Happy Thanksgiving to All of My Readers

Readers Summary

1. I just wanted to show you some gratitude for sticking with the blog on this journey of understanding. Thanksgiving marks the anniversary of when I had my own rebirth.
2. When there seems to be no hope, dare to find some.
3. Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all of your hard work isn’t what you get for it, but what you become for it.
4. We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.
5. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.

In 2004, I decided I needed to make a change in my life for my health. I went to the library to study all I could about how food, health and disease all interacted. I spent close to two years in the medical school library re-educating myself. In 2006, right before Thanksgiving I decided to unleash what I had learned upon myself. At the time I was 6’2″, 357 pounds and not healthy. I stood in front of my family, and I told them that this Thanksgiving I was going to use the tradition of this holiday to be my springboard to a better way of life.

Most of them laughed at me. My wife did not because she saw how much time I had spent studying many areas of science to gain insights that heretofore had eluded me. So you might be asking yourself what did I do? I went back to a simple principle of just eating real food. I also made sure this real food was in season. I won’t bore you with all the details, but most of what I learned was that the fundamental laws of nature built into food dictated what was healthy and what was not. I stopped thinking about food as a metabolic fuel and began to realize food contained hormone information from the environment that I was living in. And that environment was quite toxic considering my weight.

I thought Thanksgiving would be the ideal traditional holiday to unleash my new ideas on me. After all, Thanksgiving is about sharing food from the harvest being prepared in a traditional way. So that year, I went to several farmers’ markets and farms and bought only natural food without any processing. If the food came prepackaged in the grocery store or was altered by mankind’s chemistry tricks, it did not make it into my grocery basket. If a food was not growing in my local area naturally according to what the farmers told me, I would not eat it. For example, in the gulf south right now, you cannot find a banana growing naturally. So therefore our biology says we should not eat it. If you do, the amount of fructose and sugar within it will cause your body to pay a biologic toll. That toll is generally not a good one for wellness. If you continue to make that error chronically over time, that toll becomes a disease. This principle is why food grows in seasons. It contains information from the sun and the local environment that our body and brain pays deep attention to.

I found when I followed these simple rules, my sleep improved dramatically. In fact, I began to go to bed much earlier than I had and slept quite well and more weight came off. Great sleep is vital to wellness (read more about quantum sleep in a recent blog). So you might be wondering how this plan all worked for me, that Thanksgiving in 2006. Well, in three months, I lost 77 pounds, and in one year, I lost 133 pounds. Today, almost a decade later, I am 215 pounds of wellness. It was not an easy journey. I have found, for me, it was the love of the chase for wellness that created the ride of the journey. I want to share that with all of you who are interested in wellness. I believe there are answers to our ills, but we must dig deep for them. Sometimes we have to look in places others do not.

Most people have convinced themselves it is not possible to change so they don’t have to put forth the effort to try.

Belief is the first step to transformation in any aspect of life.

This is why a mind without wisdom from books is like a body without a soul. Your decisions impact tomorrow so much, and every single person you inspire impacts the world more so. When you become involved in your health, you are going to impact at at least one mind, your own. This mind is going to go on to change so many more minds because your friends and family will watch you from a distance. You cannot see the world from somebody else’s point of view and not be changed. It’s a chain reaction and it starts with YOU.

This year, consider using Thanksgiving as your springboard for wellness. Take care of your dreams, or your fears will take care of them for you. Sometimes we focus so much on what we don’t have that we fail to see, appreciate and use what we do possess! God bless you and yours, and I hope you all have a great Thanskgiving.