Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

This.

My personal experience (which includes a lovely meniscus blowout during squats) is that even given perfect form, once you get up to heavy weights (2x-3x bodyweight for deads and squats) you are starting to push the limits of your body and need to realize that occasional injury is part of the total picture.

That said, I still stay away from machines. I feel even if you're working with light weights, the balance factor of free weights adds so much more to the workout.

To prove your point, I will offer my own belief. Actually, I am not posting it here because it supports your observation but vice-versa, because your observation supports my point.

You're right: there are always people crawling out of the woodwork suggesting one approach or the other. Whenever someone gets evangelical about something, it proves that it's working for them, for the moment at least. How else could they think that their mundane and unoriginal approach is "the" solution that will change lives? There are evangelists for everything from walking an hour a day on a treadmill to rock climbing. Ergo, almost anything works for some people sometimes. However, no new or old exercise idea has had widespread acceptance and staying power. Therefore, every idea fails for most people, either immediately or eventually.

Conclusion: Certainly educate yourself about all the options and their benefits, but right now, do whatever you find compelling right now. Don't worry about whether it will for someone else, or whether it will work for you next week. Just do what works for you right now.

For example, I thought I was bored with kettlebells (lately I've been trying to learn Olympic lifting) but one night last week for some reason I didn't want to leave my apartment, so I did a kettlebell workout. That worked for me on that particular night. For some people, that wouldn't work at all, because they like to have every workout scientifically planned out: exercises, reps, weights, etc. Sticking to the plan is what motivates them, so they would have dealt with the situation differently.

Some people really get off on the idea of having a "treat" occasionally. For them, maybe they can motivate themselves by signing up for a triathlon in some exotic location. Or they might take a day off and visit a national park, or treat themselves to a beautiful evening wandering around with a friend, splurging on a show and a nice dinner downtown. (Two or three hours of walking may not be challenging, but health-wise, it beats the hell out of sitting at home.) Or maybe they would sign up for an expensive activity such as riding lessons.

It all depends on your situation. Do you have outdoor recreation nearby? Do you live in a walkable or bikeable city? Can you afford Crossfit or an expensive gym? Do you have a garage where you can put a few hundred dollars worth of weight equipment? Do you have enough money to become an equestrian? Do you get off on consistency, or is boredom your bane? Does measurement of your progress motivate you or demotivate you? Do you like to geek out over your fitness, or relax and let your mind wander? Do you like it if your workout activities express your trendiness or your wealth and status, or would you prefer a "no bullshit" workout at a grimy gym surrounded by tattooed guys in sweat pants?

There's no answer that fits everyone all the time. Different people will thrive with different choices, and next month you may be a different person than you are now. Just do whatever works for you right now. (If that means forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do, well, that is a paradox. Best to just do it and not think about it.)

Cheese, butter, sauerkraut and pickles are all products of fermentation. Fermentation is how people preserved and enhanced the nutritional composition and digestibility of many foods. Process's like canning, freezing, refrigeration, dehydration, bleaching(flour,sugar,salt) and pasteurization, to name a few, are all examples of modern food process's that typically alter the food in some way that favors shelf life, cost or convienence over nutrient density.

Rice and Thai Food. So add lean chicken and some vegetables to that if you want to be literal.

This recalls a conversation I had with a highly noted doctor of nutrition at University of Colorado @ Denver.

He was the first to admit that nutrition sciences were largely confused. All of those years of studying cholestrol and various other substances in isolation had led to a ton of barely viable nutrition advice that didn't seem to work in practice.

He has come to believe that the research continues to point in a single direction. It's more or less what the OP said, with a bit of twist. The problem isn't processing in the traditional sense... it's processing in the industrial sense. Modern processed foods contain a whole litany of preservatives that seem to have a profound impact on food in two ways.

1. It often more or less removes much of the health benefit of actually eating. Vitamins, minerals, and a whole range of amino acids magically disappear. Post-processing foods tend to be left high in carbs and so called "empty calories". This is why, in his mind, McDonalds and the like are so damaging. It's why TV dinners (even the 'healthy' ones) are terrible for you. By eating more "whole" foods (as the OP suggested) you avoid so much of this.

2. Those preservatives themselves trigger body processes that cause all sorts of strangeness. Why can you drink Coke Zero everyday and not lose weight (or Stevia, Splenda, etc..)? Because your body has a natural metabolic reaction to the sweetness. It's still calorie-in/calorie-out, your just sabotaging the calorie out. The prevailing theory about this has something to do with energy storage back in our caveman days. When eating sweet fruits and the like, our bodies would go into energy storage mode for the coming winter. In those days fruits represented one of the few times that we would experience a calorie surplus. Apparently many common preservatives trigger that same response.

For the last couple of years I've essentially followed the OP's advice. I eat as close to "whole" as I can. I eat quite a bit more meat than he's advertising, but I try to make sure it as unprocessed as possible. I eat a lot of whole vegetables and a bit of fruit. Nuts and the like are a staple. I eat fewer refined carbs, but I don't necessarily try to stay far away from them either.

I'm healthier, fitter, and all around in better shape then I ever have been.