Calisthenics for Beginners – by Matt Schifferle
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For those who are curious to take up calisthenics, for its famed benefit to many kinds of health, this is a great starter-book.
First, what kind of benefits can we expect? Lots, but most critically:
- Greater mobility (as a wide range of movements is practiced, some of them stretchy)
- Cardiovascular fitness (calisthenics can be performed as a form of High Intensity Impact Training, HIIT)
- Improved muscle-tone (because these are bodyweight strength-training exercises—have you seen a gymnast’s body?)
- Denser bones (strong muscles can’t be built on weak bones, so the body compensates by strengthening them)
A lot of the other benefits stem from those, ranging from reduced risk of stroke, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, etc, to improved mood, more energy, better sleep, and generally all things that come with a decent, rounded, exercise regime.
Schifferle explains not just the exercises, but also the principles, so that we understand what we’re doing and why. Understanding improves motivation, adherence, and—often—form. Exercise diagrams are clear, and have active muscle-groups highlighted and color-coded for extra clarity.
As well as explaining exercises individually, he includes three programs, increasing in intensity. He also offers adjustments to make exercises easier or more challenging, depending on the current condition of your body.
The book’s not without its limitations—it may be a little male-centric for some readers, for instance—but all in all, it’s a very strong introduction to calisthenics… Enough to get anyone up and running, so to speak!
Get started with “Calisthenics for Beginners” from Amazon today!
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True Age – by Dr. Morgan Levine
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Yesterday’s book review (Counterclockwise) was about psychological factors affecting physical aging (progression or reversal thereof); today we have a book about the physiological factors affecting physical aging (progression or reversal thereof).
Dr. Levine is first and foremost a gerontological epigeneticist, and a lot of this book touches on her research in that field and that of her colleagues.
She does also discuss direct environmental factors also though, and—as you might well expect—lifestyle factors.
Regular readers of 10almonds are unlikely to gain anything new in the category of lifestyle matters, but a lot of the other material will be enlightening, especially with regard to the things that might at first glance seem set in stone, but we can in fact modify, and thus “choose our own adventure” when it comes to how the rest of our life plays out, healthwise (so: choose wisely!).
The book is mostly an overview on the (at time of writing: 2022) current state of affairs in the world of longevity research, and although it’s not a “how to” manual, there is plenty in the category of practical takeaways to be gleaned too.
The style is is mostly light pop science, but with a lot of hard science woven in—she is a good explainer, and has clearly made a notable effort to explain complex concepts in simple ways, while still delivering the complex concepts too (i.e. not overly “dumbing down”).
Bottom line: if you’d like to know about what can be done to increase your healthspan and general longevity, this book has a lot of answers!
Click here to check out True Age, and shift yours in the direction you prefer!
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Procrastination, and how to pay off the to-do list debt
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Procrastination, and how pay off the to-do list debt
Sometimes we procrastinate because we feel overwhelmed by the mountain of things we are supposed to be doing. If you look at your to-do list and it shows 60 overdue items, it’s little wonder if you want to bury your head in the sand!
“What difference does it make if I do one of these things now; I will still have 59 which feels as bad as having 60”
So, treat it like you might a financial debt, and make a repayment plan. Now, instead of 60 overdue items today, you have 1/day for the next 60 days, or 2/day for the next 30 days, or 3/day for the next 20 days, etc. Obviously, you may need to work out whether some are greater temporal priorities and if so, bump those to the top of the list. But don’t sweat the minutiae; your list doesn’t have to be perfectly ordered, just broadly have more urgent things to the top and less urgent things to the bottom.
Note: this repayment plan means having set repayment dates.
Up front, sit down and assign each item a specific calendar date on which you will do that thing.
This is not a deadline! It is your schedule. You’ll not try to do it sooner, and you won’t postpone it for later. You will just do that item on that date.
A productivity app like ToDoist can help with this, but paper is fine too.
What’s important here, psychologically, is that each day you’re looking not at 60 things and doing the top item; you’re just looking at today’s item (only!) and doing it.
Debt Reduction/Cancellation
Much like you might manage a financial debt, you can also look to see if any of your debts could be reduced or cancelled.
We wrote previously about the “Getting Things Done” system. It’s a very good system if you want to do that; if not, no worries, but you might at least want to borrow this one idea….
Sort your items into:
Do / Defer / Delegate / Ditch
- Do: if it can be done in under 2 minutes, do it now.
- Defer: defer the item to a specific calendar date (per the repayment plan idea we just talked about)
- Delegate: could this item be done by someone else? Get it off your plate if you reasonably can.
- Ditch: sometimes, it’s ok to realize “you know what, this isn’t that important to me anymore” and scratch it from the list.
As a last resort, consider declaring bankruptcy
Towards the end of the dot-com boom, there was a fellow who unintentionally got his 5 minutes of viral fame for “declaring email bankruptcy”.
Basically, he publicly declared that his email backlog had got so far out of hand that he would now not reply to emails from before the declaration.
He pledged to keep on top of new emails only from that point onwards; a fresh start.
We can’t comment on whether he then did, but if you need a fresh start, that can be one way to get it!
In closing…
Procrastination is not usually a matter of laziness, it’s usually a matter of overwhelm. Hopefully the above approach will help reframe things, and make things more manageable.
Sometimes procrastination is a matter of perfectionism, and not starting on tasks because we worry we won’t do them well enough, and so we get stuck in a pseudo-preparation rut. If that’s the case, our previous main feature on perfectionism may help:
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16 Overlooked Autistic Traits In Women
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We hear a lot about “autism moms”, but Taylor Heaton is an autistic mom, diagnosed as an adult, and she has insights to share about overlooked autistic traits in women.
The Traits
- Difficulty navigating romantic relationships: often due to misreading signs
- Difficulty understanding things: including the above, but mostly: difficulty understanding subtext, when people leave things as “surely obvious”. Autistic women are likely to be aware of the possible meanings, but unsure which it might be, and may well guess wrongly.
- Masking: one of the reasons for the gender disparity in diagnosis is that autistic women are often better at “masking”, that is to say, making a conscious effort to blend in to allistic society—often as a result of being more societally pressured to do so.
- Honesty: often to a fault
- Copy and paste: related to masking, this is about consciously mirroring others in an effort to put them at ease and be accepted
- Being labelled sensitive and/or gifted: usually this comes at a young age, but the resultant different treatment can have a lifetime effect
- Secret stims: again related to masking, and again for the same reasons that displaying autistic symptoms is often treated worse in women, autistic women’s stims tend to be more subtle.
- Written communication: autistic women are often more comfortable with the written word than the spoken
- Leadership: autistic women will often gravitate to leadership roles, partly as a survival mechanism
- Gaslighting: oneself, e.g. “If this person did this without that, then I can to” (without taking into account that maybe the circumstances are different, or maybe they actually did lean on crutches that you didn’t know were there, etc).
- Inner dialogue: rich inner dialogue, but unable to express it outwardly—often because of the sheer volume of thoughts per second.
- Fewer female friends: often few friends overall, for that matter, but there’s often a gender imbalance towards male friends, or where there isn’t, towards more masculine friends at least.
- Feeling different: often a matter of feeling one does not meet standard expectations in some fashion
- School: autistic women are often academically successful
- Special interests: often more “socially accepted” interests than autistic men’s.
- Flirting: autistic women are often unsure how to flirt or what to do about it, which can result in simple directness instead
For more details on all of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Related reading:
You might like a main feature of ours from not long back:
Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women
Take care!
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10 Great Exercises to Improve Your Eyesight
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If your eyesight has been declining a bit, all is not lost. Just like many other muscles in the body, the muscles of the eye—including those responsible for changing the focal length of your vision—can atrophy without exercise. So, without further ado, here are the exercises recommended:
The eyes (still) have it
- Blink for a minute: blink rapidly for 30–60 seconds to regulate blood circulation, lubricate your eyes, and prevent dryness.
- Rotate your head while staring ahead: turn your head in a circular motion while keeping your gaze straight ahead. This improves blood circulation to your eyes.
- Look to your right and left: slowly move your gaze from right to left while breathing. This one relaxes and stretches the eye muscles.
- Close your eyes and relax: close your eyes for at least 30 seconds to relax and strengthen your photoreceptor cells.
- Move your gaze in different directions: shift your gaze right-left, up-down, in circular motions, and trace a figure 8 with your eyes. This improves visual perception for both near- and far-sightedness.
- Close and open your eyes: tighten your eyes shut for 3–5 seconds, then open them. Repeat seven times to improve blood circulation and relax your eye muscles. ← 10almonds note: the duration makes this different from #4, so do try both!
- Push against your temples with your fingers: gently press your temples with your fingers for two seconds, then release. Repeat 4–5 times to improve fluid circulation in your eyes.
- Draw geometric figures with your gaze: use your eyes to trace shapes such as triangles, squares, and circles to enhance your eye coordination and muscle strength.
- Move your eyeballs up and down: close your eyes and slowly move your eyeballs up and down five times to stretch and relax the muscles ← 10almonds note: this seems to be the same as part of #5 and has a considerable overlap with #8, but we’re listing it anyway, or else everyone will wonder where #9 went!
- Strengthen near and far focusing: focus on your thumb 10 inches away for 10–15 seconds, then switch focus to an object 10–20 feet away. Repeat five times to improve focus adjustment ability.
By practicing these exercises daily, we are told that you can improve eye health and vision within a week.
For more on all these, plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Vision for Life, Revised Edition – by Dr. Meir Schneider
Take care!
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Body on Fire – by Dr. Monica Aggarwal and Dr. Jyothi Rao
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
There are times when you do really need a doctor, not a dietician. But there are also times when a doctor will prescribe something for the symptom, leaving the underlying issue untouched. If only there were a way to have the best of both worlds!
That’s where Drs. Rao and Aggarwal come in. They’re both medical doctors… with a keen interest in nutrition and healthy lifestyle changes to make us less sick such that we have less need to go to the doctor at all.
Best of all, they understand—while some things are true for everyone—there’s not a one-size-fits all diet or exercise regime or even sleep setup.
So instead, they take us hand-in-hand (chapter by chapter!) through the various parts of our life (including our diet) that might need tweaking. Each of these changes, if taken up, promise a net improvement that becomes synergistic with the other changes. There’s a degree of biofeedback involved, and listening to your body, to be sure of what’s really best for you, not what merely should be best for you on paper.
The writing style is accessible while science-heavy. They don’t assume prior knowledge, and/but they sure deliver a lot. The book is more text than images, but there are plenty of medical diagrams, explanations, charts, and the like. You will feed like a medical student! And it’s very much worth studying.
Bottom line: highly recommendable even if you don’t have inflammation issues, and worth its weight in gold if you do.
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Buffed-Up Buffalo Cauliflower
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This is a tasty snack that also more protein than you’d think, because of the garbanzo bean flour. It also has plenty of health-giving spices, as well as blood-sugar-balancing vinegar, no added sugar, and very little salt.
You will need
- 1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into florets
- ½ cup garbanzo bean flour
- ½ cup water
- ⅓ cup hot sauce (we recommend a low-sugar kind; Nando’s hot sauce is good for this if available where you are, as it has no added sugar and its main ingredient by volume is vinegar, which is good for balancing blood sugars)
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp nutritional yeast
- 2 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low sodium salt
For the ranch sauce:
- ½ cup raw sunflower seeds
- ⅓ cup water
- ⅓ cup milk (plant milk being healthiest if you choose one that’s unsweetened)
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried dill
- ½ tsp MSG, or 1 tsp low sodium salt
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Preheat the oven to 400℉/200℃.
2) Blend the ranch sauce ingredients until smooth, and set aside.
3) Mix the buffalo cauliflower ingredients except for the cauliflower, in a big bowl.
4) Add the cauliflower to the big bowl, mixing well to coat evenly.
5) Bake the buffalo cauliflower florets on a baking tray lined with baking paper, for about 25 minutes, turning gently if it seems they are at risk of cooking unevenly.
6) Serve hot, with the sunflower ranch on the side!
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- An Apple (Cider Vinegar) A Day…
- 10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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