The concept of ceviche can create a little bit of a block for many people, “so you like soak raw fish and stuff in lime juice and then eat it?” The lime juice is like a pickling liquid that ‘cooks’ and preserves the seafood. Yes it’s considered to be cooked in its own way, even though it is never heated. In fact, just as if you were boiling shrimp, the lime juice will turn the shrimp from gray to bright lobster red. And it is most certainly safe to eat as the lime juice will destroy bacteria and any parasites. In fact, it’s much safer to eat than raw fish as in sashimi, which is of course a widely accepted safe food – but if raw fish scares you, don’t equate sashimi and ceviche because they are truly very different.

The reason ceviche is such a healthy dish to incorporate into your life is primarily because of enzymes. Enzymes are an essential component of food that most people are drastically lacking, especially with the widespread pasteurization of dairy products, juices, etc. which at one time were almost always served fresh, unheated, and teeming with enzymes. So having a few raw staples in your life is vitally important, and the quantity of enzymes that you’re receiving can best be measured by calories, not by quantity. Most people attempt to get raw foods from lettuces and vegetables, but these have the lowest enzyme contents and don’t get you too far in meeting your raw food quota.

As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, your best sources of enzyme-rich foods are high-calorie goodies like full fat raw dairy products, avocadoes, coconut, lacto-fermented foods, raw and rare meats, raw seafood, and ripe fruit in moderation (never eaten alone). Fresh squeezed juices, raw honey, and dried fruit are also potent sources of enzymes, but should certainly be consumed in very limited amounts as most people desperately need to recuperate from a lifetime of sugar over-consumption. I personally have gorged myself on sugary enzyme-rich foods in an attempt to eat mostly raw natural foods, but I eventually crashed and burned until switching gears on my sources of raw calories.

Without going any further on yet another rant about enzymes, here’s how to make ceviche at home, in a manner which will, what did I say, “make every citizen of Mexico kneel before your bowl?”

Ceviche (4 servings)

Ceviche is basically a seafood salsa that can be served alone (smile) as an appetizer or even an entrée, or eaten with chips (frown) or on a tostada (scowl).

½ pound raw shrimp; peeled and finely chopped
½ pound other seafood; diced (sea scallops and white fish like Halibut are the best)
Fresh juice from 6 limes

5 Stalks celery, diced (unless your name is Pippa)
1 small onion, diced
1 large tomato, diced
Kernels freshly cut from 2 ears of corn (optional)
1-2 avocadoes, cut into large chunks
Large handful of cilantro, leaves and stems, chopped roughly
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1T or so of Celtic sea salt
1T Hungarian paprika
Cayenne pepper, chipotle powder, or sauce from canned chipotles to desired spiciness

Preparation:

1. Mix the first 3 ingredients together and let soak, refrigerated, for at least a couple hours.
2. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients together like a nice chunky salsa.
3. Once the seafood and lime mix has soaked long enough, mix the two bowls together and get down on it.

Ceviche is well preserved by the lime juice and will keep for a week or so without its quality decreasing. It is easy to prepare, it only requires some chopping and squeezing – no dirty pots and pans, and it is muy rico when it’s done just right. So please give it a shot. It’s truly hard to screw up and I promise you won’t die.

Ceviche is also served in most Mexican restaurants (where it also won’t kill you), but I’ve never been overly impressed with it except in Mexico (where it almost did kill me, actually, on second thought, it was probably the giant mound of raw oysters I ate with it…some people like to learn the hard way I guess). Still, it’s a great thing to order if you’re looking for healthy food at a restaurant. Guacamole I might mention, while we’re on this here Mexican food tangent, is also a fine, enzyme-rich nutritious home and restaurant item. And by the way, if you omit the celery, lime, and raw seafood and add a bunch of mashed avocadoes and extra sea salt to the above recipe, you got yerself a damn fine bowl of guac.

And, before departing from the world of ceviche, I’ll also mention that drowning your ceviche in tomato juice and adding some whole cooked shrimp will make a fine Mexican- style seafood cocktail.

May all who read this have the huevos to try this at home, and I welcome any and all feedback as always. Buen suerte amigos…

Ceviche, tu amigo is a post from: by the pines

“The cruel irony is that although we become totally obsessed with the daily measures of how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we are (refused dessert = good; didn’t have time to go to the gym = bad), there is no finish line. This weight preoccupation will never lead us anywhere. It is a maniacal maze that always spits you out at the same point it sucked you up: wanting. We keep chasing after perfection as if it is an achievable goal, when really it is the most grand and painful of all mirages.”


“Spontaneity is crucial to health. Listening to when your body is hungry, and for what, is a mindful act anathema to most young women. In fact, the majority of those I interviewed for this book don’t even know how to identify when they are hungry or when they are full. They have so intellectualized the rights and wrongs of feeding themselves that they can’t feel a damn thing.”

-Courtney Martin; Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body

It made a huge impression on me when I first heard Human Behavior expert John Demartini say that you must plant flowers in the garden of your mind or you will be “forever pulling weeds.” Although the guy has a lot of cutesy sayings that fall somewhere in between Cheddar and Provolone, there is no doubt that many of his sayings, like this one, are very well thought out and meaningful.

This saying in particular means that you must fill your life and your mind with what is important to you, and what you are passionate about doing/experiencing/exploring or distractions and annoyances will end up filling your mind and your life – just like a garden with nothing planted in it will quickly be overrun with the stuff you don’t want in your garden. When I first heard this, and the truth of it sank in, it was only a matter of weeks before I purchased 30 health and nutrition books online and started this blog. I’ve been dedicated to filling up as much of my life and mind with what I find to be the most interesting subject on earth ever since. For no other reason than because I really love and enjoy it.

What saddens me is thinking about all our culture’s wasted time and head space that gets wrapped up in “what am I going to eat today” and “gosh life would be better if I lost 20 pounds.” To me, this neurotic and obsessive behavior (that first struck me at around age 14) has become one of the primary diseases of modern humans, no doubt a direct result of being bombarded with a barrage of marketing messages that are totally unrealistic (and of course cloaking serious health problems and eating disorders – because you can’t see those in a picture or commercial) and the yardstsicks of self worth that are generated based on that.

But after researching stress in greater detail, it’s become apparent to me that this fixation on weight, body image, diet, and so forth is a much greater health liability than any known junk food. I also wouldn’t disagree with Shawn Talbott, author of The Cortisol Connection, who states that stressing out about your diet too much is a leading cause of excessive cortisol production. It’s probably an even more prevalent problem than eating a truly crappy diet, and is a problem that humans have probably never immersed themselves in to such a degree until now.

But it gives me great joy to bring my research full circle. In fact, I applied for an LLC name in Hawaii in 2005 called “The Body Trust.” It was based in part on an epiphany I had while starving myself out in the Wilderness, which was the climax of my war against myself to achieve superhuman fitness, leanness, toughness, and self-sufficiency. The name was turned down because the word Trust is apparently off-limits, so I went back to the drawing board and came up with Sacred Self instead – the original name of this blog.

Cheesy I know, and Woo-Woo up to Wazoo, but the meaning behind it was truly revolutionary. My main sermon was to form a pact with yourself, make a conscious effort to avoid feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse in all things in life but most importantly your exercise and food choices (I can still vividly remember how focused I was on enjoying a piece of chocolate cake for the first time instead of beating myself up over it and quickly promising to run 47 miles on my hands the next day), and to fully trust and obey cues for hunger and desires for physical activity.

That’s where this all began, and I even published a few articles in a New Agey publication about self-judgment and an article entitled, “How Much Do Your Beliefs Weigh?” which featured my strong belief that negative self-talk and the binge and repent mindset were the root of excess body fat storage. Author Linda Bacon who you can read more about at the 180 Metabolism Blog in my latest post “Devour Bacon for Christmas” would certainly agree.

All that aside, the big question is how do we overcome our neurotic fixations on body image and our diet, in the name of better health – and more importantly, a better and more empowered and fulfilling life – filled “ful” of flowers and not weeds?

First, we must break down some of the myths surrounding leanness. We clearly have a totally delusional infatuation with it.

Why is leanness attractive? Leanness is attractive because it is more scarce. Scarcity is what gives all things value. At times in history, and in many countries still today like Mauritania which is the most extreme, it was much harder to be big, strong, and full-bodied than it was to have a 6-pack. Being voluptuous was more attractive, not being lean. In some cultures it’s hot to put a big plate inside your bottom lip or get your face really scarred up. Beauty is mostly a subjective matter and is based almost purely on being rare and difficult to obtain – just like diamonds, gold, silver, art, boutique wines, etc.

Shaved (no pun intended) down to its core, attraction is all about VALUE. What makes a person attractive is based on how valuable they are to the prospective “buyer.” The two most common virtues that are valued in today’s society are wealth (and the status and sphere of influence that accompanies it) and physical beauty (which again, is mostly subjective). For mutual attraction to emerge between two people, there has to be a state of value equality between two people… and equal exchange. When the exchange is equal, the two people have matching self-confidence (self-worth, the prime determinant of your attractiveness), and they feel equally lucky to be in the relationship because each possesses something that the other values.

When there is a power shift however, like one person getting a huge promotion or say, being in the National spotlight for overcoming testicular cancer and going on to win a worldwide athletic competition that inspires a billion people, the balance is totally thrown out of whack. When this happens a whole set of instinctual behaviors emerge that try to achieve balance once more. The lesser person in the relationship will often be quite irrational in trying to bring the other down to his or/her level (via resentment, infidelity, depression, alcoholism, abusive and/or combative behavior) or bring himself or herself up in value (by getting leaner, trying to seduce another, more powerful person, plastic surgery, or whatever desperate measures can be conjured up).

I bring this all up because, in today’s day and age, one thing you don’t want to use to attract another person is physical beauty. Physical beauty, unlike most other qualities that can have value and therefore be attractive to someone else, is a DEPRECIATING ASSET. I semi grew up in Aspen, CO for the love of Pete. What I’m about to say is not a stereotype, but a fundamental law of interpersonal relationships…

The more attractive you are based on society’s definition, the higher your probability of attracting people more fixated on physical appearance and less fixated on personality characteristics. Most people probably have a percentage. Some are 10% physically attracted, 90% attracted to other values – some are 90% -10% in the other direction.

And I’m telling you, the more attractive you are, the more likely you are to attract someone whose attraction is more heavily weighted on physical appearance.

In Aspen, the typical scenario goes one of two ways…

Wealthy young man marries hot young woman. This is a common exchange because these are the two most prized “scarce” attributes in modern society. Her accessory is the large diamond she gets out of the exchange and the increasing social status. His accessory is the woman herself and his personal feeling of self-confidence as every man obsessed with physical appearance (there are many) wishes they could be him. Both enter into the top tier in the pecking order for their respective genders (and yes, men and women’s pursuit of stupid leanness is more in competition with people of their own sex for power and thus increased self-worth, not necessarily because it is what the opposite sex finds attractive – but again, self-worth is the overall prime determinant of attractiveness).

Man gets increasingly wealthy. Hot woman becomes increasingly less hot. Woman goes crazy dieting and getting plastic surgery and blowing enormous amounts of money on things that make her feel more attractive and confident (jewelry, botox, designer clothes) trying to maintain equality. Both stop getting along and start becoming unfaithful. It is a mess. Inequality of self-worth cannot exist in a healthy relationship.

Or the man of course just cashes out and seeks out a younger, hotter piece of ass that equalizes his ever-growing self-worth.

You may not see this play out much where you live, but it has taken over places like Aspen and parts of So Cal and South Florida with jaw-dropping consistency. It’s probably no coincidence that Lance moved to Aspen where he can bar tender bartenders.

I bring this all up because being attractive is just as much of a curse as it is a blessing. To be fixated on it as if life will be made better by becoming more attractive is a tragic error. Rather, the more attractive you become the more you attract those who care more about physical appearance than anything else – and as the love you receive from your partner slips away with your beauty over the years, and your partner starts spending lots of time checking out other people and wishing to do a trade in for a younger model, you will get to experience what it feels like to be on the short end of the relationship stick.

So based on the grounds of relationships, or attracting a wonderful mate, there really is no grounds for thinking you need to improve your appearance. Even if physical attraction is important to you, and you want to “tie down” a hottie, you’ll be more likely to achieve it by generating an asset more valuable to a hottie – like material wealth, or being a great musician, entertainer, intellectual, etc (trust me, Orianthi could gain 50 pounds and still be more desirable than any supermodel on earth).

And let’s not forget that…

1) Dramatic attempts to become super lean and hot usually end up with you becoming more fat and ugly with more health problems and more emotional instability.

2) We are usually pretty limited in our ability to change our physical appearance more than slightly – not enough to make any real difference in the grand scheme of things

3) The opportunity cost of being perpetually fixated on your outward appearance, your diet, and your exercise regimen is a huge waste of your time here on earth, keeping you from having more fulfilling experiences in your life, and cultivating self-worth via other means that are NOT DEPRECIATING ASSETS.

4) The more obsessive you become about becoming more attractive, the more insecure, self-conscious, self-critical, narrow-minded, and one-dimensional you become.

5) The more you value physical appearance, the less you will be able to connect with yourself and others and appreciate people, including yourself, for the many, diverse gifts and talents one can possess.

6) Diet obsessiveness is socially crippling and alienates friends and family members

7) Restrained eating is a serious health liability (Linda Bacon claims there were 75 studies that demonstrate this as of 2008).

Being worried about how you look is without question the single biggest turnoff to others in the world. Trying on 36 outfits to see which one makes you look the least fat is not “cute.” In my experience, seeing beauty in someone who cannot see it themselves because of some drive for the elusive perfection, is deeply heartbreaking.

9) The universal quest to obtain and express unconditional love (for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse) gets farther out of reach the more you measure yourself up to an aesthetic ideal (which, again, is mostly subjective, and is an elusive fantasy that no one can ever obtain).

10) If you diet down below your weight set point to attract someone, you will create an artificially high standard for your looks in the other person’s eyes which will lead to a lot of disappointment in the person you attract when you gain all that back plus some.

11) There are 7 million Americans, and many more millions worldwide with a diagnosed eating disorder (and an estimated 25% chance of dying from suicide or that affliction directly), and diet and body image fixation is the “gateway drug” to get there.

12) Most of the compiled epidemiological health stats gathered worldwide suggest that being slightly overweight is more healthy, and yields much greater longevity, than if you are a of a “normal” weight or are underweight compared to your fellow countrymen and women.

So I propose something totally different, and hope to post a strong, affirmative presentation before the New Year to help us all frame a much more empowered mindset heading into 2011. And that something different is to take a lot of focus off of diet and body image (weeds) and make a conscious and continuing effort to replace those weeds with the things you want to do, experience, have, learn about, and spend your day doing – not just for your own sense of enjoyment, but to actually cultivate self-worth in areas that don’t depreciate.

Sure, health is important. We all want to feel good, be full of life, have the energy and charisma to do the things in life we want to do, and so forth. Health will always be the foundation for living a truly inspiring and fulfilling life. And our diet and lifestyle is a great backbone for all that. However, this desire to nourish oneself, eat the type of food that makes us feel good and perform at our best instead of for other reasons, and establishing a healthy relationship with our diets, our health, and our physical attributes – is something that stems from total dietary freedom, flexibility, open-mindedness, and lack of restraint of any kind.

You should never allow yourself to feel deprived of something so easily under your control as the food you eat or the amount of rest and/or activity you require to function at your best.

But most importantly, no matter who you are you must swear above all else that you will never betray yourself with self-deprecating thoughts. If you get one thing out of this post, it would be to replace those self-deprecating thoughts and body image fixation with time spent cultivating your greatest skill, fulfilling your greatest pleasure, touching the lives of others with whatever gifts you’ve been given, and begin taking a large dose of the wonder drug Fukitol for additional support with that.

In other words, to quote the movie Little Miss Sunshine, “Do what you love and f#!% the rest.” If you don’t love thinking about and playing around with your diet to see how it can change how you feel and function, then stop doing it. If you don’t love checking yourself out in the mirror 47 times per day and constantly thinking about that little pouch of fat on “x” part of your body, then stop doing it. If you don’t really love engaging in the endlessly interesting health conversation at this blog, then spend your time doing something you love more.  I won’t be offended.

In closing, I don’t think there’s anything much more inspirational than this as it pertains to us all trying to overcome the nagging, time-consuming, and disease-causing fixation on body image. Many people allow 100 pounds, 50 pounds, or even as little as 5-10 pounds to get in the way of them doing truly great things with the gifts they’ve been given (or even go on a beach vacation) – or the desire to be more attractive occupies so much time and energy and mental racket that it prevents people from developing valuable knowledge and skills – or even being so much as a good parent, a good friend, or just enjoy a slice of pizza.

Well, you can weigh over 700 pounds, barely be able to breathe, and still be widely loved, adored, respected, appreciated, and honored for the talented and passionate person that you are. IZ (shown above), perhaps the state of Hawaii’s greatest icon – and the only non-government official to have the state flown at half mast after death, was recently recognized by NPR two weeks ago as having one of the top 50 voices in the history of recorded music. 13 years after his death, his most beloved song has had well over 13,000,000 views in just eight months after being posted on Youtube.  I can’t embed the video here due to permissions, but you can see it by clicking below.  I highly recommend watching it if you have any image insecurities – with weight or otherwise. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1bFr2SWP1I

The question is, would his time have been better spent dieting, feeling ashamed over how he looked, constantly trying to figure out how to lose weight, looking in the mirror, hiding from cameras, counting grams of trans fats or sugar in his food, and shying away from the public eye for fear of being looked upon as a glutton by a bunch of people who don’t understand the first thing about body weight regulation? If he had a 6-pack would he have been more loved or less loved? If you get that last little bit of cellulite off your ass, and you spend most of your idle time thinking about how you look, will you inspire others and leave a mark on society so profound that someone that you’ve never met will see a random video of you on Youtube 13 years after you die and have tears of inspiration rolling down their cheeks? I kinda doubt it.

In 2011, make it a resolution to first choose Inspiration, then Health (and doing what makes you feel physically good) in that order, and stop trying to lose weight. If you lose weight doing that, great. If you don’t, great. It doesn’t matter. The weight problem is the fixation on it, not the weight itself. And that can be cured in 5 seconds if you really GET what I’m saying in this post.

Besides, I still fully agree with Schwarzbein’s proclamation, “you must get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy.”  But I think it can be taken even further, in that you must cure a weight issue to lose weight, not lose weight to cure a weight issue.  Like a wise man once said, “don’t drink to solve your problems, solve your problems before you drink.” 

To further help yourself overcome any obesity myths you may be influenced by, I highly encourage everyone (not just Danyelle who has taken the following advice literally!) to DEVOUR BACON FOR CHRISTMAS as explained HERE, regardless of your religious beliefs. See, isn’t Bacon delicious?

“Only through extraordinary effort and education have I been able to free myself from my obsession with weight.”


“As wonderful as food is, it is only one of many pleasures in my life. I am no longer waiting to lose weight before I live my life fully. Having freed up all the energy and time that I spent on dieting or obsessing about my weight or food and having let go of my shame about these, I have greater depth and fulfillment in my life, including deeper intimacy with others. I don’t think about my weight, and it stays fairly consistent. Oddly, after this new eating pattern became firmly rooted, I actually lost about thirty pounds.”


“Fat isn’t the problem. Dieting is the problem. A society that rejects anyone whose body shape or size doesn’t match an impossible ideal is the problem. A medical establishment that equates ‘thin’ with ‘healthy’ is the problem.”


“There is an easy way to win the war against fat and reclaim your pleasure in eating: Just give up. Yes, give up. Stop fighting.”

-Linda Bacon

For more on the futility of dieting or trying to consciously control your calorie intake to lose weight and more,  read 180 Degree Metabolism.

Weight Fixation: “Waist” of Time is a post from: by the pines

Most people gain weight when they say “ah screw it” and decide to eat “high-everything.”  That’s not the case all the time though.  In fact, sometimes eating nutitrious foods to appetite triggers the release of stored fat – even in the short term.  This is a rare testimonial, but fascinating.  I’ve asked this guest poster to do something more interesting though – report back 1 year later on longer-term weight changes eating 180-style vs. Isagenix, a popular protein powdery starvation regimen that has actually made a really good friend of mine blow up like a balloon in increments over the last several years following short periods of Isagenix weight loss.  Enjoy, and special thanks to our guest poster Tiffany P.!   

My story is the same as most of you. I went on my first diet when I was eleven and thus started the viscous dieting cycle. I’ve been on every diet you can name. I would lose weight, then gain it back, plus some. In the last five years my weight has ranged from 175 lbs to 265 lbs.

My family and friends decided to try this diet called Isagenix. They’ve always been healthy eaters, so I thought that maybe this was a good program. I did some research and wasn’t too excited about it. You only
eat once a day and you juice cleanse once a week. I have to be honest, I’m a diet addict (hopefully ex-diet addict now!). If I wasn’t nursing my baby, I probably would have tried this diet. Thankfully, I care enough about my baby’s health to not try something so stupid.

So while my family was starting their diet I found this crazy place called 180 Degree Health. I started to read up on Cortisol, Leptin, Fructose, and The Milk Diet. I put my scale away and stopped dieting! I now eat what I want, when I want, as long as its nutritious. Some days I eat a ton of carbs, other days I eat a lot of fats. I just listen to what my body wants.

Last week I had a major sweet tooth and wanted some ice cream. I decided to eat a pound of bacon instead! Curious as to how my new way of eating was affecting my weight I decided to weigh myself.  After two months of not dieting I’ve lost 14 pounds!

Pretty amazing when you compare this to my Isagenix friend who has now lost 18 pounds in two and half months. My calorie intake varies from 2,200 to 2,500 calories a day. My friends intake is 900 – 1,100 calories a day.

One of my family members stopped Isagenix and started eating three meals a day. They gained the weight back very quickly and are now back on the program (which cost $270 a month).

After 14 years of dieting I’ve finally found the answer to weight loss and overall health. I’m going to continue to FEED my body nourishing and natural foods, rather than starve it!

Thanks to Matt for all your hard work!

-Tiffany P.

180 vs. Isagenix is a post from: by the pines

Day 9 and going strong…

Got a little exercise today and definitely felt a little faint in comparison to my usual self. My heart was still pounding unusually hard and fast for the amount of exertion I was putting out there.

I was really busy doing a bunch of other writing today. As we speak I think I’ve already topped the 20-page mark, so I’ll save my juice for the commemorative Day 10, which is, for those who aren’t mathematicians, tomorrow.

Today’s menu was pretty exciting. I cooked for convenience today, not variety, and it wasn’t all that enjoyable to be honest. Still, the nice thing about the diet so far is that food is something you stick in your mouth, chew, and swallow. It’s like a whole new level of neutrality surrounding food. I don’t think much else of food in general and can just get along with my day. It’s nice. So, here goes:

Breakfast: Chicken roasted in leftover bacon grease topped with extra butter

Lunch: Ditto

Dinner: Ditto

Snacks: Ditto

I did have 2 ounces of that Fontina I’ve been hitting right before breakfast, but that’s it. Chicken with chicken and more chicken. I did eat the gizzard and will eat the rest of the organs tomorrow even though there was some nasty green lovin’ on the liver that will probably kill me.

I can definitely say that, so far, raw meat, in the form of red meat and raw fish, is much more enticing on this diet than cooked meat and seafood.

Bowels are flowing flawlessly for all those interested in that. Had me a nice one within 20 minutes of waking up. Although, I will not be satisfied until it jumps out of the toilet and sings a song of Christmas cheer. When I find a diet that produces that result, I will have found “the one.” I hear that singing feces requires having a lot of fiber in your diet though, but I remain skeptical about that.

FUMP Day 9 is a post from: by the pines

I recently ate the best burger I’ve had so far in this lifetime.  Check out the full review at:

http://180kitchen.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/larkburger/

Larkburger is a post from: by the pines

My latest and certainly greatest title is “the milk man.” When people need to discern between me and another they sometimes say, “oh, you mean the milk man?” Every now and then I get a “hey, milk man!”

For those of you who don’t already know, for the past month I’ve been interning at a raw dairy farm in Montrose, CO and driving 100+ gallons halfway across the state on my “route.” Doesn’t everybody milk cows on their days off? This is the semi-clever one I’ve been using relentlessly when faced with having to tell someone what I’ve been up to lately. But it’s true, after my day job I’ve been driving over two hours to get up at 4:30am and milk “the girls,” deliver milk all the way over to the raw milk-obsessed town of Carbondale, and more, including, but not limited to, eating the most massive and nourishing farm breakfasts in the world compliments of Mama Cindy.

For the past year I’ve been extremely interested in the idea of unpasteurized milk and milk products thanks to the work of Sally Fallon, Jordan Rubin, Donna Gates, and others. My introduction to these revolutionary (because they use common sense, a rarity in today’s nutritional wonderland) authors led me further down the path of raw dairy to legendary nutritional pioneers Weston A. Price and Francis Pottenger, who both concluded that raw, grassfed dairy products were the most nutritious foods available to modern humans from several vantage points.

Price for example, sent 10,000 native foods from his worldwide travels back to his laboratory for nutritional research. Butter from cows fed on rapidly-growing green grass shared the title for the planet’s most nutritious food along with organ meats and fish eggs. Butter? Yes, butter, but not the kind sold down at City Market (the “c” in city is pronounced “sh” as in shopper). Price’s deep yellow raw butter contained high concentrations of fat soluble vitamins and substances rarely found in any other food on earth, such as Activator X, CLA, Wulzen factor, etc., all known to have profound healing and rehabilitation properties.

Which brings me to my next point. At the dawn of the Mayo clinic, J.E. Crewe, M.D., one of the founders of the clinic, used grassfed milk to successfully treat and cure most degenerative ailments. Crewe is quoted as saying, “The method itself is so simple that it does not greatly interest most doctors…The fact that many diseases are treated and successful results claimed, leads almost to disrespect.” He used a milk diet of 3-9 quarts a day to treat high blood pressure, obesity, various forms of edema, diabetes, heart disease, liver and kidney disorders, arthritis, allergies, asthma, and much more.

And what Crewe knew with certainty and confidence to be true after nearly two decades at the clinic reflects exactly what I’ve discovered myself on my own personal journey to better health…

“When sick people are limited to a diet containing an excess of vitamins and all the elements necessary to growth and maintenance, they recover rapidly without the use of drugs and without bringing to bear all the complicated weapons of modern medicine…the most important single factor in the cause of disease and in the resistance to disease is food. I have seen so many instances of the rapid and marked response to this form of treatment (raw milk diet) that nothing could make me believe this is not so.”

Personally, I haven’t been able to sleep in a house with cats and/or dogs in eight years because of severe allergy-induced asthma – that I was once medicated and even hospitalized for. Monday night I slept quite well in a house with two cats and two dogs without a sniffle or a wheeze. A few weeks ago I slept on a pillow covered with dog hair with no noticeable effect. My reaction has been one of disbelief, after drinking raw milk, yoghurt, and kefir regularly for only a week before noticing miraculous improvement. This coupled with a massive reduction of dietary sugar (and alcohol and caffeine) made possible by the abundant consumption of nourishing unadulterated fats and animal protein over the past four months are the only factors I can attribute my healing to.

Of course this is exciting for me, but understand that healing my body of these and other ailments has been my primary pursuit in life since I suddenly became completely incapacitated by them in December of 1999 (at that time I couldn’t walk to the bus stop without having an asthma attack). This isn’t just a pleasant surprise, to me it is winning the gold medal, an Oscar, the Nobel prize. I set out with a grand achievement in mind, and although I’m still in disbelief and awaiting the return of my problems, it appears, for the moment, that I have done it.

So thank you everyone for following along with me on this journey, which is now accelerating as my personal progress and knowledge blossoms. I hope to continue to share my discoveries with anyone in pursuit of truly healing and nourishing themselves – and to offer the most effective and efficient route to the pinnacle of well-being.

…and call me “the milk man,” because that is, above all else, what I am.

The Milk Man is a post from: by the pines

Alright, I’m bummed to be doing this “extreme” diet.  I have no need to take such drastic measures, and to be honest, the last serious diet (2 weeks vegan) took a toll like no diet has in a long while.  But it’s time to check it out, and with my girlfriend under the knife as I type this in a hospital lobby (jaw surgery – I’m very excited to write about some of the things the docs have said to her so far, like “wow, 98.6!  We don’t see that very often”), it seems like the most appropriate time there will ever be to try a liquid-only diet.  Poor Aurora’s gonna be on liquids-only for up to 12 weeks.  Surely I can give milk 4.

Plus I was never breast fed.  It’s never too late to be on a milk-only diet I guess. 

Anyway, I’ll be blogging and vlogging about this adventure extensively.  Check out the first video recorded yesterday, and be brainstorming some good names for me.  Right now I’m leaning towards the FUCC Diet in honor of Colin Campbell – extreme animal protein hater.  Open to other ideas though.  We could just go with “The Milk Diet” but turn MILK into an acronym that slanders saturated fat haters somehow, or neolithic food bashers, or casein-o-phobes, or lactose slanderers, or what have you.  Wish me luck. 

Acually, pray that it sucks something awful, and that my conclusion will lean towards it not offering any advantages over eating a mixed, whole foods diet. 

Also, some of you might have missed this last big round of videos that I have not, as of yet, embedded into a blog post.  Enjoy these as well. 

The Raw Milk Diet is a post from: by the pines

A golden rule that I lived by for years served me in many ways. That rule was that if a food was natural and produced without newfangled chemicals, additives, and modern food processing techniques, then it was unquestionably nourishing and could be part of a wholesome, healthy lifestyle. To me this was a panacea of sorts. If I followed this rule, then I could be confident of the best health that I was capable of achieving, or so I thought.

The reason I’m addressing this notion is because I frequently encounter people with the same exact mindset. When I tell them that for the most part I avoid fruit, natural sweeteners like organic raw honey, etc. it’s obvious that this doesn’t fit into their own personal philosophy. These real foods, as many insist, are better alternatives to processed sugars, high fructose corn syrup, Splenda, and artificial sweeteners. This is obvious. And I of all people certainly understand how one concludes that natural sugars are an optimal source of nutrients. I was fully there myself not too terribly long ago. In fact, organic honey, dried organic fruits like dates, figs, goji berries, and raisins comprised a huge percentage of my diet less than a year ago – and I enjoyed better health than the majority of the American public eating abundant amounts of these foods.

These seem like incredibly nourishing foods with many well-documented benefits ranging from antioxidants and enzymes to good ole’ vitamins and minerals, but that doesn’t automatically qualify them as the ideal foods for improving health, restoring proper hormone balances within the body, rebuilding the immune system, overcoming chronic health conditions, etc.

The bottom line is this…

Many of us have accumulated and inherited poorly functioning endocrine systems. The endocrine system can basically be summarized as the system that regulates every single chemical substance in the body and the subsequent functions of those chemicals. In short, the endocrine system is everything. People like Weston A. Price and Francis Pottenger, Jr. were able to show very conclusively how perfect specimens of human beings and animals, when nourished improperly, could begin to deteriorate. This deterioration, much to the contrary of what geneticists today falsely believe, is cumulative and passed generation to generation, getting progressively worse the further down the line it gets.

As I’ve mentioned to many people, a year ago I came across an article in a Tennessee newspaper which stated that type II Diabetes in TN had doubled in young children in a period of only 10 years. Absurdly, it blamed this solely on lifestyle changes? Has the life of a young kid really changed so dramatically in the last 10 years? Has the diet really changed much? Let’s see, 10 years ago kids drank a lot of sodas, ate a bunch of candy, and lived off of fast food fries, chicken nuggets, commercial ice cream, and macaroni and cheese. For health kids enjoyed pasteurized juice, pasteurized milk, and fortified cereals. And free time was spent playing video games. Wow, what a difference a decade makes! Now kids are eating the exact same things and playing video games or surfing the internet. This article, God rest its soul, made the statement that “the problem is that we don’t live like farmers anymore, but we’re still eating like them.” Yikes! Farmers used to live off of hydrogenated fat, highly refined grains and sugars, artificially flavored and colored foods, and MSG? Huh, I never knew that.

Our dietary and lifestyle habits as a nation are changing slowly, but degenerative diseases, especially those directly related to endocrine function like diabetes, hypoglycemia, and obesity, are accelerating. Weight problems have doubled in something like 25 years in the U.S. A century ago your chances of acquiring type II Diabetes was around 1 in 400. Now it’s something like 1 in 5.

My point is not to cast a shadow of doom over our health, but rather to assure you that honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, lots of fruit, pasteurized juices, dark chocolate, red wine, caffeinated tea, and other sugary stimulant “superfoods” that are being promoted at your local “health food store” are not the foods that will reverse this cumulative degenerative process that is well underway. Vegetarian and low fat diets are also more of a problem than they are a solution for creating proper biochemical function, healthy metabolism, and proper blood sugar regulation.

There’s a reason why the average American eats 17 times the amount of processed sugar than he or she did 100 years ago. Our bodies crave it more and are exponentially more addicted to and debilitated by it because our collective ability to metabolize it properly is declining.

Avoiding nourishing foods that have been wrongly chastised is another important factor in the acceleration of sugar’s damage upon the body. Egg yolks, butter and other full-fat dairy products, meats, unadulterated oils, organ meats, etc. are key defenders against the damage done by excess sugar, and their removal from what’s considered to be a healthy diet is yet another gear that helps speed us ever faster toward poorer health.

Most importantly, removal of sugar in nearly all forms from the diet of a sugar addict is seldom done successfully without the proper tools – nourishment from abundant amounts of proteins and fats, preferably from pasture raised animal products and seafood, some raw and some cooked. There have been countless times in my life where I’ve tried to eliminate sugar unprepared. And every time I crashed terribly because my body was so dependent on receiving sugar to function instead of producing its own. Of course I felt it was some lack of discipline, but every chemical reaction in my body was communicating one thing loud and clear to me…eat sugar, frickin’ eat it! Do it, do it now!

Avoiding sugar without nourishing yourself is a great way to start a caffeine addiction as well. When I tried completely eradicating sugar from my diet for the first few times, I gravitated towards caffeine with a sudden obsession. It was the only thing I could find to satisfy that constant physical feeling of deprivation. Why? Because caffeine stimulates the release of glucose into the bloodstream from the liver’s glycogen stores, increasing the glucose levels of the blood, curbing hunger, and causing the release of excess quantities of insulin. In other words, it serves the same physical purpose. It took me years to solve the puzzle of why I, out of nowhere, couldn’t go more than a few hours without dark chocolate and a cup of Earl Grey. Ha! And this immediately after 45 consecutive days without sugar.

And of course I tried to eat abundant amounts of “natural” sweet foods. The result was frequent breakouts, poor digestion, less lean muscle mass, constant hunger, and very little progress toward the chronic ailments that I’ve recently overcome with the avoidance of both sugar and unbalanced high carbohydrate meals. High-sugar natural foods aren’t the cause of the problem, but nor are they the solution, and I encourage anyone who is compelled to discover better health and vitality, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to nearly eradicate these foods for an extended period of time and watch what happens. You might be amazed as I have been.

All Natural is a post from: by the pines

I’ve made it to a nice even number now – 10 days.

What’s weird is how normal eating this way feels already. I mean, to someone who’s never tried it, eating an all-meat diet sounds pretty out there. Yet, the meat diet has such an appetite-stabilizing effect that food becomes little more than something you chew and swallow at a few particular times each day. My neutrality with eating differs little with how I feel about brushing my teeth. It’s just another daily ritual to file away with all the others. So much for Michael Pollan’s advice to “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” What’s next Mike? “Douse yourself in gasoline, don’t burn yourself, light a match?”

Although 10 days can’t reveal much, here are the following things that I’ve noticed thus far:

On the positive side…

Amazing skin
Excellent digestion with no bloating or gas
No cravings for food of any kind – don’t even think about it
Sound sleep
Shiny toe and fingernails
VERY stable emotions if eating at regular intervals
Reduced pain in back and some other areas – amazing as I’ve sat for about 60 hours this week.

On the negative side…

Pain in the legs below the knees, and slight knee pain and stiffness
Rapid pulse
Thundering heartbeat
Reduced sex drive (starting to return to normal though)
Irrational Godzilla-like moods after more than five hours without food
Increased dark coloration under the eyes
Slight feeling of faintness when exercising
Occasional nausea
Tooth sensitivity

That’s the summary so far. For those curious, my weight has stayed the same, although I feel it’s dropping slightly now as I’m unable to eat as much food as I did for the first several days. No signs of muscle catabolism.

Today’s menu…

Breakfast: 6 eggs scrambled in 1.5 T butter, chicken liver and heart

Lunch: 4 ounces chicken meat and skin with lots of pork and chicken fat

Dinner: 8 ounces raw ribeye with 1T macadamia nut oil and 1/2t truffle oil

FUMP Day 10 is a post from: by the pines

Along the same lines as the last blog post – a long-winded and passionate article on getting beyond the pathological fixation on weight, diet, and body image issues affecting modern humans to an unacceptable degree, here is an audio program encouraging you to not TRY to lose weight as a New Year’s Resolution.

The focus of any New Year’s Resolution should be making a resolution to spend more time doing what you find to be the most fulfilling, satisfying, and enjoyable things in life – establishing a healthy relationship with food and exercise in a way that supports those endeavors instead of functioning as a major distraction, and just letting go and letting the pounds fall where they may.  Enjoy, and feel free to pass it along to anyone you know whose life and aspirations are being undermined by their inner body image, weight loss, and dietary battles.  

2011 New Year’s Resolutions: Lose Weight! is a post from: by the pines