Forget Healthy Nutrition, Just Take a Pill.

I saw the most ridiculous commercial the other day on TV. Typically most of the TV my wife Lisa and I watch is DVR'd shows that we like, thus allowing us to skip commercials. We purposefully avoid the news and prefer to create our own reality and opportunities instead of buying into the crap that gets spoon-fed to us via the tube'.

However, I was a little slow on the remote and got stuck watching a commercial that made me sick. Walgreens is running a commercial basically encouraging you NOT to pursue healthy nutrition as an option for wellness. That's right, don't listen to people who tell you to eat vegetables and fruits, no no no. Instead get down to the pharmacy and let one of their experts fill your prescription.

Seriously, when I see this bulls@$t it says to me, "Hey, you in front of the TV. We think you are a stupid mother-f$%ker. Here's another big heaping spoon-ful of s%#t. Enjoy, moron!"

Instead of pushing good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle as a means of preventing illness and maintaining wellness, just take a pill. (BTW - this works for weight-loss too!!!)

Give me a f*&king break.

If you haven't seen the video, fortunately the folks at I Live Chiropractic posted it. Hit this link to check it out for yourself.

Click HERE to watch this ridiculous commercial. Way to go Walgreens!!!!

Now please understand I'm not bashing Western medicine. I pay for my health insurance every month, and I have a fantastic doctor I see once a year for my annual physical for him to basically confirm how awesome I am.

I think doctors should educate patients on adopting healthy lifestyle practices, good nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, etc. Let's use medicine only when absolutely necessary. In a life and death situation YES give me the damn drugs. If I have the sniffles? Sorry, but I'm passing on the pills. We are over-prescribed. Yeah, it's great for big Pharma, but is it great for you?

Come on people, think for yourself and don't let these big corporations piss on your minds.

Wake up.

Stay Strong and Healthy,

Scott

End of my Raw Month - It's a Wrap!

So that's it. One month on the raw plan. I'll try to keep this a short wrap up as I'm sure you guys are sick of reading about food.

Progress

At the start of this month I was at 190 lbs and down from 220 when I started a mostly raw diet at the end of September 2011 - I haven't been south of 180 lbs since 2000.

As you probably read in my last blog post the most dramatic drop is in my bodyweight. The cool thing is that I've actually cut back on my training volume and intensity - this proves that if you want to lose weight it is mostly about nutrition, not training. The old saying "you can't outrun a doughnut" is definitely applicable.

My body-composition has changed for the better, I'm much leaner with better definition. My energy during training is outstanding and my focus and mental clarity (particularly during taiji class and practice) is great.

My joints feel really good, even after periods of heavier training.

My eyes are very clear and my skin is good - no cracking or drying - I attribute this mainly to the good fats in avocados, flax seeds / meal and flax oil -- but I could be wrong, sounds good anyway!

Planning

It's true!

The raw foods diet was very easy for me to follow. Probably because I've been eating predominately raw vegan foods since end of September 2011 this wasn't a very dramatic change, I could see how it'd be tough to jump in 100% if you don't eat that well right now.

Here's what I recommend if you want to give this a try:

• start small, begin with one meal a day and a snack or two 100% raw and transition over time
• no matter what make sure the bulk of your raw diet is 80% or better fresh veggies and fruits with some nuts and seeds -- do NOT rely 100% on dehydrated foods and "transition" foods - use these as a treat or variety occasionally
• most dehydrated and transition food recipes call for a lot of nuts, dense calories still add up!
• drink a lot of water
• incorporate juicing - don't give me that crap about juices not being whole foods, yes, I know. What juicing allows you to do is extract the micronutrients, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, etc. from a TON of veggies and fruits to get s super boost of healthy nutrients. Much easier than eating 10lbs of veggies and fruit in one sitting.
• incorporate blended green smoothies - blended your greens allows you to ensure that you unlock all the chlorophyll out of the greens and extract as much nutrition as possible, plus the blended drinks utilize whole food nutrition, so you're getting the fiber and bulk from the fruits and veggies. If you have the time to graze all day and properly chew your food like a cow or horse, skip the blended drinks. I also recommend a Vitamix or Blendtec - they are worth the cash.
• raw vegan eating will assist in detoxification - however if you want to go deeper explore juice fasting - I highly recommend looking at www.juicefeasting.com they are a GREAT resource and have info on healthy fasting for up to 90 days. This has been a very effective approach ion helping people recover from major diseases - it's worth your time to educate yourself at the very least.
• there's nothing wrong with going 80-90% raw - you'll still reap many of the benefits and it will make things like travel and eating out much easier - this is essentially my maintenance plan except when I detox or fast annually from now on.
• at the bare minimum - try to get at least 50-60% of your daily nutrition from raw fruits and veggies - i.e. living food. Want to make it easy? Eat one meal a day 100% raw, the rest of your meals aim to make 50% of the meal raw. Simple.
• don't neglect your fiber.
• a good blender and a good juicer make this stuff really easy.

I could go on and on so if you have specific questions about my experience post a question or email me directly at sshetler613@gmail.com.

Where do I go now

Now that the month is up I'm going to stay mostly raw, my goal was 80-90% for the end of this. I never planned on staying 100% vegan, as I will most likely eat some eggs and a little fish or cheese occasionally; but over time I see me getting closer and closer to pure vegan nutrition - but for only doing this a little over a year now (April 2011 is when I stopped eating meat and fowl) I've made some huge improvements in my overall health and fitness.

Mainly I'm looking at getting my training dialed in and building my strength back while maintaining a lighter body-weight right around the 180 I'm at now.

Thanks for following this month long experiment! I hope it inspired you to take a look at your nutrition and maybe make some changes for the better!

Stay Strong and Healthy!

-Scott

Day 22 or Raw for 30 Days!

As I write this blog it's Day 22 of my Raw for 30 Days birthday plan. So far it's been an outstanding experience! This morning my body-weight was at 180 lbs. I haven't seen 180 lbs since 2002, and I'm definitely a lot leaner and carrying more muscle than I did back then, so at least something good came from being a fat and bloated 220 lbs for all those years.

#1 question I've been asked for the past 22 days - Where do you get your protein? If I had a dollar for every time, I'd have a Bugatti by now...

Despite the lack of "direct" protein consumption I have not atrophied, gotten sick, become "skinny fat", or spontaneously combusted. Yet.

If anything my body composition is changing for the positive, I'm leaning up, getting tighter and definition is improving and the cool thing is I train less than I did before. I still put effort into the workouts, but I have cut my training time down tremendously. Plus my recovery is better and overall I feel a lot better.

This cracked me up! It's funny, this is the type of crap I always used to say about vegetarians and vegans - now I'm on the receiving end. Karma I guess. Oh well - you can't argue results!

Where do I go from here?

With one more week left on my 30 day experiment I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Will I stay 100% raw vegan? Nope. That was never my intention. My goal was to improve from the 70-80% raw vegan plan I was following since September of last year. I wanted to go the 30 days for a couple of reasons, one to prove to myself I could do it since one of the biggest obstacles I see with my clients is motivation and discipline to change their nutrition habits. 

Look, I'm just as busy as everyone else. I work 6 days a week, run my own business and do all the domestic stuff everyone else does. I still have time to eat healthy and workout. 

I'm sick of hearing excuses from people. You are responsible for what you put into your mouth and it takes the same amount of effort to put a handful of goji berries into your mouth as it does a handful of M&Ms. More people need to take ownership of their lives and stop making excuses.

In addition my goal was to use this 30 days to detox and cleanse a bit as well as tighten up my nutrition so that I can maintain an 80-90% raw vegan plan with only 10-20% coming from cooked vegetarian foods. Basically I will continue to follow what I'm doing now with 1-2 servings of cooked food a day. However there will probably be 2 or 3 days a week that are 100% raw and I will continue to do 100% raw periods as well as periods of juice fasting throughout the year to detoxify and maintain the improved health I am experiencing now.

One reason is personal, I want to be healthy and have a very high quality of life through my twilight years and when it's time for me to trade this body in I want to make that transition as strong and healthy (mentally, physically and spiritually) as possible.

I also need to be a role model for my clients. How can people take health, weight loss, and training advice from someone who doesn't embody what they teach? One of my top rules "Don't be the fat trainer selling a fat loss program, DVD or book!"

As a side note - I recently read Dr. Gabriel Cousens' book and watched his DVD on reversing diabetes naturally, due to the fact I have relatives who are diabetics as well as knowing many people who suffer from this horrible disease. It was incredibly informative and enlightening, then my friend Antony posted a link about Dr. Cousens recently on Facebook which reminded me about this - his approach to treating diabetics and getting both Type 2's and 1's OFF insulin and medications is a raw food nutrition plan. Here's a great video intro of his program:

And here's a link to the preview for Dr. Cousens' video I purchased my father:

I'm looking forward to seeing what the last week has in store! Also, last year for my birthday 6/13/11, I conducted a personal fitness test. I repeated the test for my birthday this year and will be posting my 1-year comparisons in the upcoming week.

Thanks for reading!

Stay Strong and Healthy!

-Scott

15 Days into Raw for 30 Days!

And 15 more to go!

After two weeks of raw vegan eating I feel like I'm in the groove with it. This is good and bad. It's good from the standpoint that I can pretty much find the right kinds of foods no matter if we are going out to eat or staying home. It's bad because I can see how falling into the trap of eating the same limited menu over and over would become easy. However this was a problem before I switched to vegetarian nutrition as well.

Preparation is simple - that's one of the things I love about eating this way, nothing to cook! The foods that take the longest are things that I have to prepare in the dehydrator, but even with that it's like 10:00 of prep time to get it ready to dehydrate.

The dehydrator has really opened up some great new options for raw foods, my favorites so far have been the raw sweet bread and flax seed crackers. In addition I've made some guacamole and some awesome raw hummus to eat with them.

Guacamole! 

Raw Flax Crackers!

Raw Hummus - a MUST with the Flax Crackers!

Since this was my birthday week, I loaded up on some raw desserts - raw cheesecake (macadamia nuts, sea salt and dates for the crust and cashews, honey, lemon juice, coconut oil and vanilla for the filling) and some raw chocolate (raw cacao, honey and coconut oil).

Raw Cheesecake!

Raw Chocolate! Happy Birthday to ME!

For my birthday dinner we went to R Thomas Deluxe Grill in Atlanta for dinner. R Thomas has a very healthy, diverse menu with tons of vegetarian and vegan meals and for the resident cannibals they use only free-range hormone-free meats. They have a great selection of smoothies and juices as well. I got a raw vegan entree that had flax chips, sweet potato chips, a mixed veggie salad, mixed veggies, hummus and a couple other raw spreads. I also had a green smoothie and raw apple pie for dessert. Lisa had a raw vegan entree with a veggie / fruit juice. The meal was amazing and if you are in Atlanta check out R Thomas-great food!

Birthday Dinner at R Thomas Deluxe Grill in the ATL!

As I wrap up week two I have to say the experience thus far has been great. I feel better, I recover faster after workouts, my energy is great, my body composition is changing rapidly, I'm much leaner and tighter and my weight is down to 181.5 lbs as of today (190 lbs when I weighed in on June 1).

Scary but this is probably closer to the truth than we'd like to admit!

Even though I only have two weeks of my 30 days raw plan left, I am definitely going to keep up 80-90%  of my daily nutrition as raw vegan, and most likely a lot of days will be 100% raw.

I'd have to concur with legendary turn of the century strongman, George "the Russian Lion" Hackenschmidt, who in his book "The Way to Live in Health and Physical Fitness" said, "I believe I am right in asserting that our Creator has provided food and nutriment for every being for its own advantage. Man is born without frying-pan or stew-pot. The purest natural food for human beings would, therefore, be fresh, uncooked food and nuts."

George "The Russian Lion" Hackenschmidt

I'll have another update at the end of week 3!

Until then,

Stay Strong and Healthy!

-Scott

30 Days Raw - Week 1 Recap

So 1-week of 100% raw vegan eating is in the bag. It's actually Day 10 as I'm writing this and going 100% raw vegan has been an awesome experience so far. I do not plan to do a daily update as the nutrition is pretty similar on a daily basis - I outlined my typical day in a previous blog post. From hear on out I'll only do 1 or 2 updates weekly on the blog as writing, and for you reading, the same daily nutrition over and over will be quite boring.

Here is what I've experienced after the first third of my 30 day experiment.

Juicing the healthy way! A typical breakfast.

-weight is down about 7 lbs (190 - 183) in the first week, getting tighter and body composition is improving, I'm even starting to see those ab things I haven't seen in about 12 years


-caffeine headaches last about 2-3 days, after the third day everything just started getting clearer


-energy is great, I get about 4-5 hours sleep a night and honestly I am waking up at 3am during the week without much of a problem


-energy and strength during workouts is great


-sleep is good, I feel pretty well rested when I wake up


-skin / complexion is clear


-eyes are clear


-recovery post workout is improved, I don't experience much fatigue either, endurance is good


-greater mental clarity


-better focus during work, writing and reading

One of the things that I am really liking is raw foods taste amazing and are very satisfying. I am never hungry. I don't experience any reflux like when I was eating a lot of meat.

Based on a lot of the things I've read particularly the work of Dr. Max Gersen, who's raw juicing and vegan approach to nutrition has successfully helped many people survive horrible bouts with cancer, and Dr. Gabriel Cousens, who has helped numerous type 2 and a handful of type 1 diabetics go completely off ALL insulin and oral meds, raw nutrition is definitely beneficial in healing disease. One of the things I plan to do is get my annual physical toward the end of this month, I can't wait to compare my lab work to my last physical when I was a 225 lb hardcore carnivore!

Raw foods are very easy to prepare as well. Just chop some things up, blend some things up, whatever, prep time is basically but in half.

This past week I have experimented with some of the "transitional" raw foods, some of which require preparation in the dehydrator.

I've made some raw sweet bread, raw flax chip, raw oatmeal, raw banana crepes, raw pad Thai, raw macaroni and cheese and raw cheese cake and it all tastes amazing. It's pretty crazy to eat some of the stuff and think that it is 100% healthy.

My Omega 8006 juicer and my Vitamix blender are the rockstars of my kitchen. While the dehydrated and "transition" raw vegan foods are awesome for some flavor and variety, nothing beats loading up on raw fruits and veggies and the juicer and the vitamix make it super easy. Through the vitamix alone I get anywhere from about 10-20 servings of green veggies and fruits daily-the blender is awesome because you are getting 100% solid food nutrition as it utilizes the entire fruit and vegetable-, plus the juicer adds in the highly concentrated micro-nutrients from fruits and veggies. Between the juice in the morning and the 1-2 blended green smoothies I am getting about 64-96 oz. of super high quality raw veggie and fruit nutrition daily on top of the raw fruits and veggies I eat.

One of the benefits to the blended drinks and juices are that they ensure the extraction of the good stuff in the greens, the chlorophyll, that's locked up in the cellulose. When you eat raw green veggies you really have to chew them up well to break down the cell walls to unlock all the good stuff in the greens (think about cows and horses grazing, all they do is chew). The blender and juicer take care of that for you and ensure you're getting access to all of the health promoting and healing nutrients in the veggies.

Even after my 30 days of 100% raw are up, I plan to be tighter with my nutrition. Prior to this I was about 60-80% raw vegan and 20-40% cooked vegetarian foods for my daily nutrition. I hope to maintain closer to 80-90% raw vegan after this month is up. Travelling will be the hardest, but Lisa is eating more raw now and enjoying it so that will make it easy.

Training has been good as well. Basically I am practicing Taiji and Qigong daily with three classes at my Shaolin School. I'm weight training with conditioning 2-4 days per week, and doing a LOT of mobility, stretching and Indian club work.

Overall I feel much healthier and more fit than ever. Granted due to the fact I've lost about 40 pounds since last September my strength dropped as expected with that much weight loss, but I have begun building it back even though I am still losing weight. Also - contrary to everything I've ever heard non-vegans say about this type of diet, my muscle has not vanished and my bones are not brittle. Body-fat has disappeared pretty quickly though. I guess I am getting a sufficient amount of protein as I have not turned into Captain Atrophy yet. The funny thing about training and vegan nutrition is that no-one talks about real plant-based vegan foods. Everything I read on the internet is usually something to the extent of "vegan nutrition is bad for training, all that fake meat, soy based crap is poison." Um. Yeah. It is. It's hysterical to me that following a vegetarian or vegan diet means loading up on processed soy. Where is the "vege" in vegetarian?!?! It's raw fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds. Anyone I've talked to who is raw vegan, vegan, etc. who trains hard stays away from processed soy like the plague. If you decide to try this nutrition - do your research first. Eat real plant based foods, not processed crap. See video below.

Quick - someone tell these guys to eat some meat or get on the anabolics before they atrophy!

I'm definitely looking forward to what is in store for the next 20 days of this experiment - but raw will continue to be the majority of my nutrition lifestyle for the remainder of my days in this human experience.

Stay Strong and Healthy!

Scott