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by Dr. Mercola

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Insulin is key to health and disease prevention, and controlling your carbohydrate intake is the most effective way to control your insulin level and optimize your insulin sensitivity
  • An estimated 80 percent of Americans are insulin resistant, even though their glucose levels are normal, and thus undiagnosed, placing them at increased risk for chronic disease
  • A low-carb ketogenic diet addresses the endocrine aspect of metabolic health, effectively driving your insulin level down, and as your insulin decreases, your metabolic rate increases
  • The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway controls autophagy and plays an important role in aging and cancer. While protein primarily activates mTOR and therefore needs to be restricted to just what your body needs, insulin, which is increased by sugar and refined carbohydrates, activates mTOR to a far greater degree than protein
  • Aside from a ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting — where you do not eat for 16 to 18 hours a day; 12 hours being the absolute minimum — is another effective way to regain your insulin sensitivity and control mTOR

In this interview, Benjamin Bikman, Ph.D., an obesity and diabetes scientist and associate professor of physiology and developmental biology at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah,1 reveals how the ketogenic diet affects your physiology and supports optimal health.

“My main interest early on was looking at how the body adapts to obesity,” he says. “That was my master’s thesis. My master’s degree was exercise science here at BYU … I ended up pursuing a Ph.D. in bioenergetics at East Carolina University, under this wonderful scientist named Lynis Dohm, Ph.D.

His focus had been looking at how lipids cause insulin resistance. That was an interest of mine because I thought this was starting to explain why and how the body becomes insulin-resistant in the midst of obesity … Insulin resistance is that connection.

During my Ph.D., we were looking at inflammation in people who were losing weight following gastric bypass procedures and how improved inflammation is likely part of the improvements in insulin sensitivity that people see post-bypass.

I followed that up with a post-doctoral fellowship at … the Duke National University of Singapore. They had this focus on cardiometabolic disorders. I … looked at inflammation as a particular mediator there … Then in 2011, my alma mater, BYU, came knocking. They wanted to do more diabetes research, and I fit the requirements … That got me, essentially, to where I am now …

If I really am getting this conviction, based on my own research, that insulin is key to not only diabetes but to almost every chronic disease, what is the best way to control insulin? That was when I insisted on only looking at published human clinical data — not rodents, not cells, not epidemiology, just clinical data.

The low-carb diet was just this very effective way to do that. That then got me interested in asking questions about ketones, which is what my lab is doing … how ketones are regulated by insulin.”

Bikman’s conviction that insulin is a key to health and disease prevention, and that controlling carbohydrate intake is the most effective way to control insulin, led him to start practicing what he’d learned. He went on a low-carb diet about eight years ago. “Sure enough, at middle age, it’s helped me stay healthy,” he says.

Most Americans Are Insulin Resistant

Unfortunately, many, including doctors, still do not understand the influence of insulin on health and disease. The late Dr. Joseph Kraft, former chairman of the department of clinical pathology and nuclear medicine at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chicago, wrote the book “Diabetes Epidemic and You: Should Everyone Be Tested?”

In it, he presents data that suggests 80 percent of Americans are in fact insulin resistant, or have “diabetes in situ.” Based on data from 14,000 patients,2 Kraft developed a powerful predictive test for diabetes.3 He would have the patient drink 75 grams of glucose, and then measure their insulin response over time, at half-hour intervals for up to five hours.

He noticed five distinctive patterns suggesting that a vast majority of people were already diabetic, even though their fasting glucose was normal. Only 20 percent of patients had healthy post-prandial insulin sensitivity and low diabetes risk. According to Kraft, “Those with cardiovascular disease not identified with diabetes … are simply undiagnosed.”

One of the take-home messages here is that insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia (a condition marked by excess insulin in your blood relative to your level of glucose) are two sides of the same coin, as they drive and promote each other. In other words, if you have hyperinsulinemia, you are essentially insulin resistant and on your way toward developing Type 2 diabetes.

High Insulin Is a Key Disease Promoter

Both insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia promote fatty liver and high blood glucose, and both of those, in turn, promote atherosclerosis. High blood pressure is another side effect of insulin resistance that drives atherosclerosis by placing stress on your arteries.

The effects of insulin resistance are really at the heart of most if not all chronic degenerative diseases. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s are just a few of the most obvious ones. The logical conclusion then would be that addressing insulin resistance is a foundational component of effective health care. Bikman says:

“When I teach this to my students … I put insulin resistance in the core. Around it, I have all these chronic diseases. It’s what I call the ‘wheel of misfortune.’ Really, the most common cancers, prostate and breast cancers, almost always … will heavily express — by six or seven times — the number of insulin receptors. So, insulin is promoting the growth of the tumor.

With dementia, the connection between insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s is so tight that people refer to it as Type 3 diabetes. With sarcopenia, we know that if a muscle becomes insulin-resistant, that actually diminishes insulin’s ability to promote the anabolic production of proteins within the muscle …

We have to have our medical practitioners start appreciating … the utility [of] measuring insulin, because our focus on measuring glucose misses the mark. As someone’s becoming insulin-resistant, their insulin is climbing, but it’s enough to keep their glucose in check.

And because we always look at glucose, we don’t catch the disease until they become so insulin-resistant that no amount of their own insulin is enough to keep the glucose in check. Now, the glucose starts to climb — 10 years later, perhaps — and that’s when we detect the problem. We’re looking at the wrong marker.”

How the Ketogenic Diet Improves Insulin Sensitivity

The question then becomes, how do we treat insulin resistance? As Bikman’s research reveals, the ketogenic diet is part and parcel of the “cure” for this condition.

“For me, the benefit of a low-carb ketogenic diet is that it addresses the endocrine aspect of metabolic health,” _Bikman says. “For too long … the message has been completely focused on calorie number._

It is this idea that if you can simply put a person into caloric deficiency, they will lose weight — problem solved … But we know that has long-term consequences … There’s a lasting metabolic damage …

Nevertheless, the power of the low-carbohydrate diet is that it addresses the endocrine component. As important as calorie number is, and I can appreciate the laws of thermodynamics … we cannot ignore the relevance of hormones, especially insulin.”

As explained by Bikman, it’s important to realize that insulin is what dictates what your body does with the energy it has — the energy you consume and the energy you have stored. “Insulin has its strong, capable hands right on the steering wheel of what the body does with the energy that it has available,” he says.

Importantly, research shows your metabolic rate increases as insulin decreases. “To me, that’s the power of the low-carb diet. You’re controlling insulin, and that can start to address all of those chronic diseases,” Bikman says.

The Importance of Cycling High and Low Carbohydrate Intake

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World hunger is solvable in four words because it’s not a hard problem.

The first solution is “Sardines, crackers, water filters.” These four things could be made available to the world’s population with little more than existing manufacturing and distribution channels.

The second (and better) 4-word solution is to “grow and harvest locally.”

Grow and Harvest Locally

The challenges of providing food to difficult places on earth are best framed as they would be in providing food for astronauts engaged in interplanetary travel. Bringing food to a distant planet is unfeasible. Therefore, what’s transported are seeds and knowledge. Food is harvested at the destination from those ingredients.

On earth, food comes from land, water, sun, work, and education. Everywhere people are currently starving, the first three of those ingredients are already present.

Is it feasible to harvest or grow food in all of the world’s biomes?

If viewed from the vantage point of intra-planetary “space” travel, then, yes, of course, it is.

Then, Why Does World Hunger Persist?

Because stated desires are mistaken for intent, an unchallenged shortage mentality, the mistaken belief that personal contributions don’t matter, and lack of knowledge about how to harvest food from local land and waters.

Still, world hunger will not end until the usual suspects abandon artificial prosperity blocks. The only thing powerful enough to do that is overwhelming abundance.

Stated Desire vs. Intent

A stated desire to “end world hunger” is not the intent to do anything, at all, about hunger. Unless the speaker has a grocery bag in their hands, it’s virtue signaling.

Virtue Signaling

Virtue signaling is like wind past the ear; pleasant, but empty except for any action the listener might take. The speaker withdrawals from the Bank of Elegance to purchase the listeners good will. “Rather than pay in action, or in fact, they enchant with the grace of their salute. The true courtesy is the performance of duty: the spurious, and especially the useless, is deceit. It is not respect but rather a means to power.”1

“Leaders” touting a desire to end world hunger ought to be accountable for grocery deliveries in proportion to the loudness, and reach, of their speech.

Shortage Mentality

Is there a shortage of sardines, crackers, or water filters?

If you don’t know the answer, then shortages aren’t the problem. Anyone with a spare $900 could ship a ton of sardines to Venezuela, today!

Price controls, and a lack of imagination cause shortages. Free markets resolve most shortages. Those that remain require imaginative substitutes. If sardines come up short, substitute a can of spam. Starvers can’t be choosers.

The First Best Solution is You

Personal steps taken towards the resolution of large problems are not meaningless; nor are they mere gestures. They’re the first best solution because the need is met:

  • Personally, imparting knowledge and experience to the doer.
  • Locally, improving the immediate environment.
  • At the least possible cost as people make sure of that when their time and money is at stake.

Passing the buck to a group masks the reality that doing so gives it to another person. Unless people (who make up every group) have the expertise, the price of the solution increases and the likelihood of success, or any action at all, is decreased.

‘Wars’ on Effects

Wars declared on effects, rather than causes, are guaranteed (designed?) to never end. Even my 4-word solutions to end world hunger presume that hunger, itself, is the problem.

Hunger is an effect of a shortage of food, not eating food that’s available, or not digesting food that’s eaten. Hunger doesn’t cause these conditions. However, where there are no medical, or psychological, problems, making food available to the hungry is the solution because it addresses the cause.

Sadly, more food than needed to feed the world must be made available to the world, to overcome artificial prosperity blocks by the usual suspects.

Prosperity Blocking by the Usual Suspects

Western countries are using aid to Africa as a smokescreen to hide the “sustained looting” of the continent as it loses nearly $60bn a year through tax evasion, climate change mitigation, and the flight of profits earned by foreign multinational companies, a group of NGOs has claimed.

Attempts to make the population less hungry are direct threats to the rackets that profit from hunger. From the vantage point of the scoundrel, world hunger is not a problem, but an opportunity. A hungry population is a controllable, and profitable, population.

Any good thing can be blocked, or destroyed, with a tiny fraction of the energy it takes to create it. Therefore, worldly power is obtained, more quickly and easily, by blocking the good than it may be obtained by producing the good.

Prosperity blocking is widespread, efficient, and predictable. I was tempted to say the resolution to world hunger is in three words: “Stop Blocking Prosperity.” But abundance, not the blocking of it, is the correct solution.

Food Like Air

Recent attempts to outlaw the collection of rainwater proves that nothing is outside the scoundrel’s willingness to block. The more precious the good, the more profitable the block. But, where abundance reigns, prosperity blocks fail.

Rainwater blocking fails only where the abundance of rain overwhelms the block. The second 4-word solution to end world hunger is best because it leads towards making food available in overwhelming abundance.

Only when food is available like air will world hunger come to an end.

Conclusion

196 countries would have plenty to spare after gearing up factories and transportation to provide 7.5 billion people with sardines, crackers and water filters. The unchallenging project would realign providers and channels to tackle more challenging problems like getting fresh fruit and vegetables on the plates of everyone in the world!

The better solution is to frame the challenge of food provision as intra-planetary travel where it must be harvested from, or on, the ground of the hungry. Only when food is available in such abundance that it overwhelms the prosperity blocks from the usual suspects, may attempts to end world hunger be successful.


  1. The Art of Worldly Wisdom, by Balthasar Gracian, page 115, “cxci Do not take Payment in Politeness”. 

The world discards ideas and people that present multiple standard deviations away from “normal”. And yet, Reality has always been phenomenal and noumenal. To ensure you’re able to thrive in the artificial chaos of this generation you’ll need to be an outlier, in many ways. Here’s “The Outlier’s Handbook” to optimize your trajectory.

The Outlier’s Handbook

(Thriving in Artificial Chaos)

Table of Contents

Part 1 — What Outliers?

“Let Your Reasonableness Be Known to Everyone”

  • Ockham’s Razor: Benefits & Limits
  • The Bookends of Normalcy Bias & Cognitive Dissonance
  • “This Book Goes Too Far!”

What Outliers?

  • Outliers Defined
  • You Know You’re An Outlier If . . .
  • Outlier Benefits
  • Outlier Costs
  • Personal Secession and Other Outlier Mindsets

Part 2 — It’s Your World, Boss!

This Is Where You Live

American Roulette

  • The Constitution is Safe!
  • A Bank with Social Services Around It
  • Democracy: The God that Failed
  • The Corporation
  • The Deep State
  • Fascism, American Style

Lifecycle of Nations

  • “Poverty of Nations” Report Card
  • Imperial Collapse Playbook

Danger, Will Robinson!

Technocracy: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation

Regional Bloc Head Mercantilism

  • Gee, Maybe Nation-States Weren’t So Bad, After All
  • Solutions Amidst Global Fascism
  • Change Happens Like This, Now

Part 3 — The Usual Suspects

Call Them As You See Them

Origin & Story of Rulers and Authorities

  • Angelic Gen 6 View: Consistency & Insights
  • So, Who are “They”?
  • The “New” Face of Evil (Follow the Blood)
  • Long Term Trends Require Spiritual Unity
  • The Minions
  • A Working Structure of Oppression

They Walk Among Us

  • Serial Killers
  • How Can You Spot One?
  • Political Ponerology
  • 7 signs you might be dating one
  • Protection From Them
  • Speech Patterns
  • I, Psychopath
  • The Hidden Cost of Killing Psychopaths
  • Beware the Backlash

Elements of Their World View

Their Goals

  • ”Ye Shall Be As Gods”

Their Methods

  • The Moral Code of Evil
  • Inversion
  • Undisclosed Adhesion Contracts
  • Counterfeit Money
  • Controlled Markets
  • Technocracy
  • Stacked & Interlocking Pyramidical Structures
  • Consolidation
  • Democracy
  • Eugenics
  • Perpetual Fear
  • Long-Term Planning
  • With Methods Like This, Who Needs the Occult?

Part 4 — Acquiring Immunity

Move #1: Acquire Personal Immunity

Personal Matters

  • Purpose is Everything
  • Managing Outlierhood
  • Growth
  • Ethical Time Travel

Health Matters

  • First Do No Harm
  • Clean Food, Water, Air & Place
  • Nutrient Dense Diet
  • Gut Flora, Probiotics and the Second Brain
  • Optimal Exercise
  • Stress & Breathing
  • Life Extension & Blood Sugar Management
  • Sensible Health Insurance
  • Putting It All Together

Spiritual Matters

  • Intelligent or Random Design
  • Oneism (Monism) vs. Dualism
  • CINO’s & MINO’s
  • Christianity Leads To Science, Islam leads to Murder
  • Gandhi or Jesus?
  • Get Blessed
  • Get Uncursed
  • Supernatural Immunity: The Mind & Way Of Christ
  • The Whole Council of God
  • Spiritual Warfare
  • Practical Examples of Spiritually Based Solutions

Locational Matters

  • The Best Place to Live
  • Where Not to Live
  • Should you relocate?
  • The World is Yours
  • The Illusion of Ownership
  • Mobility
  • G.O.O.D Project – Lessons Learned

Family Matters

  • Instrument of Recursive Perfection
  • Spouse Choice
  • Children
  • Extended Family
  • Friends Worth the Title are Family
  • Community

Legal Matters

  • Natural Law
  • The Constitution is Safe!
  • Jurisdiction Matters
  • Where is the Agreement?
  • It’s Hard to Be a Free Man
  • Unraveling Your Liberty

Financial Matters

  • Money is for Immunity & Purpose
  • Business as Extension of Purpose
  • Tax Penalties for Fear and Poor Planning
  • Mortgage Slavery, Repealed
  • Austrian Economics is Real Economics
  • Investments in Immunity & Purpose Have the Highest ROI
  • Asset Protection

Political Matters

  • Terms of “State” & “Government”
  • The Diversion Of Left – Right Thinking
  • The Votes that Matter
  • Optimal Government = Perfect Self-Government
  • The Chief Asset Of The State: Fear & Belief In It’s Necessity
  • All Matters of Liberty Are Related
  • Caveat Viator: Libertarianism and Anarchy are Aspects of a Complete Worldview
  • Govern Thyself Perfectly and Hold Death Dear

Perspective Matters

  • The Most Valuable Commodity on the Planet
  • Philosophers On Donuts
  • Terms of “Freedom” & “Liberty”
  • Equality & Authority
  • Freedom & Structure
  • Peace Does Not Flow From Passivity
  • Proof and Truth
  • You Can’t Beat Everything with Nothing
  • “Let’s Just Split the Difference and Find a Middle Ground”
  • Stoicism
  • The Opportunity in Uncertainty
  • If Swamp Rats Can’t be Exterminated Why Can You?
  • What About America?

Doing Matters

  • Tony Robbin’s Best Trick
  • Think Spiritually, Act Locally
  • Getting Things Done
  • Low Hanging Fruit
  • Tragic Flaws of Conventional Prepping
  • Expert Tips
  • How To Lose Without Fighting (An Outlier’s Not To-Do List)

Part 5 — Ants & The Human Mosaic

Change The World in Four Moves

  • Humans as an Ant Army
  • Move #1: Immunity
  • Move #2: Specialize
  • Move #3: Move
  • Move #4: Cooperate
  • Humanize the Best Attributes of Animals & Insects

Part 6 — Problems: Solutions

Move #2: Specialize & Pick One

Personal Concerns

  • Training Disguised as Education
  • Shortening Attention Spans
  • Media Agitprop

Health Concerns

  • Eugenics
  • Vaccines Vs. Immunity
  • Socialized Medicine
  • Food Fascism & GMOs
  • Fluoridated water
  • Nuclear Waste & Meltdown Disasters
  • Geo-Engineering
  • Disease(s) Cured

Spiritual Concerns

  • Psychopathy
  • Moral Relativism
  • Odious Debt (Slavery)
  • Wars of Conquest
  • False-Flag Attacks
  • End Times Decoder Rings
  • 501c3 Churches

Locational Concerns

  • Agenda 21
  • Scientific Control Grid
  • Power Grid Fragility

Family Concerns

  • The State as Great Father
  • Broken Families

Legal Concerns

  • Patent Squelching
  • Webs of Undisclosed Adhesion Contracts
  • Drug Wars
  • Licensing
  • Militarization of Police
  • Surveillance State
  • Monopoly
  • Bonus: Beating Traffic Tickets

Financial Concerns

  • Fractional Reserve Banking (The Theft of Human Labor)
  • Disappearing Middle-Class A.K.A Unemployment
  • Currency Wars
  • US Bankruptcy
  • World Banking Systems
  • Institutional(ized) Theft
  • Market Manipulation
  • Global Cooling, Warming …Climate Change?
  • Technocracy

Political Concerns

  • Collectivism
  • Globalism

Part 7 — Appendices

  • In Case of Emergency: Read First!
  • Four Ways to Parse Solutions
  • Reading List for Outliers
  • Outlier Creeds
  • Sovereignty & Law
  • Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses
  • Agorist Road-map Kyle Bennet
  • 100 Ways To Leave Leviathan
  • Wayne & Barry’s Guide for World Rulers

The best way to quit drinking wine is to replace it with something else. For wine you’ll need direct and indirect replacements.

The indirect replacements are for the routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes, feelings, circumstances and occasions that surround your wine drinking.

The better your choice of replacement(s) for the drink and all these other things that surround your drinking the easier the quitting will be.

I wrote similar words about quitting coffee, last week. And I’m testing their limits by simultaneously giving up wine and coffee. Wine is the tougher of the two because I like wine more. It’s also become more ingrained in my lifestyle and eating habits than coffee ever did.

I thought about calling this article, “How to Give Up Alcohol”, but, I don’t have experience with drinking other forms of alcohol, besides wine. I can’t tell you how to stop drinking alcohol unless its the alcohol in wine your trying to give up. Like every article I write this is about my direct experience. In this case my direct experience is in giving up wine.

It’s possible that some of my experience may be useful for wine alcoholics, but, that would be presumptuous. If you have a more extreme form of addiction than I’m writing about here the additional benefits of an isolated environment, group support and a counselor is probably warranted. It’s never been easier to find an Alcohol Treatment Program near you.

Should you stop drinking Wine?

The biggest stumbling block for quitting anything is knowing if and why you need to quit. In the case of wine you have to be very clear and honest with yourself on your reasons for giving it up. Wine, itself, is not a harmful drink. But, you can make it into one by drinking too much of it.

How much is too much? I’ll give you my answer, but, you’ll have to come up with yours. In terms of health one glass of wine a day is good. Between one and two glasses the benefits drop off, rapidly, according to bodyweight. There is no literature anywhere recommending more than two glasses, regardless of bodyweight. So, if health is your value there’s your answer.

If you exceed the amount good for your health its bad for your body. At that point you can no longer claim health benefits as your excuse for drinking more.

I am giving up wine for the following reasons:

  • It’s interfered with the length and quality of my sleep.
  • Lack of sleep has compromised the clarity of my thoughts and the quality of my writing.
  • I’ve been exceeding the small quantity that’s good for my health.

These are not acceptable tradeoffs for my enjoyment and they’re certainly not Optimal. I won’t be having wine until its just another drink option and I can take it or leave it. Here’s how I think about it: “Wine that detracts from my health and productivity has got to go.”

Being this clear on my why and if is probably the only thing that enables me to actually stop drinking it. Seems to me the more wine detracts from your life the more motivation you have to stop drinking it. I highly recommend being honest here and getting extremely clear on your motivations.

Replacements

Quitting is a transition to something else. With wine its a transition to alternative beverages, routines and choices . With that in mind here’s a few important points to keep in mind about picking and using replacements:

The best replacements usually have a lot in common with what you’re trying to quit. Things we have to quit often involve routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes and feelings surrounding the thing we’re trying to quit. You need replacements for them, as well. For wine, there is the taste, the wine buzz, the smell, the cool liquid flowing down your throat, the occasions where its served and the mood and social interactions that occur around it. Since we live up in wine country in northern California there are many events that occur on vineyard grounds, as well.

You may need a series of replacements to step into the routines that are optimal for you. That means that your optimal final replacement may not be the best choice to use first. Your body may have to detoxify or have other reactions and compensations it has to cycle through before you can ultimately quit. In extreme cases that may mean moving from something toxic to something less toxic and eventually to something non-toxic.

It may be effective to allow yourself as much of the replacement as you want (Assuming your replacement is not toxic). It may serve as a psychological reward for following through on the quitting.

My Replacements for Wine

My first replacement for wine is sparkling water.

Sparking water is fun, cold, quenches my thirst and is poured out of what looks like a wine bottle. Like wine, I have to make a separate trip to the fridge to find a cold bottle. After opening it I pour it onto a wine glass. When we’re eating out at a restaurant and I have wine I usually pour sparkling water into the empty wine glass. So, there’s a psychological sense that I’m finishing up a good meal and a few glasses of wine at a restaurant when I pour the sparkling water without having had any wine, at all.

My second replacement is a RockStar energy drink. This is similar to the sparking water but comes in a can. Like wine it gives me an energy boost and usually gets my writing started if I’m procrastinating on an article. Many people don’t know that wine gives an energy boost, as well, and that’s part of what’s missing when you stop drinking it.

My third replacement, used in the afternoon, is a nap. I was using coffee and wine as a crutch to power through the afternoon without a nap or a break. I decided not to fight afternoon naps any longer and just take one. The benefits of afternoon naps have been enormous! If fact, I feel it gives almost a full extra day of productivity every day! Wow, talk about a replacement.

My fourth replacement is my ace in the hole: Exercise! Physical exercise is the best way to get high. And when it comes to drinking wine the physical high from exercise completely wipes out desire for anything but water or electrolytes.

I have a RockStar after waking up from my afternoon nap. So far, its been a great way to start my ’second day’. It’s one of those sugar free health drinks that has healthy ingredients. I’m skeptical about the pink, blue and yellow stuff they use in sugar free drinks and prefer stevia. But, for now, I’m enjoying the Rock-Star until I find something better. Leading candidates are pelligrino with a little fruit juice added for taste or some of the exotic teas my wife gets on her trips to China.

Exotic teas will probably become my number one beverage replacement for wine in the future. I don’t think they are the best first beverage, but, they are probably the my optimal replacement. There are an infinite variety of them, they are excellent for a wide variety of health aspects, its fun to make them and experiment with preparation and taste. They are also like wine in the sense that it feels like I’m drinking the earth. Call me nuts, but, I think drinking wine and tea feels like drinking the earth. They make me feel like I’m absorbing all the best minerals and herbs from the leaves and trees and fruit that they were made from.

How Long Does It Take?

It took about three weeks before it didn’t occur to me to have wine with dinner, any longer. That’s longer than I thought it would take and shows how much I associated food with wine.

As much as I was addicted to coffee it was easier to stop drinking coffee than wine. That was another surprise because I craved coffee but never wine. I think wine was actually providing more energy and calories than the coffee was. I was actually using wine like an energy bar. Who knew?!

One of the surprising things for me was how much I slept. Without the energy from the wine I was more tired, even during the day. I could not have a cup of coffee to bridge this gap because I was giving up coffee at the same time. This is all ok with me because one of my goals was to sleep more. I just didn’t expect to be more tired in the afternoons. This may be the temporary adjustment of my body making up for lost sleep. I sleep much better at night, now, and that has enourmous health benefits.

How Will You Know When You’ve Quit?

You’ll know you’ve quit when you can take it or leave it. Wine will take its place among the multitude of drink options available to you depending on the occasion and what you’re in the mood for at the moment.

You’ll be able to have a meal and not automatically think of having wine with it.

You’ll be able to engage in social interactions in a relaxed and enjoyable manner without the wine buzz that used to loosen up your inhibitions.

A few days ago, we were over at a friends house and I was starting to fade. We were late in getting together and didn’t want to leave, yet. The conversation was interesting and another couple had just walked in the door that we wanted to socialize with. This is the point at which I would normally pour a glass of wine. Instead I had one cup of coffee. Luckily, I had already gotten to the point of not needing coffee to start my day and it was just another drink option to me. It was just the thing needed to keep the conversation going for a little while until it was time to go. One cup of coffee and that was it. No coffee needed the next morning and no problems sleeping that night. And best of all, no wine either, which probably would have kept me up all night.

Unlike coffee, wine has never been a drink I couldn’t do without for things like starting my day or thinking clearly or what have you. It’s always been an optional drink added to the existing circumstances. My desire for it was mental more than physical because I never really craved more of it unless I was already drinking it. And that’s just part of my obsessive nature. Most of the time my obsessive nature helps me finish things. I’ve learned to redirect that urge into finishing a bottle of pelligrino instead of a bottle of wine.

Being straight is the ultimate high. Spend time with any 5 year old if you need to prove this to yourself. You’ve always known it. Children don’t need anything but a glass of water and a baloney sandwich to be ecstatic about life. And the only way to experience the full bandwidth of life is to be straight.

The irony is that If I have a glass of wine in a few months one glass will probably provide more enjoyment than three glasses used to. One glass is all I’ll want. And, its all I ever did need. If a second glass is poured I’ll be thinking about sleepless nights and less productivity the next day. Hopefully, I’ll be thinking about that while reaching for the pelligrino.

Copyright © 2014 by Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com

Book Review by Terence Gillespie

The human body has not changed much since its inception, so your foods do not need to change either. Eat the delicious meals of your forebears.

That simple truth from Eve Gabriel is followed by equally clear guidelines for implementation:OK

Avoid any food that is advertised on television, radio and magazines. Transition to biodynamic, traditional organic or small diversified farm’s animal foods. Start with the five foods you consume in greatest quantity.

That’s one truth and a few guidelines covering almost every choice we make about the food entering our bodies. Going further in her new book, The Fateful Fork, Gabriel narrows the fate of our health down to the only food choice that matters: The next one.

Every mouthful of food you eat presents you with 2 options: To build-up your health, or destroy it. Each bite is a fork in the road: Depending on your choices, you head towards health or disease. Your food leads to predictable destinations.

Digestible wisdom like this doesn’t come easy. The Fateful Fork is the culmination of a Master’s degree in Naturopathic Nutrition, 15 years of clinical nutrition counseling practice, two decades as a professional chef and a lifetime of research. The vast fields of nutrition, science, food, farming and traditions in health are Gabriel’s life’s work. Her latest book is a condensation of her considerable nutritional wisdom.

The Perfect Diet?

Many of Gabriel’s clients turned to her, as a last resort, to learn which foods to eat and which to avoid to break their reliance on pharmaceutical medications. Although the author initially set out on a journey to find the perfect diet she returned with something better: The knowledge to help others discover what their own optimal diet may be and how to achieve it.

The perfect diet cannot be put on a laminated card and tucked in a universal wallet. It’s a discovery process of what your particular body needs. What can be given to everyone is high quality food and the ability to find, recognize and prepare it. Start with nutrient-dense foods and the optimal ratios for your body will surface naturally if you know how to listen.

Nutrient-Dense Philosophy In One Egg

The criteria for determining nutrient-density is detailed throughout the book. Each criteria forms a level and each level has a range of qualitative possibilities. The basic four levels of quality are:

  1. Growing Methods.
  2. Processing Techniques.
  3. Freshness.
  4. Preparation Techniques.

The author applies the four levels of quality to an egg:

  1. Soil – Chickens ought to be eating foods grown in good soil;
  2. Intact – Eggs are best whole, not just the whites or yolks and not processed;
  3. Fresh – Not old. Local eggs are best;
  4. Preparation methods – Many for eggs which are also easy snack and travel foods.

This boils down to local farm-raised eggs, which are quite easy to come by once you do a little digging in your specific locale.

Whole and Intact

An important aspect of food that echoes throughout the Fateful Fork is the wisdom of eating foods in their whole form. For instance, lycopene can be isolated from a tomato, but what’s the point? A lycopene pill will never provide the benefits of eating a whole tomato. Applied to an egg that translates into eating the whole egg. No separating the yolk from the white. Protein powders do not supply the nutrient-dense protein of an intact egg delivered by nature in its perfect vessel containing a myriad of other ingredients all in balance with one another.

Nutrient Dense ‘Superfoods’

All this hype about superfoods had me fooled. Our every day food has the potential to be the superfoods we’ve been looking for; from the right source, unprocessed, fresh and well-prepared. As sources become less and less available it’s no wonder the superfood folklore has arisen.

We don’t have to seek out exotic dark chocolates and honey from specialized regions of the world in hopes of being among the lucky few to be blessed with good health. The main staples of our diet are the superfoods we’ve been seeking. The knowledge of recognizing and insisting on them is the holy grail.

The Naturopathic Way

One of the reasons I trust Gabriel’s advice on food is she has a Masters in Nutrition from Bastyr University where the curriculums adhere to the principles of Naturopathic medicine:

  1. Let nature heal.
  2. Identify and treat causes.
  3. First, do no harm.
    1. Use low-risk procedures and healing compounds.
    2. When possible, do not suppress symptoms.
    3. Customize each diagnosis and treatment plan to fit each patient.
  4. Educate patients.
  5. Treat the whole person.
  6. Prevent illness.

Naturopathy builds on the belief that the human body has an innate healing ability. Practitioners craft comprehensive treatment plans that blend the best of modern medical science and traditional natural medical approaches to not only treat disease, but to also restore health.

When my wife and I disagreed with an orthodox medical (Conventional) doctor about the vaccine schedule for our son it was to a naturopathic doctor that we turned. It is serious and wholistic medicine and we’re glad to have a superior alternative to the insurance-dictated conventional. Naturopathic (And Gabriel’s) advice is not given to fit into an insurance reimbursement category. It is customized to individual needs and designed to keep people well. It’s no wonder this comprehensive approach to health is thriving!

Nutrient-Dense Foods Replace Supplements Replacing Drugs

You can let go of confusing dietary rules and supplement programs, which are only necessary when you eat processed industrial foods.

Hypertension is a family trait. So far, I’ve been able to control it by non-prescription means. Dr. Atkins Vita-Nutrient Solutions helped me get control of my blood pressure forsaking prescription drugs for a combination of diet, vitamins, minerals and other supplements. After reading The Fateful Fork it’s obvious that many of the supplements recommended by Atkins could be replaced by nutrient-dense foods.

Can I replace all of them? We’ll see. I’m looking forward to trying (With naturopathic assistance). Each pill eliminated is one less expense and hassle even if it’s only a vitamin or herb.

Vegetarian Escapes and Train Wrecks

If abstaining from animal foods prevented diseases you would know it by now, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I think the natural reaction to a juicy steak is to cause the human mouth to water. It’s through disgust, unrelated to the animal itself, that many learn to squelch that natural reaction and turn to vegetarianism to escape. After discovering the disgusting conditions under which animals are grown for the slaughter, injected with hormones and antibiotics and fed unnatural foods to maximize profit it’s inevitable that those same toxicities are delivered onto the dinner plate. How can you blame someone for for trying to escape by going veggie?

Unfortunately, the vegetarian escape leads to another set of problems and, if one is not extremely careful, to a train wreck.

Eating the grain-based substitutes in place of animal foods is unpleasant and foolhardy. Industrial grains (corn, wheat, rice, barley, and all others, even “ancient grains”) are nutrient-deficient, insulin-triggering, processed foods that continually evolve into ever-stranger renditions as technology changes. . . .They are cheap surplus commodities posing as healthful foods.”

“A side effect of animal product avoidance is rampant deficiencies of fat-soluble vitamins A, D and K. It is not surprising that these are now top-selling supplements. Heart disease, vascular degeneration, cataracts and osteoporosis are some of the consequences of fat-soluble vitamin deficiency.

While reading The Fateful Fork my wife, who had recently ‘gone veggie’, was experiencing many of the above symptoms. A blood test and an appointment with her naturopathic doctor revealed the truth of Gabriel’s words, up close and personal. Vitamin D deficiency, low blood sugar and many other stressful symptoms. The doctors prescription was along the lines of “The Paleo Diet”. There’s much to learn from the metaphor in the Paleo books comparing the modern human diet with that of our ancestors. The Fateful Fork is scientifically consistent with most of the Paleo recommendations but Gabriel’s knowledge is far more comprehensive in addressing every aspect of food.

Try as they might, the long-term, million-dollar studies funded to prove the health benefits of low-fat vegetarian diets, consistently prove otherwise. Instead, the studies show that carbohydrate-rich diets cause heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The more processed carbohydrates you eat, to the exclusion of animal products, the more likely you are to acquire those diseases, and yet the unsound Federal Nutrition Guidelines are ever more restrictive.”

Avoiding Train Wrecks

The Vegetarian ‘movement’ and desire to escape crummy food may never have happened if the food philosophy and accumulated knowledge put forth in the Fateful Fork was understood and widely adopted. Faced with crummy alternatives people took the path of least resistance: Eating only vegetables and fruits and grains which have the appearance of being fresh and natural.

Contrarianism is catchy. When it comes to industrial foods and the chronic health problems they create it’s hard to resist an idea to do the opposite. Fine, but going veggie is not it. The real escape from industrial foods is to biodynamic, traditional organic or small diversified farm’s animal foods and fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Paleo Plus

The Fateful Fork is what the reader is left hungry for after reading the Paleo diet. If you haven’t read either, yet, you can safely skip Paleo for Gabriel’s book and learn more about every aspect of food in the process. While Paleo backs into proving a metaphor, Gabriel builds every component of a meal from the ground up describing the science, lifestyle, tools and challenges you’ll face from the soil to the dinner plate. Her practical explanations for how to prepare foods that Paleo forbids make for wholistic treatment and a better companion for navigating the vast world of food.

When contemplating grains or legumes, for instance, Paleo just says no. The Fateful Fork tells you the science behind it, how different sources mitigate the downside effects, how preparation affects health values and how it may be combined with other foods to aid digestion.

Raw Milk or No Milk

In The Paleo Diet Cordain says no dairy, period. His reasoning is that “Paleolithic people ate no dairy food. Imagine how difficult it would be to milk a wild animal, even if you could somehow manage to catch one”, he says.

What kind of Paleolithic wimps is Cordain talking about? I can think of a few modern-day engineers, writers and computer programmers who would gladly wrestle a cow into a milk pen to prevent starvation and provide a steady source of food.

In contrast, Gabriel says drink “Raw Milk or No Milk”.

Raw milk from pasture-fed cows is the ultimate in high-quality food. It is completely different from industrial milk in its composition, freshness and its effects on your health. Historically, raw fresh milk was used therapeutically to cure all sorts of illnesses. The persistent hype in the media, schools, medical field and government about industrial milk’s importance in your diet is based upon the characteristics of traditional raw milk from pasture-fed cows, not on industrial milk. Industrial milk has no redeeming qualities; it ought to be avoided. . . called something else to distinguish it from unadulterated milk.”

And the author does mean raw. Gabriel and her family know the names of the two Jersey cows that produce their milk. Apart from putting it into a bottle the only ‘processing’ is in getting it delivered to the back kitchen door!

Similar advice is given for the forbidden paleo categories of grains and legumes. Gabriel delves further than simple prohibitions based on a metaphor. She provides the science, recommends sources, and gives specific consequences of preparation and combining them with other foods.

Industrial Food, Inc.

Industrial foods are created to produce one thing: Corporate profits, not healthy people.

In every area of life, nowadays, we expect technological advances. When it comes to food, however, Gabriel says high-tech innovations are rarely our friend. Technological advances that skirt around quaint notions of high-quality soil-based food may increase corporate profits but only at the expense of human health. The problem is, “You are not periodically updated so that you require new or less nourishment. Despite space travel and cell phones, you are still firmly tethered to this planet earth and the primeval foods it produces. There are no new answers to feeding yourself properly.

Salt of the Earth, Not the Lab

The real salt of the earth is exactly that: From the earth, not the lab.

Sea salt contains 92 essential minerals and trace elements such as potassium, magnesium, iodine, boron, selenium, manganese and copper, among others; they do not contain merely sodium and chloride [Like Industrial Table ‘Salt‘].” Even the iodine (Originally added in to prevent goiter –a common thyroid-malfunction-based condition) has become a modern-day ruse with little to no quality iodine in market salts.

Gabriel points out that natural foods don’t have the high amounts of salt we’ve gotten used to. You can add the real salt with more enjoyment and nutrition without fear of adverse effects.

Industrial Food Primer

  • NPK Soil Fallacy – Tragically flawed science concluding that only Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K) was necessary to replenish soil has lead to soil sterility and pollution. The hundreds of nutrients in animal manure and post-harvest plant materials are now dubbed “Waste” and replaced with severely lacking and dangerous NPK ‘fertilizers’. How can you get live foods from dead soil?
  • GMO Seeds – Alter the genes of a seed and you own the ‘new’ life-form. These dangerous and unproven altered life-forms convey more property rights than landowners because the patent holders have billions of dollars to enforce them. Farmers have the burden of proof of patent infringement should a scintilla of airborne seed take root in the farmers soil. As this is all but impossible the farmer goes broke just preparing to defend themselves. When they go bust another farm is forced to purchase GMO seeds rather than use the natural seeds from his own crops. Many GMO seeds, once planted, corrupt the soil making the land unsuitable for natural seeds in the future. The farmer landowner is now, in effect, enslaved by the seed provider as is any future purchaser of the land intending to farm.
  • Additives – Additives make foods easy to ship, give them a longer shelf life and make them appear the right colors to entice us to buy them. If the label has more than three or four ingredients (Total) you’re probably in trouble. The most benevolent ingredients you can’t pronounce are a lousy attempt to ‘fortify’ the food with something that shouldn’t have been taken out or killed through processing in the first place.
  • Protection That Isn’t – Under the guise of protection Amish milk farmers are raided while the FDA claims to lack the authority to intervene in the affairs of industrial meat processors who provide a steadily predictable source of deadly e. coli bacteria. Senate Bill 510 does not protect the public from unsanitary conditions of local farms whose natural approach is routinely pristine; it simply eliminates thousands of local natural food providers producing such high-quality alternatives that industrial food companies cannot compete.

We’re Not Sick, We’re Starving

Many of the supposed diseases– for which we’re told some new pharmaceutical drug is needed— are, in fact, the result of simple nutritional deficiencies.

Healthful ‘lively’ foods contain the enzymes necessary to digest the foods that contain them. Industrial foods are dead on arrival and leech the enzymes necessary for digestion from our bodies. Enzymes, vitamins and minerals are drawn from our bodies quickly causing a dangerous deficit. Ironically, getting ‘supersized’ is an efficient way to literally starve yourself of nutrition. Eating ‘live’ foods with enough enzymes for proper digestion is a complete motivation, in and of itself, to ban industrial dead foods from our diets.

Three Votes Per Day

As overwhelming and powerful as these conglomerates and regulations seem they cannot withstand something much more powerful: The three votes a day each of us may cast in favor of our health. By simply refusing to take empty calories and disease ridden foods into our bodies all the products that disgust will remain unsold and rotting on the pallets that deliver them. That message trumps anything you could put on letterhead or voice mail. It will be delivered loudly and clearly to every food producer and representative in the country with the simple act of lifting a forkful of truly nourishing food to our mouths.

ROrganic!

The word “Organic” is being misused by industrial food processors as a means to sell their disease causing crap. Gabriel recommends a new name for the excellent foods being grown and provided by traditional organic farmers: “Rorganic!” meaning real organic. The author explains . . .

As with industrial milk — which is so completely different from traditional, raw milk from healthy cows — it ought not to be called “milk” at all; the same is true for USDA Organic.”

“Traditional organic farmers have established their reputation and consumer base due to hard work and long years of persistence. Now that their methods are at last economically viable, traditional organic farmers are suffering from being grouped together with the National Organic Program and its infiltration into a market in which they do not earn a place.”

“Since we cannot seem to stop this federal invasion, the real organic farmers need a new name. Rorganic! seems fitting to me.

Comprehensive Food Philosophy

Gabriel’s food philosophy is comprehensive and easily digested to cover every area necessary to conduct the food choices for a large family (Or restaurant!):

  • Meal Frequency
  • Defining a Meal
  • The Science of Food
  • How to Shop
  • Best Sources
  • Setting up your kitchen
  • Handling snacks
  • Food Storage
  • Handling Leftovers
  • Kitchen Tools
  • Social Challenges
  • Food Groups Redefined
  • Practical Daily-Life Integration
  • Money Saving Charts

Reclaiming Delicious

Our bodies are hard-wired to prefer food with high amounts of salt, fat and sugar. Industrial food processors have mastered the trick of including them in almost everything available. Is it any wonder that we’ve lost touch with what the word delicious means?

Delicious is when everything about a food is enticing because it’s what your body needs to live. Media sources would have us believe that means thick-crust pizza, mac ‘n cheese mix, a bag of potato chips and lucky charms for breakfast. Our bodies know that delicious is fresh blueberries and a glass of pure raw milk, wild-alaskan salmon with asparagus, pasture-fed beef and cauliflower, local farm-raised eggs with sprouted bread toast or a handful of pumpkin seeds with a piece of dark chocolate.

Optimal Food Philosophy?

Optimal solutions provide benefits beyond solving the initial problem. They address every dimension rather than merely splitting the difference between a short list of comfortable alternatives. The discovery process screens to match the true context of reality where preconceived notions are, at most, a starting point. The food solutions put forth in Fateful Fork provide the kind of multi-dimensional fruit one would expect from this kind of exhaustive approach to nutrition. They:

  • Increase Quality
  • Require Less Intake
  • Cost less
  • Increase Health
  • Satiate Appetite
  • Realign Imbalances
  • Promote Health
  • Prevent Disease
  • Save Future Health Care Costs
  • Are Delicious (The real non-twinky, what your body needs kind of delicious).

The cost is finding sources, sometimes spending more in the short-term, reorienting lifestyle around re-supply and preparation, and abstaining from bad choices.

The author strikes me as someone who has been so immersed in every aspect of her passion about food and nutrition that merely writing about it didn’t make the priority list, until now. Now that it has the reader benefits from Gabriel having faced the challenges of translating and implementing her nutrient-dense philosophy in every conceivable environment, circumstance and context.

If I could choose the experience, qualifications and lifestyle of the optimal person to write about food the theoretical author would have an identical resume to Gabriel’s: A Master’s degree in Naturopathic Nutrition, 15 years of clinical nutrition counseling practice, two decades as a professional chef and an avid gardener. Luckily, we get all that from a person who can also write! What she’s written may enable you to avoid train wrecks and unnecessary health care costs by learning how to load your next fateful fork with the nutrient-dense foods that lead to optimal health.

Copyright © 2010 Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com.

The best way to quit drinking coffee is to replace it with something else. For coffee you’ll need direct and indirect replacements.

The indirect replacements are for the routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes, feelings, circumstances and occasions that surround your coffee drinking.

The better your choice of replacement(s) for the drink and all these other things that surround your drinking the easier the quitting will be.

In the rest of this article I’ll tell you what replacement(s) I chose and describe my current experience with quitting.

Should you quit drinking coffee?

Not knowing if or why you want to stop drinking coffee is probably why you haven’t quit, already. Or maybe your why is not enough to motivate you.

In the case of coffee we’re bombarded with conflicting stories about whether its good or bad for us. Both sides of the health argument for coffee are about even and the question will probably never be resolved.

If coffee controls you instead of you controlling it then you should quit drinking it. You’ll know it’s controlling you when you can’t start the day without it. Or, if you get a headache when you don’t have enough.

Replacements

Quitting is a transition to something else. Here’s a few things to keep in mind about picking and using replacements:

The best replacements usually have a lot in common with what you’re trying to quit. Things we have to quit often involve routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes and feelings surrounding the thing we’re trying to quit. You may need replacements for them, as well. For coffee, there is the taste, the caffeine buzz, the smell, the warm liquid flowing down your throat and the routine of grinding the beans and setting up the machine.

You may need a series of replacements before settling on the final. That means Your Optimal final replacement may not be the best first replacement to use. Your body may have to detoxify or have other reactions and compensations it has to cycle through before you can ultimately quit. In extreme cases that may mean moving from something toxic to something less toxic and eventually to something non-toxic. The final replacement should be something actually good for you.

But, we’re talking coffee, here, not heroin. One or two replacements will probably do it. I used four replacements for coffee: Two for the morning and two others for the afternoon, see below.

It may be best to allow yourself as much of your replacements as you want as long as your replacement is not toxic. It may serve as a psychological reward for following through on the quitting.

My Replacements for Coffee

My first replacement is tea, with caffeine.

For me, it is the perfect first replacement because it has so much in common with the way I drink coffee. Tea is hot, I add milk and stevia to it, it prevents my caffeine withdrawal headache and the physical routine surrounding its preparation is almost identical to making coffee. We have one of those “Instant Hot” water dispensors in the kitchen so I get the added benefit of having the tea ready, almost instantly.

My second replacement is tea, without caffeine. By this time I’ve ramped down on the amount of caffeine in the tea, so, probably won’t get a withdrawal headache any more. If I do then alternating with caffeinated tea is the quick remedy. After about seven days the whole craving for coffee in the morning is gone. That’s surprisingly quick for someone who couldn’t imagine starting a day without coffee only a week ago!

My third replacement, used in the afternoon, is a nap. I was using coffee as a crutch to power through the afternoon without a nap or a break. I decided not to fight afternoon naps any longer and just take one. The benefits of afternoon naps have been enormous! If fact, I feel it gives almost a full extra day of productivity every day! Wow, talk about a replacement.

Every once in a while I have a diet Rock Star after waking up from my afternoon knap. So far, its been a great way to start my ‘second day’. It’s one of those sugar free health drinks that has healthy ingredients. I’m skeptical about the pink, blue and yellow stuff they use in sugar free drinks and prefer stevia. But, for now, I’m enjoying the Rock-Star until I find something better. Leading candidates are pelligrino with a little fruit juice added for taste or some of the exotic teas my wife gets on her trips to China.

How Long Does It Take?

The whole thing took about a week, for me.

As much as I was addicted to coffee it just didn’t take that long to quit drinking it. I had a headache for the first 3 days if I didn’t have enough caffeinated tea. A little bit of tea and “Poof”, headache gone.

One of the surprising things for me was accepting the fact that I’m a slow riser. It takes me a while to leave dreamland and cut over to wakefulness. Because of this I find the routine of making the tea just as useful as the tea, itself. Therefore, when I wake up I go right into preparing the tea and, by the time its ready, I’m ready for the day.

How Will You Know When You’ve Quit?

You’ll know you’ve quit when you can take it or leave it.

Coffee will take its place among the multitude of drink options available to you depending on occasion and mood. You’ll be able to start your day with a clear mind and ready to go to work even though you’ve had no coffee.

A few days ago, we were over at a friends house and I was starting to fade. We were late in getting together and didn’t want to leave, yet. The conversation was interesting and another couple had just walked in the door that we wanted to socialize with. I made myself one cup of coffee. It was just the thing needed to keep the conversation going for a while until it was time to go. One cup of coffee and that was it. No coffee needed the next morning and no problems sleeping that night.

Coffee is now just another drink option. I neither crave it, avoid it or even think about it. If I want a cup I have one. I’ll even just have a decaf since I don’t need the buzz to think clearly, anymore.

Start acting and feeling like this and you’ll know you’ve quit.

 

Copyright © 2008 by Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com