The title of this article is from an acquaintance of mine Rip Esselstyn.I know Rip through his father Dr Caldwell Esselstyn.
Here is an excerpt from his article Attention Athletes: Eat Your Vegetables!
Alex Rodriguez. Barry Bonds. Jose Conseco. Andy Pettitte. Jason Giambi. Roger Clemens. Baseball players in the news, all of them in hot water for using illegal substances for a competitive edge.
As a former professional athlete with friends active in all areas of sports, I know that steroids and other illicit substances have permeated just about every sport. A feeling has sprung up among athletes that if you’re not on this stuff, you’re at a disadvantage. You’re just not going to be as good as the next guy.
But the secret to hitting fifty home runs, to stealing a hundred bases, to pitching a perfect game, doesn’t involve needles or pills, the cream or the clear.
The secret is no farther away than the local grocery store, where no one needs an illegal prescription or a shady doctor. It’s right there, in the produce section, where you’ll find Nature’s naturally lean, bad-ass performance enhancers: plant foods such as whole grains, vegetables, fruits, legumes, seeds, and nuts. Instead of injecting themselves with human growth hormones and steroids, instead of having those monsters coursing through their 65,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries, by consuming plant-powered foods, athletes’ systems will be bursting with vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants, and they’ll not only be on their way to MVP seasons but also to the best health of their lifetimes.
What is so powerful about this article, is that it’s true and reinforces the new mentality that is sweeping the nation one person at a time – that it’s your lifestyle that determines your health, how you look and feel, and perform!
So many people spend a lifetime, trying to find the magic pill or powder, some substance that will help them overcome the common ills, created unbeknownst to them, mainly by the way they eat. They think low energy, what they don’t know as poor performance due to their lack of true health, and the fight against disease are normal and natural, but they aren’t… just common because of our modern day way of life that is simply caught up and unhealthy.
What has also become common is thinking that that we need to seek performance enhancing substances to function and perform at peak, when we haven’t even begun to proactively tap the potential of our own lifestyle – how we think and live.
Of course, a big BIG part of your lifestyle is how you eat. The quality of the food you eat, whether you eat Nutrient Rich foods or nutrient poor foods is going to have a huge and compounding effect on your energy level, your health, how fit you are, and what you are able to achieve in your life.
Most people just can’t get it, that they need to change the quality of their diet, not simply seek another way to lose weight. They will naturally lose weight, when they focus on eating for health, functioning and performing better in a now more active and healthy lifestyle.
Rip Esselstyn has has it right. As the founder of www.PerformanceLifestyle.com, and author of the PerformanceLifestyle blog, this mentality is clear, near and dear to my heart and hopefully yours.
When how you live is driven by your ability to function, to have quality of life and the capacity to perform “well”, you will look at how you eat and your overall lifestyle so much differently. You will finally leave the eat less diet mentality ingrained in our heads by a diet industry that knows very little about living a balanced and healthy lifestyle.
You will learn everything you can about eating better, about eating Nutrient Rich foods and eating for health!
~ JAM
John Allen Mollenhauer