Why Most Diets Don’t Work
The reason is because you don't know what diet is. That's the number one reason I believe that you don't know why your diet is not working. Because you don't even know what diet is.
Okay, so let me share with you what I've learned about what diet is.
Parental Influences
First, it begins with your mom and dad's diet before conception.
Now you want to think about how your parents have been feeding themselves and what I call preparing the Garden of Eden for the seat of soul to come in and be born into this world. That's part of your diet.
And I hate to point this out and be offensive, but the mother’s diet is vital for the birthing of that child or for the environment for that child or that soul to be fertilized into coming into its potential. So that's part of your diet now.
Sensory Consumption
More importantly diet is everything that you put into your eyes, your ears, your nose and your mouth. And on your skin because your skin consumes 68% of what you put on it. That's how a Nicoderm patch works. So if you're lathering all kinds of personal care items on your skin, you're eating it, you're consuming it. So if you don't want to take a tablespoon of that and consume it you might want to consider something else.
Diet is everything you put into your eyes. So everything you look at is feeding you. That’s why I suggest you always feed yourself beauty.
And the most beautiful thing you can have is nature's beauty; flowers and all these other things that put a visual sense of beauty into our eyes.
Also, what are you reading? Because you're feeding yourself with what you read? That's coming in through the eyes and it's actually getting produced or producing some kind of food for thought if you want to use that language.
What you're listening to. Think of the difference between a running brook and a jackhammer. You know, which one is more soothing and peaceful and nourishing, right?
I want you to think about the music that you're listening to.
I want you to think about the information that you're listening to.
I want you to think about so many things regarding what you're listening to because you're feeding yourself based on what you're listening to and who you're listening to.
Now you can listen to yourself internally or you can actually abdicate that responsibility and just listen to other people; take their words for their truth not knowing what your truth is.
And then in your mouth the foods that we eat. You can even think about anything that you’re consuming in our mouth. Now if you want to get a little bit deeper anything you say is food. So if you're saying things in a negative way that you're feeding yourself; your feeding society negativity. Not a great idea. If you want to actually live in a state that is good for you, right and truthful. We say “watch what you say, because it is food for thought.”
Now putting things on your skin. I mentioned before that is probably one of the things that most people hate when I say it because it threatens all their personal care items.
So many things going on our skin out of our own insanity to meet vanity norms in society.
Nourishment
If you understand when you are nourished, then you move in the world in a certain way, which is actually delightful. You become an asset to the evolution of society. But when you're malnourished.
And to the degree you are malnourished, you become a liability for the evolution of mankind and all the problems of this world because you are the problem now. I don't mean to be offensive, but I have to share how I've come across this in my own life if Gandhi's greatest quote is the change you want to see in the world means anything to you. I'm reiterating it in my special way.
Key Takeaways
If your diet isn’t working it’s because you haven't taken ownership that you are on a diet and have to go about navigating and guiding yourself back to what nourishes you.
Understand that you are on a diet and that diet goes beyond just food intake.
The diet starts before conception. The ways your parents feed themselves is part of your diet.
Be mindful of what is consumed through all senses. Feed yourself beauty and if you wouldn't eat it don't put it on your skin.
Take ownership of your diet and make conscious choices to nourish yourself.
In today’s world, it’s easy to see how many people are sick, tired, diseased, and dysfunctional because they’re not actively engaging in their well-being. The way society is set up, it’s not really designed for you to take your health back. So, you have to become a warrior for your well-being. I like the phrase “respectful rebel” because you’re rebelling against all the nonsense.
This one's on nutrition, with a bit of a different take. I've done a few things on diet before, but this is Nutrition 101, which means you have to feed yourself first. And I don’t mean just your body; I mean your self—S-E-L-F. You know what that means? It means taking time to self-reflect on who you are in the world and nourishing who you really want to be. The ultimate nutrition for that is stillness and silence. Spend time alone in stillness and silence—however you want to approach that. It could be just taking a slow, intentional, energetic walk with a piece of paper and a pen to capture your thoughts.
What's up again? I love speaking to you respectful rebels—those who want to go against everything the government says to do. If you do the opposite, you're probably going to be fine, right? So with that in mind, let's go against the grain a little.
People come to me with their illnesses, diseases, and challenges regarding their well-being, and I always say - there's only one disease we all have. So what is that?
What is your definition of God?
How do you embody God, and how do you express that embodiment into the world around you?
These are very important questions, but few people really ask them.
Most people just move according to tribal thinking—adopting a particular definition of God without ever sitting down to consider, "Without the influence of society, churches, religions, spirituality, and all that, what would I really say to express God in my life?"
Now, this might be offensive or triggering to some people, and that means it's challenging your definition of God. As a coach, teacher, and speaker on the subjects of health, healing, and transformation, it’s my job to challenge you. It's not to threaten you or your belief system, but to push you beyond self-limiting beliefs.
I grew up in a family where if I wasn't doing something, my mom would say, "Get busy, get out of here, do something!" I was shamed and blamed. I was always working mentally or physically.
I remember checking into a psychiatric ward after I had gone to the gun club to take my pain away. During this time, I discovered the importance of self-love. I checked into the psychiatric ward because I didn’t want to go back there. I told them, “I just want to learn how to love myself back to well-being,” but their response was that it was my mental illness talking and that I needed more medication.
It's kind of sad that I spent 17 years in the public educational system and university, becoming a civil engineer specializing in bridges, yet I didn't know anything about who I was in spirit, my personality, or what I love to do for its own sake.
Do you have a burning desire in life? A deep yearning that you want to bring forth to the world—or to your world? You know that feeling—“I’m on fire with a burning desire!” My soul force, my passions are being expressed in a certain medium on this plane of living
Being a Warrior for your Wellness is not about either-or. It’s about both-and. The Air Element is the paradoxical realm of thinking. Is that absolutely true? No. Is it relatively true for me? Yes, so take a breath. We’ve got some things to discuss.
We’re living in a framework that says disease is inevitable and is out of our control. I’m trying to help people work through the seven elements of healing, and in this framework, we're exploring how these elements have always been within our control. If you missed the Earth element discussion, I encourage you to catch up before we delve into the Air element next week.
Water, unlike the solid Earth, can be liquid as well as ice. It’s fluids of the body, and includes vital systems like the circulatory and lymphatic systems.
I want you to know something - parasites, fungi, bacteria – all these microbes are here to heal us.
You’ve been taught that germs cause disease. But germs don’t cause disease if they actually heal us. You may be experiencing some cognitive dissonance in hearing this, but hear me out. On this plane of existence, every statement has an opposite that must also hold true. Just as we've been taught cancer is a disease, we must also consider that cancer is not a disease.
If you're living on autopilot and it’s making you sick - know that we live in a culture that’s sick, full of disease, dysfunction, and delusion. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that this is true.
We need a framework for healthy living because our current framework for living often perpetuates disease, dysfunction and delusion as our so-called normal way of life. And therefore, we are engaged in behaviors that uphold that default reality.
Over the past two decades, I've developed a real framework to live by that I want to share with you.
What's up gang? This is Dan. And I have an important public announcement. It's about fasting, how we actually purify and heal our bodies through fasting - and guess what, I'll give you a key takeaway right away. It's the cheapest way you can do it.
It doesn't cost you anything. In fact, you save money on eating. You save money on doing dishes or energy, doing all the dishes and all that nonsense. But what is fasting? Generally speaking, there's so much out there about fasting. God Bless America, it just chops everything up into all kinds of pieces.
So when you take your aspect of self - your awareness - to the breath and how you're breathing it, then you come directly in contact with your spiritual essence, because you're in the present moment. You're in contact with your awareness to the degree that you’re fully aware of your breathing in that moment. And you're going to allow yourself to just observe the breath. That's all you need to do.
I remember getting the diagnosis that I had cancer, and I was like, how am I going to navigate this? Oh my God. So I found a book by Tony Robbins, and as I flipped through the pages I saw “Start living your life.” Right when I flipped it over!
And, they had all kinds of things about belief systems and stuff like that. And I’m going home and saying, Oh my God, what am I going to do?
Well, I'm going to coach ice hockey, because I love ice hockey. And in doing that, I realized that people were going to help me navigate this. So I wanted to help other people so I could feel like I'm being grateful. It’s an act of gratitude to be of service to other people, to volunteer and to just make my life continue to move on.
What are your intuition and instincts about how you want to navigate your cancer journey? You have the answers inside of you. You are your own best expert on this. And that’s what I ask people when I coach them.
When I saw my first oncologist, he asked me a very powerful question.
If you think of Mozart, think of how amazing his music and compositions were to humanity back then and even still today. How he did his music was not necessarily how he did his relationships, from my understanding. He wasn't very good at relationships but with his music, he did really well, so it didn't carry over into his life.
How you can live with more power and love with more grace. This is a phrase I've used as a mantra for my own life - live with power, love with grace. This is why I share that with you, is because I've been fortunate to be in the presence of other people who represented power and grace.
Let me ask you something: what if I told you that nothing is missing in your life? It's just changing form or shape.
I came across this in my own life when I would be experiencing feelings of lack or feeling like something was missing. I wanted more success, more clients, more money, more identity - whatever it was, more health. And I realized that if you actually think about it, it's in your next book.
I want to share something with you. What if your emotions are real - but they're not actually the absolute truth?
I experienced this myself because I get triggered - and when I do get triggered, I take a look at it and then that emotion comes up and leaves me.
So what I realized in that moment was that the emotion was real. I sat with it and then all of a sudden it left. That meant that the absolute truth came right behind it.
At 29 years old. I walked into an office - an oncologist in Boston. I was there to find out, why was I so sick? They had done a biopsy. They knew it was cancerous. I was there to find out my diagnosis and prognosis and what am I gonna do about this?
The doctor gave me a question. That doctor asked me, “Dan, how did such a young man get into the business of cancer?
And that question I turned inward and I asked myself.
In that answer I found that I was not living my true authentic self and I was definitely doing things that were not in the best interest of my optimal health, let’s just say that. And to summarize it pretty aggressively, I was living an ignorant and arrogant life.
After that Eternal moment, he had another thing to say. He said, “Dan with a little bit of suffering you will grow stronger.”
The reason is because you don't know what diet is. That's the number one reason I believe that you don't know why your diet is not working. Because you don't even know what diet is.
Okay, so let me share with you what I've learned about what diet is.
First, it begins with your mom and dad's diet before conception.
Now you want to think about how your parents have been feeding themselves and what I call preparing the Garden of Eden for the seat of soul to come in and be born into this world. That's part of your diet.
What if I told you 20 minutes of exercise can actually change and transform your life? I know you're thinking that's impossible because everybody out there says you need to go to at least a one-hour class. But 20 minutes of concentrated intentional effort trumps anything else.
I have something to shock you with. And potentially liberate you. What if I told you that cancer is not a disease?
I want you to know something - on this plane of living - whenever you make a statement the opposite is also true.
What does that mean?
I'm a holistic heroic performance life coach who empowers people dealing with cancer or chronic illness to find their own path towards healing.
As a 6x cancer survivor, I realized that cancer isn’t the disease - it’s the expression of the disease. Cancer was my body’s way of waking me up. And it became my greatest opportunity to awaken into my own conscious spiritual evolution. That’s why I became a holistic heroic performance coach focused on HOPE - Helping Other People Evolve into their true authentic selves.