I will divide this section of pearls into Diet and Exercise:

Diet Pearls

• Diet is everything.  Sorry to let you guys in on that little secret.  When my diet goes south for a while, so does my body.  Eating slowly, chewing your food, eating more organic, fresh vegetables and fruits, and less meat is critical.  I would say 70 to 80% of your struggle to look and feel better is due to good diet.
• Give up Coke and all sodas.  They are very acidic and not healthy for the body.  Coke can dissolve meat and clean concrete.  Just because you are drinking Diet Coke does not save you.  Fake sugars are equally bad and they are terrible for you.  People can develop cancers from having a body that is not pH balanced, i.e., acidic.  I drank a Diet Coke every day and never thought I could give it up but I did and have not had a soda can for two years now.  Buy pH strips from Amazon for a few dollars and make sure that your pH is at least 7 or higher.  You might be surprised to see how low your pH really is.  A low pH predisposes you to cancer.
• Give up caffeine if you can.  I stopped a year ago and I feel much better.  I do not have the up and down swings anymore.  When your body is totally fit you will not need to rely on caffeine.  Do I miss the taste?  Not really.  Not after awhile.
• Don’t blame genetics.  That is a sign of weakness.  We are actually more of a product of our environment, which we can control, than our genes.  Genetic risk of cancer is in general very low.  The number one risk for cancer is bad diet followed by a sedentary lifestyle.  If you control your diet, you seriously reduce the risk of cancer and of heart disease.  Look at the women who go from a low meat and dairy diet in Japan over to the United States who start getting a high incidence of breast cancer just like Americans do.  Diet is everything.
• We consume way too much sugar.  Start to cut down on your sugar intake but don’t replace it with aspartame or saccharine.  Those chemicals are truly bad for you and can actually spur your body on toward obesity.  Replace sugar if you have a sweet tooth with natural Agave honey or Stevia and do so in moderation.
• Get rid of all things white:  white sugar, white bread, and white rice.  Consume unpolished, brown rice only.  The Ezekiel brand, sprouted bread is amazing.
• Give up dairy.  Stop drinking milk of any kind, especially the conventional steroid-laden kind.  Cheese, ice cream, etc. are all bad.  When we talk about needing milk for growth and to prevent osteoporosis, that is pure bunk.  The best thing to limit osteoporosis is exercise to strengthen one’s bones.  It is questionable whether even calcium is needed.
• Give up OJ.  Drinking juice is a very sugary activity that even one glass a month can risk an increase in diabetes.  Don’t be afraid of fresh fruit, which is great for you, unless of course you are in fact diabetic.  Eating fruits are great for your body, skin, and to limit cancer.  Drinking juice is not.  Ideally, if you eat fruit, it is better to eat it on an empty stomach an hour before a meal.  It will raise your insulin and help you digest your food better and thereby burn more calories.  However, personally, I am used to eating fruit as a dessert after a meal (still good though).
• Shop at the edges of the grocery store and buy as many colored food items as possible.  Buy the rainbow of food colors.
• Do not eat any processed food, period.  I have stayed away from major fast food chains for two years now.  The cheap meats and the chemicals that are in there are nothing short of deadly.  If you do this one thing alone, you will be much healthier.
• Make small changes to your diet.  Many Americans (like myself) are radical and we make radical changes rather than baby steps.  Do one thing at a time.  Give up Coke then go from there.  Start small.
• A little cheating is ok.  Read The 4-Hour Body.  If you cheat with your meals once a week, it almost reprograms your body for weight loss.  However, when I cheat I still stay away from really bad foods like fried foods, soft drinks, and processed foods.
• Hara hachi bu- Japanese for eat until you are 80% full.  In the past I would eat until I was stuffed like a pig.  Now, if I eat to that point I will feel physically sick.  I eat until I am pretty full then stop.  If I just wait a few minutes, I will become full.  It takes our bodies 20 minutes to sense that we are full. Unfortunately, most Americans eat rapidly and finish their meals way under 20 minutes before our brain can even register that we are in fact full.
• Eat when you are hungry.  If I feel hungry, my body is telling me I need something so I eat something small.  I try to get in 2 small snacks between my meals but with my busy schedule I don’t always do that.  Smaller meals, more frequently program your body toward a greater metabolism that leads to faster fat burning.  I also try to avoid eating any meal for at least 3 hours before going to sleep.  I like the rule, “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”
• Avoid domino foods, like nuts and chips from a bottomless bag.  I eat nuts for my break (Brazilian nuts are great) but I take out 5 and plan on eating not a single one more.
• Drink plenty of cold water.  Cold water in particular makes your body’s metabolism speed up and it is also refreshing (except for Europeans who like to drink their water at room temperature.  Sorry for that.)  Rain Water is a great brand that is pH balanced.  Thanks Richard for that tip.  Otherwise for the sake of the environment, drink filtered water.
• Grow an organic garden if at all possible.  Gardens have so much more nutrition than even the produce you get from Whole Foods.  A study from the University of Irvine showed that organic vegetables have a much higher polyphenol content, a secondary metabolite that helps with a vegetable’s defense against bugs.  When there are pesticides, the polyphenol count goes down because the plant does not need to mount a defense against the bug.  We get a huge degree of our protection against illness and disease from polyphenols.  I have not been sick one day for over two years now, and I do not get the flu shot.
• Do not drink shakes to replace meals unless you do not have a healthier option.  I drink a blend of many vegetables in the morning but try to eat at least 1 to 2 hard food meals during the day since our body does better in processing real food and not shakes.  If you do not have a healthier option, by all means have a healthy shake.  For protein shakes (which are different), please read the exercise pearls section below.
• Read anything written by Michael Pollan.  I have summarized a lot of his work here in this blog series.  Go to the archives.  His magnum opus is The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  His shorter book that is equally great is In Defense of Food.  That book is actually what started my change toward better health so I owe a lot to him.  His newer short book of simply a list of rules (as I am doing here) is called Food Rules and even though I did not buy it because I have read all his other books I think it is brilliant.  However, for the non-reader, read Food Rules, as it summarizes all his thinking in pithy one-liners.
• If you are too lazy to read, please watch Food, Inc. It will change the way you see everything.  Michael Pollan is prominently featured in it.  It is an eye opener.
• Buy local food from local grocers as much as possible.  Grassfeed beef is so critical if you eat meat.  Cows were not meant to eat corn.  You will be surprised that local farmers can actually be cheaper than Whole Foods or other major chains.  Just get a dedicated deep freezer to store the meat, which will keep.
• Try not to eat out because it is not healthy for you.  My friends who eat out more like My Fit Foods, a place that has prepackaged healthy foods.  Don’t know if you have one near you or an alternative to that.  Whole Foods
• Be mindful of your food when you chew it.  Experience the taste of it rather than scarf it down.  Establish a positive relationship with food rather than a negative one.  Read Savor, a great book on mindfulness eating.
• Take fish oil and vitamin D. Omega-3s from fish oil regulate blood pressure, resting heart rate and limit sudden death, arrhythmias, etc.; and we simply do not get enough because we do not eat enough fish.  Salmon is the best source of omega-3s where tilapia followed by orange roughy are the worst on the list, i.e., those latter fish give very little omega 3s.  Do not eat farm raised fish but only wild.  (Avoid big fish like tuna that carry more mercury.  Watch the extras section of the DVD The Cove and you probably will not eat tuna again.)  We need to ingest (if we do not get it from fish) about 1000-2000 mg combined total of EPA and DHA per day so check the backside of your Omega-3 supplements to make sure that you are getting that quantity. With proper Vitamin D we can prevent arthritis, cardiovascular disease, depression, pain, cancer, osteoporosis, hypertension, diabetes, etc.  We should shoot for 40-60 ng/ml as a blood level with 30 ng/ml being insufficient and below 20 ng/ml being truly deficient.  A recommended dose of supplementation is 2000 IUs per day as a start.  In contrast most multi-vitamins only contain 400 IUs.

Exercise Pearls

• Before we talk about exercise, we should talk about sleep.  You must get 7 hours of sleep or more even if you tell me you do not need it, your body does.  When you don’t sleep enough you risk heart disease but even more importantly you will gain weight.  People that do not sleep enough simply start to gain weight because that is what our body does when it is deprived of much needed sleep.
• Use public accountability for your progress.  Too often we do everything in private and we do not have people who hold us accountable for our actions so we fall off the wagon very quickly.  Our January resolutions for the year disappear by the end of that month.  I post my before and after photographs on Facebook and I also have accountability meetings with my Entrepreneur’s group every month for metrics that I must uphold and attain.  Find an accountability partner that can help you achieve your goals and stick with them.  Your accountability partner has to be as serious as you are or it won’t work.  Give yourself a monetary penalty or some other form of shame if you don’t make your weight or your goals.
• Find friends that workout and eat right.  You are your friends.  The more you hang out with people that are overweight, who do not value exercise and diet, and who scoff what you do, the more that you will become like them.  A survey found that the more you associate with fit people, the fitter you become.  The more that you hang out with people who are not fit, the less fit that you become.  Sorry, that is the truth.
• Use three forms of body weight evaluations.  I use a caliper that I bought for $5 (to measure body fat), a Myotape for $5 (that easily allows you to measure body circumferences), and also an Omron body scale (all bought from Amazon) that measures percent body fat, muscle, visceral fat, BMI, etc.  (BMI is not important if you are already a muscle lean individual but it is a helpful measurement if you are a bit overweight.)  I heard of a cool device  theWithings body scale (thanks Richard Jensrud) that is a beautifully designed scale and wifi enabled to sync to your iPhone and to your PC all of your information like BMI, weight, fat percentage, and muscle percentage, but I saw one review on Amazon that says the body fat reading is not that accurate.  (I own the Omron and not the Withings body scale.)  Try to do the measurements at the same time of day and with the same relationship to food (that is before a meal preferably).
• There are three types of stretching:  static, dynamic, and ballistic.  We tend to do static stretches before a workout but they do not actually help minimize injury (they don’t increase injury risk either as some believe).  However, they can actually compromise performance when dealing with sports that require power and speed, which would be most sports.  Ballistic stretches are not that helpful either.  They involve rapidly moving back and forth motions.  Dynamic stretching, as advocated in the book Dynamic Stretching, involves movement activities like heel and toe walking, spiderman walking, air squats, high knee raises, etc., that can actually minimize injury and help with sports performance.  The best thing to do is to find movements that would mimic your sports activity (read Dynamic Stretching for more information).   However, static stretching after working out is great, and I do that after every workout for at least 5 minutes if not longer.  I have always wondered why we do dynamic forms of stretching before each Crossfit workout.  Now I know.
• Quit going to the gym.  What?  Well, don’t quit going to the gym but as you will see in what I have to describe I believe that traditional gyms are not the best way to get healthy, as I will shortly explain.
• To build a Spartan body will take years not weeks or months.  Many people get fooled by a before and after body that is seemingly a magical transformation.  In the 6 months that you see of my photos, I am still not close to where I would like to be, but that is part of the fun.  There is no end, just a journey like anything else in life.  Make it fun and stay on track for a lifelong journey of improvement.  Once you change your brain about exercise and diet, you can then take off.  Don’t think negative and don’t be impatient for the body you want.  Many people use quick fix remedies and try to lose all the weight quickly.  That leads to disastrous yo-yoing and skin problems as well as metabolic issues.  Plan on losing weight and build muscle slowly.  The joke is that the 300 workout will not give you a 300 body (a la the film).  The 300 workout was done as a test but not as a regimen, and also the casting directors already picked buff guys that had developed those bodies over years.  All they did was refine those bodies by adding harder workouts to get them even more refined for the movie.
• Muscle confusion is what I learned from finishing the home program P90X.  When our bodies get used to a certain program, we become very efficient at it.  This leads to a stop in growth or a plateau.  The more you change it up, the better.
• High-intensity interval training (or HIIT) is what I learned from completing the home program Insanity. (Do not do Insanity unless you are already totally fit or you will hurt yourself.)  If you perform very high intensity work with short breaks, you actually reset your metabolism higher so stop looking at how many calories you burn on the treadmill.  It does not matter.  You want to have a strong afterburn, i.e., how many calories you are burning in the next 2 days that follow your workout.  For free workouts, go to bodyrock.tv.  It is a great site for those who want a quick workout.  The lie is that you have to spend a lot of time in a gym to get fit.  All you need is 4 to 20 minutes at home doing high-intensity interval training with a good interval timer.  I have all the gadgets that are shown on bodyrock.tv including the Gymboss interval timer, a sandbag, dip bar, jump rope, but more about gadgets in a moment.  I also just downloaded the free app (Nike Training Club) for the iPhone that helps you with free HIIT workouts.  Have not used it yet.  Thanks Ashley from Crossfit for that tip!
• The best speed jump rope is Buddy Lee’s Aero Speed Hyperformance Jump Rope.  It is expensive ($40), and you can buy it on Amazon.com.
• The programs that I got from Beachbody that I mentioned above, P90X and Insanity, are great.  They are super intense and I would not advise them for someone who is out of shape.  You need to work into them.  However, what I love about them besides the fact that they are intense is that I can do them at home.  In the past, I would say I would never have had the dedication to work out at home because I felt that I needed a class to attend in a gym environment.  That all changed in late December 2010 when I realized that I did not need to go to the gym anymore.  Believe me, you do not need a gym and you will be disciplined enough to workout at home.  Once you have done this you will be amazed at your progress.  Your excuse that you can’t go to the gym because you have no time or you have to watch your kids is now officially gone.
• Do not use traditional Nautilus machines since they work your body unnaturally.  If you look at a powerlifter versus a sprinter, which body do you think looks more natural and attractive?  The answer obviously is the sprinter.  Doing compound exercises that require multiple muscles and balance create much leaner and more balanced looking muscles.  Mark Lauren’s book, You are Your Own Gym:  The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises, will help you understand how to use your bodyweight for exercises to get that body at home without needing a gym.  I recommend however push-up bars (I have the power bars by Tony Horton) to limit wrist strain and a great pull up bar (I love my P90X one).  I also have the Bowflex SelectTech 552 Adjustable Dumbbells that are amazing because you can dial in any weight without needing a rack of weights at home but be forewarned these dumbbells are expensive, costing about $400 for a pair.
• Work out in the morning.  I realize that if I don’t get my workouts in in the morning I have a good chance of not getting the workout in at all.  I try to workout 6 days a week if possible.  You really need to work out almost every day to get fit.  Those weekend warriors (which I was one of them) cannot get fit enough with working out twice a week.  It just won’t happen.  But as I mentioned above, start slow.  Start with a couple times a week and build slowly to 5 to 6 times a week.  Read the book, Younger Next Year, for more information on this idea.
• Crossfit- This is extreme again.  I love Crossfit gyms.  If you have never tried it and you are type A, you will love it.  Crossfit is HIIT training that incorporates Olympic weightlifting, kettlebells, etc., in short bursts that are all timed to measure your fitness and intensity.  It is truly max effort of 100% that really is the epitome of HIIT.  Please consult a doctor before trying this (or anything I have recommended) and be careful if you have body injuries, as Crossfit may worsen them if you are not careful.
• Active.com is dedicated to triathletes.  What I learned from this site is that when we constantly stress our bodies just a little bit more, our bodies grow from that stress.  However, if we do not listen to our bodies and push through injuries, we lead to injuries that really set us back, if not indefinitely so.  So the second half of this advice is listen to your body.  When it is in pain, stop.  I have come to realize two types of pain: muscle soreness (to me a good thing but then I back off on that area until the soreness dissipates) and ligament and joint pain (by all means, STOP!)
• Get bodywork done.  I believe that structural integration or rolfing is the best body manipulation that exists.  Michael Solberg, a structural integration expert in my building, has literally saved my body from injury.  Over time you start to understand how your body feels and moves; and it is amazing how in tune you become with your body. I literally can guide Michael on where the restriction is and what needs to be done because I am so in tune with my body (but he really does not need my help).  Structural integration is focused on releasing fascial (connective tissue) scarring that occurs from just daily living not to mention being a surgeon and an intense fitness devotee.  I also get deep-tissue massages whenever I can in my spa (or when I am traveling).  Good bodywork is so important as part of any fitness regimen and limits the potential for injury and allows you to advance safely.
• Do yoga (or pilates).  I am a huge fan because it also saves my body from injury.  When we only do compression workouts (everything I have described until this point), we risk injury and shorten our bodies.  Yoga helps me stretch out my body so that I limit the risk of injury but also shape my body favorably.  Although structural integration helps me release much of the tightness that yoga helps me do as well, it is not enough.  Yoga builds 25% more muscle strength and toning when muscles are eccentrically stimulated.  In addition, yoga increases peace, mindfulness, balance, neural integration, posture, and flexibility.  These are all important things to have.  If you are not enjoying your yoga experience, it is most likely due to two things:  inexperience in the field and also choosing the wrong studio.  Many gyms that offer yoga offer a “yoga light” version.  You should try to find a dedicated studio that matches the style that you like.  I cannot recommend a particular style of yoga since you will find what works for you.  However, personally I love vinyasa flow yoga.  I can promise you that I sweat three times more at yoga than I do at Crossfit or running but my heart rate is lower throughout, and I do not do hot yoga.  (Btw, a great yoga mat that absorbs sweat and does not slip when wet is called “The Mat” by the great clothing designer, Lululemon.  I stopped using my yogitoes.  Thanks Allie for the tip!)
• You must take Whey protein (I recommend Jay Robb since it is from grassfed cows that are not steroid injected) mixed with some kind of fruit immediately after your workout.  I cannot emphasize enough how important this is.  Your body goes into a catabolic (destructive) state after your workout and you are more prone to injury and will try to retain fat if you do not replenish it with nutrients.  Eating a piece of chicken won’t cut it.  Your body needs broken down protein (Whey is the best) and some kind of glucose (fruit is the best) to drive the protein into your cells.  You can build muscles (don’t worry ladies you will not get big if you are not on steroids) and burn fat better if you take this protein shake after a workout.  A protein shake is very low calorie typically and is not intended as a meal replacement.  Thanks Marzia for this tip.  She also recommended taking a combination of glutamine and branch chained amino acids (BCAA) to help with muscle recovery if you are as intense as I am about your fitness training.  Skip the creatine.  It is not good for your body.
• Get good shoes.  Actually get rid of your shoes.  The more padding you have in your shoes the more joint problems you can have.  Our feet are one of the most complex parts of our body.  We were programmed to run and move barefoot.  When we wear padded shoes, we lose proprioception (feeling of the ground below us), which causes us to bang our joints even harder without us knowing it.  Switching our workouts over to a relatively barefoot or minimalist style shoe should be done slowly because you will have injuries if you do so too quickly and do not build up enough foot strength.  Some brands that I recommend are Vibram FiveFingers (the ultimate), Vivo Barefoots, and Merrells.  (If you love Nikes, get the Nike Frees.  I use those to walk in on my vacations.  I prefer those as walking shoes and the Vibrams and Vivos for running where I am forced to run on my forefoot.  But I like to walk by striking my heels so Nike Frees are great for a lot of walking, as you do in Manhattan.)  Learn more about my feeling about barefoot techniques in the section below on running.
• For runners, I would recommend reading Chi Running (and the DVD) and Barefoot Running.  They have both changed the way that I see running.  As mentioned above, the type of shoes you wear can truly destroy you or help you.  60 to 80% of runners injure themselves.  This is an alarming statistic.  This can be easily avoided if one small thing were changed:  moving from a heel strike to a forefoot or midfoot strike.  The reason that most runners run by striking with their heels is that they wear shoes that are too padded and allow them to do that.  If you change your shoes to a minimalist one or even try running for a few steps by striking your heel without shoes you will be screaming in pain.  Our body will not allow that.  When we strike our foot with our heels we transmit 7 to 8 times our body weight through our ankles, shins, knees, hips, and lower back.  Strike with your forefoot and read the books that I have recommended and you can avoid injury.  Again, start slowly and do not run very much when starting barefoot even if you are an experienced runner because you will injure yourself if you do not build up foot strength first.
• Eric Franklin balls and imagery.  I have just purchased these so I cannot speak much for them yet but am excited to incorporate them.  They are rubber balls that build up strength in your toes and make your body conscious of injuries and help you work through areas of tension through related imagery.  You can get the book and balls on Amazon.
• For swimmers, read Total Immersion.  This book will help you swim much more efficiently and with less fatigue.  The concept of this book like Chi Running is to work with your core rather than your arms and legs.  We too often think that swimming is an arms and leg activity when it should not be.  When we swim with our cores rotating us then we use that as the engine and the arms and legs as propellers.  It has changed my relationship to swimming.  Great goggles that I love are the Italian-made Aqua Sphere Kayenne:  they are sexy and do not leak.
• Get a kettlebell.  Kettlebells as popularized by ex-Soviet Pavel Tsatsouline are an amazing way to workout and build total body strength, lose weight, and tone your body in virtually minutes.  I got this idea from Crossfit but more importantly from the book, The 4-Hour Body.  The one that I own is the Weider version that allows for different interchangeable weights and I totally recommend watching the DVD, Enter the Kettlebell, by Pavel Tsatsouline.  You do not need to buy the book.  The DVD will help you minimize injury and optimize your form.
• TRX system.  The TRX system is a great bodyweight trainer that I own.  I use it for atomic pushups and to work out my back.  Just Google it to see what it can do.
• Buy a sandbag.  The purpose of the sandbag is to make your muscles adjust as you lift the bag thereby improving balance and firing off more muscles recruited during the exercise.  The best one to buy on the market is the Ultimate Sandbag, which is a bit pricey but worth it for the quality.  You have to buy some Play Sand for a couple of bucks from Home Depot to fill it up.
• For indoor cyclists, I love Spinervals training DVDs.  I use that at home on my home exercise bike.  They really get you through a spin class without having to attend one.  I did spin class for ten years but now I only integrate a spin class a couple of times per month to mix up my other routines.  I think just doing spin all the time can make your body too used to the same motion, and as mentioned above make it too efficient leading to stunted improvement in overall fitness goals.

As all of you know, I am not a fitness expert and value the input of my dear colleagues who are.  I would also like to thank them for their valuable assistance and guidance in helping me be more fit.  Why be more fit?  So that you look and feel better than you ever have.  As Todd Whitthorne from Cooper Aerobics said, it is about “squaring off the curve”.  What that means is that our lives should be rock solidly high in quality and then we die one day, which unfortunately is inevitable.  This is opposed to how most of our bodies go without proper diet and exercise, which is a slow downturn until we barely can wipe applesauce off our chins on the day we die.  One day you will wake up barely able to get out of bed with chronic pain.  But remember the words of Jake Lalanne who was doing bench presses a week before he died at 96 years of age: “Inactivity is the killer, and remember, it’s never too late.” Hope you found this blog inspiring and also I am open to your input, as I am always learning too!

For those who do not know, I am part of the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) that has been an indispensable part of my professional, social, and personal life.  In this organization, I learn about ways to live a healthier and rewarding professional and personal life.  As part of my duties, I am the official Dallas EO blogger for our learning events.  I thought the event hosted last week by Todd Whitthorne, the CEO of Cooper Concepts, started by Dr. Kenneth Cooper, was just amazing so I am forwarding a link to the blog that I wrote for those who are interested.  Here are also some photos from the event taken by Clint Brewer from Vim Studios.

]]> http://lfp-blog.com/dr-lams-blog/health-and-fitness-blog/feed/ 3 http://lfp-blog.com/dr-lams-blog/mindfulness-mondays/mindfulness-mondays-64-savor/ http://lfp-blog.com/dr-lams-blog/mindfulness-mondays/mindfulness-mondays-64-savor/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 11:00:27 +0000 dr. lam http://lfp-blog.com/?p=5873 As we enter the holiday season, I decided to read a book aptly entitled Savor that tries to help individuals lose weight and keep that weight off.  It has been a steady two years for me in which I have continually lost weight down to an almost ideal weight for me without any yo-yo-ing except for 2 to 3 pounds.  The book advocates that we approach food with mindful intention, as we should everything in life.

Too often we blame will power, where will power is basically a short-lived contrivance.  When we force ourselves not to eat or have an adversarial relationship to food, we fail shortly thereafter.  We cannot wage an ongoing epic battle of the bulge, as will power is only a temporary fix job.  We must open ourselves to transforming our relationship with food so that we do not resist, fight, and binge.

For myself, I do not like overeating because it now makes me sick.  Eating refined sugars and other processed foods no longer give me joy, as they once did.  That does not mean I do not enjoy a dessert or some chocolate every now and then.  However, I do not crave it or desire it with eager desperation.  When we start to become more mindful in every arena in life, we become more mindful toward how we eat food.

In short, the author advocates that we consciously eat our food.  Today we tend to scarf it down in a blink (of which I am still a culprit but am learning to let that go).  We often live our lives in a multi-tasking mode with the Internet, the radio, the television, and various other distractions around us so that we do not mindfully even taste our food.  Chewing each bite 20 to 40 times not only allows one to savor the taste but it also allows us to mechanically break down the food and help with important enzymatic digestion of every morsel.

This week, be mindful of your food and be present with it as you eat, savoring the taste, the nutrition, the labor that went into its preparation, the gratitude of having it and turn off the mindless distractions that would otherwise invade our presence of mind with that food like the Internet and other invasions.

A story that captivated me in her book recounted the life of Martha Graham, the iconoloclastic dancer who ushered in a new way of seeing and performing dance.  Against all odds, she became a dancer:  she was told she was too old, too heavy, too ugly, and too short.  She said, “They thought I was good enough to be a teacher, but not a dancer.”  Dance was her reason for living, Duarte explains.  Driven by her burning desire for her art, she declared, “I did not choose to be a dancer.  I was chosen.”

Her stark, blunt, gestural dance stood antithetical to traditional romantic, flowing movements of European dance that dominated until that time.  Beating down the stereotypical chorus girl prototype, Graham was the brave, new woman who owned her own company and created a new expression.  In 1930, she debuted her haunting solo dance called Lamentation.  One of her first performances was in Brooklyn.  Immediately after the performance a woman came up to her and with tears thanked her for how much her dance meant to her.  Graham later found out that this woman had recently witnessed the death of her 9-year-old son who was struck by a truck in front of her and who had the incapacity to cry until that performance that gave her the vehicle and dignity to weep.  Graham insisted that if her dance could touch one person in the audience that it would be worth it.  She wanted her dances to be felt rather than understood.

I think her story is truly inspirational whether you love or hate modern dance.  It is a story of a person who passionately followed her heart against all tormenters and naysayers.  She pursued her art and wanted that art to speak to whoever was willing to listen and be receptive to it.  I think we all can learn a valuable lesson when we hear the stifling looks of others who believe we are not worthy to pursue what we want in life because we do not meet whatever criterion or standard that the public has set for us.  We can all follow our heart more than our minds and work to achieve greatness through our capacity to express ourselves and hopefully that expression will touch at least one other life.

Namaste,

Sam Lam

I believe that love is the most powerful emotion we can share with one another and we can harness that power every day in small but profound ways.  Whether you believe in the law of attraction or you do not, you can believe that there is a difference when you approach a situation with love or without it.  Any relationship, any desire, any thought, etc., can be influenced by love or by an alternative, lesser emotion.  When our enemies hate us and offer us their bitter enmity, we can go beyond that hatred by returning love.

There was the famous Japanese scientist who showed that water crystals can be influenced when someone felt love or felt anger in proximity to the water.  Byrne contends that if we are 99% water, how do you think your love or your anger you feel influences your cellular make up?  When we are angry all the time, it soaks into our cells and changes and mutates our bodies with cancer, heart disease, aging, sickness, and other infirmities.  If we give our body a deep love, we allow our bodies to stay in complete healing or to return to it.  I have now finished The Power twice and have felt moved by its ringingly clear message that I wanted to share with you today and hopefully you can pass that message on to someone this week.

He starts with the premise that we cannot change our body without first changing our mind.  If we want to lose weight, it does not begin with our body but with how we perceive our body, how we desire that weight loss and what we do to be committed to those changes.  If we adopt a fad diet for a week then decide to stop, it is not the fad diet’s fault it is our brain’s fault that caused us to attempt a fad diet and then subsequently to abandon it.

By losing 35 pounds over the past 2 years, I did so not by using fad diets but by realigning my relationship to food.  In the past, I enjoyed eating processed food quickly and mindlessly and also in having guilty pleasure in eating fatty foods. I also liked stuffing myself with food.  Until I changed my brain in a fundamental way not to like eating that stuff and not wanting to eat until I was gorged like a pig, I could not lose weight and keep it off.  I find that people who want to lose weight are using food as a crutch (as much as I did) and cycling their energy around this activity in a love-hate relationship.  Until we end the brain struggle, we cannot end the physical one.

Similarly, as I started to enjoy eating healthier and working out regularly, I started to change my perception of my own body and my relationship to it.  I started to enjoy my new body and enjoy my healthy lifestyle.  When I was in Belgium a week ago, I ate fries, chocolate, and waffles but I could “cheat” because I knew that they were part of my enjoyment for the time that I was in a country famed for those foods but I actually started to crave my morning concoction of raw vegetables and other healthy comestibles.

Another fascinating part of the book centered on how the lack of sleep can actually cause us to gain weight.  He argues that as adults over the age of twenty we need at least 7 hours of sleep for our body to function well. Those who say that they can get by with 4 to 5 hours are doing a disservice to their body functioning since almost all of us require at least 7 hours no matter what we tell our bodies to the contrary.  When we have a lack of sleep our body starts to create an imbalance of leptin to grelin.  Grelin is what makes us hungry and leptin makes us full.  Our grelin hormones (what Amen calls gremlins) surge making our bodies not only hungrier but hungrier for sugary, fried foods; and our leptins fall making us not as full when we eat.  When we get our beauty rest we not only get beauty because we feel more rested but our eating habits can improve because of it too.

The other fascinating topic that this book discusses is how other people in our lives influence our eating habits, which Amen cites an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  Dr. Amen, a Lebanese, recalls his confectioner heritage when his grandfather would tempt him with sugary snacks and how his family would encourage him to eat more because he was too thin.  He argues the single most common reason for obesity is living with someone who is obese.  That person reinforces bad habits and also encourages bad habits out of guilt for their own lack of will power or desire for gluttony.  I just got back from Europe and I do not believe I saw one obese person except for the vacationing Americans.  In France and in Spain when someone gains 5 pounds they do not allow themselves to move to 10 to 15 pounds but start to vigorously move downward back to their ideal.  It is simply not in their culture to be overweight.  It is in ours.

Sometimes when our body is out of our desired ideal it may not be our fault entirely.  Dr. Amen talks about how his wife was hyper aggressive, agitated, and well, masculine.  He consulted a gynecologist who suspected polycystic ovarian syndrome and found out that his wife’s condition was caused by hormonal imbalance.  By treating her effectively with medicine, she changed.  If we have a hard time changing our brain perhaps there is a functional brain problem that is causing us not to want to change or to be comfortable with our body at an unacceptably unhealthy state.  That is where SPECT scanning and/or counseling with a professional may be of value but lies beyond my knowledge basis.  Sometimes it is a question of the chicken or the egg:  we may have a desire to eat badly and therefore we gain weight.  Alternatively, a bad diet causes us not to stay full, to be more tired, and to be frankly addicted to more bad diet that causes us to eat more bad food.  Amen talks about proper supplements that can help balance the brain and the body. For me daily vitamin D and fish oil are integral to my overall balance of my mind and body.

This book is so rich in content and advice that I cannot hope to cover all the details.  I hope that these salient points that I derived from this book for my own personal gain is helpful for anyone out there interested in changing their body by a new method advocated as changing one’s brain first.

Younger Next Year

The principle, declared method to look younger next year advocated by the septuagenarian Chris and the 50-year-old Dr. Harry is routine, consistent exercise.  They see this as more important than almost any other element, and they spend a good portion of the book explaining why.  In short, they believe that our body is programmed to decay when we are sedentary since it goes against the nature of our epoch a millennium years ago when we did not sit at computer terminals with a large Coke beside us.  We tell our bodies that we are dying when we do nothing.  We start to store fat and decay, as we tell our bodies that we are in starvation mode (since that is what we did when we started to starve a thousand years ago and before) by breaking down muscle and storing fat.  It was the most efficient way for us to avoid death by actually starting to rot.  Crazy huh?

The authors advocate working out at least 6 days a week and to make 4 of those days cardio intensive.  After having finished this book, I started a few weeks ago to change my work out regimen to fit the bill.  Two years ago I was a weekend warrior, doing spin classes and a little lifting on the weekends.  About 18 months ago, I started yoga and then within a couple of months I went to four days a week.  I then progressed after a few months to perform yoga almost consistently 5 days a week.  I have now returned to yoga 4 days a week and added an incredible workout known as crossfit (check out crossfit.com for more information) twice a week so that I now work out consistently 6 days a week (except for last week when I was in Europe in which case I walked almost 3 to 5 hours each day instead).

In their diet chapters, they also reflect on how a sugary diet of empty calories causes our bodies to think we are in starvation mode since in the history of man we have never gone from starvation to gluttony except when our body starts to try to horde calories during times of starvation.  When you combine that with the empty calories we get from soft drinks, we have a ton of calories we are consuming each day but they are not nutritive so our body grabs all the calories we are getting but we start to become hungry again for two reasons.  First, our body stored all the fat from the calories in preparation for possible starvation but then had no nutrition obtained from doing so.  Second, the sugar spike that required an outpouring of insulin causes us to pour out more insulin making us even hungrier in a very short time.

The authors finally touch upon the need for love and connection in our lives.  Sex being a great thing to have but not as critical as having touch and love in our lives to provide emotional health.  As a retired attorney, Chris states that he did not take the time during his years as a lawyer to develop any personal hobbies so that when he retired he was left with a large vacuum and did not know what to do with that surplus time. He contends that we all should engage in fruitful avocations so that we can engage our brains and hearts in rewarding pastimes that can also carry over into our mature years.

Although this book was a bit redundant in its message (perhaps I have read too many books on a similar subject), I recommend it to anyone who finds what I have written above to be foreign sounding or have not really thought about exercise, diet, or relationships as sources of how to look and feel better now and a year from now.  Although I am a plastic surgeon, I believe that Botox, fillers, and fat transfer are insufficient to make someone truly look and feel young:  diet, exercise, and mental/emotional health must accompany your investment.

As a physician in his mid-70s, he argues that he has not been sick since he was 19 years old because of his healthy lifestyle and his diet.  Being a pioneer in gastroenterologic endoscopy who practices half the time in Japan and half the time in America, he really knows the differences in colon and stomachs seen from the inside out.  He notices that high meat diets in the West causes the colons to become thicker, inelastic and in short putrified.  Vegetables on the other hand create an elastic, thinner, more pliable intestine that leads less to stagnation.  Stagnation in the intestine from high meat diets leads to the build up of necrotic tissues that can lead to colon cancer.

He has found that his patients who maintain his enzyme-rich diet and lifestyle have never had a recurrence of colon cancer.  He believes that cancer is a “lifestyle” disease that has less to do with genetics (although obviously it does) and more to do with dietary choices over a lifetime.  He believes that healthy eating is critical.

We have 5,000 enzymes in our body to help us with cellular functioning.  Dr. Shinya argues that there is a prototypical, or “miracle”, enzyme that produces all of our vital enzymes that we have in our body.  This is obviously speculative but what he has observed (and I would agree based on what I see in my life) is that the healthier you are the less you get sick or have problems because the reserves that we have are very high.  When we have almost no reserves left, our body will get sick and can get cancer more easily.  When we are in good health, then have too much to eat or have too much alcohol, we repair our body much faster and we almost have no “hangover” or sickness.   He argues that with this precursor enzyme that is stored in our body, when we need it to fight off a sickness in one area we have less of it to fight off other concurrent problems.

Unlike The China Study that roundly denounces meat of all kinds, Dr. Shinya says that our meat should be about 15% of our diet.  He argues that carnivores out there like lions and tigers may be thought to be strong but they are actually quite weak.  They run short distances and have flimsy muscles.  Horses, which are herbivores, are strong and lean with big muscles.  Carnivores typically eat herbivores for their nutrients and directly attack the intestines first where the plants are still in the process of digestion to gain the nutrients.  Albeit teleological, he argues that if you look at the makeup of our 32 teeth, we can determine what percentage of food makeup we should have.  Incisors (2) are used to tear at plants; canines (1) are used to tear flesh; and molars (5) are used to grind plants.  So with a 7:1 ratio, we were meant primarily to have an 85:15% ratio of plant to meat in our diets.

Other tips he offers is to eat mainly raw, organic food, as food over 118 degrees can kill essential enzymes and so can heavily chemically treated food.  I am eating about a 30 percent and sometimes more than that raw, plant-based diet.  He says that alcohol and tobacco are lethal over time on the body and should be heavily moderated or eliminated.  He says that seeing some of his colleagues he can see who leads a good lifestyle and who does not simply by looking at their face and skin.  Eating tons of fruit (despite what people say about the risk of sugar unless you are diabetic) is another critical element.  He also levels a heavy attack on dairy products like cheese and milk and says that they truly ruin one’s intestines over time and do not offer anything beneficial.  Like Dr. Campbell’s conclusions in his book, The China Study, he sees that milk can also cause osteoporosis, which is fascinating since we believe the opposite is true.  He sees that women who are predisposed toward breast cancer (minus family history) oftentimes share a common history of diet preferences, specifically heavy meat and dairy and minimal attention on vegetables.   He argues that only infants have a robust supply of lactase, the enzyme to process milk.  As we progress in age, lactase progressively diminishes, which he points to the idea that is why our bodies not only do not need milk but cannot handle or process it well.

Also interesting is that he argues green tea that has been espoused for its antioxidant properties is the principal reason for atrophic gastritis and possible precursor to stomach cancer in Japan, which has a 10 times higher likelihood than in the United States.  Heavy consumption of non-herbal teas like green tea, Chinese tea, and English tea along with other caffeinated beverages like coffee over time erode the stomach and cause digestive problems.  Because of the book, I am now giving up green tea, which I thought was originally good for you.  I already gave up daily coffee one month ago.

Getting our body pH balanced toward a more alkaline environment can help with reducing cancer risks and promoting health.  Meats are highly acidic and putrify the body.  Water, which is more alkaline, can truly help with cleaning out the body and reducing the risk of bacterial build up in the body.  Water should be drunk when waking 2 to 3 cups about 1 hour before eating food that can control appetite and burn off calories if drunk reasonably cold like 70 degrees but not ice cold.  Drinking water at the time of eating a meal can reduce digestive enzymes and make digestion worse. He also argues not to eat or drink for 4 to 5 hours prior to sleeping, as this can cause reflux into the esophagus and also program our body to store fat.  He believes that antacids used to help with reflux esophagitis eventually destroy the stomach, which needs the acid.  Similarly he argues that laxatives are not a good way to clean the intestine.  If someone needs a bowel cleansing, he argues in favor of a coffee enema.  (I have never tried that, as my bowel health is exceptionally good because of my diet.)

Although fish is better than red meat for you, he does argue to limit fish intake, as too much of it is also bad for your intestinal health, especially red fish like tuna and bonito.  The red color from the fish comes from the myoglobin in the muscle that is heavily oxidized and is not good for the body.  White fish is better for the body if one makes that choice.  He also warns against eating large fish like tuna and swordfish that have a much higher level of mercury in their system that can cause a host of problems in the body.

I finally understand why and how mercury poisons our bodies after watching a DVD extra feature in the documentary, The Cove, about terrible dolphin killing in Japan.  Industrial pollutants enter the water system as acid rain containing mercury.  Small fish imbibe the water and get the mercury embedded into their muscles.  Then larger fish eat smaller fish and accumulate their mercury.  This continues onward to very large fish that eat a ton of small fish and build that mercury level exponentially, especially if they are old fish.  They simply cannot get rid of the mercury in their system.  Unfortunately, the fish that affluent people like are big because they have no bones and minimal to no fishy taste.

Ultimately, he says that despite some of these rigorous rules he espouses that everyone should really enjoy food even stuff that may not be 100% healthy for you 5% of the time because the enjoyment of food is what leads to good health.  Practicing love and gratitude can kill cancer and build one’s immunity.  I like this attitude because it is something that I have learned in my yoga practice.  I think when we are too dogmatic about something, are bodies become rigidly fixated and that is not healthy either.  In any case I hope this blog was helpful in your quest for living a healthy life and lifestyle.

For those who followed my blog last year realized that the book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan was a game changer for me.  I have lost 35 pounds over the past year and a half owing a lot to Pollan’s writings.  The China Study for me is the next phase in my journey, one that I have not entirely embraced because the message is utterly radical and difficult to digest, pun intended.

The author, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, was raised on a farm in which he drank a quart of milk each day and chowed down on steak or at least hearty meat almost daily.  He has since over his life completely abandoned all animal proteins including dairy products (yes that means poultry and fish too) because of the findings he made in one of the largest if not the largest epidemiological study in history, the China Study.

I will not be able to summarize all of the findings in this book but encourage anyone and everyone to read this book even if you do not intend to be vegetarian.  At least get the opinion of what is written so that you can make smart choices for yourself and for your family.  What is interesting is that many people may assume that Campbell is a vegetarian because of animal rights.  That is far from the truth.  He got his PhD from Cornell University where he was studying how to maximize feeding of animals but he conducted animal studies to find out how to do so.  He says that he had no way of getting around these animal studies to find his remarkable results that he did.  Whether you agree or disagree with animal studies is not the point here.

What he found was that rats given a 20% animal-protein diet versus a 5% animal-protein diet and then exposed to a common mold fungus aflatoxin had 100% cancer rate in the former group and 0% in the latter.  He argues that these were not extreme examples as you would find in the saccharine research done on lab rats where the equivalent in humans would be similar to ingesting pounds of saccharine every day for years, which would probably give anyone cancer.  By the way, I have given up any artificial sweeteners last year because I think they are terrible for the body but that does not really matter for the purpose of this blog.

From this initial finding, he went on to evaluate the population in China, which he asserts is a relatively homogenous population, especially compared to the diverse genetic stock of the United States.  He isolated out rural populations and standardized for multiple factors like sedentary lifestyle, job type, etc.  He found that the populations that digested a higher proportion of animal proteins (which by the way is far lower than what we Americans eat) had a considerably higher incidence of cancer and heart disease than the sector that did not.  In short, animal-protein digestion whether in dairy or in its native form is one of the principal causes of heart disease and cancer.  So those on the Atkins Diet think twice.  Campbell argues you can lose weight if you restrict your calorie intake even if you are eating cardboard and worms but that does not mean that it is healthy for you, i.e., the Atkins Diet yields weight loss through calorie restriction eating terrible stuff for your body.  That is how it works.

He argues against moderation stating that the American Heart Association advocates a blood cholesterol level of below 200.  He asserts that 35% of heart attacks occur in those individuals whose cholesterol falls between 150 to 200.  He says that most of America is beholden to special-interest food groups who have made it okay to eat bad food and to get away with it.  He finds that cancer rates are caused almost entirely by diet and only reflects a genetic predisposition of 2 to 3%.  Only 2 to 3% of cancers are genetically related??? Difficult to believe.

Heart disease begins early.  He cites the examples of young GIs who were killed during the Korean War and whose hearts in their early twenties were opened up.  They were already fully clotted with plaques and arterial disease.  He says that cancers are not only caused by diet, they are greatly accelerated by it.   Eating a whole foods, plant-based diet not only slows down cancer, it can reverse it. Eating an animal-rich, protein-heavy diet can cause and accelerate cancer.

He believes that a strict vegetarian diet can reverse many of the trends in heart disease and cancer that plague Americans today.  He does state that unfortunately many vegetarians are not that healthy because they eat fried foods rather than a “whole foods”, plant-based diet, which he sternly warns should be the diet for everyone.  Unfortunately, we physicians charge for pills and are beholden to major pharmaceutical companies for our education so we are “pill this” and “pill that” instead of seeing that the fundamental change lies in diet, diet, diet.

Another interesting finding in the book is that cow’s milk is dreadful for you, and I don’t care if you are taking unpasteurized, raw milk.  He argues the casein protein is a major cause of problems for cancer and heart disease.  In fact, he says that babies under the age of 2 who have a familial predisposition toward Type I diabetes should not be fed cow’s milk because there is a virus in it that attacks the pancreatic islet cells and can make a child permanently insulin dependent.

I honestly believe that the reason why men’s lifespans are shorter than women’s is that we simply do not care about diet as much as women do.  I have certainly been a culprit of this.  Am I a strict vegetarian? No, not at all. Not yet at least. I still eat meat, etc.  I have changed almost all my breakfast and lunches though to vegetarian and half of my dinners.  I think it is a good start.  If you asked me a year ago if I would become a vegetarian I would have laughed violently.  Now I am not that certain.  I want to live a long, healthy life free of “diseases of affluence”.  For those who do not buy these ideas, I encourage you to read this book.  It might change your brain as much as it has mine.  I realize how controversial this topic is for many of you out there, but I felt a burden to my readership to publish this information even if I am assailed for doing so.