Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 13

Find Your Own Artist

Falling Back on Your Heart

Once upon a time there was a Brazilian tennis player named Guga. An unparalleled, but self-effacing athlete— he won twenty tournaments, including three majors, and was a Davis Cup hero—- he was unusually humble and famously non-self-promoting.

When he won the French Open in 2001, he didn’t fall to his knees, kiss the ground, pump his fist in the air or even scream “YEEESSSSS!”

He did something very different.

He drew a heart on the red clay of the tennis court with his racket.

And then he fell back into it.

“The heart was for the people cheering,” he told Inside Tennis. “I felt I was in the heart of the 14,000 people.”

This week, I went to see a live performance of a musician I’ll call “My Artist”. (I’m not going to tell you whom My Artist is because this article is not about him–it’s about what he did.)

My Artist drew that heart and fell back into it. Not on the clay courts of Roland Garros, but at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.

My Artist doesn’t just perform. He doesn’t just write songs and sing them. He creates a shared group consciousness. He connects people. He spreads joy. He creates powerful, profound, connections.

He draws a heart—and then invites everyone in the audience to join him in falling back into it.

I’ve experienced this kind of connection at a public place where music is performed, most notably as a kid when I attended black churches such as Washington Temple Church of God in Christ in Brooklyn NY. Yes, I was Jewish, and yes, I was white. But the connection and love and heightened sensation and transcendence and…well, heart that I experienced in those places was unlike anything I had experienced before.

I think that connection—that heart– is the reason people go to church. I think it’s the reason people do drugs and go to raves. Yes, those two experiences are very different in content, but I’m not sure the basic human needs that drive people to them are all that different.

It’s the very human need to feel connected to something bigger than yourself, whether spiritual or secular. To connect with other humans, to let the guard rails down, to “lose” yourself, to put the ego to bed, to experience the power of surrender, and to just fall back, with gratitude, into the heart.

In fact, think for a minute about the expression “lose yourself”. What do you find when you “lose” your “self”? You lose your ego, your separateness. And what you find is your connection with something much bigger…humanity, the planet, love.

And while maybe you don’t regularly go to live music events, or even have your own version of My Artist, you probably have some place in your life—some circumstance—in which you can celebrate the love you do have to give, the love of, and for, the people you surround yourself with, and the gratitude you feel (hopefully) for the things in your life that are awesome.

Starting with just being alive.

That heart is a sacred space. Draw it for yourself.

And then– even if it’s only for a minute or two– fall back into it.

Include both images but…USE THIS PICTURE AS THE FEATURED IMAGE:

What’s the Deal With The New FDA Nutrition Labels?

On May 20, 2016, the FDA announced that the familiar Nutrition Facts label found on every food and food product would be undergoing a facelift. Supposedly, the new improved label will reflect “new scientific information”—more on that in a moment. According to the FDA website, the new label “will make it easier for consumers to make better informed food choices.”

 

First, let me say this——looking to the federal government for guidance on what to eat is a fool’s errand. There are two government agencies that have a tremendous influence over what we eat—the USDA and the FDA. Let’s start with the first one.

 

The USDA has two mandates—one of which is to provide the country with accurate information about food and health, the other of which is to protect and expand the interests of American agriculture. Those two mandates put the USDA smack in the middle of conflict of interest territory. Four of the five biggest crops in America are implicated in making us fat, tired, sick and depressed. The government will never tell us to eat less of them.

 

Then there’s the FDA, which is, at this point, so compromised by Big Pharma money that even Forbes magazine has taken note.  (The FDA, by the way, is the same agency that works tirelessly to protect us against the dangers of vitamin supplements! I rest well every night knowing they’re on the job.)

 

But I digress.

 

So here are some of the changes you’re going to be seeing on the nutrition facts label.

 

Let’s start with the Daily Value, a stupid and useless concept if there ever was one. (I’m still waiting for someone—anyone—to give me a useful definition of “Daily Value”. No one uses the term in real life, few people understand it, and it adds absolutely nothing to the conversation except confusion.) The “Daily Value” still sits there on the new label, but now manufacturers have to tell us the actual amount of a nutrient, rather than just the percentage of DV.

 

So while the old label would say “Calcium… 20% of daily value”, the new label will say “Calcium….260 mg….. 20% of Daily Value. At least now you know you’re getting 260 mg of calcium. What’s more, vitamin A and vitamin C have been taken off the label, while vitamin D and potassium have been added. (Calcium and iron were on the old label and will remain on the new one.)

 

People, can we just talk about how ridiculous this is? Why vitamin A and not B1? Why calcium and not magnesium? Or vitamin K2? The selection of what nutrients to include is arbitrary and isn’t based on anything other than some dude on a regulatory committee that thought it was important.

 

Why is this a problem? Because the inclusion of some nutrients (i.e. potassium, calcium) and the exclusion of others (magnesium, selenium) sends a not-so-subtle message that the nutrients included on the label are somehow more important than the ones that weren’t. (It also sends a secondary message that the government actually knows what nutrients are most important. Ridiculous.)

 

Speaking of subtle messages, why is cholesterol still on the label? Really, people? The FDA says that the new guidelines will “reflect the latest science” but the latest science is quite clear that dietary cholesterol means absolutely nothing, and even the FDA itself has said that dietary cholesterol is no longer “a nutrient of concern”.

 

Then why put it on the damn label? It’s not important, it never was important, but the millions of people who see this nonsense on the label will think it is.

 

One good change to the labels is that “Calories from Fat” is being removed. This is definitely a good thing, but why on earth has it taken this long? Walter Willett—the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and the lead researcher on two of the largest studies to ever investigate the relationship between diet and health, the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study—told World Health News that “We have found virtually no relationship between the percentage of calories from fat and any important health outcome”.

 

Know when he said that? March 29, 2000.

 

So why did it take them 16 years to take the “calories from fat” part off the label? Keep that in mind when you evaluate government recommendations on food and vitamins. Just saying.

 

One really good thing about the new labels is that they no longer let the manufacturers lie about “serving size”. Ever look at the label on something like a “healthy muffin”? You glance at it and it says 100 calories per serving and you think, OK, cool, that’s not so bad. Except the fine print says: Serving size: 1/3 muffin; Number of servings: 3.

 

So the manufacturers of the 12 or 16 ounce bottles of soda that absolutely everybody in the world drinks in one sitting can no longer pretend that their product “serves three”. From now on, you will actually know the number of calories and other stuff that’s in the portion you are about to eat.

 

There’s actually going to be a dual column on the new labels—one will be the fake “serving size 1/3 cookie” stuff, the other will be the real deal—what’s in the whole cookie (which is much more useful, since you’re going to eat it in two bites anyway).

 

I do like the fact that they now have to tell us how many grams of the sugar in our food comes from “added sugars”. (You can believe Big Food fought hard against that one in the back alleys of Lobby-dom!)

 

Manufacturers will have to comply by July 26…. 2018.

 

Sorry if I sound like I don’t have any faith in our government. I actually think they do some things pretty well. Recommending what we should be eating doesn’t happen to be one of them.

What’s the Deal With The New FDA Nutrition Labels?

 

 

On May 20, 2016, the FDA announced that the familiar Nutrition Facts label found on every food and food product would be undergoing a facelift. Supposedly, the new improved label will reflect “new scientific information”—more on that in a moment. According to the FDA website, the new label “will make it easier for consumers to make better informed food choices.”

 

First, let me say this——looking to the federal government for guidance on what to eat is a fool’s errand. There are two government agencies that have a tremendous influence over what we eat—the USDA and the FDA. Let’s start with the first one.

 

The USDA has two mandates—one of which is to provide the country with accurate information about food and health, the other of which is to protect and expand the interests of American agriculture. Those two mandates put the USDA smack in the middle of conflict of interest territory. Four of the five biggest crops in America are implicated in making us fat, tired, sick and depressed. The government will never tell us to eat less of them.

 

Then there’s the FDA, which is, at this point, so compromised by Big Pharma money that even Forbes magazine has taken note.  (The FDA, by the way, is the same agency that works tirelessly to protect us against the dangers of vitamin supplements! I rest well every night knowing they’re on the job.)

 

But I digress.

 

So here are some of the changes you’re going to be seeing on the nutrition facts label.

 

Let’s start with the Daily Value, a stupid and useless concept if there ever was one. (I’m still waiting for someone—anyone—to give me a useful definition of “Daily Value”. No one uses the term in real life, few people understand it, and it adds absolutely nothing to the conversation except confusion.) The “Daily Value” still sits there on the new label, but now manufacturers have to tell us the actual amount of a nutrient, rather than just the percentage of DV.

 

So while the old label would say “Calcium… 20% of daily value”, the new label will say “Calcium….260 mg….. 20% of Daily Value. At least now you know you’re getting 260 mg of calcium. What’s more, vitamin A and vitamin C have been taken off the label, while vitamin D and potassium have been added. (Calcium and iron were on the old label and will remain on the new one.)

 

People, can we just talk about how ridiculous this is? Why vitamin A and not B1? Why calcium and not magnesium? Or vitamin K2? The selection of what nutrients to include is arbitrary and isn’t based on anything other than some dude on a regulatory committee that thought it was important.

 

Why is this a problem? Because the inclusion of some nutrients (i.e. potassium, calcium) and the exclusion of others (magnesium, selenium) sends a not-so-subtle message that the nutrients included on the label are somehow more important than the ones that weren’t. (It also sends a secondary message that the government actually knows what nutrients are most important. Ridiculous.)

 

Speaking of subtle messages, why is cholesterol still on the label? Really, people? The FDA says that the new guidelines will “reflect the latest science” but the latest science is quite clear that dietary cholesterol means absolutely nothing, and even the FDA itself has said that dietary cholesterol is no longer “a nutrient of concern”.

 

Then why put it on the damn label? It’s not important, it never was important, but the millions of people who see this nonsense on the label will think it is.

 

One good change to the labels is that “Calories from Fat” is being removed. This is definitely a good thing, but why on earth has it taken this long? Walter Willett—the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and the lead researcher on two of the largest studies to ever investigate the relationship between diet and health, the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study—told World Health News that “We have found virtually no relationship between the percentage of calories from fat and any important health outcome”.

 

Know when he said that? March 29, 2000.

 

So why did it take them 16 years to take the “calories from fat” part off the label? Keep that in mind when you evaluate government recommendations on food and vitamins. Just saying.

 

One really good thing about the new labels is that they no longer let the manufacturers lie about “serving size”. Ever look at the label on something like a “healthy muffin”? You glance at it and it says 100 calories per serving and you think, OK, cool, that’s not so bad. Except the fine print says: Serving size: 1/3 muffin; Number of servings: 3.

 

So the manufacturers of the 12 or 16 ounce bottles of soda that absolutely everybody in the world drinks in one sitting can no longer pretend that their product “serves three”. From now on, you will actually know the number of calories and other stuff that’s in the portion you are about to eat.

 

There’s actually going to be a dual column on the new labels—one will be the fake “serving size 1/3 cookie” stuff, the other will be the real deal—what’s in the whole cookie (which is much more useful, since you’re going to eat it in two bites anyway).

 

I do like the fact that they now have to tell us how many grams of the sugar in our food comes from “added sugars”. (You can believe Big Food fought hard against that one in the back alleys of Lobby-dom!)

 

Manufacturers will have to comply by July 26…. 2018.

 

Sorry if I sound like I don’t have any faith in our government. I actually think they do some things pretty well. Recommending what we should be eating doesn’t happen to be one of them.

BE DO HAVE: Wisdom of the 70’s deserves another look.

 

If you go to any motivational speaking events you’ve probably heard some version of the BE/DO/HAVE parable. Werner Erhard made it part of his original curriculum for the EST training, and it’s been firmly implanted in the self-help and motivational literature ever since.

 

Even though BE -DO – HAVE is from the self-help world of the 70’s, it still holds up today. It’s well worth repeating, even if you’ve already heard it.

 

Maybe you’ll find it helpful as I do.

 

BE/DO/HAVE is really shorthand for how we think about our goals and how we go about achieving them. And it exposes an essential fallacy in our thinking that really holds us back from getting what we want.

 

A good friend of mine is a very successful actor in Los Angeles, and he wants to transition from acting into coaching and motivational speaking. He wants to have an impact on people and use his experience as a black actor in Hollywood to help and motivate others as they struggle with life challenges.

 

But he’s stuck because he feels he has to have a degree in psychology before he can be taken seriously as a counselor or speaker.

 

He’s fallen into a common trap. He’s got BE/DO/HAVE in the wrong order.

 

See, my friend feels he has to HAVE a degree in order to DO the things he wants to do (speak, coach, counsel) so that he can BE the thing he wants to be (a person who helps other people reach their goals and makes a difference in their lives).

 

And so he’s stuck. With this template, he can’t progress until he does the first step– getting a degree. And that’s a pretty daunting obstacle.

 

But what if he’s got the order wrong?

 

The brilliance of reversing the traditional way we think about goals is that you don’t have to wait to start doing the thing you want to do, or being the person you want to be. My friend is already being a force for change and healing in his everyday life. He’s a great listener. He’s a great motivator. He has a huge amount of experience and compassion. And he gives great advice. He’s already BEING the thing he wants to be right now. He just doesn’t believe it “counts” because he doesn’t HAVE the thing he needs to DO the thing he’s actually already doing.

 

Once you start BEING who you want to be—and owning it– you may well find that you don’t even need the stuff you thought you had to have before you could do it.

 

Take weight for example.

 

I’ve asked a lot of people in my life why they wanted to lose weight. Almost always, there’s an “in order to” in their answer. Keep digging, and you’ll almost get to some version of this: I need to HAVE a great diet, so I can DO what I need to do to lose weight IN ORDER TO… (feel sexy, find love, like myself better, fill in the blank).

 

I’ve also found that the majority of these people think that feeling sexy, finding love and liking themselves better can’t happen until they’ve first done the first two steps (HAVE a good weight loss program and DO it successfully). Only then could they really BE the sexy, lovable, self-accepting person they want to BE.

 

What if they were wrong?

 

What if you could be that sexy, self-accepting, lovable person… RIGHT NOW… at whatever weight you happen to be today?

 

Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m all for self-improvement and growth in all areas of our lives. But I also think there’s a lot to be said for doing an end-run around all the “conditions” and “obstacles” we put in front of ourselves. Instead of putting ourselves through all that shit, why not try BEING what we want to be right now?

 

Remember, life doesn’t give you extra points for postponing joy.

 

 

Here’s a true story. Many years ago, I was sitting in a Broadway theatre on opening night. I no longer remember what show I was seeing, but I remember what happened like it was yesterday. The lights were dimming and the show was about to start. All of a sudden, a woman entered the theatre looking for her seat.

 

In her wake, was a wave of electricity.

 

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this before, but some people have an energy about them that literally compels you to look at them. There’s something so electric, so … “other worldly” about them, that even if you have no idea who they are you know immediately that they have … something. I’ve experienced this a couple of other times, once in the presence of the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein, whose energy you could feel across a room, and once in the presence of the Bee Gees. It’s a kind of “who was that masked man??” feeling, a sensation you couldn’t describe but that told you someone electrifying had entered the room, and you knew it even before you had any idea who it was.

 

That’s what happened to me when this woman entered the theatre.

 

She certainly didn’t look like the typical “sex symbols” of the 90’s. By the standards of the day, she was a “big” woman. But I remember thinking she was one of the most beautiful and sexy women I had ever seen. It wasn’t just her elegance, and it wasn’t just her grace. It was her quiet confidence. This was a woman who already KNEW she was the sexiest person in the room, and didn’t have to do a thing to prove it to you. She radiated confidence, humor, sexiness and beauty and it all came from within, where it can’t be faked.

 

She was positively electric.

 

Did I mention that she was about a size 16?

 

Did I mention that absolutely no one gave a shit?

 

I found out later who the mysterious woman was. Her name was Emme, and she was the first “full figured” model to ever be chosen for People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People issue.

 

No one told Emme she had to be skinny in order to be beautiful. No one told her she needed to lose weight in order to be sexy. (If they did, she forgot to listen. Brava.)

 

She just decided to BE who she wanted to be– even though, according to the rest of the world, she didn’t have any of the attributes one “needed” to be beautiful—like a size zero body with no bodyfat– to BE sexy, beautiful, confident and dynamic.

 

What do you think you need to have to become the person you really want to be? What do you think you need to DO to be the person you really want to be?

 

Maybe—just maybe—the answer should be “nothing”.

 

That’s because—like Emme– you already have it.

 

But unlike Emme, you haven’t yet owned it.

 

Maybe it’s time.

Life Lessons From The Tennis Court

I never got bitten by the “sports” bug, never played them as a kid, wasn’t any good at them. And if you put me with a bunch of guys who are happily bonding over beer, pretzels and football, I’ll feel like a total alien.

At my niece’s college graduation, my brother told me our seats were on the 50-yard line, and I didn’t know what that meant. And I’d rather have root canal than be forced to watch the Superbowl. Sorry.

So I’m not generally a big fan of sports analogies, or lessons from the playing field, or any of that stuff. But I am an avid tennis player. And, much to my own surprise, I’ve learned some powerful life lessons on the tennis court, a few of which I want to share with you now.

The best thing about these lessons is you don’t need to know anything about tennis to appreciate them.

1. Your mental game can make the difference between winning and losing.

I’ve seen (and experienced) defeats on the court that were entirely mental. I even saw it happen to the great Roger Federer when an umpire ruled against him on a call. His frustration and annoyance was palpable, and even after the point in question was long over, you could see that he was unable to let go of it. Well into the rest of the match, Federer was still stuck in that earlier game when the call went against him, and was unable to really focus on the present. He ultimately lost the match.

How many times do we do that exact same thing to ourselves in real life?

How many times do we tell ourselves a story about something (I suck as a tennis player, I can’t do anything right in my relationship, nothing ever works out for me, I can never lose weight, I’m too (fill in the blank) to ever be worthy of love… that effectively prevents us from getting what we want?

What stories do you tell yourself that disempower you? And, more important, what’s a different story that you could come up with that might empower you?

Here’s an example. I’ve had days when I’m playing great and many days when I’m playing badly. When my mental game is off, I react to the bad days with frustration and anger, neither of which, by the way, makes me play any better. When my mental game is good, however, my inner dialogue is completely different.

Instead of wanting to pull a John McEnroe and break my racket into a thousand pieces, I’ll have a dialogue with myself that goes more like this: “OK, I’ve been making real progress over the last year, and am playing at a whole different level. But this particular shot is still giving me problems and that’s something I need to work on. And since I seem to be having an off-day on the court, I’m going to try for a safer strategy of just hitting every ball in the middle, keeping the ball in play, and waiting for my opponent to make some unforced errors.”

Which inner dialogue is more likely to produce a better result?

Which type of inner dialogue do YOU have with yourself when you get frustrated with something in life that doesn’t go your way? Could you improve that dialogue? Could you be gentler with yourself?

Moral of the story: we can’t always change what happens, but we can always change how we deal with it.

2. Keep the ball in play

When all else fails, keeping the ball in play is a strategy that will never fail. I call it “staying in the game”. And it doesn’t just work on the tennis court.

In fact, when you think about it, there’s a “stay in the game” message behind every great success story.

Jackie Robinson hit an amazing 52 home runs in 1965, which was the same year he also struck out 71 times. He stayed in the game.

In the early 90’s, John Travolta was just about washed up as an actor but he stayed in the game. In 1994, Quentin Tarantino tapped him for a role in “Pulp Fiction” and the rest is history.

Jay Leno, who’s had a roller coaster of a career with some very public failures was once asked the secret of success. His answer:

“You know, it’s all about…. Ya just… You know… Stay in the game!”

Moral of the story: In tennis– and in life– you can’t win the game if you stop playing. Staying in the game (i.e. keeping the ball in play) doesn’t guarantee you’re going to win it. But giving up guarantees that you won’t.

3 . Use what you got.

I regularly play tennis with a group I affectionately call “the old guys”—who range in age from about 70 to 86.

Good luck trying to win a game from one of them.

These guys don’t run all that fast. Some of them hardly run at all. They don’t have a lot of power, and they don’t have 100 mph serves. In fact, they hit the ball rather gently.

But they’re next to impossible to beat.

Why?

‘Cause they have one “weapon”: they can place the ball any damn place they want.

You can be hitting your best power shots, running around like crazy, sweating bullets trying to defeat them, and they will sit there, calmly, and simply put the ball wherever you’re not. They’re uncannily clever and tricky. They have a court sense developed over 40 years of playing, and a remarkable ability to anticipate where you’re going so that they can hit the ball exactly where you’re not.

They don’t have (or need) power. They don’t have (or need) speed. They have learned to use what they do have, two skills which together make them virtually unbeatable by any player at my level.

One, they have an outstanding mental game. And two, they can place the ball anywhere.

They’ve learned to use what they have very effectively instead of bemoaning what they don’t have.

I’ve seen this same kind of thing with performers. Dudley Williams was the star male dancer in the internationally known Alvin Ailey Dance Company. He danced professionally till he was almost 67. I saw him many times in those years. He no longer had the agility and athleticism he had as a youth… but he had something else even better.

He never lamented about the loss of any skills he once possessed. Not once. Instead, he developed and nurtured what he did have. Experience. Inner strength. Wisdom. Artistic vision.

And it was more than enough. Even in his later years, you couldn’t take your eyes off him when he was performing, because he literally dominated the stage with sheer presence and magnetism. The memory of seeing him perform I Wanna Be Ready (from Ailey’s masterpiece, Revelations) in his late 60’s, still brings a tear to my eyes.

How many times do we concentrate on what we can’t do instead of celebrating what we can?

Even a non-sports guy like myself can’t miss the wisdom in these sports-related lessons.

Stay in the game, use what you’ve got, keep your mental game sharp and never give up.

Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Something similar could be said of these three lessons.

They may not be the most profound lessons in the world— but they’re better than anything else we’ve got.

Life Lessons From The Tennis Court

 

 

True confession time: I hate sports.

 

I never got bitten by the “sports” bug, never played them as a kid, wasn’t any good at them. And if you put me with a bunch of guys who are happily bonding over beer, pretzels and football, I’ll feel like a total alien.

 

At my niece’s college graduation, my brother told me our seats were on the 50-yard line, and I didn’t know what that meant. And I’d rather have root canal than be forced to watch the Superbowl. Sorry.

 

So I’m not generally a big fan of sports analogies, or lessons from the playing field, or any of that stuff. But I am an avid tennis player. And, much to my own surprise, I’ve learned some powerful life lessons on the tennis court, a few of which I want to share with you now.

 

The best thing about these lessons is you don’t need to know anything about tennis to appreciate them.

 

1. Your mental game can make the difference between winning and losing.

 

I’ve seen (and experienced) defeats on the court that were entirely mental. I even saw it happen to the great Roger Federer when an umpire ruled against him on a call. His frustration and annoyance was palpable, and even after the point in question was long over, you could see that he was unable to let go of it. Well into the rest of the match, Federer was still stuck in that earlier game when the call went against him, and was unable to really focus on the present. He ultimately lost the match.

 

How many times do we do that exact same thing to ourselves in real life?

 

How many times do we tell ourselves a story about something (I suck as a tennis player, I can’t do anything right in my relationship, nothing ever works out for me, I can never lose weight, I’m too (fill in the blank) to ever be worthy of love… that effectively prevents us from getting what we want?

 

What stories do you tell yourself that disempower you? And, more important, what’s a different story that you could come up with that might empower you?

 

Here’s an example. I’ve had days when I’m playing great and many days when I’m playing badly. When my mental game is off, I react to the bad days with frustration and anger, neither of which, by the way, makes me play any better. When my mental game is good, however, my inner dialogue is completely different.

 

Instead of wanting to pull a John McEnroe and break my racket into a thousand pieces, I’ll have a dialogue with myself that goes more like this: “OK, I’ve been making real progress over the last year, and am playing at a whole different level. But this particular shot is still giving me problems and that’s something I need to work on. And since I seem to be having an off-day on the court, I’m going to try for a safer strategy of just hitting every ball in the middle, keeping the ball in play, and waiting for my opponent to make some unforced errors.”

 

Which inner dialogue is more likely to produce a better result?

 

Which type of inner dialogue do YOU have with yourself when you get frustrated with something in life that doesn’t go your way? Could you improve that dialogue? Could you be gentler with yourself?

 

Moral of the story: we can’t always change what happens, but we can always change how we deal with it.

 

2. Keep the ball in play

 

When all else fails, keeping the ball in play is a strategy that will never fail. I call it “staying in the game”. And it doesn’t just work on the tennis court.

 

In fact, when you think about it, there’s a “stay in the game” message behind every great success story.

 

Jackie Robinson hit an amazing 52 home runs in 1965, which was the same year he also struck out 71 times. He stayed in the game.

 

In the early 90’s, John Travolta was just about washed up as an actor but he stayed in the game. In 1994, Quentin Tarantino tapped him for a role in “Pulp Fiction” and the rest is history.

 

Jay Leno, who’s had a roller coaster of a career with some very public failures was once asked the secret of success. His answer:

 

“You know, it’s all about…. Ya just… You know… Stay in the game!”

 

Moral of the story: In tennis– and in life– you can’t win the game if you stop playing. Staying in the game (i.e. keeping the ball in play) doesn’t guarantee you’re going to win it. But giving up guarantees that you won’t.

 

3 . Use what you got.

 

I regularly play tennis with a group I affectionately call “the old guys”—who range in age from about 70 to 86.

 

Good luck trying to win a game from one of them.

 

These guys don’t run all that fast. Some of them hardly run at all. They don’t have a lot of power, and they don’t have 100 mph serves. In fact, they hit the ball rather gently.

 

But they’re next to impossible to beat.

 

Why?

 

‘Cause they have one “weapon”: they can place the ball any damn place they want.

 

You can be hitting your best power shots, running around like crazy, sweating bullets trying to defeat them, and they will sit there, calmly, and simply put the ball wherever you’re not. They’re uncannily clever and tricky. They have a court sense developed over 40 years of playing, and a remarkable ability to anticipate where you’re going so that they can hit the ball exactly where you’re not.

 

They don’t have (or need) power. They don’t have (or need) speed. They have learned to use what they do have, two skills which together make them virtually unbeatable by any player at my level.

 

One, they have an outstanding mental game. And two, they can place the ball anywhere.

 

They’ve learned to use what they have very effectively instead of bemoaning what they don’t have.

 

I’ve seen this same kind of thing with performers. Dudley Williams was the star male dancer in the internationally known Alvin Ailey Dance Company. He danced professionally till he was almost 67. I saw him many times in those years. He no longer had the agility and athleticism he had as a youth… but he had something else even better.

 

He never lamented about the loss of any skills he once possessed. Not once. Instead, he developed and nurtured what he did have. Experience. Inner strength. Wisdom. Artistic vision.

 

And it was more than enough. Even in his later years, you couldn’t take your eyes off him when he was performing, because he literally dominated the stage with sheer presence and magnetism. The memory of seeing him perform I Wanna Be Ready (from Ailey’s masterpiece, Revelations) in his late 60’s, still brings a tear to my eyes.

 

How many times do we concentrate on what we can’t do instead of celebrating what we can?

 

Even a non-sports guy like myself can’t miss the wisdom in these sports-related lessons.

Stay in the game, use what you’ve got, keep your mental game sharp and never give up.

 

Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Something similar could be said of these three lessons.

 

They may not be the most profound lessons in the world— but they’re better than anything else we’ve got.

 

Tiger’s Milk and Tiger Nuts, Oh My!

 

 

Before “Tiger’s Milk” became famous as a punch line in a Woody Allen movie*, it was the iconic “health food” of my youth, one of the most popular items in what were then known as “health food stores”. Originally invented in the 60’s, Tiger’s Milk Bars were called “America’s original nutrition bar”—and continue to be widely available in various sizes and flavors.

 

Given that I used to love Tiger’s Milk Bars, I was naturally curious when I recently came across a snack food intriguingly labeled Tiger Nuts.

 

What are tiger nuts, you ask?

 

Good question.

 

First, they’re not a nut. Technically, they’re a tuber of a grass-like plant known as the yellow nutsedge. Tubers are basically structures that grow on a plant– usually on the root, sometimes on the stem– that serve as a kind of storage unit for nutrients. The tuber vegetable family includes yams, sweet potatoes, jicama, taro and Jerusalem artichokes.

 

Second, they’re not that new. According to an article in London’s Daily Mail, Tiger Nuts were a popular treat during the 1950’s and 1960’s but are now making a comeback as a superfood, due to their rich nutrient profile and their amazing amount of fiber (more on that in a moment).

 

And thirdly, they’re totally acceptable to a wide range of restrictive diets. They’re organic, they’re gluten free, they’re Kosher, and they’re non-GMO. And they’re totally Paleo-friendly. Although I know of absolutely no way to verify this, the manufacturer claims that Tiger Nuts fueled 80% of our ancestors’ diet two million years ago, and proudly proclaims them to be the ultimate Paleo-approved snack. (For the record, Paleo Magazine gave them a rave review in 2014, which noted that tiger nuts have a protein-fat-carb ratio very similar to human breast milk.)

 

Are they a superfood? It’s easy to argue “yes”. They have a rich content of minerals like phosphorus and potassium and magnesium, and are a natural whole food source of iron. But the very best thing about them is their fiber content. A mere one-ounce of tiger nuts has an almost unheard of 10 grams of fiber, which puts fiber “poseurs” like bread and cereal to shame.

 

What’s more, much of that fiber is known as resistant starch, a type of fiber that helps maintain a healthy balance of gut flora. There are studies showing that resistant starch improves insulin sensitivity, which in turn, helps with losing weight. Prevention magazine even suggested that resistant starch may well be the “next big thing” in weight loss.

 

The fiber in Tiger Nuts is actually prebiotic fiber. Prebiotics are food for the good bacteria (probiotics) in your gut. This is hugely important, since it’s becoming increasingly clear that the care and feeding of the “good guys” in your gut microbiome is of critical importance to your overall health. (It’s also important for your weight, by the way).

 

So how do they taste? Not at all bad, especially for a snack this nutritious. The brand I sampled (manufactured by a company called Organic Gemini) had a slightly nutty, slightly sweet taste. One good thing about them is that because they have so much fiber, they take a long time to chew, so they last a long time and feel very satisfying as a television or movie snack (and they beat the pants of popcorn from a nutritional point of view). Soaking in water can also soften them, and creative folks will find all kinds of ways to use them in baking. You can also make (or buy) Tiger Nut flour, which would be a great alternative to wheat.

 

I’m giving Tiger Nuts a big thumbs up.

 

Apparently, they’re easy to find—I found at least four different brands online, and you can easily buy them from Amazon. I think you should try them. If nothing else, they’re one of the best sources of fiber I’ve found in a long time.

 

 

 

*The Woody Allen film was Sleeper, and the exact quotes are as follows:

Dr. Melik: This morning, for breakfast, he requested something called “wheat germ, organic honey, and tiger’s milk”.

Dr. Aragon (chuckling): Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Coffee — Health Benefits or Hype?

First they said coffee protects against cancer. Read what happened next

While working on the “coffee” entry for the 10th anniversary edition of my book, The Healthiest Foods On Earth, I had an interesting discussion with a colleague about the nature of coffee research.

There’s been a ton of coffee research, and almost all of it has been very positive. Coffee drinkers have less risk of a baker’s dozen of conditions that aren’t exactly on your Christmas wish list—Alzheimer’s, gout, diabetes, pancreatic cancer. Compared to a matched group of non-coffee drinkers, coffee drinkers have a distinct advantage in the health risks sweepstakes.

Even the World Health Organization has gotten on the coffee bandwagon. In

In 1991, it had warned that coffee might be a carcinogen. But in a rare reversal of position, it recently announced (June, 2016) that regular consumption of coffee could actually protect against at least two types of cancer.(1)

Now understand something. I love—repeat love—coffee and drink a lot of it, so I’m always happy to hear about another study confirming coffee’s benefits.

But I may have fallen into a trap, and it’s a trap that many people fall into when reading research, especially research which confirms what they already believe. I’ve pointed out this trap many times, which I thought would protect me from falling into it.

I was wrong.

At this point, I need to credit my esteemed colleague Dr. Dean Raffelock, who first pointed out the flaw in these studies. Follow the argument below, and you’ll soon see what that flaw is.

You see, we now know that there’s a genetic component to how people metabolize coffee. There are slow metabolizers and fast metabolizers, and which group you fall into has a lot to do with how coffee affects you. Slow metabolizers are likely to be kept awake by the caffeine, to have their blood pressure go up (and stay up) and to get the jitters (essentially high levels of cortisol at work). Slow metabolizers have none of these problems and enjoy coffee immensely.

The positive studies on coffee were almost all epidemiological, not clinical. What that means is that scientists look at large groups of people and watch what they do and take measurements. (A clinical study, on the other hand, is an actual experiment where you manipulate variables—like what drug is given, or how much sleep is allowed,. An observational study—which is what most of the coffee studies are—simply tries to find an essentially homogenous group of people (i.e. similar medical history, weight, age, etc) and compares those of them that drink coffee with those of them that don’t.

What a study like this does not do is find a homogenous group of people, break them up into two groups, and tell one of them to drink five cups a day and the other to abstain.

Do you see the difference?

The coffee studies essentially ask people to identify themselves as either someone who drinks coffee or someone who doesn’t. The study then follows the subjects for as many years as possible and at the end of the follow-up, compares the two groups on a whole bunch of medical metrics. The coffee drinkers generally have a better outcome.

But what Dr. Raffelock wisely pointed out is that on one crucial dimension, the two groups– those who drink coffee and those who don’t–are not the same.

“The coffee drinkers who would generally volunteer for a study on coffee drinking would be a biased (self-selected) population because they already possess a metabolism better able to process coffee in healthier ways and would naturally have less tendency toward developing cancer or other diseases from it” he wrote to me in an email.

“Most likely they have liver enzymes better at processing coffee just like some people have livers that process alcohol or other chemicals better than other people. So the coffee drinkers in this study could be a population that is already biased toward suggesting favorable results because they are already know they tolerate coffee well.”

This is the kind of analysis most of us forget to do when looking at epidemiological research. We’d all be wise to remember the mantra of observational studies—correlation is not causation.

In the case of coffee, it’s clearly true that coffee drinkers have a health advantage. But it’s ALSO true that those health advantages only accrue to people who do well with coffee.

Moral of the story: If you hate coffee because it makes you feel like shit, don’t start drinking it for the health benefits.

Metabolically, you’re unlikely to get the same results as people who tolerate coffee just fine.

Grilling Your Way to Cancer? You don’t have to.

Everyone says grilling meat causes cancer. Read what to do about it.

By Jonny Bowden

Barbeque season has arrived, which brings me to my annual message on healthy grilling.

There is a smart way to grill, and a dumb way to grill. The first helps protect your health, the other does exactly the opposite.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss healthy grilling when I appeared on Sacramento’s KCRA News and KXTVNews. During both interviews, I suggested that the single most important thing viewers could to protect themselves against cancerous compounds formed while grilling was to make a marinade:  of herbs, spices and Malaysian palm oil.

The first commandment of grilling: Don’t leave food on the grill until it blackens. Those big flames licking your hamburgers may make the burger look mouth-watering, but what those flames are doing to the burger from a health standpoint is a disaster.

See, the single biggest danger with grilling is high heat. Those big, attention-getting flames interact with the meat to form compounds called heterocyclic amines, which are carcinogenic.

There are safer ways to prepare your meal.

Making a marinade from oils and spices is a great grilling strategy. There’s solid research showing the protective effects of a good marinade as it really cuts down on all the compounds that you don’t want from your barbecue.

As with everything, details matter, and in this case the details are in the choice of oil and choice of herbs and spices. Some oils work better than others for the marinade. Our diet is way too high in pro-inflammatory omega-6s, which are exactly what we’re consuming when we use vegetable oil. You are much better off switching to some better oils, like Malaysian palm oil. This red oil is filled with carotenoids and tocotrienols and I also like using it because of its sustainability. Malaysia protects 50 percent of their forests, which means there, no orangutan habitats are harmed in the making of palm oil.

Adding herbs and spices with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory qualities to a better quality cooking oil can spruce up the marinade too. If you look on any nutrition data site, you’ll see that pound for pound, herbs and spices are more nutritionally rich than practically any other class of food. You can’t go wrong with any of them, but I particularly like using turmeric, oregano… or both.

As Dr. Masley and I wrote in our recent book, Smart Fat, spices are like a medicine cabinet, stocked with terrific, health-giving, natural remedies that we don’t use nearly as much as we should. Use them! Cover whatever you’re grilling with Malaysian palm oil and then just go to town with any or all of the herbs and spices you’ve got on hand. Keep the heat a little bit lower than normal—eat meat, fish and chicken just a tiny bit rarer, and you’ll be doing yourself—and everyone at your BBQ—a tremendous service!

Grilling Your Way to Cancer? You don’t have to.

Everyone says grilling meat causes cancer. Read what to do about it.

By Jonny Bowden

Barbeque season has arrived, which brings me to my annual message on healthy grilling.

There is a smart way to grill, and a dumb way to grill. The first helps protect your health, the other does exactly the opposite.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss healthy grilling when I appeared on Sacramento’s KCRA News and KXTV News. During both interviews, I suggested that the single most important thing viewers could to protect themselves against cancerous compounds formed while grilling was to make a marinade:  of herbs, spices and Malaysian palm oil.

The first commandment of grilling: Don’t leave food on the grill until it blackens. Those big flames licking your hamburgers may make the burger look mouth-watering, but what those flames are doing to the burger from a health standpoint is a disaster.

See, the single biggest danger with grilling is high heat. Those big, attention-getting flames interact with the meat to form compounds called heterocyclic amines, which are carcinogenic.

There are safer ways to prepare your meal.

Making a marinade from oils and spices is a great grilling strategy. There’s solid research showing the protective effects of a good marinade as it really cuts down on all the compounds that you don’t want from your barbecue.

As with everything, details matter, and in this case the details are in the choice of oil and choice of herbs and spices. Some oils work better than others for the marinade. Our diet is way too high in pro-inflammatory omega-6s, which are exactly what we’re consuming when we use vegetable oil. You are much better off switching to some better oils, like Malaysian palm oil. This red oil is filled with carotenoids and tocotrienols and I also like using it because of its sustainability. Malaysia protects 50 percent of their forests, which means there, no orangutan habitats are harmed in the making of palm oil.

Adding herbs and spices with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory qualities to a better quality cooking oil can spruce up the marinade too. If you look on any nutrition data site, you’ll see that pound for pound, herbs and spices are more nutritionally rich than practically any other class of food. You can’t go wrong with any of them, but I particularly like using turmeric, oregano… or both.

As Dr. Masley and I wrote in our recent book, Smart Fat, spices are like a medicine cabinet, stocked with terrific, health-giving, natural remedies that we don’t use nearly as much as we should. Use them! Cover whatever you’re grilling with Malaysian palm oil and then just go to town with any or all of the herbs and spices you’ve got on hand. Keep the heat a little bit lower than normal—eat meat, fish and chicken just a tiny bit rarer, and you’ll be doing yourself—and everyone at your BBQ—a tremendous service!

Embed this video in the post —→KCRA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUL-v8GHGH0