Living a Balanced Life

I read somewhere once that you should sleep 8 hours, work 8 hours, and relax 8 hours, sounds like something the government came up with.



Our ancestors did very little work on a day to day basis only about 4 hours a day with the rest of the time spent improving there living conditions, family bonding, arts, etc. This is the basis on which humans built culture having such extra time to develop society. A lot of speculation is spent on how we lived a day to day and notions are brought up that it was difficult and short lives lived. When you look at the few hunter gatherer tribes left around the world there lives are very balanced and not extremely difficult on a day to day basis except in times of hardship(weather, drought, food shortage, sickness). In a survival situation very little time is spent procuring food once a base camp is established, water is collected, food sources are located, and traps are set. Unless time is spent physically hunting for a large prey animal there isn't much energy expended establishing the necessities as long as they are available in the surrounding environment.

People forget that the human animal is part of the environment and we used to not co exist with it but be an integral part of a balanced eco system. Now we almost control the eco system in a detrimental way and the majority of mankind lives in cities that make it almost impossible to see how much energy is spent day to day providing the basic services of water, electricity, housing, waste removal, and shipping food in. So how do we live a balanced life and take care of our bodies that once thrived in fresh air, sunshine, clean water, and clean fresh food while living in a man made world where everything is open 24 hours, artificial light bombards our natural circadian rhythms, our surroundings are sterilized and overly comfortable, and food is processed and modified for higher profit margins.

I like to think as human beings being smart enough to notice our downward spiral in health and life and utilize the good tools we have created in technology and use them for our benefits and discard the determential ones. I don't want to sound negative about our day and age, there are tons of great new things in medicine, technology, and people really are starting to change there lives for the better. I just like to clear the air before I start talking of beneficial changes.

So how do we proceed.

First and Foremost is Get Healthy. Forget about all of these lose ten pounds a week quick fixes, take this and you will lose an extra 10 pounds a year, add this to your diet and slim down. Focus on the basics and build a good base.  Our bodies are a fine tuned machines that have been fine tuned over half a million years and extremely fine tuned over the last 200,000 years. We have only introduced processed food in the last few generations of people and agriculture in the last 20,000.  Consume lots of Water, Vegetables, Greens, Fruits, Seafood, Lean Free Range Meats, Nuts, Seeds.  When Constructing your diet remember wild is the best if sustainably harvested, then free range and always organic. Try to stay away from gmo's, hormones, and extra antibiotics. When it comes to produce, in season is the best, then quality frozen retains a lot of the vitamins and nutrients and normally are picked close to the origin of harvest and frozen in season during peak growing periods. Canned vegetables are sketchy sometimes because of linings containing bpa's so looked for jarred pickled or fermented vegetables. Eat small amounts of food and listen to your body at first most people over eat because the food is low in nutrients, I promise if you cut out processed foods and eat all whole foods you will begin to crave what your body wants and lose weight.

Now how about exercising, most people hate it some people love it, and others are obsessed with it. I enjoy working out but my daily lifestyle is normally enough to maintain a fairly fit body. Our ancestors would probably put most olympic athletes to shame when we were really living in our natural environment. Try standing more through out your day, if you sit at a computer all day elevate the computer and stand. Walk more, you don't need to run and compete in marathons. I wore a pedometer for a week to see how far I walked. I averaged about 12.5 miles a day over the week, granted I'm on my feet all day and normally walk our dogs and daughter about 2 miles in the morning. My point is in my limited spare time I am not going to waste it running. To get a good muscle toning and cardio work out I normally resort to a quick 15 min high intensity workout consisting of rope climbs, pull ups, push ups, dips and ab work but only 2-3 times a week. Most of the other days my workouts are what I consider play, sprinting around the yard with my daughter, chopping wood, surfing, spearfishing, hunting. Enjoy your time and your birth right of movement.

Sunlight, Fresh Air, and Clean Water. Get outside and expose some of your skin to sunlight and fresh air daily for at least a 1/2 hour. Your skin is like a sponge and it breathes shed some clothes and enjoy it on your skin. The sun a fresh air will boost your Vitamin D, boost your energy if your out in the morning the sun shuts down your bodies natural production of melatonin, it also makes you feel happier and fights depression. Fresh water is crucial, also drink filtered water especially if it is from the city. If you drink city water for a year you almost end up drinking a half gallon of bleach from the chlorine that is put in it to kill bacteria. So buy a water filter that filters chlorine out or better yet a distiller. You can even take it a step further and filter your shower head so your not breathing in the chlorine in the steam. Eliminating chlorine in the diets of cancer patients has shown a lot of benefits.

There is a lot to mull over right now, the main thing is to be happy and feel good so start making some changes in your life. The biggest problems in our bodies is that all day they are being bombarded with small amounts of stress. It comes from the junk we put into it through our diets, items we slather on it with body products, lack of movement that turns on certain genes in our bodies. So start eliminating some stress and continue scaling it back to feel better, get out and enjoy life act like a kid again.