Loving Life in the Flu-pocalypse

Yeah, so I'm one of snarky, uppity health and fitness assholes who can't shut up for five minutes about how the modern American/western lifestyle is killing people. I am constantly turning my nose up and grimacing at people and the garbage they joyfully allow to pollute their own temples. What do you want me to say?

I'm sorry if it's literally insane to me that it doesn't occur to you, while you lay in bed in a puddle of your own sweat, puking and shitting all over yourself, in pain, that you would rather endure that at least once a year and constant colds and other maladies throughout the year than stop feeding your body shit. I watch people suck down two and three or more Red Bulls a day, eat chicken tenders and highly processed pasta dishes made with fake cheese sauce ... you know, I could describe this shit all day ... and I look at them and I'm like, yeah, the flu is going to kick the living crap out of you. And like the self-fulfilling prophecy that is, it happens. Oh, you're sick again? You're just down on your luck, aren't ya.

I and countless others can attest to you that food doesn't have to be garbage to taste good. The problem with people's perceptions of healthy food is that for years "science" lied to us and said that fats were bad for us. Well, fats are where the flavor comes from in foods, so instead of fat they shoveled a heaping pile of highly refined and nutritionally devoid carbs in your face, and loaded that shit up with sugar and salt - hey, it's low fat! My diet is high in fat, high in cholesterol, and high in calories, yet my body fat percentage is around 12-13%, and I walk confidently amongst the chronically sick and ill utterly unworried about catching whatever bug they're suffering. My food is delicious, because I cook it in bacon drippings and smother it in egg yolk. I eat homemade mayonnaise. I drown my vegetables in butter, my chicken in homemade gravy.

I see people post amusing memes about wanting to be skinny but also wanting to eat tacos. Well, pick one and own it. If you want to eat tacos - and, oh by the way, I cook the best tasting Mexican dishes you've ever had that have no flour or corn tortillas - then eat tacos and forget about being lean and healthy. If you want to be lean and healthy, forget about Taco Bell and learn how to cook Mexican food at home. You have the entirety of the internet at your fingertips. You're a gourmet chef if you know how to read and follow directions.

Even if you don't want to go full paleo, you can take some pretty simple steps to lessen your chances of getting sick, and limiting the severity when you do:

• Eat your effing vegetables. Raw preferably, lightly steamed otherwise. Two-thirds of your portions is preferable.
• Get enough sleep. You can't fight disease if you're exhausted. If you can't sleep, your adrenal glands are probably fatigued. Stop sucking on energy drinks.
• Drink water. Sugar is the number one contributor to disease. If you're drinking soda all day, or energy drinks loaded with more sugar than I consume in a week, you're going to get sick. If you're dehydrated, you won't get enough sleep.
• Take care of your gut. 70% of your immune system is the bacteria in your gut. If you're sucking down antibiotics, drinking diet sodas or consuming highly processed, chemical-laden "food", your microbiota is going to take a beating and won't be able to do its job.
• Limit alcohol consumption. Alcohol is poison. It's called inTOXICation, people. Geez.
• Get sunlight as much as possible. One of the main reasons there's a flu "season" is sunlight is limited. The days are shorter than the nights, and then, typically being cold, we fully cover our bodies to keep warm. Your body converts sunlight into vitamin D, and then vitamin D into anti-microbial peptides that kick the snot out of pathogens. Almost any illness can be attributed at least in part to a vitamin D deficiency.
• In lieu of sun, take a whole food-derived multi-vitamin, and remember, you get what you pay for. I take Mercola Whole Food Vitamin-Plus. It's like $52 for a month supply, but almost anything you buy at the store is going to be shit. The vitamin D dose has to be at least 2,000iu; preferably 5,000. The RDA of vitamins is just enough to keep you from getting deficiency illnesses like rickets (vitamin D) and scurvy (vitamin C), etc. You almost always need more than that. A lot more.
• If you really want to go all-out you can take a mushroom supplement like turkey tail, which will really supercharge your immune system.

Health and wellness requires a holistic approach - that is to say, treat the whole body to keep the whole body healthy. Disease is a symptom. It's a symptom of imbalance and deficiency in your body; it's almost always entirely environmental. Yes, some people are genetically predisposed to get certain illnesses, but those are only triggered by nutritional deficiencies or environmental exposure to impurities, be it the air we breathe, or the food and water we ingest. If you're sick all the time now, that will be the same reason you get cancer when you're older.

Most people don't realize how lousy they feel because they've become accustomed to feeling lousy. So, not surprisingly, they think I'm an asshole because I constantly flaunt in their faces about how much of a machine I am. So I suppose they have no frame of reference when I try to explain to them how awesome it is not to feel like shit all the time. It's your life; torture yourself if you wish. But I'm here to tell you: eating healthy is not a sacrifice. It's not a burden. When you know what the shit is doing to your body, and you realize how awesome healthy food can taste - especially when your taste buds are no longer dulled by mega-doses of sodium and artificial flavor enhancers - it's not difficult. At all. It's so easy, in fact, that I can't shut the fuck up about it.