Self-Overcoming, Self-Becoming, the Übermensch and Mr Olympia: Nietzsche in Bodybuilding

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In the Nietzsche Haus in Sils Maria (Engadin) is a collection of gadgets and various merchandising inspired by Nietzsche: among these, some energy bars stand out, upon which a stylised superman [Übermensch] is sketched out. There is a common tendency to implicitly connect Nietzscheʼs Übermensch with athleticism. Other concepts of Nietzscheʼs have been sometimes applied to the sports or other forms of physical activity –– for example, Nietzscheʼs idea of the ʻfree spiritʼ has been recently compared to football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Portier 2014). Moreover, Nietzscheʼs relationship to dance has been exhaustively analysed over the years (Müller 1995; Reschke 2000; Röller 2001). However, albeit widely acknowledged, Nietzscheʼs actual impact on fitness and bodybuilding is still to be explored.

In the essay ʻOrchids and Musclesʼ, Alphonso Lingis portrays bodybuilding very critically, in what could be arguably described as a negative way. This is his opinion on bodybuilding:

In the absence of a public cause before them and before us, the public mind can only rummage around for psychological causes producing these cases […]. One sees them narcissistically pumping themselves into ostentatious sex symbols –– but symbols that sexually liberated public recognizes as the obsolete figure of virile protector, who was also phallocrat and wife-beater. When the mind finds itself seduced to look where there is no cause inscribed, it turns away in resentment (Lingis 1988: 103).

At the very end, Lingis describes bodybuilding ʻas the monstrous excrescence of maternity in the virile figure of powerʼ, and relates it to Nietzscheʼs idea of ʻpowerʼ, as well as to narcissism (ibid: 115). Although I quite disagree with the author’s view on bodybuilding as an expression of narcissism, I sure agree on pointing out some Nietzschean elements too, but I want to extend the concept of ʻpowerʼ to its two manifestations as: self-overcoming and self-becoming.

Power and Self-Overcoming

What is Nietzscheʼs understanding of ʻpowerʼ?

Beside the popular book which Nietzsche had never agreed to publish but was nonetheless released posthumously by his sister and Peter Gast, based on one of Nietzscheʼs private publication plans, the idea of ʻwill to powerʼ appears in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Beyond Good and Evil (1886).

In both works, Nietzscheʼs understandings of ʻpowerʼ and ʻwill to powerʼ are to be read in terms of interpretation. So he writes in Zarathustra: ʻWhat urges you on, and arouses your ardor, you wisest of men, do you call it “will to truth”? Will to conceivability of all being: That is what I call your will. […] That is your entire will, you wisest men; it is a will to power, and that is so even when you talk of good and evil and of the assessment of valuesʼ (Za II, ʻOf Self-Overcomingʼ, KSA 4: 146). According to Nietzscheʼs understanding, ʻwill to powerʼ means nothing but life itself, that is to say, no individualism or social implications are implied in the conception, given that such concepts are created by life in its own evaluation process and are given merely as a result. So Nietzsche carries on, through Zarathustraʼs mouth: ʻWhere I found a living creature, there I found will to power; and even in the will of the servant I found the will to be master. […] The living creatures value many things higher than life itself; yet out of this evaluation itself speaks –– the will to powerʼ (ibid, KSA 4: 147-49). In Beyond Good and Evil, the same meaning is expressed through the famous sentence, at the end of aphorism 22, with which Nietzsche anticipates a response to possible criticisms to his notion of ʻwill to powerʼ: ʻSupposing that this also is only an interpretation –– and you will be eager enough to raise that objection? –– well, so much the betterʼ (JGB I, 22, KSA 5: 37). So long as everything is subject to interpretation, in fact, the concept of interpretation itself stops making sense, when understood in terms of ʻtruthʼ.

In this sense, this concept goes also hand in hand with that of self-overcoming: there must be no ego, life must be allowed to transcend and constantly overcome itself. Such an idea is elsewhere defined by Nietzsche as ʻAmor Fatiʼ, a latin phrase for ʻlove for fateʼ, representing the condition of someone who has learnt not only to accept their own impotency towards their own destiny, but also to love and embrace such unfathomable, inescapable, destiny. The concept appeared for the first time in a fragment from Autumn 1881 (15[20]), was re-elaborated in another note a couple of months later (16[22]) and also in a letter to Nietzscheʼs life-time friend Franz Overbeck (5 June 1882). It was then officially introduced for the first time in the Gay Science (1882/1887, § 276), and then re-elaborated again in a few private notes (NF 1884, 25[500]; NF 1888, 16[32]; NF 1888 25[7]), to be finally redelivered to his readers in Nietzsche Contra Wagner [1888] (1889, ʻEpilogueʼ, § 1) and Ecce Homo [1888] (1889, ʻWhy I Am So Cleverʼ, § 10; ʻThe Case Wagnerʼ, § 4).

Self-Overcoming and Bodybuilding

How does this all relate to bodybuilding? As I will show in this section, there are several aspects of Nietzscheʼs idea of ʻself-overcomingʼ that can be easily related to bodybuilding –– the most obvious one being the constant hitting and breaking PR: every time you hit a new record, you’ve automatically overcome your old self –– to put it in a more Nietzschean way, life (the ʻwill to powerʼ) has overcome itself through your hitting a new pr. Likewise, your constant improving your strength, your physique, your endurance, etc., can all be thought of as examples of self-overcoming.

Even more than this, however, one should point out the egoless element of a real bodybuilding journey. First of all, a true bodybuilder dissolves him or herself in the workout; they put concentration before anything else, and their egos ultimately undergo a dissolution: when training, a bodybuilder becomes humble, they start from a low weight and then slowly, religiously, increase it, improving their strength over time.

Finally, and this is the most important aspect, like Nietzsche, as a bodybuilder, you acknowledge that your progress is not really yours but belongs to something greater, of which you’re just a part (e.g. constant training, proper diet, genetics, motivational environment, etc.).

You might raise the objection that this kind of discourse applies to other philosophies too on the one hand, and to any other sport or discipline too on the other hand. And that’s sure the case, after all this is precisely why Nietzsche considers everything as an expression of the ʻwill to powerʼ. However, if we proceed further with our analysis, we shall see how another corollary of Nietzsche’s understanding of ʻpowerʼ resonates with bodybuilding even more, namely, the idea of ʻself-Becomingʼ.

Self-Becoming

What does it mean to become who one is?

In Ecce Homo (1888), Nietzsche dwells upon the concept of self-becoming extensively, although without explaining what he means by that. He just talks about how he has become who he is. And this means that there’s no one-size-fits-all rule when it comes down to self-becoming. However, Nietzsche gives us some advice to become who we are –– the most important one being to reconnect with our instincts. Interestingly, knowing one’s own ideal diet and exercise is one of the key elements of self-becoming.

Indeed, Nietzsche used to self-prescribe diets and exercises to fight his painful migraines; he was into hiking, ice-skating, swimming, and found the typical German diet totally unhealthy. As he writes in EH, ʻWhy I Am So Cleverʼ, §1, Nietzsche seems to perceive a correlation between not only diet and overall health, but also between diet and individual, as well as collective, morals:

Indeed, I can say, that up to a very mature age, my food wasentirely bad—expressed morally, it was “impersonal”, “selfless”, “altruistic”, to the glory of cooks and all other fellow-Christians. It was through the cooking in vogue at Leipzig, for instance, together with my first study of Schopenhauer (1865), that I earnestly renounced my “Will to Live”. To spoil one’s stomach by absorbing insufficient nourishment—this problem seemed to my mind solved with admirable felicity by the above-mentioned cookery. (It is said that in the year 1866 changes were introduced into this department.) But as to German cookery in general—what has it not got on its conscience! Soup beforethe meal (still called alla tedesca in the Venetian cookery books of the sixteenth century); meat boiled to shreds, vegetables cooked with fat and flour; the degeneration of pastries into paper-weights! And, if you add there to the absolutely bestial post-prandial drinking habits of the ancients, and not alone of the ancient Germans, you will understand where German intellect took its origin—that is to say, in sadly disordered intestines…. German intellect is indigestion; it can assimilate nothing. But even English diet, which in comparison with German, and indeed with French alimentation, seems to me to constitute a “return to Nature,”—that is to say, to cannibalism,—is profoundly opposed to my own instincts. It seems to me to give the intellect heavy feet, in fact, Englishwomen’s feet…. The best cooking is that of Piedmont. Alcoholic drinks do not agree with me; a single glass of wine or beer a day is amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears for me;—in Munich live my antipodes. Although I admit that this knowledge came to me somewhat late, it already formed part of my experience even as a child. As a boy I believed that the drinking of wine and the smoking of tobacco were at first but the vanities of youths, and later merely bad habits. Maybe the poor wine of Naumburg was partly responsible for this poor opinion of wine in general. In order to believe that wine was exhilarating, I should have had to be a Christian—in other words, I should have had to believe in what, to my mind, is an absurdity. Strange to say, whereas small quantities of alcohol, taken with plenty of water, succeed in making me feel out of sorts, large quantities turn me almost into a rollicking tar. Even as a boy I showed my bravado in this respect […]. Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is,—just as Wagner, who converted me back to meat, experienced it,—cannot with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to abstain absolutely from alcohol (translation by Anthony M. Ludovici. 1911. Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis: 30-32).

The first thing we learn from the above passage is the necessity of a diet being: personal, individually designed, egoistic (in the sense of being perfectly adapted to individual needs). Indeed, he blames his youth diet (a typical German diet) for being ʻimpersonalʼ, ʻselflessʼ, ʻaltruisticʼ and therefore Christian –– which according to his mature understanding means opposed to life and instincts (as he explains inThe Anti-Christ; [1888], 1889). So Nietzsche advocates a reconnection with one’s own, individual, ʻinstinctsʼ, for both optimal physical health (he speaks about ʻdigestionʼ) and best intellectual activity. In his specific case, one can deduce that Nietzsche prefers to avoid: excessive ʻfat and flourʼ; heavy cooking (ʻthe degeneration of pastries into paper-weightʼ); excessive alcohol. Interestingly, we also learn that Nietzsche had tried a vegetarian diet on himself at the time of his fascination for Schopenhauer and Wagner, and been dissuaded from this type of diet by this latter himself (later in his life, Nietzsche will notoriously discourage young students of his from attempting vegetarianism by using Wagner’s own argument indeed).

Then he makes his point of what a balance diet should look like:

A heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach. For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table d’hôte, are strongly to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten between meals, coffee should be given up—coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities, but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not a good beverage with which to start the day: an hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink a cup of thick cocoa, freed from oil [entölten]. Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion—nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit (ibid).

The first condition for optimal digestion is simplicity (ʻa heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. […] the stomach should become active as a wholeʼ). The other conditions can be translated as: avoiding snacks between meals; avoiding coffee; drinking tea sparingly and in the morning solely –– however tea should always be strong––; drinking fat free, thick hot chocolate one hour prior to morning tea in ʻenervatingʼ climates; being as active as possible and mostly outdoor (ʻRemain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion—nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spiritʼ).
So, later in § 10:

these trivial matters—diet, locality, climate, and one’s mode of recreation, the whole casuistry of selfishness; self-love—are inconceivably more important than, all that which has hitherto been held in high esteem! It is precisely in this quarter that we must begin to learn afresh. All those things which mankind has valued with such earnestness heretofore are not even real; they are mere creations of fancy, or, more strictly speaking, lies born of the evil instincts of diseased and, in the deepest sense, noxious natures—all the concepts, “God”, “soul”, “virtue”, “sin”, “Beyond”, “truth”, “eternal life”. … But the greatness of human nature, its “divinity”, was sought for in them…. (ibid: 52).

Therefore, a return to what was traditionally perceived as
ʻtrivial mattersʼ, such as ʻdietʼ itself is key, according to Nietzsche, to accomplishing the ʻdivinityʼ of ʻhuman natureʼ, its ʻgreatnessʼ.

In his Letters From Turin (1889), Nietzsche explains what a usual meal of his at the restaurant looks like: ʻminestra or risotto, a good portion of meat, vegetable and bread—all good … I eat here with the serenest disposition of soul and stomachʼ; in other words, carbs, protein and just a little bit of fat, the typical bodybuilder diet (let’s forget about the bread for one moment). One of his favourite carb sources has always been risotto, as we learn from a few letters, whose prep technique Nietzsche was taught by his housekeeper in Genoa (very interestingly, I found a reproduction of his recipe on this website: https://paperandsalt.org/2014/03/31/friedrich-nietzsche-lemon-risotto-with-asparagus-and-mint/). Ultimately, in a letter to his mother and sister written in Genoa (Italy) on 6 April 1881, Nietzsche claims that his diet is ʻso changeable […], depending on the place or the climateʼ –– as mentioned above, Nietzsche was very sensitive to his somewhat poor health, in particular concerning his migraine and digestive issues.

Although, on a general level, there are certain principles which most individuals should benefit from (such as consuming simple meals and being outdoor as much as possible), in Nietzsche’s overall idea of ʻself-becomingʼ, individuality is key. Such individuality, however, manifests itself through one’s own diet in the first place. Understanding how important and unique one’s own nature and instincts are is the only way for a man or woman to become who they really are; however, it also means that the first thing they have to learn is to abandon their egoistic prejudice (Nietzsche dwells upon the ego delusion in the first part of Beyond Good and Evil extensively), and embrace the uncontrollable chain of inner instincts and surrounding events that has built their individuality over time, and that will continue to do so. This is why I like to think of Nietzsche’s idea of ʻSelf-Becomingʼ as a ʻcorollaryʼ of his ideas of ʻwill to powerʼ and ʻamor fatiʼ. In Nietzsche’s view, connecting with one’s own instincts and individual needs is the best way to become who one is. As we shall see, this has much to do with bodybuilding too.

What Does ʻSelf-Becomingʼ Mean in Bodybuilding?

The aforementioned individuality that is so important in Nietzsche’s idea of ʻbecoming who one isʼ finds its equivalent meaning in the bodybuilding idea of fulfilling one’s own genetic potential. First of all, in bodybuilding, understanding and mastering concepts such as ʻbody typeʼ, ʻmetabolic rateʼ, ʻindividual dieting and trainingʼ is the basis for success. Every good bodybuilder knows whether their body type is ʻectomorphicʼ, ʻmesomorphicʼ or ʻendomorphicʼ, and designs their workouts and diets accordingly. Secondly, knowing how a bodybuilder’s body reacts to certain foods, beverages, stress and certain exercises is paramount to tailoring the best workout programme and meal plan a bodybuilder can benefit from. For instance, some individuals do well on high carbs and low fats, as opposed to others who perform at their best on a high-fat diet; some people (especially women) have genetically strong legs and weaker upper bodies, some others are stronger in their back and chest and not so in their legs; certain people respond well to steady cardio, versus others who prefer HIIT; some individuals need to consume more or less calories than others to achieve the same results, etc. Thirdly, this discourse applies to the division choice: to give you the most obvious example, typically, a Bikini competitor can hardly do well in a Women’s Physique or Bodybuilding contest, and vice versa; whereas a Figure competitor can potentially move up or down her division, but will have to work really hard to achieve her goal physique. One could even argue that:

bodybuilding is the constant pursuit of the ideal body, based on acknowledging one’s individual strengths and weaknesses, and striving to realise the full potential of the former, while working hard to compensate for, and minimise, the latter.

Another element from Nietzsche’s idea of ʻSelf-Becomingʼ deserving attention is his emphasising the role of one’s diet in their ʻbecoming who they areʼ. Diet is obviously as important as workouts in bodybuilding. As everyone knows, one needs to eat in a caloric surplus, if they want to build muscle, however ʻabs are made in the kitchenʼ, meaning that one has to eat clean and below their maintenance caloric intake, if they want their hard-built muscle to finally stand out. Even closer to Nietzsche’s idea, however, is the fact that bodybuilders don’t eat for personal enjoyment, but consider food as fuel, constantly calculating macros and adjusting their ratio based on their personal needs (bulking, maintenance, cutting). As it was for Nietzsche, here simplicity plays again a pivotal role: meals should be simple, effective and easily digestible. Moreover, it is important to point out the role of certain foods and drinks (such as carbs, salt and water) during peak week and on show day: often time, restricting carbs and manipulating sodium and water intake during the week leading to the show, and then carb-loading on show day, can really determine a competitor’s placement in their competition. Lastly, timing is also imperative, if one wants to succeed as a bodybuilder: whether you intermittent fast or not, consuming small meals in a certain time window, possibly the same everyday, is common practice among successful bodybuilders. Similar to Nietzsche’s advice, bodybuilders want to stick to the same amount of meals everyday, and not to snack in between.

The Übermensch at Mr Olympia

Self-Sculpting and Self-Experimentation

What is accounted in Ecce Homo represents Nietzsche’s own, personal and unique, self-becoming. If one wanted to find a more generalised ideal of self-becoming, the figures of the Übermensch and of the ʻhigher manʼ described in Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, respectively, are to be looked at. Both types of men are depicted as something that has yet to come; they appear far away from the men of the crowd, able to incorporate their instincts in their personality, without rejecting them or being driven by them. They are the only ones that can bear the ʻdeath of Godʼ without falling prey of the so-called ʻshadows of Godʼ (see The Gay Science, §§ 208-209). These ideal men are brave enough to reject pre-established values and belief systems, and to experiment on theirselves until they find their own belief systems.

As Paul Bishop has recently observed, Nietzsche’s representation of the Übermensch can arguably be considered a form of ʻself-Sculptingʼ, belonging to a wide tradition that can be traced back to late Antiquity (Bishop 2017). The ideas of constant self-experimentation and self-sculpting are naturally predominant characteristics of bodybuilding too; so is the strive to return to a certain Greek ideal of perfection (as I’ve previously suggested; see Schwarzenegger 1985; Fair 2015).

Nietzsche’s Idea of the Athletes

On top of that, Nietzsche makes use of sport metaphors in his published texts. For example, in The Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche compares the ʻphilosophersʼ fighting ʻa war […] against [a] lack of enthusiasmʼ to ʻsportsmen of “holiness”ʼ [sportsmen der “Heiligkeit”], who have ʻin fact found a real release from what they were fighting against with such a rigorous training [training]ʼ. In the same section, references to the impact of a diet on ʻoneʼs physical well beingʼ –– and to physiology more broadly –– recur throughout. In fact, Nietzsche tries to address religious, psychological and moral categories as responses to ʻa feeling of physiological inhibitionʼ which cannot ʻenter peopleʼs explanations, due to their ʻlack of knowledge about physiologyʼ (GM III, § 17).

Conclusion

If Alphonso Lingis righteously guessed a little bit of Nietzsche in bodybuilding, his reducing such little bit of Nietzsche to the social implications of his representation ofʻpowerʼ does not suffice. So writes Lingis: ʻevery great epoch of culture, Nietzsche wrote, is not only an epoch of humankind’s cultivating of nature –– transforming of nature’s resources in accordance with its own idea –– it is also an epoch in the history of humankind’s cultivation of its own nature –– transforming its own nature in accordance with its ideal. Every great culture, marked by distinctive intellectual, artistic and moral productions, has also set up a distinctive icon of bodily perfectionʼ (Lingis 1988: 101).

As I’ve argued throughout this post, in my opinion, Nietzsche’s strive for self-overcoming, self-becoming, self-experimenting and self-sculpting are the real elements to be emphasised, when one wants to compare Nietzsche’s philosophy with bodybuilding. Moreover, Nietzsche’s stress on body and ʻphysiologyʼ over morals and metaphysics, as well as his emphasising the importance of rigour and discipline (not to be forgotten, Nietzsche was first of all a philologist), his comparing philosophers to ʻsportsmenʼ are all signs of his will to attribute a certain value to the body that goes beyond its separation from the mind. Lingis is right to point out Nietzsche’s idea of humankind’s ʻtransforming its own nature in accordance with its idealʼ, but he is wrong in identifying such an ideal with mere narcissism, forgetting the strive to self-becoming that underpins bodybuilding. It is not just about building a body; it is also about building a better version of oneself –– hence self-becoming ––, through constant self-experimentation and self-overcoming. The idea of self-sculpting is no merely an aesthetic one; it is the idea of working on oneself (getting rid of what does not suit one’s own nature and sticking with what really works for oneself), towards the full realisation of one’s ultimate self.

Watch my video here.

References

Bishop, Paul.2017. On The Blissful Island With Nietzsche And Jung: In The Shadow Of The Superman. Oxon and New York: Routledge.

Fair, John D. 2015. Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon. Austin: University Of TexasPress.

Lingis, Alphonso. 1988. ʻOrchids and Musclesʼ.InDavid Farrell Krell, and David Wood (eds). Exceedingly Nietzsche: Aspects of Contemporary Nietzsche Interpretation.London and New York: Routledge: 97-115.

Müller, Farguell Roger W. 1995.Tanz-Figuren: zur metaphorischen Konstitution von Bewegung in Texten: Schiller, Kleist, Heine, Nietzsche. Munich: W. Fink.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1967 ––. Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke Nietzsches. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin / New York: De Gruyter.

––. [1888]. Ecce Homo. Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici. Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1911.

––. 1887. On The Genealogy of Morals. A Polemical Tract. Translated by Ian Johnston. Arlington: Richer Resources Publications, 2009.

––. 2009 ––. Digital Critical Edition(edited by P. DʼIorio).

Portier, Sylvain. 2014. Zlatan Ibrahimovic ou comment retrouver le sérieux que l’on mettait dans ses jouets, étant enfant Friedrich Nietzsche. – [Vallet] : Éditions M-editer, 2014. – 44 S. : Ill. – (Livre’L).

Reschke, Renate. 2000.ʻDie andere Perspektive: Ein Gott, der zu tanzen verstündeʼ.In: Volker Gerhardt (ed.). Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra. Berlin: Akademie Verlag: 257-284

Röller, Gisela. 2001. Tanz als Form des Denkens: Friedrich Nietzsche, Denen jenseits von Schluß und Dialektik. Jansen, Lüneburg: Jansen.

Schwarzenegger, Arnold. 1985. The New Encyclopaedia of Modern Bodybuilding. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998 (2nd edition).

March 13, 2019March 15, 2019

Travelling Safe With IBS. My 7 Staples

Let’s face the truth: who wouldn’t wish to be lying on the beach right now, soaking up the sun, listening to the rhythmic sound of the ocean waves, drinking some fresh coconut water to stay hydrated and planning what to order for dinner at the local restaurant? However, if you suffer from IBS, your holidays might turn into nightmares: you’ll most likely feel bloated or constipated; you won’t know whether or not you can enjoy most of the food; coconut water is a taboo; you’ll feel anxious and restless, and also uncomfortable in your expensive swimsuit, after all of those months of hard dieting and training at the gym. I can confidently say so, because that was exactly the description of my old self during my so-long-awaited honey moon in Thailand. I had no notion of low and high FODMAP foods back then, and was following a highly raw vegan diet. I spent 13 out of 17 days in constant pain: bloated, nauseated and frustrated. I remember I would mix up a variety of fresh local fruit for breakfast, in the hope that that would help me detox my body, and I would often have some fruit after my workouts and for lunch – not to mention all the coconut water I would drink throughout the day, to “balance my electrolytes”.

Ko Samui, 2015. I was in constant pain: bloated, nauseated and frustrated. I would mix up a variety of fresh local fruit for breakfast, in the hope that that would help me detox my body, and I would often have some fruit after my workouts and for lunch – not to mention all the coconut water I would drink throughout the day, to “balance my electrolytes”.

Ko Samui, 2015. Practicing Yoga, desperately trying to detox my body

Fast forward 3 years (2018). I spent an amazing week in Tenerife, experiencing little or no symptoms of IBS, although I often enjoyed some high FODMAP foods, such as avocados, kombucha and onions. What did I do differently? Well, if the motto “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” applies to most situations in life, it certainly suits holidays best. Over the last 4 years, I’ve come up with a list of items that I carry with me whenever I travel, no matter how far my destination is, or how long I’m staying. Such items draw my attention away from “right and wrong” foods, and reassure me that symptoms can be defeated, should they appear. The first time I tested the efficacy of that list was last summer, when I went to visit my family in Italy. I put myself on a strict low FODMAP diet, and made sure I had with me all of the 7 items listed below (some of which were still missing in my previous holiday to Tenerife). I had the fewest IBS symptoms of my entire life, and could enjoy every single moment of that holiday (I even had a few vegan ice creams!).

Beside some more traditional advice, such as “make sure you drink plenty of water and protect your skin with a good sunscreen, if you’re travelling to a sunny place”, I would recommend that travellers with IBS try out my 7 staples below.

*Enjoying Tenerife (2018), with just some bloating (as you can clearly see from the picture). I wasn’t fully aware of high and low FODMAP yet.*

Italy, 2018. My first fully low FODMAP holiday. Almost no bloating at all (the picture was taken on the very last day, after 2 weeks of low FODMAP chocolate and vegan ice creams – a little bit of bloating was perfectly normal).

1. Vegan Probiotics

Whether or not you have IBS, taking probiotics on a daily basis will do wonders for your gut. However, recent research has suggested that probiotics can be extremely beneficial for IBS sufferers, although symptoms might reappear, if their consumption is discontinued (you can find some interesting stuff here). Whenever I travel, I always make sure I have vegan probiotics with me, which I have first thing in the morning, at least 20 mins prior to my breakfast. If you’re not vegan, you still want to make sure your probiotics are at least dairy free: you don’t want to take the risk of ingesting lactose. Probiotics keep best in the fridge, so make sure your room has one, when you book your hotel!

2. Protein Powder

Breakfast and snacks can be a real pain in the neck when you’re on holiday, as sometimes it’s hard to find low FODMAP options. This is why I always pack some protein powder in my luggage. I usually buy my supplements on Bulk Powders, but protein powder normally comes in soft bags which are not always safe to carry in your luggage, as they might open up and mess up your clothes. Two great substitutions are the Vega Essentials Shake and the Garden Of Life Raw Organic Protein Powder. The former is more affordable and tastes real great; the latter is raw and the ingredients are highly certified, but, I have to admit, I don’t particularly enjoy the taste, and it’s also a bit pricey. I’m a fan of vanilla, when it comes to protein powders, but chocolate is also a great choice, if you don’t enjoy the vanilla flavour. Just read through the ingredients, to make sure there’re no high FODMAP sweeteners. 😉

3. Oats And Oatcakes

If you’re renting a holiday flat (highly recommended), you might want to bring along your favourite oats, in case you need a quick breakfast or meal. Oats saved my life so many times when I went away, and they’re also quite cheap!

If you’re staying in a hotel, however, you might want to consider having oatcakes always with you. A protein shake, 5-6 oatcakes, 1 kiwi (usually available in every hotel breakfast) and possibly some nuts will be an excellent, low FODMAP breakfast to start your day off the right way. You can also keep oatcakes in your bag or backpack, and have them as a snack throughout the day.

4. Mixed Nuts And Seeds

My go-to mix: almonds, walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds.

Nuts and seeds are always a holiday staple, whether or not you have IBS. Just mix up some almonds, walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds and bag them. You can snack on them at any time. Just watch your intake, as they might become high FODMAP, if you overdo them.

5. Protein Bars

Protein bars are an awesome snack when you’re away. Just bear in mind that most of them have a lot of high FODMAP ingredients. My favourite bar is the Pulsin’s Maple and Peanut. It’s vegan, with a pretty decent macro ratio and tastes great. I found that I can tolerate it quite well, although I can’t have more than 1 a day and possibly not everyday. I really love the brand and highly recommend you try all of their flavours, if you’re not on a strict low FODMAP diet. Otherwise, just stick to the Maple and Peanut flavour and won’t be disappointed, I promise! 😉

6. Resistance Bands and Hip Circles

Exercising is paramount for your gut health and is recommended in all IBS therapies. Resistance bands and hip circles are great tools, when your hotel or flat doesn’t have a gym, or when the weather outside is not so great. There’re a variety of exercises that can be performed with just resistance bands and your bodyweight: just get creative! If you really don’t know where to start, you can draw some inspiration on YouTube.

7. Running Shoes

Lastly, I always make sure I travel with a pair of running shoes, so I have no excuses not to go for a run or a hike. Hiking is one of the most enjoyable experiences to discover new places and breathtaking views, especially when you’re close to the woods. Trekking can also be an amazing option, if you’re in the mountains (just make sure you wear proper shoes and socks though!). Anyway, even when you’re just visiting a city, you can prefer walking over taking the bus, and exploring hidden neighbourhoods or mews. Just make sure you keep a map always with you, and you’re able ask the fundamental questions in the local language, in case you get lost! These are my current shoes. I love them because they’re very light in weight, quite affordable and extremely comfy – plus I just love wearing bright colours!

Go and Explore!

Don’t let IBS stop you from enjoying your holiday. Everyone deserves unforgettable holidays to recall, when outside it’s rainy and cold, as well as future holidays to plan and look forward to, when work stresses you out.

These were my basic holiday tips – I hope you’ve found them helpful. What are yours? Are there any more things to take care of, when you travel with IBS? Comment down below! 😉

March 8, 2019March 15, 2019

Gym Insecurities. How To Boost Your Confidence With 3 Simple Items.

Let’s face the truth: we constantly experience a lot of peer pressure at the gym. There will always be someone who lifts more than you, or who appears leaner than you, or who seems more conditioned. Even worse than this, in every gym there’s always someone willing to chat with you, to tell you how amazing your arms are, or maybe to correct your form, because they “used to lift heavy, back then”. If you’re a regular gym goer, you might consider this as a healthy way of perfecting yourself, confronting with others and setting higher and higher goals for yourself. However, if you’re new in the gym and not really experienced in weight training, such peer pressure might turn into a feeling of inadequacy which can seriously discourage you and push you to quit.

Luckily enough, you don’t need real confidence to appear confident and keep some of the pressure at bay. Most of your inadequacy feeling, indeed, comes from your transmitting your lack of confidence to whoever runs into you. If you do look confident, however, nobody will realise that you’re new or insecure. The best trick to boost your confidence level is to use a few simple items, that will: sustain you through your workout (thus improving your form); keep potential pests away; making you appear as a pro athlete.

Here they are.

1.Squat/Hip Thrust Pad. Using your own pad will give you extra confidence at the gym for 3 reasons: first of all, it’ll help you perform hip thrusts properly, allowing you to go heavy, yet keeping your form throughout, in case your gym doesn’t provide any pads; second, you won’t have to wait for the person before you to finish using the gym pad (btw, how many germs and bacteria would you find on it?!?), so you’ll avoid an awkward conversation with a stranger (or a potential, unreachable, Mr/Ms Olympia); finally, bringing your own pad will make you come across as someone that knows what they’re doing at the gym, like a pro athlete, rather than an insecure rookie. Below is my own super cheap pad, which has saved my life — and my hip bones — many times. The only downside of it is that the black straps broke after a couple of usages. However the pad is still in excellent conditions after nearly 3 years. You can still go strapless, if you don’t want to take the risk…

2. Straps. Using straps will help you lift heavy, even if your grip is not solid. However, unless you have an injury, straps on lower weights aren’t recommended, as they’ll prevent your grip from becoming stronger. I’m currently recovering from a nodular fascitis on my right forearm, which was surgically excised last December, but I’m trying not to use straps on my warm-up sets anyway, in order to build more strength in my forearms, as a sort of prevention for further injuries.

3. Bluetooth Headphones. Yes, wearing headphones all the time will make you look focused on your workout and out of the reach of potential interlocutors, giving you all the confidence you need to finish your workout in peace.

Headphones always on, straps around my wrists, overall confident appearance…

However, most of your confidence will come with time, and, unfortunately, pests will always be around, ready to engage in a conversation with you, as soon as you return a set of dumbbells. But, by then, you’ll have learnt how to cope with them and will be answering their questions quickly and with a genuine smile on your face, because, by then, you’ll have achieved all the confidence you need. You’ll have learnt that the gym is your second family, a community of athletes constantly supporting each other to do better and better. And you’ll be happy to share your passion with them.

March 8, 2019

2019 Resolutions: A Quick Update

As I mentioned in my previous post, me and my best friend took on a 3-month challenge as part on our NY resolutions. Both our personal challenges were physique-orientated, however, whereas I had committed to gaining at least 1 cm in my upper back and — possibly — in my arms, my bestie’s challenge was to lose 8 Kg. I can proudly anticipate that we both did really well.

I have to say, however, that I didn’t do extremely well in the first month and was quite worried I’d never make it through. Although I did gain some mm, it didn’t seem to happen consistently. However, with a strict diet and high-volume workouts I not only met my expectations but even exceeded it, in that I managed to gain 2.5 cm in my upper back. Unfortunately, I didn’t gain any cm in my arms, but their composition changed (I can confidently say so, because my strength has improved a lot over these past 3 months), so I’m happy with my result. Weight-wise, I gained 2 Kg and my body fat percentage increased by 2%. Doing the maths, I estimated those 2 Kg coming down to roughly 1 kg body fat and 1 kg lean muscle (both are less than 1 kg, though, considering some water weight).

My new back…
*I did lose some definition, but I visibly increased my size too (compare the ratio upper back-waist in the two pics — for the 2.5 cm I gained on my upper back, I only gained 1 cm on my waist)*

I’m still far away from my objective, but I’m definitely proud of my achievement. I’ve just started a mini cut now, to see how much of those 2.5 cm I can keep on my upper back, while bringing my bf percentage back to its maintenance level (16-17%) or even a bit below (summer is coming!). Being naturally extremely lean in my upper back and shoulders, it seems like a doable process to me. To do this, I created a new meal plan to slightly reduce my calorie intake (which is still fairly high, though) and introduced a second workout to incorporate some brisk walks, yoga and acrobatics in my daily routine. I’m planning to then re-introduce sprints on the treadmill and steady bike x3 a week, while I’m not going to make to major adjustments to my diet.

As to my bestie, well, she started way better than me: in the first 6 weeks, she managed to lose 4 Kg and I was sure she would win and I would lose. However, she caught a flue, stopped her diet and plateaued on that weight. I’m still super proud of her because she hasn’t gained any kg back so far, and will start dieting again, once she’s fully recovered. 4 kg in 6 weeks is such a remarkable achievement, that I consider her to have won her challenge too. 😉

Strength Improvements and New PR

My NY resolutions didn’t solely concern my physical appearance though, as should never be the case (we want to become better human beings, not prettier Barbies, after all). I wanted to increase my upper back’s strength too, and the exercise that works best for me it’s rack pulls . Although this exercise can be thought of as a deadlift variation — and, similar to deadlifts, it does work your lower back and hamstrings –, it’s in fact one of the best ways to improve your upper back. If you’ve never tried them, you’ll be surprised with how beneficial rack pulls can be for your trapezius, your rhomboids and even your lats (if you squeeze them enough). In the last month of my challenge, I focused on strength training, and achieved new PRs in almost every exercise — the one I’m mostly proud of being rack pulls (of course). If you’re a natural athlete, incorporating strength programmes in your routine will definitely help you with hypertrophy too, as strength training will break plateaus and prepare your muscles for heavier loads, hence for more tension, hence for hypertrophy.

My new PR @ Rack Pulls: 3×5 @ 105 Kg (231.5 lbs). I’m aiming at 120 Kg by the summer (let’s see).

Conclusion

Life is a journey whose final destination is for you to become the best version of yourself (namely, to become who you are). I like to break down my ultimate self-realisation into smaller, achievable goals, each of them being accountable year by year, and I like to keep track of them on a monthly basis, to make sure I follow the right path. I’m happy with how my journey towards this year’s goal is going so far, and I’m proud of myself, for not feeling discouraged by the monstrosity of the ultimate goal, being able to focus upon the small steps that will lead me there instead. You should also find a good reason to be proud of yourself. Stick with it, and let it become your personal mantra for your darkest days!

December 4, 2018October 11, 2019

2019 Resolution: Gains and New Challenges

Stunning Christmas decorations at Covent Garden Market…

Christmas is just around the corner and New Year’s Eve is just behind it

My living room is all set up for Christmas and I look forward to celebrating! 🙂 🙂 🙂 My husband’s iPad on the table is playing Christmas songs from YouTube…

Although I am a Summer person and can’t stand the cold, I love this time of the year. I love decorating my Christmas tree in advance, playing Christmas songs all day long from mid November onwards, and planning my Christmas lunch in detail. I just like the feeling of have something to wait for, something to magically turn the cold weather into warm emotions. However, this aren’t the only things I like about this time of the year. As winter is about to begin and the dark is reaching its apex to give way to the light and the new year to start, so, every year, I too rethink my past achievements and prepare for new ones to come. This is when I seriously express my gratitude for what the current year has allowed me to accomplish and set new goals for the next one. Interestingly, I’ve never missed a single goal that I’ve set for myself as part of my New Year’s resolution.

This year, this process has been a little bit more fun than usual, as I’m sharing part of my 2019 challenges with my best friend. It all started as a game, while I was advising her on weight loss. As we all know, sharing a challenge with someone else helps you track your progresses better, and prevents you from getting lost along the way or giving up your resolutions.

What Am I Grateful For?

2018 has been one of the years I’m most grateful for: it has brought me a lot of physical achievements and professional successes. The fitness goal I had set for myself around 1 year ago concerned my upper back and shoulders: I wanted to get bigger and stronger in those areas, and improve my performance on pull-ups/chin-ups and rack-pulls. And I did it! Although I didn’t increase my shoulder size that much, I definitely increased their muscular density and strength. On my upper back, instead, I managed to gain a few inches as well. Strength-wise I was able to improve my rack-pulls performance significantly: 1 year ago, I could do 6 sets of 5 reps with no more than 80 Kg, around the end of August this year, I reached 100 Kg for the same volume. As to my pull-ups and chin-ups, after 10 years of resistance training, in 2017, I still couldn’t perform one single complete rep. Now I can easily perform multiple sets of 7 reps.

Professionally, I had promised myself that I would have finalised two editorial projects I had been working on for a long time. Not only did I succeed in both, I even exceeded my expectations, in that I set up a small publishing house with my colleagues, which might even expand in the long run.

I’m grateful for all of the people I have been surrounded with this year, for their positive energy and influence on me. As naïve as it might sound, I’m grateful to my husband and my family, for just being there. I’m grateful to my body, for allowing me to accomplish my goals, and to my mind, for staying focused and motivated 365 days a year. I’m grateful for all the opportunities I have come across this past year, and for those that are yet to come.

My 2019 Resolutions

As I mentioned before, some of the expectations I decided to set for 2019 arose as a challenge with my best friend. Whilst she has some weight to lose, I’m not fully happy with my back and shoulder size yet, and wouldn’t mind to increase my arms too. To make our challenge more attainable and accountable, we decided to break down the year into 3-month periods, and to set a certain amount of Kg or cm to lose or gain for each period. Our first of such periods started on the 26th of November and will terminate on February, the 26th (2019). My goal is to increase my upper-back, shoulder and arm size by 1 cm for these first 3 months. Depending on how it goes, I might decide to challenge myself even more, by raising the attainable size up to 1.5-2 cm for the next trimesters.

To achieve our goals, I created a meal plan for my friend and one for myself. She committed to long walks, whereas I didn’t make any changes to my current workout routine, as it’s already shoulder and upper-back focused. I might incorporate more arm exercises later on, if I don’t see any significant change in the next month.

Other than this challenge, I committed myself to improving my skin appearance and getting rid of some awful stretch marks that I’ve had on my thighs for over 16 years. I’ve never had any patience with dry brushing and moisturising, but I just can’t stand the view of those stretch marks, and I’ve postponed for long enough…

As to my career, I have a clear plan in mind, but can’t really talk about it now, as I hope I’ll be able to share more details within the next 6 months or so. However, creating this website is already a dream come true to me, and I’ll do my best to find more time to write posts, recipes, and shoot videos in 2019.

Tracking Our Progresses

My (still too small) back at the beginning of the challenge, let’s see how far I can go… 🙂

So far, I’ve gained about 4 mm on my upper back and around 2 mm on my shoulders. My arms haven’t really grown yet, but I’ve had a bunch of people making nice comments at the gym. My bestie is doing much better than me though, as she’s already lost much of the weight she was supposed to. 🙂

Will my arms manage to increase by 1 cm in the next 2 months and a half???

My skin challenge hasn’t started yet, as buying reliable, vegan, and highly effective oils costs a lot of money, and I’d rather spend that money on nice presents for my friends and family around this time of the year. However, I’ve already planned to buy a lotion I saw online with my January payslip — I’ll keep you updated.

Epilogue

Regardless of the outcome of my challenge, setting goals for oneself and pushing one’s own possibilities to the extreme is always a learning experience: it can show you what your limits are, and surprise you with some amount of strength and willpower that you didn’t know you possessed. Keeping your expectations attainable and accountable, however, is key to achieving your goals. Proceeding step by step, and measuring each and every daily improvement in your life will lead you to accomplish anything you want. If, on the other hand, you set too high goals for yourself and don’t allow yourself to keep measurable trace of your success, you’ll be more likely to give up. With that being said, however, even working on small, accountable bits of improvement can be hard at times. There’ll be inevitable moments, when you’ll lose your objective perspective and start comparing with others; in such moments, you’ll become your own enemy number 1. Don’t worry: those moments won’t last forever. In fact, if you practice daily mediation, and visualise in your mind your goal and your path leading to it, your focus will come back as soon as you detach from the negative emotions caused by comparing yourself with others and seeing your objective as unattainable. A good way to do so, is to dedicate at least 10 minutes a day to express your gratitude. This can be done first thing in the morning, during your day, or at night, when you’re in bed and about to fall asleep (it’s actually an excellent way to improve your sleep). Remember, gratitude is the farthest feeling from fear and oppression. Try to think of 3 different things in your life you’re grateful for everyday, and you’ll achieve whatever goal you set for yourself.

Bonus tip (this is actually something I’ve never shared before): in the last year of my PhD, when my stress levels were crazy high and couldn’t stay focused without panicking for more than a couple of hours a day, I used to visualise an entire stadium, crowded with supporters wearing T-shirts with my face printed on them, holding a jar of green smoothie or juice, chanting my name supportively while shaking their drinks proudly. As odd (and embarrassing) as it might sound, it really helped me find balance and accomplish all of the tasks I had set for myself at the time. Fun fact: this is also where my “keep calm and drink smoothies” motto originated. Find your own mantra to support you throughout your journey and you’ll reach your destination safe and sound! Good luck! 😉

PS As I wrote above, expressing gratitude before sleeping is an excellent form of meditation that can even improve your sleep quality. Mine has improved significantly, since I started using a nostril expander. The amount of oxygen that gets through your nose is impressively calming and relaxing. If you have trouble breathing with your nose, you might want to apply some surgical tape on your mouth, to keep it shut throughout the night (it’ll also prevent you from snoring!).

October 17, 2018October 17, 2018

Veganism and the Paradox of Living an Ethical Life

Me today, following a plant-based, low FODMAP, high-protein diet

As a vegan athlete, I get asked where I get my protein from all the time. I have to say, finding sustainable, plant-based protein sources has caused me to reflect a lot lately.

As a Nietzschean kind of person, I regard myself as a self-experimenter in the first place. Over the past 14 years, I’ve tried at least 5 different approaches to food.

My Dietary Evolution from 17 to 31

From omnivorous eater, I turned pescatarian at 17, meaning that I was on a 80%-lacto-ovo-vegeterian diet, allowing myself to consume around 20% of my food from fish and seafood more broadly. At that time, my workout routine consisted of: swimming 3 times a week, occasional running, occasional basketball with my friends, drama class and musical choreography once or twice a week, occasional crunches, push-ups and lateral leg raises in my bedroom. As my workouts became more resistance-oriented – which happened about 3 years later – I felt the need to increase my protein consumption. Between the age of 20 and 27, I turned into one of the major causes of the threatening fish extinction which the world is going through these days. My diet mostly consisted of canned tuna, fresh or canned mackerel and sardines, smoked salmon, eggs, yoghurt, cottage cheese and quark, oats, vegetables, fruits and rice cakes. I didn’t like that kind of approach, which made feel so guilty everyday. However, people kept telling me that “animal protein was the best source ever”, and I would “deplete my body”, if I stopped eating fish, dairy and eggs.

But that is not all. During those years, I decided to try various popular diets, to lose fat without giving up my performance. So I tried the 40-30-30 diet for a few years, then the Atkins diet, then I nearly starved myself and brought a lot of undesired medical conditions into my body, which I’m not very proud of and I’m not going to tell you about here.

In 2014, I randomly came across the bodies of amazing bikini competitors and bodybuilders online, who also happened to be vegan. How was that even possible? That seemed to be the answer to all of my ethical dilemmas at the time. I immediately did a lot of research and went vegan cold turkey. But because I can’t help being extreme, not only did I turn vegan out of the blue, I even signed up for a 3-day-raw-vegan detox plan online, which got me totally spellbound. I saw amazing effects on my body as soon as I started that program, and I was so happy, that I decided to stay on a mostly raw vegan diet for good. As I had moved to the UK only one year before, I didn’t have any good training equipment to work out, nor could I afford joining a gym. My workouts were still consistent, but they consisted of: bellydance, yoga, running and bodyweight HIIT-exercises. I shortly realised that a raw vegan diet couldn’t really sustain the intensity of my workout routine, but my obstinacy, as always, took over, until I finally could afford a gym membership and started lifting heavy. At the point, my diet had to undergo some significant changes, the pivotal one being getting back to a high-protein diet.

Me on a mostly raw vegan diet (Bangkok, 2015)

As I ignored the existence of high and low FODMAP foods, at that time, I was confusing some IBS symptoms with soy-intolerance, trying to not eat too much tofu or tempeh (was the latter even a food?). Also, there was this popular controversy about the possibility of soy being harmful to female hormones, which was scaring me a lot. I suddenly had no choice but to increase my consumption of legumes, mushrooms, and protein-packed vegetables such as broccoli, which in turn aggravated my IBS. Only in Summer 2018 did I finally come across the benefits of a low FODMAP diet, and found a good balance in my diet. I also did some extra research about soy phytoestrogens, and found out that their being harmful is not proven enough (this is an interesting up-to-date article on the issue). However, I still feel ethically guilty…

How Many Lives Does It Take To Meet Your Daily Protein Intake on a Plant-Based Diet?

If you’re omnivorous and base your daily meals on grass-fed beef, lamb and chicken, then you’re probably killing less animals than me, the plant-based insect murderer in disguise. Let’s leave the CO2 issue off this topic, as I’d like to solely focus on the actual amount of lives involved in soy production vs animal production.

Technically, when you eat a steak, you don’t eat the whole cow, calf or ox. In theory, one single life could feed you for one week, if not for longer (assuming you’re eating livers, kidneys, heart, brain, etc., and making bone broth on top of it). In a very hypothetical, ideal reality, when your meat is grass-fed, the animal – coming from a small, family-run farm – has been circulating freely and enjoyed its life till its very last seconds. No extra water has been needed to feed it, and no weird antibiotics. In this hypothetical world, when you eat a steak or a burger, only one life has been sacrificed for your meal, and that life will suffice for one week, or more. You might counter-argue by saying that that cow might have killed some insects or stepped on other smaller creatures along the way, but that would have occurred anyway, whether you would have eaten that animal or not – therefore, you’re not really responsible for their lives. You’re still responsible for you’re animal’s life only.

Let’s break down the process of soy production instead. Besides the deforestation and other environmental issues, which soy is seriously responsible for (to have an idea, see what WWF thinks about it), soy cultivation kills a lot of small animals (from insects to tiny rodents) because of the tractors used to plough and harvest. I’m aware that the main cause of deforestation is soy’s being used to feed animals – which wouldn’t happen, if nobody ate those animals in the first place. However, if everyone was vegan and on a high-protein diet, soy cultivation would increase even more, causing the second issue (i.e. the death of small animals) to grow accordingly (here’s an old, yet still insightful article by The Guardian on the issue; another, more recent post from Munchies on the debate is this one).

So, to put it in numbers, for every single soy bean you harvest, hundreds of insects have to die. Yo don’t need me to tell you you can’t make a block of tofu out of one soy bean…

Moreover, the same discourse applies to quinoa, buckwheat, lentils and avocados, popular “cruelty-free” superfoods, staples in many vegan kitchens. It seems like the most ethical choice to be vegan would be to thrive on a self-grown or locally-sourced fruit-based diet (I’m including nuts and seeds, as long as you’re able to grow them by yourself or find sustainable ones). Many people succeed on such a diet, even athletes and bodybuilders. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I tried many times, and I need my tofu and tempeh to fully recover in between workouts. Not to mention that, as an IBS-sufferer, my fruit choice would be quite restrictive…

Why Am I still Vegan, Then?

This is the question I’ve been asking myself a lot in recent times, especially since I’m married to a mindful omnivorous eater, who buys only locally-sourced-grass-fed beef, a lot of entrails (to not let any animal die in vain) and uses chicken carcasses to make his own bone broth every week. Is his approach more ethical than mine? Most definitely.

However, there is no scientific way to really address my dilemma, it’s just a matter of rather personal choices. In other words, it’s all about “compassion”. A few philosophers reflected upon animals’ suffering on the one hand, and the impossibility to stop that suffering in order to survive on the other hand (the most popular one being Arthur Schopenhauer, who drew many of his ideas on his knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism, and who influenced later vegetarian thinkers). There is no escape: if you want to survive, one or more lives will have to be sacrificed. However, facing the suffering in your plate on a daily basis is not for everyone.

I just couldn’t take the idea of having a cow killed just to satisfy my selfish desire of eating – I know it’s my need to survive, but that’s how I can help regarding it, as “a selfish desire of eating”. Such a “selfish desire of eating” drives my choices everyday, leading me to consume lives, whether I want it or not. But there are different grades of murder, I believe, and eating a dead animal, absorbing the energy of a suffering-dead animal, has a more immediate impact on my ethical response, than eating some tofu or tempeh which accidentally caused the death of insects and small rodents. To u

se another popular word, it’s all about karma: meat is pure suffering, it brings the animal’s suffering into my plate and transmits it to me; tofu brings a lot of suffering too, but doesn’t expose me to the extreme, sudden death of what’s in my plate, and doesn’t really transmit such suffering to me directly.

Life is made of choices, and if I were to choose between having

an animal killed and eating it, or having a few lives died in the process of

creating something which doesn’t force me to eat a dead animal, well, call me a hypocrite, but I’ll go for the latter option.

But this is my very own personal perspective, which I’ll never impose on anyone else than myself.

October 8, 2018October 5, 2019

Carrot, Kale and Swiss Chard Soup

Last soup of my October Soup Challenge: 1 Soup a Day for 1 Week (check out my previous soups here).

Tonight’s soup is going to be a light and simple one. It’s Sunday, we didn’t go to the gym, and we just want to chill out and get ready for the beginning of a new week. Moreover, as we just found some amazing baby carrots, kale and Swiss chard at our local Farmers Market, I couldn’t imagine my soup to be made with any other ingredients than these.

Nice veggies right from our local farmers market! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Ingredients

5-6 Carrots (or more, if you’re using Baby Carrots)

2 Green Spring Onions

2 large Swiss Chard Leaves (chopped)

2 cups Kale (chopped)

Himalayan Salt

2 cups Fresh, Filtered Water

Optional: Fresh Ginger

Cooking Method

Peel and chop carrots and spring onions and place in a large pot. Cover with water, add salt and ginger (if you’re using it), place a lid and bring to a boil.

Rinse and chop kale and chard and throw them in your pot, as soon as the water starts to boil. Reduce heat to minimum and simmer until veggies are tender. Blend into a cream and adjust salt (and pepper, if you want).

Serve warm and garnish with fresh rocket and some nutritional yeast to hit your daily B12 vitamin intake (I always use this one)!

I’m going to have mine with some baked tempeh.

October 7, 2018April 27, 2019

How I’ve Become What I Am

Sils Maria (Engadin), 2012. First time sitting on the rock that inspired Nietzsche’s intuition of the eternal return — his “most abysmal thought”. I was at the beginning of my PhD, and didn’t know what to do with my life.

Destiny and Self-Becoming

As is well known, the motto of Nietzsche’s popular book “Ecce Homo” (1888) is “how one becomes what one is”. The whole text is indeed to be understood as Nietzsche’s re-analysing his own philosophical path in the light of his self-becoming. As a Nietzsche scholar, such a thought has had a tremendous impact on my entire life. Do I choose to become what I am?

Borrowed from the classical thinking — which Nietzsche, as a philologist, was very familiar with — is another key concept to go hand in hand with that of self-becoming, namely, the idea of “amor fati” (occurring not only in “Ecce Homo”, but in other writings as well, such as “The Gay Science”). In latin, it means love for fate, or destiny, and represents, to Nietzsche, the highest form of love a man can reach: what could be more noble than giving up one’s own ego entirely, to the point of not only accepting but even loving one’s own fate? If you connect the dots, you’ll see that becoming what I am can occur only if I love my fate, if I let my life be and love it’s being. But this is not enough yet…

As a mental experiment representing the worst case scenario where the concept of “amor fati” should be applied, the idea of the “eternal return” ought to be postulated. Nietzsche had that intuition in August 1881, while hiking along the lake of Silvaplana, in Engadin (Switzerland):

“The greatest weight.— What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!’
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?… Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?” (“The Gay Science”, §341, trans. by Walter Kaufmann).

Nietzsche’s “greatest weight [das Schwergewicht]” represents the possibility of the same life occurring over and over again, for ever and aver, and having already occurred over and over again, since forever. From an ethical point of view, two consequences are to be noted: 1) I’m not really responsible for my decisions or deeds, as whatever I choose, I’ve already chosen innumerable times; 2) however, when I choose, I have to ask myself: do I want this choice to be repeated innumerable times in the future? As a matter of fact, the seeming lightness of the former consequence is devoured and shattered by the terrifying heaviness of latter. Again, amor fati seems to be the key to solve the riddle: if I love and embrace my fate, the heaviness of the hypothesis of the eternal return won’t curse me any longer.

Another classical image borrowed by Nietzsche represents this idea very well: “dancing in chains”. As Nietzsche explains, the Greek artists and poets “impose upon themselves a manifold constraint by means of the earlier poets”, and then “invent in addition a new constraint, to impose it upon themselves and cheerfully to overcome it, so that constraint and victory are perceived and admired” (“Human, All too Human, II”, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, § 140). A Nietzschean life can be thought of as a never-ending “dancing in chains”, a continuous, yet joyful, overcoming of pre-existing and self-imposed constraints towards the realisation of something that comes across as light and serene.

My Philosophical Path

When I started reading Nietzsche, I was 18. I hadn’t begun my Philosophy BA yet, and I only had two passions in my life: music and fitness. The main reason why I chose to study Philosophy was because it seemed the only way to merge both my creative and my disciplined sides together, and — hopefully — disclose a new approach to my existence. I retrospectively acknowledge I was being far too optimistic back then, as I was expecting to achieve something without first changing my mindset.

While my passion for music stayed pretty much the same (I was playing the drums in a band, and attending all the gigs I could), my passion for fitness evolved: helped by my boyfriend at that time (to whom I’m proudly married now, and who had already been lifting for a few years), I started lifting weights twice a week, I increased my cardio routine, started practicing yoga on a regular basis, and joined a belly dance class. This latter was probably the greatest discovery back then: I could finally unite music, fitness and the search for spirituality that the study of Philosophy wasn’t satisfying yet. Plus, it really helped me overcome my shyness… :/

I did my BA thesis on the symbology of light in Nietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, and decided to continue working on the same text in my MA. This time around, however, I would look at it from a different angle, namely, through a psychological lens. That’s when I discovered C. G. Jung and my life changed. I did both my MA and PhD dissertations on Jung’s (mis)understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy, and, I have to say, the exploration of analytical psychology fulfilled my search for spirituality and provided me with unexpected tools. I was finally starting to give sense and meaning to my life.

To finish my Phd, I had to move to London (UK). Possibly because I had just discovered Jung’s concept of “synchronicity”, but it didn’t seem like a coincidence at all that the world-leading historical research on Jung was being conducted in the city where my boyfriend had just moved! I was still unsure about my future, in fact I had just spent some time in Germany and was planning to move there for good. As that opportunity was offered to me, it seemed like a sign from my fate: whether I wanted or not, I knew I had to take the chance and move to London, that was just meant to be.

Here is where I’ve really become what I am.

What to do with “the greatest weight”? Just lift it!

In London I felt like I could finally let my full essence express itself undisturbed. I found the courage to do many things: after 10 years of pescatarianism, I finally gave up animal products and went vegan; I married my soulmate; started practicing meditation on a regular basis and taking online courses on Hinduism; found a solid group of scholars who are more than just colleagues to me. Most importantly, however, I joined a gym and started working out everyday, lifting heavier and heavier. Slowly and without even realising, I started inspiring more and more people. We live far from our families, we don’t own our flat (and maybe never will), I have to work part time in a coffee shop to pay my bills, but I embrace it all, as my “chains”, necessary for the “dance” of my life to be light and joyful.

If there’s something I’m really grateful to Nietzsche for, it’s for teaching me the profound, yet often forgotten, interconnection between philosophy and practical life: through philosophical introspection, I shape up my life, and through my everyday life, I pose and then answer my deepest questions. Philosophy is not meant to be constrained in scholarly books; nor is life meant to be lived superficially.

The only downside of my self-becoming is that I had to quit my band. I’m still attending as many gigs as I can, and, sometimes (rarely), I compose with Garage Band. I listen to my favourite bands everyday though (at the gym, on the tube, at home) and sing like a crazy in the shower and when cooking. I was meant to become a philosopher, I was meant to inspire fitness enthusiasts, but I now realise that I was never meant to become a musician.

Fair enough, I still love my fate more than ever!

Same place, 3 years later. On my path to becoming who I am, embracing my “amor fati” and dancing “in chains”.

October 7, 2018October 5, 2019

Spicy Courgette Dahl Soup

Alright, I’ve only got 2 soup recipes to create, before my self-imposed challenge is finally over. I somehow feel like I have to pay homage to my favourite cooking ever, which is Indian. As my IBS got worse, I had to seriously cut down on lentils and chickpeas, which I decided to avoid for 3 months. When I slowly started reintroducing them, I found that my tolerance level for red lentils hadn’t changed much, which I was glad for (I was honestly expecting it to drop, after such a long time without eating them). I can proudly get away with a mild bloating if I consume up to 50g dried red lentils! As to the chickpeas, well, my tolerance level dropped dramatically, and I can now consume only a couple of tbsps, without feeling bad. Sad story! 🙁 However, at the moment, I’m not as interested in increasing that level as I am in feeling well and with a flat stomach, so I’ll leave it for now. It could be my next challenge, who knows…

Dahl has always been one of my favourite foods, something I could have everyday without getting tired of it. As I cannot consume it as often as I used to, and as I have to reduce my lentil portions, I made some changes to the traditional recipe, to make it more digestible. Obviously, eating such a small amount of lentils doesn’t satisfy my protein need, so I had some baked tofu with my soup, to hit my macros.

My recipe serves 2 people with my tolerance level: if yours is lower, just have half of it, and add in some basmati rice, to give your dish the same volume.

Ingredients:

100g Red Lentils (dried)

1 medium to large Courgette

1 tsp Turmeric

1 tsp Cumin Seeds or Powder

1/4 tsp Garam Masala

1/4 tsp Coriander Powder

1 inch Fresh Ginger

2 tsp Coconut Oil

Fresh, Filtered Water,

Sea or Himalayan Salt

Cooking Method

Soak your lentils for a few hours or overnight. Rinse them thoroughly, place in a pot with just enough water to cover them and some salt. Place a lid and bring to a boil.

In the meantime, chop your courgette into tiny, thin strips or triangles.

As the water starts to boil, skim off as much foam as you can, and add in turmeric, 1 tsp coconut oil and your chopped courgette. Reduce heat to minimum and simmer for about 20 minutes, until your soup reaches a porridge-like consistency.

While your Dahl soup is still finishing cooking, dry fry cumin seeds or powder in a small pan and set aside. In the same pan, heat up 1 tsp coconut oil and add in all of the spices (your roasted cumin included). Fry for a few seconds, turn off, and add your spices to the soup.

October 7, 2018October 5, 2019

Pumpkin and Green Bean Hot Pot

I created this recipe for my October challenge to celebrate Autumn and I was so happy with the result, that I decided to make it again soon. I love Asian soups, such as Phos and Hot Pots, because you can have veggies, carbs and protein all in one delicious bowl, which is warm and healthy too.

*Serves 2

For this Hot Pot you’ll need:

1 small Sugar Pumpkin

2 cups fresh or frozen Green Beans

1 inch fresh Ginger Root

1/2 Green Pepper

2 Baby Aubergines (sliced)

1 Spring Onion (the green part)

1/4 tsp Cumin

1/4 tsp Coriander

1/4 tsp Turmeric

1/8 tsp Black Pepper