Episode 234: How to Eat to Improve Health, Boost Energy & Live Longer

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Hal: Miracle Morning Community, we are live. What’s going on, everybody? Yeah. If you’re tuning in, we’re going to talk today about food. We’re going to talk about eating specifically, eating the food, why we eat, what are the reasons that we eat, and what are the values that we place on the food that we eat but how do we make those choices, what criteria do we use to decide what food we’re going to pick up out of the fridge, what food we’re going to pick from the grocery store, what food we’re going to order off of the menu at a restaurant that has a lot of different options. Why do we eat what we eat? That’s the first thing we’re going to talk about and then we’re also going to talk about what we should stop eating. So, what are the foods or the types of food that we should stop eating and then what are the food that we should start eating? And in terms of stopping eating the foods, we’re going to talk about how do you give up the addictions that we have to the foods that we eat and that we crave.

 

Eating is an emotional experience by the way. We’re going to dive into that. Think about that, by the way. If you get excited about certain foods like if you love pizza or you love ice cream. If you love any food which we all do, that’s an emotional thing. That’s an emotion that we have poured into food that we eat. Now, often it’s the taste that creates the emotion. It’s interesting that mind-body connection. And then we’re going to talk about what’s to start eating, what are the foods we should start eating and how do you get yourself to eat the foods that you’re like, “Yeah, I know I should eat more vegetables but I don’t like vegetables,” or whatever but the big picture here is we’re going to talk about eating for health and eating for energy. Those are the two benefits of the outcome that we’re moving towards in today’s conversation is how do you get yourself to eat the foods that give you the most health and the foods that give you the most energy.

 

[EPISODE]

 

Hal: And in terms of health, that’s kind of the long-term benefit. It’s usually the one that we talk ourselves out of being urgent like, “Ah, I could eat this cheeseburger right now or I could this pizza or I could eat this candy or this ice cream or whatever because my health is like it’s a long ways away before I got to worry about any ailments or any disease or illness.” So, health usually is not an urgent or immediate benefit and so often it gets put on the backburner and it’s not enough to get us to make the right choices. Now, energy, on the other hand, that’s what I love to talk about when it comes to eating, eating for energy, because that is an immediate benefit or an immediate consequence if you eat the wrong foods. And we all know that if you ever celebrate Thanksgiving or you’ve got a big meal in general, what happens afterwards? Everybody looks for a spot around the house on the couch to take a nap because the more we eat, the more tired we become.

 

In fact, that’s a lesson we can start with which is that digesting food, this is literally probably like worth taking notes on some of this stuff. Digesting food is one of the most energy-draining processes that we put our bodies through, digesting food. So, depending on which foods you put into your body, determines the digestive process that they’re going to have to undertake. Some foods give you more energy, some foods require more energy to digest than the other foods and then the opposite is true. Some foods don’t give you energy because they’re dead and they require or in other foods require a lot less energy to digest. So, there’s this balance between digestion, the energy that is your body is using to digest the food that you’re eating, and then on the other hand what amount of actual energy you can measure the energy, there are devices to measure energy in food. How many megahertz of energy is the food giving to your body if you’re eating food?

 

Here’s the general principle. If you’re eating food that requires more energy to digest then it adds to your body, you’re now in an energy deficit. You’re now in an energy deficit because your body is using all of its energy to digest the food and the food itself if it’s dead, if it doesn’t have a lot of energy in it, you’re not gaining energy from the foods. You’re in energy deficit. That’s what happens after Thanksgiving when you have to go take a nap or any heavy meal. In fact, I think it’s funny. The company, 5-hour Energy, any other energy drinks, but 5-hour Energy is the big one and they often say in their commercial, “Do you ever get tired? That 2 PM slump? Are you ever get tired in the afternoon? Have a 5-hour Energy,” but here’s why you’re tired. What you ate for lunch in about an hour the energy drains from the food you’re digesting it’s peaking and it lasts for about an hour depending on how much you ate or what types of food that you ate. So, you don’t need the 5-hour Energy. We just need to be mindful of the food we eat during the day and ensure that we’re eating foods that give our body energy.

 

All right. So, let me back up. In terms of let’s start at the first point here which is why do you eat? So, think of the reasons that you choose the foods that you choose. Most of us choose our foods based on taste. That’s most people. They literally go, “Oh, what am I in the mood for?” Again, it’s an emotional decision. What sounds good? What looks good on the menu? What am I in the mood for? It’s an emotional decision. Most of us make our choice based on taste and that’s why there are many diseases related to the foods that we eat, heart disease, the number two cause of death I think heart disease. Number one is cancer. I’ve got some conflicting opinions on that that I’ll share with you since I ate a pretty much anti-cancer diet before I got cancer. So, in some ways you go, “Wait a minute. Now, why are you giving us advice on what to eat to be healthy when you’ve got cancer?” We’ll talk about that.

 

So, the number one reason most people choose to eat what they eat is taste. We go to the menu, we look at what cleanse is going to meet my needs of my palate right now. That’s what I’m going to order regardless of what it does to our energy and what it does to our long-term health. The second reason that we might choose our foods is based on health. Most of us want to eat healthy. Many of you do eat healthy so that is obviously that’s a choice that we make if we choose based on health. And then number three is energy. That’s another reason that we might choose the foods that we choose is what is going to give us energy and that’s my mission is by the end of the Facebook Live today that you’re starting to choose foods based on the long-term health consequences and for those of us that we want results quick, the immediate or almost immediate energetic consequences of the foods that we eat. So, eating for energy is going to be my goal by the end of this episode. And then the other reason that we might choose the foods or eat in general is human connection. Eating is a very ritualistic activity. We go out to eat with people. We sit down with our families at dinnertime and we eat. Eating is a way for us to socialize and engage with other human beings. So, that might be another reason you choose to eat.

 

We’re going to look at why are you choosing to eat what you eat and here is my – this is my big picture challenge, lesson, invitation for all of us and that is this. I think the key to living a long healthy life is making a conscious choice to value the health and energetic consequences of the foods that you eat above the taste. So, we talked about that a few minutes. Most of us choose our food based purely on taste, maybe texture, but essentially taste. What tastes good, what am I in the mood for, and that’s how we choose our food and I’m encouraging you or asking you to consider that if you want to be healthy and live a long healthy life, it doesn’t mean you can’t eat yummy tasting foods. I find foods that taste amazing but I find foods that taste amazing that first of all under my number one value in what I eat which are the health and energetic or energy consequences of the foods that I eat. So, it’s about shifting your mindset.

 

I remember I taught this to Adam Stock, a friend of mine, that I gave a bunch of coaching in his group that we were a part of and he said, of all the things that I taught him that the number one thing that he walked away with is what I just said and I’ll say it again is that we’ve got to make a conscious choice to value the consequences of our food above the taste of our food. So, place higher value on the consequences in terms of the health consequences and the energy consequences, your physical, mental, and emotional energy from the foods that you eat, place that value higher above the taste. And when you do that, it doesn’t mean that you don’t eat foods that taste good. It just means that this is your number one criteria, the health and energetic consequences, and then you underneath that realm, you go, “Okay. What are the foods that taste good underneath the realm of the foods that will give me immediate and lasting energy so that I can perform at my best, I can feel great, and will ensure that I live a long, healthy life,” or nothing ensures anything as I’ve learned, “But that will increase the odds that I live a long healthy life?”

 

So, that’s the basis of everything we’re talking about today is that you’re choosing foods based on your first priority, your highest value in terms of what you eat, health and energetic consequences, and then you find all the foods that taste good. Because here’s the deal, healthy foods over here, unhealthy foods over here. There are infinite, I don’t know, lots of food, countless foods that taste really good over on the unhealthy section. I love pizza. I love hamburgers, I love fried chicken. I love dessert. I love all of it. I love all of it. And then over here there’s the healthy energy-infused foods and there’s also a really long countless list of foods that taste really good over here. Now, they’re probably harder to find. You got to go on a little bit of a quest. You got to experiment and ask other people what they like and what foods they eat. Like I just had a salad for lunch from a place here in Austin where I live. It’s called Tacodeli, very popular. It started in Austin and Tacodeli is a farm-to-table kind of Mexican restaurant so they use organic produce, they use like grass-fed meats and free-range chicken and all of that. So, they’re very health conscious. I just had arguably the best salad I’ve ever had in my entire life. In fact, as of eating, I go, “When is Jon Berghoff visiting me next?” I would say, my other friend, Jon Vroman, all my friends and I’m going, “I’ve got to like when they come here, I’m buying them this salad.” So, it’s totally healthy. It’s very healthy but it tastes amazing.

 

So, that’s going to be one of the keys here is once you make the conscious decision and I would do it in writing by the way. You’re not going to remember 90% or 99% of the conversation that we’re having right now of what I’m talking about. You’re going to probably forget most if not all of it. So, you need to put that in writing. From now on, I am making a commitment to value the health and energy consequences of the foods that I eat above the taste of the foods that I eat. So, that’s the number one. That’s the value. That’s the mindset shift and then from there, you might also put in your affirmations a question or just a reminder, “I am on a quest to find the best tasting foods that support the value of health and energy.” So, that’s kind of step one is once you make the decision, your action step after that decision is made which hopefully you’ve already made it or you’re ready to think about it and make it in the next maybe 24 hours. It shouldn’t take too much thought when you really think about, “Well, yeah, of course, I want to have a lot of energy.” Don’t know anyone who doesn’t have want to have energy and I want to be healthy.

 

But I would say that for everybody, those are two very important things and I can tell you that when you’re facing death and your priorities really kind of it’s in the shuffle in order of what is really most important, and I realize that it is health because if I’m not healthy, none of my other priorities matter. I can’t be here for my kids and my wife, I can’t be here for my family, and we can’t be here for our loved ones if we’re not healthy. We can’t or we’ll have a really hard time succeeding at a high level if we don’t have energy and often it’s not an issue with motivation. Often, we wish we had more motivation but consider that we actually just need more energy because when you have a lot of energy, you feel motivated. Right now, I have a lot of energy and, by the way, I just ate lunch. Most people after lunch were like, “I just had a chicken sandwich.” Usually, it’s processed hormone-infused chicken and processed white bread, bleached flour which Dr. Andrew Weil in his, not this book but in one of his books, Eating Well for Optimum Health. That’s one of the first books I read on health but this is the author, Andrew Weil. And in that book, he said that bleached flour which that’s bread, that’s pizza crust, any bleached flour, doughnuts, pretzels, chips, softened chips, corn white, whatever, tortilla chips.

 

He says it’s the worst thing that men ever invented and I believe he said it was invented during The Great Depression because it was a way they could create a lot of food for very little money. They found a way to make bread go farther and create a lot of loaves of bread when our country was struggling financially and he said the fact that The Great Depression is over we should not be eating that food anymore. He said white bread is the – or bleached flour is the worst thing that man ever invented and plagued our society with. So, consider that and you’ll rarely ever find me, personally, after I read that, I cut bleached flour out of my diet. Now, I’m not perfect by the way. I don’t think you should be either. Do I believe you should indulge in some vices sometimes? Yeah. In fact, there was a great book that I read in 2001 called Body for Life by Bill Phillips and that was at that time the number one fitness and health book in the history of the world. I don’t know where it is now in that category, in that ranking, but why are you eating right, choosing health and energy above taste and figuring out the foods that taste really good. So, there you go.

 

What not to eat? This is something to consider. What you don’t eat is more important than eating healthy like what you do eat meaning if you’re eating foods that are detrimental to your health and energy and you add in healthy foods, it doesn’t balance it out. That’s good. That’s better than not adding healthy foods but it’s more important to get rid of the foods and any other toxins that you’re putting in your body. For example, if you drink soda, that’s one of the worst things arguably. I don’t think it’s an argument, not much of an argue, but it’s one of the worst things that you can put into your body. You’ve seen the experiment where I believe they put a rusty nail into a glass of soda and it completely eats through the nail and it disintegrates it so think about what’s it doing to your organs, to your stomach lining. Now, I will drink a little bit of soda like once a month. It’s like a treat for me. I love it. I love soda but I don’t buy in stock. There’s none in my house. I don’t drink it in a regular thing. I drink unsweetened iced tea which was hard for me. I used to drink. I went from soda to iced tea that I put two sugars in and then that was like a gradual thing and then I got to one sugar and then I got to no sugars. And so, that’s my default drink when I go out to eat, it’s unsweetened iced tea.

 

And there’s another tip right there in what I just shared which is gradual progression. I encourage you not to try to give up all of the foods that you love, not to try to radically change anything really. That it’s proven that when you try to radically radical immediate changes, go from like a complete 180, go from one area to completely go to another area, and give up everything that you’re addicted to that you love, try things that you don’t even like, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s much better, it’s much more effective, it’s proven that if you gradually move, I love it on – it was Jack Canfield who said – I think it was Mark Victor Hansen. It’s one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul guys that I saw speak at an event once and he said, “Wean into improvement. Don’t try to make a quantum leap.” He said don’t try to do a 180. He said just lean into it. If you don’t read at all, read a page a day. If you drink six sodas a day, go down to five. Do that for a few weeks then go to four, then go to three, and then you go to two, and then you go to one, and then go to none, and replace it with something else.

 

I actually used to coach a client who when I met him when we started working together, crazy, he drank a 12-pack of Mountain Dew every single day and he ate one extra-large pizza every single day. That was his diet. Mountain Dew, 12 of them a day, 12 cans, and one extra-large pizza. I think it was one. Maybe it was two pizza. I don’t remember if one or two. But, yeah, right there. So, I said, “Hey, let’s just gradually go down,” and we went from he got an extra-large pizza then he got a large, and he went down from 12 Mountain Dews to 11, and then to 10. And then it took a couple of months but after a couple of months, he stopped drinking soda completely and pizza was a once a week thing. So, think about that. If he could go from 12 Mountain Dews and one extra-large pizza a day down to like pizza and soda once a week, you can change anything.

 

But in terms of what not to eat, here’s what I mean by this. Think of it this way. If you eat a bunch of vegetables and you’re like, “I’m so healthy, I eat vegetables,” and then you go and you shoot heroin every night, the vegetables don’t fix the fact the damage that the heroine’s doing. That’s an extreme example but if you’re drinking soda every day and then you start eating vegetables, the soda is still doing the same damage that it was doing before you eat vegetables. So, now we trick ourselves into thinking, “Well, ooh, I made some positive changes so it’s okay for me to keep doing the things that I know are detrimental to my health. I still smoke cigarettes but I eat vegetables now so it’s okay.” It’s not okay. It’s better to eat vegetables than not but just consider and I forgot what book I was just reading. I read too many books in fact. Well, you can see the ones behind me or in front of me. There are like 18 books that I’m reading right now or 12 or something. So, I read too many books at the same time. I don’t recommend it but it’s what I do.

 

So, I was reading a book. I can’t remember. I think it was a book called Anticancer what I’m reading right now. I’m not sure if that’s the one but they talked about how it’s far more important to get rid of the bad foods in your diet than just to add the good foods. So, I think we talked about that. So, how do you do that? Again, you do it gradually. You don’t get rid of everything at once. You get rid of – you start, you lessen your portions of what you’re doing that’s bad. You lessen the frequency, you lessen the amount until you eventually get to where you’re doing either none of it or let’s say for example if you went from 12 sodas a day down to one soda a day and be like, “Man, I just can’t go to zero like I’ve got to have my daily soda,” I mean, we all choose our vices. We choose. You have to weigh the pros and the cons and whatever. I don’t think there are any vices like anything that I eat like regular. I eat unhealthy occasionally. We have pizza occasionally or whatever but I’m thinking if there’s anything daily that I eat that’s – I don’t know if I do daily unhealthy food. Well, I drink coffee every day. I don’t know if that’s unhealthy. I don’t know.

 

All right. So, in terms of what not to eat? Right. Get clearer so here’s your action step. Get clear on what are the foods that I’m eating that I need to cut out of my diet and then put in writing how to do that. Here’s a great way to do it by the way. There’s a great app on the phone. There’s a great app on the phone called Way of Life and I might have shown this before, but Way of Life, these are all of my commitments. So, I’ve got others. I’ll read them to you. No snooze. Up at 4 AM. No snooze. Up at 4 AM. So, I got in the habit of hitting the snooze button, believe it or not. During cancer, I was sleeping a lot and I got in the habit so now I’m like I’ve been back out of the habit for a while but I’m not perfect. I still fall short on it. My number one mission in life is to focus on staying cancer-free, lemon water, sauna, beamer, laser watch, etcetera. So, I’ve got a whole cancer-free daily like commitments of the things that I do, the anti-cancer practices and each day I check off whether or not I did them. I’ve got my number two mission which is to connect with Sophie and Halston, spend one-on-one time with them every single day and I’ve gotten that. I have a perfect record every day and I have 100 jumping jacks. It’s something that I realize I’m like maybe just do jumping jacks each day to get my blood flowing again. So, I’m tracking jumping jacks every day. I drink one lemon water and two Evian waters every day so I track.

 

This is my tip. I don’t even go through all these. I’ve got reading, I’ve got exercise, and I’ve got quitting stuff. So, I’ve got quitting to supplement that I used to take. I don’t want to say the supplements because I like the guys that do it but there is this supplement that it has one chemical in it that is kind of unknown as to even has harmful effects and they use it to make their capsules white. I should tell you what the chemical is. I don’t have it in front of you. It’s like titanium dioxide or I don’t know but a lot of vitamins use it. Actually, tons of food products use it to make their product white. Toothpaste actually use it to make their toothpaste white and as I was researching the ingredients and all of the stuff that I took, I found that, wow, this one is kind of questionable. I don’t know. So, I have quitting it so I was taking it every day. It’s got B vitamins in it. It’s got a small amount of caffeine. It’s like a supplement to help you focus and I’m happy to say so out of the last 19 days maybe that’s when I started it. I’ve taken it three times and, by the way, the way I did it I used to take two capsules a day, one to two times a day. So, let’s say up to two times a day and then I went down to one capsule a day twice a day and then I went down to one capsule a day, once a day, and then now I’m at zero capsules a day and there have been three days where I was weak. I wanted the – I needed a little energy. I needed a little boost. I needed a little focus so I took the supplement. There you go.

 

Then another one I have is less than 100 milligrams of caffeine because I read a book that talked about taking as much as 400 milligrams of caffeine so experimenting with increasing my caffeine and I felt like it was making me like depressed and irritable so I’m cutting it back. And then in the last two weeks, I have only one day where I was above 100 milligrams of caffeine. So, I just want to give you some real-life and that is called Way of Life. Great app to track specific commitments that you make that way, if I don’t have this, by the way, I don’t remember. I can’t remember the last. There’s like 10 different things I’m committed to either quitting or starting. I don’t remember all these and so I’m not going to remember if I’m doing it. We don’t track our progress. We can’t improve our progress. We don’t know how we’re doing it.

 

And then last but not least is what to eat and how to get yourself to eat the foods that you’re not used to or that you don’t necessarily like the new taste of. All right. So, what to eat and how to get yourself to eat foods that you’re not used to or food that don’t taste good. All right. So, here you go. Like I said, this is not about eating healthy foods that taste terrible. That’s not my favorite thing to do. I want to eat healthy foods that taste amazing. So, how do you do that? Well, first of all, it’s realizing that there are lots of healthy foods and you can even Google like healthy food that actually tastes good. That’s a good Google search. I can tell you that the general principle of what – here’s what I consider healthy foods and I’m not the leading expert. I don’t have a Ph.D. I’ve read I don’t know how many dozens of books on healthy eating and I’ve experimented for, what am I 30, since I was 20 years old is when I went to Tony Robbins seminar when I was 20 years old. He has an entire day based on health. If you’ve been to Tony Robbins you know what I’m talking about, the entire day based on health and that was my first like eye-opening to what the consequences of eating unhealthy foods are and what types of foods we should be eating and that sort of thing.

 

And Tony back then he I believe he was an advocate for a vegan diet, so no animal products. No meat, no dairy and no cheese, none of that. That was the path that I went down. I was a strict vegan for quite a while and then now I have a much more well-rounded well-balanced diet and I don’t know this for sure, don’t quote me, but I’ve heard Tony also has because I think he eats fish now and so he has more of a balanced diet as well. So, my general diet is this and this is what I recommend for energy in the short term. That’s my number one priority in the short term. I want to have energy. I want to be able to record videos like this. I want to be able to focus and work and write and engage with my kids and I want to have a lot of energy. So, if you want to have a lot of energy, raise your hand, want to have a lot of energy, here’s what I recommend. Eat raw vegan plant-based like raw vegan diet during the day. So, uncooked food, unprocessed food. Now, here’s my description of this and I’m really going back 17 years when I learned this from Tony I think. I’m sure I’ve read other stuff on it but it’s the idea that digesting food is the most energy gaining process. We talked about that.

 

Well, when I was at Tony’s seminar, this was 17 years ago, but he had this little machine that when you held it up to anything, it actually gave a reading of megahertz of energy and he held it up to a piece of cooked steak and it put out a very small almost no amount of energy. I’ll use general numbers that are somewhere in the range. Let’s say it put out 10 milligrams of energy or maybe it was 50 but in that range 10 to 50 milligrams of energy for dead cooked meat. Because here’s the thing, when you cook food, you kill the energy that was in that food. So, plants like broccoli, raw broccoli when you measure it, it puts out like 2,000 milligrams of energy or megahertz of energy and so when you’re measuring the food, you could literally measure how much energy is coming out of it and then what do you think takes for energy to digest, cooked steak that sits in your stomach or raw broccoli? If you guessed raw broccoli or any raw vegetables, yeah, you’re going to digest raw fresh, fruit, and vegetables much faster than you’re digesting cooked dead food where the energy has been cooked and killed, sucked out of it.

 

So, think about this. It takes more energy to digest the cooked dead food than it does the raw living food, and the raw living food gives your body more energy than the cooked food. So, when you eat cooked food, it’s draining more energy while it sits in your stomach, all the blood rushes to your stomach away from your brain to try to digest the food and it takes a long time which is why you need that 5-hour ENERGY at 2:00 in the afternoon because you have that energy slump because of the food that we ate for lunch, right? Whereas, if we eat the raw fruits or vegetables, it digests much more easily and it gives us a lot of energy. So, my diet, in general, is raw vegan by day so I’ll have a smoothie in the morning with some raw fruits or veggies, maybe some plant-based protein powder. I’ll put some Brazil nuts in there for selenium and fat, good fat. I’ll use an unsweetened almond milk to minimize. I have almost no sugar in my smoothie other than a small amount of fruit. I sweeten it from usually the plant-based protein powder which uses Stevia to sweeten it or if you want to use fruit, that’s fine, a banana or whatever. And then for lunch, I usually have a salad and I make my own salad.

 

Here’s how you make a solid taste amazing. Let me give my secret salad dressing recipe. So, I don’t know if I and I think I invented this one day like just playing with stuff in the kitchen but it makes stuff taste so good, I put it on not just salad. I’ll put it on anything. So, here are the three ingredients. Either olive oil which is there’s so many health benefits of olive oil, either extra-virgin, organic extra-virgin olive oil, or organic avocado oil. So, those are the two oils that I recommend, one of the two, and then get Bragg’s liquid aminos. Now, here’s a warning. Bragg’s liquid aminos is I believe it is soy-based. Soy, not so good. Not so good. It creates estrogen in both men and women which women don’t need the extra estrogen or most women unless you have an estrogen condition where you need extra estrogen. But anyway, so soy has got some problems. It’s also the highest, I believe it’s one of next to corn I think of all GMO crops. I believe it’s number 2 to corn so it’s genetically modified. You’re not getting the real soy from the earth. It’s been genetically modified. So, anyway, so soy is not necessarily great and Bragg’s liquid aminos I believe it is soy-based but here’s the deal. They’re using a tablespoon like if you’re making salad dressing you’re using a very, very, very small amount.

 

Now, if you want to use any kind of some sort of non-soy-based sauce, you can replace Bragg with that but if you haven’t had Bragg liquid aminos and that’s the name, it’s Bragg’s liquid aminos and you haven’t had Bragg’s liquid aminos, it’ll blow your mind. I’ve never met a single person that doesn’t absolutely love the flavor and it’s kind of like soy sauce in case you’re curious what it is, kind of like soy sauce but it has its own very unique flavor that’s incredible. So, the third ingredient is organic hummus. So, that’s how I make salad dressing. I put in a big hooping thing of hummus, big hooping tablespoon or fork of hummus. I put in a little bit of olive oil and you just play with the consistency. If you like it thicker, use more hummus, less oil. If you like it like I don’t like it too salty so I don’t use very much Bragg. I literally just turn the Bragg’s over and put a little squirt in there. So, you can play with it. But that is my favorite salad dressing and if you put that on anything, it tastes good. Put it on, chop up some broccoli, raw broccoli, raw carrots, raw veggies. That’s actually how I started my raw vegan diet. I’m not a cook but I just chop a bunch of raw veggies. I put them in a bowl, I made that dressing, I stirred it around the veggies, and I just ate a bunch of raw carrots and zucchini and celery and broccoli and it was great and I had tons of energy.

 

I remember the first week I literally can picture making that dish. What I would do is I would chop a bunch of organic veggies up, put them in a bowl, I’d make the dressing, I put it in its own Tupperware container so that I can pour it on each day. So, I made enough veggies. I don’t want to do it every day. In making the veggies to last me for like three or four days and then every day I was in sales back then. I would do my appointments driving to different appointments and so I would put in a Tupperware container. I would put a small amount of the dressing and then I would put some veggies in Tupperware container and then I would take it and that way I can just put it in a cooler, little ice thing and then I could just eat it during the day as my meal and I would have that for a meal. So, that is my secret salad dressing that you can put on any salad. And if you just start, it’s just a good decision to start eating more raw fruits and vegetables. And there’s another great app called HappyCow and it’s an app to find vegetarian and vegan restaurants and grocery stores. It’s called HappyCow I think because if you eat vegetarian and vegan, the cows are happy. I don’t know. But there’s the app. So, it’s the HappyCow app and if you open it, you can look up vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian-friendly, grocery stores. You can look it all up. It’ll just map everything nearby. So, whenever I travel as soon as the plane lands, usually the first thing that I do is I open up this app and I look for healthy restaurants around me.

 

Now, for those of you that are like, “Ugh,” for those of you that tuned out like five minutes ago because you’re like, “I’m not going to do vegetarian or vegan,” I don’t eat just vegetarian and vegan. So, I should’ve said this upfront. I do raw vegan by day because I want maximum energy and then I do what I call almost like Paleo by night. So, I eat organic chicken, free-range chicken, I eat free wild caught salmon. In fact, I had salmon on my salad today for lunch. So, I was drawn to try their salmon. I do grass-fed beef and I’d say not every night do I have meat but I have meat probably three to four nights a week so quite a bit and I eat a few things. Number one is it’s healthy meat so it’s not injected with hormones. It’s not fed – what’s the bad meat? Corn I think. So, it’s all grass-fed, free-range, organic, I really look, I’m willing to spend the money on healthy food. To me, like people go, “Oh, the healthy foods cost more. Organic cost more.” Well, tell me a better use of our money than on the health and longevity of our body because once again, if we don’t prioritize health, all our priorities don’t matter because we’re not alive or energized to enjoy those priorities. So, to me, it’s worth saving money in other area, put money into eating healthy. That for me is where my money like I really invest into eating really yummy good healthy foods.

 

When you go to Yelp, you can type in farm-to-table restaurants. So, that’s typically the only type of restaurant I eat. That’s where go to if it’s not a vegetarian restaurant like for dinner more often than not, I’ll just search for a farm-to-table restaurant and a farm-to-table restaurant is a restaurant that actually cares about the quality of their ingredients. Most restaurants don’t. Most restaurants put profit as their first priority so they literally go, “Okay. What’s the cheapest food we can buy and then the best seasoning to make it taste good?” so they only serve it to people. Their number one priority which is taste, we satisfy, and they keep coming back. I have friends that work in the restaurant industry and I’ve heard just horror stories. Restaurants that I used to like I won’t say the restaurant. I won’t throw people under the bus but my former favorite restaurant someone that I know used to work there. We were talking one day and she goes, “Oh my God, I wouldn’t eat there.” I said, “What? I love that place.” She goes, “Their food is terrible like the quality of their food, the quality of the ingredients are terrible.” If you go to a farm-to-table restaurant by kind of default they actually, A, they usually use local farms to get all their meats and their produces and they typically value their health. Usually, their stuff is organic and they’ll tell you if it is or if it isn’t but that’s what I encourage you. If you’re not familiar with that, go to Yelp when you look for your next restaurant or look on Google, farm-to-table restaurants in blank city, whatever city that you live in.

 

Oh, my posture is really bad on this video. I’m killing my back here. It’s not good. All right. So, in terms of what to eat, you can make your own decision, eat healthy. I recommend eating raw vegan meals by day so living foods. That’s what I mean by raw vegan. I mean, living foods, foods that grow out of the ground, not in a can or in a package or that are microwaved. I know that you have a lot – you have a microwave at your office that you use for lunch. Yeah. Don’t use the microwave at all. Just google what does a microwave do to your food. Google that or Google what or is a microwave bad for your food? Google that and you’ll find out what it does and talk about killing whatever was in your food that could add value to your body like the microwave is an expert at doing that. So, I think that’s it. I just do raw vegan by day, plant-based food by day, healthy farm-to-table, paleo if you will, by night. No processed sugar, no flour, no bleached flour especially, all of that. So, we did it. We made it. By the way, I want to mention this too. Healthy eating, if you do it gradually like I said, it’s not about a nine-day switch. It’s doing it gradually.

 

And I remember when I was 20 when I first went to vegan when I was 21 years old I think, my good friend from high school was visiting me at my apartment back then and he said, he saw me pouring back then it was soymilk. That was before so I don’t do soymilk anymore. I do organic almond milk, never soy but back then, we didn’t know at least I didn’t know the harmful benefits of soy so I had soymilk but that’s not the point. The point is he goes, “Ew, is that really worth it? Just because you want to be healthy, you have to drink that every day?” And then I was pouring it over cereal like some organic cereal or something, I don’t remember. And I said, “I’ve been eating this way for like six months now. It’s not hard. Do you really think I even give it a second thought when I pour soy milk over my cereal?” I said, “In fact, when I go visit my mom and I asked to put cow’s milk over my cereal,” I said, “That grosses me out now. It freaks me out because I’m not a cow.” I go, “Why would I drink cow’s milk? Cow’s milk is designed in a cow for a cow.” Every part of the chemical makeup of cow’s milk, now let me get on the tangent here. Some of you are going to like send me hate mail but just think about that logically. It was cow’s milk. What is it designed for? It’s designed for a baby calf and we actually have to work to keep the cow producing milk because it’s not natural for them to make it for us but we realized we could take their milk. Anyway, that’s another story.

 

Bragg, yeah, we have some fans of Bragg’s. All right. That’s great. Mathia, Dana, you guys love Bragg’s as well. “Too much soy could mess up thyroid,” says Maris. I don’t doubt it. Yeah. I don’t do soy. Stay away from soy. “Have you drink matcha?” Yes, I do matcha every day. Actually, there’s a drink called matcha bar which you can buy at Whole Foods and it’s like tea or it’s got actual matcha like ceremonial grade, organic matcha outer in the water like making it into a tea and then there’s one with a little bit of honey, there’s one with no honey, and nothing. So, yeah, I do matcha and I also do organic matcha powder in my smoothies quite a bit. Marie says, “Tahina on its own mixed with garlic and lemon plus water is also quite nice.” Yes, that’s also a great dressing. Tahini is fantastic mixed with garlic and lemon juice I could see is great. “Hummus is not easy on the stomach.” It’s easy on mine. You have to try that. I’m not sure. “Bragg’s also make salad dressing.” Yeah, that is true. They actually do make branded salad dressings as well but, yeah, when you go to this grocery store, Eben Pagan taught me this. Eben Pagan said, “You should only shop on the outer edges of a grocery store first and foremost,” meaning everything in the middle is all packaged. The outer edges is typically where they have it’s fresh, it’s refrigerated, and the middle is just lines and lines and lines of shelving where they have dead, processed, packaged, full of preservatives foods and so you should really shop on the outside of the store. And I rarely go in the middle unless I have some sprouted seeds or something like that. Then frozen. I’ll go eat some frozen berries.

 

Costco by the way, if you shop at Costco they have a great organic smoothie, prepackaged smoothies where all it is, is organic kale, organic strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries I think. That’s it and it’s prepackaged in the size of a smoothie and so you tear that open, dump it in a blender, put in some organic almond milk, protein powder, whatever you want to add and go from there. “Love the HappyCow,” says Glen. Nice. I wonder if you love it because you’ve used it or because you’re excited to try it. Either way. “What kind of hummus do you use?” I go to the store. I just go to the store and I get organic hummus. I don’t know what brand. I mean it varies sometimes depending what store that we go to. But I actually make sure it’s organic and also the cool thing is they make different flavored hummus often including the organic kind. So, a lot of times I’ll get like cilantro jalapeno or garlic or mix up my flavor of hummus and that’s a great way to mix up the flavor of the dressing. “All right. Going to try HappyCow.” That’s great. “Vegan, no eggs, no dairy.” That’s great. Yeah. Christine. That’s a great point, Christine. Christine Johnson said, “Doctors and medical costs are much higher than eating healthy foods,” and that’s so true. And then Robin Sherman said, “I think either you’re going to pay on the front-end and eat healthy foods and feel good and live a long life or you’re going to pay on the backend by paying your medical bills because you wouldn’t eat healthy foods.”

 

Vicky, you want me to recommend the apps I recommended. So, one is Way of Life to track your habits and the other is HappyCow. And then Instacart, by the way. If you don’t use in Instacart, amazing. I use Instacart. It’s grocery home delivery. In fact, it’s almost like – I actually wondered this is negative detrimental but so this is my – I have a category of apps in my phone called Food. You’ll see there’s Yelp, Instacart, Favor, Uber Eats, Eat24, Thrive Market, HappyCow. So, take a screenshot of this if you want but I don’t have to leave my house anymore. I don’t know if that’s good but like I just have lunch delivered to me. I have my groceries delivered to me. If you don’t know about Instacart and it’s available in most areas, maybe not every area, but if you don’t know about Instacart, check it out. It’s food delivery and like I get food delivered from Whole Foods, Central Market like with your really health-conscious store that has a lot of great options, Sprouts. Those are all great stores. “Our family faced cancer this year too and we really turned to you and your resources. So glad you’re feeling well. I’m looking forward to hearing your knowledge, you learn from your experiences.” Christina Power Rose, Thank you for those kind words. I appreciate that. I appreciate you. “Take care of your back, Hal. Sit on your meditation pillow.” I know. It’s right there too. All right. I will. Thank you for that, Maureen Timmons. I appreciate the encouragement and looking out for me.

 

Clem Melinda says, “Best decision of my life. Vegan two years and try to eat raw vegan for breakfast and lunch and vegan cooked at night.” Yeah. There you go. By the way, let me tell you why I stopped being completely vegan. I’m going to share this with all of you. B12, vitamin B12. That’s a nutrient that’s very important for metabolizing our food and energy for our cognitive function. There’s a lot of reasons B12 is really important. It is very difficult, very difficult to get B12 in a vegan diet. You can get it from nutritional yeast. In fact, I can’t even think of. There’s literally only like two things I think or maybe three that you can get B12 from other than supplements. Well, you would go, you might say, “Well, then why don’t you just take a supplement?” What that tells me like I try to look at nature and like what is nature intended? What is the universe telling us? What is nature or the earth telling us? It’s the best way to think to live to eat and when it comes to eating I thought if a vegan diet were the best diet for optimal health, why would it be missing a vital nutrient such a vital nutrient as B12? So, and then when I looked at where do you get B12? You primarily get it in animal sources, in eating meats.

 

Now, I still do dairy by the way. All cheese occasionally but it’s just if it’s on something. I don’t actually seek it out. I don’t buy it in a store. But again, it goes back to my whole philosophy of just the common-sense thing of cow’s milk was designed to take a 50-pound calf into a 200-pound calf in a very short amount of time. It’s a matter of weeks. I don’t know what hormones take a 50-pound calf into a 200-pound calf but I’m guessing they’re not the ones that I need as a full-grown adult. So, that’s why dairy made sense to me but eating animals, that’s very natural and that’s happened for since before cows were milk, we were eating meat and the caveman ancestors were eating meats. And so, yeah, so the fact that I couldn’t get B12 in a regular in a vegan diet or that it was very difficult, I thought it would be pretty prevalent if it’s the right diet. That’s why I went back to eating meats. So, I just wanted to share that with everybody as a little kind of side tip.

 

Oh yes, Clem says, “I love plant-based milk.” I agree with that. “How about the kids?” Ah, my kids eat a very healthy diet. They eat a healthy diet. Not quite as healthy as mine but my wife from day one she’s a homemaker, she’s a primary caretaker for them but we both agree that we would feed them vegetables and no jarred baby food. Again, if it’s on a shelf and it’s in a can or a jar, so my wife always made their baby food homemade. She never, I mean, not never. I’m sure there’s an occasion where we are on vacation she had to grab some baby food or some from the store, but what she did is she went on I think it was Amazon.com and she found this little grinder. It was like a portable little food grinder. It’s like this big. It’s plastic with a little like spin wheel and you go to – when we were at a mini restaurant she just ordered cooked vegetables, cooked broccoli, cooked carrots. You put it into the grinder and you grind it and it mashes it up into a consistency that you can use a baby spoon and feed to your baby. So, we started the kids there and they’ll eat almost anything. My daughter eats sushi, my son just eats cherry tomatoes like they’re nothing and they still eat meat too. So, they’re on kind of more of a paleo diet all day long if you will.

 

And we do eggs by the way. I’m a big fan of cage-free eggs and we’re conflicting. I don’t know that taking chickens eggs, I don’t know if that’s natural. That doesn’t feel more natural to me than drinking cow’s milk. I don’t know so yeah. To me it’s not about, it’s not all or nothing. It’s not about perfection. It’s about really evaluating your choices and making sure that you’re making choices in alignment with those values and for me, they’re health and they’re energy. Those are my two values when it comes to food and I make 99% of my dietary choices of where I’m going to eat, what restaurant I’m going to go to, like I stopped eating like 99% of restaurants because they don’t have quality ingredients in the foods that they use. All right. Mahmud Sidang wants to know, “Is it possible to have a session about journaling like this in the future?” Yes, I will write it down right now. Hold on. I’m even going to write down requested by Mahmud. I hope I’m saying your name right, Mahmud Sidang. Thank you for the requests. We can get requests all day long. In fact, if you want to put requests, put them in a Facebook group and then say, “Hey, Hal.” You know what I’ll do? I’m going to do this. I’m going to put up a post. Somebody remind me to put a post on Facebook. I’m going to, I’ll put up a post that says like requested topics and you guys can request topics. That’ll be fun. Yeah. Mahmud, thanks for prompting that. I appreciate that.

 

“Do you eat eggs?” Victoria, wow, you’re a psychic. Before I even saw your question. Yes, I do. Organic cage-free pasture-raised eggs I believe are the eggs that we eat. “The best rice milk is Lima Rice Coco. Drink Coco?” No, but thank you for the recommendation. “Do you eat grass-fed butter?” Yes. I do eat grass-fed butter. Not a lot but, yeah, but I do. How do you get your kids to eat that way? We talked about that. You start them young and here’s the deal, by the way. This just kills me. When people say, my kids, if I don’t give them, if I only give them, they won’t eat healthy food basically. So, first of all, that was our philosophy of starting them on healthy food from like day one that they could eat foods that’s giving them healthy food, right? That was our first philosophy. Now, if you’re like, “Ah, my kids are already three and they’ve eaten crap or whatever like how do I get them to eat healthy now when they don’t like to eat healthy?” And by the way, my kids they go to school so they see what other kids eat and they like are tempted to want to eat that but here’s the thing.

 

Your kids won’t starve themselves to death so you might have to make them not eat for most of the day and then they’re like, “I’m starving,” and then you get them to eat healthier foods. And by the way, it’s the same strategy that I talked to about – who asked that? So, that’s Brett, Marie, thank you for the question. It’s the same strategy. It’s gradually. Same strategy that I gave to all of us adults. It’s gradual. You don’t say, “All right. Now you’re going to eat this really healthy food.” You find foods that are healthy that taste good first of all and you gradually wean them off. Remember, it’s more important to stop eating the bad foods. So, if they’re eating like our kids have never had McDonald’s so I’m not bragging or anything but right there my daughter is nine years old and she’s never eaten McDonald’s or Burger King or I don’t know. I’m sure we’ve been to a fast food restaurant here or there but, yeah, so she’s never in it and she always like, “I want to know what it tastes like.” I’m like, “When you’re 18 that’s where we go.” We have a joke. That’s where I’m taking her for her 18th birthday is McDonald’s so that’s our joke. “I know for your 18th birthday, you’re an adult, we’ll go to McDonald’s, we’ll celebrate, we’ll eat there. You’ll see. It’s not the best tasting food.” Actually, it is the best tasting.

 

“Why you said stay away from soy?” Again, I don’t have enough time to go into detail. I’m really not an expert. For me, by the way, and you’ve heard me say this, I read a lot and I remember, I make choices based on what I read but call it my brain damage. I have trouble remembering the details. So, a lot of times when I’m telling someone something like, “Well, tell me more about that or why.” I’m like, “You’re going to have to google it yourself. I don’t remember all the specifics of why I came to that conclusion. I just remember that it was all of those specifics that led me to the conclusion. The conclusion I remember because I remember it’s in my affirmation. That’s how I live. I don’t remember all the details behind it.” So, yeah, but google that. If you want anything I said today if you want to go deeper, google it. Google the harmful benefits of soy. Google that yourself. Alan Peter says, “Eat real food.” Yes, that’s great. Eat real food. Ty Harman is here. Truth About Cancer. He was here. Hi. What’s up buddy? I’ve got your book right here. Guys, if you have not read this and you want to prevent cancer, The Truth About Cancer by Ty Harman. I’m sorry. Ty Bollinger is a fan of Miracle Morning which is cool.

 

All right. “I like lemon, olive oil, garlic dressing.” Yeah. Another great one. “Too much estrogen in a soy. That is true.” “It’s easy to make your own hummus.” Anne Web. I like it, Anne. That’s great. All right. So, google that. I don’t know how to do that. Anne does or reach out to Anne. Judy, “Do you eat only organic?” I eat as organic as I can. I mean, I will not eat food and I won’t go to restaurants that don’t have organic food typically but, again, sometimes I’m in a city where it’s like when I used to speak in a rural town like some towns in North Dakota there were no vegan restaurants. There were no organic like I just had to eat the best of what I can find so that’s what I eat. Mary says, “I take B12 tablets.” That is good. Oh, and by the way, when it comes to vitamins, not all vitamins are created equal. Not all vitamins are created equal. There are a couple of brands that I recommend. One is called Pure Synergy and one is called MegaFood. So, the brand is, yeah, Pure Synergy. So, here’s the deal. Most vitamins, here’s a little bonus section of the video today, most vitamins are made of – they’re synthetic. They’re made like vitamin C is made of ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid, google it. Google how they make ascorbic acid. It’s made with bleach and ammonia and terrible for you yet that’s what is like 99% of vitamin C in almost all products is made with ascorbic acid. Not good. So, you want vitamin C from fruits and berries and natural things.

 

So, there are some vitamin companies that actually make their vitamins from whole foods and they get the vitamin of vitamin C or B12 or whatever from other whole foods so Pure Synergy is one of those brands. Now, in full disclosure, I have not gone to their factory. I have not yet researched like I have done, well, basically I researched what are their ingredients. They put organic fruits and veggies. Okay, great, but I haven’t gone to their factory. I haven’t talked to their CEO. I only know what I’ve read. So, Pure Synergy though is a brand where I have now started taking. Another one is MegaFood. So, those are two that are plant-based and another one that I’m a big fan of is Dr. Schulze. Not the foot doctor. Anyway, so, yes, the other one is HerbDoc. Check out the website. HerbDoc.com also he has great natural whole-food-based vitamins there as well. Guys and gals, I’m going to see if I have one more question that I can take. Oh, we have a recommendation from Alicia Griffin, “My favorite vitamins are Plexus XFactor. I’ll have to look that one up. I’ve not seen that one. Another recommendation is from Charlene, “Read How Not To Die,” as mentioned before. “I like your accent,” Erin Schuab says. I didn’t know I had an accent but thank you.

 

Okay. So, here’s the last question I’ll answer. Tara Windsor says, “Can you recommend some books for getting started with healthy eating for people that’s just getting started?” Yeah. Eating Well for Optimum Health is one and then the other book I’ll recommend and that’s by Dr. Andrew Weil. The other one is Living Foods for Optimum Health. That’s the book. That was the first book I read that was on plant-based eating and that’s not by Dr. Andrew Weil. Which one I’m thinking by Andrew Weil? Well, you can google it. So, Living Foods for Optimum Health is the first book I read like 15 years ago that turned me on to eating a plant-based diet. I’m guessing maybe there are newer better books. I don’t know because that was the one that I read on and then I have read books by Andrew Weil and I can’t remember the book I read on diet by him but if you search him whatever books he has on health and eating, I’d recommend.

 

[CLOSING]

 

Hal: So, guys and gals, thank you for tuning in. This was about 40 minutes longer than I planned on staying on so hopefully you got a lot of value today. Hope so. I encourage you to make some changes in your diet. So first, evaluate why you’re eating what you’re eating and I encourage you and invite you to make the decision to value the health and energy consequences above the taste of your food and then find the food that taste really good that are underneath the healthy umbrella of foods that give you energy and that are great for your body, mind, and spirit and then cut out the foods that are bad gradually and then add the foods that are good gradually. So, don’t try to – and monitor your progress. Use that Way of Life app. If you don’t do that, there’s a piece of paper, write down why I’m eating the foods that I’m eating.

 

Remind yourself of the reason to value your health and energy, maybe even beyond that. I want to be here for my kids and my grandkids and whatever so you’re clear on the why. And then the what and the how is involved in getting rid of the bad foods, adding in the good foods, and doing those gradually and track. Make actionable commitments of what are you going to cut out of your diet or what are you going to cut down? And what are you going to add into your diet? And check out that Way of Life app. Check out the HappyCow app. Check out HerbDoc.com. Check out some healthy vitamins, Pure Synergy and MegaFood, as well as those that are available on HerbDoc.com and that’s all for now. Love you, guys and gals. I will see you on the next one. Until then, live your full potential one morning at a time.

[END]