We Are What We Eat

Now I know that we are all familiar with this little saying, but I always took it for granted and never really thought about it.  It is quite profound to speak of the fact that your body has a living ecosystem inside of it.  You put food into your mouth which is taken through a process involving billions of living organisms who use enzymes and other chemicals to break the food down into it’s components.  These guys then use the good raw materials to build new cells/perform maintenance on the body, pass the unneeded waste down the line, and store the rest as fat for a rainy day.

Its all quite magical if you ask my opinion, but what happens when you don’t give your body enough the actual raw materials it needs to function optimally and too much of the materials it doesn’t need?  Your body then has to rob enzymes and materials from otherwise healthy cells to build new “malnourished” cells.  You then get whole warehouses full of shit (literally) that you don’t need.  In other words, you fall into a state of disease.  Dis-ease, that means you are not at ease, and under stress.  Under stress, things don’t run optimally.  If your body were a city, there would be garbage in the streets, bad plumbing, and maybe even talk of rebellion (cancer).

When I started learning more and more about the topic of health from an adult perspective, my conscience no longer allowed me to ignore it.  I had these three major food addictions that were making me unhealthy and gain weight in an unhealthy way.

People who know me probably remember me as being a pretty scrawny guy.  I wasn’t happy usually being one of the smallest guys in the crew, so I welcomed the freshman 15 going away to college.  But the weight kept slowly creeping up, and never down.  By the time I was 28, I was pushing 180 pounds, which caught the eye of my wife.  I never considered myself overweight, but for the first time I couldn’t deny that I was flirting with it. Without action I would end up going over that slippery slope. I honestly didn’t know I had almost 50 extra pounds on me to lose!

I had to take action. I made the choice and I educated myself in a way that our schools and our parents done.  I did my own homework.  I went to battle with these three addictions that were leading me down the road to cancer and obesity.  I look at too many people I love that are losing this battle not even knowing there is one and how to stop it.  This war on health has decimated my family, I can tell you that much.  That’s why I need to pass this knowledge on.

Knowing is half the battle.

-G.I. Joe

3 Foods That Are Slowly Killing Us

#1 -Sugary Drinks

That’s right, I’m talking about soda, pop, fizz, or whatever new slang you kids are using it these days.  Better toss in energy drinks, most juices the kids drink, and sports drinks on the to-avoid list.

The sugar content in sodas is shocking.  There was a whole US study showing how daily consumption of soda actually increased the risk for type 2 diabetes by 25%.  Soda is made to addict you so you keep guzzling it all day long.  Not to mention when we eat sugary acidic things our body has to rob the nutrients from our healthy cells to help digest it causing us to feel weak and tired.  But hey, you can just grab another Coke for that little pick-me-up.

Here’s a scary fact that you’ve probably never heard.  When you drink soda pop out of plastic (cups or bottles) the chemicals and acids in the soda pop break down and mix with the chemicals in the plastic which (mostly petroleum) and the resultant chemical changes male hormones into female hormones after it hits your blood stream.  This is causing breast cancer in males AND females.

This is the only country in the world that more men die of breast cancer than women, but we don’t talk about that.  This is because men drink more soda pop than women.

-Dick Gregory

What should you drink instead if you want a sweet tasting drink?

Do fresh juices that are at most grocery stores.  It’s more expensive, but well worth the price when you know the alternatives too well (especially when they’ve been sitting on the shelf in a plastic bottle with BPA).  Make your own juices.  I will have a high quality juicer for the rest of my life. Eat fresh fruit to get your sweets.  Even some raw cane sugar, maple syrup, honey.  Stay with things that actually come out of nature.

As another “word to the wise,” anything that says low-fat, sugar free, or diet, it really means it has added more artificial replacements so they can legally say it on the label. These additives are actually much worse for you than what they are trying to trick you into thinking you are replacing. Look up ASPARTAME POISONING and you’ll never drink DIET (so ironic) again.

#2 – Vegetable Oil & Fried Foods

Vegetable oil is very sneaky because it’s not really made from vegetables. There is a whole industrial process behind the production of vegetable oil. Real terrible, go look it up. Vegetable oil is full of trans fats.  These trans fats increase the bad cholesterol (LDL) and reduce the good cholesterol (HDL).  Corn oil, canola oil, sunflower oil; these are all full of high amounts of poly unsaturated fats while our body consists of about 97% saturated fats and mono-unsaturated fats.  This increases your triglycerides which are the blood fats that clog up veins and arteries making it harder for blood to circulate around the body and raising blood pressure.  Also produce free radicals that cause cancer down the line.

My favorite healthy replacement is coconut oil.

Coconut oil is full of the mono-unsaturated fats our body needs and uses. As a bonus, 50% of the fats contain lauric acid which is an immune booster and natural anti-viral. We literally use coconut oil for butter, to cook with, to pop popcorn with, to eat, and even as a lotion. For other healthier cooking alternatives to vegetable oil use my runner-up favorite extra virgin olive oil or flaxseed oil.

Another big reason to avoid vegetable oil is that it’s mostly used for frying up something salty and fattening as it is. Fresh live food is full of the enzymes that we need to break down and digest it.  Not just fried food, but when you heat ANY food very much above 104 degrees F the enzymes become denatured. Is it a coincidence that a fever over 104 becomes deadly? Please don’t take my word for any of this, look it up. Fried food is all but devoid of enzymes, so we get very little nutrition from it.  It mostly passes right through us without being digested and utilized by the body. Any of it that does get broken down is at the expense of the enzymes robbed from healthy cells. Eating fresh foods, at close to body temperature, in their most natural state is what works optimally for digestion and integration.  It’s what our bodies evolved side by side with.

#3 – Processed Meats

I know, I know. Nobody wants to hear ANYTHING about cutting back on the meat intake.  I’ll admit that this is my biggest struggle with taking my healthy eating to the next level.  I crave meat.  I love a big juicy steak or a nice pork tenderloin… Sorry for the Homer Simpson moment, but you get the picture.  We like meat, but we need a reality check about how good it is for us (especially the factory processed varieties). The World Health Organization released a study saying that processed meats cause cancer in the body. Think about it, do your own homework. Watch a couple of documentaries like Food Inc. and Forks Over Knives which are real life horror flicks themselves.  We need to get over our meat addiction.

Nobody likes to talk about hormones and antibiotics especially in chicken and beef.  An egg hatches today, and in 29 days you’re ready to eat it. Colonel Sanders can’t say Kentucky Fried Chicken anymore only the acronym KFC. They grow chickens with no beaks, no feet, and no feathers. Of course the industry put out their own contradictory press releases, but you’ll find out the truth when you do your own homework. If you walked through there you would think you died and went to a horrible place. On top of it, when you inject hormones in to the chicken to make it grow, it creates cancer all throughout the chicken.

Combine some fried chicken with some french fries and an XL Diet Coke and you’ve got the recipe to send you right into the loving arms of our pharmaceutical industrial complex.

On a deeper level, it’s more about the energy of that animal getting transferred to your DNA when you eat it.  Animals raised in fear and brutalized store that fear in their DNA.  DNA is like the flight recorder of your species.  When you intake that into your body, your body reads the data on that disk and has a reaction.  From the point of view of your body, it’s like watching a horror movie for your cells.  That’s why our Jewish people are only supposed to eat Kosher meat.  They are not to cause pain to any animal, and when they kill an animal to eat it unconsciousness must be instantaneous.  They know that when an animal dies in a state of terror, that fear keeps on resonating through every living cell in it’s body even past it’s death.  WE HAVE HAD THIS ENERGETIC KNOWLEDGE BEFORE.

5 Vegan Foods with More Protein than Beef

I have been an on-and-off vegetarian for the past couple years and I’m really getting to where I know I need to finally rip the band-aid off. I get the “why are you a vegetarian, where are you going to get your protein?” I didn’t know what to say at first so I had to do a couple google searches.  Ask and you shall receive.

I see that beef usually runs about 7g / oz of protein.  These plant based foods have more protein than beef both PER OUNCE and PER CALORIE:

#1 – Spirulina

1 teaspoon gives you 4 grams of protein.  Spirulina is also packed full of magnesium to help build muscle and repair the body.  Super green powder.

#2 – Hemp Seeds

2 tablespoons of hemp seeds will get you 10 grams of protein.  Hemp seeds give you a pretty complete protein along with some Omega 3s.  They are a superfood by any definition.

#3 – Spinach

Popeye had the right idea when he picked his favorite dark leafy greens. 1 cup of spinach is 5 grams of protein.  A few cups of spinach salad will give you a whole day’s protein.

#4 – Broccoli

A mere 30 calories of broccoli has 4.5 grams of protein.  Broccoli is a fractal food as well.  Look up “fractal foods” if you want an interesting lesson.

#5 Almonds and Almond Butter

You can eat a handful of almonds (about 10 ounces) and chew up a whole 7 grams of protein.  Even Peanut butter will give you 8 grams of protein in two tablespoons.  Fresh, unsalted nuts are my new #1 Snack.  Can’t get enough!

Protein is not a magical substance that is only contained in animal meat. Where do you think the rest of the world that isn’t carnivorous gets their protein building blocks for their bodies to regenerate?  From plant based sources of course.  Vegetarians don’t have to be weak.  A gorilla eats bamboo all day and he would have no problem ripping your arm off.

I hope you learned a little something today.  I want to keep providing you with real value.  With real knowledge that I wasn’t taught in school but found out by doing my own homework.  Sometimes you need to leave the beaten path when you really want the truth, and not everyone is willing to do that.

Remember, evolving a little every day, in every little way.

Stepping onto a brand new path is difficult, but not as difficult as remaining in a situation…

-Maya Angelou