After working in trauma, I have a new perspective on “health.”

Do cardio at least 3 times a week.
Drink green tea 3 times a week.
Take a multivitamin 6 days a week.
Eat whatever the heck I want to.

Don’t go to freakish “raw” extremes.... because tomorrow you could be hit by a drunk driver. Enjoy what you put in your mouth (take that how you will). We are definitely not guaranteed a tomorrow. So, enjoy life. That is my prescription as your personal nurse practitioner.

-Amy

Thanks Amy...sounds nice and reasonable.  Love your name by the way.

Shaun,
You’re body will pay you back.

My wife is into health, although not as hardcore as you. As soon as we got married, a plethora of various and sundry health problems I was suffering simply disappeared, I swear due to her cooking alone.

You may or may not be any healthier at the end of all this healthy eating, but you’ll definitely be too poor to enjoy any health you have left.  All that junk is way too expensive!

Beth

Fried Chicken, Homemade Alfredo, biscuits and gravy.... syrupy sweet tea!  Any time you feel like having a real meal, come on over!!  You know the Rednecks will pass up RAW for fried any day!!!

Kim

I have seen fried twinkies and fried corn on the cob and gas stations in Tennessee....right past the pickled pigs feet and pickled hard-boiled eggs, but before you get to the souse (sp?) YUM!!!

We used to buy bread at the grocery store.  Now, my wife grinds wheat, beans, & etc… to make bread.  WOW!  What a difference.  Enriched bread is bread where they take out all of the good stuff and enrich it with just enough vitamins to keep you from getting freakish diseases from lack of those basic nutrients. 

In case you are looking for where she buys her stuff:

http://www.breadbeckers.com

They have a pick-up in Franklin.

Too expensive?  I thought so but now I’m doing the math:

+ the cost of organic/no-chemical food
- the cost of all the other food I usually buy
- the cost of trips to the doctor (at least some)
- the cost of prescription drugs (at least some)
= about the same?  a little less?  a little more?

Time will tell.

Health is hard, but it’s worth it.

Just choose healthy stuff when it’s available, and when it’s not, thank God for what you have and chow down.

Want disdain from strangers?  Post about extreme health choices on your blog. 

Or go to a barbecue while being vegan.

After I graduated from college 7 years ago, I ended up being more of a sissy moderation type.  But while I was hardcore into health, I felt much disdain from people I never met before and people that I was not condemning for their junk-food-eating practices.

I think it’s great to make whatever health choices you want for yourself, but sometimes, I do wonder.  I wonder why we are so concerned about it and I think it’s also part of the “live as long as you can” mentality.  I mean I definitely think you should try to eat your fruits and veggies, and all of that.  I think we need to exercise and cut down on sugar and all of that.  I recognize that there are health crises in this country that have a lot to do with diet.  I just also think that we do the best we can, and let God worry about the rest...we can’t control everything.  we can’t be sure that even if we eat the most radical of healthy diets that we won’t still end up going to the hospital and having to buy prescription drugs for something else.  After all, even those who don’t smoke get lung cancer.  So I guess that’s why I’m a moderation sissy, fanatic or whatever you want to call me.

I wonder why we are so concerned about it

I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m concerned about it because of my gene pool.  Out last insurance guy literally laughed when I answered his questions about family history.  We’ve had everything.  Everything.

75% of my grandparents had cancer.  50% of them died.  A friend of ours is dying of it right now.  Diabetes, dementia, obesity (I’m not at risk there), heart disease, osteoporosis, hypertension, high cholesterol, etc etc.

It’s like standing on the tracks, hearing the train coming your way and just standing there saying, “Well, I don’t want to stop enjoying life on the track.  I really like walking the rails, the view from here, and everybody dies of something sometime so...”

If I didn’t do something that MAY get me off the track, at least to evaluate that something for a little while, that would be insane wouldn’t it?  Trying something, no matter how unpleasurable it may be at times, that cuts the legs out from under many of the trains heading my way, is to “do the best we can.”

If your drinking water smelled like poo because, well, it had poo in it, would drinking less of it be the best you could do?  Probably not.  There’s a lot of poo in your food is what I’m learning.  Not sure that’s something to be moderate about. 

But I’m still evaluating and learning.  I’m no doctor, just a guy on the tracks listening to the trains.

And another thing (I’m a little amped, not angry, about this today because Brody’s been making jabs at me for the last 48 hours about all this)…

Do you know how long the average person takes to eat a meal?  Not the hanging out talking time, but the actual time spent taking food in to the body, chewing it, swallowing.  Less than 20 minutes.  Multiply that by 3.  That’s 60 minutes out of twenty-four hours that most of us spend actually eating three meals in a day.  60 minutes!

I’ve been getting some flack for changing the way I spend 60 minutes of my day.  I’m being advised here to “enjoy life” because it’s short.

Now think about this with me and tell me if that advise isn’t a little strange.  “Life” and it’s “enjoyment” is greatly impacted by how much I enjoy the taste of food that spends no more than 60 minutes in my mouth every day?  Huh?

For me, and I know I’m not everybody, how much I enjoy a meal has a lot to do with who I’m with, what we talk about and where we are.  It has very little to nothing to do with what I’m eating (unless it’s Tex-Mex or cheese based).  If the people and the experience is what I enjoy why not care how long I get to enjoy those people and experiences?  I’m investing in what real life is for me and what really brings enjoyment to me.  I can give up familiar tastes for 60 minutes every day for more life and more time with the people I enjoy.

Make sense?

Absolutely makes sense.  If it doesn’t bother you to change your diet, then you absolutely should. 

I think at times I get discouraged from choosing a more radical diet because there’s quite a bit of conflicting information out there.  I read one book and it suggests one thing is the best and healthiest way.  I read another and it says “no that way will kill you, this is the best way.”
That’s why I hold to eat your fruits and veggies, shop at farmers markets, do your exercise.  Health fads come all the time and are not always helpful.  I have an affliction that is both hereditary and also probably related to my diet.  I hate it, it’s extremely painful.  And I did massive amounts of research when I first came down with it and guess what?  There was enough evidence to support any way I wanted to live and deal with it.  So I just sort of do a little of all.  My doctor gave me absolutely no advice whatsoever.  He did NOTHING.  So I guess that’s why I’m on the moderation train.  But, since the actual food doesn’t concern you all that much then you are probably making the best choice for yourself.  We do, after all, have to answer to our own conscious.

grr, I meant conscience.  Maybe I should change my diet radically, I feel i’m losing my mind.

Healthy is smart, but is eating raw food truly healthier.  I read an article about the oldest people in America a few years back.  One guy (3rd or 4th oldest in America at the time) was a junk food addict.  He ate stuff like twinkies everyday and baffled his doctors by maintaining great health well past 100.

What is the goal of eating healthy food?  What is “good” health and how do we know if it has been achieved?  Surely eating specific foods can’t itself be considered healthy in and of itself.  It needs to have some end result.  Unfortunately, drawing clear lines between specific foods/food prep methods and good health is a very tricky job.

I was at a party today where the guy ate a raw hamburger.  1” thick burgers.  30 seconds on the grill on each side to kill the germs of the guy manning the BBQ who had handled the meat.  It was still red on the outside and was thrown between two pieces of bread and eaten as is.  Would your wife consider that acceptable?  What about carpaccio?  I’ve only eaten carpaccio twice in my life (both within the last year), but I sure liked it.  It has to be one of hte most delicious ways of preparing beef that I’ve ever encountered.  Unfortunately, like most raw food, it is pretty expensive.  I think I know the answer to those questions, but would hate to assume things here, because you may be onto a brand new diet that I have never heard of.  I probably should have read the earlier post more thoroughly.  I imagine you answered it there.

When I lived in Cincinnati, they had a great radio show on PBS with some local chefs.  One time they had some raw foodists on to interview them about their diet and go over raw food preparation. The chefs thought it would be a great challenge to prepare a wonderful, gourmet meal that would wow the average joe and still meet these people’s standards for food prep.  It got me thinking about food prep in brand new ways, though I must admit that I don’t take their advice.  Me likes me some beef.  Medium rare. And pork too.  Medium to well done. Me like to catch own fish and cook over fire like ancestors.  Fire great invention.  Eating only raw food backwards step in evolution.  You no monkey anymore.  You have complex language and a god.  Why eat only raw food?  Me no understand. 

MB

My family has found that a healthier lifestyle is built gradually.  Today we are members of two or three food co-ops that let us mill our own grain to bake our own bread and acquire much locally produced free-range, grass fed, raw or natural, blah-blah-blah products.  We didn’t jump into it though.  The small changes we’ve made, one after the other, over the last five years have led us to the many strange practices and looks of disdain we have today.