Lucario said:

Well, I’m trying to lose some wieght (doctor’s orders), and I’d like to know: How could I emulate the diet and exercise of my ancestors (back in the days when food was scarce and women could slave in the kitchen all day over a roast) without sacrificing the comforts of modern living and on a shoestring budget? Being able to do it without experiencing hunger pangs would be a bonus.

I have no idea what your situation is. However, my doctor told me I needed to lose some weight and suggested I cut back on soft drinks. That’s what I did. I really found going to water was very bland so I started drinking seltzer, which is calorie free and also flavored seltzer, which is very low in calories.

That alone was enough to lose a couple pounds.

You don’t need a gym membership to have a non-sedentary lifestyle.

I understand what you are saying about it being a luxury to take an hour or more to exercise. However, in the historical context, it’s absolutely bizzare that being active is something you would have to try to do.

Before mechanized transport, for example, it was damn near impossible to not get a lot of exercise.

My grandmother has told me about when she was younger, in the 1950’s, starting a family, and I’m impressed by how much walking was required. My grandparents lived in the suburbs, but as was common at the time, the expense of automobiles meant that there was only one family car. My grandfather took it to work on weekdays. She did not, however, stay put. She walked (almost every day) to the neighborhood market, which was a good half mile away.

If she wanted to go further, she would take the bus, but the bus stop was also a good walk from the house and the bus only took her to the downtown area of the town, so she would have to then walk around to get to the final destination.

They did not get a second car until the late 1960’s. Again, this was fairly common at the time.

She also had to hang the laundry on the line because there was no dryer. I think things were just required more exertion at the time in general – lawn mowers were not self-propelled and many still used non-motorized mowers. Vacuum cleaners were heavier and took more effort.

Mind you, I am not trumpeting the virtues of being a 50’s housewife as if it’s a wonderful thing. It’s certainly true that a lot of that stuff is thankless work, preformed in relative loneliness and that it is not what a woman would want to aspire to, given other choices. I’m just saying, that’s the way it was – life involved more manual labor.

I really doubt that would work.

For one thing, I really consider gym memberships overrated. Yes, they make it easier to exercise, especially if you have some specific goal or prefer weight training. However, you don’t need a gym membership to just regularly run or walk.

Having a membership does not mean you will actually go regularly and stick to it.

Memberships are not expensive to begin with. Not only that, many have access to free gym facilities and don’t use them. Universities have student health centers that are free to use if you are enrolled. Some employers have gyms at the office. I’ve seen many communities which have free or extremely low cost exercise facilities maintained by the parks and recreation department. It’s great to have free or low cost gyms, but that’s no magic bullet to actually getting people to exercise.

Not sure about that. The area I live in, I’m not sure I could walk to a local gym. Not that they’re not within reasonable walking distance, but the area is just not very pedestrian friendly. Not all streets have sidewalks etc. I would really not want to be regularly walking along the shoulder of the road regularly, especially after sunset. It could be downright dangerous. That’s not even factoring in the weather.

Yeah… walking back from the gym at 8 pm, in the complete darkness, on the shoulder of an unlit road where cars barrel around blind curves at 50+ MPH, in November, in a driving freezing rain… No thanks.

        Lucario said:

^ Sorry, anon, no sheep or other such game out ther for me to catch and slaughter.

Pity.

It’s only relatively recently that we’ve gotten to the point of not being a bad hunt/harvest away from starvation so starve-feast-starve-feast-etc is pretty much how we’ve been living, whether or hunter/gatherers or peasants for most of human history (and peasantry is relatively recent compared with hunting and gathering).

It also happens to be the reason you can’t really do much about (promoting exercise isn’t going to work as people will just end up eating more after they’re done completely wiping out what they’ve sweated off).

Which would only likely be used by those who already go to the gym without actually getting any new people into there (or at least new regular customers, which is what you’d need for it to be a success, a person who shows up once or twice isn’t being helped, or hurt by it).

Of course the people who drive to the gym should probably be pointed at and laughed at (unless they work there).

Inrceasing the amount of walking people do might actually help (since they aren’t all that likely to quaff down lots of food as soon as they get to work) and there are other good reasons to invest in public transport.

Regards

Lu Brits

Reasons why people are fat:
* Eating large amounts of high calorie food
* Sedentary lifestyles

I’ve heard a lot of noise about calorie taxes and salad from politicians and news outlets, but I’ve yet to hear anything about reason #2. For many of us, leading an active lifestyle is a luxury. Gym memberships cost money, and taking an hour out of your busy day to exercise exacts a real cost in time. Maybe instead of trying to tell us what to eat, government could encourage municipalities to provide free or low-cost gym facilities to their residents. Investment in mass transit and walkable neighborhoods would also be a great way to get people to walk more without necessarily having to take time out of their schedule to do it.

What I meant was how one could emulate the diet/exercise habits of one’s ancestors (not necessarily cavemen, peasants will do) without sacrificing the comforts or modern life or suffering hunger pangs. That is, I’m still ” hunting and gathering” from the supermarket.

        Lucario said:

Well, I’m trying to lose some wieght (doctor’s orders), and I’d like to know: How could I emulate the diet and exercise of my ancestors (back in the days when food was scarce and women could slave in the kitchen all day over a roast) without sacrificing the comforts of modern living and on a shoestring budget? Being able to do it without experienceing hunger pangs would be a bonus.

You could try this variant of raw foodism.

The diet of our ancestors was hunger then feast, then hunger, then feast.

It’s also worth pointing out that people tend to eat after they exercise (and usually quite a bit more than what they just worked off).

Initially, the message was “I’m going to cure myself holistically, then I’m going to go and have scans/biopsies/take pictures of my disappearing tumours and go back and show the doctors who wanted to amputate my arm that Gerson works.” Now that she has passed the magical 2-year gerson mark, her message is that she’s not going to have any conventional scans, because the scans didn’t show her cancer in the first place, plus all the radiation will be bad for her…. no mention of having biopsies. No going to real doctors at all. Instead she’s having completely invalid and unreliable blood tests via Mexico, and using some machine that doesn’t detect cancer (ie. how do I know I don’t have cancer? Because tests haven’t detected it!).

My guess is she suspects, and doesn’t want to know, that she’s been on a delusional trip. I would feel terribly sorry for her if she wasn’t taking money off other people for her e-books, sponsored ads and telling them that western medicine will kill them. As she is doing all those things, I am saving my sympathy for sick people who don’t make money out of scams. Gerson therapy is one big fat scam.