Get Real Eat Real: Simple Choices for Excellent Health
Let's start a conversation on food and health! Food is your first defense in health and wellness. "You are what you eat." Is not just a catch phrase or quaint idiom. It's truth! It is fact! Food is, or should be, a celebration of life and yet the mass of Americans lead lives desperately trying to maintain their health while not paying any attention to the food consumed. Not only is food integral to your physical health, it is a huge part of your emotional, mental and ultimately your spiritual wellbeing too! Food is life!
But for many Americans, it has become an inconvenience, an interruption in our quest to do something other than take care of ourselves. We seem to place everything else above that simple daily ritual and relegate it to other people, thinking that it's not so important as this or that or well anything else really! A quick bite from a fast food restaurant will suffice; a healthy power bar will do in a pinch. Everything else is more important and the quality of the food we eat has been relegated to an inconvenience at best, and at worst, irrelevant. It's a way of life that is perpetuated by big business and corporate mantras. The Rebels of our country who tag along to the left or to the right are missing the point of their revolution! There are many who feel frustrated, who yell and scream about the excesses and abuses of the corporate giants, Monsanto, Kraft, of government excess, inadequacies and corruption. How they’re making us sick while robbing us blind. Some “feel the Bern” while others are fighting to make America great again because we are all fed up! It's naive to think that politics will truly satisfy our restlessness or that having the right president will make anything better because the root of the dissatisfaction is that as a culture we have lost our way, we have become untethered and find our familial and social connections on a screen instead of at dinner table, face to face, sharing a meal, celebrating our health. Lets simplify, simplify, simplify the process and negate the trauma that American culture has created in an attempt to eat like a king without the income of a king.
I love food and I am truly saddened that for so many people it has become a burden and a pain in the ass, figuratively and literally. We suffer mostly from an addiction to convenience and this addiction means that we will do almost anything to feel better, or look better not the right thing or more often than not to not have to do anything. We’ll take pills, try fad diets, surgery, liposuction, anything to look healthier but we are not willing to do what it takes to BE healthy! We are adamant about our right to eat what we want, but most of us have no idea what we are eating. As a culture we have allowed ourselves to be duped by the major processed food industries to think that a box of food can replace a simple, well cooked meal; that serving over 5 billion people hamburgers is a good thing and that dunking your donuts is a great way to start your day. In an effort to make more money, we spend less time taking care of ourselves and our families at home and spend most of that money on doctors or pharmaceuticals to help fix our bodies; lower our blood pressure, loose weight, control insulin, open the veins, etc. For our culture eating a plant based diet is radical, yet having a doctor cut through the skin and crack open your ribs and remove your heart to replace some arteries is normal. We consider social media posts adequate social engagement, politics by post rather than real action. We have thrown ourselves so far out of alignment with our intuition that we have created a whole industry of experts and books that tell us what to eat, when to eat and how to eat.
Is this the pot calling the kettle black? I realize that it seems I'm standing on the same soap box as those diet books, proclaiming that "I have the answer”! But not really, I’m not advocating a diet. You can eat what you want if you follow a few simple rules. Its an approach or rather an understanding of what your are eating, a way of thinking about your food that will free you from the endless cycle of fad diets. We have survived for millions of years without diet books to tell us what to eat and, not surprisingly, ever since we have had diet books and advice from experts we have become the most unhealthy country in the world. According to the CDC the top three leading causes of death; heart disease, cancer & chronic lower respiratory diseases account for 1.2 million deaths each year. These top three and other diseases that plague America like obesity, and diabetes are preventable, curable and even reversible through good clean real food! It is truly that simple.
But simple is not always easy! Sometimes you need some guidance, support or just a swift kick in the butt to keep you on track. That’s where I can help! Me or any number of Health Coaches across the nation who are educated and determined to change the paradigm. My sincerest hope is to foster a conversation about these issues that will help you decipher real food from everything else and hopefully replace the anxiety of eating with the joy of living! Food is a celebration!
In 2001 Kurt Michael Friese wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post called “Occupy Your Kitchen”. In it he wrote: “what we have is not just a food problem in this country, but a cooking problem. Food marketers have been working for decades to convince people that cooking is a chore, like doing laundry or cleaning out the cat box, something to be avoided if at all possible and then done as quickly and grudgingly as possible. The result? Well if we are what we eat then most Americans are fast, cheap, and easy.”! It is still the same 15 years later! We are stuck in a quagmire a quick fixes and easy solutions.
I am an actor, healthy eating specialist, health coach and yoga teacher. My interest in promoting health and wellness has inspired me since 2010 when I became the Healthy Eating Specialist for Whole Foods Market. Since that time I’ve been working on healthy eating presentation, healthy cooking classes and demonstrations, nutritional seminars, yoga classes and workshops and more.
Here you can find a collection of essays on basic healthy eating principles, recipes, techniques, ideas, nutritional advice and more with the goal to inspire you to get back into your kitchen and cook your own meal for the sake of your health, your family and our society. To make cooking fun and simple using the best, freshest, minimally processed ingredients with simple techniques.
Americans in general are addicted to convenience and that addiction is destroying our way of life, not enhancing it! Real change begins at home, inside your heart! So get real about your own choices and your own habits because thats the only place you are truly in charge! It all starts in the kitchen!
“It is a matter of priorities, and what could possibly be a higher priority to each of us than the health and well being of our families and ourselves?” - Kurt Michael Friese
More to come….
check back soon for more info on my Healthy Eating plan.