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How To Lose Weight

January 10, 2021

If you’re like most of the people around the world who had their lives rocked by the COVID pandemic, staying healthy in 2021 is likely one of your resolutions for the coming year.

And if so, ‘losing weight’ is probably on your list.

Most of us carry more inches around the middle than we’d ideally like and worry about the long-term health risks that can come with being overweight. And with COVID-19, excess weight is a co-morbidity that can dangerously worsen outcomes for those infected.

Yet most New Year’s weight loss attempts meet with failure, usually after only a few weeks. The truth is: dropping unwanted pounds and keeping them off is hard.

BUT….it’s doable. In fact, the pathway to achieve a healthy bodyweight is surprisingly straightforward. It just requires disciplined commitment. Weight loss programs overwhelmingly fail because of psychological reasons or misinformation. If you pick a program based on good science — and keep your mind right while pursuing it — positive results are inevitable.

In this article, which builds on previous advice I’ve written on the topic,  I’m going to recount my own experience (with evidence for you to judge) with finally losing the pounds that had for years stubbornly refused to leave my middle. The keys to my success weren’t complicated nor expensive. And I firmly believe that anyone, regardless of age or situation, can deploy them to similar results.

Why Believe Me?

For those wondering whether they should believe me, take a look at the Before and After pictures below:

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should listen to me because I’ve taken this journey.

That’s me in both pictures. In my late 30s on the left and my late 40s on the right.

I know what it’s like to be far too overweight and health-challenged.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Running Out Of Soybeans?

December 24, 2020

Several factors are conspiring to weaken the reliability of our food production systems, warns Christian Westbrook, publisher of the website IceAgeFarmer.com

We’re seeing a shortening of the growing season for important crops due to weather trends and changes in the solar cycle.

Our food production system, which is highly dependent on chemical inputs and fossil fuels, is becoming increasingly brittle.

And we have more vulnerability due to the global nature of modern food supply chains. Crop shortages/failures in one part of the world impact all markets now.

For example, soybean supply is tightening as bad weather in South America and increased buying by China are hitting at a time when global stocks are already low.

As the world population grows, climate instability continues, and more countries are able to economically compete for resources, experts foresee future demand that may prove overwhelming vs supply:

What if several of the world’s biggest food crops failed at the same time?

In the past several decades, many of the world’s major breadbaskets have experienced shocks – events that caused large, rapid drops in food production. For example, regional droughts and heat waves in the Ukraine and Russia in 2007 and then again in 2009 damaged wheat crops and caused global wheat prices to spike by substantial amounts in both years. In 2012 heat and drought in the United States slashed national corn, soybean and other crop yields by up to 27 percent. And yields of important food crops are low and stagnating in many countries due to factors including plant diseases, poor soil quality, poor management practices and damage from air pollution.

At the same time, many experts assert that world food production may have to double by 2050 to feed a growing population and satisfy rising demand for meat, poultry and dairy products in developing countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Make Your ‘Dent In The Universe’

December 23, 2020

Having spent a career launching iconic products — including Apple’s first Macintosh computer — Guy Kawasaki knows a thing or two about what leads to success and fulfillment in both business and life.

These are insights more and more of us could benefit from right now, as the economic disruption caused by covid has thrown many households into turmoil as millions of workers have been laid off, hundreds of thousands of businesses are closing, and many industries have been upended.

As we look ahead to the coming decade, challenges abound. More and more experts foresee a “lost decade” for the markets, as today’s sky-high valuations have pulled tomorrow’s returns into today. Many of the jobs lost to the pandemic simply won’t come back.

How can we chart a course through this uncertainty that will give us hope, happiness and fulfillment?

Kawasaki advises developing an accurate understanding of your talents and then optimizing them for a niche others aren’t serving well. Ask yourself: How can I maximize the value can I bring? And how can I make it as unique as possible?

In Guy’s long experience, the people who manage to exist in the upper right quadrant of the chart above have the most successful careers, the most profitable businesses, and the most fulfilling relationships.

Guy thinks this framework is more important than ever given the continued disruption and challenges ahead.

Which is why now, more than ever, is the time to partner with a financial advisor who understands both the opportunities and the risks in play, can craft an appropriate portfolio strategy for you given your needs, and apply sound risk management protection where appropriate:

Gold & The Great Reset

November 29, 2020

The composition of the US dollar, including what it is backed by, has been replaced many times throughout America’s history. And another replacement is currently underway, warns monetary expert Mike Maloney.

After President Nixon fully severed its ties to gold, our government leaders have increasingly relied on expanding the currency supply to paper over (quite literally) today’s problems at the expense of the dollar’s purchasing power tomorrow.

As Mike explains in his excellent video series Hidden Secrets Of Money, such willful debasement of the currency by furtive and shortsighted politicians is nothing new. Over thousands of years, since the Romans intentionally progressively shrank the silver content of their coins, history is replete with such examples.

And now 2020 has arrived. The Federal Reserve’s response to the pandemic-induced economic slowdown has unleashed more ‘thin air’ creation of new dollars than ever seen at any prior moment in history:

21% of all US Dollars have been printed in 2020

And the leading developed countries of the world are now discussing the need for a Great Reset, in which it’s being proposed that new national cryptocurrencies (perhaps laying the groundwork towards a ‘one world currency’) replace the current existing fiat versions.

Using the lens of monetary history, Mike sees all this as simply a modern spin on the same cycles the world has seen before. Politicians will deform and abuse the currency for their own immediate needs until the system collapses, and a new, more sound alternative emerges from the ashes.

Which is why he remains so confident that gold will strengthen dramatically in the coming macro environment, despite being in a short-lived corrective phase at the moment. In fact, he sees today’s weakness as an excellent accumulation opportunity for both current holders as well as those new to owning precious metals.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome To The Interregnum

November 22, 2020

hands fighting over crown

Your unease has a name: Zozobra

We’re between things.  It’s an uncomfortable place.

We are transitioning from an old story into a new one and that has folks feeling anxious.   By “we” I mean everyone on the planet.  If you find yourself with a deep sense of unease, yet unable to quite pin it down, you will find this article extremely helpful.

The old story of endless growth on a finite planet is winding down.  Whatever replaces it won’t be a continuation of the past.  Things are going to have to change, whether we like it or not.

Put more bluntly: the easy times are over, and a period of disruption has begun.

It may be many years or even decades before thing truly settle into a new equilibrium (of sorts – there really isn’t any such thing in this ever-changing universe).  The old will fall away even before the new has arrived. That process has already begun, hence the nervousness, anger, and fear.

My day job is serving as an information scout, an ambassador of the unknown, and because of that I’m acutely aware of the degree to which people are already worn down, burnt out, and unable to process any more.

Folks are so exhausted by the trials and tribulations dished up by the crazy-making machine fondly referred to as “2020,” that many are paralyzed.  Unable to take new actions because they are overwhelmed.

Yet, as I wrote recently, no choice IS a choice.  When so much is changing and so much is on the line, remaining frozen with anxiety is as much a determinant of your future prospects as taking swift action – each sets one down different paths promising different outcomes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It doesn’t have to be this way

November 13, 2020

This is insane. Even when something dead-nuts safe like Vitamin D finally emerges, irrefutably, to be of massive benefit, what does the UK NHS do? They decide to ship only 400 IU per patient/day.

That’s roughly 1/10th what’s needed to boost serum levels to the safe and effective range of 50 ng/ml.

A ‘futurecast’ from Hannibal Spotsbury explains what comes next.

Also the Drug Which Shall Not Be Named (DWSNBN) is back in the news.  This time from India where it conferred a 90% reduction in Covid cases among high risk health care workers. Add it all up and there’s a TON that we could be doing to effectively limit the spread and severity of Covid…but aren’t.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Links: Covid and Sun’s incidence https://twitter.com/SebastianHantel/status/1325484241442975750

Vitamin D above 50 ng/ml https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4437692/#:~:text=Without%20significant%20sun%20exposure%2C%20achieving,vitamin%20D%20by%20the%20IOM.

Robin Whittle Vitamin D Twitter https://twitter.com/RobinWhittle3/status/1324455772198072320

Sweden Vit D in food https://www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2015/05/28/Sweden-to-expand-mandatory-vitamin-D-fortification

We Are Pawns In A Bigger Game Than We Realize

November 2, 2020

“I had grasped the significance of the silence of the dog, for one true inference invariably suggests others…. Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well.”

 ~ Sherlock Holmes – The Adventures of Silver Blaze

Is it possible to make sense out of nonsense?

So much these days is an incoherent mess.  It’s complete nonsense.

Page 1 excitedly beams about a glorious rebound in GDP.  Yay economic growth!

Page 2 worryingly notes the near complete failure of Siberian arctic ice to reform during October and that hurricane Zeta (so many storms this year we’re now into the Greek alphabet!) has made punishing landfall.

Each is a narrative. Each has its own inner logic.

But they simply do not have any external coherence to each other. It’s nonsensical to be excited about rising economic growth while also concerned that each new unit of growth takes the planet further past a critical red line.

These narratives are incompatible. So which one should we pick?

Well, in the end, reality always has the final say. As Guy McPherson states: Nature bats last.

So better we choose to follow the narrative that hews closest to what reality actually is, vs what we desperately want it to be.

‘They’ Don’t Care About Us

While issues like climate change and economic growth may be difficult to fully grasp and unravel, direct threats to our lives &/or livelihoods are much more concrete and something we can react to and resist.

Such immediate and direct threats are now fully in play and, once again, they’re accompanied by narratives that are completely at odds with each other.  I’m speaking of Covid and the ways in which our national and global managers are choosing to respond (or not).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ben Hunt: Inflation Ahead!

October 26, 2020

Ben Hunt — highly respected fund manager, author, and former professor/entrepreneur/venture capitalist — says that to be successful in managing your wealth, there’s only one question that matters:

Are we entering a deflationary future, or an inflationary one?

The strategies and appropriate investment targets for each are extremely different, so you’d better answer correctly.

Though Hunt says as long as you identify the trend “roughly” right, you should do fine. You don’t have to be brilliant with the exact investments you put your capital into. As long as they benefit from the secular trend, its massive scale and momentum will do the heavy lifting.

So which kind of future are we entering?

Hunt thinks we’re at a very important inflection point. That after decades of deflation (e.g., chronically declining interest rates), we’re now transitioning into an era of secular inflation.

The $trillions in monetary and fiscal stimulus so far, and the near-certainty of much more to come, are certainly a big step in that direction.

And with asset prices completely distorted from reality, a struggling global economy, and an inflationary outlook, Hunt thinks the coming years will be extremely rocky for investors. Lots of cross-currents, with the only guarantee being that the majority of investment predicts will be foiled — as there remain very few active investors alive who have any experience managing capital in an inflationary environment.

Which is why Hunt is emphatic that now, more than ever, is the time to partner with a financial advisor who understands the risks in play, can craft an appropriate portfolio strategy for you given your needs, and apply sound risk management protection where appropriate:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Censorship is Out of Control

October 22, 2020

Censorship is Out of Control

The Coming Financial Crisis of 2021

October 19, 2020

Economist Steve Keen predicts that even if the covid-19 health crisis subsides next year, a brewing financial crisis on par with the 2008 Great Recession is in the making.

He sees the pandemic as having delivered an “unprecedented shock” to the global economy, and the response from authorities as nothing less than a “catastrophe”.

With tens of millions of households having lost their income this year, personal savings becoming exhausted, government support programs on their way to drying up, and lots more company layoffs/bankruptcies/closures ahead — Steve expects a punishing recession to arrive in full force in 2021.

And on a larger scale, he sees modern neoclassical economics — which ignores the importance of natural resources and the health of our ecosystems — as completely unsuited for the reality in which we live today. He warns that if we don’t adapt a more informed approach to managing the global economy, we will only continue to make the mess we’re in worse:

The Illusion Is Failing

October 18, 2020

Sometimes the magic fails.

The secret to the trick is accidentally revealed. The woman was always in the box.  The eye is no longer deceived. And there’s no getting the audience’s sense of awe back.

Just like a bungled illusion, once trust is broken, it’s gone.

For many during 2020, the loss of their jobs and businesses — in many cases due to incompetent government management of the pandemic — has been both a blessing and a curse.

Of course nobody likes being laid off or losing a business they’d carefully built up over the years.

But for a significant number of those people, however, they’ve now been given time (against their will, admittedly) to reflect and realize how much they hated their work in the first place.  For them, the illusion has been broken.

They won’t go back to pretending their former lives were acceptable or tolerable, and they’re actively looking for employment that better fits their values.  Time for something new.

Others have realized how much they really disliked what air travel had devolved into. With its demeaning theater of faux displays of ‘safety’– being groped by TSA agents and having to perform a striptease to get personal items through the security scanners.

I’m one of these folks.  I’ll be traveling a lot less in the future, no matter what happens with the SARS-2 virues. I’ll be content to stay local and conduct my business via Zoom calls as much as can possibly be done.  I won’t miss the pat-downs, delays, crowded seats, and cancelled flights.

Similarly, social media has now been revealed to be run by petulant sociopaths whose goal is for you to see exactly what content they want you to see, because that fits their profit incentive.  But they do so under the guise of “protecting” us from uninteresting or inappropriate material.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Welcome To Easter Island

October 4, 2020

Remember Easter Island? That place in the pages of National Geographic with the gigantic carved heads peeking up from grassy slopes?

Whether you recall it or not, you live there — in a manner of speaking.

Easter Island was colonized by the Rapanui, a particularly adept seafaring culture.  When they arrived, around the year 800 A.D., the island was a lush forested tropical paradise.

But eventually, according to researcher Jared Diamond in his bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, they committed ecocide.

They cut down every single tree on their island. Eventually the people had no wood to burn in their cookfires. They had to resort to burning grass, a particularly inferior fuel source.

But before arriving at that sad state, the Rapanui cut numerous huge stone effigies called “moai” out of solid rock – some weighing 14 tons – sculpted them, and moved them great distances.

For whatever reason, the Rapanui tribe felt it was very important to make these giant stone heads, often at the cost of using trees as the means for transporting and erecting them.

Somewhere along the way I’m sure there were alert members of their society quietly wondering if maybe they should instead start protecting their dwindling groves and forests?

It’s tough to be “that person” who concludes that your culture is up to something completely non-sensical.  It’s tough to open up and call that stuff out — because most people don’t see the problem themselves, and can feel attacked if you bring it up.

In this story of Easter Island, the production of the gigantic stone moai were deemed more important than every tree on the island.    Hey, maybe that was the right call – I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But whether it made sense or not, it wasn’t a sustainable practice.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Charles Hugh Smith: What Would A Better System Look Like?

September 22, 2020

Writer, philosopher and long-time contributor to PeakProsperity.com, Charles Hugh Smith, returns to the podcast to explain the new socio-economic model he has just introduced to the world through his new book A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet.

The main mission behind Peak Prosperity is to focus on new, more regenerative and sustainable models that will better serve humanity than the old models which are currently falling apart. Charles posits a new way of living that is a) achievable with existing resources and technology, and b) much more equitable and resistant to abuse.

We very much need new alternatives like this at this time. Because, once the system breaks in earnest, our ‘leaders’ will be desperate — and as Jared Diamond wisely observed “Nations in crisis borrow and adapt solutions already devised”. So getting good ideas on the table now, so that they’re available to be adopted when needed, is critical.

The principal idea is we need a new system. Now, it doesn’t have to replace the existing system entirely. It just has to be an effective alternative that people can choose if they so desire to.

In my opinion, it needs to be decentralized, anti-fragile, yet connected with other like-minded people. But right now, we’re having to start from scratch, basically reinventing the wheel. We’re fighting a kludgy, broken, unfair, rigged system every step of the way if we want to create a decentralized community-based economy.

So what would a system be like if we designed it from scratch to actually make it easy to join a community economy? Well, we want a system that’s opt-in and voluntary, not like the one we have now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Collapse Is A Process, Not An Event

September 20, 2020

Look, I’m a systems guy.  I think in systems terms.  You should as well.

Why?

Because we’re entering a period of time when the major systems that have supported humanity are going to fail.

Or, put more accurately: they are already failing.

As just one example, our monetary system delivers outsized gains to the already stupendously-wealthy while piling up massive debts on the backs of we citizens, both born and yet-to-be-born.  The US Federal Reserve is the unelected and unaccountable body that is most responsible for have made America’s billionaires nearly $1 trillion ‘richer’ since the pandemic hit.

These next three Fed-related data points are, in a word, obscene.

The first shows that the US Federal Reserve now “owns” more US federal debt than all foreign central banks. The second shows how billionaires are getting grotesquely wealthier from the Fed’s “rescue’” efforts. And the last shows how the Fed’s record-low interest policy has resulted in an explosion in federal debt:

(Source)

(Source)

This is obscene (and infuriating!) to anyone who cares about the future.  Leaving aside the morality issues for a moment, we can at least conclude that the behaviors and values on display are thoroughly unsustainable.

Eventually spending more money than you have ends in ruin.

Speaking of spending what you don’t have, a similar story can be told about ecological overshoot and humanity’s extractive practices —  it’s akin to spending both the entirety of the interest income as well as some principal each year from our environmental trust fund.

There aren’t many resources that one can point to which aren’t in some serious form of either concerning decline or depletion, or both.  Already thousands, if not millions, of people in the American West are considering relocating because of the ever-present danger of disruptive if not life-threatening fires:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Market Update: The Fed’s Big Lie

September 2, 2020

Market Update: The Fed’s Big Lie

Ignore Powell’s happy talk. The Fed is desperate and merely playing for time.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced on Thursday that the Fed will now shift its focus from hitting inflation targets and instead prioritize closing “unemployment shortfalls”.

This gives it the aircover to do “whatever it takes” until the unemployment rate is back down into the low single digits. Inflation can now run hotter than 2%, rates can stay at 0% (or go negative) for the next decade+, more QE…. all is fair game now in the pursuit of lower unemployment.

Essentially, the Fed is now tripling-down on the same failed policies that have created today’s zombie economy and the worst economic inequality in our nation’s history.

Rich 5% own 2/3 of the wealth

Perhaps the folks at the Fed are smarter than we think, and there’s actually a grand plan they’re pursuing that’s going to work out to society’s benefit?

Sadly no, reveals this week’s expert guest, Danielle DiMartino-Booth. Danielle knows the Fed inside and out, as she worked as a consultant for nearly a decade to Richard Fischer, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, including helping deal with the Great Financial Crisis. She knows how the organization runs, as well as the specific people running it.

And her assessment is that the Fed is trapped in a nightmare of its own making and is merely playing for time at this point. Everything it throws at the situation is designed to hopefully get the system to limp through the next quarter or two without breaking, at which point they’ll scramble to come up with the next short-term “solution”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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