That Stuff Will Kill You - About the Seminar

One of the reasons my seminar - That Stuff Will Kill You - is 3 hours in length is a result of experience.  I could explain in a few minutes what to eat to lose body fat and feel good - eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar no wheat - but then folks would run into an "expert" (wife, sister, friend, web article, doctor, or dietician), who would say:

- "all that fat and red meat will kill you!"

- "you need to eat more carbohydrates for energy!"

- "you might lose weight that way but what about your cholesterol?"

It reminds me of the old saying (and John Mellencamp song):  "You gotta stand for something, or you're going to fall for anything!"

In other words, if you don't know why it's important to eat eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar no wheat, you will have a much lower chance of sustaining that choice.  By contrast, if you know enough to sort through the nutrition and health "wheat and chaff", you can make informed choices by instantaneously being able to identify when someone is spouting myth or strongly held belief, but not fact.

Another reason the seminar is lengthy is that while the "eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar no wheat" prescription is simple, the implementation can be tricky.  There's the "low carb flu", hydration and electrolyte issues, long term behavior patterns to overcome, and many, many mis-information obstacles that can lead you right back to the eating patterns that are sabotaging your health right now.

No topic illustrates these issues more clearly than that of supplements.  

There are certain supplements that are nearly essential in the beginning stages of conversion to a  paleo diet implementation, and others that you will likely need the rest of your life.  My goal is, to borrow the biblical idea, to teach you to fish, not to give you a fish.  If you walk out of my seminar with the ability to think through why you may or may not need this supplement or that one, I'll be very satisfied.  

Supplementation is a very personal issue - and the guys out there making big bucks selling the powders we call "supplements" are designing new ones every day, and spending even more time trying to implement a marketing plan that will convince you to send them the dollars you give your life energy to obtain.  That's all good - it results in a situation in which you and I can get any supplement we can even conceive of.  The question for you is - "How can I tell if the benefit of any given supplement is worth what I'm paying for it?"  We can get to the heart of that matter very quickly at the seminar.

As an aside, one supplement that virtually every one of us needs is vitamin D - because most of us spend so much time indoors, under sunscreen, or under clothes that we can't make enough vitamin D EVEN IF WE GET THE 15 MINUTES OF SUN WE NEED EACH DAY!  We've been so long in between uses of our capacity to make vitamin D we've lost that capacity.  In fact, when I started vitamin D supplements, the impact on my training was more palpable than any other supplement I have ever tried (and that's a long list of "tried it").  

In closing, I should make it clear that I do not advocate spending much or taking many supplements, and the ones that have the most impact for me are the cheap ones.  So please, if what you want is a long list of supplements to spend big bucks on, don't come to my seminar!  The reason for that is that by far, the biggest impact you can have on your health is not by what powders you can buy to supplement your diet, but rather by what foods you choose to nourish yourself, and in what proportions you eat those foods.