In keeping with blogging tradition, I feel compelled to write something scintillating about where I see the industry going this coming year. After all, it is New Year's Eve!
I'll start by referring you to a post I just completed on my brand new blog Body Mind Freedom.
My girlfriend read it and remarked that it contained little that was upbeat.
So, feeling a little like Scrooge Mac Duck saying "Bah Humbug" to the Christmas fairy, I started to ponder why I was such a sour puss and whether it was time to get excited again.
And before too long it came to me.
I think the health, fitness and weight-loss industries need a major wake-up call.
If you've read even a smattering of my posts over the last year, you'll already know that I am saddened at the lot of personal fitness trainers and nutrition professionals.
These well-intentioned individuals are little more than low-level cogs in the antiquated machinery or our respective health care systems (USA and UK).
And I make no apologies for the fact that I think these systems are operating on borrowed time. People are getting sick from a host of preventable diseases and our solution is to plug them in, medicate ... and foster further dependance, suffering and inbalance.
All of which needs to be paid for by someone. Increasing load, less bucks ... something has to give.
But I digress.
Here is a quick summary of what might change in 2010: Nothing! Nix! Zippo! Not a thing.
If it is broke ... don't fix it!
We will continue to get sicker, sooner. But actuaries will refute this with statistical proof that average age expectancy is up, so nothing is rotten in the state of Denmark.
We will continue to abrogate our responsibility to ourselves for our own state of well-being. After all what are health care systems and insurance companies for?
We will continue to ignore the obvious benefits of organic foods in spite of the science. Science, like accounting, is malleable ... and money always talks.
Besides, no-one likes to feel naive, so the dissidents have an easy sell in a recession.
We will continue searching for magic bullets, quick fixes and super-foods. Isolation will lose none of its lustre. People will not see that a supplement is the ultimate refined food.
And the formal status quo will continue to endorse its existing set of sacred cows.
Then we will wring our hands in frustration that our kids are becoming fat and diabetic. We will endorse hugely expensive programs to show them how to get outside and play again.
But health and safety fears will still encourage kids to wear helmuts and check for allergies first before using sticking plasters (elastoplast). Really!
We may rue that politics and legislation trump common sense and foster paranoia ... but we will do nothing. Except tell people to participate in the process, so they too can change the world (or at least have a licence to complain).
On a positive note (see, I listen to my most ardent critics), some people will keep digging and refuse to succumb to the inexorable tide of media conditioning.
These enlightened souls will relish responsibility and choose to embrace the notion that the best health insurance is getting healthy and living a healthy lifestyle.
These special people will be my inspiration.
Thanks for all your kind support in 2009. May this next decade bring you the happiness you deserve.
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Reframe your Nutrition Paradigm
I must apologize for not updating this blog for such a long time.
I have been working on a new project that I will reveal before the end of the post. Because my technical skills are quite limited and because I am a frustrated perfectionist, getting everything "just right" took far longer than I had initially envisioned.
Today, I thought I'd chat about the way we view nutrition. Quite simply, we have been conditioned to such a degree that we no longer even understand what constitutes appropriate food for a human being.
I'll give you some examples. How many times does one hear that we should learn how to read labels ... or that we should be taking "this supplement" or "that" superfood?
Or, if we only learn to eat less food, more often ... then somehow we will gain back control of our cravings and "balance our sugar". Blah, blah, blah ...
What hog wash!
The reason we have lost our way is very simple actually. For years and years, in fact millennia, we foraged for what we could get. That was, pretty much, fruit and vegetables, berries and seeds. And roots and tubers if you really want to get down and dirty.
In the last 10,000 years or so we "discovered" fire and learnt how cooking can enhance the flavor of food. We also learnt how to domesticate grains which allowed us to settle in one place and really concentrate on breeding.
And of course cooking meant we now could eat animals and enjoy them, something I'm not sure any self-respecting Neanderthal would have seriously considered prior to that mythical lightening strike.
In the last few decades, maybe a little longer, we also became quite skilled at manufacturing "food" and so ushered in the age of convenience consumption. And this, in turn, negated the need to expend energy foraging for sustenance growing in the wild.
What these developments also meant was that we now eat according to modern dictate, rather than Nature's design.
So we consume calorie-dense, nutrient-deficient food ... and we become fat, slow, sore and ultimately diseased. Symptoms yielding inevitably to condition.
Of course, some people will say that we have adapted to tolerate grains and no doubt will adapt to our sedentary lifestyles and concentrated calories. But it would appear the scientists among us feel there's strong evidence that the human genome could not possibly change that radically, so fast.
Whatever the real truth, I am utterly convinced through personal experimentation, that we respond best to the following:
- living, fresh food versus dead, cooked, or manufactured food. Mother Nature beats mankind's best food chemists hands down, every time.
- plant food versus animal products (which need to be cooked and contain surplus saturated fat, cholesterol and protein).
- organically grown versus commercially farmed fruit and vegetables ... which are theoretically free of chemical residues and, if fresh, are far more nutritious because they come from living soils.
- "low" fat versus "high" fat. By this I mean that no more than 10% of your calories should come from fat (not just "fatty" foods).
- ripe fruit and tender, young greens versus immature fruit and overly mature greens ... because these criteria facilitate digestion that is less energy-expensive.
So ... start your days with fresh, ripe, seasonal fruit so you get a variety over the course of a year. Then, sometime in the afternoon, have some more fruit and/or tender, young, fresh greens. Occasionally eat minimal amounts of avocados, olives, nuts and seeds.
Eat this way and you will feel infinitely better. You will think clearer, articulate yourself better and even appear more intelligent to your slower peers who are no doubt weighed down by the burden of animal products and cooked delights.
You will also be free of addictions (though we prefer to call these "cravings" or "an appetite"), which is an added bonus that should not be under-estimated.
Earlier, I promised to reveal my new project to you, so here goes: you can find a rather snappy landing page here.
Because I am a trust-worthy guy who would not dream of compromising your privacy, I strongly suggest you opt-in to my list and grab yourself a free copy of my report "10 Fat Loss Tips". This will also take you to an information (sales) page that explains everything you need to know about my stunning new book.
Who knows, you might find it quite an eye-opener ...
I have been working on a new project that I will reveal before the end of the post. Because my technical skills are quite limited and because I am a frustrated perfectionist, getting everything "just right" took far longer than I had initially envisioned.
Today, I thought I'd chat about the way we view nutrition. Quite simply, we have been conditioned to such a degree that we no longer even understand what constitutes appropriate food for a human being.
I'll give you some examples. How many times does one hear that we should learn how to read labels ... or that we should be taking "this supplement" or "that" superfood?
Or, if we only learn to eat less food, more often ... then somehow we will gain back control of our cravings and "balance our sugar". Blah, blah, blah ...
What hog wash!
The reason we have lost our way is very simple actually. For years and years, in fact millennia, we foraged for what we could get. That was, pretty much, fruit and vegetables, berries and seeds. And roots and tubers if you really want to get down and dirty.
In the last 10,000 years or so we "discovered" fire and learnt how cooking can enhance the flavor of food. We also learnt how to domesticate grains which allowed us to settle in one place and really concentrate on breeding.
And of course cooking meant we now could eat animals and enjoy them, something I'm not sure any self-respecting Neanderthal would have seriously considered prior to that mythical lightening strike.
In the last few decades, maybe a little longer, we also became quite skilled at manufacturing "food" and so ushered in the age of convenience consumption. And this, in turn, negated the need to expend energy foraging for sustenance growing in the wild.
What these developments also meant was that we now eat according to modern dictate, rather than Nature's design.
So we consume calorie-dense, nutrient-deficient food ... and we become fat, slow, sore and ultimately diseased. Symptoms yielding inevitably to condition.
Of course, some people will say that we have adapted to tolerate grains and no doubt will adapt to our sedentary lifestyles and concentrated calories. But it would appear the scientists among us feel there's strong evidence that the human genome could not possibly change that radically, so fast.
Whatever the real truth, I am utterly convinced through personal experimentation, that we respond best to the following:
- living, fresh food versus dead, cooked, or manufactured food. Mother Nature beats mankind's best food chemists hands down, every time.
- plant food versus animal products (which need to be cooked and contain surplus saturated fat, cholesterol and protein).
- organically grown versus commercially farmed fruit and vegetables ... which are theoretically free of chemical residues and, if fresh, are far more nutritious because they come from living soils.
- "low" fat versus "high" fat. By this I mean that no more than 10% of your calories should come from fat (not just "fatty" foods).
- ripe fruit and tender, young greens versus immature fruit and overly mature greens ... because these criteria facilitate digestion that is less energy-expensive.
So ... start your days with fresh, ripe, seasonal fruit so you get a variety over the course of a year. Then, sometime in the afternoon, have some more fruit and/or tender, young, fresh greens. Occasionally eat minimal amounts of avocados, olives, nuts and seeds.
Eat this way and you will feel infinitely better. You will think clearer, articulate yourself better and even appear more intelligent to your slower peers who are no doubt weighed down by the burden of animal products and cooked delights.
You will also be free of addictions (though we prefer to call these "cravings" or "an appetite"), which is an added bonus that should not be under-estimated.
Earlier, I promised to reveal my new project to you, so here goes: you can find a rather snappy landing page here.
Because I am a trust-worthy guy who would not dream of compromising your privacy, I strongly suggest you opt-in to my list and grab yourself a free copy of my report "10 Fat Loss Tips". This will also take you to an information (sales) page that explains everything you need to know about my stunning new book.
Who knows, you might find it quite an eye-opener ...
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