Life’s Guarantees

Here’s what I know for sure.

Life can be good and happy and life can be terribly hard and sad. Sometimes back-to-back, double feature style.

It’s kind of like watching Bridesmaids and laughing your ass off until there are tears, and then BAM, Schindler’s List comes on, and the tears just keep rolling down your face, leaving salty trails behind them.

Life is a rollercoaster of emotions. Ups and downs, awesome days and stupid days, laughing, crying and sometimes everything all at the same exact moment.

Through it all, there are some guarantees in life that are important to remember.

Some of these guarantees we all experience, some are unique to each of us, and others are only guarantees if we make the choice to allow them to show up in our life.

Let’s break all this down and get some clarity in today’s fuckery – are you with me?

First, let’s look at some guarantees that we all have in common and that none of us have any control over. Maybe it’s the consistency that makes these guarantees comforting, or maybe it’s that they aren’t up for debate. Whatever it is, we can rest easy knowing the following truths with absolute certainty:

• The sun and moon will rise and set.
• Gravity always does its job.
• We will always inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide until we die.
• We will all die.

So no matter how much of a shit show your day turns out to be, as long as you’re still alive, the sun will shine, you won’t accidentally be uprooted into outer space, and your lungs will fill with oxygen. If nothing else is going your way, hold on to that.

The next set of guarantees are personal. These are different from person to person and unlike gravity, they morph and change throughout our life because of a little thing called impermanence, but we will always have them in one form or another. And this is good because humans like consistency and routine, so our own personal guarantees – no matter how strange – act as an anchor. And regardless of how much someone has their shit together, we all need anchors because life is so unpredictable by nature.

At this current moment in my life, here are some of my guarantees:

• Everyday at 1:30 pm my cat, Panda will start acting like an asshole and freak out because he knows that at 2 pm he’ll get wet food and he can’t handle the excitement.
• Every Wednesday, I write my Saturday fuckery to you, and for the first 30-60 minutes, I stare at my screen and think to myself: What the fuck am I going to write this week? And then I write a really bad first draft, and I tweak it throughout the the week until I’ve edited something that’s worth your time to read.
• If I eat an apple, I will burp, and it’s not a dainty little cutsie girly burp. The sound that comes out of me after I eat an apple sounds like it should come out of a biker bar bouncer named Hammer. Hammer is 6 feet 5 inches tall, 300 pounds, has self-inflicted no front teeth, and has a thing for knives and snacks on small children. The frequency and pitch of my burp should be coming from that guy. Why and how it comes out of me is a mystery.

No matter how shitty or unpredictable my week is going, I know that I’ll be entertained every day at 1:30pm by my cat. I know that on Wednesday, my ass will be in my writing chair questioning my ability to entertain, educate and inspire through words, but by Saturday morning at 9am Pacific time, I’ll have sorted it out.

And lastly, I know that if I want to freak someone out, all I have to do is eat an apple. It might not seem like a lot, but when I combine it with the whole sun / moon, gravity and oxygen thing, it brings me comfort.

Then we have the guarantees that work in our favor, but only if we make the choice to have these guarantees show up in our life. The action steps to lock down these guarantees are often out of people’s comfort zones, so they frequently get ignored, put off for later or they become the brunt of misinterpretation.

Here are a few of them:

• If we eat healthy food every day (by healthy, I mean whole plant foods and less of everything else) we will have lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, a lower BMI, a stronger immune system, a healthier heart and protection, and often even reversal of type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancers, autoimmune disorders, and other degenerative and chronic diseases.
• If we engage in physical activity every day for at least 30 minutes, our mood will improve, and our outlook on life will become more positive.
• If we sleep a solid 7-8 hours per night, our body and mind will be better equipped to glide through the day even when bullshit happens.

Unlike gravity, engaging in things that guarantee a healthy body and mind is a choice that you have to make every single day.

Some days, that’s easy.

Making your green smoothie is like brushing your teeth – effortless and part of your routine. You look forward to that brisk morning walk and can’t wait to get out the door. And your bed looks like a warm cocoon that sweetly calls your name, with lights out by 10 pm.

Other days it’s not so easy.

You don’t want anything in your mouth if it doesn’t belong to the donut family. Exercise doesn’t even enter your mind as a possibility. And binge-watching Narcos until 3am doesn’t seem like a choice as much as a requirement.

Wherever you’re at with the choices you make for your beautiful bod, it’s okay.

As long as you understand that you can have the same health guarantees as the rest of us by making the choice more often than not to eat healthy food, be active, and get enough sleep over and over again, then you’re on your way and headed in the right direction.

Donut Narcos binges might happen in the midst of working towards these guarantees. It’s called life. But don’t let it stop you from moving forward and making a different choice tomorrow.

And if you get lost, confused, off track, don’t know where to start, or just need a friend in the process, you have me.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a teleseminar about healing your relationship with food. It was fun to do a fuckery in person (or should we call it a puckery?)

I answered a couple of questions after the talk, but there were a lot more that I didn’t have time to answer. Over the next few weeks, I’ll work on answering all of the questions that came in.

Here’s the first one.

QUESTION:

I was hoping to get some ideas for food to pack for my four days on the road when I move from Maine to Texas next month. I want to eat healthy & inexpensively, packing whatever I can in my cooler. What I want to avoid is running out of food or getting bored with what I’ve packed.

ANSWER:

For starters, this person is already on the right track because they’re bringing a cooler along with them. When you go on a road trip, take after this smart cookie and make room for a cooler. It’ll allow for more variety when planning your meals on the road.

When deciding what food to pack, ask yourself these four questions:

1. Is it nutrient-dense and consists of whole plant foods?
2. Is it easy to prepare on the go?
3. Is it easy to eat on the go?
4. Is it yummy eaten cold?

If you answered yes to all four of these, than you have a winner and it should be on your road trip menu (along with your best of the 80’s mix, a couple of audio books and back to back episodes of the WTF podcast).

Here’s what I’d pack if it were me venturing out on this trip:

1. Cold soup like vichyssoise or gazpacho.
2. Cold salads like potato salad, quinoa salad, lentil salad, or grain salads.
3. Wraps. The trick with wraps is to use tortillas that won’t get soggy over time. Sprouted corn tortillas work really well for this. This type of tortilla is typically small, so you would need to make a few of them. This is great because it will give you variety. Maybe fill a couple with hummus and Kalamata olives, tofu scramble with lots of greens, and carrot cashew pate with cucumber. The possibilities are endless on this one.
4. Use a spiralizer to spiral some cucumbers and carrots and put them in one container. Make a couple of sauces and pack those separately. Pesto sauce and peanut sauce are yummy options. When it’s time to eat, just place some spiralized veggies into a bowl, add some sauce, and stir so that the veggie noodles are all saucy. Top with some Walnut Parm to seal the deal.
5. Sandwich kits. Pack some bread, a few avocados, some sliced veggies and a yummy dressing, like my cashew ranch, my Caesar Dressing, or the tahini dressing. Pack all of these things separately and then assemble your sandwich when you get hungry. This way, the bread won’t get soggy, and you can make each one fresh.
6. Easy to eat fruit. Wash some grapes and put them in a container, wash some apples, cut up a melon, bring bananas – anything that isn’t messy.
7. Travel-size almond butter packets. These are great for whipping up an almond butter and banana sandwich or just eating as-is or with an apple.

The last thing to remember is to bring any kitchen tools that you’ll need. A little plastic cutting board, a little sharp knife, a plate, a bowl, silverware, and some napkins are useful.

Hopefully, this is enough to turn your engine on and get your wheels turning (I had to do it).

Okay—we’ve covered some good ground here, don’t you think?

Get ready to get your panties in a twist because today’s recipe is prize-winning.

Here’s the ultimate sauce to put over anything and everything.

Use this sauce as a salad dressing, use it to top veggies and grains, use it as a sandwich spread, put it on sweet potatoes, use it in place of sour cream—seriously, just put it on every damn thing you eat.

If you make a batch at the beginning of the week, it’ll make simple, easy meals 100% satisfying and delicious throughout your entire week.

Or you could just let me do the meal planning for you, and all you have to do is follow along.

Enjoy this recipe for Lemon Tahini Dressing, sometimes called “Tahini Crack” or “T Crack” in our private Facebook group.

I hope that you have a happy week. May it be filled with guarantees that work in your favor.