Week 23: A Doctor’s 52 Week Journey to an Unprocessed Life
Welcome to the Go UnPro Podcast, a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. Now, here is your host Dr. Brent W. Laartz, Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, Neuroscientist, and Best-Selling Author. All right everyone, welcome to week 23 of a doctor's 52-week journey to an unprocessed life. Today we're going to be talking a little bit more about achieving goals. Those goals could be weight loss, could be connection, could be diet, labs, some sort of cholesterol lab that you've been trying to get down, your hemoglobin A1c, or sleep. It could be... your plastic use, all of these different areas of your life that are getting to an unprocessed life. It’s making me, once you get rid of 50% of everything, it's a little bit tougher to get to the rest of the goal.
And that has to do with a lot of different goals you might be trying to sometimes easy to get the first, well, sometimes it's very hard to get the first step out of the way, right? That first step is very influential on what's going to happen, okay? So overcoming that is nine-tenths of the battle. Getting that first step and you're already there, right? That's what they say. You're already there if you take that first step. However, With that said, achieving goals needs to be that last 50%, okay? Getting to the 90, 95, 99% of your goal, okay? That area is even harder than that first step, okay? First step, heart. Next, 50%. and this is an exact science, but the last 50% of that goal is a little bit harder because if your goal, as long as you set that goal high enough, the standard, the bar high enough, you shouldn't be able to attain it as easily as getting to that first step and just a little bit more effort.
It's got to take more than that. Anything worth it in life. needs to have an effort at it, right? With that said, actually, we're going to be talking about a new book I was just reading by Angela Duckworth. And we're going to be talking about that too, about really making some of these goals effortless. Okay. But Making challenges weekly for those goals. Let's say it's this week. We all know I'm doing the raw vegan food challenge for seven days. And for a few days, pretty easy. Just make a berry yogurt and beans and fermented cucumber dish. Perfect. Day two comes very easy. Day three, all of a sudden, your friend wants to go watch a movie. What are you going to eat in a movie that's going to be raw, vegan and in any shape or fashion?
OK, so and so wasn't 100 percent successful on this seven day. But I was successful at the 90% level, right? So making those challenges weekly, you don't need to succeed at 100%, but you need to try to get to close to 100%, try to perfect that over time, okay? So that's why making challenges weekly can kind of change and making those additions, not the subtractions, effortless, okay? Making the additions to your diet, to your exercise routine, to your sleep routine, to your connection routine, those additions. take out the bad negatives and take out the subtractions automatically because there's not room for them, right? Every week making a challenge will spill over into the next week somewhat as long as you don't go right off the wagon, okay?
So building consistency without the need for perfection, that's important. You can't be perfect. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect, but do the best you can. That's what I'm trying to do with my life. Lowers my stress. It builds confidence, builds focus. It lessens the distractions. With that said, let's talk about our environment because that is also half the battle, is the environment. Probably half of that battle is the people you surround yourself with. And the people I surround myself with in the past have been those people who have made poor decisions. I've also surrounded myself with at least some people that I know, that I look up to, that I... build on my achievements looking forward to the future. And I think that overall, that is half of your environment is the people you're surrounded with.
The other parts of situations, and that's Angela Duckworth's new book is called Situations. Very interesting because you really... entitles you to not feel guilty about making an easy path, making the path easy for yourself. And that involves putting yourself in the right situation. That's what I'm trying to do with everyone I surround myself with, making the path easy. for me to achieve these health goals to an unprocessed life. It could be people, could be things, could be animals, products, your kitchen, your bedroom, your workplace, your desk at your office right here at the podcast studio. What is in my studio? I do not have any distractions in my a lot of, I have a few distractions. I have to be honest, but those are things that are distracting me, not necessarily from my health.
Okay. So I love distractions. I love distractions that are good for me. And that's what, that's what the situations that you put yourself in will matter for you. Her first book, Angela Duckworth's first book was called Grit. And I read that book first 20 years ago when I was raising my kids and trying to bring my kids into having grit. Okay, having grit is extremely important. If you don't have grit by the time you're 20 years old. it's hard to learn grit. And certainly your environment can put you into a situation where you need grit, okay? So your situation, if you're struggling at something and you have to succeed, you need to get there. Grit is going to get you there. But your situation that you put yourself in and the objects, the people.
the environment that you put yourself in to achieve your goals is equally important as the grit that you have. Okay, so let's talk about this week, what we're doing for a diet. And we already talked about this. We're doing the raw food vegan challenge. I just made a cauliflower rice. Raw cauliflower rice with peppers carrots and garlic and some cayenne pepper carrots amazing dish last night also made my own yogurt because i am going to be traveling this week and so traveling getting to that um situation, putting myself into a situation. So again, we're traveling to go to a 5k. And what do you find yourself when you go to a 5k? When you go to a 5k, you have all kinds of vendors out there that are giving you processed crap, bars, this and, and yogurts that are in a plastic bag and, and little sugar packs that are in a plastic bag.
What do I need a sugar pack for? My sugar in my body, as far as a 5k or a 10k, will last me an entire 5k or 10k and probably even a half marathon. Okay, could be a different story as far as what you might need to get through a marathon. I'm not running marathons, that's for sure. So I'm bringing this um homemade hummus with me to this okay so the vegan raw food challenge we went on one day a week i fast had a berry yogurt that is homemade oat milk yogurt beans and cucumber that's fermented for the last two to three weeks and Along with that, tomatoes in there and garlic and great bean, kind of a salad-Ish. OH, and there was a pepper dressing that was on it.
That was a raw pepper, hot pepper dressing. Day three had a salad with bib lettuce and spinach, carrots, dates, peppers. We're going to go into the weekend here with berry yogurt and the hummus that we talked about. And then day seven, I'm heading to the beach for a little R&R recovery from that Saturday 5K. I'm going to try to do some resistance training over the weekend as well. I've been lacking a little bit on that. And so because I've been training for this 5K. So that's, um, going to be the movement. , just, , I guess we got into the movement section of our five pillars, right? , 5k challenge. I’ve done some two days this past week. I'm doing a rest day today, the day before. And then, um, and then.
I'm at a little bit of a loss here because last week was a really busy day at work, week at work. And so therefore, I had busy days that I couldn't get to trying to do at least five miles, three to five miles each day and or doing some resistance training last week was very difficult. So when you find yourself, when I find myself in those situations. I try to do some two a days the next week, not every day. Certainly that's not a doable thing every day for the next week. You don't want to overdo it. You don't want to injure yourself. And I, I think that is one of the most important things with movement that gives you that longevity and that endurance to keep going forward onto the future in your resistance training and cardiovascular training is trying to avoid injuries.
And that involves not overdoing it. I had, and I've been doing some classes, talked about that last week, and I did an arm challenge. with these resistance bands. I got a little bit of shoulder and neck issues with it, trying to get over those injuries. Those are minor injuries. And sometimes it takes a little bit of rest and recovery. Okay. So that's this week for movement, doing that 5k challenge. That’s another one of these challenges, another one of these goals. Okay. For the third pillar, sleep. I'm doing a challenge a little bit this week, trying to get less than seven hours only two times in each week, okay? And I'm going to have my busy weeks that I'm not going to be able to obtain that challenge. I'm a physician. Physicians wake up early.
Physicians go to bed late because they are getting a call from somebody. Okay. And it's just not always possible in my profession and maybe your profession as well. A lot of people's profession. Okay. So sleep, we're going to continue to work on our environment as well as Angela Duckworth talked about, about blackouts, about red lights at night and, and early morning sunshine. Okay. All right, so the connection part of this, and I'm going to be advertising here a little bit because connection to me involves community and it involves charity, okay? I am. And you don't have to necessarily donate to this charitable thing for me. And I can certainly donate also. But I'll just advertise this just in case you feel that this is important. I feel that children's cancer is one of the places where...
these kids didn't ask to get cancer. They didn't drink alcohol for 40 years. They didn't eat poorly and eat processed food for 40 years to get cancer. They were just being kids. And we have a charity here in the Tampa Bay area called the Children's Cancer Center. And I volunteered And I call on everyone, if you don't donate through me or through the website of the Children's Cancer Center, try to get involved. And if you're nationwide and you have a children's cancer charity, there are charities, I think, that deal with research. But I think the most important charities that deal with children's cancer. is those that can help children be children, even though they have cancer. And this Children's Cancer Center here in Tampa, they provide this place that's not in a hospital.
It is a building that they can go to. that they can have activities with other kids that have cancer and also kids that don't have cancer because there are plenty of volunteers from local high schools that go there to volunteer. And I volunteered there in the past and now this year I am now what's called a soul man for... something called Wine Women in Shoes and it's a charity that is benefiting the Children's Cancer Center. It is an event that has shoes and fashion for women and part of the group is men who are supporting that and we are basically serving the women during this event and we're also raising on our own accord, because a big majority of the money is raised by the women of this organization.
But a small amount is being raised by the men who are also participating. And I will put the website. I'll put it up here. I'll put perhaps, if I can, I'll put a QR code on the screen. The website is www.giveffect.com/participants/580513-Brent-Laartz. And that's the website to get to my page. I'm sure that you can find on there. I haven't searched through it, but I'm sure on giveeffect.com you can find. ways to find other soul men, or go to the Children's Cancer Center website itself, or in your facility or your community, I should say, find a children's cancer, donate, give your time.
This is an amazing time we live in where children and younger people are coming down with cancer still, partially because of our environment, partially because of genetics, I'm sure, but partially, and none of it is the fault of these children. All right, so I'll put that up as the website on the video here and in the show notes. All right. So the last, the fifth pillar here of plastics, we're doing this this week. We’re exchanging out and I've had multiple different types of socks and brands of socks. And I'll tell you, almost none of them are wool or cotton. I did, I have tried some cotton socks in the past and I have several pairs that are not adequate for me, for my active lifestyle.
And so I'll tell you that I'm searching this week and next couple of days at different stores and Amazon, let's say, and or other websites looking for some good. I'm going to look for some merino wool. I've also seen some alpaca wool socks out there. But again, when I talk about these things, plastic free product, you have to really read the label and do some research because some of these products are plasticized fibers. OK, so they process them. with chemicals with with different ways and oxidation to make them into a plasticized stretchy fiber merino wool by itself already has some moisture wicking and has some stretch to it so It is a great fiber to use, but there are other ones you can try to find. Research for yourself.
Again, half the year is going to be spent, not half the year, but a good portion of the year is going to be spent replacing my wardrobe and getting rid of the plastic and the polyesters. All the rayons and the and the spandex and the elastane and all these kind of things that are what I think not good for me. So what I want to get rid of. So you can't replace your whole wardrobe and maybe some people can that shop to themselves to death. But I'm not going to shock myself. That's I'm not going to spend a lot of money all at one time. And nobody can. Right. Especially in these days and times. So this week, it sucks. This week, it's my athletic socks. This week, it's my business, my attire socks.
I do have some nice cotton socks I got in France when I was there that that are nice, organic cotton socks that I actually really love. And so this is going to be a challenge. OK, so we've already done our business shirts. I've got my merino wool shirt here that is great moisture wicking and is also a good daily wear kind of shirt. and I've got the underwear matched. I've got a few pants. I've got some other things in the works in the future, and this is the next thing, okay? So, all right, that's our five pillars. That's our week 23.I can't wait for everything else, and you know, as I've explained before, we don't kind of go through what we've done in the past. As far as diet, really are.
Let's just go through diet. I'm not going to go through any of the other five pillars and go through what our goal is here. What my goal is, is to increase the antioxidants, the polyphenols in my diet, get rid of the processed foods, increase the fiber, and then also obviously vitamins and those. berries and vegetables are going to get us there. We're going to get to mostly plant-based diet. Okay. Probably I would like to be five to six days out of the week, no meat. The rest of the time, potentially some fish. And I would like to get to no beef and almost no chicken or turkey. Okay. So Also there, you know, the accountability, no fast food, trying to get rid of soda, which is somewhat difficult because our doctor's lounge has water and soda.
That's all they have. They have coffee. I don't drink coffee. They have tea, but it's caffeinated. I don't drink caffeinated tea. All right. So we're trying also to get rid of processed sugars. Again, carbs are not bad if they are complex carbs, okay? So again, if you're going to be vegetarian, you're going to be eating carbs. But trying to avoid those sugars and the fruits that I do eat, there's got to be a reason for that. There's got to be a reason I'm taking in that fructose. And that reason is the polyphenols in the berries that I eat. Okay. And then some protein with beans, hummus. The importance of that is, it can't be understated. And, um. Avoiding processed oils. Also trying to get mainly cold processed. I like olive and avocado oil.
Certainly if you are going to use seed oils, try to get them cold pressed so that they are not oxidized by all of the heat processing that would need to be done. Trying to eat a lot of whole vegetables fruits etc okay so and trying to get that seven days a week trying to do fermented foods homemade and homegrown what we just talked about um and we're going to get to a couple of field trips next okay so i am going to show you guys just a couple of little video clips of my raw food vegan challenge and also growing food at home so afterwards here's a couple of videos and afterwards join me for the future join us on video on apple podcast on spotify and we've got YouTube, we've got Substack, we've got our website, gounpro.com, and join us on social media. That's where you'll see a lot of what I'm doing as well. Brent W. Lartz, MD. On TikTok, it's brett.w.lartz.md. On social, on I think, you know, meta, it's brett.w.lartz.md. at BrentWLaartzMD. So join us and here's a couple of good videos for you. See you soon.
All right for week 23 we are making our raw veggie challenge. This on day four is dinner and it is cauliflower rice, raw cauliflower rice that is, and it's going to be a spicy dish. So we're doing the cauliflower here to start ricing it etc. So we'll see you in a second. and here's the final product look at those kale and the cauliflower and the tomatoes jalapeno peppers amazing this is going to be tasty add a little bit of salt cayenne and onion powder and some garlic onto there as well all right that is going to be one good serving of some raw veggies love it all right so here we are i just bought this house not too long ago so this is the very start of what i'm going to be doing for
growing my own food which is one of the things that as far as connection goes with the land but also movement and getting that exercise that full range of motion of getting into the earth and getting everything healthy can’t be matched okay this is what people in blue zones do they grow their own food and then they grow their own food and then they eat it and share it with their family etc so um here over here still have to get another bag of organic soil here obviously it's in a plastic bag
Come on. Good stuff. All right.
Organic raised bed and potting mix. All right. So we're going to, for the most part here, we're going to use seeds, but I have one hot pepper. that's been languishing in this pot for a little bit here. And that's one of the issues sometimes we have is you buy the stuff. If you don't get it in the ground quick enough, it kind of starts to go to crap, right? So we're going to go ahead and plant this, even though it's been sitting here for a little while. I'm not sure how well it's going to do, but let's get it in there. Okay, so I'm going to be putting more topsoil in here. This is in a half day of sun here. I'm going to kind of put that there.
Let's build it up a little bit over here. I'm going to be adding more soil to the rest of this. Let's get it to grade there. Maybe build it up right here. Okay, let's see how that grows over time here. I don't know. Already a little aged already a little late in the summer this is what this is what we're accomplishing here we're not only going to the gym we're not only going out for runs and bike rides etc and tennis on the court sports that's all been fun and games and is associated with longevity but really the natural longevity is growing your own food we're going to be putting a couple of raised beds out there bigger raised beds this is the start since we just moved in and let's see how we grow here all right thank you very much for joining me we'll see you back in the podcast
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