Recently, there has been a big influx of high school graduates embarking upon a new four-year career at the University of Hawaii and obviously at colleges and universities throughout the world.
This transition presents numerous new challenges to these kids.
Yes, college is a time to explore new beginnings, new horizons and new roads to finding success and fulfillment. We all know that the key to a successful college career includes doing well academically, developing a fulfilling social life, enjoying participating in intramural sports if athletically inclined and not a scholarship athlete, and above all, maintaining good health to support this active college lifestyle.
Unfortunately, and not just for college kids, the perception of what is “healthy” can vary from one person to another and can greatly affect their lives.
One of the greatest fears of college freshmen is the dreaded weight gain commonly called the “Freshman 15”. Later in life it’s called obesity.
This fear can become the driving force behind health-related decisions for anyone and dealing with this weight-gain fear in the wrong way can damage both health and the capacity to succeed academically. Later in life it can damage the capacity to make a decent living.
So, three factors can support a fit and healthy body weight and the active mind needed to get the most out of a college education, a pleasurable social life, and a life unencumbered by drugs and surgery.
The big three are adequate nutrients and calories, getting enough sound sleep and maintaining physical fitness with moderate regular exercise.
Good nutrition means consuming an adequate diet that provides all the essential phytonutrients and antioxidants needed to form the basic foundation for good health by keeping the immune system strong and healthy.
When individuals attempt to achieve or maintain an attractive body weight by restricting calories too severely, they can trigger a starve/binge condition that is the body’s natural response when calories are too low.
The best way to avoid this starve/binge pitfall is to always consume a healthy breakfast. Research has proven that those that eat breakfast stand a way better chance of having a better body weight. Skipping a meal usually creates a natural binge response that leads to overeating later in the day.
For me, a healthy breakfast means oatmeal sweetened with vanilla rice milk that does not contain canola oil, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, bananas and apples. And, if possible, all organic.
Generally speaking, consuming inadequate calories and not meeting adequate protein needs decreases the ability to maintain a healthy proportion of muscle to fat, which can compromise the immune function, increase the risk of illness and impair brain function necessary for academic and job success.
For the psychos out there that feel that oats do not supply “enough” protein, substitute quinoa for the oats, as quinoa is a complete protein.
One final word on the dietary aspect is this: no matter what you choose to be your way of eating, at least one meal a day should consist of, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman put it, “G-BOMBS”.
G = greens (as organic as you can get. Oh yeah, a cucumber is green as are bell peppers. The red ones started as green ones).
B = beans (hummus makes a great salad dressing along with some balsamic vinegar).
O = onions (for me, Maui or sweet onions “brok da mout” – Hawaii pidgin for yummy).
M = mushrooms (my favorite is Shitake).
B – berries (yes, you heard that correctly. They are an incredible source of antioxidants).
S = seeds and/or nuts (your call).
This one daily meal will give you enough phytonutrients and antioxidants to strengthen your immune system like crazy.
The second of the three, getting enough adequate sound sleep, is essential for optimal brain function as well as emotional stability.
Sleep research has proven that an ongoing sleep deficiency can compromise memory, decrease alertness, lead to poor decision-making and be a contributing factor to obesity. At the other end, too much sleep can be symptomatic of both physical and mental health problems.
Last, but certainly not least, maintaining a consistent and moderate exercise routine promotes good physical and mental health because of several factors: it increases calorie needs, which assists in weight control; it builds and maintains muscle tissue and also increases calorie needs while at rest; consistent exercise helps to promote good brain function along with mental and emotional stability.
Also, many types of physical activity incorporate social interaction that contributes to building a social network that can last a lifetime.
For a college student, establishing good eating, sleeping and exercise habits can contribute to a lifelong routine that benefits health, mental productivity and social richness.
For you that gave up on these years ago and decide to start again, it will give you a new lease on life.
Aloha!
Sources:
www.verywellhealth.com
www.asanediet.com
www.healthline.com
www.drfuhrman.com
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
