Eat Foods As Grown

This afternoon I needed to run to the local grocery store to buy some beans and onions to fix a vegan recipe that I like. When I picked up one of those little mini carts I noticed a woman standing at the check out line. She was obese. Her food purchase laid out on the belt for the cashier was 2 canisters of Pringles potato chips and some sodas. She is not getting any nutrition from processed foods. This is a large problem in North America today.

Do you want to know why you are hungry 2 hours after eating a Big Hamburger, a Big Order of French Fries, and a Big Soda Drink? The reason you are hungry is the body is not getting the nutrition it needs to function properly. Our body needs the enzymes, minerals, phytonutrients and vitamins that are found in a plant based diet. If your food has a nutrition label, more than likely that food is not all that nourishing for your body. Do you see a nutrition label on a sweet potato or a mango?

Many years ago I ate those same foods. I also weighed 75 pounds more than I do now. When I quit smoking in 1998, I began a series of actions that have helped my overall health. If you want to also achieve the best health you can, may I suggest that you make gradual removals and adjustments so as to ensure your success? That is how I did it. I didn’t give up all unhealthy habits at once. Some people say that if you make radical changes your chances of long term success to move towards healthy habits goes down dramatically.

After stopping smoking, I remember I had a long talk with my oldest sister. I had gained some weight as I rewarded myself with ice cream for a few years. People gain 1 pound of weight when they consume 3,500 calories that is not used up in daily living or exercise. Years of eating sweets put about 75 pounds on me. So the process of removing those 75 pounds required some changes. Here is how I began the process:

1. Eliminated white sugar and white flour

2. Cut down on amount of food I ate

3. Stopped eating red meat

4. Quit eating sweets and began having a piece of fruit for dessert instead

5. Started eating more vegetables

6. Ate oatmeal for breakfast with a grapefruit on the side

7. Ate a salad with fresh greens everyday

8. Walked in the county park at least 30 minutes every day even if it was inclement weather

9. Eat like a King at breakfast, a Queen at lunch, and a pauper at supper

10. Drink 1/2 of your ideal body weight in ounces of pure water every day

( If you weigh 150 pounds, you need at least 75 ounces )

White flour has very little nutrition for our body. Sugar is dense calories that has no nutritional value. By simply removing those two foods from my diet, I started dropping weight. Grapefruit is an excellent choice for all people trying to lose weight. Citrus fruit naturally contains the flavonoid Naringenin that signals the liver to burn fat. If you are on statin medications or metformin, you need to check with your doctor about possible issues with those drugs interacting with Grapefruit.

Many people that get their weight down to their bodies natural weight should be able to reduce many drugs. Check with your medical provider and see my disclaimer at the bottom of this website.

I then continued on and was losing between 5-8 pounds a week without any pills or potions. Here is my other set of actions that have moved me from having some white meat to being a vegan:

1. Eliminated dark chicken and turkey meat

2. Quit eating processed foods and boxed dinners

3. Eliminated caffeine from my body by gradual weaning

4. Increased consumption of fresh fruits

5. Eat more whole grains like brown rice, quinoa

6. Eat 100 % whole wheat bread

7. Eliminated dairy and eggs from diet

8. Use soy milk, soy cheese, butter alternative

9. Use almond milk

I remember experiencing quite a detox when I got off the dairy products. Dairy causes mucus build up inside our bodies. Many dairy products have growth hormones that were given to the cows to make them grow faster. Dairy products also have casein which is a protein. You can research the problems that dairy products cause to the human body at your leisure. Cow’s milk is meant by our Creator to be consumed by baby cows. Once the young cows are weaned, they graze on grass and leave the cow’s milk alone.

In just six months, I had lost the 75 pounds and now am almost at my ideal weight. I am in my 50’s now and staying active with my exercise and healthy diet is more important now than ever. One thing that I learned recently is that if you have a tone body from doing some weight bearing exercises, your body will burn more calories every day even if you are just sitting at the computer or at your office working from a chair. You can see more information about getting a solid work out by spending 10 minutes a day doing some exercises to the point of positive momentary muscular failure on my page here:

How I Exercise

 

Rest on the Sabbath. Heed Old Testament dietary codes. And be ready for Jesus to return at any moment.

If these practices sound quaint or antiquated, think again. They’re hallmarks of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the fastest-growing Christian denomination in North America.

Newly released data show Seventh-day Adventism growing by 2.5% in North America, a rapid clip for this part of the world, where Southern Baptists and mainline denominations, as well as other church groups are declining. Adventists are even growing 75% faster than Mormons (1.4 percent), who prioritize numeric growth.

For observers outside the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the growth rate in North America is perplexing.

“You’ve got a denomination that is basically going back to basics … saying, ‘What did God mean by all these rules and regulations and how can we fit in to be what God wants us to be?’,” said Daniel Shaw, an expert on Christian missionary outreach at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. “That’s just totally contrary to anything that’s happening in American culture. So I’m saying, ‘Whoa! That’s very interesting.’ And I can’t answer it.”

Seventh-day Adventists are asking a different question: Why isn’t the church growing much faster on these shores, which is home to just 1.1 million of the world’s 16 million Adventists? Despite its North American roots, the church is growing more than twice as fast overseas.

“We don’t feel that we’re growing very much, and that is a source of concern, especially for North America,” said Ron Clouzet, director of the North American Division Evangelism Institute at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich. Hispanic Adventists are “the one group that is growing very well,” he added. “If we didn’t have that group, we would look even more dismal.”

With Saturday worship services and vegetarian lifestyles, Seventh-day Adventism owns a distinctive niche outside the Christian mainstream. But being different is turning out to be more of an asset than a liability.

Since the mid-19th century when the movement sprang up in New Hampshire, Seventh-day Adventism has had an urgent mission to bring the gospel — with a distinctive emphasis on Christ’s imminent second coming — to the ends of the earth. Adventists find the essence of their mission in Revelation 14:12, where the end of the age “calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.”

The church’s traditional, global focus is now bearing fruit in new ways. Newly arrived immigrants in the United States often come from parts of Latin America or Africa where Seventh-day Adventism has long-established churches, schools and hospitals.

Those who migrate from Brazil to Massachusetts, or from Mexico to Texas, are apt to find familiarity in a local Adventist church led by a pastor who knows their culture and speaks their native language, said Edwin Hernandez, a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at the University of Notre Dame.

Immigrants aren’t the only ones embracing Seventh-day Adventism. Many in the general public have noticed Adventists tend to be superstars of good health and longevity; research shows they tend to live 10 years longer than the average American. With strong track records for success in health and education, Adventists find they get a hearing among skeptics who share those priorities.

Publicized research on Adventists’ health “has helped bring some objective evaluation of Adventism… particularly all up and down the West Coast,” said G. Alexander Bryant, executive secretary for the denomination’s North American division. “So we talk to people about our lifestyle.”

Some newcomers to Adventism also appreciate the church’s clarity about what’s expected of Christ’s followers. Diana Syth of Kent, Wash. attended many types of Protestant churches for years. But she said she “never got the information I needed to know about what it meant to be a Christian” until she and her husband learned of Seventh-day Adventism from a sibling six years ago.

“My (adult) son has seen a change in us,” Syth said. “He sees a new calmness in us. There’s hope where there wasn’t hope before.”

Adventists are also reaping the rewards of their extra efforts in evangelism. Responding to a national initiative, more than 80% of the 6,000 Adventist churches in North America staged weeks-long outreach events in hotels and other settings in 2009.

Bryant said in an ordinary year, one-third to one-half of Adventist congregations put on such events, and North American church growth rates would hover around 1.7% — still high enough to top the rates of other large denominations in North America.

Creativity seems to be paying dividends, too. The church has seen some of its strongest gains come in non-religious regions such as the Pacific Northwest. In Washington, for instance, the denomination has established “Christian cafes,” where people can relax and ask questions without feeling the pressures of church.

“You’re not necessarily inviting them to church,” Bryant said. “You’re just sitting around, talking with people, building relationships — and slowly talking to them about Christ.”

This article was published in the USA Today on 18 March 2011

Shift Happens

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come:

1. Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. Checks. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
 
3. Newspapers. The younger generation simply doesn’t read newspapers. They certainly don’t subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. Books. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can’t wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you’re holding a gadget instead of a book.  Saving trees, too.

5. Land Line Telephones. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don’t need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they’ve always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.

6. Music. The music industry is dying a slow death, not just because of illegal downloading. It’s the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today is “catalog items,” meaning traditional music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, “Appetite for Self-Destruction” by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, “Before the Music Dies.”

7. Television. Network revenues are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they’re playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It’s time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.

8. The Cloud vs.Ownership. Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest “cloud services.” That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That’s the good news. But, will you actually own any of this “stuff” or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big “Poof?” Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.

9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That’s gone. It’s been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, “They” know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And “They” will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

 

De-industrialization of America

The United States is rapidly becoming the very first “post-industrial” nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.

But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America. Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
 
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable. Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

Nineteen facts about the deindustrialization of America:

1. The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75% of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation.

2. Dell Inc., one of America ‘s largest manufacturers of computers, has announced plans to dramatically expand its operations in China with an investment of over $100 billion over the next decade.

3. Dell has announced that it will be closing its last large U.S. manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem , North Carolina in November. Approximately 900 jobs will be lost.

4. In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of them were manufactured inside the United States ? Zero.

5. According to a new study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, if the U.S. trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.

6. As of the end of July, the U.S. trade deficit with China had risen 18% compared to the same time period a year ago.

7. The United States has lost a total of about 5.5 million manufacturing jobs since October 2000.

8. According to Tax Notes, between 1999 and 2008 employment at the foreign affiliates of U.S. parent companies increased an astounding 30% to 10.1 million. During that same time period, U.S. employment at American multinational corporations declined 8% to 21.1 million.

9. In 1959, manufacturing represented 28% of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5%.

10. Ford Motor Company recently announced the closure of a factory that produces the Ford Ranger in St.Paul, Minnesota. Approximately 750 good paying middle class jobs are going to be lost because making Ford Rangers in Minnesota does not fit in with Ford’s new “global” manufacturing strategy.

11. As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

12. In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70% of GDP, over half of which is spent on services.

13. The United States has lost a whopping 32% of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

14. In 2001, the United States ranked fourth in the world in per capita broadband Internet use. Today it ranks 15th.

15. Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.

16. Printed circuit boards are used in tens of thousands of different products. Asia now produces 84% of them worldwide.

17. The United States spends approximately $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States .

18. One prominent economist is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040.

19. The U.S. Census Bureau says that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that is the highest number of poor Americans in the 51 years that records have been kept.

So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.

We Share Every Day

Networking is Easy. Today I went and shopped for fresh fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains and veggies at a local grocery. They have a grand opening in process and I was much impressed. This store has a vegan section.

While waiting for the city transit to get back home, I called a friend and mentioned that she may want to browse The Market at Lakeway. When I go to church, I will see over 100 people I know that also will be interested in a store that carries local produce and has a vegan section. So why is Networking so easy?

I did not get paid a nickel to share with my friend and anyone else that I will share about The Market at Lakeway. We share every day whether we realize it or not.

Did you know that there are over 35 million people working in home based businesses? There are millions of people that understand this concept of working smarter and not harder. Sharing comes naturally for all of us. We share good products or services naturally. That is how to build a large stable income in the Whole Wellness Club. Invite guests to your opportunity and let a third party like our owner Chuck Dhuey do the work for you on the business calls. It is that simple. Do you want success? Subscribe to my newsletter about how to be successful by completing the box below:

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