Try This Trick to Lose Weight

Trouble losing weight? Trouble keeping it off?

I dare you to try this. And if nothing changes in 90 days, you can return to doing things as you were. No harm, no foul.

1. Remove all foods that contain milk, cheese, or butter.

2. Reduce the amount of animal-based proteins(meat and eggs) to less than 10% of your caloric intake.

3. Let all of the produce you eat appear on your plate the way it did when it was harvested. In other words, not processed in any way. Cooking vegetables, legumes, and potatoes(tubers/roots) is okay.

4. Don’t eat carbohydrates UNLESS they are in their original form as mother nature created them. Of these, you can eat as many as you like. Syrup and refined sugars are the problems, not whole fruits, vegetables, and legumes.

The reason why this kind of eating plan works is because of the nutrient density of foods when consumed in this manner. Animal-sourced foods are extremely dense and packed with nutrients, while produce is comparatively low in nutrients. By consuming a whole-food diet where ALL of the plant fiber remains intact, you will find that it is the intact fiber itself that is the caloric rate limiting mechanism that will keep you from consuming too many nutrients. This will also eliminate all processed junk foods from your plate.

Continue further if you would like to understand why this works…

Nutrient density is the problem. Our body needs just the right amount of all of the good stuff. Not too little, and not too much.

Overnutrition, or consuming an excess of nutrients or calories, can lead to several health problems, including:

Obesity: Consuming more calories than the body needs can cause weight gain and eventually lead to obesity, which is a major risk factor for several chronic diseases.
Type 2 diabetes: Overconsumption of calories, especially from simple carbohydrates and sugars, can lead to insulin resistance, a condition where the body can’t use insulin effectively. This can eventually lead to type 2 diabetes.
Cardiovascular disease: A diet high in saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, and salt, and low in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, can lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and atherosclerosis, all of which increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Fatty liver disease: Overnutrition can cause the liver to store excess fat, leading to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which can progress to more serious liver damage.
Certain cancers: Overnutrition can also increase the risk of certain cancers, such as breast, colon, and prostate cancer.
Kidney disease: Consuming excessive amounts of protein can put a strain on the kidneys, leading to kidney disease and kidney stones.

The answer. Nutrient Restriction.

Caloric restriction refers to reducing calorie intake while maintaining proper nutrition to promote better health and longevity. Here are some potential benefits of caloric restriction:

Increased lifespan: Studies in animals have shown that caloric restriction can extend lifespan by up to 50%.
Improved metabolic health: Caloric restriction has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Reduced inflammation: Caloric restriction may reduce inflammation in the body, which is associated with many chronic diseases.
Improved brain function: Caloric restriction has been shown to improve cognitive function and reduce the risk of age-related cognitive decline.
Delayed aging: Caloric restriction has been shown to delay many age-related changes, including oxidative stress and DNA damage.
Protection against age-related diseases: Caloric restriction has been shown to reduce the risk of many age-related diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

My Gift To You

My gift to you. If you eat something today, don’t eat it again tomorrow. Rotate your daily food intake, both solid and liquid. Yes, including your coffee and even your healthy fruits and vegetables. And here is why.

We go to a convenient store and buy a gallon of milk, a tub of butter, a loaf of bread, and a block of cheese. Then we go about eating these things every day until they are gone because we don’t want them to go bad. We spent good money on them and they are good when consumed together as well. And this is also true for the healthiest of organic whole foods.

When you eat the same thing day after day it will ultimately end in a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and inflammation even if it remains subclinical for many years. By the time it shows up on the radar and we go to the doctor we have become so far disconnected timewise from the inception of the cause, that we fail to see the connection between this dietary action and the disease it causes. And then we downplay it by calling it love handles.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Just eat smarter. And if you insist on eating anything animal eat it only once every 4th day allowing only one kind of animal product in your body at a time. Watch what will happen.

P.S. Regarding any kind of dairy product, I cannot in good conscience put my stamp of approval on it no matter what kind of animal it came from or what kind of processing or fermentation has been applied to it. No mammal is designed to consume its mother’s milk beyond infancy much less into adulthood or from another species of mammal.

P.S.S. The problem with eating anything animal lies within our body’s response to our consumption of it. It results in an immediate immune response. Some might call this lactose intolerance while others lack the vital energy to do anything in response to the toxic effects the animal products have on the body. But that does not mean that there isn’t a problem. That just means you are not experiencing it today. That doesn’t mean you won’t forever. It may just take time to show up as an ulcer, SIBO, colitis, or some other ailment that will likely require medical intervention if you choose to stay your dietary course.

What is Autophagy?

To eat oneself is the plain meaning of autophagy. It is our body’s way of cleaning itself out. It is the way by which our body removes dead or degenerate cells that have lost their optimal functionality. This way the body can regenerate itself. It literally eats itself and in the process recycles the amino acids or proteins in a form of reincarnation, and it happens over and over again. Our body recycles itself because it is an efficient thing to do. It is the act of repeated incarnation. The process by which our body heals itself by tearing itself down and rebuilding with its own flesh through the process of granulation. A wound healing in the grandest sense of the word.

The human intestinal tract is an amazing ecosystem. A habitat for that which makes up much of our humanity. It is inhabited by diverse and complex colonies of synergistic micro-organisms that not only call us home but are also absolutely necessary for our overall health and wellbeing. We may be an individual in a sense but we are likely better understood as a host of a grand buffet of bacterial components spanning a diverse spectrum of individual players both commensal and pathogenic depending on the situation they find themselves in. It’s one big dinner table in there and there is a lot of diversity in its many different guests.

The lining of our intestinal tract which is also known as our intestinal epithelium interface interacts directly with this houseful of guests and acts as a barrier or first line of defense against bad players that might be interested in finding their way into our tissues. This lining of our intestinal tract has a number of mechanisms by which it protects us against micro-organisms that might want to attach themselves or even make their way into our vascular system. One of these mechanisms by which this is accomplished is mucus. A mucosal lining that has antimicrobial properties that can limit bacterial interaction with the host’s intestinal surface.

So important is this barrier our body even goes so far as to produce its own anti-microbial compounds by which to keep some of these bad players at play. One I find fascinating that our body generates on its own is lectin. A compound that is also a plant defense mechanism that we humans need to be careful of. We don’t want to be consuming too much of this compound as it is found in fresh produce as it will interfere with proper digestion, metabolism, and assimilation of nutrients. We refer to this dietary form of lectin as an anti-nutrient because it interferes with the absorption of nutrients like zinc, phosphorus, iron, and calcium. As you can see, we are not so different from the plants that live around us. We have common interests.

As you can see our intestinal lining plays a very important role in the maintenance of our overall health and wellbeing. Just another reason to be extremely diligent in the foods we choose to put in our mouth. Our intestines are not only our interface with the outside world but are also a banquet table and a battlefield. On one side is the outside world where the food we put in our mouth passes through for consumption by the trillions of micro-organisms that inhabit the passage, on the other our inside world(vascular), bathed in blood that leads directly into our liver through our portal vein for further processing and filtration before the blood that circulates through our intestinal lining enters back into general circulation.

And if everything is functioning as Mother Nature intended that whole internal environment will be continually recycled and reincarnated over and over again, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, for a complete lifetime. What does our ingesting and assimilation will eventually be ingested in this continual process we call autophagy in which our extremely conservative body eats itself to rebuild itself for the betterment of life, not only within this creature we call us, but to benefit the greater outer world we call home. Mother Earth.

Fruit Only?

I do not believe that we are primarily frugivores. Going back into our ancestral records demonstrates that we have always been hunters and gatherers that ate whatever was available in sufficient quantity for us to maintain life. This whole notion of us being primarily frugivore is pretty clearly born out of our modern lifestyles that have been made possible because of the Industrial Revolution. And using teeth for an argument is flawed because there are simian frugivores with massive fangs contrary to what one would expect to find in an obligate frugivore. Consider the Gibbon; fangs and all.

If I had to put a name on it, I would say that we are opportunistic omnivores. Omnivores that ate what was available, when it was available at that point in time according to where we lived. Some forms of eating have proven to be better for overall mortality. Still, we are nowhere near the finish line in our understanding of the human condition and what foods it takes to get us back to our so-called Edenic state, which is why I am currently a vegan, but not raw and not frugivore.

I believe that we are still too early in the game to call the outcome as to what is the best diet for humans. But clearly, we are beginning to see that some correlations lead us to believe that a whole food/plant-based diet of at least 95% is the best way to go.

I love the current dietary course I am on for several reasons, and it just makes sense to me, but I do have my reservations. I believe in biological evolution and, as such, 50,000+ years of human adaptation where some small amount of animal-based proteins may very well have become a part of our genetic structures. Even if humanity was born in a pristine garden where there was no need to eat animals, the fossil record demonstrates that we did not follow that path beyond that garden state.

I am convinced most certainly that modern-day man has significantly erred in our ways because of modern convenience. Our overconsumption of animal proteins may be the real problem, not simply the consumption itself. In like manner, a diet that consisted of large amounts of grapes or any other single fruit with every meal would also eventually become a problem.

I am not making up these rules, just appreciating the observations based on our physiological, cultural, and traditional development. It may very well be that the current human condition is based more on the last 50,000 years of human development and subsequent adaptation than we could have imagined. It may be that a 95% whole food/plant-based with around 5% of our caloric intake from small animal sources like fish that is consumed once or twice a week with a spacing of about every fourth day is the optimal diet. This is just how the research plays out, especially for those above 65 from current findings. This leads me to my next point.

Even within the five major communities that make up what we refer to as “Blue Zones,” which comprise our oldest and healthiest demonstration of human life here on Earth, the ones that live the shortest lives are the vegans and vegetarians. The ones that live the longest, the centenarians, are the ones that do incorporate small amounts of animal-based proteins. There is current data among gerontology researchers that sees a decline in health and vibrancy in those who remain vegan beyond 65.

And then, on top of it all, there are always exceptions that anyone can point to that fall outside of specific dietary rulesets that have better health than others no matter how they eat. But these exceptions don’t make the rule. They are simply exceptional. It may very well be that they were lucky enough to come from a lineage of ancestors that were doing things the right way for long enough with strong maternal genetics for enough generations in a row that no matter how they treat their body, they will excel in their individual expression of life: cigarettes, vodka, steak, and all. There will always be exceptions.

I believe that we all need to step back and take a deep breath, making observations while gathering statistics along the way. Maybe in another 500 to 1000 years, we can start drawing reasonable conclusions. But for now, I believe we would best be served to extract our current findings from observable evidence with child-like curiosity and a lack of rigid dogmatism.

Follow The Equatorial Sun

Eat like an Amazonian.

Eat only when the sun can shine on it. Don’t let it kiss your lips if the sun can’t kiss it first. Eat only between the hours of 6 am and 6 pm. Hunters and gatherers wouldn’t be out hunting and gathering at night lest they become the prey of another predator. And they certainly wouldn’t have been eating as many calories on a daily, regular basis as we do today. They might have even had times during the year where they might go days without eating. They would have had times of adversity and seasonal variety by default. This leads me to my next point.
If you eat something one day, do not eat it the next. As hunters and gatherers, they would have eaten a variety of foods throughout the year. Refined foods with preservatives and refrigeration changed all that. We now eat the same things day after day after day. This leads to a lack of diversity in our gut flora resulting in food allergies, hormonal imbalances, and other deficiencies because of our modern technological conveniences. This leads me to my next point.
Eat at least 95% whole-food/plant-based.* Hunters and gatherers wouldn’t have had the ability to eat animal-based proteins 3 meals a day as modern man does. They would have been eating a diet that was made up of mostly herbivorous fare and ZERO processed foods or preservatives. There was no Piggly Wiggly, HEB, Costco, or Walmart. There were no refrigerators, butchers, burger joints, greasy spoons, or taco trucks to serve up meat three times a day like have available today.

And that is it. Not difficult at all and it can be observed whether you are an omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan.

These are the three main pillars of health that I have discovered from the last 4.5 years of my research into human physiology and disease pathology. It took a lot of time and observation of data from both anecdotal and scientific sources. I have read hundreds of books and countless scientific and medical journals on almost every aspect of how the human body functions and what the human body needs to perform at its optimal levels.

Is this my final opinion or word on this subject? By no means. This is my AT&T position. This is where I am at in my understanding AT THIS TIME.

I will say however that I am feeling a certain level of confidence that these three pillars will likely be the foundation for much of my future writings on the subjects of eating and how it relates to human physiology and disease pathology. Eating the right way shouldn’t be complex. I imagine it wasn’t complex for a hunter and gatherer that was living long before the time of agriculture and the use of crops as we understand the use of domesticated plant and animal food sources.

*For those of you that choose to consume non-plant-based food sources be sure to limit them to 5% of your caloric intake at the most. This would best be observed by eating an animal-based meal in one sitting with 3-4 days spacing. This would allow enough time for the prior non-plant-based food sources to have been assimilated before introducing more non-plant-based food sources back into the body.

What’s Keeping Us From Living Our Fullest Life?

Look at the fangs on this fuzzy fella. He is a gibbon and gibbons are frugivores.

I used to think that the reason we humans have these teeth in our mouth that we call canines is that we were meant to eat meat. Well, this fuzzy fella has some crazy-looking fangs, yet he only eats fruit all day.

I’m not saying that we cannot eat meat, because surely we can and do. But just because we call 4 teeth in our mouth canine teeth and they vaguely look like what a canine has a mouthful of doesn’t mean that meats were to be eaten by us in the amounts we do.

I still plan on continuing my non-animal fare as long as wisdom leads me down that path. It makes the most sense to me from my studies over the last 4.5 years on how the human body works BEST.

Can we eat meat? Sure. Should we eat meat? Not to the extent that most of us do if there is plenty of fresh plant-based/whole-foods are readily available. But hey, if you happened to find yourself lost in the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska and the only things the Inuit have to offer is seal, then eat up my friend. It’s better than the other option.

If malnourishment were the other option for me I already have a plan in place for how I would go about consuming it. I’d rather be prepared than be caught off guard in that eventuality.

Can we humans fully function on a completely whole-food/plant-based diet alone? I am and I know a lot of other people that are doing it too, and we are all doing just fine. Am I 100% convinced that any one of us vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, or carnivore has it all figured out? No. There may yet be a better answer still.

These days we are living in a world of plenty where we have so many good options that we actually have the luxury to actually choose to do as we like. Something a lot of humans couldn’t have done just 150 short years ago. Many were just trying to maintain health or even simply survive. And sadly many suffered from all manner of malnourishment diseases that have been virtually vanquished in this world of plenty we live in today.

I personally can’t wait for the first person that has figured out how to live more than 120 years with a body that looks, feels, and functions like a healthy 24. It will start with a single person with sight beyond their own short life. A person that understands that there are things that are within our midst, within our grasp, within our power to control. Principles by which we can become the fullness of the life that was intended to be used by the intelligence that saw fit to gather our elements together into a cohesive bundle of energy. A life force bound up in this unique form for a purpose.

[EDITING]–Fruit, Soup, Salad and Time-Restricted Feeding

On December 01, 2020, I began my vegan journey. A diet that would no longer depend on any animal-based nutrient sources. And I don’t see myself ever going back to that way of eating. In this day and age, there is just no justification for it as research, revealed knowledge, and an abundance of sourcing options have made it possible to no longer have to depend on keeping animals for regular consumption of things like milk and eggs.

Notice I mentioned consuming milk and eggs and that I didn’t mention eating meats on a daily basis as many do in this post-modern era of refrigeration and the convenience offered by fast food, butchers, and grocery store chains. Go back just 200 years to the early 1800s and it becomes clear why most people were not eating meats the way we do today in the modern world. It just wasn’t feasible. People were eating a lot more bread, plant-based whole foods, along with milk and eggs which were sustainable food sources for those that could afford the convenience of keeping chickens and milk-bearing animals like goats and cows.

Simply put there just was no option for eating a single meal that contained a pound or less of beef like there is today. And why would you kill the cow or goat for a few good meals when it could provide you with milk for an extended period of time. And hunting larger game was, I imagine, much less fruitful without the rifled barrel of a long-range rifle. If you wanted to eat animals it would have been in much smaller amounts. And things that were much smaller in size that were not sufficient sources of eggs or milk. Things like fish, small birds, and other small animals. But still, not something that would have been an available day in and day out fare unless you lived in a vibrant coastal area where fishing had been commercialized. And that fish would have been much healthier to eat than the fish available at our stores and restaurants today.

Early on as a vegan, I found myself amongst a group that was eating a diet that consisted of all plant-based whole foods that were completely uncooked. This limited things even further because a lot of things in the plant world that would need cooking to be properly assimilated were also no longer on the menu. Things like legumes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, leeks, onions, garlic, shallots, and most nuts. This also meant that good old sourdough bread with vegan-based butter, garlic powder, and brewers yeast was off the menu. Oh man, I missed that one. They also promote the idea that we don’t need any additional salts whatsoever. That wasn’t so tough, considering everything I was eating was fruit.

This group of what is called Natural Hygienists also recommend drinking only distilled water in that it is the healthiest of all forms of water. Bye-bye coffee and tea. That was a little rough at first. Even though historically mankind has not had access to mechanically distilled water until the last couple hundred years. Rainwater would have been the exception, but most humans throughout the ages got their drinking water from rivers and wells which were far from being distilled. Some sources contain significant amounts of electrolytes or minerals. The only thing I ate for the next year that didn’t fall within this mindset was a quarter cup of homemade hummus as a part of my salads.

This lifestyle and diet were very cleansing, to say the least. I found that it was not as difficult to follow as some do. I read many accounts of people that really struggled with this. That was not the case with me. One thing that might have made it easier for me was everything I read on the topic. The first thing I read on the topic was a whopping 2295 pages called The Life Sciences Health System written by a Natural Hygienist by the name of T.C. Fry. It was the curriculum for the school that he opened and operated American College of Health Science in Texas, which offered a voluminous correspondence course detailing Fry’s views.

When I began reading this document I found it rather difficult to follow as it was only available in PDF format with no easy way to bookmark it. So I decided to utilize my programming and web development skills to set up a website on my server utilizing the same software Wikipedia uses to serve up its website. That way it would then be easier to read through in a more digestible format along with a robust search engine and an easier way to print portions of the text as needed. That document can be found at https://terrain.wiki. This effort made it much easier for me to read through and that way it would be available for others around the world as well.

This diet did amazing things to bring my body back to a state it had never been in before. My body had cleansed itself of much toxicity that I didn’t realize many decades of eating animals along with indulging in too much other good stuff like alcohol, tobacco, salt, caffeinated beverages, etc., had done. I felt amazingly clean internally and externally. I even feel much more sober-minded than I could have ever imagined possible. Which lead me to another question. Were this diet and lifestyle intended to be a permanent solution or just a medicinal tool to fix a toxic overload? Which lead me back around to my prior studies on historical diets as they relate to longevity, human lifespan, and the idea of living to 120 years and beyond with a body that looks and feels no more than middle-age.

I also began to re-examine the works of Dr. Valter Longo, an Italian-American biogerontologist, cell biologist, and author of the book, The Longevity Diet. He is also famous for his studies on the role of time-restricted feeding and nutrient response genes on cellular protection, aging, and diseases. His views and approach to longevity as it relates to aging are amongst the best approaches I have found. Not only to reach our fullest potential of 120 years but how that relates to disease in our body as a complex system. He does this by basing his studies on 5 pillars.

Complex systems like airplanes and automobiles.
Centenarian studies as found in our oldest living populations(Blue Zones), which I will address later.
Clinical studies, such as can be found at the National Institutes of Health.
Biology of aging, focusing on the cellular and molecular processes that contribute to aging and age-related diseases.
Epidemiology, the who, what, when, why, and where of health and the progression of disease in defined populations.

I, like Dr. Longo, have also spent much time examining complex systems and how they can be great tools to our understanding of how the human body works. Especially refineries and waste treatment plants considering our body does both of these things in the processing of our caloric intake.

“Dr. Valter Longo is the Edna M. Jones Professor of Gerontology and Biological Sciences and Director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California –Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Los Angeles, one of the leading centers for research on aging and age-related disease. Dr. Longo is also the Director of the Longevity and Cancer Program at the IFOM Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy. –https://www.valterlongo.com/“

If you are looking to make some meaningful changes to your diet that will help improve your lifestyle and ultimately your longevity, I highly recommend his book, The Longevity Diet. It is well worth the read and time spent.

Around the same time, because of Dr. Longo’s research, I also reflected on my previous studies of the Blue Zones and the Blue Zone diets in particular. None of which are marked by any kind of fruitarian diet. Not to say that these Blue Zone communities found around the world aren’t eating fruit, but they are not making it their mainstay. It is however a part of a well-balanced whole-food plant-based diet fed from locally grown and sourced produce that is not shipped in from all different parts of the world in limited selections as we see in the Western world of convenience we have become accustomed to.

Here is what these Blue Zone diets look like.

95% of your food comes from a plant or a plant product.
Very limited non-processed free-range meats. (note: This author chooses to abstain from all animal-based foods.)
Eat no more than 3 eggs per week(non-factory raised). (See above note on the author.)
Eat at least a half cup of cooked beans daily.
Avoid foods with added sugars.
Snack on nuts.
If you eat bread, choose sourdough or whole wheat.
If a label is needed to tell you what you are eating, don’t eat it. Whole foods.

While people in four of the five Blue Zones consume meat, they do so sparingly, using it as a celebratory food, a small side, or a way to flavor dishes. About 2 ounces per serving and about 5 times per month. One study that has been following 96,000 Americans since 2002, found that the people who lived the longest were not vegans or meat-eaters. They were “pesco-vegetarians,” or pescatarians, people who ate a plant-based diet including a small portion of fish, up to once daily. In other Blue Zones diets, fish was a common part of everyday meals, eaten on average two to three times a week.

–https://www.bluezones.com/2020/07/blue-zones-diet-food-secrets-of-the-worlds-longest-lived-people/

Why is soup in the title you ask? Because I believe they are the best way to get the fullest complement of nutrients that our body needs that cannot be fully appreciated on a completely raw diet. And there are many thousands of years of evidence that soups were a significant component of our ancestral diets.

These days I am glad to see that soups are a part of the Blue Zone diets. They are such a great way to gain access to a greater amount of nutrients that are bound up in many of the darker leafy greens, legumes, roots, and tubers. There is a long history of humans consuming soups as a practice with evidence going back about 20,000 years. Of course, back then they were using animal hides, watertight baskets, and hot rocks to cook the soups until they invented vessels fashioned from clay.

–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup & –https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1218643

And then there is this notion that we need to be eating three meals per day along with snacks in between. Where did we get this idea from?

The Industrial Revolution and the rise of non-home-based schooling, or public and private schools where there were benefits to schedules and larger amounts of resources dedicated to quantifying time in blocks rather than the fluidity afforded on a farm for example.

Let’s think about that for a moment. Are we still at the height of the Industrial Revolution? No, we are not. As a matter of fact, we are rapidly speeding towards an automated end of the labor vacuum that was created as a result of industrialization. We created a whole host of machines that needed a whole host of human operators that had previously worked in a more agrarian manner. As a result, we needed people that could be available and full of energy for long days at the mill or in the coal mine and they would need energy in the form of food to remain productive. They would also need a system by which their children would be occupied while they were attending to all this new mechanization that needed human operators.

Thanks to an education crusader named Horace Mann, Massachusetts became the first state with compulsory school laws in 1852. Mann also led the charge to change schools from a one-room schoolhouse that taught all children together to a multilevel format that separated children into separate grades by age.

The Industrial Revolution came about in the latter half of the 18th century and became a reality of life on a global scale by the middle of the 19th century. Pretty clearly our modern iteration of schooling was no longer simply about basic education, but about attending to children that no longer had both parents around the home or homestead and these children would need to be prepared for the reality of an industrialized world.

Move forward again another 100 years into the mid-1950s. A new world where many common diseases and disorders were being solved by a better understanding of how the human body worked. And how certain food fortifications could eliminate many of the common disabling malnourishment maladies like pellagra, rickets, beriberi, scurvy, and goiter. All of a sudden, we were improving human life expectancy in the industrialized nations, and as a result of a further industrialized WWII America in support of the war effort, victory gardens and wartime canning became a patriotic symbol promoted heavily by Uncle Sam. A simple way to ensure that there wouldn’t be any food shortages on the homefront in a time when more industries were supporting the war effort and rationing was in effect.

Alas, another outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution would be the birth and growth of large grocery chains that would eventually supplant the need for local, smaller retailers and we now have a world that made it very easy to never have to look back at a world of toiling over the soil for foods. And why would we, when we could go to a store and conveniently purchase packaged and preserved foods, supported by our industrialized city jobs that were providing convenient jobs and reasonable pay in exchange for a more relaxed 40 hours per week thanks to the growth of labor unions.

And that is when the Standard American Diet planted the seed for the world of managed health care that we have today resulting from our modern metabolic diseases caused by overconsumption of convenience foods. And in just two short generations we moved from dietary deficiencies to a world of metabolic disorders as a result of conveniently accessible prepackaged foods leading us into a world of metabolic disorders. In a post-WWII world where both mom and dad have entered the workplace to chase after the American Dream(nightmare), convenience has become King and the healthy homestead has been supplanted by factory farming, mono-crops, soil degradation, and conveniences of all manner which has left us an extremely unhealthy lot.

A recap of what I believe; at this point in time. My AT&T position.

I do believe that there is likely a way to eat that is most beneficial as part of the bigger picture of aging and what Dr. Valter Longo refers to as ‘Juventology’ rather than ‘Aging’. I believe that a whole-food plant-based diet will get humans closest to achieving our fullest potential of 120 years. I believe that there is a place in the overall picture where eating fruit only, or a frugivore diet has its place as a medicinal or cleansing mechanism that should be practiced from time to time, especially when feeling under the weather, but not for long-term maintenance. I believe that we would best be served by doing our best to rotate what produce we eat as much as possible, avoiding eating the same things more than 2 days in a row, and best if only once in a three-day period to avoid any level of dysbiosis.

-Dysbiosis is characterized as a disruption to the gut microbiota homeostasis caused by an imbalance in the microflora, changes in their functional composition and metabolic activities, or a shift in their local distribution. Wikipedia

I believe that the best timeframe by which to eat would be to follow the equatorial sun. Don’t let it kiss your lips if the sun can’t kiss it first. Eat only from 6 am to 6 pm, regardless of where you live on Earth. I believe a feeding window of 12 hours per day is the sweet spot where the fewest health problems will arise. Gallbladder problems tend to show up on the lower end of feeding windows; 8 hours or less. Metabolic disorders; diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and such begin showing up at 15 hours or more. I believe it is always better to eat heavier foods/meals earlier in the day and lighter, easier-to-digest foods for the last meal of the day; maybe even just a snack.

I believe the best way to determine what the optimal human diet should look like is to mimic the diet and lifestyle choices of the longest living people on Earth, wherever they are found.

Finally, I hesitate to suggest a frugivore model of eating as a long-term solution as some vegans do. I find it problematic in light of our current state of produce quality and access to enough variety to make it feasible. Although, some would disagree with me on this point. However, as I mentioned above, I do believe it is a great medicinal tool for occasional cleansing as needed. And I believe the best way to overcome these nutritional deficits is through soups containing as many dark and vegetables, dense and complex leafy greens, beans, roots, and tubers.

And never go nuts with nuts. Try to limit them to at most every other day and only one quarter cup serving. Personally, the only nuts I eat are walnuts. Not because of flavor, but because they are the healthiest of nuts. Peanuts and almonds are the two least healthy. I would avoid them.

And when in doubt, always eat less than more.

*Why Am I No Longer a Raw Vegan?

Why am I no longer a raw vegan?

Simply put…Insufficient electrolytes and subsequent imbalances. Not enough of ALL of the needed electrolytes, with excesses of some, like potassium.

Water and electrolytes are essential to our health. Electrolytes take on a positive or negative charge when they dissolve in your body fluid. This enables them to conduct electricity and move electrical charges or signals throughout your body. These charges are crucial to many functions that keep you alive, including the operation of your brain, nerves, and muscles, and the creation of new tissue.

Simply put, bad things happen over long frames of time that often go unnoticed because of the slow crawl towards the disease states of these deficiencies.

I am not suggesting salting your foods by any means. But I am suggesting looking at the ways to get ENOUGH of ALL of the needed electrolytes for OPTIMAL human functionality and longevity of years.

And a raw vegan diet in my humble opinion is not a way to accomplish that end.

I intend to attend my birthday at 120 years with a body that looks and feels no more than a robust 34. And I will do what it takes to get there. Even admitting when I have been wrong in practice.

See you in 2092.

*Are We Getting Enough of the Right Stuff?

In late 2020, I was introduced to a concept of health and wellness that is referred to as the Terrain Model of Natural Hygiene. It is a way of understanding human physiology and disease pathology that is a more hands-off approach coupled with a whole-food/plant-based diet. A diet where adherents also take a hands-off approach to the foods they eat. Consuming foods the way they come out of the ground or fall from the tree. Consuming foods in a raw state without any prior processing or heating.

This made a lot of sense to me considering I had been moving in this direction slowly over the two to three years leading up to my introduction of this way of thinking and living. In 2019, after a prolonged fast, I decided to remove all dairy from my diet. No more milk, cheese, or butter of any kind. A bummer at first, but I got over it pretty quickly and my physical and emotional state started making a turn for the better that I didn’t expect or plan on. Shortly after that and as a result of my studies I concluded that it would be best to also step away from all things related to beef and pork. And then over the following year leading up to the summer of 2020, I removed eating any kind of meat whatsoever. No more fish or fowl as well. I did keep eggs in my diet though until the end of November 2020. That was when I was introduced to a group on Facebook that promoted Natural Hygiene and the consumption of a fully unprocessed whole-food/plant-based diet.

This group in particular even goes so far as to suggest that much of what we call vegetables are not appropriate for human consumption and that the healthiest of diets consist of only fruit and leafy greens. Some might consider this a little extreme, but I had already done most of the hard work already in removing all of the animal-based food sources over the prior eighteen months.

Was it hard at first? Absolutely, I was eating as much as I wanted to, but never quite felt like I was fully satisfied until I started consuming a rather large salad every morning to set me off in the right direction for the day. From there it was all fruit and some occasional nuts until the evening. And what I can say for sure is that this way of eating is just what the doctor ordered. It really helped my body move to the next level of health and overall hygiene. But then there came a point where my body felt like something was missing. I began to suspect that this diet is/was not the full answer. That it is/was good for healing or cleansing, but that it alone was not what the body needs for ongoing health and wellness if one is trying to reach their fullest human potential.

I was really hoping I would be able to say that eating fresh fruit and leafy greens was all that was necessary for complete nutrition. I was standing at a crossroads and it was time to turn a corner.

Can we live on juicy fruits and leafy greens alone in our modern world? I cannot say that in good conscience. I cannot say that has been my experience because I am well convinced that the WAY our modern produce is grown for those of us that need to buy it is squarely where the blame is to be found. Not in the diet itself. Yes, plant-based/whole foods are still the answer, but alone they are just not quite enough on their own. Not until a more sustainable way of soil management is implemented on a larger scale. Fortunately, there are people that are currently working on that.

Not only do we need to be getting the right KIND of foods, but we also need to be getting a sufficient amount of the nutrients that are supposed to be in those foods.

Some might want to suggest that you can supplement vitamins and minerals in a daily capsule, but I would wholeheartedly say they likely make no difference. Especially considering, long-term studies of those in their 90’s demonstrate that there are no health benefits conferred to those that took a supplement daily versus those that did not. We are likely just making expensive urine for someone else’s benefit.

Simply put, our body needs the things that we call vitamins and minerals, but only in the form that nature creates them, bound up in their natural plant-based/whole food forms.

Two good options that can fill in some of the missing dietary components, even though not technically raw, in their cooked form, sweet potato, and legumes(beans) do seem to provide some of the things that would be missing in a fully uncooked whole-food/plant-based. Because of this, I would recommend limiting the intake of these two treating them like you would any supplement, consumed in smaller amounts. Sweet potatoes once or twice a week. Legumes could be consumed daily but should be limited in quantity to less than one cup, like in hummus as an example.

Another one which I’ve had the pleasure of trying out for the last month is called Daily Green Boost. Found at www.dailygreenboost.com. Currently, I am on their monthly auto-ship subscription program where they send out 4 bottles per month. They even cover the cost of shipping for a grand total of $91.76/mo.

It really seems to be filling in on anything else that might be lacking in my diet. I’ve even gone so far as to commit myself to this supplementation protocol for 6-9 months to see what difference it makes.

Are We Getting Enough of the Right Stuff?

by Michael J. Loomis