While I’m not naturally “ripped” with 6 pack abs, I have been naturally skinny my entire life.  When I stopped growing “up” I reached 5′11″.  Freshman year of college I was 5′11″ 140 pounds.  I filled out a little over the next 5 years and have spent my ENTIRE adult life (from age 22-32) at 155 pounds.  I’d get a little fatter and a little stronger in the winter up to 170, then do a bunch of cardio to lose the fat, wind up loosing any muscle too and end up RIGHT BACK at 155.  It was a vicious circle I did for YEARS!  This isn’t horribly skinny.  But this is despite lifting weights on and off since I was 15!  What the hell?  How come I couldn’t grow AND KEEP any damn muscle??  Sure I made little bits of progress to 170, but then right back down to 155.  Year after year after year, NO longterm progress.  It was maddening.

I never wanted to be “huge”.  I don’t want to be 225 all roided-out looking.  Not for me.  But I just didn’t feel very manly at 155.  I didn’t like it.  I wanted to be a lean, muscly 175.  Just 20 pounds.  Is that so much to ask?  Apparantly YES it was!  fuck me.  Naturally big guys don’t understand the skinny guy’s plight.  They don’t understand how FRUSTRATING it is!  Especially when the advice you get is “Try harder”  “lift more”.  I AM trying hard!  ???  What kind of nonsense advice is that?  You think I’m lying down on the bench press and actively deciding to only push at 70% instead of as hard as I can??  That’s absurd.  I couldn’t do that if I tried.  How can you NOT push at 100% when you’re lying on a bench and it’s you -VS- the weight.  Man’s natural competetive drive MAKES you give it 100%.  You think I WANT to get 8 reps on this set when I got 9 the last time I was in the gym?  You think I want to say, “Ok, well flat bench isn’t working anymore.  I can’t make ANY progress….  fuck.  I guess we’ll switch to Decline.  Or incline.  Or flys.  Or…. shit what difference does it make…”  That’s the skinny guy’s plight in the gym.  And it SUCKS.

I feel you fellow skinny guys.  Because I was there.  I did that shit for TEN YEARS.  I went to the gym the whole time from age 22-32, and still stayed right around 155.  What else could I do?  NOT go to the gym?  I knew that wouldn’t work, and I’d probably lose my college “fill out” and slip back to 140.  I certainly didn’t want that.  So I kept going week after week, month after month, year after year.  And I never got anywhere.

I’m 34 years old now and I’m 185 pounds!  I FINALLY figured it out. Let me just say here that I’m not trying to sell you anything.  I just want to share my story to help out the other skinny guys.  This is my “giving back.”  That’s it.  You shouldn’t have to spend 10 YEARS making no progress like I did.  …but if you listen to the “experts” you will.  So listen to me damnit!  Haaahaaa. 

THE key turning point in my life and my fitness goals was finding a rare nugget of truth in a SEA of Misinformation on lifting and adding muscle.  And it’s THIS Article by Daymon Hayhow:
:: Bio Logic Labs ::
Skinny guys, I’m telling you, take a 5 minute break and read that article.  It will literally change your life.  You’ll be able to actually make progress and grow and KEEP muscle.

Did you read the damn article?  Come back after you’ve read it.  It will take 5 minutes.  Ok good.  I was / am 100% the “weight set point” guy he talks about in that article.  No matter WHAT I did, I could NOT grow!  I couldn’t get my body to move past 155.  And I lifted HARD.  Didn’t matter.  I had heard “eat more” before.  “Yeah no shit”, I thought.  “I AM eating!”  And I thought I was.  But something about that article made it sink in this time.  It’s not “eat more”.  It’s force feed yourself.  It’s eat until you are STUFFED.  I wasn’t doing that.

In July of 2006, after reading this article I took a leap of faith, didn’t worry at all about getting fat and did what he said.  I ATE.  I ate clean at first, brown rice, chicken, veggies, and then when I’d get full I’d switch to junk, fast food, hamburgers, pizza.  Whatever I could stomach to get calories up.  I tried to stay away from sugar as much as possible, but I did have ice cream about once a week.  No sugar soda.  Sugar is SUCH poison that even when I’m trying to keep calories up, I stay away from it.  It’s just so bad for your body.  I don’t want to give myself type II diabetes after all.

I had protein with every meal.  NOT insane amounts, I just made sure there was some in every meal.  Chicken and rice.  Oatmeal and a 1 scoop protein shake with 24 grams.  You don’t need obscene amounts of protein, you just need to make sure there is a measurable amount with every meal.  The miniscule amount of protein in pepporoni on a pizza doesn’t cut it.  But pizza and a 24 gram protein shake does cut it.  Clean first, then junk.  It’s really HARD to overeat like this on all clean, natural foods.  (which is great news if you’re just trying to maintain your weight!)

I lifted hard but BRIEF.  I’d hit each body part ONCE a week.  That means if I did chest on Monday, I wouldn’t do it again, for a whole WEEK until the following Monday.  This was hard for me to wrap my head around because for years naturally big guys told me to lift MORE.  You know WHY they say that?  Because for them, it works!  They are the “hungry fat” guys in that article.  They HAVE TO do that to grow.  Naturally skinny guys will FAIL miserably if we train frequently.  When I think of all the time I wasted doing bench press EVERY M-W-F and not making any progress….. Who knew I had to do it LESS to grow muscle?!  I started out with multiple exercises per body part on some bodyparts, but over time it all came down to ONE excercise, 3 sets per bodypart, per week.  And THAT is what worked!  That’s what gave me the most progress.  For example, I started out doing 4 different exercises for chest every Monday.  Decline, Incline, flat bench and flys, 3 sets around 10 reps for each.  But I couldn’t make progress that way.  EVEN eating the way I was!  I had to whittle it down to ONE exercise.  Just incline, or just decline.  Didn’t matter what, just ONE thing.  And when I did that… BAM, progress every week.

It was SO difficult for me to believe and accept that the answer was NOT to lift more, but actually to lift LESS.  Lift less and EAT MORE.  I was spending less time in the gym than I ever had before and making MORE progress than ever.  I was consistent.  I went every week, 3 times a week to hit all my bodyparts.  But I was spending LESS time in the gym overall.  Once I got it all whittled down to ONE exercise per bodypart, per week…. oh man.  It was amazing.  Gains came fast and easy.  Every single time I went to the gym I added more reps or more weight.  It was beautiful.  This is what lifting was suppossed to be like!  These are the gains I failed to achieve in TEN YEARS of my adult life.  Lifting weights was actually working!

I kept a meticulous journal of body weight and workouts.  I struggled in the beginning when I was doing too many exercises per bodypart.  But once I got it all squared away and whittled down this is what happened.

All you naturally BIG guys, this is going to mean nothing to you.  This is for my skinny peeps!

May 2006     153 pounds
July 2006     158 pounds
Sept 2006    162 pounds
Nov 2006     171 pounds
Jan  2007     171 pounds (2 months of stuffing myself and no gain!)
Mar 2007      183 pounds Heaviest in my LIFE!  Woo-hoo!
Apr 2007      186 pounds
May 2007     187 pounds!

I was ECSTATIC!  Guys who don’t have this damned skinny gene just can’t possibly understand. I was BEYOND happy.  I hadn’t been able to achieve progress like this in my whole life!  And now at 32 years old I could FINALLY do it.  Amazing.  I was the strongest I’d ever been in nearly all my lifts.  I was recovering from a shoulder injury in 2005 so my bench wasn’t at an all time high, but everything else was.  I had ARMS!  I had biceps where I didn’t before.  My FOREARMS were bigger.  I’d never seen that before.  I had NICE big traps for a change.  I also got FAT.  Not obese, but I did have a big ol beer belly I’d never had before.  This is where the leap of FAITH came in.  Daymon said it would be easy to lose that fat and hold the muscle.  Time would tell….

From May 2007 - Nov 2008, I cleaned up my diet, took out as much of the bad junk food as willpower would allow (hey we all live in the real world after all!) I stopped force feeding and just ate until I was full.  I did almost NO CARDIO and dropped tons of fat.  In August 2008, I even quit drinking booze for good!  I was a HEAVY drinker, so that eliminated several thousand empty calories per week.  I got back down to 171.

I did NOT get stronger and stronger in everything like Daymon suggested while I “leaned out” and hold my bodyweight at 185.  That didn’t happen.  BUT I did hold my strength in everything.  I dropped 16 pounds but kept the same numbers in all my lifts.  I dropped all the fat basically and kept the muscle!  And that was just fine by me.  Every year I had been trapped in a vicious cycle, a lean 155 in the summer, a fat 170 in the winter, and then right back down to a lean 155 the next summer.

This time I FINALLY did it.  I added muscle AND fat up to 185.  Then I took the fat off, KEPT the muscle and settled in at 170.  I was now a LEAN 170, at about the same bodyfat I was previously at 155.  So when all was said and done I added 15 POUNDS of muscle.  That’s un-be-freakin-lievable for a guy with the skinny gene.  Unheard of.  I couldn’t do it my entire adult life prior to this.

Notice, this didn’t happen overnight.  It took me a YEAR of force-feeding to bulk up and add 35 pounds.  And then another year and a half to get the 17 pounds of fat off!  But the fat-shedding was not miserable at all.

The key change this time on the way DOWN, was that I did it through diet.  I DID NOT DO CARDIO! I didn’t do zero cardio; I went surfing once or twice a week.  But I didn’t schedule an hour of cardio a day in some horribly flawed plan to loose fat.  Cardio is freaking kryptonite to the naturally skinny guy.  DON’T DO IT.  Don’t try to use cardio to lose the fat you put on.  It WON’T work.  You’ll lose all the fat AND all the muscle and be trapped in the horrible vicious circle I was trapped in for 10 years!

What I DID do on the way down was continue my same workouts, continue to go to the gym.  Continue one exercise per bodypart, once a week and lift JUST LIKE I was lifting to bulk.  But…. and this is the mentally hard part.  You really don’t make any progress.  You just continue with the same reps and the same weights while your body slowly drops fat.  Be strong!  Stick to it.  It’s this lifting that causes you to KEEP the muscle you have.  Just think of it as maintenance.

The dieting part on the way down is easy.  Cut out all the processed foods and stick to natural ones.  That’s it!  You don’t have to count or cut calories, you don’t have to fear fat and go ultra-low fat.  You just prepare, good whole natural foods and eat until you are full.  When it’s all natural foods, not processed crap, you’d be surprised how well your body naturally adjusts your apetite to eat a reasonable amount.  It’s not fat in food that makes people fat, it’s PROCESSED foods!  All you really have to do is switch to natural foods.  I never went hungry.  When you get somewhere around 10% bodyfat, then you have to really diet, cut calories and use CKDs and tricky stuff.  But to get down to 10% you just have to eat the right foods.  I only went down to about 14% or so, so I never got into the tricky territory.

Like I said though, it took me 18 months to drop those 17 pounds of fat.  About a pound a month.  Why so long?  Simple.  I was a heavy, heavy drinker.  Literally 1000+ empty calories from beer every week.  Once I got that out of my life, it was easy.  The fact that I was able to hold my lifts in the gym AND slowly drop fat even while drinking heavily is a testament to how well eating mainly whole, natural foods works.

So now what?  I’ve already started BACK up.  No, not to go back to 185 then 170 and be trapped in a new vicious circle.  This time I’m going all the way to 200 pounds!  I was happy with the weight when I got down to 171, but not the bodyfat.  I was probably around 14%.  I’d like to be around 7-9%.  To be that lean I’d probably wiegh about 160.  So if I want to weigh at least 170 and be 7-9% bodyfat, I need to pack on some more muscle with another bulk cycle, and then come back down.  Same plan, lift minimally and EAT.  Get big and fat, then lift and DIET to lose the fat.  NO CARDIO.  I want to settle in at a LEAN 170 with around 7-9% bodyfat.  I’m ok if it ends up being a little more than 170, but I really don’t want to drop under 170.   And then that’s it!  For the first time in my LIFE I’ll actually be able to focus on just MAINTAINING my weight instead of CONSTANTLY being in either a bulk or cut cycle.  I’ll post a “part 2″ when this next phase is complete.

But I dispute the notion that foreclosed or underwater homeowners are somehow “innocent victims.”  That’s a pile of crap.  Have some personal fucking accountability!  You have to sign on the dotted line in about a hundred different places that tell you how much your monthly payment is going to be on your house.  That’s your payment REGARDLESS of what happens to the value!!  You borrow $300,000, you have to pay back $300,000.  Even if the value of your home drops to $90,000.  That’s irrelevant.  You signed on the dotted line a hundred times saying you would pay back $300,000.

Foolish homeowners got greedy and bought more house than they could afford with mortgages that had a low rate to start and then turned into a high rate later.  Even KNOWING they could NOT pay the high rate, they bought the home and just figured they’d sell it at a higher price later.  Wrongly assuming the price would always go up.

I did NOT do that. Even with everyone around me making money buying houses, I still RENTED through the entire upside of the now “crisis”.  Because I thought, “Well what if the price does NOT go up?  Then I’ll be stuck with a house I can’t sell and a payment I can’t make and I’ll go bankrupt.” I’m not some genius, it’s a pretty EASY thing to see.  But the GREEDY, idiots who did buy homes FULL WELL KNOWING THEY COULDN’T MAKE THE HIGHER PAYMENT when the interest rate resets, didn’t think about that or didn’t care.  They are JUST AS MUCH TOO BLAME as brokers, lenders and bankers.  They are NOT innocent victims.  They’re in trouble because of greed.

If anything we’re letting them off too easy.  They shouldn’t be able to just “walk away.”  You take out a $300,000 loan motivated by greed and you can easily just NOT pay it back, simply by defaulting.  And the only punishment is you lose the home and your credit is crap for a few years.  If you owed a bookie $300,000 and didn’t pay, they would break your legs, or KILL you.  I’m so sick of hearing people bitch about losing their home.  Guess what?  I lost my home too!  Because I RENT!  I was never able to buy one because this whole system caused prices in Orange county to TRIPLE in 10 years.  That means a $200,000 home became a $600,000 home.  If anyone is a victim it’s the renters who had to watch real estate prices RUN AWAY for 10 years straight.

What do you think happens to these “poor, innocent victim homeowners” after they lose their home.  THEY HAVE TO RENT!  Just like you and me.  Boo freakin Hoo!  And many of them took out $100,000 + home equity loans and blew all that money on expensive things, cars, vacations, trips to Vegas, etc during the boom time.  That we are now ALL paying for as taxpayers via the multi-billion dollar bailout.  We ALL have to pay higher taxes for the rest of our lives, because greedy homeowners bought homes they could not afford, spent thousands of dollars of home-equity loan money and now never have to pay it back!!  Because we let them just “walk away” from their mortgage!!!  It’s criminal.  So excuse me if I don’t feel sorry for these idiots. 

The system AND Homeowners.  Both equally to blame.  Anyone that tells you differently IS one of those idiots and just can’t admit that they were WRONG.  Typical American, entitlement “victim” mentality.  Boo-hoooooo, the evil bankers used me.  No.  YOU used ME and every fiscally responsible American that did not buy a house in the boom.  Your welcome that I’ll be paying the mortgate off that you walked away from, with higher taxes for the rest of my life.

I saw this story about Barkley having to go to prison for 3 days because of a DUI:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090309/ap_on_sp_bk_ne/bkn_barkley_released

It got me thinking of just how many negative, dire and sometimes deadly consequences of drinking, we as a society just collectively accept as a “normal” part of life!  All for the sake of getting “loose” in social situations.  I want to be loose in social situations just like anybody else.  That’s WHY I drank for 16 years.  But man…. what a PRICE we pay!  And it doesn’t have to be deadly horrible things.

People do die from drinking. whether from drunk driving, or falling and injuring themselves, or liver failure long term, or toxic overdose short term from binge drinking.  And we collectively just accept those deaths as “normal”.  It’s tragic, to be sure, for those unlucky few, but we seem to be OK with it if it means the rest of us can continue to get loose in social situations.

How many negative consequences did I accept in MY life, just to be “loose” in social situations?  Just so it would be easier to joke around with friends, easier to meet girls, easier to dance, easier to have fun…

How about just the sheer dollar amount?  I’m a single man, I routinely go out 4 days a week.  That’s not very difficult living in a fun Southern California beach town.  Friday and Saturday night every weekend.  And Sunday-Funday.  Then you just throw in one extra day.  Taco Tuesday or…. Thursday!  The first day of the weekend.  I’d routinely spend about $40/night.  4 nights a week, 4 weeks a month, plus an extra day since only February has exactly 28 days… and that’s $680 a month.  And that’s only beers at bars.  Let’s not forget all the pre-drinking at home.  I will conservatively estimate $100/month for 18 packs of cheap beer for pre-partying.    Now we’re at $780/month.  I was pretty good about only going out near my house and riding a bike to the bars.  (How SAD is that by the way??  Rarely able to go out just ONE town over because it meant driving!)  But a couple times a month I’d take a cab somewhere.  So factor in $20/month for cabs.  …instead of the $1.00 a sober person would spend on gas driving his own car!  Now we’re at $800/month.  $9,600 a year!  $9,600 post-tax dollars a year, which is about $13,000 of actual income earned.  All for the sake of feeling “loose” in social situations so I could have fun.  Wow.

How about the effect all those calories were having on my health? Never mind the damage alcohol does to your liver.  Most people who drink do NOT die of liver disease, so let’s not even consider that.  What about just the sheer number of calories?  Let’s figure that out.  I could put down 10 beers on an AVERAGE night.  “10 beers!  No way, I don’t drink like that!”  Don’t you?  Think about it.  “Well I only had 6 beers out at the bar.”  Ok, I’ll give you that.  But what about the 3 at the house before you left and the 1 beer at the “afterparty?”  Men who don’t have to drive, can ROUTINELY drink 10 beers in one night without even realizing it.  Try counting all the drinks you had the next day.  You’ll be surprised.  I used to THINK I had about 6 a night… until I started counting.  The reality for me was around TEN.  And it’s the reality for a lot of guys.

I made “smart” choices and went with light, 100 calorie drinks.  But that’s still 1,000 calories a night, 4 nights a week.  4,000 EMPTY calories every week!  Either on top of what I was eating, or short-changing what I was eating nutritionally because I blew the calories I should have used on good food, on beer.

No wonder I’ve been trapped in an average body my whole life.  No wonder even though I was in my prime in my 20s, and I could diet and get lean, I could never get “ripped.”  How could I with 4,000 extra calories every week??  The futility of it all…

How about all the money I’d spend on cabs because I was too drunk to drive?  How about all the bars in other towns I wanted to check out but couldn’t because they were outside of cab range?  No WAY I would drive because that means I’d have to stay sober.  I’m not saying I NEVER drove to bars and stayed sober.  I think all drinkers do that from time to time in a failed attempt to prove to themselves that they don’t “need” the booze, but it was a RARE exception.  Time and time again, even if I knew the bars further away were more fun, I would still choose the close-to-home option.

How about all the girls I BLEW IT with?  This of course wasn’t an issue when I had a girlfriend, but when I’m single I like to date.  How many girls did I absolutely blow it with because I was TOO drunk.  This happens to ALL single drinkers, guys and girls.  You start out trying to get “loose” so you can interact with the opposite sex more easily.  But it’s easy to get TOO drunk.  And there’s nothing attractive about someone who is too drunk.  Man, when I think of all the girls who’s names I forgot!  Girls who I “re-introduced” myself to when I’d just met them 5 minutes earlier.  Girls who I said something completely inappropriate to, thanks to “lowered inhibitions”.  Girls I would straight-up FORGET to go back to after going to the bathroom or the bar and not realize it until I saw them with another guy at the end of the night.  All for the sake of getting loose….  Yeah.  I got loose alright.  Too loose!

But we just ACCEPT this as “normal”.  As a normal part of society.  And we laugh about it.  Probably because it’s so tragic that’s the only way we can deal with it.  “Ohhhh man you totally blew it with that girl last night, that was funny!”  “Ohhhh man you were throwing up all night!  That was sooooo funny.”  “Ohhhhh man you almost got your ass kicked by that big guy last night.  That was soooooo funny!”  Is it??  It it really funny?  Maybe to your friends.  But it’s rarely funny to the person involved.  But we just accept this as “normal life”.

It’s NOT normal.  In the 7 months since I quit drinking I’ve been able to achieve that “get loose” feeling stone sober WITHOUT booze.  It’s not easy.  There is an adjustment period, when you first go out in social situations sober, where you will feel completely out of place.  Like you aren’t having fun.  Maybe even “seized up” or panicky.  But if you keep forcing yourself outside of your comfort zone and keep going out to be social in whatever social situations you used booze for as a crutch in the past, you get past the “adjustment period.”

And once you do…..  Oh man life is beautiful!  You feel YOUNG.  You feel like a kid again.  I’m there now.  I can go to a bar or nightclub stone sober and have as much, if not MORE fun now, than I ever did when I drank.  How awesome is that??  You get ALL the benefits of drinking, and none of the negative consequences.  And when you get there, you wonder WHY you drank for as long as you did.  And you start to see things differently.  Which is what prompted this post.  You can’t see how as a society we can collectively just ACCEPT DUIs, and drunk-driving deaths, and injury, and colossal sums of money spent, and health consequences, all just to get loose!

You know what?  It IS worth it.  IF getting drunk is the only way to enjoy social situations; if that’s the only way to have fun and get loose, I suppose we should just accept all the problems of booze.  And that’s the ingeniousness of the trap! Making you believe that it’s normal, that you HAVE to drink to have fun in social situations, or to dance, or to go talk to that girl, or whatever. It’s not true!  It’s NOT the only way to enjoy yourself.  I’m not bullshitting or a victim of “wishful thinking”, I truly have more fun now sober than I ever did drunk!  And no, I don’t mean I go skydiving and kayaking now instead of going out.  I mean I have MORE fun in nightclubs and bars, FULL of drunk people, socializing, meeting women, dancing, etc.   And because I don’t have the negative consequences - one of those being hangovers and lethargy the day after - I can go do those other things as well.

It’s a better life.  If you want that life I encourage you to read “The Easy Way to Stop Drinking” by Allen Carr.  You DON’T have to consider yourself an alcoholic to want to stop!  I don’t think I’m an alcoholic.  I never thought that.  But I knew I was completely dependent on it to have fun in social situations.  And while that may be acceptable by 90% of society, it was unacceptable to me.  The only reason I continued as long as I did, is because I believed what everyone else believed.  That as bad as the negative consequences were, it was a NECESSARY evil.  And it was totally worth it if it meant I could have more fun in social situations.  Once you realize that’s not true, quitting is easy.  Not only easy, a natural thing to do once you see the truth.

The thing that keeps most people trapped is the “adjustment period”.   Those first few nights out - even the first MONTH or TWO - in social situations where people normally drink, you WILL feel out of place and awkward.  And that’s why people keep drinking.  They try sober for a night or two and determine it’s no fun.  They don’t realize they just have to get through the adjustment period!  And once they do, they will have MORE FUN sober than they ever did drunk.  The whole reason for that “adjustment period” is BECAUSE of booze.  It’s because you are dependent on that crutch that you feel awkward without it!  So drinking isn’t the cure for that awkwardness…. it’s the CAUSE OF IT!

I hope at least one person reading this can see the trap for what it truly is and gets to experience the AWESOME life that I get EVERY day now.   You’re not going to turn into some straight-edge, no fun, going-to-meetings, BORING person.  Far from it!!  I’m the life of the party.  I go to bars and clubs full of drunk people all the time.  I socialize, I dance, I have just as much fun as everybody else.  Probably more.  It’s not hard to get off the crutch.  Just read the book.

1. They make an inferior product!  Toyota and Honda could figure out how to make a car that wouldn’t break down every other week.  How come Ford and Chevy couldn’t?  US automakers spend all their money on designing new models instead of getting existing ones right, and MARKETING.  Did you ever notice how many US car commercials are on TV.  That’s a hell of an ad budget.  It took the US public 20 YEARS to catch on and realize US cars are shit and it’s not normal to be working on your 4 years old car EVERY weekend.  I’ve still got relatives in Vermont who are either VERY patriotic, or have succumbed toe the brainwashing.  They ONLY buy American made pieces of crap.  Fine.  Fix your Ford every effing weekend, while I drive my Honda into the GROUND.
2. Unions.  I’m not a big rich business owner.  I’m a working man.  But I think unions are bad.  It’s freakin’ socialist, communist thinking!  Think about it.  Here’s how it should work: “Hey we need some guys to rivet this piece to that piece.  And do it 1,000 times a day.  Let’s pay them $11 an hour.”  Perfectly acceptable.  Here’s the job, here’s the pay, you don’t like it YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORK THERE!  “Hey we can’t get enough guys at $11 / hour.  Let’s raise it to $13″  Classic supply and demand.  “That worked!  We’re good!  Lets build some cars.”But here’s what happens with a damn union. “We’ve all formed a union.  We don’t want $13/ hour anymore.  We want $20.  And if you don’t give it to us, we’ll all strike and cripple your company.  If you try to hire other workers to RUN YOUR EFFING BUSINESS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! we’ll set up picket lines, call them scabs and bully and intimidate until you pay us more than we’re worth.”  And then when management finally caves because they have to stay in damn business! The union says “Now we want $30/ hour.”  It’s freaking CRIMINAL.  It’s a $13 / hour job.  And under the normal laws of supply and demand they would get plenty of workers at $13/ hour.  But under collective bullying, they get $30…. All the while driving UP the price of cars compared to Toyotas and Hondas.  Meaning to stay competetive, US automakers have to cut corners on things like…….ohhhh I don’t know, RELIABILITY.

Imagine if other industries allowed this bullshit?  What if all the guys at McDonalds formed a union and now instead of making $8/ hour, they get $25.  How much do you think that Big-Mac will cost?  How long do you think they’ll stay in business?  IF YOU WANT HIGHER PAY GET A BETTER JOB!!  Shit paying, low end jobs are a necessary evil.  It motivates you to get a effing education, learn a new skill for Pete’s sake and get a better job!  And the people with no motivation and apathy stay in those jobs.  That’s THEIR choice.  We shouldn’t pay them 4 times what their worth because they chose to work a mindless factory job.  You can do whatever you put your mind to and work a different job.
3. Health Care.  The same unions demand healthcare.  Since our government which provids police, firemen, roads to drive on, bridges, infrastructure, etc, will let you FUCKING DIE if you get sick without healthcare, businesses have had to step in to pick up the slack.  But in a normal business, without communist unions, businesses OFFER healthcare in better positions to attract talented workers.  In a collective bullying union job, the unions DEMAND healthcare.And healthcare is too expensive. That’s the final nail in the coffin that broke the big 3.

Healthcare is a FOR PROFIT INDUSTRY.  Worse than that it’s a for profit industry with a 3rd party payer system!  That means joe gets sick, goes to hospital for service and somebody ELSE pays for it.  Joe pobably never even sees the bill!  That system is a set up for MASSIVE corruption.  That means hospital can charge whatever they want because JOE never sees the bill and gets outraged.  Insurer pays for it, and all is well.  Except this massive corruption drives up the price of premiums for EVERYONE.  In the neighborhood of $500/month if you want DECENT healthcare.  And if you have a “pre-existing condition” forget about it.  The industry will LET YOU DIE.

You want proof that it’s a corrupt system?  Look at the relatively low price of elective surgeries.  If you break your arm badly or need any sort of “medically necessary” surgery, you’re looking at a MINIMUM price tag of $20,000.  Well how come they can do a boob job for $4,000 then?  You’re telling me setting a bone is harder than slipping an implant through a belly button and managing to set it in the right place?  I don’t think so.  The difference is WHO’S PAYING FOR IT.  When it’s the insurance company, the hospitals rape them to the tune of $20,000 plus.  When it’s chicks who want big boobs, the MARKET determines a fair price.  Which happens to be $4,000.  You wouldn’t see to many boob jobs at $20,000 a pop.

And THIS is why the automakers will fail.  They make a SHIT product.  Their workers get paid WAY TOO MUCH on account of unions.  And the cost of healthcare is too high.  With union wages and healthcare costs, how can they POSSIBLY compete with the Japanese??  …healthcare is going to be the downfall of this whole country if something isn’t changed.

It’s RIDICULOUS that the overwhelming majority of surfboards made today are custom shaped! That’s why new boards are $500-$1000. It’s a freakin’ flotation device! It has no moving parts. It should be $100-$300 tops. Look at snowboards. Without the bindings (moving parts) they average $200-$300. And they are mass-produced not customized. I use the car analogy. You would never buy a custom made car just for you, because it would cost 1 million dollars or more. Different people have different needs. Honda makes a Civic, an Accord, a Pilot, etc, etc. You choose the model you like and that’s what you buy. And if you don’t like Honda, you have other brand’s models to choose from.

That’s how it should be with surfboard manufacturers. Different companies have shapers that design ‘models’ and those surfboard models are mass-produced and therefore become dramatically cheaper. Each person doesn’t need a custom shaped board. 99.9% of the surfing population is NOT good enough to need their board customized. How many pro snowboarders have custom boards? What about wake-boarders? Motor cross riders? All of these athletes rely on their equipment to excel in their particular discipline, but only a fraction of a percent have custom-made equipment. I’m not talking about different ‘options’ I’m talking custom-made from the ground up like almost all surfboards today are.

If you had 50 surf companies making 5 models each (super low-ball figure) you’ve got 250 boards to choose from, probably in different sizes too. That’s enough to find one that’s perfect for you. And if you really like it and destroy it…. just go buy another one! No longer would you have to lament the passing of a one-of-a-kind board. This kinda’ happens today anyway. The board you buy most likely was not custom-made just for you. A shaper has a model he sticks with and makes a lot of them. But he still has to custom shape each and every blank. That’s foolish. The shaper is a designer by nature. He should design masters and a machine can reproduce them. This is an unpopular viewpoint I have with my surfing peers, but I for one hope custom shaped boards become a thing of the past.

There’s also got to be a better solution for traction then rubbing messy, fahhking WAX all over the deck of your board! But that’s another argument altogether…

The role of the police should be to protect and serve. To protect and serve the taxpaying residents in their jurisdiction. Not to harrass and levy fines! Last 4th of July my house party got shut down 3 times. The first time was at 2 in the afternoon! Do we need policing of an event that draws 50,000 people? Absolutley. But what they should be looking for is people that are vandalizing, people that are fighting or beligerent, people that are peeing in someone’s front lawn. They shouldn’t be breaking up a peaceful gathering of 50 people socializing, drinking and dancing. This is America. We are supposed to be a free country. You should be free to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t encrouch on someone else’s freedom. Should I be able to have a party go until 3AM with music and guests outside on my patio? No. Because some of my neighbors would probably like to sleep. And I would be encroaching on their freedom to get a good nights rest. But there is no justification for the cops breaking up a party at 2 in the afternoon. See the difference?

There is a law in Newport beach that requires a bar/restaruant/club to have a license for dancing and if you don’t have one it’s illegal to dance. ILLEGAL TO DANCE! How absurd is that? As far as I can tell they aren’t giving out any of these licenses. Buzz club is shut down. Aysia 101 is now a restaurant and on several occasions the cops have come into El Ranchito and shut the whole place down because there was “illegal dancing.” Does anyone else think this is wrong??? STOP CRIMINALIZING FUN! Stop making unconstitutional laws that encroach on my right to have a good time. Should I be able to go 100 on the freeway? No. Why? Because I might hurt someone else. But what is the rationale behing a no-dancing ordinance? For more on this check out www.freenewport.com. This is an awesome website. I urge the residents of West Newport to GET INVOLVED. Do something. They’ve made too much of daily life illegal already.

“Don’t do drugs!”  Unless it’s from a big business, properly taxed, then it’s ok.  Prescriptions are up 300% NOT because of an “increase in awareness” of these drugs. It’s because the pharmaceutical business is exactly that - a business. There are constantly commercials on TV in newspapers, on bus stops, advertising, brainwashing you on the next drug and why you and/or your child NEED it.

I’m all for drugs that can help a legitimate physical condition, or that are a short term fix for an IMMEDIATE problem.  But throwing drugs at an emotional problem instead of getting to the root of the problem is just plain lazy. My kid is “violently acting out, he needs a ‘mood stabilizer’” Bullshit. He needs a good smack! My kid is depressed, he needs an antidepressant. NO, he needs you to maybe spend 5 minutes a day talking to him and letting him/her know that despite what all the jerks at school think, you think he’s a good kid. Be a parent for crying out loud.

The world got along just fine for thousands of years and no kids ever suffered from depression or ADD. Nobody every had “chronic heartburn”. It’s all about $$$$$$$. Eat right and 99% of these so-called “disorders” disappear. Chronic heartburn? Well stop eating SHIT!! They label it a disorder and suddenly you’ve got a disorder and now you need a pill for it. What a bunch of crap. It’s not Attention Defecit Disorder, it’s called being a kid! Kids don’t have long attention spans. That’s normal!  Maybe stop spoon feeding them sugar every morning for breakfast!  This stuff makes me sick. And the worst part is, even if you don’t buy into to it we ALL pay for it through outrageous health-care premiums and the higher taxes for the govt to pick up the rest of the tab. Even if I spend $0 / month on pills I have to help pay for the guy who’s taking $1500/month in pills through my higher health-care premium.

And who decided that kids (of all people) are supposed to be even-keeled all the time? You throw a temper-tantrum and mommy puts you on Prozac?? That’s just being a kid! Heck, I’m about to throw a temper-tantrum right now! Think it’s NOT all about money? Look at the drug company Wyeth for example. As of this writing (August 2005) they have 51,000 employees and their CEO takes home 4 million a year!

Reuters Article - January 2003

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - About 6% of US children are taking drugs to
treat depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a
host of other behavioral and emotional problems, researchers said
Monday.

Their study of data on nearly 900,000 individuals younger than 20 years
who were enrolled in an HMO or received Medicaid revealed a 200% to
300% increase in the use of psychotropic drugs between 1987 and 1996, with
the greatest increase occurring after 1991.

Alpha-agonists such as clonidine, which is used to treat behavior
problems, saw the greatest increase. Prescriptions for neuroleptics,
antidepressants and “mood stabilizer” anticonvulsants, which are used to
control acting out and violent behavior in kids, also rose during the study.

In general children on Medicaid, the federal health insurance program
for the poor, were more likely to be prescribed these drugs than were
kids whose families were enrolled in an HMO, and children on Medicaid
receiving the drugs tended to be younger than their HMO-enrolled
counterparts. For instance, children aged 10-14 years were the largest users of
psychotropic drugs among Medicaid recipients, compared with children
aged 15-19 years in the HMO group.

Males were more likely than females to be prescribed psychotropic drugs
overall, particularly if they received Medicaid, according to the
report in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent
Medicine.

It is not clear from the study why the use of psychotropic drugs rose
so dramatically among children, or why there are different patterns of
use among children insured through an HMO and through Medicaid.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Dr. Julie Magno Zito, the study’s
lead author, said that changes in diagnosis, access to medical
treatment and a greater awareness of the mental health treatment needs of
youths may explain the results. Greater visibility of drug promotion may
also play a role, according to Zito, of the University of Maryland,
Baltimore.

In an accompanying editorial a doctor from Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston said that the data may reflect higher rates of mental
illness among Medicaid users, who are generally less well-off than those
who use employer-based insurance. Alternatively, a greater awareness of
psychiatric disorders and better drugs may have led to more
prescriptions, suggests Dr. Michael S. Jellinek.

However, he notes that usage of many drugs increased in youngsters
despite little research on their effectiveness in children.

“Given the scale of current psychotropic medication utilization, we
have a responsibility to know what we are doing and the quality of our
efforts,” Jellinek writes. “We need to ask the mirror on the wall this
question: Are we prescribing the right psychotropic medications to the
right children using the right treatment plan?”

The study authors conclude that more research is needed to update the
current report and to examine trends for specific drugs. A more
nationally representative group of children might also better reflect trends,
they suggest.

Now I don’t agree with everything Dr. Atkins advocates, but damn you gotta’ love a man that just says FU to the established medical “authority”.  Dr. Atkins had been saying for years that one major consequence of the current low fat obsession is that people on a low-fat diet are majorly deficient in Omega-3 fatty acids because they are afraid to eat fat! So not only is the low-fat, high-carb diet responsible for obesity and type II diabetes, but you could easily extrapolate from this data that a high carb diet is increasing the incidence of Alzheimers in America today. I love this line, “diet may play a role in the mind-robbing disease.” MAY play a role??? Of course it does! The same way that a lifetime abuse of carbohydrates will give you type II diabetes. Very sad. People think they are doing the right thing. They think eating low-fat is healthy….. and look what it’s doing to them.

Eating fish may fight Alzheimer’s
Study suggests that just one helping a week is beneficial.

By PHUONG LE
The Associated Press

CHICAGO – Older people who eat fish at least once a week may cut their risk of Alzheimer’s by more than half, a study suggests.

The study adds to the evidence that diet may play a role in the mind-robbing disease, which affects 4 million Americans.

Researchers found that people 65 and older who ate fish - including tuna sandwiches, fish sticks and shellfish - once a week had a 60 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s than those who never or rarely ate fish. Amounts eaten weren’t specified.

“This is very promising, but it’s very early, and really we need to have a lot more studies,” said lead researcher Dr. Martha Clare Morris of Chicago’s Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center.

The study involved 815 Chicago residents 65 and older. Follow-up tests nearly four years later found that 131 participants had developed Alzheimer’s.

The researchers found a link even after adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity and risk factors like heart disease.

The study, published Monday in the Archives of Neurology, was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Fish is rich in an omega-3 fatty acid that is believed to be important for brain development, Morris said. Studies have shown that animals fed the fatty acids had better learning abilities and memory.

The gov’t has been lobbied so heavily with so much $$ from big business, that their food pyramid and “guidelines” are inherently corrupt. Their definition of “proper eating” is the one that earns food manufacturers the most $$, it’s not the one that’s most healthy for you. Most people are too stupid, or too naive to see any of this. This should throw up a huge red flag:

The makers of Hershey chocolates, Budweiser and Spam urged the federal government “to put its considerable influence behind efforts to urge Americans to increase daily levels of exercise” but also asked it to recommend higher food consumption.

Higher food consumption? Are you f*@#%ing kidding me? We’re in the middle of an obesity epidemic and they want us to eat more. Or this one…

The Independent Bakers Association, representing bread makers, warned against a tilt toward protein consumption, influenced by regimens such as the Atkins diet.

Any nutrional specialist or personal trainer not working for a company trying to sell you a particular product will tell you Americans need MORE protein in their diets, not less. Processed carbs like white bread and cereals occupy the largest spot on the food pyramid, while fresh vegetables which are far more nutrious and better for you but with smaller profit margins fall further down the list. Be a skeptic. Read often. Question everything. And think for yourselves!  Here’s the article…

Food industry weighs in on guidelines
Scientists worry corporate influence will sway policy at a time of radical overhaul.

BY RAJA MISHRA
The Boston Globe

Uncle Sam’s menu is about to change, and corporate America wants to help write the new edition. But scientists worry that the result will be more sensitive to the bottom line than to the ever-expanding American waistline.

Every five years, federal officials revise the cornerstones of national food policy: the national dietary guidelines and food pyramid. The last revision was 2000.

Together, these policies outlining the official, government-sanctioned healthy diet hold enormous sway over American eating habits. More directly, they control the federal government’s vast food-assistance program, which feeds one in five Americans.

Corporate food makers have bombarded federal officials recently with suggested changes. And virtually every food company wants the government to urge more daily consumption than most scientists recommend.

Many nutrition specialists fret that the corporate duress combined with considerable pressure to significantly change national food policy in the face of an ongoing obesity epidemic will lead to unhealthy changes.

In hundreds of pages of lobbying briefs, various sectors of the food industry argued for changes that would benefit them economically.

The makers of Hershey chocolates, Budweiser and Spam urged the federal government “to put its considerable influence behind efforts to urge Americans to increase daily levels of exercise” but also asked it to recommend higher food consumption.

The Independent Bakers Association, representing bread makers, warned against a tilt toward protein consumption, influenced by regimens such as the Atkins diet.

The vitamin and supplement industry argued for placing a flag labeled “supplements” atop the food pyramid. But supplements vary widely in their effectiveness.

“The pyramid has been very susceptible to industry pressure,” Harvard nutrition specialist Meir Stampfer said. “Even now, it’s not really, in my view, scientifically based advice.”

Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the low-carb craze has focused intense interest on this round of changes. “I’m always worried when they reopen these guidelines,” she said. “The food industry is so influential and there’s so many of them. There’s a trade group for every food.”

In one sign of the changes afoot, U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman John Webster said, “I’m not going to use the word ‘pyramid’ because we’re not sure it’s going to be a pyramid. Here, we call it a ‘food guidance system.’ ”

Next week, the USDA will hold a two-day open meeting on the issue in Washington. In June, a panel of academic specialists, none with direct ties to the industry, will issue recommended revisions. Changes must be approved by the Bush administration and finalized by the end of the year, a closed-door decision during which, critics say, the industry wields considerable influence.

Food-industry representatives said they are advocating for realistic targets, achievable for average Americans. For instance, in recent months, they have opposed proposals from scientists to cut daily recommended sodium intake by more than a third. Higher sodium intake can increase the risk of high blood pressure. The proposal seems unlikely to be adopted.