I’m going through detox and I’ve learned a few things:
1. Put the chia seeds in last. If you put them into the blender first, your smoothie will have chia gunk in the bottom.
2. Kale goes into the blender first or it won’t blend. It won’t matter how Hulk-angry you get.
3. Don’t leave your son alone with the juicer. He’ll try to juice a banana. Bananas can be blended, but not juiced. Try it and the banana mush gums up your juicer’s filter. It takes a lot of energy to get that filter clean…though there’s no listing for that activity at Fitbit. How many calories is Frustration?
4. At 4:30 pm, just when you’re feeling virtuous, you’ll get a craving for bloody steak you can feel in your eye teeth. You won’t act on this craving, but you’ll understand vampires better as you consider the meaty necks of strangers.
5. When you make a joke about being on a new food regimen, weighing your poop and comparing it with friends, some people will unfollow you on Twitter. (But many more people will follow you. Given a choice between the humour-impaired and poop freaks…welcome, poop freaks!)
6. I’m overstimulated and need to go to bed early. I can feel it. It’s what my body needs. I can feel it like I’m wearing a shawl made of lead.
7. Vegetarian and vegan don’t necessarily equal “healthy.” Must have longer talk about these issues with #1 Son. He wants to try eating vegetarian meals, but loading up on bad carbs, though technically vegetarian, isn’t healthy. However, he loves vegetables and fruits if disguised in a cold smoothie.
8. It takes a lot of fruit to make a glass of juice (though I’m looking forward to making carrot soup from the pulp.) Found a place to get fruit and vegetables cheap. It’s always cheaper to take care of yourself: Cheaper than diabetes, potato chips and a heart attack, for sure.
9. When I eat healthier, #1 Son eats healthier. I should have gotten to this faster.
10. What was #6 again? Oh, yeah. I’m actually going to go to bed at a reasonable time.
~ Robert Chazz Chute is a suspense writer and crime novelist. The weight loss stuff runs earnest to funny. Everything else is about Bad Versus Evil.
New update: Salad, a few nuts, seeds, almond milk. Can’t wait to weigh my poop and compare it with friends!
The little blender is for fruits and vegetables that contain little liquid, like avocados and bananas. I also use it to mix coffee with ghee. A spoon won’t mix the coffee right with the butter. To make it palatable, it must be blended. I also add Xylitol, a good sugar alternative that’s also great for your teeth.
The big blender juices fruits and vegetables in the front and poops pulp out the back (for sorbet and soups).
New resolutions mean nothing without fresh resolve, every day. Here comes 2013, so happy new year, have a listen and buckle up!
Here are my commitments:
1. RE: My writing career: I’m using fellow author, Zombie God Armand Rosamilia, as my pacer. The goal is 10,000 words a week for me, too.
2. RE: My health. As a writer, I am sedentary. That will kill me if I don’t get off my ass. On my current trajectory, my first heart attack will hit in less than seven years and I’ll be dead in less than ten. That would be tragic because, aside from the fact that the universe collapses without The Magic That is Me, I’m way too young and pretty to die. I have a lot of books to write and not enough time to get them done on that shortened timeline. Therefore: I choose a new reality and daily exercise. I got a Fitbit and a juicer for Christmas.* Tally-freakin’-ho.
3. RE: Tasks to complete. I plan at least four more books in 2013. This is doable. It is a simple goal. It is not an easy goal. That’s okay. Mama didn’t make no wimps and I’m a genius, so what’s the problem besides acting unconsciously (i.e. sometimes acting pretty stupid)?
*Do you have similar goals for weight loss and exercise? A Fitbit will cost you about $100. Since it could save your life (I hope it saves mine), here’s the Fitbit link. For an alternative to the Fitbit, try Slimkicker.com or FitDay.com.
For more on the benefits of juicing and a healthier lifestyle, watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. For even more on juicing, go toJoin the Reboot. Want even more than that to get on track?Vegucated andHungry for Change are good movies to consider on Netflix (and those links will take you to their respective websites.) I’m not ready to go full Vegan — I’m keeping my egg whites — but for the next few months, I’m juicing to correct my weight and pre-hypertension so it doesn’t climb to full hypertension. (In Vegucated, you’ll note that participants dropped 20 points or more off their blood pressure after just six weeks as vegans.)
A key component I’m using for my particular approach to weight loss is incorporating bio-hacks from The Bulletproof Executive. Read, review and talk to your doctor if necessary. Not all hacks are appropriate for all individuals, depending on varied medical conditions. Given my condition, I’m taking a radical approach that may not be for you. However, I’m on stage this summer and I have to look awesome. (Oh, yeah…and there’s that little thing about wanting to live longer.)Â
Take in the information. Think about what’s right for you. Design a plan. Write it out. Report to somebody to keep you honest. Stick to it even when you don’t feel like it. This can apply to getting things done, balancing your check book or organizing your office. Whatever you’re challenge, you have choices to make. And let’s not kid ourselves: We’re conscious adults. Mostly, we already know what the right choices are. Find the tools that will help you with your goals and make those choices.Â
If it’s diet you’re changing, think more about all you can add in. That will displace what you’re subtracting from your lifestyle. For instance, you can have all the vegetables, homemade vegetable soup and vegetable juices you want and you’ll fill up with low calories, high nutritional content. The more green leafy and cruciferous stuff, the better.
We can change. If you get some energy from the podcast, come back to it and remember why you made this commitment to improve your life. Seek support from your circle of friends and fellow travellers. This is the Internet. Whatever your challenge, there’s someone out there who shares it. For instance, if you don’t have support locally, allies can be found everywhere. Consider Weight Watchers or start with podcasts, like Dave Jackson’s Logical Weight Loss. I’ll be checking in, too. Subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll let you know my progress in coming months.
Pop Goes the Weasel Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
MTAÂ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Mistake the Getaway #2Â Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Clips on today’s show were from The Matrix, FDR, President Obama singing Al Green, Bush the Junior, Joe Rogan, Wikileaks recording “Collateral Murder”, Robocop, Sly Stallone’s speech to his son in Rocky Balboa (2006), Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, Howard Beal’s speech in Network, Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, MLK (x2), Pat Morita as Mr. Miyago to Ralph Macchio as Daniel-san in The Karate Kid. Obama pops up again, too.
To help with the bandwidth for the show, hit the tip jar/donate button to the right, buy some books or say hello via the Speakpipe prompt at the top right. Thanks for listening!
Today, in the early morning of my 48th birthday, I dreamt of Christopher Hitchens again. Instead of writing “again”, Hitch would have written “as I sometimes do.” Read and listen to him enough and you start to write and speak in his patterns, as one violin resonates with another. He spoke in complete sentences with a professorial British accent. You could hear every comma, semicolon and period.Â
I disagreed with him intensely over the idiocy of the Iraq invasion. (Christopher — never Chris — would have said “wisdom”, not idiocy.) For someone so against religion, his unwavering faith in that war still baffles me. His books were researched deeply and well-written. He shone brightest in debate and was always erudite and witty. I miss him. We met again today in a good, safe place.
In the dream, I’m some sort of documentarian but I’m helping him mow a massive lawn. He rides a huge mower and cuts a massive swath with wide blades. I have the same small red lawnmower from Canadian Tire I had when I was a kid. The metaphor for that didn’t strike me until after I awoke. (“I must caution you,” as Hitch would say, that’s a writing metaphor, not a penis metaphor. Hitch was a titan. I write amusing little stories for a tiny audience.)
The setting was a summer cottage, though here, it is always summer. Hitch confessed he enjoyed mowing the expanse on the big tractor so much he often mowed neighbours’ lawns, as well. That’s a joy difficult to imagine for him in real life. That was my first clue I might be dreaming.
He was friendly enough, but he was still Christopher Hitchens — before the cancer took him — so I was cautious with my words and mostly listened for fear of wearing out my welcome. (Hitch would have said, “…for fear of growing stale in his company.”)
He showed me his sanctuary where things were most quiet. I expected a large office with walls of books. Instead, we tiptoed past his sleeping wife so he could show me an incredibly white and clean bathroom off his master bedroom. In one of those Felliniesque details that makes you wonder about the gnashing teeth in the spinning gears of the subconscious, the toilet appeared to be filled with milk. I didn’t say so, but I thought he must have thrown up in that toilet a lot because of the chemotherapy. Reading my mind, he said that chemo and all pain was behind him now.
We sat outside in Adirondack chairs on the freshly cut, green grass and sipped lemonade under a warm sun. Wanting to appear game, I mentioned it was my birthday and told him how strange it was and how little I’d changed. “What’s the evolutionary advantage in not adapting? I haven’t changed much at all. In university, I studied the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history. Seeing so many civilizations rise and fall, it’s impossible for me not to be fatalistic about the fate of our own. Writing books is the closest immortality.”
“How have you changed, really?” he asked. “You must have, some.”
At 24, I was immersed and obsessed with violence and at 48, I’m a crime novelist. In sublimating my rage with humour, I’m creating art instead of bloody noses. I’m happier now. I laugh more and make others laugh. I was afraid all the time then, though I still can’t afford new glasses.Â
I became lucid then and I knew I was having a conversation with myself, not Christopher Hitchens. Disappointing. Though neither of us believe in heaven, the melting illusion saddened me more because Hitch after death was more placid than he ever was in life.
“Is fear of mortality what this dream is all about?” he asked.
“I’m still young enough that I fear failure more than death, though the two are inextricably linked.”
“‘Inextricably’, hm? Even though you know I’m not here, you’re still trying to impress me.” He didn’t say it unkindly.
“I’m not awake yet,” I said, though I could feel the real world pulling me away. I fought it, but once begun, that process can’t be stopped.
“I think I just answered my question,” I said. “The adaptive advantage of our minds changing so little and thinking like a young person is that I can still focus on achieving things in the future instead of worrying I’m going to drop dead any minute.”
“Try to stay young until the end. It goes easier that way.”
But that’s me talking to myself and I’m almost back in my bed with weak, gray light filling a cold horizon of snow and ice.
“You should write more,” he said, and toasted me with his glass of pink lemonade.
“I know. Thanks.”
I awoke thinking, time’s running out. I got up right away and wrote this.
Warning: NSFW means Not Safe for Work. There’s lots of swearing in this video amid the points about the safety of video games. If you don’t want to hear Penn Jillette swearing, don’t play this video.
In this pod, I cry: Murders Among Dead Trees (free ebook!), My Life as a Spy, Newtown, Bad Media and sex & violence in a reading called Another Narrow Escape.
Grab the ebook, Murders Among Dead Trees, before Friday Dec 21st at midnight and it’s free. If you love suspense and paranormal stories, please review the book. (See the link below to learn more about the book.)
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This is Episode #62. Episode #63 of the All That Chazz podcast appears in the new year. Thanks for listening, for your donations and for your kind emails. Especially, thanks for buying my books! Merry Christmas and see you in January, 2013! Happy New Year!
