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!

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.

Good News for Your Health

Hi Readers!

I have some good news. I'll be opening my Functional Nutrition Medicine Coaching Program to eight (8) participants at the end of 2023.

Overweight? Sick? Tired? Depressed? Brain fog? Unmotivated? Out of shape? Generally unsatisfied with your direction in life?

Then this program is for you. You can reach out to me HERE for more information, pricing, and to get enrolled. The program launches 1/1/24 and you have to be enrolled by 12/31/23 (with intake all paperwork completed) to participate.

So, this is your early bird notification (and there is a 20% discount if you get on board between now and 6/30/23).

I am thrilled to be able to take on more participants in my no nonsense Punk Rock Life Coaching program.

The End!

Clean Blows

I had four BMs before noon today, all of them "clean blows," and I expect more to come before the day is done.

A clean blow is when a BM passes 100% cleanly from your butthole and leaves no trace of poop on the TP when you wipe. Clean blows are a common characteristic of the whole food plant based diet.

Today's clean blows were likely triggered by the massive bowl of whole and unprocessed fruit salad I ate for breakfast today. The soluble and insoluble fiber in fruit really gets things moving through the GI.

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.

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.

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).

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.

A Little Over 2.5 Years WFPB Vegan and the Results Exceed Expectations

I've been vegan for 2.5+ years, with a good 1.5 of those years as a whole food, plant based vegan. I expected to see some minor health improvements when I switched to this way of eating. However, my modest expectations were significantly exceeded.

My osteoarthritis pain in my toe from a sports injury over 20 years ago has essentially disappeared and has not returned. I sleep great. I feel great. I am the lightest weight I have ever been in my adult life. My airways are clearer than ever before - I can breath through my nose at night. I don't need alcohol or caffeine to keep me happy and motivated, respectively (I've largely quit both and I don't miss it at all). I feel mentally content most of the time (some of which is attributed to supplementing with ashwagandha, an adaptogenic herbal supplement from Chinese Medicine). My blood test at each of my annual physical exams has provided empirical proof that the whole food, plant based diet is ideal for maximal, if not optimal, health.

The only physical issue I have is some pain in my left knee when I go on long bike rides. But this pain is mild and resides almost as soon as I am done with the exercise.

I can't speak highly enough of adopting a whole food, plant based diet for health and wellness. The experimental case study will continue for the foreseeable future and I will report back periodically. But, the evidence thus far is clear: A whole food, plant based diet can't hurt, and it might help.

Good day.