UrbanEx Real Talk Fitness Radio

We tend to think of our sports heroes as super heroes.But often, they don’t even measure up to mortal men...

For example, one would have to go back to the days of the Negro Baseball Leagues, in the 1920’s, to find a single professional athlete who has lived to the age of 100. Centenarians are rare for the general population but even more rare for professional athletes. You would think that professional athletes who receive the best medical care, psychological, and nutritional advice and services would far outlive the general population, but they don’t. In fact, they die significantly younger than most. In fact, the average life span for professional athletes across all sports is 62 nearly a decade earlier than the general population. In Canadian professional football, it's even less at 51. How can this be true?

There are people out there, millions of them in fact, who are terrified of making food and dietary choices for themselves. They don’t eat sugar, because, of course, we know how awful that stuff is. They won’t eat bread or any kind of grains. They refuse to eat butter, eggs, drink a glass of milk, or eat a piece of meat because they’ve been convinced that all are straight from the pits of hell; that the rest of us are just a spoon or forkful away from cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Maybe they read the China Study or watched documentaries like Fork Over Knives, or more recently, What The Health. Maybe they believe that anything over 50 grams of carbohydrates will make them fat, or worse, will kill them.

I’ve had clients who were hundreds of pounds over-weight, and because they were brutally honest with themselves and me, met all their fitness goals over time. I’ve also had clients who were only a few pounds over-weight but blamed the world for everything. So, no matter what exercise or menu program I introduced, they never met any of their fitness goals. They were essentially stuck. You could say that the client who weighed the most, but who took personal responsibility for her life, was much healthier even with the extra weight. Indeed, she was healthier because her mental and emotional health were far more developed than the other client who felt she had it all together minus a few pounds. 

Interestingly, when Hippocrates coined the phrase, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” he was speaking across the aegis of time. Meaning, he couldn’t foresee a time when the needs of the human body relative to health and longevity could be any different than in his time. And he was right. The nutritional needs of the human body have not changed. We still require 90 essential nutrients on a daily basis: 60 minerals, 16 Vitamins, 12 Amino-Acids, and 2-3 Fatty acids, in order to maintain optimum health. But what has changed dramatically are the foods we consume, most of which never existed even a few decades ago.

The ancient Greeks believed in three goddesses, more powerful than any others. Sometimes they were depicted as a maiden, a matron, and an old hag. Three days after a child was born, they would arrive at the cradle to determine the course of the baby’s time on earth. The first goddess spun the thread of life. The second determined the length of the thread. And the third—the most feared, known as “the inevitable”—cut the life-thread. The child’s path was fixed from that moment on. The Greeks called them the Moirai. In modern folklore, we know them as The Fates.

In 21st century America, not many of us still believe in the three goddesses with their spindle and shears. Yet we have replaced them with a modern substitute: genetics. Western medicine still believes that there are diseases and disorders that are 100 percent genetically determined. No matter how you live or where you live, if you have the genetic predisposition for certain conditions, you will inevitably fall victim to them. This is the modern-day equivalent of the Moirai. And according to the proselytes of the Veganism, movement the only way to escape this inescapable fate is through Veganism. And anyone who doesn’t believe this is no longer a proselyte, they’re an apostate.

As I began to study this philosophy called Veganism it struck me as strange how people, on the one hand, could be so passionate about the rights of animals, while on the other, could be so utterly dogmatic and ideologically irrational about my right not to eat Vegan. No disrespect to Descartes et al, but I’m not a believer in the “Mechanistic” worldview. I believe that mankind was designed to have a covenant relationship with not only animals but with the whole of creation. That there is an interdependence between all forms of life, organic and inorganic. This is why plants are arrayed with colors and fragrances so that they can attract pollinators such as bees. The bees get some sugar out of the relationship and the plants get to continue their species. It’s that simple.

In 1974, the Swedish Government introduced the first food pyramid. The goal was to educate the populace on the optimal number of servings to be eaten each day from each of the basic food groups. Nearly two decades later, in 1992, the United States adopted the Food pyramid and introduced it to the American public through its Department of Agriculture (the USDA). Since then, the food pyramid has been updated twice. Once in 2005. And also,in 2011. Mind you, something as seemingly trite as a food pyramid had never been introduced to any society in the history of the ancient or modern world prior to 1974. But since that time there has been a constant roundtable discussion about what we should or shouldn't be eating. Of course, the average American citizen isn't allowed at the table nor are any of our so-called representatives. These closed-door meetings and decisions are made without the public knowledge yet they are imposed and permeate every facet of life. One thing understood about human physiology is that it has remained unchanged for thousands, if not, millions of years.

Whether we want to admit it or not most of the time we live inside our heads where we are the main character. Everything we experience is through this lens of Me-ism. We like to think of ourselves as free, open-minded thinkers, but in reality, our lack of awareness of the world around us is rooted in self-centeredness, which oftentimes gives us tunnel vision. It's not that you're selfish, narrow-minded, or believe the world revolves around you per se, but it does mean you have been hard-wired to think of self before others. The monologues in your head become endless loops of cognitive assurance. These cognitive assurances become cognitive patterns, which inevitably become behavioral patterns and habits.

When you listen to the life stories of centenarians, for example, besides walking and dancing, you seldom hear anything about a workout or a fitness regimen. If you listen very carefully, you will hear seeds being planted. See, they don't speak in terms of how many steps they've walked in a day or how many reps they performed at a gym nor do they subscribe to a particular diet. In fact, many still have habits like John who still drinks a little whiskey on occasion or eating butter every day or smoking cigars, which seems to go against the grain of all conventional health and fitness wisdom. Maybe, they're just lucky. Or maybe they've inherited some kind of supergene. Or maybe… just maybe… that even with all our high tech gadgets and gizmos and popular diets and potions and notions, they know something we don't.

Why do people age so differently? Why are some people mentally sharp, energetic, and still excited about life while other people, much younger, are sick, exhausted all the time, inflamed, and always foggy? What’s going on? Sure, we are all born with a set of genes, but the way you live can influence how your genes express themselves. In many cases, lifestyle factors, i.e., choices can switch genes on and off. The idea that your metabolism slows with age is just another myth.

Most people are afraid to talk honestly about their health because they have been sold on the idea that they could lose it at any moment. If they lost their fitness they could simply go back to the gym or the track. But where do you go when you lose your health? You’ve guessed it. Most people would immediately think to their doctor or perhaps the church. Interesting how we can find the bread crumbs back to fitness but we don’t know where to begin to restore our health. That’s because we feel we're just lucky to have it.