Progressive Change

It can be overwhelming, at times, to think about solving all the world's miriad problems. It may feel a bit like playing whack-a-mole. But perhaps that is an artifact of reductionist thinking, compartmentalizing life's myriad problems into separate problems to be solved with unique solutions for all of them.

What if the solution to MOST problems in the world was a much simpler algorithm? What if a global solution existed that minimized the inefficient work of trying to tackle every individual problem uniquely?

It turns out there is. 95% of the problems that impact your life can be solved by three things:

1. Daily aerobic exercise (30+ minutes, recommended). Anything that gets your heart rate up to about double your resting heart rate will benefit you mentally and physically.

2. Eating a whole food, plant based diet. This improves your health too, and has the added benefit of significantly reducing climate change (by about 75%) and washing away the sin of animal cruelty. You become more civic minded and compassionate.

3. Abstain from all social and most mainstream media. This is tough to do, but literally makes you smarter, happier, and more relaxed. Social and mainstream media have become toxic, vitriolic, and poisonous stuff.

You may be skeptical of the thesis of this post. So, the good news is...you can PUT IT TO THE TEST! Simply practice the above three things for about a month and see if you don't notice the positive changes. You can always go back to your old ways if you don't. But I happen to know for a fact that you will experience noticeable positive benefits within about two weeks. I encourage you to try it for a month though, just to confirm that those changes are genuine and lasting. You won't want to go back. But you can...

Take care!

Fortuitous Discovery

I have completely disenfranchised social and mainstream media (SMSM) from my life for the past 10 days, as part of a SMSM fasting challenge. In so doing, I realized I had also inadvertently disenfranchised most toxicity from my life. SMSM, as it turns out, is currently one of the only places where toxicity impacts my life. It's good to know that almost 100% of all toxicity is contained to SMSM now. That makes it easy to compartmentalize and dismiss. The rest of my life is quite detoxified, by comparison to SMSM. That was a brilliant discovery.

I am boycotting all media until they clean up their act and detoxify.

I encourage you to try it.

The End.

Maybe This is the One

Hi Readers!

It's November. And that means we are nigh on another Thanksgiving (aka, the Great Turkey Holocaust).

Perhaps this will be the one where you finally eschew eating meat, and instead focus on the variety of healthier plant based food options you can substitute for it very easily? If you want to give it a go, but find it hard to break with the meat eating tradition of the holiday, consider eating vegan "turkey." There are a lot of great meat substitutes out there these days. [I like the Gardein Turk'y Roast a great deal.]

As a reminder, eating meat is toxic physically, mentally, and spiritually. Unfortunately, the consequences tend to be karmic and happen down the road a piece, when it's far too late to undo the damage. I put forth this post every year as a PSA reminder and wellness challenge for any and all who want to participate.

But, it's your body (mind and soul) and your choice.

In any case, have a superb day!

Numbers

Vegan diet for the win!

8/16/24 Lab Results:

Cholesterol: 156

LDL: 91

HDL: 54

Non-HDL Cholesterol: 102

Triglycerides: 53

Glucose: 91

The End.

Plant Based and Pelotoning

I'm not gonna lie. My life is f*cking good. And the reason it is good comprises two things: a plant based diet and a Peloton workout every day.

If you want a f*cking good life, do those two things too. Also avoid toxins.

Ciao!

Purpose

A part of me would love to convince people to go vegan for the health, ethical, and environmental benefits. But fuck that. It's easier to just lead by example. People can't believe I'm 55, in awesome health, and have a slim, athletic body, all because of eating a plant based diet. It can't all be genes, because my family (not vegan) is not especially healthy. They eat fairly healthy and thus they are fairly healthy, but not ideally healthy like me. The secret is no secret at all. Eat vegan and exercise daily. That's it. I mean...yes, avoid excessive smoking, drugs, and alcohol too. That seems obvious to me though. Toxins are, by definition, toxic.

Of course, people could just watch "The Game Changers" documentary too.

The End.

Own It

In this increasingly ideologically divided world, it's hard to have constructive dialogues that encourage positive change in people's behavior. I have started to reach the conclusion that it's virtually impossible to motivate people toward change, because people have stopped owning their own problems. They are in a stage of change that we mental health therapists call "Pre-Contemplation" - essentially a complete lack of awareness that there is any problem with their own beliefs and behavior, and everyone else is the problem. Most people today are problem focused and believe that the solution to the perceived problems lies in other people changing their beliefs and behaviors. That's never going to happen, of course. The only person you have control of is YOU. Own that, and quit worrying what shenanigans everyone else is up to. In short, become the change agent for yourself and lead by example.

For example, it would be great if other people and government leaders would accept that man-made climate change is real and do something about it. But they ain't gonna (without some kind of miracle). So, my wife and I have chosen to live more sustainably ourselves, to shrink our ecological footprint. One important change we have made - that has a big positive impact on the planet relative to the small investment of time and effort - is going vegan. We've been vegan for over five years now, so at this point it's effortless and second nature for us. But even when we started out eating vegan, it was not all that hard to do. The biggest challenge was not even ours to bear...some people around us had a hard time with our choice, but we didn't.

The Standard American Diet already averages about 70% plant based foods, albeit comprising a lot of refined and processed caloric junk food, which is bad for one's health. So, we just transitioned the 30% of meat, eggs, and dairy in our pre-2018 omnivorous diet to all vegan meat substitutes. There are many of these nowadays, and many are quite palatable. While these "vegan meats" are not super healthy (many are high in salt and fat and sugar), they are slightly better for health (zero cholesterol, for example) and very much better for the planet (since plant based foods require about one tenth of the water, fossil fuels, and other resources to manufacture, compared with animal based foods) than meat, eggs, and dairy [SOURCE]. A vegan diet is a very manageable way of eating, and it has a huge positive impact ecologically. A whole food plant based (wfpb) vegan diet is even better, because it contains minimal refined and processed foods like corn syrup and refined oil and salt, focusing more on whole fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and raw nuts/seeds (more like a Mediterranean of Blue Zone diet). After our first year of being 100% vegan, we began to shift to eating a more health- and Earth-friendly whole food plant based vegan diet, reducing the vegan junk food as much as possible (though we still treat ourselves to it here and there).

I cannot tell you exactly how much of a positive impact eating a wfpb vegan diet has on the environment, but it's significant [SOURCE]. What's more important to understand is that the relative return on investment (ROI) from eating this way is super high. That is to say, the positive impacts are big and the amount of change needed is fairly small. A little bit of change in dietary habits has a relatively big positive effect on the Earth's environment. The ROI of going vegan is definitely greater than, say, owning an electric vehicle or bike commuting - both of which are also helpful, but have lower ROIs. The wfpb vegan diet is also better for human health too, so that's a win-win.

That being said, some people may not be able to transition to a vegan diet, even if they really love the Earth. There can be obstacles, including many socio-cultural factors (your meat eating friends may laugh at you!*). I'm lucky that my wife and I chose to transition to veganism together, after reading "The China Study," by TC Campbell (it's about the many health benefits of eating plants vs animals), and also we don't have kids (well known natural resource hogs). So, we can maintain a 100% wfpb vegan household fairly easily. We also live in a progressive, vegan friendly town, where we can find vegan food at many restaurants. Not everyone does. Some people are just rigidly set in their meat eating ways.

But not everyone has to become a vegan to save the Earth. If just 10% of people went vegan, it would have a large impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Plus, that many vegans would force some institutional changes too, like more restaurants offering plant based options. Also, not everyone has to go 100% vegan. Reducing meat and dairy consumption by like 10%-25% ("Meatless Mondays") would have a significant impact too [SOURCE].

Anyway, do whatever you want (it is the punk rock way). But if you are open to trying a vegan diet and love the planet too, consider doing a one month vegan challenge. For one month, try to eat only plant based foods. You don't even have to be perfect about it. If you hit obstacles and get derailed, that's OK. Just get right back to it as soon as you can until the month ends. After about two weeks, you'll notice some health benefits (stronger body, clearer mind), which is motivating to keep it going. If you discover it's not that hard to eat vegan, as we did, you might want to continue it indefinitely. If you hate it, that's OK too. It's not for everyone. Maybe you can just make healthier choices and try to reduce beef and dairy (the biggest climate killers).

Thanks for reading!

*Note: The jokes on your meat eating friends, because they are going to die before you do, if you go vegan.

Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day.

Here's your friendly reminder that a vegan diet has the lowest ecological footprint of any diet, hands down [SOURCE]. It's good for your health, good for the planet, and the cows, pigs, and chickens like it too.

If you want to give your positive eco friendliness that little extra push over the cliff, drive an electric vehicle and join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in your local community. It's way cheaper to buy your produce wholesale and locally with a CSA. About $500 for an entire season, May-October, and you get a big box of seasonal veggies every couple weeks.

Bye.

Eat as Low on the Food Chain as Possible

Hi Readers.

Joe here. Hey, if you don't like cancer (and who does, really?), I have a suggestion for you...

GO VEGAN.

I did a little research, and it turns out that eating animals increases your odds for getting cancer. No joke. Check this out (from the Cancer Council): https://www.cancercouncil.com.au/1in3cancers/lifestyle-choices-and-cancer/red-meat-processed-meat-and-cancer/.

It's been known for a while that eating a vegetarian diet reduces your risk of cancer, although not to zero. SOURCE: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-022-02256-w.

But going the extra step and eliminating eggs and dairy is even better. SOURCE: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565018/.

Here are some other SOURCES supporting a vegan diet for cancer prevention:

https://cancerthefacts.com/risk-reduction/meat-vegetarian-diets-affect-cancer-risk/

https://www.mskcc.org/news/research-shows-plant-based-diets-are-better-ketogenic-diets-cancer-risk-and-long-term-health

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vegan-diet-cancer_b_2250052

https://www.ndph.ox.ac.uk/news/new-study-finds-lower-risks-of-cancer-for-vegetarians-pescatarians-and-low-meat-eaters

https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/plant-power-to-lower-cancer-risk

https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/vegetarian-diet-and-cancer-risk.h31Z1591413.html

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/feb/24/vegetarians-have-14-lower-cancer-risk-than-meat-eaters-study-finds

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23169929/

You be the judge.

The End.

The Pop Up

There was a vegan popup today at the Goodman Community Center in Madison WI. We attended. We ate vegan food there and also bought some vegan stuff to take home. Overall, a fun time.

We discovered a vegan pizza place there that is from Chicago and will ship frozen deep dish vegan pizzas anywhere in the USA. They are not cheap though.

The End.

REVIEW: Mosaic Foods Online Vegan Frozen Meal Delivery Service

I decided to try Mosaic Foods vegan (and vegetarian) online mail order frozen meal delivery, after seeing some positive reviews online.

I signed up for the 18 meal plan, the biggest plan they have (and the best value after discount and free shipping). I filtered for vegan only meals (although they have vegetarian options too, I'm strictly vegan). You have to choose a recurring order option; there is no one time only option like there is with MamaSezz vegan mail order meals. So, I chose to reorder every 4 months, and then paused all order until July. You can customize and pause shipments whenever you want, but you know how that goes. I'll probably cancel my subscription and then restart it when I am ready for more.

First, lets talk about the cost. My total order cost for the 18 meals I chose for my box, after discount and free shipping, was $176.78. That works out to $9.82/meal. Let's just round up to $10/meal for argument's sake. For a mature adult male of my activity level and energy needs, one meal is about one serving. More petite and sedentary people might get two servings out of one of these meals. They fill an average sized bowl. The meals range from about 400 to 600 calories each. However, one of my meal choices was a "4 serving" Thai peanut curry that would probably actually serve two hungry people of my size. So, I kind of got 19 meals for the price. One of the meals was a soup. Another was a smoothie, which I'll try tomorrow morning.

The meals are completely pre-made and frozen, shipped with dry ice (although the dry ice was gone by the time the box arrived in Wisconsin, by truck from New Jersey, so I might not order these meals in the middle of the summer). You microwave or bake them, and eat. I fortified the soup with some brown rice I had on hand, and generally I think you can make these meals go farther by adding rice or pasta to them.

The cost of these meals is competitive with other pre-made meal delivery services, and the cost can be justified by the minimal prep time to eat them. They are convenient.

The meals are pretty tasty too, thus far. I have not gotten through them all yet. These will be nice to have on hand in the freezer sometimes when we are too busy or too lazy to cook plant based vegan meals.

I endorse them.

The End.

Reminder

The key to a long and healthy life comprises:

1. A whole food 100% plant based diet.

2. Daily aerobic exercise.

3. Self care.

4. A sense of purpose.

5. Avoidance of drugs and alcohol.

A good day to you!

The End.

Perk

Another perk of my healthy living is that I now find that I do not require as much sleep. I fall asleep quickly and stay asleep. My sleep is solid, restful, and dream filled. I wake up restored after about 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep. It's given me about an extra hour of time each day to be active and accomplish more. At first I thought that waking up too early was a sign of insomnia, but I'm never tired or exhausted when I wake. I am full of vigor and my cortisol cycle appears to be in balance (energized in the morning and relaxed at night).

I'm going to experiment with my mood lamp and see if I can use it to increase sleep time a little bit. I read in "The Depression Cure" that for people who wake up too early it is beneficial to have some intense blue light exposure around 4 to 5 PM each day. So, I'll try that and see if anything changes. But as far as I can tell, my early waking time is not a pathology, because my mood is surprisingly great and I feel rested and energized all the time. In fact, this is one of the first winters where I have not noticed much Seasonal Affective Disorder. I attribute this to both whole food plant based eating AND daily aerobic exercise (which keeps my endogenous endorphins consistently elevated). And, contrary to what my wife Deborah believes, my cognitive function and memory are much sharper too.

BOOK REVIEW: Skinny Bitch

I read (via audiobook) "Skinny Bitch," by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. After getting past the fat-shame-y and somewhat caustic first chapter (to be clear, some people do enjoy being ridiculed and cajoled into action, but it's not for everyone), the rest of this fairly short and concise book is informative and entertaining. The casual parlance of the prose can get a bit annoying after a while, but the book covers a lot of ground on nutrition, health, and the toxic food industry. I didn't need or want the food planning recommendations at the end of the book, because I'm already compliant of this way of living. 

Read this book if you are looking for forthright, yet acerbic, guidance on how to eat right and adopt a healthy lifestyle toward weight loss and wellness.

The Hard Way

There's an easy way and a hard way to learn that eating a whole food plant based diet is ideal for health, wellness, and weight loss.

The hard way is to follow a Standard American Diet (SAD) - rich in animal protein, cholesterol, refined oil, and sugar - for many years. At some point, this way of eating will invariably cause a horrible chronic disease (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disorders, endocrine dysfunction, arthritis, obesity, etc.) and quality of life will drop precipitously, followed by a long and miserably slow death.

The easy way is to eat a whole food plant based diet 95-100% of the time and feel great every day, while living a healthy life well into old age, then dying peacefully in your sleep.

The problem, of course, is if you choose the hard way, there's no coming back from that. Once chronic illnesses set in, they are hard or impossible to reverse (with the exception of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes). Then you can only regret not having heeded this blog post and the advice of health professionals, when you had the chance.

All else held constant and assuming everyone has about the same likelihood of being creamed by a bus, whole food plant based eating is the way to go.

This blog post is intended to guide you gently toward the easy way. But if you feel like you need to do it the hard way, good luck to you, because you will need it.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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!