transform your eating

Go see my NEW blog!

2010-01-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

Greetings friends! Guess what!? My brand new blog is up and rocking!

Alert the media! Phone the neighbors, wake the kids, start a fresh pot of coffee...er...Ho Shou Wu tea! Please come visit! Say hi! Leave a comment!

It's called The Super Healthy Eating System! See you there!

(THIS blog is now "space junk," floating in the cyber-cosmos.)

Healthy Eating Talk in Duluth, Minnesota

2010-01-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, dear friends! Hey, if you're going to be within hailing range (sorry, I'm such a Star Trek geek...) of Duluth, MN this Saturday, Jan. 9, come to Yoga North, and hear a groovy, four-hour lecture on the power of food, super healthy eating, your body as energy, cleansing and all sorts of other cool stuff, to launch you on your own path of awakening.

Today's Godzilla and Smog Monster Green Smoothie (A break from my blogging break)

2009-12-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, as I mentioned in the previous post, I am indeed taking a break from blogging until the new, revamped, redesigned blog is up and rolling. It's going to have a ton of super cool, user-friendly articles and videos and all sorts of stuff. (Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter so I can tell you all about it, once it's up!) But, since people are still dropping by and checking this blog out (yay, you!), I figured I'd go ahead and describe today's green smoothie. Although it was actually brown...ish...purple.

In fact, remember the Smog Monster that Godzilla fought? It looked a lot like him. Except instead of being made of toxins, it was made of stuff that gets RID of toxins, so in that sense it was more like Godzilla, who, of course, handily dispatched the Smog Monster. But I digress.

1) First I started my tea boiling very low (ceramic pot, yada yada), of Chanca Piedra, Nettles and Pau d'Arco. That's gonna be my liquid. I also started my 4 T. of chia seeds soaking in a big coffee mug of purified water.

2) I hacked open my young coconut with my machete, all Samurai Raw Food Guy. Put the "meat" into the Vita Mix.

3) Added 1 T. raw cacao nibs, 2 T. maca, 2 heaping t. spirulina, bunch-o'-ginger, about 4 inches of burdock root, 1 peeled lemon, a big handful of parsley, a handful of raw pumpkin seeds. I chopped the veggies to be added (coming up). By now the tea decoction was looking pretty ready, so I cooled it with some ice cubes, and did some other kitchen stuff while it cooled down. Then I used it to blend up all the above stuff, including the chia seeds.

3) Once that was pretty well liquified, I threw in celery, broccoli, green pepper, beet and cucumber (David Jubb has convinced me to give a rest to the leafy greens). Then I put in 1 bag of frozen organic cherries and a banana. Also, I threw in abunch of PRL (Premier Research Labs) absurdly, comically pure, whole-food supplements, like 6 caps of turmuric, aloe and such.

4) Right before I stopped blending, I added a big handful of pinenuts and 10 Brazil nuts, only blending them briefly, because my gorgeous wife likes some crunchiness in her smoothies.

T'was a right mean smoothie it'was!

Friends, Romans, Countrymen (Countrypeople)!

2009-11-17T06:10:00.000-08:00

If you're a regular visitor to my blog you will have noticed that, well, I've not posted anything in a gazillion years. 'See what happened is this: I got some advice from a kick-ass blogging coach named Michael Martine, about why only, like, 50 people come to my blog. And so what Mr. Martine did, is he helped me to see the myriad and multifarious ways in which my blog totally sucks. Not the posts themselves. They're fine. But everything else. All the things that allow people to actually FIND you on them interwebs. (Just for starters, it should be on Wordpress, not Blogspot.)

So, long story short, I'm hard at work writing (and eventually building) a new blog, which will be like a real, grown-up blog! With all sorts of groovy, helpful, immediately useful articles and suchlike. And I'm going to collapse the my site into it, too, just for good measure.

Anyway, sorry for the long delay in letting y'all know. I am essentially Amish when it comes to internet savvy. I only wrote this NOW, at all, because my non-Amish wife asked me, "Hey, have you been posting?" and I scratched my head, under my big, black Amish hat, and said no. And she pointed out I should let you good folks know what the heck's going on. She's smart.

Dr. God: The Power of Innate Intelligence (Part Two)

2009-09-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

If we’re designed for perfect health and perfect bodyweight (as I keep insisting!), why then do we become overweight, fatigued and sick? Why is our body’s Innate Intelligence failing us? Simply put, health problems of any kind—from excess weight, to acne, to allergies, to cancer—mean that laws of nature have been broken.

From the holistic point of view, your body is always only trying to create perfect health. It’s always “wanting” or “tending” to move in that direction. A classic holistic health analogy: Think of every health situation in your body like a cut on your finger. Your body is always “trying” to create your perfect weight and health, just as surely as it’s always trying to heal a cut finger. You don’t have to “do” anything to make your body heal your cut finger. Your body’s not about to just “forget” how. Nor has it forgotten how to bring you to your ideal weight and stupendous health. It’s simply been overwhelmed.

That means that a lifetime of radiant health and slimness is simply about getting out of the way of your body’s immense Innate Intelligence. It’s about not interfering with that intelligence; about cooperating with it, allowing it. It’s about unburdening the body, so that Innate Intelligence can do its work. All you have to do is align yourself to the laws of nature: eat clean and pure, rest, get the right exercise, handle stress wisely. And trust the inherent health of your body, with its infinite genius, to heal everything in its own mysterious way. It knows how. That’s the power and the gift of Innate Intelligence that you’ve been given.

And, if you've not noticed, we're MADE of food. Take your hand and grab hold of your thigh. Feel that leg? That's what you ate over the last several months. Literally. In Hindu and Yogic terminology, they call our physical body "the food-body." That's why eating a broad-spectrum, whole-foods, super-clean diet is the bedrock foundation of outrageous health.

Dr. God: The Power of Innate Intelligence (Part One)

2009-08-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

What if you never again had to even think about your health or your weight? What if you could close the book, forever, on questions about portion sizes, which diet is best, what to do about your health challenges, and how to keep your weight and health “under control?”

What if there were an infinitely wise “bio-computer” that always knew exactly what was going on with your body and that perfectly orchestrated radiant health every hour of every day, so that you never had to worry about a thing? Or you can imagine it as a genie, with great powers to manifest your perfect weight, superb health, and vibrant youthfulness. Well here’s the deal: This genie, this dazzling bio-computer, is quite real, and it’s within you right now (but you knew I was gonna say that, right?). Some people have called it Innate Intelligence. It’s that systemic Intelligence built into us by nature or God or whatever you wish to call it (or It).

Innate Intelligence
Innate Intelligence is what formed your whole body from a single cell. It performs the trillions of functions, every second, that keep you alive, thinking, seeing, breathing, digesting and all of that cool (and occasionally disgusting) stuff. In each moment, Innate Intelligence is maintaining perfect body temperature, balancing countless hormonal functions, replacing old cells, eliminating wastes, ordering the harmony of millions of enzymatic functions, coordinating brain and nervous system operations and orchestrating chemical exchanges in the heart and lungs. Billions of such operations are taking place as you read these words. In fact, countless miraculous processes are constantly taking place within just one single cell of your body! It’s freakin’ mind-blowing madness!

And here’s what all that means: Innate Intelligence is not just the best way to create vibrant health—it’s the only way. Any other tactics, even ones that seem to work in the short term, almost always contribute to problems further on down the line. They may give you an apparently good result in one aspect of your health, but then you “mysteriously” develop a different problem in another organ or system of your body.

For example, fad diets, including “calorie cutting” deprivation diets and high protein diets, achieve their results (when they do) by creating low-level disease processes in the body. They are true Faustian bargains. That’s why the weight almost always comes back on, and with a vengeance. Drugs, and even many so-called “natural” nutritional supplements, always make you pay a price, sooner or later. There are the obvious, immediate side effects; we all know about those. But there is also a more insidious, long-term, cumulative degeneration of the whole bodily system.

Innate Intelligence and Conventional Medicine
Somewhere along the line, our medical professionals stopped trusting and using Innate Intelligence as the central principle in healing. Many doctors will acknowledge the majesty of the workings of the human body, but, most of the time, it’s purely a philosophical appreciation. Innate Intelligence is not something to actually work with and depend on down in the trenches.

Because, they might say, Innate Intelligence is spotty and unreliable. After all, what else do doctors see throughout their work days other than apparent “failures” of this supposedly magnificent intelligence? The question doctors usually neglect to ask is this: Does Innate Intelligence really just “fail,” or has it in fact been relentlessly overwhelmed, and usually for many years? Instead of asking such questions, physicians typically just persist in their fundamental view of the human body—that it is a helpless victim of random circumstances. In this conventional model of health, things just inexplicably and arbitrarily “go wrong” with our bodies. If you ask medical professionals why things have “gone wrong,” they’ll usually give you one of three answers.

The honest ones will say simply that they have no clue why you “got” that disease. In medical speak, they say it’s “idiopathic.” That means they have no idea what causes it. Currently, 97% of chronic degenerative diseases are classified as idiopathic. If you’re over, say, 35 years old, the second thing your doctor might say is that your disease is “a natural part of aging.” This gets back to our models of normal. The third thing they’ll say, when you ask them why you have this or that ailment, is…drum roll, please…it must be genetics.

The Great News About Genetics
In recent times, genetics has become the handy, one-size-fits-all answer that gets whipped out to explain a thousand ailments. Genetics is the new boogey man, the modern replacement for the “evil spirits” of Medieval times. Never mind the fact that most of these diseases hardly existed 80 years ago, so if it’s “genetics,” what caused them to begin with?

Genetics certainly play a substantial role in our bodily well being. But the Nobel winning scientist, Candace Pert, describes a simple way to understand the role of genetics in our health. She says that in the scientific community genetics is viewed as a factor which can “cock back the hammer” on the metaphorical “gun” of chronic degenerative diseases. But an unhealthy lifestyle is almost always required to “pull the trigger” and actually give us one of those chronic degenerative diseases—including obesity.

Pioneering nutritional authority Bernard Jensen, who worked with over 350,000 patients in the course of his long life, said the same thing in different terms. He said that genetics can give us compromised tissues in a part of the body—the “weak links” in our health chain—but it takes “wrong living” to exploit these weak links. So, when it comes to genetics, the holistic view says that if you were born with the healthy tissues, organs and functions (i.e. no congenital problems), you’ll only develop chronic degenerative problems from improper care and maintenance of the equipment, so to speak. There are exceptions to this, but they are rare.

It’s vital to understand that none of this, either in the case of your own health or that of your children, is cause for blame or guilt. In our culture, we are not educated about these matters. On the contrary, we are proactively “educated” in quite the opposite way. People just don’t have the information about health and how health really works. Most people, and especially parents, do the very best they can with the information they have. Not only that, but some of the lifestyle factors behind these chronic degenerative diseases are environmental toxins, many of which we don’t know about or can’t do much about.

Here’s the take-away lesson: You are not genetically “destined” for illness or for being overweight. You’re designed for perfect well being. That “blueprint” shines bright in every cell of your body. Eating a rejuvenative diet of whole, nutrient-dense foods (along with exercise and stress reduction, of course), will give you radiant health and slimness your whole life long.

(For those keeping score at home, yes, it's true, the image I chose has nothing much to do with the post, except, um, y'know, it's Medieval, which I sort of mentioned...And it looks cool. Shiny objects and all.)

Abby normal

2009-07-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

I’m always studying why we Americans eat so astonishingly bad. What on earth keeps us committing suicide by fork? I’ve come up with about 9 major reasons so far, and one of them is a massive and deadly confusion about what’s "normal.” To wit:

I had this client some years back. We’ll call her Nancy, on accounta that being her name and all. Anyway, Nancy had been retired for almost a decade when she came to see me. She wanted to learn to eat better to lose a stubborn thirty pounds, something her doctor had encouraged her to do. Nancy also told me that she had high blood pressure, aching joints when she woke up—especially in her hands—and osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis. Sometimes she suffered from a little indigestion, headaches and heartburn. All kinds of stuff. The usual suspects.

Over the course of our first discussion, Nancy revealed she had one of the nastiest little myths you can carry around with you, and it’s a belief that’s epidemic in this country. She believed that her ailments were “normal.” After all, every one of her friends had a list of health challenges just like hers. Our country is so plagued with poor health that most Americans have come to see chronic degenerative diseases (and a thousand other “minor complaints”) as normal. And the constant bombardment of pharmaceutical ads only drives the message deeper into our minds.

Headaches, indigestion, heartburn, fatigue, hypothyroid, hemorrhoids, aching joints, high blood pressure, constipation, IBS, gum disease—all normal as can be. They just "happen." Business as usual. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Diabetes, heart disease, asthma, arthritis, osteoporosis, cancer—these are things we should all expect. Yippee!

There’s a funny way in which we even regard being overweight as normal. Yes, we say that obesity is caused by how we eat and by not exercising. But there’s an odd sense we have here in America that our body is always somehow “trying” to get fat. That’s why most people think they’re supposed to go through all sorts of struggles, their whole lives, to stop that from happening; to engage in the constant uphill battle to stave it off. It’s a very strange belief when you think about it. And it is big-time outer space silliness. When you eat clean, pure, whole food, with lots of raw plant food (fruits & veggies; nuts & seeds) you can eat virtually as much as you want, never counting or measuring anything, and remain always lithe and radiant.

Why? Because human beings are made for perfect health. All around the globe there have been cultures who show us this. These are peoples I’ve mentioned on this blog before, like the Hunzas of Northern Pakistan, the Vilcabambans of Ecuador, the Abkhasians or Georgians of Eastern Europe and many others. Chronic degenerative diseases—even dental cavities—were, at one time virtually unknown to these peoples. Before they became “modernized,” like us, illness of any kind was all but nonexistent. They were strong and vital and sharp into their hundreds! You can find photos of the Hunzas in their 90’s and even hundreds playing volleyball! These people aren’t mythical. They’ve been studied a lot and the conclusion is unavoidable: vibrant, dynamic health, including effortless slimness, is normal for us homo sapien types. It’s just how we’re made. It’s how you are made. I know it sounds odd, but you really have to work to get ill and overweight.

Here in the U.S. we’ve had many examples of this kind of health. These are people like nutritional pioneer Norman Walker who died at age 97. He drowned while doing one of his favorite activities: surfing. Or Paul Bragg, who, after his daily gardening work took his regular afternoon nap and died peacefully in his sleep. He was about 120 years old. Or Jack La Lane, who at age 95 is an incredible dynamo, lecturing around the world and working out two hours a day. There are countless examples like these. They are not the flukes or anomalies. They are examples of our true normal; the massive super-health we are structurally designed for. All we have to do is stop obstructing it, and a diet of fresh, whole, nutrient dense foods is the foundation and centerpiece of it all (exercise and happy emotions are key, too).

Super Healthy Eating With Zero Inspiration

2009-07-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

The Myth From Hell
There is a popular myth that lifestyle change—eating clean, a new exercise program, quitting smoking, cutting down on your bank robbery habit, whatever—comes from feeling inspired or “motivated.” Hence, when people “fall off the wagon” of their new whatever-it-is, they say things like, “I just couldn’t stay motivated.”

There Is No Viagra For Inspiration
They may try to huff and puff to keep their motivation pumped up, listening to inspirational speakers, pasting affirmations up around their house (which invariably end up looking depressing and forlorn after a few weeks), all the usual suspects by which people try to “hype themselves” into sticking with some new program.

But the truth goes like this: The only reason loss of inspiration is an issue is because we make it one. It's just some bad education that's become a habit. It's superstition, really: a self-fulfilling prophecy. A sort of spell we're under. We think lack of inspiration is the death knell, and so it becomes. We have linked the two, like Pavlov’s dogs linking the bell and the food.

The Mighty Super Power of Indifference
One group of people who typically don’t make this mistake are professional creators. The artists, inventors, composers. They’ve learned a simple but powerful art: the art of not giving a damn what their fickle emotions are up to. Robert Fritz is an author and thought leader who’s spent his life studying and teaching about this stuff (I’ve studied with him and used his concepts in my nutritional coaching work for years).

According to Fritz, consummate creators are indifferent to whether they feel “inspired” or not. It’s simply not a relevant issue to them. Instead, they draw on something quite different, something Fritz calls Structural Tension. He says that Structural Tension is the singular essence of the creative process, whether you’re creating a painting or a super-healthy eating lifestyle. Structural Tension is made up of two things.

Structural Tension 101
First: Acute awareness of your current reality (i.e. “I eat fresh veggies 3 to 5 times per week, I eat refined flour products X times per week, I have such and such health issues, fatigue, headaches…” and so on).

Second: A vision of what you choose to create. A result or outcome (i.e. a radiantly healthy diet, vibrant health, boundless energy, no chronic degenerative issues at all, youthful appearance, slim, lithe, whatever). The point of the vision is not to “inspire you,” to manipulate your emotions or anything else. It’s just to guide and direct your actions.

Between these two—your awareness of your current reality and your vision of your creation—you will feel a tension, a disharmony, a dissonance that seems to compel resolution. It’s a little uncomfortable. That is Structural Tension. Creators simply know how to stay in that tension, to tolerate it. To use it. Most people, however, spend their time getting OUT of that tension. They do that either by watering down their awareness of current reality (denial, minimizing, kidding themselves) or by watering down their vision (compromising). Either one will reduce the discomfort of Structural Tension. But, if you don’t water down either; if you instead STAY in the dissonance of Structural Tension, it MUST resolve in the direction of your creation. How cool is that?

Willpower & Self-Discipline Suck
People (such as the creators Fritz talks about) who have learned this, look, to you and me, like people who simply have some steely magical gift called “willpower” or “self-discipline.” But it’s really just that they’ve learned to rely on Structural Tension instead of emotional motivation or inspiration. Willpower and self-discipline are when someone just grits their teeth, sets their jaw, hardens their resolve and makes themselves do stuff they don’t wanna do. Structural Tension is much easier and more natural. You’re just plugging into the Way of Things! It’s like going along with a strong current in the water and steering it the way you want.

Willpower and self-discipline are what people use to “solve problems.” Structural Tension is what creators use to bring something cool into existence. They don’t bully their way through the obstacles or resistances . They just don’t pay a ton of energy and attention to them. Instead of “making themselves do stuff they don’t want,” they’re doing stuff they do want, because they’re operating from a deeper, more dynamic and resilient kind of wanting. It’s the kind of wanting that is unique to the creative orientation. It’s more playful, agile and artful.

Start Making Cool Stuff (Including New Lifestyle Changes)
We can make that same shift. Anyone can learn it. Usually it’s simply that nobody’s ever told us that, when we notice our inspiration is gone, we can just shrug and continue creating whatever it is we’re creating. We just have an old, dumbass habit of thinking that feeling unmotivated is a problem. Like I said, it’s superstition.

Once you start to get the hang of this way of doing things, using Structural Tension, you get better and better at it. You get stronger with practice. It develops, like a muscle. The muscle is indifference to the “weather patterns” of your emotions, and focusing, instead, on Structural Tension (current reality plus the vision or outcome you’re choosing to create). This is what Robert Fritz calls the path of least resistance (it's also the title of his first book—it rocks!). I highly recommend using it in every area of your life, including transforming how you eat.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas! Do you tend to think a loss of inspiration is a problem? Or do you tend naturally toward this creative orientation? Do let me know!

Behold the Freaky Power of Greens!

2009-06-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

Okay friends, here's the short version, to wit: Dark leafy greens rule the nutritional cosmos with a vast, emerald, iron fist! If they were any nutrient-denser they'd be made of diamonds! They are the big time, major league, heavy duty, mutant freaky maha nutritional powerhouse in a gazillion ways you never even thought of. Eat ‘em. A lot. Longer version follows.

Greens Kick Cancer’s Ass

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (author of Eat To Live) discusses (in that book) why greens are the most nutrient-dense of all foods. Romaine, he says, “…is a rich powerhouse with hundreds of cancer-fighting phytonutrients that protect us from a variety of threatening illnesses…” (He goes on to mention that, “In a review of 206 human population studies, raw vegetable consumption showed the strongest protective effect against cancer of any beneficial food.”!)

Another Tiresome Litany of Nutrients

In SuperFoods: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life, Steven Pratt, M.D., and Kathy Matthews tell us that dark leafy greens give us a synergy of multiple nutrients/phytonutrients, lutein/zeaxanthin, beta-carotene, omega-3 fatty acids, glutathione, alpha lipoic acid, Vitamins C and E, B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, B6 folate), minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, and zinc), polyphenols, betaine. And that’s just for openers.

Green Tornado of Cleansing

David Wolfe, in his classic The Sunfood Diet Success System, says: “Green-leafed vegetables are always the best source of heavy alkaline minerals” calcium, magnesium, iron, etc… “Green-leafy vegetation is also an excellent detoxifier of the liver…The calcium, magnesium and iron in deep green and wild green vegetation bind with heavy metals, chemicals and chemical drugs and allow the body to wash them out as salts through the urine.”

A Chlorophyll Party in Your Veins

He also talks about the chlorophyll in greens: “Chlorophyll is the pigment in plants within which photosynthesis takes place. It absorbs the vibrant Sun energy and transforms it into plant energy. This energy is transferred directly to you when you eat chlorophyll-rich foods such as green-leafed vegetables.” Chlorophyll is a well-known blood and liver cleanser.

And: “The heart concentrates magnesium at a level 18 times greater than what is found in the blood. Magnesium is the primary alkaline mineral in chlorophyll. An abundance of greens in the diet strengthens the heart.” Lastly, he says: “Green leaves soothe the nerves and calm the body. Those with chronic back and muscle pains should be sure to eat plenty of green vegetables. Green leaves relieve pain. Green-leafy foods decrease the overall stress of the body and facilitate yoga practices.”

Protein and Fiber and Silica, Oh My!

Dark leafy greens are also very high in fiber, which not only has countless crucial health benefits, but also is the bulk that actually causes us to feel full! They also have these beautiful lightweight proteins called polypeptides that are great at building new tissue. And silica! Don’t even get me started on the silica! Greens are loaded with silica! Got silica coming out their ears! This you must have for strong, resilient bones and healthy hair, skin and nails. Pound-for-pound, and calorie-for-calorie, greens also have many times the amount of protein that steak does.

The Summing and the Eating Up

So, like I said, eat ‘em up. Woof ‘em down. Big, honkin’ mounds of ‘em. Mostly raw. Juice ‘em, stuff ‘em into your blender for green smoothies, make salads big enough to get lost in, chop ‘em up and put ‘em in wraps and roll-ups, have a bowl of them as a base for a healthy Mexicali feast (Romaine, tomatoes, avocado, raw corn niblets cut fresh off the cob, salsa [Seinfeld was right—say that again, just for fun: “Salsa!”], and, if you want some cooked stuff, some beans.) Hang 'em up all over your walls to keep away the vampires.

Well, okay, maybe not that last one.

Be Devious With Your Inner Child

And don’t tell me you hate greens. Why? Cuz’ everyone hates greens. They’re bitter, dull and nasty. But eating greens isn’t about eating greens. Eating greens is ALL about what you eat them WITH; it’s the “with” that makes them palatable. So, yummy raw dressings (like tahini-miso!), raw olives and cut up mangoes in your salads (for example). Blueberries and coconut in your smoothies. You get the idea. You have to artfully sneak them down yourself (the secret is thinking of yourself like a 5 year old). Works every time.

Attitudes for Ridiculous Health and Obnoxious Longevity PART TWO!

2009-06-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Okay y'all, here we go with PART TWO of my unabashedly non-foody post.

8) Quiet Mind. Longevity guru Peter Ragnar just quoted (on an interview I was listening to from The Best Day Ever—great site, but it is a paysite, FYI) research showing that we use up 85% of our body’s energy by our thinking! An herbalist I read about (can’t recall his name—sorry!) who is vibrant into his upper 90’s, attributed his superb health and longevity to, “A calm mind.” (NOTE: this is not the same as the not-worrying pointer, in PART ONE, below, or here, because a mind can be spinning frantically even with “positive,” enthusiastic things.) Learn the deep peace (and exponentially greater productivity) of a quiet, silent, spacious mind. Resources: The Journey of Awakening, by Ram Dass, The Renaissance of Psychology, by George Pransky

9) Mental Flexibility. As we age, our thinking tends to get smaller, more rigid, stiff, repetitious, stereotypical and predictable—our bodies follow. Break it up, regularly, always, daily, fiercely. Expose yourself to new ideas, weird people, funky angles, fresh experiences. Listen deeply and openly to people. Take the opposite side of a polarized issue you feel strongly about. Play with Rudolf Steiner’s technique of finding 12 perspectives on any given subject or idea.

Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” And Van Morrison said, “I shall never grow so old again.”

Most of all, find your way into meditation that opens you to touch the Source, the “sky of mind,” the unborn, inexhaustible source of life (see above Ram Dass link).

10) Disbelief. Stop believing in aging. Seriously. Enough with the aging, already. The new scientific field of epigenetics is showing how we AGE because we’re hypnotized to BELIEVE we must. Check out the work of Bruce Lipton. His book, The Biology of Belief or his website, which has many free podcasts of cool interviews with him.

12) Happiness, Joy and Love. Again, Bernard Jensen: “Happiness, joy and love bathe the nervous system to such an extent that it heals! It heals! It gets all the tissues well. You cannot be well unless these three things flow through you and work in your nervous system.”

13) Gratitude. An extremely health-giving disposition for humans. Usually, “I’m grateful for this or that particular THING” is hunky dory, but what you REALLY want to open yourself to is an omnidirectional, non-intellectual feeling-quality of gratitude, that you have no words for and you only notice later it was gratitude! For everything and nothing and unspeakable luscious Beingness. Here's a book on gratitude I've not read, but looks cool.

14) Magnanimous Spirit. Give, serve and help others. Unleash your own generous heart. (Be careful not to mistake this with codependency and caretaking, which is actually a compulsion [not a free choice]. In codependency, we may LOOK like we’re always helping others, but our focus is actually on ourselves getting loved and appreciated for all our saintly helpfulness. It comes from scarcity and an inability to know and express our needs directly. By contrast, true generosity and magnanimity come from being centered in our authentic feelings and giving from overflowing fullness.) I think Catherine Ponder has some fine things to say about generosity.

So cultivate these 14 ways of thinking, feeling and being, exercise smart, and eat super-clean and, Mack trucks running you over notwithstanding, you'll be tearing around doing cool stuff in this groovy world for a long, long time.

Attitudes for Outrageous Health and Obnoxious Longevity (Part One)

2009-06-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Hey! Aren’t I a food guy, a Diet Transformation Coach? What sort of non-foody post is this? Oh, the madness! ‘Tis anarchy!

Sorry. My bad.

But I’m digressing from food (for just 2 little blog posts!) to talk about the emotional piece of uber health. Because it’s so humungous. Ginormous. And other made-up words. So without further ado, here is PART ONE of the attitudes for massive health:

1) Know your innocence. Deep feelings of guilt make people sick. As kids, we interpreted any and all signs of unlove from our primary caretakers as being “our fault.” The child’s mind says: “I must be bad or they wouldn’t treat me this way.” Such beliefs can be brought into the sunlight of awareness and healed. Resources: Books by Bernie Seigel, A Course In Miracles (and books inspired by it, like Goodbye To Guilt).

2) Forgive. Old resentments and anger also make people sick. Forgiveness is a profound process to enter into. It typically can’t be done quickly, just because it “sounds like a good idea.” For forgiveness to be deep and life-changing, people usually must first move through the old, unfelt, painful emotions—anger and grief—about what happened to us. THEN we can move into true forgiveness. One good book is Forgiving the Unforgivable.

3) Heal Your Shame. America has been called a “shame-based culture.” Shame is different from guilt. Guilt says, “I deserve punishment for something, or things, I DID (even if I can’t remember or imagine what they could be.)” Shame says, “Who I AM is bad and uniquely flawed.” For working with shame, two fine books are: Healing the Shame That Binds You, by John Bradshaw, and There Is Nothing Wrong With You, by Cheri Huber.

4) Relationships. Give and receive love, care, affection, energy and attention. Engage and participate in peoples’ lives. Really “show up” for the people around you with full presence. Commit yourself to your friends’ lives. Strong social connection has been shown in numerous studies to be VERY highly correlated with great health and longevity. Check out Healthy At 100.

5) Purpose. Have a mission. Locate and feed your passion, whatever gives your life meaning. Check out The Power of Purpose. If you don’t have one, make one up and throw yourself into it.

6) Trust. This means letting go of worry! Chronic worry keeps the stress hormones (especially cortisol) coursing through our blood, and that tears us apart, wipes out DHEA (the youth hormone) and ages us QUICK. It’s possible to learn to take a step back and see worry as just a chronic habit, one that doesn’t actually have ANYTHING to do with what it appears to be about on any given day. Also, spirituality can give one a gut-level trust in an infinitely vaster Reality, and that trust is the supreme antidote to worry. A decent book is The Worry Cure. A cooler one is The Secret of Letting Go, by Guy Finley.

7) Slowness. Learn a new inner-asana, or posture, of NEVER being in a hurry “toward” anything, for any reason. Cultivate this by getting in touch with the dimension of yourself that knows that you and your life are ALREADY utterly whole and complete and magnificent right now, in this boundless present moment (“If you’re not whole withOUT it, you’re not whole WITH it”). There’s nowhere to get to. A good book: Slowing Down To the Speed of Life

The great Bernard Jensen said: “You’ll never be well until you get a quiet body, until you get a silent body, until you get a slow body. The busy body kills himself. He’s making the acids in his body.”

And Deepak Chopra said: “If the observation you’re making is, ‘I’m running out of time,’ then you actually start to run out of time! Even your biological clock speeds up!”

And Peter Ragnar: “Time pressure destroys the nervous system.”

Stay tuned for PART TWO!

Awesome Silly Little Idea

2009-05-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

Of all the devious tricks I teach my clients to get themselves to eat super healthy, this one sounds pretty silly and trivial, I know, but it works: You make a nifty little list of all your healthy meals and snacks and you literally POST it in your kitchen. On the fridge, on a cabinet door, whatever.

See the thing is, when you come home from work, or wherever,
and you're tired and crabby and in a low mood,
you're a different person. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
It is a well known fact that Mr. Hyde frowns upon broccoli and its ilk.

In these low moods, we don't remember what we know and it feels like
way too much work to TRY to remember. We just think very poorly.
We're like an extra in a George Romero movie, staggering
toward the Cornflakes. But that handy little list, staring
us right in our mouthbreathing face, takes the place of thinking.
It's like a little restaurant menu in your own kitchen.
Try it. Dr. Jekyll will feel so much better in the morning.

Required Reading

2009-05-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

Here are some excellent books to get educated and inspired about super-healthy eating. As I always say, nutritional education isn’t enough, on its own, to move you into a new lifestyle—but it HAS to be there. These are great places to start your journey. Or to refuel.

* Healthy at 100, John Robbins,
A terrific “big picture” book to start with. He tells us about 4 super-healthy cultures and reveals their secrets of extreme longevity and wellbeing.

* Eat to Live, Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
A lot of solid science supporting the power of whole foods to heal and regenerate us. (Oddly, he includes some dubious foods in his “recipes”—publishers often make authors do this, so that “average Americans” will buy the thing.)

* The Live Food Factor, Susan Schenck
The best book on raw food I’ve found so far. Packed with both the science and the how-to of the raw food way of eating. Very impressive book.

* Conscious Eating, Gabriel Cousens
A huge book, but, if you really get into this way of life, an amazing resource.

* Vibrant Health, Norman Walker
He’s an “oldy but a goody”—a pioneer GIANT in the field who has withstood the test of time. His stuff will at first come across as very dated and antiquated, not to mention a little corny, but his overall message is superb. Plus, he “walked the walk,” in no uncertain terms, dying at age 97 in a fricking SURFING accident!

* Bragg Healthy Lifestyle - Vital Living to 120!, Paul Bragg
Ditto everything I said about Walker, above (except the dying by surfing part…but wouldn’t that be weird if Bragg did, too?)

Motivation: Change your genetics

2009-05-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

I know. I love a good, "But it's all in my genes" excuse just as much as the next guy. Or gal. Who doesn't enjoy a little good, old fashioned biological predestination along with their morning smoothie?
Alas, another study has come out showing that simple lifestyle changes can dramatically CHANGE our genes for the better. A measly 3 months of eating plants, exercising and stress reduction "turned off" 453 genes and "turned on" 48. Dig it:

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1628897920080618

How cool is that?

The study was done by Dr. Dean Ornish.

And if you want more and even cooler info about how your genetics do NOT predetermine ANYTHING, check this out:

Beautiful Quote

2009-04-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

Here's an awesome quote I found in an issue of The Sun magazine. It's relevant because many people, when they transform their eating, come up against difficult emotions and self-worth issues.:

"So much that was beautiful and so much that was hard to bear. Yet whenever I showed myself ready to bear it, the hard was directly transformed into the beautiful."

—Etty Hillesum

Jubb's Coconut Orgasm Soup

2009-04-22T16:53:00.000-07:00

Folks, this is not only the yummiest raw soup recipe I've ever come across, it's the yummiest raw FOOD recipe—period! Seriously. It's from Lifefood Recipe Book – Living on Life Force, by Annie Padden Jubb & David Jubb, and I hope it's okay to put it here on my blog. It's more free advertising for their book than, y'know, um, plagiarism!

We (me and my ravishing wife, Carolyn) have tried three recipes from this book so far and they've ALL been amazing. This is my and my wife's favorite raw food recipe book ever. (Plus, I've heard many interviews with David Jubb and Annie Jubb, and they're both very fun and informative to listen to.)

It takes my wife and I, double teaming, about 30 minutes to make (but then we also double the recipe). Without further ado:

• 3 medium organic tomatoes, thinly sliced and halved
• ½ onion, sliced and chopped
• 7 ½ cups water
• 1 c. coconut meat (fresh or dry shredded)
• 6 tablespoons miso
• 1 carrot, finely shredded
• 5 tablespoons Dr. Bronner’s mineral bouillion
• 1 zucchini, finely shredded
• 3 – 4 tablespoons raw tahini (or ½ c. ground sesame seed)
• ¼ cup dulse, cut into small pieces
• 3 – 4 tablespoons almond or flaxseed oil or coconut butter
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne powder to taste
• optional garnish: raw goat cheese

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a pot on stove. Never use aluminum pots! Use a fork to mash the tomato and onion into the soup to release their flavors. Warm slowly over medium flame for 5-7 minutes. Stir your love into the warming soup. When warm, remove and serve at once. The soup should be warm to the touch, but NOT too hot to put your finger into (if it’s too hot it will destroy the enzymes and many other nutrients). Onion should still be raw and crunchy.

Our observations, after making it four or five times:

• Some of that water you use should be the coconut water. This adds a nice sweet undercurrent which is highly yummy. We found the amount of water listed in the recipe to be way too much (like, by 4 times) for our tastes (we prefer it nice and thick, like a hearty raw stew). I'd recommend starting with just 2 or 3 cups, and then, if you want it more brothy, you can add more.

• Coconuts – you may need to open a few until you find one that has fairly thick meat. Scoop it out onto cutting board and chop it up a bunch, like it’s almost shredded. The "dry shredded" option listed above sounds pretty gross to me. The coconut makes it. For opening instructions, click here, or here (if those aren't enough, punch "how to open a young coconut" into Google; you'll get a zillion options).

• It’s much easier to make this soup if you first put your liquid (water and coconut water) in the pot and dissolve the miso, tahini, bouillion, and coconut butter (or whatever oil you choose). Get that dissolved first (otherwise it’s hard to mix it all up and you can end up with a glob of miso in your mouth). Then dump in all the other stuff.

• Soak the dulse for 15 minutes or so – it’s like any seaweed, which is hard and crumbly, so you soak it first in some water and then cut it up on a cutting board.

Also, our co-op doesn't carry Dr. Bronner's Mineral Bouillion, but just ask someone at the store for something close. We've used different vegan bouilliony things.

PS A million thanks to my pal Sheila for typing up a ton of this recipe. I'm a plodding hunt & peck typist. Maybe she'll share my jailtime for copyright infringement! We can do Sudoku's together! Maybe our friends will bring us this soup with a file hidden in it! A raw file!

You Are Energy

2009-04-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

On my website I have several free articles originally published by small health newspapers in the Twin Cities area (I wasn’t quite as tight an editor back then, but I think there’s still some nifty stuff in them). Check ‘em out. Below are a few excerpts from one called, Cultivate Your Energy Body. Enjoy!

“…by eating lots of raw, or “live” foods, we literally consume bioelectric life force. The enzymes in live plant foods have been shown to be little reservoirs of life force. In addition, the water in raw foods has a unique “colloidal energy” known as zeta potential, having to do with positively charged particles in the water. Actual, hard-science instrumentation measures a potent electromagnetic field surrounding and permeating raw foods. For reasons like these, many raw foodies say that eating raw foods is “eating sunlight.”

…In his book, Biophoton: The Light in Our Cells, researcher Marco
Bischof says, “The biophoton light is stored in the cells of the organism, and a dynamic web of light constantly released and absorbed may connect cells, tissues and organs within the body.”

…cultivating an energy body is about cultivating a body that is clean and light. This is a body with clean lymph, pristine extra cellular fluid bathing all your cells. In this body, cells shine. Energy flows freely. This is why people who eat rejuvenative diets gradually eat less and less food, often only eating two, and sometimes one, light meal per day. Their bodies are clear, light and beautifully efficient. They’re living more on energy than on food.

… If our bodies are organized by and in energy fields, then our vision of dietary health must go far beyond mere concerns about, “this vitamin” or “that antioxidant.” We must begin to learn about conducting energy, or light. I believe that the most profound levels of conducting energy must involve a deep process of emotional opening (which, of course, is not the topic of this article). But the most foundational level—that’s all about what we eat!”

Gabriel Cousens Quote on Emotional Eating

2009-04-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today I have a quote for you from Gabriel Cousens. His hefty book, Conscious Eating, has been one of my nutritional "Bibles" for years. Here's a passage from that book:

“For many people, eating may be a mechanism for suppressing a variety of feelings, avoiding sexual tensions, and/or avoiding certain painful aspects of their lives. Some people eat in an attempt to make themselves feel good. Others may eat in order to deaden themselves to their feelings or their lives in general. Some overeat in a conscious effort to self-destruct. For others, eating becomes an addictive way of handling life. Some are so afraid of their inner life that when God calls, they would rather reach for another plate of ice cream than heed this call. Overeating is a way of numbing oneself to life…

“For many people, overcoming their food transferences and food issues can require intense and difficult work that takes them to the very core of their psychological beings…"

All I wanna know is, who eats ice cream on a plate? You KNOW you're a health nut when you don't even REMEMBER how normal people eat ice cream! (The plate of ice cream comes, I presume, after you've had enough spoons full of pizza...) ;-)

I kid because I love!

Phasers

2009-04-08T18:55:00.001-07:00

About 20% of my clients are “phasers.” Not the Star Trek weapon, but people whose healthy eating phases wildly (even though they “know everything” about nutrition, and might even be professionals—chiropractors, nutritionists, etc.). They eat super clean for a couple months or weeks and then they eat nasty for just as long.

If this is your pattern, there are plenty of things you can do in the domain of ACTION—foundations to build, habits to put into place, all sorts of little “tricks of the trade.” But the real change in this phasing-pattern comes PSYCHOLOGICALLY. I observe that there are essentially three keys to inner-transformation. Applied to this issue—phasing with healthy eating—they go like this:

1) Intention—Access the clear intention to SEE what’s really going on with you, psychologically, with your on-again-off-again eating. Really WANT IT.

2) Not Knowing—Dare the humility of really NOT KNOWING why you play out this pattern. If you’ve done a bunch of therapy or read some self-helpish books, you probably have a lot of theories as to why you vacillate with your eating, but if you REALLY knew, the pattern would shift. So free-fall into “I don’t have a CLUE what I’m up to with this pattern!” As Zen Master Seung Sahn Said, “Only don’t know.” (It’s the title of one of his books, too.) This disposition is porous and open and available to see and learn new things about why you do what you do.

3) Consciousness—Those two—Intention and Not Knowing—lead inexhorably to becoming CONSCIOUS of what your pattern is all about, what you’re “playing out” and so on. There are LEVELS of seeing. You can see something in your psychology in an abstract, intellectual way for YEARS without REALLY seeing it at all. But when you see some inner pattern in a deep, direct, visceral way, that pattern absolutely will shift (or your realtionship TO it will shift, with the same end result—powerful change).

What To Do About Unhealthy People Around You

2009-04-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

It’s common for a person who’s just started eating healthy to try to make their kids or spouses eat healthy, too. This is a profoundly bad idea. Doomed to failure.

It’s a little like with the airplane masks on an airplane. The instructions are: Secure your own mask before helping your kids on with their’s (you won’t help them very effectively if you’re unconscious). Same with healthy eating. First get yourself firmly, rock-solidly grounded in rejuvenative eating. Live it, for real. Get to the point where you’re shining with vibrant energy and glowing with deep cellular vitality. They’ll see your radiant eyes and skin, they’ll notice your increased energy, your clear mind. You’ll even smell better! Even little kids (actually, especially little kids) will pick it up energetically.

And when do you finally begin preaching, “educating,” and reforming your housemates? Well never, actually. You’ll only help them discover the power of regenerative eating by attraction and example. That’s it.

I know it takes preternaturally healthy boundaries to do this (for more on this, check out al-anon literature and meetings!), but ATTRACTION really is the only thing that works. If it’s in their “karma” or “destiny” or whatever, they’ll be drawn. But the more you seem self-righteous or judgemental or ANYTHING weird or unhappy or complicated about their eating, the more you create a power struggle—polarized resistance, defiance and so on. In other words, eat and let eat.

(Of course, if your child is young enough that it works to just tell them what to eat, and your spouse agrees with you, and you’re good at making healthy stuff yummy to a child’s palate, then there’s no issue there.)

Potent Quotes from Cheri Huber

2009-04-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

I think that, for anyone in the amazing process of transforming how they eat, the wisdom of Cheri Huber is indispensable.

“Most people hold an unshakable belief that the primary reason they are ‘good’ is that they punish themselves when they are ‘bad.’…The process of self-hate is so much a part of the average person that we don’t even recognize it. We think we’re just doing the things that will insure we’ll be good. It’s normal, we say. Everybody does it. Or should.”

“Any time a voice is talking to you that is not talking with love and compassion, DON’T BELIEVE IT!…If the voice is not loving, don’t listen to it, don’t follow it, don’t believe it. NO EXCEPTIONS! Even if it says it’s ‘for your own good,’ it is not. It’s for its own good, not yours. This is the same as when parents talk to you in a hateful tone of voice ‘for your own good.’ It’s for their good. It makes them feel better. It does not make you better. (And it does not make you behave ‘better’.)”

Green Smoothies (or sometimes red or brown or blue)!

2009-03-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

In a post a while back I listed the ingredients I used in a special “mood” smoothie. Since then, I’ve had a few requests for a “normal,” everyday smoothie. Here it is:

1) Fruit as a base. Can be a young coconut (water and meat) and/or a banana and/or an orange. Any fruit, really. Grapes, apple, frozen organic berries (yes, freezing ‘em wipes out a bunch of the enzymes, but still pretty healthy), pineapple, mango, whatever. Plus I always add Goji berries, no matter what other fruit is in there. I peel and toss in a whole lemon pretty often, too.

2) Dark leafy greens. I rotate kale, spinach, collards, dandelion greens, and sometimes weirder, freakier greens (escarole, etc.).

3) A handful of raw, organic nuts and/or seeds. For nuts: walnuts, pecans (Taoists are big on pecans!), almonds, pine nuts, Brazil nuts. For seeds: chia (soaked overnight, about 2 tablespoons), hemp, sunflower, pumpkin.

4) Water.

5) If I'm NOT using a young coconut, I'll add a couple tablespoons of raw coconut oil (Tropical Traditions).

6) An avocado (peeled, seeded). Add this last, cuz' it thickens the thing so much, and so quickly, that it makes blending tougher.

7) Cinnamon, mon (a rasta comment)

DIRECTIONS
Start with a small amount of greens and gradually build, minimizing the fruit little by little until you find that line where it still tastes good but is not a sugar bomb. Don’t worry. That line will move (toward more and more veggies) as you get healthier and healthier. The big, big super crazy health is in the greens, so you want as many of those bad boys as are palatable. Keep edging it up.

In a hurry, that’s enough. That’s a perfectly fine, basic, respectable smoothie. However, mine have gotten a little fancier over the years. Here’s what ELSE might go into mine (bearing in mind they’re different every day), in ADDITION to the above.

MARKS FANCY PANTS EXTRAS
1) Fresh ginger, an inch or so.

2) Burdock root (about 4 inches)

3) Stinging nettle decoction for my liquid. Packed with massive, disease-crushing minerals. Put 1 cup in a 1 quart mason jar, fill with boiling water before bed, let it steep, covered, over night (got this from Patrick Timpone on One Radio).

4) Other veggies. Whatever’s around. Broccoli, bell peppers, green beans, carrot, whatever. Plus I always add celery. (Bernard Jensen revealed how the organic sodium in the celery helps the organic calcium from the greens stay “in solution” in the body so the cells can actually use it.). Oh, and very commonly I add some beet.

5) Occasionally I’ll add some raw egg yolks.

6) Maca. About 2 tablespoons.

7) All sorts of PRL’s beautiful, insanely-pure superfoodish supplement-ish things. These are always changing, but lately it’s been: dark cherry concentrate, pomegranate concentrate, colostrum, tocotrienals.

There you have it, folks. Enjoy!

Tao of Diet Transformation

2009-03-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

A client gave me the book The Tao of Pooh for a gift a while ago, and a few lines seemed so appropriate to the process of overhauling how we eat. Well actually, the whole book does. But I might get in legal trouble if I transcribe the entire book here. Plus it would make for a rather long post. Plus, too much work. Pooh ("the most effortless bear") would never do such a thing.

"...when you try too hard, it doesn't work...The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard—one that thinks too much...This mind tries too hard, wears itself out, and ends up weak and sloppy [and, I might add, directing you too binge on Cheetoes]."

By the way, on an unrelated note, here's a really smart interview with John Robbins:

http://www.garynull.com/Documents/spectrum/interview_with_john_robbins.htm

Use the Zealots!

2009-03-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

When regular people want to start eating healthy, and they pick up a nutrition book, they often find themselves with a book by a health fanatic. Such books are very common. Most of us, when confronted by a nutritonal zealot, ditch the book and look for saner fare. Natural enough. We feel the rigidity, the unsettling fervor, and we naturally recoil. But I think it’s wise to come at it differently. Like my chiro pal Michael Nokken counseled me long ago: “Learn from the zealots!”

Consider it, most of the big advances we’ve gotten in any field came from people who were zealots—a little nutty about what they were into. Who else is going to spend every waking minute of their lives doing all the work and the research and the experimentation? You and I are too busy, y’know, having lives and stuff. The martial art world would not have been revolutionized if not for the extreme explorations of Bruce Lee or the Gracie brothers. Check out Mozart’s life or Balanchine’s or Balzac’s. I don’t know much about Einstein’s life, but I’ll bet he was pretty “fanatical” too (if his haircare habits are any indication).

The point is that we can USE the findings and knowledge of zealots without, ourselves, actually BECOMING a zealot. We can, as the 12 steppers say, “Take what we like and leave the rest.” Raw foodists, macrobiotics people and Ayurveda folks can all sound pretty flakey and “out there.” But so what!? That doesn’t necessarily mean their information is unsound. Dig through their dogma and ideology and excavate their research, carefully weigh the arguments and evidence they present on their own merit (no matter how goofily (or scarily) they convey it) and do some experimentation in your own private laboratory—your own body. Soon you may find yourself feeling an affectionate humor toward the health zealots of the world. And even receiving the fruits of their albeit extreme labors with gratitude.

Break it down to get it done and eat clean!

2009-02-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

One of the oldest secrets is to achieving things is this: When you’re trying to accomplish a task, break it down into small, component parts. Old or not though, not many people apply it to transforming their eating. Instead, for most of us, building a new lifestyle around food just seems like one, big, daunting task.

So let’s take just one part of that task—finding new foods (and yes, that is actually only ONE part!)—and break that down. From now on, instead of thinking, “Oh God, I’ve got to start discovering new healthy things to eat,” I want you start thinking in terms of these four, concrete action steps. To wit:

1) Get a couple of decent cookbooks. This can be library, on-line (used or new), or a bookstore. Or, the next time you’re over at your super-healthy friend’s house, you can slip a mickey in his kale juice and then load up your arms with his books. Yes, there are zillions of healthy recipes on-line, but since you might not know yet how to assess healthy versus only SEEMING healthy, it could be safest to go with a book that’s well known to be reliable. I recommend getting raw food recipe books, not because I teach 100% raw food diet (I don’t), but because most people could use way, way MORE raw plant foods in their diet.

A couple of good ones:

http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Food-Made-Easy-People/dp/1570671753/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235348672&sr=1-1
Super convenient and tasty recipes.

http://www.amazon.com/LifeFood-Recipe-Book-Living-Force/dp/1556434596/ref=pd_sim_b_62
This one has some of the yummiest recipes I’ve ever found!

http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Smart-Raw-Kate-Wood/dp/0757002617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235349336&sr=1-1
Also a nice, useable little book.

2) Make a date in your planner or Blackberry or stone tablets to spend a half hour or so looking through that/those cookbooks searching out yummy sounding recipes. Clever sneaky hint to get yourself to actually DO it: Tie this activity in with some enjoyable activity: Laying at the beach, sitting in a bath or in front of a cozy fire.

3) Schedule in your shopping trip. Fun hint: Make THIS activity fun by getting sloppy staggering drunk before you go. (Kidding!!!)

4) The last step to schedule in is, of course, time in the kitchen, making stuff. Two ways to make this less of a chore: First, listen to cool stuff (on your iPod or whatever). You can even listen to inspirational and educational health podcasts and so on. Here’s a link to a site with tons of free interview podcasts. I recommend Gabriel Cousens, Lindsey Duncan, Patricia Bragg, Robert Marshall, Douglas Graham, Andreas Moritz and Annie Jubb.

http://www.oneradionetwork.com/health_-_podcasts/

The other way to get yourself to work (play) in the kitchen is, gasp, put a TV in there and rent a fun show or movie to watch while you chop and stuff. Hey, whatever works!

DHEA & Hormone Health

2008-12-05T19:32:00.000-08:00

Listened today to a cool interview with Dr. Norman Shealy. He has some nice simple advice on how to keep DHEA levels up naturally—without TAKING it, never a wise choice, according to him. Here's what he says to do:

Take, daily:

Vit. C, 2 grams

MSM, 1 gram

60 mcg of Molybdenum

6 mg Beta 1-3 Glucans

Magnesium chloride lotion (I've heard many folks talking about this lately as a powerful way to actually get magnesium into your body in an absorbable way)

The last thing on Dr. Shealy's list is Natural Progesterone Cream (from wild yams), but Dr. Theresa Dale says such things are bad in the long run and, for whatever reason, she convinced me.

Dr. Shealy says that these things, combined, can raise DHEA levels 250%. DHEA has been called a "superhormone." It is widely regarded as a powerful anti-aging hormone, and low levels of DHEA are correlated with loss of muscle mass, bone density and reduction in immune system function.

But I'll tell you, after years of study, where I come out is this: The bottom line for hormone health is essentially like this:

*Make inner-peace and calm and happiness priority number one

*Get enough good quality sleep

*Resistance training

*Good EFAs (Essential Fatty Acids)

*Clean, rejuvenative diet of whole foods, mostly raw plants

Remember, we're only as healthy as our hormones. Hormones are key!

Happy Smoothies

2008-10-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

So last week, my wife was all PSMee and I was all stressed out with no hormonal excuse whatsoever (just general, all-purpose neurosis, I guess) so I found myself modifying our daily smoothies specifically for mood healing, calming and upliftment. Here's what I did: To your usual smoothie ingredients, add a fistful of Prozac capsules, half a bottle of Valium and two tumblers of your favorite vodka, chilled. Blend.

Kidding! I kid because I love! Seriously though, here it is:

The base was a young Thai coconut, and I added another tablespoon of raw, virgin coconut oil. WHY? The medium chain triglycerides burn nice for good, clear energy, and raw coconut oil has been shown to tonify the thyroid.

I added Whey Protein from Premier Research Labs (also called Quantum Nutrition Labs); an exquisitely clean, organic product, dried at low temperatures to preserve enzymes and delicate proteins. WHY? The more stressed we are, the more protein we need. Its effect can be "grounding" or "anesthetizing," depending upon who you to talk to.

I added 2 heaping tablespoons (remember, this is a smoothie for two), of maca. WHY? Maca is an adaptogen, which means it brings us toward homeostasis. It also harmonizes and tonifies the hormones in general.

http://www.peruvian-maca.com/

I added an avocado, chia seeds and pumpkin seeds. WHY? EFAs (Essential Fatty Acids) have been shown, in oodles of research, to lift mood and ease mild to medium depression. They are also crucial to hormone health (the body makes its hormones out of fats).

I added Premier Research Labs' Max Stress Nano B, a super absorbable, amazing B complex. WHY? B for stress, big time.

http://www.healthproducts-usa.com/probest.htm

I tossed in some Himalayan Sea Salt: WHY? The adrenal glands absolutely need good salt (with its full mineral complex).

I threw in some Premier Research Labs Nutritional Flakes: WHY? More good B vitamins and more protein, too.

I added 3 raw egg yolks: WHY? The choline in egg yolks is vital for neurotransmitter function. Plus, as mentioned, EFAs and protein.

I stuffed tons-o'greens in: WHY? Greens are full of magnesium (among other things, calcium, iron, chlorophyll, etc.), and magnesium has always been known as the CALMING mineral.

Lastly, against my better judgment, I threw in 2,000 mg of L-Tyrosine, 1,000 mg of L-Phenylalanine and 1,000 mg of L-Glutamine. These are amino acids known to improve moods and fight depression and anxiety (usually, I'm not into supplements that are "fragments" and "isolates" like these, but I made an exception).

Actually, believe it or not, there was other stuff in there, too, but this post is getting awful long.

So, did it work? I have no idea! We both felt saner and happier by the evening, but that could also have been the power of placebo. Or any number of things. But I'll bet over time, these bad boys (the smoothies) would perk up just about anybody's mood to the point of obnoxiousness!

Absurdly Easy Snack

2008-10-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

I only do one kind of snack: Absurdly easy ones. Plain old "easy" snacks don't cut it. Absurdly or nothing. It's all about the absurdity. Here's a new one I stumbled on to. Ready with pen and paper? Okay. Drum roll, please. Figs and raw olives. Together at last. Crazy mad yumminess.

You buy the dried figs (I like the mission ones) and soak 'em overnight, or all day, in a glass of water (fridge or not). Or if you're Warren Buffet, you can buy the fresh figs (for the 8 days that they're available each year). Then you scarf, along with the raw olives. Take a bite of a fig, and pop an olive in your mouth. Chew. Swoon. Not rocket science.

I go for the raw Kalamatas. If you're in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area, they've started carrying raw olives at The Wedge Co-op. Otherwise you can get them on-line.

http://www.sunfood.com/Catalog/CategorySearchResultsView.aspx?CategoryId=0&SearchTerm=olives&Cid=

It's all about the sweet and salty combo. They're just like Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, except not at all. But darn yummy all the same.

Healthy Eating and the Organized Life

2008-10-17T16:34:00.000-07:00

Many things stop people from eating clean—emotional issues, lack of a smart transition plan, lack of knowledge. But one of the common obstacles that people often overlook is simply life chaos! Many people have lifestyles that are so disorganized that there’s just no way they’re gonna successfully revolutionize their eating and make it stick.

When this is your obstacle (or one of them!), I recommend both an inner and an outer approach. The inner approach has to do with shifting your thinking, the “pace” of your thinking, and cultivating a slow, quiet mind. It also includes the usual suspects of stress reduction tactics. I’ll talk about all that in a future entry. The outer approach has to do with concrete actions to start bringing order, structure, balance and efficiency to your daily life. Sometimes it’s wise to work on this kind of stuff before transforming your diet.

Here are a couple links to sites that might give you some cool ideas and inspiration about organizing your life. Because an organized (or at least more organized) life makes transforming your eating, and all the simple habits of a rejuvenative diet, so much smoother, easier and happier.

This one is a fairly long but groovy talk by David Allen, my favorite life organizing guru.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/2/2/my-favorite-productivity-expert-speaks-at-google.aspx

And here’s David Allen’s official site;

http://www.davidco.com/

And one more site with some good ideas:

http://zenhabits.net/

Just Rewards

2008-10-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

I work a lot with rewards in my coaching work with people. They work. By fully acknowledging and affirming the things you accomplish toward clean eating, small and large, you literally make yourself stronger, fueling yourself for further accomplishment. Just like if you were coaching a young child.

By contrast, not really celebrating your achievements weakens your resolve. It’s like driving with one foot on the brake pedal. Plus rewards just add a quality of lightness to the whole process of diet transformation. So do like this: Sit down and make a list of cool rewards. I suggest two lists, actually, one of rewards that cost money, such as:

* getting a massage
* buying yourself a CD or a book

* a half-day at a spa

And one list of rewards that don’t cost money, like:

* a day at the beach
* a long bath with some “guilty pleasure” magazines that you don’t usually let yourself indulge in
* a couple hours browsing in a cool used bookstore

Your lists should include both small and large rewards.

Then, come up with some landmarks of clean eating: having found a certain number of delicious, clean dishes that you love, going a week without eating refined sugar, completing a fast or cleanse, sticking to your menu plan for a certain stretch of time, whatever. Now match them up, the landmarks with the rewards. This is one of the obvious—but nevertheless potent—“tricks of the trade” to play your own psychology like a flute. Watch your rejuvenative eating snowball like magic!

Green Smoothies

2008-10-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

The big craze in the raw food movement these days (or one of the big crazes) is green smoothies. And here’s a craze that earns its craziness. I’m telling you, these things—green smoothies—are a supersonic, turbo-charged, double-barreled, stealth weapon in the game of eating a regenerative diet and gaining outrageous health (while keeping your day job). Green smoothies combine mega-health plus dazzling ease and convenience plus over-the-top yumminess.

Here’s what you do: Throw fruit and a bunch of dark leafy greens in a blender. Blend. Drink. Take a nap. Watch an episode of Scrubs, despite Zach Braff’s annoyingness. Okay, the nap and TV part isn’t actually part of green smoothies per se. I added that.

What a lightning fast and deliriously scrumptious way to drench your body with ridiculous nutrition—enzymes, minerals (they are mineral-o’-ramas!), oxygen, chlorophyll, vitamins, protein, fiber, phytochemicals up the yin yang and EFAs (Essential Fatty Acids, for those keeping score at home). It’s a party in your cells! Green smoothies are big, two-fisted salads in a glass—orgies-o’-rejuvenation!

For the record, dark leafy greens (kale, spinach, collards, dandelion greens, etc.) are the healthiest things you can put in your body. More on this on another post. Raw foodies have been drinking these concoctions for decades, but the recent holy bible on green smoothies is a book called Green For Life by Victoria Boutenko.

Green smoothies can be as quick and easy as a banana or two, a couple leafs of kale and some purified water. Or a half a bag of frozen, organic berries (way healthier than banana) and a handful of spinach (ditto the H2o). Start with less greens and gradually increase over the weeks, as your taste adapts. A couple stalks of celery are also huge for health. The organic sodium is heavily alkalizing and it also helps your body absorb and use the calcium from all the greens. I usually add raw pumpkin seeds (zinc, EFA’s), an avocado and all sorts of other veggies (i.e. not just green leafy ones).

Last, you can also throw tons of other wacky, superfoody stuff in there, too—goji berries, maca, spirulina, supergreenfood powders, Big Macs, etc. I also like to add cayenne, ginger and cinnamon. Well, okay, maybe the Big Macs might not be such a great idea.

The Great Paradox (for Success in Transforming Your Eating)

2008-10-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

Tons of books tell us how important it is to have a clear vision of anything we want to create in our lives—like a clean way of eating. But here’s the paradox: Yes, you need to have a clear vision of what you want; but you also have to be merrily un-attached to that vision.

Sports psychologists get paid big bucks teaching athletes not to take winning too seriously. The ancient Samurai warriors trained themselves to be indifferent to winning or losing. Recovering alcoholics are cautioned against “white knuckling it.” Why for?

Because if we’re too attached to a goal that means that, on some level, we’re actually scared of NOT getting it. And fear magnetically pulls us in the direction of the very thing we’re afraid of (okay, that MAY be a paraphrase from Master Po, one of Kwai Chang Kane’s wise old teachers in the 70’s show, Kung Fu. Master Po wore scary white contact lenses!).

So, oddly enough, if we’re too invested in eating healthy, we’re almost guaranteeing our failure. The art, then, is to balance laser-like intention with a playful humor about the whole thing. Both must be there. To transition to a super healthy way of eating, you need a clear vision of exactly what you want (in terms of vibrant health) but you also must know that nothing ultimate depends on it. Your essential wholeness, okayness or lovableness is not at stake. That is innate and untouchable. There are many cool ways to get in touch with this "knowing." Meditation is one of the best. As the old saying goes, “If you’re not whole without it, you’re not whole with it.”

This exquisite balance makes you adaptable, resilient and tenacious as you learn to eat cleaner and cleaner. So transition to a radiantly healthy eating lifestyle, but always wear your transition as a loose gown.