It seems everywhere you turn someone has yet another collection of diet tips and advice. I’ve found most of them to be confusing, contradictory and often an outright con. If you’ve had your fill of health fads and you’re looking for health ideas that work, here is my favorite collection of unconventional health tips for when you’re ready to move beyond the basics.
Unconventional health tips: how to never worry about weight loss again.
General Health & Wellbeing
- Learn what is involved, and why it’s important, to change mindset. All too often it’s easiest to accept conventional wisdom instead of challenging the status quo and thinking for oneself. Learn how to change mindset.
- Learn where food comes from and eat food which closely resembles what it started life out as. Eat an orange rather than drinking store bought orange juice. A fresh chicken breast is more nutritious than store bought chicken curry. Choose fewer, simpler ingredients. This simple principle will reduce the number of additives and preservatives you consume.
- Educate yourself on how industrial food is making us sicker, fatter and poorer. A good place to start is to watch the movie Food, Inc. A highly recommended book is Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition by Marion Nestle. (Amazon).
- Avoid mainstream supermarkets in favor of local greengrocers and health food stores. Apart from the obvious benefits, this allows you to forget about use by dates. Eat food which should be thrown out next week if not consumed.
- Fall in love with your body’s waste elimination systems. In today’s society we have steered so far away from our natural foods that our bodies have become sick and weak. We have processed and refined our foods to the point of death. As a result, our bodies cannot eliminate the toxins quickly enough, and most of us have highly toxic intestines. Watch this video to see what a blocked colon looks like, and the effects it has on health (ignore the first 45 seconds).
- Make intestinal cleaning a daily habit. My personal favourite is simply to sprinkle psyllium husk on a wheat-free breakfast cereal and mix 3 teaspoons in diluted apple juice at night before retiring. Consider doing a Psyllium & Bentonite Internal Cleansing Program every 2 months.
- Learn to breathe correctly. According to the Taoist view, the nutrition provided by air through correct breathing is even more vital to health and longevity than that provided by food and water through nutrition. Think you know how to breathe correctly? Daniel Reid spends more than 50 pages(!) describing correct breathing techniques in his book The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity (Amazon).You might also be interested in Dr. Al Sears’ hotly criticized, but excellent PACE Program.
- Prioritize health. Some people find that looking after their health is time consuming and so avoid doing anything about it. Each and every one of us has 24 hours in the day. The difference between those who take time for health and those who can’t is that those who do have allocated enough time because its important to them. For those who say they don’t have enough time, it really means there are other things more important than their health. Time is there for everyone. If you want to improve health, change your priorities sufficiently so that you can allocate time to preparing healthy meals, exercising and breathing.
Food & Drink
- Make friends with fats. Forget everything you know about fat for a moment. For years the health industry and food manufacturers have bundled all fats, good or bad, together and have told us to eliminate them from our diets. However, there are two sides to the story of fats. It is absolutely true that you should aim to completely eliminate the ‘bad’ fats, such as trans-fatty acids and saturated fats. However, there are also the ‘good’ fats, also known as Essential Fatty Acids that are so beneficial and vital to our wellbeing, yet sadly we are chronically deficient in them. My favourite is coconut oil, because it is known to increase your metabolism dramatically and give the body an instant source of clean, slow burn energy. An enlightening article can also be found at Ray Peat.
- Follow an alkaline diet. The majority of modern diets are acidic in nature. Acidic diets create yeast or candida colonies that grow and expand in the system. This imbalance causes both short term and long-term damage to the system. Some bodies can continue for years with this undetected condition. However, the damage is being done, even while our body’s intelligence tries to maintain the pH balance by using any resources available. Here are 12 Reasons to Alkalize Your Body and a List of Alkaline Foods.
- Treat your heart. Studies have found that just by adding a little cayenne and ginger to your diet, you will effectively improve the circulation and flow of blood throughout your entire body. Try a simple tea with ginger, lemon, honey and a pinch of cayenne as a delicious pick-me-up to really get your heart pumping. A recommended book that refers to this method is 21 Days to a Healthy Heart: Eat Your Way to Heart Health by Alan L. Watson (Amazon).
Hair & Beauty
Coming soon.
In Conclusion
Many people believe that they are doing themselves a favor by finding a couple of healthy foods and eating only those things day after day. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Like quitting any long-term habit, changing your diet may take some time and effort, but the rewards are well worth it. While extremely brief, this article has hopefully given you a few ideas for extreme health approaches that work.
The diet and health industries are big business and before you buy into either of them, here are a few hardcore health tips that don’t cost the earth, but do produce results.
If you've enjoyed what you've read so far, you'll certainly enjoy my big-picture thinking in the booklet The 2012 Manifesto. You can read more about it here or just click on the big-ass Download button below and I'll take you straight to the download page.
I am a global roamer, soul-searcher, contrarian who has challenged the norm since 1975. My goal is to connect with other world-changers to help make sense of life in an increasingly senseless world. 
. Thanks!
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Wow its just great i like all 11 health tips. Your blog is full of information and posts. Thank you for sharing this valuable information.
I’d like to add my 2 cents worth about the information Michael has just shared with you. He is absolutely right in what he’s telling you. I happen to be practicing what Michael is now preaching, and it works.
When I was growing up, back in the 30’s and 40’s, what was called “nutrition” was simply good advice that was passed around from family to family, kitchen to kitchen. We didn’t need Michael’s sage advise so much back then. It’s true, of course, that in those days we weren’t concerned about such things as whether or not the vegetables were grown organically, the chickens “free range”, or if the corn was created artificially in some agronomy lab.
And our food came right from our own garden or from a neighboring farm …. not from thousands of miles away as is the case today. On average, today most food in North America travels 1,300 miles from farm to plate! How else do you get grapefruits in New England and maple syrup in New Mexico? Or salmon in Kansas or pineapples in Wisconsin?
There wasn’t much concern about proper proportions of carbs, proteins and fats. But what my grandparents DID know was how to grow fresh foods, how to properly prepare and cook them, and which ones were “good” for you based upon hundreds if not thousands of years of experience.
In other words, they (and I) learned something about proper eating habits directly from our family, friends and close neighbors. Nowadays, that just doesn’t seem to be the case. So what are you, the reader, to do? Well, one good thing to do if follow the excellent advise given here by Michael. You might also want to check out my webpage, which is also about “health”, at http://www.valleylongevity.com.
Thanks Patrick.
Nice website you have, although the correct link is http://www.valleyoflongevity.com/
I totally agree with this article. More power to the author.
Absolutely agree!! Thank you for sharing this valuable information.
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