be laid out in the next release, at a good price...and so on.

— I stumbled across something today, read it, dropped a comment about it some other place, and then left it alone.

Until I couldn't.

I sat there eating my first food in 19 hours—courtesy of an almost daily fast—time restricted feeding, eating window, whatever— and looked down at my 159 baht ($4.15) plate of grilled pork and chicken, with mushroom sauce, green peppercorn sauce, mashed potatoes, smoked pork sausage, and grilled vegetables...then realized I'm eating something that many a diet zealot loves, and that another hates.

...What I'd seen was a head-shaking post by Amber O'Hearn recalling an experience with potatoes she hadn't touched so much as a bite of in over 2 decades. I seem to recognize the name, perhaps from the Paleo Daze—and apparently, she switched trains at the station at some point, in favor of a high-fat, low-protein keto/carnivore dogma approach.

Yep, I'm perpetually straddling dietary salvation and condemnation both, in nearly every meal—all of them falling short of either someone's dietary prescriptions or someone else's proscriptions. And on deeper sociological examination, isn't that part of of the point of different diets as such, and in the first place?

It starts with chocolate and vanilla...but oops, both are proscribed by some dietary catechisms, allowed only in moderation in others. And unless there's an Ice Cream Diet^TM, I don't know that either are prescribed anywhere...unless perhaps the chocolate is 70% or greater organic cacao and then it might fall under the grudgingly allowable for some. I digress.

I'll go into detail over Ms. O'Hearn's post, below.

So what constitutes the ideal inspiration for a jump-to-the-front blog post more than that? I mean, just look.

This was at my favorite place in Rawai, JeePhueng Phochana and Steak House, a hole-in-the-wall owned and operated by a trained-chef hubby & wife team who met while working in a fancy hotel restaurant on the island, pre-Covid. Unique in the world, a "Thai" restaurant that serves only Farang food, but at Thai-normal prices. It's less than 2km from my place, I've walked over and back a number of times. Every time I go I end up meeting Thai folks who've become Farang-food fans, as well as the astute Farangs, and the regulars, like myself.

My friend Jackie, for instance—a former 2nd-baseman for the Phillies way, way on back—eats there every day for lunch. Everyone says the same thing: 'love the prices but we come here because everything is so good!'

And then I thought about the dinners I cooked at home the last two nights and it's the same thing. Love & hate on the same plate, depending upon which dogmatic dietary perspective one pays homage to adheres to...practices. There. I fixed it.

Wait until you see those marvelous, mouth-watering photos. But first, the setup.

Two days ago I was in Lotus Fresh, a Seven Eleven-sized offshoot of the Tesco Lotus chain and I walked past the most beautiful pork filet I have ever seen in my life. And that's the truth. A good inch and 1/2 thick, perfectly marbled, with a thin strip of fat that would turn singed and succulent over a grill flame. I had to have it, though it would set me back 69 baht ($1.80). I pared it with a boiled potato and bathed the entire shebang in a tarragon chicken-stock reduction sauce, dusted with black pepper and cayenne for a wee bit of kick and a Lagasse BANG!

Then down the aisle, an equally attractive, thick chicken breast with its skin called to me at only half the price of the pork. So I got that too, for last night, and that lower-carbohydrate meal was paired with mixed stir-fried vegetables and garlic, tossed in unsalted butter. I did the same thing with tarragon and chicken stock, but added a smidgen of milk for a southern flair.

I trust you'll be able to tell which is which.

[This post is public access and will be until I deem it's the right time to toss it behind the Membership Wall at some level to be decided. Notably, I have added a Lifetime Subscription option, by request. Details here.]

When I began to consider doing another workout or 'gym-post' yesterday—after a workout at Sun Fitness just a half-click walk from my hotel—I remembered that the gym was what lead me to Paleo and dieting in the first place, way way back in 2007; 15 damn years ago, at the age of 46.

Resistance Training

From my first post on the topic, May, 2007.

I will have much more to say about this in months to come, but it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that in terms of health and fitness, people have been suckered into a load of nonsense over the last 30 years with respect to the benefits of aerobics to the exclusion of all else.

Over four years ago, now, I embarked on a program of walking (briskly) every morning five days per week. I wanted to lose some poundage that needed losing, the dog needed walking anyway, and I like to walk. Well, 4,000 miles later (I was very religious about it, still am, and I enjoy it and intend to keep at it) I not only didn't lose any weight but probably put on about 20 lbs. This was three miles per day (about 45 minutes), fifteen miles per week, every week. If you think you're going to do much about an overweight problem with evening walks around the block you're probably fooling yourself.

[More...]

What really got the ball rolling was a comment on the post. Long timers will know the prominent name in the LC, Paleo, and Evolutionary Fitness spheres.

Yep, it was Art De Vany. It was perfect, really. He had both a sensible fitness approach and a sensible dietary approach—both modelled after evolutionary principles. To this day and as far into the future as humans manage to remain genetically human, one cannot go wrong by simply adhering to his 'old' advice.

The test of time is baked into the cake.

And so I made lots of progress in both areas and in terms of the gym, I blogged about it frequently.

Leangains by Martin Berkhan

This all culminated in working with Martin Berkhan, creator of the Leangains Protocol, beginning in April of 2010. Martin's demeanor is as badass and no bullshit as is his 700# deadlift. I was using an experienced trainer at the time—one with an actual degree in exercise physiology—who took well to Martin's approach, helping rather than hindering.

Six months later and I was ready to do a series of posts about all of it.