Tarzan

Whole wheat bread, rice cakes for sandwiches

Start by making one meal a day that is vegan, healthy, and tasty. Learn how to cook vegan first by checking out some recipes and trying them out yourself. Eat lots of legumes - beans and lentils. I'd suppose begin by making at least one meal a day where beans or lentils are the staple. Lots of protein depending on how many beans or lentils you use. Ex. I eat lentil curry every day (caramelize onion and bell pepper with water in non-stick pan, garlic-ginger-curry powder-or every spice you like, then a can of chopped tomatoes-lemon juice and let simmer, 150g red lentils cook em. Then add the bunch together, eat it or store it. This dish can be really awesome if your spice game is great Depending on the amount of fiber you will be eating, you will fart a lot at first as your gut microbiome won't be adapted to the humongous amount of fiber you could be getting. If you want to take it slower then don't just to eating 100g of fiber a day, go for idk like 50g/day at first. Although after a few months that will be fine. All else just start incorporating whole plant-based foods - fruits, veggies, seeds, nuts, etc. Also, improve your spice game. Greger's website nutritionfacts.org or book How Not To Die is great for nutrition data, but they don't care about bodybuilding. Yt vegan recipes - jon venus (bodybuilder), avantgardevegan.

Hey guys, I just finished my first 10-day vipassana retreat. First days were rough as I was going in quite raw, I hadn't meditated a while before that and was hoping to kickstart my meditation practice again. I wanted to ask everyone who has attended the retreat and followed the technique how good is your progress with this technique. I'm not sure if I should follow it or use another technique. I have the kriya yoga book from Leo's book list but haven't yet begun reading it. I remember someone mentioning that you have to have developed your concentration skills before trying it out. I'm also familiar with the theoretical progress scheme of meditation (samatha and vipassana jhanas as described by Daniel Ingram in his book). Do you think its better to develop concentration (one-pointed concentration) by a separate technique at first to a high level and only then progress to insight practices? Or going straight for insight practice is fine, just letting concentration increase as you just push through distractions, mind-wanderings?

Hello. I am considering doing a retreat this summer and am wondering whether to go for a vipassana retreat abroad or do a solo retreat at home. I am a newbie and haven't done any practice for the past 10 months for practical reasons (mandatory military service). I did about 6 months of meditation prior to military, mostly do-nothing, mindfulness, and some 10 minutes concentration practice. I got up to 40 minutes of do-nothing a day over a couple of months and then alongside do-nothing tried mindfulness meditation that Leo described in his video. When I started doing do-nothing an hour a day it started to become really difficult for me. Concentration practice was so-so, distractions and phasing out was common but I usually noticed myself distracted quickly and went back to the object. Concentration was mostly back-and-forth noticing myself distracted and going back to 1-pointed focus on the object and it felt like it didn't improve that much as the weeks went by. As far as I have learned about meditation it seems that retreats 7+days can really kick up progress. Since my practice wasn't very high quality and I feel that developing better concentration skills through a retreat would benefit a lot. What are the pros and cons of Vipassana and solo retreats? Which is better for a newbie? Would it be better to progress more smoothly rather than abrubtly go from 1-hour/day practice to 10 days constant meditation?

@Hansu That is a nice experience. The way through these challenges is to learn to beat your ego that wants to complain and just stop doing whatever task is assigned to you. It'll start creating excuses for why you need to stop hurting yourself physically. You beat your ego by learning how to be completely present and be aware of the physical and emotional suffering (thoughts, pain, anger) caused by the assignment. I chose military service rather than community service because of this, but I think the latter would've benefited me more-so in hindsight. @Self Discovery You have to think for yourself. Would you benefit a lot from the challenges that military service could offer ? Or do you think there are even better and more relevant challenges in you life? If the latter then maybe you need extra time to deal with them, and you'll probably have more free time in community service. How do you want to develop youself? Think both scenarios through.

Same in Estonia, I'm about halfway through military service and looking back I would've chosen community service since it atleast pays a minimum wage that I could save once it's done and I would've had more free time to meditate, go to the gym, or spend time on your purpose or relationships. When you're in bootcamp/forest you wouldn't get much privacy nor free time. I have a few good things going for me though - I'm learning to be a paramedic so I will atleast acquire some valuable skills and also I'm saving some money (175 euros a month from soldier support money). Still, I'm pretty depressed - I don't do formal meditation (just being generally mindful) or go the gym right now (hell, I've gained 8 kilos because I ate healthier and went to the gym 4-5 times per week before). I still read when I can though, I've finished a lot of books. After the paramedic course ends I'll have a lot more time so I'm looking forward to what I can do then. It'll be fine once its over and then I'll just get on with my life and figuring out my life purpose. In military what you will learn is how to kill people and become cannon fodder. And well, you'll learn how to live with your average peers 24/7 who don't want to be there and who will mostly complain or blow off steam, do random shit (although you might make some good friends aswell). Not really worth the time in my opinion, you can do better things, especially if you have your life going nicely as you sayed it is. So, that's my perspective.

I would be skeptical about these kinds of claims since he doesn't provide any references for the claims he is making. Use google scholar or ncbi to search for scientific articles about any of these things and sci-hub to access those articles if they aren't publicly available.

Here's a youtube channel you can also check out. About harm reduction, how to test, etc. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn8V3KNSgDr1Dai77_y8JrQ