Why CVS and Senators Lie

I saw a CVS Health commercial today. It was a promotion patting themselves on the back for eliminating tobacco products from their stores 10 years ago. Bravo.

The problem though, is that’s not the only addictive carcinogen they sell. Alcohol and ultra processed foods that are laced with chemicals and added sugar, line their shelves and are just as deadly and addictive as cigarettes. This self-congratulating as a show of their “commitment to health” is so nefarious.

It reminds me of this clip where Senator Chris Murphy is standing in front of the closed USAID building with a group of people in protest. He says:

“The people get to decide how we defend the United States of America. The people get to decide how their tax payer money gets spent. Elon Musk does not get to decide”

Do we though? I don’t recall deciding, or agreeing for that matter, to send my tax dollars to fund a war and a genocide. There are many other places I and my fellow Americans would rather spend their money.

But that’s what these companies and politicians do. They tell you what you want to hear while omitting the truth. They play to our emotions. CVS is making us feel like, “Wow, the was a bold move. They must be really committed to health.” While ignoring all of the other harmful products they sell in their stores.

Murray is getting us angry at “Elon Musk who isn’t elected and doesn’t get to decide where our tax dollars go!” Leaving out the part that he and his colleagues decide, not us or Elon Musk, and their decisions are increasingly less aligned with the will of the people.

I just finished reading The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. Here’s an excerpt that stuck out on the topic.

“Teenage smoking is one of the great, baffling phenomena of modern life… To address that problem, then, we’ve restricted and policed cigarette advertising, so its a lot harder for tobacco companies to lie. We’ve raised the price of cigarettes and enforced the law against selling tobacco to minors, to try to make it much harder for teens to buy cigarettes. And we’ve run extensive public health campaigns on television and radio and in magazines to try and educate teens about the dangers of smoking.”

If we can do it for cigarettes. If we could demonize them, restrict them, and tax them, then why can’t we do it for alcohol and ultra processed poisonous foods that we know are killing us? Why can’t we make it just as difficult to drink or eat your way into an early death as we did for smoking?

If Chris Murphy and his colleagues can stand outside of the USAID building in protest, surely they can stand outside of Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Starbucks, Kelloggs, Kraft, Pepsi, and voice their concern over the increasing amounts of processed foods in American’s diets, the deleterious impact they hav on our health, and demand change!

He might say something like, “Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Beverage don’t get to decide what food we grow, how we grow it, and what ends up on our shelves, the people get to decide!”

But of course he would never do that.

Murray is no more interested in doing something so “controversial” as restricting alcohol or processed foods as he is telling us the truth about where our taxes go and who decides. It could mean career suicide. It would mean having integrity, doing what’s right, telling the truth, and helping the people you were elected to serve, even when it might cost you.

CVS doesn’t want you to know that there are other things in their stores that are just as dangerous as cigarettes. They just want you to think they care, and to think about them when you think about your health. They’re just looking for another way to convince you to walk through their doors, instead of Walgreens. Even though they all sell the same poison.

The only thing they are really interested in is filling your prescription(s) and having you buy something addictive to keep you coming back for more. Nobody is looking out for your health. It’s on you to do it for yourself.

The path to health is littered with temptation

In this world, if you want to be healthy, then you need to follow a game plan. You need to have some rules. You need to have parameters set up that you’re going to stay within.

You need to have some tricks to help you stay on the path. You need all of those things to help you build healthy habits. And once you’ve developed healthy habits, it will make sticking to your plan, maintaining your goal, easier.

But it will still require work. Because we live in an unhealthy environment. We do not live in an environment that promotes health. We live in one that advances the opposite.

So it’s on you to be proactive and vigilant. The temptations are all around us. The temptations are intentionally the most affordable, and the most accessible. So, if you’re not being vigilant, it’s very easy to get sucked into the system and slip up.

The food system is set up in such a way to keep us just alive enough to keep us coming back for more. But the food system in no way supports making us thrive.

The food is grown in a toxic and lifeless environment. It’s then mixed with toxic chemicals. Addictive substances are added. And sold everywhere.

Achieving health in today’s society requires hyper vigilance and hyper focus. It’s the only way.

Look to Food

Think about the current state of eating in America. It used to be that most meals were made at home, or made down the street by someone you knew. Then came the invention of the microwave dinner, the first major processed food. Suddenly, you didn’t have to cook. You could go out and buy pre-made meals and store them in the freezer.

Then fast food and drive-thrus entered the scene. Now you could sit in your car to order food, and sit in your car to eat. Alone. Around the same time came the explosion of ultra-processed foods (“manufactured calories”). “Food,”manufactured calories, became cheap and abundant everywhere. You could eat anywhere, anytime.

And now present day someone delivers your food straight to your door. Without having to talk to anyone or see anyone. 

We keep looking for complex answers to the complex questions: Why are we so divided and why are we so unhealthy? But the answer is simple, and it’s the same for both questions.

Food.

When we broke bread as a family, we were killing two birds with one stone. We were coming together, and we were nourishing our bodies. Now, most of us accomplish neither each day. Most of us are happy to tap a few buttons and have food magically appear before our eyes, and think nothing of it. We’ve made eating into a habit instead of the spiritual practice it used to be.

But food is so much more than a habit or just a means to get calories. It’s so much more important. Food is nature, and when grow our own food, when we cook our own meals, it’s an opportunity to connect with nature and the bounty it provides. Our body gets more than calories and nutrients. It’s nourished by the earth, grounded by the process.

When we gather around the kitchen to cook we connect with our family and our community. When we cook for someone else, when we feed someone else, we’re connecting on the human need to be nourished. To take care of someone else. Whatever our differences might be, they melt in the presence of a meal together. They melt in the offering of a home cooked meal.

When I see food delivery drivers drop a bag of food off and run back to their car before anyone comes to the door, I cringe. It gives me anxiety. Because there is no better evidence of just how disconnected we are.

We don’t see where the ingredients for our food comes from. We don’t see how it’s being prepared. We don’t smell the amazing aromas that fill a kitchen. We don’t know who’s cooking for us. We don’t hear the sizzling or clanging of pans. We don’t know who’s preparing the dish. And we don’t even see who’s serving us anymore. We are 100% removed from the process, and just left with one job.

To eat.

But that’s not the purpose of food, and it never was.

What can you eliminate?

Everyone talks about all the things you should do to optimize your life. They talk about all of the supplements to take. All of the hacks to incorporate into your day. The type, intensity, and frequency of exercise. But adding more to a busy life with limited capacity is a daunting task. Starting new routines and creating new habits requires consistency over a long period of time, and for that reason, for most people, they usually don’t stick.

That’s why I think that a much easier path is to eliminate the things from your life which do not serve you. Addition by subtraction. Remove what does not serve you and get back time and energy, and ultimately your health.

I think there are three things that almost everyone could eliminate tomorrow with minimal effort that would also drastically and immediately improving the quality of theirlife.

• Alcohol

• Social Media

• Added Sugar and Processed Food (“food that isn’t food”)

Anyone, in any situation, could eliminate those three things and instantaneously be on the road to a better, happier, more productive, version of themselves.

These three substances rob all of us of our mental, physical, and emotional health. They cause unwanted and undetected spikes in stress hormones, and deleterious chemical reactions. They are at the core of depression, anxiety, weight gain, and chronic disease, and therefore at the core of the health epidemic in this country.

And it’s not just our healthy that they wreck. These three substances act as sedatives, muting our intuition, causing lethargy, and interfering with our critical thinking. They block our motivation, and they silence our ambition. They convince us to check out, when we want to be tuned in.

Alcohol, social media, and foods that isn’t food, are collectively and directly responsible for the increased prevalence of disease and mortality. If we could eliminate these substances from our lives then we wouldn’t need to do anything else.

We wouldn’t need to be more active. We wouldn’t need a multi-vitamin or a handful of supplements. We wouldn’t need to view sunlight immediately upon waking up. We wouldn’t need to find ways to disconnect and be mindful. We wouldn’t need to do any of those things but we would, because we would feel such an immense physical, mental, and emotional improvement that it would become immediately clear to us that we wanted to do it all.

Alcohol, social media, and food that isn’t food are mentally, emotionally, and physically destroying us. If we can eliminate them, the rest will take care of itself.

When Everything is Important, Nothing is Important

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My Biggest Pet Peeve

My biggest pet peeve, especially as it relates to health in this country and around the world is that everyone is working on their own thing, which isn’t necessarily the right thing. My pet peeve was triggered the other day after I read an email for a new documentary called Plastic People. The movie chronicles the rising presence of microplastics in our environment, in our bodies, and its impact on our health as a result.

This is good work. Important work. I agree that our obsession with plastic is definitely playing a role in our deteriorating health. I try to limit the use of plastics in my life all of the time. I just don’t think it’s the most important work if we’re really trying to solve our health problems. 

I don’t know how much time, money, human capital, and just overall resources were used in doing the research for this movie, analyzing the research, publishing it, and pulling a movie together, but all I can think about is that every resource used here, could’ve been used to tackle the real issue. Food.

The fact that most people don’t have access to the food they need to be healthy. Most people don’t have access to enough food at all. The fact that the majority of food is grown in lifeless soil. That most food is doused in chemicals like herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that kill life all around it. The fact that most animals are raised in inhumane and unsanitary conditions, and are fed the same toxic food we grow for ourselves. That most livestock are injected with hormones and given antibiotics when neither one is needed.

And, most importantly, the fact that all of that food described above is then processed in factories by large corporations who add more chemicals, sugar, and toxic ingredients to it. And that this same highly processed toxic food is convenient and cheap to buy. 

The average American’s diet now consists of at least 70 percent processed food. At least 70 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. At least 50 million Americans are facing food insecurity. Millions more face nutrition insecurity, a term that is not even spoken about. That is the biggest issue we face.

The fact that all of that food is wrapped in plastic, served on plastic, eaten with plastic utensils, doesn’t help. But it is not, in my opinion, our biggest problem. In fact, I would argue, that if we could change our food system, that if we could change people’s behaviors around food, that it would do more to limit the amount of plastic in our environment than anything else we could do.

If more people shopped for and cooked whole foods only, instead of buying packaged foods and pre-made meals. If more people cooked instead of ordering take out or going to the drive in. If less people drank sugar filled coffees, juices, and smoothies. If all of those things were to happen, if we could change the food system and change peoples habits, we could greatly reduce the amount of plastic on this planet.

And that’s why this is my biggest pet peeve. Because when I see a documentary like this one, or I hear a charity asking for money for research to study cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers, or any other chronic disease, or a research study like this one I wrote about, I automatically think, “what would happen if instead of spreading ourselves and our resources thin across all of these ‘issues,’ we aggregated them around the main issue. Food and the food system.”

How much better off would we be?

I’m sure this perspective will garner push back from many. But I think if you truly understand the impact the way we grow food has on the planet, and the way the food we eat impacts our health, you too would realize that there is no greater issue we face than this one. 

Everyone Already Knows the Answers

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I started chatting with a guy on the chair lift the other day. He asked me if I took off from work to be there. It was mid-day on a Friday. I told him I work from home, so I didn’t have to. I just skipped out for a few hours. When he asked me what I did for work, I told him I run a blog.

“That pays the bills?”

“No,” I laughed, “but hopefully one day it will.”

He asked me what the site was about, so I explained the focus on health and self improvement, which prompted the question, “Are you a psychologist, doctor, nutritionist? What qualifications do you have to give out this advice?”

“No credentials,” I said, “just a life long devotion to the cause, and 10 years working in the healthcare system, where I learned everything we do wrong.”

“Right, treat the symptom, not the cause. My doctor has me on a statin for high cholesterol, and high-blood pressure medication. He’s been telling me for 10 years I’m pre-diabetic, and every time I go back to him he says the same thing. But I keep telling him, this is my new baseline.”

“It might be,” I said, “but the problem is if you do end up with diabetes…” He cut me off.

“I’m not going to get diabetes. I know what my problem is. It’s the three beers I drink before bed. It’s the three brownies and Cheez-its I had for dinner last night. It’s not every night, it’s not all the time, and I’ve really cut back, but I know if I cut it all out, I’d definitely get rid of this belly.”

“But I’m happy,” he continued, “I’m having fun.”

Everyone knows but no one wants to do it. It’s this idea that prompted me to write this piece the other day talking about how the formula is always the same. It’s always the same, beer, brownies, and Cheez-its are bad, and everyone already knows it. But very few people act on it. Not until it’s too late.

The number one reason I hear and read about that makes people finally focus on their health is a health scare. Number one reason. I’d say the number two reason is for their children. I don’t know if there’s a third. Very few people wake up one day and just decide to do it for themselves, which is a shame.

But the problem as I see it is that drinking beers, eating brownies, and snacking on Cheez-its might sound fun, and it might make you happy when you’re doing it, but I have a hard time believing that it’s more fun and creates more happiness than doing the opposite. That it creates more smiles in the longer run compared to being healthy.

I can only speak from personal experience. I’ve been devoted to my health for more than half of my life. And during that time I’ve drank, I’ve done drugs, I’ve stayed up late, I’ve eaten shitty foods enough to know what it all feels like. But I’ve spent many more hours not drinking or doing drugs. Getting a full night’s sleep. I’ve eaten many more meals full of whole foods rich in vitamins, fiber, and other nutrients. And hands down, 10 out of 10 times, the latter is what has made me happy and have fun. And the more dialed in I’ve become over the years, the greater the returns on happiness have been.

If you’re just waiting until you have a health scare, until you finally cross that threshold from pre-diabetes to full blown diabetes, then you are wasting time feeling below optimal. You’re not feeling as good as you could be feeling, which might not seem possible to you, but I promise you it is. If you are allowing alcohol, added sugars, and highly processed foods to occupy a full time seat in your life, then you are allowing those substances to reduce your vibration. You are letting them keep you down.

Life is short, and you only get one. Don’t wait until you have a health scare or until having kids wakes you up. Start making the change now. Every day is a good day to try.

Not to get political

Healthcare

I was talking to my neighbor the other morning. We ran into each other walking our dogs. My fiancé and her both share a history of cancer. My fiancé currently has stage IV metastatic breast cancer. We found out less than a year ago. My neighbor knows this and was asking how she was. All things considered, she’s doing pretty great. But it launched us into a conversation about healthcare.

My neighbor’s new insurance doesn’t cover preventative PET scans, a very effective form of diagnostic imaging that could detect cancerous cells throughout the body. So she told me she’d first have to be diagnosed with cancer, again, for a third time, before her insurance would cover a scan. By which point it could be spread to multiple locations throughout her body. The best chance of survival when it comes to cancer is early detection. Which makes this policy insanely dangerous and stupid. 

Its backwards policies such as these that leave the patient out in the cold that caused me to leave a successful career in healthcare after nearly a decade. I could no longer be an accomplice to such crimes.

My neighbors husband it turns out left for similar reasons. He was working for an insurance company that celebrated when they got above a certain threshold of claims denials. The more claims they deny, the less services they pay for, and the more money that goes to their bottom line. The more of a chance that treatable diseases, like cancer, are missed, and people like my neighbor or my fiancé suffer.

One of my responsibilities at work was to fight the insurance companies for erroneously denying claims, and for what we called short pays (the health insurer is contracted to pay $90 for a service but they only pay $60). We had a whole department dedicated to this one function of recovering money we were owed, a large percentage of which was owed to the doctors we managed. We routinely negotiated multi-million dollar settlements ($30 x thousands of claims = millions of dollars). Wasting hours of our time, and never getting 100 percent of the money owed to us. The reason a doctor spends only 10 - 15 minutes with each patient is not just because of the low level of reimbursement they are receiving, but because sometimes they aren’t being reimbursed at all, and they need to make up for it with volume.

These are the very real games that health insurance companies play, and get away with. Sometimes the doctor pays for it. Sometimes the patient does. But the insurance companies always seem to walk away unscathed. Healthcare in this country is a business. And business, particularly in a capitalist society, is driven solely by profit. And when patient outcomes are pushed aside in favor of more profit, you end up with a nation of chronically sick individuals.

The Behavior of Change

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“The funny thing about a problem is that once you deal with it, it goes away.”

Are You Trying?

For the past 6 week I’ve been trying to lose the extra holiday/vacation weight I put on. According to the scale I’m up about 5 lbs. Most of the day I don’t even notice it. It’s only when I get in the shower, or at night before bed. That’s when it sticks out to me, and that’s when I usually mutter to myself something along the lines of, “I just can’t get rid of this belly.”

Now, the reality is that I actually have not been trying to Lise it. Ever since combing back from vacation and hosting the Christmas holiday, I’ve been allowing myself to indulge in food that I normally wouldn’t eat. Food that I wasn’t eating before my trip. The change has been sparked in part by a new desire to cook more recipes than are not in my normal repertoire, in terms of types of food, flavor, ingredients, and technique. Things like homemade granola (loaded with sugar), and homemade beef stew (loads with fat).

So really, it’s no surprise that I have yet to put a dent in those extra lbs. because I’m not really trying to. In fact, I’m consciously doing the opposite wow what I know I should be doing. And every time I look at my belly, I’m reminded of this. Right after I mutter to myself about not being able to lose it I follow it with a smile and say, “yea, but I’m kind of enjoying it.” I’m not ready to lose it. I’m not ready to begin trying. I’m enjoying the different foods, indulging for a change, and I don’t intend on stopping right now.

I talk to a lot of people who ask me for diet and exercise advice. Some are open to what I have to say, others are not. They don’t exactly say that, I can just tell by their excuses. “O that’s really hard, I love my pasta.” “What will I eat for cereal?” Or, “I don’t have the time.” They don’t realize it, but what they are really saying is “I’m not ready.” And that’s ok. But recognize the difference.

Stop torturing yourself with something that you think you want. If you don’t want to give up your pasta or cereal, and you don’t want to wake up early to exercise, then you don’t want to make a change to improve your health. Not yet at least.

You’re not actually trying, the way I’m not actually trying to lose my extra pounds but yet wondering why every night I see this “unwanted” belly. But one day I will, and so will you. Until then, enjoy the ride, stop beating yourself up, and come back when you’re ready. The point is, if you really wanted to do it, you would. Because when you really want something, you get it done.

Workout Journal: Diet

I’ve had another realization recently that everyone’s approach to weight loss is the same. It doesn’t matter who you talk to or who you listen to, but its always the same. I had this realization while listening to Ethan Suplee on The Joe Rogan Experience.

When you ask someone what they did to lose a shit ton of weight, it’s never this big complicated plan that they undertook. It’s always the same.

I cut out sugar and refined carbohydrates and replaced them with fruits and vegetables, and whole grains. I only eat lean protein, and I exercise. It doesn’t matter what types of fruit, or what types of exercise. The key is just in eating those whole foods, eliminating the other ones, and starting to make yourself move for 30 - 60 minutes per day in some rigorous way. It’s basically what Ethan Suplee did to go from 550 lbs to under 300.

It is really that simple and it really is the same for every single person on the planet. Now how they convince themselves to make the change, and how they get themselves to commit to it long term, what their reason for the change is, that might all differ. But even that seems to be a pretty uniform thing. Someone has a health scare. They do it because they are a new mom or dad. They set a goal to run a race, climb a mountain, and need to get in better shape to do it. They’re incentivized by a work program, or their friend group. Or maybe their kids convince them. Whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter. They all represent a shit in mindset that says I want to feel better for X reason.

Some people might follow a certain diet, like paleo, keto, carnivore, or Whole360. But again, that doesn’t matter. You don’t have to follow a name brand diet. Because the foundation of all of those diets is that they are devoid of processed foods, added sugar, and refined carbohydrates, and they are loaded with whole foods and lean protein. 

So whether you accomplish that by only eating meat. OR eating a lot of healthy fats. OR eating a lot of raw nuts, it doesn’t matter. The formula is the same.

Eliminate added sugar, eliminated refined carbohydrates, and eliminate processed foods and the weight will fall off, and you will immediately start to feel better. 

My fiancé got diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer last April. Immediately upon finding out we cut sugar and refined carbohydrates out of her diet (cancer consumes sugar at a rate 100x normal cells). Within two months she lost nearly 20 lbs, and she only weighed about 116 lbs to start. Her mother, at my fiancé’s nudging, recently did the same thing. She stopped putting agave in her coffee throughout the day, and replaced her morning toast with fruit. She’s down 6 lbs in less than a month. She’s in her 70s. My father who’s 66 did it as well. He cut out all the junk, all the added sugar, and he’s lost over 30 lbs and is now shopping for new clothes.

The formula is the same. It doesn’t matter your gender, your ethnicity, your age. You just have to find your reason and your motivation to do it. And what better reason is there than to feel happier, more energetic, and clear minded. I don’t know of any.

Plant Based Meat Alternatives Are Bad, Kind Of, Depends Who You Ask

If you want to be confused, then read this article in Heathline. A new study was published assessing the health risks of eating plant based meat alternatives for vegetarians. In other words, ultra processed food that is devoid of animal protein. The takeaway.

“Researchers examined health outcomes for over 3,300 vegetarians by comparing those who consumed plant-based meat alternatives to those who didn’t eat these processed foods.

Vegetarians who ate plant-based meat alternatives had a higher risk of depression, increased inflammation, slightly higher blood pressure, and lower levels of a protein associated with HDL (“good”) cholesterol.

In spite of these changes, the researchers wrote that, in general, eating plant-based meat alternatives did not have any extra health risks for vegetarians, although they called for additional research on the possible links to depression and inflammation.”

When I read something like this I’m not sure if what I’m reading is actually real. Or if the author actually knows what they wrote. Or if they have even the slightest bit of a conscientiousness or awareness.

When I think about my diet, and the foods I avoid and the ones I incorporate, I generally try to avoid ones that lead to an increased rate of depression, 42% in this study, higher inflammation and blood pressure, and lower levels of good cholesterol. I don’t think that’s crazy to say and I don’t think that’s controversial.

If I said “here eat this foods, they are going to increase your chance of being depressed by 42%, increase inflammation throughout your body and your blood pressure, while lowering your good cholesterol,” I assume you would tell me to fuck off, and probably ask me why I’m trying to kill you.

But according to the research experts in this study, all of those side effects are not a cause for concern. According to these research experts, their conclusion is that “in general, eating plant-based meat alternatives did not have any extra health risks for vegetarians.” Really? Did we read the same study or do we need to redefine what health risk means?

It is exactly this type of “reporting” that has led to the insane health epidemic that we’re seeing in this country and that’s growing all over the world. This confusing, no real answer, wishy washy reporting, that always seems to ease your concerns after telling you that what you’re eating is killing you.

I can only assume that somewhere along the line the study authors and the author of this article were paid by plant based meat alternative companies to bend the reality into something that seems harmless. Otherwise, what would be the motivation other than complete incompetence?

It seems like the reason for this conclusion that plant based meat alternatives do not lead to extra health risks is because the study authors did not see a link between these processed foods and heart disease. Which I can only assume is the link they were after.

“Researchers wrote in the paper that despite these changes, eating plant-based meat alternatives did not significantly increase a person’s heart-related risks.”

It’s amazing to me that rather can ringing the bell on the 5 alarm fire that this report is, the researchers feel ok with the results.

“In conclusion, while no clear health risks or benefits were associated with PBMA [plant based meat alternatives] consumption in vegetarians, the higher risk of depression, elevated CRP, and lower apolipoprotein A levels in PBMA consumers suggest potential inflammatory concerns that warrant further investigation.”

Even if there is no direct link to “heart-related risks,” which I’m not sure I understand because I always understood high blood pressure and low HDL to be early signs of heart disease, shouldn’t there be an extrapolation of the trend to say that people who are depressed and have increased inflammation will eventually develop other chronic diseases as they age? I’m not a doctor, research, scientist, nutritionist, and I would bet my life that there is a connection.

But really all of that is not even the biggest tragedy of the study. The biggest tragedy is in calling it a “study” to begin with. The “study” included 3,300 people who were identified as being vegetarians based on a “a 24-hour dietary recall questionnaire, which everyone completed at least two of.”

Said another way, before the study started, participants completed a survey about what they ate in the previous 24 hours, and then the participants biomarkers were monitored for the next 14 years! but their diet was never questioned again. They were assumed to have maintained the same diet over the 14 year period.

“In addition, data on people’s diets were gathered mainly at the beginning of the study rather than throughout. So researchers wouldn’t know if a person’s diet has shifted since the start.”

Levels of physical activity, stress, sleep, and consumption of alcohol, all things that could impact someone’s health, were also not monitored. 

These studies mean nothing. Their conclusions mean nothing. Every second we waste analyzing a “study” like this or even conducting a “study” like this is a second we could have spent actually helping someone. Every dollar we spend on “studies” like this are dollars wasted that could have went towards providing people with real wholesome and nutritious foods that we know conclusively leads to improved health. I’m not sure I understand how people believe the jury is still out. Processed food, added sugar, refined carbohydrates are the reason that America and the world is getting sicker and sicker. This has been well established for decades. But somehow we keep giving “experts” the leeway to discover the cause and come up with a cure.

Healthline: Meat Substitutes Linked to 42% Higher Depression Risk in Vegetarians

Food Frontiers: Plant-Based Meat Alternatives Intake and Its Association With Health Status Among Vegetarians of the UK Biobank Volunteer Population

The Behavior of Change

Perception is reality

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Food is food. Medicine is medicine. Poison is poison. 

Let’s not confuse things. 

It’s not even that food is medicine it’s that all this other shit is fucking poison. Framing food as medicine creates skepticism because people already have a perception of what medicine is, and it’s not food. Let’s let medicine be medicine. Food be food. And poison be poison. And clear up any confusion. 

See, I do think medicine has the power to heal. In specific cases there are medicinal therapies that can help. But mostly, healing doesn’t come from eating real food, it comes from the elimination of poisonous ones. 

It would kind of be like telling a smoker that oxygen heals. So they stop smoking, stop inhaling CO2 and nicotine and all of the other harmful substances in cigarettes, only breathing oxygen, and cite oxygen as the medicine. But it’s not. The poisonous cigarette was the culprit. And when they stopped that their body began to heal. 

Or telling someone who drinks soda that water is medicine. It’s not. If a soda drinker replaces their soda with water, the water has no healing benefits. The elimination of liquid sugar called soda is the reason they begin to heal. 

Food is medicine. Sounds nice. Hippocrates said it a million years ago. Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. Yes, food has vitamins, minerals, macros, that you need, but are they really healing? If that’s all the stuff you already need, then is it healing or maintaining?

Food is medicine feels complicated. It feels like extra work. Medicine not only already has its own perception about what it is, but it also has its own perception about what it means to take medicine. And I don’t think food should be mixed up in that. 

I also think that by emphasizing real food as medicine it lets the food industry off the hook for the toxic substances that it creates. It doesn’t put enough emphasis on the illness that their products create. It shifts the focus away from their poison and onto eating healthy food, and I don’t think that anything will change until the products that they make are banned or severely limited. 

Recently there was that stupid debate going on about Fruit Loops Canada versus Fruit Loops America and the ingredients in each. RFK Jr, someone I actually like, was arguing that we need to make our Fruit Loops like that of Canada’s with less toxic ingredients, but that misses the point. The issue is not what’s in Fruit Loops, the issue is that Fruit Loops exists as a cheap, accessible, and easy choice for consumers. Another inane debate that’s been going on is people trying to push McDonalds to go back to using beef tallow for their french fry oil instead of the seed oil they switched to many years ago. The issue isn’t the oil. The issue is that McDonalds, and garbage like it, are allowed to exists as cheap, accessible, and abundant options for people.

Ban the poison and fix our health.

To avoid the perils of the products manufactured by the ultra processed food industry requires a heightened state of awareness and vigilance. It requires preparedness to head out into the world and not fall victim to these substances. For my finances birthday we rented a few lanes at the local bowling alley. We had a 5:30 - 8 pm slot. Too early to eat dinner, too late to wait to be done. I knew I was going to be hungry, and I knew the only options at the bowling alley would be highly processed and refined poison devoid of anything even resembling food. So before walking out of the door I stuffed a piece of steak and a 1/4 of an avocado into my mouth. I figured at the very least it would take the edge off, and hopefully prevent me from indulging in bowling alley food until I got home. 

I ended up eating one slice of bowling alley pizza. Not terrible, and I did enjoy it, but I was able to avoid the french fries, chicken fingers, and three varieties of birthday cakes that her friends brought. But how many people have the time, awareness, or dedication to do that? My senses are not many, and understandably so. 

One other lady that joined us to bowl also didn’t indulge in any food. She’s training to do some mountaineering this winter and looking to lose a few pounds. 

But we were in the minority, and when cheap toxic food is the only option, most people are going to have a hard time turning it down. 

Timing the market

To understand why you can’t time the market, take the simple case of United Healthgroup. Previously trading at an all time high of $630 per share, is now (at the time of this writing) down to $489 in the weeks following the murder of their CEO, Brian Thompson. Down over 20% in a few short weeks. Unpredictable and therefore impossible to time. That of course is an extreme example, but I think the extreme examples are the ones that provide the most clarity because it’s hard to dispute the facts. COVID, when the market dropped 40% in a matter of days, is another extreme but important example. You can’t time the market.

Peloton growing too fast and being unable to keep up with demand, followed by the death of a child using the treadmill, coupled with the death of an actor using a peloton on a TV show, crashing the stock to an all time low is another clear cut example. None of that could be predicted. Peloton’s stock has never recovered.

Over the last few years, with this lesson in mind, I’ve been selling off my individual holdings, and reinvesting them slowly into ETFs. The major one in my portfolio being VTI. While an ETF like VTI will swing with the market, the swings will be far less volatile than say what happened with UNH. After COVID a number of my stocks went from all time highs, to all time lows, and after seeing my money dry up, I realized I had learned my lesson and that I needed to do what I can to prevent that from happening again in the future.

Some of the individual stocks I got out of, like Uber and Netflix, went on to rebound to new highs, and in theory I lost out on that upside. But gains in the stock market are only made when you sell. Otherwise they are just unrealized. And it’s very easy to get enamored with your “unrealized” gains and have them slip out from under you without you even noticing. Separating your emotional buy-in for a stock is an important part of the game. Not getting too greedy is just as important.

If you want to win the market, then you need to believe in long term gains. Sticking it out for the long term and putting your money into ETFs that provide the least amount of volatility and the most amount of stability. Another small bonus is the dividend that comes with most (if not all) ETFs. Use those dividends to reinvest in the security and I think you’ll have a winning strategy you can’t go wrong with.

Proud of myself

I’m proud of myself. And not because of doing the hard things or working hard. Working hard and doing the hard thing has always come naturally to me. As naturally as working hard can. I’m sure there’s a trauma reason behind it. 

But no, I’m proud of myself for doing the small things, taking my time, and not pushing myself too hard. 

I went skiing the other day and my boot was killing me. Normally I would’ve just kept going, not wanting to waste time stopping. Not wanting to be a bitch having to stop to fix my boot. It’s skiing, isn’t your boot supposed to hurt? But instead, I stopped. Took my boots off and relaxed enough to fix my boot, relieve the pain, and even write myself this note. 

Even going skiing was an accomplishment for me. My in laws were coming in that same day and I still had a lot of things I wanted to before they got in. The house needed to be cleaned. There were a couple of pieces of furniture I wanted to pick up. Some minor groceries I wanted to get for them. In a past life I would’ve put my desire to go skiing and be outside for a few hours aside, and decided that it was more important to get every little last thing done. And then for the next few days I would’ve suffered as I had ignored that calling to get outside. Which would’ve been a far worse result than if I didn’t get everything done on time at the house. 

But this time I decided to take a chance. To go skiing and see what happens. See if I can get everything done anyway. See if in the long run the time outside, listening to my inner voice, outweighed rushing to get everything done and stressing myself out. Like I said, in so many words, I’ve always been good at stressing myself out and pushing through. Relaxing and taking time for me has never been a skill of mine. 

But not this time. I think I’ve started to feel a shift. Figuring out that balance is more important than nonstop work.

Follow up note… it worked. I got everything done, and had an awesome day on the mountain. 

Sleep

Sleep is the most important thing. If you don’t get good sleep, nothing else will matter. You can go a few nights with bad sleep and get by, but those days will eventually catch up, and you won’t make much progress during that time. In fact you’ll likely regress.

That’s why everything you do should be with sleep as the priority. What foods should I eat and what foods should I avoid? What drinks should I have and what drinks should I avoid? Should I back off my exercise or push hard? What should my technology hygiene look like? What should I engage with and what should I avoid? How’s stress impacting my sleep and how can I improve it?

Because the thing is, that while some of this will require short term sacrifices, the benefits of quality sleep will very quickly begin to outweigh them. Your body will begin to heal and transform. Your mind will be clear. Your relationships will improve. It will be easier to make better food choices. It will be easier to be active. Nothing in life escapes the impact of poor sleep. And everything improves with good sleep. 

Health

I want to be healthy so that I can participate fully in life. Health as a stand alone has never been the focus for me. Health has always been a means to an end. To be able to wake up and say yes to any invitation that comes my way. Yes I want to take that trip. Yes I want to climb that mountain. Yes, let’s go to the beach. Yes, yes, yes.

I want to wake up and feel good. And to me that’s health. And it’s not possible without health. I fear how many people don’t wake up feeling that way. How many people have felt poor for so long that they no longer know how poor they feel. Often worse. It upsets me. 

Death Penalty

Something just dawned on me that should’ve seemed obvious before. While reading Judgment at Tokyo, I read about how the lead judge of the trial agonized over sentencing any of the accused war criminals to the death penalty. He had never sent anyone to death before. 

Which made me realize, and ask myself the question: if a judge sentences someone to death, doesn’t that make them a murderer? Even if the accused is convicted of heinous crimes, doesn’t that make the judge equally as heinous?

I know the idea is to serve justice and protect society, but it’s kind of like the abortion question. An abortion is killing a baby. You might agree with the procedure or not, but at the end of it, a life has ended. Same goes for the accused. 

You may or may not agree with it, but at the end of the day, when someone is executed for a crime, the people involved have taken a life. 

The Behavior of Change

Thoughts and download from the week.

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“Most frustration comes from not having a plan, or from not being open to changing when the plan you have fails.”

Eating Late

Every night it’s a struggle to not eat a snack after dinner and before bed. I know how much better I sleep, and therefore how much better I feel the next day when I don’t have a late night treat, and yet I fight myself on it every night.

Food is so good, it makes it so hard. It feels so right at the time, but I immediately regret it because I know I’m not going to sleep as well as I could have if I just listened to that voice saying “don’t do it,” “you don’t need it.” Instead of listening to the voice that says, “who cares,” “you deserve it.”

I used to think that if I just had something healthy and light, like a bowl of fruit, or something satiating, like protein powder mixed with soy milk, that it would be okay. But it’s not. It’s better than cake, or cookies, or ice cream, but it’s still not good.

Often times I rationalize eating something by convincing myself that I didn’t have enough calories that day, or enough of a certain macro, usually protein, to cover me for my workout. But it’s really just that, a rationalization to eat when I don’t need or want to.

If you’re reading this and thinking “wow this guy is tormented by food.” You’d be right. It wasn’t always like this for me. It started when I started training for triathlons a few years ago. Back then I always felt like I couldn’t consume enough calories to keep up with the long and hard days of training. There was no way, without a proper nutrition plan, which I didn’t have, to stay on top of the calories and macros I needed. As a result I always felt hungry and depleted. So I began over analyzing my food, and questioning what I was consuming with every bite. Even though I’ve been removed from that training style for a couple of years now, it’s taken time to undo that programming.

Tracking my food for 6 months helped. I learned that I was over-consuming fats, and under-consuming proteins (the latter of which I think was contributing to the feeling of being depleted). Balancing my diet, getting closer to the right amount of macros, has helped repair my relationship with food, but I know there is still more work to do.

But, no matter how much my that relationship improves, I doubt it will ever be easy. Because really, aren’t we all tormented by food in this country? Isn’t that why 70 percent of the population is either overweight or obese? And why everyone is always trying to lose weight and failing? I don’t think you can live in this country and not be tormented by food. Food in this country is available in endless abundance, it’s accessible everywhere you turn, and it’s extremely affordable. There is always an opportunity to shove something delicious in your mouth. Not something nutritious, but something delicious. Something ultra-processed, loaded with sugar, and of low quality, actually stripped of its nutrition. Something that tastes good, feels good, and hits all those sensory pleasure zones in your brain. No, we all struggle with it.

A rancher at a regenerative agriculture conference I went to said it best, “our addiction to convenience is killing us.”

So I wage the daily battle against food. Some days I win, some days I lose. I just try to string together more winning days than losing ones. Staying away from ultra processed foods, foods loaded with added sugar, fat, and sodium.

If there’s one thing that The Comfort Crisis brought to light for me, it’s that in this modern world you need to be actively fighting back the comforts that are all around us and making us sick. You can’t take a day off.

It’s an unfortunate thing, but if we want to achieve and maintain our health, it is going to require work, because the environment in this country doesn’t support a healthy lifestyle. It’s on you to create one for yourself.

10,000 Steps

I think 10,000 steps, when combined with a diet rich in whole foods and devoid of processed foods and added sugar, is actually a good number to strive for that can make you healthy and keep you there. The problem I see is that getting to 10,000 steps in a given day is really hard. I like to think that I’m very active. I workout for a minimum of one hour per day. I don’t have a desk job that keeps me tied to a chair for 8 hours or more. I spend 3 - 5 hours per days standing in my kitchen cooking meals and cleaning up after them. I walk my dog 2 - 3 times per day. On most days I do some type of yard work, that might include mowing the lawn, watering our flower and vegetable beds, or weeding. And still, most days, I don’t even come close to 10,000 steps. In fact, the Garmin watch I recently bought came set with a daily step goal of 7,222 (no idea where that number comes from), and I rarely even hit that number. The only time I hit this number is if I go for a run or a hike. 

But I do recognize that on days when I hit that 7,000 number, or even better yet, I get up and over that 10,000 step number, I feel better. The difference is noticeable. My energy levels are better. My mood is better. I eat better. I sleep better. Everything is better. I’m just not convinced that 10,000 steps is a realistic figure for 99 percent of the population. For most of us, getting enough steps in would require a gargantuan effort. But I’m also not sure what is, or what other metric might be that could have the same benefits as 10,000 steps, but also be achievable.

No One Size… Many Sizes

We say there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to diet and exercise. That each of us are unique, and what works for you might not work for me. And what works for me, might not work for you. And that’s true, but we need to go one level deeper. Because, unfortunately, it’s even more complex than that.

What works for you is going to change throughout various times in your life. What works when stress is low, probably won’t work when stress is high. What worked when you were 25, doesn’t work when you’re 30, 35, or 40. What works when you’re catching a full night of Zzzzs, doesn’t work when your baby is waking you up multiple times per night. What works when you’re home, might be hard to replicate on the road.

That’s why, beyond any diet or exercise advice, you need to be vigilant about which situation you find yourself in, and adapt to meet it. You need to dial into the signals that your body is sending you.

Someone changes their life by going on the ketogenic diet, but after 6 months, they suddenly aren’t feeling well. It’s not working, and they’re constantly craving something sweet. Maybe it’s time to start incorporating some fruit. Or they’ve become tired of eating so much meat. Maybe it’s time to start eating more fish.

Or they always worked out in the morning, but now they start work earlier, and they have a longer commute, both of which are cutting into their morning workout. Can they wake up a little bit earlier to get in a workout? Is there time during lunch? At the end of the day? Instead of exercising 5x per week, can they squeeze in 3? Something, anything, just to keep the momentum and build on the habit.

There are so many examples, so many ways life is going to interrupt your plan, and I think that’s the problem that a lot of people face. They are unable to recognize why their routine is no longer effective, and rather than investigate why and make some changes, they throw the whole plan away and regress back to baseline, or worse, below it. 

I think it’s very important to realize first that what’s going to work for you is specific to you. But second that you’re going to need to stay on top of it and manage it throughout different times in your life. The way I like to think about it is using a golf analogy (I don’t golf, but it works). I like to always stay as close to the pin as possible, so it’s never too hard to make my putt. What do I mean?

Let’s say I go on vacation where I’m sure to indulge in food I wouldn’t normally eat. Well I’ll try and keep at least one meal per day, but usually two, close to my normal diet when I’m home. This way, when I do get home, my routine hasn’t drifted too far off, and it makes it easier to ease back into my normal diet.

Let’s say that I have family visiting, and working out for 60 - 90 minutes isn’t possible without looking like I’m offending my guests. Rather than completely skipping my workout, I might just put together a 30 minute workout that keeps the routine and momentum alive for when my family leaves and I have my time back.

I’m constantly thinking about how I need to adapt my plan to fit the current situations in my life, always keeping the focus on staying as close to the pin as possible. Consistency is the key. Consistency is where progress is built. Figure out what you need to do to stay and consistent and not let life interrupt your plan.

Senate Testimony on the Health Crisis in this Country

I listened to Brigham Buehler, Casey Means, and Calley Means all on Joe Rogan talking about the testimony they gave in front of the Senate discussing the growing health crisis in this country. All three of these guests expressed some level of gratitude that they were able to present their case and lay out the facts about why and how we’ve gotten into such a mess. But the one thing I didn’t hear from any of them was anger or disdain for the fact that we even had to have a testimony to begin with. That no one that sits in the Senate has any idea about what’s going on in this country. That they are so unaware, or at least claim to be, of the fact that toxic food, plastics, and prescription drugs are murdering people in this country. They needed to hear it from a panel of experts.

Perhaps my view is biased because health, diet, food, exercise, longevity, and health span, are all things that I think about and read about on a daily basis. But holy shit, the health crisis in this country is the biggest issue we face as a nation, with ripple effects throughout every aspect of our lives. And the members of the senate don’t have a clue as to what’s going on, and yet they are the ones voting on bills, policies, and funding that directly impact the trajectory of this epidemic.

Maybe I don’t know how government and politics works, but my assumption would be that the people leading the country should know a little bit about what’s going on in the country before they get to lead it. I question how much these members actually pay attention. How many of them actually read. How they spend their free time, or any of their time, because time and time again, they are fucking clueless.

Perhaps it’s a product of the fact that some politicians have been politicians for decades. Decades! Spending their time campaigning, going to parties, and kissing the assess of the people that give them money. It’s outrageous and it’s becoming harder and harder to accept the extreme level of incompetence that exists in our government.

Three good podcast episodes

Joe Rogan and Diane Boyd - Diane K. Boyd is a wildlife biologist who has devoted decades to studying wolves. She is the author of "A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery."

Joe Rogan and Israel Adesanya - Joe sits down with Israel Adesanya, a mixed martial artist competing in the Middleweight division of the UFC. He is the subject of the documentary "Stylebender," available now.

Peter Attia and Anne Lembke - #321 – Dopamine and addiction: navigating pleasure, pain, and the path to recovery | Anna Lembke, M.D.

Establishing a new political party

The Health Party

I want to start a new political party called The Health Party, whose whole mission will be to discuss current events and policy decisions purely from the lens of personal and public health.

I think everyone would agree that their health, and the health of their loved ones, is their number one priority above everything else. That everything we do, is done with the survival of ourselves and those we love in mind. So, with that in mind, the idea is to analyze current events and policy decisions to determine how they are impacting our health, and choose where we want to throw the weight of our support, based on this idea.

For instance. There’s a new Farm Bill [link] that’s going to get passed this year. In that bill will be billions of dollars that the government is going to pay farmers. Currently, all of the money will go to subsidizing conventional farming. Farms that grow rows and rows, acres and acres, of commodity crops like wheat, seed, grain, corn, and potatoes. These farmers all spray the food they grow with endless amounts of insecticides, fungicide, herbicide, and any other type of “side” you can imagine, as they prep their fields for planting, during the growing season, and while harvesting. Not only does the food get it, but because of their proximity to these chemicals, the farmers and farmhands are also exposed.

So, when considering our health and the health of those around us, should we continue to subsidize these farms? The answer is obviously no. No, we do not want to continue to subsidize growing methods that produce food that is killing us. No, we don’t want to continue to subsidize food that is used to make sugars, like high fructose corn syrup, ultra-processed foods, and to feed animals raised on feed lots (CAFOs [link]). No, that is not where we want to spend our money. Our tax payer money.

But, we should do something with the money. So, should we use it to incentivize those farmers to begin transitioning to healthier farming methods, like regenerative agriculture? A method of farming that has been proven to grow healthier and more humanely raised foods, that can heal the land and heal the population. Yes. We know the harm that pesticides and conventional farming practices have on the land and our health, so we should use that money to begin to transition away from them.

I think it can be that simple.

I read an article the other day that said the estimated cost to transition from conventional farming to regenerative farming globally is between $200 - $450 billion. But that same article also stated that it will be hard to make that transition because farmers have not been able to secure the funds they need to transition, which is one of the main struggles that farmers face. Obtaining required capital from banks and other financial institutions. So they’re stuck, unable to change. 

If we move that $70 billion in the farm bill that is currently ear marked to subsidize conventional growers, and give it to farmers that are trying to improve, then we’ll already be 15 - 35 percent of the way there (depending on what end of the estimate you believe).

I think when policy, bills, and current events are analyzed purely from a personal health perspective that almost all of them will be that easy.

I hope you join.

Sincerely,

The Health Party.

The Behavior of Change

Sunday Scaries. Thoughts and download from the week.

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Grasshoppers

I learned that grasshoppers have a gear like mechanism in their legs that enables them to jump. Facts like these remind me why it’s important to question everything. In all my years of life, I never considered that the use of gears was not unique to humans. For 37 years I’ve been walking around misinformed. What other information am I taking at face value in my life? Where else am I holding onto a belief based on wrong information or information I have yet to learn? These are the types of questions I like to ask myself, and every time I learn something new, like this, it reminds me that there is still so much I don’t know, and everything should be questioned.

Enjoy your health

I was listening to a podcast recently with two nutritionists discussing diet, exercise, and health. I’m a big fan of the guest, the reason I tuned in, but the host I’d never heard of. I’ll call her Mary.

Mary said a lot of things that I didn’t agree with. I didn’t like her choice of words, or the message she was conveying. Fortunately she was sharing the stage with someone who knew what they were talking about so she was able to correct her.

But the thing that really bothered me was her insinuation that eating “healthy,” akakthe real way to eat, was boring. My god, if this lady is your nutritionist, then I feel really bad for you.

The way she said it, insinuated that things like fast food, take out, or frozen meals, were exciting. There is nothing exciting about any of those. Particularly when they make up the majority of your diet. They are poison, and are only appealing because they are cheap, accessible, and convenient.

A rancher at a conference a few weeks ago said, “our addiction to convenience is killing us.” He’s right.

If this lady knew anything about food, nutrition, or cooking, then she would know that there is nothing more exciting then stepping into your kitchen, opening the refrigerator, looking in the pantry, peaking around in the spice cabinet, and figuring out what ingredients you have and what you can make from them. Deciding what to eat based on how you’re feeling that day, or what your activity level was, and then catering a meal to those needs.

That’s fun, and exciting.

If you don’t have time to cook, let’s work on finding the time. If you can’t afford to grocery shop and cook healthy foods, let’s figure out ways to make cooking affordable and accessible. 

But please, for the love of god, don’t fucking tell me that eating healthy is boring. Yes, I crave foods from time to time that are outside of my repertoire of cooking skills and ingredient list, but those instance are few and far between. I prepare very close to every meal I eat during the week, and I enjoy the hell out of 99 percent of them.

After you’ve eaten this way for long enough, you learn what you like, what you don’t, what tastes good, and what doesn’t, and you learn how to make what you want and need. I’ve gotten to the point where eating out has become the disappointing thing to do. I typically leave a meal out thinking, “I should’ve just eaten at home.” 

Eating healthy is only boring when you don’t know what you’re doing. And clearly Mary doesn’t have a clue.

Lawn

I never mow the lawn in the same pattern. I mowed the lawn today, differently from two weeks ago, which was different from the two weeks before that. 

Today I split the front lawn down the middle length wise, and then attacked each half individually. Usually I start on the perimeter, ride the edge, and then form a pattern from there. Sometimes going in a circle. Sometimes focusing on each quadrant individually. Other times just completely making it up as I go, probably looking like a mad man, or someone who has never mowed the lawn before (both could be true).

In the back I started with what I’d describe as a candy cane shape. I took the long far side first, which is in the shape of a candy cane, and followed that to the end. I kept that pattern going back and forth. It was fun to be mowing in that shape, and it actually turned out to be pretty efficient. It was probably the fastest I’ve got done mowing since we moved in.

But the thing is, when I look at my neighbors lawns, all I see is straight rows. They look like they’re so methodical about it. They have a set pattern. They know the most efficient way, and they know what they want their lawn to look like, and so they’ve adopted the same pattern over and over.

When their lawn is mowed, it looks orderly and clean. The way my rug looks after I’ve vacuumed it. Whereas mine kind of looks like my hair after I’ve just given myself a haircut.

But, the more fascinating thing I’ve realized lately, is that I’ve been using the weed whacker incorrectly for the last 3.5 months. Since June I’ve struggled trying to figure out the best angle, and height, to keep the thread at so that it edges properly. But I couldn’t figure it out. Last time I edged the lawn I switched hand positions [read: non-dominant dominant]. I put the handle of the edger in my right hand, and used my left as the guide. Switching hands turned me in the opposite direction. Come to find out, that’s the direction the edger is supposed to face. Nothing wrong with my technique, per se, just holding the tool backwards. Even edger’s are apparently made for righties.

Where else in my life am I struggling because I’m holding the tool backwards?

My role

Recently I’ve been thinking about the role I play in a given situation. In particular unsuccessful ones. The easiest example is like when an unintended emotional trigger gets pulled in either my girlfriend or I, and we delve into an argument. In those situations, even if she’s wrong [;)], once things have cooled off I like to ask myself “What role did I play in the descent into chaos? How could a different action, word, facial expression, or body position, have changed the outcome of that conversation?” And then I try to remember that for the next time.

Which means, in order to be effective, I also have to figure out the signs that things are about to get hairy. Is there a certain feeling I can identify that gets triggered before an argument happens? Is there certain body language or words that she starts to use that I could look out for that’ll signal what’s to come, and trigger me to change my approach? What are those signs, and can I remember to change my actions and reactions in time to save the conversation, and ultimately our day.

What role can I play to improve outcomes, even if it means sacrificing how I “feel?”

Something to listen to

Elizabeth Gilbert — How to Set Strong Boundaries, Overcome Purpose Anxiety, and Find Your Deep Inner Voice (#770) - If you’re a male listening to this, and it feels to feminishy, just give it a chance. Actually, if you feel that way, it’s probably a sign you should keep listening. For awhile I’ve believed that to be your best self you need to be your unapologetically real self, and that’s what she talks about. At least that’s my interpretation. And while I haven’t achieved that yet, it’s a great conversation that gives you permission to pursue it.

The Joe Rogan Experience - #2207 Shawn Ryan - I just enjoyed this conversation because Shawn Ryan really seems like a down to earth guy whos curious about life and what’s going on. There is no agenda. Much like Rogan. Their conversation spans across multiple topics and I thought Shawn brought a really good perspective to just about everything discussed.

Runs and Hikes

Eldorado Canyon State Park - Continental Divide Overlook via Fowler to Rattlesnake Gulch Loop - This was harder than I anticipated when I set out for my run. I don’t know if it was just the heat, or what, but it wrecked me. It’s a steady gain all the way to the top, which makes for a pleasant descent. I liked how accessible the trail is, and the views are beautiful. I ran it during the week and there was very little traffic on the trail. Parking was also a breeze.

Rocky Mountain National Park - Sky Pond, The Loch, and Timberline Falls, via Glacier Gorge Loop - This was my first trip back to Rocky Mountain NP in over 5 years, and a lot has changed. In 2019 I hiked to Sky Pond. I was able to easily park at the Bear Lake Trail. On this trip we needed a time entry permit, and when we got to the Bear Lake Trail lot we were turned around by park rangers because the lot was full. We parked about a mile from the trail head, turning our 10 mile hike into 12 miles. Sky Pond is beautiful, but the park and route felt like an amusement park, with scores of people everywhere. If you’re looking for a more wild experience, I’d recommend heading somewhere else.

Golden Gate Canyon State Park - Panorama Point via Mule Deer and Raccoon Trail - Golden Gate Canyon has become one of my favorite places to hike and run. It’s accessible, beautiful, and not overly crowded. Most trails also have a lot of coverage from the sun, like this one. Views are beautiful and the trails are well maintained. I highly recommend this park.

Things that stuck with me

“We always talk about learning disabilities, but we never talk about teaching disabilities”

The Cost of Food

My neighbor just told me the supermarket is selling pork shoulders for $.99 per pound. He was, understandably, excited about this. 

I checked the prices for pork shoulder at some of the regenerative and pastured farms I could recall off the top of my head.

Sisu Farms - $11.00 per lb (where I order most of my meat and chicken from)

White Oak Pastures - $10.00 per lb (the farm of Will Harris)

Acabaonc Farms - >$10.00 per lb (a local farm on Long Island, NY where I’ve ordered meat for my family)

That’s what we’re up against. The cost to raise pigs the right way, is at least 10x more expensive than raising pigs conventionally (based on selling price). 

The reason regeneratively raised animals are more expensive isn’t just because they are receiving higher quality food, and have access to land to roam, while conventionally raised animals are stuck in small pens, cages, or overcrowded chicken coops, where they are fed a low quality diet of grains and corn.

It’s because, on top of that difference in the way they are raised, the grain and corn they are fed is highly subsidized by the U.S. government with your tax dollars. 

So, it’s not that pastured animals and regenerative farms are more expensive. Their price, is the right price. The problem is that conventionally raised animals, most of what you see on sale in the grocery store, has been made artificially cheap. At least, that’s how it appears.

Coincidentally, or not, the owner of Sisu Farms (mentioned above) sent out a newsletter this week talking about just that and more. She said that during a long drive to Kansa (700 miles) to have her turkeys processed at the closest USDA approved processing center, she listened to the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (I haven’t read it but it’s on my list now).

Here are some of the stats she rattled off from the book:

• Direct Farm Bill subsidies for corn and wheat - $3 billion

• Tax funded agriculture fuel - $22 billion

• Treatment of food related illnesses - $10 billion

• Collateral cost of pesticide use  - $8 billion

• Cost of nutrients lost to erosion $20 billion

Even though we know that feeding pigs, chickens, and cows, grains and corn isn’t what’s best for the animals or the humans that eat those animals, that’s what the government continues to subsidize. They subsidize it on the front end, and we all pay for it on the back end with all of the expenses listed above, and a $3 trillion healthcare spend.

In her email she also provided a link to reserve one of her turkeys for the holidays, which prompted me to look and compare the cost across three farming practices.

Sisu Farms Pasture Raised Turkeys - $11 - $13 per lb

Bowman Landes Free Range Turkeys - $4.59 per lb

Kroger Conventional Turkey - $1.89 per lb

I was at an Advancing Food is Medicine conference two weeks ago. The goal of the food is medicine movement is to promote regenerative agriculture and increase the availability and accessibility of food to treat diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, fatty liver disease, and more. 

A number of regenerative farmers and ranchers who used to farm conventionally spoke. They said one of the biggest obstacle they face is financial support. Both in the ability to secure loans that grant them the capital they need to transition from conventional to regenerative practices. And crop insurance, protection against lost of crops due to disease, weather, etc., which requires that they practice conventionally (i.e. using pesticides, herbicides, using feedlots, grain, corn) to maintain coverage. 

Financial support and investment seems like the easiest and lowest hanging fruit we could solve for. Shift the dollars that are subsidizing grain and corn, and use it to support the transition away from conventional agriculture. Give farmers a 3 - 5 year runway to make the move. Then take the savings realized from reducing fuel costs, food related illnesses, pesticide use, nutrient erosion, and healthcare costs (every 1% reducing in a diabetic patients A1C results in annual savings of $1,000) and invest it back into the food system.

Now that I’ve been in the room with these farmers and ranchers I can tell you my suspicions about the work ethic and character of these individuals has been confirmed. 

Give them a fighting chance, and they won’t disappoint. Right now they are receiving very minimal support, and they are still making enormous progress. Imagine the possibilities if we invested in them, which would be an investment in our food, an investment in our planet, and an investment in our health.

One of the speakers at the conference, a representative of the Savory Institute said it best, “Personal health is planetary health.”