Heavy squats and deadlifts are going to strengthen your core in a more functional manner than crunches or sit-ups or whatever ab exercise ever will.
Sure, I don't have room for weights in my apt. or money for a gym membership, but I make do, in part based on the advice given here, and do single-leg squats, frog squats and standard squats. I also sometimes squat-sit when sitting down and always when doing a BM, as it is a natural and beneficial human movement that should be incorporated into everyday practice, not just in special exercise times. I also do other ab exercises that have been demonstrated to be highly effective in exercising the abdominals, like the bicycle crunch and vertical crunch (
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/abdominalcorestrength1/qt/Bicycle_Crunch.htm). I actually find the U-sit to be the most effective exercise in stimulating my bowels. It's strange that I can now do hundreds of regular crunches, whereas ten or twenty used to be a struggle, yet my ab muscles don't look substantially larger. My grandfather was like this. Up until his seventies he was as strong as iron, yet very thin and spindly looking.
What really amazed me was that some folks at the ZIOH forum developed muscular, defined abs through diet alone. I suspect some of them may already have had them underneath the fat and just had to lose weight to reveal them. Plus, some people may respond very well to the increased meat and/or dairy hormones and low level of antinutrients in the ZC diet.
another volume producer is psylillium husks or flax.
Thanks, but I tested those two things probably more extensively than 99% of the people on the planet with little to no benefit and they seemed to exacerbate my problems in the longer run. Between the two, the most effective thing to promote movement for me was to just eat plain flax seeds, perhaps because they irritated the colon. After a while, that was no longer very effective. Check out the video "Fiber Menace" (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz53dawDtJ8) for why they're both harmful. I do find flaxseed oil to be effective on the skin and muscles (I witnessed it literally make my fathers red, inflamed muscle pull literally disappear before my eyes as he wiped it on--I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it), but I no longer ingest any flax products. After I got tired of several people insisting I was not taking enough flaxseed oil, seeds or meal I drank a whole 16 ounce glass of it, plus ate a bunch of soaked flaxseeds and flaxseed meal to settle it once and for all. Those people were shocked when I reported that absolutely nothing happened. They were sure that it would give me bad diarrhea to take that much. Yet no matter how much I took and how often it failed, they continued to insist it would eventually work. They were kind of like the raw vegans in their blind faith in this, and still are. I can't believe how much time and money I wasted on flax products. As you can probably tell, this was one of my major mistakes and I regret suggesting to others that they try ingesting it based on the amazing things it did on the surface and on the advice of Cordain and others, despite my own lack of success with it re: internal purposes. I still think it might be medicinally beneficial for some if used over brief periods, but is not advisable to ingest over longer periods. I find I benefit more from animal and seafood fats.
Both I have soaked in water first.
Just soaking psyllium in water would likely constipate me pretty badly. You're supposed to mix it in a liquid to avoid it getting too dried up and stuck in your colon.
The flax to get rid of hopefully most of the anti-nutrients, the psyl. to prevent it from soaking up the juices in my stomach etc. It shouldn't take much, maybe a teaspoon once or twice a day. Oh, with the flax, I always chewed it to the point of dissolvement, or blended it. One can soak and sproat them, and lay them out to dry, which then is much easier to chew until liquid. But this was years ago.
If one is going to eat flaxseeds then it does make sense to sprout them, because they contain antinutrients of their own.
Psyllium husk and fiber like that makes me constipated like nuts.
Yeah, they helped me a little bit at first, but then made things worse.
If you have constipation issues then it's usually because you are over eating. You need to wait until you are very hungry until you eat and then only eat till you're not hungry any more.
On raw paleo you don't need as much food as before to get the nutrients and energy you need. When I have most energy is when I am careful not to over eat.
Problem is, if I don't eat a lot I lose weight and end up looking emaciated. I also notice that my constipation actually tends to worsen when I eat less, probably because even less feces is produced.
