ARTICLES

Breathing in present moment breathing out only moment. I have picked up so many mantras and sayings that infiltrate my thought process throughout the day. Some of these are very helpful, others are prude and straight-jacketed thoughts that have made pleasure feel like a ruler swiping across my wrist.

It took 6 minutes of sitting this morning before I heard the rain. I was so excited for what is happening. For all the interesting facts and academic adventures playing out in my mind. I finished my first book in that 6 minutes and moved to Costa Rica and had three babies all by myself. Then I woke up. To Austin. To the pitter patter of soft rain on big windows. To the excitement of the darkness and to my breathe. We can always find the present moment. It never goes anywhere and our breathe is our anchor.

Today perform a random act of kindness. Smile at a stranger. Send someone a note in the mail. Pay an expired parking meter. Congratulate a friend with a warm embrace.

I was recently reading The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. It is so good and then there are three pages that just need to be ripped out of my kindle. The Author went full bore into the benefits of eating vegetarian and how people feel better when they start eating vegetables. Thanks, buddy, no shit. If you go from shoveling in cheeseburgers and fries to eating copious amounts of fruits and vegetables – you are going to feel a lot better. Then you after a while you won’t. Because human beings need precious substances like essential fatty acids and amino acids, B-vitamins, and iron which are not available in plant products. And no spinach, is not a viable iron source. Think it is? Prove it to me with blood work. A Complete Blood Count is $4.95.

“To live life to the fullest, you must stand guard at the gate of your mind and let only the very best information enter. You truly cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought —not even one…on an average day the average person runs about sixty thousand thoughts through their mind, ninety-five percent of those thoughts are the same as the ones you thought the day before…

This is the tyranny of impoverished thinking.”

-Robin Sharma

I am a doctor.

I have been waiting nine years to write that and it may matter more to others than to me. I leave bits and pieces of how I came into this field in my writing, but I wanted to take this time to tell the story.

The problem is wanting to be normal. To take the red pill and stay in WonderLand.

The root of orthorexia and anxiety about food choices is not a problem with food sensitivity testing or elimination diets, it is our environment.

Men can lose weight and see results and cheat a little bit. I will never tell them this in consults. Women can’t. They have to be damn near perfect week to week and it is so easy for things to slip and wine and chocolate to come rushing back in when life gets hard. I don’t have the perfect solution, all I can do is let them know that I understand and give them as much data and information to be successful.

Some people choose to watch sleeveless folks who look like they know what they are doing at Lifetime fitness and then sneakily do that 15 minutes later. Others bumble from one Men’s Health plan to another or use some awful training app with enough beeps and buzzers to meltdown a 5 year old. Yet, most trainees have never been through a solid movement evaluation or even a novice level strength training program.

My favorite saying when it comes to food quantity is, “Don’t let the Perfect be the enemy of the Good.”

There will never ever be perfection on the food quantity side of your life and to chase it is unhealthy. Let go of it.

Get creative and find out what kind of snowflake you are. Move the Keylogs forward.Take discipline out of the equation. Simple, not easy.

Let the opinions and discussions of what you are doing with this body take a back seat to what’s important – Family. Friends. Gratitude. Giving. And Being Present.