While talking to a buddy of mine through one of my sources discussion pages, I started talking about people in my grandfather's generation in the 20's-30's. They where buff and huge, or if not buff, just lean in general and never touched a single weight in their lives! I often hear people on television say "what are we doing wrong?" Well, in case you never thought of it, here's my insight on the topic.
If I were to ever show you black and white pics of my grandfather and his brother, just in their adolescent years, they were already huge and buff boys! Why was that? How could a 15 year old and a 13 year old already have huge bi's and abs and never touch a weight?
EXERCISE: Well to start off, my grandfather was the middle child of four. When they were young back in those days first off, there were no school buses. So guess what, rain/shine/snow, every child had to walk to school! Not only that, but the kids were given a 2 hour lunch period to go home, eat and walk back to school! The school was a couple miles from where they lived, so imagine walking a total of 6 miles to school every single day! When I went to school, (don't know how it is now) P.E. was only 20 minutes. My grandfather stated back then P.E. was about an hour long, and sometimes there were 2 or even 3 P.E. sessions! The schools had the mentality that kids who got their excitement out through physical activities will be more interested in learning once class began. The superintendent who was out with the kids made sure everyone was playing, or doing some sort of physical exercise. You couldn't be in a huddle with a bunch of guys or girls without doing anything, because they thought those were the ones who were contemplating trouble. My grandfather's family, as well as a huge percentage in the USA back then, were farmers. So not only did my grandfather and family walk their 6 miles to school, they were ALSO in between working on the farm! My grandfather's family was of 6 people total including mother and father and all chores were split. Just before going to school, every morning the family got up at 5am and did the following chores:
1. milk and feed the cows (they had over 150 at one time), 2.feed the chickens and pick the eggs (they had 70 chickens and 3 roosters), 3. go out and pick veggies and fruit (acres and acres and acres of tomato, onion, garlic, fig, cherry, peach, olive trees etc.), and 4. feed all the other animals they had (pigs, horses, dogs, bulls, sheep, & goats). Sometimes, the chores got too overwhelming and they couldn't go to school. The chores were just too massive. They had to be at school by 8am. so if they were no where being done, they just forgot about going to school for the day. It was more important to get the chores done. When my grandfather and his brother got older, then the real fun work began! They had tons of acreage of hay, alfalfa, barley, and wheat. Everything was cut, rolled, and stacked by hand! Once they started making money, they were able to buy a couple Farmel H tractors to help disk the fields, but other thank that, it was all done by hand! Once the grain was cut, and rolled, it was then stacked up high in the barn. Our barn is still there in one piece and it stands about 50 feet tall. So I could only imagine the hell my poor grandfather and uncle had to endure stacking and climbing until the straw bails were up to the roof! They told me the bails weighed between 75-100 pounds A PIECE! Talk about a full body workout!!
EATING: In order for my family to do all this work, they needed to eat and boy eat they did. If you know any Italian, you will know the way to our hearts is food lol. This is proof to me as well that if you wanna get big, you gotta eat big. Luckily, my great grandfather was an expert butcher, and they never bought a piece of meat while he was capable of butchering. He did it all, which is why they had a selected variety of animals on the ranch to eat! My grandfather said everyday was pretty much like this:
Breakfast: 6 eggs A PERSON, 2 pounds of bacon, 2 pounds of sausage, 3 loafs of french bread, coffee. Ham or turkey would be thrown in for holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Lunch: Was pretty much always sandwiches. Tons of french bread, Italian cold cuts (mortadella, salami, coppa, prosciutto), tons of cheeses, homemade olives, homemade wine, tomatos, and peppercinis.
Dinner: Always consisted of a meat, a pasta, salad, more french bread, and more wine. Their father always had huge portion cuts for each family member to eat. Pasta was always made daily fresh by my great grandmother. No brown pasta or brown rice shit.
So in-conclusion, "what are we doing wrong?" Well, if you eat big, you need to exercise to work it off, bottom line. You cannot eat McDonald's everyday, not do nothing and expect to lose weight! My family as well as everyone else in their generation ate well, but also kept on working! Hell, my grandfather often stated the only rest they ever got was when they finally went to bed at 8pm! There were no such thing as diets, protein drinks, weight lifting, diet pills.....everything my family did was exercise, even though they just called it work! Their bodies used all that food for fuel and because they were always on the move, the body never stored it for fat. My uncle was 87 when he died and he still had 18" arms! Now that was impressive! I hope one day the USA will finally get their shit together, and stop making bullshit excuses as to why the Obesity epidemic is out of control and they don't know why!