September Newsletter

It’s September 1 and I’m curious how we got here. Seriously. What a bullet train of a year it’s been. Somehow it got to be August and I realized, “Wow, I haven’t had one week of vacation all year!”  That’s how consumed I have been with all that I’ve been juggling.

Fall is a time to reflect and refocus. For those ready to finally lose weight for good and ditch their dieting drama, my September teleclass will be about what the dieting industry doesn’t want you to know and the proven, scientific weight loss formula that those 5 percent of people who do keep weight off, including myself and my clients, know that you don’t. All the details are here. It’s going to be life-changing.

To give you an idea of some of the success I’ve had with the approach I’ll be discussing on this call, check out a former client of mine Sera’s story here . It will inspire you to really look behind your dieting drama.

This month I’m taking a break from debunking myths and hours of writing, researching and witticisms. I’m a little tapped out from an e-book I’m writing for my summer grad course on sustainability which point to our industrial food system as the largest contributor to global warming. Yep, before you get smug over your hybrid and recyling habits, look at your fork.  More details to come about when that will be available. In the meantime, support your local farmers!

I’ll resume in October with my view on crappy health information that you need not digest. For now, I am just going to be. Because I write this newsletter a couple of weeks in advance, I want and need my one week of summer vacation which allows me to be “unplugged”. I’m recycling some blog posts to keep you on your toes and engaged in some of the most important health topics of our day.

If you are only going to read one, please read the conservative view on health-care reform written by Dr. Andrew Weil. It’s important because if we adopted true conservative reform (not what’s being peddled as conservative!), the system wouldn’t be overburdened or overpriced. Everyone could have access to quality care and we’d actually have a health-care system worth fighting for. Life would really be so simple if some people would just play nice in the sandbox and share!

A view of REAL conservative health-care reform

Be Patriotic with your Fork

Before you go hating on Michael Vick

Exhale. I’ve had to do that a lot lately as I feel people have become particularly judgmental, especially without a whole lot of facts. I guess it’s a survival technique – and so is rest, relaxation and unplugging! So rest assured, I’ll be back in October fired up all over again.

Bring on fall and dem Stillers (for those not from Pittsburgh, that’s how they say it in Pittsburgh. It’s not a typo)!

Ali

Another way to be Patriotic

I have a few grips in life that as I get older, make me laugh more than get all huffy and puffy like I did when I was younger. I realize now that getting angry and presenting facts don’t do much to change people’s minds who have their own anger and facts. It doesn’t work all the time, especially when it comes to health-care.

One thing that makes me curious all the time, especially since 9/11 is what it means to be patriotic. America was founded on a radical vision, intelligence, progressive ideas, separation of church and state and white guys trying to get out of paying taxes. Except for the later, these ideals are trashed in much of the media and on the Bill O’Reily right as either “elitist”, “liberal” or “socialism”. Especially these days as the debate on health-care heats up (I’ll write more about this later).

But what if we just re-instilled progressive ideas as a value? What if we took a conservative approach and got back to basics when America at one time was about the best and brightest, not about the biggest pocket book. Because in exchange for a few industries making huge financial profits, we are suffering catastrophic financial and quality of life calamities on a citizen level. For example, 1 in 3 citizens lives with chronic disease, 1 in 2 men will get cancer and 1 in 3 women will get cancer. And the outcomes of these diagnosis is poor: our health-care effectivness rating in 2000 was 37th (out of 191) and is currently ranked next to Serbias despite spending more than any other country.

What if we did whatever it took, like our Founding Fathers and Mothers and looked to what other countries are doing, many considered “third-world”, who have healthy and happy citizens? What if we considered all ideas – yes even from those “socialist health-care systems” who get much better results than America’s current corporate dominated health-care INDUSTRY?

Instead of getting defensive and simple-minded that America is “the greatest country” – what if we acted like the greatest country and did whatever it took to get this beautiful country back on track versus come from a place of fear? That is being truly patriotic.

But always preferring to be part of the solution than the problem, I’ve found a couple great answers from Slovenia. Part of my family origin is Slovenian, a beautiful country with beautiful people I had the pleasure of visiting in 2002.

My Aunt sent me this wonderful article from the Faster Times about what we in the U.S. can learn from Slovenia in terms of food and effect, health. You see, real health-care doesn’t happen in your doctor’s office. It starts in your kitchen with real food and taking personal responsibility for your health. It’s a perfect blend of being radical and conservative at the same time.

Check out the article here and then get to your farmers market! This time, the revolution starts in the kitchen.