Whole Guidance Podcast: Nutrition | Fitness | Happiness | Mindset | Ancestral Health | Holistic Wellness

Heal Thy Self CLICK HERE TO DISCOVER THE BEST FOODS TO SUPPORT SELF-HEALING This may sound revolutionary But we must go back to our evolutionary history To uncover human health mysteries To discover the truth behind pain To see the pleasure that can rain Down upon your body treasure and turn sickness Around back to health to feel full of abundance And wealth to find amongst us true love That shines bright like the sun above Which moves the entire night into day And from the dark comes this spiritual haze It lifts and expands Its spiritual gaze Toward you, by you, through you, and now from you This Spirit you wonder is what's wondering you This soul you ponder is what's pondering you This energy you seek is what's seeking you This pain you bother is what's bothering you This pleasure you miss is what's missing you This life you live is what's living you And this love that you are is what is loving you Don't forget your ancestral past Their power now lives within you, it will forever last You are the product of generations of love And your health will regenerate from this love Health is not outside you, you are a health through and through Health is your essence, do not forget this lesson To find wealth there is no need to work To find God there is no need for church To find health there is no need to search These are all expressions of love in the Universe To be or not to be, love is always the answer Life is rhythm so be a dancer Sing in tune with Mother Nature Follow her beat, you’ll find your centre Play healing sounds and be a healer Create beautiful music and become the Creator Remember love is an inside job Your heart is full of it and gives love as it throbs But you cannot give what you do not understand So learn what love is and make it your brand Be open to giving your self a love raise Be open to receiving loving gifts of praise You get from life as much as you give So give as much as you can afford to live Now is not the time to be cheap Love has no limit give it freely so others can keep Giving what they're getting to the rest of the world This circle of giving and receiving is a never-ending whirl Wind that blows through the entire cosmos Everything, after all, is connected in the Universe After you've given all that you got, you have not lost There's nothing to pay for love, there is no cost In the end your health will be free To express itself naturally And one day you will realise and accept this truth You are not in your body; your body is in you Links and Resources How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy! -- Paul Chek The Fourfold Path to Healing -- Thomas S. Cowan MD, Sally Fallon, Jaimen McMillan   Please leave a 5-s tar iTunes review for the Whole Guidance Podcast Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher Radio | Android | RSS The post WGP 052: Health is an Inside Job appeared first on Whole Guidance - Learn a New Way of Being.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Love and your Life’s Legacy: I’ll explain how your legacy is a gift to the world that just keeps on giving I’ll talk about how what you value and what you love determines the legacy you will leave behind Finally, I’ll share a simple exercise that will help you create a life worth loving and a legacy worth leaving CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS THAT WILL BRING MORE LOVE INTO YOUR LIFE A legacy is something that is given from the past and received in the present and that will most definitely change the future. There are many different types of legacies that you can leave behind after your passing. They may include tangible material things like a car, a house, money, a business, a cure, or even a child. Your legacy could also be abstract experiential things like an idea, a philosophy, a religion, a physical training program, or a procedure for dealing with grief. Now your legacy, whether it is a person, a place, or a thing, whatever it is, it will always leave an impact in the world of the living for many years, long after you’ve moved on and it will change the world. The change may be small or large, but there’s still an impact. Even the smallest of events can lead to massive change, like a butterfly flapping its wing can contribute to the eventual formation of a hurricane, your legacy will have ripple effects on the world stage. For instance, you and I are products of a lasting loving legacy known as humanity. Each generation of life is a legacy by default. Just by being born you have already impacted your parents, your caregivers, everyone who you’ve come into contact with throughout your lifetime, you have changed. So no matter how short or long your life or how small or big of an impact you have: "You are legacy in full expression" And you are leaving a legacy that will change the world, whether you’re fully aware of what that change is or not. Now the type of legacy you leave behind will be determined by what you love and what you love about life comes from your personal core values. Your personal core values are the needs you have when it comes to living an awesome life. They define how you want to live. They guide your choices and they determine the type of person you want to be. Core values also influence the types of personal relationships you want to be in and also what communities and organisations you wish to join. If you value fast cars, big mansions, and money than those material objects will be what you want in your life and these are what you will leave as your legacy. If you value family, friendship, connection with others, than personal relationships and their affect on the people in your life will be the legacy that you will leave behind. If you value food, music, and wine a restaurant may be your legacy. A piece of music could be your legacy, or maybe a food, music, and wine festival, that could be your legacy. Whatever you love you will pursue based on your values and after the game of life is over for you, those people, places, and things that you valued and have nothing but love for, will become your legacy. There is one exercise I’d like to share that will help you determine your values, what you love about life, and ultimately your legacy. That exercise is writing your own obituary. Yes it may sound a bit of a morbid thing to do, but once you get into and finish your obituary you’ll be left with a sense of fulfilment and will find yourself really passionate about getting after life. Really take the time, which could be hours, days, or weeks, to write your obituary and keep in mind these two things: How you would like to be remembered as a person? and What would you like to leave behind as a lasting loving legacy? After the exercise look at what you’ve written down and you will figure out what your personal core values...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Love: I’ll explain some of the ideas, the emotions, and actions of human love I’ll talk about universal love and its absolute nature Finally, I’ll give one loving practise you can use to transform any thought, word, or deed into an expression of love CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS THAT WILL BRING MORE LOVE INTO YOUR LIFE Love is a word with many many meanings. Thinking about love is not the same as feeling love and they are not the same as acting out of and being love. The ideology behind love or the way most people think about love is that it is an emotion that creates a bond and a connection between two beings. The bond between a parent and its offspring, or the bond between a plant and the soil, and even the bond between the Sun and the Earth, these connections and relationships between different forms of life can be considered love. The idea of human love usually brings up images of intimate romantic partnerships between two people. But there’s also family love, and friendly love, national love, and enemy love, fiery love, free love, violent love, and the love to complain and to hate things, and the love to give and to share, etc. There are many forms of human love. So thinking about love it isn’t just one thing, it’s many things. Now just like the idea of love the emotion of love isn’t just one feeling. Love brings up many different emotions. Actually human love is a collection of hormones and neurotransmitters interacting together. The coordination of these molecules of energy in motion or molecules of emotion create different sensations in your bodymind that we call love such as: Gratitude Joy Happiness Peace Serenity Hope Awe, and Inspiration   For example, when I see a sunset I feel inspired and in awe of its beauty. It gives me hope for tomorrow, which gives me peace and serenity in the moment. I feel a sense of joy and happiness and I have nothing but gratitude for being alive and being able to experience such a fantastic event. Altogether I could simply say I loved witnessing the sun setting over the horizon. Again like the idea of love, feeling love isn’t just one thing, it’s many things. When it comes to acting out of love and being love, again this ain’t one thing. Acts of love or loving deeds and being love are actually the culmination and the final expression of the way you think about love and the way you feel about love. If you think love is being loyal to your nation and this inspires you to want to protect your country and the values it represents, your act of being love may lead you to sign up to the army and defend your country. If you think love is being listened to where people give you their undivided attention and you get filled with joy at being the focus of attention, then your act of being love will most likely make you quite the talker in your tribe where you seek a lot of the attention. And if you think love is all about food, something I know personally all too well, and eating makes you happy, then your loving deed will be to eat and the more love you seek, usually the more food you will eat. So your thoughts about love, dictate how you feel love, and then ultimately how you express that love. Now I’d like to move on from the human concept of love, where it can be many different things depending on your own unique view of the world, to the universal picture of love where love is absolutely everything. This quote from the book The Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz perfectly summarises what I mean by universal love: “The energy of love is just like the light that comes from the sun. Like sunlight, the emotion of love looks different depending on what is reflecting the love.” This quote means that universal love is whatever it reflects.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Healing and Love: I’ll explain the difference between conventional and natural healing methods I’ll talk about unconditional love and why it is the most important factor when it comes to healing I’ll talk about a couple of things that can stop the healing process from happening properly Finally, I’ll share a few ways you can make love your drug of choice to help you with any healing journey you may be on CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS THAT WILL BRING MORE LOVE INTO YOUR LIFE There are two main belief systems out there when it comes to healing. One is used by the conventional mainstream model and the other by more traditional natural healers. The current conventional medical model used mainly in western societies focuses on treating health symptoms and disease with medication or surgery. So they have a pill or a procedure for every illness. What conventional treatment misses is the fact that health symptoms and disease are really signs of underlying hidden malfunction that has been going on in your bodymind for days, weeks, months, perhaps several years in terms of certain cancers and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Conventional mainstream medicine is based on a mechanistic, reductionist, allopathic model of healing where the human body is separate from the mind and works much like a machine that can be reduced down to different parts and by treating the symptomatic issues that are appearing in the parts you will fix the rest of the machine. On the flipside of this you have natural traditional ancestral healers that use a holistic approach to healing where they may or may not treat health symptoms and disease directly, but they do look for the underlying root cause of the issue and they will look to support your bodymind’s own innate ability to heal. This holistic approach by natural healers aligns with the theory of Vitalism, which is the understanding that there is a life force energy that beats your heart, breathes your lungs, and heals your bodymind. To compare these two very different models of healing let me use the engine check light on a car’s dashboard as an analogy. Conventional mainstream medicine would treat the check light in the following ways. They would test the bulb, make sure that there wasn’t anything wrong with the bulb. They may remove the bulb. They may also tape over the check light so you can’t see it. They may even ask you to put a blindfold over your eyes so you can’t see the check light. This is what it means to see things as a machine and to reduce things to their smallest parts and to treat only the symptom. Now natural healers would see the check light as a sign of some other underlying issue going on. Then they would find that this engine check light relates to an issue with the engine itself and so they would go directly to the engine and do further tests on the engine. Once the problem is found a natural healer would choose from a number of different strategies that they feel would fix the specific issue that they found in the engine and once the engine is fixed wouldn’t you know it the engine check light on the dashboard inside the car is no longer lit. That’s how a holistic root cause healing model works. It treats the underlying cause of the symptom. Earlier I mentioned life force energy and how your bodymind can heal itself. Think about a cut on your skin. A band aid or plaster over the cut isn’t actually healing it. It’s simply preventing the cut from getting infected and getting worse and can actually improve the speed of healing, but the band aid or the plaster isn’t doing the healing. Think about a broken bone. A cast isn’t actually healing the bone. It’s job is to prevent the bone from healing out of alignment, but the cast isn’t doing the healing. This life force energy that is healing the cut and healing the bone ha...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Obesity: I’ll explain why obesity is a disease and also a major hidden cause of other diseases I’ll talk about the difference between being obese and being overweight I’ll explain how obesity is caused by hormonal imbalances and not by eating too many calories Finally, I’ll give you a few holistic lifestyle strategies to reduce obesity, regain health, and feel awesome in your own skin CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FAT BURNING FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN It’s no secret. The world today has a lot more fat and sick people than there were 150 years ago. Seeing an obese person way back in the day meant having to visit a carnival or circus that’s how rare obesity was. Unfortunately today you just got to walk outside or turn on the tele and you’ll see excessively large people everywhere. Since the 1980s obesity rates have doubled. Hmm, I wonder what happened in the 80s? Ah that’s right the low fat recommendation from the American health authorities. Good one guys. Today this misguided unscientific nonsensical low-fat strategy has lead to about 13% of the world’s adult population being categorised as obese and about 50 million kids worldwide under the age of 5 being defined as obese. That’s what gets me the most, seeing overweight and obese infants and children. Now the World Health Organization has a list of the top 10 leading causes of death and smoking tobacco isn’t even on the list, but we all know that smoking causes many chronic diseases that eventually will lead to death. This is what the World Health Organisation says about smoking: “Tobacco use is a major cause of many of the world’s top killer diseases – including cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive lung disease and lung cancer. In total, tobacco use is responsible for the death of about 1 in 10 adults worldwide. Smoking is often the hidden cause of the disease recorded as responsible for death.” Interesting right? In fact the World Health Organization label smoking as the number one killer, but they still don’t put it on the list. Instead you’ll see diseases relating to the heart, brain, lungs, and infections. This is where obesity comes in. Even though it’s not listed, just like smoking as a leading cause of death, obesity is a major hidden cause of many of those on the list. The top 3 by the way are heart disease, stroke, and lung related diseases all of which are due to the obstruction in blood and oxygen flow to the heart, brain, and lungs. The thing about obesity is that most people think it’s just a weight issue and obese people are eating too much and not exercising enough. While I agree that some of the health problems associated with obesity is due to the large amount of weight on the body causing physical dysfunction, obesity causes more harm through physiological and biochemical damage because of its ability to disrupt the function of other systems in your body. You see your body isn’t stupid. It has specific feedback loops and safety mechanisms to prevent the excessive loss or accumulation of fat and it has to control the amount of fat on your body because your fat cells are actually another organ. So when your fat levels get out of balance the key functions that they perform will be disrupted. One of the functions of fat is fat acts as a warehouse for toxins. When your body is unable to fully metabolise, process, and eliminate toxins it stores the toxins in fat cells. Fat also sends signals and hormones that can have a positive or negative effect on your immune system and your metabolism. Your fat cells send out immune signals controlling inflammation and stress in your body. Your fat cells also send out hormones telling you that you’re full and will increase fat metabolism, i.e. fat-burning. But when you have too much fat this will increase the amount of pro-inflammatory signals called cytokines increasing the...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Epigenetics: I’ll explain the difference between genetics and epigenetics I’ll talk about how your environment impacts the activation and expression of your genes Finally, I’ll give a few holistic tips on how to activate and express health-boosting and life-affirming genes CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST HEALING FOODS FOR YOUR GUT The study of how genes control life is called genetics. Genetic looks at genetic differences, mutations, heredity, and of course of lot of today’s genetic research looks into genetic diseases. Genetics and the study of genes is a very important and valid science, but the belief behind genetics is outdated old-school thinking and that belief is that genes control life. This belief came from the hypothesis that there is a gene for every protein. The more complex an organism, the more cells and proteins there are, the more genes there would be. That was the idea. This idea turns out to be incorrect. The Human Genome Project, which started back in the late 1980s, was setup to uncover the entire sequence of genetic information found in human DNA with the side benefit of discovering the genetics of every disease and how to prevent and cure them. The human body has about 100,000 protein molecules, so science expected to find about 100,000 genes. Fast forward 15 years and guess how many genes they found at the end of the project in 2001 – only 35,000. Fast forward another 15 years to today and after further study and research that initial number has shrunk to about 20,000 genes. There was a lot of hype in the science community about the Human Genome Project, but funnily enough when the scientist’s expectations proved to be wrong, very wrong, there was no big deal made about the unexpected results. This massively incorrect assumption about a gene coding for a protein fell off the radar. Science tends to work this way unfortunately where the good news is reported and the bad news is swept under the rug. So now we know that there are only 20,000 genes in the human genome and these 20,000 genes code for over 100,000 proteins and alongside this fact is the news that the largest number of genes found in a single animal is 31,000 genes and that animal is the near-microscopic water flea Daphnia. Imagine that, a near-microscopic simple organism with hardly any cells and proteins compared to the 35 trillion cells and 100,000 proteins in your human body and yet this tiny little life form has 11,000 more genes than humans do. What this shows you is that genes do not control life. No matter the complexity of an organism the number of genes present will vary a lot. It’s not the genes that say how life will be from birth to death. It’s the life that is lived that will determine which genes get expressed or activated or switched on and which genes don’t. Say goodbye to the old belief that your genes control your life and hello to the new way of thinking – that your life controls your genes. This new way of thinking is actually 50 years old and is called the science of epigenetics, which looks at how environmental signals affect gene expression. Epigenetics means above the genes and studies how your environment affects the biochemical and physiological processes that are happening outside of your genetic code, but have a direct effect on which sequence of your genetic code to read and which genes to express or not. Remember the old way of thinking says that genes are in control like a foreman of a construction site. Genes dictate what gets built and so decide the health or disease of your cells. The new way of thinking, epigenetics, says genes are actually just simple blueprints. They don’t do anything at all. It’s all the proteins and enzymes and cellular signals and every other process that’s going on in and outside of your cell that dictate which blueprints to read (gene expressio...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Leaky Gut Syndrome: I’ll explain how a leaky gut can lead to chronic disease I’ll talk about what causes a leaky gut Finally, I’ll give you 5 steps to healing and sealing a leaky gut CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST HEALING FOODS FOR YOUR GUT Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician and considered the father of western medicine, although I’m sure he’d be quite upset at the current health-care system and medical model we use today, which is really a disease-care model, but anyways… Hippocrates said: “All disease begins in the gut.” And he is absolutely 100% correct and let me explain how. And by the way when I say gut I’m talking about the small and large intestines in your body. Your entire alimentary canal, your entire digestive system is one long tube that begins in your mouth hole and ends in your south hole so anything you put in your mouth and swallow is still technically outside of your body. If it gets digested and absorbed into your bloodstream then it’s inside your body, but if what you swallow gets eliminated then it technically was never in your body. That’s not to say it won’t affect your body only that the effect will be minimal compared to if what you ate did get into your bloodstream. Now your gut performs many functions in your body besides digestion and elimination and its primary role is to act as a barrier controlling what’s allowed in and what stays out of your body. Nutrients are allowed into your body and unwanted unknown foreign materials are kept outside of your body. So it’s similar to a mosquito net. It allows oxygen in while keeping mosquitoes out. When this barrier becomes compromised and unregulated or when this mosquito net gets punctured and has tears in it this is called leaky gut syndrome. When you have a leaky gut unwanted unknown foreign materials get into your bloodstream and then all hell begins to break loose in other parts of your body. When undigested food particles, pathogens, toxins, and other irritants that usually get eliminated find their way into your body, into your bloodstream your immune system gets activated and this causes an inflammatory and stress response at whatever site the foreign material settles in. The longer this inflammation and stress goes on the higher your chance of getting a chronic disease. For example, if you have had leaky gut for a while and unwanted material settles in your joints you may get rheumatoid arthritis. If they settle in your arteries your chance of having a heart attack or stroke skyrockets. If this foreign matter settles in your thyroid you may experience hyper or hypothyroid issues. If they settle under your skin you may get rashes, eczema, or acne. If they settle in your brain your ability to focus and think clearly may reduce dramatically giving you brain fog. If this foreign material stays in your gut you may experience digestive issues like bloating and foul-smelling gas that can eventually lead to Crohn’s or coeliac disease. And if these non-nutrient substances don’t settle anywhere in particular this chronic low-level inflammatory and stress response will cause your hormones and your neurotransmitters to get out of balance with either too much or not enough being produced causing body composition problems (fat gain or muscle loss), reproductive issues (infertility), energy imbalances (feeling tired or fatigued), and mood disorders (depression). Not only does bad stuff get into your bloodstream with a leaky gut, but because your gut wall is damaged you’re no longer able to absorb the full amount of nutrients, minerals, and vitamins from the food that you’re eating and this leads to nutrient deficiencies. This malabsorption of nutrients causes your body to start cannibalising itself in order to meet its own nutrient requirements. So if you’re not absorbing enough calcium your bones will begin to breakdown.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Depression and Suicidal Tendencies: I’ll explain what depression is and what suicidal tendencies are including their symptoms I’ll talk about from my experience what it feels like to be depressed and to have thoughts of suicide I’ll talk about contributing factors that can cause depression and suicidal tendencies Finally, I’ll give a few tips on how you can work your way out of a depressive and suicidal black hole CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU IN BALANCE Depression is a mood disorder in which you feel extreme sadness and grief, you’re uninterested about life, and you suffer chronic mental, emotional, and physical pain. Depression affects 350 million people worldwide and that’s only an estimate. Because depression is such a difficult thing to admit to having with for fear of ridicule and looking weak or looking like a lesser person in other people’s eyes I’d say that between half a billion to a billion people suffer from some form of depression. There are different types of depression including major, melancholic, manic, and a few others all of these have similar symptoms including: Persistent feelings of sadness and grief Feeling hopeless, helpless, worthless, pessimistic and/or guilty Feeling irritable and anxious Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable Low self-esteem Indecisiveness Alcohol and drug abuse Eating or sleeping too little or too much Difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions Thoughts or attempts of self-harm Thoughts or attempt of suicide Fatigue or low energy Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment Suicidal tendencies are thoughts that you have about death and killing yourself due to not being able to cope with chronic pain and the suffering you’re currently experiencing in your life. Being suicidal is another mood disorder and an advancement from self-harm where you cut or hurt yourself in order to cope with pain. Thoughts of suicide affect an unknown number of people, but over 800,000 people worldwide commit suicide every year with someone dying from suicide every 40 seconds. A lot more people attempt suicide, which makes thinking about suicide a major health issue. Here are some symptoms and danger signs for suicide: Talking about wanting to die or killing yourself Researching and planning suicide Talking about feeling hopeless or having no reason to live Talking about feeling trapped or in unbearable pain Talking about being a burden to others Alcohol and drug abuse Eating or sleeping too little or too much Withdrawn or feeling isolated Showing rage or talking about seeking revenge Displaying extreme mood swings Always thinking about death Suddenly happier and at peace with things Loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable Visiting or calling people to say goodbye Making arrangements and setting your affairs in order Giving things away, such as prized possessions   What I’m going to do now is to do my best to describe what it feels like to be in a state of depression and thinking about suicide. Now I lived with depression for two decades and had suicidal tendencies for a decade and a half, but even that doesn’t qualify me enough to say that this is exactly what the experience of depression and thinking about suicide feels like for everybody. Even after having talked with and researched other people who have dealt with these disorders all I can give you is a description of my own personal experience. Describing a feeling or sensation is extremely difficult though. So what I’m going to do is use two analogies to give you a sense of what depression and suicidal tendencies feel like or felt like for...

In this podcast I'll be exploring another Universal Life Lesson found in Motion Pictures: I’ll explain how other people can act as Universal signs and lessons I’ll talk about a few movies that deliver the same universal message Finally, I’ll share how you can apply this universal teaching to your life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN This is part 3, the final of a 3-part series I’ve been doing on universal lessons taught in film. In part 1 I talked about believing in yourself. In part 2 I talked about accepting your past and accepting who you are now. Before I get into the final set of films and life lesson I’ll talk a bit more about reading signs from the Universe. The Universe speaks to you in many ways giving you signposts in different forms, signs that tell you which direction your life should be moving toward. One of these universal signs is other people. The world is full of kind, generous, and awesome people. But the world also has many annoying, hateful, jerks. Now I would rather hang out with the awesome folk and not just because it feels good to be around uplifting people, but because I can learn a lot from them. I learn different opinions on so many different topics. I learn new things that I can use to make my own life better and the biggest lesson I get from awesome people is that the world isn’t a terrifying place full of bad and apathetic people as some forms of media would have you believe and that there’s plenty of do-gooders and go-getters out there. For me awesome people are a sign from the Universe that awesomeness truly exists and that joy is an experience that everyone can have. Of course I do encounter many people who aren’t awesome, but quite negative or hateful or very down on life and being around them can be very draining and energy sapping and they can suck the real honest-to-goodness joy out of life. But I still learn a lot from these so-called energy vampires. I learn different opinions on different topics. I learn new things that I can use to make my own life better. And the biggest lesson I get from negative and apathetic people is that the world is full of opposites. There’s always a different way to do the same thing and there’s always a different way to react to the same event. For me people who aren’t awesome are a sign from the Universe that in order for me, for you, for any of us to experience awesomeness we must also experience the negative, the hateful, and the annoying as well. My point being people who are good and people who are bad they teach the same universal lesson that life is all about the good and it’s all about the bad. You can’t have one without the other. Everyone is here to give you the full experience of life, the full experience of you. So the next time someone cuts you off in traffic or lets you in the gap; calls you names or calls to say they love you; makes your blood boil or makes your heart sing; remember these people are teaching you something about the world around you and about yourself. What that lesson is though, well it’s up to you to do the introspective work and personal development and reflection to find that out. Alrighty then before I begin with the final lesson in films spoiler alert! If you have not seen Kung Fu Panda 3, Home Alone, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and The Matrix Revolutions you may want to skip this episode as these are the four movies I will be exploring in the next moment. That next moment being right now. In Kung Fu Panda 3 Po the Dragon Warrior is reunited with his long-lost father. There is also a new villain on the scene named Kai and he is a supernatural spirit warrior from the spirit realm who defeats his enemies by stealing their chi or their energy. The only way to defeat Kai is by mastering chi. Traditionally Panda’s were masters of chi and Po’s father promises to teach him the art of mastering chi,

In this podcast I'll be exploring another Universal Life Lesson found in Motion Pictures: I’ll explain critical Universal signs that you may be missing I’ll talk about a few movies that deliver the same universal message Finally, I’ll share how you can apply this universal teaching to your life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN This is part two of a 3-part series I’m doing on universal lessons taught in film. In part one I talked about movies that delivered the universal message that you have everything you need to live an awesome happy and healthy life as long as you deeply whole-heartedly believe it to be true. Before I get into the next set of films and life lesson I’ll talk a bit more about reading signs from the Universe. Now when it comes to accidents, loss of a loved one, heartbreak, sickness and chronic illness, these can be very painful experiences indeed, but these are also signs from the Universe. These painful events that we’ve all experienced are actually working for you and not against you. This will be difficult for some to understand at first (I know it took me a while to get there), but the most painful, unbearable, horrendous, terrifying and saddest moments in your life also happen to be the biggest lessons that you’ll ever receive in life. These are massive signs from the Universe, this is the Universe talking and communicating with you. As I mentioned at the top of the podcast I was given a whole bunch of signs about why I was feeling depressed, but I never paid much attention to them because I was in too much pain. So the trick to seeing and realising that pain is actually a sign and is something that needs to be learnt from is to separate yourself from that pain. Easier said than done and that requires a whole podcast in itself, which I will do eventually, but the point I wanted to make here is there are signs everywhere in your life on how to live and act and pain is an urgent message being delivered to you for your benefit by the Universe, that the way you’re living your life needs to change. Alright before I begin with lesson in films spoiler alert! If you have not seen Kung Fu Panda 2, The Lion King, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix Reloaded you may want to skip this episode as these are the four movies I will be exploring right now. In Kung Fu Panda 2 Po is happily fulfilling his role as the Dragon Warrior protecting the land with his five martial arts friends known as the Furious Five. When they defend a small village from bandits Po gets distracted and has a flashback about his past. This distraction allows the bandits to escape. Soon after Po and the Furious Five are sent to stop Lord Shen, a really bad guy, who is ready to unleash a new deadly weapon upon the world. During their attempt to capture Lord Shen Po has another flashback about his past, which again distracts Po allowing Lord Shen to escape. On another attempt to stop Lord Shen Po inadvertently again gets in the way and the Furious Five are captured while Po gets blown across town with a cannonball. Po is healed by a wise fortune teller who also teaches him to stop resisting his flashbacks and to accept his past. Once Po calms himself he sees his past for what it really was instead of what he imagined it to be. Po accepts his past and finds inner peace. With inner peace Po is no longer distracted and with the help of a few kung fu masters he saves the Furious Five and the whole of China. A quote from the movie: “You gotta let go of that stuff from the past, ‘cause it just doesn't matter! The only thing that matters is what you choose to be now.” In The Lion King Simba is a lion cub and son of Mufasa, king of the pride lands. Scar is Simba’s uncle and wants to be king so comes up with a devious plan to prevent Simba from being the future king. Scar tricks Simba into waiting in a deep valley and...

In this podcast I'll be exploring a Universal Life Lesson found in Motion Pictures: I’ll explain how the Universe is always teaching you and giving you signs I’ll talk about a few movies that deliver the same universal message Finally, I’ll share how you can apply this universal teaching to your life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN The Universe – it isn’t just a gigantic void or space filled with planets, stars, galaxies, and life. It’s also the biggest school in the universe. The biggest university you could say. This university is full of lessons and learnings that have been around since the very beginning and will be around long after the end. These lessons are like laws or principles that when you follow them give you happiness and health and when you ignore them or completely disregard them you feel horrible and unhealthy. These universal lessons and messages are delivered in many different ways, an infinite number of ways in fact and the signs, they are everywhere and they’re always there. Whether the sign comes in the form of the weather, or other people, a bird through the window, or seeing the same set of numbers over and over again the Universe is always communicating with you. The most prominent communication tool used by the Universe is your bodymind. Your bodymind is always talking to you giving you subtle cues and clues to the lessons the Universe is providing you. For me it took decades of feeling like crap and having a sick-prone body before I took the hint and learned a very important lesson – my body does not agree with gluten. It also took many many years of feeling lonely and angry at family and friends because I was 100% absolutely certain that I was right and that they were wrong before I learnt another very important lesson – my mind prefers love and connection over anger and isolation. Okay Universe, I finally got it. It took me a while, but I got it. Lessons learned thank you very much and of course I’m still learning new lessons every day. For such an infinitely large school the Universe’s list of lessons isn’t anywhere near as big, which is why you see the same themes and ideas being retold time and again in different movies of different genres. I’m going to focus on three of these morals that have been told in countless movies and I’m going to make this a 3-part episode series where I’ll talk about each universal lesson and the movies that tell its tale in its own podcast. Oh yes before I begin talking about the first universal lesson spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen any of the movies I’ll be exploring in this 3-part series you might want to come back to these episodes after you’ve watched them. I’ll be talking about the Kung Fu Panda trilogy, Wizard of Oz, the original Star Wars trilogy, Lion King, Toy Story, and the Matrix trilogy. Alrighty then life lesson from the Universe numero uno. I’ll be exploring this lesson in the context of the first Kung Fu Panda movie, Wizard of Oz, Star Wars: A New Hope, and The Matrix. In Kung Fu Panda Po is a Panda and the unlikely choice as the chosen one who must learn Kung Fu in order to become the Dragon Warrior and save the village. He is told that a sacred scroll would reveal to him the secret to limitless power and that he would only be allowed to read the scroll once he was worthy. After a long time training in martial arts and kung fu Po got the scroll and what did he find? What was the secret to limitless power? What did the scroll contain? Nothing, it was blank. Actually it was made out of golden parchment paper and it did show Po’s reflection. Po didn’t see it at the time, but later understood that there is no secret to limitless power or becoming the Dragon Warrior. He is the Dragon Warrior as long as he believes it to be true. And a quote from the movie: “To make something special you just have to believe it’s special.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Juicing and Blending: I’ll explain why consuming juices and smoothies are important for happiness and health I’ll talk about the differences and the pros and cons between juicing and blending vegetables and fruits Finally, I’ll share tips on how to turn your juices and smoothies into a healing elixir CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Everyone knows that vegetables and fruits are packed-full of phytonutrients, plant chemicals that have powerful medicinal and healing effects in your body. Plant power fuels and nourishes animal life on this planet. Without the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and immune-boosting benefits you get from consuming plant matter it becomes very difficult, but not impossible, just hard to give your body the nutritional, energetical, and informational support it needs to thrive. Unless you live in the North and South poles where you’re exposed to cold with its own unique healing powers and are consuming a lot of nutritionally dense rich blubberous animal fats and their offal then plant foods are going to be a necessity in your diet. Juicing and blending your vegetables and fruits into juices and smoothies are an excellent and simple way to get more plant medicine into your diet. When you juice you’re making juices and when you blend you’re making smoothies. Juicing is very different to blending, which makes juices very different to smoothies. Plants are made up of mostly water much like your own body and also a carbohydrate known as fibre. Fibre is indigestible by your body’s digestive system. This fibre though it is the perfect food for the trillions of microorganisms that live in your gut, in your digestive tract and your gut microbiome plays a huge role in your digestion and in keeping your immune system running optimally. Fibre is the difference between juicing vegetables and fruits into juices verses blending them into smoothies. When you juice, using a juicer obviously, what you’re doing is separating the fibrous plant material from the water and this water contains a majority of the phytonutrients. This leaves you with a very watery drink and a lot of fibre leftover. When you blend, using a blender obviously, what you’re doing here is pulverising, chopping, mashing 100% of the plant material fibre and all leaving you with a thick drink. There are benefits and drawbacks to both juicing and blending. The primary benefit to having juices and smoothies is that they are a very simple, nutritious and delicious way to increase your consumption of vegetables. Not everyone can manage to eat 3 to 9 cups of vegetables a day, but you can easily get 3 cups of a variety of vegetables in one juice or smoothie. For example in my green smoothie that I have for dinner most nights I put in a quarter cup of parsley. You have probably seen a tiny pinch of parsley used mainly as a garnish and sure that tiny amount tastes okay, but can you imagine eating 4 tablespoons worth of chopped parsley? Maybe spread out evenly over a day, but for me I like getting my parsley dose in one hit and it’s so much easier and tastier mixed into a smoothie. Now the main benefit to juicing and drinking juices is that they are an easily digested and quickly absorbed source of nutrition and energy. For people with digestive issues, energy issues, and for those who are severely malnourished drinking green juices will be easier on your body allowing your body to absorb more of the nutrients in that juice. It takes about 20 minutes for a juice to be fully digested and absorbed compared to a few hours for a full-blown meal. Also because your body doesn’t need to spend a lot of energy digesting your juice it will have more energy that can be used elsewhere such as for repairing damaged tissues, increasing detoxification processes,

In this podcast I'll be exploring how Blood Sugar Affects Your Hormones: I’ll explain how hormones control your health I’ll talk about how blood sugar levels affect your health and control your hormones Finally, I’ll share a few holistic lifestyle tips on how to control your blood sugar levels and hormones naturally CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN There is so much information old and new about health and wellness that it can be extremely frustrating sorting through what he said and what she said and what science says just to find yourself back where you began – confused. If you ever find your head spinning and your ears smoking and your brain melting and your bodymind just about to explode because of all the contradictory information out there I suggest you keep it simple by focusing on one thing and this one thing to focus on would be your hormones. Now do you know how to make a hormone? Okay that’s a setup for a bad joke so I won’t go there, but do you know what a hormone is? Hormones are signalling molecules that traverse and tell different areas of your bodymind what’s happening in your environment both internal and external and how to respond and behave to environmental changes. Your hormones are affected by your lifestyle, by what and how you think, feel, do, sleep, breathe, move, drink and eat. All these things affect your hormones and your hormones affect all these things. I’ve spoken about hormones before and how they affect your health back in episode 23. I’ll focus on three major hormones in this episode with regards to the effects of blood glucose levels. Insulin, cortisol, and melatonin. Insulin is a very critical and important hormone needed for growth and repair as its job is to help get nutrients out of your bloodstream and into your cells. Keep in mind that when insulin is high your body’s ability to mobilise and burn fat for fuel comes to a standstill. Insulin does not have a circadian or daily rhythm like cortisol and melatonin do. Insulin’s release is determined by what, when, and how you eat. The insulin receptor sites on your cells, which is the place where insulin docks when it connects to your cells, these insulin receptors do have a circadian rhythm of their own where in the morning these sites are insulin-sensitive, screaming out to insulin to come and give some nutrients. Whereas in the evening these receptor sites are insulin-resistant where they play it cool and ignore insulin most of the time even when insulin is trying to dock on and deliver nutrients. Cortisol is known as the stress hormone and when you perceive stress or when your body is physically under stress this is when cortisol gets released and is free to roam around your bloodstream where it will suppress your immune system, digestion, and your ability to burn fat, because if you’re stressed the last thing your body is worried about is healing and breaking down your last meal as it wants to move as fast as it can to get away from the stressor. In order to do this cortisol increases blood glucose levels and metabolism to provide more energy to your muscles. Cortisol has a circadian rhythm where it rises sharply in the morning to get you up and moving and then its levels begin to fall throughout the day where in the evening there’s only a tiny amount of cortisol in your bloodstream allowing you to relax and to get to sleep. Melatonin is known as the sleep hormone, but it’s also a potent powerful antioxidant and it plays a major role in reducing cancer risk. Melatonin has a circadian rhythm, but opposite to cortisol where it’s low in the morning and then rises in the evening making you want to go to sleep as it helps in the repair process of your bodymind while you sleep. Everything in life ebbs and flows goes up and down in rhythms and waves and this constant flow back and forth keeps everything in harmony and balance.

In this podcast I'll be exploring how to Heal Broken Relationships: I’ll explain the major reason relationships fall apart I’ll talk about why people relate so poorly to themselves and to one another I’ll explain how 3 words can heal any relationship Finally, I’ll give an exercise on how to use these 3 words to heal broken relationships in your life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Relationships are part of being alive. If you’re not relating you’re not living. Technically the first relationship you’re in is with your own bodymind. Your bodymind is made up of trillions of cells living in harmony with each other. This massive community of cells are in constant communication with one another and build and maintain healthy relationships with each other. From the day you’re conceived into this world to the day you will leave this world you are in constant communication with your bodymind and must build and maintain this relationship throughout your lifetime. The healthier your relationship to your bodymind the healthier your bodymind ends up being. Of course today the world is full of people with sick and diseased bodyminds meaning as a collective culture and society and species we are not doing a very good job of maintaining and looking after the most important relationship we have, which is with our own selves. The main reason for such a high rate of disease in western society today is people do not listen and communicate well with their bodymind. When you have a symptom this is your body talking to you, telling you ‘hey you’re doing something that I’m not liking, please stop right now’. But you don’t. Who does? None of us are taught in school how to be in tune with the wants and needs of our bodies and our mind so we end up playing ignorant fools to our body’s messages. I know when I was dealing with my chronic health issues I was totally ignoring the signs and body language that my bodymind was trying so hard to communicate to me. Why was I ignoring it? Because at the time I really enjoyed my lifestyle. I loved fast food, I enjoyed not having to go to the gym like everyone else was doing, and my job wasn’t killing me either or so I thought. Of course now looking back I can see how my body was rejecting the food, the lack of movement, and the dissatisfaction in my job by giving me skin issues, digestive issues, and depression. The same reason goes for personal relationships. Your relationship to your family, friends, neighbours and perfect strangers it all comes down to effective communication. If you have good communication with other people you’ll have good relationships with those people. On the flipside if you have bad listening skills and cannot effectively share your intentions with other people you’ll find it very difficult to relate and connect to them on a meaningful level. So why do people plead ignorance and just not want to listen to their bodyminds or to anyone else? Why is effective communication so difficult to build and maintain? It comes down to wanting to be right or not wanting to be wrong. We all know the feeling of being right, but we also know the feeling of being wrong or at least to be found out to be wrong. One makes you feel great joy and pride, while the other makes you want to jump off a cliff or hide. The idea that being wrong is bad comes from human evolutionary history. When your ancestors heard a sound in a bush they had to decide whether that noise was a potential threat, a predator and to run away or was it just the wind and they could continue on their way. Get this wrong and your ancestors would have a very bad day. Get it right and nothing much happens really except knowing you made the right choice and you got to live another day. This idea that being wrong is bad is reinforced during your upbringing and it is during this time that the idea that being rig...

In this podcast I'll be exploring the Best Ways to Measure Your Health: I’ll explain why tracking your health progress is crucial to reaching your health goals I’ll talk about how your body weight is really a poor measure of health Finally, I’ll give you 5 different health tracking techniques you can use to better manage your health CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Many people set health goals and fail to reach them, why? Two big reasons come to mind. First one is you need to know why you are doing what it is you are doing. Many people fail to reach health goals because they don’t have a big enough why, a big enough reason to push through plateaus and obstacles that will most definitely show up. Having a dream gives you that why; it gives you direction and inspiration to push through right to the end. Second big reason people fail to meet health goals is that they do not track their health progress. Just as having a dream and setting a health goal is important in that it gives you direction and something to move toward and gives you that drive and that push, tracking your health progress is like signs and indicators that keep you on the best path toward your dream. Tracking and measuring your health is really important in that it gives you clear signs when things are working for you and when things are not. If you suffer from chronic weight issues, whether you’re overweight or underweight, than the bathroom scale is probably your most prized and most despised earthly possession and why wouldn’t it be. You have been told that body weight is a very important indicator for health. Let explain how this is not 100% accurate. Your body weight is made up of muscle, bone, fat, cartilage, bodily fluids of several types, and of course water. Whenever you stand on a scale and measure your weight you are weighing the totality of all of these things. This is where the Body Mass Index or BMI fails as a health measurement. The BMI is a measure of body fat (supposedly) based on your weight in relation to your height. If your BMI comes out at 18.5-24.9 you are labelled as having a normal weight. If its 25-29.9 you are labelled overweight. Over 30 and you're obese. Now I want you to think of the Terminator himself Arnold Schwarzenegger. During his bodybuilding days his body weight was around 107 kg or 235 lbs and he’s 6’2”. Arnold’s BMI in his prime works out to be 30.2. Meaning according to body weight and BMI that Conan, the Commando himself who helped Red Sonja save the world and who single-handedly took out the Predator is an obese fat hunk of human flesh! Remember over 30 is obese. Well of course that’s not true as Arnold’s body fat percentage when he was competing was only about 5-7% and he was in reality a mass of lean muscle and a chiselled piece of human art. The bathroom scale is not giving you an accurate number for health. It’s giving you a number, but that number depends on so many things. Is that scale number made up of mostly muscle which is a lot more dense and heavier and healthier than fat? Or is it bone mass? Is that scale number mostly fat? Imagine you spend a whole month off the sugars and junk food, you’ve quit smoking, and you’re now walking more and doing some resistance training. You start out at 70 kg and after 4 weeks you see on the scale the same 70 kg. Your initial reaction may be shock, horror, and confusion, but if you understand that getting off the sugars means you’re not holding onto as much water as before and that eating more real food and not smoking and doing some weight training can actually build muscle and bone and cause fat cells to empty out and die then maybe that number is a really good indication of how you’ve been doing that month. You’ve burnt off the fat and you’ve built up some bone and muscle. This is why body weight is not a good measurement to track and using a scale is a waste...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Food Sensitivities: I’ll explain the difference between food allergies, food intolerances, and food sensitivities I’ll talk about the many many health issues associated with food sensitivities Finally, I’ll share 5 ways you can identify foods your body is most sensitive to CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Most people have heard about food allergies, like a peanut allergy and food intolerances, like lactose intolerance. But not many people know about food sensitivities. Let me explain the difference between the three of these. Now a food allergy is a dramatic and immediate reaction by your body’s immune system to a particular food that you’ve eaten. Allergic reactions include immediate swelling and itchiness and also anaphylactic shock which can be fatal. The top eight allergenic foods are: Peanuts Tree nuts Wheat Shellfish Soy Milk Eggs and Fish   Food intolerance on the other hand is a more subtle, minor delayed reaction. We’re talking a few minutes to a few hours here before you experience symptoms. Food intolerances do not involve your immune system and are actually caused by your body not having the right enzymes or not having enough enzyme activity to breakdown the compounds that are in real food or in the chemicals added to fake pretend food-like products. Common food substances that people are intolerant to and do not have the enzymes to fully breakdown include: Gluten in grains Lactose in dairy Biogenic amines like histamine, tyramine, and arginine Preservatives and Additives   Alright food sensitivities. Now food sensitivities are similar to intolerances in that they provoke a small delayed reaction in your body. When I say delayed I mean delayed. Reaction times to a food your body is sensitive to can vary from hours to weeks.  Food sensitivities are similar to allergies in that your immune system is the cause for the reaction, but a different branch of your immune system, which is why instead of an immediate allergic reaction you get a delayed smaller reaction. So a food sensitivity is your body’s immune system having a reaction to the food you eat or the compounds added to or found on the food you eat and these immune reactions are small and can take a while to show up as a visible and noticeable symptom. Common foods and substances found in food that people are most sensitive to include what I mentioned earlier for allergies and intolerances, but also the following: Sugar and sugar alcohols Industrial seed oils more commonly known as vegetable oils Corn Legumes Seeds Grains whether they contain gluten or not Artificial sweeteners Alcohol Caffeine Cacao Nightshade vegetables Citrus fruits Agricultural chemical sprays Genetically modified organisms and Mould toxins like aflatoxin and ochratoxin most commonly found in peanuts and instant coffee   As you can see when you add up all three food categories together that makes quite the list of food and food compounds that can cause food sensitivities. Keep in mind that these foods and compounds are the most common sensitivities found in people who are experiencing health issues, but you can actually be sensitive to any food. No food is off-limits when it comes to causing negative reactions in your body. Whether it’s seaweed, beef, pork, broccoli, or even beautifully roasted sweet potatoes, food sensitivities can occur with any food. Let me list (yes another list) the many health issues and symptoms that a food sensitivity can cause: Brain fog Inability to focus Food cravings Low energy Irritability Fatigue Insomnia Headaches Mood swings

In this podcast I'll be exploring Greed: I’ll explain how greed can be a good thing I’ll talk about where this wanting and grasping and craving for more comes from I’ll explain the link between greed and unhealthy attachments I’ll talk about how greed creates dissatisfaction through expectation Finally, I’ll share a few strategies on how to manage yourself when it comes to greed and your desires CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Greed is defined as an intense or excessive desire for more. Looking at greed from an evolutionary lens, our ancestors lived in times of both abundance and scarcity and greed comes in very handy in those scarce moments. When traditional cultures did not have enough food put aside for the winter or had their villages wiped out by natural disasters or disease these are times when you need to have a very intense desire to survive as your life depends on it. Coming back to today to modern times where if you’re fortunate enough to be listening to this podcast I have to say, you are pretty set when it comes to getting your basic needs met. We live in a world that’s very abundant in many respects with more than enough food being produced to feed the planet, but food wastage means people still starve. We live in a world with more than enough clothes to cover every single man, woman, and child a thousand times over, but still people die due to extreme weather conditions and thermal stress. We live in a world with so much advanced technology that this could shift the human race into a new age of peace and love, but old wars still rage on with weapons of mass and mini destruction being the technology of choice. So the problem isn’t really greed itself, but the greed mindset in abundant conditions. Now if the world we live in today has more than enough for us to survive why the excessive intense desire, the need, the want, the grasping, the craving for more? One reason is you have been programmed by news media, marketing, food companies, drug companies, sports, fashion, military, and every other industrial complex out there to desire more. Every day you see advertisements telling you that you’re not good enough or that you haven’t made it in life until you buy x, eat y, wear z, and smell like p, the letter that is. Another reason for excessive wanting and desires is your upbringing. Your parents and family would have installed into your under seven year-old subconscious mind as you were growing up that no matter what you do, you must do more; no matter what you have, you must have more; and no matter how you’re being you must be more! Now they didn’t do this on purpose because hey their parents did the exact same thing to them. So this is where greed in an abundant world comes from – external sources.  This is why despite having more today than anyone 10,000 years ago ever had, you have this insatiable appetite to want more to crave what it is you don’t have yet grasp at because you feel like you’re missing out on something. This greed mindset comes from outside of you. Having an intense desire for more can lead you down a path to unhealthy attachments. Attachment itself isn’t a bad thing. A loving bond is absolutely necessary between family members, friends, and communities to keep everyone moving forward in the direction that lifts everybody up. Unhealthy attachments, however, are not bonds of love, but bonds of fear. When you lust after and want great ideas, people, places, and things you can begin to confuse yourself with that which you desire. For example you could be greedy for money and say to yourself that unless you earn a certain amount or have a certain amount of cash in the bank you are not successful. So you grow this unhealthy attachment with an idea of success equalling having lots of money and therefore you think that without money you are nothing.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Food Anti-Nutrients: I’ll explain what anti-nutrients are I’ll talk about how anti-nutrients affect your body and how they affect the absorption of other nutrients I’ll list foods that are thought to be extremely nutritious, but really are extremely anti-nutritious Finally, I’ll share how to best prepare foods to lower their anti-nutrient content CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Everyone knows what a nutrient is – a substance that nourishes the mind, body, and soul. But have you heard of anti-nutrients? Anti-nutrients are plant compounds that prevent you, the plant predator, from stealing or absorbing nutrients from the plant. Believe it or not plants and other living creatures were not put on this planet for the sole purpose of feeding the human race. Plants are sentient life forms, like you and me. They have their own life purpose with the dream of the continuation of their own species and since they don’t have legs to run away or claws to fight off predators they use chemicals to protect themselves. By using biological phytochemical warfare in the form of these anti-nutrients plants increase the chances of their own survival and the survival of their offspring. While at the same time causing a lot of health issues for their predators. So anti-nutrients are a plants innate defence mechanism. These anti-nutrients can negatively affect your health. Examples of anti-nutrients used by plants include: Lectins Saponins Gluten Phytic acid or phytates and Enzyme inhibitors Lectins have been shown to bind to insulin receptors on the walls of your cells. Insulin is the hormone responsible for putting nutrients into your cells and if you’ve had a carb rich meal high in lectins then all that sugar that’s now flowing in your bloodstream cannot be absorbed into your cells because lectin is blocking insulin from attaching to the cell. When sugar is blocked from getting into your cells it’s left to roam in your bloodstream and when it lingers there for far too long this causes damage and inflammation to your cells. Think of your arteries, think of your brain neurons, think of any part of your body where sugar attaches itself to the cells, it becomes glycated, glued to the cell and it causes malfunction and damage. We’ve all heard of diabetes and this is what happens when sugar is left to linger in your bloodstream. Gluten, saponins and lectins can also cause irritation to your gut, to your intestines. Remember your gut is where most of your nutrient absorption takes place, but if your gut is stressed, inflamed, or compromised then you don’t absorb as much nutrition as you should. Your gut wall is like a net, like a mosquito net where it keeps the pesky bugs out, while letting the proper nutrients in. The problem is lectins, saponins and gluten they’re like mosquitos with little katana blades that cut through the net creating tiny little holes that allow them and other molecules such as undigested food particles and disease causing microorganisms, pathogens, to get into your body. When you get undigested and unprocessed food particles, pathogens, and other foreign materials in your bloodstream your body mounts an immune response and this leads to inflammation and stress. Now if this stress is chronic and goes on for a long time, if your body has to fight off these pathogens and foreign material that shouldn’t be there day after day because your gut has become leaky this is how you get really sick and get diagnosed with autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Hashimoto’s, psoriasis, diabetes, and coeliac disease, just to name a few. When it comes to phytic acid this will bind to minerals meaning that if a food is high in say zinc like pumpkin seeds, but that food is also high in phytic acid then when you eat pumpkin seeds for example you only ...

In this podcast I'll be exploring the light side to Cancer: I’ll explain how there’s always a flip side to every situation I’ll talk about 3 negative sides to cancer that can be turned into positives Finally, I’ll give the 3 most important steps anyone dealing with cancer needs to follow before healing can begin CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN This is the final part of a 3-part series I’ve been doing on cancer. In the previous episode I talked about what cancer is: a miscommunication between your healthy and abnormal cells. I also explored many factors contributing to this miscommunication and worked out it was because we as a species are living against the natural order of things and that we’re surrounded by and participate in activities that are not allowing our community of cells to communicate effectively. I also talked about how to heal from cancer following the 7 Holistic Health Principles that bring you back in alignment with Mother Nature and the Universe. On to the final part. All life is influenced by two universal forces yin and yang. Like a coin which has two sides, heads and a tails, life can also be viewed as either black or white. But you shouldn’t forget a coin also has a middle and when you spin that coin on this middle heads and tails no longer exist, but what does exist is the potential and the possibility for both. Meaning the universe, life it’s not as simple as black or white, but it’s both black, white, and even gray. So from one extreme all the way to the other including everything in between this is what life is all about. So when it comes to cancer many shudder at the mere mention of the word, the sound, the intention behind it. But did you know in many traditional cultures and non-westernised societies they have no word for cancer in their native tongue because they’ve never experienced it. You could tell one of these non-westernised people all about cancer, what it is and describe to them in detail what you mean by it and they wouldn’t flinch. The reason we jump when cancer shows up is because western civilised society has evolved with cancer and whether intentionally or not has turned cancer into a poisonous snake. So cancer to us is what a predator is like for more ancestral tribal communities. To these traditional cultures cancer is a ghost. It doesn’t exist to them. Is it possible for us civilised folk to turn cancer from physical to metaphysical and maybe even beyond? Well as I just mentioned earlier life isn’t black or white so let me talk about how cancer isn’t a poisonous snake, but instead can actually turn out to be the antidote to the snakes bite. In part 1 of this series I talked about the big 3 conventional medical treatments for cancer: chemo, radiation, and surgery. I for all intents and purposes badmouthed these 3 treatments and gave one side of the coin to how fatally flawed these treatments are. Over 97% of cancer patients die from these treatments so while what I said may be true it’s only a half-truth. This is the Whole Guidance Podcast and I help guide people toward wholeness in all aspects of their life and show them new ways of being so I’d like to give the whole side to the medical cancer treatments story and flip my negative perspective from part 1 to show that these actually can be very positive treatments if used correctly. It is true that chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery are not selective treatments. Meaning these procedures do not target cancer cells specifically. Yes even surgery. Recall from part 1 while surgery may remove the cancer daughter cells inside a tumour it actually misses the cancer mother cells or stem cells that produced the daughter cells and caused the tumour. Plus surgery can puncture a tumour causing it to leak cancer daughter cells giving them freedom to metastasis and spread throughout your body.

In this podcast I'll be exploring the many sides to Cancer: I’ll explain what cancer is and will show how a normal healthy cell functions compared to an abnormal cancer cell I’ll talk about how cancer causes death I’ll explain the one true cause behind cancer and the many contributing factors to this cause I’ll talk about the one true cure to cancer (hmm… interesting) Finally I’ll share natural holistic health tips that will help you heal from cancer as well as prevent cancer from growing out of balance CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN This is part 2 of a 3-part series I’m doing on cancer. In the previous episode I spoke about the conventional wisdom of cancer and how it’s all misinformation. The truth about cancer is that you shouldn’t be afraid of it. Like any other lifestyle disease you can cure cancer naturally and I’ll be talking about that in this episode. So what is cancer? I’m going to give you 3 definitions because cancer is that big of a confused mass of information. Hopefully by giving multiple definitions you’ll be able to see cancer for what it really is from your own perspective. First definition of cancer comes from orthodox conventional mainstream western medicine which says that cancer is an out-of-control malignant tumour that metastasises or spreads throughout your body. In a word cancer is a tumour. Yeah. Alright, it’s close. But I know there’s way more, a lot more in fact to this cancer story than just a tumour spreading. I like this second definition of cancer better and it comes from early 20th century Nobel Prize winner, physiologist, and doctor Otto Warburg who defined cancer as any cell that produces less energy through the oxidation of macronutrients in an aerobic environment and instead produces most of its energy by fermenting sugars in an anaerobic environment. I know that’s a lot to take in. To paraphrase Dr Otto’s definition and make it simpler: a cancer cell produces extremely low levels of energy compared to other normal healthy cells. In a few words cancer is low energy production. Not bad, a much better definition I reckon. The third and final definition of cancer I have for you is my own. Cancer is a block in cellular communication leading to malnutrition and dysfunction in healthy cells that are still in orderly communication with each other and this blocked communication also creates abnormal function and abnormal growth of chaotic cells. Again a lot to take in so to make my cancer definition simpler: cancer is when there is miscommunication between your cells decreasing healthy cell function and increasing abnormal cell function. In a few words cancer is confusion at the cellular level. If you think about what I just said my definition it doesn’t focus just on the abnormal cells or cancerous cells, but also includes, what used to be healthy cells, the suppressed cells. So to redefine what I just said: “Cancer is the presence of both suppressed healthy cells and abnormal cancerous cells.” Personally I really like this definition (no surprises), but I have to say even this doesn’t tell the whole story about what cancer really is. Now I believe these 3 definitions together do give us a better picture of what cancer is all about. Cancer is a tumour that grows out-of-control and spreads. Cancer is a cell that uses sugar to produce low amounts of energy in an environment with hardly any oxygen. Finally, cancer is a miscommunication between cells causing an imbalance of healthy cells to abnormal cells. To see how these 3 different cancer definitions actually do come together pretty nicely when it comes to explaining exactly what cancer is, I’m going to give a little lesson (actually quite a big lesson) on cell biology and will explain how healthy cells work and how they create energy compared to abnormal cancerous cells.

In this podcast I'll be exploring the dark side of Cancer: I’ll explain the truth about cancer in terms of the type of disease it is and is not I will bust other conventional beliefs about cancer that you might have Finally I’ll give a few resources that you can use to enhance your knowledge about cancer and to help you take control of your health CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN About 1 in 2 people alive right now will get diagnosed with cancer. Look around you count how many people there are divide that in 2, they're going to get cancer. And 25% of men and 20% of women will die from cancer. The American Cancer Society have estimated that in the U.S. in 2016, that’s this year as of this recording, 3 people will be diagnosed with cancer and 1 person will die from cancer every single minute. Pretty scary stuff right or is it? Media, which includes not just the news and magazines, but any influence on your mind and the way you think. So media really is your family and friends, your workplace, your church, social media, anyone you’ve heard or know are forms of media and media has a huge impact on how you think and on what you believe in. When it comes to cancer the media would have you believe that to be diagnosed with cancer is automatically a death sentence and if it’s too late to treat conventionally then you need to get your affairs in order before your inevitable early death and if the cancer is treatable according to conventional western medicine standards then you only have a limited amount of time to choose between chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery or a combination of the three, which are western medicines biggest hammers to fight and destroy the nails of cancer. Problem is anytime you have a hammer of course everything begins to look like a nail and as a society we have been taught to believe that cancer is a nail in your coffin and that the big three, chemo, radiation, and surgery are your only hope. But like I said these are hammers and these hammers do one thing very well and that’s to nail cancer right into your body. The truth about cancer is this – cancer is not any different or especially significant than other non-communicable diseases or other lifestyle diseases like heart disease, lung disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, osteoporoses, stroke, MS, ALS/MND, chronic kidney disease, etc. Let me repeat. "Cancer is not any different or especially significant than other diseases." So all this extra fuss and fear mongering about cancer by the media by doctors isn’t justified and in my view it’s just plain irresponsible. What this means with a cancer diagnosis is that it’s not a death sentence and like all other NCD’s, like all other lifestyle diseases you can take control of your health and live with your sickness and manage it or even overcome it. When it comes to cancer there’s no need for additional fear than if you were diagnosed with any other disease. You know what? And what I’m about to say may be controversial to hear, but this is just my personal opinion that has rapidly evolved over the past few months of intensive, highly intensive personal research of reading scientific papers of watching and listening to hours upon hours of doctor and patient interviews including both success and failure stories… I believe that cancer is simple to cure. Now I did not just say it’s easy to cure from cancer. What I mean is that the solutions to curing cancer, which I’ll talk about in the next episode, are simple and require one thing and one thing only – a real intention to heal. So this means dedication, commitment and staying on the path to healing. Now I’m not the only one who thinks cancer is simple to overcome. Here’s a quote from an article written in 1990 in the 'Townsend Letter For Doctors' by Dr Dan C Roehm regarding the Budwig Diet,

In this podcast I'll be exploring your many different Bodies: I'll explain how your physical body is more your energy body I’ll talk about four other bodies that help make the whole entire you Finally I’ll share how you can nourish and meet the needs of your 5 different bodies CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Humans, that’s me and you included, some of us we like to think that we’re different or better than other creatures, that we’re above other animals, plants, and sometimes even other humans. Truth is on the surface we all look a little bit different. Okay majorly different, but if you were to zoom in, into your cells, into your molecules, into your atoms, and into the quantum particles themselves like quarks and leptons guess what you’d find? The exact same thing you’d find as if you zoomed in on a cat, on an insect, on a fish, on a tree, or even zoomed in on the sun. Nothing. Well you’d see nothing, but with devices like the superconducting quantum interference device or SQUID for short with such devices that measure energy you would find that this invisible nothing that you’ve zoomed all the way in on is actually energy swirling around vibrating as a wave of pure energetic potential and you only see this wave become physical reality and realise its potential when you zoom out of the very small quantum space where you see the particles form into atoms and molecules. All this to say that your physical body, your physical being is really waves of potential energy manifesting and becoming real creating formed particles, molecules, cells, organs, muscle, bone, skin, and everything within. Now your physical body is just one of the many parts that make up the whole you, one of the many energy bodies that you have and need to look after. I will now explore four other bodies that you may not be aware of. Imagine looking at yourself standing on the Earth naked, your feet and legs connected to the Earth represent your physical body. This is the first of your 5 bodies. Moving up from your legs we reach your groin area and here you’ll find your second body, your sexual body or sexual being. This body exists when you’re born, but doesn’t come into full expression until your teenage years when your hormones begin to go into overdrive so this body is concerned with your hormones and keeping them in balance is the key to a healthy sexual body. Your sexual body isn’t just about procreation and making babies. It’s also about creating experiences that take you out of your physical body and into a state of bliss and euphoric orgasmic ecstatic oneness with the universe. Your sexual body also strongly influences how you relate to your physical body and to other people in general. The more you explore your sexual way of being the more you will know thyself and the more confidence you will have being in your own skin in your physical body as well as having the confidence to be yourself when around other people. If you have issues around sex where you find it difficult to think about sex let alone talk about it this will come down to the culture that you were brought up in and to how you were raised and there’s no right or wrong way to think about sex. There’s no right or wrong way about anything. Maybe this quote by French writer Marquis De Sade (I’ve no idea if that’s how you pronounce it) may help you see sex from a different perspective: “’Sex’ is as important as eating or drinking and we ought to allow the one appetite to be satisfied with as little restraint or false modesty as the other.” So sex like food is a nutrient we all need and while food may feed your physical body sex feeds your sexual being. Moving up your body we come to your chest area where your emotional body or emotional being radiate from. Your emotional body builds upon your sexual body and is about relationships with self and other...

In this podcast I'll be exploring the 7 Principles of Holistic Health: I’ll explain the importance of having a holistic perspective on health I’ll talk about each of the 7 Holistic Health Principles Finally I’ll share a few resources on how to integrate these principles into your life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Modern western culture would have you believe that your health issues are not related to your lifestyle and that there’s a single pill for every single ill. Meaning if you want to get rid of your health symptoms then you must take a specific type of pharmaceutical drug or medication that targets that specific symptom. This is a reductionist approach meaning it reduces your body and health issues to isolated parts and disconnected organs where the focus is on treating the symptom and disease wherever it shows up. Now there are many problems with this kind of thinking. First of all it misses the wholeness of your entire body, which is an integrated interconnected system of systems. Your body is not a collection of parts strung together, your body are the parts that make up the whole. Your back, for example, includes your back muscles that cover your spine and are covered by your skin and your back muscles are also connected to nerves that are connected to internal organs. So when you experience back pain all of these your muscle, bone, skin, organs, and your central nervous system all of these together create the sensation of pain. Now how exactly one could isolate back pain to be caused by one single thing is beyond me, which brings us to another problem with a reductionist view that focuses only on treating symptoms – it misses the root cause of the problem. Symptoms are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your health issues and a collection of symptoms create larger and larger tips called diseases. Now one symptom or disease could be caused by many different factors, hidden from your view. Let’s say you had a headache. Is your headache caused by a lack of sleep, exposure to a toxin, a stressful relationship, poor breathing patterns, being dehydrated, too much sitting, food sensitivities, eating too much sugar, not eating enough fibre, high perceived stress levels, having no clear direction in life, or just not enough sunshine? It could be any of these. Or, if western medicine and pharmaceutical companies would have you believe, is your headache due to a pain medication deficiency? I mean is your body missing out on its daily dose of a pharmaceutical drug? I don’t think so. This is exactly why so many people who follow the western medical model don’t heal in the long-term. For example those with cancer who undergo surgery, radiation, or chemo, all of which will do a good job of removing all signs of cancerous tissue, these people will inevitably get diagnosed with cancer once again later on in life and this second cancer is usually more aggressive than the first and it can show up in a totally different area of the body. Because treating the symptom or disease only focuses on the tip of the iceberg. You must look beneath the water to see what’s really going on and what’s at the root cause of the problem and you can do this by looking at your health through a holistic lens or framework. The 7 Holistic Health Principles I’m about to go through is a framework that you can follow in order to not only treat sickness and disease, but to also prevent serious chronic health issues from showing up in the first place. By using these seven principles as your health guides you will realise a happy and healthy life of purpose, no doubt about it. The 7 Holistic Health Principles are: Moon Ether Air Water Fire Earth, and Sun   So let me explain a bit more about each one. The Moon principle refers to rest and recovery.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Knowledge: I’ll explain why having knowledge is not as empowering as you might think I’ll talk about two types of knowledge that are truly empowering Finally I’ll share how to best apply accumulated knowledge giving you phenomenal powers to live an awesome life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Today a lot of the human experience is all about watching TV, YouTube videos, and sharing information through social media websites. Which is great! I mean it’s awesome that we can learn so many new things about so many different topics and connect to so many different people through the power of the Internet. But, how much of this knowledge and of these online relationships are actually relevant to your life and how much of that relevant information have you actually applied and done yourself? Think about what you’ve learned in just the past 7 days. How much of that information was relevant to you and how much of it have you tried for yourself? Probably not a whole lot… and that goes for me too. The old saying ‘knowledge is power’ doesn’t hold true. Because what you know could have absolutely no use for you in your current life situation and more importantly even though you know a lot of stuff if you don’t apply that knowledge and get it out of your head and into the real world then there’s really no power in knowing that stuff. “Knowledge that isn’t relevant and applied is weak.” There are two types of knowledge that are relevant though and easy to implement in your life empowering you to become a better version of yourself. First knowledge type is a knowing. Knowing is all about self-knowledge. It’s about an innate, instinctual, intuitive know-ing that you feel emotionally deep down to your core and because it comes from within rather than without this knowing is all about you. With this type of knowledge you will know what you want and don’t want, what you like and don’t like, who you want to hang out with or not, what career or job you’d like to have, what foods work for you and don’t work for you. There’s a musical lyric ‘to know you is to love you’ and what I’m saying here is: “To know thyself, is to love thyself.” With a knowing you will better understand what it is you love and what it is you don’t love. This helps guide you to filter out the crap information and to choose better info to download into your bodymind. By knowing what’s worth learning and what isn’t you ensure that what you do know is relevant to you and your life. The second knowledge type is about being knowledgeable. Being knowledge-able. Where you are able to put your knowledge into being. Meaning applying the knowledge you’ve learned and taking action on that knowledge. So turning a learned thought and idea (which is external energy downloaded from the universe) and integrating this with your knowing of self (which is internally sourced energy from within your own bodymind) and making it a reality in the physical world (which is a combination of both external and internal energies).  So being knowledgeable is all about taking action on what you’ve learned to create a new experience for yourself and others. You could read, watch, and listen for an eternity about how to drive a car, ride a bike, or swim, but you still wouldn’t be able to do any of it until you actually get into a car, on a bike, or in the water and apply what you’ve learnt. It’s only when you apply knowledge by being in action, by being knowledgeable and using your knowing of self that you actually get to experience life and find out your own truth about something you’ve read, seen, or heard about. So knowledge isn’t power, but potential power and applied knowledge is truly where you have the power. As I said before in order to make sure you’re accumulating relevant knowledge you must have a knowing of your self and ...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Diet: I’ll explain why dieting doesn’t always equal health I’ll talk about the two main types of diets that all other diets can be grouped under I’ll talk about the one true diet that I believe everybody should be on Finally I’ll highlight a few techniques that you can use to fine tune your real food nutrition CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Diet; dieting; to diet; to be on a diet; and for some people don’t even mention the ‘D’ word. For anyone who has dealt with body weight issues hearing the word diet brings up a lot of other words: Restrictive Tasteless Boring Struggle Willpower Low energy Anger Frustration Pain   Notice how there’s no mention here of an improvement in health. Diets are mainly used to reduce your weight and yes all diets will change your weight and modify your body composition, short-term. It doesn’t matter what diet you go on you will lose both muscle and fat in the first few weeks. The problem with any diet when used for far too long, way past its due by date, is that you may end up losing a lot more healthy muscle than non-healthy fat and even more importantly you will eventually create havoc, chaos, and a huge imbalance in your hunger, satiety, stress, growth, and reproductive hormones. Meaning that if you follow a diet purely to reduce your weight and to change how you look that diet will work in the here and now, but in 6 months or 6 years this same diet will cause a cascade of health problems making you a very sick, sad, and surly person to be around. The reason for this is because the main type of diet people use to reduce their weight and to look good in the mirror is a limiting diet. Anytime you limit the foods you eat you run the risk of missing out on vital nutrients. That is nutrition your body and mind need for vitality. Long-term deficiencies in nutrients may make you look good in the mirror, but it’s the hormonal havoc that these nutritional deficiencies cause that is at the root cause of many diseases including cancer. It’s not just food you limit in these body image diets, but anytime you limit your way of thinking and feelings toward food and your relationship with food you limit your entire human experience. Your mindset, which was once open to the many possibilities in life, is now closed off to a collection of experiences that life has to offer. Limiting your way of being can cause a lot of distress and this emotional and mental stress will change your physiology creating real physical stress in your body. Remember the body and mind are one and the same, the bodymind. I’ve mentioned one type of diet already, a limited diet where you limit your eating and your way of being to achieve a body image goal. There is a different type of diet and what differentiates this diet from a limited diet is that it doesn’t restrict foods in the same sense because it’s not based on looking good, but based on thinking, feeling, and doing good and this other type of diet accomplishes this goal through healing. This healing diet I call a limitless diet. A limitless diet is followed for health and life reasons and not for body image reasons alone. The reason this type of diet is limitless and not limiting is because your why is much bigger than just looking good in the mirror. Your why could be to overcome a disease like cancer, to have more energy to play with your family and to get work done, or to be able to think clearly in order to start and finish a personal, a professional, or a community project you’ve been thinking about for a long time. When your why for following a diet is bigger than just how you look in the mirror than the foods you restrict yourself to eating no longer seem so, restrictive. Whereas a limiting diet is about scarcity where you feel like you lose a...

In this podcast I'll be exploring How to get Yourself Back on a Holistic Track after Overindulging on Food: I’ll explain how overeating can be a gateway to many other dream-negating bad habits I’ll talk about some of the causes for overeating Finally I’ll share five tips that’ll help get your bodymind back into a holistic way of being after an episode of overeating CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Overeating, binging, and overindulging on food are habits that other animals don’t seem to exhibit. The human animal, however, practises this habitual way of eating to the extreme a lot more than it should. When you binge eat there’s the possibility of thinking that since you’re already doing something that’s not exactly health-promoting you may as well do some other non-healthy things like indulge in some alcohol, sloth around all day, or just think horrible negative thoughts like how sucky it is to be you right now for not having the willpower to just say no to food. As a kid I would binge eat on cookies or crackers and hot chocolate (yummy) and I still have binge eating episodes to this day. I know for myself that once I start going down the binge eating path my return to the path of a healthy way of eating can be a long and difficult one as other healthy habits fall by the wayside as well. My sleeping pattern would go all over the place, I’d forget (on purpose) about keeping up with my usual movement practise, and I’d find my thoughts heading down a dark corridor. One reason for overeating is not being mindful and conscious of your own actions. I know many people who literally eat like ducks. They barely chew their food and end up swallowing big portions of food down their gullets. I know many people like this because I used to be one. You can only see what you have within you, so that’s why it’s easy for me to see this because I definitely had this mindless habit for a long time. Back in the day I was one of the fastest eaters on the planet (true story) and I never took the time to chew my food, you know to just enjoy the taste. I was never fully involved in the whole eating process. I guess you could say I thought eating was a waste of time and I had better things to do. Problem is because I ate so fast I wasn’t giving my body the proper signals that I’ve eaten and it’s time to stop now. So I would have seconds, thirds, and all too often a fourth serving. Looking back at it now all I can think is ‘man I really was a pig... or a duck. Another reason for binge eating is emotional. Feeling alone or hurt. Feeling like you don’t have a purpose and don’t know who you are and what you want or living a life that you really aren’t in love with. So loneliness, confusion, and fear of life itself will cause many people to turn to food for comfort and this can turn into a long period of binge eating. Last reason I’ll give for overindulging on food is the season. What I’m talking about here are special occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and holidays, all of these are perfect excuses to get off the health train and on the indulgence express (my kind of ride). I mean who doesn’t love pumpkin pies, fruit salads with ice cream, cakes, and my personal favourite homemade smoked salmon. Smoked salmon, you may be thinking how is that unhealthy? Well let me tell you how. If you can sit down and eat half a whole salmon including the head in less than 20 minutes that my friend is overindulging of the highest degree. Remember: “Too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing.” All right so let’s get into five ways you can get yourself back to living a holistic healthy lifestyle after an episode of overeating. So the day after your however-long binge first thing you want to do is to get back in touch with your dream. What is your dream? Do you even have a dream?

In this podcast I'll be exploring Fear: I'll explain what fear is I’ll talk about what limiting beliefs are and how they keep you from change I'll talk about how expressing your authentic self helps you see fear in a new light Finally I’ll share an exercise you can practise to reframe your thoughts to help you deal with your fear CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Fear can be defined as an emotion driven by the thought of possible danger or the anticipation and expectation of pain and harm. Meaning fear is an emotion based on a thought you have about a future event. Another way to see fear is that a lot of people believe hate to be the opposite of love, but hate like love is still an emotion that connects you to the object you have hatred toward. In my experience and what many other people have found is that fear is actually the opposite to love as fear has an energy vibration that drives you away and disconnects you from whatever it is that you’re afraid of. Fear is an energy that you experience in the now present moment based on a future event, and it stops you from moving toward what it is you want. One major driver of fear is a limiting belief. Now a limiting belief is a thought, an idea that you have downloaded from your upbringing that stops you and restrains you and prevents you from doing anything. This is the essence of fear. For example you may want to play a sport or join a gym, but you have this belief that you are not coordinated or strong enough so you don’t sign up. You may want to become a fashion model, but you have this belief that you are not attractive, pretty, handsome, tall, thin, or beautiful enough so you don’t even bother looking at job ads for models. You may want to be a scientist, but have a this belief that you’re not smart enough or that people where you come from don’t normally become scientists and have other types of jobs and careers so you stop putting effort into your studies. Or how about this example. You want to forget the past and start from scratch a relationship with a loved one that you had a fight with many years ago. You want to let go of the resentment that you’ve held toward that person for what they said or did to you or hope that they can forgive you for something you said or did. You want to reconnect with this person so badly it hurts. However, you have this belief, this thought, this idea that no matter what you say or do that person is never gonna’ change and never gonna’ want you back in their life anyway. They will shut you down, you will feel embarrassed and hurt, and you would just be wasting your time. So you don’t reach out to that person and continue to live in the shadow of regret and wondering ‘what if’, all the while missing out on the love that you could be receiving in that relationship. A belief that holds you back from experiencing life is a limiting belief because it limits you from reaching and realising your full potential and experiencing life in all its fantastic awesome beauty. A limiting belief is the face of fear and it will always be staring back at you for as long as you allow it. Fear keeps you from changing and you will never be able to change and develop and grow and evolve to reach your full potential if you live in fear. One of humanity’s greatest fears is to follow one’s own dream. When you’re following your dreams and living the life you want to live and being the way you want to be this is when you shine at your brightest and show your true luminous being, your authentic self. This fear to dream and act upon one’s dream and shine brightly was summed up brilliantly by spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson who says: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

In this podcast I'll be exploring Emotions specifically Anger and Happiness: I'll explain how emotions run your life I’ll talk about how anger is a necessary and healthy emotion I’ll talk about how the pursuit for happiness isn’t a healthy choice Finally I’ll share how to express healthy anger and to choose happiness to get the most pleasure from life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Ah emotions. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. Your thoughts (your ideas) they create your feelings (your emotions) and your feelings well they determine a heck of a lot. It is your feelings that determine your words (what you say); your deeds (what you do); and ultimately your results (what you get out of life). Let’s take a look at how ideas and emotions in your bodymind really do lead to the results you get in your life. Human thought begins with the perception of an internal or external stimulus. This thought then creates subtle energies. These subtle energies influence your physical, emotional, and mental ways of being by mobilising chemical messenger molecules throughout your bodymind. Examples of chemical messenger molecules include immune cells, hormones, and neurotransmitters. So once these molecules have energy and motion they travel to, are received, and used by your cells as instructions that drive both your verbal and physical actions. These molecules of energy in motion or another way to say it would be these molecules of e-motion absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it determine the course of your life because what you say and what you do will always, always determine what you get out of life. Now there are two main emotional forces that drive the human experience: pain and pleasure. One emotion associated with pain is anger. The root cause for you to get angry is because you have a need that is not being met. But I’m not talking about basic needs like food or shelter. No I’m talking about deep-seated, inbuilt, animal, innate, primal, evolutionary-rooted physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs.  The ultimate human need is the need to connect and to share your self with others. So when your need for connection and sharing is not being met many emotions can come up and anger is the emotion that people think and feel of when they wish to express externally to another person that they have this unmet need. As I talked about earlier this anger really is a collection of molecules of energy in motion. Anger is an emotion that has very hot, unstable energy attached to it so your words and deeds will also be hot and unstable when in an angry state resulting in a heated and rocky outcome to whomever you are expressing that anger toward. When taken to the extreme anger turns into rage, which has even hotter less stable out-of-control energy associated with it. Now when anger does not turn into out-of-controlled rage it can be a very beneficial and healthful emotion. In fact anger is one of the most powerful and impactful emotions as anger alone can cause you to change. Your fits, your bouts, your outbursts of anger are all opportunities for change. To change what? To change anything you want. Whether your anger causes a change in you, in someone else, in your environment, or a global change it doesn’t matter as change of any kind is what life is all about. Many inventions, services, businesses, restaurants, and even airlines were created because one person got given a crappy deal, got angry, and then got even… an even better idea that is. For example successful businessman Richard Branson he was left stranded at an airport and instead of moping around complaining, getting worked up into a rage and eventually doing nothing about it, he got over his anger and frustration and asked other stranded passengers if they’d like to charter a plane with him and thus the seed f...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Vitamin D and Smart Sun Exposure: I'll explain the importance of Vitamin D and how it is made I’ll talk about how conventional mainstream sun safety advice and practises are causing more harm than good Finally I’ll give tips on how to practise smart sex (that’s smart Sun EXposure) and how to optimise your vitamin D levels so you can continue to live a happy, healthy, and holistic life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN In the previous podcast I talked about some very important hormones that you needed to know about. By living a holistic lifestyle you can keep these hormones in a beautiful state of harmony and balance which in turn keep you and your body happy, healthy, and in harmony and balance as well. One hormone I didn’t mention in the last podcast was vitamin D. I didn’t talk about vitamin D in the previous show because I believe that no matter the chaos in your physical, emotional, and mental body’s vitamin D has the power to bring all of you back to centre, in harmony, in balance, in peace and one with the universe. Yeah I know sounds pretty hippy dippy and I’ll talk more about this at the end of this, but for now let me talk more about vitamin D. First up vitamin D has been given just the worst name ever because it isn’t a vitamin at all. A vitamin is an organic compound that your body cannot make and vitamin D is created by your body when your skin gets exposed to the sun. Technically vitamin D is a fat-soluble secosteroid so it’s a steroid hormone much like cortisone and testosterone, but let’s not get too technical here shall we. I like to call vitamin D the sun hormone… sounds nice right. The sun hormone controls the expression of over 1000 genes in your body meaning it can turn on or off about 5% of your entire genetic code. Whoa! The sun hormone also reduces inflammation, boosts your immune system, destroys disease, prevents tumours, fights cancer, strengthens your bones, is a powerful antioxidant, improves mood, enhances and activates the actions of the nutrients you eat, so overall vitamin D (the sun hormone) helps you live a longer quality of life. Right now there is a worldwide deficiency in vitamin D levels in the human population. Even those in equatorial regions are vitamin D deficient can you believe it. On top of that skin cancer rates continue to rise despite people following national health guidelines for sun safety. In New Zealand where I live we have the SunSmart campaign where we are advised to slip on a long-sleeved shirt and into the shade, slop on copious amounts of high sun protection factor (SPF) broad spectrum sunscreen, slap on a wide brimmed hat, and wrap on some wrap-around sunnies (that’s sunglasses for you non-local folk). So Slip, Slop, Slap, and Wrap… pretty catchy right. This campaign also recommends the following: During September to April (the warmer months of the year) we should be sun protected between the hours of 10a-4p, and in the early morning and late afternoon have some form of outdoor activity for 30 minutes without sun protection During May to August (the cooler months of the year) we should be outdoors for 30 minutes with face, arms, and hands exposed in the hours around noon   Now unfortunately it is this exact misinformation that is leading to both decreased levels of vitamin D and increased levels of skin cancer in the human population. How so? Well first I’ll talk about how your body actually makes vitamin D. Okay I know I said earlier that I didn’t want to get too technical, but the way the human body makes this potent healthful hormone from sunlight or light energy is pretty cool. When UVB rays from the sun hit your skin they react with a precursor molecule in your skin called 7-dehydrocholesterol to create vitamin D3.

In this podcast I'll be exploring Calories and Hormones: I'll explain what calories are and how counting calories won’t do much for your health I’ll talk about hormones and how they affect your health a lot more than calories Finally I’ll give a few tips on how to balance your hormones naturally to turn you into a fat-burning machine CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Calories are all people talk about when it comes to dieting and changing body composition. Funny thing is most people have no clue what a calorie actually is. Well a calorie is a unit of heat energy where 1 calorie equals the amount of energy needed to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade. The way calories are measured is to burn the dry weight of the object you want to find the calorie value of and then measure how much heat is given off. So if you wanted to find out the number of calories in a banana, for example, you would first dehydrate it and then burn it and by measuring the amount of heat it gives off you will be able to work out the amount of calories it contained. Now this is all fine and dandy when measuring calories using a calorimeter in a stale, stable, stagnant setting like a scientific laboratory, but when you’re talking about measuring the burning of foods in the human body or the metabolic-effect of how food calories are utilised by human physiology then Houston… we have a problem. You see if you were to ask an aboriginal tribe in a South American jungle or African bushland or Australian outback who are excellent specimens of optimal human health whether they weighed, measured, and counted the amount of calories or energy or foods they ate on a regular basis, they would just look at you sideways, show off their bright-white teeth with a wide grin, and then they’d start laughing their bottoms off. They have a lot more important things to be concerned with than calories like maintaining shelters, hunting and gathering food, and getting back to telling stories and playing around all day. Sounds like the life right? Your ancestors as far back as 100 years ago were not concerned with counting calories and obesity wasn’t even an issue back then. Today, however, it seems like the more calories we count as a society the more obese we seem to be getting. What’s up with that? The reason is human beings are not calorimeters. You are not a simple input and output device. Your body is one of the most complex biological machines in the universe. Your body is an interconnected system of trillions of inputs and outputs. For someone to say that they know exactly what happens to the hundred calories they eat from food or say that they know exactly how much calories they burned during exercise is human hubris at it again, meaning we think we know better than Mother Nature. It is impossible to know the exact amount of fuel energy you get from food and how much energy you burn from movement. Another thing is that not all calories are created equal. 2000 calories of sugar water, for example, if you were to compare this to 2000 calories of coloured vegetables, yes they are the same amount of energy, exactly the same amount of energy, but when your body begins to digest, absorb, assimilate and metabolise and make use of the macro and micronutrients you will see a totally different effect in how your body looks, in how you think and feel, and how you act in life. A human body made up of sugar water compared to one made up of vegetables would be the same as comparing a house made up of straw and one made up of brick and mortar. One is weak and full of holes (tumours) whereas the other is strong and solid (healthy). Ask yourself are the calories that you’re currently consuming on a regular basis turning you into a person of straw or into a solid piece of human awesomeness? There are a number of ways the foods you eat and the movements...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Supplements: I'll explain why supplementing with vitamins and minerals is a necessity I’ll talk about some vitamins and minerals that you need on a daily basis I’ll give some supplement and food recommendations for these vital nutrients Finally I’ll share how you can lower your supplement requirements CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Today human society of the western variety follow many practises that are not very beneficial to life on this planet. One of these practises is modern agriculture. Way back in the day about a few generations ago farmers and growers did not need to use chemical fertilisers, man-made pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and other chemicals or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in order to grow plentiful and bountiful crops that were also packed full of nutrition. Farmers did not grow a single crop time after time on the same plot of land and soil, also known as a monoculture. Farmers did not grow and breed vegetables and fruit just so they could make them bigger and sweeter. Today the way society practises farming leads to a lot of these agricultural chemicals leaching into the soil poisoning the microorganisms and worms needed to create a healthy soil. This sick topsoil that is depleted of vitamins and minerals creates sick plants, sick animals, and sick humans. Not only do the chemicals poison the soil, but they get into waterways and flow into local rivers and lakes and eventually hit the ocean creating more sickness and disease for sea life. The vegetables and fruits of today have lost their medicinal properties and have less fibre and a lot more sugar. The bland iceberg lettuce and sweet supersized apple you’re eating today are not the same bitter and tart, smaller varieties your grandparents had in their day. Before agriculture you could actually gather lettuce that was quite bitter and full of plant nutrients that would act as medicine in the body. Today that bitterness and medicine has been lost due to the commercialisation of the food industry and also due to consumer demand. So it’s not all the producer’s fault as buyers over the years wanted bigger and sweeter tasting foods so society has to take some of the blame here for why food today does not have the same nutrition density and medicinal benefits as the foods of previous generations. Not only is the food supply low on nutrition, but the environment is high in pollution. Industrial chemicals are being pumped into the air, land, and oceans all over the world every second of every day and the more toxins your body is exposed to the more work your innate detoxification system has to do and this detox process requires nutrients. So unless you live in a bubble your body is already working overtime to detoxify the chemicals you’re exposed to on a daily basis and this detox process is soaking up all the nutrients it can find within your body. Another thing that soaks up a lot of nutrients in your body is stress. Whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional stress will drain your body of the nutrition it needs to thrive leaving you with a body that has barely enough to survive. The more physical stress your body is dealing with and the more perceived emotional and mental stress you believe yourself to be under then the higher your vitamin and mineral needs become. So because it’ll take you a few heads of broccoli today to get the same nutrition from one single head of broccoli grown 100 years ago and due to the constant barrage of toxins your body is being exposed to and the increased amount of stress in modern life these all cause an increase in your nutrition requirements meaning that supplementing with vitamins and minerals and other vital nutrients is a necessity to achieve optimal health in this day and age. Now with so many vitamin and mineral supplement...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Materialism and Spiritualism: I'll explain what materialism and spiritualism really mean I’ll talk about the dark and the light sides of each one Finally, I’ll share how you can best balance the material world with a spiritual life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Depending on the definition used you could think materialism and spiritualism are two sides of the same coin or are totally unrelated. The following set of definitions show how these two belief systems are actually connected. Materialism is the belief that nothing exists except for physical matter. Spiritualism is the belief that spirit is the fundamental element of all reality. What we have here are total opposites and yet this is exactly what makes them totally connected. How? In the podcast I did on the philosophy of Yin and Yang I explained how these two forces of the Universe are both opposing each other, but at the same time are interconnected to each other. The potential for Yin, the seed of Yin grows from inside Yang and vice versa. You cannot have one without the other. For example day and night, hot and cold, fear and love, each of these are opposites of each other, but you could never know one without experiencing the other as it is from day that night comes, it is after heat cools that you feel cold, and it is after you’ve faced fear that love can be expressed… and vice versa for all of these. Matter and spirit are different yes, but they come from within each other. The physical world is made up of matter, right. The sun, the moon, the Earth, your body these are all material objects. The spiritual world is made up of energy. The sun’s radiation, the moons gravitational pull, the Earth’s electromagnetic field, your body’s aura and light signature these are all spiritual elements or units of energy. So here you have physical objects radiating, emanating, and producing energy. But, not only do physical objects produce energy, but physical matter itself is made up of and moved by energy. If you had a powerful physics microscope and looked at your hand under the smallest zoom setting you would see the peaks and valleys of your skin. Increase the zoom a little and you’d see the individual cells that make up these peaks and valleys. Zoom in further and you’d see the organelles, the little organs inside one of these cells. Zoom in again and you’d see the molecules making up the parts of the cell and organelles. Zoom in even further and you’d see the individual atoms making up these molecules. Zoom in once again and you begin to see protons, neutrons, and electrons the building blocks of atoms. What, more zooming? Yes and this time you’ll see the fundamental building blocks of the universe called quantum particles and forces some of which include quarks, leptons, electromagnetism, and gravity. Now if you were to zoom in one last time on a quark or a lepton, guess what you’d see? Nothing! You would see absolutely empty space. However, this space isn’t actually empty as it’s full of pure energy and this energy is constantly vibrating, it’s twirling and swirling, it’s moving and grooving. It’s a little vortex of energy constantly in motion. So ultimately your hand is made up of, held together, and animated by energy in motion. So we had physical matter producing energy and now we see that energy makes and moves physical matter. Yin and Yang at it again. Energy is pure potential and unlimited possibility and it’s only when this energy accumulates and concentrates to form matter that you see that possibility come to life. So without energy there would be no matter, but without matter you wouldn’t even realise, you wouldn’t know that energy even existed. In other words: “Spirit expresses itself as matter and matter is proof that spirit exists.”

In this podcast I'll be exploring Choice: I'll explain how your choices create your life and how your life creates your choices I'll talk about the three choices you can make in any one moment I'll describe how meditation can improve your choice selection Finally I’ll share what’s really behind the Power of Choice CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Life is made up of moments and in between these moments is a gap. This gap represents the space between your thoughts. It is in this space where you will find pure potential and endless possibility, for it is in this space where you have all the power in the universe – the power of choice. Choice has power because the choices you make determine the moments you experience. Your life and everything in it including who you are, what you have, how you think, feel, and act, the people you surround yourself with, the job you have, the money you have, the happiness and the love you have, your entire life is a result of the choices you have made. However, only a very small amount of the choices you end up making come from this space of possibility. The majority of your choices I’d say over 90% of them actually come from your past, from earlier life experience. For example you know you like chocolate ice cream (well I do anyway) over vanilla ice cream because you’ve tasted them already. You know you have an issue with heights because the last time you stood near the edge of a cliff or you were on a bridge you felt dizzy and almost fainted. You know not to make noise at 2pm in the afternoon while your mother is having a nap because the last time you did that she woke up in a very foul upset mood leading to an unexpected meeting between you and her shoe… ouch! So while you have the power to choose whatever it is you want in your life in between moments, it is your previous life experience that will determine the majority of your current choices which will determine the way you think, feel, and act in the future. Altogether these will lead to the results you get in your life. Thus we have the circle of choice where: “Your choices make your life and your life makes your choices.” I’ve learnt from Holistic Health Practitioner Paul Chek that in life you have three choices. The first is the optimal choice. The optimal choice involves having open and honest communication with yourself and the important people in your life. This choice moves you toward your dreams and helps you achieve your goals. Not only does the optimal choice improve your happiness and health, but it also helps with growing the happiness and health of people in your life. The choice that unites and is open to joy is the optimal choice. The second choice is the suboptimal choice. The suboptimal choice means getting what you want now, but at a cost. This choice gives you instant pleasure, but will eventually cause pain within yourself or with another person. The suboptimal choice disrupts and slows your dream building and happiness and health progression. The suboptimal choice also interferes with the growth and improvement of the people you care about. The choice that divides, that is closed and depressing is the suboptimal choice. The third choice is the choice of no-choice or doing nothing. Doing nothing has both a negative and positive side. The negative of doing nothing is having an apathetic attitude where you lack interest in participating in life and just don’t care. This uncaring attitude means you will do nothing when in reality you should be doing something. This apathy will cause you to become isolated by creating distance between you and what it is you really want (your dream) as well as creating distance between you and the people in your life. Not only that, but by not choosing you prevent and stop altogether any further progress or growth or evolution of yourself ...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Food Cravings: I'll explain what food cravings are I'll talk about three different types of food cravings and what causes them Finally I'll share my top tips on how you can better manage yourself when it comes to food cravings CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Let’s first make the distinction between hunger and food cravings. Hunger is a normal physiological response by your body meaning hunger is a normal physical function that your body performs. Hunger happens in response to your cells being low on nutrition and energy and information. You know you’re really hungry when you receive growling sounds and feel physical sensations from your stomach. Hunger leads you to eat any food in general. A food craving is a physical, emotional, and mental want or need for a specific food. As I always say life is in flow and always in motion and if you’re not moving then you’re not living, you’re not growing, and you’re not changing. Food cravings come from the fact that your current way of being, your current lifestyle is stuck in a rut. “I define food cravings as a craving for change.” Having a fixed mindset or being stubborn or not being able to go with the flow will lead you to become physically, emotionally, and mentally stagnant. You will find yourself repeating the same actions, expressing the same feelings, and believing the same thoughts over and over and this my friend is the root cause of all food cravings. A physical food craving is due to your body lacking specific nutrients. If you find yourself eating the same foods day-in-and-day-out for long periods of time you will be getting plenty of nutrients in fact probably in excessive amounts from that one group of foods, but you will be missing out on a lot of other nutrients found in different foods. If you’re also eating a lot of fake pretend food-like products aka processed and packaged foods well these have hardly any nutrients in them. I mean there’s plenty of energy and calories in these foods, but where’s the nutrition? Movement, either too little or too much causes physical food cravings. Nutrients and energy and information from the foods and beverages that you eat and drink get digested, absorbed, assimilated, and metabolised when your digestive juices, your blood, and your lymph fluids are all in flow. When you don’t move and you stay in the same physical position for long periods of time your lymph fluid doesn’t flow and your heart has to pump harder to keep your blood moving causing nutrient traffic jams. When you’re doing strenuous exercise stress hormones increase and this stops your digestion in its tracks. Now if your breathing is short and shallow and if you’re drinking tap water then the nutrients in your body will not be transported as effectively as they could be. Proper breathing massages internal organs and keeps your cerebral spinal fluid in flow helping to move nutrients in and waste out of your cells. Quality water has no industrial chemicals and has the right amount of minerals to form healthy blood vessels and other fluids needed to move nutrients around your body. So to sum up physical food cravings while eating the same real foods all the time and eating fake foods may give your cells certain nutrients and plenty of energy your cells will still be screaming out for other nutrients and different building blocks they need to do their job. Now with no movement or with excessive movement not all the nutrients that you eat will even get to where they are needed most due to the lack of lymph flow, inefficient blood flow, and too much stress shutting down your ability to digest and absorb your food. Also proper breathing technique and quality water are needed for effective transportation of nutrients in your body. An emotional food craving is due to certain feelings triggering physical ...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Carbohydrates: I'll talk about the many different types of carbs I'll explain which carbs are essential for health and which carbs can contribute to disease I’ll talk about how to find your sugar and starch tolerance level Finally I'll share the best ways to get more healthy natural whole real carbs into your diet CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Carbohydrates are one of the three main macronutrients besides fat and protein. The most popular carb of them all is sugar. This pure white highly processed refined powder has been the cause and reason for many people failing to reach their body composition and health goals. Sugar’s sweetness and ability to affect your hormones, your immune system, and your neurology should not be underestimated, and I’ll talk more about this later on. But there’s more to carbs than just this simple sugar. Carbs in the modern age need to be differentiated into two groups: cellular carbs and acellular carbs. Cellular carbs are minimally processed whole vegetables, fruits, stems, leaves, and seeds of plants. Cellular carbs are made up of living cells with more nutrients, structural fibre, and a lower density and percentage of actual sugar content per cell. These carbs get digested by your body and your gut microbiota without issue (remember your gut microbiome is the ecosystem of trillions of microorganisms living in your colon). Acellular carbs are highly processed and refined sugars, flours, and includes the starch stored in whole grains. Acellular carbs are made up of dead cells with hardly any nutrients, non-functional fibre, and a much higher density and percentage of actual sugar concentration per cell. The digestion of acellular carbs creates an immediate excess level of sugar in your blood as well as an imbalance of your gut microbiome due to the fact that these naked sugars without the nutrition and without the fibre are rapidly digested and encourage the overgrowth of Candida and other pathogens. All carbs are made up of single or groups of molecules called saccharides or sugars. Monosaccharides consist of just one sugar molecule such as glucose, fructose, and galactose. Disaccharides are made up of two sugar molecules. Examples include sucrose (your regular table sugar), lactose (milk sugar), and maltose (which is two molecules of glucose). Carbs that are made up of 2-10 saccharide molecules are called oligosaccharides and any carb over 10 sugar molecules long is called a polysaccharide. Now mono- and disaccharides can be considered simple sugars and oligo- and polysaccharides could be called complex sugars. Starch is a storage form of carbs. Starch is a polysaccharide made up of hundreds to thousands of saccharide molecules, specifically chains of glucose. Dietary fibre is also a carb. Fibre from foods are non-glucose oligo- and polysaccharides meaning that while your digestive system will breakdown and assimilate sugars and starch into glucose it will not breakdown and assimilate fibre. Fibres can either be insoluble meaning it doesn’t dissolve in water or soluble where it does dissolve in water. Insoluble fibre passes right through your entire digestive system from mouth hole to south hole and is not digested by your body and is also not digested or eaten as food by your gut flora. Certain soluble fibres are digested and eaten by your gut flora. These fibres that feed your gut flora are known as prebiotics and they feed both the good bugs (probiotics) and the bad bugs (pathogens). Another type of carb that acts as a prebiotic is called resistant starch. It is a polysaccharide made up of glucose molecules, but unlike regular starch which is digested by your body resistant starch acts like a prebiotic fibre where it is resistant to human digestion and so becomes food for your gut m...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Saturated Fat and Cholesterol: I'll explain how fats and cholesterol are needed by your body I’ll talk about how and why saturated fat and cholesterol were wrongly convicted of being the cause of heart disease I’ll talk about how industrial seed oils aka vegetable oils are very much non-essential and damaging to all life on the planet Finally I'll share the best and most delicious ways to get more healthy natural whole real fats into your diet CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Saturated fat and cholesterol are essential for health, no doubt about it. Saturated fatty acids form about 50% of the membranes of your cells. This is the cell wall and saturated fat gives your cells more strength and stability. Think about what happens to coconut oil or melted butter when left at a cool room temperature or if you put them in the fridge. They become solid. This is due to the high content of saturated fat which is much more stable and not as easily oxidised or damaged as the other two main types of fats monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Now if you were to put olive oil or fish oil in the fridge they would remain liquid as they don’t have anywhere near the same amount of stable saturate d fatty acids, but do have higher amounts of the more flexible monounsaturated fats and even more flexible and unstable and fragile polyunsaturated fats. Besides making for strong cells by giving your cell membranes proper integrity saturated fatty acids also enhance calcium absorption which is critical for bone health. Saturated fats also help in the production of other essential fatty acids like omega-3 needed in the inflammatory response for healing. Saturated fats are also rich in fat-soluble vitamins A and D. Now all fats in general have health benefits including helping your body to make use of fat-soluble vitamins. If you’re drinking low fat smoothies, you ain’t getting any of those fat-soluble nutrients. Fats also help stabilise your appetite and make you feel more satiated and full. There is no excessive release of the fat-storing hormone insulin when you eat fats compared to carbohydrates. Fats are a longer burning and consistent source of fuel compared to protein and carbs. Unlike fat protein and carbs, but more so with carbs these macronutrients get burnt up a lot quicker leading to sugar highs and sugar lows. Leaving you hungry and angry aka hangry. Cholesterol is another very essential nutrient for health. Cholesterol is not fat, but a steroid alcohol and acts as a building block for hormones, neurotransmitters, and cells. Vitamin D for example is made when cholesterol in your skin mixes with UVB radiation from the sun. Your sex, growth, and stress hormones like testosterone and oestrogen and cortisol are made from cholesterol. No cholesterol equals no sex and growth my friend. Also cortisol is not only your primary stress hormone needed to help you deal with stress, but it also reduces inflammation in your body. Cholesterol is also used in making bile that’s needed for proper digestion of ft. The protective coating surrounding your nerves is called a myelin sheath and these are made from fatty acids and cholesterol. Cholesterol is also an antioxidant fighting off free radicals in your body preventing DNA damage, premature aging, and cancer. Finally and probably the biggest most important health benefit to saturated fats and cholesterol is that the dry weight of your brain is made up of at least 50% fatty acids and cholesterol. Without fat and cholesterol your brain would be nothing but a watery and mushy mass of stupidity. You want a fat head. You really do trust me. As you can probably tell by now saturated fats and cholesterol are essential for a healthy and happy bodymind. However, for many years now saturated fat and cholesterol have been demonised as the bad guys when...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity or NCGS and living Free of Gluten: I'll explain what gluten is and how it can negatively impact your health I’ll talk about the differences between coeliac disease and non-coeliac gluten sensitivity I'll also talk about the single biggest mistake people make when shifting to a gluten-free diet Finally I'll share some simple and effective tips on how to make gluten-free a part of your lifestyle CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN So what exactly is gluten? Gluten is a complex protein found in some grains. This includes all wheat varieties such as: Spelt Einkorn Emmer Durum and Khorasan aka Kamut   And also includes the grains barley and rye. Oats don't have the same gluten proteins, but the way that most of the oats are processed and stored today means that they do contain high amounts of gluten simply by being exposed to the same facilities and transport vehicles that are used for gluten-containing grains. So there’s a lot of cross-contamination that occurs with oats. Gluten is made up of two different proteins gliadin and glutenin. Gliadin gives gluten its gluey stickiness and glutenin gives gluten its flexibility and stretchiness. This is why gluten-containing grains are perfect for baking and for manufacturing pretend fake food-like products. This viscosity and elasticity provides you the consumer with a delectable and delightful eating experience. The problem with gluten today though is that it isn’t the same gluten our agricultural ancestors ate. The wheat you’re eating today is nowhere near the same wheat that is associated with biblical times commonly referred to as the staff of life. In the past 60 years man has taken it upon himself to modify wheat into a more versatile and robust crop. Why would we do this? World hunger. There was a time in the mid 20th century where the main focus of society was on starving populations. How times have changed eh. Today the main focus is on the war on terror or as I call it the submission to fear, but anyhoo… back to gluten. In order to feed the world scientists and farmers hybridised different wheat varieties resulting in a wheat crop that was more resistant to temperature changes and drought and that would also grow more grains in less time. Specific wheat varieties were also chosen for their increased gluten content making for a better cooking ingredient. And thus today we have modern wheat which is the third highest produced crop in the world behind corn and rice. This wheat not only has higher amounts of proteins including gluten, but also has higher amounts of starch and sugar compared to ancient grains. Sure modern wheat has awesome baking characteristics and tastes nice and sweet, but unfortunately more gluten and more sugar make for more fat, more inflammation, more obesity, more diabetes, more heart disease, more cancer… and you get the idea. So how does gluten contribute to making you fat, sick, and nearly dead? In more ways than one unfortunately. First gluten damages your gut. You have this protective barrier lining your gut like a giant fortress wall and along the wall every now and then there are little gateways that open and close allowing certain nutrients in. Gluten actually causes these gateways to open allowing anything and everything to slip through into your body. This is known as intestinal hyperpermeability or leaky gut syndrome. When your gut becomes leaky you can get a whole cascade of health problems manifest as a result because now your immune system needs to go on high alert and has to battle all these foreign materials that should not be in your bloodstream. This heightened immune response creates stress and inflammation and chronic stress and chronic inflammation together are the main causes for...

In this podcast I'll be exploring the Two Universal Forces of Yin and Yang: I'll explain the philosophy of Yin and Yang and the differences between them I'll talk about how imbalances in the forces of Yin and Yang affect your life Finally I'll share some tips on how you can better manage your Yin and Yang energies CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Yin and Yang are an ancient Chinese concept that describes the fundamental principles of the Universe. Yin and Yang are opposite yet complementary forces. They are two very distinct energies, but at the same time one cannot exist without the other and together they form a whole. Within Yin there is always the potential for Yang and within Yang the possibilities for Yin also exist. Life is an ever-changing process and the forces of Yin and Yang are always in a state of flow, constantly changing from one into the other. It is this interdependent relationship that gives rise to the experience of the universe. For example day would not exist without night. You wouldn't feel pleasure if you didn't know pain. Energy transforms into matter and the breakdown of matter reverts back to energy. Life would not exist without death and it is through death that new life is born. The Yin-Yang symbol called Taijitu represents these concepts perfectly. The outer circle represents the wholeness of the universe. The contrasting black and white colours they show the opposite nature of the Yin and Yang energies. The two small dots in the circle show how Yin contains the seed of Yang and Yang contains the seed of Yin. Yin represents: The Feminine The Dark Wet Coolness Slow Accumulation and Passivity Yang represents: The Masculine The Light Dry Heat Fast Spending and Activity   As I said before Yin and Yang are always transforming from one to the other and there’s a balancing act that’s going on here. A perfect balance can never be reached though. Yin and Yang are not seeking equality, but harmony. They are not two separated and equal forces in exact balance with each other. When Yin and Yang are in harmony together they form one connected energy that’s in flow with the universe. How this relates to your life, happiness, and health is that even without knowing it you’ve experienced this harmony of Yin-Yang as well as its constant shift in balance. Think about times in your life where you had no worries and concerns and everything just seemed to go your way as if you were in flow with the universe. How about the fact when you’re sick you know you’re sick, but when you’re feeling really good and happy and have no health issues you don’t know it as you’re too busy having fun and feeling awesome living out your life. This is Yin and Yang in harmony in your life. Now if you’re finding life a bit of a struggle at the moment in terms of health, wealth, love, and happiness it is most likely because these two forces are out of balance with each other where one is overriding the other. There are 4 possible states of Yin and Yang imbalance: Excess Yin Excess Yang Deficient Yin Deficient Yang   Remember in the previous podcast episode I did on stress I talked about how there are two parts of the nervous system that deals with stress. The parasympathetic nervous system relates to digestion, elimination, growth, and repair as well as feeling calm and connected. The sympathetic nervous system relates to increased heart rate and blood pressure as well as feeling stressed. Being in a parasympathetic state is anabolic meaning building up, whereas being in a sympathetic state is catabolic meaning breaking down. So when your PNS is activated your body shifts into a state of accumulation. This is Yin.

In this podcast I'll be exploring the topic of Dream Building: I'll explain why having a dream is necessary to living a happy and healthy life I'll talk about personal core values and how they help you build your dream Finally, I'll share some tips on how to build your own dream that will move you toward the life you've always wanted CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN A lot of people today feel lost and live out their lives without really knowing what it is that makes them truly happy and what they really want from life. What does this have to do with dream building? Well dreams aren’t just what you experience during REM sleep. Dreams aren’t just visions and ideas created in your mind. Dreams aren’t just fantasies disconnecting you from reality. Dreams are much more. Dreams act as your North Star a guiding light and give you direction in your life. Having a dream gives you purpose. It gives you the desire and the will to experience and live the life you want and to live it on your own terms. Your dreams also make up your legacy where your legacy is your gift and your contribution to the world. In order to live out your dream though you need to set goals. Goals give you two things. Firstly goals give you an intention and provide you with a target to aim for. Secondly goals give you a means to reaching that target. So for example, if your dream was to be healthy and full of energy then one of your target goals could be to reduce excess fat and reduce your waistline by a certain amount before a set date. In the process of reaching that goal you would need to change up your diet and other aspects of your lifestyle. It is in this process of learning how to live a healthier lifestyle where you develop and grow as a person becoming someone different to who you were before. So goals aren’t just something you achieve, but are also a means to learning a new way of being. Without a dream your life becomes like a ship without a map and compass and without clearly defined goals that ship is without a captain on board. A ship that has set out to sea without direction and purpose will sail on endlessly going round and round in circles. As the saying goes: “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Having a dream gives you your GPS coordinates telling you exactly where you are now and where you want to go. Having clearly defined goals programs that GPS to give you the most effective route to achieve your dream. Now I’m sure at one point in your life someone has told you to ‘stop daydreaming and pay attention’. Now imagine if historical figures like Jesus Christ, Rosa Parks, William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Leonardo Da Vinci, Kate Sheppard and Mary Ann Müller who have directly or indirectly changed the course of human history imagine if these people stopped dreaming and did exactly what everyone else was doing. Martin Luther King Jr would not have been inspired to lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement and make his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech, but instead would have had to unhappily sit on the sidelines and settle for having to live out somebody else’s dream. This is where your own personal core values come in. Your personal core values are the needs you have when it comes to living an awesome life. They define how you want to live, they guide your choices, and they determine the type of person you want to be. Core values also influence the types of personal relationships you want to be in and also what communities and organisations you wish to join. Basically core values help you choose when to say yes and when to say no. Living in harmony with your values creates a very happy and well-balanced life free of major and chronic stress. However,

In this podcast I'll be exploring Inflammation: I'll explain how inflammation can be both beneficial and harmful to your health and wellbeing I'll talk about some of the different causes of chronic low-level inflammation Finally, I'll review the best ways to reduce inflammation in your body CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Inflammation is your immune system in action and what a beautiful natural act of Mother Nature it is. Your body has the innate intelligence to heal itself and works best when you feed it real food, water, sleep, movement, breath, and healthy relationships. You have seen inflammation in action when you've had a cut or a bruise or had an infection. That part of your body gets red, it swells up, heats up, and sometimes there's pain. If you can support your body's innate healing process with natural healing therapies and then get out of its way and not interfere too much then overtime the injured area gets better and heals. Inflammation is key to healing. Without it your immune system would never be called into action and you would never heal. However, there is a dark side to inflammation. Acute inflammation is obvious to spot and simple to manage. With acute inflammation the inflammatory reaction is massive like a Hollywood movie explosion. Chronic ongoing inflammation on the other hand is hidden and difficult to deal with. With chronic inflammation the inflammatory response is more like a small match lighting up. No big 'hey look at me!' as with acute inflammation, but still a calling card for your immune system to wake up and to get into action. So your immune system reacts the exact same way whether you have acute or chronic inflammation. Now there's nothing wrong with your immune system doing it's job, but there is an issue with the amount of work your immune system has to do. Acute inflammation comes and goes -- job done. Chronic inflammation comes over like an unwanted family member who overstays their welcome and your immune system does everything it can to heal and so reduce and remove the inflammation, but that stubborn chronic guy just won't leave. The more your immune system is active the more energy and nutrition it will use leaving you tired and without the proper building blocks to support other areas of your body. Now as a result of your immune system being overworked and frustrated another more serious problem arises. The quality of the work that your immune system does starts to go down. Meaning your immune system that includes white blood cells, T cells, and B cells starts to confuse your own body tissue with foreign and infectious objects. So now your immune system begins to attack you causing damage to whatever part of the body is being mistakenly attacked. This is what an autoimmune disease is. The body reacting to and attacking itself. Examples of autoimmune diseases include: Multiple sclerosis Crohn's disease Hashimoto's thyroiditis Type 1 diabetes Vasculitis Rheumatoid arthritis Psoriasis Systemic lupus erythematosus Coeliac disease By the way if you are dealing with an autoimmune condition I highly recommend the book The Wahls Protocol by Dr Terry Wahls. Dr Wahls has MS multiple sclerosis, but by following an ancestral evolutionary diet and lifestyle was able to get herself out of a wheelchair and onto a bicycle. A truly inspiring story and individual. Anyhoo... Not only does chronic inflammation send inflammatory signals throughout your body causing the breakdown of bone, nervous tissue, and organs, but it also sends out fat-storing signals and interferes with normal hormone communication. It is this chronic low-level inflammation that is barely detectable by you and your health practitioner that is at the root of almost every single disease not just autoimmunity.

In this podcast I'll be exploring the topic of Detoxification: I'll talk about the health impacts of having excess toxins in your body and explain how your innate detoxification system works I'll talk about the hidden toxins that could be lurking in your environment Finally, I'll share some tips on how to support your innate detoxification system CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Today there are over 85,000 industrial chemicals in the environment. Globally this equates to 310 kg (685 lbs) of toxic chemicals being released into the air, on land, and in waterways every second. Toxic industrial chemicals are all around us and are the price we pay for civilisation and advanced technology. Even newborn babies have been shown to have on average over 250 toxic chemicals in their umbilical cord blood. 180 of these chemicals were carcinogenic meaning cancer causing compounds. The health impacts of toxic exposure include: Neurological disorders Endocrine disruption causing hormonal imbalances Unstable blood sugar Accelerated aging Digestive disorders causing malnutrition Fatigue and low energy Reduced bone integrity and muscle mass Increased fat gain Autoimmune diseases Weakened immune system Increased inflammation and of course again Promote tumour growth aka cancer Now our ancestors never had to deal with such an overload of toxins. They would only have been exposed to a foreign toxic chemical if they lived by an active volcano, were exploring underground caves, or came across an unknown species of plant or venomous animal. Your body has an innate intelligence that breathes you, that beats your heart, that helps you grow, that heals and repairs you, and also detoxifies you. Fortunately for our ancestors their innate detoxification system could function without much strain or stress. Unfortunately for us that's just not the world we live in today. Industrial chemicals, heavy metals, naturally occurring biotoxins, electromagnetic fields and radiation, high levels of perceived stress these all create a toxic load on the body and your body's innate ability to detox is near breaking point every day. There are two types of toxicity or toxic exposure. Acute or sudden toxicity means your body has been exposed to a high dose of a single toxin creating an immediate reaction in your body also known as being poisoned. Chronic or gradual toxicity means your body has been exposed to extremely low doses of many different toxins creating a slow and steady response over time. This doesn't mean chronic toxicity is not as bad as acute. Far from it. Both acute and chronic toxicity are equal in how they affect your life. While one will kill you in the moment the other will kill you slowly, but surely over time. In order to explain how chronic toxicity makes for a slow and painful death I need to talk about mitochondria. These are the parts of a cell that convert fatty acids, lactic acid, and glucose a sugar molecule into physical energy. So these guys are the power-plants, the energy centres of the cell and your entire body. A quick side note it is believed that mitochondria were one of the first single-celled organisms to have evolved billions of years ago and the fact that they have their own DNA separate to the cell and to you supports this idea. So mitochondria are bacteria that use the human body as a vehicle to feed themselves. Trippy huh? Now if you also think about the fact that there are 10 times more microorganism cells than human cells and 100 times more microorganism DNA than human DNA in your body it kind of makes you wonder... who's running what now? I mean that's a bit of a mind cluster right there. Definitely makes me come back to that age old question, 'Who am I?'. Anyhoo back to chronic toxicity...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Connecting with Nature: I'll explain the importance of relationships and connecting with others I'll talk about the different types of natural connection that nourishes your bodymind Finally, I'll share some simple and effective relationship and nature rituals you can put into action to grow your natural social network CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN All life came from a single cell billions of years ago. Now this cell wasn't alone for long as it soon multiplied into a community of cells. Over time this community of cells adapted and evolved and grew and developed into all the different life forms we see today. Human beings are social creatures. We live and we love and we fight in communities. Wanting to be with other people and feeling a connection with another person is built into your DNA going way back to that very first cell. Now if you think about it how do we punish someone who's already in prison? Solitary confinement. This is where people are physically separated from the main population and put into a room by themselves isolated from the rest of the world. There's no worse prison than that of a mind of someone who has lost connection to their friends and family. Whether you experience pleasure or pain as long you're with other people there's a hidden sense of safety and security that makes you feel like it's okay to feel this way. You can call on another person for help or you can blame that other person for causing your problem. A shared experience also tends to feel more alive and vibrant in the moment then if you were to have it by yourself. But when you are cut off from family and friends this is where feelings of loneliness and solitude begin to creep in. Every time I bite into a delicious piece of dark chocolate or drink a tasty smoothie the first thing that comes to mind is 'I want to share this experience with someone else'. But if I'm alone at the time there's a split second where I get a little bit sad at not being able to share what I'm having. Sadness is an emotion that you can feel and deal with on your own quite easily. Grief on the other hand can hit you pretty hard and it usually comes from a major sad event happening in your life suddenly, out of the blue, and unexpectedly. Dealing with grief alone is never easy. You need support and people around you to help you to see a different perspective of things and to see that this time of grieving is only temporary, eventually things will get better. Without support that grief if left to linger may turn into depression. To paraphrase a line from The Lord of the Rings: "Grief must move on, grief cannot linger." The saying it takes a village to raise a child is very true if we want that child to grow into a happy and healthy adult. Today many families are having to raise children alone. I'm not talking about single mums or dads, but families that have no extended relations nearby to help them. No grandparents, no aunts or uncles, no-one to act as a babysitter or teacher or guardian. This raising of kids without proper support puts too much stress and strain on the family and eventually on society as a whole. Obviously us human beings are happier and healthier together than we are apart -- up to a point as we do get on each other's nerves every now and then, but as a society we are all in relationship with each other whether we like it or not. It is this relationship, this togetherness that moves you as an individual and us as a society forward and helps every single one of us to learn and to grow. "Relationships are the key to experiencing the fullness of life." A lack of relationships equal a lack of experience leading to a lack of learning and growth and a lack of living. Now even if you were the last human on this beautiful planet you still wouldn't be alone. Animals,

In this podcast I'll be exploring Movement: I'll explain how movement is one of the most essential nutrients for your body I'll talk about how a lack of movement affects your health Finally, I'll talk about the different types of movement that your body expects and how to increase your consumption of real movement nutrition CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Movement is life. Life is movement. If you're not moving you're not living. Movement nourishes your body and mind. Your body and mind are actually one and the same. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Dr Dan Siegel defines the mind as the following: "The mind is an embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information." Your mind is embodied within your entire being, your whole body, cultivating the many different life processes happening within. From your left pinky toe to your right ear lob. Whenever I refer to your body I'm also referring to your mind and vice versa. So you can think of your body and mind as one entity called the bodymind. Movement then moves not only the body, but the mind your entire bodymind. Movement acts as a pump. Every time you move you contract and relax different muscles in your body and this process of restriction and expansion within each muscle acts like a pump. These pumps move water, blood, oxygen, nutrients, energy and information throughout your body. No pumping action means no nutrition for your cells. Your lymphatic system is your waste management system and does not have a pump of its own as does your circulatory system that has the heart as a pump. Lymph fluid in your lymphatic system only moves when you move. If you don't move then all that toxic waste just sits around in your lymphatic system and doesn't get into your bloodstream where it can be processed for detoxification and elimination. Overtime this causes a toxic buildup in your body and when you do decide to move this will eventually overwhelm your detoxification organs such as your liver, skin, lungs, and kidneys. You must get into the groove and move in order to transport nutrients to where they are needed the most inside of your cells and in order to transport and eliminate waste out of your body. If you're not moving and remain in one position for long periods of time and I'm not just talking about sitting, this applies to any long held position standing, kneeling, then your cells begin to starve due to a lack of nutrition and you also create a buildup of waste. One of the symptoms you will experience due to a lack of movement is tiredness and low energy. When your cells do not receive the nutrients, energy and information that they need to function your metabolism begins to slow down, your bodymind begins to slow down because it's low on nutrition and energy. Even though the energy is there inside your body your lack of movement is not transporting that energy to where it's needed the most. Not only does a lack of movement cause you to feel tired, but because the nutrients aren't being transported to vital organs in your body such as your gut, heart, and brain your bodymind begins to lose focus and attention and you also begin to experience unstable mood swings and can begin to feel irritable. Having unstable energy levels isn't just due to a lack of nutrients reaching your cells, but also due to your inability to handle carbohydrate and sugar. Eating excess carbs and sugar creates many issues in the body including having unstable levels of blood sugar. So while you may experience an energy high at first after a carb-heavy meal or snack as the sugar rushes throughout your bloodstream it's not too long before your energy comes crashing down as all that sugar gets quickly burnt up for energy and any excess sugar gets put into storage and then you begin to feel hungry again.

In this podcast I'll be exploring a topic I'm very familiar with Digestion: I'll explain how proper digestion works and its many different stages I'll talk about poor digestion and how it can affect your health Finally, I'll give some digestion rituals that you can practise to increase the absorption and usage of the nutrition and energy and information you get from eating real food CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Digestion can be broken up into two main phases. First is the psychic phase. Second is the physical phase. The first phase deals with your mind, with your emotional and mental state and the choices you make when it comes to eating. So what you choose to eat, when you choose to eat, how you choose to eat, and the whys behind each choice are the beginning of your digestive process. I will focus on the second phase of digestion in this episode the physical phase and there are many different stages. Remember from a previous episode that your enteron, your alimentary canal, your entire digestive tubing from your mouth hole to your south hole is technically outside your body. It is your body's first line of defence against anything you put into your mouth. It is in your gut where the stuff you eat finally gets absorbed into your body. The first stage of physical digestion begins in the mouth when you eat and chew your food. Mastication, that is the mechanical physical act of chewing, breaks up the food into smaller pieces making it easier to swallow and mixes it with the digestive enzymes in your saliva. These enzymes begin to break down the macronutrients in the food, specifically carbohydrates into smaller starch molecules. So properly chewing your food makes it easier for later stages of your digestive process to function. The second stage of physical digestion happens in your stomach. The acidity of your stomach is very high. It can burn skin and dissolve metal and if it wasn't for the thick mucous membrane that lines your stomach it would eat itself. One reason for the high acidity in your stomach is to further digest and breakdown food molecules, specifically proteins from long chains of amino acids (polypeptides) to smaller ones. Another big reason for a very low pH (meaning a very high acid level) in your stomach is to ensure that any bacteria, fungi, or parasites that have stowed away in the food and come along for the ride are killed and destroyed. You do not want these bad bugs to go any further than your stomach. The next stage of physical digestion is in your small intestine. Now your small intestine has a very different pH level compared to your stomach meaning it is more alkaline and not acidic at all -- in fact its neutral. This is because your pancreas, an organ that secretes digestive enzymes and hormones, also releases bicarbonate into your small intestine to neutralise the acidic foods coming from the stomach. The digestive enzymes secreted by your pancreas further breakdown the carbohydrates into saccharides (smaller sugar molecules) like glucose and fructose, the proteins get broken down into individual and very small chains of amino acids, and fats are also broken down into individual fatty acids. As the food travels further into your small intestine the digested macronutrients and micronutrients (remember micronutrients include vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and plant nutrients) so the macros and micros begin to get absorbed through the gut wall of your small intestine. Once absorbed saccharides and amino acids travel to your liver to be processed and detoxified before they enter your bloodstream. Fats take a different route to your bloodstream by hitching a ride through your lymphatic system, your waste management system. Once in your bloodstream the absorbed macros and micros get transported to where they are needed most and assimilated by your cells and metabolised,

In this podcast I'll be exploring once again my favourite topic Real Food: I'll share which fake processed pretend food-like products you should never eat... ever I'll be offering a master list of real foods that you should be eating plenty of on a regular basis Finally, I'll explain how to best use this real food manifesto for your individual goals CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN Remember the definition I gave in the previous podcast describing what real food is. "Real food is any organic and natural plant or animal that fuels and nourishes the human body with energy and nutrition." Well the first group of foods I'm about to share now are the exact opposite because they are not food, but are marketed to you as being food. You should never and I mean ever intentionally buy, store at home or work, eat or even think about including these fake processed pretend food-like products in your diet and your life. No human, no mammal, no animal, no plant on this planet should be consuming these products. That's not to say that you won't ever be exposed to these pseudo-foods these fake foods, but you can at least minimise the damage they cause to your body and health by reframing how you look at these foods and changing your perspective from seeing foods to seeing crappy industrial commercial products instead that do nothing more than expand and fatten your waistline as well as the bottom-line of big corporations. First pseudo-food are industrial seed oils also marketed as healthy vegetable oils. Canola -- aka rapeseed Corn Soya Cottonseed Safflower Low-oleic sunflower Peanut and groundnut Rice bran Grape seed   These oils all come from seeds, grains, and legumes, not from vegetables. The way these oils have been manufactured, produced, processed, stored and packaged damages the delicate fatty acids in the oils making them go rancid. Rancid oil is off, it's stale and dead and when you eat rancid oil you get turned off to life as well. Ever wonder how they turn a liquid oil like canola into a solid? By using biochemical processes such as hydrogenation and transesterification companies can do amazing things. Too bad the end products are one molecule away from being plastic! So next time you see hydrogenated or transesterified on a label you run. Run literally like your life depends on it. So do not eat industrial seed oils or any product made with them such as: Margarine and other buttery spreads Sauces Salad dressings Mayo Chips Baked goods Gluten-free foods   Virtually all processed food-like products have been made with these damaged rancid industrial seed oils. Also a lot of restaurants and food outlets fry and cook foods with these industrial seed oils because it's cheaper and they believe they're doing the right thing in terms of giving customers a healthier end product. Now if you have a heart healthy program in your country you will see a lot of these fake foods with a heart healthy mark on them. Again don't believe the hype and the marketing. In New Zealand where I live we have the the Heart Foundation Tick programme where over 1100 products (products!) in 62 food categories have purchased the right to proudly display the healthy red tick. Yes it's a paid for service. Unfortunately most of the products use industrial seed oil as the main ingredient. Be alert, be wary, but don't be afraid because now that you know better you can do better. Next pseudo-food is regular table salt. Table salt has been processed and stripped of its minerals and trace minerals meaning there's no micronutrients in table salt as there is in naturally occurring salt leaving behind a very bright white powder. Also there are anti-caking agents and other chemical additives added to table salt t...

In this podcast I'll be exploring my favourite topic Real Food: I'll explain what real food really is and its different nutritional components I'll talk about how eating real food and fake food affect your health Finally, I'll share how to recognise real food and simple ways to make it a part of your holistic healthy and happy lifestyle CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN What is real food? If I were to sum it up in one word -- QUALITY. Quality food makes for quality humans, which makes for a quality planet, which makes for quality soil, which makes for quality plants, which makes for quality animals, which makes for more real quality food and here we have the circle of life. If I were to use a few more words real food is any organic and natural plant or animal that fuels and nourishes the human body with energy and nutrition. Now if I were to use some poetic words to define real food it'll go a little something like this: Real Food Lived on the Earth In the Sky Under the Sun Real Food Is fished from pristine Oceans Harvested from organic Soils Plucked from vibrant Trees Real Food Has abundant Nutrition Limitless amounts of Energy Universal intelligence and Information Real Food Is loved by Mother Nature Lives giving Love Dies receiving Love Real Food Eats Real Food So hopefully by now you're getting the idea that real food isn't invented, created, and made-up in a lab by Father Industry. Real food is birthed, grown, and raised by Mother Nature. Real food comes from the land, the sea, the sky, and is lovingly cared for, cherished, and blessed before it's harvested from the bosom of Mother Nature. Real food is of the Earth not of the petridish or chemistry set or factory line or a corporation's bottom-line. Real food is the highest quality of nutrition, energy, and information infused with the life force of Mother Nature herself. Let's talk about real food nutrition and here I'm talking about macronutrients (macros) and micronutrients (micros). Macros include fats broken down in the body and used as fatty acids. Proteins broken down in the body and used as amino acids. Carbohydrates broken down in the body and used as saccharides (sugar). Fibre a form of carbohydrate is not broken down and used by our body and mainly comes in two forms. One form is broken down and used as food by your gut microbiota (that's all the microorganisms that live in your gastrointestinal tract) and this fibre is called a prebiotic. The other form of fibre isn't digested by your body or your gut microbiome and is eliminated. Last macro and possibly most important is water. Water is a massive component of real food and the quality of the water in real food depends on how the food was grown and raised. Micros is where we get into the teeny tiny small world of nutrition. However, micros have a far bigger impact on your health than macros ever will. What real food really gives you in terms of happiness and health are these micros in huge amounts. Micronutrients include vitamins. There are fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamins A, D, K, and E (sidenote vitamin D is actually a hormone), and water soluble vitamins the B complexes and the most well known vitamin of them all vitamin C. Another group of micronutrients found in real food are minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, and sulphur, and trace minerals like zinc, iron, copper, manganese, selenium, and cobalt. Phytonutrients are another group of micros. Phyto comes from the Greek word for plants so these nutrients are found in plants, but they can be passed on to animals that you eat as well. The list of phytonutrients goes on for days and includes polyphenols, carotenoids, flavonoids, isoflavonoids, indoles, lignans,

In this podcast I'll be exploring Water and Hydration: I'll explain what water is and what it does in your body I'll talk about how not getting enough water affects your health and the importance of water quality Finally, I'll give some simple tips on how to know if you're dehydrated and how to improve your hydration and overall health CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET YOU LEAN You cannot survive a week without water making H2O one the most important nutrients for your body. Water covers around 70% of planet Earth. Your body is about 30% solid and 70% water. Also, your blood has a similar amount of salinity as ocean water. Isn't it amazing how similar your physical body is to that of the Earth? I mean it's as if you and Mother Nature are intimately connected and ultimately come from the same place. Well I think it's an awesome idea. Anyhoo... Water comes in three well-known forms or phases -- liquid, solid, and gas -- but there is also a fourth phase of water called Exclusion Zone, EZ water, or living water. If you'd like to learn more about EZ water I recommend the book The Fourth Phase Of Water by Gerald Pollack. It's a beast of a book too nerdy for me believe it or not, but was still a very profound read for me personally. Water is a solvent meaning it dissolves other substances creating a solution, a mix of water and whatever is in the water. The best quality drinking water is not naked water meaning it's not just H2O. Health affirming water also has minerals, trace minerals, electrolytes and other stuff inside of it. The measurement of these inorganic and organic substances found within water is called Total Dissolved Solids or TDS. I'll come back to this later. When you look at water in its frozen phase you can see crystals within the ice. In its liquid state water still has these crystal-like structures. So water is a liquid crystal and just as LCD technology makes use of these liquid crystals to store and transmit energy and information in LCD televisions your body uses water in much the same way. Energy, nutrition, hormones, neurotransmitters, and waste products are stored, transmitted and transported around your body and eliminated in your sweat, in your urine, and in your poo all thanks to water. Water! Your blood is mostly water. The lymph found in your lymphatic system your sewage system is mostly water. The cerebral spinal fluid that surrounds your brain and spine is made up of water. Synovial fluid, which provides lubrication for your joints and the discs in your spine, again water. About 80% of your brain is water. Water also provides stability and integrity to the cells in your body giving them proper structure and form as it makes up part of the cytoplasm, which is the thick solution or gel inside each cell. If your body is too acidic due to high sugar consumption and chronic stress for example it will retain water in order to buffer and stabilise your pH levels leading to additional weight gain. Also, for every gram of carbohydrate you eat your body will hold onto 4 grams of water. Meaning if you're eating too many carbo-HYDRATES your body will be heavier on the scale and look softer in the mirror. So unless you like feeling bloated and looking so fluffy dropping a lot of processed and refined sugars from your diet may be action step number one in your 'improve body composition' plan. So without the right amount of hydration all of these different areas of your body will begin to slowly, but surely breakdown and as a plum becomes a prune your body will become a flat wrinkled empty skin-bag of puny muscles and porous bones. It's crucial to keep yourself hydrated with high quality water. According to internationally renowned researcher, author, and advocate of the natural healing power of water Dr F Batmanghelidj in his book Your Body's Many Cries For Water (which I highly recommend) ...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Sleep: I'll explain why you need sleep and how it works for you I'll also talk about what happens when you don't get enough sleep and how that works against you Finally, I'll share some simple and effective sleep rituals that you can practise for better health and wellness CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET LEAN In the previous podcast I talked about how oxygen is our primary nutrient. Well I believe sleep is our second most important nutrient or at least on equal footing with water, food, and movement. Before we dig in let me make a distinction and explain the difference between what I cal quality restorative sleep (QRS) and long restless sleep (LRS). So QRS is when you go through the usual five stages of sleep, which are stages one, two, three, four, and rapid eye movement (REM) and this is considered one sleep cycle before it goes back to stage one again. Each cycle lasts on average 90 minutes and you should have four to five sleep cycles every night, so around six to eight hours of sleep. If you are not getting four sleep cycles minimum per night or if your sleep cycles keep getting interrupted before going through all five stages you are potentially not getting the correct rest and repair you would normally get during sleep. I call this LRS where you might sleep for up to 12 hours, but if most of your sleep cycles were disturbed and if you only got three full cycles then you may well wake up feeling more tired and worse off than before you got into bed. Now I will go through some of the benefits of quality restorative sleep and how it improves your life. It gives you more energy Sleep is when memory imprinting happens where short-term memory becomes long-term memory enhancing your memory skills Allows you to think clearly increasing your ability to focus due to the detoxification processes in the brain that only happen while you sleep Sleep also puts you in a very good mood (no matter which side of the bed you wake up on) Improves your performance on the sportsfield and on the court, in the boardroom, as well as the bedroom Helps you adapt to more stress and better manage yourself when stress happens Keeps you looking youthful and full of vitality Gives you a healthier body composition by keeping you lean   So how to get QRS? Your body has an internal clock a biological clock that runs on a circadian cycle, a natural rhythm of about 24 hours. Your circadian rhythm is based on the cycles of the sun and the moon, the day and the night. Your body has light receptors not just in your eyes, but also on your skin. When you are exposed to light in the morning your body releases cortisol (a stress hormone) that is used to wake you up, to get you active, to get you alert and ready to play out your day. In the morning your cortisol levels should be high in order to help get you out of bed. As the day goes on your cortisol levels drop gradually and from the afternoon your cortisol drops big time because when you're getting ready to wind down for the evening and to get ready to go to bed you don't want to be full of stress hormones causing you to feel awake, active, and alert. The hormone on the opposite end of cortisol is melatonin. This hormone deals with repair, rest, and sleep. In the morning melatonin should be at it's lowest levels and as the day goes on and you expose yourself to sunlight during the day melatonin production begins to rev up. It doesn't get released yet, but by getting daylight exposure you're telling your body to start making melatonin. When night time comes and you're no longer bathing in the sun sometime after six o'clock that's when melatonin will begin to be released. This will help you to wind down, to relax, and get ready for awesome sleep. Now if cortisol is up in the evening melatonin is going to struggle to r...

In this podcast I'll be exploring Breath and Breathing: I'll explain what breath and breathing do for the body I'll talk about how the way you breathe determines the stress in your body and mind Finally, I'll give some practical tips on how to retrain yourself to breathe deeply and fully for optimal health and wellness CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET LEAN Breath is life. Air is life. Oxygen (O2) is your primary nutrient. You can last a few weeks without food, a few days without water, but you can only last a few minutes without oxygen. When we breathe in we're breathing in life and energy. The O2 we inhale nourishes our lungs, heart, blood, and finally the rest of the body. When we breathe out, when we exhale, we remove waste products from our body such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and even fat! Okay we don't literally breathe out fat, but it has recently been shown that as we burn fat over 80% of the leftover products from fat burning becomes CO2, which we exhale, while the rest of it turns to water that is excreted and removed from the body with all the other bodily fluids. This doesn't mean the more you exhale the more fat you will lose. Remember this is just getting rid of the fat that has already been burned for energy. So you need to train your body first to burn the fat before you can breathe out the fat. Luckily we cannot breathe in fat otherwise I might be sniffing in that butter, lard, and extra-virgin olive oil all day every day! I cannot get enough of that good stuff. Okay back to breathing! Breathing supports proper cell function letting those little guys do the work they need to do in order to keep your body moving, digesting, assimilating, metabolising, detoxifying, eliminating, growing, and repairing. Correct breathing helps move cerebral spinal fluid that surrounds your brain and spinal cord in order to nourish and move waste products from the central nervous system. Breathing also balances your blood pH levels. pH measures how acidic or alkaline something is. Your body prefers a neutral baseline of pH in the middle. When your body gets too acidic or too alkaline sickness and disease are not that far behind. So correct breathing keeps your pH levels in that nice neutral zone and in proper balance. When you inhale O2 creates an electrical charge in the body that grows your aura. Yes I said your aura your being your essence your life force, the energy that lives inside of you and also surrounds you. When you exhale you are breathing out energy out to the environment and your aura shrinks a little. So not only do you need to breathe to keep your cells alive, to keep your body functioning, to keep your pH in balance, you need to breathe to support your energetic essence, your spiritual being, your qi, your prana, your life force. This energy grows when you inhale and shrinks as you exhale. Your aura is in constant flux, always changing, continually moving and in flow and if you're not breathing correctly you can upset the balance of your energetic fields, internal and external, causing blockages leading to sickness and disease. The way you breathe determines the way you think, feel, look, and perform. When you breathe through your nose there are little passages that spins, moistens, cools, warms, and filters the air. This is one of your first lines of defence against toxins in the air and your environment. Breathing through the nose with your tongue resting on the roof of the mouth behind your top teeth also connects the meridian system or energetic system of the body. The network of meridian channels are how your life force moves and flows throughout your body. With the right breathing you will allow your energy to flow effortlessly around your body to where it's needed the most. Also, with your tongue in this resting position it activates your cervical flexor mechanism (neck muscles),

In this podcast I'll be exploring Stress: I'll explain what stress is and the different types of stress I'll talk about how stress affects the body Finally, I'll give practical tips on how to reduce stress in your life CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET LEAN Stress is defined as placing pressure or tension on an object. What most people don't realise is that there is such a thing as good stress. This is called eustress, e-u-stress, eustress. The difference between eustress and stress (or distress) is determined by our own perception of the stress. For example imagine two people riding a rollercoaster. One person experiences stress and the other experiences eustress. While one person experiences pain, anxiety, and worry the other person experiences, pleasure, joy, and excitement. Same pressure. Same tension, but different experiences different perceptions of that stress. One has distress (or stress). The other has eustress. My point here is that everything that happens to us is not good or bad until we make the choice to make it mean good or bad. So whatever type of stress you are experiencing, keep in the back of your mind that you do have the choice to see this stress as something positive something for you, eustress, or as something negative, distress. There are three main types of stress and many subtypes of these stressors. The three types of stress are: Physical Mental and Emotional Biochemical and Physiological   Examples of the subtypes of these stressors include electromagnetic stress, nutritional stress, and thermal stress. Now these three main types of stress can be broken down into two groups. External stressors such as being out in the sun, getting injured, or being exposed to toxic chemicals. Then there's internal stressors such as having a disease and having an imbalance in your hormones. So an example of a physical stress would be working out at the gym. Having difficult relationships would be an example of a mental and emotional stress. An example of biochemical and physiological stress would be when you come down with the cold or flu and your immune system has to battle the bugs in order to bring the inside of your body back into balance. So those are the three main types of stress. There's physical stress, which is normally associated with external stress. There is mental and emotional stress, which can be either external or internal. Then there's biochemical and physiological stress, which is an internal stressor. Your body is made up of a system of nerves and the nervous system is broken down into different types. The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is the system that looks after your body automatically. It digests, it eliminates, it regulates blood flow, hormone production, temperature, etc. You don't have to think about doing any of this stuff yourself. These are run by your ANS. Now as you live life and experience different events the ANS can go down either one of two pathways. One pathway is the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS). The other pathway is the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS). The SNS puts your body into a fight, flight, flee, or freeze state. When activated the SNS releases stress hormones which raise heart rate, blood pressure, and moves the blood from your internal organs to your muscles and limbs. These stress hormones also prevent fat mobilisation and fat metabolism. What does that mean? It means your body stops moving fat out of the fat cells, out of their homes, which means you will not be burning any fat for energy. So much for reducing your waistline hmm. The PNS on the other hand puts you in a rest, digest, calm, and connect state. The PNS deals with growth, fat-burning, and sex hormones that help keep your heart rate and blood pressure in a healthy range and your blood remains close to your internal organs allowing for your digestion,

In this podcast I'll be exploring what it means to be in an Attitude of Gratitude: I'll explain what gratitude really is I'll also explain why everyone should be practising gratitude in their lives everyday Finally I'll talk about a few different ways to practice being in an attitude of gratitude CLICK HERE TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE BEST FOODS TO GET LEAN What is gratitude? Let me read what Professor Google says. The definition of gratitude: "The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness." Alright so thanks and appreciation, sounds pretty standard. Now I like to give these two quotes of what I think gratitude really means. This is from Melody Beattie: "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." And this from Wayne Dyer: "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change." To me gratitude is about seeing things in a new light, in a different perspective and there's different ways people express gratitude: blessing and prayer; showing appreciation to people; saying thank you and actually meaning it. Gratitude isn't so much what you say, it's how you're being in that moment that you're giving thanks and appreciation and being grateful and praying and blessing. I love to say "say what you mean and mean what you say." You can say thank you and not mean it, but you can BE thankful and there's no denying what you mean. That's what gratitude is. Gratitude is a life skill, a tool to reframe parts of our lives from not that much, from scarcity to more than enough and abundance. Today we love in a world where everything is pretty much 24/7, plugged in all the time, non-stop. We live in the world of FOMO. FOMO means Fear Of Missing Out. Now I believe that everyone should be practising and dedicating a few minutes a day to being in an attitude of gratitude because that will get rid of your FOMO disease, your FOMO syndrome, your FOMO illness, okay. Remember gratitude is a reframing tool. It helps us s change our perception of things, so where there wasn't enough now there's plenty. What we have is plenty. By practising gratitude no longer do you have this fear of missing out because what you have is already enough and it takes time to see things this way, but that's why you got to practise this. It's a tool that you use to build a skill that then becomes a habit. So being in an attitude of gratitude will help you disconnect from this 24/7 online world that we live in currently. Disconnect just enough to bring you into the present moment, to being more mindful and aware of how your thinking, how your feeling, how's your body going, how's your mind going, how's your life going. Right now we are surrounded by so much stimulation that sometimes we don't know whether we're coming or going. Just taking time out to say thank you or to give a blessing or to have a prayer, just being grateful for five seconds will bring you to that moment in the present very mindful and aware of how you're feeling. What sensations are you feeling in your body? What thoughts are running through your mind before you get into that attitude of gratitude and then what thoughts come after? Gratitude, it's not just being polite and saying thank you. It's disconnecting yourself from the confusion that can appear around you. It's removing the fear of missing out. It's bringing you to the present moment, increasing your awareness and making you very mindful of how you're feeling and how you're doing in the moment. It's nothing small, it's quite huge. Grat-ti-tude. One word. Three syllables. Infinite amount of possibilities of how it can change your life. Now there is no one way to practise being in an attitude of...