7 REASONS FOR WORKOUT BURNOUT: THEN DO TAI CHI (ISSUE 125) April 15, 2014

By Diane Gold

How often do we get workout burnout and why do tai chi to avoid it or to fix it?

We are all about getting ourselves in shape, greedy to feel great and look spectacular. This is a good kind of greed because it keeps us healthy and our country flourishing. But, in my over 15 years of teaching martial arts (of which tai chi is one) and all my life watching people and their workouts, I have heard story after story about people’s workout history. There are only a few stories, even though we all, as individuals have our own.

1.  My Workout Is  Boring.

2.   I Feel Empty And Disconnected From Myself When My Workout Is Over.

3.   My Mind Is Not Relaxed  After My Workout.

4.   My Motivation Is Gone.

5.   My Muscles Are So Tight From Working Out, I Move Like A Robot.

6.   I Feel Totally Selfish When I I’m Finished.

7.   I Want A Workout That Builds Me Spiritually.

These reasons may sound familiar. We can give ourselves reasons to quit or continue.

 (1) If our activity doesn’t keep our attention, we quit. We usually are not taught the merits of follow through and perseverance, so we quit.

(2) If we don’t feel as if we have done something important, we quit. We usually don’t take the time to examine importance.

(3) If we are jittery and unrelaxed, we are forced to stop the behavior that’s causing it. We usually don’t know how to make the small adjustments needed to relax the situation.

(4) If we’re not motivated, we quit. Even if it’s one time, so often one missed session is enough to end the habit of working out.

(5) If our muscles are unnaturally tight, we may see it as counterproductive and quit. Most everyone has not been taught how to keep loose or to get loose.

(6) If we feel selfish, we may not like the feeling and we quit.

(7) If we see our workout as devoid of anything spiritual, we may feel plastic, unsubstantial and quit.

ENTER TAI CHI.

The art of tai chi is a system of movement that uses wave-like, circular patterns of moving the body, arms and legs. Its purpose is to connect everything that we do with the body with our mind and our spirit. It’s not a magic potion of movement; what it is is a very slow moving discipline that, because of its slowness, allows the mover to connect the movement to the mind. Its purpose is to teach the mind to act fluidly like the body movements. The physical moves are tools to connect us to ourselves.

Here’s something to think about. When I am doing tai chi, the speed at which I am moving allows me to focus my attention on my movement. The movement allows me to focus on only 1 thing. This focus allows me to follow each body part, 1 at a time. I can, as well, connect my motion with the heat and the balance of my body, the expansion and compression of my lungs, the flow of my blood, and the space in which my body exists. I am in moving, martial meditation.

Picture the adventure of a dandelion seed, using the fibers of the dandelion flower to keep it airborn, and it is whisked away by a fluid stream of the wind. The ride is smooth with no sudden movement other than what the airstream provides for it. This fluidity likens it to the journey of tai chi, where we learn to follow the line of movement of one body part from its beginning to its end which leads it into a new beginning of the next body part. This rolling rhythm that is tai chi allows us to translate our wave-like action of our body to our mind, reducing or removing jerky decisions, panic or despair.

And yet, the standard joke in tai chi is this:

“If tai chi is for the mind, why are my legs shaking?”

The true answer is that tai chi uses the body to teach the mind. And the shaking will pass. It’s only mild discomfort on which we are not focusing.

When people do tai chi, they move throughout the session. So tai chi has the advantage of allowing the blood to continue flowing throughout the session, permitting easy self-monitoring of the body so that there are no strains and there are enhanced respiration and circulation without any impingements from closing the body off in any way.

Further, tai chi works to relax every muscle, tendon and joint by teaching focus on one movement or body part at a time. Eventually, the goal is to move while looking at nothing at all. But that takes time.

The very nature of tai chi, that we move everything simultaneously, that we focus on one body part at a time, that we feel our blood moving around in our body and learn to picture the air that surrounds us makes it ideal for someone who is looking for something more. The blood’s moving is our life energy or chi that we hear so much about. The slowing down of movement, the reduction of thought to only one thing (and then “no” thing) and our being able to feel our chi moving up and down our bodies and limbs allows us to have a spiritual, meaning part of ourselves, experience. We know we are not doing traditional working out because we feel especially tuned in to our bodies and our own essence at the same time.

For those special reasons, tai chi helps us to avoid workout burnout. Tai chi is always new because the moves we do reflect the way we are in our lives on that particular day, and we are always feeling a physical connection to our feet, our hands, our bodies, our fronts, our backs and heads when we do it. We remember more as we train ourselves to notice more. The fact that we are able to establish a strong foundation for ourselves allows us to see others in a compassionate, even protective, way. This foundational root takes away the feeling that we are doing our workout just for ourselves, alone, since we start to become kinder and wiser the more we do it. The objection to our doing a selfish workout dissolves, and we evolve.

For all the reasons that we don’t burn out when we do tai chi, this old and sophisticated art offers solutions to people with a huge list of physical and emotional issues: memory disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease, muscle disorders, like Parkinson’s Disease, Anxiety Disorder, Chronic Organic Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), cardiovascular disease, balance disorders, diabetes and more. And it’s a martial art that teaches self-protection, one-pointed focus, stress-free living and how to maximize health.

ACTION STEP

Consider doing tai chi. The training teaches you to move every part of you at a time. It’s always new because your movements change with understanding.

Go HERE to begin the inquiry process.

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DIANE GOLD, PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She is excited to share some insight about workout burnout. She says,

“I have watched and experienced over and over the cycle of getting into a routine or habit and then, because of missing one instance of it, dissolving the routine for a new one. When we skip an activity or class once, we are beginning a new habit, that of feeling what it feels like to skip the activity and doing something else with that time. This starts the beginning fibers of a new routine which replaces going to the activity or class. When we skip the activity or class two times, it is sooooooo much easier to skip and put less importance in the third time and the fourth time. Pretty soon, the class is out of sight, out of mind; and we are on to the next routine.

“This is OK, as long as we know it is our choice and that is the right choice for us. If it is laziness, stop skipping, and get back to the original routine. And may the force be with you.”

LOW VITAMIN D LINKED TO DISEASE IN TWO BIG STUDIES (ISSUE 124)

by Diane Gold

NOTE FROM PUBLISHER

A version of this article appeared in The New York Times. Asterisks mark changes from original article.

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By Anahad O’Connor

New research has found that lower vitamin D levels were associated with illness, but didn’t show whether they were a cause.

People with low vitamin D levels are more likely to die from cancer and heart disease and to suffer from other illnesses, scientists reported in two large studies published on Tuesday.
The new research suggests strongly that blood levels of vitamin D are a good barometer of overall health. But it does not resolve the question of whether low levels are a cause of disease or simply an indicator of behaviors that contribute to poor health, like a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and a diet heavy in processed and unhealthful foods.

Nicknamed the sunshine nutrient, vitamin D is produced in the body when the skin is exposed to sunlight….* And blood levels of it can be lowered by smoking, obesity and inflammation.

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is an important part of the immune system. Receptors for the vitamin and related enzymes are found throughout cells and tissues of the body, suggesting it may be vital to many physiological functions, said Dr. Oscar H. Franco, a professor of preventive medicine at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and an author of one of the new studies, which appeared in the journal BMJ [April 1, 2014.]*

“It has effects at the genetic level, and it affects cardiovascular health and bone health,” he said. “There are different hypotheses for the factors that vitamin D regulates, from genes to inflammation. That’s the reason vitamin D seems so promising.”

The two studies were meta-analyses that included data on more than a million people. They included observational findings on the relationship between disease and blood levels of vitamin D. The researchers also reviewed evidence from randomized controlled trials — the gold standard in scientific research — that assessed whether taking vitamin D daily was beneficial.

Dr. Franco and his co-authors — a team of scientists at Harvard, Oxford and other universities — found persuasive evidence that vitamin D protects against major diseases. Adults with lower levels of the vitamin in their systems had a 35 percent increased risk of death from heart disease, 14 percent greater likelihood of death from cancer, and a greater mortality risk overall.

When the researchers looked at supplement use, they found no benefit to taking vitamin D2. But middle-aged and older adults who took another form, vitamin D3 …* produced in response to sunlight — had an 11 percent reduction in mortality from all causes, compared to adults who did not. In the United States and Europe, it is estimated that more than two-thirds of the population is deficient in vitamin D. In their paper, Dr. Franco and his colleagues calculated that roughly 13 percent of all deaths in the United States, and 9 percent in Europe, could be attributed to low vitamin D levels.

“We are talking about a large part of the population being affected by this,” he said. “Vitamin D could be a good route to prevent mortality from cardiovascular disease and other causes of mortality.”

In the second study, also published in BMJ, a team of researchers at Stanford and several universities in Europe presented a more nuanced view of vitamin D.

They concluded there was “suggestive evidence” that high vitamin D levels protect against diabetes, stroke, hypertension and a host of other illnesses. But they also said there was no “highly convincing” evidence that vitamin D pills affected any of the outcomes they examined.

“Based on what we found, we cannot recommend widespread supplementation,” said Evropi Theodoratou, an author of the study and research fellow at the Center for Population Health Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. The second study also looked at bone health. While Vitamin D had long been believed to help prevent osteoporosis fractures from falls, clinical trials in recent years have challenged the idea. The study also found no evidence to support that assumption.

“Vitamin D might not be as essential as previously thought in maintaining bone mineral density,” Dr. Theodoratou and her colleagues wrote.

Dr. Theodoratou was not alone in suggesting people hold off on taking vitamin D supplements for now. Even though Dr. Franco found them to be beneficial, he said that more research was needed to show what levels are best. Instead of taking pills, people could improve their vitamin D levels with an adequate diet and 30 minutes of sunlight twice a week, he said.

“The most important factors in obtaining vitamin D are going out and doing some exercise and following a healthy diet,” he added.

And in an editorial that accompanied the studies in BMJ, Paul Welsh and Dr. Naveed Sattar of the British Heart Foundation’s Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Center pointed out that previous research “extolled the virtues of antioxidant vitamins only for major trials of vitamins E and C and beta carotene to show null, or even some harmful, effects of supplementation.”

They said vitamin D pills should not be recommended widely until clinical trials that are underway shed more light on the benefits and potential side effects.

But Duffy MacKay, a spokesman for the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a supplement industry trade group, said that vitamin D is not easily obtained through food alone, and noted that exposure to sunlight has its dangers.

He said he agreed with Dr. Franco that more research was needed to identify “an optimal dose and duration” of vitamin D.

“But there is enough positive research currently to indicate that people should be supplementing with vitamin D for a variety of positive health outcomes,” he added.

CONCLUSION FROM PUBLISHER

Although there are many studies with conflicting opinions about vitamin D levels and disease or supplementation and absorption, we must be open enough to change our minds when we get new information. This goes for all topics.

We can hear the debate and decide for ourselves whether the studies we hear about were stringent enough, had enough participants, were controlled by pharmaceutical industry purpose and measured what they set out to measure. This will lead us to better understanding of vitamin D and how it affects our health.

ACTION STEP

Spend some active time outside where it is bright. If you’re not used to the sun, take it slowly. 10 minutes several times a week is a great beginning amount of time. Sunscreen is known to block vitamin D absorption, so 5 minutes at a time works if you are very fair skinned.

This article has been edited. You can see the original at The New York Times Wellness Blog, Anahad O’Connor, April 1, 2014.

Anahad O’Connor is a staff writer for The New York Times as well as an author and avid investigative journalist. See more about him on our Experts page.

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DIANE GOLD, PUBLISHER AND AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She always enjoys new information about science and the science of nutrition. She says,

“Be diligent in your search for eating well. How we treat our bodies matters. Read a lot so that the mind stays open to varying opinions. Believe many, rather than following the first thing you hear. Discuss what you read and share the knowledge you have. Enjoy it when the information changes.”

IGNORING CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN HEALTH CARE: THE HABIT (ISSUE 123)

By Diane Gold

Health Care means taking care of our bodies, minds and spirits. We do it in many ways: through eating food that nourishes us, doing great exercise, connecting with friends and family, being creative and productive, giving ourselves daily relaxation and getting good rest.

In all sectors that touch upon health care, there are conflicts of interest. We have the habit of ignoring them. In order to do research, we need money, so we sell products. These products may be less than perfect to save money and to make more. In order to live well, some of us may create partnerships and agree to job restrictions we never would have if we didn’t need the money. These are compromises. We all have made one. These are not unethical moves, in themselves. Ignoring the huge conflicts of interest that develop because of them is. Not making this disharmony common knowledge is!

HERE ARE SOME OF THE LARGE ACTORS OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN HEALTH CARE!

PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES

Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of selling drugs. They are so strong that their global marketing messages lead people to become dependent upon drugs rather than interdependent upon a health care system that includes drugs as medicine. Since non-pharmaceutical cures for illnesses can reduce the profit to big pharma, the pomp and circumstance of big pharma overshadows preventive or non-drug therapies that treat or remove illnesses.

Drug companies don’t publish all their negative results so that they will have higher marks with the FDA; this event endangers health.

Drug companies pay for a great deal of research in medical schools. The results of these studies are privy to the drug company. Not that drug companies set out to change data, but the access they have may urge them to present the result in their favor.

Drug companies pay for doctor’s continuing education. Although doctors are not required to use the sponsoring company’s products, studies have shown that even the most ethical doctors are swayed by the sponsoring drug company.

HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES

 Health insurance companies are another sector that creates conflicts of interest. The cost of insurance-reimbursable health care is so high that these companies foster the habit that they are the only way and that they are required. True, I would not want to be without health care as an almost 65-year-old citizen, but I do want to honor these comments from Jon Raymond, founder of Out In The Streets Films, from his article The Sadism Of American Health Care,

•    Insurance is not healthcare.
•    Insurance is premiums and co-pays
•    Insurance companies are known to deny claims for expensive catastrophic conditions, such as cancer treatment.
•    61% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt.
•    Many people in debt had insurance when they first got sick, but claims were denied.
•    There are no regulations to require insurance companies to honor claims, or to regulate premiums.
•    Cancer is a multi-trillion dollar annual industry
•    Most all processed food outlets and chain restaurants sell carcinogenic foods.
•    Good food, such as organic food, is more expensive than bad food.
•    Health care costs are multiple times higher for the insured than the uninsured.

Because many government healthcare providers require that we have no assets or less than $2000 per month in assets, many middle class-ers are not willing to sell everything we have and go with no insurance so that, when we have a catastrophic illness, we can use government funding. Which is a great reason why the Affordable Care Act asks that we all have insurance of some kind.

There are multiple conflicts when it comes to insurance. When we go to doctors of our choice, they may cost more or not be part of our insurance carrier’s group. In order for doctors to be part of an insurance network, they have to reduce the amount they are willing to be paid. If they stay off the network, they don’t get all that free advertising that comes as part of a network.

DOCTORS

Our doctors may be promoting a drug or treatment protocol so that they receive a bonus or good connection from a drug company or an insurance company. Most doctors will not promote what they don’t believe in; however their discussion of drugs from a company that favors them they give their patients urges other doctors to do the same, benefiting the original prescriber and the drug company. If the drug could have been replaced with exercise or good food, this non-drug strategy gets lost in the shadows.

HOSPITALS

Hospitals may charge extra amounts of money for insured patients because they know they will get reimbursed by insurance companies and not have to go to collection companies to collect their accounts receivable. Over-prescription of procedures has been found in hospital studies just to receive the insurance reimbursement. These factors increase health care costs.

MAJOR CORPORATIONS AND MIND/BODY SCIENCE

Most major corporations don’t get paid if they don’t have a product. So their research and development scientists rarely work on proving how mind/body workouts improve health. Corporations do make significant donations to companies for the greater good, but hardly ever in the sector that could reduce their own profit by our learning health care that didn’t involve a purchase. Therefore, we can’t depend upon scientists to do research to prove how exercise and mind techniques enhance and fix health, unless they are independently wealthy or want to do it on the side.

The fact that there is no scientific method study of mind/body work only means no one did the study, because there was no monetization from its positive outcome on the other end. Since marketing is everything, even when massive breakthroughs in medicine are realized; if there’s no product for capitalization or delicious marketing budget to publicize it, the public doesn’t get the information en masse; so research on the technologies of tai chi, meditation, yoga get neglected as to how they affect disease.

LUDICROUS TANGENT

The other day, I saw a headline in The New York Times that mentioned how science had just proven the effectiveness of some mind/body technique. I burst out laughing because it seemed odd to me that a sophisticated newspaper in the year 2014 would headline a strategy that has been in glorious use for 5000 years as if it had just been discovered. Ludicrous!

MEAT AND DAIRY INDUSTRIES

The meat and dairy industries sell meat and dairy. So, naturally, they would not want to do studies proving that animal-based nutrition is bad for our health. Further, they would want to word their product descriptions in ways that the layperson would understand as,

“This product is good for your health.”

The perils of animal product in heart disease are becoming a more popular fad. We know that social proof(seeing lots of other people do the same thing) drives us to make that same decision. Therefore, plant-based nutrition is becoming more popular, in part because more voices are speaking out about it, including doctors and scientists, and, in part, because those voices who have been speaking out for years are being heard. Plus, the very youngest children are learning about the perils of meat and dairy at very early ages.

But, the more people learn about the benefits of plant-based nutrition, the more lobbyists the meat and dairy industries hire; and the more Congressional deals are there for the taking.

We might also consider the ethics of raising animals for slaughter, or, in the case of dairy cows, shortening their lives by 80% as long as cows who do not get milked by machine on a dairy farm or traumatizing pigs in tiny cages.

OTHER FOOD INDUSTRY COMPANIES

The food industry is out to sell its products. Companies that make all the products in the middle of the supermarket – those in boxes or packages – test their food to be safe. The safety requirement measures how a food affects a living animal or human on a short term basis.

QUESTION

Why would government regulators allow possible carcinogenic ingredients in our foods?

ANSWER

Many ingredients are questionably carcinogenic, meaning there is inconclusive evidence about these ingredients. It took 50 years for us to realize the perils of certain pesticides.

FDA

FDA regulators are friends with food manufacturers as well as big pharma. If they allow certain ingredients or substances to be approved for production, they are racking up points with these companies to become consultants at a later date. Kind of like, I’ll scratch your back now, so will you give me a consulting job in 5 years?

My solution is that one stipulation for every FDA and government regulator be that each is not permitted to consult or CEO for any company that has to do with food or drugs.

PESTICIDE AND GENETIC MODIFICATION COMPANIES

As with meat and dairy, the agribusiness companies that assist farm food to market make huge profits from the produce that is sold. This means that the production and promotion of pesticides and genetic modification have an opportunity for big profits, which is great, if we need the pesticides and if genetic modification is safe, since capitalism is good. However, powerful groups control this sector and may promote the use of pesticides that are not needed and genetically modify seeds/foods that have not been proven safe. Don’t we want our food proven safe beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than not yet proven harmful by all testing?

The conflict comes when we are harming our health for the sake of profit.

MEDIA

Finally, although there are conflicts in finance and natural resource manufacturing, too, we will close with media conflicts. Journalists have to omit some news. They report what their corporate heads allow, which often coincides with the voices of their advertisers.

FACT

Did you know there are only a few (6 or 7, depending upon whom you ask) major news companies? This means that the voice of media is controlled by a few men (yes, each CEO of these companies is a man).

CONCLUSION

For many industries, there are opportunities for conflicts with health care. The fact that they exist does not mean that we are doomed. It means we would do well to take it upon ourselves to be aware that they exist. The above categories are the major sectors that can conflict with our health care. There are more. Greed can make us lose our way. Power can do the same.

It is our responsibility as ethical humans to understand that we all form habits, habits of greed, power, consumption. It is not the fault of an industry to want to make money. Profit is healthy. It drives human productivity and discovery. It is not the fault of good human beings to be paralyzed by what these situations bring.

Instead, these conflicts of interest in health care are huge opportunities for us methodically to recognize them, discuss how they can compromise our well-being and sprout new solutions that will complement and balance out the wrongs. If we see what some people call greed mechanisms and others call capitalism, we can decide to devote our time to educate others. For some of us, this is a duty. For others, we can pass this article on just to one person.

Knowledge and awareness are power. Let’s no longer ignore the conflicts of interest in health care. They are real and are part of the human network.

ACTION STEP ONE

Know the conflicts of interest in health care, and eat well. Consider how funding drives decisions for all of us. Know that all our industries, factory farmers, health insurers, medical personnel and facilities, our research companies, government regulators are run by profit. And all the sectors fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Think about it. If I do you a favor, according to scientific studies, you will unconsciously be more amenable to doing me a favor. If we all do each other favors, our impartiality has a strong chance of being compromised, no matter how objective and unbiased we say we are.

So, we must trust that the news is written so that advertisers are happy. Drugs are regulated so that drug companies who donate doctor education, academic research funding, and money to all who promote them, are happy. Academia likes companies who give. Doctors and hospitals are bound by insurance companies. The world of marketing creates stories about food and health for profit so that we buy more pharmaceuticals, meat, dairy, GMO seeds, pesticides and addictive sugar products.

ACTION STEP TWO

Now that we know, we can pass it on by having a discussion about it with, at least, 1 person.
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FEEDBACK

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at WarriorsOfWeight on Facebook.

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Thanks.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She loves to facilitate learning. She says,

“As long as we are breathing, doomsday is not here. If we see conflicts running through the fabric of our societies, this is a great discovery and a wonderful chance for change. Aside from educating others, it is motivating for me to create some different infrastructure. By ignoring the conflicts of interest among all the different sectors, we put aside our great gift to help fix society.

“And that’s OK, except we might be really good at it. So, let’s take the opportunity to create new pathways around these conflicts and excel. The relationships that cause the conflicts of interest will not be changing slowly. Therefore, let’s get started by walking around them.”

THE HABIT OF PEACEFUL CONFLICT RESOLUTION  (ISSUE 122)

By Diane Gold

I have been considering the idea of the habit of peaceful conflict resolution and how it affects world peace. This kind of thinking comes from deliberating about the anger and hate that lead us to vengeance, jealousy and greed. I am always examining new ways of conflict resolution and looking at how our reactions to these fight or flight emotions can be tempered.

Are we uncontrollable animals who need revenge to survive, or are we civilized beings who can calmly resolve our differences without annihilating each other if someone steps on our prideful ego in some way? The microcosm, meaning conflict resolution between two individuals, mirrors the macrocosm, meaning conflict resolution, country to country. And vice versa. As we work it out individually, we can work it out globally. As I see it.

This leads us to the “habits vs. instincts” discussion.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HABITS AND INSTINCTS

I have been searching for the words that define the difference between habits and instincts. Here’s a quote from the differencebetween website which had a brilliant and superlatively simple way of putting it,

“Habit is a fixed tendency or pattern of behavior that is often repeated and is acquired by one’s own experience or by one’s own learning, whereas an instinct tends to be similar in nature to habit, but it is acquired naturally without any formal training, instruction or personal experience.”

What makes the above quote a great definition is that Charles Darwin alludes to something similar in his Origin of the Species as did his predecessor, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 500 years before Darwin. They both arrived at the idea that traits can be passed down generationally even if they are acquired through acquired training of the previous generations. Another way of saying this would be that the offspring of parents who are trained in a certain behavior are born with the behavior and no previous training in the future generations.

For example, if it became necessary for all of us to swim a lot to survive well, we, primates, might, in generations to come, be born with the ability to swim without being taught.

We can look at the domestication of one or two wolf species. The domesticated wolf became the dog, according to James Serpell, professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Vet Medicine in his 1995 The Domestic Dog. Through teaching the wolf pup of the wild wolf to be calm, gentle and social with humans; the offspring of the tamed wolf pups began to exhibit the gentler traits at birth, without any training.

HABITS AND EVOLUTION

So, the way of our evolution has to do with the training we are given which, if ingrained in us well, can be passed down to our offspring or to their future generations from birth. What could exist is our own domestication, cultivating the habit of peaceful coexistence.

We are no longer savagely beating each other for food, land, shelter. We are civilized society. Unless someone takes our food, land, shelter. Then our survival instinct comes into play, and we become original savages. We create laws to temper our survival instincts. Good. This is civilized. But isn’t our penal system based on vengeance and our forgiveness based on remorse?

Example 1: When someone commits, some of us say an eye for an eye.

Example 2: When someone commits a crime and shows no remorse, we want to penalize that person with the maximum sentence. When the same person with the same crime shows remorse, we show leniency, and it is easier for us to feel for this person as a human being and forgive. Those of us who can forgive the non-remorseful who laugh at the pain they have caused have developed inner wisdom. I aspire to that, although I am far, far away.

CULTIVATING THE HABIT OF WORLD PEACE

The point here is if we start role playing peaceful solutions to different circumstances when we are young, we will be very experienced at conflict resolution by the time we reach 25 when our voices can help run the world. We will recognize human rights violations and know how to use our voices against them using our peaceful methods. This means we may be interested in letting go of our old ways.

We know that repetition develops a habit. So, if we continually come up with solutions using peaceful methods, we eventually will develop the peace habit. If we then cause peace to happen due to solution-based strategies rather than problem-centric ones, several generations down the line can be born with the peace gene more inherent than ever before.

CONCLUSION

Educating our young is the way to world peace. Changing ourselves is another way, but this may the hardest of all endeavors. The subject of peace must be added to the worldwide curricula, not for one unit in fourth grade, but every day and week of every year through graduation. If we begin the process today to regularly replace our own fight or flight emotions when we are not really in danger of losing our lives, future generations have the chance to be born with more tempered spirits. Instead of keeping our eyes closed, we can see that cultivating the habit of peaceful conflict resolution is our responsibility. We can make an effort to balance ourselves; we can also volunteer to teach the way to do this.

Becoming involved in educating about peace is worth everyone’s time. Make some.

ACTION STEPS

1)   NEIGHBOR A TAKES NEIGHBOR B’S LAND

a)   Gather a group of 5 family members, friends or associates.

b)   Agree to do an exercise where none of you will be speak or act disrespectfully or raise her voice.

c)   Agree to speak about your emotions during the exercise.

d)   Put names on individual pieces of paper, and put papers in a top hat or bag. Draw two names out without looking to see whose turn it is.

e)   Neighbor A will be the aggressor neighbor, and neighbor B will be the neighbor upon whom aggression is taken.

f)   Neighbor A takes 25% of Neighbor B’s land. The town in which they live has given jurisdiction to the individuals to work out their own issues, so there is no town board to intervene. Both Neighbors A & B say their ancestors owned the land.

g)  Neighbor B will come up with one possible peaceful solution to this issue.

2)   NEIGHBOR B TAKES NEIGHBOR A’s LAND

Follow all steps a) through g), but reverse roles.

3)   EACH OBSERVER COMMENTS ON THE METHOD USED TO SOLVE THE ISSUE

4)   DO THIS ONCE A WEEK WITH FAMILY AND AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH WITH FRIENDS OR ASSOCIATES.

5)   PASS IT ON TO MORE GROUPS.

___

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She is concerned with the peace of the world and believes educating youth at an early age holds the key. She says,

“We defend ourselves for no apparent reason other than soothing our egos. And we are encouraged to do so. This behavior perpetuates the war mentality.

“Consider that if we could tame ourselves, we could create world peace. Isn’t it worth it to learn peaceful conflict resolution? Isn’t it worth it to teach it early?

“It starts with each of us individually. We may even begin our personal journey by teaching the peaceful way to our young ones. Through our teaching, we will learn.”

HOW SLOUCHING DESTROYS HEALTH (ISSUE 121)

By Diane Gold

Slouching destroys health. It may stop our breathing, but it can certainly compromise our power and our vitality. Not only do we compress the spine when we slouch, but we limit our respiration and cause our body to atrophy . We don’t usually think about these events, but they are obvious when we do.

Shoulders over the hips is the proper alignment for standing or sitting. This can also be done for people who spend their days in bed, with a small alignment trick below.

HEALTH AND SLOUCHING

One of the ways we stay healthy is to pump lots of fresh oxygen into our systems. The cleaner the air, the better off we are. The freer the airway is, the easier it is for it to flow.

Think about what happens when we have unwanted mucous in our body. We have difficulty breathing. This is because our airway is blocked.

Or think about when someone falls on top of us in gym class or martial arts training; we have a hard time breathing because our lungs get compressed and our oxygen level is restricted.

The same thing happens when we slouch: we restrict our own airway. It does take some effort to hold the torso up without slouching, but our bodies will thank us for the unbounded occasion to suck up oxygen with no obstructions.

MISSING THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK THAT BODY

Every time we are standing or sitting, or even lying down; we have the opportunity to work the abdominal muscles to hold the torso straight. Every time we don’t use this chance, it goes away.

It feels really good to have strong abs. They can do amazing things. Strong abs allow for a great life and great digestion, too.

We also have the chance to learn how to relax our chins, necks and shoulders with good posture. This, too, goes away if we don’t grab the moment.

PERPETUATING THE HABIT

When we keep slouching, we get used to it and it becomes normal. Unless we take a good long look, there are probably 5 times a day we slouch without noticing it: tidying up, cooking, working, driving, sitting on the toilet are some examples. We know that we develop a habit from a cue. The cue is the urge to relax or the urge to rest. What could possibly be wrong with letting the shoulders go while we are cooking? Isn’t this activity supposed to be mellow and fun?

Carving out relaxation time is crucially important. It doesn’t mean we have to slouch. After the cue, (wanting to relax) we do a behavior (letting the abs, shoulders and butt go out of alignment) that brings us the reward of ending the work it takes to stand, sit or keep the bones aligned. If repeated, this becomes the norm. Thus, we habitually slouch. Until we replace this behavior.

ACTION STEPS

1) USING THE LEGS

When we look at daily activities that require us to carry weight, we have to use our legs to take the pressure off our backs and our knees. Take vacuuming, sweeping, carrying out the recycling bin. These tasks require us to exert effort. When we bend the knees to engage the legs, we can do the pushing, pulling, carrying without compromising our spine. When an object is fairly bulky or awkward, it’s important to use some type of leverage (bent knees, a wagon, a dolly or a partner to avoid slouching the back during this enterprise.

2) USING THE ABS

Funny as it may sound, using the abdominal plate to hold the back erect is the easiest way to insure a healthy posture. This would mean this set of muscles has to be strong enough to endure the weight of the undertaking.

The labor can be as gentle as standing at the mirror to brush our teeth.

I bring this one up because several times this year, I have looked at my posture while grooming my teeth; it was in need of correction. Either my shoulders were slumped, I was leaning over the sink with an out of alignment back or I relaxed my abdominal muscles enough to slouch.

The action step is to notice yourself at tooth brushing time, and get the shoulders over the hips while you brush, floss and tongue brush.

3) TUCKING THE BUTT

So often, when people hear,

“Tuck the butt,”

they tuck the hips forward (which is correct), and they compromise the spine (obviously not correct). The purpose of this butt adjustment is to take the pressure off the joints and the back and place it on the bones which were built to do the heavy lifting (pun intended).

Standing in line is the perfect place to tuck your butt. Since we have decided to stand in this line, rarer and rarer with online banking, taxes and government paperwork;  we can use this instance to work on our slouching habit by changing our behavior. It takes just as much effort to stand straight as to slouch, even though we think the opposite; so we might as well maximize our own energy by aligning the body.

Large-chested women will find this particularly helpful as they have the challenge of not leaning too far back or forward to compensate for the weight of the chest.

The action step are these:

a)   While standing, feel like a soldier by rotating the belly button forward at the same time as tucking the butt so that the body is in a straight line. If you have strong abs, it’s OK if the torso is slightly forward of the hips.

b)   While sitting in your chair or on the couch (or sitting up in bed), tuck the butt so that the lower back presses against the lower back of the chair or couch. If this leaves space between the upper back and the chair or couch back, place a pillow there so that the center of the shoulders stay over the center of the hips.

If you are seated on a seat with no back, tuck the butt in the same way and use the abs to hold the shoulders over the hips with straight back.

c)   Especially for people who spend most of their time in bed, tuck the butt while lying down. Press the lower back into the bed. If possible, and for best leverage until you have rock solid abs, bend the knees  upward with feet flat on the bed.

CONCLUSION

 Slouching is insidious. It pops into our lives when we least expect and becomes normal unless we manage and fix it. When we are younger, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, except that the earlier on we make our move, the earlier we will develop the habit of an aligned body.

We need our breathing for health, so let’s help it out. We need to train our bones, muscles and tendons to keep us straight.

We feel better when our bodies are in line. There’s no time like the present to make slouching a thing of the past in our lives.
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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

If she knows one thing better than anything else, it might be how to align the body for maximize health. She says,

“We have lots of time to live and make changes. Our lives will power up once we pay attention to body alignment. It’s as if someone turns a switch on the world; but we have done it. That’s how important posture is.

“It’s climactic. Replacing slouching helps our health. It is poignant. It’s like lighting up our lives because we let in more oxygen when we sit and stand well.

“Do it once. Then do it again. Keep on going.It’s good for all of us and makes us strong.”

THE HABIT OF EATING MEAT MAY BE HURTING US (AND OUR WORLD) (ISSUE 120)

By Diane Gold

The habit of eating meat is passed down from one generation to another, in most societies. Throughout the years, a symbol of abundance has become the finest steak dinner, so much so that, at one point, the overproduction of uric acid crystals between the joints known as gout, got the nickname “disease of the rich” because wealth often meant increased intake of animal proteins.

What is now becoming common knowledge, or is such to the Millenial generation and after, is that hunger and thirst could be contained if we increased our plant-based nutrition consumption; we could reduce many chronic diseases if we reduced or removed meat from our diet; our water footprint to farm livestock for food is sending the world economies on a downward spiral of water emergencies; especially in the latest generation, people are questioning whether it is ethical to eat meat (which could includes but is not limited to beef, pork, lamb, chicken, fish, bees).

This article looks at this global habit in relation to agribusiness, the pharmaceutical industry and education.

HUNGER

What would happen if the money spent on livestock feed were spent on growing extra food for people who needed food?

According to PETA:

1) Using an acre of land to raise cattle for slaughter produces 20 pounds of meat. This same acre could produce 365 pounds of soybeans, 17 times more food.

2) The resource to produce 1 pound of meat would produce 13 pounds of grain. That would feed an entire community, rather than 1 family.

3) This year, 7100 children will die from a hunger-related disease per day. That’s 2.6 million for the year. We can help hunger by replacing our meat habit with some form of plant-based nutrition.

HEALTH

1) ANTIBIOTICS

The use of antibiotics in livestock production has created highly resistant strains of bacteria (super bugs) which pass by touch to workers, from water supply contaminated by infected animal feces and from uncooked infected meat.

Because of the power of the food and pharmaceutical industries, the Food And Drug Administration (FDA), unlike the European Union, has never banned antibiotic use in animal production. It did, however, implement a regulation that asked the farm industry voluntarily to phase out the use of certain antibiotics.

For those not calculating, if antibiotics are used in animal feed, the drug companies get paid for their drugs and farmers get to fatten up their livestock more quickly from the antibiotics so they reduce feeding expense. This translates to a less healthy environment, chemically altered food and reduced health.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is important to note that most super bugs that affect humans are obtained from overuse of antibiotics in humans.

2) PLANT-BASED NUTRITION

There is much evidence that plant-based eating reduces obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol. Therefore, what about replacing the meat habit with plant-based foods for health and environment?

Check out more interesting facts here: http://warriorsofweight.com/6-great-reasons-for-plant-based-nutrition.

WATER FOOTPRINT

The statistics around the amount of water used to produce food are so unreliable since circumstances are always changing and it is a very tricky subject. It is true that the amount of water used for vegetables and livestock vary from one measure to another.

To produce 1 head of broccoli, 5.4 gallons of water are needed.

To produce 1 tomato, 3 gallons are needed.

According to the journal, Ecosystems, a study by M. Mekonnen and A. Hoekstra from U of Twente, Netherlands, beef uses 4 million gallons of water per ton. That means just under 40,000 gallons for a pound of meat. To break it down further, the study looked at the amount of “blue” water used. For veggies, 5.6 gallons of blue water is used to produce a pound. 20 gallons is used to produce a pound of fruit. And about 72 gallons are used to produce a pound of beef. These figures vary greatly, depending on the further breakdown within the category.

According to Ask.com, the Department of Animal and Range Sciences at the South Dakota University measured that 1 cow may yield 84 pounds of steak quality meat, which means, more or less, 225 6 oz. meals or 336 4 oz. meals. The same amount of water produces 23,000,000 heads of broccoli.

And 70% of the water used in livestock industry is to grow animal feed; in California, this means alfalfa for cows. The sad thing is that, even though California is experiencing a water shortage, farmers are exporting alfalfa hay to Asia. (Show me the money!)

According to the Food And Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations, 70% of land that has been deforested in Latin America, which means, in part, the Amazon, is used for livestock grazing. The expense of the food for livestock is what makes the least sustainable sense.

THE ETHICS OF EATING MEAT

I have had lively debate with a local doctor. He talks about how plants have feelings, or certainly, that they react to stimuli; and I talk about how I believe plants yield to us but should be thanked for their sacrifice. Certainly, we both agree that hurting animals is wrong.

In my opinion, if vegan food is available to me; it is my duty to eat it. Were I in a North country with limited vegetation, would I eat fish or four-legged animals? I would, because it’s my duty to self-sustain; I would give thanks for the animal’s life I used for mine, the way I do with the plants I eat.

A fascinating fact is that Inuits in Greenland have low heart disease. They eat primarily proteins and fats from salmon, whale and seal with no sugars and no carbs. This statistic may come from their Omega-3 to Omega-6 ratio, which is balanced at 1:1, unlike in the West where we are Omega-6 (inflammatory) rich.

CONCLUSION

The habit of eating meat is like any other repetitive pattern we have. When we think about it, we may choose to change it in order to enhance our health, eat in a way that will help stop hunger, be examples of saving water so there will be some left for our grandchildren and modify our ethical actions.

Instead of blindly consuming food, just because it tastes good to us, we might want to consider the consequences of our actions. Not following in the footsteps of the past generations, we might want to evaluate the newest scientific evidence about food and nutrition. We might choose to realize that the dairy and meet industries have vast sums of money to promote the idea of eating meat or consuming dairy. Big media are friends with big dairy, big meat, big poultry and big pharma. These relationships may be cause for us to do our own research on whether the habit of eating meat needs a complete turnaround in 2014.

ACTION STEPS

Here are several action steps that may serve all of us.

1) Check out the amount of Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids you consume on an average day, shooting for 4 (Omega-6) : 1(Omega-3). The National Institute Of Science recommends a ratio of 10:1 in the United States. In my opinion, that’s because they are friends with agribusiness producers who make vegetable oils, sugars and other foods that imbalance the ratio. Other countries typically say 4:1 is OK, new evidence points to 1:1 being ideal.

2) Research a few hunger statistics, and consider replacing 1 meat meal weekly with a plant-based meal. You can go to the PETA website at http://features.peta2.com/making-the-connection/world-hunger.aspx, about half way down to the slider showing the ratio of elimination of eating animals to the amount of hunger that would go away.

3) Be grateful for whatever food you eat. This will bring positive feelings to the world, which may, in turn, create happier circumstances for all animals and plants, including ourselves.
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Please leave a comment.

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She is slowly realizing the importance of early education to impact environment when it comes to animal farming and proper nutrition. She says,

“Teachers have the absolute privilege of connecting the dots for young children to understand the world and how it works. What can be taught now to elementary school children is things like producing meat can use 10 times as much blue water as producing vegetables. And reducing meat consumption can reduce hunger.

“These real-life scenarios can help children to understand what most adults don’t due to lack of connecting the dots: that greed or over-consumption can keep the world out of balance and that a little self-control in each of us can heal the world one hungry child at a time. Our thoughtful actions can also create health in ourselves.

“With this knowledge, the youth, who are the change makers of the world, will be able to take meaningful actions based on seeing the full picture. But, will the education system – walking on tiptoes to maintain its funding – allow such teaching; and will the community – walking on tiptoes so that the major corporations lend a hand to sponsor local projects so local politicians look good – allow the open teaching that is needed? It will require patient work on the part of local educators. But, it’s worth it to educate students about the habit of eating meat and what issues surround it.”

FOOD LABELS, THE NEXT GENERATION IN NUTRITIONAL DATA (ISSUE 119)

By Diane Gold

Food labels, the next generation in nutritional data, is being proposed by the Food And Drug Administration. The changes to the nutritional label would help consumers identify food facts more easily, get a more realistic and up-to-date version of what a portion of food in the present day represents and know what sugars in a product are added and not part of the inherent make-up of the food.

1970s TO CURRENT FOOD REGULATIONS

I have been researching ingredients and labels since 1971 when I started querying manufacturers about from what source enzymes, lecithin, mono- and di- glycerides,  and the myriad of hard-to-pronounce substances. I wanted to know whether they came from an animal, vegetable, mineral, synthetic process. Back in those days, similar to now, many manufacturers did not know that information because they used whatever their suppliers supplied them based upon what was cheapest on the day of purchase.

1970s. The first labels came in the early 1970s when some companies began putting food information on the packaging.

1990. In 1990 came the Nutrition Labeling And Education Act, which required macronutrients on the label: protein, carbohydrates, fats and other data.

1996. The Food Quality Protection Act came in 1996 which regulated some of the pesticides in our food.

2011. The Federal Food, Drug And Cosmetic Act came with more regulation on pesticides, which came from updated reports of the harmful effects these pesticides had on humans and animals through the food they ate.

2014. The Food And Drug Administration has a proposal to upgrade food labels once again. After reading about the changes,

ACTION STEP

Go here to comment, agree, add, disagree:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=FDA-2012-N-1210

and leave a comment. When we take action, change happens.

THE PROPOSED CHANGES

1)    SERVING SIZE

What we used to eat 20 years ago that was listed by FDA as one serving is being recognized as obsolete and totally inaccurate. Due to our larger servings or mislabeling originally, the portion size on the label is being increased. So, if we ate ice cream before the label changes, 1 serving would be 200 calories, half a cup, with 4 servings in the pint.

The proposed change would list 1 serving as 400 calories, 1 cup, with 2 servings per pint. If I were eating ice cream, which I do infrequently to curb the repercussions from this occurrence, my single serving could be 2 cups, 800 calories, 1 pint. And that’s not including any additional nuts, syrupy fruit, caramel or fresh, ice cream store ice cream.

With the proposed changed, the well-known brand of store-bought designer ice cream I just checked would go from serving size 1/2 cup to 1 cup, since most people don’t eat 1/2 cup.

It’s also possible the FDA will include a dual column label which would allot for accuracy of 2 different sized portions, like 1 cup serving or 2 cups (whole container for a pint) or, with soda, 12 oz. or 24 oz.

The term cup is helpful because it’s something we can measure. The term container keeps is nebulous since containers range in sizes.

2)   ADDED SUGARS

Food labels have a column for sugars. What they don’t say is from where that sugar is derived. They don’t say whether it is from the natural orange in the ingredients or from some additional sugar, added during manufacturing. The FDA proposal asks for a sub-heading called Added Sugars. I believe it will be a percentage so that we will be left to figure out which are natural ingredients and which are added. This would mean we have to be aware that agave, agave nectar, barley malt syrup, beet sugar, brown rice syrup, brown sugar, cane or cane juice crystals, cane sugar, coconut sugar, coconut palm sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, dehydrated cane juice, dextrin, dextrose, evaporated cane juice, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, maltodextrin, malt syrup, maltose, maple syrup, molasses, palm sugar, raw sugar, rice syrup, saccharose syrup, sorghum syrup, stevia, sucrose, syrup, treacle, turbinado sugar, xylose are added sugars and sorbitol and maltitol are sugar alcohols.

Why do we care about added sugars?

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 78 (suppl) 827s, 2003 said,
” … excess energy intake from added sugars can potentially lead to nutrient shortcomings, due to displacement of more nutrient-dense foods/beverages, and to weight.”

To clarify nutrient density, here’s Clemson University, South Carolina, Cooperative Extension Service’s definition,

“Foods that supply generous amounts of one or more nutrients compared to the number of calories they supply are called nutrient dense.”

So, if we’re gorging down sweetened soda, we are not ingesting glorious veggie juice, hydrating water or other healthy food that is not reaching us because we are full from nutritionless soda.

It’s important to be aware of ingredients that are sugar. If a product has more than one of these, the split in “actual sugar,” that is, a substance that turns carbs into glucose, gets lower on the label of ingredients since the highest percentage ingredients go first.

3)   NUTRIENT REQUIREMENTS

Calcium, Iron stay. Potassium, Vitamin D are added. Vitamins A and C will no longer required.

4)   UPDATED DAILY VALUES

The amounts of nutrients needed per day will be updated to match the current scientific information we have.

5)   DESIGN

The daily values will be on the left side, more visible to the eye, and the serving size and calories will be bigger and bolder so that we become more aware of what our serving size actually is.

Personally, I would like to see every package show the total calories per package, like 1217 calories for a bag of 8 oz. fried, unsalted potato chips, so that when I buy them and eat them in one sitting, I am completely aware of the 79 grams of fat (25g of which is saturated) I consume. Calories are great since they give energy to the body; it’s where they come from that matters. And this one bag exceeds the amount of fat and saturated fat recommended for 1 person in 1 entire day.

ADDICTION ALERT

Eating an entire bag of chips, on my part, is possible. It’s similar to my addictive ways with any substance. If I indulge in it once, I will want to indulge again the next day and will have to put forth a concerted effort to replace the potato chip buying behavior with another for, at least, a month, until, if I am lucky, the urge will go dormant again. When I do it, I usually buy baked (reducing the fat grams to 24 greasy grams), since fried will make me feel sick and the craving for grease will require more will power to replace.

IMPORTANT CHANGES I WOULD LIKE TO ADD

What are not included in the proposed changes are the following:

1)   PROHIBITING NON-SCIENTIFIC VERBIAGE LIKE “NATURAL” AND “FRESH,” words that are meaningless and mislead the uneducated consumer to think these foods are better or organic. We depend upon it to regulate food and drugs, and, thus, should require scientifically founded language only with asterisk to the report on which it is based so that our health knowledge is never based on which company has the best marketing.

2)   REQUIRING HARVESTED AND MANUFACTURING DATE AND STATEMENT THAT SAYS SAFE IF USED BY, including the report on which this “use by” info is based. Currently, we have no way to know whether produce is left in a refrigerator for a year or not. With manufacturing, each decides on the length of time after completion date that is safe for a consumer. Therefore, we have no way to know on what data each farmer or manufacturer uses. We have a right to know and for it all to be consistently monitored.

3)   LISTING INGREDIENT SOURCES USED IN MANUFACTURING, gathering, packaging process and whether they are animal, plant, part-animal or -plant or synthetic, including defined guidelines for the words animal, vegetable, part and synthetic.
Take isinglass or other animal derivative finings in beer or wine which clears out cloudiness from yeast. There are also glycerol monostearate used for foam on the beer and honey or lactose for flavor. Since these additives exist, every manufacturer should be required to define whether or not its product contains any of these or other ingredients.

4)   LISTING THE SOURCE, for ingredients that typically have multiple sources. An example of this would be lecithin, without the word animal, soy or plant-based next to it. When the labels says lecithin, we are guessing at its source.  Another very common ingredient is mono-glycerides or mono-and di-glycerides, as they are commonly used together. These emulsifiers can come from animal, plant or synthesized process. If a product lists animal mono-glycerides, there would be no question as to its source, and people could make informed decisions without calling the manufacturer. As it is now, manufacturers only list the details of ingredients to avoid law suits from allergic reactions or if their profits come from a particular religious group that requires it. I would change the regulation to require producer disclosure on  all packaging.

5)   DISCLOSURE OF WAX AND POLISH, such as waxes on produce or polishing on vitamins tablets. Each manufacturer or produce finisher (the company that sprays wax on fruit before it goes to market) should be required to list the source of the ingredients that are used. Of course, this means that manufacturers would have to keep an up-to-date database of the sources of the ingredients from their suppliers.

Many people are not aware that apples, avocados, peppers are waxed. The wax may be plant-based, bee-based, petroleum-based or synthetic. We deserve to go to the store or market and get our food without having to call the food’s producer before eating it. The food industry is concerned with safety, as it should be. It would do well also to care about informing us of what we consume because we trust them.

CONCLUSION

We depend upon food labels all the time. Their accuracy is crucial for our education and that of children. Eating nutritionally is the one action that can maximize our health, more than any other act. The FDA has the ability to educate us with the nutritional data they approve on packages.

ACTION STEP

It’s great that there is an update coming on food labels. Let’s make some comments at:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=FDA-2012-N-1210

to be personally involved, to make a difference and to speak out for what we believe.

There is a finite window for these comments before the proposal goes for a vote. So, let’s make them count toward the next generation of food labels.
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FEEDBACK

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Please LIKE us on the website and at WarriorsOfWeight on Facebook. Thanks.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She has been working with food manufacturers for 40 years, inquiring about information not shown on food labels. She says,

“I believe it is the food industry’s job to educate us: not at the expense of profit but, also, not at the expense of foregoing the latest science. The food labeling system should provide for more frequent label updates as the science comes in.

“The manufacturer and the farmer are our teachers in nutritional data. Let us use them wisely in this educational regard.

QUITTING A HABIT! (ISSUE 118)

By Diane Gold

Quitting a habit! Quitting is such a simple word. It has two very different connotations, although they both mean the same thing. It means the act of stopping doing something. But, in our minds, it usually refers to stopping our current job or ceasing our current habit. We will focus on the habit.

PSYCHOLOGICALLY HELPFUL?

When we use the word “quitting” for the cessation of a habit, it conjures up the image of life being sucked out of our bodies. Even thinking about stopping a habit feels as if we are going to lose something instead of gain something. Psychologically, these concepts direct our actions, so they are not just semantic observations that only have intellectual use. When we see we are going to get something; it can cause pleasure, and we are more likely to move toward it. On the other hand, when we are going to lose something; it can cause pain and we avoid it.

That’s why it’s much more advantageous for us to use the correct word and one that is more pleasing to our psyche: replacing. When we replace something, we maintain a feeling of abundance. This keeps us balanced and happy.

THE TRUTH

The truth is this:

ONCE A HABIT, ALWAYS A HABIT.

This is not a bad thing, so please, let’s hold onto our hats and rejoice! It’s a reality that when we respond to an urge for something over and over again, it becomes a habit.

And, once we have learned it, we usually do not unlearn it. What we do accomplish is we replace it. And this is the interesting fact.

REPLACING A HABIT

So, here’s this task we have for ourselves. We have a habit, and we want to replace it.

One of the online dictionary’s defines replace as,

“Take the place of” and

“Put back in a previous position.”

I would edit the second definition to be,

“Put in position,”

merely because where the “something” is placed could be in an old or new area of our lives.

REPLACING VS. QUITTING

When it comes to habits, replacing and quitting are like opposite sides of the yin-yang symbol, where opposing forces make the whole.

Consider the glass’ being half empty or half full concept. When the glass is full, we think of richness. The empty term, in Western terms, can speak to barrenness, although, in the Eastern way, emptiness is the way to abundance.

Deleting the term “quitting,” when it comes to habit change is a freeing experience. So many people are anxiety ridden when they think they have to quit something. Many fewer people are troubled when they think about replacing or doing a new behavior and keeping the attention on that new behavior.

In fact, the idea of focus comes into play. When we focus on quitting our old behavior, our mind is filled with all the old memories that go with the behavior. When we focus on replacing our behavior with the new one, we walk in the new direction, which is where we want to go.

There’s all that talk about keeping the eye on the target, the goal, the ball. It’s true that if we keep focused on the new behavior as if it comes naturally, eventually, with repetition, the replacement behavior will become natural, and we will have a new habit. Or, at least, we will get good at replacing it.

CAUTION: THE BOREDOM TRIGGER

Be careful of the feeling of boredom. It can act as a built-in excuse for doing a certain behavior that is not good for us. We might think that if we had excitement rather than stagnation in our lives, we would not act out the behavior we wanted to change. We might even create the boredom to delude ourselves.

Boredom, in many cases, is the actual trigger that causes our over and over again behavior that becomes a habit. Rather than knowing there are an infinite amount of things we can do to lead full lives, it’s important to pre-plan one or two of them. That way, we will be armed against even the most common cues like boredom.

ACTION STEPS

So, let’s get started and see how it feels.

ACTION STEP 1

1)   Pick one thing you wish to “put in position.” This means pick any habit you would like to replace, such as eating desserts or sleeping too much.

Let’s say we always get the urge to eat dessert. We can change our reaction to this trigger by planning another behavior in its stead, such as going jogging as soon as that urge is felt. This will begin the process of replacement. Repeating this behavior will turn it into a habit. By behaving consistently by jogging and not dessert eating, we will have replaced our old with the new behavior. Although this certainly is quitting acting out the old behavior from the sheer repetition of the act; it’s easier to accomplish by using the concept of “replace.”

ACTION STEP 2

2)   Keep a record of what time the urge occurs, what time you start the new behavior (like jogging) and how long you do the new behavior and each time this occurs for a week. If this is accomplished for a week, continue the process for another week, another week and another week.

ACTION STEP 3

3)   Promise yourself you will not judge whether it is just as difficult to do the new behavior a month later as it was on the first day. This feeling is not important. It just exists and doesn’t work only one way. For some people, it becomes easier with time to be automatic about doing your new behavior. For others, you will have to be deliberate in directing yourself to do your new behavior.

Just keep replacing. Each time you do, it’s OK to give yourself a high five in the mirror.

CONCLUSION

Think about quitting a habit. It reminds me of wrenching something from life. We have to do without which causes pain.

Now think about replacing a habit. Ever more gentle it is, causing some growing pains, yet not attacking our psyche in the same way.

Of course, when we want to do something new in place of some old habit, we want to give ourselves the easiest path to follow. That path involves planning one simple action that will be repeated over and over again. It also requires saying “replace” instead of “quit.”

Armed with these tools, we have every opportunity to have a pain-free experience of moving from one habit to another.
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FEEDBACK

We value your feedback very much. Please leave  a comment below.

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DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She believes “replacing a habit” is a more nurturing way of the phrase “quitting a habit.” She says,

“How we are treated by others is really important. How we treat ourselves is crucial.

“We have the opportunity to be nurturing to ourselves. Making it easy for ourselves is one such way to nurture. This includes speaking of ourselves fondly and setting up the user friendliest situations. For habit change, this means using the word ‘replace’ and not ‘quit.’ It’s similar to the difference between exercising on a rocky field or exercising on a flat cushy matted floor. One is easier than the other.

“Be nice to thyself whenever possible. This will facilitate us in any habit change endeavor.”

THE REAL SCOOP ON THE HEALTH CARE LAW! THE CASE OF THE SHRINKING WORK FORCE (ISSUE 117)

By Diane Gold

The Health Care Law Is Projected To Shrink The Work Force. This headline looks at full-time workers in an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. According to Jason Furman, Council Of Economic Advisors Chairman, the change in number of workers has to do more with people’s choosing part-time assignments rather than that employers are deleting jobs to avoid employee’s health insurance costs.

Let’s remember that the Affordable Care Act subsidizes those who work, for the most part. And, if people have enough money to pay for their insurance and their lives; they are contributing to our economy whether it’s with a full-time, part-time or self-employment situation. This is the exercise of beautiful freedom of choice.

THE HABIT

Here’s the habit, though. We, the sheep of America, have been groomed to go to school, strive to get a corporate or non-profit job, in part, for the health insurance benefits provided. Getting the right job that happens to include health care benefits is fabulous. It’s not the only way, and now, it is becoming a less chosen option.

Certainly, we are bound to contribute to humanity in a way that sustains us in some financial way and in order to leave a personal human legacy. We don’t have to get it by having a J-O-B in an environment, where group health care was the only reason we took the job. We can be CRE-8-TIVE and do what we love, which, for most people, is not what they do at their J-O-B. They can be small business owners, putting them in a category to be able to pay for themselves, but out of the headlined category: full-time W-2 worker, about whom the CBO is estimating.

THE ARTIST

There are those of us lucky enough to have trained in a field that we adore and actually work within that field. Or there are those whose job title is “artist,” and we have been fortunate or talented enough (both) so that people don’t think twice about calling us “artists,” which, of course, brings in income from the many who love us. (We are in the habit of calling people who paint, play music, write “people who fool around with art” if they don’t have popularity, and, therefore, aren’t financially sound, unfair as this can be.)

THE ENTREPRENEUR

There is so much creative energy that we all possess that is channeled by some into entrepreneurship. The people in this division make some of the breakthroughs that make our country great and make us happy Americans. We are thriving spiritually because of choices like entrepreneurship. Yes, there are just as many, if not more people who have that same spark of invention who don’t make a living at it and struggle. But they deserve the time to keep working at it.

THE FREEDOM

As I see the health care law headline about shrinking jobs, it makes me grateful to be American. Why? Because I believe America’s greatest benefit is its FREEDOM. We are free to be our wonderful selves, in all our creative glory, to choose what is right for us, based on our current situation. What may be seen as a bane in shrinking corporate workers could produce the next breakthrough in health care, technology, space, famine, peace. Isn’t that huge!

SPIRITUAL HEALTH

It’s fair to say that what keeps us happy and healthy is our own personal foundation. When we have a belief system or a set of ethics by which we live; this drives us to do act the way we do and make the decisions that we do.

As I see it, this category is the most important one we have. If we are personally “together,” as they used to say back in the day; we have what it takes to go on from there.

If we have our own value system, we know how to act as human beings, not just based on what feels good to us (hedonism), but based upon how we can benefit humanity and create a legacy of our own. I’m talking about the fact that building our virtue builds our legacy of choice. Spiritual health may not collect a billion dollars in money. Yet, if we have set up an ethic that helps others or creates harmony; we contribute spiritual health to the world.

When we work less, we have more time for this type of growth.

THE HEALTH CARE LAW

The Health Care Law aka The Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare is part of the legacy of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. It allows for people previously uninsurable due to health issues to be insurable. It allows for people who could not afford health insurance to be subsidized enough to get it.

Another feature of this policy is that some citizens get to choose a lifestyle that does not include working full-time in a distasteful position just for the health care benefits. Although most of us cannot afford to work part-time or at our dream task; the law, formally called the Affordable Care Act, offers a new and unscheduled benefit: that of personal freedom.

We knew the ACA would give us more security, a way to reduce health care costs by having many more insured and not expending enormous medical costs by emergency room health care. No one talked about the freedom that might become available to some. According to the predictions, the economy will not suffer from these choices because we will have more contented citizens who maintain a higher level of health due to peace of mind from health coverage and spiritual wholeness and we will be using less expensive health care services.

CONCLUSION

I’m quite a fan of the ACA, since I have seen, first hand, its benefits. As with most headlines, though, it’s important to evaluate alleged proof and investigate media slant. In the case of the Health Care Law, the prediction of shrinking of employees is not a bad thing. It may mean people are choosing to work less and spiritualize more. It may be the trend of our current generations’ understanding of the importance of personal growth. It definitely will have to do with our lowering our health care costs, another plus.

This example of headline grandstanding is an opportunity to step back and see for ourselves. It’s also a good time to inventory our own choices that may or may not be possible for us at this time but that may give us some insight.

ACTION STEP INVENTORY

This might be eye opening and only takes a minute. Answer as if you were in the particular situation, even if you are not. And actually ask yourself the question. When I asked myself one at a time, they had more of an impact:

1) On scale of 1 to 10, 10 being high, if you were single, would you rather have a steady large organizational job or a steady part-time job and the time and freedom in which to be creative?

2) On scale of 1 to 10, 10 being high, if you were single, would you rather cut down on spending to afford a steady part-time job and the freedom to be creative or keep your steady corporate or non-profit job?

3) What is more important to you, money or spiritual health?

4) If you were responsible for a family, what would you want to show your kids, that it’s more important to provide luxury for them and have a corporate job that you don’t like or live with no frills and have a part-time job which afforded you time for creativity, spirituality and family?

5) Are you surprised at yourself?
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Finally, it seems as if freedom of choice is the reason for the shrinking employee headline. We’re all different. There’s no one way to be. And, through the ACA, the United States has just happily extended our freedom.

FEEDBACK

We value your feedback very much. Please leave a comment below.

Please LIKE us on the website and at WarriorsOfWeight on Facebook. Thanks.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She believes we all deserve health care. She says,

“I believe it is a right in the civilized world. Because of the Affordable Care Act, more people can be insured. A brilliant feature that is a secret benefit is the reduction in full-timers that is predicted. These are not the dedicated folks whose work is their passion. It is the people who have yet to find their passion. And their part-time status may lead them to it which will lead them to become more productive citizens to benefit us all.”

THE NUMBER ONE METHOD FOR HABIT CHANGE: THE SECRET IS OUT (ISSUE 116)

By Diane Gold

Before we reveal ”The Number One Method For Habit Change” for free, in this very article; let’s look at habits, in general, to understand how many we have and the potential simplicity of changing them.

PERSONAL HABITS vs. NON-PERSONAL HABITS

Our habits are either personal or non-personal. We all easily identify with habits and actions that relate to ourselves, since we are usually quite concerned with ourselves: whether we can or cannot control our eating, drinking, drugging, picking, blinking, speaking. These habits are physiological or mental and connect to our senses, rather than related to ways we act toward the outside world.

Non-personal habits define how we act toward our environment through repetitive actions passed down from families – political agendas, belief systems, what paper towel brand we use, what is acceptable to wear, eat, the way we were brought up to speak, the way we do or do not speak with people on the street or in our neighborhoods, listening to certain music because that’s what we’ve been exposed to, the amount we allow ourselves to dance in public, our understanding of social customs of our area, the way we treat others, the way we resolve conflict, whether we are first to help or wait for the crowd to do it first. These are all external to our own personal habits. They influence them and cross over into the personal, but they are outside them, for the most part.
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Both personal and non-personal habits make us who we are. Although we will focus on the personal, the number one method for habit change is the same for each.

APPEARANCE

We develop habits based on how certain actions make us feel. Whether we wear designer clothes, keep our hair immaculate or stay fit because we enjoy people’s staring at us; we act out behaviors regularly to achieve these good feelings, aka rewards. The cue, which is the original feeling that makes us do a behavior urges us to work so we have access to buy clothing, get our hair done, so we look how we like. This urge also pushes us to work out so that our bodies look good, which gives us the end result: the reward of having people acknowledge our beauty. Appearance

These are only examples of appearance habits we may have. There are others of us who specifically wear clothing to make us invisible, since we don’t like it when people stare. And there are others of us who do not consider what people think; they are busy with their own lives and work.

PHYSICAL CRAVINGS

Quite often, our habits become founded in the urges we feel. By acting out a certain behavior, we can receive a hormonal rush of happiness. Because we want to experience this “reward” again, we repeat the same behavior to get it. That’s how habits begin, with repetition.

The craving, urge, cue, whatever we call it, that drives us to behave a certain way can be a similar feeling no matter what reward our end product (the result of our action) achieves. Whether we eat a yummy food, take a tranquilizing drug, drink a drink that makes us tingle, play a card game that thrills us; we are seeking the end delicacy that our hormones produce.

TIME FOR HABIT CHANGE

As may be common knowledge, once we have a habit, it belongs to us. Like gene expression, it can be dormant or active. We don’t unlearn to ride a bike, and we don’t lose our blue-eyed chromosome that may express itself in our children, even though our eyes are brown. When we turn social drinking into excessive drinking, we own it. That doesn’t mean we have to express it in the future.

When we choose to change one of our habits, we replace the habit that was there with a new one. The old one is still there, but it is a “habit in the closet,” so to speak. As long as we are doing a new behavior and not opening the closet, the habit will stay put. For as long as we choose. Habit In The Closet

So the big trick to creating a new way of acting is SPEED, not the drug, but the swiftness with which we act after a cue. We have to be ready starting now for the very first cue that comes that has previously made us do the habit we want to change. From now on, we must replace this action within 15-30 seconds of getting that cue so that the mind doesn’t have a chance to intervene.

Once we have made the decision to do something different, that is, change a habit, we can remember,

“Immediate Action Required.”

That’s the simple answer to what could seem a monumental issue. Rather than struggling with “not” executing an act we have done over and over again, like giving in to our desires that lead us down a path we want to avoid, we take our attention and our bodies to a new place, a new action and, therefore, a new, but rewarding, outcome.

ACTION STEPS

1) As soon as the almighty urge shows up that sends us to get our reward, IMMEDIATELY DRINK WATER, TWO GLASSES AT ROOM TEMPERATURE. Bam! That’s it.

2) OK. That’s not exactly it for some people. We may need another action to lead us to the reward we want which is to look good, feel good and, ultimately, change our habit. We may need to VERBALIZE that we have had the craving out loud to another person or people.

Of course, if we have an appropriate friend, we can tell the friend. If not, we can tell a stranger. It’s surprising how many people want to listen to what we have to say, even if we just know them from shopping where they work. Naturally, we can reach out in social media, but this digital admission does not give us the same mirror reflection that telling a live person gives us.

We may be afraid, nervous, embarrassed to admit our urge. That’s fine. That has nothing to do with taking the action. We have plenty of time after we admit our urge to be afraid, nervous, embarrassed. As long as we take the action of saying it out loud first. This works best if it is done within 5 minutes of drinking the water.

If you’re near the beach, tell a lifeguard. If you’re in-city, tell a librarian. If you’re on the farm, tell a fellow farmer. The worst that can happen is that you will be judged by someone else. Most people are not qualified to make a judgment, so the judgment would be like someone not liking the color of your eyes. Those who are qualified to judge who make a negative judgment about someone’s decision to change a habit lack the compassion and humility that are found in a quality human being.

Think about it. What’s worse, not changing a habit whose time has come or the possibility of embarrassment? The obvious answer is not changing.

Granted, it does get tricky when we have children and they will be heckled in school. In that situation, it is time to trust the children and speak to them honestly.

3) Here’s a quick step in not being embarrassed. FOCUS on discussing your urge and on doing the new behaviors. When you are finished drinking water and verbalizing, you will have time left to be embarrassed. Or you may feel the power that comes with self-help.

CONCLUSION

What habits we develop depend on who we are, what we decide and our body and mental chemistry. Not every person raised in luxury with servants and dinner parties has the habit of overdrinking. Not every person raised in poverty who gambled in the park to feed her family lets gambling take over her life when other financial opportunities appear. The number one method for habit change works universally.

THE NUMBER ONE METHOD FOR HABIT CHANGE

When we are ready to change a habit, this is the process:

1) Make a contract with self to replace a behavior for a day or a week. The contract must include the action step to be taken immediately upon having the craving that starts the habit process in motion (such as when the urge to drink alcohol or eat a cookie comes; drink water, not alcohol or drink water, instead of eating a 3:00 pm cookie).

2) Take the contracted action step immediately every time the urge shows up, starting immediately. It’s only for a day or a week. You can un-contract yourself at any time after the first contract or renew it. Your choice.

3) Be consistent with the contracted behavior every single time you feel the craving or you start to think about it. It’s only for a day or a week, whichever you have chosen.

Once this process is completed, you have the choice to renew the contract or stop. The choice for changing a habit is yours.

HELPFUL HINTS

If this process does not work the first time, it’s okay to start again and again.

If someone says anything about your habit change question, it is not important. What is important is to do the action steps. That’s it.

It is not necessary to believe you can do it to succeed. What is important is to act. By doing so, your belief in self will arrive, while you are changing your habit. You will believe when you see what you have done.

FEEDBACK

We value your feedback very much.
Please leave a comment below.

Please LIKE us on the website and at WarriorsOfWeight on Facebook. Thanks.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition and habit change.

She believes we complicate. She says,

“Simplify, simplify, simplify. When we make things so complex, we miss what’s right in front of us. When we have one choice, we take it. When we have one road on which to walk, we walk it. The habit change process outlined as ‘The Number One Method For Habit Change’ proposed to do just that: offer one choice and one road on which to act out the choice.

“When we look at one thing at a time, we just might accomplish our goal. So let’s make a contract, act on it and repeat the actions for the contracted duration. That’s all we need, and that’s plenty.”