10:10 Wellness

Eat It Raw Part 1

I'm finally getting around to a topic that's been on my mind for several weeks.  That topic would be "raw foods".  "Oh great, can I watch my grass grow at the same time?" you ask.  I'll agree that it sounds like a very boring subject.  We've all heard about the "raw food diet", and we know we're supposed to eat lots of fresh fruit and veggies for the powerful antioxidants they contain.  So why can't we just leave it at that?  Well, the reason that the topic became top of mind for me is an experiment that I heard about with what I'd call disturbing results.

Before we get into that, I wanted to share some of what I learned from my on-line research.  Like every other topic that exists, there's an Internet community to support it.  Would you believe there are over 150 raw food blogs on the Internet?  This community calls themselves "raw foodists".  I don't know about you but this title sounds too close to "nudist" for me, so you don't have to worry about me showing up at your next party buck naked with a veggie tray.   That said there's still much wisdom and knowledge to be culled from our naturalist contemporaries.

From one of my favorite new resources, Wikipedia, we learn:  Raw foodism is a lifestyle promoting the consumption of uncooked, unprocessed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet.  Depending on the type of lifestyle and results desired, raw food diets may include a selection of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds (including sprouted whole grains), eggs, fish, meat, and unpasteurized dairy products (such as raw milk, cheese and yogurt).

A raw foodist is a person who consumes primarily raw food, or all raw food, depending on how strict the person is. Raw foodists typically believe that the greater the percentage of raw food in the diet, the greater the health benefits. Some believe raw food highly encourages weight loss and prevents and/or heals many forms of sickness and many chronic diseases that are seen as incurable by the medical community.

It's that last sentence that we should pay attention to.  Encourages weight loss?  Many of my fit friends may not have a need (or at least a big need) for this, but we can all benefit from the second:  prevents or heals many forms of sickness and disease.

Is there any science to back this up?  Am I really better off eating my green beans raw vs. cooked?  In the little bit of research I did, I couldn't find any experiment or test results that demonstrated a direct benefit.  The raw food sites and the Wikipedia resource primarily focus on enzymes and the role they play in our digestive process.  More on that in a bit.

Another popular site I found was what else but rawfoods.com, "the largest Internet community dedicated to educating the world about the power of living and raw foods" - their stated purpose.  Their site attempts to "re-educate" the world about how simple health can be by simply eating living and raw foods.   Two questions are posed in the welcome page:   

What other animal on the earth denatures its food by cooking?

What other animal on earth suffers from all the health challenges that we do?

Those are good questions.  Well what's so special about raw aka living food?  And what defines living food?  Living foods are foods that contain enzymes.  Enzymes begin to be destroyed at 102° F and are completely destroyed by 126° F.  So?  And what exactly are enzymes and why do we need to pay attention to them?

"Enzymes are any of the various complex organic substances, as pepsin (a protease of the stomach that breaks down most proteins to polypeptides) originating from living cells and capable of producing certain chemical changes in organic substances by catalytic action, as in digestion."

That definition is a little too scientific, but it boils down to this:  "enzymes are important because they assist in the digestion and absorption of food.  If you eat food that is enzyme-less, your body will not get maximum utilization of the food.  This causes toxicity in the body. What is meant by "toxicity in the body" I am not sure, but a natural state it is not.  (Please say that out loud in your best Yoda voice). 

Is there a difference between living foods and raw foods?  "Living and Raw foods both contain enzymes. In living foods, the enzyme content is much higher. Raw, unsprouted nuts contain enzymes in a "dormant" state. To activate the enzymes contained in almonds, for example, soak them in water for just 24 hours. Once the almonds begin to sprout, the enzymes become "active" and are then considered living."  Ahaa (I exclaim)!  That's why sprouts are so healthy.  And btw, I did soak some raw almonds for a couple of days as an "experiment", and sure enough they begin to transform tho no sprouts after such a short time.  So presumably my almond snacking that day was even healthier as it contained more living enzymes.

"OK Hughes, I'm about to nod off here" you say.  Here's where this got exciting for me.  While we really don't have any "science" to tell us why or how much raw food we should eat, we do have some population studies or observations that are very interesting.  Again from Wikipedia:

In a 1936 work entitled Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, dentist Weston A. Price observed dental degeneration in the first generation who abandoned traditional nutrient dense foods which included unprocessed raw foods e.g. un-pasteurised milk products, fruit and dried meats. Price claimed that the parents of such first generation children had excellent jaw development and dental health, while their children had malocclusion and tooth decay and attributed this to their new modern insufficient nutrient diet (which would have included a proportion of raw food).

Another advocate of a raw food diet during this era was Dr. Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., M.D.  He was a physician who observed the benefits of whole food nutrition, particularly with patients with tuberculosis at his father's sanatorium in California.  Convinced that good nutrition formed the basis for the successful treatment of disease, Francis senior placed a priority on the quality of food he served at the sanatorium.

Junior was best known for a 10 year experiment involving over 900 cats.  It was this experiment (and you can buy the book about it from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation - just don't all go at once or you'll crash their server) that most intrigued me. He raised generations of cats to a number of different diets.  The two extremes were a 100% raw food diet and a 100% cooked food diet.  The raw foodie cats thrived.  The cooked cats did not.  In addition to differences in proper teeth formation (like Weston A. Price discovered in his studies on humans) the cooked cats had significantly higher incidents of numerous diseases.  And get this, by the third generation, the cooked cats were becoming infertile - you know, they couldn't make kittens. 

While this experiment, and the research of both doctors is admittedly quite old, I think their observations and applications are timeless.  If you'd like to watch a 6:45 video on the topic, here's the link:  The Price-Pottenger Story.

From the blogs and sites I surfed, I found the raw foodies are suggesting a diet that is somewhere between 70 to 100 per cent raw.  That would be a very difficult proposition for most us.  And in fact, Pottenger himself suggested that a diet that's at least 50% raw is acceptable and certainly beneficial. 

OK, so there's our goal.  Half our diet is raw.  How do we do that?  I'll share my thoughts on that in Part 2.

Are you in?

Why My Purpose Isn't Important

Hello my fit friends,

One of my favorite morning rituals is to surf to the web site that contains "My Utmost For His Highest".  Here I can find the daily devotional from Oswald Chambers' book of the same name.  I like it because Chambers challenges me spriritually in a piece that can be read and digested in minutes - good for us "on the go" types.  And it's not for everybody so don't hear me say "you need to read this".

What caught my attention today were some of his comments about purpose.  As someone who truly attempts to live a life on purpose, I'm always open to other's perspectives on how to do do this.  Especially when the other's perspective is to align ourselves with God's purpose for our lives.  I hope you'll click through and find out why your purpose isn't important.  My Utmost For His Highest 11/10/07

2 Steps You Can Take Today to Get Out of Debt Fast

Hello my fit friends,

What does debt have to do with wellness you may ask?  A lot.  If you're struggling to keep your head above water financially because you've accumulated debt (and I'm still paying down some of our stupid debt), you know how much stress this creates.  Stress is bad.  Debt stress is very bad.  Stressed people get sick more.  There's the wellness connection.

As for this article, I copied it from the Early to Rise newsletter that shows up in my mailbox a couple times a week, and it's written by Micheal Masterson who created the newsletter and who writes brilliantly.  One of his suggestions is to "make the decision to earn more money".  I like the proactiveness of that suggestion and how that connects to the income opportunity of 10:10 Wellness.  Here's the piece:

Do you spend more than you make? I used to.

When I started working as an editor at a Washington, D.C.-based newsletter publishing company, my salary was $14,000. My wife was earning less than that. Our two salaries barely covered our basic living expenses. On top of that, I was attending graduate school and we were paying off student loans. Then our first son was born. For the first six months of his life, he slept in an open drawer in our bedroom.

Meanwhile, I was spending money I didn't have on things I couldn't afford. Struggling to pay for my education and brand-new family, I overspent because it seemed to provide some happiness, some relief.

But the thrill of buying stuff soon waned. Each new object brought less relief. Eventually, I realized that I was getting 80 percent of my pleasure from experiences that didn't cost much money. But recognizing that you don't need junk food and kicking the habit are two distinct things.

Here's how I got myself out of debt:

First, I got rid of all my credit cards. I figured that what I couldn't buy with cash was either worthless or worth saving for. Although the fear of going without credit was great, I never experienced any anxiety after I trashed the cards. It seemed like a drastic decision before I made it, but after half an hour I never gave it another thought.

The second thing I did to get out of debt was to start saving. I had made myself a promise that I would save a percentage of my take-home pay, but I never did it. The breakthrough came when I was talking to a friend about how the IRS manages to collect a big chunk of our income through the evil genius of withholding. I recognized I had to do the same thing to myself. The only way I was going to save money was through force.

The solution was available in a new-at-the-time savings-bank program, one that withdrew a set amount of money from my primary account every month and put it in another one. That program allowed me to gradually increase my saving from 10 percent of my income to 25 percent and pay down my debt in a few years.

If you are spending more than you are making, get rid of your credit cards. And to get used to spending less, remind yourself repeatedly that most of the junk you buy (a) becomes unused after a few months and (b) doesn't provide you with much value anyway. Remember that the best things in life - the picnics you have with your family, the walks you take by yourself, the time you spend with your friends - are free, or nearly so.

Create a separate bank account that you'll use to pay down your debt, or have your debts automatically deducted from the one account you have. You might even consider a debt consolidator. (But watch out. Most of them are crooked.)

Increase the amount of your take-home that goes into debt payments every month. You might start, for example, with 10 percent and then increase that by 5 percent a month. Six months from now, you could be living on half of what you spend now - and I'll bet you will be feeling a lot better about yourself. You'll have less stress, more energy, more confidence, and the beginnings of a lifelong habit of wealth building.

There are so many ways to save money. You can spend less on just about anything without giving up either the pleasure you take in buying or the quality you get from your purchases.

Instead of buying new clothes that will be out of style in a year, buy vintage clothing that looks great and distinguishes you.

Instead of signing a lease for an expensive car, buy something old but still good that has a personality.

Instead of going out to lunch every day, eat some fish or other protein at your desk. This is one of the things I did. By eating a can of tuna every day instead of going to lunch with my co-workers, I saved almost $2,500 in a single year. Plus, I went from staff editor to publisher by applying that extra lunch-hour time to improving the business.

Instead of plodding along in your same old job, make the decision to earn more money. I did that by making myself a more valuable employee. Until then, I was doing my job and leaving when my job was done. To prepare for my raise, I started working extra hours - even though I didn't have many. I used those extra hours to help my fellow workers do their jobs (which they appreciated) and launch a few new products. I didn't know anything about marketing at that time, but those two activities turned me into the go-to guy at the office.

Several months later, I walked into my boss's office and told him everything that was wrong with the business. "You are not telling me something I don't know," he said. "If you let me run this business I will fix all these problems," I promised. He liked my moxie - and he had no one else to turn to - so he let me take over. With my added responsibilities, he gave me a raise. Every six months, I asked for more money, and I got it. In three years, I had nearly doubled my salary.

In addition to working extra hard at my primary job, I earned a second income by teaching a class of undergraduates early in the morning. It wasn't a ton of money, but it helped pay off those debts.

I was working 14 hours a day, spending two hours with my family, and getting it done. It wasn't easy but it was a lot of fun. What I discovered was that working hard when you are motivated is a lot more fun than hardly working when you don't like your job. That was a lesson that made a big difference in my life. If you are in debt and have too little income, it's a lesson you should teach yourself.

Work more. Save more. Spend less. Waste less. You'll be out of debt and on your way to building real wealth in no time.

If you want to read more about wealth building, I recommend Automatic Wealth (because it's my book). For investing, read The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham and Value Investing by Martin J. Whitman. For real estate investing, read Donald Trump's book The Art of the Deal and Frank McKinney's Make It Big: 49 Secrets for Building a Life of Extreme Success.

Why diets don't work

Other than the fact that diet books generate a lot of revenue, there's not a lot of long term value to the dieter in most of the diet fads.  I've always preached exercise as the ultimate long-term cure for excessive weight.  Combined with smart eating, exercise improves our metabolism (the number of calories we burn just living) which ultimately eats away at our fat stores.

While this concept is still valid, I found a 3 part article at Mercola.com that drills this concept down a little further.  Written by Paul Chek, an internationally respected speaker and consultant in corrective and holistic exercise kinesiology, the piece puts a heavier emphasis on resistance training than I have, and for good reason - it produces the best results.  And this dude practices what he preaches:

Check out the 3 part series at: 

How to get the fat off

Gulf Coast Cycle Fest 07

Thanks to my buddy Steve Florence for getting me out to a great ride in Eastern Manatee and Sarasota counties.  Props to Steve and Kerry Meeks who made the trip down from Tampa and completed the 100 mile century ride.   Yours truly had planned an "extra-ordinary" ride (the 100) which it was for all the wrong reason.  Namely I was in crampsville for the last 20 miles.  Steve suffered a little nausea the last 10 miles, and Kerry would admit his legs were over-spent.  But all in all, it was a great ride, we had phenominal weather, and got to meet a bunch of really great people.

The boys just after finishing.

With less than 10 miles to go, deep in Crampsville, I came upon a oasis that had my favorite recovery drink - YooHoo.   Saved!