We're on the tail end of day 3 and it's going good. We watch movies, read and sit near the heater and sleep a lot. I've gone out a couple of times and when I pass the bakeries, I feel a little left out but not really super hungry. Tonight, I did find myself pulling out a couple of cookbooks to read through. I'm certain I'll feel inspired to cook once we break the fast on December 30, 2009. Here's a couple delicious recipes you might want to test for yourself:

This is an organic celery root. I love this one's heart shape.
It's delicious baked, with onions, cabbage and add some steamed spinach at the end.



Or shred it raw and add it to a coleslaw salad.
In fact, here is an easy delicious nutritarian cole slaw:
Shred some carrots, celery root and some raw beets too, if you're feeling brave.


Thinly slice some purple cabbage and green cabbage.



Add some sweet onions too, diced very small.
Add a handful of raw sunflower seeds and a handful of lightly toasted sesames seeds.


Mix together some fresh squeezed lemon juice, unsalted mustard, balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of honey.
Pour it on, mix it up and enjoy!


We also wanted to share some interesting information that led us to make the decision to fast.

"Few health professionals are aware of the many, truly astonishing, physical adaptations that result from water-only fasting. Most believe that water-only fasting is simply “starving,” and that little or no benefits result from such an experience."

"In reality, water-only fasting is dynamic, complex, and involves many health-promoting processes. For example, studies have indicated that immune function is significantly enhanced during water-only fasting, an effect that few would suspect. There is also an enhanced mobilization and elimination of toxic products, including poisons such as PCP, dioxins, pesticide residues, and other pollutants.

It is now recognized that, in the industrialized world, most diseases are due to dietary excesses—especially of animal products and processed foods (such as oils and refined sugar). It turns out that voluntary, water-only fasting is often magnificent in its ability to assist the body in healing from the consequences of these excesses.

Fasting results in weight loss, elimination of excess cholesterol, triglycerides, and uric acid, as well as accumulated environmental toxins. Often, growths and tumors associated with dietary excesses, such as fibroids and cysts, are reabsorbed. Inflammatory conditions, such as arthritis, colitis, asthma, and hepatitis, often are greatly improved or resolved. Many enzymatic functions of the liver and other organs, including the insulin-resistance characteristic of diabetes, can rapidly normalize. For most adult-onset diabetes patients, medications become unnecessary...

Fasting also assists in an extremely important normalizing process—a process we call taste neuroadaptation. Many modern foods are not the normal foods of our species—they are foods that have been altered to create unnaturally intense taste responses. As a result, most of our modern foods are high in processed sugar, fat, and salt. Our taste buds adapt to these abnormal-but-appealing foodstuffs, making the consumption of whole natural foods less palatable by comparison. Water-only fasting helps to rapidly re-sensitize the palate, so that healthful foods can be fully enjoyed again. Of the many benefits of water-only fasting, this is, for many people, one of the most important."

--Fasting...the lost adaptation
Douglas Lisle, Ph.D., and Alan Goldhamer, D.C.
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We hope you're all having a wonderful time with family and friends. This is such a sweet time of the year.

Until next time,
Be well Santa cells,
Ruth and Matthew

Day 1 of 12 - Water Fast - I'm not even scared.


"Fasting, in the strictest sense, is defined as the voluntary abstinence from food and drink, except water, as long as the nutritional reserves of the body are adequate to sustain normal function. This is the state of physiological rest."
Fasting and Eating for Health, Joel Fuhrman, M.D.


We've been preparing to fast for a few months by reading Dr. Fuhrman's book on the subject. We did it once before for 3 days when Mati got sick and ever since, we have been interested in how our bodies would respond to a longer fast. Dr. Fuhrman recommends a longer fast for health and longevity once every 5 to 1o years. That's what we're doing now. It is not recommended to fast for longer periods of time without medical supervision. Matthew and I, though, have been eating a high nutrient diet for 2 years now and have the nutrient stores required to endure a longer fast. Also, neither of us are on medications or have an illness that needs medical supervision. We will however, be careful. We plan to monitor ourselves and our symptoms and will break the fast if necessary.

That being said, the timing is perfect for us. We're both on vacation and so is everyone else. It's quiet and beautiful outside and very cold. Perfect for staying in and recuperating. We bought matching pajamas. When I was a kid, we always had new pajamas for Christmas. I love this tradition and so we've adopted it for fasting throughout Christmas. We bought more paint supplies. We have a movie pile, books we like and music to listen to. We 're ready!

We found this fantastic snowman.

We appreciated our meals more than usual yesterday. We ate giant salads topped with eggplant and red pepper ratatouille, baked french fries with guacamole and for dessert we savored every delicious bite of our crepes caramel de buerre au salé - which are crepes filled with the most delicious caramel you've ever tasted. We feasted.

Today is Day 1 and it's 3:30pm. We woke up in our twin pj's at 12:30pm and its been a joy to sit here and write. Mati is reading something by Albert Camus and our bodies think we're the best bosses ever for giving them the holidays off for the first time in over 30 some odd years.

Until tomorrow, Day 2,
Be Well, Little elf cells.
"The health of our nation is not improving; in fact, we are getting sicker. Changes are developing in health care, and the public is more aware that a problem exists. Our economy is weighed down by an expensive and largely ineffective medical system that relies on expensive tests, treatments and last minute heroics to attempt to combat the harmful effects of a nation poisoning itself with a rich disease-causing diet."

"The self healing power of the body is often overlooked because it is rarely given a chance to act in a world that expects the quick fix. The power of the body is as evident as green grass, rainy days and sunshine."

These are excerpts from: Fasting and Eating for Health, Joel Fuhrman, M.D. 1995

I wasn't going to tell you this. I was afraid you wouldn't understand. But I realize now that I have underestimated the level of interest and acceptance our friends and families have in understanding the science of nutritional excellence.

So, over the next 12 days, we're going to be water fasting. While most everyone we know will be knee deep in Christmas fudge, we're going to take it down a notch, get in our pajamas and let our bodies do what they do best. Heal themselves.

We're going to begin our water fast on Sunday, December 20, 2009. We plan to break the fast on New Year's Eve.

Until Next time, Check out these Christmasy-like nutritarian dishes we made for our first Eat To Live Holiday Brunch!
And of course,

Be Well Little Cell

Christmas Soup

Pomegranate Clementine Salad

Our friends were creative and made delicious nutritious dishes without salt, oils, or animal products of any kind. It was a feast for the eyes as well as the belly.

If you're interested in finding out more about fasting and its benefits, we think Dr. Fuhrman's book, Fasting and Eating for Health: A medical doctor's program for conquering disease, is a fantastic read.

Food: the ultimate moral choice.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
--Hamlet
Two years ago, Ruth and I decided to change our diet after awakening to the dangers associated with almost all Western-style diets. Cancer, heart attack, stroke, autoimmune disorders, global warming, pollution of our environment and water supply, obesity, antibiotic resistance.

The list goes on and on and in the end it all comes down to three basic factors: breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are literally poisoning ourselves and our planet with our food choices. Don’t believe me? I invite you to read on.

The science is clear. Food is the most powerful environmental factor in the vast majority of diseases. The laws of cause and effect tell us that most diseases are preventable and even reversible. As is the suffering they provoke for our planet and its inhabitants.


Despite all this, each day we choose a path that leads to disease, climate destruction, health care crisis, poverty and famine in the third world. We elect eloquent politicians who speak of change but we choose to ignore the real power each of us exercises each day with our wallets. Do we want change? It sure doesn’t look like it.

Not yet at least. We’re quite happy with our green energy compromises, our troop surges and our well-lit supermarkets with their promise of endless prosperity and material goods. I wouldn’t be so sure. Not with the specter of bankrupt health care, unemployment at 10% and the dollar sinking like a stone.

Or did you really think the American dream would last forever? The good news is that change is possible. You don’t have to worry about carbon taxes, nuclear-armed Pakistan or when the Fed will finally get around to raising interest rates.

If you don’t like the way things are you can change them. You don’t have to wait for your president, preacher or parents to tell you how. It’s pretty simple. Go to refrigerator right now and open it up. Take out everything that you didn’t personally grow or buy from a farmer in your community. Now take out everything whose origins or manner of production are unknown to you. Odds are that’s most of what was in your fridge.

Now give or throw all of that food away and replace it with things that come from your community or personal garden. Repeat with your cupboards, pantry, freezer, and second fridge until you’ve reestablished a link with where your food comes from, how it was grown and transported, and how the grower was compensated.

I’m not asking you to be a saint but I am asking you to return a notion of moral duty to your food choices. For the Jewish it’s called kosher, Muslims call it halal. Christians alike fast and avoid meat on holy days. This is change my friends and you don’t have to wait four years for it to come again.

If you want to put people back to work, always buy locally from organic farms, which require lots of manpower in the place of pesticides and chemicals. If you don’t want to buy all your food this way, start with 20%. Then work your way up. Can you buy a third or half of your food this way?

Each dollar spent is a vote for change and sanity in these insane times. Talk to your friends, support food co-ops and insist your politicians begin to discuss and support local, organic agriculture for a change.


If you don’t want to give up your daily cup of coffee, you can at least insist it be fair trade and organic. The same applies to all our food choices. The more we inform ourselves nutritionally and politically the more we will see that we don’t have to give away our power nor accept the mediocrity that has come to characterize American life.

And most importantly, if you want to choose a healthier lifestyle for yourself and the planet then stop eating animal products. This type of change won’t appeal to your ego nor will it win you the support of many of your friends and family at first. But it will bring about a radical change for both your health and that of the planet. What it lacks in sex appeal it makes up for in vitality. This, my friends, is the American way.

Breakfast Salad

We've discovered breakfast salads. Normally, back in the states, we'd blend a salad in the morning with kale, frozen fruits, nut butters, and some avocados. Here, though, we've opted not buy a blender since we're going home in July and we're trying to keep our lives free of machinery we won't be taking back with us. While blended salads are absolutely delicious and the nutrients absorbed very easily in liquid form, we're just eating the breakfast salad. It's simple, quick, refreshing, filling and its incredibly high in nutrients. It's also gorgeous to look at. Try it for yourself. It tastes even better if you use organic ingredients. And better for the world if you know where that organic produce came from. Go for it!
And tell us what you thought.

First, fill the bottom of a large bowl with lettuce and arugula and slice a banana on top.


Next, dice an apple and put that on top.


Take an orange, peel it, and dice and spread that on top.


Dice a 1/2 an avocado. Spread on top. Almost done.

Sprinkle cinnamon to your liking. And eat it up. Preparation time 5 min. Yum.

Until next time,
Be Well Little Cell

Lean on me.

We have a few friends who have begun the process of really taking drastic measures to change the course of their health, the health of their families and the incidentally the health of the planet. It isn't always easy but it's worth it. One of our dear friends is Myriam. The following is a letter Matthew wrote in a time when Myriam reached for support as those around her couldn't grasp the importance of what she is attempting. We all thought you might benefit from the support too. You can do it!


Hello Myriam,
I've been wanting to write to you for awhile now both to offer support in your transition to a healthier and more fulfilling lifestyle and to just to tell you what's been going on for us here in this little corner of the world. It's unreal how fast time goes. Entering our second year, it seems like it's going faster than ever, not necessarily in a bad way. We are loving everyday here and feel blessed to have this opportunity to be in a fascinating and rich culture like France. At the same time, we are both very excited to come home again. To rediscover the unique people, places and choices that life offers us back home. Oddly enough, my appreciation for my own country and culture continues to grow the more time I spend here in Europe.

For me, it's really been one long lesson in gratitude. European life is in certain ways much simpler and immediate than life back home. Having no car, we walk most of the places we need to go. The city is beautiful and pedestrian friendly and Ruth and I have both found that walking is a lifestyle choice we prefer, both now and for the future. The body feels better as does the soul. There's less stress and without even trying I've found it to be a sort of active meditation which allows me to air out the little frustrations that our busy modern lives encourage. Cause make no mistake, however romantic and enchanting French life can be, it is every bit as full of the little daily challenges and difficulties as life back home. I really believe we go too fast for our own good.

That's why we've made the decision to continue with a very modest yet vital lifestyle. We have quite happily spent the majority of our time in our little city. Many people would consider this odd or even tragic to have voyaged so little outside of our region. But to us, it has been a choice which has paid rich dividends, so to speak. We have an abundance of time, very little stress, kind and interesting friends and the liberty to do truly amazing things. Next week, we go to Paris for three days to watch tennis, visit a museum and check out whatever else interests us. We feel at home here in many visceral ways. So why come home many people ask?

Because we honestly feel that our home country is just as rich and fascinating as European life. I have a hard time understanding why so many Americans have accepted the mediocrity that has come to characterize their country. To us, America is a place of loving family and friends, incredible opportunity both personal and professional. It's has some of the best thinkers and doers in the world today. You just gotta dig a little to find them. We feel blessed to come home to this country, to be welcomed by you and Kerry, to see our family grow and to have the opportunity to continue to do the things which we are passionate about. We are truly blessed to have this choice.

In regards to food, I think you're making some amazing progress towards the goals you've set for your life. I encourage you not to think in black and white terms. Let pleasure be your guide and invite discipline into the mix only to the extent that it is able to peacefully coexist with that pleasure. Remember that every bite of high-nutrient food is both a blessing and a victory for your cells regardless of whatever nutritional goals you might have. And what we call discipline is often just the ability to create space apart from an admittedly crazy society and its eating habits. So start small.

When you are alone or with others that share your nutritional goals, try to create an environment with all your favorite nutrient-dense food choices and only those foods. Give yourself the gift of discovering the pleasure these foods can provide when they don't have to compete with salty, sugary foods. If you can create a home environment that offers only pleasurable, high-nutrient food choices, you will restore a more deliberate aspect to your food choices. Each time you desire something outside this diet, you leave the house and go and get it. Walk if you can because it will allow you plenty of time to meditate upon that choice without judgment.

If you can create this opportunity for yourself, you'll have a great foundation to build upon as you go forth into the world. If someone brings food into your house which doesn't correspond with your nutritional goals, tell them if you have the courage. If not, throw it out or give it away as soon as possible. It's only after you've been able to create a disciplined and highly pleasurable home food environment that you'll be able to extend it to your work, social outings and other events as you desire.

In the beginning, don't expect to be successful in the most challenging food situations. For instance, worrying about food in a party or social outing with all the excitement and craziness that entails is neither fun nor healthy. We know foods can be addictive so treat that knowledge with respect. An alcoholic doesn't kick his addiction with his old drinking buddies, nor a sex addict in a strip club. If you choose to go to a party do your best to find pleasure in whatever high-nutrient choices are available but don't beat yourself up if you desire other foods. If you find no joy in your actions, you won't succeed.

There's nothing inherently wrong with eating any type of food. Your nutritional goals are there to invite more pleasure into your life. The more you break from your diet, the more you'll naturally have to ask yourself if you want to reach the nutritional goals you've set for yourself. If you do, then you'll either start accepting fewer invitations to parties (knowing it's natural to snack at them) or you'll start creating more pleasure in the situations you've already mastered (at home, with a few friends, etc.) so as to resist the temptation to overeat at parties.

This is the best advice I have in addition to continuing to educate yourself about personal nutrition and well-being. We have such blessings in the West and such untapped power to introduce peace and justice into the world simply by bringing more presence to our personal food choices. Each dollar spent and each forkful consumed is an opportunity to remake the world. An opportunity we can no longer afford to take for granted. I think you're exactly where you need to be. Welcome to a conversation that matters.

Bonne continuation et tiens-moi au courant.
Matthew
Until next time,
Be well little cell.

Take An Honest Inventory

An autopsy study in the New England Journal of Medicine found more than 85% of adults between the ages of 21 and 39 already had atherosclerotic changes in their coronary arteries.

Aside:
Fatty plaques and streaks are the beginning stages of atherosclerosis. If there are atherosclerotic changes in the vessels near the heart, that also means the vessels everywhere else in the body have fatty plaque changes too. Brain vessels for instance and the vessels in the genitalia - vessels of particular interest to me. Vessels are vessels and fatty plaques don't just choose heart vessels.

The 1992 Bogalusa Heart Study looked at autopsies performed on children killed in accidental deaths. The study confirmed the existence of fatty plaques and streaks in most children under 12 years of age as well as teenagers!

And why is this the case, you may ask? I'm convinced it's because we all go around thinking we're the ones who feed ourselves and our kids a "healthy" diet.

I think we need to re-evaluate the language we use.

Do we and our children eat 90% of calories from whole unrefined, unprocessed foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds and beans every day? If you've answered no, how about 50%?
If you answered yes to 50%, try for 80%. If you answered no to 50%, even though you can't tell, you're setting yourself and your children up for future health care problems. Maybe its time for a change of heart, pun intended.

And we don't seem to care because why again? Because we've heard it so many times already and we're just too damn busy, right? Because we can't seem to wrap our brains around our nation's love affair with low nutrient foods and our own poor choices around them? Why is this still okay with us?

Because each of us, individually, think we aren't the ones. But we are. I am. You are. We are the Americans we're talking about. Those are our children in those autopsies with the fatty plaques in their blood vessels and we're more concerned with what? What could possibly be more important than this?

So let's take an honest inventory. It's important to put the ego aside here and try not to get angry and try not to make excuses for yourselves and one another.

But even if you do get angry (which is what I did at first); think about it some, sleep on it and see how you feel tomorrow. We'll try again, then.

Here's an easy way to take inventory right this minute and a good rule of thumb in general.

Sit up straight, reach down near your belly button and grab the extra flesh there.

If you're a man and you can pinch more than a 1/2 inch near your umbilicus, you're overweight and at risk for health complications.

If you're a woman and you can pinch an inch of flesh or more, you're overweight and at risk for health complications.

Yes. You.

An inch is not very much, I know.

And you can keep saying things like "live fast, die young", "death by chocolate", "life is short, play hard."

You can say that but I don't believe you.

I have a very dear friend who is dealing with her father's decline from Parkinson's disease. When she reports to me how things are going with him, my heart aches for her in a way that I cannot easily describe. Before I go to sleep at night, I ask the universe to please bring dignity to him as he nears his tragic death, which is taking a toll on too many people, mostly him. I'm certain we would make changes now if we could foresee our own death similar to his. I bet he would if he could.

And yes, your diet in early childhood and what you eat right NOW indicates what kind of death you will die. And yes, diet does have an impact on autoimmune diseases and too many other preventable diseases that we, Americans, die needlessly of. Yes, indeed, it does.

And so I don't believe that you really don't care about the kind of death you will die or the kind of death your children will face or your parents. With all due respect, I don't believe you. I bet you want for yourself, The Good Death.

The death where you go peacefully in your sleep without morphine, medicines, tubing stuck in every orifice, diapers on your ass, mind numb and confused, unable to recognize your surroundings. You don't want that, I'm sure of it.

The Good Death is after having spent so many delightful years with your spouse, children and their children, memories intact, all 11 body systems working together in sweet synchronicity, walking, laughing, and participating, right up until the very end. I bet you want that for your parents, yourself and for your children too.

Up until recently, I really tried to hide the drastic changes we've made in our diet, feeling rather embarrassed that we don't eat the same way others do. I'd sheepishly salt my soup dishes when having friends over. One time I brought a gorgeous veggie packed quinoa salad to my neighbor who gently, of course, said it was "a little bland" and she salted the shit out of it and poured some yogurt on top. I felt embarrassed of myself. But no more. From now on I'm not hiding. I'm saying it out loud. Fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds, beans every single day, every single meal for me please. No thank you on the salt. No thank you on the cream. No thank you on the daily dose of packaged, refined, processed toxic diet. No thank you.

I'm looking for The Good Death. The long, clear, agile, laughter and joy filled life, followed by an uneventful and peaceful passing in my own bed. That's what I want for myself and those who will be responsible for me during my eldership.

It's my dream for you and yours too.
Until next time,

Be well little cell.

References: Eat To Live by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., Ch.1 pg 15 - Digging Our Graves with Forks and Knives - The Effects of the American Diet, part 1.

Bender, R., C. Traunet, M. Spraul. and M. Berger. 1998. Assessment of excess mortality in obesity. Am. J. Epidemiology. 147 (1): 42-48; Wolf, A.M., and G.A. Colditz. 1998 Current estimates of the economic cost of obesity in the United States. Obes. Res. 6(2) 97-106.