You Are What You Don't Eat!
All of this is actually surprisingly easy to do, when you know what to do.
I have spent a good deal of time over the last few years soaking up a lot of information from holistic doctors and health experts on diet and nutrition. I have learned a lot and put what I learned into practice.
It has paid off in spades.
I don't need to be a doctor or medical expert to know this stuff. In fact, most doctors don't know this stuff!
I had to educate my own doctor about what I do in terms of nutrition because her first reaction was I should stop what I'm doing, get back to eating three meals a day and take these medications to deal with the effects of mal-nutrition that she tried to convince me I was heading for!
I changed doctors after that.
Straight and to the point: I eat an ultra-low carb, low sugar, vegetarian diet and do daily intermittent fasting with occasional longer fasts lasting from 24 hours up to 72 hours, depending on how I'm feeling at the time.
I take a long, brisk walk in a hilly area every day and do a routine of light exercises at home. I also do daily Wim Hof style breathing and get into a shower that starts freezing cold and warms up after 20-30 seconds.
The intermittent fasting is an important aspect to my daily routine. I generally fast for around 18-20 hours each day with a 4-6 hour eating window, so you don't need to worry that I'm starving myself. I certainly am not!
I generally eat between 12 noon and 4pm, give or take. That means by the time I go to bed at night, my body has completed its digestion process so it has the whole night to heal and repair itself.
The fasting window allows my body to engage its natural healing and repair mode where it repairs damaged tissue and heals the parts that need healing.
Important Fact: I discovered that the body only enters this healing phase when it is not digesting food. Most people eat several meals a day, often eating right before going to bed at night. What that does is keeps the body busy digesting so it never enters the healing phase!
What are we doing to ourselves?
The body is designed to eat, digest what we eat, step and heal itself, with the most potent healing occurring during deep sleep. If it can't heal because it's kept busy digesting 24/7, it's going to start breaking down.
Does that make sense to you? It should. It did to me and I took notice.
I made it a vital part of my daily health regimen to allow my body time to heal.
I've been doing this for over a year and I look and feel great!
I'm in my 50s and I take zero medications.
What are you doing and how are you looking and feeling?
I probably lost a lot of you after that surprising revelation of what I eat and do. I'm not surprised, because of all the people I know personally, they ALL think I'm quite mad and would never do what I'm doing.
Well, not all of them. I have made some new friends lately and they are on the same wavelength as me.
The point is, to make radical changes to the way you live is difficult for most people. Who in their right mind would willingly get under a freezing cold shower, for instance?
Why would you do it?
I'll tell you why I do it. It boosts my immune system while also jumpstarting my body's circulation. That's a good enough reason for me to do it, especially in this current climate of fear over a certain virus that may or may not be wreaking havoc in the population. Either way, I want my body to be as prepared as it can be in case a real virus gets loose and it needs to fight it off.
I firmly believe that our miraculous human bodies have all the tools at their disposal to deal with just about any pathogen that tries to do it harm. Those tools need to be in tip top condition and ready to fight when the time comes.
More on that below. Back to what I eat.
The mainstay of my daily diet consists of a collection of healthy nuts, seeds, vegetables, fresh fruit, eggs and goats cheese. I add fresh herbs and spices to my food, as well as sea salt and black pepper to give it some taste. I also add fresh ginger and turmeric, onions and raw garlic to my food for their anti-viral, anti-bacterial health properties.
I will eat fish on some days, but only fresh caught varieties like hake, sardines and occasionally tuna. I try to vary my main meal each day to keep things interesting and tasty.
I try to source all me veggies and eggs from local organic farms when I can.
I drink water, herbal tea, one cup of fresh ground coffee in the morning, lemon water (freshly squeezed lemon in water). I drink one cup of freshly made olive leaf tea a day (it's anti-viral and super healthy). I have plenty of olive trees growing around where I live for a fresh supply of leaves.
I don't drink any soda or diet soda (poison) because of the toxic artificial sweeteners in diet drinks or the sugar in regular drinks. I also don't drink fruit juice except on the very rare occasions when I can get freshly squeezed juice (from say fresh oranges), but mostly I don't bother.
I allow myself a little alcohol occasionally, maybe a glass of red wine or even a cold beer. But maybe once a week with a meal.
I occasionally cheat on carbs. I allow a little carbohydrate in the form of a chocolate cookie as an occasional treat. I'm human and not perfect.
The whole point is to severely limit the amount of fructose getting into my body while maintaining nutrition as best I can.
The fructose that is making everyone fat is in all refined carbohydrates - mostly simple carbs from grains - bread, pasta, pastry etc. It's also in processed food in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).
Fructose consumption in large amounts leads to fatty liver which in turn leads to all kinds of health badness.
Before you say it, I know there is some fructose in fresh fruit and veggies along with carbohydrates. There is also high fiber in them which lowers the level of net carbs being consumed and balancing out the fructose by causing the body to use more energy to try to digest the whole vegetable plant matter.
I do limit the fresh fruit I eat to maybe one or two a day, usually an apple or a banana for the nutrient benefits. I include low sugar berries like raspberries or blackberries for the vitamin C and antioxidants.
However, since my refined carb intake is so low (I don't eat any processed foods at all), the related fructose intake is low enough so as to not be a problem.
I realize that by omitting meat from my diet I lose some nutritional elements, like B vitamins, iron and some level of protein. I make up the B vitamins by including dietary yeast to the mix. Most everything else I need comes from what I keep in my diet.
Eggs are the best source of protein anyway!
By not eating meat, I remove a lot of the toxins associated with it from my diet. Like antibiotics and growth hormones fed to farm animals as well as all the horrible toxins in their feed that is passed on in their meat.
It's the same reason I won't eat any farmed fish - it's so toxic!
So there it all is: what I eat, drink and don't eat and don't drink and why.
I'm not a machine, so there are some slip ups every now and then. I accept that and move on, because I know the main bulk of my diet is good, healthy and nutritious.
The intermittent fasting allows my body to reset each day and have some time to engage its healing and repair mode with some autophagy to clean up whatever needs cleaning up.
The exercise, breathing and general positive outlook keeps me feeling good, which it is supposed to do!
