I first learned about Metabolic Flexibility through a guy named Mike T Nelson – he’s downright awesome for more reasons than I can count on my small and chubby fingers. He’s a lab coat kinda guy, who’s a little more fly because he likes to lift weights to the sky – oh yeah I can rhyme a little bit, did you know that about me?
But that’s besides the point…
Mike, through all those little E-mails he sends, introduced me to the concept known at Metabolic Flexibility – aka MetFlex (sounds like a robot from Terminator doesn’t it? Badass much? I think so). The MetFlex idea is simple: if you suck at burning the right fuels (Carbs and Fats), you’ll suck at beating zombie ass with wooden planks. There’s also a mental component to it, but we’ll get to that later.
Imagine that meal time slugfest you have after you chowdown a shitload of food. Would you want to be running half-assed through Zombie filled streets feeling like you have narcolepsy? The opposite is true when you have no food whatsoever. You might have experienced it before, the sudden, “Holy Crap, I want to kill everything around me” kinda mood or the “Fuck my life, I’m lazy as shit kinda mood.” Normally it comes when you’ve had your mind off food because of work, errands, or other life duties that hold you off from eating for hours.
I’m sure the being irritated isn’t too bad, except you might “accidently” shoot an ally – that’s of course if you believe in helping other people survive (Who believes in strength in numbers anyway? They might take my food, guns, and weapons right?). But I know for sure, that lazy feeling wouldn’t bode well when Zombies are trying to gut you open…
So then, we must prepare…
Preparing for Z-Day
You have been forewarned!
Z-day is what I’ve aptly called the Zombie Apocalypse; and if you’re one of those haters that think I’m f***ing nuts, at least I’m prepared.
Will you be?
I know there’s some that don’t think about it, but I know there’s plenty that do. Plenty that cuddle in bed at night having nightmares of THAT day hoping that they’re not one of those people on all the Zombie movies that makes the “Oh shit, what is that stupid fucker thinking” mistake. You know, the one that checks in on the room with the scratching sound on the door only to have a Zombie, who by the way is only thinking “Brains, Guts, Yum,” leap from out of the door only to chomp on your neck and spill your blood all over the floor (you know someone has to clean it up and I know that was a run-on sentence – shit).
But let’s me not get to far ahead of myself – preparation is a must for the believers. And especially if you have the time for it, hell it doesn’t take too much out of your day anyway, you might as well right? MetFlex is not just an idea about burning foods, but an idea about being ready for any type of foods or being ready when there isn’t food. To perform optimally like nothing major is happening no matter when you eat, what you eat, or how you eat.
For now we will simply define optimally as: Doing shit you want to do or need to do without any altered state of mind, mood, or physicality.
Anal Probing, Wait I meant Mental Probing (I was thinking about Aliens for a second)
Before we get into the whole this is what you do, we got to know where you’re at. The idea when asking yourselves these questions is does it change how I perform? Am I not optimal anymore because of the answer to these questions? The questions are not exhaustive (they aren’t all the details you may want to cover, but they sure are hell some of the major ones).
Ask yourself these questions – (Yes/No should suffice):
Eating too little – What if you have an abundance of food? During these times you’d actually want to store it in fat for once (You never know when you’ll get your next meal).
Do I only eat one meal a day?
Can I eat more than one meal a day?
Eating too much – What if you didn’t have food around, not just for one day, but even a week? Are you ready?
Do I eat between 3-10 meals (snacks and meals are the same in this case)?
Can I eat only 1 meal a day?
Can I eat nothing at all for a day?
How many meals can I skip for a week and still be okay?
What You Eat – What if you have a certain crappy disposition to certain foods. Holy ‘ell does milk bloat me like no other.
Do certain foods cause me one or more digestive problems – ex: diarreha, constipation, bloating?
Do certain food combinations gas me up – ex: Steak and Beans…wow?!
Do I have to eat certain foods together – ex: For me it used to be I had to eat white rice with almost everything…
How You Eat – You know the random shit that affects some people mentally.
Can I use my fingers to eat or do I have to use utensils?
Do I have to eat foods in a certain order – ex: For me I hated mixing certain sauces together or I had to eat my eggs after any foods that I preferred ketchup with.
By understanding where you don’t perform optimally you can then learn how to train it, unless you have some sort of medical condition. You shouldn’t be reading crap on the internet anyway to try to diagnose and treat yourself. That’s my disclaimer, so if you choose to listen and do any of this crap – you’ve been warned (I’ll warn you again later) it’s to keep me and Adam safe you know? Safety first!
Training those have to do’s is necessary for your Zombie Survival Kit; get it good and we’ll increase your likelihood for survival.
Finding Waldo
If you don’t know who Waldo is, shame on you – just kidding; but just in case, he is some fictional character created in children picture books where you literally try to find him among a mass of people. What I mean in this case is that we have to find your waldo. We have to understand how we must train YOU, so you’re prepared without wasting anymore time then need be. (Yes I know, sometimes my analogies don’t play right – I just felt like talking about Waldo).
Let’s look back…
What questions did you answer that are things you have to do. – For example if you feel like you have to eat 3-10 meals a day, you have a Zombie Killing problem. Anything that would dilute your Zombie Killing Orchestra throw in the list.
Now, let’s go back to eating 3-10 meals a day. Say you answered, “I feel like I have to eat 5 meals a day.” In order to train it, the next day try eating 4 meals a day.
If you were successful that day, the next day try eating 3 meals.
If you weren’t successful, the next day try eating 4.5 meals.
Basically if you succeed, go lower. If you fail, go bigger.
Let’s take another question – Say you answered, “I feel like I have to at least eat something per day.”
In order to train it, you must first figure out how long is your stretch between meal times. Normally from Dinner to Breakfast is the longest for most people because it includes your sleep.
Say you eat your last meal at 9pm and you eat your first meal at 9am, you’ve successfully gone for half a day without eating. Good for you, but we need to make it longer.
There’s two ways:
Say again your last meal was at 9pm, keep going past 9am, until you notice you start moving slower – the onset of you starting to move sluggishly. What also tends to happen is your personality changes. Quiet people get loud, loud people get quiet.
The other way is a step by step approach, whereas the above is a more customized approach for your body. This approach is simple, stretch the time you have your first meal by 30mins to 1hour. If for example; your last meal was at 9pm and your first 0meal was at 9am, see if you can go to 9:30am or 10:00am.
If you were successful that day, the next day try going for 10:00am or 10:30am.
If you weren’t successful that day, try 10-15 minute intervals instead. For example: Going from 9pm to 9:10am or 9:15am.
Basically if you succeed, go by hours. If you don’t succeed, go by minutes.
Mental Preparation: Diet Edition
Even diets have mental components to them because our brains affect everything – that’s probably why Zombies want to eat them so much. Although this won’t be a super long topic, the general idea is that sometimes we have certain food rituals or food habits that keep us stuck. Anything that keeps us stuck isn’t always good for us, especially when there may come a time when that habit helps us die whether directly or indirectly.
For example: If you go back to the question about eat with you fingers or with utensils, my answer would be that I can only eat with utensils. I hate the feeling of touching certain textures with my fingers that it just feels weird for me to eat like that. I don’t actually thing it’s wrong to eat with my fingers, more so it just feels awkward. Now although this may not be necessarily a strong habit I have –
Imagine in the beginning when I’m not starving for food yet. Imagine in the first or second week where food is more abundant and I feel like I have to eat with a spoon and fork. How much food would I not eat, if there weren’t any around? How much food would I not have stored in my body simply because…Now imagine what happens when the third week comes, the fourth were food is scarce…getting the picture yet? Sometimes preparation, helps for preparation for something else too. The goal is to look for rituals you may have, habits that you have when it comes to eating with certain things, eating certain ways, or eating at certain times; and see if you can break those habits.
Mental Training is like Food Training
Using my above example, I may try to simply grab with my fingers a bite of food and put it in my mouth. If I can do it once, the next day I might try to do it twice. If I can’t, I may simply touch the food in my hand, and not put it in my mouth.
The goal is to understand the parts of the habit that I can scale or progress if I have to. I only want to break down anything I’m trying to train to manageable chunks. I don’t want to start small, when I can go a bit bigger – I’d rather work with bigger chunks if I can, and go smaller only if I have to, similar to
Remembering that Fateful Day
Shoot on sight and keep moving
I want you to remember this article when you look back if Z-Day ever happens and say, “Thank God to Darryl for preparing me in shit I didn’t even think about.” It’s true that as humans we are highly adaptable, but in survival situations, do you really want to spend your time adapting to crappy diet situations whether there’s too much or too little food or killing Zombies faster and running away over obstacles and shit.
The goal really is just for you to understand that there’s things we can do now besides building bomb shelters full of canned goods and other crap. I want to increase your chances of survival, period. As Zombies try to eat your brains; know at least you’ll be one of the only with a glistening six-pack, that’ll be smiling and making it Zombie Killing or running look easy because whether you have food or you don’t, you’ll be mowing down Zombies left and right – most likely with a chainsaw or some other long-distance weapon (that’s a teaser for the next article). You’ll be the Zombie Killer, the Brad Pitt Edition versus the “I got eaten by Zombies because I was a fat ass and kept falling asleep person.” So remember, it’s not that eating is bad or not eating is good – we just want you to survive when a horde of Zombies is coming after you and your supposed allies ate all the “emergency supplies.”
To Death Dealing Zombies!,
Darryl – Badass Trainer, certified in ZS (Zombie Survival)
Darryl can be found in “The Dungeon”, editing videos of himself playing with himself or with his clients, training his clients for Pure Greatness, or writing smart ass articles on Easier Strength Training. If you’d like to contact him: E-mail him at apolakifitness@gmail.com, friend him on facebook Darryl Lardizabal, or twit him @XPO312.