Grapes, or Grape Juice?  That is the question.

I get asked a lot about fruits and juices.
Picking between them, or refusing both, is an important discussion.

Overall though, rule 1 is this: Choose the food which will cause the lowest blood sugar response, so choose fruits over fruit juices, grapes over grape juice. Fruit juice is much better than soda, because it at least has vitamins and some phytonutrients.   But it also has a lot of simple sugar, which is not good. 

Always consider a) the Glycemic Response (how high it raises your blood sugar) of a certain food and b) the ratio of fiber to carbohydrate.  Both of these factors will affect your energy and your weight control.

You may actually get more vitamins and minerals by cooking fruits and vegetables, so I'm not saying to not ever do that.  But fruit has a good bit of sugar to begin with, and by cooking a fruit or making it a juice it will raise the sugar response even more.  Eating a whole fruit causes a lower insulin spike and is much better for you metabolically, and with better control of insulin, your whole health will be so much better. 

Higher insulin responses lead to greater fat storage.  So more juice will usually lead to more insulin and more fat. 

Vegetables are different because they're starchy to an extent and have much less, if any sugar.

If the choice comes down to grapes or grape juice, always choose grapes!
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I enjoy writing and helping people, and write on all sorts of health, wellness, nutrition, and fitness topics.  
 
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When you start studying mental health, like I did a few years back when I wrote my book "Movement & Meaning" about exercise and mental health, you can go down quite a rabbit hole.

The conception of the self is something that has changed over time. It used to be pretty well set, and rooted in a particular time and place, a particular culture.  As the sociologist Phillip Reiff taught in his work, we no longer in modern American society live in a culture, we live in what he called an "anti-culture."   Cultures are defined by values and morals, and what they forbid. Scarily, our culture only forbids forbidding, a recipe for nihilism and anarchy. Which is what we're getting more of every day.

There are of course outposts of culture within the anti-culture, and I've written a lot about that.  This blog is one outpost. 

I wanted to share a book I just finished that is an excellent synopsis of how we ended up in this mess, where people are "identifying" as the opposite sex, as animals, and all sorts of things. 

Truth is no longer based on truth, but is based on feelings, in other words there is no functional concept of truth.  If I feel like a woman, or a black person, then I am, because to me it's true.  How someone feels about something determines whether it is true or not. You have your truth and I have mine. 

This is the rise of the "Therapeutic Self" or the "Modern Self" where reality is based on the psychologized self. 

Years back I started studying theology as a natural process, that came from studying the mind and philosophy. You can't understand the modern self without studying metaphysics (the study of "being") and theology.  As Chesterton said, "All arguments are theological."

The therapeutic, modern self identity is based on emotions and emotivism, the philosophy that emotions reveal truth.

Carl Trueman has written an excellent and accessible book on this subject for the lay reader:

"The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self"

It's based on the work of  3 writers I’ve previously read. He synthesizes the work of:

• Alasdair Macintyre in "After Virtue" a pivotal work I read a few years back. One of the best and most influential nonfiction books of the past century.
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, a dense book I enjoyed but was a grind.
• Philip Reiff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, fascinating look at how modern man largely has entered a 3rd stage (versus political then religious) of existence - therapeutic.

You would not have to had read these 3 to understand Trueman, which is good, because those are all much harder reads.  I highly recommend anyone who wants to make sense of our current pathologies.

I enjoy writing and helping people, and write on all sorts of health, wellness, nutrition, and fitness topics.  
 
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"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."   - John Adams

I like to take walks outside and think.  I never take my phone with me unless I'm listening to an audiobook, because walking is a perfect time to think.  Lightbulbs go off while you walk, and your conscience speaks.  You connect dots.  

Sometimes they're happy thoughts, sometimes sad, sometimes both or in between.  

I've been thinking a lot lately about John Adams, specifically a quote of his.  

I saw a story this week about yet another freeway shooting in Atlanta.  Someone I know had a friend shot at who had their small child in a car seat almost killed, spared by a few inches.  

"In just the first month of 2022 in the city of Atlanta alone, police are investigating four interstate shootings.
Last year, police reported at least 30 shootings across metro interstates."

Read the whole story: 
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/rising-number-of-road-rage-shootings-in-metro-atlanta-leaves-drivers-wary-of-interstates/ar-AAToeau


John Adams was correct.  This quote keeps popping up in my head.  He was a very wise man.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams

This is why the life of the spirit is so important.  A purely materialist concept of the human person, or human soul, without morality, or a religious anthropology will allow and even promote anything, no matter how degraded, nihilistic, or banally evil.  Just ask the Chinese or Russians, victims of a materialist communist ideology that took the life of over 100 million people. 

People can't hope to live in a free society without some limits or objective conception of good and evil.  The great hope of America was that with the right amount of virtue, people could be free and self-govern.  Unfortunately, no one seems to want to talk about virtue anymore.  

John Adams predicted the future.

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I enjoy writing and helping people, and write on all sorts of health, wellness, nutrition, and fitness topics.   

Remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
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The Two Keys to Building Muscle 

1. Higher Volume of Weight Lifted
2. Lower Rest time Between Sets

Volume of Weight Lifted
I’m a big proponent of total volume of weight lifted when it comes to building muscle.   An added benefit is that the higher the volume of training, generally speaking, the greater the health benefits.

Total Volume Formula
Weight x Reps x Sets 
Example
Bench press
100 pounds x 10 reps x 4 sets= 4000 pounds of volume 
More volume = more muscle 
(Versus dumbell flys, 40 pounds x 10 x 4 = 1600 pounds lifted) 
In this example, it’s easy to see why bench press is so much better for building muscle than flys.

If you pick exercise like squats which you can do more weight on, then your volume will be higher and you’ll build more muscle.

Focus on:
3-5 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise for building muscle, using compound (multi -joint) lifts.
If you do less than 5 reps, you’ll lift lesser volumes. If you do more than 15, the same thing occurs.


Rest Time Between Sets
Lactic acid accumulates and thus growth stimulation occurs when muscles are fatigued, which means lowering the rest time between sets to 15-60 seconds.  Never rest longer than 60 seconds between sets when you're trying to focus primarily on building muscle.

So to build muscle:
Focus on high volume training (a lot of sets) and short rest between sets. 

The type of training needed to focus primarily on building strength (versus mass) is different, involving longer rest times and heavier weights with fewer sets. For endurance focus, 15-20 reps or more is appropriate.

Application:
Alternate compound (multi-joint) exercises with little or no rest and do multiple sets:


Squats / bench press
Rows / deadlifts
Leg press / pull up
Lunge / overhead press
Dips / bar curls

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I enjoy writing and helping people, and write on all sorts of health, wellness, nutrition, and fitness topics.   

Remember...there's never been a better day than TODAY to make it happen!
 
Read Next: The "Religion" of Health
 
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