I've finallyscored myself a domain name for my new blog over at typepad . . .
Well, today's the last time I'll post on Vox. I've enjoyed my time here, but I need to upgrade my blog. When I first started blogging I never expected to get so many viewers that I'd need a more 'professional' platform.
Incidentally, if anyone knows how to export posts out of Vox please drop me an email. At the moment it looks like I've got to port across 650 posts individually :(
At any rate, I've moved to www.thefightgeek.org. Come and check out my new home.
:)
As a rule, I'm not a big fan of wearing head-gear when sparring. From my perspective, it just gives better leverage for incoming strikes. That being said, I think this type of head-gear would be useful when you're sparring with elbows. Who wants to get cut during training?
You can purchase this kit from Alsgym.
(Offensive language)
Every meal must be healthy.
'Healthy'
eating has different meanings for different people. For me, healthy
eating is more than optimal nutrient composition or balancing calorie
intake to expenditure. It's about creating meals that contribute to my overall sense of well-being, rather than subtract from it.
I'm not going to argue for or against any particular style of eating. The internet has made it easy to find a tonne of recipes from all the major 'schools of eating' out there. My advice is give all the reputable diets a try, find out what works best for you and don't be afraid to customize their strategies and recipes to better suit your needs. I personally like Dr Clyde Wilson's take on eating—it's logical, simple and tasty—just like me :)
I must enjoy every meal I eat.
Good
nutrition is important, but if a food tastes like shit I won't eat it.
Food isn't just 'fuel' for my body—I'm a person not a car. I consider
eating to be primarily a relaxing and enjoyable past-time—it's an oasis
for me. Nutritional benefit be damned if a food offends my taste-buds.
I understand that 'taste' is conditioned to a large extent, and I'm
open to experimenting with new foods, but if I can't work out a way of
making a food taste good I ditch it. Case in point—brussel sprouts. I
still haven't worked out if they're nutritious vegetables or fibrous
turds squeezed from Satan's anus. Either way, I won't eat them.
By the way, I'm not saying every meal has to be a gourmet extravaganza (I don't have the skills to pull that off anyway!), I just make sure every meal tastes good. I want to spare myself the cognitive dissonance of linking 'healthy food' with 'tastes like shit'—who knows where that could lead :)
Meals must be easy.
I'm
not lazy—I'm busy. Well, okay perhaps I'm lazy. Either way, most days I
get tired and don't have much energy left for cooking. So each meal I
eat has to be simple to prepare, quick to cook, and easy to clean-up
afterwards. If a meal isn't easy—from prep to clean-up—I won't even
attempt it (no matter how tasty or healthy). If I fancy a meal that
requires a lot of effort to prepare, I'll go out and pay somebody else
to make it for me.
Meals must be affordable.
You know what really
pisses me off? Comparing the cost of healthy food and junk food. In my
country it's cheaper to eat shitty food than healthy food. And we
wonder why obesity is such a problem? Anyway, enough with the rant
(that's another article altogether). The sad fact is, healthy food is
expensive. So it's important to develop affordable recipes—at least for
the majority of meals.
[Another pet peeve: I don't like 'healthy' cook books that are filled with expensive or hard to get ingredients. These authors make eating-well look more like an optional luxury for the wealthy, rather than a smart option available to everybody.]
Meal choice must fit within a larger family eating plan.
Developing
a meal plan for a family is difficult. And unfortunately, I do the
cooking in my house. My wife is easy-going with food, so she's happy to
follow my lead with meals. However, my daughters have been sent by God
to punish me (probably for past culinary indiscretions). One likes what
the other hates, so meal planning is a pain in the arse. Despite the
hassle, it's well worth the extra effort to find recipes that suit
everybody, or at least can be adjusted to suit everybody with minimal effort. It's no fun cooking three different meals for one sitting!
I don't pretend to be a nutritional expert or anything. These are just guidelines that have worked for me.
Wow! That was one nasty knockout. In the last contender post I said the longer the fight went on the better Soren's chances of getting the win—Dzhabar must've read it :)
It's sad to see Soren go—and in such a devastating way. On the show, he came across as a really good guy. I hope he can pick himself up quickly and jump back in the ring asap. It was doubly sad, because now there's only one surviving Aussie—JWP.
The next fights should be very interesting. I hope that JWP and Yod don't have to fight one another—that would be a travesty. I think the best match-ups would be JWP vs. Sean and Yod vs Dzhabar.
It's getting to the business end of the competition now and I'm loving it :)
As I've said in previous posts, I don't like thug fighters. Fighting is a sport for athletes, not a vehicle for sadistic grunts to vent their insecurities.
That being said, I think I may have been too quick to judge Kimbo Slice. I don't like the way he got to where he is today—street-fighting is stupid. But, to his credit, Kimbo seems to be taking the sport of mma seriously. I sincerely hope he continues down the 'athletic' path and is able to have a successful career fighting professionally.
