~ Written By Peter Twist
For a healthy fit body, it is better to eat a bit of crap food every day along with a lot of powerfully nutritious superfood than it is to eat no crap and all average, mediocre food. For a healthy home, we can keep our same routine but at the grocery store simply turn our head to the left and right to see and select natural green earth friendly cleaning products just down the aisle from the toxic chemicals we’ve been lacing our homes and earth with for years.
These are 2 of my Top 7 readily actionable changes we can make now, that come with the most potent positive changes to our health – affecting our cells, body composition, physical fitness, mindset, spirit, happiness while decreasing stress and strengthening disease prevention.
Define your own game plan, own it and operate outside the norm. The norm is not doing well. The norm is fat sick and depressed. Even young fit people are getting cancer and the government sadly recommends below average standards – this blog is for people more interested in exploring their best, yet in a long term sustainable way they can manage successfully for years.
In a world that can feel more out of control all the time and an overwhelming societal system that degrades the earth and harms our health, there is no better feeling than knowing simple secrets that allow us to own the process of feeding our health and fitness, to live a strong vibrant energized life.
I remind top achievers that “a leader of 1 a leader of many. You can’t lead one you can’t lead any”. We must be healthy and strong to lead others well – our business, our kids, our teammates.
While we wish government and big industry would focus on true proactive health that allows society to flourish and prevents sickness, changes TODAY can only happen under our own control. Here are 7 ways to powerfully step change your life now :
1. TOXIC HOUSEHOLD CLEANING PRODUCTS:
How is a clean home one laced with chemicals? I thought about this for years, worried about the complexities I would need to solve. It proved so easy I was embarrassed I delayed.
Crazy the thousands of chemicals few of us can pronounce that billions of us have washed down the drain into our water supplies just to clean our dishes, clothes, countertops, floors, sinks and toilets. It is unfathomable that someone actually approved that this was a good idea.
ALL I needed to do was go to the grocery shelf where I normally by such toxic products and omg just look a few feet to the left or right – and poof there were all the green products that clean all the same things in my home. Made of natural ingredients immensely kinder to the earth. There was no effort, no confusion that required tremendous study, no significant time investment – just making a different choice – in the same store. My path and schedule changed not at all, just the specific product selection. This is something you can do tomorrow! It is fully in your control.
2. FOOD SUPPLY:
The most powerful shift we can make that quickly upgrades our body, appearance, skin, health, fitness, mindset, energy while helping protect animals, water, soil and air is buying real whole healthful foods. This also invests in businesses who care to purvey healthy foods with sustainable practices, making such items more readily available at lower prices in the future.
Upgrading food quality is both simple and complex. It is also complex given the thousands of products and deceptive advertising and false labeling. However I have yet to find anyone of any age and education level who does not know an apple is healthier than a bag of Doritos, so lets stick with the basics and operate our home food inventory system based on very simple guardrails. When available and affordable, we will select foods which are:
√ Real whole living foods
√ Organic
√ Non GMO foods
√ Superfoods (nutrient dense)
√ Alkaline producing foods
√ Foods with no labels – they are what they already are.
3. Don’t eat average food. That is where the pitfall lays.
Being a “nutrition monk” would not be very fun nor sustainable. My taste buds and my fun meter desire pizza and a few cold beers to crush. In fact I eat some kind of crap food almost daily. But this is not an occasional cheat meal, its a way of life. But the crap I eat is a bit and the other food I consume, the bulk of my daily diet, is incredibly powerfully potently amazingly nutritious food.
Eat a lot of amazing real whole foods. A tiny bit of crap food. And no mediocre average food. Get coached on your game plan.
3. MEAT CONSUMPTION:
I have carnivore taste buds and Paleo is effective for lean muscular bodies but it is indisputable that less meat and more plant based diet is significantly better for the earth, our health, and more ethical given the mass torture in factory farms.
If you are not eating organic meat, you are using McDonald’s meat in your home based recipes that feed your family.
The suppliers who distribute meat manufactured inhumanely in order to scale the volume of production needed to bring per unit cost low enough fast food restaurants can advertise cheap burgers and deep fried chicken, deliver meat from the exact same factory farms to your grocery store where it is wrapped nice and pretty for your buying convenience. What you are buying is sick meat infused with antibiotics, hormones, fillers, chemicals, the meat highly stressed from animals tortured from birth to death.
To visualize, imagine 25 of us humans being born on an elevator in which we live until we are killed to harvest our meat. Would you be stressed living in such conditions and knowing you are to be killed? Healthy? Obviously not. Nor an ethical practice. The massive stress response in an animals body is something we consume, along with the drugs we force into them. Do you think those animal cells we chew up interacting inside our body with our cells feeds health or sickness?
Eat less meat.
Choose when possible organic meat.
Save yourself. Reduce factory farming profits and help providers of healthful food to flourish by selecting their goods. Net a positive impact on our water, soil, and air.
Despite my carnivor teeth, that was impossible to ignore.
Pircing and Budget: Given organic meat is more expensive today, I decided to cap my old meat buying budget, meaning the budget I allotted to purchasing meat remained unchanged, forcing me to buy less meat. That in of itself achieved positive change in my diet, I voted with my dollars for ethical farming, and bought into a system more sustainable for our earth.
4. TOXIC PEOPLE:
Do your friends gossip, complain, judge? Is your boss or coworkers incessantly negative? Has the intimate relationship you are accustomed to become less intimate and more cold, distant and abusive?
Given we have emotional ties, removing toxic oppressive drama-creating people from our lives is not usually a short term process. But make no mistake, negative energy and abusive relationships sap us and over the long haul can cause physical sickness in addition to the mental and emotional trauma.
Some people deal with people challenges by immersing in exercise but many overwork, drink, eat comfort food and have trouble sleeping. Toxic people suck energy, prevent us from having a peaceful mind of clear thought and creativity. The opportunity cost of toxic dynamics is measureable in all area sof our life, both in terms of productivity and personal happiness. One very bad situation often leads to bad choices and actions that layer more stress on the mind and body.
What is immediately actionable it to begin to associate with new positive people who boost your energy. Simple ways are taking on new hobbies or renewing old activities you have forgotten how passionate you are about. Participating in things you love and with new likeminded friends you meet who bring good energy strengthen you from within and together can spark your flame to make other positive changes in your life.
Make time in your life for new positive likeminded people who feed your spirit. Eventually there will be no room for the energy suckers.
5. THINK & LEAD WITH YOUR SOUL:
Easier said than done. Humans and the society we are asked to participate in is ego-led. Most of the negative self talk and artificial drama we create in our heads is from viewing our world from the ego’s eyes. Or celebrity culture and media influence is all ego based. The outcome has been stress, anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction, sadness, anger and apathy.
However, viewing our path with gratefulness and appreciation, awareness of our blessings, produces an immediate change to the levels of stress and peace inside our bodies.
Yet there is more. The majority of humans unfortunately lead infrequently with their soul, wide open authentically to the world. Many small talk their way through life and others are closed off. Many are forced to pretend, or so they think.
Most of us protect and save exposing our deepest soul until months and years into a relationship where we may finally open fully to one person. Wow. That’s too bad. Giving partially and presenting a rehearsed, protected, pretend version of ourselves to the world, mind busy with negative anxious chatter, robs us of potentially rich experiences that bring fulfillment and happiness.
Imagine if you could give openly of your true authentic self, where in even causal interactions with strangers they can feel your energy and be touched by your soul. Imagine further how that would step change how people receive you and interact with you. The exchange of warmer more open, genuine authentic real energy tremendously boosts health and happiness.
Don’t live beside life holding back or pretending. Be 100% yourself, lead with a kind soul, give generously of yourself, and enjoy the richest connections you’ve ever experienced in life.
From chatting with many openly generously soulful people, a constant is their past difficulties and immense challenge they had to overcome. If you feel you have had intense challenge, now is your opportunity to transform from that. The next step is shifting away from your common routine to spend a lot of time solo – what many are afraid to do. The more the better. For it is in self and the time to reflect and be yourself, that you can eventually leave the self chatter and ego behind once you learn to be happy by yourself just Being. Happiness lays within, you own it, and once you are happy and soulful, you can bring that to others, rather than needing other people to become happy which is situation-specific so only short term.
Just imagine leading all interactions with peace, happiness, and your wide open genuine soul – not only will the interaction be more fulfilling and genuine, your path will begin to attract and naturally connect with the most soulful kind people. Light attracts light. Become the light, you will soon have fewer toxic people around and will develop new friendships with similar people. As always, it starts with you.
6. MOVE, LIFT, EXERT:
It is human nature to find easier ways to do everything. Yet counterintuitive because what we don’t use today, we lose for tomorrow.
Exercise to the body is the medicine it needs and desires. Builds the physicality for a body that is mobile and strong, feeds health to the inside of your body, nourishes your spirit and is proven therapy for the mind. People joke but quite sincerely – exercise keeps the crazies away. True. It also helps prevent short term sickness, long term disease and keeps our human vehicle tuned up so we can say YES to participating in what we love.
Carry luggage versus rolling. Embrace the effort. Take stairs rather than the escalator. Carry grocery bags instead of pushing a cart. Squat deep every time you pick something up. Hold business meetings by walking and talking. LOOK for ways to use your body more, not less. Fitness is built by making small choices every minute every hour.
In the gym, while anything that gets someone moving is a good thing these days, I am sure you would agree, let me also stress that neural-predicated exercise overloading that stimulates adaptations not only to muscle strength, lowering body fat and increasing heart and lung capacity, but also, vitally, the software that operates your body including your brain and the millions of neural networks looping from the brain and spine into the rest of your body.
There are few qualified neural fitness coaches but when you can find a gym specializing in this, they will reboot your system and cause adaptations in your body from the inside out, netting great appearance on the outside and smarter software on the inside. Importantly, that rebooting may be a key to disease restoration, injury healing and add a layer of prevention to Alzheimer’s. I am opening “The New Medical Center” this fall combining functional exercise with functional medicine and functional foods. It will be a very forward thinking approach to healing and peak performance. All of my 10 gyms will adopt this model, yet today they already house the worlds top neural based coaches ready to step change what your future looks like.
7. YES, GET OUT IN NATURE:
Modern society is amazing and I love visiting international cities and soaking up the electric energy. Yet I doubt that noise, pollution, crowded sidewalks, pavement, concrete and constant bombardment of advertising are a formula for a healthy body and soul.
Get into nature. It is alive and feeds us energy. Is real, authentic and grounding. Brings peace. Quiets the mind. Restores the body.
Swim in lakes and oceans. Walk in forests. Hike in mountains. Bike, jog, or sit and mediate, read or just Be.
Even take a dumbell and exercise barefoot on your lawn for a few minutes.
Finding sanctuaries of nature accessible in your world avails time in outdoors on a regular basis that can become part of your workout routine and lifestyle.
This is so powerful, I use the mountains, rainforest and ocean as the classroom setting for small group leader mentorships that focus on mental and spiritual renewal in Vancouver up a beautiful fjord, and, am taking one group to Everest Base Camp in the fall for what is destined to be a life changing experience.
Daily bites inside the nature with annual all-you-can-eat-buffet approach to nature’s powerful impact.
Those are 7 recommendations of changes I made to “Protect Your House” that I was able to accomplish amidst 70 hour work weeks and single Dad parenting. I hope it helps you to clearly see the readily available options at our dispoal amidst the sickness economy clutter.
Good luck creating your own Game Plan. Soon it will become second nature to follow. You will be accustomed to these choices and see many healthy options standing out. Grab them.
