Food can have nutrients, but not all food has nutrients. You must be able to make that distinction between food and nutrients.
If what you focus on expands, then begin to look for nutrients rather than just food.
To make better food choices you must look at four things:
1. How easy is it to get the nutrients out of food – assuming it has nutrients (digestion)
2. How fast can the nutrients get to the body cells (nourishment)
3. How much left over junk is left over from the food (especially toxins, poisons)
4. How fast can the body get rid of the left overs (excrete)
This varies from person to person. Some people have very good digestive and excretory systems so they are able to get by better than others even if they don’t make the best food choices. Some may be good in one aspect but not so much on the other, and some may just be out of luck with both.
You are going to have to listen to your body and know where you stand. Some of the things I’ve done are specific to my body because I was not having good digestion. Like me you may initially have to worry about taking certain foods based on your condition, but once your body starts functioning properly you can start to build up and make it perform.
The best thing you can do for your diet is to LASER FOCUS your attention on being what you want to be, and forget where you are at… if you want health and wellness, focus on health and wellness and it is almost inevitable that you will get it.
Think of this like driving… there’s a reason why the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror. Looking ahead is far more important than what’s behind you.
Therefore the focus of this book will be how to become healthy top to bottom by focusing on where and how to get the best nutrients for your body to achieve that. Whether you are fighting off a condition or not, changing your diet for the better is the best thing you can do for yourself.
I personally stopped looking for information on how to treat, cure or prevent my condition and shifted my focus to eating foods to make my body work at its full potential. I focused on getting my detox organs like my liver to work at its peak, my brain to work at its peak, my glands to work at their peak. Basically I began to follow the old adage, eat to live don’t live to eat and took it a step further. I began to eat based on performance. If I was to take on creative or ‘mind’ tasks I would eat foods that would fuel brain function. If I were to take on physical work (exercise) I would eat foods that would fuel my glands and muscles, etc.
When you look at nutrients from a pure performance perspective you’ll realize that the average person’s diet is the opposite of what they need.
We are so used to thinking about nutrition in terms of carbohydrates, protein and fats that anything else sounds foreign and weird.
Trying to talk about nutrients in anything else is like saying that yellow is not yellow, but that it’s a frequency with a wavelength of 550 nanometers. Huh?
Well, even though it may sound weird, it’s true. With today’s abundance of bad information I’m starting to believe we don’t live in the information age… we live in the misinformation age.
Going back to basics helps to cut through all the clutter and misinformation on nutrition we are seeing in North America and other parts of the world.
I don’t know about you, but what we are seeing in 2013 is not normal. People are fatter than ever, they are slower and they are literally and respectfully dumber than ever. I don’t say that from a mean perspective, but rather to point out that something is wrong and most people don’t know how or why this is happening. Worse, many don’t even realize or want to admit it IS happening.
The biggest problem is that most people don’t have an outside perspective on the topic. Being raised in Mexico and having traveled around the world has given me a different perspective many people simply don’t have in the US.
It is perfectly normal for most people in the US to go to the grocery store and see tomatoes year round sitting on the shelves at the produce section.
When someone from a different country comes to the US, and sees tomatoes when they are not in season, they wonder where do these tomatoes come from and why do they all look the same?
Why does every apple look shinny and ‘perfect’? Hmmm…
Most people in “Eastern” countries don’t understand the concept of Costco or Sam’s Club… why do we need to buy so much food at once?
They are used to seeing fruit go bad in 3-5 days… and usually shop daily for what they are going to eat everyday… how come our fruit can last for weeks?
Hmmm… I knew something was wrong and everything began to name food as the culprit, but not all food, there is good food and there is bad food.
Bad Food is the silent killer. With this book we’re going to make it yell so you can hear it coming and know not to eat it.
Most importantly, we are going to learn the biggest lesson we can learn when it comes to eating…
The goal is not to fill up our stomachs. The goal is to feed gut flora like bacteria and living cells inside of us… This is easy when you understand fermentation either from brewing beer or fermenting foods and fruits.
To give you a framework there is a spectrum of different types of foods you can have in your diet.
S.A.D. – Standard American Diet is where most people are today… these are things like pizza, burgers, white or whole grain breads, pasta and most cooked foods.
Healthy foods – salads and other light foods (mostly vegetarian like or vegan type foods)
Organic foods – this begins to take into account the source of foods and making sure the food has nutrients
Superfoods – chocolate (true cacao), many extracts and mushrooms.
Heirloom foods – wild growing plants that need no help from man to grow. These can be anything from Peruvian potatoes to wild tomatoes, etc.
Living foods – live foods with probiotics (friendly bacteria, yeast and fungi), which is just about anything fermented and many mushrooms with live spores in them.
Nutri-medicinal foods – herbs and plants which have been the real medicine from the beginning of time and far more powerful than anything made in labs when you know the source and how to use them.
There is more beyond, but this is a good road map that kind of lets you figure out where you stand. When my friends ask me to give them a “diet” I don’t really have one. I simply keep in mind what type of foods I’m eating and make a mental picture of where I fit in this spectrum.
Here’s the deal… as part of my research I’m constantly pushing myself to move further up the right side of the spectrum. This is not something you can simply do overnight.
Like me, you will get cravings… you will miss food from the left side.
This is a transition which has nothing to do with will power, but everything to do with what’s on your mind and what’s already living inside you!
Life is like a bicycle and you must keep pedaling and moving forward to stay standing. The real reason why most are not able to make the transition from the left side of the spectrum to the right side is because they don’t have a goal in mind.
Personally I set out to burn all the fat from my body because I know understand that’s where bad critters like parasites like to hide and live inside our bodies (yuck!). This is the real reason you get cravings and if you are able to get rid of them, it becomes easier and easier to move up the right side of the spectrum.
It has nothing to do with vanity or looks, but simply health and I hope that’s the real reason why you are here. I’ve seen many body builders with great physiques but who I can tell are overworking their kidneys and begin to look much older than they really are… I admire their commitment to the art of bodybuilding. It is their choice (though some may simply not know any better). I’m personally choosing health over looks.
