Day 18 of 365: “Using no way as way, Having no limitation as limitation.”

Hey There!

I have 547 page views of my blog at the writing of this entry, so this thing seems to be getting some wings! FUN!

I have been receiving lots of feedback from many of you about my blog and my 103in365 journey in general. I want to say Thank You first of all. I love hearing that some of you are feeling more motivated towards change in your own life right now, and the support that you are giving me around the changes I am making right now too is invaluable!

Some folks are saying they are still having problems with, or are unable to at all, leave comments on this blog. I am going to see if I can find out what’s what with that. In the meantime, you can send me e-mail at onehundredinthreesixtyfive@gmail.com   Maybe make the subject line 103in365 and that will make it easy for me to identify. This problem will hopefully be resolved soon. I will leave you know.

I am continuing to chip away at my goals and I am excitedly learning about new theories, programs and healthy lifestyles that I knew nothing or very little about before. One thing I am reading about, and listening to a podcast about, is Paleo. I had heard of it before, but did not know much about it. One thing I have learned about it, so far, is that it encompasses many aspects of your life and there are whole communities that share their experiences about living the Paleo lifestyle.

The basic concepts are eating and living as our ancestors did. The Paleo diet is often referred to as the “Caveman Diet”. Paleo suggests that we are genetically designed to eat lean meats, vegetables, some fruit and small amounts of starch and good fats. Paleo is against processed foods, even grains, especially one that have gluten and refined sugars in them. Paleo fitness is about training to the body’s natural abilities and range of motion that is needed to survive in the wild, such as sprinting, grappling and moving around on all fours and lifting heavy things. The idea is that through a Paleo diet and lifestyle, one can minimize the risk of modern day illness such as diabetes and cancer and obesity.

I am not convinced that I will, nor am I even considering at this point, going full on Paleo. However, I believe there are aspects of Paleo (such as eating cleaner and not just doing dumbbell curls and riding a exercise bike for an hour a day) that make a lot of sense. Eat better and do interesting and diverse exercise is a great idea!

In my life since high school, I have spent years (on and off, not all the years) studying martial arts and martial arts concepts. I have studied Tae Kwon Do, Karate, Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Boxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kali and Muay Thai Kick Boxing to name most of them. Almost all of those arts were introduced to me through Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee’s martial arts concepts.

Jeet Kune Do’s main philosophy, one of Bruce’s main philosophies, is written around the symbol for the martial art concepts. It reads, “Using no way as way, Having no limitation as limitation.” This is brilliant because it suggests that in martial arts, we should not limit ourselves with one way of doing something nor one philosophy of how we should be. Rather, we should learn the things that make sense and work for us, out of as many styles of martial arts as we can be exposed to. I believe this can be generalized to other things like fitness, food, and maybe even politics. 

I am putting these concepts into practice with my weight-loss and fitness journey. I am exposing my self (not all at one time mind you) to many healthy lifestyle choices, fitness plans, exercise programs and the people who are fired up about them. By doing this, I will continue to create and practice my own personal Jeet Kune Do in other dimensions of my life as well as martial arts.

I also plan to share with you the broad strokes of what I am learning and what I am trying. I am planning to try different things, either at least once or for a period of time, this year. Maybe stuff like less or no red meat for a period of time. Maybe I will even go veggie as an experiment for more than a day and tell you how it goes. I also plan to try exercise such as Crossfit, P90X and maybe even Sweating to the Oldies! I will let you know how those go too!

So I got that going for me, which is nice. (watch Caddyshack once a year. It will make you a happier person.) 

That is all for today my friends.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Scuba