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[quote="biltonjim" post=18385]Do you have a wife, Kawboy, if you don't mind me asking? I ask only because it would be a great help in achieving your aims if both of you could adopt the plan contained in The Plant Paradox.[/quote]

Yes I do Jim. she's the love of my life and we're now 31 years of marital bliss.

Both of us are committed to this new diet. I've just finished tossing a bunch of frozen goods that were in the freezer downstairs. We've both read the book and are convinced that this writer, a renowned cardiologist in California is on to something. His track record is over 10,000 patients helped with this diet over the last 13 years. My wife Pat, wants to lose around 50 lbs and I'm suppose to lose 100-110 lbs although if you saw a pic of me, you'd think I weigh maybe 230 ? not 270 lbs. Anyone I mention to that I need to lose the 100 lbs thinks that's outrageous. "There'll be nothing left of you !!" is the typical response.
About 15 years ago both the wife and I went on Atkins and we were doing so good. Dropped about 30 lbs each. Then one Saturday morning after going to the gym, we decided to drive from Newmarket to Brampton to pick up some desserts for the 18 guests we were having for Thanksgiving Dinner. About halfway there, I started to get a numbness in the side of my face, then numbness in my left leg. I told the wife that I was pulling over and that she needed to drive because of this weird sensations. So I pulled over and as we started to swap positions, I came to realize that I was acting like one of my workers at the Nuke Plant when he was having a hypoglycemic shock episode. I told the wife to get me to the nearest Tim Horton's and get me a coffee with double sugar and a chocolate glazed donut. Sure enough 20 minutes later things were back to normal. So the Atkins diet is no carbohydrates when on their "Induction Phase" and between the no carbs and the workout at the gym, I had driven my blood sugar down too low. Scared the shit out of the wife and that was the end of that diet. Needless to say 3 months later, the 30 lbs were back on where they shouldn't be.

This book is the best 20 bucks I've spent on anything. I can't believe how screwed up we've made the American Diet, how badly we've messed up harvesting plants, how we the customer have demanded from the farmers, the growers, the butchers cheaper product forcing them to find ways to grow more food faster cheaper and screw the quality in order to provide us what we want at a price that doesn't kill the budget. What a mess and the end result is unhealthy human beings. This book also talks about the way things are done in Europe and why the majority of the populas are closer to the proper weight. It truly is a facinating read.

www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_5_17/133-...7&crid=3D3TTZPSH7IQV

I just bought the book. Looking forward to reading it! Thank you Kawboy for mentioning it!

Hi KawBoy,
Thanks for suggesting that book, I'll order it on Tuesday.
I'm 68 years old, 200 pounds and just put a stem cell transplant behind me. The docs wouldn't have let me have the transplant had my heart not been in good condition. My typical blood pressure is 122 over 70. I've never paid much attention to my diet, I suppose my activity level has kept my heart healthy, so far. Still, looking forward, I need to do more.
Thanks again.
OH, also thanks for proving that this place is about more than sixes!
Bill

Hi all you old kwaka nuts
Happy new year to you wherever you are around the world hope its a good one for you bikes n all !
i myself decided whilst waiting on a backwards f&^*#*d up health system to organize surgery i would make a concerted effort at looking after my health
so
first i decided as meat is actually not good for the digestion system in the first place i would replace it with Chocolate !
secondly as milk products are so expensive here i would replace them with man made items as the labels all state its great stuff for you ! ( that just buggerd the chocolate) !
this by the way i list under stress ! being so expensive my wife stress me out over the cost of dairy products that we produce in proliferation but gets marked up to the crap house as manufacturers can do better selling it all overseas. and we all know stress just aint cricket !
i decided as most veges here are covered in pesticides of varying natures, i would not buy them in humble protest to the poisoning of our land and waterways due to land run off spilling into our waterways, ( though this is mostly a problem here due to our cows standing in the streams pissing crapping and generally fornicating for the hell of it whilst the farmer looks on)
so mainly i just live on Gummy bears KFC this did include many tins of baked beans (the beans though highly nutritious having to stop due to often violent protest from the wife! wine to control cholesterol spirits to control any pain and fruit drink that has vitamin C added due to the fact its not really fruit drink in contradiction to what the label says but is full of water which i make a effort to get once a week.
i also got Foxtel so i was able to ensure a very active participation in sports on a regular basis, the Dr did point out though im picking the wrong sports !!
so maybe ill include some tennis Rugby etc!!

you may laugh !!, but sadly some of this stupidity has become a very real reality of people in NZ
John my best wishes to you i just missed out on surgery i have waited on for 3 years due to a irregular ECG and the realization from a GP their is a bad family history of heart problems, so i know the wake up call that hits you with.
anyways hope you all get a great year ahead
Dion

Dion,
I know thaat the primary reason people end up eating all the crap is due to the cost of food and you being down in New Zealand I feel your pain. I was in Aukland on Valentine's Day last year and went to take the wife out to dinner. ALL the restaurants were booked solid @ $100-$150 a plate. We ended up at Denny's of all places and had 2 cheeseburgers and 2 Cokes for the unruly cost of $58. That same meal up here in Canada would have been $17. For the life of me I can't understand why it costs so much to eat in New Zealand/Australia. Your food prices are through the roof.

The "Beans" are the second worst food source on this diet plan according to the book due to the lectins although most vegan diets suggest beans as a healthy protien replacement for meat and this whole phylosophy boggles the mind. We are in such a mess as beings on this planet. Our health system is through the roof which drives the cost of health care up to the point we can't afford it. Doctors and now in the last 30 odd years these new "nutritionists" are scrambling to figure out why so many people are overweight and the theories abound. This book is written by a cardiologist in California USA who got tired of doing heat replacements and open heart surgery so rather than doing "breakdown maintenance" he chose to look at the problem from an "engineering perspective" and see if by making some changes to the way we operate and maintain our bodies, we could have a better operating experience. When you break it all down, a doctor is nothing more than a mechanic. He(she) fixes things when they are broken and do annual inspections to see how things are running. The brain is the engine control module ECU, the heart is the engine, the liver and the kidneys or the oil and water filters, the vascular system is the fuel system. The comparitive list can go on but you get my drift. Genetics do play a part in the whole scheme of things just like if you're stuck with a Ford and your friend owns a Chevy. One's heavier on fuel while the other needs more brakes more often. But with regular check ups and running good gas and oil and seeing the mechanic for regular checkups, both vehicles will last a long time.
This Dr. Gundry is more of a Systems Engineer than a simple mechanic. He has the ability to fix the human body but also looks at it from an engineering perspective. Almost all of his patients that came to him were overweight and had a unhealthy lifestyle and not necesarily due to the way they were living but due to the common or standard way North Americans were living compared to human beings around the world. So his investigative research has led him down this path of realization and like most engineers, has decided to come up with an "engineer change" to mitigate the problem as he sees fit. Those that choose to follow his engineering change have seen the benifits with reduced blood pressure, weight loss, more energy, less inflamination, disapearing issues of Crohn's disease and Irritable bowel syndrome, disappearing acid reflux issues and the list goes on.

Look at what we did to gasoline. The need for gasoline was driving us to find ways of harvesting it greater, cheaper so we started fracking oil wells in order to get them to produce more oil faster and that's distrubed some of the water systems causing grief. Then due to reduced oil availability, we started to look for other fuel to augment our gas in order to extend the quantity of fuel and found that blending gasoline with ethanol, we could meet the fueling needs. How did we accomplish that? Growing more corn and fermenting it to produce ethanol. Ethanol is fine for running in everyday vehicles as long as you are constantly keeping it moving through your fuel system, but let it sit in your fuel systems stagnant and now you've got blocked arteries. So if I told you to go find ethanol free gasoline to run in your KZ's, you'd spend the extra 4 cents a liter for the good stuff so you didn't have to pull the carburetors every year to fix them right? We've all had to deal with problems with the carburetors in the KZ1300's and I bet no one of you out there has never had a problem with your carbs. It's not an uncommon problem with these carbs nor is it uncommon will all carbs. It's the ethanol that's messing up the carbs just like the food sources we have today are messing up our bodies. We also suffer from the lack of exercise. Paleo man had to hunt for his food because he didn't grow it. then man learned how to grow food with a lot of manual labor required. It wasn't until the tractor came along, that man was able to grow food with less manual labor and that was the beginning of when we as a race, started to put on weight.
We need to change our culture if not for ourselves, then for our children. This latest generation (our kids) are not intersted in doing the manual labor jobs and why is that? There's more money in job that involve sitting behind a computer. Talk to the kids and tell them that they could earn $100,000 a year laying bricks or $140,000 a year working as a mechanic in a Nuke plant and they're not interested. There's more money in jobs where you can sit in a chair and drive a computer and it takes less energy. I fear for what's down the road for this new generation.

Kawboy, that's a shocking update regarding down under. When I was spending some time in Australia in 2003 I think, I found food there to be of better quality than Canada and not more expensive than here. I forgot where you are in Canada, but in Vancouver things are quite expensive. Add tax and tip, and it becomes too much. It also depends where and what quality you buy it.

From my personal experience, I think the most important thing a person is do is to listen and pay attention to what his/her body it telling them. Being organic vs. machines, body can heal itself even without external help. It does much better with help, and external help can invigorate it, with positive other effects as better mind and feelings. There is no secret that everything is connected. Stress might be much worse than a diet, and no physical activity will not turn a no matter how healthy eating person into a healthy person. I think it is actually might be much healthier not to be too rigid and religious about diet, about hitting the gym, or doing some sort of meditation or other self proclaimed or suggested soul 'enlightening' activity. In my opinion, all should be taken with a grain of salt, but all diverse elements of well being should be present. Unless there is a very specific medical or mental condition which require treatment and/or restrictions. In a way, I think there is no difference between the visible and invisible - body vs. all that can't be measured in pounds. Stress is one of the worst elements, and stressing out about braking a certain dietary rules might be overall in the long run much worse than breaking them, with moderation, once in a while. Human nature wants rebelling, I think being easy on yourself is healthy, as long as you listen to your body and are willing to use some discipline.
In my case, I used to have a few pillars I'd keep in sight, but when I felt like having a cheese cake, I'd have it. I got into eating lots of veggies and mostly fish, but when having a raving for it I'd buy the biggest steak they had and eat it with no veggies but just a slice of bread. It tasted sooo good! And I felt calm and had my veggies and fish, which I loved as well, the next and next day.
I think a variety of spices and herbs are also very important. They enrich the eating experience and are acting as medicine at the same time. One good thing I always do is I keep the water after boiling veggies. Usually people dump it, but it packed with nutrients and a great tasting drink. Broth is very healthy, and we used to drink it in Europe when sick. But just even that simple water after boiling broccoli - it can be drank or used for cooking other things instead of using tap water every time.

I will say it again, no matter how authoritative I sound I am doing it with no shame: a diverse movement exercise and stretching must be a part of life to make those good nutritions work and those bad things go away. Internal organs need massage and stimulation to work properly and efficiently - they get it when you are bending, squatting, walking, swimming, waving your arms and so on.
Without going on and on... let's not forget that a huge factor in all this health subject are also genes. You can have the healthiest life style and die early, some can abuse their bodies and live long. So what can we do? For me, choose to eat and drink goodies which are proven to have positive health properties, eat a diverse diet, physical exercise, don't constrain yourself emotionally but don't dwell on bad feelings for too long, don't fear breaking some rules once in a while and when you do, forgive yourself - all good for stress reduction, and sleep, lots of sleep. If possible, look at the world with a child's eyes.

I see I am enforcing your remarks Kawboy, especially the last paragraph I will quickly add that my 1983 Honda had lots of smooth running problems. I knew it was fuel delivery related. I used Seafoam and it was helping. But leaving it standing for a couple weeks would make it horrible. Run on 2 or 3 cylinders until warmed up ridden, and it became much worse in cold weather. I switched to Chevron no ethanol gas about 2 months ago. It's like a miracle. All the problems are gone, it starts and runs like a Swiss watch any and every time. It cost a couple dollars more every filling, but the bike needs it and deserves it. And I, as it's keeper, owe it to it. Same with our bodies - we are the keepers, give it good stuff, quality over quantity. And it saves dollars and grief at the end as well.