Ôªø Obtain healthier nutrition, heathy diet, and a well-balanced lifestyle through education.
5
Dec

I know I don’t need to tell you that anything that is fun will hold and keep your attention, and would therefore be more likely to be included in you life on a long-term basis. We love fun things because they make us happy, and we want to continue doing things which make us happy.

So why do so many of us continue to subject ourselves to “rote-routine” exercise programs that are non-engaging, flat and boring. I have never known boredom as ever succeeding in convincing anyone into doing anything for very long? Boredom in anything, especially exercise, is unnecessary and it should be avoided by all means necessary! Here are a few reasons why from now on “fun in exercise” should be your new motto:

2009-gravity-inversion-table-therapy-equipment-exercise 2009 GRAVITY INVERSION TABLE THERAPY EQUIPMENT EXERCISE
US $99.99 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-04-2009 22:40:49 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item
nordictrack-isolift-exercise-equipment NordicTrack Isolift exercise equipment
US $30.00 (1 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 5:18:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item
new-spring-action-rower-home-exercise-equipment New Spring Action Rower Home Exercise Equipment
US $11.50 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 8:02:48 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
40-trampoline-arobic-exercise-cardio-equipment-bouncer 40" TRAMPOLINE AROBIC EXERCISE CARDIO EQUIPMENT BOUNCER
US $49.99 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:10:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

1. It gives you the impetus to do something that you probably wanted to try out, and now you finally have an excuse to try it out. Eg. Tennis, volley ball, dancing, etc

2. It puts you in the mode of wanting to do the activity which you find fun and enjoyable. Therefore you do it more often.

3. When others see you enjoying yourself and loosing weight, they ask questions and your single act of having fun in exercise may encourage others to be more active themselves.

4. Exercise on its own has been found to be a stress reducer, but when it is fun too, your heart is truly into it. This can be a true soul booster and you really feel the euphoria from the experience.

5. You look forward to something that you find enjoyable.

6. It is easier to solicit the involvement of family, friends etc. to become part of a fitness activity that is fun and enjoyable. Eg. Bicycling, playing basketball in the backyard with the kids, playing volleyball on the beach, going salsa dancing or taking a salsa class with the spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend.

7. It can open the door to like-minded people who help support you in your efforts to incorporate unconventional forms of exercise into your life.

8. Your exercise space is more likely to be in a ‘non-exercise’ environment such as your home, a dance studio, the beach, the park, your backyard etc. Therefore this removes the mindset of having to be in ‘exercise-mode’ as you would be in a gym for example; plus you are surrounded with the familiarity of your home, family, dog or whatever resonates comfort for you. When you exercise for fun, you are there to be in enjoyment of the activity and this is the primary focus. In fact it’s not exercise at all. It is just something you love doing.

9. Fun in exercise fuels long-term desire. Most people say that they have a determination to exercise, but determination is greatly mind-directed. Let’s face it, we can easily get caught up in the “minefield” of our minds. Determination may seem great on the outside, but I feel it bears too much weight on the mind, and not as much on the heart and soul which really are our true driving forces.

While determination gets you pumped up for the task at hand, it is desire which keeps you going when your mind can’t reason with the pain or the obstacles that come in the way. This is what keeps you going when the diet plan is over or the gym membership has expired.

I wish you much luck in deciding which activities are fun for you. Some activities you may consider are dancing, kick boxing, marathons and walking for a cause activities, joining a walking or running online “meet-up” group, indoor “rock climbing” etc. Choose an activity which makes you feel good and always make it fun!

Karen Lugay is a Registered Dietitian living in the New York City area. On the subjects of nutrition and weight management, Karen believes that these are never one dimensional. Therefore overall nutrition should be eclectic and enjoyable at the same time. She also shares this view on the topic of exercise. Visit her website, http://www.bellymovesebook.com to sign up for her free nutrition newsletter and to discover one of the unconventional exercises of choice which she recommends, Belly Dance, in her compelling book “The Day I Heard My Hips Move-How as I did, You Too Can Transcend Limited Time, Zeal, Firsthand Knowledge, and Other Perceived Hurdles to Orchestrate Your Own Belly Dance Journey”.

5
Dec

If you think that your bones are merely some sort of framework or scaffolding for all the organs in your body, you are getting the wrong impression. The truth is your bones are living tissues, and they need nutrients to make them strong just like your muscles or skin. And if you can only take a look at bones on a cellular level, you will find that these tissues are in a constant process of being worn out and being rebuilt.

As you grow older, your bones wear out faster than they are rebuilt; this gives way to a disease known as osteoporosis. The overall effect of this disease is bone loss and it can turn anybody’s life into a tragedy. In fact, there are over one and a half million bone fractures in America caused by osteoporosis. But the real bad fortune that the victims of these fractures have encountered is the fact that they could have easily prevented or reversed the effects of bone loss. And the best part of it all is that you can beat osteoporosis by eating the right food.

Protein-Rich Food

Protein is important for the bone-building process in your body. And the best sources of protein are meat, fish and poultry. The body needs about two ounces of protein each day; this translates to about six ounces of fish, chicken, or red meat; and the keyword here is lean meat!

But surely you have heard about the bad things that meat can bring to your system. Well, the idea here is moderation. If you consume more than the required amount of meat protein in your diet, there is a big tendency that your body will produce acidic waste products from excess protein in your body. When this happens, your kidneys will have a hard time cleaning up your system.

And here’s the rub, when your kidneys are cleaning up excess acidic protein wastes in your body, they need the help of the mineral calcium to eliminate protein byproducts. The place where your kidneys can request for more calcium is in your bones; after all, your skeletal system is the biggest calcium stockpile in your body! If you do the math in all this, excess protein will give you calcium deficit and weaker bones. So take it easy with those meat products, keep your meat consumption to no more than six ounces a day.

Calcium-Rich Food

Fighting osteoporosis means maintaining a healthy amount of calcium in your bones. Always make sure that calcium is in the black if you do not want to deal with bone loss later in your life. To do this, you need around four servings of calcium-rich vegetables and low-fat dairy products. Cheese, yogurt, spinach and collards are some of the stuffs that are rich in calcium.

However, it is important to note that people who are in their adult years experience rising levels of lactose intolerance; this means, older people have become increasingly unable to digest most dairy products. To compensate, older people can source their calcium needs from food such as soy products, seaweeds, broccoli, salmon and several types of beans. These items can well answer for your daily calcium needs without giving you upset stomach.

Always remember that too much of a good thing can be bad. As for calcium, having large amounts of this mineral in your system, may impede or interfere with the way your body can absorb other important minerals like magnesium and zinc. Instead of attaining strong healthy bones, too much calcium may bring you weaker bones.

It is also important to remember that bone supplements can greatly help you in balancing the amounts of nutrients needed by your bones. You can use products like Osteozyne to complement your diet.

Sharon Bell is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and published author. Many of her insightful articles can be found at the premiere online news magazine http://www.healthnfitnesszone.com

For more details about preventing osteoporosis, visit http://www.osteozyne.com

1
Dec

When performance sports are over, overweight athletes are more likely to develop asthma, musculoskeletal trauma, heat illness, osteoarthritis, or cardiovascular problems, according to a study presented to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

The optimal treatment for excess weight in the case of overweight athletes is a combination of behavioral therapy, nutrition, and fitness. The specialist team that handles the problems of overweight players include the coach, a team physician, a parent for young athletes, a certified trainer, a cardiologist, a dietitian, or a strength and conditioning coach.

The factors that may increase the risk for certain diseases in case of athletes who don`t have a healthy weight include medical history of diseases such as sleep apnea, hypertension, high levels of cholesterol, diabetes, asthma, or orthopedic problems.

Heat illness history, the lack of acclimatization, and the use of performance-enhancing supplements are also factors that may lead to health problems for athletes with weight problems.

Caffeinated beverages may have side effects such as hypertension, arrhythmias, and palpitations and cause heath problems for athletes. The use of creatine, steroids, or steroids precursors that may lead to gaining muscle mass may also represent a risk factor for the health of athletes. The lack of acclimatization, the history of heat illness, or the possessions of performance-enhancing supplements are also factors that increase the athletes` risk to have health problems when they retire.

The prevention methods used to prevent asthma and heat issues are numerous and may apply to all athletes.

(c) Project Weight Loss 2007. All rights reserved.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vicky_Lynum

2009-gravity-inversion-table-therapy-equipment-exercise 2009 GRAVITY INVERSION TABLE THERAPY EQUIPMENT EXERCISE
US $99.99 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Saturday Jul-04-2009 22:40:49 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item
nordictrack-isolift-exercise-equipment NordicTrack Isolift exercise equipment
US $30.00 (1 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 5:18:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Watch this Item
new-spring-action-rower-home-exercise-equipment New Spring Action Rower Home Exercise Equipment
US $11.50 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 8:02:48 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
40-trampoline-arobic-exercise-cardio-equipment-bouncer 40" TRAMPOLINE AROBIC EXERCISE CARDIO EQUIPMENT BOUNCER
US $49.99 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:10:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
48-portable-trampoline-folding-exercise-equipment-new 48" PORTABLE TRAMPOLINE FOLDING EXERCISE EQUIPMENT NEW
US $64.99 (1 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:10:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
2009-gravity-inversion-table-therapy-equipment-exercise 2009 GRAVITY INVERSION TABLE THERAPY EQUIPMENT EXERCISE
US $154.99 (0 Bid)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:20:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
ab-rocket-exercise-equipment-with-3-resistance-levels AB ROCKET EXERCISE EQUIPMENT WITH 3 RESISTANCE LEVELS
US $41.00 (16 Bids)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:35:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
2009-gravity-inversion-table-therapy-equipment-exercise 2009 GRAVITY INVERSION TABLE THERAPY EQUIPMENT EXERCISE
US $81.00 (10 Bids)
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:50:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
2009-gravity-inversion-table-therapy-equipment-exercise 2009 GRAVITY INVERSION TABLE THERAPY EQUIPMENT EXERCISE
US $159.99
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 10:55:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item
40lb-weight-vest-exercise-equipment-athletic-weighted 40LB WEIGHT VEST EXERCISE EQUIPMENT ATHLETIC WEIGHTED
US $74.99
Auction Ends: Sunday Jul-05-2009 11:09:00 PDT
Bid on this Item   | Buy this Item   | Watch this Item

1
Dec

I wrote this page because of problems I once had, resolved, and I hope to research on this further.

I once heard of a case where doctors had performed an autopsy on someone and found his intestines to be plugged with a cake-hard substance having the smallest pinhole for the faeces to get through. I guess the guy must have had the worst case of the runs during the latter part of his life, and I’d assume that this condition must have been a large reason to do with his death.
I’ve also heard of an Australian Olympic athlete who died shortly before competing, and when they did an autopsy on her, they found her intestines plugged with cheese. She apparently absolutely LOVED cheese pizza.

For me, if you want to hear my gruesome problem, first of all I developed hemorrhoids after riding for 40km a bike I borrowed one day, on a hard bicycle seat and after not riding the bike for well over a decade. I was bleeding in my stool and I guess it took me a while to find and approach the problem with a solution, as it tended to linger for many years (I generally avoid surgery and medication at all costs). For years I would have a bad case of diarrhea and sometimes a scary amount of blood in my stool. One possible reason for this is the bad way in which I terminated one of my fasting periods, leading to an ultimate burning ring of fire. I’ve been eating hot chilies and food all my life, and the way people see me eat they have often commented that I must have “guts of steel”. But I guess with the way I damaged or abused them from two points of attack like this might have weakened them to where they were bleeding so much. On one of my fasts I also regularly did the colon flush, which I was later informed could weaken my intestines. By excessively cleaning it and leaving it empty for a longer period of time (my longest fast was 19.5 days), I might have weakened them, and I later read that it takes a while to heal intestines in general.

I hear of people who have the case of severe diarrhea, or constipation, and for which they might take various medication, but I have found that by proper eating and proper release one can bring their intestines back to a healthy condition, even if this may take a longer time.

If your intestines have become weaker like mine have, then you simply have to be kind to them for a longer period of time until they come back to health. For me, and probably for anyone, this simply meant holding back on the hot stuff until my stool looked regularly healthy. It is always good to examine your poo, and to note the aroma as well. If it really stinks something unhealthy, you should consider the diet you are eating. If it smells really unhealthy and toxic, imagine how many hours and days such unhealthy toxic substances are lying dormant in your intestines.

If you are not relieving yourself properly (taking proper and thorough poos), this toxic and possibly poisonous gunk will probably be seeping through your intestinal walls, into your blood stream and polluting your body. If you eat unhealthy food (possibly laced with dangerous chemicals), your liver (your body’s filter) will try to remove and process the poison, as well as your kidney, your stomach will pass it on while trying to extract only the healthy stuff. The rest then oozes its way slowly through your long (I believe around 25 feet) intestines, and if you are not emptying yourself properly, it will sit there dormant, eating away at and destroying your intestinal walls, weakening them, with the very poisons all the previous organs have worked hard to get rid of to pass out of the system now seeping uncontrollably and directly into your blood stream! A very bad scenario.

Many times I see how people stuff their faces, gorging on anything that suits their fancy (visual and taste of tongue stimulation) without giving any thought to the possible consequences, somehow assuming that their body is expendable, or a wonderful machine that will correctly deal with the garbage they are feeding it. Surviving on plastic covered hot dogs without really investigating what those plastic sleeves are stuffed with - perhaps the guts and entrails and remains from a chicken factory, mixed with some healthy meat, food colouring and chemicals. Yuck.

On the other hand, the same people could spend an immense amount of attention washing and waxing their cars on Sundays. Perhaps buy better quality oil and gas for their beloved cars. Or when they cook, they correctly pour grease from the pan into an emptied pickle jar and not down the drain. For they know that the grease will clog their drain and they will have to clean it, by pouring into it some super toxic chemical which will find its way into nature and our water supply, and possibly pumping their piping with a toilet plunger.
But their kitchen sink piping is made out of thick metal and it can handle this abuse and pressure. Your intestines certainly are not. Yet the same people practically pour grease down their throats with the stuff they eat. Grease and fat is apparently addictive, which is why fast food joints go out of their way to stuff their foods with it. And look at the state of the average American. That immensely obese animal which survives on such fast food more than any other nation.

Changing your diet away from this poison and towards leaner meat, vegetables, and generally healthy food will go a long way towards extending your life and helping you maintain a lean and healthy body. Not to mention of clogged arteries and greatly increasing the chance of cardiac arrest (heart attack) due to such greasy unhealthy eating, especially if you combine that with smoking cigarettes and a stagnant lifestyle without any exercise. What an immense abuse of the body, pounding it with such poisons for a long period of time. When you are young, your body is more able to handle such abuse. But as you get older your metabolism decreases (especially if you do not exercise), and your body simply is not able to process all this toxic waste like it used to. So it is not able to get rid of it properly, and begins to stuff it in this corner and that, swept under the carpet here and there, and you begin to bulge out in a most unhealthy way. Just take your clothes off one day and take a long hard look at yourself in a standup mirror. You can practically see all that unhealthy food bulging out of you, your poor body not able to process the sheer volume of it.

And yet people can think that this is some natural state. Perhaps they don’t care at all, or have resigned to it as the way of life.
Not at all my friends. If you think logically and with simple common sense, simply by putting in healthier food and helping your body a bit, you can reverse this trend, and over the years your body will be able to catch up and slowly get rid of all this junk you were feeding it too fast for it to get rid of.

There are several things you will have to do.

First of all, the more exercise the better. I know, a horrible word and you’ve heard it a thousand times until it’s making you sick just thinking about it. But it really does not have to be painful. The important point is movement. You don’t have to go to the weight room, but walk when you can. Your thighs are your body’s biggest muscles, and exercising them forces your body to pump a lot of blood.

When you increase your blood circulation like this, you are exercising your heart (very good for you), and the increased circulation and higher metabolism means that your body can process any junk within it at a faster pace. Don’t force yourself to do some horribly painful jog, and get all sweaty to the point that you hate the idea and cant possibly motivate yourself to repeat it the next day, or never. But increase your daily activity slowly and at a leisurely pace. If you get off the bus two stops early on the way to work, walk through a nice park, and find yourself panting once you get to your destination, well, keep it to two blocks then, or cut back to one block. But if you do this every day or two, within a week you will not find yourself panting after such a short walk.

Which is when you can increase the distance with ease, until you might get to my point where I like to run up escalators, initially two steps at a time, then walking two steps at a time, to end up at the top (some escalators can be long indeed) walking one step at a time but with both my thighs burning nicely, a very slight film of sweat produced, and my heart pounding a bit. With little quick exercises like this you can keep your body in fairly good shape. I almost never take the elevator. I walk almost everywhere, or jog there, always finding on a map a nice route through tree-lined residential areas or parks, so it is quite a pleasant experience. Many times I will get somewhere walking faster than by public transportation, when you count the time from door to door (average time waiting at the stop, walking to the stop etc.). I can do a half jog, walking intermittently, always to the point before I start to sweat, so that I can arrive at my destination faster than the public transportation system and with almost no sweat at all.

So you can think of ways how to exercise, multi task so to speak, in such a way that it will not consume any extra time during your day, and not be a painful and regretful experience for you. This will increase your body’s metabolism to the point that it will be much better able to process any junk you might eat.

And try to shift your diet away from such junk, for God’s sake. Sure, I like to go to McDonald’s once in a while, or eat an unhealthy hotdog, or a bag of chips with coke etc., but I’m always conscious of whatever I put in my mouth. I read the package. You know, it is not that difficult to find a bag of chips (or snacks - such as a granola bar) that is more healthy.

Once again, if you make a slow transition in this department as well, your shift will not be a painful and torturous experience. The important point is not to go overboard to the point that you abandon your intentions. Go as slow as you need, but be resolute in your shift. And you will find that your tastebuds will change accordingly. When I decided I wanted to go vegetarian, at first I craved for meat, but over time my body almost became repulsed at the idea of meat and looked forward with salivation at the prospect of eating a delicious salad-only dinner. On my pages you will find some simple healthy recipes which work for me. It really is not difficult to eat healthy, cheaply, and it can be a joy to cook and eat such healthy food.

Now if you take care of these two points you will go a long way towards a healthy body, and healthy intestines. It does not really make sense for me to go into great detail about healthy intestines if you are regularly pounding your system with garbage, and if you are inactive.
Once you have attained the above state to some degree, we can proceed to focus on your intestines (although you can certainly focus on everything at the same time).

Your intestines, in a healthy state, apparently maintains some bacterial balance. Like a swamp which helps keep a lake clean. Full of certain types of bugs which eat the bad stuff. In India they are designing swamps which process, in a natural way, a large city’s entire human waste.

Your intestines are similar, and if it is coming out as hard as a brick or as runny as Niagara, it is a sign to you that you are doing something wrong. One way you can regulate the bacteria is by drinking Kefir every day. I think it is supposed to be similar to buttermilk. It introduces a certain bacteria into your system to help maintain your intestinal ecology the way it should be. I bought mine flavoured with strawberries, found it delicious, and enjoyed drinking two small cartons a day.

You should also regulate your faeces. I know, sounds pretty funny doesn’t it? But it makes total sense to examine what comes out. If my faeces smells bad, I always think back to what I ate that day or the day before, and decide to try and avoid it. I also pay attention to how my stomach feels and my body in general after eating unhealthy food. So I gauge my body this way, watching what I put into it, paying attention to how I feel afterwards, and examining what comes out.

Okay, I got some weird friends, and you don’t have to go their extreme by relieving yourselves in the bathtub so that you can rub your faeces between your fingers, examine it close up and smell it. Or perhaps you are not blessed with the toilets they make in the Czech Republic: a little platform which is later washed into a smaller hole. A platform where you can feel the heat of your faeces warming your butt cheeks as you sit, the aroma filling up the entire cabin to the point of tears, and you can examine it as thoroughly as you want to afterwards. Someone told me that they designed those toilets at a time when people had problems with worms in their stool - to give them an opportunity to examine their faeces in greater detail.

Anyway, it’s only your poo, and it is a product of what you eat, so there is no great reason to get all weasy and “ooh, that’s SO gross!” about it. Really, it’s just left-over food that your body did not want, plus dead red blood cells. No great trauma. Unless of course you gorge out regularly on unhealthy food, such that the product coming out the other end is toxic stinky and mighty disgusting looking. I can promise you that my poop practically smells like flowers and has a nice texture, and I do not consider it disgusting to look at.

So do not treat your poo with such disgust. Not as some sort of bad evidence you want to conceal and flush out of your sight as quickly as possible, but as something that you can examine and use to regulate your body and what you put into it.

I’ve been told that pork and beef are generally bad, because, in different ways, they help clog your intestines. So try to cut down those, try to eat only the lean and healthy stuff, and in between it eat stuff that helps flush out your system. Like for example Spinach salad. With a healthy dose of olive oil (very healthy for you), some good vinegar, squeezed lemon, a bit of spice, perhaps grated cheese, maybe even diced apples, and you have a rather delicious and very healthy meal which you can whip up in no time flat. Or use Romaine lettuce. Apparently Boston or Ice salad does not have much nutritional value. Go to your local health food shop and start asking lots of questions. Eat long grain brown rice rather than white processed rice. Sure, it might take 40 to 50 minutes to cook, but if you do it properly it requires no maintenance. Just throw it on the stove, during which time you can do lots of other stuff. I live in a caravan truck and do not have a convenient kitchen at all, yet I eat very healthily. So you have no excuse! Oh yes, and I like to throw sesame seeds on practically everything (soup, salad). There are very easy ways to eat healthy and not spend hours and a thick wallet doing it.

You can also try the intestinal flush once in a while. Like plugging your garden hose into an outdoor faucet and turning it on full blast. Really clean out all the dead leaves accumulated over the winter. Your body works on the same principle as your car and your kitchen sink. So just give it an equal amount of attention, and you will find yourself getting much healthier in ways you might not have dreamed of. Which will allow you to enjoy life much more, and that blasted car, if you really need it.

On my pages I have prepared the stuff I generally like to eat and find easy to make. I don’t have hours to kill a day on cooking either. Living in a truck, I generally like to reserve cooking for the weekends. I’ll allow myself fast food occasionally during the week, but I make an effort to find healthy fast food (not that difficult), and in between that I have my healthy food. And now I can enjoy practically all the hot peppers I want (great joy). My intestines have become healthy again, no more blood, and great texture. For example, for a few years I’d always have painful diarrhea the next morning after eating only a few hot peppers. I guess my diet of beer, hot peppers, bread and sardines wasn’t a healthy combination. But there was not that much else available in the area I was in at the time. The important point is that I noted the problem and experimented with my diet until I found what the problem was and determined a solution. If I get constipated, the next day I’ll eat more green leafy salad stuff. If I get the runs too much, I’ll have some chicken. Just experiment and gauge your poo until you find a good diet that works for you. But think about it and pay attention. And this way you should become a healthy and happy person.

I’m 42 years old and people keep guessing I’m between 24 and 30, so I must be doing something right!

Healthy intestines and healthy eating
Translation Service
Translation Agency

1
Dec

People buy a car, People in the “west” gorge their mouths constantly on anything that looks or smells good to them, without any thought whatsoever of all the chemicals, pesticides and hormones that are injected into those foods. And extra for better gasoline, shine their car, give it quality oil, take it to regular maintenance and love their automobiles like some god, but treat their own bodies like expendable garbage, like it is somehow some amazing instrument capable of processing and removing all the garbage we put into it. Add to it the air we breath, which goes deep into our lungs and through that into our bloodstream. Did you know that our bodies are capable of processing the basic elements of air - carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen - and converting that into food? So our bodies actually consume air, contributing to some percentage of our overall food intake.

But if you live in the city, this includes all the pollution emitted by cars, which contribute to half a city’s air pollution. Gasoline and with all its additives has about 600 chemicals in it, many of which contribute to neurological diseases. Now if we add up all the chemicals in processed food, pesticides in our fruits and vegetables (which certainly do not all wash away by simply running them under tap water but are absorbed deep into their cells as they consume water while they grow), car exhaust, cigarette smoke (there are about 600 chemicals in your average cigarette, including ammonia to help it burn and help you get more addicted), whether inhaled directly or secondary smoke, and alcohol, which is a toxic poison (think of inTOXicated), you can see how we daily pound our system with hundreds of chemicals.

And you can imagine how these foreign and unnatural substances accumulate in our cells over a lifetime. We are born fresh little babies, assuming our mothers maintained a healthy diet and lived in the clean air country. We grow up and our young bodies are better able at processing any bad stuff we put in it. We feel invincible in our youth, but over time and once we hit around 20, the scales are tipped, our bodies are no longer able to process everything so fully, and we start to see the effects.

This is when it is a good idea to start thinking of a spring cleaning. In fact, it would be better to think of good and wholesome eating all year round, but even if you managed to accomplish that to the best of your abilities, there still remains all the other substances found in our surrounding environment. Cancer was apparently non-existence more than 50 years ago, but with all the chemicals that have been added to help things grow faster, in our air, and the environment around us, it is no wonder that this disease has exploded.

Imagine going to the store and buying a fresh, white rag to clean your house with. You go around your house with your pale of water, wiping this and that, until both the water in the pail and the rag start to look increasingly dirty. And you find that you are no longer able to make things look cleaner, but are rather just moving and smearing dirt around. Well you can look at your body in the same way. Initially able to process junk, but as the junk accumulates in your system and your body get older, not as capable of cleaning itself that effectively, this junk starts to remain and reside in various cells and corners of your body, sitting there rotting, reducing your body’s overall performance, and leading to all sorts of diseases.

This is when you want to take your rag and run it under clean water, and your body through an annual spring cleansing. When I go through my annual cleanse, I am amazed at all the junk I see being removed from my body. Now before I embark on an explanation of how to clean your body, I’d like to point out that I have been doing this for years, starting slow, and each time improving on it, such that I have brought it up to a rather thorough level, which could seem quite extreme to anyone who has not cleansed their body before. I will first explain to what measure I do it, and then provide various alternatives for those who are just starting out. After all, when you rid your body of toxins, it is said that you could actually die from over toxification if you have never done this before (in fact, die of this sooner than lack of water or sleep). Releasing the floodgates of toxins stored and built up in your bodies over the years can cause such a poisonous shock to your body that it would actually kill you! So I’d actually suggest you start slow and improve on it every year. When I started, my first year I was whining and groaning like a baby from one mere day of fasting. But by the third year I felt no pain at all (I guess because I had removed most of the toxins), and now I can go for eight days on water only and not feel the slightest bit of discomfort. Amazing eh?

I combine my fast with various other techniques I have learned over the years, but first to explain the principle of a fast. When the body does not have enough of its regular intake of food, it starts to look around for other things it can consume. Usually when you feed it enough, it has plenty of fuel to burn in the stomach, intestines and bloodstream. This is the easiest source of energy, so it burns that first. But when it runs out of that, it starts to search the body for other possible sources of energy, and this is where it burns away other things which don’t really belong there (like fat, for example). And after that, toxins, and yes, even cancer. They say you can cure yourself of cancer by not eating for forty days, but I can guarantee you that it would take years of training to achieve a forty day fast.

So your body can actually devour viruses, weak and cancerous cells, and everything else which does not belong there. After about five days of water only, I feel like a Duracell battery, running on particular energy. In fact, when animals suffer a major injury, they automatically go into a fast to heal themselves. The body uses about 60% of its energy to consume the food we eat. When you free yourself of this burden, especially if you are a big meat eater, you would be surprised how much extra energy your body has to fight a sickness or to heal an injury. When I fast, I find I sleep less (sometimes only four to five hours a day), that I’m more perky, and I feel light and bouncy, like I’m walking on the moon. This contrary to the sluggishness and sleepiness I feel after a big steak meal.

In fact, whenever I get a strong cold (which is almost never because I eat rather healthily, with lots of garlic - check out my website how to kill a cold), I fast a little bit by eating less and eating only light foods like whole grain rice. This clears up extra energy which my body can use to fight the virus, and I often kill it within a single day.

So the principle of fasting cleans the body. Getting right down to the cell level and burning off junk that doesn’t belong there. Junk which will stay there, festering and rotting over the years, and which cannot be removed in any other way.

Of course, during this period, you want to drink lots of clean, purchased spring water. Not mineral water, where minerals can generally deposit in your joints and cause problems later, but good clean water, and you can imagine your body like that dirty rag which you hold under running tap water and flush out all the junk clogged between the pores of the fabric. In this same way you are flushing and cleaning out your body.

One of the reasons why I started fasting is because I saw the affects on a friend of mine. Over forty years old, and his face looked noticeably shiny after a few days. I also notice my improved complexion, and my next fast I’d like to take before and after pictures to prove it. He explained how, with all the water you are drinking and your body burning and flushing away junk, your skin is sucked of all the junk clogged in it. Your skin is a very important and your largest bodily organ. It breaths, and has many important functions. So it is soaking in the junk from the air around you, and depositing in it the junk circulating within your bloodstream. So yes, one of my great motivations of fasting is to look young and beautiful. I admit it. And people constantly guess I’m at least ten years younger than I am. So you can forget about all that mascara and more chemicals you plaster on your skin to make yourself more beautiful, and simply embark on a good spring cleaning, ridding your body of all this junk, and you will be amazed what a simple and beauty trick you accomplished. After rinsing your rag under running water for a good five minutes, it won’t look shiny and new like when you bought it, and you won’t look shiny and new like when you first came out of your mommy, but you will certainly notice a healthy difference!

After hopefully convincing you of the sound logic behind a good spring cleaning, we can start to talk about how to go about it.

When I do my annual fasts, one friend of mine protested that I was not fasting at all, if she had found me nibbling on some food. But this is not true. What is breakfast after all than breaking an eight hour fast while sleeping? As soon as you reduce your regular intake of food, your body goes into fast mode, searching around for what doesn’t belong there, to supplement its required energy intake. Many people “fast” by eating only fruits for thirty days. There are many ways you can go about it. Not necessarily the extreme I like to.

There is also a famous juice fasting concoction composed of squeezed lemon, maple syrup, clean water and a sprinkle of chilli. Lemon is a good cleansing food, maple syrup is the healthiest glucose you can find (where glucose supplies your body with raw energy), and the chilli for vitamin B and to neutralize the pallet. The latter is good because you will definitely taste the toxins coming out in your saliva. This juice fast is not as strong as a water fast, but works too, and you can apparently survive on that alone for forty days without any pain or effort.

But I must admit there is some pain and effort, for which reason I prefer to make my fasts more powerful, so that I can make them sweet and short. And the pain and effort for me has always been all those parties I had to forgo. For you certainly should not consider introducing your bodies with such poison as alcohol while you are trying to rid your body of those very toxins! Another pain was the torture of all the foods I smelled. When deep in fast mode, my sense of smell became very acute. I could smell someone cooking a block away. I would acutely know exactly which spices they were using, and my mind would be flooded with thoughts of sinking my teeth into a juicy steak, or licking on an icecream, or crunching into a handful of potato chips…

It was a never ending bombardment of temptation on my poor little mind, and my tongue dazzled my imagination with all sorts of succulent foods oozing over my hungry taste buds with a bountiful rich assortment of flavours squishing and squashing between my teeth, the delicious juices then oozing wonderfully down my throat. This was a constant torture indeed and I found the greatest exercise of my willpower. Absolutely no pain in my stomach (after the second year of fasting), my body felt perky and light, I felt awake and full of energy, but BOY was my tongue feeding my mind with the wildest fantasies of juicy red strawberries embedded in a healthy mound of vanilla icecream. Constant bombardment of my mind, and no wonder I would sneak off and nibble on the occasional potato chip, savoring every sweet little crunch, until I was caught red handed and accused of, “That’s not a fast!”

Another torture was the boredom. You’d be surprised what a nice break in your long day a meal makes. And the entire ritual of cutting the garlic, washing the vegetables, stirring the pot, nibbling away contentedly. Heck, you even miss the ritual of washing the dishes! Instead, you spend your entire day working and being productive. It is horribly boring. Sipping on boring water, not dazzling your senses with the most varied foods, which you can usually choose at your whim, but only dreaming of when this blasted fast will be over so that you can sink your teeth into every pleasure you can find.

So over the years I found myself preferring a shorter but more powerful fast. Although I admit that my last fast was not such a torture session, and I am thinking it is because I prepared my body better in advance.

But if you will be doing the juice fast, I can at least confide in you some assurance that the pint of juice did have some rewards. Lemon, maple syrup, water and chilli may seem like a strange combination, but I tell you it was darn delicious, and at least SOMEthing. And I even appreciated the preparation of it, with the welcome ritual break during my long, awake and productive day.

And yes, on my longer fasts, I’d even indulge in some chicken broth soup, laced amply with crushed garlic, freshly ground pepper and tasty spices. The water would fill up my stomach so I’d feel full and sort of contented, while the spices satisfied my pallet. And my daily intake of energy was still plenty low so as to benefit from the nature of the fast. My friend may have pointed her finger accusingly at me while I sipped with utter delight each precious spoonful of my brothy and tasty concoction, but I am sure I was still benefiting from the power of the fast.

But before I embark on a detailed explanation of my powerful fast, I’d like to give you a bit of warning concerning the corners you might consider cutting above. First of all, I LOVE hot and spicey foods. And one year I’d say I over indulged in my spicy brothy soups, each time throwing in about five dried hot peppers, and two or three freshly bought red hot peppers (with curry spice etc.). It was a wonderfully satisfying dazzlement of my pallet, and because I was producing no stool, I imagined that my body was consuming this scanty amount of “food”, meaning a few cloves of garlic, a seemingly innocent amount of red hot peppers, laced with my tasty lemon juice drink concoction richly supplemented with an ample serving of chilli pepper for greater satisfaction. Well, my friends, I’d like to assure you that my body was not magically consuming all these hot peppers as I naively imagined, but upon recommencement of eating some weeks later, I produced what I like to call the choochoo train of extreme pain. Yes, the first produced stool essentially bulldozed out this massive pile up of sweltering pain, the agonizing level reaching heaven itself and must have inspired Johnny Cash to write his Ring of Fire on the other side of the planet. I have never felt so much pain in my life, have slept so little and in so many desperate positions, that I would truly like to spare you anything like this. If you do happen to fall into such a trap, I would suggest a quick intestinal flush with sea salt water, explained below.

Well, hopefully I have not horrified you out of dabbling in this venture. But over the years, the fast has truly become painless for me, and almost a pleasurable experience, for example when I flushed out all my liver stones, felt the toxins flushing out of my system, and could look with joy at my shiny young looking face. It truly does feel like a rag under a running tap. You feel lighter, fresher, and it is a pleasure to feel your body ridding itself of all that junk. And you can look forward to a week of feasting afterwards, gorging on all those exotic foods you fantasized about during the fast.

Fasting
Translation Service
Translation Agency