My first fast, for therapeutic purposes, and not wrestling weight loss, started on January 1st, 1972. I had loved the changes that took place when I did water fasts in High School, but this was due to the annual need to get to 200 plus pounds for football, and then down to 178 and 168 (about 4% body fat). To do this up and down weight juggling ritual, two coaches mentored me on pretty sound and advanced nutrition. To get down to 168, I had dry toast and a boiled egg for breakfast. 1 cup of cottage cheese for lunch and lean meat and brown rice for dinner. This was at a time of the season when school continued, but indoor wind sprints ran for an hour before classes. A rigorous practice of 2 hours and then a 10 mile team run, 800 calories of food, and about 5,000 calories of activity. I would not recommend this protocol, especially as wrestling was followed by protein powder smoothies and every measure I could take to get back to 205 by August. Healthway's was an Adventist health store in our mall, and other than the canned carrot juice, I invested heavily in every fitness product I could find and tolerate.
By 1972, I belonged to a new food coop, one of three that emerged in Portland in the 70's. Both my mother's and father's families were farmers, though we moved from our farm to Portland in '54. My parents, with common sense and economic considerations, ate mostly whole foods, all prepared at home from scratch. I learned organic gardening, composting and cooking before I headed off to college, but the coop was where I learned about the standard processing and preparation of our foods, as they reached our shelves. Our coop was dedicated to the highest standards of whole and organic foods, and in distinguishing good from bad, you have to understand the many negative, yet accepted processes in processing foods. The next 10 years would be formal and informal education about nutrition and natural health.
I fell confident in my view of optimum nutrition, understanding the highly individual needs of every person. The foundational principles of optimum nutrition have not changed much in these many years. Nor has the Standard American Diet (SAD). I find this absurdly sad. Always #1 and 2 of ten most common foods are breads and pastries. Wheat, eggs, dairy and meat fill out the top 10. This paradigm, which follows our national farm and food supply, is simply how to feed a large work force with the food resources available. It is not optimum, it is simple math, to misguided government regulation of farms and food creation. It is up to each and everyone of us to realize the trap of "going with the flow" of the SAD. it is responsible for tremendous generational increases in nearly every "Western Disease" from cancer and heart disease to diabetes, neuropathies, strokes and, did I mention cancer? The chemicals we add to these few depleted foods are almost all linked to increases in cancer and systemic inflammation.
The Good Life requires a good deal of awakened relationships with our shopping, preparation and elimination of higher cost "convenient" and "fast foods". Food alone cannot guarantee a good life, but the absence of high quality nutrition is essential to finding a good life. Omar
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