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Comment by Diane HB on January 21, 2013 at 8:23pm

Btw, I didn't mean to imply that one can completely avoid unpleasant emotions, but the more one heeds them, and the fewer resistance one has to them, the less "bad" they feel. We actually do experience the less constricting ends of fear, anger, sadness, etc, we just have other names for them.

And no, cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, but an indicator. Tex calls it a band-aid the body creates in response to inflammation. Its levels can indicate the amount of inflammation in the body, but it's not what creates the inflammation. So using drugs to lower cholesterol actually does nothing to solve the problem.

Tex's first career was a physician's assistant, so he's a good resource on how the body works. :)

Comment by ViP on January 21, 2013 at 6:12pm

Diane, thanks for that detailed reply... I don't think I'd read your writeup on the Language of Emotions previously, must have missed it.

 They're only unpleasant when they're obstructed, and that was quite a revelation to me.

That's a revelation to me too. I'll have to try just letting it flow.

About Eat to Live, actually, the first thing I thought of as soon as I got the gist of his diet plan was that it matched what Michael had said about leafy green vegetables, and fruits. It's good to know that you don't have to stick to the hard version of it but can still get a lot of benefits. Thanks for recommending th eother two books, I'll have to check them out. There are a couple other trends in diet that I've noticed - one is that "wheat is bad for you" (book: Wheat Belly). This one seems interesting. Another is that cholesterol is not actually a cause of heart disease, but is made to look bad because it causes damage after the real culprit has already occurred (inflammation; source: Dr Stephen Sinatra, via the Dr Oz show.)

Comment by Diane HB on January 19, 2013 at 2:13pm

VIP:

I did a write-up about The Language of Emotions if you haven't seen it. It was extremely helpful for embracing and understanding my emotions, but the author doesn't talk much about the intellectual beliefs that caused those emotions, so in my opinion she doesn't go "up the stream" far enough. Her info helped me become comfortable in my own skin, but I came back to Michael for the intellectual aspect. Also, she talks about "positive" and "negative" spectrums of an emotion we consider unpleasant, such as fear -- what they feel like when they're in flow, and what they feel like when they're obstructed. They're only unpleasant when they're obstructed, and that was quite a revelation to me. Michael actually hinted at this same info in the Wholeness of Soul course (which I should follow up on), but I've never seen it elsewhere.

From WOS: "For the most part, Fear only has power to PROTECT you, NOT to control you.  For the most part, the only reason any of you ever feel the more constricting ends of the spectrum of Fear, is because you DO NOT LISTEN."

Re: Eat to Live

It is hard, but the really strict version of the diet is primarily for people who want to lose a lot of weight and heal diabetes, heart disease, etc. He has another book called "Eat for Health" that outlines a more gradual transition to the full-on version. Doing it around 50%, we're still eating about 4-5x more fruits and vegetables than we were before. 

I think Eat to Live is really important to read because sticking to a diet long-term has everything to do with why you're eating the things you're eating. I felt that I got the whole picture from Dr. Fuhrman in terms of current scientific evidence that unprocessed fruits and vegetables are the foods that keep us in optimum health. He even gave me tools for evaluating future nutrition research. If you listen to media reports of nutrition research, they always say such-and-such thing has a lot of a vitamin/nutrient, but they never tell you how much and in comparison to what.  I recently heard that popcorn and potatoes have "a lot of" a couple kinds of vitamins in them (probably funded by popcorn and potato growers). The problem with that is, they're both high-calorie foods, which means they'll have a low nutrient-to-calorie ratio no matter what nutrients are in there. If you consume mostly foods low in micro-nutrients and high in calories, you end up consuming less nutrients overall, which are what the body needs for optimal health.

Anyway, from his book I learned to eat a lot of fruits and vegetables with whatever other less healthy stuff I'm eating. 

I would also recommend two other books on diet that rounded out my understanding. They are Healthy at 100 by John Robbins and In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Healthy at 100 (which I read back in 2007 or so) shows empirical evidence of the optimum diet by examining the diet and lifestyle of four cultures that historically had healthy elders living to their 80s, 90s, 100s. They all had diets high in fruits, vegetables, beans, some grains, and low in animal protein and process food. They also had active lifestyles and lived in cultures that valued community, and old people were respected and treasured. So diet is not the only factor. 

In Defense of Food provides a really enlightening look at the unreliability of nutritional science. Essentially, scientific studies on food generally tries to isolate nutrients to see what they do, but you really can't study individual micro-nutrients in isolation, because there are massive numbers of them in a single food, and they interact differently in the body based on other foods the person is eating. I think it's important to read because you learn to not take nutritional studies as gospel. 

And finally, both Eat to Live and Healthy at 100 validate "Michael's diet" for me. All this came about because my husband Tex is much older than me, and we wanted to keep him alive and healthy for a long time. I had my doubts when Michael first mentioned that an optimum diet is vegetarian, because we were doing something close to the Zone diet at the time, and I liked meat. But I also didn't feel good about the amount of meat we were eating because I'd already read a lot more evidence for a plant-based diet being healthier. Michael's diet suggestions reminded me of Healthy at 100, so I bought it for Tex to read. It convinced him to switch to vegetarian immediately (though we are back to eating small amounts of meat when eating out, because he can't have soy). I kept reading and a few months later stumbled across Eat to Live, which recommended virtually the same diet as Michael. That pretty much cinched it for me.

Comment by ViP on January 18, 2013 at 10:50pm

I'll have to check out the Language of Emotions. Coincidentally, I ordered Eat to Live not too long ago after seeing the author on PBS - sounds like it must be about as hard to stick to as I thought! 

Comment by Diane HB on January 15, 2013 at 11:51pm

Thanks guys. :)

Comment by Maxim on January 15, 2013 at 9:58pm

Diane, you graded your own report card ;)

Here's to more zigging and zagging.

Comment by Maureen on January 15, 2013 at 1:30pm

You are a great thinker and writer Diane. I love your clarity, your focus, and your insight. I not only learn more about you as I read ...I learn more about myself.  Thanks!