There’s a certain soberness to seeing a doctor snip away at your arm right before he sews you back together, putting your bones out of sight and touch once again. It’s the opposite of what most people do, cutting away at the steak on their plate and exposing the bones concealed within. Now, it’s pretty cool to be able to see and touch bones, as long as they’re yours. Other bones are kinda gross.

Let’s say, for a moment, that you are a healthy, reasonable person. You avoid alcohol and tobacco and other drugs because you know that they are bad for your health. You know that, while they bring some little level of pleasure and escape, the overall result is negative.

Instead you drink milk, feeling good about the calcium it contains until your sinuses are filled with at least a freakin’ gallon of mucus and you fall down the stairs and break your flippin’ arm! What the deal? Isn’t this stuff supposed to make your bones stronger? And what’s with this monstrous pressure in your head? Oh man, it feels you could stick a needle in there and it’d spurt out, like, thirty feet!

Son, you have discovered one of the sad truths about food: no animal, past babyhood, is meant to drink milk and no animal at all is meant to drink some other animal’s milk. I won’t go into too much detail on the first part of that, but if you’re old enough to be reading this, you should definitely not be guzzling your mother’s milk anymore. Grow up, man!

On the second part, you do realize that cow’s milk is designed to turn a sixty pound calf into a four hundred pound adult within a year, don’t you? That stuff’s got some crazy hormones in it and your body probably won’t know what to do with them; it freaks out and has to handle them as foreign substances (which they totally are). Any nutrients actually in that stuff are overshadowed by all the anti-nutrients and pus that it contains (pus?! sick!!).

Hold on just one minute, you say, if I’m not meant to get milk, where will I get my calcium? My friend, that’s simple. To begin with, you probably don’t need that much calcium, because you haven’t been getting that much. Milk, you see, is a very poor source of calcium and the calcium it does have is overshadowed by all the anti-nutrients; the majority of the calcium in milk never strengthens your bones.

We can see this in the American population. The meat and dairy industries have an enormous advertising and lobbying presence, and have been very successful in convincing the population that they need to be drinking milk (despite the obvious fact that early humans couldn’t drink cow’s milk and there’s no possible way for a mammal to evolve natural dependence on the mammary secretions of a different animal) and also that you need a extortionate level of protein in your diet. The worst part is that these industries have convinced the population that meat and dairy are the only sources of these nutrients and have even managed to lobby their way onto the food pyramid.

Now calm down. Despite implications to the contrary, I did not just make a radical statement; I just made a very logical statement. Thinking about our biology and physiology, we have absolutely no nutritional need nor necessity for any dairy products. Also eggs; that’s like eating some lady’s menstruation. There’s no way your body was designed to consume those substances. In fact, from what I’ve found and read: becoming vegetarian produces benefits in health and clarity of mind (and more, but that’s not my focus here), as does becoming vegan; in fact, becoming vegan (removal of dairy products) producing much greater results (four times as great) than becoming vegetarian (removal of meat).

Brian Johnson has said that the single best nutritional choice you can make is to stop milking the cow. It’ll heighten energy levels, clear your mind, clear up allergies and improve health. What are the losses? Ice cream and shakes; that’s it. If you’re willing to try new things, give non-dairy ice cream a shot and, in the mean time, get rid of cheese and milk and all the rest of that grossness.

When I started this, I’d intended to also mention the benefits of removing meat from your diet (hence the title), but I don’t think I can pull that off and stay under a thousand words and I like to keep these posts relatively short, so I’ll leave that for another day and just finish this off with a link to an article about milk: http://www.organicathlete.org/article/915 as well as the thought that if these guys weren’t on to something, their organization would fail. At this time, I’d like to encourage you to stop consuming dairy.
I understand that this may be difficult for you, and in fact, I’m still working on it myself, and if you are concerned about calcium, I’ll leave you with a list of good sources: kelp, almonds, sesame, beans, oranges, figs, broccoli, kale, spinach, cinnamon, peppermint, romaine lettuce, celery, cabbage, green beans, garlic, Brussel sprouts and basil. Enjoy!

Today at work, I was thinking about how my current social interactions (in a low energy state) differ from social interactions I’ve had over the past few months (a great deal of which I spent in a high energy state). I realized that the one differing factor was that level of energy.

And it’s so much more than just that. Besides effecting my behavior, I can also see changes in my levels of motivation, my ability to focus and even my eyesight! It’s truly amazing how much is effected by one simple thing.

This discovery actually boosted my motivation and got me excited, which is the only reason I’m writing this now. Seriously, I hit the brick wall four hours into a ten hour shift. I seriously don’t know how I managed to make it through those next two hours until I started thinking about my energy levels. The next four were pretty good, because I was talking to myself the entire time about energy levels and motivation and stuff.

I wanted to have a list of methods to raise energy levels to put in here, but I wasn’t able to come up with anything novel – just the basics: eat regularly, have something to look forward to, give yourself a reason to go on (having people around to watch/say, “I tolda so, ya failure” really does the trick for me).

There are some basic, easy ways to increase energy temporarily. One of my favorites is milk shakes, but I think I’m starting to lean towards icees and slushies, because there’s no dairy to cloud the mind. Apples are also amazing; I’ve had times when I didn’t want to do anything but lay around, but someone brought me an apple and as soon as it was in my mouth, I managed to move for the first time in half an hour. Generally, though, liquids work better because you can get more in your system faster, but I think fruits should be just about as good, because of the juice.

It’s a popular Mormon tale that an apple will wake you up more than caffeine, which I believe to be true. An apple will add energy to your system, while caffeine will simply trick your body into thinking it has the energy (leading to a crash when your body figures out you’ve been lying to it).

When I was doing plays, we were always told to have ENERGY (and to enunciate)! On the high energy nights, you could truly feel how much better we performed. That actually extends to everything. Energy effects your ability to do anything, even to see!

Two days.

I’ve got two days before I undertake one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. You know, I keep saying that it’s going to be difficult, but you know, it probably won’t be.

I think each individual task will be difficult up to the point when I actually start and then it will get easier. Hopefully, by the end of the month, getting started on each one will become easier and easier. I certainly hope so.

It makes me wonder about the people who normally live like this. The people who are always doing new things and learning and growing. How do they manage?

I’m reminded of an old motto of mine, “Nothing I ever do is ever as dangerous as it looks,” which at times I’ve changed to, “Nothing I ever do is ever as hard as it looks.”

Actually, the more I think about it, the more excited I am for it to begin. Heh, this is going to be fun!

“There is no passion to be found in playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living – Nelson Mandela

Okay, so I imagine that quite a few of you are wondering why in the world you would ever want to be a freak. First of all, how about we define precisely what I mean when I say you should be a freak. It’s really very simple: just think of anyone you’ve ever heard of. Anyone at all.

For example, when Michael Jordan was in high school, he would get way early each morning and spend hours every day working on just the basics, the fundamentals. People called him a freak, people said he was weird. Now people call him the greatest ever.

Now, that is one freak! If you think about it, a freak is someone, anyone, who is different from what is normal. A freak is someone who puts so much passion into what they do that they transcend normality. Think of freaks you’ve known yourself. People who have put more into what they do; people who have gone above and beyond what was necessary. Anyone who has achieved more than what is usual among the boring hordes of normality.

Tim Ferriss works fewer hours in a week than most people do in a day and yet probably makes more money. He lives everywhere and enjoys it better than just about anyone. I’m planning to join him, but it’ll have to wait until after my mission unless I can think of some way to work zero hours in two years. That’d be pretty cool, but I wonder how to set it up…

More on being weird, Robin Sharma has a podcast entitled “Only the Weird Win” and I highly suggest you listen to it. As well as the rest of his podcasts; they’re all really good.

Besides, being weird is one of the best things you can possibly be. Somewhere, I remember reading some advice that you should always establish yourself as weird, but in a good way. The example given was about an internship, in which the new intern would arrive earlier than everyone else and stay later than everyone else. Not only that, but he would manage to perform a recordable activity (such as emailing a memo) at some absurd time (such as three in the morning). He was soon considered weird, but in a good way.

I’ve got an idea bouncing around in my head that’s probably both the hardest and the best thing I could ever possibly do. The hardest part is that I’m going to seriously regret not trying it if I don’t and also regret failing it if I do. It’s an idea that Brian Johnson would be greatly proud of me for trying. It’d also be totally worth it, even if it shatters into little pieces. What is it? I’m going to be perfect!