I meet people everyday in NYC.
I do consultations weekly. Others I meet while hanging out with friends. I see some interesting things.
Interestingly enough, I have found that many people simply don’t care about their health and often times are lying to themselves about it. Many people have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Some people don’t care until they get sick and diseased and then they are forced to deal with it. Even then, as Carolyn Myss says in her book Creating Health: ‘Most people would rather die than change their diet.’
Then there are the special few that truly want to look and feel better and want an awesome life regardless of their current level of health & wellness. These people are the exceptions – and the most inspiring people to hang out with and work with.
If you really want an awesome life and experience true health & vitality – make sure you don’t make these common mistakes that even the smartest people with the best intentions make.
By the way, what separates these people is not genetics, discipline or willpower…it’s a genuine desire to have an awesome life full of vitality and to look and feel amazing.
1 – You Cannot by Lose Weight to Improve Your Health. You Must Improve Your Health In Order to Lose Weight.
When you are irresponsible in your diet & lifestyle and finally get sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, you may end up desperate. Many people are desperate to lose weight and will try all sorts of stupid things. When you are in a state of desperation, you will make bad choices and suffer consequences because of it.
I see clients who have damaged their metabolisms from years of irresponsible diet & lifestyle (which includes dieting, coffee, sugar & artificial sweetener addiction among other factors). This is common. The biggest mistake these people make is focusing on losing weight, instead of getting healthy.
So if you want to be truly healthy and fit and burn fat – focus first on improving your health and wellness. Go through your life and find times in your life where you were most inspired. Now, ask yourself how can you do that consistently. Then, go do it often.
When you are healthy, your body will naturally – and easily – shed fat and you wont crave junk foods. It may take a little work to get healthy, but it beats the work involved in being sick and tired all the time.
Want to improve your health, look and feel better than ever? Change your mind and your body will follow.
2 – Failure to Connect the Dots
Most people still don’t get this. The food you eat and the way you live determines your overall mood, energy levels and vitality on a daily basis, quality of your skin, your rate of aging, how you look and feel (physically and emotionally) and yes, whether you get disease or not.
Are you constipated? Do you have bad skin? Do you get moody? Do you have belly fat? Do you get tired in the afternoon? Are you tired when you get up in the morning? Are you overweight?
The answer to these is to simply look at your diet.
3 – Using Coffee to Get Things Moving in the Morning?
Not being able to poop is a problem. Coffee is not the the solution. It is a temporary fix that makes you poop immediately but then sets you up for tomorrow’s morning constipation. Temporary fixes usually make things worse. You didn’t get constipated because you had a coffee deficiency.
This can be either a food reaction, chronic dehydration or unmanaged stress. I have found 9 times out of 10, it is stress. A deep sense (deeper issue than most realize) that you simply can not cope with
current circumstances.
Digestive disorders are the result of stress, food intolerance/allergies or years of poor diet. Most people with digestive disorders, need some one to help you rebuild a healthy gut, especially if you have been experiencing this for awhile.
A great starting point is to follow my advice on this blog and cut the C.R.A.P. – Caffeine, Refined foods, Alcohol, Pasteurized Dairy. Second is to drink nothing but water at the right times throughout the
day. Get to bed on time and learn some new coping skills if your stressed.
If you have a job that you don’t love, you will naturally be stressed & unhappy on some level every day.
What’s the solution for that? I know of a bunch, here is a great one…
4 – It’s All in Your Head
There are VERY FEW cases of genetic diseases. Your diet & lifestyle determine whether or not you
express those genetic issues.
Most of the hereditary issues I have seen are, in fact, not genetic at all. They are learned BELIEFS and BEHAVIORS. I am talking about the more common issues like high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
Every person I ever met with a family history of these issues is doing exactly what they should to get those issues and using the ‘its genetic’ excuse as their way of dealing with their irresponsible diet & lifestyle.
If your parents have high cholesterol and you CHOOSE to live and eat just like they do…or worse yet, live and eat like the vast majority of Americans do, then guess what?
If you want to learn more about how your thoughts affect your health and discover some of the most cutting edge health sciences that are many, many years ahead of mainstream medicine, check out the Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton.
5 – Avoiding Red Meat Because You Have Been Misled Into Believing It ‘Rots’ or ‘Decomposes’ in Your Gut or Causes High Cholesterol & Heart Disease
Heart disease is also not a mystery. Red meat and butter DO NOT contribute to it and if you still believe this crap, you need to start reading better material and eating better food – especially coconut oil, butter and grass fed animal foods. These foods that are supposedly ‘bad’ for you are, in fact, very ‘good’ for you when they come from organic grass fed sources. They are the raw materials used to produce your brain chemistry and hormones.
The idea that red meat is ‘hard to digest’ or sits in your gut and decomposes and rots is a vegan idea that is not only false for healthy people, it is only true by people who have digestive disorders. For some, the last time they ate meat, it sat in their gut because they were unhealthy. They then conclude that no one should eat it and everyone should become vegan. It’s all false. We evolved 2.5 million years primarily eating on fat and protein and we didn’t get heart disease until the last 100 years.
If you have difficulty digesting meat, you have a digestive disorder that needs to be corrected.
If you dont feel energized after eating red meat, you might be a Carb Type who is not designed to eat red meat often. The first solution is to eat according to your metabolic type.
Then, if you want to learn the truth about saturated fat and cholesterol, here is an in depth book that will shed some light on this topic…
6 – Bad Food = Bad Mood
Depression, anxiety and most brain chemical imbalances are either due to imbalanced perceptions or reactions from food (from food intolerance or chemicals in foods). You don’t need drugs or years of long drawn out therapy for years to resolve these issues.
These issues result from 2 sources: Years of dieting, drug (recreational or pharmaceutical), artificial sweetener or sugar abuse or food intolerance / allergies especially to gluten….or imbalanced perceptions.
Want to know my all time favorite nutrition book and what I use to get amazing results and save yourself from years of dangerous drug therapy:
This is one of the greatest books I have ever read and I use her work in my career daily.
Now your typical ‘guy’ (you know, the guy who reads Maxim magazine and watches more sports than actually plays them, and who says obnoxious comments like ‘she’s got issues’ – what they are really saying, is they have the exact same issues and have yet to understand, own and heal them. We all have issues. Only few people desire to heal them and move on.
You can choose to ignore or deny them, wallow in them and talk about it in therapy for years or you can CHOOSE to heal them and move on.
If it is an imbalanced perception, typically resulting from trauma (or perceived trauma) as a youth, I encourage you to get The Breakthrough Experience by Dr. John Demartini.
This book and the work of Dr. Demartini changed my life and my career. This is a great starting point to healing and is light years ahead of conventional talk therapy.
7 – Why I Eat Healthy Food
I don’t eat the foods I do or live the way I do because I am ‘weird’ or a ‘health nut’ or because ‘I fear some mysterious disease that randomly strikes people later on in life when you’re old.’ This is a huge misconception. I choose to eat the foods I do because of these reasons:
1 – Fresh, organic food taste good, in fact, the taste is superior to the commercially raised synthetic produce and chemical-based processed man made crap that people eat.
2 – These foods and this lifestyle give me ENERGY and make me feel consistently awesome throughout the day.
3 – I personally don’t want to walk around farting, burping, stomach aching, tired with bad skin and foul moods – and yes, those are all resulting from poor food choices.
4 – My food choices give me the ability to tolerate stress much better and help me to prevent the premature aging that most Americans experience. Plastic surgery and drugs don’t really help much when you feel like crap inside.
5 – I don’t want to be sick and a slave to medicine when I’m older which slowly kills you slowly while deceiving you into the false idea that you are managing a disease. I see this everyday. In fact, I am sure you know many people like this.
6 – I don’t eat ‘health food’ – I eat real food that results in improved health. The vast majority of people are eating ‘crap foods’ and need this distinction because they don’t know much about their body, health or our natural, symbiotic relationship with nature.
8 – Pay Now or Pay Later
If you don’t manage your health now, you will be forced to manage it later. Your body is beautiful and designed to be healthy, full of vitality and heal. If you count your blessings and take care of it, it will, reward you. If not, you will experience signs & symptoms of neglect.
The average American family is paying more than $2000 per year on doctor visits and medical costs.
They spend over $500 a year on over the counter medications.
Its about the same $500 for prescription medicines. (New Yorkers spend more than other states).
This does not include spending on illegal ‘black market’ pharmaceuticals, which is a MASSIVE market, by the way.
Two of the top five most widely prescribed medications are for digestive disorders.The other three are for heart disease related and arthritis conditions.
Most doctor visits are for fatigue.
What does all that tell you?
I have not paid one penny for medical costs in a decade. I spend my money on food and occasional surf or snowboard trips.
Please note – I did not say you should not use medicine. Ok, so don’t take things out of proportion and make things up! I am pointing out some interesting facts here.
Oh yeah, these numbers are from several years ago and they have grown every year since.
Another way to see it is this – either you run your life & vitality now or you will be overrun by disease & death. Pretty simple equation if you ask me. I have all my clients get How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy by Paul Chek. Paul Chek is a friend and teacher of mine. It is considered ‘the Bible’ of fitness and nutrition by many experts. Everyone should have this book.
Currently it is out of print. It will be available in the next week or two and I will post a link for it.
Until then, use your head, live from your heart and eat real food.
Peace
Antonio
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