Unfollow

I want you to unfollow me. I strive to be the anti-influencer. I am the alternative Internet non-presence.

If you are sick of addictive and stupid social media and it's tribalism and radicalization, un-follow me. And by un-follow, I mean think of me when you feel compelled to use toxic social media. Let me turn you off from that completely. It may save your life. It will definitely save your rational, thinking brain.

The irony of it all is that if you agree with me, ignore me. Actively.

But still read this blog.

The End.

Probabilities

For what it's worth, I have decided to throw my lot in with the majority of people who believe in SCIENCE, not the tiny minority of self proclaimed conspiracy theorists who are convinced COVID is a hoax and vaccines don't work.

There are a couple of possibilities here. 1. The vast majority of scientists are right. 2. The vast majority of scientists are in a collective conspiracy, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The odds are against the conspiracy theorists. But if, by some miniscule chance, they are actually correct, I will take my lumps. I have absolutely no worry whatsoever that I will be taking any lumps, at least not from the mainstream science camp. You never know what the irrational and emotionally driven radical extremists are going to do, but you can pretty easily avoid them.

The End.

Vegan Diet and COVID

There have not been too many studies on the benefits of a healthy diet for protecting against COVID infection severity and duration.

But there is THIS ONE.

If it's backed up by future research, vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian diets appear to be protective against COVID.

In no way whatsoever does that imply that you should not get a COVID vaccine. Let me be very clear - you should DEFINITELY get a COVID vaccine.

The End.

Dumb People

People are getting dumber exponentially, because of social media. It amazes me how much faith and credibility people put into information they obtain on social media. When I was a graduate student in Journalism school, one of the core tenets we learned about media audiences is that they rate friends and family as the number one most credible source of information, universally. So that's why people believe stupid things when their stupid friends (who also probably got the information from a stupud friend) share stupid information on social media. How often have you seen a quote from a famous person memed on social media and believed that person actually said it. 99.9% of the time it's completely made up.

Plant Based Thanksgiving

We had planned to have a 100% vegan Thanksgiving get together. But the omnivores in the family could not shed the yolk of convention and decided they will bring meaty side dishes to satisfy their internalized narratives about the holiday.

So, turkeys will, unfortunately, die for some family members this week. We had hoped to keep it humane, but alas...

I don't know if I should share the premonition I had that everyone who eats turkey this Thanksgiving will be stricken by a serious avian flu that is currently raging through the domesticated turkey flock. I don't think I will, because it's likely that my predictive visions hold no water. And that would just alarm people.

Fingers crossed.

Diet and Disease

It's pretty much doctrine in nutrition science that eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) will kill you. It takes a long time, but very few people on this diet of refined carbs and fats live long enough to die of old age. They most often die of cancer and heart disease, which are awful ways to die. Just ask anyone who suffers from those diseases.

The only way to beat the odds and improve the likelihood of dying relatively painlessly at the end of a long and healthy high-quality life is to adhere to a whole food plant based (WFPB) diet. If you're skeptical about that, the science doesn't care. Facts matter and there is no debate among scientists (except those underwritten by industrial SAD food producers, unsurprisingly) that eating more fruit, vegetables, raw nuts, and whole grains prevents (and reverses) many chronic diseases and prolongs life.

It's super easy to eat a WFPB diet and it doesn't require any special tools or caloric restrictions, other than not eating anything that's not a whole plant food. Or, if it's easier to remember, simply not eating any food derived from something that had a mother. Boom. Easy peasy.

Now, most people reading this are not going to adopt a WFPB way of eating for a variety of dumb reasons, in spite of the massive health benefits. These people will think they are choosing to continue eating the SAD of their own free will. But it's actually big government and corporate messaging that beguiles people into following a diet that will slowly but absolutely kill them. It doesn't really matter if they have free will or not. The point is they will continue to go on slowly poisoning themselves with inflammatory SAD foods until the damage is irreversible, and then they will actively die.

It's just sad and pathetic is all...that horrible, preventable death will take many lives before the stricken will even have a chance to remedy it.

On the bright side, almost all of those who transition to WFPB eating immediately begin to heal, reverse inflammation, and prevent or reverse chronic diseases. I'm living proof.

I am almost 54 years old and I have the health of a 25 year old, four years after switching to a 100% plant based diet (a less strict version of WFPB eating that allows some vegan junk food now and then because...you know...life is literally too short to not enjoy some ice cream or a cheeseburger now and then - and yes, there are very delicious vegan versions of these now!). I fully plan to live 50 more years, assuming I don't get hit by a bus or Republican right wing extremists don't take over and start disappearing granola-type, peace-loving vegans like me.

Do you know who isn't going to live 50 more years? You, if you keeping eating sh!tty animal based foods known (by science!) to cause horrible, deadly chronic diseases.

A good day to you.

Cog Diss

I'm getting a certification in mental health integrative medicine that focuses a lot on nutrition. Unfortunately, the data it's based on is really out of date and doesn't discourage meat eating for all the reasons we now know it should be discouraged.

I'm struggling with that. I'll eventually need to pass a test on the material and so I'll have to answer some questions with answers I know are just plain wrong, just to pass the test. That makes me feel yucky.

Things Continue to be Excellent

My brain power continues to be maximized on the whole food, plant based diet I have been following for almost 3.5 years now. My weight is down to a nearly all time low (in my adult memory). I feel fantastic. I won't have empirical data to support my subjective experience until after my annual physical, likely in July. But based on my strength during exercise, I expect the blood work will support my lived experience.

Many people doubt or distrust the whole food, plant based vegan diet for health promotion. There are two reasons for this. The first is mass confusion about nutrition in the mainstream media. Even though no scientific study as ever concluded that eating LESS fruits and vegetables is good for your health, there is still a cognitive dissonance about animal based foods and whether they are unhealthy. Animal foods are unhealthy (SOURCE), but the mainstream media, with its "fair and balanced" doctrine, perpetrates a belief that the science is still ambiguous about the harm animal foods do to the human body.

At baseline, the ideal diet for optimal health is the whole food, plant based diet (SOURCE). The introduction of any animal based foods - at all - increases the risk for chronic diseases. That's not to say people eating a whole food, plant based diet won't ever get a chronic disease. But it is to say that the risk is the lowest it can possibly be if you eat a whole food, plant based diet (SOURCE).

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy theories seem to be all the rage right now. So, I'll go ahead and add mine to the mix.

Nearly half of Americans are clinically and collctively psychotic and the American industrial food system is to blame.

That's it.

The Battle for Structure

We marriage and family therapists often have to engage in what we call a Battle for Structure with clients. It's kind of a pre-therapy intervention we do with clients to maximize their engagement with therapy - a way of non-verbally getting the client to take personal responsibility for engaging in therapy. If therapists lose this battle by being over accommodating or handholding the client, the client typically does not make progress or benefit from therapy. Once the Battle for Structure is won, the client can then engage in the Battle for Initiative, taking personal responsibility for their mental health and wellness (attending appointments, completing homework, applying therapeutic techniques and interventions).

If the Battle for Structure is not won by the therapist, it's almost pointless for therapy to continue because clients won't engage or move forward significantly. This may be one of the down sides of person-centered therapy (meeting the client where they are at), which overly accommodates and validates the client's point of view, such that they win the Battle for Structure, and thus do not take ownership of their growth. Instead, they expect the therapist to "cure" them, which is not how therapy works.

Tenets

Good health is not random. The future is a probabalistic numbers game. You can load the dice in your favor by:

1. Following a whole food, plant based diet.

2. Exercising daily (or at least more than never).

3. Avoiding alcohol, drugs, and especially nicotine.

4. Avoiding social media (the junk food of the mind).

5. Practicing good self care (which includes the above, and more.

Thoughts to Think On

I sometimes struggle with the dilemma of how to persuade people to adopt a whole food, plant- based (WFPB) diet. In spite of mountains of scientific evidence supporting the WFPB diet as ideal for long term physical and mental health, people still seem to adopt the narratives of the Food-Industrial Complex and the corporate mainstream media, respectively, that what we eat has no bearing on our health and that a plant based diet is extreme and unsatisfying.

When I notice myself struggling with this issue, I use mindfulness to remind myself that's it's not my responsibility to persuade people to improve their heath and wellness via ideal dietary choices. I'm only in control of my own health choices, and it takes a good chunk of my mental bandwidth to stay on top of that, much less try to manage other people's lives.

I think it is sufficient to point out a simple fact and then let people incorporate that fact into their own life narratives: No scientific study has ever concluded that eating more fruits and veggies makes your health worse or causes heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, or any other chronic degenerative disease you can think of. Ever. In fact, the opposite is true. Many studies have linked eating more fruits and veggies to longer life, better health, and lower disease risk.

Prove me wrong.

DO and DO NOT

Some tips for an ideal life...

DO

Self Care* 

Eat lots of whole food fruit and vegetables.

Exercise regularly.

Set good boundaries.

Read books.

Journal.

Empathize with other people (put yourself in their shoes).

Vote.

DO NOT

Shop at Walmart.

Watch corporate mainstream media.

Eat food that comes from animals.

Smoke.

Abuse drugs or alcohol.

Stress out.

Take any abuse from anyone.

It has been clinically proven that adhering to the above tips produces at least a 95% ideal life.

*Note: Self Care = Treating yourself with kindness and compassion, whatever that looks like. You are the only one who can do that consistently.

Ways That You Can Change the World

The past few days have pointed out that most of us common people in the United States are pretty powerless to do anything to change or improve our so-called "representative government" to make progressive, positive change in the world (outside of elections). But don't let that deter you from doing things at a local level that can have a significant positive impact on the world, without any need for a governmental middleman. In fact, in spite of Congressional gridlock in the US, it's now easier than ever to make a difference at the individual level. The US government has proven itself unreliable to undertake even modestly progressive ideas, compared with the rest of the world, which may be why the rest of the world is rapidly moving forward in the 21st century. So, f*ck 'em.

That being said, one of the most impactful and wide-ranging positive things you can do is going vegan. Here's why: www.eatthis.com/reasons-go-vegan.

In summary, following a vegan diet is good for you, good for the animals, and good for the Earth. You don't have to go vegan if you don't want to. But just know that if you don't, you are kind of slowing down progressive, positive change for the rest of us.

Have a great day!

Officially Normal BMI

For about the past week, my BMI has been officially in the "normal weight" range (<25). For my gender and height, that's 189 pounds or under. It's the first time in my adult life that I've weighed this little. And of course it's attributable to my whole food, plant based vegan diet and regular exercise. So, there's little chance of anyone else being able to achieve my remarkable results themselves, because most people won't eat this way or exercise. But my method works and it's simple. I'd write a book about it, but it would be under a page long. Bye.