Read Lean or green part I
Note: this blog post is not about becoming vegan or vegetarian, or not eating meat or eating a meatless diet, but it is going to really pick on animal product production as one of the leading causes for global warming and poor health and inspire you to consider your food choices.
And true to this blog, Healthy High Achievers ARE environmentally conscious of their food choices. They don’t eat foods that are good for weight loss at the cost of our planet!
How would you like to know that the more weight you lose, the shorter the planet was to survive?
Sounds like a really fair trade off right?
Not!
What in the heck are you talking talking about JAM?
Well, hear my logic.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest methods for weight loss is a low carbohydrate diet, which is the consumption of lean chicken or fish (which by the way, are “meat” just like like red meat, only a little leaner”.
Not a day goes by, where I don’t I hear respected (many of whom I deeply respect) diet gurus, weight loss guru’s, fat loss gurus, fitness gurus camoflouging a diet rich in meat as a nutrient rich diet. It’s not. And because it is stimulating, and more energy dense, requiring more calories to break down (increase weight loss) it is also sold as a “metabolism booster” and a way to burn belly fat, which has many negative consequences.
You hear… “eat a lean protein at every meal” and then put a vegetable on the side. Meanwhile the vegetable is rich in protein! Its just the old model of nutrition still running its course.
We will discuss that in another article.
“Meat” is not only a nutrient poor food, devoid of more than just carbohydrates, but also phytochemicals, water, fiber, enzymes, many vitamins and minerals… you know those little things that enable your body to function and perform?. Meat is also loaded with cholesterol and saturated fat…, even when it is “lean”.
But what you may not know is that meat production is one of the biggest consumers of energy on the planet.
BTW: as the founder of nutrientrich.com I have learned a thing or two about food and food production. If you don’t believe me that meat is nutrient poor check out the 3 classes of food.
So much energy is consumed by producing meat and other animal products, there are millions of entries on the Internet pointing out that the more meat you eat, the more heat… meaning global warming. I did a simple google search on ‘the amount of energy it takes to produce one point of beef”.
Guys and gals, this is serious. Here’s an article from NASA on the subject of global warming and from a gentleman who is advising President Elect Barack Obama.
Any hope of succeeding will require Obama to grasp, deep in his guts, the fact that climate, energy, food, and the economy are now hopelessly intertwined, and that trying to solve any one of these problems without taking on the others simply makes all of them worse. More, he needs to understand, again viscerally, the single stark fact of our time: No matter how many votes, no matter how much lobbying, no matter how much pressure you apply, you can’t amend the laws of physics and chemistry. They aren’t like the laws that politicians are used to dealing with. They will be obeyed, like it or not. 350 is now the most important number on the planet, the red line that defines reality reality.
What the average fat loss guru’s don’t realize is that their solutions are killing the very planet we live on!
Not all of course, but there are many respected experts, who indiscriminately propose you eat chicken and lean meat, and bison etc… to shed the pounds. I know this has been part of the fitness establishment for some time, but the truth is, “health and fitness” of all industries, are among the leading promoters of animal product consumption for purpose of weight loss and getting enough protein and it’s just plain inaccurate, false and contributing to global warming.
We can’t afford to be indiscriminate about our food choices which are intricately connected to the environment.
And if you think you need meet for protein you are just plane wrong.
Let me be clear, according to Joel Fuhrman MD author of Eat to Live and Eat for Health, two of the most important books on diet and health ever written, endorsed by Mehmet Oz (Oprah) as “medical breakthroughs”, “there is protein in everything. The only way you could be deficient in protein would be to be deficient in calories”. When you have a greater need for protein because of increased activity you will simply eat more.
Note: I am a former Mr New Jersey 3rd place finisher and I haven’t eaten more than 5% of my diet from animal products in 20 years. You don’t need meat for protein.
The problem is people are so used to eating lean which has not carbohydrate, versus green, which has carbohydrates, that they don’t know how to eat green and stay lean. I must admit, it’s a bit challenging at first, simply because its new to most people, not because it’s hard.
But if you want to lose weight and save the planet at the same time, it’s time to move away from lean (for the most part) and start eating green.
Imagine right now, if millions of overweight and obese people stopped eating so much meat, stopped trying to lose weight the nutrient poor way (lean) and started learning how to lose weight the nutrient rich way (green)!
It’s easy to lose weight eating lean or “nutrient poor”; the onus of such a diet is on eating less junk food, which dominates our shelves as the third class nutrient barren foods they are. Ref: 3 classes of food.
This is good!
But eating less nutrient barren foods is not enough, not even close to enough to halt the spread of global warming from a food production point of view or to improve your health. And healthy people live at or near their ideal weight all year round.
Eating Green or “nutrient rich” is where the challenge is, and mind you, most guru’s haven’t got a clue how to do so. They are so used to the nutrient poor model of nutrition, that started with the 4 food groups years ago and the bodybuilding model of fat loss and muscle building, that they never even learned how to eat Nutrient Rich!
The reason this is the new trend in eating and not in a self serving way, is that the trend is to green for obvious reasons. We need to change how we eat, because it’s killing the planet!
Thats one of the reasons why I founded nutrientrich.com and built eating nutrient rich into the Performance Lifestyle formula. Not only is it the most successful way to eat for health, higher performance and natural weight loss, eating nutrient rich helps big time towards saving the planet.
Quick rant:
For one moment, stop thinking about your taste buds alone and your interests and your obsession with fat loss and think about the planet. Change your taste buds to what is better tasting food anyway, stop depriving yourself eating dead food that is caustic to the planet and killing it, find another way to make a living if your way depends on promoting animal product consumption, and get on the right side of history… in alignment with what keeps people and our planet healthy.
I know those words are going to cause an uproar, but they are true and I want to be at peace with what I promote, which requires a healthy stab at the truth. There more to becoming a Healthy High Achiever than looking, feeling and performing better; we have to thinking about what’s good for our bodies as well as our planet.
In my opinion, this is one of the biggest challenges of our time, the issue of global warming, and the outcome we achieve in this pivotal next decade will depend in part on what you eat, how you lose weight, how you choose to stay healthy, your very outlook on life and living.
John Allen Mollenhauer “JAM” is the founder the Performance Lifestyle Community and Training Center where every day achievers – fast tracked business owners, professionals and parents learn how to maintain higher levels of health, energy and fitness so they can perform well and achieve their goals while maintaining their quality of life.
As a former worn down workaholic turned Healthy High Achiever, John Allen Mollenhauer (aka “John Allen”) helps you optimize your lifestyle similar to the way athletes do for better results, even if you are not into sports or a fitness enthusiast. Unleash your full potential to perform, look and feel better and achieve your goals even more successfully, in a Performance Lifestyle.
He is also the founder of Nutrient Rich – The Most Successful Way to Eat for Health, High Performance and Natural Weight Loss, and Lose weight the Nutrient Rich Way.