Sanitas – Week One of working toward total health.
So, it is one week into the new year of 2014 and I have been
attempting to faithfully follow my list of 52 pieces of health advice. Here’s what went well.
First, not eating three hours before bed is fantastic. I should’ve been doing this my whole
life. I sleep better, I feel better in
the morning.
Second, I love only drinking red wine (a single glass) and
savoring it completely with my meal. It
is a beautiful experience.
Third, slowing down.
Every meal, and now it also seems every moment, lingers and I like
that. It’s like I am able to breathe
into things better. What ensues is a
stronger sense of presence. Add to this
a day of total Sabbath, and it adds a sheer sense of bliss to the week.
Fourth, the sugar. I
missed it for one day. Now that is
gone. I hope it continues to be
gone. I haven’t even had a piece of
chocolate yet.
Fifth, memorizing poetry.
I did it. I memorized Mary
Oliver’s Among the Trees and I use it
as part of my daily meditation. Here’s
the text, as I write it from memory here:
When I am among the
trees,
especially the willows
and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the
oaks and the pines,
they give off such
hints of gladness,
I could almost say
that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from
the hope of myself
In which I know
goodness and discernment,
And never hurry
through the world,
But walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees
stir in their leaves.
and call out, “Stay
awhile.”
The light flows from
their branches.
And they call again,
“It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do
this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to
shine.”
I would encourage every person to memorize just one poem per
week, or a section of something longer.
It does open up your mind. Better
yet, you should also recite it for someone.
Share it.
What didn’t go so well this week? Well, I didn’t do a fast yet. I was with family all week and so I will add
that health advice in next week. Also, I
did not eat an apple a day, but I ate lots of fruits and veggies. And in terms of cutting the “white stuff” or
refined carbs, I mostly did that, with the occasional piece of homemade bread. All in all thought, I kept to most of the 52
pieces of advice. I don’t know yet which
one will be the hardest to keep, but I look forward to finding that out.
Now, this week, I finished Robert Lustig’s book Fat Chance:
Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease. And I can safely say, wholeheartedly, that I
believe in what he says here about the cause of what we face in the obesity
epidemic. I was walking through a
Ralph’s grocery store, buying food to make a whole foods dinner of chicken
chili, salad, and whole grain corn bread – and I was looking for Bobs Red Mill
cornmeal – and all of a sudden I found myself just overwhelmed by the boxes and
boxes, aisles and aisles of processed foods.
The frightening thing is that all of this processed stuff that contains
so many different types of sugars, is causing fatty liver disease in millions
of people who may not even think they’re at risk. And the only way to reverse this trend is to
stop.
Simply stop eating
anything processed. Simple. Stop eating sugar.
If I can do it, it has to be possible.
It is not easy. It is simple.
Big difference.
This difference between ease and simplicity is worth
exploring. We do want this all to be
easy, but it took us a long time to get unhealthy, so it will take just as
much, if not more time to reverse it. That
is difficult and yet the reversal is just simply turning around and making
another way. Here’s an easy way to
start. Just eat dessert once a week and
every other time eat fruit if you crave something sweet. That’s a turn around that anyone can make.
Another aspect I love about Lustig’s writing is that he is
not working for anyone. He’s not
promoting any product. He is just giving
his advice as a scientist and a physician who is dealing with obesity,
compiling all the research on it, and offering some sound advice for those who
would like to heal from metabolic syndrome.
And how do you know if you are suffering from metabolic syndrome? Well…if more than 20% of your daily calories
are coming from sugar or refined carbs, it’s likely you have at least a mild
form of it. Even if you are skinny, you
could have it. The danger is the fatty
liver that this syndrome creates because eventually this will lead to liver
disease. Basically, if you’ve been
eating as much sugar as I was eating, you have the liver of an alcoholic. Good news is that you can heal this by
stopping. At least cut back to not more
than 20% of your calories coming from sugar sources.
Here are Lustig’s key pieces of advice, although I would
recommend reading the book. This is a
global health crisis. People talk about
Americans being fat, but now that Americans have successfully exported the
Western processed industrialized food diet to the farthest reaches of the
planet, we’ve colonized the world with metabolic syndrome.
Advice to reverse metabolic syndrome:
1) You
have to get your insulin down and keep it down.
So, to do this you have to exercise, you have to eat less sugar, and you
have to eat fiber (at least 24 grams per day)
2) You
have to get your grehlin down. (This is
the hunger hormone…I remember it because it resembles the word growling.) To accomplish this you have to eat breakfast
with protein (think eggs) and you have to stop eating at night and you have to
sleep much more.
3) There’s
something called PYY (Peptide YY) which is the switch in your brain for feeling
full. You have got to get these PYY’s up
and the way to do that is to eat the appropriate sized portions, eat a diet
filled with fiber, and always make sure you wait a while to take seconds. It’s about a 20 minute cycle for PYY to kick
in, so eat slow. Slow down.
4) One
hormone that blows your metabolism out of proportion is cortisol…the stress
hormone. You have to get this down. It’s going to be there, but you have to get
it down and the only way we know of doing this is by a) exercising b)
meditating. Both have to happen because
when you exercise you excite the nervous system and make cortisol and then your
levels are down all day long. Meditating
brings your nervous system under control, focusing on long deep breaths and
allowing yourself to just stay put and allow the moment to be. Cortisol goes way down in people who are
meditating and exercising.
If you think you may be a victim of metabolic syndrome, you
can reset the clock on that by taking these four pieces of advice. There’s a lot out there that can be confusing
on the science of diet and exercise, so I think if you can just take these four
into consideration, it’s a great way to start.
Really, so much of this is about hormones and our hormones are way out
of control on the Western industrialized diet.
This is because of added sugars to foods. In his book he covers about fifty names for
sugar on dietary food labels. Here are
just a few of the more confusing ones: diastatic
malt, dextran, ethyl maltol, panocha and sorghum syrup. These are all sugar, plain and simple.
Lustig is straightforward and many are taken aback by his
approach. And believe me, I know that
for many people cutting sugar seems like it’s impossible because they are on a
low income and processed food is so much cheaper. We have many problems to solve here, and I am
interested in how a true health shift could take place. What I am trying to do is have an influence
on those I love and care about through taking care of my own health. How many people can I help by just being
healthy myself?
Think about it. Try
it out and stick to it. If you need some
help, let me know. I’d be happy to do
whatever I can.
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