The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
– Thomas A. Edison
The rise in obesity isn’t due to a sudden prevalence of a fat gene.
It’s due to our lifestyles and the foods we eat.
There are some simple fixes.
- Chew your food
- Stop overeating
Doing the first helps with the second.
Wouldst thou enjoy a long life, a healthy body, and a vigorous mind, and be acquainted with the wonderful works of God, labor in the first place to bring thy appetite to reason.
Ben Franklin
The two rules above come from John Tilden’s 4 eating rules.
John Tilden wrote a book called Toxemia Explained in 1926. Like Paul and Patricia Bragg and many others, he believes all illness results from one cause: blockage in pipes in the body. Problems with digestion, assimilation, and elimination.
These problems come from how we eat.
John Tilden’s Eating Rules
You can completely change your approach to food by starting to follow John Tilden’s four rules of eating. They are not easy.
For example: Don’t feel well? Don’t eat. Animals follow this rule all the time. Humans have corrupted their natural instincts and as such we’re quite the unhealthy lot.
The practice of these rules, even if only for a percentage of the time, will have an incredibly transformative effect on your life and your health.
John Tilden Eating Rule #1
Never eat unless comfortable in mind and body from the previous meal or meal time.
John Tilden Eating Rule #2
Never eat without desire and keen relish for the plainest, simple food; and not even then if to do so would break the first rule.
John Tilden Eating Rule #3
Avoid overeating. The best way to do this is by following the fourth rule.
John Tilden Eating Rule #4
Thoroughly masticate and insalivate, especially starchy foods.
The daily salad
Caffeine, Alcohol, and Sugar
First, drop the soda. Soda is full of chemicals you don’t need, contains sugar or artificial derivatives thereof, subtracts health and vitality from your body, impairs food digestion, is addictive and therefore sabotages self-mastery, and is completely unnecessary.
So, if you’re getting your caffeine from soda, find another source. Like coffee or tea.
Caffeine is a drug. Just like alcohol, just like marijuana, just like cocaine. Sure, some drugs have worse effects than others. The need for caffeine is an addiction, addictions lower your consciousness, and inhibit your degree of self-mastery.
For many people, coffee is not just coffee. It becomes filled with sugar and artificial creamers. It becomes a dessert that is full of additional calories that you don’t need and your body will have to process. Your delicious coffee drinks might be the very thing that is causing your body to gain weight. Most likely it is just another indulgence that seems harmless, but is a silent saboteur.
Limit yourself to a cup a day, and find joy in that one cup. Add some cream—real cream, not fake stuff. Enjoy it, be grateful.
Weight loss: Be aware of anything you drink that has calories. Juices, coffees with added stuff, milk.
Check out all the labels of your favorite drinks and find out how many calories you are ingesting.
If you’re overweight, get rid of anything you drink that contains calories. Including alcohol. You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you persist in the habit of drinking your calories. It’s way too easy to over-consume in this manner.
Let’s talk about alcohol.
First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the drink, then the drink takes the man.
A lot of people drink too much of it. It causes problems in families, relationships, and communities.
It can also be very enjoyable when treated with respect.
Learn to treat your drugs with the respect they deserve and restrict and enjoy your intake.
This goes with sugar too.
It destroys your body. Makes your emotions swing wildly. Leaches the calcium from your teeth and bones.
Stop Snacking
A snack forces your body to direct vital energy to your stomach when your vital energy should be on the task at hand. Particularly if you are what is called an information worker or a mental worker.
You have only so much power. It makes sense to direct the majority of it to the activity that manifests money in your bank account. Discipline your hand, and prevent it from grabbing things and putting them in your mouth between your meals.
This is another obvious—yet difficult—thing for those who are overweight. Confine your eating to certain periods, eat according to Tilden’s rules, and lose the weight and the sickness in one fell swoop.
Also, unless you’re training heavily where you need to keep nourishment in your bloodstream, fasting between meals gives you an important break from eating and is a good time to hydrate.
Pay Attention When You’re Eating
If you’re eating and your nose starts running, pay attention and stop. Or if you’re eating and you get stuffed up, what were you eating?
You might have food allergies that if you paid attention while eating, you’d notice. Then you could eliminate those foods from your diets and enjoy more vitality.
The Food You Eat
You might think that if you’re eating meat and veggies you’re doing pretty good. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
At the time I write this, there are scores of food documentaries on Netflix that succinctly show the poor state of food in America. They pick on Big Agriculture, and it’s easy to do. We treat our animals abominably. If dogs and cats were being treated the way we treat chickens and cows, there would be an uproar. Animals raised in this manner do not produce high quality food–they produce low quality calories. These foods stuff us and make us feel full, but provide low nourishment.
Even the produce we eat is suspect. Soils are over-farmed and produce travels great distances to reach your grocery store. The difference between produce from the store and produce from my garden or the CSA I belong to is staggering. Produce from my garden fills me up. It’s fresh. Produce from teh grocery store can’t compete if it’s shipped long distances and has been picked prematurely. Sure, it’s better than eating junk food, but it’s not what it should be and as consumers we need to shop with our wallets.
In the Milwaukee, WI area Sendiks offers good quality meats. Outpost does, too. Outpost also has locally sourced produce. I try to do the bulk of my shopping at these places in addition to belonging to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and growing a garden.
The point is to question the quality of food you get from grocery stores because food is the nutrition that supports your life. Food is medicine. Food is life.
If you’re looking for something different, something quick and effective (who isn’t?!), something that will have a tonic effect on your body and provide all the benefits above, then I recommend you get yourself a kettlebell and start practicing the tremendously effective kettlebell exercises.
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