Engagement
Good news, I got engaged over the weekend so really stoked about that! Been with her for over 6 years now so it was about time heh.
Plus we have both recovered from whatever that illness was so I’ll be back to training this week and back to telling you guys all about how much of a noob I am
Update
Well after about a month of being healthy while my girlfriend was sick, I finally got what she had.
I’m getting better now and can hopefully resume my life next week.
I feel like I could get back to training now since the symptoms have gone down to those of a normal cold but I don’t want to risk giving it to other people when it will affect them so much for so long.
The doctors still never identified what the bug is.
Forced break
My girlfriend has been very sick for the last few weeks so I have been looking after her instead of training.
It’s very hard to be stuck inside when training makes me so happy but the doctors we’ve seen still don’t know what it is and it gets scary at times.
I’ll post more updates when I get them.
The journey of an MMA noob, weeks six & seven
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve started staying for the second hour of jiu jitsu, the “advanced” class, which is just free rolling instead of taking instruction.
I have yet to get any submissions but can notice my defense improving each time.
As always, the people are really helpful and have great attitudes. We have laughs in-between my tapping 😉 They can all remember being in the same situation themselves so it’s really not a big deal.
I know that for a lot of people the fear of failure can be enough to not try things, and I’ve had that mentality before too. It has caused me to miss out on opportunities.
The main reason for my writing this blog series is to help people who are interested in trying MMA or any martial art by showing that we’re all in the same boat.
Don’t worry about whether you’ll be good at it or what you look like or anything like that. All you need is a humble attitude and the rest will come.
I’ve entered myself into a grappling competition this month and have a seminar from my jiu jitsu teacher’s teacher, John Will, a few days beforehand. So that’s all pretty exciting stuff!
The prize for the grappling comp is an Xtreme Couture T-Shirt signed by Randy Couture, Ray Sefo, Vitor Belfort, Gray Maynard and more, so that’s a pretty awesome prize. Now if only I could do submissions… 🙂
A year without shampoo
Introduction
It’s been roughly a year since I stopped using shampoo/conditioner.
The main reason I tried it was because I had read that most dandruff is caused by shampoo, and I’ve had dandruff for as long as I can remember so I thought I’d give it a try.
My dandruff has never been better and my hair itself looks great, it hasn’t lost any “shine” or “volume” or any of the words companies arbitrarily use to sell shampoo.
Why shampoo is no good
The reason shampoo is no good is because it stops your scalp from regulating itself, which it is very good at doing if you just give it a chance.
Every time you use shampoo you are removing good oils from your scalp which makes your body overproduce them, which is why the more often you wash your hair the more quickly it gets greasy, just like chapstick which appears to moisturise your lips immediately but then makes them more dry.
If the products didn’t do that they wouldn’t make much money; like Chris Rock says “the money isn’t in the cure, it’s in the medicine”.
Some people even suggest that chemicals in products like shampoo are correlated with childhood obesity and lower brain development (source).
How can I do it?
It’s easy! Firstly you need to allow for a few weeks of adjustment, during which time your hair will become more greasy than usual. This is just because your body is used to battling the shampoo. It’s OK though because you can just clean it more regularly during this time, but try to last as long as you can in-between cleans to ween your scalp off faster.
To clean your hair without shampoo you just use baking soda. It’s really cheap and you don’t need much. Wet your hair in the shower then run a bit of baking soda through it, just because baking soda is a great cleaning agent. That’s all!
So save yourself some money and make your scalp and hair more healthy, it really works 🙂
Sure but it’s different for a woman!
Nope, in fact it’s mostly women who are writing articles about how great it is!
My girlfriend has been off shampoo for as long as I have, here’s a photo of her – and her previously unmanageable hair – from 2 nights ago. She’s on the left.
If you want to know more about it, check out these articles I found by searching “no poo”:
The No Shampoo Alternative
Ditching shampoo: a dirty little beauty secret
No ‘Poo: New & Improved!
The Oh-So-Important HAIR Update
and of course Wikipedia
Lose weight without changing eating or exercise
Like the title says, this tip is an easy way to lose weight and become healthier with no changes to the type of food you eat or your exercise:
The tip
Next time you’re at the supermarket and you take an item off the shelf, look at similar brands for the same item. Compare the nutritional information on the items and get one that has less sugar (top priority) and/or saturated fat (second priority). Unsaturated fats are fine.
That’s it. No need to change what you’re eating or anything like that.
Notes
Keep in mind that it’s normal to have developed a taste for a certain brand over time, but give the new brand a real good try and even if it doesn’t taste good at first you will probably come to like it after a few tries, as your mind learns to become accustomed to that taste instead of the old one.
When comparing nutritional information, make sure you are comparing the same quantities. In New Zealand there are two columns; the “per serving” column and the “per 100g” column.
Ignore the “per serving” column because this is an easy way for companies to trick you. All they have to do is increase the number of servings they say are in each item and it will make the numbers in that column go down. So make sure you always look at the “per 100g” column, or your country’s equivalent.
Also keep in mind that another trick some companies do is to use High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) in place of some of the sugar. HFCS metabolises in your liver to be exactly the same as sugar, so don’t be fooled!
Unfortunately in some countries this trick can get around the nutritional information label to make it seem like there is less sugar than there is, but they still have to include it in the list of ingredients, so try to avoid items that list HFCS in the ingredients list.
Example
An example of this is tomato sauce (ketchup). The sugar content in tomato sauce varies greatly from brand to brand, and even within the same brand.
I recently compared the sugar content in the different types of Wattie’s tomato sauce (a main brand over here) and found that the “Homestyle” kind has about 10g less sugar per 100g than the default kind. That’s a huge benefit for almost no effort.
You can do this with bread, milk, canned goods, potato chips, drinks, anything at all.
The journey of an MMA noob, week five
This was the first week back after the Christmas holidays and I thought it would be hard to get back into it since I didn’t do much exercise during the break, but to my surprise my cardio has actually improved. I guess it’s the momentum created before the holiday still paying off.
My lungs held up all week with no need to take breaks in the 2-hour sessions (other than the normal ones).
On Tuesday we did wrestling which was a great workout as always, especially for my legs which were about ready to give out any minute.
On Wednesday we learned the very cool baseball bat choke, which I posted tips on the other day, and then on Thursday I successfully used it so I was very stoked. My technique was pretty bad but it worked so that’s a good start.
On Thursday we did no-gi jiu jitsu and as always I ended up with sore knees from rubbing on the mat, I’m looking forward to when they harden so I’m pushing it to make that happen.
The knees had no marks on them that night but when I woke up the next day scabs had appeared so that’s good it wasn’t all in my mind 😉
I should quickly mention that the 2 injuries I’ve mentioned in past posts (left AC and left middle finger) are doing better but not 100%.
My shoulder is almost back to normal now after over a month, but the finger is still stiff and painful. It is getting better but it’s happening more slowly. I hope it will be better soon!
