Monthly Archives: January 2012

Two Very Different Views on What Exactly is a Healthy Body

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There are two main VERY different definitions of what a Healthy body is.  See which one makes more sense to you.

The medical community defines a healthy body as a body that currently displays no risk factors for heart attack, stroke, or chronic disease.  You’re simply told, “Good job you’re healthy see you for your next regular check up”.  And well over half of those supposedly healthy people will go on to develop at least one chronic disease.  Many of them two or more chronic diseases. And many of those will drop dead of a massive sudden heart attack or stroke as their first warning sign that something is wrong in which case will be too late to fix the underlying problem.

Naturalists, as well as my personal beliefs, define a healthy body as a body that is activated and reactivated to enable the bodys own healing mechanisms to keep all disease and sickness at bay and it doesn’t matter what you call the disease if the body is truly healthy then disease cannot invade the body.  If something invades the body its because the invader  was enabled to exploit a vulnerability in the bodys natural defenses because the vulnerability exists in the first place.

Instead of only treating the symptom its our responsibility to fix the underlying problem and REACTIVATE the bodys own healing mechanisms to fix the problem.

In the medical community healthy people are taken over by chronic disease, heart attack, and stroke every day because they do not enable the body to heal itself instead they only treat the disease or the sickness. I believe if the medical community redefined what it is to be healthy then they’d have more power to help people change their life style and become truly healthy people with fully equipped healing mechanisms inside. All of the equipment needed is already there in the body! So Flippin Activate it already!!

If we just accept disease as fate or genetics then it makes us easy to just cry victim powerless over our own lives to reclaim our own health.  The body innately wants to heal itself.  There is a real under estimated MAGIC to that innate desire the body has!  We just have to give the body the tools it needs to do so.   That’s where nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and over all life style come into play.

Either health or sickness will win and take over your body.  The one better nourished wins.  If health wins you win. If sickness and disease wins you lose.  If the body asks for organic whole foods and you give it a diet coke you sabotage your own self interest by nourishing sickness over health. Nourish Health so it can do its thing for you and give you a MASSIVE wonderfully abundant healthy life.

Yes toxic food is generally cheaper than healthy food. Your body doesn’t care!  Health doesn’t comprehend money. But you do! Health is the BEST wealth.  Some of you out there are making money decisions at the expense of your health saving your wealth to buy the deficient toxic foods. And then you don’t have any wealth either so that plan is not working out to well! People who think this way are generally poor in almost every area imaginable especially in wealth and health.  I know its not out of laziness some people are running HARD chasing sunsets but they’re running east!  Maybe a good plan is all that’s needed so all that energy is refocused in a way that’s more in line with what they want?

Shift your beliefs and you can have it all.  Wealth, Health, Success and Fulfillment.

Use my Healthy Grocery list and the Healthiest Meal of the Day to help you get started in activating and reactivating your body to enable its own natural healing mechanisms.

-Tom

P.S. I am not here to undermined any advice, care, or treatment you are getting from your doctor or other health care professionals. I’m preaching personal responsibility for you to do your own research, include your doctor as part of your team, and make your own decisions as your own personal advocate for the things you want.

Megadeth A Tout Le Monde

 

Use Your Failures to Invoke Some Massive Success In Your Life

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This philosophy dramatically helped me  see my dreams come true.  See if it can help you to.

It’s not what happens to you that determines your destination its the set of your sail that determines your destination. Another way to put it is… It’s not what happens to you that determines the way your life turns out it’s how you respond to what happens to you that determines how your life turns out.

If you get burned by a false promise, a person, an entity, it will kill you or grow you depending on how you respond.

You’ve been burned before. We all have. Some of us die others grow beyond anything we could imagine.  Let all your experiences teach you.  The lessons found in our failures is so incredibly powerful if we take the lesson and apply what we learn.

Welcome all new experiences the good with the bad because the same walls that drive out sadness also drive out happiness. Not only that but they also drive out opportunity to make the discoveries you need to make to get everything you want. Walls are murder to your dreams and once that happens life is over.

When you make a mistake and totally mess something up, because it’s not if but when, let it teach you. EVERY event in response to an action validates if that was the right or the wrong action. The more mistakes you make the more you learn what not to do and the closer you come to FAILING YOUR WAY FORWARD TO THE TOP. That’s how I did it. You can do it to. I know you can. In fact I promise you that you can. The universe guarantees it!

-Tom

P.S. A Quote from Lindsay Matway, “You MUST come to terms with and create a space in your life to fail, but large enough to fail-forward, not fall complacent… Remember that even a championship thoroughbred must first be broken to arrive at its destiny. It’s in the journey to become what you think you want, that you actually become who you are destined to be!”

Megadeth A Tout Le Monde

 

Get Informed

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3 documentary films you must see in my opinion are “Food Matters”, “Forks Over Knives”, and “Food Inc”. Literally every person that I know, including myself, who have seen these films have been inspired to change the way they spend their money and what they put into their bodies. Consequently they are living happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives. If you are like me you will probably feel like you’ve been treated by those motivated by pure profit as nothing more than a rag doll just tossed around and respected about as much as they respect their workers and farm animals. I do not want to make those people rich anymore at the expense of my income, health, and the planet in which I live. We need to become aware (watch those documentaries) then pay the awareness forward so more people take personal responsibility for their health and spend their money differently.

Industry will follow the money they always have and always will. If we want industry to change then first WE must change.

I would absolutely love to hear what you think and feel after watching the three films I recommended. Please by all means reach out to me on my Facebook.

– Tom

Me and Desert Sage

Desert Sage

P.S. A transcribed Excerpt from “Food Matters”

I worked with a lady once who was suicidally depressed. She lived at home with her family. She was in her fifties. She spent all day sitting in a corner facing the corner. She wouldn’t talk to anyone, eat with anyone, she was totally un communicative. She was under the care of a psychiatrist as she should be. The psychiatrist had her on a variety of medications which you would expect. The family was wondering about her nutrition. I mentioned to them about Dr Hoffers work with niacin, a naturally occurring vitamin in nature, and they wondered how much she needed to take. At 11,500 mg of niacin a day she was sitting at the table talking to them like nothing had happened. So they went to the psychiatrist and showed the psychiatrist this recovered person. The psychiatrist said wellllll I don’t think you should take all that niacin it might be harmful. So they stopped giving her the niacin and she was back in the corner. There is not one death from niacin per year on average. There have been one or two attributed to niacin over the last 15 or 20 years. But there is not even one death per year from niacin. How many people per year who are suicidally depressed go and end their lives? – Andrew W. Saul Ph.D.

Doctor Saul gos on to say…

Two handfuls of cashews give you the therapeutic equivalent of a prescription dose of Prozac. If you’re depressed the first thing you can do is know that its ok to be depressed. If you’re malnourished you should be depressed so don’t do that anymore. Go and eat good food.

-Tom

Megadeth A Tout Le Monde

Healthy Grocery List

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90% – 95% of the food in most grocery stores is nutrient deficient toxic food. People who consume deficient toxic food can’t help but to occupy a deficient toxic body. ~ Get Informed ~

Most of the nutrient dense non toxic food will usually be on the outside isles of the grocery store. But not even that is enough! Look for the organic plant based all natural Whole Foods. I follow a plant based whole food nutrient rich diet. Every person I know who eats a plant based whole food diet has more natural energy and feels better than people who eat too much meat and dairy. They perform better, feel better, alleviate stress better, recover better from traumatic events, recover better from exercise, and they don’t “crash” in the middle of the day. This kind of plant based super food nutrition has also been known to prevent, arrest, and reverse many different kinds of chronic diseases. Hippocrates said let thy food be thy medicine..

Here is a list of some GREAT items I love to throw in my shopping cart when I hit the store! =) by the way, you might also like our Plant Based Whole Food Cooking and Juicing show for more ideas.

My Healthy Grocery Shopping List!
I’ve listed some VEGAN resources, and other Helpful resources, at the bottom as well as some more food tips!

Proteins

  1. Lentils
  2. Quinoa
  3. Nuts and seeds
  4. Beans
  5. Fish (water packed tuna or fillets, salmon, halibut, cod, red snapper, tilapia
  6. Chicken (Free range organic)
  7. Buffalo
  8. Ostrich
  9. Turkey
  10. Check out the 10 Sources of VEGAN Protein and see if you can SAFELY make the transition to 100% Vegan.

Complex Carbs

  1. Oatmeal (steal cut oats or organic gluten free rolled oats – eat RAW and it’s will be starch resistant)
  2. Sweet Potatoes (Yams)
  3. Beans (pinto, black, kidney)
  4. Oat Bran Cereal (No Sugar Added)
  5. Brown Rice
  6. Ezekiel Bread
  7. Pasta (Whole Wheat, Ezekiel brand – watch serving, very dense, chill in fridge for 24 hours after cooking and it’s starch resistant)
  8. Pasta (Brown rice or Quinoa base no wheat and gluten free)
  9. Wanna get away from pasta? Try Zoodles! Check out this video I made on Zoodles.. https://youtu.be/k7bnEABuft8
  10. Rice (jasmine, basmati, Arborio, wild, brown)
  11. Potatoes (red, baking, new)
  12. Enjoy Life Cereal – Crunchy Flax Original Gluten Free 6 grams of fiber per serving!
  13. Whole Wheat Pita (Low Carb Variety – Joseph’s Pita Bread, or Food for Life brand)
  14. Corn Tortillas (Food for life brand)
  15. Whole Wheat Tortillas (Food for Life brand)
  16. Rice Cakes (lightly salted only)

Non Dairy Cheese!! (this is being the most difficult VEGAN food to find that tastes good)

  1. coming soon… But for now DAIYA is the best I’ve found.. I’ve also had CASHEW based home made cheeses that, to my extreme surprise, taste better than the best dairy cheese I’ve had. I’m from Wisconsin so I know and LOVE dairy cheese. I just stay away from it now because dairy is a slow killer, literally. I haven’t found any cashew based cheeses sadly. Not yet anyway. Google recipes for Cashew based Vegan Cheeses. They are amazing. Also, check out our video on making a VEGAN Nachos and Cheese with a Cashew Base. Every meat eater I’ve ever fed this to, so far, raves about it and how much better it tastes than dairy cheese.

symbol_dairy_free_answer_6_xlarge personalised-allergy-labels-no-dairy-1-med-500x500 notmilk

I use to be a strong advocate for milk and all dairy. I’ve learned things about milk and dairy that I cannot unlearn. I put together some resources to help you with your own research and decision. If you choose to go dairy free for yourself and for your family I want it to be because you made an informed decision that you feel good about rather than because you blindly followed me. You may even find yourself very angry at the dairy industry, the federal government, the Pharmaceutical industry, and big agriculture as you learn the truth about Dairy that the Dairy industry or the government is not going to tell you. Click Here for some Non Dairy Resources.

Fibrous Carbs & Vegetables (Fresh first, frozen second, canned last choice)

  1. Arugula
  2. Green Leafy Lettuce (Green Leaf, Red, Leaf, Romaine)/Bagged Salad
  3. Fresh Beets
  4. Broccoli
  5. Asparagus
  6. String Beans
  7. Black Beans
  8. Spinach
  9. Bell Peppers
  10. Brussels Sprouts
  11. Cauliflower
  12. Celery
  13. Mushrooms
  14. Pickles
  15. Cabbage
  16. Sprouts
  17. Cucumber
  18. Green or Red Pepper
  19. Onions
  20. Garlic
  21. Tomatoes
  22. Zucchini
  23. Squash
  24. Spaghetti Squash
  25. Pumpkin

Sea Vegetables

  1. Wakame Seaweed
  2. Nori Seaweed
  3. Arame Seaweed

Fruit

  1. Berries (All berries are great!)
  2. Lemons or Limes
  3. Melons (not watermelon)
  4. Grapefruit
  5. Apples
  6. Dates
  7. Grapes
  8. Oranges
  9. Eat bananas, strawberries, peaches or plums sparingly (lots of natural sugar)
  10. No dried fruits, including raisins (loaded with sugar)

Healthy Fats

  1. The ONLY way to eat healthy fats is in their Whole Food Form such as WHOLE walnuts, seeds, avocados etc. If you’re going to do oils use them minimally. Here are a few:
  2. Olive Oil Extra Virgin First Cold Pressed
  3. Raw Nuts (almonds, pecans, cashews)
  4. Flaxseed Oil
  5. Coconut Oil – un refined extra virgin
  6. Sesame Oil – Cold pressed
  7. Avocado

Beverages

  1. Water! (Install a water filter for your home. Bottled water is toxic. Bad for you and bad for the environment. And for Petes sake stay away from Vitamin or Flavored Water!)
  2. Unsweetened Tea (If you use sweetener make sure it’s all natural organic such as cane sugar or stevia)
  3. Black Coffee (I have coffee only once and a while. Always organic and fair trade. Fair trade ensures the farmers are compensated fairly)
  4. Non Dairy Milk (rice milk, almond milk, hemp milk etc. – Soy Free and Dairy Free)

Condiments & Misc.

  1. Organic Ville Non Dairy Mayo (Finding a VEGAN Mayo that tasted really good was amazing for me. This tastes better than hellmans original mayo and I LOVE hellmans!)
  2. Bragg Liquid Aminos – Soy Sauce substitute
  3. Apple Cider Vinegar (unfiltered, raw, and unpasteurized)
  4. Miso (Make sure it contains NO MSG)
  5. Mirin (Look for EDEN brand)
  6. Rice Vinegar (Unflavored, unsweetened, no high fructose corn syrup)
  7. Umeboshi Vinegar
  8. Balsamic Vinegar
  9. Balsamic or Raspberry Vinaigrette (Farm Grove)
  10. Salsa or Fresh Pico De Gallo
  11. Extracts (vanilla, almond, etc) <— Great in your coffee in place of creamer!
  12. Cayenne Pepper Powder (A staple in my house I put it on almost everything especially my raw vegan dishes)
  13. Pink Himalayan Salt http://www.himalasalt.com/
  14. Healthy Snacks

Sweeteners

  1. Instead of Sugars try WHOLE FOODs as sweeteners. I listed some “healthy” sugars below and even though they are “healthy” it is still NOT healthy to add ANY kind of sugar isolate to your food. Check out this video I made and cut all sugar isolates out of your diet =) https://youtu.be/TNKC4h2uBuE
  2. Raw, Unfiltered Honey
  3. Stevia
  4. Grade “B” Dark Maple Syrup
  5. Agave Nectar
  6. Coconut Palm Nectar
  7. Raw Cane Sugar

BEST Sweets to Curb your cravings!

  1. Shakeology (Vegan Chocolate is my personal fav!!! I have 2 servings each and every day)

Powerful Healers Found in Herbs and Spices! Get into the habit of cooking with these Immediately! RAW has more Power In Healing Yourself and Loved ones:

  1. Oregano
  2. Cumin
  3. Garlic
  4. Ginger
  5. Turmeric
  6. Basil
  7. Clove
  8. Fennel
  9. Mint
  10. Parsley
  11. Fenugreek
  12. Cayenne Pepper
  13. Rosemary
  14. Cinnamon
  15. Paprika
  16. Cilantro
  17. Dill
  18. Sage
  19. Thyme
  20. Safron

More Tips:

– Cut out Dairy

– Cut out GMO contaminated food

– Eat More Organic

– Eat Less Gluten

– Buy Local whenever possible. Support your local economy and the Land!

– Instead of olive oil eat whole olives. Instaed of nut oils eat whole nuts. Instead of avocado oil eat whole avocado etc.

– Instead of sugar eat whole foods that have sugar that naturally occurs in them.

– Red Meat Purchases; ONLY GRASS FED. Corn fed cattle is pro inflammatory to the human body

– Poultry; purchase only organic and caged free

– Fish; purchase only wild caught. A lot of the fish farms are toxic and have sea lice as well as other bacteria destroying the nutritional benefit of their fish.

– Pork; there really is no good option but if you buy it buy organic

GET INFORMED

Check out my Health & Wellness Blog

The Key of Knowledge Website

Simply Your Meal Planning for Vibrant Health and Better Workout Results

More Resources to help you with a mostly natural Plant Based Whole Food Diet

Vegan Proteins

Yum Universe – Healthy VEGAN Cooking Teacher

Christina Cooks – Healthy VEGAN Cooking Teacher

Oh She Glows – Healthy Vegan Cooking Teacher

Sunshine Burger

The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen – Nourishing Meals


Did my Healthy Grocery List help you today? If it did feel free to buy me a cup of Coffee,

By the way I am NOT a doctor, nutritionist, or health care professional of any kind. What you see on this page are foods and ideas that have worked for me and others. You do your own research and do what SAFELY works for you. Consult with your doctor, nutritionist, or whomever you want. Don’t just blindly follow some guy on the internet =) I believe you will find what’s right for you if you take on full personal responsibility and do your due diligence.

Allison Mingo Herniated 2 Discs in Her Neck and She is Now Pain Free!!

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Allison Mingo

Just over six years ago, when I was 29, I herniated two disks in my neck at C5-6 and C6-7 which are at the base of the neck right between the tops of my shoulder blades. I didn’t have surgery, so I still get flare-ups from time to time, and they can last from weeks to months of sharp, excruciating pain. For years I’ve been waking up every day in so much pain in the morning that I can’t function normally. Taking a shower in the morning was nearly impossible as I couldn’t twist or turn to reach everywhere. It would take hours to “warm up” and some days it would last all day. The closest I can come to describing it is it feels like an ice pick or a knife jammed between your shoulder blades. Just two or three years ago, there were a few days where I’d be at work and do some simple twisting movement or stretch and I’d have to go to the ER because the pain was so intense. Crippling. Even recently I was having enough trouble that I went to a sports and spine center to get some therapy.

I’ve been working out with Power90 and drinking Shakeology for the last three weeks. I have strengthened the muscles in my shoulders and back enough that I am no longer waking up in any pain. I’m sleeping better, I can function properly, and I feel better than I’ve felt in years. I initially started doing this to lose weight and get in shape. Now I see weight loss as a bonus. Being pain-free is what motivates me!

– Allison

The Poor and the Humble

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I grow Healthy Rich People.  That’s pretty awesome!  But it’s the poor and the humble that I really enjoy helping the most.  They are more hungry for change and growth than the comfortable. And it’s really warming and inspiring to watch someone grow their self confidence with one action at a time and over all success in their lives from very challenging scenarios. The poor and humble will express more gratitude than the comfortable and when they change, grow, live, they will give back more than the comfortable because to be totally comfortable is to also be selfish. In a world where over a billion people are starving to death there is no worthy scenario to cease changing and growing.  The poor and the humble is where it’s at!

The poor and humble are more likely to give back more as they create wealth for themselves.  They remember where they came from so they have a tendency to pay their success forward as they achieve their own success.  Remembering where they came from fills them with more gratitude than the comfortable.  There is not much else that turns me off more than a person with good fortune who has no gratitude.  A person who has triumphed over intense challenges is more likely to be extremely grateful.  I actually take at least a minute of time out every day to consciously be grateful for my good fortune.   It’s really important to me to do that.

Triumph over struggles is inspiring!  The bigger the struggle the bigger the triumph the bigger the inspiration for people who need that hope while they go through their own struggles!  The comfortable are too busy being lulled into a state of complacency, perhaps from their job because it’s a paycheck, that they are not doing anything to inspire anybody.

I’m not saying the comfortable are bad people.  They are just in waiting, consciously or more likely sub consciously, for an experience that turns everything on for them.  We all have a trigger that turns on desire.  It just takes the right experience to trigger that desire that turns everything on.  That experience is different for everyone so who knows what that experience will be from person to person!  Welcome ALL experiences including the bad ones because you never know which experiences is going to be the one that turns everything on!   Call it a life changing day because you took down the walls that keeps out both happiness and sadness.

For me one of those experiences was in April of 2006 when my job was off shored to India at no fault of my own.  Up til that point I was lulled into total complacency along with most others who lose their hunger because they have a job that pays the bills.  I wasn’t doing anything to grow to the “next level”.  My entire income was that one income that I didn’t even own so when that one income I had that I didn’t even own was taken away from me along with all my health insurance I had nothing.  It created a very negative devastating emotion that lead to a very POWERFUL positive outcome.  I became the poor, the humble, and the uncomfortable. My comfort was taken away from me!   THANK GOD FOR THAT!  That lead to my FINALLY owning my own life, my income, my destiny, creating wealth for myself, health, GRATITUDE, and everything else that makes me who I am today.  And tomorrow I will keep growing because I know first hand the folly of getting too comfortable.  There is always another level to grow to and we must always keep going.  Live full and die empty right?  YES!

Here is something that the poor and humble are not!   The poor and humble are not certain members of our society who take free money from the government with no ambition to ever become independent of help from the government.  The person who does that is the poor and the entitlement driven stealing from the rest of us.  We are not paying our public school teachers decent wages.  Sometimes our soldiers fighting for us over seas die because we cannot afford to give them the proper body armor.  Some of our kids have died from preventable illnesses because we could not get them the health insurance they needed.  Over 80% of our total population, including our kids for the first time in our history, are dying from obesity and life style choice related problems.  All of this is going on while we have a number of both poor and rich people taking from everyone else with no ambition to become independent of government help.  Some people actually boast about how they “play the system”.    Those are the cowards taking money from the dying child because we cannot afford that child health insurance and the dead soldier who should have lived if only he had the proper body armor which we could not afford for him.

The poor and humble accepts the government help but they feel very uncomfortable to do so.  They let the government help buy them more time while they work hard to become independent from government help.  Some of the poor and humble who go on to create lots of wealth for themselves will write a check to the IRS for every dollar they received from the government while they struggled financially.  They pay the government back!!  That is inspiring!!!!  Who does that?!?!   The MOST HUMBLE people do that.

-Tom

Megadeth A Tout Le Monde