I'm 100% 811 HCRV and I'm not immortal yet! What's wrong!?

Is everybody ready for a rant!? Good, good. Now, gather around, settle in; there's plenty of sitting room.

All ready? Comfortable? Got your smoothy in hand? Ok, let's go!

Today, I'd like to talk about my favorite kind of discussions. We see them all the time here on 30BaD. They never get old, and they never go away.

Discussion Type #1:

"I've been 80/10/10 for ten months, but the 30 years of bodily abuse I gave myself isn't fixed yet!" ;P

Or,

"I've been on this lifestyle for 1 year now and I'm still having [insert issue here] problem!"

"Can you tell us about your diet?"

"Ya, I have a smoothy for breakfast, then a big sandwich with multigrain bread for lunch and pasta for dinner."

"Wait... what lifestyle have you been living again?" ;)

We all deserve some slack in our lives and our lifestyles, and we can all laugh about how silly we can be at times. We're not all going to be able to perform this ideal lifestyle 100% all the time for the rest of our lives. But... we can be realistic with ourselves and others.

For instance, I drink pasterized orange juice. Do I think it's optimal? No. Juicing my own would be better. Eating the whole fruit, with the fiber would be even better than that. But, I make an allowance.

I'll also eat cooked rice for dinner if the fruit supply isn't available, which I've had to do a few times over the last few months. Is it optimal? Heck no! And I always feel a notch lower on the ol' health-o-meter afterwards. But I make an allowance. And I continue on the journey, as close to optimal as I can, always refining and getting better at it. I know I'm not at all alone in this part. BUT... and this is extremely important... I'm also realistic about the results I'm going to receive based on my choices.

What I don't do is pretend that I should be getting optimal results even if and when I don't live optimally.

Doug Graham, DR and others have really laid before us an optimal lifestyle - something to aim for, to strive to always do better, to always tweak and improve. We'd be insane to think we're going to live it perfectly all the time! But where we run into issues when trying to help one another, and where discussions can become difficult, is when people expect to get the same results as, for example, DR or Freelee, but continue to eat grains, bread, rice, pasta, lentils, salt, onions, garlic, chocolate, etc., etc., continue to lack sleep, continue to either exercise like crazed lunatics or get zero exercise at all, etc.. Now, to be clear, there's nothing "wrong" with eating healthy, high carb cooked vegan, and there's nothing wrong with differing schedules and with slightly over or under exercising. One will certainly be healthier than the average SAD eater, even with these variations. BUT, one cannot expect to see the same degree of results as those who get the vast majority of their daily cals from raw fruits and veggies and who follow the full lifestyle (very nearly at 100%). Expect to see some improvement in health adopting a cooked high carb vegan diet and varying some of the other aspects, yes, but do not expect to see the same results as Doug Graham, or DR, or Freelee, etc., etc..

In short: let's be realistic folks :). Have the common sense to recognize that our results are going to be in accordance with the degree to which we live this lifestyle. Living it 50%?, expect a small portion of the results, but no more. Living it 90%, expect a decent degree of the results, but not complete.

AND... if we've been abusing our bodies for 30 years (and the SAD diet is abuse!), we cannot expect to have all our problems fixed within 6 months, or even a year, or heck, even 7 years! That is simply not how Nature, Biology or Cause and Effect work. Take ownership of yourself! Take ownership of the lousy choices made in the past, or made currently, and expect results according to those choices! Choose to eat a donut and there's nobody to blame for the results but yourself - and the corresponding results will come. Choose to eat donuts and coffee for thirty years... nobody else to blame, and expect the corresponding results!

Part of this lifestyle is taking responsibility for ourselves, for our choices and their results. Take out a giant loan to go to university and expect to have loan payments for quite a few years. This is logic, and everyone agrees on it. Choose to abuse our bodies for thirty years... expect to have some serious health debt to pay off! And don't expect to be able to pay it all off with some magic quick-fix, over the counter, spoon-fed diet. That's not realistic, and it has nothing to do with 80/10/10 HCRV.

This lifestyle is long-term and it's holistic. Never allow yourself to forget that.

A puzzle is not complete unless it has all the pieces; and it is not whole until all those pieces are put together... and that takes time and patience and hard work! ALSO... and this is hugely important! ... even once the puzzle is complete... my puzzle is going to look different than your puzzle! Yours is going to look different than the next person! Each puzzle will have a unique picture. Which leads us to...

Discussion Type #2:

"I've been 811 HCRV for 3 years now, but yesterday I stubbed my toe and today it's still red! What do I do!? Help!" ;-{

Let's talk realism. 80/10/10 HCRV is pretty darned awesome. I mean, talk about thriving as a human being! This is where it's at!

But here's the thing. We're still human beings. And you know what that means? We're still gonna get old, we're still gonna die, we're still gonna stub our toes ;). Just because you've decided to be an 811er, don't expect to suddenly be supermen and superwomen, immune to death and incapable of aging. And don't expect to become cookie-cutter images of some health guru for the rest of eternity.

Do you plan to live this lifestyle within a degree or two from 100% for the rest of your life?... ya, you're still gonna die someday. Your hair is still gonna turn grey, some of us might go bald, some might get arthritis. Heck, some of us might even have a heart attack, or get cancer. C'est la vie folks! C'est la vie!

80/10/10 HCRV is going to make us healthier in accordance with the degree to which we honestly live it. It's going to significantly reduce the probability of us getting certain diseases. It's gong to even eliminate some, purely dietary diseases altogether. It's a damn-fine lifestyle. :) But it doesn't make us immortal. It doesn't change us from being human. And it doesn't transmute me into DR any more than it transmutes you into Freelee!

We will still all need to face some realities in our lives:

I am me, and I'm the only me I'm ever gonna have.

We're going to get old.

We're not always gonna have perfectly smooth skin, perfectly wavy hair, blemish free faces. Ladies, you are always gonna turn heads in a bikini - for the first half of your life you'll turn them towards you, for the second half they might turn in another direction ;P. Guys, your hair is gonna migrate all over your body; for some it'll leave the head in favor of the back; for others it'll gather in even less admirable places ;). I could go on.

Lastly, we're not going to be immune to everything. And we're gonna die someday, right along side the SADers (if hopefully a little more gracefully)

Why spell this out in this way? Because we need to both get over ourselves and start embracing being ourselves. All this incessant navel gazing, this worry about the tiniest blemish to our desired supermodel body, this nonsense about counting pounds and kilos... all this needs to go. All this wanting to be like so and so, feeling like crap because we're not as fit as so and so... this needs to go. All these expectations of miracles, quick-fixes, effortless transformations... these need to go.

Ask yourself why you want to live this lifestyle? Is it because your thighs are slightly wider than your hips and you just can't lie with yourself until you look like Freelee? Is it because you can't bench twice your body weight and this makes you feel like a waste of life? Is it because you're so afraid of getting old that you're panicked to find the mythical fountain of youth?

Or is it because you want HEALTH? Is it because you love yourself and others and the planet and you want, naturally, to live in harmonious health with all of this? Is it because you want to be happy, calm, content and focused? Is it because you're worth being good to, just as you are? Is it because the animals deserve your love and so do you!?

If health is our focus, if it is our goal, then all else falls into place. We will live out our lives learning every day to be healthier than we were the day before. We will age, and all that naturally comes with it will come. And hopefully we will age gracefully, welcoming the natural cycle of life fully, because we've learned to live in harmony with nature and ourselves. If health is our focus we can be honest with ourselves. We can put our weight and shape and muscle strength and stamina in their proper places of importance, instead of amplifying them into the most important things in all of life.

Health is holistic. It is the living of life in balance with life, in balance with ourselves, our neighbors, with animals and bugs and bacteria. Health has nothing to do with body-image. It has nothing to do with immortality or anti-aging. And it has nothing to do with our expectations of it. Again, health has nothing to do with our expectations.

Make health your focus and all else falls into place.

End Rant. :)

Did you make it all the way to the end? Wow! Consider me impressed. I hope you finished your smoothy. Fuel up to thrive! :D