CAPÍTULO VI PROPUESTA
6.5 CRONOGRAMA PARA ALCANZAR LA CERTIFICACIÓN OEA
“The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum of fortune; it is also the basis of happiness.”
P.T. Barnum
P
eople believe that if they simply had more time, all of their problems would disappear. I would suggest that it is not time but extra energy that is what we are truly after. WhetherInsider Buy Superstocks
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in trading or in any other aspect of life, high energy is the essential factor of peak performance.
By far the most important components of peak performance for me are nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle.
This is a subject very near and dear to my heart. I wrestled with whether or not to include this section in the book. I felt strongly that I should include it to demonstrate how modifying lifestyle can change everything.
I don’t know about you, but I treat my Labrador Retriever like the princess that she is.
She gets constant exercise, proper attention, and the best food. Likewise, if you have young children, I am sure that you give every consideration to what they watch, what they read, what they eat, and how much exercise they get. Do you give the same careful consideration to your own well being?
Throughout the majority of my life, I abused my body and generally disregarded it and treated it like crap. For me, ten beers, an entire large Domino’s pepperoni pizza, an entire key lime pie—all in the course of an evening—no problem. And Thanksgiving? Watch out!
After eating a meal, I would be lethargic for literally hours afterward. From the age of 18, I generally went on a diet two or three times per year in order to shed my layer of beer. I found that during these dieting phases, despite severe caloric restriction and increased physical activity, my baseline energy level always surged through the roof. Once the diet ended, however, my energy level would plummet to previous levels. I would quickly put on body fat, lose muscle, and revert to my previous lethargic self.
Everything changed for me during a family trip to Southeast Asia several years ago. Prior to a flight to Bangkok, I purchased a book titled The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted written by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II.
To make a very long story extremely short, it turns out that China is the world’s best laboratory for the effects of diet on energy and long-term health. Specifically, there are several provinces within China where per capita consumption of vegetables is high while consumption of meat is virtually non-existent. Meanwhile, in other provinces, the per capita consumption of meat is quite high and consumption of vegetables low.
Researchers found in study after study that the rate of diabetes, obesity, cancer, and heart disease was virtually non-existent in the geographic areas showing high consumption of vegetables combined with low meat consumption. In comparison, the rates of these diseases in every low-vegetable/high-meat consumption province throughout China and other parts of the world were several hundred to several thousand percent higher.
To me, the evidence was overwhelming. The people eating the veggies were not only living much longer, but they were far healthier and far more active until the day they died. I would surmise that they had far more nerve energy and were much happier as well. The evidence from several studies over several decades was too one-sided for me to ignore. Since finishing the book, outside of a rare slipup (I am still an occasional sucker for the P’s—pizza, pepperoni, and pie) I became a vegetarian for life.
Jesse C. Stine
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One of the fortunate byproducts of my new plant-based diet was a dramatic reduction in my consumption of sugar and all of its derivatives: fructose, sucrose, corn starch, corn syrup, flour, and so on. Once I switched to this plant-based, low sugar diet, my level of energy shot through the roof. In fact, there have been several studies demonstrating that rats fed a strict plant-based diet spend a majority of their days on the treadmill while their “traditional diet” friends spend their days scavenging for food in an effort to perpetuate the glycemic roller coaster.
These days, I automatically wake up before the crack of dawn and my body literally NEEDS to run. Without thinking, my body forces me to put on my shoes and run out the door. This was NEVER, EVER the case before I modified my diet several years ago.
As my new dietary lifestyle progressed, I became acutely aware of just how addicted I was to all forms of sugar; cakes, pies, juices, pasta, beer, bread, and ANYTHING in a package. Like any other potent addiction, my urge to consume sugar is so strong that once every few months, in moments of weakness, I find myself at its mercy. In these moments, all it takes is a piece of pie or a couple of beers for the relentless sugar cycle to begin anew. The cycle gains steam, and can knock me out for days at a time. My energy level retreats to prior levels, clear thinking disappears, and all motivation is extinguished.
During the occasional slipup, all I can think about all day long is what I will eat next. To say the least, the difference in energy level is quite dramatic. Zero sugar lifestyle = energy level 10.
Reversion to “American diet”= energy level 2. The sugar epidemic is so prevalent in our culture that it is hidden in virtually everything we eat today. In the old days, I didn’t think sugar and its derivatives had any effect on my energy level because over my entire life I had never gone a single day without it.
As our culture is so focused on the scale, I’ll make it abundantly clear in terms of weight.
At 6’2”, my college weight was 205 pounds. My “normal weight” is 188 pounds. My diet weight was 175. Today, my 365 days per year plant-based weight is 164 or less. And the best thing about it is that due to the suppression of the sugar/insulin cycle, I very rarely get hungry. I simply eat because I know that I have to.
In a nutshell, I no longer eat anything processed (packaged), I only eat foods that spoil, I cut out sugar derivatives (fruit being the exception), I prepare 99% of my meals myself, and I go to the fruit and vegetable market twice per week. That’s it. My energy goes through the roof. It’s a foreign notion to most Americans, but this is how roughly three billion people on our planet eat every single day.
The point is that if you take the necessary disciplined effort to focus on diet and exercise, you can expect that your energy, your outlook, your focus, your motivation, and ultimately your investment success will surge to a whole new level. Not only that, but you will look better, feel better, be happier, be more optimistic, and your creativity will skyrocket. Mentally, you will think faster and clearer leading to better investment decisions. There is no downside.
It should go without saying that a healthy lifestyle goes well beyond investing. Our health and well-being trump all else.