Most Americans believe that dietary fat is satanic. But what you think about fat is wrong. Fat is good. Your brain is 60-70 percent fat and is made up of the fats you put in your body. Fat also fuels biochemical processes that protect your immune and endocrine systems (you need fat to make hormones, and they are chemical communicators in your body).
Image: pixbox77 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Fat was vilified by the medical community and the government, but they got it so wrong and in the process led a lot of people into the bad health zone. Once you are in a bad health zone it takes a monumental amount of effort to pull out. So I want to help you by telling you about fats. This blog would be miles long if I went into the whole story behind fat, so I hope that you’ll order Death by Supermarket on Amazon. It’s a cheap little book that will save you zillions in health costs down the line. Why? Because bad fats, which are endorsed by the medical community, are so dangerous and such killers that the sooner you 
understand which fat to eat and which to avoid, the better.
Polyunsaturated vegetable fats are said to be healthy by the so-called experts. These are corn, cottonseed, peanut, safflower, sunflower, soy, and canola. They are the fats that are lined up in gleaming bottles in your supermarket. These oils have been processed with heat and chemicals, and are exposed to oxygen all of which oxidize the fragile polyunsaturated molecule and create free radicals (which lead to cancer and every other degenerative disease). Adding to the problem is the fact that they are omega 6 oils.
But this doesn’t mean that you should avoid polyunsaturated fats altogether, because naturally occurring polyunsaturated fats are health giving and will contribute to your achieving brain neurotransmitters balance and your genetic gifts.
Within the polyunsaturated fatty acid are omega-3 and omega-6. Omega-3 and omega 6 are essential fatty acids, which means they are required by the body but can only be obtained through eating the right foods.
Omega-3 promotes lean body mass, which means that including omega-3 fatty acids in your diet will help you burn fat and build muscle. Omega-3 fats are essential to cellular health. Without omega-3 you will likely end up with dry skin, premature wrinkles, thin, brittle hair and nails, depression and other neurotransmitter imbalances, chronic constipation and a malfunctioning immune system, leading to muscle and joint pain and arthritis. Of course with omega-3, you will enjoy the opposite effects.
The ideal and traditional ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids omega-3:6 is about 1:1. Today Americans consume a 1:20 to 1:50 ratio. And this is not good, as an imbalanced omega 3:6 ratio has been shown to be a major contributing factor in the development of cancer and other degenerative diseases.
So let me try to be really simple because fatty acid biochemistry is totally confusing and has made my own head spin around like Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist.
Omega 6 is found in meat—but unfortunately it’s too high of a ratio now that factory raised animals are fed an unnatural diet. Like humans, they are what they eat, so when we eat them, we’re eating too many Omega 6’s. I hope that’s clear.
Omega 3 is especially important now that researchers have identified what Dr. Russell Blaylock (a former neurosurgeon who is a leading alternative medicine expert) calls “smoldering inflammation” as the cause of most disease. Omega 3 can be found in cod liver oil, whole grains, fruit, veggies, fish, olive oil, and garlic.
Omega 3 becomes gamma-linolenic acid in your body (you’ve heard of it—GLA) which reduces inflammation. And you can actually supplement your diet with GLA producing omega 3 oils like evening primerose, borage, and black current seed oil (please keep
them in the fridge).
The balanced diet of real, whole, historically eaten foods that I talk about in Death by Supermarket provides a perfect balance of omega 3:6. The typical American diet, like I said above is killer on the Omega 6 side.
Omega 3 is so important to brain health that if you are depressed or you kids are tearing the house apart in rage and/or suffering from ADD try giving them (encapsulated so they don’t rebel) flavored cod liver oil.
Examples of healthy polyunsaturated fats are cold-water fish such as cod, herring, mackerel, salmon and sardines and their oils, eggs, butter, cream, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds and oil, sunflower seeds, walnuts, wheat germ and wheat germ oil and flaxseed oil (experts recommend cod liver oil over flaxseed oil, as flax tends to go rancid more quickly). Sesame oil is the only polyunsaturated oil that can be used safely in cooking.
Other fats you know about are saturated and monounsaturated, which are also healthy and I will write more about these fatty acids in future blogs.
Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,
We get fat around our middles sooner or later in life. Americans (and all factory food eating peoples) are now growing that roll a lot sooner because we’ve speeded up the aging process.
My blog is dedicated to my Life Mission: Living a happy and fulfilled life, caring about body, mind, and spirit. I hope you come back and read how you can define, explore, and live your Life Mission.
THE ETERNAL PROBLEM OF TIME MANAGEMENT FOR A WRITER
My primary goal every day is to begin the day with meditation. I find if I don’t meditate immediately then fires take control of my schedule. If I do meditate then I’m better able to extinguish fires during the workday. I don’t need coffee to wake up so I meditate before I leave the bedroom.
I schedule exercise (usually yoga) on my calendar. If it’s not on my calendar then when something comes up it might bump yoga off my day, and I don’t want that to happen. Because I’m a health and wellness writer I factor yoga into my work day with impunity!
I work every day, even on the weekends. I rarely skip a day. I may not work the entire day, but I get something done. I frequently work the entire weekend. Fortunately I’m in love with what I do. But I don’t always write. I would like to write every day, but I’m an industry of one so I have to do everything, including grocery shopping, bills, cooking. In the spirit of disclosure, I do have a housekeeper who comes once a week, an assistant who runs errands for me once a week, and now that one of our dogs is too old to give me a workout, a dog walker comes 5 days a week.
When I have time alone on the weekends I don’t “work,” I write. That is pleasure and those are wonderful stolen hours.
Every week begins with a To Do list. This list runs the gamut from personal to business. It’s all mixed up. The To Do list would take over my writing schedule if I didn’t create artificial deadlines. I know exactly what trajectory any given project is on and what state it needs to be in by a certain date. Then I set another deadline. This works well for airline travel because I have edited all of my manuscripts on airplanes. But you have to plan ahead and have the manuscript in a prepared state.
Because I create deadlines there are days when I simply have to devote the entire day to writing just to make progress. I have to read a manuscript through in total quiet without interruptions so that I can gauge its flow and continuity. That takes scheduling. On those days bathroom breaks and food runs to the kitchen are the only interruptions allowed. But it’s so much fun.
I only make business calls during the day. I’m not a phone talker by nature and don’t enjoy talking on the phone so I generally keep calls to the point and move it along. The phone can chew up a lot of a writer’s day. The same is true with the Internet. It’s very easy to get caught up in emails and Facebook.
Because I’m doing FB videos now, that takes a lot of my time. It requires “stage” makeup or I’m washed out. So just getting myself organized, and the camera set up with acceptable lighting takes a lot of time and then it takes time to upload the videos to YouTube. So I generally turn back to whatever I’m writing while the video is uploading. This sounds a lot like mult-tasking though it’s not. I’ve come to the conclusion that multi-tasking doesn’t really result in the optimal completion of tasks. You get stuff done but not in the spirit of excellence.
Right now I’m working on my proposal for Survival Guide. I’m thinking about it all the time, when I wake up and when I go to bed. I take the last draft with me to bed and read and edit it before I go to sleep. After I meditate, I take my laptop to the kitchen for breakfast and download emails and FB messages. I blow through them as fast as I can. Then I eat breakfast and I’ll work for several hours on my writing. I attend to emails and FB messages in between writing when I want to clear my mind of what I’m working on so I can have a fresh look at it.
I don’t go out very often at night. That would probably not appeal to a lot of people, but I like to go to bed early so I can be fresh the next day. I’m dedicated to my lifestyle of work and accomplishments. I haven’t been much of a vacation taker since I started my writing career. That needed to change for my health, sanity, and productivity, so the last few summers we’ve spent 4-6 weeks on Martha’s Vineyard. Last summer was a near total bust. I started working on my memoir Hippie Chick but mostly I goofed off the entire time. It was OK and it didn’t make me paranoid because I knew that I would crank in September. And since that time I have not stopped. But if that kind of slacking derails you, then I wouldn’t recommend it.
Because of my dedication to my work, I’m not a crazy social animal. I love entertaining, but I keep it to a reasonable amount of time. Socializing is a reward for work done, but at the same time there are times when I can’t stand the sight of my laptop. So socializing purges me of any pent up discontent.
Every single social, travel, or extracurricular event, book, magazine, newspaper, TV, movie, play, or opera is fodder for my writing. I never stop making mental or actual notes. Keeping my mind active saves me time because I never have to think, now what? I have so much creative stuff at my disposal that sometimes it builds up to a toxic level and that’s when I can’t sleep. So I have to monitor my drive a little.
One detail that I have always given priority to is making connections. I spend time networking regularly. I spend a lot of time sending review books out, scheduling radio interviews, preparing for interviews and talks and rehearsing. And in the beginning I always wrote thank you notes (on real stationary not emails) to agents who rejected a manuscript. They took time out of their busy schedules to read my work and I felt an acknowledgement is only polite. Now I don’t really get much information on who reads what because my agent does it for me. But if there is an instance where I have direct contact with a person who gives me any amount of time, I thank that person with a real note.
As I write I’m getting a pedicure. It’s taken me 45 minutes to write this. I planned it that way. I plan my entire work schedule. So I guess in a nutshell my time management strategy is all about planning.
Om Shanti,
Your girlfriend in health,