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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Knowledge:
- I’ll explain why having knowledge is not as empowering as you might think
- I’ll talk about two types of knowledge that are truly empowering
- Finally I’ll share how to best apply accumulated knowledge giving you phenomenal powers to live an awesome life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Today a lot of the human experience is all about watching TV, YouTube videos, and sharing information through social media websites. Which is great! I mean it’s awesome that we can learn so many new things about so many different topics and connect to so many different people through the power of the Internet.
But, how much of this knowledge and of these online relationships are actually relevant to your life and how much of that relevant information have you actually applied and done yourself? Think about what you’ve learned in just the past 7 days. How much of that information was relevant to you and how much of it have you tried for yourself? Probably not a whole lot… and that goes for me too.
The old saying ‘knowledge is power’ doesn’t hold true. Because what you know could have absolutely no use for you in your current life situation and more importantly even though you know a lot of stuff if you don’t apply that knowledge and get it out of your head and into the real world then there’s really no power in knowing that stuff.
“Knowledge that isn’t relevant and applied is weak.”
There are two types of knowledge that are relevant though and easy to implement in your life empowering you to become a better version of yourself.
First knowledge type is a knowing. Knowing is all about self-knowledge. It’s about an innate, instinctual, intuitive know-ing that you feel emotionally deep down to your core and because it comes from within rather than without this knowing is all about you. With this type of knowledge you will know what you want and don’t want, what you like and don’t like, who you want to hang out with or not, what career or job you’d like to have, what foods work for you and don’t work for you.
There’s a musical lyric ‘to know you is to love you’ and what I’m saying here is:
“To know thyself, is to love thyself.”
With a knowing you will better understand what it is you love and what it is you don’t love. This helps guide you to filter out the crap information and to choose better info to download into your bodymind. By knowing what’s worth learning and what isn’t you ensure that what you do know is relevant to you and your life.
The second knowledge type is about being knowledgeable. Being knowledge-able. Where you are able to put your knowledge into being. Meaning applying the knowledge you’ve learned and taking action on that knowledge. So turning a learned thought and idea (which is external energy downloaded from the universe) and integrating this with your knowing of self (which is internally sourced energy from within your own bodymind) and making it a reality in the physical world (which is a combination of both external and internal energies). So being knowledgeable is all about taking action on what you’ve learned to create a new experience for yourself and others.
You could read, watch, and listen for an eternity about how to drive a car, ride a bike, or swim, but you still wouldn’t be able to do any of it until you actually get into a car, on a bike, or in the water and apply what you’ve learnt.
It’s only when you apply knowledge by being in action, by being knowledgeable and using your knowing of self that you actually get to experience life and find out your own truth about something you’ve read, seen, or heard about. So knowledge isn’t power, but potential power and applied knowledge is truly where you have the power.
As I said before in order to make sure you’re accumulating relevant knowledge you must have a knowing of your self and one of the best ways of doing this is through meditation. There’s nothing like focusing your mind on one thing for 20 minutes to 2 hours to get you intimately connected to who you really are on the inside because your mind wants to do everything else but focus so you’re constantly having to bring yourself to centre. But along the way you get insights as to what thoughts are clogging up your body and using up a lot of your thinking energy. It’s these thoughts you want to come back to after meditation to figure out why they kept coming up during your meditation practise.
The one tip I have for putting a lot of your accumulated knowledge into action is to be mindful during the learning process or in other words pay real attention while you’re learning. What I mean is when you’re not completely focused on what you’re learning or on what’s happening right in front of you then you only pickup fragments and get a partial download of what you see and hear into your consciousness.
You see there’s a difference between seeing and watching, hearing and listening, trying and doing.
For example, you could see someone cook scrambled eggs a million times, but unless you actually focus and look for the details and watch you won’t be getting the full download of what they’re doing. You could hear them talking about temperatures and egg yolks and timings, but unless you actually focus and clear the chatter in your head and listen you won’t be getting the full download of what they’re actually saying. You could try in your mind and visualise the steps, but unless you actually get up of the couch and into the kitchen and do and act and cook you won’t be getting the full experience of cooking scrambled eggs.
But then of course even if you did cook a beautiful plate of scrambled eggs, what if you got gas or stomach cramps after eating them. This would be part of knowing, knowing your self and understanding that scrambled eggs are not relevant to you at this time and that this particular knowledge while it doesn’t serve you personally it may still help someone else.
So yes of course you want to be learning and growing and enhancing your skills throughout your lifetime, but you want to make sure the information you learn and download into your consciousness, into your bodymind fits you and your lifestyle and you most definitely have to make sure you take action on what you’ve learnt, because the power of knowledge is yours only when you’re able to put that knowledge into being.
Bonus tip, pick up the awesome book The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman. It teaches you how to learn anything easily and quickly. I read this and picked up tips on how to break down complex ideas, on how to save on my learning time, and how to keep moving forward by creating an optimal learning environment.
So remember to keep learning, to keep learning about yourself, and to keep moving forward by being in action.
Links and Resources
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Diet:
- I’ll explain why dieting doesn’t always equal health
- I’ll talk about the two main types of diets that all other diets can be grouped under
- I’ll talk about the one true diet that I believe everybody should be on
- Finally I’ll highlight a few techniques that you can use to fine tune your real food nutrition
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Diet; dieting; to diet; to be on a diet; and for some people don’t even mention the ‘D’ word. For anyone who has dealt with body weight issues hearing the word diet brings up a lot of other words:
- Restrictive
- Tasteless
- Boring
- Struggle
- Willpower
- Low energy
- Anger
- Frustration
- Pain
Notice how there’s no mention here of an improvement in health.
Diets are mainly used to reduce your weight and yes all diets will change your weight and modify your body composition, short-term. It doesn’t matter what diet you go on you will lose both muscle and fat in the first few weeks.
The problem with any diet when used for far too long, way past its due by date, is that you may end up losing a lot more healthy muscle than non-healthy fat and even more importantly you will eventually create havoc, chaos, and a huge imbalance in your hunger, satiety, stress, growth, and reproductive hormones. Meaning that if you follow a diet purely to reduce your weight and to change how you look that diet will work in the here and now, but in 6 months or 6 years this same diet will cause a cascade of health problems making you a very sick, sad, and surly person to be around.
The reason for this is because the main type of diet people use to reduce their weight and to look good in the mirror is a limiting diet. Anytime you limit the foods you eat you run the risk of missing out on vital nutrients. That is nutrition your body and mind need for vitality. Long-term deficiencies in nutrients may make you look good in the mirror, but it’s the hormonal havoc that these nutritional deficiencies cause that is at the root cause of many diseases including cancer.
It’s not just food you limit in these body image diets, but anytime you limit your way of thinking and feelings toward food and your relationship with food you limit your entire human experience. Your mindset, which was once open to the many possibilities in life, is now closed off to a collection of experiences that life has to offer. Limiting your way of being can cause a lot of distress and this emotional and mental stress will change your physiology creating real physical stress in your body. Remember the body and mind are one and the same, the bodymind.
I’ve mentioned one type of diet already, a limited diet where you limit your eating and your way of being to achieve a body image goal. There is a different type of diet and what differentiates this diet from a limited diet is that it doesn’t restrict foods in the same sense because it’s not based on looking good, but based on thinking, feeling, and doing good and this other type of diet accomplishes this goal through healing. This healing diet I call a limitless diet.
A limitless diet is followed for health and life reasons and not for body image reasons alone. The reason this type of diet is limitless and not limiting is because your why is much bigger than just looking good in the mirror. Your why could be to overcome a disease like cancer, to have more energy to play with your family and to get work done, or to be able to think clearly in order to start and finish a personal, a professional, or a community project you’ve been thinking about for a long time.
When your why for following a diet is bigger than just how you look in the mirror than the foods you restrict yourself to eating no longer seem so, restrictive. Whereas a limiting diet is about scarcity where you feel like you lose and miss out on foods in order to lose the weight, a limitless diet is all about abundance and where you feel awesome dropping the foods that will stop you from realising and sharing that abundance.
What I’m saying here is that no matter the diet whether you go on a medical or detox or paleo or vegan or vegetarian or low calorie or low carb or low fat or a crash diet or even a religious diet if it’s to look good naked and nothing else you will feel limited, restricted, and neglected in every ounce of your being. However, if you use this diet to improve your health, to improve your life and the health and life of other people you will never feel like you’re missing out and you will be nothing but thankful for having a way of eating that is helping you make a difference in the world.
Now that’s not to say that wanting to look a certain way is wrong. Far from it. Being a vein person is a great motivator and inspirer for change.
What I’m saying is that dieting purely for looks is a lot more difficult and harder to stick to than when you’re dieting for other reasons. Hence the statistic that 95% of dieters regain all of their lost weight and then some. So unless you’re one of the 5% who can live through a limited period of your life thinking in a limited mindset you may want to rethink why you’re following a particular diet.
A limited diet is very difficult to integrate into your life, a limitless diet on the other hand doesn’t need integration as it becomes a part of your life and following it becomes a part of who you are and your lifestyle.
Now there is actually one diet that trumps every single other diet out there. This diet is one diet that I believe every person should be following and the cool part about this diet is even if you’re on it just to look good naked you won’t feel limited in any way, shape, or form. This one diet for all is a limitless lifestyle diet no matter your reasons for choosing it.
There’s not really a name for this diet because there’s no one-size-fits-all approach with it. There’s no prescribed food list of restricted and allowed foods. There’s no specific end to this diet either. Like I said it’s a limitless lifestyle diet so it only ends when you end.
This diet is many other things. It’s:
- Original
- Individual
- Adaptable
- Flexible
- Customisable
- Attainable
- Relatable
- Educational
- Delectable
- Flavourful
- Nutritional
- Healthful and
- Spiritual
You will definitely find out who you are on this diet.
This diet is unique to your physical, sexual, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs and no other person on this planet will be eating the same foods, at the same times of day, in the same portion sizes to you even though both of you are on this one single diet. Same goes for twins. Just because you can eat broccoli with tonnes of butter with a nice piece of steak at this point in your life doesn’t necessarily mean your identical twin can eat the same way.
Okay so now I’m just trying to think how to describe a diet that is different for each person.
The whole point of this diet is to find the right foods that work for you and the wrong foods that don’t work for you and by work for you I mean after you eat a certain food does it make you look, feel, and perform better in life and if you continue to eat this food overtime is it helping to improve your financial and health status, is it improving your relationships, and most importantly is this food making you a happy, joyful, pleasurable, and peaceful human being full of vitality, love, and laughter.
So I guess you could call this diet a diet of discovery or a process diet because as time goes on you will be fine tuning and figuring out the foods that you should be eating and shouldn’t be eating in this moment. On this diet you will find some foods that worked for you 6 months ago may no longer be serving you now and the right foods that are working for you now in a few years time may turn out to be the wrong foods for you. This diet is constantly changing and evolving and it’s the process that you focus on while eating this way, not some far off distant goal or outcome.
To begin this unique individualised diet it must start with real food. I’ve talked about real foods compared to fake foods in podcast number seven and eight so listen to those for more detail, but basically if it came from a man-made packet instead of a nature-based pasture it’s not real food.
So starting with real food the next step is to find out what foods are creating a low-level inflammatory, immune, and stress reaction in your body and which foods aren’t.
One simple way of doing this is by tracking your heart rate. Fifteen minutes before eating the food you’re testing measure your resting heart rate for 60 seconds to get your heart beats per minute. After finishing the food wait another 15 minutes before measuring your heart rate again. Be sure to keep yourself in a relaxed state during the entire process. If your heart rate increased up to 9 beats per minute retest the food. You really want no increase at all in your heart rate, but anything under 5 beats per minute is fine. If your heart rate increased by at least 10 beats per minute then your body is reacting to that food and it’s best not to eat that food for another 3 to 6 months before retesting it again.
One of the oldest methods to find out if your body is reacting to a food in a negative way is by following a strict elimination provocation diet. This diet integrates well with your unique diet that you are working on discovering as they both have the same basic idea. Eat the foods that work for you and don’t eat the foods that don’t work for you. Plus both diets keep you in a limitless mindset as they’re both about discovering your own unique diet. The main difference being that at the very beginning of your new way of eating with an Elimination Provocation diet you cut down on the highest allergenic foods and other foods that a lot of people are intolerant and sensitive to. The other difference is that most people do an EP diet once and believe that’s how they should be eating from now on until forever. Whereas with the unique diet that your customising for your own needs you are continually improving and testing and removing what works and what doesn’t work over your lifetime.
So after 90 days on the EP diet you begin introducing one at a time 4 days apart a new food and keep track of any changes in your bodymind. If you react badly keep that food at bay for another 3 to 6 months before reintroducing it again. If you respond positively that food stays in your diet until the next time you want to test if it’s working for you or not.
Check out The Elimination Diet book by Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten for more detailed information including food elimination introduction lists, meal plans, and recipes.
Another method you can use to find out if the foods you’re eating are making your bodymind happy or not is by muscle testing. Muscle testing, also known as applied kinesiology, is based on the energetic being of your body and is used to diagnose and treat many health issues by testing how your body reacts to certain objects or questions. With regards to foods you could hold a food with one hand close to your chest and heart and hold up your other arm keeping it straight. You would get someone else to press down on your extended arm and if you’re able to keep your arm straight and in place then that food would be acceptable to eat. If your extended arm becomes weak and drops down then that food should not be eaten at this time.
Another thing you’ll need to discover is how much fats, proteins, and carbohydrates you should be eating, that is what is your ideal macronutrient ratio. One way to find this out is by keeping a body language log. You want to track your satisfaction, energy, and mood levels after each meal. Regarding satisfaction one thing to keep an eye on is whether you’re still hungry or crave sweets after a meal. If you’re still hungry then you may have had too many carbs. If you’re craving sweets than maybe you didn’t have enough carbs or you had too much fat and protein. When it comes to energy levels if it didn’t get noticeably better after a meal you probably had too much fat and protein and if you feel absolutely wiped out and ready for a nap that’s a sign of too many carbs. Finally, with your mood if you’re anxious or irritable than you most likely had too much sugar and you’re crashing after the meal.
For more information on real food and for a body language log that you can use to track your macronutrients I highly recommend Sean Croxton’s eBook The Dark Side of Fat Loss. It talks about real food and other holistic ways of improving your health and includes a really nice one page body language log that’s intuitive and simple to use.
Remember:
“There’s no one true diet for all.”
So the next time someone says there is and that these are the only foods you should be eating for the rest of your life and they don’t allow for flexibility and adaptability and growth, well don’t accept it blindly. It doesn’t mean you can’t use restricted diets in limitless ways. It just means these diets should only be used for short periods of time before moving onto the next one.
But instead of going on a diet why not make your diet a part of your lifestyle. Because there is one true dieting process for all and with heart rate monitoring, elimination diets, muscle testing, and body language logs you will find out and realise for yourself the one true diet that works for you and that makes you happy, healthy, whole, and complete. Forever.
Amen!
Links and Resources
- WGP 007: Food Nutrition – What is Real Food?
- WGP 008: A Real Food Manifesto
- The Elimination Die — Tom Malterre, Alissa Segersten
- The Dark Side of Fat Loss — Sean Croxton
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring How to get Yourself Back on a Holistic Track after Overindulging on Food:
- I’ll explain how overeating can be a gateway to many other dream-negating bad habits
- I’ll talk about some of the causes for overeating
- Finally I’ll share five tips that’ll help get your bodymind back into a holistic way of being after an episode of overeating
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are habits that other animals don’t seem to exhibit. The human animal, however, practises this habitual way of eating to the extreme a lot more than it should.
When you binge eat there’s the possibility of thinking that since you’re already doing something that’s not exactly health-promoting you may as well do some other non-healthy things like indulge in some alcohol, sloth around all day, or just think horrible negative thoughts like how sucky it is to be you right now for not having the willpower to just say no to food.
As a kid I would binge eat on cookies or crackers and hot chocolate (yummy) and I still have binge eating episodes to this day. I know for myself that once I start going down the binge eating path my return to the path of a healthy way of eating can be a long and difficult one as other healthy habits fall by the wayside as well. My sleeping pattern would go all over the place, I’d forget (on purpose) about keeping up with my usual movement practise, and I’d find my thoughts heading down a dark corridor.
One reason for overeating is not being mindful and conscious of your own actions.
I know many people who literally eat like ducks. They barely chew their food and end up swallowing big portions of food down their gullets. I know many people like this because I used to be one. You can only see what you have within you, so that’s why it’s easy for me to see this because I definitely had this mindless habit for a long time. Back in the day I was one of the fastest eaters on the planet (true story) and I never took the time to chew my food, you know to just enjoy the taste. I was never fully involved in the whole eating process. I guess you could say I thought eating was a waste of time and I had better things to do. Problem is because I ate so fast I wasn’t giving my body the proper signals that I’ve eaten and it’s time to stop now. So I would have seconds, thirds, and all too often a fourth serving. Looking back at it now all I can think is ‘man I really was a pig… or a duck.
Another reason for binge eating is emotional.
Feeling alone or hurt. Feeling like you don’t have a purpose and don’t know who you are and what you want or living a life that you really aren’t in love with. So loneliness, confusion, and fear of life itself will cause many people to turn to food for comfort and this can turn into a long period of binge eating.
Last reason I’ll give for overindulging on food is the season.
What I’m talking about here are special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and holidays, all of these are perfect excuses to get off the health train and on the indulgence express (my kind of ride). I mean who doesn’t love pumpkin pies, fruit salads with ice cream, cakes, and my personal favourite homemade smoked salmon. Smoked salmon, you may be thinking how is that unhealthy? Well let me tell you how. If you can sit down and eat half a whole salmon including the head in less than 20 minutes that my friend is overindulging of the highest degree. Remember:
“Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.”
All right so let’s get into five ways you can get yourself back to living a holistic healthy lifestyle after an episode of overeating.
So the day after your however-long binge first thing you want to do is to get back in touch with your dream. What is your dream? Do you even have a dream? Have you written it down with specific goals and outlined the steps you need to take to get you there? Have you got clear personal core values on when to say yes or no when it comes to your dream? If you haven’t got a dream with clear goals and core values then you’re living life with no real direction.
A dream is your compass, your GPS that keeps you on your chosen path.
As the saying goes:
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
So unless your dream is to gain massive amounts of weight or to outdo everyone at a buffet meal or to win an all-you-can-eat contest then overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are not dream-affirmative actions. Listen to the Dream Building podcast I did for more information on using dreams to help guide your holistic lifestyle, it’s podcast number 14.
Second tip: get outdoors. Strip to the bare essentials (not fully naked, but if you can get fully naked more power to you) and get some sunshine on your skin and ground yourself to the Earth by going barefoot on the grass, soil, or sand. Connecting with nature will help improve your mood, boost your immune system, and help reduce the inflammation caused by the excessive amounts of energy you’ve been putting into your body.
Third tip is to do a little fasting. Digestion is a 4-6 hour process and your body has to focus a lot of attention on this very important function. Nutrients and energy will be diverted to your stomach and intestines to ensure proper digestion takes place, but this means other functions in your body will be somewhat affected.
One process that happens in your cells only during times your body isn’t digesting and when you haven’t eaten in a long time is called autophagy. Autophagy is when cells destroy, clear out, and recycle old, damaged, and unused proteins. This makes for a healthier, cleaner internal environment for the cell giving it longevity and maintaining its ability to function at an optimal level. By fasting you give your cells the chance to clear out the junk and to repair or get rid of what’s not working.
Now there are many different ways to fast. You could do a 24 hour fast once or twice a week, a 48 hour water fast, 3 day fruit fast, couple weeks of juice fasting, or what I normally practise intermittent fasting where you fast between 12-18 hours and eat only within a certain feeding window of 12-6 hours.
Right now I’m doing a 12 hour fast with a 12 hour feeding window. So I usually finish eating dinner before 7 and don’t have breakfast until 7 the next morning.
Fourth tip is to move at high intensities. High intensity movement patterns include lifting heavy (at least 80% your 1 rep maximum) and high intensity interval training where you go all out for a certain amount of time and then rest for a certain amount of time and you repeat this over and over.
High intensity training helps maintain and build lean muscle mass, which is a metabolically rich part of your body, meaning the more muscle you have the more energy you actually need to maintain it. HIT also keeps your metabolism raised long after the workout, up to 48 hours in some cases, allowing your body to burn energy and fat even while you’re at rest. HIT compared to longer endurance activities stops your stress hormone cortisol from staying too high for too long, which is exactly what you want as cortisol is catabolic, meaning it breaks things down including muscle tissue. Last benefit to high intensity workouts is that they can be extremely short. So instead of going for an hour long run you could do sprints on a spin bike with the whole workout lasting no more than 20 minutes and turn yourself into a metabolic beast.
Last tip to getting yourself back on track after an episode of binge eating is to get back to eating real food. Stick to whole foods from Mother Nature and skip the packaged and processed junk from Father Industry. If for one week you can lower your starch and fruit intake that’d be even better.
Remember:
“Real food is real medicine.”
And by eating real food you’re giving your body exactly what it needs to heal and repair itself. Especially important after a period of feeding it an excessive amount of energy or significant amounts of fake pretend food-like products.
So follow your dream, connect with nature, do a little fasting, do intense movements, and just eat real food and in no time you’ll be back on track to living your dream and living a holistic healthy lifestyle.
Links and Resources
Please leave a 5-star iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Fear:
- I’ll explain what fear is
- I’ll talk about what limiting beliefs are and how they keep you from change
- I’ll talk about how expressing your authentic self helps you see fear in a new light
- Finally I’ll share an exercise you can practise to reframe your thoughts to help you deal with your fear
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Fear can be defined as an emotion driven by the thought of possible danger or the anticipation and expectation of pain and harm. Meaning fear is an emotion based on a thought you have about a future event.
Another way to see fear is that a lot of people believe hate to be the opposite of love, but hate like love is still an emotion that connects you to the object you have hatred toward. In my experience and what many other people have found is that fear is actually the opposite to love as fear has an energy vibration that drives you away and disconnects you from whatever it is that you’re afraid of.
Fear is an energy that you experience in the now present moment based on a future event, and it stops you from moving toward what it is you want.
One major driver of fear is a limiting belief. Now a limiting belief is a thought, an idea that you have downloaded from your upbringing that stops you and restrains you and prevents you from doing anything. This is the essence of fear.
For example you may want to play a sport or join a gym, but you have this belief that you are not coordinated or strong enough so you don’t sign up. You may want to become a fashion model, but you have this belief that you are not attractive, pretty, handsome, tall, thin, or beautiful enough so you don’t even bother looking at job ads for models. You may want to be a scientist, but have a this belief that you’re not smart enough or that people where you come from don’t normally become scientists and have other types of jobs and careers so you stop putting effort into your studies.
Or how about this example. You want to forget the past and start from scratch a relationship with a loved one that you had a fight with many years ago. You want to let go of the resentment that you’ve held toward that person for what they said or did to you or hope that they can forgive you for something you said or did. You want to reconnect with this person so badly it hurts. However, you have this belief, this thought, this idea that no matter what you say or do that person is never gonna’ change and never gonna’ want you back in their life anyway. They will shut you down, you will feel embarrassed and hurt, and you would just be wasting your time. So you don’t reach out to that person and continue to live in the shadow of regret and wondering ‘what if’, all the while missing out on the love that you could be receiving in that relationship.
A belief that holds you back from experiencing life is a limiting belief because it limits you from reaching and realising your full potential and experiencing life in all its fantastic awesome beauty.
A limiting belief is the face of fear and it will always be staring back at you for as long as you allow it. Fear keeps you from changing and you will never be able to change and develop and grow and evolve to reach your full potential if you live in fear.
One of humanity’s greatest fears is to follow one’s own dream. When you’re following your dreams and living the life you want to live and being the way you want to be this is when you shine at your brightest and show your true luminous being, your authentic self.
This fear to dream and act upon one’s dream and shine brightly was summed up brilliantly by spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson who says:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”
Now you may be thinking how it is possible for someone to be scared of their own light energy and their own awesomeness.
Well how many times have you seen someone else shine and be and do and have awesome things only to see them be cut down by others because they are appearing to be too showy, big-headed, egotistical, and up themselves?
How many times have you personally been told to ‘watch it’ whenever you’ve found success, because it looks like you’re showing off or making others feel inadequate?
Every time you shine you are exposing the shadows of other people, but instead of those other people seeing your light as a motive for inspiration and change, they choose to see it as a threat, so they bring you down to their level and keep you from change.
With this limiting belief that any time you dare to dream you are told to get your head out of the clouds and to do as everyone else does is it any wonder why a lot of people give up their dreams, fail to shine and ride the mediocre train into ‘surviville’ to end up living a ‘just okay’ life like everybody else, instead of dreaming big, shining their light, living an awesome life, and thriving.
The thing is when you shine not only are you exposing the shadows of people around you, but you also see your own shadows, your own fears and it is only during the times that you do shine that you can face your shadows and fears full on.
When you look at your fear in the light you will see it very differently. Expressing your true self your luminous being you will no longer turn away from fear, you will face it head on and do whatever it is that needs to be done.
Fear isn’t something to remove or to forget about. It’s an emotion you must use to drive you, motivate you, inspire you to keep moving forward, through that fear to the other side where your dreams live. Of course this is all dependent on you being able to fully express yourself and to shine your light being without regret. Because you can only see your fears when you’re shining at your brightest.
So how exactly do you shine when you have all these limiting beliefs stopping you from doing so in the first place?
By doing the work – that’s Byron Katie’s ‘The Work’ that is.
Byron Katie is an author that writes about self-inquiry and seeing reality for what it really is. Bryon suffered from depression and one day woke up to reality and realised that when she believed her thoughts she suffered and when she didn’t believe her thoughts she no longer suffered.
Byron created a free online tool called The Work, which is a powerful process of self-inquiry. I’ll put a link to the work in the episode show notes, which you can find at wholeguidance.com/blog.
I highly recommend The Work as it makes you question your own thoughts and will help you realise that your limiting beliefs are only there because, well you believe them to be real. But as you go through The Work you will realise that these limiting beliefs are only as real as you think they are and by changing your thoughts about them you can change your entire life.
I no longer run from fear. I embrace it. That doesn’t mean I’m never afraid. It just means when I feel the fear… eventually I push through it.
By questioning your own beliefs you can use fear to move you toward your dreams instead of away from your dreams.
There’s a saying:
“The obstacle is the way.”
And fear is one of the greatest obstacles to humanity reaching enlightenment, but this also makes fear one of humanity’s final hopes to reaching enlightenment and living an awesome life.
I’ll finish with the full quote from Marianne Williamson that I introduced earlier because it’s such an empowering and non-limiting belief:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Make this year the year you overcome fear.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Emotions specifically Anger and Happiness:
- I’ll explain how emotions run your life
- I’ll talk about how anger is a necessary and healthy emotion
- I’ll talk about how the pursuit for happiness isn’t a healthy choice
- Finally I’ll share how to express healthy anger and to choose happiness to get the most pleasure from life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Ah emotions. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.
Your thoughts (your ideas) they create your feelings (your emotions) and your feelings well they determine a heck of a lot. It is your feelings that determine your words (what you say); your deeds (what you do); and ultimately your results (what you get out of life).
Let’s take a look at how ideas and emotions in your bodymind really do lead to the results you get in your life.
Human thought begins with the perception of an internal or external stimulus. This thought then creates subtle energies. These subtle energies influence your physical, emotional, and mental ways of being by mobilising chemical messenger molecules throughout your bodymind. Examples of chemical messenger molecules include immune cells, hormones, and neurotransmitters. So once these molecules have energy and motion they travel to, are received, and used by your cells as instructions that drive both your verbal and physical actions.
These molecules of energy in motion or another way to say it would be these molecules of e-motion absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it determine the course of your life because what you say and what you do will always, always determine what you get out of life.
Now there are two main emotional forces that drive the human experience: pain and pleasure.
One emotion associated with pain is anger. The root cause for you to get angry is because you have a need that is not being met. But I’m not talking about basic needs like food or shelter. No I’m talking about deep-seated, inbuilt, animal, innate, primal, evolutionary-rooted physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs. The ultimate human need is the need to connect and to share your self with others.
So when your need for connection and sharing is not being met many emotions can come up and anger is the emotion that people think and feel of when they wish to express externally to another person that they have this unmet need. As I talked about earlier this anger really is a collection of molecules of energy in motion. Anger is an emotion that has very hot, unstable energy attached to it so your words and deeds will also be hot and unstable when in an angry state resulting in a heated and rocky outcome to whomever you are expressing that anger toward.
When taken to the extreme anger turns into rage, which has even hotter less stable out-of-control energy associated with it.
Now when anger does not turn into out-of-controlled rage it can be a very beneficial and healthful emotion. In fact anger is one of the most powerful and impactful emotions as anger alone can cause you to change. Your fits, your bouts, your outbursts of anger are all opportunities for change. To change what? To change anything you want.
Whether your anger causes a change in you, in someone else, in your environment, or a global change it doesn’t matter as change of any kind is what life is all about.
Many inventions, services, businesses, restaurants, and even airlines were created because one person got given a crappy deal, got angry, and then got even… an even better idea that is. For example successful businessman Richard Branson he was left stranded at an airport and instead of moping around complaining, getting worked up into a rage and eventually doing nothing about it, he got over his anger and frustration and asked other stranded passengers if they’d like to charter a plane with him and thus the seed for Virgin airlines was sown.
Unfortunately many people use anger purely as a release valve and nothing else and there’s nothing wrong with releasing pent up energy, but if you don’t do something after that release you miss out on the main benefit of getting angry, the benefit of change.
Anger can be a healthy emotion with the potential for unlimited benefits because who knows where change can take you.
Happiness on the other hand is an emotion associated with pleasure. You usually feel happy when you get what you want and need and when personal expectations are met. I say usually feel happy because even when your needs are met you may still find yourself to not be in a happy place as I’ll explain shortly.
The emotion of happiness has an energy signature that is adaptable and stable. Happiness can warm you when you’re feeling cold and can cool you when you’re feeling the heat. Happiness can help ground you to the present moment and keep you centred, even when you think that everything around you is falling to pieces.
The issue with happiness lies in its pursuit.
The pursuit of happiness is an endless everlasting game that you can never win. When you’re told by others such as your parents, well-meaning family and friends, and the media that in order for you to be happy you must act a certain way, own a certain product, buy a certain perfume, wear a certain brand of clothing, follow a certain political party and you end up getting what you thought you always wanted you find yourself still very unhappy indeed. So you begin to pursue the next false idol of desire, get it, and still find yourself unhappy and this perpetual persistent pursuit for happiness goes on and on for as long as you play it.
Even if you were to pursue your own goals you will find that at the end of that rainbow there is no real pot of gold. Think of all the personal goals you’ve set and achieved and ask yourself after the fact right now in this moment long after you accomplished what you set out to do, are you happy? Are you happy because you fulfilled your dreams and goals or are you happy for another reason?
I used to always wait for something to happen in my life before I would allow myself to be happy such as earn a certain amount of money or lift a certain amount of weight or to see a certain number on the scale before I would say to myself I was happy and I was finally successful. Now, however, not only am I extremely happy and satisfied once I’ve achieved a goal, but I’m also happy during the goal seeking process. For example, I’m happy and satisfied after eating a delicious, nutritious, and tasty dish, but I’m also happy while shopping for, preparing for, and cooking the actual meal.
What I’m saying is that in my experience being happy isn’t something that you can get out there externally. Happiness can only be found in one place, internally, inside of you. No matter how much pursuing you do to be happy, no matter how much money you make, no matter what you own or how many material objects or awards you accumulate you will never find happiness in any one of these actions specifically. In order to express the energies of adaptability and stability, in order to express true happiness you must choose to do so in any one moment.
In other words happiness doesn’t have to be a destination, but can also be the journey itself and the only thing stopping you from being happy is you.
“In order to be happy, you must choose happy.”
It doesn’t matter who you’re with, what you’re doing, where you’re going, or how you’re feeling, I believe that happiness really is a personal choice and it’s a choice that you can make in any moment.
I’m not saying it’s an easy choice to make. For some people choosing happiness will be such a foreign concept that to make such a choice may look impossible. For other people like the Dalai Lama for example choosing happiness comes as second nature. For me personally I am constantly having to remind myself daily to stop waiting for happiness to come to me and to let happiness come from me.
It’s a simple idea seeing happiness as a choice, but boy is it a bloody difficult choice to understand.
Alright so now I’ll talk about how to express healthy anger and how to make it easier to choose happiness.
Firstly, when it comes to healthy expressions of anger you must give yourself permission to express that anger. Do not hold anger or any other emotion for that matter inside your bodymind.
Remember emotions are actual chemical messenger molecules or molecules of energy in motion and when you experience an emotion and a feeling these molecules of energy are mobilised throughout your entire body. When you express that internal feeling and emotion by sharing it externally those molecules get used up by your cells and the energy releases from your body into the environment.
However, if left to linger inside your body these molecules and energy will build up and accumulate in certain areas of your body depending on your genetics and upbringing. If you chronically and consistently hold back from expressing your emotions this bundle of molecules and energy in your body will eventually create a disease and the most common disease associated with pent-up suppressed emotions is cancer.
Secondly:
“Get mad, then get over it.”
Is a quote by American statesman Colin Powell and it’s a quote that you must keep in mind when it comes to healthy expressions of anger.
Back in the day when I was dealing with depression I was also dealing with anger issues (actually I still am). Whereas back then I would attach to my anger as if my life depended on it and it would grow into full-blown rage and I would totally forget what it was that I was angry about in the first place, now I am able to let go of that anger once I’ve allowed myself the chance to fully express it. Plus I’m fully aware of how I am being and what I’m saying during the outburst of anger, which is pretty weird. It’s like I can see how much of an egg I’m being and all I can do is be a witness to my outburst. This is a good thing though because it helps me remember what I got angry about and makes it easier for me to change what it is I want to change so I won’t be triggered as easily the next time I might get angry.
So do not attach to anger and let it develop into full-blown rage. Stay in control of your aggression by fully expressing it and do not confuse yourself with those molecules of energy in motion. You are expressing anger, you are not anger itself.
Healthy anger is anger that is expressed, let go of, and learnt from.
With regards to happiness there’s a brilliant quote by James Openheim that says:
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”
As I said before happiness isn’t necessarily the destination, but also the journey itself and the journey is always where you are in the present moment. Happiness isn’t something to pursue, but something you choose to express while in pursuit of your dream. Yes achieving your dream will definitely be a cause for celebration and joy, but you’re allowed to be happy as you make your way toward reaching your dream.
“Happiness is found in the being, not in the having and the doing.”
So in this present moment and any other moment you wish, you have the power to choose to be happy. The choice for happiness is and will always be yours.
So how exactly do you practise letting go of anger and choosing happiness in any one moment… by practising mindfulness.
How many people today are on autopilot waking up to go to school or work, coming home, going to sleep, and then repeating this all over again without being fully present and aware that there were a thousand other events and experiences they had that day.
Life and the human experience is exciting, exhilarating and extremely complex and full of ups and downs and twists and turns, but too much of modern society today is all about numbing the human experience and reducing it down to the most basic of tasks and needs making life appear to be such a boring experience.
Mindfulness practise improves your awareness of how you’re being, how you’re feeling, and what you’re doing in the now the present moment. Mindfulness keeps you in touch with what’s happening internally in your body and what’s happening externally in your environment. When you live your life with a heightened level of awareness you will find that life is so much more than work and sleep.
By practising mindfulness on a daily basis you enhance your ability to express anger and then let it go. You are also able to learn from that expressed anger what changes you need to make to reduce your chances of getting angry in the future and to learn what changes you see are necessary in order to reduce what may upset other people as well.
By practising mindfulness regularly you will come to see that happiness isn’t a reward, an object, or an end date, but it’s an energy that you have inside of you and you can choose to express that energy of happiness anytime you want. Mindfulness gives you full awareness of our ups and downs and during those times that you’re feeling down you will begin to notice, like an observer outside of your body, that you’re actually feeling down in the dumps and this awareness helps you to choose to continue to live in the sadness (and that’s perfectly fine) or to let it go and to choose happiness instead.
The best way to practise mindfulness is to take time out from your day and to just sit with your thoughts. That’s right I’m talking about meditation.
Meditation isn’t about achieving some divine connection with the universe (although that can be a nice bonus if you can receive such a gift). Meditation is about keeping your mind focused on one thing and one thing only and anytime your thoughts start to wonder, stray, and go walkabout you bring yourself back to centre which is your original thought that you were focusing on.
Meditation comes in all forms and sizes:
- Sitting
- Standing
- Walking
- Gardening
- Paddle boarding
- Dancing
- Sports
Whatever experience you can have that will keep you focused on one thing and crowd out all other thoughts you can make into a meditative and mindfulness practise.
The key words here are regular, daily, consistent, and practise.
Meditation and mindfulness they’re like everything else in life. You don’t just take one breath, or sleep for one night, or eat just one meal, you must breathe, sleep, and eat consistently in order to live and learning to enhance and improve your levels of awareness takes time, takes effort, and it’s an ongoing practise.
There’s a brilliant book by Daniel Goleman called Emotional Intelligence that gives great insight into how your emotions influence your life and how they influence your intelligence.
There’s a saying:
“When emotions are high, intelligence is low.”
Meaning your levels of emotion determine your levels of intelligence, which brings us back to my original statement about how emotions run your life.
Don’t be scared to get angry. Use that anger to learn and grow and change to improve your life and other people’s lives.
Don’t be thinking that happiness is some tangible external object that you must get. With practise you can choose happiness whenever you feel you need it.
By learning from anger and choosing happiness sooner rather than later you can make yourself a very smart and intelligent human being indeed.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Vitamin D and Smart Sun Exposure:
- I’ll explain the importance of Vitamin D and how it is made
- I’ll talk about how conventional mainstream sun safety advice and practises are causing more harm than good
- Finally I’ll give tips on how to practise smart sex (that’s smart Sun EXposure) and how to optimise your vitamin D levels so you can continue to live a happy, healthy, and holistic life
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
In the previous podcast I talked about some very important hormones that you needed to know about. By living a holistic lifestyle you can keep these hormones in a beautiful state of harmony and balance which in turn keep you and your body happy, healthy, and in harmony and balance as well.
One hormone I didn’t mention in the last podcast was vitamin D. I didn’t talk about vitamin D in the previous show because I believe that no matter the chaos in your physical, emotional, and mental body’s vitamin D has the power to bring all of you back to centre, in harmony, in balance, in peace and one with the universe. Yeah I know sounds pretty hippy dippy and I’ll talk more about this at the end of this, but for now let me talk more about vitamin D.
First up vitamin D has been given just the worst name ever because it isn’t a vitamin at all. A vitamin is an organic compound that your body cannot make and vitamin D is created by your body when your skin gets exposed to the sun. Technically vitamin D is a fat-soluble secosteroid so it’s a steroid hormone much like cortisone and testosterone, but let’s not get too technical here shall we.
I like to call vitamin D the sun hormone… sounds nice right.
The sun hormone controls the expression of over 1000 genes in your body meaning it can turn on or off about 5% of your entire genetic code. Whoa! The sun hormone also reduces inflammation, boosts your immune system, destroys disease, prevents tumours, fights cancer, strengthens your bones, is a powerful antioxidant, improves mood, enhances and activates the actions of the nutrients you eat, so overall vitamin D (the sun hormone) helps you live a longer quality of life.
Right now there is a worldwide deficiency in vitamin D levels in the human population. Even those in equatorial regions are vitamin D deficient can you believe it.
On top of that skin cancer rates continue to rise despite people following national health guidelines for sun safety.
In New Zealand where I live we have the SunSmart campaign where we are advised to slip on a long-sleeved shirt and into the shade, slop on copious amounts of high sun protection factor (SPF) broad spectrum sunscreen, slap on a wide brimmed hat, and wrap on some wrap-around sunnies (that’s sunglasses for you non-local folk). So Slip, Slop, Slap, and Wrap… pretty catchy right.
This campaign also recommends the following:
- During September to April (the warmer months of the year) we should be sun protected between the hours of 10a-4p, and in the early morning and late afternoon have some form of outdoor activity for 30 minutes without sun protection
- During May to August (the cooler months of the year) we should be outdoors for 30 minutes with face, arms, and hands exposed in the hours around noon
Now unfortunately it is this exact misinformation that is leading to both decreased levels of vitamin D and increased levels of skin cancer in the human population.
How so?
Well first I’ll talk about how your body actually makes vitamin D.
Okay I know I said earlier that I didn’t want to get too technical, but the way the human body makes this potent healthful hormone from sunlight or light energy is pretty cool.
When UVB rays from the sun hit your skin they react with a precursor molecule in your skin called 7-dehydrocholesterol to create vitamin D3. Now you can find this particular form of vitamin D in supplements. When this D3 is released from your skin into your bloodstream it travels to your liver where it’s converted to 25-hydroxyvitamin D3. 25-hydryoxyvitamin D3 then gets transported to your kidneys where it’s activated into the steroid hormone form that your body actually uses. This active form of vitamin D is called 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 and it’s this form of the sun hormone that regulates gene expression and makes you a happy and healthy human.
Now the sun gives off a few different ultra violet rays, but its UVA and UVB that are relevant here. Here are some details about these two different spectrums of sunlight:
- UVA does not get absorbed by the ozone layer and reaches the Earth’s surface year round. UVB is mostly absorbed by the ozone layer and only reaches the Earth’s surface during summer and the warmer months of the year.
- UVA penetrates a few layers into the skin. UVB does not.
- UVA causes skin to thicken and age, but not burn. UVB does the opposite. It burns, but does not thicken or age skin.
- UVA damages melanin-producing cells (melanin gives colour to your skin and acts as an antioxidant, meaning melanin protects against skin cancer). UVB promotes melanin production.
- UVA overexposure leads to malignant melanoma (the aggressive type of skin cancer). UVB overexposure leads to non-melanoma skin cancer (the least dangerous of skin cancers).
- UVA passes through glass. UVB does not.
- UVA will not produce vitamin D. UVB will.
Also take note that due to the fact that most of the UVB rays get absorbed by the ozone layer the angle of the sun to the Earth will determine the amount of UVB that actually hits the Earth’s surface. So during the summer and warmer months of the year when the sun is high between 10a and 4p there will be full UVB exposure on the Earth’s surface, as well as UVA of course. However, in the winter months when the sun is low on the horizon then very little to no UVB penetrates the ozone layer, but there’s still full UVA exposure on the Earth’s surface.
So if you’re living north and south of the 33rd parallels of the Earth’s latitude then you’re not getting any UVB during the cooler months of the year, but you’re getting plenty of UVA.
Okay enough about sunrays. I want to talk about sunscreens now.
Sunscreens are just the icing on the proverbial cake of misinformation. They are meant to protect the skin of the human race, but as it turns out most commercial sunscreens or sunblocks are nothing but a big disgrace.
Your skin can also be called your second mouth as approximately 60-70% of what you put on your skin gets absorbed directly into your bloodstream – bypassing your liver and its detoxifying processes. What goes on your skin goes straight to your blood.
The majority of sunscreens sold in supermarkets and pharmacies today are made with toxic chemicals that will actually increase your chances of getting skin and other cancers. These chemicals include:
- Retinol
- Retinyl palmitate
- OMC or octyl methaxycinnamate
- Octocrylene
- Avobenzone
- Oxybenzone
- Homosalate
- Octinoxate and
- Octisalate
Add to this fact that many sunscreen SPF factors are based on blocking UVB exclusively meaning you get no vitamin D producing rays, but plenty of the UVA cancer causing rays. As for the broad spectrum sunscreens, which block both UVA and UVB, most of them don’t block both rays evenly. Instead it’s more 67-95% of UVB being blocked compared to only 5-33% of UVA.
Let me put it all together then and summarise how modern living, national sun safety guidelines, and sunscreen care products create vitamin D deficiency and skin cancer.
You work indoors most of the day missing out on vitamin D production. Even worse you sit next to windows that are not UV-rated thinking that you’re getting a daily dose of sunshine. Problem is because glass filters out UVB and not UVA it’s more of a daily dose of cancer that you’re getting.
When you’re outside you’re told to cover up during the hottest part of the day which is also the time that UVB penetrates and gets through the ozone layer to the Earth’s surface. Then when it’s cooler you uncover yourself a bit more, but there’s no longer any UVB and only UVA hits your skin.
You use toxic chemical heavy sunscreens and sunblocks that not only block more UVB than UVA, but they also block your body’s ability to function 100% by overtaxing your innate detoxification system, meaning they overload your liver and this leaves the door wide open to diseases. Plus the chemicals themselves (the ones I mentioned before) they are carcinogenic, meaning they cause the overgrowth of cancer cells in your body.
So here you have two sources of cancer. You get cancer externally via UVA rays penetrating deep into your skin and into your cells and you can get cancer internally from the toxic chemicals used in sunscreens that get absorbed through your skin.
Alright so let’s get into some tips on how you can practise smart sex, smart Sun Exposure.
First, go outside during UVB penetration times. This will depend on your location, time of the year, and is based on the sun’s position in the sky. Remember when the sun is high, vitamin D production is high.
Expose as much of your skin as possible without sunscreen for the appropriate amount of time based on your skin type. You want to get a nice tan, but you never ever want to get sunburn. Sunburn causes a cascade of inflammation and immune activity in your body that over time will turn into a chronic disease. So if you’re very light skinned maybe 5-20 minutes is all you can do before the damaging effects of UVA kick in. Whereas if you have darker skin you could do between 20-60 minutes easy depending on how much melanin you have in your skin and how tolerant your skin is to the sun’s rays. Once you sense the burn in your skin then it’s time to slip, slop, slap, and wrap!
So during the summer season and the warmer months of the year expose yourself to the sun between 10a and 4p. During any other time of the season, year, or day cover up.
Second tip, keep away from windows during the day otherwise cover up as much as possible if stuck behind one.
Third tip is to eat your sunscreen. That’s right you can consume plenty of “sunscreen-like” compounds from real food that will protect you from sun damage from the inside out. How cool is that eh!
So eat plenty of antioxidant rich foods like small berries, vegetables, herbs and spices. The lycopene in tomatoes has been shown to be protective against sun damage. Omega-3 and saturated fats are great internal sunscreens so eat more oily fish and animal fat from grass-fed free-range pasture-raised happy animals. Astaxanthin is another great skin protecting compound that you can get from krill oil or in supplement form.
Fourth tip is to only buy and use all-natural organic sunscreens. A healthy sunscreen will have the active ingredients titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. These do the actual UV blocking. Also almond, coconut, sunflower, jojoba, and eucalyptus oils or any other ingredient you would normally think of as natural and even eat are fine. Shea butter is another popular natural ingredient. If you wouldn’t eat it don’t put it on your skin. For a basic sunscreen recipe all you need is some zinc oxide and a nice plant based lotion.
Fifth smart sex step is if you are unable to get enough sun exposure then eat your sun hormone. You can get vitamin D from real foods like wild caught oily fish, grass-fed butter and raw full-fat dairy, free-range pasture-raised egg yolks and lard, fermented cod-liver oil as well as other organically raised animal livers.
If you are unable to eat enough vitamin D foods then you can take vitamin D3 supplements, not D2, but D3 and make sure the capsule is infused with some fat like extra-virgin olive oil as the sun hormone is a fat-soluble molecule and is a lot easier to absorb when taken with fat.
When supplementing with vitamin D it is important to get your vitamin D levels tested. What you want is the blood test for 25-hydroxyvitamin D. A healthy range is between 35-65 ng/mL. Your results will then determine your actions, meaning do not blindly believe you are vitamin D deficient or sufficient and go overboard on the supplements or not supplement enough. Test is best, do not guess. A good guideline to follow when supplementing vitamin D3 (while you wait for your results) is to take 1000 IU (international units) per 11kg/25lbs of body weight. Once you do find out your vitamin D levels you can increase or decrease your sun exposure and supplementation as is required.
Final and crucial tip and this has to do with optimising the vitamin D you do produce, eat, or supplement with, is to reduce your body fat. Remember vitamin D is a fat-soluble molecule so the more fat cells you have and the larger those fat cells are then the more vitamin D your body fat will hold onto and the less vitamin D there will be in your bloodstream to be converted into the more important active hormone needed for maintaining and building the wealth of your health.
Listen to the podcast before this one that I did on balancing your hormones to optimise your fat-burning potential for more information on how to reduce your body fat the easy way without having to count calories.
I’ll leave you with this.
I personally believe that Vitamin D is the most important hormone in the human body. The reason I say this is because the majority of multicellular life on this planet lives and dies by the sun and human beings are no different.
You and I,
“We are beings of light energy”
and none of us, not me, not you, not even the moon would be here if it weren’t for the beautiful unconditionally giving and loving sun that supports all the life in our little region of the universe.
The more disconnected you are from the source of your existence the more you disconnect yourself from who you really are, your true being.
The more you disconnect yourself from that light that birthed you, that light that currently breathes you, and that light that will one day return you to source, the less happy, the less whole, and the less complete you will feel.
In order to live an awesome life you need to get back to your roots and there’s nothing more rooted in human ancestral tradition and culture then having fun out in the sun man.
You want sun? Go get sun.
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Calories and Hormones:
- I’ll explain what calories are and how counting calories won’t do much for your health
- I’ll talk about hormones and how they affect your health a lot more than calories
- Finally I’ll give a few tips on how to balance your hormones naturally to turn you into a fat-burning machine
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Calories are all people talk about when it comes to dieting and changing body composition. Funny thing is most people have no clue what a calorie actually is.
Well a calorie is a unit of heat energy where 1 calorie equals the amount of energy needed to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade.
The way calories are measured is to burn the dry weight of the object you want to find the calorie value of and then measure how much heat is given off. So if you wanted to find out the number of calories in a banana, for example, you would first dehydrate it and then burn it and by measuring the amount of heat it gives off you will be able to work out the amount of calories it contained.
Now this is all fine and dandy when measuring calories using a calorimeter in a stale, stable, stagnant setting like a scientific laboratory, but when you’re talking about measuring the burning of foods in the human body or the metabolic-effect of how food calories are utilised by human physiology then Houston… we have a problem.
You see if you were to ask an aboriginal tribe in a South American jungle or African bushland or Australian outback who are excellent specimens of optimal human health whether they weighed, measured, and counted the amount of calories or energy or foods they ate on a regular basis, they would just look at you sideways, show off their bright-white teeth with a wide grin, and then they’d start laughing their bottoms off. They have a lot more important things to be concerned with than calories like maintaining shelters, hunting and gathering food, and getting back to telling stories and playing around all day. Sounds like the life right?
Your ancestors as far back as 100 years ago were not concerned with counting calories and obesity wasn’t even an issue back then. Today, however, it seems like the more calories we count as a society the more obese we seem to be getting. What’s up with that?
The reason is human beings are not calorimeters. You are not a simple input and output device. Your body is one of the most complex biological machines in the universe. Your body is an interconnected system of trillions of inputs and outputs.
For someone to say that they know exactly what happens to the hundred calories they eat from food or say that they know exactly how much calories they burned during exercise is human hubris at it again, meaning we think we know better than Mother Nature. It is impossible to know the exact amount of fuel energy you get from food and how much energy you burn from movement.
Another thing is that not all calories are created equal. 2000 calories of sugar water, for example, if you were to compare this to 2000 calories of coloured vegetables, yes they are the same amount of energy, exactly the same amount of energy, but when your body begins to digest, absorb, assimilate and metabolise and make use of the macro and micronutrients you will see a totally different effect in how your body looks, in how you think and feel, and how you act in life. A human body made up of sugar water compared to one made up of vegetables would be the same as comparing a house made up of straw and one made up of brick and mortar. One is weak and full of holes (tumours) whereas the other is strong and solid (healthy).
Ask yourself are the calories that you’re currently consuming on a regular basis turning you into a person of straw or into a solid piece of human awesomeness?
There are a number of ways the foods you eat and the movements you perform affect your biology way beyond calories and energy expenditure. You need to stop focusing on calories when it comes to happiness and health because there’s more to your wellbeing than just energy in and energy out.
The foods you eat and the movements you perform will absolutely determine the physical structure and functionality of your organs, they will determine your mood, and food and movement have a huge impact on your hormones.
Speaking of hormones these are molecules that your body uses to communicate between the many different organs, glands, and tissues. Hormones affect your body’s metabolism, immune function, growth and repair, your mood, your stress levels, and your body composition.
The major hormones you need to know about are:
- Insulin
- Cortisol
- Melatonin
- Leptin
- Ghrelin
- Oestrogen and testosterone and
- Thyroid hormones
Insulin is an anabolic or growth hormone released by your pancreas and helps transport nutrients from your bloodstream into your cells. Excessive amounts of glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream leads to the transformation of most of this glucose into fatty acids and high levels of nutrients in your blood causes your pancreas to release large amounts of insulin. Once insulin gets into your bloodstream it then does its job of storing all those nutrients into your cells as well as putting any leftover fatty acids into your fat cells, so insulin plays a major role in fat accumulation.
Cortisol known as the stress hormone is catabolic meaning it breaks things down and it is released by your adrenal glands in response to physical or perceived stress, low blood sugar levels, or low leptin levels. When your blood sugar levels get too low this will cause a cortisol spike. This sudden increase in cortisol then raises your blood sugar levels and when blood glucose gets too high insulin will need to be released to bring it back to a healthy low level and if your blood glucose drops too far then cortisol comes out to play again and this sugar and hormonal rollercoaster continues on and on making for a fatter and heavier you.
Melatonin is your antioxidant, anti-tumour, circadian clock time for bed hormone. Melatonin needs to be low in the morning and high in the evening for the best sleep and recovery as well as for the most growth hormone release during sleep, which helps you burn fat as you dream. This is the opposite rhythm to cortisol. Cortisol needs to be high in the morning and low in the evening. So if you don’t get enough daylight exposure during the day, you’re exposed to too much blue and bright lights after sundown, and if your cortisol rhythm is not normal, this will cause your melatonin levels to be low making it difficult for you to fall asleep and to get a full nights rest.
Leptin is a satiety hormone meaning it signals to your brain when you have enough energy in your body and is released by your fat cells. The more fat you have the more leptin your fat cells release signalling to your brain that you have plenty of energy on board and you don’t need to eat. The less fat you have the less leptin gets released signalling to your brain that you don’t have enough energy on board and that it’s time to eat. The problem for obese individuals is something called leptin resistance where you have so many fat cells releasing a lot of leptin that your brain just can’t take the excessive amounts of communication anymore and just stops listening. So even though your fat cells are signalling non-stop to your brain that your body has more than enough energy on board and that you don’t need to eat, your brain ignores these signals and still thinks you’re low on leptin and therefore low on energy and fat stores. Chronically low leptin levels as perceived by your brain will cause an increased release of the stress hormone cortisol and high cortisol levels keep your leptin levels low.
Ghrelin is a hunger hormone and works opposite to leptin. Low levels of leptin usually mean you are low on energy reserves and this causes a release of ghrelin which then increases your appetite. Once your appetite is satisfied and enough leptin hormone reaches your brain telling it you have enough energy on board then ghrelin hormone reduces which also lowers your appetite. Now if you have high levels of cortisol in your body this will cause leptin levels to be low meaning ghrelin will increase giving you an appetite. So the more stress you have the hungrier you get.
Oestrogen and testosterone are sex hormones used for growth and for reproduction. Women have slightly higher levels of oestrogen hormones compared to men and men have a lot more testosterone than women. Chronically high levels of insulin in your bloodstream (due to a high sugar diet for example) leads to an increase of testosterone in women and a decrease of testosterone in men as well as an increase of oestrogen in men. When cortisol is low testosterone and insulin are high, but when cortisol is high testosterone and insulin are low making cortisol a muscle wasting hormone. Chronically high levels of cortisol interferes with the normal production of your sex hormones, so too much stress overtime leads to low libido or sex drive, infertility, and the end of sexy times in the bedroom.
Last group of major hormones you really need to know about are your thyroid hormones. Your thyroid hormones are responsible for your body’s overall metabolism, meaning your cells ability to process energy. The two main thyroid hormones are T4 and T3. T4 is the inactive thyroid hormone and this is produced by your thyroid gland. The conversion of T4 to the active form T3 takes place primarily in your liver and in your gut. If your thyroid, liver, or gut are unhealthy and unable to do the work that they should then the production of T4 and T3 hormones will be dramatically impacted. Your body will either produce too much thyroid hormones leading to hyperthyroidism or having a very fast metabolic rate where you feel nervous or anxious a lot of the time, have irregular heartbeats, trouble sleeping, dry skin, excessive weight reduction, and excessive bowel movements. Or your body won’t produce enough thyroid hormones leading to hypothyroidism or having a very slow rate of metabolism where you feel depressed and irritable, experience hair loss and memory loss, feel tired and weak a lot of the time, find it difficult to reduce weight or have a dramatic increase in weight, have muscle cramps, feel cold a lot, have brittle nails, and constipation. High levels of perceived stress interferes with the production of T4 and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol interferes with the conversion of T4 to T3 causing abnormal metabolic function throughout your entire body.
Okay so that was a lot of information to take in about your major hormones. Now I’m not sure if you noticed, but there was one constant between them all. There was one hormone that popped up time and again and it has an impact on all the other hormones. Do you know the hormone I’m talking about? Yes, the stress hormone cortisol. That’s the hormone I’m talking about.
High cortisol leads to the increase of glucose in your bloodstream eventually causing a spike in insulin and this high insulin release causes fat storage and an increase in fat cell number and fat cell size.
High cortisol at night prevents melatonin from rising leading to trouble with sleep, less growth hormone release, less fat burning, a weakened immune system, and an increased risk of cancer.
High cortisol levels equal low leptin and high ghrelin levels meaning even if you’re obese or if you’ve eaten a big enough meal that normally would have satisfied you in the past, you will still have an appetite and feel hungry and will want to keep eating and you may never feel satiated.
High production of cortisol equals low production of your growth and sex hormones. More cortisol means less growth and more stress means less sex.
Finally high stress and rich cortisol production equals poor thyroid hormone production causing an abnormal rate of metabolism, either too high or too low. The majority of thyroid issues deal with a very slow rate of metabolism leading to difficulty reducing fat cell number and fat cell size.
So the big takeaway from all this hormone talk is that if you can control your cortisol you can control the rest of your hormones and you can determine the overall health of your body.
Not only that, but by taking control of your cortisol levels and the levels of all your other major hormones you can determine the amount of muscle and fat that your body synthesises and burns… without the need for counting calories.
Imagine that your hormones are an orchestra and that when they play in perfect harmony you get to hear wonderful music a beautiful symphony being played. However, when you have disharmony in the orchestra, when there’s a group or single instrument out of tune, out of sync, out of beat and rhythm then you’re left listening to something that would probably even make the walking dead turn and run in the other direction.
Homeostasis is a term that means a system is in balance and functioning as it should. When your many hormones are in harmony and playing sweet beautiful music together then you can consider your body to be in a homeostatic state. When your body is in homeostasis, where you’ve achieved hormonal harmony, then your body’s ability to burn fat and maintain or build health and muscle will be easy peasy lemon squeezy.
However, if your hormones are not in harmony with each other well then your ability to reduce fat and maintain or build health and muscle go right out the window. It doesn’t matter how many calories you count or restrict and no matter how hard you push yourself in the gym because if your cortisol and other hormone levels are not in healthy ranges then your body has bigger issues to deal with than worrying about energy in and energy out.
What I’m ultimately saying is that when your hormones are in balance with each other you’re a lean, mean, and very keen playful, happy, and healthy human being. But when your hormones are ‘out of whack’ (yes that’s a scientific term where I’m from) when your hormones are out of balance then oops-a-daisy you become flabby, fat, and lazy.
So what causes hormone imbalances?
High levels of stress and inflammation and stress and inflammation are caused by unhealthy relationships, disconnection from Mother Nature, exposure to toxic compounds, improper sleep, too much not enough exercise, eating inflammatory foods, not drinking enough quality water, and incorrect breathing patterns.
To get your hormones in a happy and healthy harmonious state you need to reduce your stress levels and lower the amount of inflammation in your body and you can do this by living a holistic healthy lifestyle. If you listen to episodes 2-15 of the Whole Guidance Podcast I go into detail about how to do this, but I will share a few quick and easy tips here on how to keep cortisol your stress hormone in check which will reduce the amount of stress and inflammation in your body.
First tip is to remove sugars and grains from your diet. Pasteurised dairy too if you’re really serious about keeping your cortisol levels balanced. Sugars and grains and highly treated dairy products are pro-inflammatory causing a lot of fire in your belly and in your body and also cause a lot of insulin to be secreted by your pancreas. By removing these foods from your diet for 21 days you can then try reintroducing them again to see how you feel and I bet you’ll notice a difference. With less insulin in your bloodstream your body’s metabolism will gradually shift from burning sugar and storing fat to not needing sugar and burning fat. Replace the sugars, grains, and dairy with more animal and fruit fats and oils.
Second tip is to get quality sleep. Now I said quality, not quantity and this means consistently going to bed before 11p and getting up around 6 or 7a for at least 21 days. This will reset your circadian clock and help restore your melatonin to its correct levels, low in the morning and high in the evening.
Third tip is to breathe deep diaphragmatic belly breaths through your nose. This helps keep your body in a rest, digest, calm, and connect state and so reduces your cortisol and increases your fat burning potential as well as your growth and sex hormone levels. Listen to episode 4 on how to practise proper breathing technique.
Fourth tip is to sprint more and cardio less. What I mean is that instead of doing 30 minute, 60 minute, or 2 hour long duration cardio sessions, why not try 4 minutes of high intensity interval training. H I I T or HIIT is where you go all out at 80-100% effort for 30 seconds and then rest for 90 seconds and repeat this seven more times. Timing isn’t set in concrete so you can go hard for 60 seconds and rest for 60-240 seconds if you wanted to. There’s no set rules. Find what works for you. You can do HIIT on a spin bike, sprinting up hills, or by performing exercises like burpees. Sprint training burns fewer calories during the exercise than long duration cardio does, but it produces a healthier hormonal profile after the exercise is completed meaning cortisol levels don’t stay elevated for long periods after a sprint session and your metabolism remains higher for longer periods after HIIT as well.
Fifth tip is to support your liver and gut health to ensure optimal conversion of your inactive T4 hormone into the more active T3 hormone making you a metabolism beast. Easiest way to support your liver is to reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals in your environment. You can do this by swapping out commercial home and personal care products for organic plant-based ones. Easiest way to support your digestive system is to eat real food. Real food is from Mother Nature. Anything from Father Industry I consider fake pretend food-like products and these will only create inflammation in your gut.
As Michael Pollan an author who writes about real food says:
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Sixth tip is to manage your self when it comes to stress. I did a whole podcast on how stress affects your health and how to identify and reframe your perspective on the stressors in your life so listen to that for more details. Also meditation and practising mindfulness and awareness is another way to move away from past regrets and future failures and to just be in the present moment. The more you can be ‘in the now man’ then the less you will be stressing about stuff in your head.
My seventh and final tip for reducing stress and inflammation and on how to best balance cortisol and all your other hormones is to get some smart sun exposure. Vitamin D is a powerful hormone that regulates over 1000 genes in your body and today about 70% of people living in western society are deficient in vitamin D and do not have enough of this health building hormone. You need to be exposing your skin to the sun on a regular basis to get the right amount of vitamin D, but of course you don’t want to get too much sun as too much of a good thing will burn you on the outside and cause fire and inflammation on the inside. I’ll talk more about smart sun exposure and vitamin D in the next podcast.
I’ll leave you with this final thought.
Throughout human history calories were never counted or measured in order to be healthy. Building muscle, reducing fat, achieving a happy mindset, all of these were and still are easily accessible to anyone living with balanced hormones without the need for calorie counting.
When you focus on the quantity of calories this will cause an imbalance in the quantity and quality of your hormones. So at the end of the day if you want quality hormones you must focus on quality calories.
To learn more about how calories really don’t matter read The Calorie Myth by Jonathan Bailor. This book lays out the science on how hormones beat out calories time and again for achieving the best health ever.
“Health is not a math equation.”
When your body is healthy, whole, and complete you’ll never have to think about calories ever again because health has always and will always be instinctively and innately and naturally easy.
Links and Resources
- WGP 004: How to Breathe for an Awesome Life
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
- The Calorie Myth — Jonathan Bailor
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In this podcast I’ll be exploring Supplements:
- I’ll explain why supplementing with vitamins and minerals is a necessity
- I’ll talk about some vitamins and minerals that you need on a daily basis
- I’ll give some supplement and food recommendations for these vital nutrients
- Finally I’ll share how you can lower your supplement requirements
CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN
Today human society of the western variety follow many practises that are not very beneficial to life on this planet. One of these practises is modern agriculture.
Way back in the day about a few generations ago farmers and growers did not need to use chemical fertilisers, man-made pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and other chemicals or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in order to grow plentiful and bountiful crops that were also packed full of nutrition. Farmers did not grow a single crop time after time on the same plot of land and soil, also known as a monoculture. Farmers did not grow and breed vegetables and fruit just so they could make them bigger and sweeter.
Today the way society practises farming leads to a lot of these agricultural chemicals leaching into the soil poisoning the microorganisms and worms needed to create a healthy soil. This sick topsoil that is depleted of vitamins and minerals creates sick plants, sick animals, and sick humans. Not only do the chemicals poison the soil, but they get into waterways and flow into local rivers and lakes and eventually hit the ocean creating more sickness and disease for sea life.
The vegetables and fruits of today have lost their medicinal properties and have less fibre and a lot more sugar. The bland iceberg lettuce and sweet supersized apple you’re eating today are not the same bitter and tart, smaller varieties your grandparents had in their day. Before agriculture you could actually gather lettuce that was quite bitter and full of plant nutrients that would act as medicine in the body. Today that bitterness and medicine has been lost due to the commercialisation of the food industry and also due to consumer demand. So it’s not all the producer’s fault as buyers over the years wanted bigger and sweeter tasting foods so society has to take some of the blame here for why food today does not have the same nutrition density and medicinal benefits as the foods of previous generations.
Not only is the food supply low on nutrition, but the environment is high in pollution. Industrial chemicals are being pumped into the air, land, and oceans all over the world every second of every day and the more toxins your body is exposed to the more work your innate detoxification system has to do and this detox process requires nutrients. So unless you live in a bubble your body is already working overtime to detoxify the chemicals you’re exposed to on a daily basis and this detox process is soaking up all the nutrients it can find within your body.
Another thing that soaks up a lot of nutrients in your body is stress. Whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional stress will drain your body of the nutrition it needs to thrive leaving you with a body that has barely enough to survive. The more physical stress your body is dealing with and the more perceived emotional and mental stress you believe yourself to be under then the higher your vitamin and mineral needs become.
So because it’ll take you a few heads of broccoli today to get the same nutrition from one single head of broccoli grown 100 years ago and due to the constant barrage of toxins your body is being exposed to and the increased amount of stress in modern life these all cause an increase in your nutrition requirements meaning that supplementing with vitamins and minerals and other vital nutrients is a necessity to achieve optimal health in this day and age.
Now with so many vitamin and mineral supplements on the market today where do you start or how do you know which to take?
Well I’ll talk about just a few vital nutrients I believe everyone should be supplementing with on a regular basis.
First up are probiotics. Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms that live on, in and throughout your entire body. Most of your probiotics live in your gut, your intestines. These little friendly single-celled organisms help maintain the health of not only your gut, but your whole bodymind. Your gut is where 80% of your immune cells live and your immune system needs probiotics in order to function properly so it’s crucial to keep your gut probiotic population in a happy and healthy state as a weakened immune system may eventually leads to many many diseases including cancer.
Next is magnesium. Now magnesium is required for over 300 chemical reactions in your body. Adenosine triphosphate or ATP is one of the energy molecules used by your cells and ATP needs to bind to magnesium for it to be used. During the replication of your DNA magnesium is needed by enzymes that make sure no errors or mutations occur and when there is a mutation these enzymes need magnesium to repair the damaged DNA. Damaged DNA is one cause of cancer. Magnesium is also needed to move calcium around the body and helps muscles to relax and work more efficiently making it the perfect mineral to support the health of your heart.
Probably the most important vitamin today, actually a hormone, is vitamin D. This hormone that we mainly get from the beautiful unconditionally loving sun regulates the expression of over 1000 different genes. Meaning vitamin D can turn on or off about 5% of your entire genetic code. That’s pretty powerful stuff. Vitamin D does so many things including helping the body to absorb calcium supporting bone mineralisation, boosts your immune system reducing cancer risk, reduces inflammation, and makes you feel good as it helps with converting the amino acid tryptophan into the feel-good neurotransmitter serotonin.
Alongside vitamin D I must mention vitamin K. There are many types of vitamin K and I’ll focus on K1 and K2. Vitamin K1 is responsible for helping your blood to clot properly. Vitamin K2 helps prevent the calcification of your arteries by activating proteins that will pull calcium out of blood vessels and arteries and bring it to the bone where vitamin D then does its job of helping calcium absorb into the bone.
Another vital nutrient is vitamin A. Now I’m not talking about beta-carotene found in the orange pigments of vegetables and fruits. I’m talking about real vitamin A found in animal fat. Vitamin A works synergistically with vitamins D and K2, meaning the beneficial effect of these three vital nutrients is multiplied to a whole new level when they combine and altogether they help ensure that calcium gets to your bones and not stick in your arteries. Not only is vitamin A needed for proper bone formation, but it’s also used in new cell formation and growth and development and so helps prevent birth defects, it’s required for healthy eyes, skin, and hair, for protein metabolism, and for the production of hormones.
Finally omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Now I’m not talking about the alpha-linoleic acid (ALA) that you get from plant foods. I’m talking about eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) that can only be found in animal fats. EPA and DHA are two critically important nutrients I highly recommend getting on a daily basis, preferably through food. EPA is needed for its anti-inflammatory properties and DHA is one of the building blocks of your brain cells.
Also the modern western diet is extremely high in pro-inflammatory omega-6 fats found in grains and industrial seed oils. Now I’m not going to argue that croissants, bagels, fried fish and chips don’t taste good, but the way these are made today is causing fire in your body, more inflammation. By consuming more omega-3 fats and lowering your omega-6 intake you can help calm the inflammation in your body. Remember Yin Yang where we never want to go too extreme on one thing or the other, but today most people are just eating far too many omega-6 fats which are highly Yang.
Alright so as far as my supplement recommendations go, I have already created a page outlining the brands and supplements that I recommend in the resources section of my website. So if you go to wholeguidance.com/supplements you will find the list of supplements I recommend there.
Now for the best food sources…
For probiotics you have to eat fermented foods. Fermented foods are foods that have been prepared in such a way that after they’ve been made they are chockfull of probiotics. Examples of fermented foods include:
- Fermented vegetables like sauerkraut and kimchi
- Kefir
- Aged cheeses
- Kombucha
- Lassi and
- Fermented soy such as miso, tempeh, and natto
As for magnesium you can’t go past 100% cacao. I’m not talking about your typical chocolate bar, I’m talking about the whole cacao bean or raw cacao nibs, which is the bean chopped up, and raw cacao powder. A chocolate bar that says 100% cacao with no other ingredients added would also work. Most people know that chlorophyll is the molecule that makes plants green and at the centre of that molecule is magnesium. So all your green leafy and cruciferous vegetables are full of magnesium. Pumpkin seeds are another great source of magnesium.
For vitamin D your skin being exposed to the sun during the middle of the day when the sun is high during the warmer months of the year, this is your best source of vitamin D. As far as food is concerned cod liver oil, fatty fish, mushrooms, free-range pasture-raised pork, full-fat dairy, and everybody’s favourite liver are your best food choices. I love eating free-range pork crackling that I bake at home. I can just taste that sunshiny goodness, mmm mmm.
Okay vitamin K. Vitamin K1 can be found in green vegetables. Vitamin K2 can be found in grass-fed free-range pasture-raised animal fats such as full-fat dairy and eggs. So if you were to put some quality butter on top of your organic green veges you’d be getting a one two combo of both vitamins K1 and K2. Natto is very high in K2, but also tastes like crap… so not my first choice for K2. Brie and Gouda cheeses are fantastic foods sources of K2 as well.
For vitamin A grass-fed free-range pasture-raised animal fats are the only way to go. So egg yolks, butter and heavy cream, as well as liver will be the best sources of vitamin A.
You will find EPA and DHA omega-3 fats in cold water fatty fish like salmon, herring, sardines, and mackerel. You can also get EPA and DHA in grass-fed full-fat dairy and meat products as well as free-range pasture-raised eggs.
Now one superfood I recommend that combines vitamins A, D, K2, and omega-3 fats into one potent product is fermented cod liver oil mixed with butter oil. You can find this in a pretty little package from a company called Green Pastures. I list this on my supplements page, but will also put a link up for it in the show notes for this episode. It doesn’t taste the best, but it does the best for your body.
Okay now there are a few things you can do to lower your nutrition requirements and therefore lower your need for supplements.
First is to eat real nutrient dense food. Earlier I spoke about how modern food practises have created nutrient poor foods. Well in order to get nutrient rich foods you need to buy local organically grown produce and local grass-fed, free-range, pasture-raised farmed meat. You want food that has not been treated with chemicals and that has not travelled over great distances losing its nutritional value along the way. You want food that has been grown and raised naturally in and on healthy soil that is full of microorganisms and worms and vitamins and minerals. So fresh local organic foods will be packed full of nutrients.
You can lower your nutrient needs by lowering your exposure to toxins and chemicals in your environment. I did a whole podcast on how to support your detoxification system and the big takeaway there was to swap out all your commercial home care and personal care products for organic plant-based ones. The less work your liver, kidneys, lungs, and lymphatic system have to do the more nutrients you will have for growth and repair processes.
Finally if you can manage yourself when it comes to perceiving stress in your life and learn how to not take every little thing so seriously you will be doing your body a huge favour. The less stress hormones running through your veins then the more nutrition your body will have available to do more of the growth and repair processes. Go back and listen to the podcast I did about managing yourself and stress for more information.
I’ll leave you with this thought. You cannot supplement your way out of a poor diet and unhappy lifestyle. So to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to taking supplements make sure that as you’re popping those vitamins and minerals that you’re also eating real food and living a happy and healthy holistic lifestyle.
As Linus Pauling a Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry says:
“I believe that you can, by taking some simple and inexpensive measures, lead a longer life and extend your years of well-being. My most important recommendation is that you take vitamins every day in optimum amounts to supplement the vitamins that you receive in your food.”
Not bad advice from a Nobel Prize winner.
Links and Resources
- Whole Guidance Supplements Resource
- Green Pasture’s Blue Ice Royal Butter Oil / Fermented Cod Liver Oil Blend
- WGP 012: How to Love Your Liver and Detox Your Life
- WGP 003: How Stress is Making You Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
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Change Your Brain, Change Your Life – Daniel G. Amen MD
(Buy from Amazon; Buy from The Book Depository)
In this completely revised and updated edition of the breakthrough bestseller, you’ll see scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures in your brain work. You’re not stuck with the brain you’re born with. Renowned neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen includes cutting-edge reseach and the latest surprising, effective “brain prescriptions” that can help heal your brain and change your life:
To quell anxiety and panic:
Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil
To fight depression:
Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)
To curb anger:
Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rage
To conquer impulsiveness and learn to focus:
Develop total focus with the One-Page Miracle
To stop obsessive worrying:
Follow the “get unstuck” writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links that may provide monetary compensation to help support the Whole Guidance Vision of Creating a Happy and Healthy Planet should you make a purchase. We very much appreciate and thank you for your support.