It's been a huge downward spiral ever since. Immediately after, we moved up North to New Jersey. And I started going bald, fat, and also crazy. Seriously. I wasn't even the same person a year later. **** the North. Goes to show just how relevant stress can be to hormonal balance and everything else. Which is why saturated fat is evil.

I need some sort of self-exclusion on days I don't lift. Because I take EC for my cardio. Which makes me borderline manic.

i moved from northern wisconsin to austin, tx when i was 9, i feel that the move saved my life(or at least kept me from talking funny)

I got triggered for the worst lifetilt earlier. A girl gave a presentation on her opinion on dairy products. Which was well organized and referenced a ton of studies. Saying how awful they are for you. I'm pretty sure it was somewhat convincing to many.

+At least half her statements were causal correlations. And she would say **** like: M.D. X from Y, says that " Dairy products are responsible for the obesity epidemic" (not the increased calorie consumption of Americans). She literally flat out said, " Milk gives you diabetes and cancer and humans can't digest the calcium anyway." Then rants about being a vegetarian for a while and the treatment of cows being despicable.

And obviously the whole -we are the only species to drink another species' milk- argument:




THIS. DOES NOT. MAKE SENSE.

And then touches on evolution (speaking as a vegetarian who hates dairy and looks nutrient deficient and weighs <90 lb) and recommends we eat more grains.

Then at the end she says if you absolutely have to drink milk because you are addicted then get organic fat free. Doesn't say why you would want fat free milk after spending 5 minutes talking how bad the pasteurization process is of course. Also, not only are hormones really bad, but naturally occurring hormones in food have apparently been conclusively proven to give you the AIDS.

I wanted to ****ing vomit.

I had 3 sources on the top of my head and could have improved a good rebuttal speech but had no outline to turn in for said rebuttal and already had a topic I was supposed to be thinking about for the next hour instead. So I sat there and steamed.

My sleep issues which dissapeared for a while are back with a vengeance. Seeing doctor Friday.Even on days I take 0 caffeine or stimulants. It's like, do I need a ****ing tranq?

None of the mess work for me either. I take melatonin for restful sleep or w/e like everyone. Ambien doesn't work and I'm never taking it again. I would needs drug addict levels of Xanax or Valium to fall asleep. My sister had some med that actually reduces blood pressure to knock out cracked out ADD kids and it still doesn't work for me.. I basically get to bed later and later until my sleep sucks or worse I have to get up early for class and this happens. Then I am up all day and exhausted and through that and sometimes + drugs can reset earlier. What a wonderful cycle. I have no idea why this happens. I do know ZMA gives me restless sleep. Zinc and mag is ok buy I usually avoid it.

AJ -

I have exactly the same problem as you.

Basically I can't sleep until I'm tired, and I'm not tired until 26 hours after the last time I was tired.

So my schedule moves up 2 hours every day, quite consistently.

One thing I've noticed is that getting some sun, which I rarely do, make me get drowsy much earlier.

Fortunately I don't have to go school or a job or it would be pretty agonizing. I am *very* dependent on sleep to function and feel well. Even on 6 hours of sleep I feel miserable for most of the day until I get my second wind in the late afternoon.

aj,

Are you still on the ec stack? How much caffeine daily?

That's very intersting. I wouldn't say it's 2 hours but I have a similar thing, maybe 30-60 mins. I've only known one other person who does this, I think Ozzy87 told me he had this issue years ago.

I can't function without my 8 hours. And due to the way this has been going the only way I've even been able to stay up the next day is EC.

Ankle,

I cut it out since January. I reintroduced it like a week ago and plan to take it 3-4x a week, on non-lifting days where I do moderate intensity cardio. I've taken it twice, and I actually am getting to sleep BETTER on nights I take it.

Because I can use the EC crash to help me get to sleep, and I've been tired from ****ty sleep from the previous day where I didn't take any. LOL, wtf? Could the EC somehow be ****ing with me on days I'm not taking it?

I'm usually OK once I get to sleep, but I just can't fall asleep normally. The two nights I've had major sleep issues in the past week have been days I lifted and had 0 caffeine or stimulants. Maybe more exercise/walking around outside would help. Maybe it's somehow stress, I don't know. I was sleeping much better than normal for over a month.

I don't take caffeine on days I lift. I probably should and was advised to have like 600mg/day through green tea or whatever but I rarely do, and just stopped on the rare case it was hurting sleep. But maybe it would actually do the opposite? I don't know.

I think nearly everything she said was probably BS but this especially makes no sense. We evolved to eat grains which we cultivate through farming methods unavailable to our ancestors? Wtf?

Ha, my mom asked me about the dangers of milk because some chumps kept telling her how it causes cancer. Worse, some doctor said that eliminating milk from her diet cured her breast cancer in 3 months!

I sent her a long ranty missive about milk, science, logic and alan aragon.

Yea, i used to be on a 27-28 hour sleep cycle like 4-5 years ago when I was just getting into poker. I would wake up, play as long as I could until i could barely function, then go roll around in bed for an hour or two before falling asleep for 10 hours, waking up in a pool of sweat. NFI what changed really or how I got out of that.

I try to set an alarm every day and get in bed at a reasonable hour. I also used to watch tv in bed a bunch. Now i pick up some fiction, read for like 20-30 minutes, and as soon as I put it down, I am usually able to roll over and fall asleep. Of course, I used to drink a 12 pack of cherry coke and crush a pizza with a pound of sour patch kids every day, so that probably didn't help either.

i don't see what is wrong with her talking about dairy products that way. dairy products are pushed on people unabashadely from public elementary schools, where we see happy cows grazing in the field and saying how milk makes us grow strong. to be honest, i have been skeptical of milk until recently with a lot of sports my body craves it... so i figure i will trust that instinct... but i think it is good that she is making people think about food which most people accept as the holy grail because of marketing and brain washing they recieved as children which was not based on science and was nothing more than milk industry propoganda.

Critical thinking is great. However, arriving at the following conclusions in the process, is bad:

> Milk is the cause of the obesity epidemic
> Milk definitely causes cancer and diabetes
> Calcium in milk cannot be absorbed

Fwiw, I hate milk (choc milk is fine), and almost never consume it in its liquid form.

its not like those conclusions are from outer space. if person A drinks milk, and person B drinks water... person A will be fatter.

our science is quite inexact, we don't understand a lot of things, and the things we do know we have a limited understanding of (this certainly holds true for the human body, cancer, and nutrition). so if drawing conclusions from simple correlations is the best we can do, it can be helpful, and correct. also i remember in the China Study it did a good job of proving its hypothosis that animal products are related to cancer. why do you disagree? i can't restate that argument well cause i read it a while ago. i remember raptor read it, and i think he liked it, perhaps he can add here.

and on the 3rd point, again, with the same reasoning as on point 2, it makes sense that calcium in milk cannot be absorbed. demanding rock hard scientific evidence on this stuff is just not realistic, so we should work with what we have, common sense. i also remember seeing statistics that drinking milk as a kid was not correlated with stronger bones, or less of that bone disease (osterperthosisisis?)

This is an example of bad analysis, as well as "a little science can be a dangerous thing."

Wow. Really dude? Person A eats spinach. Person B drinks water.
Person A will be fatter. Spinach causes obesity.

We do have a limited understanding, sure. That doesn't make drawing conclusions from simple correlations the best we can do, or correct.

Let's address the cherry-picking sensationalist's dream: cancer. Semantically, and socially, the word "cancer" is emotionally loaded, and demands attention (sometimes with good reason). The running joke is that you can find some study showing that playing with puppies causes cancer, if you look hard enough. That said, we shouldn't dismiss the claim off-hand. At this point, I should make a brief comment on the duality of science and scientific research. Science provides a better platform than anecdotal speculation, recycled myths, plain old BS, pseudo-science, faith, and mere conjecture. Yet, we must realize there is a difference between good science and bad science and attempt to identify them. Also of note science is not immune from agendas, politics and cognitive biases and the power of money.

Aragon:
We must watch for flawed research and lend primacy to "better" studies in the context of methodologies, sample sizes, regressions and controls.

For example, here is a study that purportedly demonstrates a link between milk consumption and prostate cancer:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/74/4/549

Two things quickly come to mind: correlation is not causation, and the lack of controls for just about any other factors.

Here is a much more thorough study, with a much larger statistical sample size, with relevant controls, and a breakdown of different dairy products that finds no link between milk, dairy products and prostate cancer.
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c...full/98/11/794

On osteoporosis, I'll quote Aragon again.


The benefits and deleterious effects of milk have been postulated by many, and views are situated all along the continuum. On one end, there are those who say things to the effect of "Milk is a natural superfood. Everyone should consume it and LOTS of it." On the other, there is the hysterical "OH NOES!!!! Milk is carcinogenic and the produce of the devil! You will die if you sip it. It is unnatural to drink the milk of another animal; you will get cancer and may you spend years burning in hell." Truth can often be sought somewhere in the middle.

As is often the case in many domains (social, political, scientific, etc), the ends of the continuum are often populated by idiots and people who were hit by a truck carrying gallons of ******-sauce. Milk, like some grains, is a substance that a significant portion (significant is not equal to large) of the population has some form of intolerance to. So that should be addressed individually. The allergy angle is partly legitimate; however, people often fallaciously project their own allergies and sensitivities onto the whole population. Besides combining the logical fallacies (small sample size, hasty generalization), bad reasoning (anecdotal extrapolation, n=1) and psychological defense mechanisms (projection), prescriptions to eliminate milk from the diet based on this reeks of arrogance and is a kick-in-the-balls to scientific method.

Milk is an incredibly useful substance: it's easily available, readily prepared and relatively inexpensive. It provides an excellent source of protein, and dairy calcium. The amino acid profile is complete (unlike vegetable and grain sources of protein) which is even more relevant to vegetarians. A lot of people will benefit from adding more milk to their diet to ensure adequate protein and depending on their body composition goals. Milk is a complete beverage containing protein, carbohydrate, fat and water. This has implications in rehydration, glycogen replenishment post-exercise, nitrogen balance, protein supplementation and satiety (due to the fat).

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/res...ion-drink.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...ubmed_RVDocSum

I haven't used fallacious or loaded weasel words like "natural" to label milk and endorse its indiscriminate consumption. Nutrition, nutri-genomics, and related research is in flux. We have to take what we know, filter out the agenda, myths and BS, and balance the benefits and risks- be slave only to science and results.

So what is the take-away for milk?

Unless one has a specific and limiting allergy or intolerance to milk, there is no need to eliminate it. It has balanced macronutrients and can be a useful source of protein and calcium. Also, one can circumvent a lactose intolerance with the use of lactose-free milk or Lactaid. How much you should consume depends on the totality of your diet, macronutrient needs, goals, etc.

Poker skill has no correlation to mental acuity or deductive logic IMO.

I stopped reading here b/c this was funny (and correct) the rest was really long, and I assumed it couldn't get better.

Have you watched some of the nosebleed superstars on TV? Many of them are the exact same people that used to go to class in the trailer by the school and weren't allowed near sharp objects.

it tilts me to no end when people equate poker success with intelligence level, its just a ******ed thought process.

I'm bad right now. Not bad like, this:


but bad like, this:






Major life upswing moving to full throttle. One paper and finals are over. Ladies. Money. Crushing everything.

Schedule is awesome. 3-4x week lift, 2-3x cardio. Abuse ephedrine. Eating a very nice diet and enjoying it. Lifts are moving up more than expected from rep range to rep range. Sundays off everything.

nice life.

Is that JC Alvarado?

I must compete w/Raptor:

I have a similar setup, but on the porch. I got construction grade rubber padding and a squat stand with an Eleiko Olympic grade barbell and bumper set. No bench though.

I can't use it during the winter unfortunately because the North is awful. But it's pretty nice 6-7 months a year.

How much was the bar? The plates?

Also, does it bow much with heavy ass weight on it?

ever do OHS with your dog? the moving weight might help strengthen your core.

I think OHS while standing on your dog would more greatly work your stabilizer muscles -- and his.

Hah. He died of cancer. It's weird, it was nearly a year ago, but it feels like nothing at all has happened in my training, life, anything since then even though that's not true. The time has just dissipated.

He was a golden/unknown mix. Like 140 pounds and over 3 feet tall. Friendliest, happiest dog anyone I know has ever met. His sister is still alive although she seems pretty inactive and depressed nowadays.

The bar was like $1k. That's an Eleiko, the same one used in the Olympics. It's very springy. I can move more weight with it in the jerk than a regular barbell and get some added rebound in squats. I haven't used enough weight to make it bend but it definitely gets a little and a lot of elastic energy if you know what I mean. I feel like it just peels off the floor and springs overhead. It bent a little bit on 179kg in deads, and it looks like it's bending in the vids from the Olympics with weights like 200k in the clean and jerk, so I'm damn close.

You can get a lot of added power from the barbell in overhead lifts. Over 30% of the upward drive in the jerk can be generated purely from the elastic energy stored in the barbell from the dip/drive. It's actually a rule: if you bounce up and down after the clean to use the oscillation of the barbell to assist in the jerk, they will red light you in a weightlifting competition.

I bought the plates used outside Eleiko and got a good deal, I forget how much they were but it was like half retail.