Category Archives: Health

Health

How I lost 12 pounds in 6 weeks

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I lost twelve pounds in six weeks. I didn’t mean to, but it happened when I radically changed my diet. You probably don’t want the illness that initiated this change, but you may find interesting the weight loss results I have achieved.

My liver swelled up with a rare kind of hepatitis in early November, about 2 months after I returned from the Amazon, and I could no longer digest just about everything normal in the American diet. No alcohol, no wheat, no corn, no sugar, no fruit, no raw food, no cold food, no fried food.

It takes a lot of will power and a very upset stomach to say “no” to so many foods. So it may be tempting to refer to this as the “No diet” diet. Or, worse, the hepatitis diet.But perhaps reverting to a simple diet is a better description.

Japanese breakfast of rice, miso, seaweed, daikon and vegetables improved my health and helped me lose weight

What I have been able to eat and enjoy resembles a diet eaten by Japanese farmers: rice, cooked vegetables, miso, broths, small amounts of fish and dark meat and tea. The healing power of this simple Japanese-style way of eating is reknown.

Japanese people suffer less heart disease and obesity than Americans, and even those that move to Hawaii — halfway between Japan and the Mainland US — live longer if they maintain a Japanese lifestyle, according to the landmark Honolulu Heart Program, a long-term study of Japanese men in Hawaii. Acculturation was a primary study parameter, and researchers found that Japanese men who adopted the Western diet and sedentary lifestyle most fully were more likely to develop coronary heart disease, as well as 11 other risk factors (Am J Epidemiol, 1982). Conversely, eating a more Japanese diet and maintaining physical activity lowered men’s risk for heart disease, overweight and other risk factors.

In my time of illness, a simple Japanese diet was all my liver could tolerate. Following it helped to restore my health and, in the process, I have lost weight. After years of indulging in rich western foods, I definitely carried some extra pounds and was in no danger of becoming too skinny. The hardest part of the diet was battling intense cravings for all the foods I was withdrawing from within the first two weeks, foods such as greasy meat, spices, bread, and sugar.

This simple diet has also eliminated nearly all of symptoms from seasonal allergies to pollen, dust and molds. For years I have taken over-the counter and prescription medications for runny, drippy nose that comes with seasonal allergies. It’s the classic western answer to any health problem: take a pill.

But recovering from hepatitis or any other liver problem is all about not taking and eliminating the unhealthful. With an injured liver, you can’t take anything. So removing all I could not tolerate was my only choice. This includes wheat and corn, and doing so has worked wonders for my immune system.

Two weeks ago I took a small taste of a corn tortilla and within about 30 minutes, my nose started to run. Same when I tried to reintroduce wheat. Wheat also slows my digestion, causing almost instant feelings of nausea. So both corn and wheat are out for good, but removing them also means removing everything that eats them, including all factory farmed chicken, pork and beef.

I already don’t like ranch dressing, Coke or catchup. Now I’m eliminating wheat, corn and factory-farmed animal flesh from my diet all because I don’t want to take pills and I want to feel healthy. I also exercise every day and enjoy taking my dogs on long walks. Depending on your politics, I am suspiciously unAmerican or all about freedom. Either way, I am 12 pounds lighter and allergy free.

Culture, Health, humor

5 Steps to Release Stress…Maui style

The Deepak Chopra Center publishes monthly an inspirational newsletter called “Agni”. Today’s tome contains “The 5 Keys to Stress Release”, something people in Maui (read: hippies, trust fund hippies or just old-fashioned doubters of authority, depending on the neighborhood) know quite a lot about. Many of us are fans of Deepak. So here’s a Maui-fied version of his article:

The 10-Ton Thought — More like the 10-Ton Bong

(Moving down)

Choices that Relieve Stress — I think it’s called moving to Hawaii or maybe eating more fiber. Anyway, let’s continue.

1. Connect to your body — Very important, almost first thing after 10-ton bong. Donate all heavy winter clothes and show off skin, every day. Seriously consider buying a Brazilian bikini and laser hair removal. Get at least one sarong/pareo. Doubles as drapes, too.

2. Meditate — Easy after emptying the 10-ton bong. No need pay somebody for help you.

3. Understand your unique stress response — Try, understand every single little detail about yourself, your world, your body, your relationships, your astrology, your numerology, your baggage, and why you still get wrinkles even though you spend lots of money at the health food store and cleanse regularly.

4. Practice yoga — With lots of other stinky people living in the jungle. Anywhere is good, even if it’s your rooftop and the neighbors can see your okole. Or better, do the hot kine yoga in Paia during summer. No AC, no deodorant. Da killah wiffahs. But watch out. I’ve seen yoga turn regular kine hippies on the lamb from religion into hairy zealots. It’s ugly.

5. Learn the skills of conscious communication — Whatever that means, but we like to talk while awake or baked or waked-n-baked. Anyway, we still let people make left turns in traffic and wave at strangers.