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    Sedentary Nation: The Answers Aren’t Found in the New Millennium, They’re in 1910.
    Sedentary Nation: The Answers Aren’t Found in the New Millennium, They’re in 1910.
    Sedentary Nation: The Answers Aren’t Found in the New Millennium, They’re in 1910.
    Ebook341 pages9 hours

    Sedentary Nation: The Answers Aren’t Found in the New Millennium, They’re in 1910.

    By Sifu Slim

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    About this ebook

    “Sedentary Nation” recalls pivotal moments of the history of physical movement. Despite modernism and the decreasing use of the physical body, the book shows how almost anyone can easily benefit from a program that has a payoff of improved health, youthful look and energy, better sleep, and clearer thinking without the physical toll and battle fatigue that often accompany other approaches to wellbeing and fitness.

    Expanding on that, the author details how, as Chinese philosophy explains, you can change your thinking and the body will follow. By sharing knowledge and practices from those he respects the most and cites throughout the book, including Jack LaLanne and Bruce Lee, Sifu Slim describes his own journey of self-mastery. “Sedentary Nation” is the result of several hundred interviews and over a decade of research. It stands as both wellness guide for the busy, modern era and humorous memoir of a life spent living the wellness walk.

    Steeped in endearing anecdotes, 'Sedentary Nation' is a fun, yet instructive read. It considers our own human history, sociology, psychology, physiology, anthropology, and need for nature. An added bonus is chapter three which contains what may be the most comprehensive chronological timeline on the history of intentional physical movement.

    Through a wide-angle lens, Sifu Slim examines humans through the times of the hunter-gatherers, the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, and finally the modern couch, desk, and car potatoes. As we live along the curve of indoor, sedentary living and busyness, we seek natural wellness. Through compelling research findings and a look back in time, this book explains the current human condition and the benefits of what we lack most--daily intentional movement. Sifu Slim shares the hybrid program that has allowed him to get up and get outside for some physical movement and recreation and forestall many of the problems of the aging process. When we're done with the chores of our day, we can spend a bit of the day with what has always allowed our species to recover and enjoy some quiet moments--DOWNTIME.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSifu Slim
    Release dateDec 4, 2013
    ISBN9780991182916
    Sedentary Nation: The Answers Aren’t Found in the New Millennium, They’re in 1910.
    Author

    Sifu Slim

    Sifu Slim (Henry Kreuter) is an author, wellness educator/speaker, lifelong amateur athlete, and leading proponent of “intentional physical activity.” Sifu has developed easy-to-follow programs to empower everyone to achieve more healthful lifestyles and an instinctive wellness mindset. Inspired by legendary fitness icon Jack LaLanne, Sifu has made it his life’s mission to promote “maintenance fitness,” which makes physical activity both recreational and joyful, and a routine part of our daily lives. “The typical fitness guy has bulging biceps,” he jokes, “I have bulging perseverance and the proof is more than 13,000 days of physical activity. I started back in 1967 following TV-show host Jack LaLanne and have continued to keep wellness as the driving force in my life."

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      Book preview

      Sedentary Nation - Sifu Slim

      Preface

      "Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation,

      which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary

      because health is worth more than learning."

      —Thomas Jefferson

      Granted, among other things, Jefferson was one of America’s greatest presidents, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and fluent in five languages—but what did he really know about fitness and wellbeing that’s relevant for life in the 21st century, not the 18th and early 19th?

      It turns out almost everything.

      For one, his approach to exercise and recreation helped him to live and thrive to the age of 83, which was a well above the average lifespan at that time.

      For another, as President Kennedy declared at a White House dinner and reception honoring Nobel Prize winners, I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. You may have learned about the relationship between exercise and brainpower. Exercise has the capacity to increase the actual size of the hippocampus (part of the memory and spatial navigation center of the brain), which normally shrinks with older age. This shrinking is thought to lead to impaired memory and dementia.

      I don’t know about you, but I’m all for growing my brain with age and not becoming overly forgetful. I’m sure I’ll need to get to my favorite spots around the house and in town. I’ll undoubtedly want to recall who that person is in the mantle photo … the young, dashing dude whose arm is around the beautiful woman who looks quite a bit like the woman currently rocking in the chair next to me.

      Some folks can’t help themselves though; they’re bent on busyness. One person who saw Jefferson’s opening quote said, Who’s got time for Jefferson’s recreation?

      A rebuttal might be, Do you live to work?

      Chapter 1

      Lifestyle in 1910 vs. New Millennium

      Question: What are some of the principal similarities and differences between the lifestyle of our forebears in 1910 and our lives today?

      Possible Answers: The year 1910, and forward into the next two decades that resulted in the Great Depression, recalls a time of great economic, family, and geopolitical stress. We have suffered matching events in our new millennium’s Great Recession. Part of this causes what philosopher Alan Watts called the anxiety of uncertainty.

      How Did the Previous Generations Get Through the Tough Times in the Early Part of the 20th Century?

      It wasn’t easy but they tallied on. An obvious offshoot of the study of history is how we take away generalities and trends. Which particular trends jump out when we consider the physicality of 1910 versus today?

      An observation: Our forebears walked more, moved more, and lifted more. They ate less and sat less. They spent more time with family and no time at the mall. They may have derived more personal and societal fulfillment, and slept better. That’s it in a nutshell.

      Many of them toiled in exhausting physical jobs. For some, the workday went more than 12 hours and the workweek was seven days. If they wanted to keep their jobs or not fall off the horse, most were asleep within a few short hours of the evening meal. Today, so many stay up late engaged in a myriad of activities: flipping channels, surfing the Net, arguing, and drinking. Some are engaged in what are considered positive endeavors: working with their children, studying, reading, and intimacy.

      Staying up late due to being wired or hyper-programmed to consume more information and imagery presents itself as an incredibly significant difference between our ancestors and us. Their sleep was a significant part of their recovery from an almost impossible workweek. They had to have their brain rested and alert for their heavy-duty focus requirements. Handling animals on the farm or handling molten iron meant that one screw up could cost an arm or a life. Food has to keep you nourished, the human engine requires it and the brain loses its functionality without it.

      The rows at the supermarket were entirely different back in the old days. Yes, there were some rows of cans and boxes, but there was much less junk on display. Canning was an ingenious food preservative method that came about as a contest sponsored by France’s military between 1795 and 1810. In the early days of canning, the main goal was to preserve food, making it difficult for microorganisms to flourish. Eventually, marketers sought to improve taste, image, and profits. Today we can walk down rows and rows filled with captivating boxes and wrapped goods that excite our taste buds with hints of what’s inside. Some of what’s inside is the tasty stuff food scientists have spent time concocting. More recently, their formulas have evolved with increasing demands for more nutritious food and less chemicalized food. Green markets have sprouted up, hearkening back to old-school living. But today, it’s still quite difficult to find healthful, natural whole-food products at reasonable prices. Even the healthful cereals in the healthful markets frequently are laced with cane sugar and other unneeded additives. Would you buy cereal without the sweetened taste? In the old days and even when I was a kid, people added their own sugar or honey. What’s so hard about that?

      Food purchasing in a store wasn’t always self-serve like it is today. Someone on staff once got you what you asked for. That meant experienced shoppers closely examined what they were getting. When they could, they may have rejected the less than appealing offerings. In some instances, vegetables were wrapped in newspaper. You would open what was being handed to you to make sure it was up to snuff … or sniff.

      We know about wars fought over land and oil. There’s also a war being fought right in your local supermarket. In a popular videotaped news story, noted food journalist Michael Pollan cruises the isles inside a modern supermarket filled mostly with processed, industrial food. Dr. Pollan is accompanied by Michael Moss, his food industry investigator colleague, who says, Behind these shelves is the most fiercely competitive industry there is … They’re fighting each other for stomach share.² Food and beverage is big business just as oil is big business. These companies are huge spenders on advertising with wine and spirits, fast foods and soft drinks, and sugar and confection leading the

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