Seven habits of highly healthy people . . . part I

You probably know Stephen Covey’s landslide bestseller, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.   You can relate some of his very true principles to Highly Healthy People, and people who are highly effective tend to be physically healthy more than the general population.   (For instance, did you know that Tony Robbins was so amazed by the dramatic improvement in his health eating an alkaline diet that he now preaches it for a day at his seminars?)

For instance, Habit #1 is to Be Proactive.   Does your life run you, or do you run your life?   With food, we can let it just kinda happen to us, or we can engage in a bit of planning to have food that we both enjoy and that nourishes us well.   If we take no thought for food and just wait till we’re ravenous, well, Taco Bell is right across the street.   But if we do even a bit of planning and preparation, we have the potential to be the healthiest people on the planet, since we have available to us a huge variety of fresh produce from all over the globe.

Habit #2 is to Begin With the End In Mind.   Picture yourself at 70.   Do you want to go out like a light switch at 95, having enjoyed the company of your great-grandchildren and travelled the world?   Or do you want to go out like a dimmer switch, spending the last 25 years of your life pinned to a chair because of health problems?   Too many of us are spending the last decades of our life doing the latter.

If we envision being a spry, mentally sharp 90-year old (like one of my heroes, Gordon B. Hinckley, who lived to 96 traveling the world and serving others), we’re going to have to make choices TODAY that lead to that destination.

Two more Covey habits and what they have to do with the GreenSmoothieGirl mission, tomorrow.

I read a post by a 12 Stepper on the other blog on this site, expressing her frustration about the expense of non-organic food and even wondering if it’s worth it to eat a plant-based diet, with all the pesticides on vegetables and fruits.

Dr. McDougall says in The McDougall Program for Women (1999) that animals trap environmental pesticides and other chemicals in their flesh, organs, and milk.   Consequently, animal products are MUCH more concentrated with chemicals than the plant food sources they consume.  

He cites a study that women who eat animal products have 70 percent higher DDT concentrations (DDT being a particularly deadly pesticide known to cause birth defects in humans) in their breast milk compared to vegetarian women.

Young moms, I hope this is encouragement to you, to buy conventional produce if organic is cost-prohibitive to you, wash it well, and rest assured that what you’re doing for yourself and your children is  good and right, because the alternatives are unacceptable.

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: what’s good, better, and best for CHEESE?

Answer: Some people think soy cheese is a good alternative. I think it’s highly processed and not worth the expense. Also, it tastes yucky.   :-)

Good: cheese made from organic, no-hormones or -antibiotics-added milk

Better: raw, organic cheese, no salt added or sea salt added

Best: chervil made from goat milk, which is not mucous forming like dairy (lovely spread on crackers)

I would just like to take a minute at the end of this Mother’s Day to honor my own mother who is halfway across the world in Milan, Italy, serving and teaching people there, with my dad.   My mom and dad are the epitome of health and work long days doing meaningful things they love, not slowing down a bit just because they’ve retired.    My mom is  always learning and growing.   Last year,  she  digested 17 books on the pharmaceutical industry and the way it has controlled and harmed the public’s health.   Then  she went on radio shows and presented to community groups to teach people to put their faith somewhere else besides mainstream medicine.   She is an incredible reader, teacher, and presenter.   I wish you could hear her speak: before she left for Italy, she studied Italian on her own so intensively that she gave part of her farewell speech in Italian!

My dad can (and has!) beat me running races, despite the fact that he is 64 years old.   He owes my mom a big thank you for helping him be so healthy, feeding him a plant-based diet for the 43 years they’ve been married.   He has plenty of risk factors, including having worked as a young adult spraying Malathion in his grandfather’s cherry orchards, not even wearing a face mask.   But he is crazy healthy, and his love of running and his good diet must be the reasons!

I want to be like them when I grow up,  I want to make them proud, and I want to raise my children to be worthy of the great legacy they’ve given us.   Thanks for setting a great example to me, Mom!   Happy Mother’s Day!

Robyn

Yesterday I went running on the jr. high school track by my home, which I often do.   I saw the most astonishing thing—and unfortunately, it’s the second time I’ve seen it.   The kids came out to play flag football, followed slowly by their P.E. teacher.   Think about your own P.E. teacher when you were a kid.   This one was not like yours, I can almost guarantee you.   He had a kid carrying a chair for him, and he proceeded to sit in it, on the football field, and remain seated throughout the breakout games of football.   He was obese and had difficulty walking up to the field.

Last year, I  saw an obese female P.E. teacher at the same school do the same thing (but the kids were running sprints).    About that same time, I sat on the founding board of a charter high school, and we were looking to hire a  P.E. teacher.   An experienced applicant came to interview us who confessed to severe cardiac disease and was clearly going to be the chair-sitting variety of teacher/coach.   After he left, I informed my colleagues that I do not want to hire an obese P.E. teacher.   They seemed offended and one told me that is “discriminatory.”

I said, “If we were hiring an English teacher who hasn’t read the classics and can’t write, I’d ‘discriminate’ against her, too.   I’m going to resist hiring a math teacher who can’t calculate algebraic equations.   So why is it too much to ask that the P.E. teacher be able to jog a lap, or do a layup?”

We are setting such a bad example for our kids.   If they look around them, they could easily get the idea that life is more or less over by the age of 40 for the majority of us.   How many of their teachers (P.E. or otherwise) are teaching from their chairs?   This is a travesty.   Even if we’re okay with our virtually chair-bound lives limiting us from doing much of anything fun by the time we hit 40, we should make massive lifestyle changes even for just the ONE REASON of setting a better example.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here.   You moms and dads reading this who are willing to buck the larger culture, you are CHANGING THE WORLD for the better, one green smoothie at a time!   Obesity and heart disease will be a thing of the past when we return to a whole-foods diet, and we get out and enjoy moving around.

Locals only: please email me (robyn@greensmoothiegirl.com) if you want to be on my group buy email list and you’re not already on it.   Today I’ve just sent out an email with a group buy on RAW ALMONDS (took me months to figure out  a plan  to get raw almonds since the CA mandatory pasteurization law went into effect 9/1/07) and RAW/ORGANIC AGAVE.

These are important items for food storage if that’s a priority for you, and having raw almonds on hand is really helpful if you’re in my 12 Steps to Whole Foods program.   Almonds won’t germinate and become phenomenal nutritional powerhouses unless they are RAW.   Pickup is at my home, so this buy is for locals only (willing to drive to Lindon, Utah).     Thanks,

Robyn

Lisle and Goldhamer, in The Pleasure Trap, write about how as a culture we’re like that frog in the boiling water.   You try to put a frog in boiling water, he’s going to leap out.  But put him in cold water and turn on the heat, he’s going to gradually boil to death without realizing he’s in trouble.

If you could go back in time and serve a plate of chicken nuggets and fries to your great grandparents at the turn of the century, with a slice of Sara Lee afterward, they’d get very ill.   They’d be appalled and perplexed at the ingredient list, sickened by how sweet the dessert was, confused by the lack of natural flavor replaced by chemical/fried taste and texture—and they wouldn’t want that meal again.   But that’s not how it happened.

Like the frog, over a few generations, we have gradually been fed more and more addictive food, with more chemicals like MSG added, and in the past 30 years, meat consumption has doubled.   Refined foods have gotten less expensive while produce has gotten more expensive.   We find ourselves in a state of nearly the whole population being processed-food addicts, having been boiled to death gradually.   Our poor kids!

So, your DH has been like the frog in the boiling water.   You, miraculously, have jumped out of the pot.   Logic suggests that you could use the same frog-in-water approach to reversing the national trend in your home.

In other words, you take a step at a time, without fanfare, making meals he’ll enjoy.   Add another step a month later so he doesn’t even notice, a year later, that a radical transformation has taken place.   By then, he’ll be cooked!   I mean, hooked!   What he’ll be hooked on is how he feels (like the alpha male he once was) and how he looks (the smokin’ hot dude you married)—and he’ll never want to go back.

You have two choices when faced with a spouse digging in his heels over your changes.   One is to follow these suggestions (and feel free to add some of your own) with patience and the long-range goal always in mind.   The other is to throw in the towel and go back to eating trash.   Clearly one of these two choices would be a big mistake.