100 Days without Food

You should be feeling great, like an invincible superhero, all the time, like nothing and no-one can stop you.

Navigating life with the unstoppable certainty of a bulldozer has got little to do with your circumstances, your luck, or your genes. What it has got to do with is simple, and very much within your control.

Your life energy, much of that zest which fuels your creativity, charm, and intellect; much of that vitality is lost before it ever reaches your brain.

Where does it go?

It’s spent digesting food you don’t need (quantity) and battling with toxins your food has introduced (quality).

Want to feel better now?

Reduce how much you eat. Drastically. You only need a 3rd or less of what you ate this morning. For every 100 protein calories, 30 are spent in digestion. Quantity ladies and gentlemen. Most of what we eat is useless. It is way too damn much. The rest has to be digested and / or stored as fat. Think that process comes for free? Think again.

Quality matters too. Heard those who claim that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie? That’s not quite accurate. In fact, anything above 10% of calories obtained from fat can be toxic. How much is 10%? Think half an avocado. Anything beyond that is not helping you. Oh, and all oils — regardless how virgin, cold pressed or expensive they claim to be — are toxic.

Don’t believe me? The list of experts that say so is growing. Here’s just some of them: Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Neal Barnard, T. Colin Campbell, Rip Esselstyn, Dr. Michael Greger, Dr. Michael Klaper, and many others.

Before you ask, those are not some TV doctors. Heard of Campbell’s China Study? This magnum opus of epidemiology took ten years to finish (while not perfect, I think you’ll agree it’s a serious effort).

Anything above 10% of calories obtained from protein is toxic too. Protein is associated with growth. Hence the excess of protein in the western diet. Our obsession with protein is sourced from our conditioned fear that if we don’t get enough protein we will not be strong, we won’t grow muscle, and won’t look like the strong, virile, swashbuckling hero we want to be.

According to Dr. Fuhrman, excessive protein (and the fat that comes with it) causes mental fatigue and confusion. It’s not only meat, of course. According to Dr. Klaper, the sole purpose of milk is to “turn a 65-pound calf into a 700-pound cow as rapidly as possible”. Any wonder why this generation of westerners is taller than the previous ones? Or why we reach puberty several years earlier?

What’s wrong with growth?

Problem with growth is that it works against longevity. What? Well yes, it does. The quicker and bigger animal growth is, the sooner those animals die. There is solid research to back this up, but please do your own work and find out for yourself.
What can we do to retard aging and premature death?

Enter caloric restriction

Every animal has intuitively done it since the beginning of times. Most civilizations and religions have embraced fasting. From the ascetic fasting of monastic rules to the eucharistic fasting, the Great Lent, and the Ramadan, caloric restriction has always been around in one form of another.

You don’t need to be religious to accept fasting. Of course not. Do your own research. Don’t go by what everyone says (when it comes to nutrition, almost everyone out there is misinformed). Invest the time to understand why something works. And the only way to do this, is to try it. Prove it to yourself. See how you feel after a few days of fasting. Hint: you won’t die.

Over the last 100 days I’ve eaten nothing but plant juices. Over this prolonged period of fasting, my energy levels and mental clarity increased dramatically, my vision was enhanced (I hardly ever wear glasses anymore), I weaned myself off meds, and emancipated myself from a 20 year long addiction to coffee. Oh and I’ve lost more than 30 pounds (which was not my intention).

Going Forward

How we eat determines how we feel. It determines how we behave and how we treat others. How we feel internally creates the external space around us. Your world is my world. Our choices overlap.

There is no greater cause than this, I believe.
Stay tuned.