7 Characteristics of the Perfect Diet
- WEALTHY: How to pick an investment service (Rick Pendergraft)
- HEALTHY: Crush the "diseases of civilization" with a Stone Age diet (Dr. Loren Cordain)
- WISE: Virginia Woolf on dining well
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Getting even without doing a thing (Michael Masterson)
- "Anti-burnout" advice from the author of French Women Don’t Get Fat
- It’s Fun to Know… about bullfights
- Add "sotto voce" to your vocabulary
“Overworked, Jet Lagged, Airline Pilot Turns His Back On A Six Figure Salary. He Finally Cracks The Code To Making Money On The Internet…While Working Less Than 4 Hours A Month!”
Now it’s your turn…
After years as an airline pilot. Jim was done, sure he had a great job, the money was good, but something just didn’t feel right!
In his heart he knew he was selling himself short…He craved the freedom and respect that owning his own business would give him.
So he began looking into different businesses he could start, but nothing really turned him on, they either cost too much to start or required you to spend all day tied to a desk.
Until…
He resurrected an age old idea, with a modern twist for the internet. That was four years ago and he hasn’t looked back since. What he discovered will amaze you.
- Patrick Coffey
When Paying $5,000 Is a Better Deal Than Paying $200
By Rick Pendergraft
If you paid $200 for a subscription to an investment service and you lost $5,000 on its recommendations, that $200 was a bad investment, wasn’t it?
And if you paid $5,000 for a service but you make $50,000 on its recommendations, that $5,000 was a good investment, right?
Of course. But not everyone sees it that way.
Two weeks ago, I was a speaker at the World Money Show in Orlando. I also spent some time manning the booth for ETR’s Investor’s Daily Edge newsletter.
One gentleman who stopped by our booth to look over the various recommendation services we offer started complaining about the price - $200 per year - that another publisher is charging for its gold newsletter.
I didn’t tell him that a subscription to my ETF Options Trader service is $2,995 per year. (I was afraid he’d have a heart attack and I’d be held accountable!) Instead, I pointed out something that should be uppermost in the mind of anyone who is thinking about subscribing to an investment recommendation service: The cost of the subscription does not determine the value of the service. How much you make or lose from its recommendations is what should concern you.
$200 for that gold newsletter may be a rip-off - as this fellow seemed to think - or it could be a bargain. It all depends on how good its recommendations are at making gains while avoiding losses.
When making the decision to purchase an investment service, do your research. The service not only should have a good track record, its objectives should fit with your tolerance for risk. Even if a service is making money for its subscribers, if the aggressiveness of its recommendations is beyond your comfort level, it is probably not for you … no matter how much (or how little) it costs.
[Ed. Note: Get maximum profits with minimum risk - no matter what the market’s doing - with ETR’s newest investment service, the ETF Options Trader]
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."
Virginia Woolf
7 Characteristics of the Perfect Diet
By Dr. Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
For 2.5 million years, our ancestors ate only what they could hunt and gather themselves. Every food item was raw, fresh, packed with vitamins and minerals, and had no refined sugar or salt. As we evolved, natural selection showed preference for humans eating this type of diet. Over the years, our health and survival as a species became genetically dependent on it.
Our genetic makeup is 99.995 percent identical to that of our Paleolithic ancestors, yet our diet has changed dramatically. In fact, 70 percent of our diet consists of foods that were not even available to our Paleolithic ancestors. The result is that two-thirds of all Americans are now considered to be overweight or obese, one-third have high blood pressure, 64 million have cardiovascular disease, and 11 million have Type II diabetes.
Termed "the diseases of civilization," these health conditions are the direct result of the food we eat.
There are seven crucial nutritional characteristics of the diet our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate that are missing from our modern diet: (1) its glycemic load, (2) its fatty-acid composition, (3) its macronutrient composition, (4) its micronutrient composition, (5) its acid-base balance, (6) its sodium-potassium ratio, and (7) its fiber content. These deviations are responsible for the overwhelming majority of today’s health problems. But by eating a diet that optimizes each of these missing elements, you can greatly improve your chances of living a longer, disease-free life.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Glycemic Load
Our modern Western diet of high-glycemic refined grain and sugar products has a much higher glycemic load (a measure of the blood glucose raising ability of foods) than our ancestors’ diet. Sugars and refined grains now represent more than 39 percent of the calories in the typical U.S. diet, a drastic change that has occurred only within the last 200 years - hardly a blip on the evolutionary time scale. Long-term consumption of high-glycemic foods causes insulin resistance, which is the main factor underlying most degenerative diseases. Removing high-glycemic foods from your diet and filling up on low-glycemic foods is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your ideal weight. It can also help you live a longer life and (more important) enjoy greater health and more capacity for activity in your later years.
2. Fatty-Acid Composition
Fight heart disease, reduce your risk of cancer, and lose weight by consuming enough of the right fats. Eat more monounsaturated fats like olive oil and omega-3 polyunsaturated fats from fish or fish oil supplements, and cut back on vegetable oils and conventionally raised meats.
Our ancestors got most of their dietary fat from wild game. Because wild game meat is much leaner and is a richer source of monounsaturated and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids than our modern feedlot animal meat, our ancestors evolved with a different ratio of these fats than we are consuming today. Experts estimate that our ancestors consumed approximately two omega-6 fat molecules for every one omega-3 molecule, a ratio of 2:1. Today, most people consume an unnaturally distorted ratio of 10 to 20 omega-6 fats for every one molecule of omega-3.
Trans-fats and saturated fats lead to elevated LDL cholesterol, atherosclerosis, and chronic inflammation. A high omega-6:omega-3 ratio also promotes chronic inflammation, a characteristic of many common degenerative diseases.
3. Macronutrient Composition
Add more protein to your diet. This can improve your blood-lipid profiles and help you feel fuller and burn more calories. The best sources of protein are fish, grass-fed beef and eggs.
The proportion of calories we receive from the three main macronutrient groups - carbohydrate, protein, and fat - are also out of sync with how our bodies evolved to function optimally. The typical U.S. diet approximately mirrors USDA recommendations: Around 52 percent of daily energy comes from carbohydrates, 33 percent from fat, and roughly 15 percent from protein. Hunter-gathers received a significantly higher amount of calories from protein (estimated at between 19 and 35 percent) at the expense of calories from carbohydrates (22 to 40 percent).
4. Micronutrient Density
Ensure that your body is nourished and help your stomach feel full and satisfied, without gaining weight, by increasing the nutrient-density of your diet. To do this, try to eat one-third of your calories in the form of fruits and vegetables.
One of the results of a glut of refined grain, sugar, and vegetable oil in our modern diet is the displacement of nutrient-dense foods. Vegetable oils and refined sugars have very few vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals in them, but now contribute more than 36 percent of energy in the average American diet.
5. Acid-Base Balance
Getting 35 percent of your calories from fruit and vegetables can also help restore your body’s acid-base balance.
After digestion and metabolism, all the foods we eat release either acidic or basic substances into the circulatory system. Vegetables, fruit, tubers, roots, and nuts are all net-base-producing, whereas diary products, fish, meat, eggs, cereal grains, and salt are net-acid-producing. With a heavy reliance on fruits and vegetables, our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a net-base-producing diet throughout our evolution.
Today, we depend on dairy products and cereal grains for roughly 35 percent of our calories at the expense of fruit and vegetables, resulting in a modern diet that is net-acid-producing. Switch back to a more balanced diet and you may reduce your risk of kidney malfunction, osteoporosis, age-related muscle wasting, kidney stones, hypertension, and exercise-induced asthma.
6. Sodium-Potassium Ratio
Balance your sodium intake with potassium to reduce your risk of developing disorders like hypertension, stroke, kidney stones, osteoporosis, gastrointestinal-tract cancers, and asthma. By avoiding packaged foods in favor of fresh ones, you’ll cut a majority of the excess sodium from your diet.
The ideal sodium to potassium ratio is less than 1 - and this electrolyte balance is critical for normal cell function. The exorbitant amount of sodium Americans consume in processed foods and by voluntarily adding it to prepared foods (options not available to our ancestors) far outweighs the potassium we ingest from fruit and vegetable sources. Potassium concentrations in vegetables are four times those in milk and 12 times those in grains. Fruit has, respectively, approximately two and five times the potassium concentrations in milk and grains.
7. Fiber
Add more fiber to your diet. This simple addition can help you avoid disorders connected to low dietary fiber, like constipation, appendicitis, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, diverticulitis, hernia, and gastro-esophageal reflux. If you replace refined sugars and oils, grains, dairy products, and processed foods with fruits and vegetables, you will ingest around 42 grams of fiber a day.
It does not take an education in nutrition to know that the typical American diet is low in fiber. We get about 15 grams per day when we should be getting around 25 to 30 grams a day. Vegetables are by far the best source of fiber, and they provide eight times the amount of fiber in whole grains, on an energy basis. Soluble fibers (fruit/vegetables) reduce total and LDL cholesterol and slow the emptying of the stomach - which reduces the appetite and total calories consumed.
Eat Good Food
Eating well can be the key to a long and healthy life. Diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of morbidity and mortality in most Western countries. Virtually all the so-called diseases of civilization have multiple dietary causes, but the solution is the same: Eat a diet based on fruit, vegetables, fish, and naturally raised or wild meat, and avoid excess sugar, grains, dairy, and processed vegetable oils.
This is the diet mankind evolved to eat … and it will keep you healthy for years to come.
[Ed. Note: During the past two decades, Dr. Loren Cordain has researched the effects of diet on human health, specifically examining the links between modern diets and disease. In addition to authoring numerous scientific articles and three popular books, he is the author of the e-book The Dietary Cure for Acne and publisher of The Paleo Diet Newsletter .]
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Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: How to Deal With a Bad Partner
You knew the business idea wasn’t strong enough. You knew your partner would eventually grow bored and abandon the project. You knew his other endeavors would conflict with your own … but you still went forward with the joint venture.
Now, the partnership has caved in - as you thought it would - and you’re left with unsatisfied customers, a big net loss, and a bad taste in your mouth.
How do you proceed?
I’ve been in this situation a few times. In fact, I recently put my trust in a partner who ended up breaking promises, competing with us, and actually slandering us to potential clients.
You could vent your anger by verbally tearing into him. You could work behind the scenes to hurt his other businesses. You could even sue him.
Instead, I recommend you do what I’ve always done when a partnership has turned sour: Withdraw your active support from the partnership and any other businesses he’s involved in.
Resist the urge to take revenge. If you attack, you’ll just end up wasting your resources. I know from prior experience that defeating an opponent is always much more costly than you expect it to be.
If you take this tack, I predict that in less than two years your antagonist will be out of business. He won’t have gone out of business because of any action you took against him, and you will have spent no time or effort or money trying to bring him down. His comeuppance will happen naturally as a result of his own misguided business practices.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: To read more of Michael’s unedited, uncensored (and sometimes unexpected) ruminations, check out his blog here.
And learn how you can be part of an exclusive group of 25 to 50 ambitious businesspeople that Michael will be leading through an elite 5-day program that can help you dramatically increase the profitability of your business here.]
Worth Quoting: Mireille Guiliano on Taking Time for Yourself
"We have to take ‘beach time’ - a space for ourselves - every day, because we live in a world of burnout. Even if you take 20 to 30 minutes for yourself, you’ll be a better worker, a better colleague, a better person. It benefits the people around you as much as it benefits you."
(Source: Business 2.0)
It’s Fun to Know: About Bullfights
Bulls are colorblind and cannot see red. It is the motion of the matador’s cape that causes them to charge. The fact that the cape is red means nothing to the bulls. It is a matter of tradition.
Start Making Money Today
Interested in getting a nice little side-business going on the Internet? Or maybe even from your living-room table?
But you don’t have too much money, you don’t have too much time, and you’re not exactly Bill Gates when it comes to technology. Sound familiar?
A lot of people are in the same boat. The good news is that ETR has heard you. And now we’ve done something about it…
We’ve asked our colleague Marc Charles to be on the lookout for profit opportunities that can be run from a kitchen table, your desktop or out on the road.
Criteria? They’ve got to be inexpensive, easy to start, and still have great income potential, but without a lot of red tape.
They say when you’re first getting your feet wet with a side-business, the most important dollar to make is the first one. Well, Marc is an expert at taking beginning entrepreneurs and showing you how to make that first buck. He knows, because he’s done it dozens of times for himself, his family and his friends.
If you’ve been dreaming about starting your own business … now you can get started for about the price of 2 lattes.
And get this - you could be making money literally just hours from now. Imagine the feeling of finally getting a side business launched - TODAY!
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Sotto Voce
"Sotto voce" (SAH-toh VOH-chee) - from the Italian for "under voice" - means spoken in a low, soft voice … often with the intention of not being overheard.
Example (as used by Jeff Hull in The New York Times Magazine): "If you saw Bernie Krause, a sotto voce man with heavy, nearsighted eyes, seated amid the baffling array of high-tech sound-engineering gear in his Glen Ellen, CA studio, you might never guess that he was once flung down a Rwandan mountainside by a mountain gorilla."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker … build your self-confidence and intellect … increase your attractiveness to others … just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR’s new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007