The Future and Helping Others

I think I'm still in denial about graduating a few weeks ago, which is why I haven't yet addressed the issue of what I'm going to do with this blog now that I'm no longer at Penn.  Perhaps I'll change my name to a symbol and simply become The Blogger Formerly Known as Paleo at Penn.  Or perhaps this will become Paleo at Penn: The Post-Grad Years.  I'm open to suggestions!  But until I figure that out, the name stays.

Now that I'm no longer in school, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.  I know one thing, though: I want to help people.  Whether it's working at a non-profit, teaching or tutoring, doing something in the legal industry, or writing, I want to make a difference.  I want to communicate with people, or write for them, or inspire them, or help them in any way that I can.  I want to both learn from and teach others; I want to save the world; I want to impact someone's life.  I love blogging and sharing my experiences because every time someone reads a post and gets inspired, then my life feels so much more fulfilling.  I loved working with kids these past few years because there was so much to teach them, and their excitement about learning new things made me really happy.  I love performing because someone else feels good after listening to/watching my song/piece/role/etc.  I just feeling like I did something-- no matter how big or small-- to help someone else.

I've become really idealistic over the last few years thanks to the ancestral health movement.  We all want so badly to change the world, and we're all trying, one blog post or article at a time.  If you read any success story, it's usually something to the effect of, "I was unhealthy, and then I found [blog/book/website] and my entire life changed for the better."  How awesome is it knowing that someone may have changed their life because of something you said or wrote?  And that's why I love this movement-- we're all seeking to not only better ourselves, but also better the lives of our friends, families, colleagues, and peers as well.

In the movie Pay It Forward, the young main character (played by Haley Joel Osment) says that he's going to help save the world by helping three people, and those three people are each going to help three people, and so on and so on.  He created a massive network of people helping each other, and that's how I feel in this community-- I am so inspired by others to keep helping other people.  Most of my friends still think I'm crazy for voluntarily giving up gluten, but I'm also glad that they send their friends looking to be healthier my way, knowing that I might have good advice for them.  That's the beauty of networking, and that's the beauty of sharing information.

I really don't know what the future holds for me.  My life could go in so many directions right now, which is both terrifying and really exciting.  But one thing is certain: my passion for health won't go away.  This lifestyle changed my life for the better, and it's one of the things I'm most proud of during my college experience.  It's not even just the weight loss, though-- it's the whole mindset.  (Though the weight loss was a great accomplishment-- here's a comparison of my prom senior year of high school and my formal senior year of college.)

So what now?  Well, right now, I'm home in New York and applying to jobs and internships and hoping that someone will take a chance on me.  I'm also hoping that when I do find a job, I'll somehow make a difference there-- in addition to my job's duties, I hope to spread the word about ancestral health (but in a non-preachy way, of course) and inspire others to not only take their health into their own hands, but to also learn more about any number of subjects.  This movement taught me so much about evolution, biology, anthropology, and sociology-- I now think nothing of reading books or articles about those (and many other) subjects.  It also taught me about alternative living, different ways of thinking, and how strong a community can be.  I received a phenomenal educational at Penn, but I also received a phenomenal education (of a different kind) from the ancestral health community.

Always be a student, always ask questions, and always keep learning.

Quote of the Day:
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."  -Nelson Mandela

A Paleo Poem

Many, many years ago, our ancestors gathered and they hunted--
they lived in caves, ate off the land, and instead of talking, they grunted.
No modern diseases plagued them, for they were healthy and strong:
the antithesis of today's owrld... So then what the heck went wrong?
The cavemen lived on meat and fat, yet "experts" now claim both can kill,
so why are humans sicker now with that advice and modern pills?

Our ancestors moved frequently, they walked and hiked at a slow pace--
and they certainly weren't chained to desks for the eight hours of the rat race.
They lifted heavy natural things, not just 5-pound weights in local gyms,
and sometimes they even sprinted (away from tigers to keep their limbs!).

They didn't have computers, phones, TVs and cable, or the iPad--
Apples and blackberries were simply fruits, and a jaguar was the next meal to be had.
Their circadian rhythms were perfect: no late nights or early mornings--
they slept with the moon and woke with the sun and had no need for electronic warnings.
There's no doubt our lifespans exceed theirs-- sure, theirs averaged thirty years,
but we have sanitation and modern medicine, while they had different fears:
infections and natural accidents, being chased by mammoths and bears--
so it's unfair to use that argument, for they had totally different cares!
But there was no obesity or cancer-- no Neolithic Agents of Disease,
no high blood pressure or autoimmune conditions, and no type-2 diabetes.

Those came only after Agriculture in about 8000 BC,
when humans shrunk and started getting sick, and changed was society.
We stopped following the wisdom of our previous generations--
we settled down and changed the Earth, and we are now just fast food nations.
We moved away from real food-- now we have packaged meals and bread,
which contains the evils gluten and wheat-- or "Satan's excrements" (as Robb said)--
that really mess up our bodies and health.  Go and read Wheat Belly,
which gives a lot of reasons why you should give up your PB & jelly.

Strange "products" run amok now, and weird chemicals lace our food--
Big Macs aren't really meat-- I doubt that "cow" had ever mooed!
"Low fat" everything lines the shelves, and you can blame that all on Keys,
who scared people out of eating fat-- but it does NOT cause heart disease!
And those "healthy whole grains" aren't healthy-- they cause your blood sugar to get scary,
and it's insulin issues that make you fat-- go check out these books by a guy named Gary.
Sugar is the new cocaine-- yet it's still legal (even though it's harmful!),
which is why food companies put it everywhere-- it keeps you buying things by the armful.
The obesity crisis is getting worse: people are fat, sick, and so unhealthy,
Big Pharma and Agribusiness don't want to help-- they just want to get wealthy.
Don't listen to government regulations-- Monsanto is tied to the FDA,
so take your health into your own hands and listen to what ancestral wisdom has to say.
Go back more than 10,000 years ago, go back to eating good fats and meat,
and fruits and veggies and nuts and seeds (and dark chocolate as an occasional treat!).

Purge the pantry of those "healthy" grains, of those legumes and snacks and boxes.
Eat wild, buy organic, and perhaps try the 30- or 21-day sugar detoxes.
Just say no to GMOs, and don't venture into center aisles,
go out in the sun and play-- you'll get both your daily Vitamin D and smiles.
Sleep a lot in a dark, dark room; lift heavy things and move...
Perhaps this all sounds overwhelming, but don't worry: you'll get in the groove.
Maybe you still need some help: have no idea what to eat daily?
Go on over to Fast Paleo, or buy this amazing book by Bill and Hayley.
Mark's Daily Apple is so helpful-- it's got a ton of information,
and check out Nom Nom Paleo for her latest culinary creation.
You can raise a family on this lifestyle too: check out Paleo Parents Stacy and Matt,
or Everyday Paleo (the book and blog)-- they'll all prove how you can do that!
Knowledge is certainly power, but most people have no nutritional knowledge of any kind,
so why not read The Paleo Solution, or Primal Body, Primal Mind,
or go back even further: check out the work by Weston A. Price,
who looked at nutrition and dental health (and found if you eat well, your teeth are nice!).
Learn to question everything: seek answers and find the truth,
don't listen blindly to doctors who don't know better-- they won't lead you to the fountain of youth!
Many answers lie simply in our past: in natural food and lots of sun,
in moving and playing and lifting and sleeping, and not needing technology to have fun.
Though the world has changed since the cavemen, we can still look to their lives
and find the keys to optimal health... because we don't just want to live: we want to thrive.

Quote of the Day:
"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."  -Robert Frost

My Psych Class and Bogus Science

I once again apologize for not updating much these last few months. This semester has been a lot more hectic than I had anticipated, but it'll be over in two weeks! I'll hopefully update much more frequently over my holiday break.

I'm currently taking Intro to Psychology to fulfill one of my gen-ed requirements, and the class has been okay up until now-- some of the topics I found really interesting (evolutionary psych!), and others I just kind of suffered through (I'm not a science person, so the neuropsychology stuff wasn't exactly my cup of tea). But in all of the topics covered thus far, the information was scientifically proven-- we know, for example, which parts of the brain control which processes. So even though if I didn't understand everything perfectly, there was at least scientifically proven research to back up this information, and I can accept that it's all true.

So why am I talking about my psych class? For the past two lectures, my professor has been talking about food. The second he announced the topic, I said to myself, "Uh oh, get ready for a ton of Conventional Wisdom crap." And I was, unfortunately, correct. He lectured about the calories in/calories out theory (which is false-- watch this link from Fat Head and pick up Good Calories, Bad Calories and/or Why We Get Fat), that fat is unhealthy (also false-- click here, here, here, and watch this clip from Fat Head), that the BMI system is a good indicator of a person's health (also false-- click, and remember that BMI doesn't take into account muscle), and that the obesity crisis wouldn't exist if everyone ate the equivalent of three apples less per week (um...... WHAT!?!??!?!?). Needless to way, it was a very frustrating few days in psych. Where was any of the science behind this!?!? How can someone actually spread that information without having the facts?

What really baffled me was that my professor also acknowledged that people have no training health and nutrition, yet lectured about this topic and made no sense at all. Well, yeah, of course people don't have training-- the movie Food Matters said that only 6% of doctors have nutritional training, so why would anyone else be informed when they can just get information from the equally uninformed (i.e. the other 94%)? It's so sad that people are clueless about health and nutrition; instead, they rely on Conventional Wisdom, uninformed doctors, and Dr. Oz, and don't have the science to back up their choices. (It also doesn't help that the government is spewing crap to us too-- tomato paste on pizza can now count as a serving of vegetables!) I really don't blame my professor for lecturing Conventional Wisdom BS-- it's probably what was fed to him and no one ever pointed out the flawed science. (I raised my hand to comment on the things he was saying, but the class is in a huge lecture hall and he never saw me. Ugh!!)

The information about evolutionary nutrition is out there and makes sense! Humans aren't adapted to eat grains, legumes, chemical-heavy food products, or low-fat anything. We didn't evolve to count calories or carbs or have other people tell us that we need to be a certain weight for our height in order to be considered healthy. And we certainly didn't evolve to take meds for things that can be cured by simply eating the way our ancestors did. Read any of the literature available-- Loren Cordain, Robb Wolf, Mark Sisson, Nora Gedgaudas, Weston Price, Gary Taubes, and a host of brilliant Paleo/Primal/ancestral bloggers (Chris Kresser, Jack Kruse, Stephan Guyanet, Denise Minger, and Chris Masterjohn, just to name a few) all can back up claims about this lifestyle with real science. Although all of their views may differ slightly, the basics are still there: eat the food that we were evolved to eat, and check out the science to prove it.

Here's Mark Sisson's new food pyramid, as one example of what real food is:

But would people knowing the science really change anything? Sadly, I doubt it-- people know junk food is bad for them, yet still eat it anyway. However, it would still be a huge step in the right direction if A) doctors were trained in evolutionary nutrition, B) the government got rid of the ridiculous food plate and actually learned evolutionary nutrition as well, and C) some type of Paleo/Primal/ancestral literature became required reading in schools/health classes. While people would probably still make poor dietary choices, at least they'd know which foods are actually good (read: NOT LOW FAT) so they can make educated decisions if/when they decide to embark on a journey to better health.

Quote of the Day:

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." -The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama